Those edited versions of the Matrix sequels actually sound like they actually may have removed too much (shortened the Burly Brawl and freeway chase? But those are the best bits!). But I'd really like to see a version without all that powers in the real world nonsense, at least.

Of course, my connection means it'll probably be a long time before I can see any of them. But it's nice to know they're there.

Wasn't 'The Phantom Edit' the one where he cut Jar-Jar completely from the film? I always used to laugh at people saying Jar-Jar ruined it when it wasn't the case at all, it just became the 'in' thing to blame all the crapness on the Gungan. Lucas is the one to blame with his crap script and directing 'skills'. Sadly, Episodes 2 and 3 turned out worse (in my humble opinion), the only thing that improved was the CG.

(some) Mistakes Lucas made with The Phantom Menace -

Anakin shouldn't have been a 10-year-old boy.
The central action setpiece (podrace) should have felt more integral. The race might be fast but you are STUCK in the same point in the story for way too long.
The Jedi shouldn't have felt like people you wanted to slap across the face.
The final space and ground battle should NOT have been a video-game CG fest.
Lucas himself should have focussed on the technical side, all the things he obviously wanted to achieve, and someone better than him should have directed the acting.
He shouldn't have cast Natalie Portman because she can't act. (and why he thought it was a good idea to do that whole cheesy 'is she the queen or isn't she' thing, I'll never know).

Still, retrospectively, it's probably the best prequel. I like that there's some actual location work (I KNOW there's some in AOTC, but it feels underused, and there isn't a shot on location in ROTS), the saber fight with Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Darth Maul is the best in the prequels, which is a shame when we were promised so much for ROTS. The performances from Liam Neeson, Ian McDiarmid and others are OK (like a fucking acting masterclass compared with Episode 2 & 3). It feels more like Star Wars.

I always used to laugh at people saying Jar-Jar ruined it when it wasn't the case at all, it just became the 'in' thing to blame all the crapness on the Gungan.

I agree the film would have been crap even without him (I haven't seen The Phantom Edit so I could well be speaking out of my ass on this one), but he certainly was a major problem. Removing him was a good idea, I'd see...even if it's not a cure-all.

Who is this "Andrew Edelmark" guy anyway?

>I'd see

I'd say. Idiot.

> He shouldn't have cast Natalie Portman because she can't act.

Aside from this being not even remotely true - IMHO - the other points are pretty spot on. I once had a '10 things to make PM less shit' list, and Anakin's age was on it.

Others included Amidala being annoyed by the moppet with a crush rather than encouraging him; making Obi-Wan rebellious instead of SAYING he was without ever showing any such thing; having Jar-Jar overcome his clumsiness in the final battle, thus giving him a vague character arc, rather than turning a supposedly life-or-death battle (which, to be fair, IS raging in the background) into a Tex Avery cartoon...

...And, finally, not having Anakin save the day by MISTAKE. Seriously - imagine Luke in Episode IV blowing up the Death Star by accident and following it with 'oops'.

The title ? Ooooh, that phantom, he's a real menace.

*shakes fist in the style of Blakey from On The Buses*

"(shortened the Burly Brawl and freeway chase? But those are the best bits!)"

Well, they are too long. Also they both seem to serve no narrative function, the former seeming only to be showing that a single Smith is far, far weaker than Neo, and what does the latter achieve? - where are they going in the freeway chase and what's happens as a result? Neo comes to rescue them, but that's all. I'd like to see a tighter editing job, one that isn't precious about cutting out bits that so much money went into.

Anyone fancy trying to make a version of Red Dwarf series VIII that works? I'd do it myself but I don't know if I can sit through it all again in its current state. The hour-long original version of Back in the Red might be worth creating.

> The hour-long original version of Back in the Red might be worth creating.

Indeed it is, and it's on the VIII DVD.

Well, it isn't really. It's not the *original* script for the one hour version - it's just the three parts joined together with some extra material.

The original one hour version could be created through a complete reedit - get rid of some of the scenes shot in the session for BITR3, and edit in some of the deleted scenes - including the unused second AR scene. It's rather artificial, as some scenes would have been reshot anyway - but it would be a closer approximation to the original script than what was included on the DVD.

