Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back: Revisited

This fan-edit is absolutely incredible and perfect in every technical aspect. It takes an already phenomenal movie and makes it even more so. The new visual effects are absolutely stunning, beautiful, and seamless and makes for a perfect modernization of the movie. The redone mattes, miniatures, CG, lightsabers and lasers especially are a feast. This edit also fixes literally every single movie mistake and continuity error to be found, which truly shows Adywan's dedication and improves the movie even more.

I only take one point off of enjoyment because I wish the special edition Wampa shots were kept (which was an addition to Empire Strikes Back I actually really liked), but that's only a minor subjective gripe and not an objective flaw of the edit. And that's literally my only problem with it.

Until my edit is done, this is my go-to for watching Empire Strikes Back.

A near-perfect edit of "The Empire Strikes Back", and I only say "near-perfect" because there needs to be an edit without Luke and Leia's incestuous Sweet Home Alabama kiss! Other than that, it is technically flawless, and a wonderful marriage of the best of the original and the best of the Special Edition with even more VFX improvements. Dare I say, what the Special Edition ESB should have been!

Highly recommended, and my go-to ESB from now on!

What else can I say that hasn't already been said by literally everyone else? This is a phenomenal piece of art, handled with nothing but care and love. The Empire Strikes Back, arguably the greatest SW film as well as the greatest sequel of all time has be beautifully remastered once more, only this time not a single frame was left untouched. Right off the bat, my favorite new (large) addition is, well honestly it's a tie between the battle of Hoth and the asteroid belt chase, both having this new sense of scale and tension never personally felt since the original 1980 cut. Even the small touches, from actually seeing individual snow flakes fly across the screen on the infamous frozen ice world, to subtle changes in sound fx heard in the rear sound channel. Did I mention how amazing and how crystal clear the entire film sounds? I didn't even have a surround sound system yet it all felt like a brand new experience. Same goes for the picture quality of course, and besides the exception of an occasional artifact or two in the corner and sometimes messy film grain, this is still easily the best the whole film looks after 37 years thanks to a complete overhaul of coloring that really does it justice. Even the newly added CG fits in, I'd say, 90% of the time and even sometimes looks absolutely gorgeous (Cloud City, like everything having to do with it). If you're a defender of the Special editions, then you'll love it even more, and even if you loathe the updated cuts of the OT, you'll probably love it as well since most of the bad additions are restored to there original states. I can't praise Adywan enough for his hard work, honestly if it weren't for him I wouldn't have that much of an interest in fan editing, so thank you very much!

Though some will say 'you can't tinker with the Star Wars movies!', I say to them—after 'George can, often to their detriment, but others can't?'—'as long as the original versions are available in some form, what's wrong with an alternate version?' Well, this was quite an ambitious project for Adywan, who said going in that he considers this movie perfect as-is. The original idea was to do a badly needed color correction and fix some more glaring issues, but it eventually got into fixing the nitpickiest of things. ;) That may sound bad, but if you can fix them, why not? It makes for a more seamless experience. Yes, the attention to detail and other things led to this taking many years to complete, but it was certainly worth the wait! (and to those who whined that it was taking a long time, don't forget that he was under no obligation to do this for anyone but himself)

All in all, a superb edit made with great care, and even sacrifice. If you haven't done so, feel free to check out the rollercoaster progress of this edit here: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/STAR-WARS-EP-V-REVISITED-EDITIONADYWAN-AVAILABLE-NOW/id/9060

Pros:
- Fixing many errors in the original movie.
- Re-rotoscoping all of the laser blasts and light sabers for consistency.
- Re-editing of many scenes.
- Complete color correction.
- And much, much more!

Cons:
- None!

Conclusion:
The Empire Strikes Back is the single best Star Wars movie out there (if not the best movie ever made), and this is currently the best way of viewing it! I could only find a 720p version, but this didn't influence my enjoyment in the slightest. I do wish there was a 1080p version somewhere so I can watch this on my big screen. The editing is on par with the original crew itself. The music, the sfx, everything about this screams a 10/10 for me. Not just because it is ESB, but because of all the stuff this editor did. If you are going to watch ESB for the first time, or for the 100th time, do yourself a favor and watch this version. Bravo Adywan and team, Bravo!