Most Star Wars fans have hated the prequel films since their inception. Most people cite miscues by George Lucas, Jar Jar Binks, laziness, and an overall disregard for the things that made the original trilogy great. Could the prequels actually be edited to be good? One YouTuber thinks so.
There are two schools of thought on the prequels: one are fans who loathe them, and the other is fans who defend them. No matter what side of this debate that you ally with, you cannot say with certainty that they were better than, or even in line with, the original trilogy. They are not even close.
The only comparison that I can think of right now for this situation is wanting Lego's for Christmas as a child and getting Megabloks. Even though Megabloks serve the same purpose as Legos, you feel cheated. This is exactly how I feel when I watch the prequels.
One particular editor has taken it upon himself to reedit the Star Wars prequels, to tone down the films and take a whole slew of the crappiness out of them, making them watchable. These types of fan reedits are called 'Fan Edit' films, or 'Cuts'. The internet is full of these versions. A Fan Edit is when a film editor takes it upon himself to re-cut a film and interpreting the film in a way that he sees suitable. This usually involves making changes to the audio/ and visual elements, changing dialog, cutting scenes, and even adding scenes in an attempt to get the film closer to the source material or closer to fan expectations.
Star Wars is not the only series to receive fan edits. Some other famous fan edits include: Prometheus: Giftbearer, Terminator 3: The Coming Storm, Spiderman 3: Redemption, and The Matrix: DeZIONized. These films are an attempt to make fans happy with films that had a ton of promise, but fell short. This is exactly what Youtuber JeremyMWest-Esquire has done with the Star Wars prequels. He has made drastic changes to the films, making them watchable, and just not suck completely. Check them out below.
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
He says that these are the changes that he made to Episode 1:
- Nemoidian and Gungan voices are re-vocalized with alien dialect and subtitled.
- Journey to Gungan underwater city removed
- Jar Jar is now a useful character instead of an annoying tag-along
- Nemoidians are much more devious and less cowardly
- Childish Battle Droid dialog removed
- Queen Amidala's voice is pitch-shifted back to her normal pitch. (Still could not remove her horrible British accent)
- Naboo pilot Ric Olié's endless plot exposition removed when appropriate
- Midichlorian references removed
- Anakin immaculate conception removed
- All fart and poop jokes removed
- Anakin is edited to be a more deliberate hero instead of an accidental one.
- Removed as many "Yippe!" and "Whoa!" and "Whee!" exclamations as possible.
- Removed the two headed pod race announcer
- Shortened the podrace intro scene and tightened the whole race for more tension
- Removed the entire sequence of trying to capture the Viceroy at the end.
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
These are the changes that he says he made to Attack of the Clones: "Following in my tradition of editing the Prequels, I give you the Anti-Cheese version of Attack of the Clones. This film had some cool stuff in it, but was horribly mangled by the awful dialog and acting, especially between Padme and Anakin. There was also a lot of extra cheese in this one as well that needed to go. So, Anakin and Padme's scenes were drastically edited to make Anakin way less whiny and petulant, and most of the cringe-worthy dialog was removed. Jar-Jar's voice as well as the voice of the Neimodians were either removed or replaced. Several scenes were removed entirely, most notably Anakin's breakdown in the shop at the Lars homestead after killing the sandpeople, and R2 and C3PO are removed entirely from the ending battle in the droid factory and the arena. Those scenes were just too much cheese for my liking. There's about 100 other little edits that tighten things up and helped this fatty lose about 20 minutes of run-time- and frankly I think it's for the better. Again, your mileage may vary."
Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith
And finally, he says that he didn't initially feel the need to make a lot of changes to Revenge of the Sith, but once he got into it, there was a few big changes: "As the final chapter in my Prequel Anti-Cheese anthology, I present to you my edit of Revenge of the Sith. Before you ask, yes- I took out Vader screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the end. Honestly, I thought that was about all I needed to do, because Jar Jar only said 2 words in this film so I thought it would be an easy edit. Turns out that I needed to cut about 15 minutes of cheese in order to get this baby down to about 2 hours and 5 minutes."
These changes are great, and really help these films. You should check them out as you get ready for the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After all, it is better to refresh yourself on the whole story instead of just half. These edits truly make them not suck as much as you remember.
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