Saturday, May 10, 2014

I Discuss Star Wars: Turn To The Dark Side

This wasn't in the plans, but then again it wasn't until I heard early last evening of the existence of a fan-made edit of the infamous Star Wars prequels into a single film that happens to be 167 minutes long. The story broke on Friday and not surprisingly, once Disney saw that this video was available for free on Vimeo, it wasn't long before it was taken down. I had to go to Pirate Bay to download, and yes I'm admitting this... also, some may be surprised that The Pirate Bay is still around considering all its legal problems the past few years.

Fan edits of movies are not a new thing. There are entire websites (albeit pretty obscure) devoted to people doing their own edits to movies to try and improve them. I've come across them before... hell, I've downloaded some before. Some are better than others but it's been a thing since The Phantom Edit came out, where someone attempted to edit (ironically) Episode 1.

I haven't watched it from beginning to end; hell, I've only skimmed through it. I can tell you from the cursory glance that just about all of Episode 1 is excluded from it, aside from 5 minutes of the ending, which starts off the movie. After that it's Episodes 2 and 3, mainly the action scenes and the stuff needed to advance the general idea of Anakin following the title of the fan edit and turning to the dark side. About an hour and six minutes is Episode 2 and the rest is Episode 3. Count Dooku doesn't appear to be a thing in it, which is bad even if it's just because it is Christopher Lee. I do know that the NNNOOOOOO of 3's ending is not there, which is definitely a good thing. Who knows when I'll watch it in full. It may be months down the line.

The video quality isn't so hot but it was something made to fit on Vimeo so I wasn't expecting a 1080p experience. I am sure they really tried but who knows if they could make ice cream out of the horse manure that are the prequels. There's still the general story and its issues, the dialogue and the performances that the actors were directed towards and having to do all that acting in an unnatural green screen environment... I am pretty sure it still won't be a good film (and plus, I'll always think of the brutal evisceration the Red Letter Media reviews delivered to the prequels) but at least it won't take as long to watch and it should be less painful.

I shall return tomorrow night.

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