ArcherEdits

The second in the trilogy of projects from this March, and my 50th overall from the last two years of video projects.

The edit of this film from 2018 is quite straightforward again, luckily – it’s mostly putting deleted scenes back in, though there are two versions of this film up for grabs, for reasons I’ll get into later.
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The first change is another extended opener sequence like the first films. This time it’s Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne on mission together in Argentina (Buenos Aires) back in 1987, acting as the first ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp’ dynamic duo together. This was an original opening sequence the studio changed, and luckily I was able to find it online and in decent quality and only have to make a few changes to it, like colour grading and adding a mirror filter to one shot that’s clearly the wrong way round as you can see by a “Stop” sign appearing backwards. It’s good to put this sequence back in, because it revolves around Elihas Starr’s lab trying to harness the Quantum Realm’s powers after stealing Hank Pym and Bill Foster’s work, before things go badly wrong.
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The second change, again, is replacing the “Present Day” annotation with the one where Scott Lang is playing with Cassie in the house while he’s under confinement – this takes place in April 2018 in the story, so that’s what the new PNG overlay states.
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The third change is at nearly 42 minutes in, and is where the film splits into two versions. In one of them, the detour into Cassie’s school to retrieve the older Ant-Man suit is left in – in the other, it’s removed. It’s certainly an amusing sequence, but it’s definitely very sidequest-y in an otherwise very straightforward part in the film. Without it, Scott and Co. see Bill Foster and get some info about the past and answers about the present – and then they go right into applying those things on the old Ant-Man suit Scott says he has, and was safe, anyway – so it’s all just more straightforward.
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At fourth change is at 51 minutes in with no school or 55 minutes in with the school sequence. Another deleted scene is put in where Sonny Burch and his men are narrowing down where the lab is and starts asking questions about who Scott is in the CCTV footage they watch of the lab shrinking. There’s no clear place in the film where the deleted scene goes before the 52 minute mark in the theatrical release where Burch shows up at Luis’ office with the “truth serum”, but it feels appropriate where I put it for two reasons.

Firstly, it leads into the office scene a few minutes later much better than him showing up there out of the blue, and the place I put it goes between Scott and Co. escaping Ghost and Foster and then suddenly being in the enlarged lab in the forest. It’s a very abrupt cut in the theatrical release between the two scenes that doesn’t really carry well, so hopefully this works better. It’s also a little better for Burch’s character to see him in this scene – we get some information why he’s after the lab in the first place: tech, money, personal relevance etc – so there’s actual development and motivation there, not just having the character as someone who shows up randomly, wants the lab for unknown reasons and keeps talking about his restaurant when nobody really asks.
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Another deleted scene plays at 1hr 38mins in (1hr 34mins with the school sequence removed) – after Hank and Janey finally reunite in the Quantum Realm and she tells him about what it’s really like down there. This deleted scene ties into “Quantumania” very well, as Janet explains that the place is bigger than they imagined, to the point of entire worlds and civilisations being down there*. Also that she knows how to communicate with the quantum creatures down there, makes sense as she seems to have domesticated two of them in her time at her little spherical homestead in the past.

Also, the footage from the scene right after that, where Hank asks how Janet how she stopped the Quantum Realm messing with his head, is the same footage from the start of this deleted scene. So, to avoid repetition, I used the cut of the two of them getting into the Quantum Vehicle, but greatly slowed, to essentially paper over the cracks as best I could with the footage that was there. It’s not perfect, but hey ho
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At the very end of the film, the new title card I made is overlaid some of the footage of the film – since the theatrical title card left no room for me to overlay and then replace it, like with others. At the 1:55:15/1:51:30 mark, depending on which version you watch, I used the footage of Hank emerging from the Quantum Vehicle, because the arch-like structure in the background is reasonably similar to the theatrical ‘toy-like’ environment in that shot. Building on that, I reversed the footage to match the motion at the end of the theatrical cut, added a Gaussian Blur filter to really take the photorealistic edge off, so it’s not so jarring against the end credits in the waxworky toy style. Lastly, I made the custom title card follow the same motion as in the film: starting distant, enlarging on the screen and then continuing to enlarge very slowly until the scene cuts – with some 3D text effects this time to match the theatrical again.
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Finally, the post-credit scene involving the drumming ant has been changed, because it feels like unnecessary levity in a moment that should probably remain dire and serious for obvious reasons. Now, you see the empty Lang house with the constant blare of the emergency TV broadcast, but instead of seeing and hearing the giant ant on the electric drumkit, it cuts to aerial shots of San Francisco and keeps the blaring noise the entire time, clearly implying the entire city is in the same boat – that is to say: at least just that one city.
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To answer “Quantumania” questions that might present themselves next; the plans for that film recut are still very much up in the air and still just plans at the moment. I know what I want to do with the film ideally, and what ideas I want to put in motion with what I would change and why, but there is the big project I’ve been doing slowly for the last month that I mentioned previously. Ideally, I would knuckle down and just bash that out and finally get it done before moving onto another project in a big way.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught video editor and VFX artist here, so some areas may be visibly mostly good, as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

The first in a trilogy of projects from this March, that’s actually the 50th on my list from the last two years of video projects – the complete, the unfinished or potential ideas, and the multiple versions of projects that have gradually improved over time alongside my skills as an editor.

Honestly, it’s still a coin-flip between the titles “The Astonishing Ant-Man” and “Ant-Man – The Astonishing Cut”, because I really do like them both. But ultimately, the former works best as a group title, especially with the second film sharing the name with a new subtitle added to differentiate it as the sequel.
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The edit of the first film from 2015 is quite straightforward. Mostly the addition of deleted scenes that add good things for one reason or another, though this meant I didn’t include all of them for that same reason.
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The first change is adding the extended opening scene from 1989. After Hank Pym resigns from SHIELD when discovering Howard Stark and Mitch Carson’s work behind his back, he storms out and leaves the original Ant-Man suit in the vault in his basement, literally and figuratively closing the door on that part of his life.
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The second change is replacing the “Present Day” annotation when Scott Lang gets out of San Quentin Penitentiary – he gets released in July 2015, so that’s what the new PNG overlay states.
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The third change is around 11 minutes in, when another deleted/extended scene plays out when Darren Cross shows investors the ‘Futures Lab’, which I colour graded to match the theatrical scene as best I could. The new scene goes into more detail explaining the other uses of the Pym Particle if it were used properly: global freight shipping, biomedical surgery and waste disposal – all valid points. Another main reason for including this, is you get a lot of good shots of one of the Yellowjacket buyers from later in the film: man in a blue shirt and pinstripe suit with a Ten Rings tattoo visible on is neck. It’s a good way of tying things together universally and move it past just HYDRA wanting the tech in Phase 2 (allegedy A.I.M. was there too to buy the Yellowjacket tech, but that was never confirmed.
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At nearly 19 minutes in, another deleted scene plays at Cassie’s birthday party, where Scott talks to her properly and she says she misses him and wants to see her more. It’s a good moment that adds more weight to the father side of Scott’s character, not just the thief. Colour graded to the theatrical release best I could again.
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Another deleted scene plays at 44 minutes in – where Bill Paxton and his partner Nile start narrowing down who Scott’s “Lawyer” was before he disappeared and how there’s no record of this man. It better sets up the breakfast scene about 2 minutes later when Cassie says she hopes [Bill] doesn’t find [Scott].

Speaking of the breakfast scene, I put another deleted scene after it, where Hank and Hope talk about Scott and teaching him how to use the Ant-Man suit (and how he might be an idiot savant – or just an idiot). This is after Hank shows Scott the basement and explains the Pym Particle research, Darren Cross’ relation to him, how Hank got ousted from his own company, and where Scott agrees to help Hank. I put it here because it seemed to be the only place where it could realistically belong, as there’s no clear indicator of its position in the film, but they’re just talking about Scott learning the suit and he needs Hope’s help, so having it before he gets started with the keyhole jump sequence makes sense. Luckily I didn’t need to colour grade anything for this scene.
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Shortly afterwards, once Cross successfully shrinks a lamb without killing it, there’s an extended and colour graded scene in Hank’s basement. In the original release, Hank talks about Mitch Carson and how unless they swipe the Yellowjacket suit and erase all the data on it, Darren Cross will unleash chaos on the world – this new scene is much more detailed. Hank goes deeper into his tenure as the original Ant-Man working for SHIELD for decades around the world, and how Darren Cross succeeded where Howard Stark and Mitch Carson failed in replicating the Pym Particle work. It adds more to tie it to the wider universe again, and makes the character of Hank deeper with details of his original work, and makes Cross seem smarter and more dangerous with managing to succeed in reproducing and weaponising Hank’s buried work.
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The rest of the film plays out as normal until around 1hr 50 where there’s a new title card for the film, reflecting my work.
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The sequel has been nearly finished for almost a month, but I haven’t been into uploading much lately because I’ve been busy chipping away at another project, which has been much larger and more complex than a cinematic trilogy recut. That’s hence why I completed this over a month ago but I’m only just getting to publishing it now also.
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The only real things stopping me from uploading “The Astonishing Ant-Man: Ghosts of The Past” are some issue with one deleted scene that seems a little tricky in its precise placement, whether or not I might cut out a different (kind of sidequesty) sequence to accommodate it, and the custom title card at the end. The final point is especially tricky since the original title is hard-layered onto the background, and is obviously different from the title I’ve chosen.
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I’ve got ‘Quantumania’ plans on the go in my head too – but it’s finding the time to do it, taking the time to properly plan and execute the things I want to, and how it’s going to stand on its own next to a different version of the film that belongs to a different collection of films I’m planning.
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Specifically: I’m thinking about a “Kang Dynasty” Saga of films, to the point of already having names for the instalments thought up – but it’s all is still very much in the planning stage and I haven’t committed to it properly on any level, since it will require cinematic recuts of the Loki series’, and I just don’t know if I have that in me. Sounds like an F-ton of work.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught video editor and VFX artist here, so some areas may be visibly mostly good, as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A fairly straightforward project from this February that was mostly a rehash of the second half of my existing ‘Bad Batch’ edit project with a new coat of paint for every second season arc I already did, and the single episodes in between I previously didn’t touch. But this time, I also included some re-tweaking of two arcs specifically, which I will get into below.
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Essentially, very shortly after uploading my ‘Bad Batch’ edits, I found an alternate logo for season 2 that was less the greys and reds of season 1, and more shades of brown with the reds instead. If you’re familiar with my work on The Mandalorian already, then you know that when there are a lot of episodes of a show released, I like to differentiate and compartmentalise the seasons by their respective colours – so this was in a similar vein to that.
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As for the episode text, I tried going for the most common shade of brown in the new logo for it, but this turned out to be too light, and was very similar to the text in ‘Tales of The Jedi’ that use the same font in a tan/beige colour. Conversely, if I tried avoiding this as much as possible by going for the darkest shade in the alternate logo, it blended into the black background a little too well, especially when viewing at a distance, like across the room. So I went for a shade of brown that was more in the middle between the two, and hopefully it works well in both ways here.
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As for the arcs I changed, it’s the middle two of the second season, for actually the same reasons. The two episodes centring on the Clone Underground on Coruscant, and the two centring on the Ipsium Mine on the planet ‘Ipsidon’ both work very well as dedicated two-parters, but also have one episode each that could also be lumped in with it – feasibly, but ultimately tangentially.
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The episode “Tribe” precedes the Coruscant duo with no other episodes between them, and when we see Omega for the first time, she’s meditating in the Marauder with Gungi and ‘Tribe’’s events mentioned. That means there’s a link there to thread them together with – but because it’s quite loose, it might not be worth keeping them as a dedicated three-episode arc, so I’ve done both so you can decide what works best for you and your collection. I’ve put ‘Tribe’ up with the new logo on its own, ‘Truths and Conspiracies’ as a Coruscant two-parter with the new logo, and the entire arc as a three-parter with the old AND new logo and episode text colours as well – do what works for YOU.
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Secondly, the first time round I included “Metamorphosis” with the Ipsium Mine duo of episodes, because I always felt it leads into the Zillo episode reasonably neatly as it is. But MTMR is a fairly strong episode on its own, I’ll admit, so this might not be the opinion of everyone. To this end, I’ve reuploaded the extended three-part arc with the brown logo, as well as MTMR on its own and the shortened duo separately with the alternate style too. Again, you do what works for you and your collection.
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Because of the gaps of episodes I missed in season 2 now being taken into consideration, the numbers as they appear in the uploads are now different – but I’ve made sure to keep it clear what is what. All three-part versions of the tweaked arcs are labelled as ‘extended’, the previous season 2 work (and the now re-tweaked arcs) with the original grey logo are denoted as “V1” – and everything with the new brown logo is labelled as “V2”.
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And just a bit of an announcement: Yes, I’m currently doing the Season 3 arcs as they come, and yes, I’ll probably do differing logo ones again with how I like to differentiate things.
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Footnote: I am merely a self-taught editor and VFX artist here, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A fairly big project from September-November ‘23 that unfortunately got cut in half due to me hitting a brick wall with it, and had me picking it back up February-March ’24 in a mercifully easier and more straightforward second half.

To specify the structure of the season this time around, it’s still 5 episodes and the story is almost identical to the way it appears in V1: “The Droids”, “The Expedition”, “The Survivors”, “The Warriors” and “The Reclamation”. Story specifics of how the 8 release episodes became 5 edited ones are here if you’ve not read it before/recently: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Mandalorian-season-3-Groguless-Edit/id/107124. The minor story changes are below*
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This whole new take on the project came down to me discovering a tool in the editing software I use, allowing me to take the shots of scenes from V1 I’d carefully zoomed in on to excise the little green guy, but have more manual control over what was on the screen.

By using these keyframes I can assign in the footage at will, I could redo a lot of my previous work to a better standard – especially the movement shots and distance shots. Also I could recreate the zoom part of the ‘zoom and fade’ effect with each episode’s show and title cards like the released episodes – and that doesn’t hurt.
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To give specific examples of my new approach to the movement shots: in V1, when the zooms were solid and fixed, I had to zoom in to accommodate the smallest amount of ‘clean’ footage available. As in: if Grogu was absent for just 1 second at the end of that cut of that scene, that’s what I had to accommodate for all of it just to cover that 1 little shot, as I had no other choice at the time. This led to a lot of that footage being cut off by default just to accommodate the most extreme detail at the smallest point, which was a shame - because I accomplished what I wanted to, but a lot of the episodes were “lost” in the process in a sense.
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Good examples are when Din arrives on Nevarro for the first time, a few instances in the Mandalorian tunnels, when Din/Bo are meeting up with the fleet on Plazir-15 and when Din is sneaking through the Imperial Mandalorian bunker. With all of these, now it’s easier to see the whole thing because you can ‘stay with’ the characters the whole time.
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These new methods either have the camera stay with them so they stay fixed in frame despite the movement – or more like the shot starts completely zoomed out like the release. Or as soon as the character I want to keep appears, it immediately zooms in on them and stays there (so it’s following them like the former despite starting differently), or continuing to zoom in further, staying with them that way.
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All of it depends how the specific characters move in that specific shot of that specific scene.
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With how I fixed the distance shots: in V1, I had to cut out a lot which was a big shame. Even though GG did very little to move the plot forward this time, a lot of the shots with him there had him slap-bang in centre-frame the whole time, so cutting him out without cutting out a large chunk of that shot of that scene by proxy was just simply not possible.
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I worked around that this time by creating nearly two-dozen colour PNG’s to overlay the 5 respective episodes in the scenes where appropriate – in the same method as the annotative PNGs for locations in this show, Andor and Boba Fett. The colours would be identical to the background behind GG and/or his hover-pram and I could use the keyframe tool to keep them obscuring what I wanted to as much as possible – so if the camera moved, even a little, I could compensate for that. The scenes in the Mines where GG’s hoverpram has its own light source emanating from that was trickier to get right, especially with a character moving in front of the bulb in a lot of shots, but I did what I could.
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Some were simpler than others, because obviously almost all of the backgrounds of shots were unique and varied a lot by colour, lighting and complexity. Specifically: some were like rocks in the dark like the covert’s meeting while Gorian Shard attacks Nevarro, so they were very easy to get the colour of and apply the overlay – others were like the entrance to the Mines of Mandalore and much more complex with lighting and background detail factors. In fact, the complexity of the Mines entrance is why I got burned out and hit the brick wall in the first place.
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When it comes to having something to obscure the shadow GG/his hover-pram leaves in the scene, I didn’t really bother that much to be honest. Best case scenario, it felt like an afterthought when I’d already done the complex work on that scene shot so I just wanted to move on already. Conversely, in the worst case, it was like the kept characters were walking through the shadow itself, so if I wanted to obscure it every step (pun not intended) of the way – I would have to create a bespoke PNG the colour of the background, taking in the exact shape around everyone’s feet and legs for literally every 24th-of-a-second frame. Way too much work to do even once.
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*The changes to the story are all in ‘Chapter 2: The Expedition’, and they’re just intended to clean up certain elements of the new plot rather than radically reshape anything.
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The first change is admittedly not my favourite, but this was one of those times where I was boxed into a really tight corner with the footage in front of me, and the reality of what I could feasibly do with it. I wanted to clarify the scene where Din and R5 arrive at Mandalore and Din talks to the astromech, expositing for the audience while passively showing his growing tolerance for droids. Unfortunately though, there is literally not a single shot in the season where R5 is clearly shown with a space background, so I had to make my own. I took freeze-frames from the scene on Mandalore’s surface with Din and R5 both clearly visible, replaced the original background with a starry background I animated with keyframes like the rest of the colour PNGs in the other scenes. It’s really not perfect and I’d like to do it a different way if I could – but, again, what can I do?
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The second change in the story is where Din gets captures by the Kazdan Paratus-like creature in the spider tank in Mandalore’s underground. Now, he communicates with R5 and tells him to get to Bo Katan, right as the tracker on Din that R5 was monitoring from the N1 cuts out, and R5 flies away in a panic. It’s clearer now, reframed in a way that makes it a little more dramatic and hopefully just better overall.
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Lastly, when Bo encounters the Alamites, her dialogue when they’re discovered is very slightly different, and her line about wondering what else survived down there is re-inserted. I found a way to make the latter work well, and reinstating it makes the mechanical creature a bit more well-fitting in that bank of scenes, as well as the menacing implication of whether or not it’s alone down there.
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I put it in the same place as my Version 1 of the project – so if you already have that, you should also get this easily too.

Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught video editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A project from June ’23, which has been my only Phase 1 project so far, and set me on the path to tweaking WandaVision afterwards.

This one was mostly me adding extra content to, in my view, enhance the story by clarifying key details, though I did cut or change a few details I found irksome, as I do. I also made two versions of the film depending on the inclusion of one particular deleted scene – the extra details are spelled out below.*
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My main gripe/push to edit the film was the war montage in the middle of the story: Cap and the Howling Commandos are fighting HYDRA all across Europe, but we as the audience just get a bunch of mindless action with no specifics. In fact, the whole passage of time throughout the entire film can be very unclear at times, which does work against the story in some ways – so every time there’s a large time jump, it’s now specified and laid out.

To the end of enhancing the war action specifically, I added in the locations of these battles (and some headcanon dates since it’s not specified at the source) to actually give the action some depth. Now, when you see all the places they fight, you really get the impression of just how widespread HYDRA’s grip on Europe is, which frames them as a much bigger and more powerful threat than just a bunch of generic uniformed bad guys shooting at the heroes in some factories and forests.

I also took the liberty of adding those same kinds of annotations to other locations, for similar enough reasons. For example: Camp Lehigh, New Jersey is an important location in the CA mythos, and is returned/referred to repeatedly in later stories, but I don’t think it’s ever actually referred to by name in this story: the quintessential Captain America story in the MCU – so that was addressed. Also, HYDRA’s main headquarters in the Austrian Alps, not referred to specifically on screen again, so this just adds depth of the world they’ve built for the story and such.
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The first actual change I made to the story aside from the annotations is after the Project Rebirth scene around 37 minutes in. When Steve comes out of the Vita-Ray Chamber, the pec touch from Peggy is an involuntary reflex by the actress, not part of the script. As with my work on Black Panther and removing Shuri’s “white-boy” line, would that same action in that same context be permissible the other way around? I very much doubt it for obvious reasons – so I excised it.
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Now it’s zoomed in on Steve’s face more to cut out the action of Peggy’s hand, so the background music of the scene isn’t interrupted by a jarring cut. And it zooms back out to the normal view when she notices the towel the nearby nurse is holding, snapping herself back to reality somewhat. Also, when it’s zoomed, you do see Steve’s face more closely, and how the effects of the procedure are shown in his reaction to stepping out of the chamber.
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The second major change in the story, annotations aside, is 73 minutes in at the SSR main HQ in London. I reimplemented the deleted scene where Howard Stark talks about the tech Rogers recovered from HYDRA, really framing how dangerous their new weapons are and how powerful the Tesseract they’re working with is.
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I had to match the colour of the scene to the colour grading in the theatrical release of the film, which isn’t 100% perfect because there’s not really a way to directly get the colour enhancement data from the studio to replicate it directly in my editor. But I think the result of what I pulled off is good enough at least, and hopefully not too jarring at all.
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Shortly after that at ~78 mins is another tweak, I took out Peggy shooting at Steve in the bunker. Iconic? Yes. Incredibly stupid if you think about it for more than two seconds? Also yes.
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You have a car ride with the man in Brooklyn and ascertain he’s probably even more clueless with women than the usual man, and show him no open signs of liking him before or after the serum. Then, when you see someone else taking the initiative and kissing him first, you have a problem with it – and blame him and not her –to the point of firing an actual loaded gun at him for it? Yeah. No. Get out of here with that.
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Now, when Steve shows her the new, unpainted, Vibranium shield, she just coldly walks past him and says nothing.
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Around 80 minutes in is where the main bulk of the annotative enhancements are found:- each war location is spelled out by country in the canonical order the respective battles happened, and a reasonable enough amount of time spacing them apart. Now the gap of time between November ’43 when Rogers goes on his Solo mission to rescue the 107th, to the capture of Arnim Zola and losing Bucky in February ’45 is much more clearly laid out.
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The rest of the film plays out unchanged until the very end in Times Square, where I put most of the deleted scene ending back in – I say most because it seemed to drag on for just one line/question too long.
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Now in this (mostly) extended ending, Rogers and Fury meet and the connection between the modern SHIELD and the older SSR is made clear. As is where Rogers is standing – he’s in the same city but recognises none of the streets anymore as you’d expect, so it’s an understandable question. Steve asks about the war, which was a big part of his life for the last few years of him being conscious (before and after the serum) and Fury confirming the result and stating how Rogers himself helped bring that about feels like it really vindicates the main/20th century bulk of the film. I did cut Fury’s line about the world not changing all that much, though, Rogers just made the ultimate sacrifice and one of the first things he’s told is that the world is still largely the same? Bit of a slap in the face in my opinion.
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Again, as with the deleted scene in the SSR bunker, I made sure to match the colour grading to the theatrical release as best I could, though this was a little trickier now with the colours and lighting being outdoors in this scene. But I think I did a good enough job regardless.
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*As for the details on the second version of the film, it all hinges on the Azzano deleted scene around 51 minutes in, where Bucky, the future Howling Commandos and most of the 107th are taken captive by HYDRA in Italy. The reason why this deleted scene is such a bone of contention is that the VFX work from the studio towards the end of the scene is not complete.
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When the HYDRA Uber Tank aims at the Allied forces – the 3D model is untextured, and while the polygonal geometry is animated for the action, there’s no background in the scene either. As far as I know, this is the only version of this scene out there, if there is one with the completed VFX, I’ve yet to find it anywhere. The deleted scene is 75 seconds total and the incomplete VFX is only there for about 3 – if that’s something you can overlook and enjoy it all with the rest of the film, then that’s great – but if it’s untenable next to the rest of the film, then that’s fine too.
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This scene is good to include because, firstly, you get some frontline war in an actual war-era film and that doesn’t hurt, plus it fills in the gaps with Bucky and the Howling Commandos’ capture – and, lastly, shows the reality of Schmidt’s regime. Red Skull killed the Nazi officers sent to check on him and his work at ~45 minutes in, and now on the battlefield you clearly see HYDRA forces firing on the Nazi troops AND Allied soldiers, very openly showing their independence against both sides as their own radical splinter faction.
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Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught editor/VFX artist here, so some areas may well be mostly good as a result, since I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it, respectively. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A very small edit from June ‘23 that’s really just small and minor compared to my usual capers. A dedicated ‘House of M’-style edit of the series would be good (if it can be pulled off), and I am thinking a little bit about it right now, but I’m not sure what’s possible and what isn’t when you take the TV material and put it next to the source material.
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The whole purpose of this was to get rid of the Wanda apologism there is in the series, specifically in the fifth and ninth episodes.

I’m not going to debate that Wanda’s acting in incredible grief and unbelievable pain – she had no choice but to do something that was probably the most painful thing of her entire life. And then when it was reversed and ultimately meant nothing and saved no one, she had to live with the consequences of it all.

But, in spite of that – she literally enslaved nearly 4000 people, robbed them of their lives & identities, and forced them to co-operate in a dreamworld – all to try and play happy family and satisfy the fantasy needs of 1 person. Heartache and trauma or not, that is not okay, and it should not be justifiable from anyone in or out of The Hex’s borders.
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10 minutes into episode 5, during Tyler Hayward’s briefing where Rambeau is also present and her testimony is read aloud, describing Wanda’s control as a terrifying and excruciating violation, the episode’s only tweak is made.
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The conversation is much more straightforward with Monica not defending Wanda. Now when Tyler states Wanda blasted her out of the Hex, Monica doesn’t defend by claiming she survived because Wanda protected her (IF that’s true). I see it as like your friend deliberately crashing the car when you’re a passenger, but you say it’s fine because they forced you to wear your seatbelt – they still deliberately crashed the car with you right there, how is that excusable at the start??
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Secondly, when Hayward points out Wanda’s holding thousands hostage, Monica doesn’t retort that Wanda created the Hex’s border, so the bad thing could have been worse – because that doesn’t magically (pun absolutely intended) stop the bad thing from being bad in the first place.
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In the finale, the changes only happen towards the end, and they’re more thorough this time.
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When the Hex comes down and Wanda leaves the house, the Jimmy Woo portion of the mid-credits scene plays out with him starting to co-ordinate helping the town. I like the character and it’s good to see him in action, and I was always on the fence about the mid-credits tease. (If it led to “Secret Invasion” and that was good, then great, or if it lead to Captain Marvel 2 and that wasn’t almost immediately panned heavily by audiences, then also great – but neither seemed to shake out, so hey ho). When Wanda gets to town, Monica no longer says anything about sacrifice – she looks at her open-mouthed (understandable for someone afraid) and Wanda just apologises and leaves as usual.
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In the mid-credits, in lieu of the Photon/Skrull sequence, it’s Wanda in the cabin in Sokovia with The Darkhold, hearing the voices of Billy and Tommy somewhere.
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Finally, in the post-credits scene, I took the teaser trailer for ‘Multiverse of Madness’ and modified it to work here. I took most of it out (since No Way Home is referenced and other non-sequential things that would be spoiled here) and just focussed on the Wanda parts. So it’s the Marvel logo -> Wanda and Strange in the “orchard” so Westview is acknowledged by both, before the focus shifts to the topic of The Multiverse -> then showing a future (or in this case, a possible) evil Scarlet Witch before the trailer title plays. It’s short, it’s punchy, it’s hopefully a good “tease” of things - and also, hopefully, this links everything together solidly between the series and film, since they definitely didn’t feel as interconnected as they could (/Should) have been.
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Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught editor/VFX artist here, so some areas may well be mostly good as a result, since I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it, respectively. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

The first of my MCU edits, from Aug’ 2022, and was actually one of the first edits I ever wanted to do when I was thinking about getting into video projects at the start of 2022, just to fix that very annoying niggle in my head the film presented with its timeline gaff. (How they even had that oversight from a AAA film studio with a global audience in the first place, I really don’t know, but that’s a rant for another day.)

Unlike other Marvel edits, I was much easier on the deleted scenes as I enjoyed the film enough in its current form as it is, so changing the story in any massive ways just really didn’t feel necessary this time.

Name of the project comes from the main reason I wanted to undertake this project to begin with. A ‘4 years later’ cut is a bit on the nose, ‘Timeline’ cut is a bit too boring but it does open the door for a reference to the wider universe, namely the Sacred Timeline, so I called it that as a reference – if very slightly tongue-in-cheek.
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I started off with an annotation placing the Damage Control flashback in 2012, before changing the ‘8 years later’ card to a ‘4 years later’ one – using the Homecoming style font at the same size and colour, with the same 4-way motion transition as the theatrical release. Now the flashback and bulk of the film are both clearly labelled with the year they canonically occur, which fixes that gripe.
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Secondly, the footage of Peter’s “Documentary” including the clash of the Avengers in ‘Civil War’ has been removed, since it goes against said film. Especially his reaction when Scott turns into Gi-ant Man and how quickly he swings into action when Tony prompts him to nab Rogers’ shield.
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Thirdly, I took the audio from Toomes’ line to Bryce when he fires him off of his crew for his recklessness to create a sound dub. Now, when Vulture remarks to Tinkerer how long it’s been, he states ‘four years’ and not eight – backing up the time card at the beginning.
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I took out Prowler’s remark about not caring ‘what’ SM is under the suit, it always just felt unnecessary in that exchange. Now Peter corrects that he’s a boy, then overcorrects that he’s a “Man” and goes right to asking who’s selling the weapons around Queens, and that’s it.
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Fifthly, at the Homecoming dance when Peter arrives, MJ now no longer gives him the finger when she sees him. Considering how they end up getting together as a couple, taking away her publicly flipping him off makes their overall story across the three films more cohesive in this respect. Now Ned sees him and waves as usual but she looks at him mostly indifferently, cutting away again before she moves her arms at all – it’s gentler than the alternative at least.
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Lastly, I took out the Captain America post-credits segment where he speaks about the value of patience, and replaced it – ‘Infinity War’ and ‘Endgame’ have now come out of course, so our patience has now paid off. In its place I did put one deleted scene: the one where Prowler can’t unstick himself from his car and fails to flag someone down to help him, ending up on the phone with his nephew – openly mentioning Miles [Morales] by name – saying he won’t make it.

