Star Wars - The Fall Of The Republic

I'm always up for watching a SW fanedit and when I came across STAR WARS: Fall of the Republic I had to check it out.

Was I shocked as to how good this was!! The transition into the next film is practically seamless, even with the changed scenes and music. The cuts for time/plot/stupidity are practically flawless and the whole thing feels like a tighter story as to how the Republic fell and Vader rose.

If a v2 is made here's a couple things I'd like to see:
-An ending to the blockade storyline of Episode I. It took me a little while to get how the Jedi were in the TD craft, then fighting during the Duel of the Fates, but I found it cool, nonetheless (I still don't *quite* get it, but the editing was sweet!)

Offhand, I think there was something with Ep2 that bugged me slightly, but now I cannot remember what.

-Would it have been possible to add Palpatine's voice (or show him) telling Anakin to kill Dooku before, or even during, the cut?

"Shocked" at how good this was? Come on, Man...

I'm glad you liked it. But, I had a much different experience. I'm not knocking the effort, don't get me wrong. The idea was good. But, from a technical and artistic standpoint.... :-? I guess I was expecting a lot more.

There was absolutely no attempt to make the music blend from cut to cut. Transitions are bad, FAR from being accurately described as "flawless" or "seamless". Wipes are too fast and usually occur at odd moments or right in the middle of a scene. Certain things were left in that probably shouldn't have been while other things which are integral to the saga (like Palpatine's character arc) were all but eliminated.

And then there are cuts in there that defy an explanation. Darth Maul on the Neimoidian ship? Nice idea...but no...it doesn't work at all. And then the entire last half of AOTC is missing. It goes from Obi-Wan reporting via hologram to Anakin & Padme getting married. And why go to such great pains to completely eliminate Palpatine from the duel with Dooku in ROTS? What does that accomplish?

I'm sure it didn't help that the copy I downloaded was severely pixelated and low quality...but something tells me the higher-res version wouldn't do much to save this one.

My apologies to the editor...but that's my honest opinion. I hate writing bad reviews about anything, but I don't want anyone else spending 3 days downloading the torrent only to find out it's nowhere near as spectacular as advertised.

--ID

There was absolutely no attempt to make the music blend from cut to cut. Transitions are bad, FAR from being accurately described as "flawless" or "seamless". Wipes are too fast and usually occur at odd moments or right in the middle of a scene. Certain things were left in that probably shouldn't have been while other things which are integral to the saga (like Palpatine's character arc) were all but eliminated.

Click to expand...

That's exactly the kind of thing I look for before I ever pass judgement on the entertainment value of it all. It sounds like I'll be disappointed. I'll still check it out just to see how much of each film makes it into the overall plot.

It sounds like you really despised the recut, InfoDroid. You've pointed out virtually every flaw with it, and some I didn't even know existed. LOL! I did mix the audio between cuts - or at least tried. As for the speed of the wipes, I don't even know how to respond to that. I'll take your word for it.

The cuts I thought worked okay - though, there was the one Yoda cloak cut (Yoda/Emperor fight), however, I never fixed. It's pretty jarring, I admit, but the video capture from the DVD got truncated and I never got around to re-digitizing it. Excuses, excuses. I know. That's certainly my fault for leaving it in the cut. A lot of people like the cut in the ship to Darth Maul, though. And I've gotten good feedback on the removal of Palpatine during the Dooku fight, etc. Oh well.

Thanks for the input, guys. I've wondered if anyone enjoyed these or not. I guess it's a mixxed bag - though it seems to be leaning more towards negative than positive in this place. As for the low quality QuickTime, yeah, it was pretty much meant for watching on your computer. I did upload a dual-layered DVD version, though, which is pretty high-res. But,. I doubt it will get much of a look on here.

Thanks.
-BF

well... blankfist.... i took a look at this last night.... i was especially interested since i have been working on an edit similiar to this (combining all 3 prequels) for about a year now...

in some ways i was very surprised and impressed, in some ways i was not. i'd say overall i'd give your edit a B- or C+ on how well it worked overall.... but on creativity in your editing... i've gotta go with a A+.... seriously. you did some amazing stuff that really never had any business working at all and you made it work somewhat. there were too many things that i just had questions on, wondering what things were supposed to mean.... but really, considering what you did, the edit worked much better than what i would have thought possible. i very much enjoyed it if only for the creative way that you re-arranged stuff. that was the most creative part to me.... also i was really blown away with how well the transitions from episode to episode worked..... very very well done. i wish mine had turned out that smooth and cool. well done, and i will very much look forward to what else you do.

As I said, i'd give it a B+ or C- for how well the edit worked logically and story-wise.... but the creativity was fantastic.... so i'll give it a 4 out of 5.

Aww...I feel bad now. I'm sorry, Blankfist. I know it's hard having your work criticized, which is probably why I shouldn't have said anything.

After reading through it again, I suppose my feedback wasn't very constructive. I think I was just frustrated after spending three days downloading it...maybe I was expecting too much.

My apologies...and kudos to you for getting as far as you did with it. No hard feelings, okay? And much love and respect.

--InfoDroid

As I've said in other places, it's not perfect, but it's the best version of the Prequels that I've seen. And it's good enough that I feel no need to see another Prequel edit (except maybe the obligatory Magfan 3).

I guess people more familiar with the Prequels might miss this or that that you removed, but as someone who's only seen them once each, I didn't miss a thing. You took a bloated story and told it told efficiently, and thoroughly enough for me. I loved the pace.

You did a fantastic job blankfist, especially for a first time fan edit.

