Broom Kid

Correct, the audio from this (the runtime and the fps should be exactly the same down to the millisecond, LOL) should be easily muxable into any mkv of this ep (720p, 480p, 4K HDR) once extracted in full. Anyone with an existing 4K HDR/DV rip of this should be able to just drop the .ac3 file into their muxer of choice and voila.

It would be kind of comedically overkill to share the entirety of a 40+min .ac3 file solely to get a single syllable restored in the sound-mix, but that’s where we are, because LFL wouldn’t get out of Tony’s way on this one.

This is GREAT news, especially for massive fans of both Tartakovsky and this micro-series. I’m super happy to see this. Congrats to everyone involved, and honestly, congrats to us for getting to time travel back to 2005.

I get it, I just disagree. but it’s not my cut and I wouldn’t stop anyone, or want to, from making their cut look and sound the way they want it, either. Apologies if it’s reading as overstepping, I don’t mean for it to come off that way! Just sharing (probably oversharing) my thoughts in the wake of the show.

For what it’s worth though, my understanding was that Partagaz ultimately approved her arrest, and essentially set her up to be the patsy (more or less) for Ghorman in the first place. Tarkin chumps Krennic, Krennic tries to end run him and THATS when he hits the ceiling. That Vader considers him an annoyance is the point: Krennic thinks he’s a big dog who can end run Tarkin after Tarkin big dogs him, and gets casually choked for it like it’s nothing. It’s not even a finger being laid on his head. And for as much as Andor concerns itself (and is great because of this) with the lower echelons of both the Rebellion AND the Empire, it’s worth remembering the real ceilings in BOTH those institutions ARE Force-powered, ultimately. When we get to THE linking piece between 2025 and 1977, there’s really no reason to pretend otherwise anymore from a storytelling perspective (which Gilroy himself understood by slow-rolling The Force into Andor midway through S2 as part of his goal to flesh out the movie he saved in 2016)

But again: that’s just clarification into my POV, not an attempt to really change anyone else’s POV, much less change their edits. I want people to do what they feel is right for their cuts and their versions of the things they’re making for their own libraries and to share with their friends and followers more than anything. Apologies again if it came off as anything otherwise.

Faelin said:

I don’t think the point is to cut the hallway scene. At least when ive expressed cutting vader its been the scene with krennic on mustifar.

I think cutting him period is probably going too far. Krennic bullying Dedra pays off in the way he ends up becoming just like her when he butts up against that same fascist ceiling in Rogue One. She overreaches and winds up getting put in her place by both Partagaz and then Krennic. Krennic overreaches and gets chumped by both Tarkin, and then Vader. I get the general instinct, but I also feel like Gilroy is looking at Rogue One (and was looking at it when he got called in to fix it in the first place) as he’s making Andor and knows what it is he’s both leading into and also mirroring in subtle ways as he builds out his arcs.

Cutting Vader for the sake of cutting him to make Rogue One feel more like Andor feels, to me, like a short-circuiting of what Andor was doing in the first place by trying to build TO Rogue One.

I’ll DM you the wav of the mix so you can mix it into the episode proper, but yeah, you don’t need to ask permission or anything like that, just go ahead and use it! If I put anything out there, it’s automatically fair game for anyone else to transform however they see fit!

Funny story - I tried posting just that scene, as I had it on YouTube, to reddit on Mother’s Day (I hadn’t posted it to r/fanedits yet and thought that morning “hey, this would be kinda funny”) and it got deleted for “not being a fanedit” so just a heads up - trying to post it to reddit might NOT go so well. I never got an explanation on HOW it’s not a restoration according to their rules, either, but I didn’t think it was worth pressing the issue - it almost never is - especially over a single syllable, LOL.

Yeah. I took that audio, isolated the lines, retimed them (so they’re at the right speed and fit the scene correctly) mixed them into the center channel with Krennic so the levels match, and put that center channel back into the full 5.1 mix for the scene

EddieDean said:

That one’s not a trim I’d make, I’m afraid. I’m still pro-bridging-content in as many cases as possible. “All of Star Wars is better than any of Star Wars” remains my mantra - no one show, not even Andor, should trump the franchise continuity.