Including this as a substitute scene definitely felt good, bringing Miles into MCU canon like this, one way or another, and – as I stated above – none of the other deleted scenes really convinced me to change the story in a big way with them.
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

An edit from March ’23 which was my third MCU project overall

Like ‘The Eternals’ before it, I reimplemented deleted scenes I felt added things to the story – but unlike it, I also took things out which either felt needless or like they were actually working against the story for one reason or another. Total runtime is ~2hrs 19mins.
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The film starts off with an African proverb (hence the project name) that many people may have seen and gotten familiar with by now. To this day, I’m not sure if it’s a real quote from a cited place or people, but it fits the villain of the story incredibly well, and its supposed origin makes it very apt for the story also.
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The film plays out as normal until we’re in the middle of T’Challa’s ritual combat with M’Baku at the 26.5 minute mark. I cannot get behind Ramonda’s shout for T’Challa to show who he is – it’s always felt far too heavy-handed, to the point where it almost breaks immersion because it feels so obvious it’s coming straight from the writer’s room as a deliberate insert, not because it’s organic to the characters in the story. (Like when Bucky says to T’Challa in Civil War “I didn’t kill your father” and suddenly I’m catapulted out of the film into a thousand other stories which used that same line in that same context because the plot uses the same story device.) Now it’s like T’Challa’s losing, M’Baku’s gloating and the former seeing his family watching is enough to give him strength and snap out of it to win.
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Following this, the first deleted scene comes along at around 33 minutes in, after T’Challa takes the Heart-Shaped Herb and sees his father again, which he tells Zuri. In the scene, he and Zuri speak about King T’Chaka properly, from what T’Challa remembers as a child and Zuri as his old friend. It feels important to add in, because it gives development to the old king in a more positive way – rather than the rest of the film focussing on the mistakes he made more than anything else (especially with N’Jobu and Erik), and to see Zuri giving some kingly wisdom.
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The film plays out as normal following that from Wakanda to Seoul and back again, with a small tweak when they return with the wounded Everett Ross. The scene with Shuri’s remark about him is gone, since a comment about a person based on the colour of their skin in that context would almost definitely go down the wrong way, were it reversed, for obvious reasons. Now, they discuss Everett’s condition in the ‘Royal Talon Fighter’ and it cuts right to Shuri in her lab with him, ‘fixing’ him.
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It carries on as normal until the aftermath of Killmonger winning the challenge at the Warrior Falls at around 83 minutes in. There, it goes into the second deleted scene, where W’Kabi and Okoye are in the throne room heatedly discussing the future of Wakanda and the former’s crumbling faith in his former friend after the business with Klaue goes south. Here, W’Kabi’s development is shown through the effect Klaue’s actions had on him as a child, and how he can justify turning his back on his oldest friend to put his faith in Killmonger instead to get the “justice” he feels he is owed.
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From there, it transitions back into the theatrical film (conveniently still in the throne room and Okoye still there) for another 20 minutes until it gets to the eve of the clash on Mount Bashenga and T’Challa emerges, revealing he’s still alive to everyone. I took out Killmonger telling W’Kabi to kill him, because it just doesn’t work. At the ritual challenge, Erik openly talks about spending his whole life thinking, training and killing purely for the chance to kill T’Challa one day. If you just learned you failed, why would you demand someone else do it to correct your failure for you instead of jumping in and trying to do it yourself again? In principle if nothing else? Now, yes, you can argue semantics – if Killmonger said “All this death….Just so I could take the throne” or telling W’Kabi flat-out to kill his OLD friend in front of him to prove his loyalty to his NEW king once and for all, that would work well and wouldn’t need to change. But he didn’t, so it does.
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Small tweak less than a minute later: after the Dora start attacking Killmonger, the short shot of Okoye standing there and twirling her spear is gone – because I don’t really know why it was there in the first place, since it doesn’t do or add anything.
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Lastly, the film plays out as normal until the very end, when I put the third deleted scene in. Now, after the credits and custom title card, there’s an extended version of T’Challa meeting Everett Ross at the UN, and they have a strong conversation about the consequences of unveiling the reality of Wakanda to the rest of the world. Afterwards, it goes into the theatrical sequence of T’Challa taking the stand and giving his speech before the main credits.
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A pleasantly straightforward edit from Feb ’23 that was one of the first edits/tweaks from the MCU, that I may also upload soon too, depending on how reception to these edits of this franchise/genre goes.

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As I stated in my publish text for my ‘Book of Boba Fett’ edit, I always thought ‘The Eternals’ had a very particular problem for the same kind of reason as TBBF. It seemed to not really work as well as it could, because it felt like it was trying to tell two stories at once in the past and present to basically make up for lost time and use the former to fill gaps in the latter. This often came across like the time jumps being jarring and disruptive to the pacing, rather than smooth and serving the story well. Lastly; a film where you’re trying to get the band back together – when you’ve never had a film actually seeing them together properly in the first place – rarely feels like it actually works, it might have for ‘The Blues Brothers’ in the 80’s, but not this.

To this end, I devised a chronological run of the story and split it in two: a half-hour ‘short story’ from 7,000BC Mesopotamia to 1945AD Hiroshima - and a single present-day only story from Sersi in London, to the Clash of The Eternals in Socotra, Yemen. I’ve always felt like a dedicated film (or even miniseries) detailing The Eternals’ history and guiding the human race over millennia would have been better – with a second story/dedicated film focussing just on The Emergence might be better and more straightforward also.

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Eternals I: Shepherds of Humanity, 30 Mins.

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The portions of history and nothing else, as there are no deleted scenes of the film that relate to any of the sections set before the 21st century.

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The full sequence is 7000BC Mesopotamia -> 575BC Babylon with 400AD Gupta Empire -> 1521AD Tenochtitlan -> 1945AD Hiroshima -> small credits and ending title card. I implemented the short credits from the film that shows the murals of their impact on history because it feels much more appropriate here than having it in the second film here – from cave paintings to ancient civilisation sculptures to more recent cultural phenomena, like Harry Houdini posters from the turn of the 20th century.

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Eternals II: The Emergence, 2hrs 13mins.

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The main bulk of the film from the 21st century with deleted scenes reinserted because I feel they do add something good to the story at large or to the characters themselves/the dynamics between members of the group.

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The first deleted scene is around 4 minutes in, “Small Talk”, where it cuts from Sersi giving her Apex Predator class to Sprite talking to Dane Whitman about Deviants – a conversation alluded to in the theatrical release but never shown. It gives an insight into TE’s impacts on history, on and off the Deviants’ side of things, and gives Dane a bit more screentime since he always felt very underutilised and underdeveloped (I get they probably planned to fix that in the next theatrical TE story by properly making him Black Knight and such, but still).

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After meeting up with Ikaris, Kingo and Gilgamesh & Thena, the second deleted scene comes in around the 43 minute mark on the Amazon river: “Movies”. It’s very short, but it adds to the group dynamics and contrasts between the respective lives and lifestyles between Kingo and Gilgamesh.

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At the 1hr 13min mark, after recruiting Druig in the Amazon and meeting up with Makari again at the Domo with her library of lost historical artifacts, the deleted scene “Nostalgia” comes in. This was great to include because Sprite talking to Makari about their life in Babylon all those centuries ago creates a good link to the past/other film and gives the team development with the city that used to be their real home on Earth. There’s a debate on whether or not humanity is worth saving after everything they’ve done to themselves and each other, with some points on both sides. And Thanos and Endgame are mentioned, which openly ties it into the rest of the universe.

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At the 91 minute mark, the deleted scene “Gravity” plays. This gives good development for Phastos as a father and the result of the life he chose to make for himself compared to the others. Also it plays into the scene in the theatrical release where he suddenly comes to Sersi with the “Uni-Mind” idea much more smoothly.

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From there, it’s the normal chain of events as the theatrical release except the short credits put into the first film. Here, Sersi gets abducted by Arishem in front of Dane, there’s a small snippet of the short credits to give the film its name (with custom title again) and then we meet Starfox & Pip the Troll and it’s the normal credits afterwards.
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It’s a Mega link like everything else.

Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

[New information in the 1240 and 1263c portions as of 28/02/’24]
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A project from November ’22 that fixed quite a big problem in the show’s first season.

I went into everything blind, not having read any of the novels or playing any of the games, so keeping on top of everything when the timelines suddenly hopped around at random was quite difficult more than once.
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Like some of my other projects, I’ve done multiple versions of some episodes. I know some of them are generally straightforward and true(ish) to the source, but others are quite padded with original material that may or may not improve the story. This means the season has gone from 8 episodes to 14 total, with 2 of them being alternate versions. As usual, because I’m nice, you can choose which one is best for your collection and download at your own discretion.

To keep things neatly sequenced, I sorted everything by the year on the Continent’s calendar, specifically in accordance with the Netflix timeline they drew up to accommodate the adaptation and its changes.
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1206.
“Four Marks” – 34 mins
The Yennefer portions from the second episode it shares the name of. Seeing her meeting Istredd, being sold, trained at Aretuza and her struggles academically & socially. The original episode’s artwork is of the eels the failed ascendants become and/or the snakes that are one of them’s biggest fear, as Yennefer states, so keeping that for this edit of the episode was very simple.
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1210.
“Big Changes” – 23 mins.
The Yen pieces from the third episode that sees her burgeoning relationship with Istredd, the revelation of her Elven blood, her transformation and securing a place at Aiden’s Court.
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The artwork in the brief title for this episode is of Yennefer’s amulet, which fits and it already a similar enough style to the rest of the episodes’ looks.
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1231.
The Last Wish: “The Lesser Evil” – 35 mins.
The Geralt portions of Episode 1 in Blaviken with Renfry and her seven ‘companion’s, and Stregobor. I kept in the final section that showed Ciri as Renfri’s words about her echoed over Geralt as he left Blaviken, but I used a vignette and black & white colour filter to make it clear it’s anachronistic. Also, there’s some music from the games while Geralt is carving through Renfri’s men, just as a bit of fun/easter egg.
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1240.
The Last Wish: “The Edge of The World” – 17 mins.
The Geralt and Jaskier portions of Episode 2 in Upper Posada, fighting “the devil” and meeting Filavendrel, before being released and parting as (greatly asymmetrical) friends.
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“Unlikely Relationships” – 28 minutes.
The G/J portions of Episode 2 and the Yennefer portions of Episode 4 when she’s trying to outrun the portalling assassin with the death beetle. The NTFX timeline states the latter also takes place in the year 1240, so using them to break up the G/J portions and beef up the (otherwise very short) runtime felt like a good idea.
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I created new artwork for this episode that ties in very well with the main bulk of this episode. I found a good heraldry crest of the region of ‘Dol Blathanna’ – the area of the continent containing Upper & Lower Posada which includes the ‘Edge of The World’ – and used that as a base. I used the same photoshop-style trickery as the 1263c episode’s new artwork I did first to make it the same visual style as the other episodes – with colour, texture and gradient filters & overlays. This took it from smooth and coloured with greens, whites and yellows – to greys, black and with a haggard and rough visual motif, hopefully making it much more at home amongst the other episodes’ symbols as they released.
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1243.
The Last Wish: “Her Highness The Strzyga” – 43 mins.
The Geralt portions of Episode 3 in Temeria with King Foltest and Triss Merrigold. I took the name from a sidequest in the first video game, with the proper Slavic spelling of the monster’s name for authenticity, because having an episode of The Witcher just called “The Witcher” after the respective short story just sounds dull.
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1249.
The Last Wish: “A Question of Price” – 38 mins.
The Geralt/Jaskier portions of Episode 4 in Cintra with meeting Calanthe, Pavetta and Duny. I actually got very lucky with the artwork for this episode’s title – I found a Manticore artwork (like the conversation between the two quarreling Lords Geralt has to stop himself correcting to stay out of trouble), on Pinterest of all places. I flipped the artwork horizontally and erased a half-encircling shape along its border, just to make it more visually distinct than the last episode’s wolf title.
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1256.
The Last Wish: "The Last Wish” – 45 mins.
The Geralt/Jaskier/Yen portions of Episode 5 with the former meeting the latter for the first time in the city of Rinde and all of the funny business with the Djinn.
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1262.
Sword of Destiny: “The Bounds of Reason” – 47 mins.
The G/J/Y story of the dragon hunt in Episode 6 in the land of Caingorn.
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1263.
This episode is the second split into two versions, in 1263a the bulk of both is the Geralt/Cintra portions in Episode 7, and the Ciri/Cintra portions in Episode 1, but this time with the whole story. As in: in Episode 1, certain scenes and conversations were skimmed over because they’d be shown in proper detail later – and in Episode 7, conversely, certain scenes and conversations were skimmed over because they’d already been covered. In both cases, as Ciri escapes Cahir, the footage of Renfri’s words over Geralt in Blaviken from 1x01 appears again, but this time the colour and vignette are reversed: Geralt is in black and white, and Ciri is in colour – he’s the odd one out now, and it’s her time.
a1). The Slaughter of Cintra” – 1hr 4mins.
The Geralt/Ciri portions of the respective episodes in Cintra/Marnadal, with Yen at the Dwarven Monolith site in Nazair, the backstory in Aretuza with the meeting of the Northern Mages leading up to the Battle of Sodden Hill with Vilgefortz and Fringilla.
a2). Sword of Destiny: “The Sword of Destiny” – 42 mins.
Just the Geralt/Ciri portions of the respective episodes in Cintra/Marnadal, no extras.
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This is where things start to get tricky with putting them in the right order. I did my best, some clues were very obvious and clear so that’s good – but after the Slaughter of Cintra especially, nailing down the exact ‘whats and whens’ takes a bit more imagination.
To this end, I had to be creative with sequencing things to make everything work in an at least somewhat feasible single chain of events, while taking into account a lot of different factors. With this I had to balance Geralt, and Ciri, and Yen, and Sodden, and Cahir (before AND during Sodden), and Yurga with Geralt while his wife and then son are with Ciri at the same time, and so on….
b). “Chase of The Child” – 41 mins.
Firstly, we have 1x08 with Geralt in Cintra after failing to find Ciri in the chaos, before he leaves and encounters Yurga in the woods, unfortunately waking some undead beasts and being bitten. Then it’s the title card. Next it’s all of Ciri’s 1x02 portions (the line to Dara about her not speaking to anyone in three days has been excised, because it messes with the timeline). Next it’s Geralt on the back of Yurga’s wagon in 1x08 where he’s told he got bitten and hallucinates about his mother and her food. Next, it’s Ciri waking up in 1x03 and getting entranced into Brokilon Forest, seamlessly continuing into 1x04 with the Dryads until that night where she and Dara speak about Calanthe. Next it cuts to Geralt in 1x08 at night time, dreaming of Renfri and Visenna and speaking to Yurga when he wakes, who offers him The Law of Surprise for saving his life. Then it transitions aptly back to Geralt’s ‘Child of Surprise’ in 1x04 in Brokilon, having her red hallucination and hearing the banquet that willed her into existence. When the waters of Brokilon have no effect on her, Cahir and Fringilla’s Mages use Calanthe’s body back in Cintra to find her while they have Mousesack captive, and Ciri has her desert tree dream.
The artwork for this episode was the same sword-tree as the 1240 chapter(s) since it ends on that episode’s Ciri portion – but since it always had something to do with her more than anyone else, it makes more sense and fits in better here.
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c). “Not out of The Woods yet” – 40 mins.
The following day (1x05), Cahir enlists The Adonis to take the form of Mousesack, which he does that night. Then comes the new custom episode title card – a Nilfgaard sigil I found, which felt very appropriate here, and got my hands dirty changing with photoshop-style tools to change the visual style and colour to match the other symbols from the other episodes. Next, “Mousesack” arrives at Brokilon while the Dryads’ are discussing her and whether or not she’ll be allowed to stay – he lures her out of their borders and protection, with Dara in tow. Next it transitions seamlessly into 1x06 with Ciri nattering “Mousesack”’s ear off with a thousand questions and everything Ciri from 1x06 plays out in one go – with discovering the Doppler and trying to escape, tricking Cahir and him forced to kill a whole house. After Fringilla tends to his wounds that evening and Cahir declares war, it transitions into 1x08 with the boat of Mages heading to Sodden and Yen’s conversation with Vilgefortz on the stone beach. Next, Ciri’s walking through the small town in 1x07, failing to steal food, trading Pavetta’s ring for new gloves, meeting Yurga’s wife and stealing a horse. Next, the Mages are walking through the woods and Yen remarks it’s been hours (so it works well sequentially) and the Mages get set up at the old Elven Keep at Sodden Hill with the day going well into the evening. That night, Ciri in the marshland in 1x07 laments not trading the ring for food to the horse she stole, before she’s accosted by an old face and uses her dormant powers to defend herself, eliminating her would-be attackers.
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d). Sword of Destiny: “Something More – 43 mins.
Lastly, this final episode is all from 1x08, but with some portions out of release order, to accommodate the deliberately sequential changes made with the other parts of 1x08 across the last two episodes. It begins with Ciri waking up in the marshland with Yurga’s wife finding her and taking her with her. Then there’s the final title card where all the season’s symbols join together. Then it’s the night at Sodden Hill where Yen makes more arrows out of magic and has drinks with Triss, while Cahir is poised ready to attack. Next, Ciri is with Yurga’s son Nadbor in the stable while they witness Nilfgaard’s first attack, and the Battle of Sodden Hill begins. The sequence continues as normal with Yen being sent to the tower, but instead of cutting to Geralt, it goes to the archers and Triss using her poison powers and Cahir fighting Vilgefortz – once Fringilla drops the ear worms, it moves to Geralt. The earlier portion of Yurga mentioning the unnatural fog is moved here instead, and it prefaces the sequence of Geralt being told about Sodden and pouring his potion on his bite wound, flashing back to Vesimir finding him. Next is the Sodden sequence with Coral dying, Triss creating a vine gate & getting burned, Fringilla’s earworms working on Sabrina and the two boys & Yen stumbling out the foggy gate in a pause of the battle while Vilgefortz loses his temper on a wounded Mage, and it transcends into night with Yen needing Tissaia. Up next is Nilfgaard almost succeeding in charging the Keep that night, but Yen holds them back with fire magic just as Foltest arrives with his army. From then it plays out just as it did in the original episode: Ciri in bed in Yurga’s house, her dream about Tissaia, Geralt and Yen at Sodden, leaving the house in the morning to go into the woods to find Geralt just as Yurga’s wagon arrives, and the two finally come together.
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It’s a Mega link like everything else.