And to everyone else: DOWNLOAD IT. It's better than 95% of the stuff out there!

and another positive thing:
the SL low quality version, which was made from the quicktime release was downloaded in the 2 weeks it is up 50!!! times. No fanedit EVER has been downloaded that much in that short time from RS.
Soon there will be RS links for the DL and a new encoded SL.

No, don't feel bad. I appreciate all the kind words, but they're not necessary. Honesty works just fine for me. I apologize if it sounded like I was being indignant - I really wasn't. I do appreciate all the input. Thanks for all of it.

-bf

I have to agree with everything InfoDroid said. I really wanted to like this edit but the technical issues and some of the cuts (especially in the TPM part) were just too much for me and it threw me off.

I will say though that if Blankfist had directed the prequels, I would've enjoyed them a lot more because I saw where he was going with this edit, it's just that the elements do not fit together at all and it's too distracting.

I'm hoping he has better results on his next edit.

you know what you might try...blankfist... if you ever do a version 2??
i know this isn't ideal either... but kind of the lesser of 2 evils.... instead of cutting back and forth between dialogue that is happening in 2 completely different places between the 2 same people... maybe you can just replace the dialogue in the one scene... .obviously the lip sync will be off... but that might be better than cutting back and forth between obviously different locations in the same conversation. the best example would be the conversation between watto and qui-gonn....

just a thought.

Cool. Thanks. I doubt there will be a version 2.

This is the type of edit, like Spence's ewok-less Return of the Jedi, that is so bold and drastic, that it can't be done technically perfect. Without the ability to reshoot scenes or exhaustive FX work, things just will never match up flawlessly.

Does that mean it's not a worthwhile edit? If an edit is not able to be polished to hollywood standards, does that mean it can't be enjoyed or shouldn't be released?

I think most people who watch this with an open mind as if it were a new movie, and not with the goal of picking it apart will get a lot of enjoyment out of it. But this type of edit cannot be produced without some flaws, so a little suspension of disbelief is needed. For instance, blankfist's placement of the Darth Maul battle was absolutely necessary to shorten Phantom Menace as much as he did. The fact that the backgrounds didn't match perfectly is unavoidable, and can be overlooked if you aren't hypercritical.

This movie presents the best parts of the prequels, while removing almost all of the stuff that bugged me about them. It's a huge improvement over the originals. And the fan editing scene needs more editors with this kind of vision.

-T

Just watched this a couple hours ago, this was the first fan edit I've watched. Have to say overall this was a really good edit. A couple problems I had were that The Phantom Menance is just a little overly short as to be choppy, but I imagine your goal was just to get through it pretty quickly. Other than that just a few spots were slightly awkward in transitions, but overall really well done. I liked that whiny Anakin is gone and that most the the awkward romance moments likewise were cut, made the movie much more enjoyable. Anyway, gets a thumbs up from me.

I gave it a 4 stars, Blankfist. I thought you left little too much of the politics out of the Ep I and the drastic cut scene to the Darth Mal fight kind of set the mood for the whole film. It calls the viewer's attention away some much that it takes the focus off your original goal throughout the film. But I completely enjoyed the rest of the edit. I thought it was well put together after that. Clean up that Darth Mal fight and reinsert some of the back story for the blockade and you have one helluva edit here...

Thanks, I enjoyed this!

i gave it 3 stars.

the good:
the ideas are great. the cuts really put the focus on the key plot moments when all the fat is excised. i enjoyed the lack of weak characters.

the bad:
the cuts where jarring and choppy at times. some of the cuts were a bit too drastic. a lot of the character development is gone.

overall i gave it a 3 because it doesn't give a BETTER representation of the first two movies (and phantom menace mostly).

it would get a 4 from me if the editing was a bit more enjoyable.

by Blankfist
What is it about? Watch the prequels united to one movie, to one saga. This is the yet darkest take on the rise of Darth Vader. Gigantic.

original film name: Star Wars - The Prequel Trilogy
new film name: The Fall Of The Republic
film studio name : Lucasarts
Date Original Film Was Released : 1997 to 2003
Date Edit Was Released : 26th of June 2007 (as quicktime movie)
Old Running Time: approx 7 hours
New Running Time: about 3h
Cut: you do the math.

The edits:

* The Phatom Menace was reduced to just 20 minutes. It shows most of all how Anakin became the Padawan of Obi Wan
* Attack Of The Clones is completed in 45 minutes and most of all is about Anakin and Obi Wan's discovery of the clone army.
* Revenge Of The Sith takes now 110 minutes and features the crisis which lead to the rise of the Sith as well as Anakin's path to the dark side.

DVD Details:

* 2.35:1 widescreen presented in 16:9
* NTSC
* static DVD menu
* animated chapter menu
* info menu
* DD 5.1 audio


Conceptual improvements/advancements of edit over original:
This is a much darker take on the rise of Darth Vader and the Fall of the Jedi Republic. Lots and lots of unnecessary scenes were cut to solely focus on what really matters: how did the dark side take over?

Persons involved:

* idea and editing: blankfist
* DVD authoring, encoding, cover art: boon23


IMAGES:

Maybe downloadable from .info

I've reuploaded this older edit upon request.  I won't be sending it to info so send me a PM if you'd like to check it out.  I will be removing it from my MEGA account when I need to make space for other edits, so don't wait if you want it.

TVs Frink said:

I've reuploaded this older edit upon request.  I won't be sending it to info so send me a PM if you'd like to check it out.  I will be removing it from my MEGA account when I need to make space for other edits, so don't wait if you want it.

Click to expand...

I will be removing this from my account this week.  Last chance to PM me for links.