Just finished watching "Cloak of Deception", a Phantom Menace fan edit

It's been ages since I last saw ep 1 and, while looking for the despecialized original trilogy, I came across the prequel fan edits. "Eh, why not?"

Gotta say, I was expecting the pacing or the story to kinda fall flat, but this was a very enjoyable watch. There's a lot that was cut, nearly all the "whimsy" was removed, also the whole underwater trip when the jedis first land on Naboo. This leads to the Gungan alliance being a "jar jar ex machina", but it worked well enough in my opinion. Other than that, I think the movie works really well in every aspect.

The torrent I got also comes with a .docx that lists the whole movie script with all the stuff that was cut in red, and new additions (very few) in blue. A smaller list of changes can be read here - Besides removing a lot of jar jar's antics and any references to midichlorians (I personally never cared about that), one notable change near the end was making Anakin blow up the command ship before Padme and her group capture the Viceroy, so it makes it seem that the droids being deactivated is what allowed them to complete their objective.

One thing that I noticed during the final battle was that the Trade Federation pretty much dropped the blockade, as they only left one command ship in orbit, compared to the dozens at the beginning of the movie. I guess that was because the land invasion worked, so there was no further need to keep the orbital blockade.

PS: I couldn't stop laughing when Obi Wan fell because of that fucking meme

PPS: I always liked how Naboo looks, but this time I really paused to look a bit better at the architecture, and it has such a nice mix of mediterranean marble of yellowish tones and cyan roofs. With the current image quality and all, it was much easier to pick out "ancient CG" and in many places it looked like a "old last gen game", but it had that late 90s charm that warms my hearth with nostalgia.

PPPS: The worst part about watching SW as an older person is seeing all those damn walkways without a single guardrail anywhere. Coruscant is even worse, that transport vehicle full of VIP heading to the senate is fully open without so much as seatbelts.