Review Detail

Revenge of the Sith for me has become a movie that's hard to love, but this edit has definitely rekindled some of my fondness for it. With the new grading, some rescores, and the re-arrangement of the narrative - Dom's edit finds a pretty fun presentation of this flawed story without gutting it of a heart.

I loved the narrative order here, and how the Padme/Anakin scenes were implemented. Other edits often cut much of that love-oriented underpinning in favor of minimizing "cringe" or focusing instead on the political subplot, but Dom opts to ground the plot more firmly in it. I think it works well. The opera scene is moved up, and the Jedi/Palpatine politics that alienate Anakin come after he's already introduced to the dark side's potential. The progression towards the dark feels more stewed on and organic this way. It still never coalesces into the perfectly realized story, but that's more of the original movie's fault than anything else. I've been able to be forgiving of it when edits like this are able to pull off a more engaging and cohesive presentation. (And I would know how messy ambition with this movie can be.) As it stands, everything here makes sense and feels much more properly set up than the theatrical. And it didn't have to sacrifice an emotional throughline to do so.

The rescores are a big part of making the movie feel fresh and exciting to watch again. The original trilogy cues during the opening sequence add a sense a swashbuckling and idealism to this world about to turn, and it's surprisingly effective in contrast to the bleakness of what comes next. When the melodrama of Mustafar is happening, it's cool to have the memory of romantic adventure more readily accessible. It sort of works to highlight how far things have fallen.

The Order 66 redux with the OT score is also beautifully done, and implemented under a philosophy I wish I had more of when approaching my own edit. Cutting the rest of the Jedi deaths was something I thought I would miss, but this edit shows how distracting it might be to the main characters' arcs. In similar vein as the "Saving Padme" orientation, I like the commitment to the personal grounding of this.

That all said, as far as elements that didn't quite work as well, the inclusion of some of the political deleted scenes here are at odds with that intention. Only a bit. I've always had a complicated relationship with these scenes. They add a lot of (perhaps necessary) context for the characters to act against and react to, but they involve a lot of other moving pieces that scale the story broader than our three leads. Luckily, Dom doesn't use all of them and they are placed far better than I've typically seen, but I can't help but want to move on from them quickly when they pop up. But they still do a lot of the pushing for Anakin towards Palpatine, so it's hard to say. I think the right choices were made for clarity, either way.

The regrade is neat, but I think it looks too blue. Very well done and at points what I remember the movie FEELING like as a younger lad, but I don't know, it didn't fully work for me. It felt modern, when so much of this aspired to "vintage."

Overall, I really dug it! I'm not embellishing when I say this rekindled a good bit of my love for this film. It had been hard for me to sit through as of late, but there was just enough here to carry me through to the changes that enhanced what was there. Awesome work!