His idea was to edit the Star Wars prequels into one movie, as they would provide him a lot of footage to work with. 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. He even created a new opening text crawl to set up his version of the story.
The result is an 85-minute movie titled **Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back**. 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. 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. 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.
Via Jason Kottke [1], “Topher Grace Edited The ‘Star Wars’ Prequels Into One 85- Minute Movie and We Saw It | /Film [2]”
Personally, I would love to see this version. Heck, I'd like to see any of the subsequent re-edits from anybody other than George “Despoiler of Childhood Memories” Lucas.
Heck, even the “It's not Star Wars as you know it” comic Darth & Droids [3] (the conceit: it's a role playing game) delivers a much better and more coherent storyline than what George “I should have stuck to editing” Lucas ever came up with.
What? Me, bitter?
[1] http://kottke.org/12/03/new-
[2] http://www.slashfilm.com/topher-grace-edited-star-wars-prequels-