The Phantom Menace - Improved Edition (10 years on the forum edit) (Released)

Sources:
-kk650’s regraded bluray
-bryantmh’s upscaled deleted scenes
-own upscaled footage from my dvd

Well, this edit has been a long time coming. I joined the forum a little over 10 years ago, on August 2011 and actually tried to edit this movie already the next year (first Premiere edit file for this movie is from June 2012). I did finish the edit back then but it did not turn out so great with the skills I had back then, especially the sound edits were pretty crude. So I never published it or actually even watched it myself, since I was trying to edit all prequels first. I got stuck at Ep 3 though, since I could not get some effects to work that I was planning to do.

So after honing my skills with other edits I decided to give this a new try. I have always liked how The Phantom Menace blew up the scale and grandeur of the world of Star Wars movies and despite the clunky dialog (that I’m used to over the years) I think it has a fairly good adventure/action movie buried underneath all the unnecessary scenes and bad humor. I thought this would be pretty fast project, since my changes to plot points would not require any effects work, I was only planning to fix this shot of Obi’s saber:

How wrong I was…

The editing part for this new version was mostly done by fall of 2019, when I had to take a half year break. However, I realized after watching this video from CorridorCrew (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbAV4dO8gvM), that the lightsaber fight had many other issues with the sabers. Also in the beginning of the movie for some reason the colors have had their highlights washed out witch makes the planet of Naboo and the sabers very dim. So I set out to fix the issues, and the project ballooned to fix all kinds of continuity issues and to include some ideas I found on this forum. The result must be one of the most comprehensive edits of this movie (IISSM), that has been finished (there has been more ambitious efforts but I think they have fizzled out).

The edit uses the the Kk650’s regraded bluray version as a source. With it’s color correction and slight added grain, I think it’s the best looking source to use. It beats even the 4K version, since the ”so called” 4K versions of the prequels used the same scan of the movie than blurays and don’t have any added detail. See for yourself below:

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/20309 (Look at the furry part of the queen’s outfit)

Of course the brightness is different too and it affects how details pop up.

Here is the trailer for the edit:

Password: tpm

Every shot in that trailer (except the opening logos) has some kind of visual change from slight sharpening of the picture to almost all elements in the footage replaced. Most changes are very small, and you have to know what to look for. 😄

Credit goes to kk650’s color correction most of all but also to Jackpumpkinhead for his Crawl creator and bryantmh for upscaled deleted scenes. These helped this project to finish faster.

Major goals of the edit:

Less politics: -Take out political aspect of the invasion until Coruscant scenes. References to politics are reduced from Neimoidian and Sidious’ dialog to make the plot more exiting and streamlined. This also helps conceal Sidious’ identity. The Trade Federation is now The Federation of Dissenting Planets in this edit and has nothing to do with taxation. The organisation’s full name is mentioned in the crawl but referred as ”Federation” in dialogue. Their motivations are left more vague.

More mysterious Sidious: Make connection between Sidious and Palpatine less obvious. I wanted to do this, but of course this doesn’t matter so much if you’ve seen the original version (like 99,99% of people =). Sidious’ appearances have been approximately cut in half throughout the movie to keep him more mysterious. All mentions about connections to senate have been removed and his voice has been lowered to not make a connection to Palpatine. His face is more concealed to also help with this until the balcony scene with Maul, where his face was not possible to hide because of how light hits his face.

No slave subplot: No mention of Anakin and his mother being slaves. This has to be the most contrived plot points in the movie, and it hardly plays a part in later prequels. Them being poor and not able to escape the planet would be enough. They just both have to work for Watto to make ends meet. The slave subplot also creates a huge problem in the next movie, where 10 years later Jedi apparently STILL have done nothing to free Shmi and relocate her to a nicer environment. Plus the exploding tracker in body- thing. Lazy writing much? So this edit pretends that the Jedi are just tight on funds right now and Shmi has to stay behind because they can only afford to locate Anakin to Coruscant. Shmi is also kinda used to her life on Tatooine. Not perfect but it’s better than the original. This change took the most of the editing time, since the dinner scene and Anakin’s new future- discussion had to work without the slave angle.

No second bet: This also means there is no second bet. This takes out needles complications of the original plot about getting out of Tatooine. Streamlining this part of the movie makes the movie roll much more smoothly, since in the original the momentum stops badly during Tatooine scenes. This location is at this point the most overused in all of SW, IMO. Now they meet Anakin, come up with the bet to get the parts, race and then they are out of there.

