

It not only clarifies the story, but makes the film a lot more action-packed. Whats better is that the character motivations are even more clear and identifiable, a real character arc not bogged down by podraces, galactic senates, Jar Jar Binks, politics or most of the needless parts of the Star Wars prequels. While I know the missing pieces and could even fill in the blanks in my head as the film raced past, none of those points were really needed. 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. 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. 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. 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. The result is an 85-minute movie titled Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back. He even created a new opening text crawl to set up his version of the story. 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. His idea was to edit the Star Wars prequels into one movie, as they would provide him a lot of footage to work with. Instead of cutting a short film, he wanted to use something he was more familiar with. He recently became interested in the editing process and wanted to learn more about the art form. 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. I was told I could blog about it afterwards if I wanted, so here goes.įor those of you who don't know, Topher Grace is a film geek. 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 the screening was a secret private event arranged only for friends only and was asked not to talk about it beforehand. 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.