Footnote: I am merely a self-taught video editor and VFX artist here, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

I think what you’re suggesting, adding two substantial Thorin-centric prequel sequences into M4 The Book Edit might possibly undermine Bilbo’s story rather than improve it.

I haven’t seen that, no. But, on top of the explanations for reinserting those Erebor and Moria pieces I’ve already given - Thorin may not be the main character and the story of ‘The Hobbit’ is not his journey, he is still a very important character in everything. I’ve always seen him as a deuteragonist in the story since so much revolves around him: his kingdom, his throne, the Arkenstone which is now ‘his’ as the king’s jewel, Smaug is now his archnemesis as the usurper of his kingdom and its wealth etc.

Reinserting the Erebor and Moria sequences just helps to add weight to the character and really stress his importance and show him as the king he is - working to help his people when they’re displaced, trying to set up another kingdom for them and earning the right of kingship in the eyes of others on the battlefield. Hopefully not to the detriment of Bilbo directly, but just to show Thorin as the kind of man (or Dwarf) he is and show him as the power-player in the story that he is, that’s all.

I’m interested in this - though I am curious why film 3/season 2 was the odd one out with being adapted that way? Was that season in particular especially bloated and not adapted as well as the others?

A project from June ’22 that was mercifully very straightforward next to my others, as almost all the work is from other projects.

The main bulk of the project is the 258 minute “The Hobbit M4 Book Edit”, which makes up at least 95% of the whole thing and is widely considered to be the most book-accurate take on the trilogy done by a fan. So, obviously the editor ‘M4’ deserves a huge chunk of credit, and I freely acknowledge my edit would probably not be at the level it is without their very hard work.
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To get more into specifics on what I’VE done with this and why, I split it into two parts – as was the original plan of the studio – and re-inserted parts of the theatrical or extended releases that, while maybe not strictly novel-faithful, do still add something.

Luckily it’s quite sparing, and happens for what I would consider a good reason – logically, narratively or to more evenly balance the respective runtimes between these new two halves.
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Part 1: A Long Journey – 2hrs 33mins.
This starts off with the Erebor introduction from the extended edition of “An Unexpected Journey” (so Thranduil and the white gems are seen properly, since it’s important at the climax later). It’s not included in the novel, but it does set the stage of everything very well and works very well as a very ‘cinematic’ introduction – and since this is a film of the book, and not the book itself, it feels good to put it back in.
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It then transitions seamlessly into the M4 edit where it continues for half an hour, going from Old Bilbo writing in the Red Book of Westmarch to the reminiscence of his younger days, meeting Gandalf and everything until their first night camping.
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Then it’s the full campfire scene from the extended edition of AUJ which includes the Moria flashback – only 6.5 minutes total. Including this creates a solid link to the LoTR stories, exposits Thorin’s namesake, and it gives a name to a face with the Pale Orc, who doesn’t appear in the M4 edit as much as the original films (as they added a lot of padding there that wasn’t in the book), but he’s still the commander and main villain towards the end.
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Next it goes back to the M4 Edit for 68 minutes, until the ‘interlude’ that was put into the original 4hrs 18mins edit project. There’s a slow fade to black, a pause for a few seconds and then a slow fade back to the next part of the M4 Edit after the interlude: the beginning of the ‘Desolation of Smaug’ film story. The M4 Edit continues for another 26 minutes, going through Beorn’s house and Mirkwood forest until I decided to put the end of the first film in. It ends with the Dwarves captured by the Elves, Legolas checks the bridge at the gate again as Bilbo slips in, the door to the Mirkwood realm heavily closes and the screen fades to black on a cliffhanger ending.
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It ends with the credits sequence from AUJ – the soundtrack is better and there’s only a tiny bit of the DoS story included by now, so going out of the way to include those credits just for a handful of new characters feels redundant.
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Part 2: There and Back Again – 2hrs 10mins.
This film begins with the opening titles from ‘The Desolation of Smaug’, since the music for it seems more suited to the cliffhanger situation we’re now picking up from. This motif has the ominous twinge of both TDoS and TBoTFA, but not as much as the latter, which makes more sense since this is now only halfway through the story. So while the party is in a bind (pun not intended) they still haven’t faced a huge evil through Smaug, Thorin’s change or the armies converging on Erebor, the overall stakes are lower at the moment, so the softer ominous music works better.
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The main bulk of the film is the M4 Edit for almost all of it – uninterrupted from Mirkwood to Laketown to Erebor to Smaug to the Battle to the Funeral to the Shire.
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Finally, I ended it with the credits from ‘The Battle of The Five Armies’, as it was a shame to lose them and it’s another consistent link to the LoTR stories.
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Why not use the original ending point? Good question!
The original plan for ‘An Unexpected Journey’ had it end after the Dwarves escape from Mirkwood, with the barrel ride being the climax of the film and the final shot being Bard and his bow standing ominously over the Dwarves on the rocky shore.
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There were two reasons: Firstly, having a sweeping establishing shot that naturally ended up at the riverside didn’t seem to be available, so I’m guessing they maybe just didn’t film it when they restructured it from two films to three in the first place. The same goes with a way of opening the scene with Bard and the Dwarves before it goes right into their sharply-cut conflict that’s over as soon as it begins.
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But, mostly, it would make the runtimes of each film more disproportionate than they already are. It’s another 10 minutes from walking into Mirkwood and meeting Bard, so that original structure would lead to a film that’s 2hrs 40 followed by one that’s 2hrs 0 – the gap is definitely wider.
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It’s a Mega link like everything else.
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Because of the size of the massive original source file and the usual 1080p quality I work and export in, both halves of this edit are very large in their own rights; around 20GB(!) each.
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

I took it upon myself to reclaim some of my childhood somewhat by getting back the specific versions of the original two Star Wars trilogies I used to watch again and again on VHS and some DVD. Though finding them myself online in any measure of good quality always seemed to be very difficult, so I admittedly had a bit of a Thanos moment and said “Fine, I’ll do it myself”. I uploaded this in probably the wrong category in last December, so it flew under people’s radar…(https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Star-Wars-trilogies-I-grew-up-on/id/112992)

I saw ‘The Phantom Menace’ in the cinema when I was nearly 5 years old (I still remember the weird “Midichlorian count” line visual glitch) and used to watch it on its VHS release, ‘Attack of the Clones’ on VHS and DVD shortly afterwards, ‘Revenge of the Sith’ in cinema and DVD, and the Original Trilogy in the 1997 special edition VHS tapes in the special gold and black box.
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I did this because I’ve viewed all the subsequent releases as kind of the same: some of the changes were better than others, and others did feel more warranted than others in all fairness. But, despite that, I always found myself barely watching them on DVD or Blu-Ray because it just wasn’t the same, and they just weren’t clicking in my head the same way as before when I used to watch and really enjoy them when I was younger.

I used the Blu-Ray as a source for the prequels, and the ‘Despecialized’ editions for the Originals. These were opposite ends of the spectrum; the Blu-Ray had changes added to it from itself and carried over from the DVD before so I had a lot of things to take away to get it right – and the Despecialized’s had no changes at all post-1983, so I had a lot of things to add to get it right.
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July/August 2022 – Episode 1: 2hrs13mins. The droideka encounter screen with the Viceroy and ‘Force-Speed’ effects are in their old state, the podrace and starting grid sequence is shortened to its original length, I took away the air taxi on Coruscant so it’s back to the original skyscraper transition from the landing platform to Palpatine’s apartment, puppet Yoda returns in the temple and Naboo, the chants of “Vote Now!” in the senate after Padmé moves for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum.
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January 2023 – Episode 2: 2hrs23mins. I rearranged the scene through the power couplings during the Zam Wessell chase on Coruscant, took Shmi’s lines out of Anakin’s nightmare (actually a shame, it does feel like it adds things and makes it better), and corrected the drawn out scenes on Geonosis with Dooku escaping – both visually and in that scene’s music.
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January 2023 – Episode 3: 2hrs20mins. Thankfully very few changes this time. I changed the transition from Obi-Wan pensive after Mustafar to Anakin’s remaining hand clawing himself up on the lava shore and knew I needed to change the appearance of the hut structure on Kashyyyk where Yoda has his long-range briefing with the Jedi Council about General Grievous on Utapau. But finding a high-res clip of the structure as it appeared before the Blu-Ray was very difficult, so I kind of had to leave the DVD clip in – it’s not perfect but thankfully it only lasts a few seconds, so it’s a good placeholder until a better-quality clip of the same hut scene emerges and I can insert that later.
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December 2022 – Episode 4: 2hrs5mins. Using the despecialised version of the film as the base, I added special effects from the Blu-Ray that were in the 1997 editions (mostly the scenes with lots of VFX throughout, like those in space), but not all of them to make sure I omitted the ones from the 2004 special edition DVD and the Blu-Ray ones that most people felt were just unnecessary. Greedo shoots first (sorry), ugly Jabba appears (sorry), audio is updated from the Blu-Ray version and imposed over the despecialised footage in some places like the Tusken attack, Obi-Wan’s dragon call, movement in the trash compactor etc.
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Episode 5: 2hrs7mins. I didn’t do anything with this as this is not mine – this is actually the fan restoration that was completed by the editor “Adywan” that I was lucky enough to find Spring last year, so all credit there goes to them and not me as it’s all their good work.
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December 2022 – Episode 6: 2hrs15mins. Principle of this was the same as the ‘New Hope’ project with it having the despecialised version as the base and the cutting and pasting different sources in certain scenes, usually in the VFX-heavy space scenes. The Sarlaac has a beak again, the lightsaber blades cross into each other when Luke tries to kill the Emperor, the ending celebration doesn’t include Theed or the old Jedi Temple or Senate Office Building on Coruscant, Sebastian Shaw’s Anakin ghost appears.
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As with my work on ‘Andor’ season 1, the size and source quality of the original files means the file size of each of my exports are all on the larger side. Especially with the despecialised versions of the original films being around 20GB each in their own right, each film I’ve put out here is around 10-18GB – just to consider before you download.
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It’s a Mega link like the rest again
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

I uploaded something like this in December 😃

A very simple and straightforward edit I periodically visited from September to December of 2022, around other edits I was doing at the time. I also uploaded this to OT.com in Dec '23 but I think I chose the wrong discussion category 😕 (https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Andor-Season-1-Arcs-fanedit/id/112924)
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I did this because it was clear the show was split into four dedicated story arcs – I’m fairly certain they announced and explained this before the show was even released. All I had to do was put the episodes in the right groups, and when I rewatched the series in one go via these giant mega-sodes, I can confirm the story was much more straightforward, leaner, easily memorable and tighter overall.

This four-part project was very simple since I just had to cut the credits off of two episodes, cut the introduction off of two others and paste them together four times over by merging them with maybe a second’s overlap to blend the different sound and video sources properly. There there were some other changes I made too; I preferred the series’ original logo than the one we got in the later posters and streamed episodes so I used that instead, I wanted each mega-sode to have a different introductory motif in the music and I changed the dynamic of Syril Karn and Dedra Meero.
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Arc 1: “The Man from Kenari” – 1hr44mins, all of the first three episodes “Kassa”, “That Would Be Me” and “Reckoning” all merged together. Nothing about this was changed, it uses the theme music from the first episode which is the standard theme of the series and there are no extra annotations. I chose that title because the first quarter of the season deals with Cassian the man: Morlana crime investigation suspect, Ferrix community member, Imperial site robber, family to Maarva and B2EMO, and a potentially valuable asset to Luthen Rael.
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Arc 2: “The First Mission” – 2hrs7mins, all of the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes “Aldhani”, “The Axe Forgets” and “The Eye” combined. The introduction music is right from the fourth episode, so that conveniently didn’t need changing and is a more action-themed take on the initial theme music, that fits into the events of the next three episodes nicely. There is one change I made by adding an annotative prompt in one location: in the aftermath of the Aldhani heist, they see the doctor “Quadpaw” on the moon “Frezno” in a forgotten sector in the Galaxy – this wasn’t relayed to the audience in TE, so I tracked down the font they used in the series and put that extra detail in myself. I went for this title because the Imperial payroll heist is the first (that we know of) mission Cassian takes against the Empire as part of a larger movement, like we see him doing as a captain of the Rebel Alliance before his death, and as Luthen has his finger in a lot of pies of the scattered Rebel cells it puts Cassian’s foot in the door for working for the Rebellion directly.
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Arc 3: “The Sentence” – 2hrs15mins, the seventh, eighth and ninth episodes “Announcement”, “Narkina 5” and “Nobody’s Listening!” mingled into one. This mega-sode uses the musical theme of Episode 8 – because the notes sounded higher (almost clinical) and a little like they were half-played and distorted, so I found it suited the prison arc very well with that kind of off-putting and eerie environment. I did make one change to the story in this arc: when Syril goes to see Dedra outside the ISB headquarters building, all leads to any sort of relationship or romance is removed – now they just talk about Cassian and their senses of justice etc and that’s it. That particular thread felt like – best case scenario: it’s just not necessary because not every story needs to have a love story angle shoved in – worst case: Syril is projecting very clear home issues onto someone and is being not-very-subtly creepy about it or going about it well – that’s just my take on that burgeoning dynamic anyway.

I found a lot of reasons to call it “The Sentence”: Cassian in prison of course, Syril starting his slogging journey to redeem himself on Coruscant and Mon Mothma learning the uncomfortable price of getting her family’s money back in her hands with giving away her own daughter into a marriage arrangement with the son of someone she despises as the main three. But also, Palpatine through The Empire and Colonel Yularen sentencing the citizens of the Galaxy to tougher lives and conditions through the PORD, and Bix’s capture on Ferrix – and her captivity and treatment by Doctor Gorst which left her stuck in a catatonic state for refusing to share information.
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Arc 4: “The Rebellion” – 2hrs6mins, all of “One Way Out”, “Daughter of Ferrix” and “Rix Road” bringing it all to the end of the season. The musical motif during the theme this time is that of the final episode where all the music tracks come together in a kind of orchestra, no doubt parroting the funeral procession on the Ferrix streets. No changes have been made to the story of the last three episodes and I called it “The Rebellion” for a small number of reasons: it covers the prison riot and the uprising on Ferrix against the Empire as the most straightforward reasons, but also Cassian’s formal induction into Luthen’s network and the attack on Spellhaus – if Saw agreed to help Anto Kreegyr, the combined efforts of their Rebel cells would have been exactly like the activity we saw in ‘Rebels’ seasons 3 and 4, where the Alliance of Rebels work together to achieve their common goal against the Empire.
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Because of the length of these mega-sodes, and the fact I worked and exported them in 1080p as always, the file size on each of them is generally quite large – 9 to 12GB apiece – just something to keep in mind before you try and download them.
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It’s a Mega link like the rest again
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

The project that started it all with my animated arcs endeavours – though this is technically the third version for the first season. Attempt 1 in April ’20 had the basic groupings down and was very straightforward, attempt 2 in Aug ’22 was more thorough and comprehensive, and this attempt from October ’22 is the best one yet.

To frame it along the most relatable project I’ve uploaded recently – this is similar to my Rebels Arcs project: the episodes are grouped together in the relevant groups, and even if it’s not like one happens right after the other. And again, if it feels like maybe a few days or a week have elapsed since that episode ended, but it’s still the next one released, it’s still grouped in anyway because it still belongs.

As with the other SW animated projects I’ve uploaded lately, I took all the dedicated two-, three- and four-episode stories and put them in their larger stories, this time with custom title cards needed at the start of each arc/episode because of this show’s format. There is also one mega-arc again, but on more of a technicality this time.

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Once again, I always found that having every deliberate story arc self-contained as its own thing makes the story much easier to digest. And, like Rebels again – because all the episodes here are from the same seasons again, I’ve also found it makes developing as well as viewing things much smoother now than TCW’08.