It’s so interesting to me how frequently “cut Vader out of Rogue One” has become the conclusion people are coming to after Andor S2. I can’t see it actually working, especially not since the hallway sequence is one of the most singularly acclaimed bits of Star Wars anything since it came back in 2015

Plus, thematically, (and there is no way Gilroy didn’t do this intentionally in S2 of Andor) anyone who has anything to do with those plans getting out, who touches them, basically gets got. Lonni, Luthen, Melshi, Cass, Jyn… Kleya is the exception but she really does try like hell to die on Coruscant, and is pretty hollowed out when she wakes up on Yavin. Anyway, to even KNOW there are plans, to have the words Death Star inside your head is death (Dedra is going to die in that jail - maybe Kleya only lives because those are the only words she forgot?) - at some point the rebels know this and touch them ANYWAY.

and the Hallway Scene, even though Gilroy had nothing to do with it, still fits that. You boil it down, the iconography, the score, and whaddya got: Rebels, who know that they cannot survive what they’re about to do, but if they do it, the people after them will have a chance, so they do it anyway. It’s a microcosm of the larger themes of both the movie that preceded it, and the prequel Gilroy wrote specifically to lead into that prequel.

ANYWAY: If you need 5.1 audio for both “Fuck the Empire” and the re-voiced Vader/Krennic scene lemme know, I can shoot that over to you no problem

Thanks so much for the kind words you two! And yeah, when Tartakovsky & Co. go hard, they go hard. Primal is probably some of the most intense stuff I’ve seen in a looooong time.

Well, it appears the link is already getting The Dread Quota Cooldown applied to it, BUT: I do believe the tried ‘n’ true method of bypassing said cooldown still applies! You create a shortcut of the file, you create a folder on your own google drive, you put the shortcut in the new folder, and you just download that folder. I’ll link the reddit post that provides the clearest instructions on how to do it (the comments are your typical smattering of “IT DOESN’T WORK… oh wait, nevermind I just did it wrongs” that any comments tend to be under something like this)

…but worse come to worse you might just have to wait a few hours and try again.

NICE! Thank you 😃

Okay, the cut is now live!

CHANGES
I didn’t keep a complete changelist: notating the sheer amount of micro-edits being done to improve pace, cut dialog/the spaces between dialog, would be EXHAUSTING to read, but I can note some of the more impactful alterations to take the show from being 5hrs 29min down to 2hrs 14min

• NO YODA. NO PLAGUEIS. Qimir does say the Jedi could call him Sith, but he never does quite say he is one, so considering that Kylo theme keeps getting quoted in the score, it can still be freely headcanon’d that these two somehow start the Knights of Ren, if you like that (most of the “Lore” this show had distracting it from the Kill Bill/Shaw Bros vibe is gone so it’s a lot of room to head canon whatever, really).

• While Osha is reticent to participate in the Ascension as per the show (the ceremony itself has been cut down to 70 seconds total before the Jedi interrupt it) her inclination to join the Order is now implied to be an idea not-so-subtly put there BY SOL via the Force. So now when Mother Koril suggests he mindtricked her… well…

• The prison ship uprising is entirely told via Sol pulling memories/visions from the madman’s head while he’s in Jedi Jail.

• Qimir is not a Stranger. Mae knows who he is in this cut; their Apothecary scene on Olega has been cut so his Kramer-isms are eliminated, his music from the lagoon has been laid into the score, and his voice has been pitched back down to its normal register. His goofy high-pitched persona is only put on for the Jedi. He is not hiding his identity from Mae, and all references to her not knowing who her master is and trying to kill Jedi with no weapon (her blood type is apparently Knife-O-Positive, she just doesn’t have her own lightsaber) are omitted. Since there’s no Plagueis at all, you’re free to imagine that Mae & Qimir have been hanging out at that Dark Side Day-Spa for… awhile now. Getting FAMILIAR. Probably a little tired of each other, too.

• Kelnacca’s death isn’t a race between Mae/Qimir & the Jedi anymore, it’s just a straight-up trap in this cut. Everyone knows where Mae’s going (even Ki-Adi Mundi knows it, LOL) We no longer see Mae & Qimir land on Khofar at all. The reveal of Kelnacca’s death now happens as a shaky vision Sol has after Bazil goes missing (“We need a tracker for our tracker”) that he is scared & confused by while Osha is bugging him about being allowed to confront Mae (again.) Immediately after having this vision Bazil starts howling and they take off for his house.

