daneditor

I loved the opening scenes on Jakku - but the scene with the tentacle monsters feels like it belongs in a different (and less good) movie. I’d like to see it cut entirely. It’s just a question of whether Rey would have returned immediately to Jakku if the CGI monster scene/emergency hyperspace jump hadn’t happened.

I think what bothers me about it: after their escape from Jakku the film was crying out for a few quiet character moments between Rey and Finn. So it’s not just that it’s a blatantly CGI creature (and a total waste of the guys from The Raid) but the audience and the characters needed a moment to breathe.

I thought The Force Awakens was a lot of fun, with superb new characters and interesting conflicts and arcs. It looked good, sounded good and felt like Star Wars.

But…

I suspect the main criticism of The Force Awakens in the years to come will be this: it’s a rip-off of A New Hope. It’s kinda tricky to argue against that at a story level. It’s about a young, orphaned, force-sensitive protagonist stranded on a desert world who finds a droid with a mcguffin inside it. They then go on a journey across the galaxy, resulting in a huge X-wing TIE fighter battle over a Death Star (which is then destroyed) and an old man dies at the hands of a bad man in black.

Yet, personally, I only found the deja vu kicked in during the third act. The Starkiller Base I think is the culprit. I also suspect that many of the problems with the second half of the film (too much like A New Hope, the anti-climactic third act battle, how weird it was no one mentioned an entire star system was wiped out, the focus on characters superseded by a predictable, obligatory action scene) would be extracted just by removing this storyline.

The characters - old and new - are by far the best thing about this movie, and focusing on them throughout would have served the film better. It would set The Force Awakens apart from A New Hope instead of relying on another fricking Death Star to give the film stakes.

This is coming over way more negative than I actually feel about it. I enjoyed it massively and can’t wait to see it again. And that’s what excites me about fanedits of this movie, as distinct from The Phantom Menace et al. Underneath the flawed, irrational, nonsensical plotting of the prequels there were no interesting and lovable characters - just blank avatars. But with Rey, Finn, Poe and Kylo Ren this film has some great, great characters. The heroes are all likeable/lovable, and Kylo Ren is a much more complex and interesting character than I was expecting.

So I feel this is potentially exciting for Star Wars faneditors. If we nip and tuck The Force Awakens, and maybe add some deleted scenes to calm the frantic pace down a touch, then I feel this movie could be special.

Plus, for me at least, the x-wing battle in the middle of the film was superior anyway in terms of suspense and spectacle - and without the inevitable sequence of events that leads to a Death Star being all blowed up again.

The only question mark I can think of: was that Coruscant destroyed? If so, clearly that’s too important a plot point to cut out.

A few other changes:

Cut back on the callbacks. The 12 Parsecs routine and trash compactor was meta, which has no place in Star Wars. I love Joss Whedon, but thank goodness he didn’t direct this.

I’d like to end it one shot earlier as well. The final scene had slightly awkward editing all round, but surely you end on Luke’s face, given the whole film has led to that moment.

I’d also look to re-edit the fight between Kylo Ren and Rey so that Rey doesn’t beat him, but maybe just hangs on in there. I made this comment at fanedit.org, but if Luke had picked up Obi-Wan’s lightsaber and then fought Darth Vader on the Death Star it would have a) undermined Darth Vader, b) skipped Luke too far down his arc for a first movie in a trilogy.

I know that’s not a fair comparison given that Vader hadn’t just been wounded by Chewie after killing his dad, but how the scene plays out undermines Kylo Ren’s power, and stretches credibility.

Add your ideas below…

ShortRound24 said:

I already discussed this with justinvalorman via PM but I thought I'd share those ideas here also. 

This is a rough cut of my idea to make Anakin work out how to destroy the Command Ship. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ueuSW0xXbyQXljUFB4UzFEOFE/view?usp=sharing

If it appeared unclear in the clip, the idea was to have Anakin fly through the West Hanger, straight through the half doughnut ship and out the East Hanger. 

 I'd personally lose the "Now this is podracing" line but this is great work. I have to assume someone has done something similar before, because in hindsight it seems such an obvious change, but I haven't seen it in any other edit (and I certainly didn't do it with my TPM edit).

Cool! Thanks for letting me know.

There's not much there that could be added, unfortunately. A few moments maybe. Some action with an AT-ST around 6 minutes. There's a nice big pan of an imperial base at the 8 minute mark. And obviously it's nice to have a higher quality version of the Tydirium landing on Endor.

joos said:

Is this edit not on iafd?  I'd love to put a review there.

 Looks like you found it. :)

And thanks for the review. I'm glad you (mostly) liked it.

Pulp Empire is awesome, especially if you dig Tarantino's movies.

Bingowings said:

The saber build mock up looked like a really good mock-up (so not total crap). Contextually it is jar-jarring just dropped into an edit in it's current form but I do hope someone like Ady will remake the idea with models and body doubles etc.

That scene fully realised would have been one of the highlights of the film in my opinion so to add it in an edit would be amazing.

Yeah I love that idea (ben_danger's idea), and it would be great to see it in ROTJ:R. Really would feel like an emotional, ESB-type Dagobah scene if done right.

arctofire said:

Hello Dan Editor

I have seen your edit and thoroughly enjoyed it, my favroite changes have to be making Han Solo come across as a loving boyfriend rather than an unkind, overprotective, moron. It is also heart warming to see a character that cocky to make such a change over a trilogy rather than a step backwards in maturity from the last film.

 I also love the change of music at the end, this is so much better than Yub Nub. I have to say the original is the rubbish but you fixed that real good.

