TM2YC

Thrawn said:

I agree that Nute Gunray and his race are totally based on Japanese people... I kept expecting to hear one of the exclaim "Oh, no, it's Godzilla!", while pointing out of a window. But Watto is NOT modeled after a Jewish person... he's the stereotypical Arabic bazaar owner... Middle Eastern accent, a five o'clock shadow, and he keeps women as slaves.

Animator Rob Coleman admitted he drew inspiration from Alec Guinness' Fagin in David Lean's Oliver Twist for Watto (A portrayal by Sir Alec that had the film banned in Israel - Rightly or wrongly... wrongly IMO).

I love Watto. Probably my favourite PT character (Probably beacuse he has some!), sure he does say he loves "Only money" and deal in slaves but you can tell he's a softie at heart.

Just realised that Disney and Lucas are both responsible for a lot of the most ill-judged unintentionaly racist atrocities in film history:

http://www.chacha.com/gallery/5753/who-are-the-most-offensive-movie-characters

God knows what they could dream up together! The above article doesn't even cover the Ewoks sounding like Hindus and Disney's short films from the thirties.

Also factor in that ILM where part of the team beind the imfamous 'Mudflap and Skids' characters from Transformers 2 and you've got a recipe for disaster!

One good thing you can say about TPM is that it's prepared us all to not get too excited about Episode VII. Kinda like if you've been in one car crash, you might drive with a little more caution next time.

On the evidence so far, J.J.Abrams is a modestly talented Director with a taste for ludicrous scripts.  But as with Star Trek you didn't care so much about the huge plot holes because you were having so much fun with a cast of great characters.

If he can pull off 'characters' and 'fun' he's already doing better than the Lucas' last 3 efforts. I hope ST Into Darkness is damn good, otherwise it's gonna be a worrying couple of years.

But what worries me the most is that Disney signed up the original cast and set a release date the instant after Lucas sold them SW.  So basically the whole cast of elderly and now slighty rotund OT characters are going to be in VII whether Abrams can find a plausible reason for them being there or not.

Hamill had to be in VII. I think most of us have always imagined he'd be the new Obi-Wan figure running a reborn Jedi temple in VII.  Mark's age will actually add to the depth of the character and story. But I can't see any good reason for the rest of the cast to be there.  Plus you know Hamill's a fanboy like the rest of us and will bring his absolute A-game.

Hey Frink,

Uploadd this video I made a while back while editing AOTC:

http://vimeo.com/65479913

Thought it might appeal to your sense of SW humour. I used to have it on YouTube but they made me take it down.

TV's Frink said:

Removing credits....not cool IMO.

IMO also. Lots of crafts-people worked for those credits

The Nerd said:

So, I'm starting super edit of TPM. Here's a list of stuff I'm doing. If anybody has any ideas or questions, feel free to leave them in a comment.

Here's the list of a few things:

1. A new opening title crawl.
2. The Naboo invasion immediately starts after the title crawl. The Jedi arrive at the Federation Command Ship and then Sidious tells Nute Gunray to kill them.
3. NO F@%#ING JAR JAR!!! This is half true and half false. He will only take 6 lines and that is at the beginning. Other than that, he will be seen and not heard, all Gungan gags will be removed.
4. Only one Podrace lap. Most of all three laps will be included, but the scenes of them going threw the start\finish lines will be cut.
5. No Gungan vs Droid battle. The only battles will be the space battle, Jedi vs Sith and Padme & group vs Droids.
6. A few deleted scenes will be included to make up for some of the time for the cut Gungan scenes. These will be "Farewell To Jira", "Dawn Before The Podrace", and "Anakin Scruffles With Greedo", as well as a few cut shots that can be seen in the trailers, like this one: http://www.theforce.net/episode1/newspics/cut_naboo_fighter_hit.jpg
7. The lightsaber duel will be re-edited to be even faster and fiercer. As well as the battle sequences rearranged.
8. No more talk of there damn midi-chlorians. Didn't Tarkin call the Force a religion. As a matter of face, I have Tarkin sitting right next to me. Hey Tarkin, is the force a religion. "Yes it is. I once said 'The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion'." Thank you Tarkin, I'm glad that this matter has been settled.
9. The end credits will be shorter. Only the big shots will get named. In face, only characters that were played be actual human beings will be listed, this includes puppets. No CGI characters will be listed, except for Watto because some guy played his part and they water added the CGI Watoo over the actor. Jar Jar will NOT be listed at all, he's not cool enough to get credit.
10. All of the battle droids long dialogue (as in the scenes "don't worry, if they're down here..." and "where are you taking them...uh coruscant...you under arrest") will be replaced with the simple "roger roger" and "blast them" lines.
11. Jabba the Hutt will not be seen. Why? Because people, including myself, had to wait a long time to finally see what Jabba looked like in ROTJ. He was mentioned in ANH and TESB, but the mystery of what he looked like remained until we saw him. So he won't be seen at all in my edit.
12. Tusken Raiders will take out more than just one Podracer, they'll take out about 3 or 4. Sebulba won't start cheating until it's just him and Anakin.
13. NEW ENDING! This is how it will end: Qui-Gon will have his funeral. Yoda and Mace will talk about which Sith was destroyed, the master or the apprentice. A shot of Palpatine will then follow, then the credits start. The Parade reveals to many Gungans. The shot of Palpatine silently tells which Sith was actually destroyed and which Sith lives on.