• Bazil is mostly gone, too! He’s maybe the only thing in this show weirder and creepier than Sol, and at least you can understand Sol. I don’t know what the hell Bazil is doing, and I think the only real reason he’s on the ship is to get Pip into Mae’s hands. So yeah. The drawer-huffing rat thing is 85% gone!

• The big reason Mae & Qimir fall out now is due to her hiding out in Kelnacca’s house, letting him do 90% of the dirty work, keeping him out in the open and then when she leaves, she almost immediately gets pinched by Jecki, and tries to escape them AND him (she’s clearly still a little shook from finding out Osha is alive, and double-shook at seeing Qimir move like a magnet right to her)

• Vernestra is only here to reinforce that she is primarily interested in covering up whatever this is, from beginning to end, however she has to do it. She’s present at the jail when she just wants to pin it on Osha and call it a day; at the secret meeting w/ Ki-Adi (This dude SHOWS UP when Wookiees are down bad, huh!) when she wants the “investigation” out of Sol’s hands because he’s clearly going to screw it up; and when they finally go to the Brendok aftermath. Sorry, no lightwhip sequence while looking at the Khofar aftermath.

• Unfortunately, keeping Vernestra Coruscant-bound and only present when needed on cover-up duty means the great David Harewood (the Martian Manhunter himself!) is only in one shot of this cut, at the very end, with no lines, when she is chucking Sol’s dead body under all four tires of the bus and telling the bus to back up.

• Mae no longer suggests Osha can and will come find her at the end, and Qimir no longer says he will “attempt” to wipe her memory. He says definitively that he can, and he does - she doesn’t stumble or try to recite another syllable of their poem once he performs the mindwipe.

Other than that, it’s just a lot of shoe-leather getting removed, mostly: wipes to and from locations (this show had a LOT of wipes!) where people basically just have variations on the same conversations (“Why won’t you let me have revenge?” “Why do you keep telling me this very obvious thing I refuse to believe for no reason?” “Why are you pretending not to know the thing you and I were both there for?”) before getting to the scene where characters and/or plot actually advance, typically through VERY COOL fight sequence, as a proper kung-fu revenge flick SHOULD resolve most emotional conflicts.

CamSMurph said:

I admire how your edit aims to pay homage to the classic Shaw Brothers movies. As someone who skipped out on the show, I never would’ve thought of drawing comparisons to a defunct movie studio based in Hong Kong! 😄

I wouldn’t have thought it either! Or at least, not until I got about halfway through the season and was like “they’re really paying homage to wuxia films huh”

and then I read some interviews, and that’s where I came across the classic “Elevator pitch” quote that Headland gave re: “Kill Bill meets Frozen,” but then LATER said they were ALSO inspired by “Come Drink With Me,” considered by many to be the birth of the wuxia genre (it got nominated for Best Foreign Film in 67). Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” also got namechecked to explain why the show is jumping all over the place with the timeline and basically creating “mysteries” by only showing you half a story and then showing you the rest later like “Gotcha!”, but I clearly didn’t think that worked too well, so yeah. Outta here.

Whereas the standard “You destroyed my temple, now I vow revenge against yours! FIGHT ME!” setup/follow through of a TON of Shaw Bros kung-fu classics IS still present here. The trick is to try and stick as close to the story spine of that Shaw Bros inspiration, and its “get in a big-ass fight every 15-20min” rhythm with what’s given in the show, and how the show tried to present that as a lore-filled prequel-y Star Wars rule-bound THING.

I will say, even though this isn’t anywhere near as focused on all that mishigoss as the show proper was, I believe the way this plays, it’s a LOT easier (and a lot more easy to explain the stray Ren music motifs that appear to this end) for someone to headcanon this cut as the potential origin of the Knights of Ren. If one wanted to, I guess.

v2 published 07/28/2025

Changes from v1 available here.
Original post from 05/19/2025 follows below.

As soon as Russian Doll came out, I was like “I’m calling Lucasfilm. That’s where I want to work. That’s what I want to do.” So I pitched them. My elevator pitch was Frozen meets Kill Bill. And Kathleen bought it in the room, and said “I love it. I want to start working on it.”
Leslye Headland, Creator/Showrunner, The Acolyte.

Hello There!

I don’t often get to say I have anything in common with Kathleen Kennedy, being as she’s one of the most successful film producers in history, and I’m someone who fan-edits other people’s movies, sometimes, on the internet, for free, anonymously! But: absolutely loving that pitch? Me & Kathy are on common ground there, no doubt!

