Well, there's that, but in this case, isn't it more the case he simply hadn't written the story yet and, like many half baked stories that begin filming before it's totally down on paper, the changes as he went just didn't fit? I mean, he didn't even know Luke and Leia were siblings or Vader was really their father when he did the first film, did he? More things began to gel after the fact, and that's why things seem as hinky as they are.

Yes, making Owen and Beru literally related to Darth Vader was moronic.

Yes, making Owen and Beru literally related to Darth Vader was moronic.

how he and Leia were separated for their safety— "...and I took you to live near Darth Vader's home."

Last month I received a cryptic e-mail inviting me to a private screening of a new Star Wars film edited by Topher Grace — which is funny because I had no idea there was a new Star Wars film in the works, with or without Grace’s involvement. I was told the screening was a secret private event arranged only for friends only and was asked not to talk about it beforehand. The event was held somewhere in the Hollywood area in a a screening room filled with filmmakers, editors, actors, actresses and only a few press friends. I was told I could blog about it afterwards if I wanted, so here goes…

For those of you who don’t know, Topher Grace is a film geek. He loves the Star Wars films, the Back to the Future movies and all the same signature titles of any film geek who grew up in the 1980s. He recently became interested in the editing process and wanted to learn more about the art form. Instead of cutting a short film, he wanted to use something he was more familiar with.

His idea was to edit the Star Wars prequels into one movie, as they would provide him a lot of footage to work with. He used footage from all three prequels, a couple cuts from the original trilogy, some music from The Clone Wars television series, and even a dialogue bit from Anthony Daniels’ (C-3PO) audio book recordings. He even created a new opening text crawl to set up his version of the story.

The result is an 85-minute movie titled Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back. It should be noted that the Star Wars prequel trilogy is almost 7 hours in total length, and the shortest film (Episode 1) is more than 51 minutes longer than Grace’s fan cut. What this means is a lot of footage ended up on the editing room floor, and a lot of creative choices were made in the editing process. And the result? Topher Grace’s Star Wars film is probably the best possible edit of the Star Wars prequels given the footage released and available.

Whats most shocking is that with only 85 minutes of footage, Topher was able to completely tell the main narrative of Anakin Skywalker’s road from Jedi to the Sith.

I bet there are a lot of movie series that could be edited down into one awesome film.


Like the Matrix trilogy. Just edit it so you show the first 136 minutes of The Matrix, then cut the rest.

And somehow tack on the Architect talk from Reloaded.

Yes.

I'd love to do my own film edit.

Search your hearts vis-a-vis The Architect speech, concordantly, rules. Ergo, it's awesome.

The Architect speech rules. Search your hearts.