I got swept up in the mania leading up to the release of The Force Awakens. I went to the
midnight premier! My hope was that it would redeem the disappointment I had in the prequel trilogy, and I felt it did exactly that. So much so that I removed the prequels from my Star Wars collection and they ceased to exist in my personal Star Wars universe.
I thought I would be getting a new trilogy with new characters and I was going to love them as much as I love Star Wars, Empire and Jedi. Unfortunately that didn't turn out to be the case, as Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker that followed had a lot to dislike. There were some good moments, but overall I didn't like the two follow up movies.
This has been weighing down on me for a few years now, so I finally decided to make a one-off movie to act as a single sequel to the original trilogy, and only use footage that I liked and could fit into an entertaining story. So the result is The Force Awakens: Avid Recut
It starts with Rey, Poe, Finn, Han, Luke and Leila and ends with the loss of the original cast. Snoke is the primary villain and Kylo is the main antagonist, but Kylo is more ruthless in this version. I want to fear him, not sympathise with him as a troubled child. I always felt he needed to be truly bad.
Rey doesn't know who her parents are, and she has some visions of them, but there is no mention of any relation to Palpatine. By the end however, she finds her place in the universe and with the Force.
Rey has more of a journey in the Avid Recut that feels to me more in line with the original trilogy. Luke didn't dual Vader with Lightsabers in the first Star Wars - he trained with Yoda before attempting that. So in The Force Awakens: Avid Recut, Rey trains with Luke before confronting Kylo with a Lightsaber. This feels more realistic to me and corrects the one thing I didn't like about the theatrical release of The Force Awakens, when she had a Lightsaber battle against Kylo with no training.
The resulting movie edit is a little long at 2 hours 45 minutes, but I think there is always something happeing in this version to progress the story and it doesn't feel that long. The format is in h.265 1440p and 5.1 AAC surround sound.
This cut supersedes my previous edits of Force Awakens, Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker and I will no longer be hosting them. The Avid Recut of The Force Awakens however, does follow my removal of episode numbers in my versions of Rogue One, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. We didn't call the original trilogy Episodes 4, 5 and 6 when we were kids, we called them Star Wars, Empire and Jedi, so my Rogue One and Force Awakens follows this.
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