Again, there are no official name of arcs this time from a Lucasfilm source, so I just used names I invented, going so far as putting them in the credits of the arcs’ last episodes in lieu of the original episode titles.

This version of the first season is distinguished from the others by rearranging the story in the first arc by having two versions of it, both with only half the episode “Replacements” included this time, and spending the season – in my opinion at least – ‘fixing’ the character of Wrecker. Specifically, I removed some of his more stupid/shortsighted moments, especially in the first few episodes – since I felt like this was doing him a bit of a disservice by essentially just making him a giant idiot (literally and figuratively). Especially on occasions that are in very sharp contrast to his appearance in Season 7 of The Clone Wars or that just don’t make sense for an elite soldier to struggle with generally.

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Season 1:

I cut the first arc into two versions again, because the whole story of the first three episodes does form one unbroken chain of events – but it’s very long, even longer than the longest stories in TCW and RBL and even short films in the cinema. Obviously it sounds very long, and it goes double for a show that is designed for TV, and not film, so I put it into more bite-sized pieces to be more accommodating.

ARC 01a. “The New Reign Begins” [Extended] – 1hr 51mins, episodes: 1x01 “Aftermath”, 1x02 “Cut and Run” & half of 1x03 “Replacements”. Having it all together constitutes the show’s mega-arc, but only in terms of runtime, hence the technicality – it’s still only 3 episodes, but it’s still a very long story start-to-finish, like the 5-episode arcs in TCW and RBL. For the title card of this version, I put the name of the episode in the same red colour as the original episode, for consistency.

ARC 01b. “Aftermath” – 1hr 11mins, and then “The New Reign Begins” – 43 mins, episodes: 1x02 “Cut and Run” & half of 1x03 “Replacements”. The name of the original arc, and the now-second part of this one, is very straightforward – Emperor Palpatine declares the Empire’s birth and the new Galactic Order starts in his wake, even at the most base level like Tarkin arriving to put the Batch to task on Imperial enemies, not Republic ones.

(.) The story changes are consistent between both of these story versions, the runtime being the only real difference with the two different cuts. I only included half of the episode “Replacements” through cutting out all of the Ordo Moon Dragon parts – because ever since the episode aired, it all just felt like something to keep the Batch grounded and occupied while Crosshair deals with the more interesting part of the episode on Onderon. So, true to form of my ‘Sidequestless’ edits of The Mandalorian, I cut that needless little segue that stalls the story out. Now it’s like the Batch crash because of the damage from Saleucami, identify the capacitor problem, Crosshair’s whole story plays out uninterrupted on Kamino, Onderon and back again, and then back to the moon where the Batch replaces the capacitor and immediately leaves.

(…) In terms of fixing the Wrecker problem in these Episodes….

In “Aftermath”: Now he no longer repeats what Tech said about the war being over once they return to Kamino, it sounds more stupid than like a joke or sarcastic mocking, so it’s gone. Wrecker no longer wonders what Omega is when they first meet her, because how can you not know what a child is, especially in a facility like that when there are child clone cadets regularly milling around for training and such? So his line and Tech’s reply to it are both gone – we’ve only just met her, so her origins are uncertain without that being pointed out by Tech as well. In the lunch hall, Wrecker no longer acts like he doesn’t remember who Omega is, since it was just a few minutes ago. During the fight demonstration, he no longer complains about not knowing hand signals – because how can you be a soldier and not have that skill, especially an elite one? Now, Hunter gives the signals, Wrecker immediately understands, gives his thumbs up and does what he has to do. On Onderon, he now no longer remarks that he thinks Tech is joking about Omega being an enhanced Clone – because there’s no outward reason to think he’s joking and no one else makes that assumption, so it feels too wrong out of nowhere for no reason. Back on Kamino in prison, Wrecker no longer shouts he can free them from confinement loud enough for their guards to hear (because, come on dude….) – now he just stands suddenly, says it in a whisper and that’s that.

Also, I did consider removing Omega’s lucky shot against Crosshair as they’re leaving Kamino, and maybe replacing it with Echo instead. Since she admits she’s never fired a blaster before and I got sick of heavy plot convenience in the Sequel Trilogy anyway. But there’s still a bit of a mystery about what makes her so special to the point Tech notes she’s ‘enhanced’ to this day, and still some theories she could be at least a partial Palpatine clone (I’d rather not, but we’ll see where it goes), so it could all make sense one day – who knows?

In “Cut and Run”, Wrecker doesn’t ask if the battle droid booby trap was him. Even with the second tripwire being harder to see, the decoy/deactivated droids only sprung up once the farm’s threshold was crossed, and he was the only one to move there over that line, so it should be easily inferred without asking.

In “Replacements”, Wrecker’s reaction during and immediately after the shuttle crashing is removed because it’s the exact opposite of that same scenario in TCW: he openly relished an LAAT shuttle crash on Anaxes, but then clearly panicked for their own shuttle on the Ordo Moon. (It could be because Omega was on board and he’s fond of her, or because it’s their own ship/home this time – but it’s not specified at all, so it feels too different for no obvious reason).

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ARC 02. “More Enemies and More Opportunities” – 44 mins, episodes: 1x04 “Cornered” & 1x05 “Rampage”. Wrecker changes include taking out his exposition of the Ord Mantell hangar supervisor wanting a bribe – everyone can tell what ‘financial incentive’ he’s referring to without it being spelled out like that. Later on, when Wrecker goes up against Fennec in the tunnel, their clash goes unseen – because he’s a physical powerhouse with elite military training, so taking him down in a single move/second is just kind of insulting – she still wins the clash, he’s still noted MIA briefly by the others & he wakes up in the tunnel and there’s still other episodes’ incidents of him hitting his head to set off his chip, so it’s all good

Name comes from the first episode, where the Batch learns they can have heat on their tail besides The Empire when a bounty hunter comes knocking for Omega, and the second episode where they enter a life of work outside the soldiering they were created for.

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ARC 03. “The Mission to Bracca” – 1hr 31mins, episodes: 1x06 “Decommissioned”, 1x07 “Battle Scars”, 1x08 “Reunion” & 1x09, “Bounty Lost”. In the episode “Reunion”, Tech no longer states the power is back on – because everyone knows that’s what he was doing while the rest of them were scouting for weapons so it seems very redundant, also Wrecker no longer pulls on the torpedo door to open it when the power comes back, because it can easily be inferred it’ll open properly now with the power restored – now the power goes on all over the ship and it cuts to the torpedo door snapping open as an easy solution. Also removed Wrecker grouching he doesn’t know what “Egress” means when they’re trying to escape through the Venator engine – even if you don’t know the meaning, it’s still very contextually obvious what it means with where they are and what they’re doing. Thirdly, removed him complaining it’s not fair Omega doesn’t have an inhibitor chip like the other Clones - just a bit childish.

The arc’s name comes from the central two episodes dealing with the removal of the Batch’s inhibitor chips and the fallout from the interest they catch there respectively. DCM works well as an episode building up to this, and BL works well as an episode following it all, so the four all flow well together as one self-contained story.

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EPISODE 04. Common Ground – 25 mins, single episode 1x10. The only change I made was taking out the Omega line on Raxus, since it didn’t seem to make sense it would slip Hunter’s mind that she wasn’t there seeing as he told her himself to her face that she wasn’t going. Because it’s a very CW-like mission, I think an even better way to handle it would be to replace “Omega” with “Crosshair” in a dub, but since I’m not sure I can find a line from Hunter and Tech at the same volume to fit in with the rest of their whispered conversation in the corridor, so leaving it out entirely would probably be for the best. Now it works out like Tech mentioning 4 Regs in the adjacent corridor, then the Senator’s aide droid immediately comes along and goes past them, trying to “help” and it carries on as normal.

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ARC 05. “Rumblings on Ryloth” – 50 mins, episodes 1x11 “Devil’s Deal” & 1x12 “Rescue on Ryloth”. This arc has the Ryloth characters taking centre stage more than the others on the heroes’ side, meaning the Batch have less lines and such than other episodes – because of this, I didn’t have to make any changes at all when making this arc, save for a custom title card, credits name tag, and transition fade between the two episodes. The name comes from the events on the planet in general: occupation, local dissidents, secretive arms race to defend oneself, and the beginnings of the long-hoped-for Clone Rebellion itself.

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EPISODE 06. Infested – 25 mins, single episode 1x13. I cut out the bit with Wrecker’s torch dropping - since it feels like it’s adding needless tension (as nothing happens off the back of it hive-wise) and makes him look more incompetent – and the reference to it later with Cid. Secondly, when the spare trolley drops down, Wrecker no longer says “maybe they didn’t hear it” because that’s so unlikely it’s redundant at best, stupid at worst.

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ARC 07. “The End of The Republic” – 1hr 13mins, episodes 1x14 “War-Mantle”, 1x15 “Return to Kamino” & 1x16 “Kamino Lost”. Wrecker changes include: In "War-Mantle”, I’ve taken out him acknowledging everyone has a point, because it’s repetitive and redundant – except Echo since that’s the one they eventually go with – now the good points made by others are just self-evident without it being pointed out. Also the line asking what Rex’s transmission was about – he told them the problem he was having and why he couldn’t solve it himself; that all seems very self-explanatory and kind of needlessly redundant to me. Thirdly, I took out Wrecker asking Tech if what Omega says about Nala Se’s private lab was true, since it’s just confirming something that’s already said literally seconds before, and once it’s confirmed you kind of see how redundant going out of the way to spell it out is. Plus taking it out doesn’t interrupt the flow of what Omega’s saying, letting the explanation continue cleanly and lets her have her moment.

(Why this name for this arc and not the first one? Good question!) The name feels a lot more at home here, given it’s the end of the season, but also a lot of Republic elements are gone for good: the Clones are phased out with the TK Troopers replacing them, the facilities on Kamino are razed to the ocean bed, and the new Empire seems to be starting on a very strong foot going forward from here.

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Season 2:

My edit of the second season, from January-March ’23 follows the same vein as V3 of the first season – so a lot of the logic with grouping the arcs, fixing Wrecker’s character, custom titles in the credits is the same and works the same way. But, fortunately, the middle seemed to take much less work this time around, with only a few episodes needing work at all for that matter, so I think the studio started to do that on their own without me.

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ARC 08. “The War Chest” arc – 46 mins, episodes: 2x01 “Spoils of War” & 2x02: “Ruins of War”. The name comes from the vast treasure trove on Serenno the Batch goes to burgle to pay their debt with Cid, and I didn’t have to do anything to ‘fix’ Wrecker this time – he seemed much more in the game and more capable right off the bat, which was good.

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EPISODE 09. “Faster” – 23 mins, episode 2x04 of the same name. Wrecker needed some good fixing here for his comment when Tech starts the race and is in a low position. I’ve changed it so now Omega informs him Tech’s in last place, and it immediately cuts to Tech stating he’s got it handled, and that’s it – no stupidly obvious comment about how winning a race works.

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EPISODE 10. “Raiders of the Lost Heart” – 27 mins, originally the episode 2x05 “Entombed”. Given the treasure the Batch seeks with Phee Genoa on Skara Nal, and the way a lot of the episode is kind of a not-very-subtle homage to the adventures of Indiana Jones, I thought this new name would be very appropriate. Once again, I didn’t need to change anything with Wrecker luckily, so the name in the title card and credits is the only change I made.

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ARC 11. “Truths and Conspiracies” – 54 mins, episodes: 2x07 “The Clone Conspiracy” & 2x08 “Truth and Consequences”. No Wrecker changes were needed luckily, the name is mostly a portmanteau of the two released episode titles, and I used the credits from TCC for the arc, as the soundtrack is more impactful. This is especially apt after an appearance from The Emperor, Echo leaving the squad and the Imperial Stormtrooper being announced to the Galaxy.

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ARC 12. “Cid’s Last Chance” – 1hr 20mins, episodes: 2x09 “The Crossing”, 2x10 “Retrieval” & 2x11 “Metamorphosis”. Wrecker changes were not needed again, and the name comes from the Batch finally reaching their breaking point with Cid and deciding she’s sealed her own fate and is no longer worth having ties to.

First there’s the dangerous mission for her, then very clear apathy when they’re stranded there on HER behalf, and when they get the Marauder back the best she can do is a very half-assed non-apology for an insulting percentage. To top it off; in lieu of any real acknowledgement of her failings here, recognising just how much they’ve actually done for her by now, or a new and much more mutually beneficial arrangement from here on out, she just makes it clear she’s still only interested in keeping them around if they keep being profitable for her – all in one story arc.

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ARC 13. “Troubles of The Mountain” – 1hr 38mins, episodes: 2x13 “Pabu”, 2x14 “Tipping Point”, 2x15 “The Summit & 2x16 “Plan 99”. No Wrecker changes, and the arc’s name is a bit of a play on words again. On Pabu you have the flooding which threatens the citizens there on that steep islanded settlement, the matters within Mount Tantiss on Wayland concerning the Clones and their future – including Crosshair – and everything at the summit on Eriadu, perhaps especially with the mess Saw Gerrera causes with his own selfish aims.

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It’s a Mega link like everything else.

Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

Hopefully the site won’t mess up the page formatting with the number list like TCW, but we’ll see how it goes

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A project from late April to early May ’22 that was my second approach to these animated arcs projects. As with the ‘Clone Wars’ project I uploaded here recently, I took all of the dedicated two-, three- and four-episode stories and put them in their larger stories, sans the ‘Rebels’ style opening a few minutes into the episode for all but the first episode of that arc – with one five-episode ‘mega-arc’ again.

Once again, I always found that having every deliberate story arc self-contained as its own thing makes the story much easier to digest. And since all the episodes here are from the same seasons this time around, I’ve also found it makes developing as well as viewing things much smoother now than TCW’08.

There was no official name of arcs this time from a Lucasfilm source, so I just used names I invented, going so far as putting them in the credits of the arcs’ last episodes in lieu of the original episode titles.

Like the CW’08 project, especially the non-battley arcs, the episodes are grouped together based on what clearly comes afterwards in the timeline. Even if it’s something that isn’t back-to-back and maybe happens a week later – as long as there isn’t another episode first – then it’s put together in the same arc regardless, because it still feels relevant in that grouping.

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Season 1:

ARC 01. “Spark of Rebellion” – 44 mins, only a minor edit of the prologue version of the pilot episode. I’ve always felt the reveal Kanan is a Jedi at the end would be bigger, better and more impactful if there were less clues in the episode already - specifically, Ezra finding the whole lightsaber hilt in his cabin. Ezra can have the Holocron, because it’s necessary for the plot and even if he wasn’t a Jedi, Kanan having it would be a good tie-in and maybe mean he’s just a smuggler or something, so it’s still otherwise viable cutting one but keeping the other. It does make the scene a little choppy unfortunately, the sound and light reflection of the blade in the cabin is prominent alongside the important dialogue I can’t cut, but otherwise it’s okay.

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ARC 02. “Pull of The Dark Side” – 1hr 5mins, episodes: 1x08 “Empire Day”, 1x09 “Gathering Forces” & 1x10 “Path of The Jedi”. Name comes from the Dark Side starting to seep into Ezra as he’s in a rough state of mind, and he taps into it to use it against his enemy, also dealing with the aftermath of that same encounter in the Lothal Jedi Temple – all from the quote from the apparition of the Grand Inquisitor as a Jedi Temple Guard in Season 2.

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ARC 03. “The Spark Ignites” – 1hr 27mins, episodes: 1x12 “Vision of Hope”, 1x13 “Call to Action”, 1x14 “Rebel Resolve” & 1x15, “Fire Across the Galaxy”. Name comes from the Spark of Rebellion officially catching fire as multiple Rebel cells all come together in an alliance to save Kanan on Mustafar.

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Season 2:

ARC 04. “Return of the Clones” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 2x03 “The Lost Commanders” & 2x04: “Relics of the Old Republic”. Name comes from the sixth and second respective Skywalker Saga live action films, and works very well as a mix that’s relevant to the animated episodes, I think.

