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Post #890871

Author
coinilius
Parent topic
The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/890871/action/topic#890871
Date created
29-Dec-2015, 7:59 AM

Revisiting an old idea I had for a new opening to The Phantom Menace, plus some other half-baked ideas kind of thrown in as well…

https://vimeo.com/150149316

Password: fanedit

The main idea is that the opening of The Phantom Menace is drastically reduced, so that the movie starts with the invasion of Naboo and just goes quickly from there, moving the story along more quickly. My idea was to do something similar to the Lone Gungan Edition, removing the Gungans entirely apart from Jar Jar. The crawl would be rewritten, setting up that the Nemodians are invading, the young Queen, Amidala is in peril and two Jedi (and their faithful servant Jar Jar) have been sent to rescue her…

It’s been kind of mixed up now with another idea I was playing with - without sounding super-pretentious, it was to invoke the influence that Kurosawa and The Hidden Fortress had on the development of Star Wars and in particular the earlier drafts which Lucas dusted off as his basis for The Phantom Menace’s script. Basically it would take the Japanese dubbed version of The Phantom Menace, make it black and white, add some film grain, edit where appropriate and use subtitles to rewrite the story.

But I don’t really have the patience or skill to pull off an edit like that… still, I do think it’s amazing how much better just making it black and white and playing with the contrast can make the prequel footage look so much better…