Less universe shrinkage: Universe shrinkage is avoided by removing unnecessary fan service. This includes C-3PO and Jabba, which are both removed from the movie completely. I always strongly disliked Anakin building 3PO and the droid has nothing to do in the movie anyway. He was put there purely for the fans but it doesn’t serve the story. You can see ”him” in some of the shots during and after the podrace, but now he is just a random droid provided to Anakin for the race. All the characters knowing each other and popping up in the original versions makes this fictional world of supposedly tens of thousands of systems seem very small.

No mention of the rule of two Sith: This is taken out because I tried to make this movie match the original trilogy better. If there is a rule of two, surely the emperor and Vader are fully aware that they are trying to betray each other by trying to convert Luke.

Reducing lameness and stupidity: I tried to get rid of lame turns and stupidity that made me cringe every time I watched the movie. What irritates is of course personal and some of the things that others find irritating might be left in. Jar Jar is (obviously) minimized. He has few lines here and there so he doesn’t become completely mute during the middle of the movie, but I tried to left in only the least irritating sentences and sounds he makes. His voice is made slightly deeper, but it’s actually hard to tell. Could not change it too much without it getting distorted.

Deal breakers:

There might be some ”deal breaker” parts for some viewers. These may tell you this edit is not for you and you save some time and trouble. 😉:

The two headed podrace announcer: Still in there. I think we need announcer in the race and I didn’t bother to remove the announcer shots since I was already editing around Jar Jar- antics. He doesn’t bother me so much.

Anakin is still refered as the chosen one: (but not too old to start the training) This explains why Qui-Gon wanted to train him although he was just a boy. This edit does not imply that younglings have to start training when they are tree years old or something. This makes Jedi more of a humanly organization, not taking children away from their parents so early. Also the chosen one- angle brings some dramatic weight to the later movies.

End celebration is still there: I like it (great score) and I think this movie needs a happy party at the end, since the next ones don’t have them.

Edit contains:

-Hundreds of cuts
-Tens of added slight sharpening effects to blurry shots
-About 75 Audition- audio edits
-About 170 After Effect- shots, mostly saber fixes, about 90% redone.
-Added probe droid deleted scene, and multiple shorter shots from upscaled dvd footage.

I spent:

-Countless and countless hours honing the effects shots
-Countless hours thinking what I’m doing with my life…

List of some more detailed changes:

-The Jedi are mentioned by name in the crawl because otherwise Qui-Gon’s name is mentioned first time on Tatooine, way into the movie.

-Planets are made brighter and Naboo and Tatooine have added city lights(Had to do a very time consuming manual tracking for the added layer for these).

-First action scene is cut so that the Jedi supposedly don’t sense the explosion or notice the gas being pumped into the room. That way we are introduced to the lightsabers with the shot of their glow shining through the gas and the Jedi are not so jumpy, lighting the swords up from the smallest sensation of ”something is wrong”.

-Obi-wan and Qui-Gon go down to the planet to help Naboo, not warn them, since they are going down there with invading ships.

-Otoh Gunga is cut to be more mature scene and no talk about going through the planet’s core. The impression is that the ships landed near Theed, not on the other side of the planet for no reason. Jar Jar is just saved by Qui-Gon from punishment. Qui-Gon doesn’t tell Obi-Wan that they need him for navigation, since Jar Jar just goes batshit crazy in sub and does zero navigation (in the original cut). Submarine sequence is now cut around the encounter with Sando Aqua monster, which I like (random monster of the movie) and Jar Jar antics are obviously minimized.

-The ”Hyperdrive monitor” is changed from busy 3D monitor to more simpler easy to read at glance- monitor (in the trailer). The original monitor was way too advanced looking and unpractical to read at glance.

-Watto isn’t affected by the mind trick simply because he is not weak minded enough, no toydarian bulls**t needed.

-I first had Anakin starting the Naboo fighter without his dialogue but you can see his mouth moving, so I added back part of the lines. He wonders where the trigger is but then finds it right away. He catches on pretty quick you know…😄 Also Anakin purposefully participates in the space battle but is just struggling with the fighter controls.

-Jar Jar is not made general, he is just participating (quite quietly) in the battle as one of the soldiers.

Lastly:

This edit has given me a goal to finish and always something to do during these corona times when I have spent a lot of time home. It became my passion project but also my obsession, since I was putting off some real life projects because of it. Many times I wondered if this movie is worth the trouble, but I was already too far. 😄 I came up with new things to fix or add pretty late in the process too. My first deadline for this was 4th of May I think, then it was at the end of August, then halfway of October, then Christmas, then New Year… But now it’s done, and I try to have a break from this stuff and get more done in the real world.