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ARC 05. “Family Matters” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes: 2x10-12 “The Future of The Force”, “Legacy” and “A Princess on Lothal”. The title of this arc is a bit of a play on words. TFoTF centres on the Force-sensitive children being taken from their families: their parents or other guardians, and ‘Legacy’ resolves the fates of Ezra’s parents, which has always been a big (family) matter to him. Lastly, APoL has members of the Organa family lend their assistance, while Ezra’s “found family” helps him to shoulder the burden of his parents’ passing – so even though they aren’t related, their help and support is still important and valuable to him – it ‘matters’.

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ARC 06. “A New Home and a New Threat” arc – 1hr 48 mins, episodes: 2x18 “Shroud of Darkness”, 2x19 “The Forgotten Droid”, 2x20 “The Mystery of Chopper Base”, 2x21 “Twilight of The Apprentice”, Parts 1&2. The show’s single “mega-arc”, and the name comes from Phoenix Group finally finding a location for their permanent base close to Lothal, the Krykna they face at their new home and the Dark Side in Maul & the Sith Holocron being unleashed from Malachor V at the end of the season.

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Season 3:

*Sidenote: I’ve always found the structure of Season 3 a little iffy. It’s clear there are dedicated arcs that run through it, but the season tends to visit and then leave episodes of each theme before doing something else and coming back to that arc again later, rather than strictly rigid blocks like The Clone Wars.

From what I can tell, and with the names I’ve given them, they are: “Old Wounds” that deals with Maul’s quest for vengeance/hope (Holocrons of Fate, Visions and Voices, Twin Suns). There’s “Thrawn’s Hunt” where he gradually narrows down the location of the Atollon base (Warhead, Through Imperial Eyes, Double Agent Droid). “The Growing Rebellion” arc where the Rebellion, or just Phoenix Group, come across new assets for the cause (The Antilles Extraction, Hera’s Heroes, Iron Squadron, Ghosts of Geonosis 1&2, Secret Cargo). “Prepare for Attack” where they look for things for the attack on Lothal – weapons, intel, etc (The Last Battle, The Wynkahthu Job, An Inside Man). Lastly, the Imperial Mandalore arc, which is self-explanatory (Imperial Supercommandos, Trials of the Darksaber, Legacy of Mandalore).

However, the release order factors greatly into things, so it’s not like I can group these together as easily as TCW. For example: in ‘Old Wounds’, THoF clearly takes place before ‘The Last Battle’, because the ‘Phantom’ slot on the Ghost is still empty, but in VaV the Phantom II is clearly visible in the background during Hera’s briefing – so you can’t put the 3 episodes together in the same group, because part of the story is clearly missing. Similarly, you can’t have “Imperial Supercommandos” smoothly with the rest of the ‘Imperial Mandalore’ arc because there’s the question of where the Darksaber suddenly came from, so that group of 3 doesn’t work either.

I think it works better this way: having the arcs’ episodes split makes them more feasible. The rebellion grows more slowly, which makes sense because it’s difficult and secretive, Thrawn narrowing his search for the base over time creates the feeling of a slowly tightening net, creating more suspense. Lastly, taking time to gather resources for the attack makes more sense with finding old deposits the Empire somehow missed that aren’t so degraded by now they’re unusable, and so on.*

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ARC 07. “Corruption of The Sith Holocron” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes 3x01 “Steps into Shadow” & 3x02 “The Holocrons of Fate”. Name comes from the Sith Holocron, and the “The Presence” entity living within it getting inside Ezra’s head and changing him, for the more aggressive and selfish, until he’s put right again – and Maul’s obsession with the knowledge it will give him for his own ends.

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Sidenote: the release order of Season 3 has the episode “An Inside Man” coming before “Visions and Voices” – but they should be reversed. At the briefing in VaV, they talk about the scouting mission to Lothal they’re planning and asking if Thrawn is there – but if the release order is correct then they should have already done that mission and they would know Thrawn is there because they just saw him in the flesh. So, I put VaV first and AIM second in my own watching order.

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ARC 08. “The Growing Rebellion” arc – 44 mins, episodes 3x03 “The Antilles Extraction” & 3x04 “Hera’s Heroes”. So, this is kind of a proxy-arc to be honest, like a marriage of convenience. The episodes are released back-to-back and are both part of the same arc that runs sporadically throughout the season, so putting them together is very simple – as is naming it what it is. But you don’t have to download it if you don’t want to and want to keep the episodes separate, so it’s all good.

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ARC 09. “Precarious Allies” arc – 44 mins, episodes 3x05 “The Last Battle” & 3x06 “Imperial Supercommandos”. In TLB, the Ghost crew acquires the Phantom II, and in IMSU, Hera mentions to be careful with it because “they just got it” – so it makes sense that’s the first mission since getting it. This makes it another “proxy-arc” in a sense, this time: it’s clear the episodes happen one after the other, but it’s also clear they don’t have a lot in common theme or story-wise. Again – you don’t have to download it if you don’t want to, so if you want to keep the episodes separate, that’s good. Name comes from the battle droids and Fenn Rau/the Mandalorian Protectors – they’re situational allies working for convenience, but they still live to fight another day, despite the lack of choice and/or trust.

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*Sidenote: Truthfully, I’ve not really liked the first arc of this season. It makes more sense to me that VaV takes place immediately after THoF – because of what Maul wants and the urgency with which he seems to want it, why Would he hang around elsewhere for any reason first? Maybe take a week to gather yourself and collect your thoughts, but not half a season’s worth? The problem is THoF begins with Kanan and Ezra apart from everyone, and no other episode in the season ends with them like that, so putting them seamlessly together isn’t easy – the closest is ‘An Inside Man’, but Chopper’s there.

I think ideally, if I could ‘invent’ another story arc like I did for “Castle of Treachery” in TCW, I would have ‘An Inside Man’ followed by THoF & VaV back-to-back as a “mid-season finale trilogy”. It sounds like a good idea as you get a scouting trip to Lothal, when Lothal and the planned attack is a consistent theme throughout the season, and attention on the last/most climactic story of the previous season, in a way that all kind of naturally flows and works well. Ultimately, having it in its current state is the best by default: going from Kanan and Ezra alone on Atollon talking about the Sith Holocron transitioning to them alone talking about the Sith Holocron on the Rebel frigate bridge works well enough as is.*

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ARC 10. “Ghosts of Geonosis” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 3x12 & 3x13 “Ghosts of Geonosis, Parts 1&2”. Name is this for very obvious reasons.

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ARC 11. “Imperial Mandalore” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 3x15 “Trials of the Darksaber” & 3x16 “Legacy of Mandalore”. Name feels very straightforward with this, but I did make a small change to the story. Sabine seems to have too many skills and accomplishments at just 16 (blades, blasters, explosives AND piloting, AND beskar reforging for her 500yo armour, AND ship/tech repairs/inventing and so on….so I kind of cut it back a bit. Now when Kanan offers the Darksaber to Sabine, she mentions she IS proficient [with a blade] but immediately cuts to the Darksaber being a lightsaber – so it’s different and it’s a different ballgame to train with and master with practice. This feels better – the conversation is kept on that one kind of weapon in front of them, and now it’s like she’s aware that she’s still a novice at some things and she’ll have to work for a good understanding and handle on a blade like THIS.

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ARC 12. “Zero Hour” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 3x21 & 3x22 “Zero Hour, Parts 1&2”. Name is for very obvious reasons again.

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Season 4:

ARC 13. “Heroes of Mandalore” – 43 mins, episodes: 4x01-02 “Heroes of Mandalore, Parts 1&2”. Name is for very obvious reasons again.

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ARC 14. “In the Name of The Rebellion” – 43 mins, episodes 4x03-04 “In the Name of The Rebellion, Parts 1&2”. Name is for very obvious reasons again and I made some changes. Using the relay rather than destroying it is the better plan, tactically and logically present and future – so now Sabine no longer makes moves to destroy it when the plan goes awry, now it’s more like they’re sticking to the better original plan before Saw shows. Also, Saw’s speech to Ezra and Sabine after he stuns them is gone – because he just stunned them, so they can’t hear him, so why say it over their unconscious bodies?

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Sidenote: I’ve often headcanoned that having this final season would be better at 22 episodes rather than 16, especially with the story before Lothal probably being better at 8 episodes so it’s an even 1/3 before Lothal and 2/3 on the surface. These extra 4 episodes before Lothal could have been 2 more double-episode arcs or a single 4-episode one or whatever – numerous things from earlier in the show that were left open-ended were not all addressed in the end, so this would have been a good chance to tie everything up. Things like the Wookiees from the pilot episode, Saw Gererra seeing Ezra again as he said (it’s sci-fi, if they say something will happen, it WILL – doesn’t matter how long it takes or how unbelievably convoluted the explanation is, it does happen). The latter could possibly explain the injuries he has in ‘Rogue One’, as this was close to that in the timeline and released before ‘Andor’, but the other show’s second season could end up showing it instead, so it’s all good.

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ARC 15. “The Liberation of Lothal: Part I – Demonstrations of Will” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes 4x05 “The Occupation”, 4x06 “Flight of The Defender” & 4x07 “Kindred”. Name is a reference to several things in the three episodes: the Rebels’ will to go to ground on Lothal and free the planet in TO, the TIE Defender’s flight (and unplanned combat) test in FoTD, and the Loth-Wolves helping the heroes in a way that sort of demonstrates the “will” of Lothal being with them to help them against the enemy.

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Sidenote: it strikes me that this part of the season would also have been useful to pad out here to 22 episodes instead of 16. At the end of “Kindred” they get to the south hemisphere of Lothal and it’s just them and the clothes on their backs, then at the beginning of the very next episode “Crawler Commandeers”, suddenly they have allies, crates of supplies to make an outpost, if not a small base. So where and when did that come from? Even if it was a small side-story for 2 episodes, it would have been good to tie things into Season 3 by explaining those people and resources are Morad Sumar’s from his early efforts against The Empire on Lothal while Phoenix Group were offworld possibly.

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ARC 16. “The Liberation of Lothal: Part II – Attack and Ascension” – 1hr 27mins, episodes: 4x08-11 “Crawler Commandeers”, “Rebel Assault”, “Jedi Night” & “DUME”. Name is from the first two episodes leading up to and centring on the Rebels’ attack on the Lothal industrial complex – on the Yavin end and the Lothal ground-crew end – and the fact JN & DM were released on the same day, and were originally going to be titled “Ascension” parts 1&2 (https://www.starwars.com/series/star-wars-rebels/a-world-between-worlds-episode-guide). I also added a white-grey funerary coloured credits for this arc for the edit text at the end, to go with the themes of loss of Kanan and the credits of those released episodes.

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ARC 17. “The Liberation of Lothal: Part III – Past, Present and Future” – 45 mins, episodes: 4x12 “Wolves and a Door” & 4x13 “A World Between Worlds”. Name is from the fact these two episodes were originally planned to be a single instalment under this name, before being split into two episodes – and, again, released on the same day (https://www.starwars.com/series/star-wars-rebels/a-world-between-worlds-episode-guide), so keeping it as a dedicated two-parter makes good sense to me. One thing I did do was take out Kanan’s force-ghost appearing – it’s a touching moment, but we just see Kanan die, then we see him as the DUME wolf, then we see him as a ghost, then we see him again through the WBW. Surely a death packs more of a punch and has more meaning if it’s seen and then not immediately ‘unseen’ in a sense? In the Loth-Wolf it’s good because it ties into the planet and the Force on Lothal, and in WBW we see him again as his final lesson to Ezra about letting go. So those two are kept, but the force-ghost feels like it needs to go, we see and hear a lot about his relationship with Hera in the remaining episodes with the Kalikori or Jacen and such anyway.

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ARC 18. “The Liberation of Lothal: Part IV – All Paths Come Together” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes: 4x14-16 “A Fool’s Hope” & “Family Reunion, and Farewell”. Name is from Kanan’s line to Ezra “All paths are coming together now” from the episode ‘Kindred’, which Ezra reiterates in ‘Flight of The Defender’ – it feels very relevant to the season, and to the last story of the entire show where all the fates get tied up, story threads finish and everything comes to a close.

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No 19. Epilogue: “5 ABY – Finally Free”– 3 mins, the last few minutes of the Season 4 episode “Family Reunion, and Farewell”. Name is from the state of Lothal in the epilogue – they fought hard against The Empire and won their freedom, and they’re still enjoying it years later as they should. Again, separated to keep it self-contained on the timeline, and currently lives neatly between my 4ABY and 6ABY Tusken episodes of my edit of “The Book of Boba Fett”.#

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That was not as long as the TCW’08 post, thankfully.

It’s a Mega link like everything else.

Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A big project that took up most of September ’22 and was a bit of a pain to re-consolidate now, but hey ho. I took it upon myself to take all of the dedicated two-, three- and four-episode stories and knit them all together into larger stories sans the newsreel style opening for all but the first episodes – with one five-episode ‘mega-arc’ of sorts. (This will be a long post).
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Like my edits of “Andor” and “Tales of The Jedi”, I always found that having every deliberate story arc self-contained as its own thing makes the story much easier to digest. I’ve also found it makes things much smoother when it’s from episodes that belong together but come from different seasons of the show.
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I’ve got the names of the arcs from this source here: (https://clonewars.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Star_Wars:_The_Clone_Wars_arcs) and kept most of them, but did use my own names for some of them, namely the ones centred on giant battles. Also, I put it in the sequence dictated here, which also explains the gaps between the arcs where the standalone episodes lie: (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_canon_media?so=search#js). Thirdly, because of my tendency to be ridiculously thorough, I’ve included placeholder images and story reels from the “Clone Wars Legacy” project that details what story arcs we missed out on with Lucasfilm being bought by Disney and the ‘Clone Wars’ being subsequently cancelled. The reels themselves are usually very short and the animation’s topology is typically very ‘rough and ready’ as you’d expect, but it does give us some idea on what we could have got in the show’s complete 8 season plan (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Clone_Wars_Legacy).
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ARC 01. “CW’03 Canon Edit part 1 – Volumes of Chaos” – 1hr 19mins, these 720p source videos are from the YouTuber “Star Wars Jibaro” in 2017, where they edited the original 2003 “Clone Wars” series mini-sodes together in a way that I think works very well with the 2008 one. With this, I actually took the first 2 episodes they did and knitted them together – but I put in a large segue in the middle, like the famous Mace Windu on Dantooine episodes and the ones on Ilum to give more characters more things to do like Padmé and Yoda and Luminara etc.
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ARC 02a. “Capture of Christophsis” – 43 mins, episodes: 2x16 “Cat and Mouse” & 1x16 “The Hidden Enemy” and then the Star Wars the Clone Wars Movie – 1hr 38mins, which I called “The New Padawan” here, after the original episode the first quarter of the film is based on/made from.
ARC 02b. “Capture of Christophsis [Extended] – 1hr 6mins, episodes: 2x16 “Cat and Mouse”, 1x16 “The Hidden Enemy”, the first ¼ of the Clone Wars movie, minus the Jabba’s son portions so it’s all a self-contained story on the battle itself. And then the “Castle of Treachery” arc, which I actually invented and am pretty proud of, from the remaining ¾ of the movie – 1hr 16mins - based on the planned episodes “Castle of Deception”, “Castle of Doom” & “Castle of Salvation”, with the portions from earlier now edited in seamlessly here instead, so it’s all a self-contained story about Jabba’s son.
(.) Because everything from “Cat and Mouse” to the end of the film is essentially one long unbroken chain of events, having it all together kind of crossed my mind, but pulling it off seems quite difficult. The Jabba’s son exposition at the start of the film seems too important not to include and frame the story but having it and then 40 minutes of Christophsis build-up first will probably be far too much of a drag. But if you have the C&M exposition at the start like you normally would, the movie’s story feels a little jarringly put in and transitions over a little clumsily so it doesn’t really work either. But I have two solutions for you, so just download whichever you like and think works better for you.
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ARC 03. “New Alliances” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 3x03 “Supply Lines” & 1x01: “Ambush”.
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ARC 04. “The Malevolence” arc – 1hr 8mins, episodes: 1x02-04 “Rising”, “Shadow of” and “Destroy” Malevolence.
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ARC 05. “R3-S6” arc – 43 mins, episodes: 1x06 “Downfall of a Droid” & 1x07 “Duel of the Droids”.
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ARC 06. “Nute Gunray” arc – 1hr 6mins, episodes 1x08 “Bombad Jedi”, 1x09 “Cloak of Darkness” and 1x10 “Lair of Grievous”.
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ARC 07. “Trouble on Florrum” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 1x11 “Dooku Captured” & 1x12 “The Gungan General”.