 

Things I'm thinking about:

1. CGI or Puppet Yoda. Either way, Frank Oz will be listed in the credits because he truly deserves credit.
2. Renaming it to "The Beginning" as that was the original title.
3. [more to come...]

I finished an edit of TPM a few weeks ago that sounded quite similar to these ideas (Apart from the strikethroughs above).  But I scrapped it and started again as the film felt a bit 'hollowed out'. My cut had Jar-Jar with no lines or sounds or cameras pointing at him (He was lurking in a few shots towards the back lol).

After that version was binned I've edited a new cut called TPM:Reborn (Plus episodes II & III of course).

Hope you have fun with your edit! (I sure had fun with mine!)

Thank you TV's Frink!

Just finished TRM and am looking forward to ROTR now!

I'm a HUGE fan of the 'repeat it until it's funny, then keep repeating until it's not funny, then go on repeating til it's funny again' school of comedy.

Becase of this the phrases 'What!', 'You catch on pretty quick', 'now there are two of them' and especially 'your majesty' are now my favourite bits in TPM (Also obi-wan third person).

I was however disapointed that you hadn't exploited the comedy potential of extending Ewan McGregor's "Noooooo" moment further than it was in the original theatrical cut ;-)

Keep up the good work

adywan said:

imperialscum said:

generalfrevious said:

The Ewoks only existed to sell toys. Everyone knows this. 

That's a dumb statement. The furry creatures were part of the story from the beginning. They changed it from Wookiees to Ewoks because it is harder to get lots of 2.20m actors then lots of short ones.

completely wrong there. It was originally wookiees in Georges treatment but the reason he didn't use Wookiees had nothing to do with finding actors ( i don't know where you get that information from because i have never seen that reasoning anywhere). It's been pretty well documented that it was because he had already introduced Chewie as a character that can fly a spaceship and have intelligence and that Wookiees could no longer be the "primitive" race to defeat the Empire that George wanted. Early on in the writing of "Revenge", Endor was going to be populated with a race of Yuzzums (which the yuzzum ended up in Jabba's palace and then as a singer in the SE's). Ewoks weren't even part of the of the story until later on. Even Gary Kurtz said that he became disillusioned with George after ESB  when he noticed that his priorities had changed from Story and character and focused more on selling toys. 

When you see the early designs for the Ewoks you can see in their final design that their sole purpose was to look cute and look similar to Teddy bears to sell toys. Nothing more. The only reason we got the headdresses was because the costumes were too hot and they had to cut a hole in the back of the head for ventilation so they had to add the headdresses to hide this. Otherwise there would have looked almost identical to the childs toy. 

So Not a dumb statement at all.

One of my earliest memories was me and my brother feverishly rippping open a range of ROTJ toys from their silver and black packaging at xmas including:

- The speeder bike and rider (rider bloody didn't fit on the bike but still awesome, it exploded when you ressed a button!!!)

- Han and leia in forest camo

- leia as bousch

- klaatu

- admiral Ackbar

- and of course Ewoks - wicket and paploo

So the toys TOTALLY worked on us!

Played with that sh*t 'til all the paint had been worn off and we'd lost all the accesories.

imperialscum said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Star Wars =/= Citizen Kane

I think that Star Wars (OT) is way better than Citizen Kane.

I just don't see what is so great about Citizen Kane. I mean yes it is a good film and has some amazing cinematography but I don't enjoy the story and the characters. A few useless film critics labelled it as "the best film of all time" and now people are blindly following that crap.

IMO Citizen Kane is easily the greatest film of all time. Every camera move,every music que, every composition and every special effect invented a new language of cinema.  Plus the story is totally captivating.

It's often been comented that Citizen Kane has more special effects than Star Wars!

Orson Welles' cinematic legacy is as ill treated as the OT... just odd that Lucas is doing it to his own work?!?!

Have you thought of using the Fast Show's Bob Fleming to spoof Grievous' coughing and weezing?