Original run time: 2 h 16min
New run time : 1h 44min ( 1h 50m with credits)
Format: MKV (10,3G), MP4 video and ACC 5.1 audio, subtitles and chapters

Thanks for reading and have a good year ahead. If someone is interested, just ask me a link via PM. I would also appreciate feedback , especially if you spot any glaring errors so I can fix them.

My other edits:

Avengers: Age of Ultron – Improved Edition : https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Avengers-Age-of-Ultron-Improved-Edition/id/65907

Prometheus - Improved edition: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Prometheus-Improved-edition-Released/id/68622

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 - Improved-Edition: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Guardians-of-the-Galaxy-Vol-2-Improved-Edition-Released/id/73451

Iron Man 3 - Cut and Chromed Edition: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Iron-Man-3-Cut-and-Chromed-Edition-Released/id/87734

Sounds very neat. PM request sent 😉 (no guarantees I’ll get around to actually watching it anytime soon though).

Why did you need to redo the lightsabers? Can we at least what they look like now in comparison?

Some PMs have been sent!

Anakin Starkiller said:

Why did you need to redo the lightsabers? Can we at least what they look like now in comparison?

They had all kinds of issues, mostly with blade color and/or brightness. I’m actually planning a separate post on that so comparisons coming up later.

Lightsabers:

As I mentioned in the first post, something happened when they produced the home version of the film. As a result the color highlight are washed out in the more darker scenes, effecting most notably the lightsabers but also making planet glows dim. I dug up and checked my TPM VHS, and the lightsaber glows seem little brighter there but on DVD and Blu-ray the brightness has been reduced. Other problems are twisted colors and size of the blade among others. One of my biggest priorities was fixing the lightsabers in the most erroneous shots, and they were plenty.

So here are some examples:

Below are samples of dim saber blades that also sometimes slanted the color to dark green with Qui Gon’s blade and to purple with Obi- Wan’s.

Sometimes the blade core was very thin and dim.

Other times the glow was there but the core and part of the glow was too dark.

Qui Gon’s sabre in the forest has always looked too stumpy relative to his hands.

In the beginning of the end battle blades lack length and glow.

When the lightsaber fight moves to ”reactor beam area”, the errors are really bad. On the top left screenshot you can see through the blades and Maul’s blade is faint pinkish grey. I also added brightness to background beam pillars.

On some rare occasions you can see the physical probe blade in the shot, that probably isn’t lined up anymore after all the clashing with the other actor’s blade.

Also in the Obi vs Maul fight, the tips of the blades are missing most of their color and luminescence.

I also added holes to the hilts where the blades are coming out and a little lens flare effect to the saber ignitions. Most of the shots were done with vanilla After Effects, drawing a mask around the blades and adding new glows. I found about saber plugin later that I used mostly to enhancements, like adding core flicker to some shots. Manual masking made it possible to make the blade shapes very close to originals though, only bring back the lost core brightness and glow. Saber plugin was the main method used in only two shots. I also added a slight distortion to the blades when Obi- Wan and Maul clash them before Maul pushes him to hang on the ledge. Also sharpened and lit Obi’s face a little.

Did or do you take inspiration from Sandman‘s prequel revisited concepts?
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Prequel-Trilogy-Revised-concept-trailers-released-WIP/id/70831

Would love it very much, if someone able could continue his amazing work.
Nevertheless, you did great edits, from what we can read and see in this thread. Keep it up 😃

CMMAP said:

Did or do you take inspiration from Sandman‘s prequel revisited concepts?
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Prequel-Trilogy-Revised-concept-trailers-released-WIP/id/70831

Would love it very much, if someone able could continue his amazing work.
Nevertheless, you did great edits, from what we can read and see in this thread. Keep it up 😃

Yes I was a fan of that project and was following it! Shame it has apparently fallen through. AlaskanSandman actually has a credit in my end credits, although I did not mention him in the post.

His project gave me ideas for my edit, like Naboo and Tatooine really needing city lights.:

This shot is aped straight from him:

His TPM was going to be TPM on steroids, mine is more like TPM on strong vitamins compared to that.😄 His ideas were very ambitious with 3D rendered new shot and I’m not sure who would have the skills and time to finish all he planned. It would take a long time too. Maybe some kind of group effort would work.

PMs sent to DrVibble and CMMAP.

Modified and added shots:

There are many small and bigger modified shots in this edit to fit the goals of the edit, my personal preferences or to fix errors left in the original footage.

I removed the cord that is visible on two shots of the Queen at the window. The shost are also made sharper.