ARC 08. “Injured in Action” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 1x13 “Jedi Crash” & 1x14 “Defenders of Peace”.
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ARC 09. “Blue Shadow Virus” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 1x17 “Blue Shadow Virus” & 1x18 “Mystery of a Thousand Moons”.
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ARC 10. “The War for Ryloth” – 1hr 10mins, episodes: 1x19-21 “Storm over”, “Innocents of” & “Liberty on” Ryloth.
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ARC 11. “Magic of The Holocron” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes 2x01-03 “Holocron Heist”, “Cargo of Doom” & “Children of the Force”. Because the opening of CoTF actually goes back a minute from the ending of CoD and they kind of play off of each other – so I essentially took the beginning of the former, ending of the latter, and created my own bridge between the two episodes to make it work that way.
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ARC 12. “Attack of The Zillo Beast” arc – 44 mins, episodes 2x18 “The Zillo Beast” & 2x19 “The Zillo Beast Strikes Back”.
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ARC 13. The Second Battle of Geonosis – 1hr 47mins, the single mega-arc, episodes: 2x04-08 “Senate Spy”, “Landing at Point Rain”, “Weapons Factory”, “Legacy of Terror” & “Brain Invaders”.
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ARC 14. “Saleucami” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 2x09 “Grievous Intrigue” & 2x10 “The Deserter”.
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ARC 15. “The Death Watch” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes: 2x12-14 “The Mandalore Plot”, Voyage of Temptation” & “Duchess of Mandalore”.
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ARC 16. “Boba’s Revenge” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes: 2x20-22 “Death Trap”, “R2 Come Home” & “Lethal Trackdown”.
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ARC 17. “Return to Mandalore” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 3x05 “Corruption” & 3x06 “The Academy”.
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ARC 18. “Hutts and The Underworld” arc – 1hr 3mins, episodes 3x08 “Evil Plans”, 1x22 “Hostage Crisis” & 3x09 “Hunt for Ziro”.
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ARC 19a. “CW’03 Canon Edit part 2 – The Final Trial” – 23 mins, the work of YouTuber “Star Wars Jibaro” again and this time left unaltered as it fits perfectly well with everything canon.
ARC 19b. Tales of The Jedi – “Practice makes Perfect” – 11mins, a cutout from my previous edit and because it goes from Phase 1 clones to Phase 2 to the Clone Wars finale, it feels like having it as a kind of transition episode works very well, especially when it comes to Anakin & Ahsoka’s outfits before and after the Season 3 animation boom.
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ARC 20. “Padmé Amidala” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 3x10 “Heroes on Both Sides” & 3x11 “Pursuit of Peace”.
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ARC 21. “Witches and Monsters” arc – 1hr 5mins, episodes: 3x12 “Nightsisters”, 3x13 “Monster” & 3x14 “Witches of the Mist”.
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ARC 22. “Secrets of Mortis” arc – 1hr 4mins, episodes: 3x15-17 “Overlords”, “Altar of” & “Ghosts of” Mortis.
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ARC 23. “Rescue at The Citadel” arc – 1hr 4mins, episodes: 3x18-20 “The Citadel”, “Counterattack” & “Citadel Rescue”.
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ARC 24. “The Lost Apprentice” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 3x21 “Padawan Lost” & “Wookiee Hunt”.
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ARC 25. The Attack on Mon Calamari - 1hr 4mins, episodes: 4x01-03 “Water War”, “Gungan Attack” & “Prisoners”.
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ARC 26. “Droids’ Detour” arc – 44 mins, episodes: 4x05 “Mercy Mission” & 4x06 “Nomad Droids”.
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ARC 27. The Umbaran Campaign – 1hr 26mins, episodes: 4x07-10 “Darkness on Umbara”, “The General”, “Plan of Dissent” & “Carnage of Krell”.
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ARC 28. “The Slaves of Zygerria” arc – 1hr 4mins, episodes: 4x11-13 “Kidnapped”, “Slaves of the Republic” & “Escape from Kadavo”.
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ARC 29. “Obi-Wan Undercover” arc – 1hr 25mins, episodes: 4x15-18 “Deception”, Friends and Enemies”, “The Box” & “Crisis on Naboo”.
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ARC 30. “Darth Maul Returns” arc – 1hr 25mins, episodes: 4x19-22 “Massacre”, “Bounty”, “Brothers” & “Revenge”.
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ARC 31. Civil War on Onderon – 1hr 25mins, episodes: 5x02-05 “A War on Two Fronts”, “Front Runners”, “The Soft War”, “Tipping Points”.
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ARC 32. The Invasion of Scipio – 1hr 4mins, these episodes appeared in the trailer for Season 5, and the continuity states it was supposed to start at episode 5 of season 5, so putting it after Onderon feels like a good fit as it is (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/An_Old_Friend#Continuity). Episodes: “An Old Friend”, “The Rise of Clovis”, “Crisis at the Heart”.
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ARC 33. “Young Jedi” arc – 1hr 26mins, episodes: 5x06-09 “The Gathering”, “A Test of Strength”, “Bound for Rescue”, “A Necessary Bond”.
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ARC 34. “D-Squad” arc – 1hr 25mins, episodes: 5x10-13 “Secret Weapons”, “A Sunny Day in the Void”, “Missing in Action”, “Point of No Return”.
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ARC 35. “The Shadow Collective” arc – 1hr 26mins, episodes: 5x01 “Revival”, 5x14-16 “Eminence”, “Shades of Reason” & “The Lawless”.
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ARC 36. “Rogue Jedi” arc – 1hr 25mins, episodes: 5x17-20 “Sabotage”, “The Jedi Who Knew Too Much”, “To Catch a Jedi” & “The Wrong Jedi”.
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ARC 37. “Clone Protocol 66” arc – 1hr 25mins, a story arc from the sixth season but the production codes give the impression it might have been intended to be in the middle of the original Season 6 plan, not the start as we got it. Episodes: “The Unknown”, “Conspiracy”, “Fugitive” & “Orders”.
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ARC 38. “The Disappeared” arc – 41 mins, production codes indicate it also belongs to the original Season 6 and takes place after ‘Clone Protocol 66’ like the released season. Episodes; “The Disappeared, Parts 1&2”.
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ARC 39. “Yoda and The Voices” arc – 1hr 25mins, production codes indicate it takes place right after ‘The Disappeared’. Episodes: “The Lost One”, “Voices”, “Destiny” & “Sacrifice”.
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ARC 40. “Crystal Crisis on Utapau” arc – 1hr 27mins, the 4 unfinished episodes that I simply stitched together just like the rest of the story arcs here with the same Iris Circle transition for the original episodes going into the credits, with the same number of frames as the transitions I’ve put between the episodes. Episodes are: “A Death on Utapau”, “In Search of the Crystal”, “Crystal Crisis” & “The Big Bang”.
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The Order from here-on gets a little messy, but between the order as it’s laid out in at the source here (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Clone_Wars_Legacy#Unfinished_episodes) and with other details like confirmation what season it was supposed to air in, or the production codes giving clues to where they would go in relation to other episodes, there’s a fair idea of what might go where.
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ARC 41. “Bounty Hunter” arc story reels – 4 mins reels, supposed to be a four episode arc that would have centred on Boba Fett and Cad Bane – Jango would have been a prominent figure in the story through Bane’s old working relationship with him and Boba acquiring and repainting his armour – ending with a gunslinging standoff that resulted in Boba acquiring the trademark dent on his helmet from Bane.
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ARC 42. “Ahsoka’s Walkabout” arc – 8 mins reels & 1hr 26mins episodes, the (probably) final arc of the show’s planned sixth season. The original story reel of the first episode shows Ahsoka’s original post-temple outfit and the character of Nyx Okami who was supposed to own the garage she crashed into with her busted speeder bike. The released arc with the Martez sisters is made of the episodes: “Gone with a Trace”, “Deal No Deal”, “Dangerous Debt” & “Together Again”.
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ARC 43. The Battle for Anaxes – 1hr 25mins, the originally planned opening for the show’s seventh season. Episodes; “The Bad Batch”, “A Distant Echo”, “On the Wings of Keeradaks” & “Unfinished Business”.
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ARC 44. “Dark Disciple” part 1 story reels – 2 mins, based on the first half of the 8-episode arc. The production codes are across two seasons, which makes sense because 8 episodes in a single go feels like it might drag like hell. The reels here are probably based on an episode scene from either “Lethal Alliance”, “The Mission”, “Conspirators” or “Dark Disciple”.
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ARC 45. “Return to the Jedi Temple” arc – merely a placeholding patterned image, no reels exist that I’ve ever seen.
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ARC 46. “Son of Dathomir” arc motion comic – 41 mins, available on the YouTube channel “The Lore Master” – and is assumedly their work because it’s not mine. The motion comic is based on the four-part comic book series, that was in turn based on the animated episodes “The Enemy of My Enemy”, “A Tale of Two Apprentices”, “Proxy War” & “Showdown on Dathomir”.
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ARC 47. “R2 and Rex ‘Top Gun’” arc – merely a placeholding patterned image, no reels exist that I’ve ever seen.
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ARC 48. “Dark Disciple” part 2 story reels – 1 min, based on one of the episodes from the second half of this giant story: “Saving Vos Part I”, “Saving Vos Part II”, “Traitor” or “The Path”. Production codes are the earliest for the final season, indicating this might have been the opening arc for the originally planned season 8.
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ARC 49. “Yuuzhan Vong ‘X-Files’” arc – merely a placeholding patterned image, no reels exist that I’ve ever seen.
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ARC 50. “Bad Batch arc 2: Kashyyyk” story reels – 2 mins, sort of a prelude to the “Bad Batch” episode ‘Tribe’ and featuring Yoda to give credence to his line in RoTS about having good relations with the Wookiees.
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ARC 51. “Return to Mon Cala” arc – merely a placeholding patterned image, no reels exist that I’ve ever seen.
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ARC 52a. “CW’03 Canon Edit part 3 – The Labyrinth of Evil” – 26 mins, the epilogue of “Star Wars Jibaro”’s work. Because these edits from them are from 2017, they obviously pre-date the released final season of The Clone Wars in 2020, so I did make changes to this one as well as the first two – in the original 2003 episodes, Anakin and Obi-Wan learn of the attack on Coruscant together and head off, but now in the new Canon, Obi-Wan learns on his own while Anakin is speaking with Ahsoka. So I took the former scene out of the original series, to maintain consistency with the ‘Siege of Mandalore’ arc.
ARC 52b. The Siege of Mandalore – 1hr 34mins, the final arc of the Clone Wars’ planned eighth season, and the series at large, with the production codes 7.21-7.24. Based on the episodes “Old Friends Not Forgotten”, “The Phantom Apprentice”, “Shattered” & “Victory and Death”. This omits the Darth Vader sequence, poignant as it is, since separating it keeps things self-contained in the timeline. Also, I kept it consistent with the other arcs by using the intro from the season 4 episode ‘Deception’: “All warfare is based on deception” at the beginning. It feels very apt with Palpatine starting the war from both sides, setting Dooku up to fail and die so Anakin could take his place, having the Clones be sleeper agents against the Jedi and old regime which no one but him and Tyranus knew about, having his plans for The Empire already in motion for years and the Death Star plans since Geonosis in AoTC, etc.
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Epilogue – “Darkness in The Snow” – 3 mins, something separated to maybe tack onto the season 3 finale of ‘The Bad Batch’ if it’s appropriate and fits well, like if there are Imperial Stormtroopers officially shown on screen.
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That was very long, as I lead with, sorry about that.
It’s a Mega link like everything else.
Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

Sort of a companion piece to a companion piece in a sense.
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I decided to upload the edits of ToTJ that I did late last October to go with the ones I already uploaded along with the ToTJ cut of ‘The Phantom Menace’ I uploaded recently (https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/A-New-Hope-SC-38-Reimagined-and-The-Phantom-Menance-Tales-of-the-Jedi-cuts/id/113272). Both of these take all three episodes of that respective character and put them into one long episode - with time jumps made abundantly clear for story cohesion.
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“Ahsoka - The First Steps” - 39mins. All three episodes of the Ahsoka portion of the miniseries together in one long episode.

The name feels apt in all 3 stories I think. “Life and Death” has her take her first steps in a very literal sense given baby-soka’s age, and her first steps as a Force-Wielder with her taming/calming the Raxshir creature. “Practice Makes Perfect” sees her taking her first steps in doing and looking at things in the more Anakin-like and less conventional sense, rather than the things the Jedi Order officially do and prioritise, which ends up saving her life at the end of The War. Lastly, “Resolve” has her taking her first steps in the new order of The Galaxy when the Republic falls and the Empire takes its place, also her first moves against the new enemies that hunt those like her in this new era: The Inquisitors.

(I don’t have any intentions of doing a ‘ToTJ Cut’ of ‘Revenge of The Sith’ that incorporates “Resolve” at the moment for a few reasons - one is that I’m not sure it’ll fit as well as “The Sith Lord” did into ‘The Phantom Menace’ for Dooku. Like; the funeral would go from live action to animation in the sameish scene, which would probably be more jarring than before - and the business with the Inquisitor on the farm would probably only work as a post-credits thing after all of the actual Skywalker things are said and done. But because that half of the episode is just shy of 10 minutes, it would probably feel like a very LONG sequence at the end of the credits and might come off like it’s just dragging too much, so it might not work in that way either.)
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"Dooku - The Lost Faith” [Extended] - 40 mins. The same as the companion piece to the ToTJ cut of The Phantom Menace I uploaded recently but with the last episode “The Sith Lord” added on. This way, you get the entire story of that half of the season in a way that’s all self-contained on animated Dooku start to finish, hopefully making the whole Dooku story more straightforward.

The name comes from Dooku’s disillusionment with the Republic at large in “Justice”, that and the Jedi Order in “Choices”, and his ultimate breaking point after a devastating personal loss in “The Sith Lord” after his warnings on the failings of both things went unheeded for years.
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I put these in the same folder as mu last upload, so it’s all neatly put into one place. Also, because the runtime of each of the finished compilations beats 41 minutes, the total file size of each doesn’t go over 3.40GB - which is a good change from the other edits I’ve put up.
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Because it’s in the same folder as another upload, it’s another Mega link as you’d expect
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

The extra version of ‘A New Hope’ was a very simple and straightforward edit I did around the same time as my usual 1997 edit in December of 2022, and the extra version of ‘The Phantom Menace’ was done in March of this year.
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Both of these extra pieces of content do add something good to the existing story in my opinion, especially when you rewatch them now with the extra context of stories that were released afterwards that help to augment things.

I decided to add a little companion piece to the latter film where I added my edit of the first two Dooku episodes of ‘Tales of The Jedi’ from October 2022, so the whole extra story with Dooku is there.
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Episode IV: “A New Hope”, SC38 Reimagined – 2hrs6mins. My 1997 Special Edition version of ANH with the “FXitinPost” video available on YouTube implemented into the Death Star duel between Old Ben and Darth Vader at the 1:29:34 mark. This always felt better as it’s more like two old ‘warriors’ fighting instead of two random old dudes – and they’ve actually kept themselves good and sharp throughout the years like they logically should have done: Old Ben to make sure he’s in a good place to train Luke, and maybe Leia, properly in the first place – and Vader making sure he stays useful and remains in Palpatine’s favour despite the many hindrances from Mustafar and his suit for 20 years, so he isn’t supplanted and cast aside by another Darksider.
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Episode I: “The Phantom Menace”, ToTJ Cut – 2hrs27mins. My Theatrical Cut of TPM with the last Dooku episode of the first season of Tales of The Jedi, “The Sith Lord” implemented in at two parts of the film. Luckily that episode is split into two parts as well, so that’s good and easy.

The first part of the animated episode features Qui-Gon away from Obi-Wan while discussing what he just told the council about what he discovered on Tatooine to Yaddle, so it felt natural to put it after that council meeting. I put it between Padmé and Palpatine at the Senate and Anakin’s test by the council, lasting from the 1:26:06 mark to 1:30:52. The animation starts from the outside of the Jedi temple before going in, and the sequence with Padme is an important plot point – so addressing that first is a good idea – and it taking you away to another location makes segueing back to the Temple exterior very seamless.

