Pulp Empire

Wow. I am blown away. This was absolutely fun, fun, fun from start to finish! Rating this from a technical perspective it isn't perfect but it takes so many chances, does so many interesting things, and succeeds on so many levels that it hardly even matters. Be warned, you'll need to know your Star Wars movies relatively well because this edit is non-chronological.

Just some of my favorite moments: Pai Mei's voice for Yoda (inspired!), the character names popping up (DARTH VADER), the Hoth splitscreens, "Boba Fett" scrolling across the screen during his amazing intro, "A Silhouette of Doom" over the anime saber battle. And that's all just in the first half!!

Find a copy of this and watch it. It's guaranteed the most fun you'll have with a fan edit this month.

Second fan-edit I've ever watched, and this has completely sold me on the idea and potential of fan-edits. This is honestly a masterpiece of achievement. I want to show this to every person I know now.

Fantastic effort. My only criticisms are that you can still faintly hear the Williams music in a few moments, but it's forgivable and I really did not like how the Vader/Luke bespin fight was handled. It felt almost too music video-ish. But it's immediately followed up by the Prequel flashbacks set to Neil Young which might be my favorite moment in the whole thing. It's a very fun watch overall. Captures that exploitation style while still retaining all the substance and gravitas of the core Star Wars story. As someone who's favorite director is Tarantino and who's favorite film is The Empire Strikes Back, my fanboy funny bone was satisfied. Wouldn't mind seeing a Return of the Jedi one? Do the Kill Bill Vol. 2 to this movie's Kill Bill Vol. 1? Not losing sleep over that, but it'd be cool to see.

I absolutely loved this edit. The split screen in the battle of Hoth was a masterpiece. After viewing I noticed from the stats that more than 30 minutes were removed from the film. I have not seen the original in more than 10 years, and I honestly cannot say that I recalled anything important missing. The intro scenes for Darth Vader and Boba Fett are brilliant. What would I have changed? I needed to be softened up a little before getting hit with Neil Young in the last chapter, but it grew on me as the montage progressed. This is an inconsequential nitpick though. Thank you for a wonderful time, NJVC!

I have to confess two things up front. I am a big fan of njvc's previous work, but despite that, I was very skeptical that he could pull off his stated goals or that they would work for my personal tastes. I am pleased to report that for the most part I was wrong on both counts.

This is a very ambitious edit from an audio and visual standpoint, and from a technical fanediting standpoint.

njvc is a master with audio work and soundtracking. so I had high expectations at for this part, and he did not disappoint. There were a couple beautifully scored scenes. One that really stood out for me was the animated scene.

The animated scene is also just one of many examples where he demonstrates great visual and storytelling creativity that I absolutely loved. The character montages and the use of ANH and ROTJ footage was also wonderful.

This whole edit is just so fresh and fun that any technical issues at the end of the day just don't matter very much or ruin the overall experience.

That said, there were a handful of moments where technical things did momentarily pull me out of the scene. The most problematic IMO is the use of slow motion. The use itself is not the problem. In fact it is quite important stylistically. The problem is the inconsistent use of different types and some video glitches in a moment or two. The worst glitch that I can remember is in a land speeder scene on Hoth. In fact this scene really stood out in my mind as the worst usage. There were also moments in this scene when I began to feel as if the slow motion was over-used and unneeded. Lastly and perhaps most importantly regarding slow motion, there were really two different styles used and they visually clashed with each other a bit. There was normal smooth slow motion, and then there was a choppy slow motion that looked like it was shot with a 14FPS camera. Stylistically, I really loved the choppy slow motion and would have preferred a more consistent use of this look throughout.

There were a few other minor issues I had. While I absolutely loved some of the fades njvc creates (so beautiful!), fade transitions were over-used a bit IMO for certain intra-scene quick camera cuts. Yoda just didn't quite work for me either.

Overall, awesome job as usual dude.