Here Sidious’ face is made more obscured. This was done until his balcony scene with Maul where the light hits his face in a way it’s not possible to cover.

As mentioned before, the Hyper drive- display is changed to more readable, simple one.

I wanted to cut out C-3PO so I had to do some removals in some shots. In second one I had to get rid of Jar Jar as a bonus. 😎 Also I don’t know how R2 was able to stay standing in the original, considering how his legs are.

During the pod race grid sequences, there are many shots in the official bluray (added among the theatrical shots) that are out of focus and don’t look good because of that. I cut the worse ones and improved the better ones. All the alien racer intro shots are modified to look sharper. Some shots are replaced with bryantmh’s upscaled DVD shots which are a little bit zoomed in comparison to bluray version and actually have more detail, especially when I added After Effects’ Unsharp mask- sharpening effect to them. Shots are also color corrected.

Also this extended bit of Anakin with his mother looks better with replaced DVD- shot.

I added two parts of the DVD’s extended race sequence where Sebulba uses fire against his competitors. These were sharpened and color corrected but also the soundtrack had to be built to 5.1 from stereo.

I wanted to add a deleted scene of destroying the probe droid, because it explains them running from Mos Espa. In my edit, the scene of probe droid looking for the protagonists (first image) doesn’t happen before the race, but after Anakin leaves his mother. The deleted scene happens right after this. However the wide shot below of the Qui-Qon and Anakin walking (second image) is not quality wise up to bar with the theatrical similar shots. These deleted scenes can only go so far, despite bryantmh’s excellent upscaling (close up shots work better). So I set out to make a new shot out of elements of footage that I had already cut. It replaces this walking shot. The result is 2 second shot of probe droid closing in on them and I think it turned out pretty good.

The first threeway lightsaber fight in the hangar is extended. There are shots on DVD bonus materials of the lightsaber fight that are not in the theatrical cut. Fortunately Topaz video upscaler turned out to be easy to use. With a couple of upscale passes, sharpening, color correcting, lightsaber effects and some fine tuning, the shots look good enough to add, they are fast paced (after partly speed up) so it hides the slight lower quality quite well. Also the soundtrack is made from scratch, borrowing bits from elsewhere.

Also a lot of small tweaks like changing the ship explosion in the first scene to more orange from pink/purple, adding a hot glow to Maul’s cut saber hilt, and tweaking this tank shot by lowering the contrast of the tanks and adding some noise to blend them better to environment:

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/20965

Hey Dazman!

This edits looks fresh and really impressive. Would love a link if there’s one to spare?

Thanks.

I would love a link too, please. The improvements seem really good.

So, i watched it today. Overall i grew fond of it. The technical changes are impressive.
I took some notes while watching:

• video quality various often (in theatrical scenes ), especially on tatooine and deleted scenes pop out (maybe use topaz AI again, if you have the paid version?)

• did you do something to the audo stream? the center channel with the dialogue is quite low-keyed. Overall the audio seamed to be quieter than usual, because i had to ramp up my volume by +16. When i switched to another movie had to turn it down again by -16.

• the lights of naboo are neat, but as we see the ship approaching closer to the planet (second cockpit shot), they are gone.

• the beginning with the ambassador (jedi): place ship explosion after gas entering room where jedi sit. My suggestion even though i know you had written “supposedly” the jedi didn´t notice, i found myself questioning while watching “why do the jedi sit there and we didn´t even see them flinch an eye as the ship in the hangar with its people got blown up?”

• force jump to escape the droidika, nice idea (but contradictory to later when obi-wan is running towards maul and qui-gon, why isn´t he using it there). So maybe get rid of it?

• 15:00 journey underwater to naboo, i think it´s not necessary. It can be cut completly

• 29:30 why is anakin suddenly with them after qui-gon and padme left wattos place? Also during the visit subtitles for watto and anakin talking would be nice

• 41:52 sebulba and anakin subtitles would be nice, too

• 44:12 jar jar talks, no sound, frame that shouldn´t be there?

• 1:18:23 gangun subtitles, would be nice also

CMMAP said:

So, i watched it today. Overall i grew fond of it. The technical changes are impressive.
I took some notes while watching:

• video quality various often (in theatrical scenes ), especially on tatooine and deleted scenes pop out (maybe use topaz AI again, if you have the paid version?)

This is a problem of the source so probably not all shots can be fixed. I only have a 50" screen and I think it looks OK there but difference in quality might be more noticeable for larger ones.

• did you do something to the audo stream? the center channel with the dialogue is quite low-keyed. Overall the audio seamed to be quieter than usual, because i had to ramp up my volume by +16. When i switched to another movie had to turn it down again by -16.

