Last night, Topher Grace held a private showing of his own, personal fan-edit of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, called Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back, and word is that his single 85-minute film blew away George Lucas's three-movie version.

Collider's Steve "Frosty Weintraub" said "it really worked!" and Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta called it, "Probably the best possible edit of the Star Wars prequels given the footage released and available."

In the process of trimming seven hours of footage down to roughly an hour and a half, Grace decided remove most of Episode I, including every appearance of Jar Jar Binks (save for one non-speaking scene). General Grievous and the entire clone army were also left on the cutting room floor.

He started his version with the Darth Maul lightsaber duel, and focused the entire film on Anakin and Padme's relationship, Obi-Wan's quest to find out who is trying to kill the politicians, and a lot of the action (although lightsaber battles were cut where necessary).

To enhance the project, he brought in deleted scenes -- including one where Anakin meets Padme's family -- and added some music from The Clone Wars.

Unfortunately for those of us who weren't among the 50 guests invited to see it, Grace's masterpiece is unlikely to make its way to the web due to copyright issues, and even a showing in a public venue would require Lucas's approval.

[blastr]