Reddskyz

Hello. Thank you for all the hard work on these edits. I had a chance to watch version 1 of both Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones this morning. This message will focus on Phantom.

Overall, I really enjoyed the pacing in this cut. It reminds me a lot of older versions of Hal-9000’s episode 1 before so much of the movie was pruned away. This version retains more scenes of film that I remember as a child without getting too bogged down in tedious mythology or politics. I felt like the trims made on the space station to get the jedi down to Naboo faster were well executed as its where I remember the original movie failing to pick up speed. I think you did well achieving a tolerable amount of Jar-Jar across the film.

While I am used to fan editors cutting the Gungan City scenes I enjoyed your choice to leave it in. The reveal of the underwater city is beautiful, and I just believe the following scenes are just too important for establishing Qui-Gon’s character and setting up the third act conflict to scrap entirely. The negotiation with Boss Nass shows that Qui-Gon is compassionate and merciful man who is willing to use mind control to get results. It helps foreshadow some of Qui-Gon’s
sketchy behavior on Tatooine. While I did miss the planet core monster sequence somewhat, I thought the cut was well executed and probably better for the overall pace. If not for the bite marks on the submarine when the jedi arrive at the Capitol, I might not have remembered.

I felt like this edit did the best at making the Tatooine segment of the movie better. Taking out a lot of Jake Lloyd’s childish noises helped make Anakin a lot less annoying. Numerous trims at Anakin’s house were helpful in speeding up the movie. C3P-O gone just worked amazingly well, and with it R2 fades into the background as well. Of the changes on Tatooine, I would say the deleted scene where Anakin beats up the Rodian child stuck out for me. While the content itself was fine, I can’t decide if the scene felt a little too short due to the editing or it just didn’t flow well with the neighboring scenes. I was neutral on inclusion of Maul’s probe droids they didn’t hurt, but they didn’t necessarily add anything to my experience either.

The Jedi Council on Coruscant are still very frustrating with talk of Anakin being too old to train and being maddeningly passive about the encroaching dark side, but there’s not much that editing can do about it. The sequence is short, but the cut jedi test is not particularly missed. Maybe it makes Yoda seem like a bit of a jerk to start picking on the child right away. To me it highlights that they should’ve cast someone older to play Anakin. I was glad you also made other cuts to Coruscant I think the movie really bogs down here.

Skipping ahead, I don’t have much to say about the final third of the movie featuring the battles. It plays out similarly to other fan edits I’ve seen, which is to say, a substantial improvement on the theatrical cut by shoring up Anakin and Jar-Jars portion of the finale.

Overall great job creating a less annoying replacement that still feels enough like watching the original film. While I also watched your attack of the clones I will write up my thoughts another time.