A tale of two sisters! Magical sisters! But instead of building snowmen and bursting into song and lugging Josh Gad around, these sisters are, into doing, you know, NINJA THINGS: Vengeance-fueled, stupid-sexy-shirtless STAR WARS Sith-Celebration-Come Drink With Me-Type-Stuff! Who wouldn’t love that? Well… uh… as it so happened…

This TV-to-Movie edit takes the 8-episode series, and re-shapes it into a 2hr, 14min movie, cutting away most everything not core to that solid-as-hell elevator pitch. And so:

TRAILER HERE

The Acolyte: A Star Wars Story is now a kung-fu revenge flick wherein a creepy cop, weirdly fixated on kidnapping a kid, drags his three partners into an unholy mess as he bumrushes a coven of moon witches just minding their business at the ass-end of space. This, inevitably, screws up both the kid (who he ends up discarding after a couple years) and her twin sister, who he leaves for dead after kinda/sorta/accidentally/on-purpose causing the total destruction of everything she’s ever loved and then covering that up for the next 16 years. Naturally, Sith happens.

This cut goes in straight chronological order; NO flashbacks, NO “reveals.” There is zero mystery as to what happens, and who does what and when they do it. Because this cut doesn’t do the Rashomon thing at all now, it can occupy a recognizable Shaw Bros revenge rhythm: Monks wreck temple, young student escapes, learns ancient arts, kills their way up the ladder to the real villain; who is running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying (and failing) to stop what’s coming: big-ass fight scenes every 15min or so, and then a righteous kill. But now that structure’s got lightsabers in it! A whole bunch of ‘em! And also the first real peek at what Sith training looks like, and uh… it’s hot? And therapeutic?

There’s also no forced and squishy ambiguity because of that, which I think is fine for a simple kung-fu revenge flick: Sol is clearly a sweaty (and crappy!) cover-up artist who could make this movie a 3 min Digital Short if he just admitted he sucks; but he can’t, so now everyone’s gotta die. Mae is clearly teamed up with Qimir, a simple man who enjoys philosophy, bartending, cooking and killing; he is clearly hot as hell, twice as funny, makes some great points, and most importantly: has never skipped arm day in his life. Osha is clearly even more about that life than Mae is, but is crazy-repressed because a creepy crooked space cop openly brainwashed her straight outta homeschool. Yord is Yord. Yoda and Plagueis do not exist in this Dojo. There is no main title, no opening crawl, no iris out to John Williams music. For better or worse, it’s a Star Wars Story where the “good guys” (-ish!) are witches and Sith (or proto-Knights of Ren, who knows). I don’t really have a frame of reference for how you iris out of that story into Luke Skywalker’s theme. So I didn’t!

Anyway, in keeping with the pitch that started it all, I tried applying the sort of crispy, early 2000s-era digital intermediate look the Kill Bill blu-rays had: Contrasty, sharp, a tiny-bit saturation boosted, with some Kodak 35mm film emulation laid in. This aspect is now unique only to v1, and has been replaced for v2. v2 is the only version available as of 7/28/2025.) It’s also got a way faster running time than the show did:

The Acolyte: A Star Wars Story

2hrs, 14min. 1080p, 2.39:1, 5.1 Dolby Digital. English Subtitles.

Chapters:

1. Under the Bunta Tree
2. The Power of Two
3. Ascension
4. Failing the Test
5. Starting a Fire
6. 1 - Master Indara
7. Mae is Alive
8. 2 - Master Torbin
9. Streets of Olega
10. 3 - Master Kelnacca
11. What Extraordinary Beings
12. Masters and Pupils
13. Osha’s Strength
14. 4 - Master Sol
15. I’m With You, You’re With Me
16. The Acolyte/End Credits

Notable changes can be found in this follow-up post here

Any questions, suggestions, let 'em fly, I’m all ears and always happy to hear what you might have to say! If this sounds at all enticing, Please don’t just ask for a link in the comments, DM me here, or send me an email directly at straightcutsnochaser at gmail.

Bored at 3AM said:

I think this version of Rogue One is exactly what I’d want, but I think reinserting Andor’s introduction would be better at this point. I understand the idea of starting the story off through Jyn’s eyes, but Cassian’s first scenes were sorely missed.

