Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Phantom Edit

I finally managed to get my paws on a copy of "The Phantom Edit", and I watched it last night.

For those of you who haven't heard of this before, back in 2000 or 2001, after the disappointment that was the first Star Wars prequel hit cinemas, a fan calling himself the Phantom Editor took a DVD of the prequel and edited it to be a more enjoyable movie.

He cut out a lot of Jar Jar's scenes (except for those that were relevant to the plot) and removed almost all the battle droids dialogue (roger roger). He also cut out the parts where Anakin says "yippee" or "oops".

I'm pretty sure he also took out the explanation of what midochlorians are (which I thought was stupid from the beginning. Tiny organisms in your blood give you the Force?)

It's been a while since I've seen the original Phantom Menace (I refuse to acknowledge them as part of the Star Wars trilogy), but after watching the Edit, I remember why Amidala was my favourite character. I'm also pretty darn upset that she was reduced to Padme in the third prequel, who did nothing but stand around and look sad. What happened to the strong Queen of the Naboo? And having her die of a broken heart at the end? What, they could come up with midochlorians to explain the Force, but they couldn't give Padme a noble death?

Okay, that developed in a tiny bit of a rant. Sorry.

I think George Lucas should hire the Phantom Editor to redo all his crummy prequels. Especially the second one. Those loves scenes made me want to burst out laughing.

2 comments:

Adriana said...

Sounds like fun! That movie was much too long, and the second and third ones sucked even more. I have an increasing hatred of sequels and prequels. Unfortunately, I had the same problem with the Pirates movies, which was very disappointing.

Joe said...

Ooo--can you burn me a copy? Every time I try to torrent it, I get a corrupted version.

And I heard a good apology for the midichlorians:

In the end analysis, we know that there is a correlation between midi-chlorian counts and Force skills. But is a correlation the same thing as a cause? If you answered "yes", then you should slap yourself on the side of the head and go back to school for lessons in elementary logic. High midi-chlorian counts may cause Force attunement, or they may be caused by it. They may not be directly related at all- perhaps it is indirect. Perhaps they have something to do with the so-called "life energy" of a person, and it is the strength of a person's "life force" that determines his ability to use the Force (remember that Yoda created unexpectedly massive life-form readings on Luke's scanners as he plunged toward Dagobah in TESB, and a swamp cannot be such an unusual phenomenon in the SW galaxy that Luke is surprised by life-form readings from indigenous life). In any case, I reiterate: the only meaningful conclusion from the film is that there is some sort of correlation. Anything else is unfounded supposition, or worse.