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.
PART 3 of 5
Binks is lip-syncing Panaka
This is the piece of evidence that got me looking into Darth Darth Binks in the first place, but has several possible explanations that fit better than Binks manipulating anything behind the scenes as a Sith.
The argument: Binks mouth opens several times, in several scenes, while other people are talking. Perhaps he is directly puppeteering other characters by speaking through them.
Counter: It’s funny, but he isn’t lip-syncing at all, Binks’ lips part and close during Panaka’s speaking parts for the 3 seconds or so that Panaka’s/Padme’s/Jinn’s is, but not for any individual words. This type of direct instantaneous force-puppeteering never occurs at any point in Star Wars.
As for the lips opening and closing, Binks also opens and closes his lips in the Gungan city and in the ship while other people are talking, so this isn’t an isolated event.
This movement looks like an animation tied to audio activation so that his mouth opens and all they have to do is adjust his lip movements whenever Best was giving voice to Jar Jar.
I know the argument “he’s digital, so everything was intentional,” but there are countless production errors concerned with this movie, so whoever was responsible for syncing audio and Jar Jar Binks’ mouth movements during Tatooine scenes could easily have forgotten to untick a box. Nobody noticed for almost twenty years.
Important to note that if Binks was controlling speech directly, the theoretical force-controlling statements contradict each other, so Binks would be needlessly arguing with himself if he were really forcing out these statements.
----- Binks controls Jinn again
Argument: I think they mean to say controls Amidala here, because Binks’ mouth opens during one of Amidala’s words while she is talking to Jinn, although that’s something she’s already said in previously without Binks and again, contradicts itself if this control were happening.
If Binks is controlling people, earlier Binks convinces Jinn to take Anakin, and here, Binks would be convincing Jinn to leave Anakin behind.
----- Binks mouth is open again
Same argument, Binks is controlling Anakin because his mouth is open during part of Anakin’s line.
Same contradiction, why would he try to get Jinn to take Anakin in one scene and try to get Jinn to leave Anakin behind the next?
----- Binks knows the word for “gold” in Huttese and can at least understand numbers in Huttese.
The argument: if he knows the words for “gold” and “numbers” in Huttese, he is a Sith.
Counter. No connection there. No evidence that Huttese is exclusively Sith knowledge or exclusive to anyone, since lots of non-Hutts speak Huttese. Plenty of evidence of polyglots all over Star Wars who can translate between species with ease and easily understand foreign languages.
----- Binks smiles when Anakin is rude
Argument: In AOTC(I guess they put this in the wrong list), when Anakin disagrees with Kenobi, Binks smiles, meaning he’s happy about them arguing and is therefore a Sith.
Counter:
In her reaction scene to their argument, Amidala uncomfortably shifts her eyes camera left to Anakin, then right to Kenobi.
In his subsequent reaction two shots later, Binks looks camera left to Anakin, gulps, then right to Kenobi.
They cut to Typho for a third reaction shot two more shots later; Typho looks uncomfortably at the two arguing as Amidala and Binks did.
These are mirrored discomfited reaction shots to an awkward argument. Binks is not clearly smiling, but very clearly acts nervous. There’s no evidence here that Binks is enjoying the argument.
----- Binks mind-controls Sebulba to stop Sebulba from choking him
Argument: When Sebulba grabs Binks, Binks raises a hand to ward off further blows. This is the supposed mind-control to make Sebulba let go.
Counter. He’s still holding on to Binks neck and is distracted by Anakin. Anakin interrupts before Binks waves his hand and Sebulba redirects his attention to Anakin without letting go of Binks’ neck after Binks’ wave is completed. Then after Sebulba and Anakin talk, Sebulba lets Binks go, hits Binks again, and walks away.
Either Binks mind-control doesn’t work, Binks told Sebulba not to let go of his neck and then punch him, or we follow the logical, definitive sequence of events shown on screen: Anakin distracts Sebulba from hurting Binks, and Sebulba grows frustrated and storms off.