The second part of the animated episode deals with Dooku and Yaddle following Qui-Gon’s death on Naboo – but the transition from that death to the next scene in the film has Palpatine on Naboo straight away, so it can’t really go anywhere else. So it goes like: the duel on Naboo and Qui-Gon’s death at 2:06:38 – The duel on Coruscant and Yaddle’s death – Palpatine’s arrival on Naboo where he meets Anakin at 2:16:06 and onwards. Luckily the death of Qui-Gon going right to Dooku and Yaddle immediately talking about the death of Qui-Gon also works very seamlessly, as before.

I was a little concerned about jumping from live action to 3D animation repeatedly throughout the story, but it actually doesn’t jar as much as I thought it did, and the story does feel that much better and richer for it with this little Dooku backoor.
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Tales of The Jedi: “Dooku – The Lost Faith” – 26mins. I decided to incorporate “Justice” and “Choices” together into one story, as they’re both very short apart and they run along the same theme so they feel like they belong together well: Dooku’s growing dissatisfaction with the senate, the Jedi and how those two things mesh together. I did my usual thing of using a time headcanon to help anchor the story, but since the official timeframe hasn’t been added by the source at Lucas, I kind of had to guess.
“Justice” - says ‘between 68BBY and 58BBY’ - Qui-Gon’s voice actor is 27, so that-aged Qui-Gon would make it 53BBY so that fits, and it was at least 42BBY when he was on Mandalore protecting Duchess Satine with Obi-Wan present, and the two of them developing feelings for one another - that fits too. Basing it in 53BBY as an estimate before more specific information comes along to contradict it seems possible and perfectly acceptable.

“Choices” - says ‘between 50BBY and 42BBY’ - it’s before Mace Windu was on the Jedi council so it obviously precedes The Phantom Menace, there’s no specified date regarding Master Katri’s death or that of any others who die in the episode like Senator Larik, so that doesn’t help. Qui-Gon is no longer here - it’s possible he’s taken Obi-Wan as a padawan now and is training him which explains his absence - which canonically began in 44BBY. Basing it in 43BBY meets in the middle of the 42BBY time limit and the 44BBY of Qui-Gon definitely being too busy to still appear at Dooku’s side - as well as being a round 10 years after the assumed time of “Justice” in 53BBY. Therefore, basing it in 43BBY as an estimate before more specific information comes along to contradict it seems possible and perfectly acceptable also, like above.
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Because these are whole films, these are very large again – around the same file size as the original uploads I did before, if not a little longer because of the added extra content of course. Aside from the ToTJ companion piece, the films are around 10GB and 20GB apiece again – just something to keep in mind before you try and download them.
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It’s a Mega link like the rest again
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

That’s definitely interesting imo, some of the prequels were a bit "Hobbit"ised with the scene having a CGI-heavy look to it that kind of ruined things, especially in the first two where CGI was more expensive and harder to render at a higher level

Will be interested when finished

I took it upon myself to reclaim some of my childhood somewhat by getting back the specific versions of the original two Star Wars trilogies I used to watch again and again on VHS and some DVD. Though finding them myself online in any measure of good quality always seemed to be very difficult, so I admittedly had a bit of a Thanos moment and said “Fine, I’ll do it myself”.

I saw ‘The Phantom Menace’ in the cinema when I was nearly 5 years old (I still remember the weird “Midichlorian count” line visual glitch) and used to watch it on its VHS release, ‘Attack of the Clones’ on VHS and DVD shortly afterwards, ‘Revenge of the Sith’ in cinema and DVD, and the Original Trilogy in the 1997 special edition VHS tapes in the special gold and black box.
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I did this because I’ve viewed all the subsequent releases as kind of the same: some of the changes were better than others, and others did feel more warranted than others in all fairness. But, despite that, I always found myself barely watching them on DVD or Blu-Ray because it just wasn’t the same, and they just weren’t clicking in my head the same way as before when I used to watch and really enjoy them when I was younger.

I used the Blu-Ray as a source for the prequels, and the ‘Despecialized’ editions for the Originals. These were opposite ends of the spectrum; the Blu-Ray had changes added to it from itself and carried over from the DVD before so I had a lot of things to take away to get it right – and the Despecialized’s had no changes at all post-1983, so I had a lot of things to add to get it right.
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July/August 2022 – Episode 1: 2hrs13mins. The droideka encounter screen with the Viceroy and ‘Force-Speed’ effects are in their old state, the podrace and starting grid sequence is shortened to its original length, I took away the air taxi on Coruscant so it’s back to the original skyscraper transition from the landing platform to Palpatine’s apartment, puppet Yoda returns in the temple and Naboo, the chants of “Vote Now!” in the senate after Padmé moves for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum.
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January 2023 – Episode 2: 2hrs23mins. I rearranged the scene through the power couplings during the Zam Wessell chase on Coruscant, took Shmi’s lines out of Anakin’s nightmare (actually a shame, it does feel like it adds things and makes it better), and corrected the drawn out scenes on Geonosis with Dooku escaping – both visually and in that scene’s music.
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January 2023 – Episode 3: 2hrs20mins. Thankfully very few changes this time. I changed the transition from Obi-Wan pensive after Mustafar to Anakin’s remaining hand clawing himself up on the lava shore and knew I needed to change the appearance of the hut structure on Kashyyyk where Yoda has his long-range briefing with the Jedi Council about General Grievous on Utapau. But finding a high-res clip of the structure as it appeared before the Blu-Ray was very difficult, so I kind of had to leave the DVD clip in – it’s not perfect but thankfully it only lasts a few seconds, so it’s a good placeholder until a better-quality clip of the same hut scene emerges and I can insert that later.
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December 2022 – Episode 4: 2hrs5mins. Using the despecialised version of the film as the base, I added special effects from the Blu-Ray that were in the 1997 editions (mostly the scenes with lots of VFX throughout, like those in space), but not all of them to make sure I omitted the ones from the 2004 special edition DVD and the Blu-Ray ones that most people felt were just unnecessary. Greedo shoots first (sorry), ugly Jabba appears (sorry), audio is updated from the Blu-Ray version and imposed over the despecialised footage in some places like the Tusken attack, Obi-Wan’s dragon call, movement in the trash compactor etc.
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Episode 5: 2hrs7mins. I didn’t do anything with this as this is not mine – this is actually the fan restoration that was completed by the editor “Adywan” that I was lucky enough to find Spring last year, so all credit there goes to them and not me as it’s all their good work.
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December 2022 – Episode 6: 2hrs15mins. Principle of this was the same as the ‘New Hope’ project with it having the despecialised version as the base and the cutting and pasting different sources in certain scenes, usually in the VFX-heavy space scenes. The Sarlaac has a beak again, the lightsaber blades cross into each other when Luke tries to kill the Emperor, the ending celebration doesn’t include Theed or the old Jedi Temple or Senate Office Building on Coruscant, Sebastian Shaw’s Anakin ghost appears.
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As with my work on ‘Andor’ season 1, the size and source quality of the original files means the file size of each of my exports are all on the larger side. Especially with the despecialised versions of the original films being around 20GB each in their own right, each film I’ve put out here is around 10-18GB – just to consider before you download.
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It’s a Mega link like the rest again
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

A very simple and straightforward edit I periodically visited from September to December of 2022, around other edits I was doing at the time.
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I did this because it was clear the show was split into four dedicated story arcs – I’m fairly certain they announced and explained this before the show was even released. All I had to do was put the episodes in the right groups, and when I rewatched the series in one go via these giant mega-sodes, I can confirm the story was much more straightforward, leaner, easily memorable and tighter overall.

This four-part project was very simple since I just had to cut the credits off of two episodes, cut the introduction off of two others and paste them together four times over by merging them with maybe a second’s overlap to blend the different sound and video sources properly. There there were some other changes I made too; I preferred the series’ original logo than the one we got in the later posters and streamed episodes so I used that instead, I wanted each mega-sode to have a different introductory motif in the music and I changed the dynamic of Syril Karn and Dedra Meero.
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Arc 1: “The Man from Kenari” – 1hr44mins, all of the first three episodes “Kassa”, “That Would Be Me” and “Reckoning” all merged together. Nothing about this was changed, it uses the theme music from the first episode which is the standard theme of the series and there are no extra annotations. I chose that title because the first quarter of the season deals with Cassian the man: Morlana crime investigation suspect, Ferrix community member, Imperial site robber, family to Maarva and B2EMO, and a potentially valuable asset to Luthen Rael.
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Arc 2: “The First Mission” – 2hrs7mins, all of the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes “Aldhani”, “The Axe Forgets” and “The Eye” combined. The introduction music is right from the fourth episode, so that conveniently didn’t need changing and is a more action-themed take on the initial theme music, that fits into the events of the next three episodes nicely. There is one change I made by adding an annotative prompt in one location: in the aftermath of the Aldhani heist, they see the doctor “Quadpaw” on the moon “Frezno” in a forgotten sector in the Galaxy – this wasn’t relayed to the audience in TE, so I tracked down the font they used in the series and put that extra detail in myself. I went for this title because the Imperial payroll heist is the first (that we know of) mission Cassian takes against the Empire as part of a larger movement, like we see him doing as a captain of the Rebel Alliance before his death, and as Luthen has his finger in a lot of pies of the scattered Rebel cells it puts Cassian’s foot in the door for working for the Rebellion directly.
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Arc 3: “The Sentence” – 2hrs15mins, the seventh, eighth and ninth episodes “Announcement”, “Narkina 5” and “Nobody’s Listening!” mingled into one. This mega-sode uses the musical theme of Episode 8 – because the notes sounded higher (almost clinical) and a little like they were half-played and distorted, so I found it suited the prison arc very well with that kind of off-putting and eerie environment. I did make one change to the story in this arc: when Syril goes to see Dedra outside the ISB headquarters building, all leads to any sort of relationship or romance is removed – now they just talk about Cassian and their senses of justice etc and that’s it. That particular thread felt like – best case scenario: it’s just not necessary because not every story needs to have a love story angle shoved in – worst case: Syril is projecting very clear home issues onto someone and is being not-very-subtly creepy about it or going about it well – that’s just my take on that burgeoning dynamic anyway.

I found a lot of reasons to call it “The Sentence”: Cassian in prison of course, Syril starting his slogging journey to redeem himself on Coruscant and Mon Mothma learning the uncomfortable price of getting her family’s money back in her hands with giving away her own daughter into a marriage arrangement with the son of someone she despises as the main three. But also, Palpatine through The Empire and Colonel Yularen sentencing the citizens of the Galaxy to tougher lives and conditions through the PORD, and Bix’s capture on Ferrix – and her captivity and treatment by Doctor Gorst which left her stuck in a catatonic state for refusing to share information.
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Arc 4: “The Rebellion” – 2hrs6mins, all of “One Way Out”, “Daughter of Ferrix” and “Rix Road” bringing it all to the end of the season. The musical motif during the theme this time is that of the final episode where all the music tracks come together in a kind of orchestra, no doubt parroting the funeral procession on the Ferrix streets. No changes have been made to the story of the last three episodes and I called it “The Rebellion” for a small number of reasons: it covers the prison riot and the uprising on Ferrix against the Empire as the most straightforward reasons, but also Cassian’s formal induction into Luthen’s network and the attack on Spellhaus – if Saw agreed to help Anto Kreegyr, the combined efforts of their Rebel cells would have been exactly like the activity we saw in ‘Rebels’ seasons 3 and 4, where the Alliance of Rebels work together to achieve their common goal against the Empire.
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Because of the length of these mega-sodes, and the fact I worked and exported them in 1080p as always, the file size on each of them is generally quite large – 9 to 12GB apiece – just something to keep in mind before you try and download them.
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It’s a Mega link like the rest again
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.

I took it upon myself to reclaim some of my childhood somewhat by getting back the specific versions of the original two Star Wars trilogies I used to watch again and again on VHS and some DVD. Though finding them myself online in any measure of good quality always seemed to be very difficult, so I admittedly had a bit of a Thanos moment and said “Fine, I’ll do it myself”.

I saw ‘The Phantom Menace’ in the cinema when I was nearly 5 years old (I still remember the weird “Midichlorian count” line visual glitch) and used to watch it on its VHS release, ‘Attack of the Clones’ on VHS and DVD shortly afterwards, ‘Revenge of the Sith’ in cinema and DVD, and the Original Trilogy in the 1997 special edition VHS tapes in the special gold and black box.
.
.
.
I did this because I’ve viewed all the subsequent releases as kind of the same: some of the changes were better than others, and others did feel more warranted than others in all fairness. But, despite that, I always found myself barely watching them on DVD or Blu-Ray because it just wasn’t the same, and they just weren’t clicking in my head the same way as before when I used to watch and really enjoy them when I was younger.

I used the Blu-Ray as a source for the prequels, and the ‘Despecialized’ editions for the Originals. These were opposite ends of the spectrum; the Blu-Ray had changes added to it from itself and carried over from the DVD before so I had a lot of things to take away to get it right – and the Despecialized’s had no changes at all post-1983, so I had a lot of things to add to get it right.
.
.
July/August 2022 – Episode 1: 2hrs13mins. The droideka encounter screen with the Viceroy and ‘Force-Speed’ effects are in their old state, the podrace and starting grid sequence is shortened to its original length, I took away the air taxi on Coruscant so it’s back to the original skyscraper transition from the landing platform to Palpatine’s apartment, puppet Yoda returns in the temple and Naboo, the chants of “Vote Now!” in the senate after Padmé moves for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum.
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January 2023 – Episode 2: 2hrs23mins. I rearranged the scene through the power couplings during the Zam Wessell chase on Coruscant, took Shmi’s lines out of Anakin’s nightmare (actually a shame, it does feel like it adds things and makes it better), and corrected the drawn out scenes on Geonosis with Dooku escaping – both visually and in that scene’s music.
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.
January 2023 – Episode 3: 2hrs20mins. Thankfully very few changes this time. I changed the transition from Obi-Wan pensive after Mustafar to Anakin’s remaining hand clawing himself up on the lava shore and knew I needed to change the appearance of the hut structure on Kashyyyk where Yoda has his long-range briefing with the Jedi Council about General Grievous on Utapau. But finding a high-res clip of the structure as it appeared before the Blu-Ray was very difficult, so I kind of had to leave the DVD clip in – it’s not perfect but thankfully it only lasts a few seconds, so it’s a good placeholder until a better-quality clip of the same hut scene emerges and I can insert that later.
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December 2022 – Episode 4: 2hrs5mins. Using the despecialised version of the film as the base, I added special effects from the Blu-Ray that were in the 1997 editions (mostly the scenes with lots of VFX throughout, like those in space), but not all of them to make sure I omitted the ones from the 2004 special edition DVD and the Blu-Ray ones that most people felt were just unnecessary. Greedo shoots first (sorry), ugly Jabba appears (sorry), audio is updated from the Blu-Ray version and imposed over the despecialised footage in some places like the Tusken attack, Obi-Wan’s dragon call, movement in the trash compactor etc.
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Episode 5: 2hrs7mins. I didn’t do anything with this as this is not mine – this is actually the fan restoration that was completed by the editor “Adywan” that I was lucky enough to find Spring last year, so all credit there goes to them and not me as it’s all their good work.
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December 2022 – Episode 6: 2hrs15mins. Principle of this was the same as the ‘New Hope’ project with it having the despecialised version as the base and the cutting and pasting different sources in certain scenes, usually in the VFX-heavy space scenes. The Sarlaac has a beak again, the lightsaber blades cross into each other when Luke tries to kill the Emperor, the ending celebration doesn’t include Theed or the old Jedi Temple or Senate Office Building on Coruscant, Sebastian Shaw’s Anakin ghost appears.
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As with my work on ‘Andor’ season 1, the size and source quality of the original files means the file size of each of my exports are all on the larger side. Especially with the despecialised versions of the original films being around 20GB each in their own right, each film I’ve put out here is around 10-18GB – just to consider before you download.
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It’s a Mega link like the rest again
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Footnote: I am in no capacity a professional editor or VFX artist, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.