I Can Edit Star Wars Better Than George Lucas

Sometimes I forget that I occasionally do cool shit.

Recently, I was reminded of a cool little project I did a little over two years ago, called Star Wars: The Fall of the Galactic Republic. Basically, I edited together the three films of the Prequel Trilogy, in order to cut out all the really shitty stuff and to make them a bit easier to watch (read: better). Apparently, it was somewhat of a success - it received millions of hits on YouTube.

How was I reminded of it? The other day, I got an email saying the video had received another comment on YouTube. This was impressive, seeing as how the video was taken down in February due to copyright issues (I'm not bitter - honestly I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did). Either way, I still have a master copy, and so I took the opportunity to rewatch and reflect.

One of the biggest complaints that the Prequels received was due to the inclusion of C3P0. Most people found the idea that Anakin had built C3PO to help his mother was just stupid, and his role in the film was more or less just fan service (in the worst sense of that term). I agreed, and took it upon myself to purge him entirely from the film. This was surprisingly easy - editing his scenes didn't interrupt the narrative flow of the movie at all. In fact, from an editing perspective, it seemed like his scenes ware more or less all thrown in haphazardly, without regard to what was going on around them, which to me just gives more weight to the fan service theory.

Another thing I was seriously proud of is the change I made to Anakin's character development. The Plinkett Review of Attack of the Clones hit the nail on the proverbial head: Anakin is an asshole from start to finish, which kind of diminishes the impact of a series of films designed to trace his fall to the dark side. The notes I made while preparing for the edit says it most bluntly: "Make Anakin less of a douche." So I did - I had to cut out quite a bit of some of the incendiary dialogue in Attack of the Clones to make it happen, but I think it worked pretty well.

Speaking of that fuck-nut Anakin. Everyone remembers his love scenes from Attack of the Clones, and how incredible they are. If not, here's something to remind you.

Yeah, how could you possibly forget? All that shit is taken out. In the official movies, they kind of just fall in love, really really awkwardly. In my edit, I left in a few scenes of flirtation, which culminates in their first kiss when they're dragged out into the coliseum to be executed. I don't know if it's actually good - all I know is that I like it a whole lot better than what George Lucas shat out.

If there's anything I wish I could change, it would be with regards to the music. Editing around John Williams' score was more or less impossible, which means that there are some kind of abrupt changes to the background score. I tried to make it as seamless as possible, but honestly there wasn't much I could do. Maybe if I knew more about advanced video editing techniques, I could think of a way to better edit around all that. Either way, for what was essentially a hobby project that I did before I went off to grad school, I think it's pretty cool.

Now, if you want to watch it (and I know you want to stroke my ego and watch it!), even though YouTube has it taken down, I put it back up on my Google Drive account, which you can check out here. Have fun!