A Machete Order Prequel edit - (parts of) all 3 movies down to 1 (Released)

I want to thank orchidal for encouraging me to share info about my 3 to 1 Prequel Edit, sourced from the 1080p blu-rays. This was my first fan edit, done a couple years ago and rendered in high quality. I’ve had good feedback toward it with friends and excited now to share it here.

Big Picture

The Episode I Duel of The Fates lightsaber battle is used as the assassination attempt on Senator Amidala that leads into Episode II. From there, it’s a very condensed Ep II with no Tatooine, no missing planets and significantly shortened action set pieces. Episode III is shortened to the essentials but only slightly altered (no death by broken heart, no flying R2, etc)

Total Run Time of 2 hours 29 minutes
Ep 1 @ 0:05:30 or 3.7%
Ep 2 @ 0:46:30 or 31%
Ep 3 @ 1:29:00 or 60%
Custom crawl + credits @ 0:08:00 or 5.3%

Goals

I meant for this version to be seen with Machete Order viewing. One movie that can be watched between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. If you want more info about this viewing order go here - https://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/

So my first goal was there couldn’t be Ep VI spoilers (success - though I left enough for people to infer some future revelations)

A big thing for me was that this needed to be a replacement for watching the movies with a new viewer. So the plot had to make sense without having seen the full movies. I was mostly successful. I didn’t want to drastically change the story, just condense it. You have to accept a few leaps of logic and Obi Wan changing his hair style in the first 10 minutes of the movie (the end of Ep 1 is the intro - sorry, no pod racing or yippees).

The next goal I set was it had to have a shorter runtime than the longest SW movie. Last Jedi made my life much easier as it clocked in at 2 hours 32 minutes with credits. I got mine to 2:29 - success! Pacing isn’t perfect but I pared down a lot of the actions scenes to keep it from just being set piece after set piece. Particularly in Episode II.

Another goal was to remove Jar Jar. Though that’s not quite possible (he’s in some crucial scenes), I was already going to take out all his dialogue (removing 90% of Episode I helped) and ended up being easier than I thought. Success! Similarly, I wanted to see if I could make the Trade Ministers not speak. Along with Jar Jar, they’re the other most annoying and mildly racist portrayal in the series. I got them down to only four lines.

Here was the big goal - make Annakin less annoying. What I found was, the more of his dialogue you cut out, the more tolerable he gets. There are some scenes I just cut in half. Like, he’s kind of okay for the first half of the scene and then devolves into child-like whining for the second half. Get rid of that and he’s okay! Also, lost any mention of his intolerance to sand. In fact, I got rid of Tatooine completely.

Final note - so many transitions! There were so many scenes that went through 5 wide shots to go from one location to another. I hadn’t seen the movies in a while so I had completely forgot. That really shaved down a surprising amount of minutes to just cut those transitions down to two shots each.

The biggest issue is some of the music transitions.

Hope everyone enjoys - would love to hear your thoughts!

Could you please send me a link? 😉

I got you covered man! Since my Sequel 3-in-1 got some requests, I’ve pre-emptively made Plex / media server artwork for this one. If anyone needs that, I’ll have it available!

PMs sent!

Could I get a link?

Hi

OK so this is new (to me). May I have a link?

I’d love a link as well; many condensed Prequel Edits have disappointed in the past but this one seems interesting.

Since I’ve had some renewed interest in this, I thought I would share a video about the creative process. What I chose to leave in, cut out. Glad people are enjoying my cut! https://youtu.be/xE1cIJ8nGPs

Scotthomas said:

Got to watch this recently and really enjoyed it. It could become my go-to for the Prequels except for one scene which really ruins the continuity for me.

TriggeredPuppy said:
… I got rid of Tatooine completely.