I didn’t turn down audio on any channels. Off source it’s only in ACC format so it might not have the ooph of larger file size tracks.

• the lights of naboo are neat, but as we see approaching the ship closer to the planet (second cockpit shot), they are gone.

Damn, you are right! I can’t believe I missed it! 😦 Welp, I guess I have to do version 2.

• the beginning with the ambassador (jedi): place ship explosion after gas entering room where jedi sit. My suggestion even though i know you had written “supposedly” the jedi didn´t notice, i found myself questioning while watching “why do the jedi sit there and we didn´t even see them flinch an eye as the ship in the hangar with its people got blown up?”

This is a small problem created by the editing of the scene but there is no footage to make the jedi react more subtly to explosion. So they are just not “showing their hand” yet.

• force jump to escape the droidika, nice idea (but contradictory to later when obi-wan is running towards maul and qui-gon, why isn´t he using it there). So maybe get rid of it?

This is kind of needed to end the scene. The force speed is maybe dangerous to use in environment of big vertical drops? Doesn’t bother me too much.

• 15:00 journey underwater to naboo, i think it´s not necessary. It can be cut completly

I know the scene is unpopular, but it’s the Random Monster of the Movie- scene. Personal preference thing.

• 29:30 why is anakin suddenly with them after qui-gon and padme left wattos place?

I mean to imply that he ran into them while going home from work. It kind of happens the same in original too.

• Also during the visit subtitles for watto and anakin talking would be nice
• 41:52 sebulba and anakin subtitles would be nice, too

I thought I muxed the subtitles in, are you sure they were on?

• 44:12 jar jar talks, no sound, frame that shouldn´t be there?

He’s meant to be sighing silently in relief. Not the best looking shot I know, but the footage of him being subtle is very limited. 😄

• 1:18:23 gangun subtitles, would be nice also
  Official subtitles don’t include gunguns, so I didn’t add them either.

Thanks for the feedback, this is good info. I see what I can do and might publish V2 at some point.

Some PMs have been sent

Dazman said:
I mean to imply that he ran into them while going home from work. It kind of happens the same in original too.

I guess i´ve to watch the original again, because i don´t remember that at all.

I thought I muxed the subtitles in, are you sure they were on?

Oh wait, you have subtitles? 😄 Then the fault is mine, by default i don´t have turned them on. Another solution would be to burn them in

Also i don´t remember that there weren´t any gungun subtitles in the original. So my bad.

Your personal preferences are just, since it´s your edit 😃

I didn’t turn down audio on any channels. Off source it’s only in ACC format so it might not have the ooph of larger file size tracks.

Would you mind muxing in a AC3 track with 640 kb/s?

I find the community month focus quiet interesting to gather further ideas 😃
Thanks to eddie
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Community-Focus-Month-1-The-Phantom-Menace/id/92079/page/1

Could i please grab a link - i’d love to check this version out. On a real TPM fan-edit binge at the moment trying to see what is the one that works well for me.

Thanks 😃

CMMAP said:

I find the community month focus quiet interesting to gather further ideas 😃
Thanks to eddie
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Community-Focus-Month-1-The-Phantom-Menace/id/92079/page/1

Yeah, I checked the thread out, very interesting! And funny that after we talked about it, we now have a collaborative effort for the movie. Maybe Alaskansandman’s ideas can be done now!

Would you mind muxing in a AC3 track with 640 kb/s?

The audio is mixed as 640 kb/s but Premiere cs6 only gives you the output option of ACC when working from AC3. I would be interested in getting tips how to convert it to AC3 of higher quality if someone knows.

• the lights of naboo are neat, but as we see the ship approaching closer to the planet (second cockpit shot), they are gone.

I checked this again. I have modified the shot to have a brighter planet so leaving out the city lights was a decision I made because the ship moves quite a lot in relation to the planet. So you could just think the previously seen lights are off screen. The real reason being that adding the lights was difficult to track and time consuming. But I might try to add them for a future update to get the shots more consistent.

benroberts79 said:

Could i please grab a link - i’d love to check this version out. On a real TPM fan-edit binge at the moment trying to see what is the one that works well for me.

Thanks 😃

You re a brave one watching TPM many times in a row. 😉 I sent you a PM. My edit is guaranteed to have a few shots that aren’t found on any other edit to keep it a little more fresh!

Heyo! Interested as well, I’d love to see all the hard VFX work in motion please 😄

A PM has been sent your way, JKMaxx!

I’d love a link as well, thanks in advance!