War of the Stars II: The Future in Motion

Overview - Fuse the strongest of the original trilogy with the weakest, redraw Luke’s character so he now carries Anakin’s bad seed, alter Vader’s character, juice the mojo for Fett, those are just elements of an exceptional edit.

Video - Quality choices top to bottom. Now, I KNEW when an alteration was made, but my reaction was always Ooh or Whoa. War Of The Stars is an genuine alternative, not a nip n tuck edit, the flow twists in unexpected directions. The editing was seamless, which I appreciated more during repeat viewings.

Audio - Great sound. Loved the musical alterations (Planets repeated perhaps once too often). Aside from that, again there are countless modifications and the audio editing is demonstration time.

Narrative - The first two thirds of War Of The Stars is inspired. Changes in story structure, character behaviour, Luke’s peccadillo, Darth’s red-eyed fury. Fun times. Jedi is what it is, though TMBTM minimized the Ewoks, brutally truncated all threads (in the best way), slammed the action. Jedi roared past and I did not cringe once. That is a feat.

Enjoyment - A terrific version. Truly. Must see for Sith faithful. Have rewatched a couple of times, this will be going to Star Wars buddies who think they have “seen it all.”

So, in the alternate universe where Star Wars was War of the Stars, it too was an outstanding success. So, with a higher budget, the broke out of the Grindhouse and made... something truly amazing. While perhaps not as hysterically funny as the original, this is an amazingly unique take on Empire and Jedi. It preserves the altered character personalities and plotline of the previous edit, and takes them in some really interesting directions. The use of footage from a variety of sources, a lot of very impressive special effect work, and a quality new soundtrack only enhance this altered reality version of these movies. This is a worthy followup. Another must-watch.

What can I say? TMBTM played a blistering main set with TWOTS, answered the call for an encore and blew the audience away with TWOTS2. We leave dazed and awed, jaws agape over the ride we just took.

This is what fanediting is all about.

April 22, 2012 @ 5:04 am

Watched this for the second time today. I’ll try to keep my thoughts brief and not spoil any surprises.

War of the Stars II succeeds in its own right and is a wonderful follow up to the first edit. There were many times I was blown away by how TMBTM changed things. The opening sequence lets the viewer know right away that this is a sequel to WAR OF THE STARS, not just a fanedit of ESB and ROTJ.

I personally loved that this was not a Grindhouse movie and that some of the added scenes and effects didn’t have the same consistent look throughout. It added to the mythology of it all, as if the director of this movie blew his budget on two sequences so had to go cheap with some other effects. And maybe even the original director never fully finished the movie and some scenes were re-shot by someone else.

TMBTM has succeeded in making a truly great sequel to War of the Stars without falling into the trap of making a carbon copy of the first one.

A lot of hard work went into this making this and it paid off well. 10/10.

Original review: May 8, 2012

Brilliant. Bursting with creativity and imagination, not to mention technical wizardry. I loved watching empire and jedi with the deleted scenes reintegrated, that actually would have been enough. But in addition to that, we get a whole new story, achieved by…well I have no idea how to be honest. But it was completely entertaining. Congratulations TMBTM, this is one to be shared and savoured.