The Star Wars prequels are arguably a disaster, collected together. But there is a good movie in there, and a Vimeo user just proved it.
Called Star Wars: Turn To The Dark Side, essentially it cuts down all three movies into a flick that’s just a hair under three hours. And it’s… a substantial improvement!
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For those who don’t get a chance to see it before the Mouse inevitably drops the hammer, essentially, Episode I is cut down to just the climactic lightsaber fight; a fair chunk of Episode II is summarily dumped, largely from the first half of the movie; and Episode III, easily the best, actually makes up the most of the running time. Jake Lloyd gets his wish, in this cut: He’s not seen at all. Double Digit, the editor, also made the movie equally about Obi Wan and Anakin, which is a logical decision since despite Lucas’ best efforts, Anakin actually isn’t that important to the story until Episode III.
Some things can’t be fixed. Darth Maul’s death will never be anything other than a “where were his Jedi reflexes?” moment, for example. But it is a zippy, streamlined movie and one I actually enjoyed watching.
The main problem this brings out, just so there’s some substance to this point in case Disney’s lawyers get all feisty, is that the first two prequels were utterly unnecessary, unless you count George Lucas going all establishment on us, maaaaaaaaan. Seriously, most of what remains from the second movie are the admittedly quite entertaining monster fights. It was a good reminder that, oh yeah, there was actually like an hour of monster fights in that movie.
The third movie is utterly unnecessary, still, but it does at least have a plot we give a crap about. It’s telling how much of the non-monster-fight scenes made it to this fan edit, because they were the only ones any good. So perhaps Disney could analyze this, and apply the lessons learned going forward.