The Aluminum Falcon said:

"Those ideas sound good Dan. You can probably find someone to help you in making a new crawl. Have you ever thought of a new opening crawl that has the title Revenge of the Jedi? Also, I thought of something. Could you take out all the Ewoks (seriously..I saw this done in a few edits) and replace them with Wookies? You could explain in a new crawl that the Death Star is located near the Wookie planet, then use Wookie footage from the Holiday Special and Revenge of the Sith. If these ideas are crazy and have been discussed before, I apologize."


I'm not gonna change the title to Revenge of the Jedi; it's rare to find something I agree with Lucas on, but I don't think Jedi should see defeating the Empire as revenge.

I hope you're right that someone will volunteer to write the crawl for me. :)

I'm not taking the Ewoks out; in my opinion it would be impossible to make it work - and the edits I know of which tried didn't seem to pull it off; the narrative would suddenly have huge holes in it with all that stuff missing.

As for the Wookiee planet being situated near the Death Star - it's an interesting idea, but it would take someone with far more talent at editing than me to pull it off successfully - and anyway, I don't dislike the Ewoks too much in my edit, the most glaring infantile stuff is gone.

Bingowings said:

"I assume the crawl to be a place holder not the finished text.

I could give it a bit of thought if you want suggestions along those lines.

Beginning the film with Jabba after making such a big thing about Luke in the crawl doesn't quite work either.

Really with the crawl as it stands you want to start with Luke.

If you want to start the film with Han as the focus of the first scene the crawl should be weighted that way (which may be problematic as Han is rescued less than half way through the film. In the round the main threats are the Emperor and the Death Star).

If you really want a scene like that I would start with the shot of Han frozen and turn around to see the court.

The audience needs to connect the new environment and new characters with someone they know.

So I would show them Han and then the full horror of where he is.

The album version of Lapti Nek (I know it's popular) isn't quite getting the mood if you want to use a version I'd use what you can from the soundtrack of the GOUT discs."


The crawl is indeed a temporary version, it's the best I could do in Sony Vegas in the few minutes I could be bothered to spend on it - the writing clearly needs to be tightened up, as well as the look of the crawl: if you have any ideas for ways of improving the crawl I'd love to hear them!

After getting back from a few days on the south coast I watched that 15 minute clip again, and although I agree the choice of Lapti Nek isn't right, the cold open works great (IMO) - it's a scene unlike anything in the first two films, and the audience is thrown into it without warning. Personally I really like the idea of starting that way - and certainly you can't start with Leia Boushh leading in Chewie without having previously set up that a) Jabba is a grotesque gangster who is firmly in charge around here, and not to be messed with, b) that Threepio is already there and given some kind of introduction (even if it's just a shot of him and the music swells), c) that Han is on the wall. So, while the dance number seems irrelevent I think it's essential, and there's no alternative scene that can be used to introduce Jabba's palace, unless you put back the droids wandering up to the palace and being led to Jabba - and that whole scene is, IMO, boring and is better off ditched.

The idea of starting with Han on the wall and then showing the dance scene might work, I'll try it out, although I think it is quite nice to (I'm repeating myself here) start with throwing the audience in at the deep end, with no idea what's going on, and end the scene with Han - to get out of the scene on a dramatic note that pushes the story forward and tells the audience where the conflict is (Han's in this awful place, helpless).

I'll look for other music to use instead of that SE Lapti Nek - I totally concur that it's not right.

Pagz: thanks for the review! I'll certainly think about your ideas for changing Jabba's subtitles if I release a version two; changing 'There will be no deal' back to bargain makes sense, it was so long ago that I wrote the subtitles I can't remember why I changed it. I probably just remembered the line wrong.

Cutting the first rancor scene: if I publish a 'Dagobah-at-the-start' edit the first rancor scene will come back, as it's a good way to show Jabba as a bad dude, but originally, as you note, I was trying to create some suspense for when the big door opens in front of Luke and the rancor appears. Truth be told I'm not hyper bothered whether the twi-lek meets the rancor beat is in the flick or not.

Sarlacc: I may change the editing back to a less jumpy version; I liked the way it jumps around from Luke to Leia to Han, I felt it added some suspense - but you're not the first person to complain about it. Taking out the Fett means you're bound to make it a little skittish though, there's only so much non-Fett footage.

Adding a transition before Han gets to the bunker: really good idea! I'll try it out, but I don't see why this wouldn't work. I can categorically confirm there is no way I'll be adding Paploo (or whatever he's called) on the speederbike. Never gonna happen.

I'm glad you liked the Battle of Endor stuff!

Re: Coruscant included in the round the galaxy montage; a mate of mine feels exactly the same way and gets extremely irritated when he talks about that scene - but it's not something that bothers me: the Emperor is clearly an incredibly unpopular tyrant; once he's dead the dark side powers he was using to maintain control dissipate. I think it's a nice coda, and one of the few SE changes I support.

Sorry about the PAL, I'll hopefully get around to uploading an NTSC dvd at some point.

nvm

That's great, Bingowings - a lot better than my crawl. Thanks!

Right now the first scene takes place on Dagobah so that last paragraph fits nicely.

Yeah it's the same edit of the film. I uploaded the files about two months ago, but it's taken this long for the link to show up.

Thanks, very kind of you to say so. This edit is much more conventional than Spence's Final Cut; as for the dvd, it's about as bare-bones as you can imagine (one tiny special feature apart), but I hope the 4gig mpeg is the main thing anyway.

Thanks for the review! I’ve had a rotten day so this has cheered me up quite a lot.

A couple of quick points: the PAL dvd is up on fanedit now. Also, I’d recommend you check out Spence’s Final Cut of Jedi (also up on fanedit) - it’s more radical and has got some really interesting ideas and great stuff in there. Dagobah at the start works great in particular.

I must admit I’m a little surprised how much criticism that audio transition to the end credits has got. I always listen to the edits through headphones turned up loud with noise reduction on, and it sounds fine to me. That said... I’ll try to pitch the credit music lower, as you suggest – but, to be honest, I probably won’t upload it yet either way (lousy internet speed) so it’s not worth the bandwidth usage for one change to the edit.

When the bluray is released I may well come back to this edit, put the Luke lightsaber scene in there, maybe some other deleted scenes if they’re any good, as well as perhaps putting Dagobah at the start.

Just something I've been playing around with:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juAULYkuq2U&feature=youtu.be

Very annoying.

Ok, here it is on RS:

https://rapidshare.com/files/1401831773/sandstorm4.avi

Let me just say that this is my favorite version of ROTJ and I love the use of the Luke and Leia theme at the end especially. Don't change it too much!