Revenge of the Sith by DominicCobb

What is there to say? By far the best edit of Revenge of the Sith out there. I believe this is the one that will satisfy the hardcore fans: it stays true to canon and seamlessly removes all of the excess while also reintroducing a series of absolutely essential deleted scenes, which I find exponentially better the movie.
All edits are TRULY invisible, and, especially music-wise, are all close to perfect, which is the hardest thing to do with the Prequels as the music is so exceptionally weaved together.
Last, but not least: the COLOR CORRECTION which is fantastic and brings the world slightly more in line with the one from the Original Trilogy, which is my main gripe with the original films...

Well done, well done, well done... but I can't avoid asking: will Episodes I and II be coming forward too?
Please, say yes!

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!

ROVS has always been high on my list of favorite Star Wars movies but the problem of Anakins sudden turn to the dark side has continued to bother me. It just does not convince.
Dominic Cobb has done wonders to rectify this, particularily the decision to move the opera scene forward but lots of other little changes also make for a much more gradual and believable slide into the dark side for Anakin.
The changes to the music are very well executed and the music was well chosen.

The changes to the rescue of Palpatine in the opening sequence and to the Order 66 are daring and while I prefer the original in this aspect it works very well within this edit.

For me this is now the best version of ROVS out there.

Great editing and technically spotless all around.

Now the cutlist intrigued me for some things I always wanted to see but couldn't find in any other edit previously (to be specific, the removal of the buzz droids sequence was what caught my eye, and it works seamlessly). There are also lots of other small trims that tone down the film's overindulgence on CGi worldbuilding, like removing the brief shot of the gas helpers in Utapau. These are the kinds of cuts that I think always benefit the PT immensely without being heavy-handed.

As for the order of events, I have grown accustomed to not seeing most of the scenes with Padmé idling in their Coruscant loft, courtesy of other fanedits, and now to see them again makes it feel much more pace breaking for me. I feel the same way with some brief moments of levity that are kept but, like the other small CGi snippets, could've gone without being missed - like the Battle Droids bullying R2 aboard the Invisible Hand, for example.

I actually found the more radical cuts, like the reduced Order 66, to be less shocking in light of what the edit proposes, which is to be closer to the OT in execution, so that was one reasoning I could follow. However it does lose some impact when viewed as an event pivotal to the film as a single feature, since we are constantly reminded by the film's production design that this is a galaxy-wide classical tragedy involving lots of players. That's also to say that I'm not the greatest fan of the new color grade, even though I also get where it's coming from. Because again, the production design screams lush set pieces and costumes and the OT grade just muffles all that.

I have mixed feelings for the rescored scenes as well. While they are very well implemented, I feel it gives the film a much too "Indiana Jonesy" vibe (for lack of a better definition), as it sounds like the film is always revelling at its own imagery rather than following the different beats to the narrative.

Still a great fanedit and a certainly solid choice that should check all the right boxes for many fans.

I'm glad I could watch it and thank you DominicCobb for sharing it.

I really enjoyed this cut of the film. I always liked Hal9000's takes on the Prequel Trilogy but there was always a small part of me that missed the Anakin/Padme scenes (cringe as they were), as they gave a more nuanced glimpse of Anakin's fall. Not only are they back in trimmed form (plus the earnestness, minus the cringe, IMP), but the restructure of the middle of the film really nails the gradual slope of Anakin's paranoia, desperation, and confusion, which Palpatine manipulates to his advantage.

I definitely agree with Hal9000's reasoning that the more nuanced motivations are at odds with the Original Trilogy's implication of how it went down, not to mention the problems with Padme dying and Leia's supposed memories of her mother (but maybe she meant Bail Organa's wife?). On the other hand, my preference is that the main story/emotional beats of a film play out more-or-less in the way the original director intended, and this is what we get here. The heaviest changes are the excisions of the Yoda/Sidious fight, and the Order 66 montage (both work to keep the film more focused on the main characters).

I particularly appreciated that the re-inserted scene of Obi-Wan and Yoda returning to the temple (taken out of Hal's edit) was re-inserted with edits to make the combat more defensive, rather than offensive (holding to OT sensibilities).

The OT-inspired video filter and music cues are used well and lean into the fact that the PT was made with the assumption that the OT had been seen first (no getting around that, despite Secior's best efforts). The video and audio are both top-notch.

I have nitpicks, but really, that's all they are. This is a focused cut of the film with inspired editing choices that make the film much stronger, easily rivaling Hal9000's. I absolutely love that the fan-editing community is building upon each other's inspiration. Who knows what the inevitable next cut will have in store?