There’s also the claim that Sebulba recognizes Binks, but all he says is “is this yours” after Binks spits a frog into Sebulba’s bowl. Reasonable question, reasonable anger. No indication of a previous relationship.
-----Jar jar uses the force to create a distraction by making a worker droid jump.
Jar-jar is constantly tripping around all the worker droids on Tatooine and bumbling around things that serve no narrative purpose or ulterior motive even according to the Darth Darth Binks theory. This particular accident is no different.
-----Jar Jar has good balance
Jar Jar has good balance, and catches several cans conspicuously in a pile.
This is an example of good balance that could be explained if Binks had acrobatic training. Lots of creatures in Star Wars have good balance, and while Binks is clumsy, he does become a performing clown after his Star Wars adventures, so he canonically does have enough balance to juggle and catch a series of fish he spits out.
Another obstacle to his balance indicating Binks is a Sith is that he performs this particular acrobatic balancing act very conspicuously, which a hidden Sith wouldn’t do.
-----Jinn says “your focus determines your reality”
Argument: since Jar Jar is often out of focus, what Jinn is telling Amidala in this scene is that Jar-jar is the reality. And he is the reality. Which means “main character”. Even though he is already a main character. And he is also in focus much of the movie. And many, many characters are out of focus throughout every movie.
Counter: you have to assume several leaps of logic and afterwards assume that when Jinn says “something else” he is referring to not a thing at all, but a particular person behind them out of the half dozen standing behind them, and obliquely outing the impostor in front of the impostor and everyone else to no effect.
Not much here.
----- jar jar uses the force to fix anakin’s untethered pods.
Argument: Binks uses the force to fix anakin’s spinning pod by gasping and making a hand gesture at 64:23. The argument is that 10 seconds after Binks makes this hand gesture, Anakin’s pod racer slows down and then stops spinning.
Counter: Jinn doesn’t notice any force wave and it takes a relatively long amount of time following Binks’ brief back wave from a very far distance for the pod to stop spinning, while the pod begins to slow and stops spinning immediately following Anakin flipping a switch in reaction to beginning to spin.
The pod stabilization is much more likely a direct result of Anakin’s mechanical understanding, that he demonstrates again a few seconds later by reconnecting his engine tether to his pod to fully pair and reinitialize both pod engines.
What is on screen is that in the stands, Binks is concerned, like Anakin’s mother and Jinn, but of course Anakin knows how to fix his podracer(he built it) and he fixes it.
-----Kenobi asks if they’re picking up another “useless” life form.
The argument is that since Kenobi can’t sense Anakin’s powerful force-presence, maybe he’s missing Jar Jar too.
Kenobi says “pathetic”, not useless. He’s referring to Jinn’s tendency to help those who can’t help themselves.
Kenobi already knows how powerful Anakin is because he does the midichlorian count on Anakin the previous night.
Kenobi also says this before Jinn tells him they’ll be taking Anakin with them. Jinn says that the boy will be joining them at 71:40 and after Kenobi realizes that the strong-with-the-force Anakin will be coming with them, he acquiesces without further joke or protest.
Kenobi doesn’t think Anakin is useless, which the argument reads as weak; Kenobi thinks of Anakin, someone with the highest midichlorian count ever, as another wild card needy case that Jinn is deciding to support, but is not misreading the situation.
-----Jar Jar moves his mouth while Jinn is talking
The argument: Jar Jar is making Jinn turn down Anakin’s offer to podrace for the parts they need.
The counterargument if he’s Darth Darth Binks: He wants Jinn to accept Anakin’s offer, not discourage it.
Jinn doesn’t accept until several lines later when Anakin’s mother convinces them to accept the deal with no evidence that she is being controlled(natural movements, identical natural speech).
All the evidence points to this being what it looks like. Jinn reluctantly accepting the help of some slaves.