I don't know where I'd start in trying to make a watchable version of series VIII. Even the original 60 minute version of Back in the Red would contain the Dibbley family. I was watching Pete with the commentary this week and even Mac can't hold back from saying "you were teenagers in the 70s?" at the moment when Chloe and Danny are suddenly pointlessly wearing "hilarious" clothes and hair from that era. Cut out all the pointless bad gags though and I suspect that it'd suddenly become apparent that the plots were conceived around the gags, as a way of stringing them together.

The thing is, the Pete clothes stuff is easily explainable - that fashion comes in waves, and that 70s clothes were fashionable around the time they were teenagers. I've got more problems with the team finding space corps derelicts throughout VI - three million years away from earth...

It's like anything - if you're laughing, you'll forgive the logical lapses. If you're not, you start looking at things to pick at.

There is a good QPR gag in that scene, though.

"It's like anything - if you're laughing, you'll forgive the logical lapses. If you're not, you start looking at things to pick at."

I'm not sure if I agree. I think my mind works the other way around. "Follow the Rimmer-shaped blur" would be an example where my mind first goes, "well if it's a blur it wouldn't be person-shaped" and straight away I don't find it funny.

But surely that's because you didn't find it that funny? Otherwise you'd laugh first, and then think second...

Okay maybe we should separate out the strands here of the humour we're talking about so we don't cross wires. The kind that I inadvertantly referred to in response to your first comment might actually be regarded more a humour stemming from language, which I'd argue evokes laughter following a process of cognition. "Follow the Rimmer-shaped blur" isn't funny to me because I can't find a logic whereby it works as funny. This is immediate, by the way, so it can't be construed as me sitting, thinking for a moment and then going "ha ha" - this is why the immediacy of humour in these different instances is quite hard to place. The "suddenly wearing 1970s clothes" moment is more like the slapstick that the cast often aiming for in their performances in series VIII (the manner in which the cast run following Rimmer's "blur" line, for example), which would be a "laugh first, think second" moment if I found them funny. So yes, I suppose I find myself thinking "this isn't funny" throughout series VIII through a combination of these two elements. I think that for my tastes, there's something a bit off about the performances, writing and editing of the series that makes me find it all really tiresome. The effect of editing on the rhythm and feel of a series (even when the writing and delivery is otherwise really great) is always really profound, which is why I'd be curious to see how a new edit of Back in the Red would work.

>The thing is, the Pete clothes stuff is easily explainable - that fashion comes in waves, and that 70s clothes were fashionable around the time they were teenagers.

Sure. Futurama does the same thing, implying that their past 1000 years ran in much the same cultural cycle as our past 1000 years. I'm fine with that.

Also, it doesn't at all imply that Cat and Kochanski were teenagers then...no more than it implies that Pete himself was a dinosaur at some point. The fact that birds were EVER dinosaurs was enough for the time wand to work with...the fact that clothes were EVER like that was enough as well.

I'm not saying there's no flawed logic involved...just that the logical flaw is so large that it's not worth reaching into something so specific and saying, "Waittaminute..." There are far bigger problems with "Pete" than silly clothes.

Yeah, I agree with all that. I think I'm cross that, having bought the series VIII DVD this weekend, I found little in The Tank documentary that wasn't just an oozing about how fun it was to make. Only Norman says anything in that and the commentaries that indicates that this might not be the best series of Dwarf ever produced, and it's always framed as "Norm moaning once again". Everyone had a really great time making it, which is fantastic, but nobody says they felt the series was a bit wayward in its writing, apart from the odd jibe that Doug finds it difficult to come up with half hour stories. It was all frustratingly backslapping, everyone thinking we're back on form here, this is us back at the top after a slightly misguided seventh series. And it's frustrating because I'd like some evidence that they *know* it's not perfect, so that I can have some hope that the movie won't end up like the 90 minute edit of Back in the Red.

Exactly. In away it only increases my dislike of the series. Yes series VII had it's flaws. Major ones but don't fix them - crow about it - and then ignore all the new mistakes made in the processs.

With regards finding Space Corp derelicts in S6. Here's a crackpot theory. Maybe the 'universe' is like the globe. You head far enough in one direction you find yourself back at the same spot.

Re-editing Star Wars is like photoshopping a Van Gogh and saying "Look what I made".

These people should do their own work, except, they can't.

> These people should do their own work, except, they can't.

IRRELEVANT.