I think this is the move, yeah. The edit as it stands is streamlined more or less as beautifully as the film can be, considering what Gilroy was working with and just the nature/focus of the narrative of the story. But Cassian’s intro to that story is a must-have now. Before that last episode aired I was still under the thinking that the whole show was essentially a series-length embellishment/replacement for that Kafrene intro, which was as nice a shorthand you could ask for the Bond-esque rogue setup (A Luthen-trained hero if there ever was one, as it turns out) in a single scene. But that last episode makes such a big deal about Tivik calling, the opposition to believing the info (even bringing back Jebel and Pamlo), and how Draven and Mon are sticking their neck out to send him out there to meet him

I do believe that scene’s gotta go back now. It’s not just his intro anymore, it’s literally validation of Luthen’s death (and his tactics, LOL. Poor Tivik). Other than that, I think this cut is structurally pretty sound.

I would also like to toss this out there as a sort of overall/philosophical idea regarding Rogue One and its relation to Andor, and specifically this edit being more focused on Jyn than it is Cassian:

The show, even though it has Cassian’s name, and uses him as a throughline, isn’t really ABOUT him all the time either. It might be a little thematically confusing trying to re-conform a cut that already trimmed down the film (which was sort of a mashup as it was by the time it made it to its finished form via Gilroy’s rewrites/reshoots) to fit a more coherent Erso-focused POV, and expand it back out and shift itself to be a coda to two seasons of television (that were written after the fact anyway, and with way more leeway and runway)

But considering how much of Andor is literally about how main characters in their own circles BECOME supporting characters in other peoples, and still do extraordinary work; and then recede (or disappear) into history’s shadows so others can become that history’s main characters… I think there’s something fitting to Rogue One (or even this edit of it) having that happen to Cassian himself. He goes through his journey throughout the show - and Rogue One is him (and K2) taking the co-pilot seat to help Jyn’s mission get completed because that’s what needs to happen for the Rebellion to succeed. That’s in Rogue One already, to some level. I think there’s a danger of short-circuiting that, instead of amplifying it, if Rogue One gets re-edited too much to be a “sequel” to Andor, to be a referendum on the guy himself instead of letting it be Jyn’s story, with Cassian as a supporting character in it.

NOT FROM A JEDI…

I do wonder if the forcefulness of Season 2 might cause folks to go back to Season 1 on rewatches and maybe revisit whether Maarva’s speech should be restored. It’s one thing hearing and seeing that scene then, but having the context of the Ghorman Massacre in full like that…

Either way, the audio is available to anyone who wants to use it in their edits going forward, just snag it off the YouTube I linked (I upped it in 5.1 so if you use the right downloaders you should be able to get it that way) or DM me if that doesn’t work, too. No permissions or credits or whatever. Grab it if you want it!

That might be the only continuity error? And even then he’s pulling jailbreaking tools out of his boot as he says it, so I’m thinking the “first” he’s referring to might be the TYPE of prison he’s in, not prison in general? Either way, the scene sort of depends on his saying something there in order to prompt Chirrut’s following line, IIRC? So even if it’s a tiny continuity error, it might need to stick for the sake of the drama/emotion in that moment.

Also, it’s been awhile, I think I shot HAL a PM a long time ago (in a forum post far far away…) but I have conformed an isolated score to this cut, and I also went ahead and took the Ryan Golden lines as linked in the YouTube video from a couple years ago, isolated out just those lines, did some processing/mixing/stretching etc, and put them into the center channel, and then put the center channel back into the mix. To my ear it works pretty well, so there’s also a 5.1 audio track that’s exactly the same as the one originally on this cut - except the scene with Krennic on Mustafar now has a Vader that sounds closer to 77/80 than 2016.

I was also thinking - Vader doesn’t necessarily have to say “prepare a boarding party” either. I know we don’t want to go so far as to repurpose “Bring my shuttle,” but basically all he has to do is ask for, or demand, a vehicle in that shot. I don’t know if there’s a line like that in Kenobi, but could be an alternate way towards getting a younger/more accurate Vader sound in that last shot.

oojason said:
I attended the world premiere of this last night on youtube - and enjoyed it (I was wondering if I’d clicked on the wrong link - or if it was going to be a joke 👍) - though thought you did a great job on it. Nicely done.