Here's a clip of Bob:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVGxpjXUuWo

Okay cool. Was just wondering if this was somekind of 'It's ready now!' teaser thing.

I'll just have to take a cold shower and wait. lmao

Wow my eyeballs have just melted!

Any kind of eta on this?

seems to be uploading nicely. Taking a while though. TPM:Reborn should be all up on Mega later today

thx,

will try something along these lines

Re TV's Frink,

Mega was popping up with an eta of 25 to 50 hrs to upload just one of my cuts in their 6-7gig form!!!  stretch009 suggested splitting it into rars then uploading to mega.

Been suggested that mega has problems with certain browsers.  Which one do you use?

Anyone know the best vehicles to get these edits out there?

File formats? sites? methods? torrents/uploads etc?

F%$K IT!

I give up making a nice blu-ray package, with meus and chapters for now!

I just this minute stuck the basic files up on the spleen.  Enjoy and please give feedback here.

Ryan

Nero just crashed with about 5% to go on the project. Hmmm might have a little cry :-(

http://youtu.be/EPfsr8BBdA8

marioxb said:

Sounds really cool. One thing I'd really like to see in an edit is Padme not dying, as per Leia's memories in ROTJ. The Kcutter did a good job making a scene like that.

That would be nice but can't think how you would A: Show her alive on Alderaan and B: Explain why she let Kenobi kidnap her child and "Hide" him on a farm in Tatooine. A farm that she knew the location of. Why wouldn't she visit.

This seems like a rare ill thought through problem with the OT that wasn't possible to reflect in the PT.

Would love to hear if anybody has ideas to solve this conundrum.

In my cut, Anakin audiably crushes Padme's spine. She later dies from her injuries after giving birth to unmamed twins. She doesn't choose to die from a broken heart leaving her children parentless.

Some of you may have watched my edit of ROTS that I put up on MySpleen a while ago.

I was discussing it here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/I-ve-just-finished-Re-editing-Episodes-I-III-now-what/topic/15414/

Since then I’ve been working on putting together a nice package of all three films to upload.  Well it’s burning as I type and as soon as my Laptop spits it back out I’ll be uploading it for you (Hopefully torrent will be up later today). There’s gonna be bonus content and deleted material compilations (With text commentary) packaged with each film.

My goal with these edits was to create versions of the PT that were to put it simply ‘enjoyable to watch’. I wanted to make good versions of these films that still felt like the same films in essence.

I’ve seen other great edits that chop the films down to 90 mins but for me a true SW film should give you around 2 solid hrs of entertainment (And not 2.5hrs either!).

I’ve achieved this by:-

Trimming action scenes to increase pace. Reworking all major Lightsaber duels. Evaluating and then editing every line of dialogue that I felt didn’t work. Adding a few OT music queues. Adding portions of most but not all deleted scenes back in. Removing over-the-top CGI shots and Digi-Doubles.

But most importantly of all I’ve focused on transforming the characters. In TPM Anakin is brave and an amazing pilot, Padme and The Queen are one character, while Jar-Jar has purpose and is no longer annoying. In AOTC Anakin is now likeable and you believe the romance with Padme. In ROTS needless messing around with R2 is replaced with warm character moments between Anakin and Obi-Wan, while Padme is no longer confined to her apartment, she has a role in the senate, she feeds Anakin’s growing unease and she has a part in the seeds of the coming Rebellion. Lastly Anakin is not revealed to be Vader so you can still enjoy ESB.

I’ll post a comprehensive change list soon.  I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks on the forum!

I’ve posted a few short taster clips here:

http://vimeo.com/user6280236/videos

Oh and if anybody has artwork ideas I started a thread here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Cover-for-single-volume-PT-Blu-Ray-needed-for-my-fanedits-of-EpsI-III/topic/15440/

TPM changeist featured in post 16 of this thread.

AOTC changelis featured in post 24 of this thread.

Even scarier! He's gouged out a human's eye and is wearing it as a sick voodoo eyepatch!

(Or it could be a wardrobe balls up)

lol

http://youtu.be/04zJeHIBBfM

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq8N4EAusL4

and

http://youtu.be/O7nOpNNPw1M

might be useful

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/04zJeHIBBfM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Might be useful

This new cut feels good in terms of pacing and logic but that lightsaber constrution footage is very rough.  Needs changing for something else used cause it doesn't fit with the impressive quality of the rest of the sourced material you've sourced.

I don't mind the yoda scene being split into two in principle but two things that would help is if:

1. You cut at some point before or during Yoda walking from right to left

2. Then cut back with yoda in the bed. This will help make the two parts distinctive in terms of composition.

3. subtely recoloured the 2nd half in perhaps more muted/grey/blue hue. This would give it a sombre feel and again seperate it visual, which would help to seperate it in time also.