Not quite! 😉

When Obiwan contacts Anakin to rebroadcast his message to the Jedi Council, the sequence of shots introduces the following issues while maintaining that Anakin is on Naboo with Padme:

1. Anakin and Padme are inside her starship. Why would they be in her ship if they’re still on Naboo?
2. The stark landscape through the windows is clearly not Naboo.
3. When they go rescue Obiwan, the ship flies out of a cliffside hangar, even though we just saw a vast empty landscape through the windows mere seconds earlier.

I understand why the problematic Tatooine shot was included, but if there’s ever another cut of this film made, I’d strongly suggest removing that shot from this scene, even if you have to just imply that Anakin and Padme see the transmission.

I think it could work to just omit shots of the couple and focus on Obiwan’s message, then cut to the shot of the Nubian Cruiser leaving the Naboo hangar. This would create some implications for the viewer to follow; firstly, that Anakin saw the transmission and secondly, that he rushed to his Master’s rescue. I don’t think these are too obscure or hard to follow for most viewers.

That scene aside, this was a great cut of the Prequels. Thanks for making it!

Haha I mean, I can’t disagree with you on a purely literal level. But in the context of my cut, you’re never explicitly TAKEN to Tatooine. I’ve thought about rotoscoping a Naboo landscape outside the windows of the ship. While it doesn’t explain why they’re on the ship, such is the plight of a fan editor. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the edit files in the intervening years and Avid is not friendly to such issues.

Very much appreciate you watching the cut and replying! You gave me a laugh tonight because it’s one of the small issues I still think about.

mguaree said:

Hey, got interested. Link please?

Very cool! I’ll DM you a link but your timing is rather interesting. There’s been some renewed interest in my edit and I’ve decided to take a stab at recreating it. I originally made it at least 6 or 7 years ago and only to practice a new video editing program. So it’s in stereo and the source files were compressed from blu-ray. I’m now working in 5.1 with full quality blu-ray source videos.

The new version will also be at least a few minutes longer. Somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes of scenes that I didn’t feel were essential to the plot are being put back in. I was very intent on keeping the edit to under 2.5 hours but I’m going to favor quality this time over arbitrary rules.

I’ll absolutely post here once it’s complete! Hopefully by mid January.

Since this edit has remained quite popular on the various forums but was aging a bit (it was my first fan edit created maybe 8 years ago) I’ve decided to recreate it in higher quality and 5.1 surround sound. Unless told otherwise, I’ll leave the original description above as it’s mostly still accurate. I’m also keeping both a V1 and V2 available. You can read the differences below.

New runtime information:

Total Run Time of 2 hours 59 minutes
Ep 1 @ 5 minutes or 2.7%
Ep 2 @ 56 minutes or 31.3%
Ep 3 @ 1 hour 50 minutes or 61.5%
Custom crawl + credits @ 8 minutes or 4.5%

As I’ve added several scenes back in, I’ve come to believe Senator Amidala is the character to most benefit. At this point I firmly believe that making Sidius (through Darth Maul and Dooku’s assassins) responsible for the attempts on Padme’s life adds an extra layer to her story. While not explicit, to me it implies she could have been the voice of reason in the senate to hold off votes for more executive power. Palpatine needed her out of the way to concentrate his power. While he didn’t succeed in killing her, he did remove her from the political playing field. Even ignoring my exclusion of Episode I, this plays much better than silly Nute Gunray holding a grudge against her (which is a plot point that escaped me for many years).

Differences between V2 and V1:

V1 wasn’t initially created with the intent of widely sharing. It was my first fan edit and only undertaken as a way to learn Avid Media Composer. The source files were compressed from Blu-ray and I chose to work with stereo audio for simplicity. V2 uses full quality Blu-ray files and 5.1 audio. Additionally, I no longer kept the edit to an arbitrary limit of 2.5 hours. Also, as of 2025, I’ve improved as a fan editor in the 8 years between versions 😉

In short, download V2 if you want the best audiovisual quality and storytelling. Download V1 if you simply want the shortest version.