Oh yeah that’s right, you can’t just post things anymore, when you hit “post” they “WORLD PREMIERE” whatever you made live now!

Thanks everyone, for the kind words about my editing of a bad one! It dawned on me as I was typing out my post that I didn’t REALLY need to find her saying the word. I just needed a clean take of her saying half of the word. And then I realized it didn’t even need to be the full word, because she’s Irish, so any number of words will sound like it, LOL.

Me too!

But that is all Fiona Shaw! No AI. It’s part of her saying Fight from the overdub as aired, and part of her shouting “Jug!” from her early 90s reading of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, (Part 3: The Fire Sermon) - which sounds close enough in tone and timbre that when slowed down, pitched up, processed, reverbed a little; and delayed, and blended together; and then THAT is blended with the radio static and crowd noise, and then THAT is diffused and moved into the fronts and rears (and delayed a little even more) - it sounds like she’s shouting “fuck!”

Hopefully, convincingly. Maybe! In 5.1 surround! (but mostly in the center channel)

Okay, how about this

https://youtu.be/P0kgfe3uK7M

Octorox said:

I was a little impatient with the Cassian arc at first but personally I wouldn’t cut anything. It’s such a singular work as-is. Maybe would be a cool to see an edit of each arc into a movie, with no episode title cards or credits until the end.

I agree! I feel like The Gilroys/Bissell/Willimon specifically wrote their arcs to be movies, yeah. So far this seems to me like the last arc of The Clone Wars (Victory and Death/Siege of Mandalore) which was so clearly written/directed/edited to be a single film that all you have to do is take the tops and tails off each episode and stitch em together to arrive at their intended form. You’re basically talking about fanedits where you’re making like 5 or 6 cuts total and maybe another 5 or 6 audio edits.

Acbagel said:

You could try just using Fiona Shaw’s delivery of the line where she says “F*** the Empire” in an interview with Variety. I’ve had it saved on my computer forever. Not sure if the tone of her delivery would work, but it’s worth trying since it’s an authentic delivery. Here ya go!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FDEE0U0ZL9hYIRSO032Jhdt3HGKuMmU6/view?usp=sharing

That probably won’t work because she’s very smooth/low-key about it, LOL.

There has GOT to be a line reading of her saying “fuck” somewhere in her long career where she’s basically hissing/spitting that one syllable out in a way that can be mixed/cut in seamlessly (especially with the amount of radio static and audio processing that would need to be applied) but she has acted for so long and been in so many things that I’d imagine the thing that’s prevented this from being discovered is… precisely that! She’s been such a successful actress that you’d have to comb through just a TON of work to find that one syllable.

That said, I do think it’d be a pretty satisfying hunt, because in all of season one, this is the sole fight Gilroy lost, and I would love for that bit to be restored, if only because it is more than clear he is not just building that speech to culminate in that shout, but that speech is the culmination of the whole SEASON. He is building the whole series up to Maarva shouting “Fuck the Empire” as the fuse reaching the bomb and exploding. “Fuck the Empire” is what literally sparks The Rebellion (capital T, capital R) into existence.

I see the “call to action” argument upthread and I know it’s been popularized in the meantime but that’s also kind of a misunderstanding of how “call to action” as a literary idea works, really. The whole speech is the call to action, dramatically. It’s not a description of the final line at all, it’s not describing the LITERAL sentence or line in the text that tells someone to go perform an action.

But anyway: Tony Gilroy knew what he was doing when he built the whole of the series, thematically, to arrive at that speech, and when he built that speech to culminate in that exhortation. And when Lucasfilm said “we’re censoring that” he fought it really hard (and refused to reshoot, resulting in that not-great overdub) which says that artistically - “Fuck the empire” is the better choice.

I don’t know - maybe if/when “Andor: The Complete Series” hits 4K in some special edition steelbook they’ll quietly have reverted the overdub.

Hello there!

10 years ago, EON, Sony, and MGM released Spectre, their 24th James Bond film, the 4th in their rebooted Bond Canon starring Daniel Craig, and the first they’d released after FINALLY getting legal clearance to return to the film’s titular terrorist organization, and its figurehead: Bond’s archnemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Because it was a new canon, because it had been so long since Blofeld’s last canonical appearance, and because EON had uh… I guess forgotten the Austin Powers movies existed (?), they decided to reintroduce Blofeld as Bond’s lost (adopted) brother (!) and then retconned the plots of the three prior movies as secretly being part of Blofeld’s machinations; to (yes) take over the world, but (also) get over on his hotter, younger, cooler adopted brother.

