CBR has shared that some Star Wars fans have crafted a petition calling for an alleged four-hour (madon’) George Lucas cut of 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. You give a fanboy an inch, they take a whole country mile.
The petition was posted on Change.org by Fraser Beitzel and addresses George Lucas directly and not The Walt Disney Company, which currently holds the rights to Revenge of the Sith. Its introduction reads, “Hello there! The original Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith (2005) cut was over four hours long, and we think that George Lucas should do the right thing and give the fans what we deserve and what is rightfully ours.”
And I thought I was demanding.
Listen, considering that Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith is the best prequel movie, I don’t really know why we need a four-hour+ cut of it—unless … it’s mostly about Padmé. I have maintained that Padmé Amidala is the most interesting character in the prequels after Obi-Wan, and overall, probably one of the most consistent female characters in the live-action Star Wars franchise.
For me, the point of a director’s cut is for it to elevate something, explore something, or add in relevant subversive content that was cut for rating reasons. Those are reasons to spend money, energy, and effort to bring something back in a newly released state. Just the reality that the Snyder Cut of Justice League is going to cost so much money (reportedly over $30 million), tells me that investing in this kind of revisionist storytelling is a losing game in the long run.
The Snyder Cut was a good marketing plan for HBO Max, and because of the circumstances around why Snyder had to leave—I get it. I don’t agree with it, and I’ll never fully understand it, but considering how sustained the support for it has been since the movie’s release … whatever.
For ROTS, what will these extra four hours do for us? One of the issues of the prequels is that they’re too dense, and what Sith does well is having all our expectations come to fruition. You want to get really good, thoughtful exploration of these Star Wars characters? Check out the books. Make petitions for the studios to invest in their animation studios and produce some of these books as miniseries.
Not only would that be more rewarding than adding two extra hours to a movie that is already too long (and a prequel with a foregone conclusion), but it would move us past the idea that we need long director’s cuts for every film that was edited down. Sometimes, that editing is for good reason.
(via CBR, image: Del Rey Publishing)
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