NOW: With No Time to Die taking an even bigger swing with the Bond canon (and boldly, unapologetically standing tall on ALL the choices made in Spectre) - and considering all the hubbub around the recent transfer of creative power from EON to MGM/Amazon, it felt like a great time to take a look back, a decade later; at the big and bruised second entry from Sam Mendes, at Blofeld’s return, to see if there’s a way to take all those years, all that context, all that hindsight, and bring it to bear - almost like staring down the sights of a gunbarrel, if you will - on a new Alternate Cut of the film.

WHAT HASN’T CHANGED:
Oberhauser is still Blofeld, and Blofeld is still Bond’s (adopted!) brother. Considering No Time to Die openly acknowledges this, and considering how No Time to Die plays out, it seems like going to the trouble of cutting that relationship is like spitting into the wind - a wind blowing like 400 missiles at you or something. Especially since the transfer of power from EON to MGM is a clear demarcation point between eras now, anyway. For better or worse, that choice IS a big, defining part of EON’s stewardship: They not only decided to fully reboot Bond with Craig, they made THAT call, and then doubled down. So that call stands in this cut.

Spectre is still (sorta) funny. The blend of suavity, tension, thrills, and what can only be generously called “Dad Vibes” got revived winningly in Skyfall after Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace were straightforwardly serious as a heart attack (or a giant rope knot to the jumblies). Spectre aimed for that kind of balance too, but didn’t quite land it. It might seem easier to then trim off the comedy bits and revert back to that Quantum-styled dourness, but I think the problem isn’t the comedy itself (which mostly works in the moment), it’s the pacing of the stuff leading into and out of those bits that makes the jokes and more classic Bond-isms feel more out of place than they should be. Plus, the comedy still being present makes Waltz/Blofeld’s playing with - and purposeful souring of - that comedic tone work a little better in the context of the film.

WHAT HAS CHANGED:
Color Correction: The film is a very famous example of featuring what’s come to be known - as warmly as possible - a piss filter. Even when Bond is in mountainous, snowy climes, it appears as if everything has been doused in a fine mist of Mountain Dew. This cut has washed that sticky residue right out of the film. Well, MOST of it. The Day of the Dead is still a little sweaty, of course. As is L’American, and the arid nowhere outside of Blofeld’s lair. But if a locale is supposed to have green grass, white snow, blue sky? It’s got it now.

The pacing is quicker: Not a lot of scenes have been cut outright, but a LOT of shots, and beats within scenes and shots, have been trimmed off so Spectre isn’t spending so much time just staring at itself, which is a big part of why the film frequently feels so leaden. This ramps up the closer you get to the climax, too, so the pacing feels even more like it’s moving TOWARDS something eventful.

Bond and Swann have conversations like actual people: A huge part of the quickening of the pace involves these two speaking TO each other, not at each other, and not mooning at each other for three-counts in between line deliveries, and definitely not explicitly stating either the underlying theme of their current status as characters in the story, or foreshadowing a plot element to come. To a lesser extent (because other people did it way less) other characters cut to the chase a lot more (and sound a lot more normal because of it) too. Saves time! Sounds better!

Radiohead! One of the most famous rejected Bond themes in EON history (and you could probably put an album together of nothing BUT rejected Bond themes and it would be a platinum selling soundtrack album by itself) is Radiohead’s submitted title treatment for this film, which was turned down for being “too dour” in favor of Sam Smith’s flatline of a theme song. BUT DID YOU KNOW: the first song Radiohead submitted was its legendary B-side “Man of War (Big Boots”). Director Sam Mendes loved both submissions, but had to reject the first because it wasn’t original, and got overruled on the second by EON. Well now BOTH of them are back in the picture: “Spectre,” takes its rightful place over Daniel Kleinman’s title sequence (with help via elements from GnC Film’s famous rework from 2017), and Man of War goes in the end titles after the classic Bond Theme.

• Runtime is now 2hrs, 19min Burnt-in subs for foreign languages, english subs (srt) and chapters included. Dolby Digital 5.1, 1080p.

Please PM me if you’d like to check it out! As always, any suggestions, questions, critiques, comments, whatever you got, I’m all ears 😃 Thanks!