I am just getting into Fan Editing (I've wanted to do it for ages but my 2.3 GHZ CPU and 3.0 GB RAM stopped Sony Vegas from working) and I am hoping to fix those problems in the future, I was wondering if I could help you maybe create a Star Wars Return of the Jedi Remastered. Because much as I loved you edit it was quite bad quality and I belive it should recieve a remastered release with 5.1 surround sound and a cleanup and upscale. I will do this all for you because I love this edit alot and I want to make it look like a proffesional film. This will include changing the Jabba subtitles to make them on the video and the same font as the original, rather than off the video and a different font. Can I have permission to do this.

 Absolutely! That would be great. Change it in any way you want.

Although, based on your comment about the bad quality, I wonder which version you watched? If it was the download from fanedit.info it's a different edit. That "Dan Edit" version is sourced from the PAL DVD and is quite conservative. This edit is from the blu-ray, and is the version I'm happier with.

So I don't know if this version's video is a problem, it seems pretty good to me - although it could definitely do with a 5.1 mix. It's something I've always avoided because I don't have 5.1 but plenty of people would prefer it.

marduk666 said:

Do you have any updates on this project. I Wish you luck in this endevor and I would love to see your Workprint.

 There hasn't been any work done on this edit for a few months now - and there probably won't be until some new footage comes online. Probably the Tydirium fan film, or some other cool looking fan film set on Endor.

Re: getting rid of the ewoks. It would take a huge amount of reshooting and/or great fan film footage to make it work. So you would replace ewok stuff with rebel troops on the ground planning and fighting, and maybe then it would be possible. If you cut the ewoks without having some really great replacement footage it just wouldn't work.

Re: the lightsaber building scene. It looked like total crap so I got rid of it. You'd need to be GREAT with cgi stuff (or be willing to spend some money on this edit... and, nope) to make it look other than total crap... and I'm not even half decent. Hopefully Adywan and his team of magicians will do something similar, because I really dig the idea.

Anyway, the workprint is still online, so if anyone else wants to download it I'm just a PM away.

ben_danger said:

i wonder if any of the story could be re-purposed as 'bothan' spies for the opening? (bothans could just be humans)

There's a fan film called Broken Allegiance:

https://vimeo.com/2847715

It starts with a couple of humans on a small ship fleeing Coruscant and the Executor. At one point I used that scene to open this edit while specifying in the opening crawl that they're Bothan spies who have just stolen the Death Star plans.

I thought it was a nice way to start the film with a bang, but ultimately decided the footage wasn't good enough to use - the fx are good for a fan film, but don't match the look of ROTJ at all. I also agreed with the criticism that it's a bit weird starting with characters we've never seen before (and will never see again).

But it would be nice to start ROTJ with a space battle, and it makes sense to set up the mcguffin in the opening scene.

Reegar, I just noticed your sig.... thanks very much!

Reegar said:

The extra scene of storm troopers versus rebels in the forest is interesting. The battle feels more wide-spread on Endor and overall bigger as a result. I feel we need one more added scene like that to help balance this one out. That feeling is abstract, yeah. We're seeing a battle that's borderline isolated from the bunker. In the future, when more high-quality material is available, I'd really want to see a second battle happening on the "border" of it all.

Agreed. Hopefully that extra battle footage will come from this:

http://www.tydirium.tv

Supposedly it's being worked on again after being abandoned in the mid 2000s - and if it does finally get released it'll be a goldmine for ROTJ edits in the future.

Tyee, thanks for the info! Very interesting.

I have a pretty big list of changes and experiments I need to get working on - and I'll add your suggestion to the list. But exactly when I'll be able to find the time I really can't say... editing is a major time hog. And my life right now is pretty hectic.

Hopefully by then Tydirium/some other cool fan films will be released, and give me some more material to work with. It'd be nice.

I appreciate this is slightly off topic, but figured some of you would probably be interested in this.

Like pretty much everyone I was irritated with the MGM blu-ray release of GBU - the DNR is dreadful, possibly the worst I've ever seen (although Amadeus is maybe as bad). I saw some screenshots of the Mondo version which looked miles better, so I started googling around for a fanedit that used the Mondo video and the English audio... and found it on The Pirate Bay, of all places.

I've only seen the first few minutes so far but compared with the blu-ray it's a HUGE improvement - no DNR at all that I can, just a beautiful crisp HD image. Assuming the video/audio stays synched throughout this will be my new go-to GBU.

I highly recommend it.

FYI the file size is 12.69 gigs, it's easy to find on there.

It's interesting, and I'd like to see it edited together, but my gut instinct is that Luke's not that far gone. Perhaps if some of his lines are cut - namely his repeated insistence that he won't attack Vader - it would work.

But in my experience some ideas that seem guaranteed to work don't and vice versa, so like I said, until we see the scene in motion we won't really know.

It's interesting that you view the Luke/Vader cockpit scene as Luke cracking up. Must admit, that's not my reading of it. For me he's scared of becoming Vader, but I wouldn't say he's becoming mentally unstable. It's cool that you see it differently, but maybe that's why I'm less on board for Luke attacking Vader without a trigger.

No need to be humble. I'd like to hear your idea... particularly if it's easier to do than Ator's. :)

Great that you finally got the edit. :)

The sister subplot has been cut and put back into this edit so many times over the last couple of years. Like you I don't really care for it, and would like to cut it for good. For me it's more to do with focusing the conflict on Luke/Vader, which this whole edit is basically about, although the contrivance of Leia being his sister feels a step too far.

The problem I always found was, if Vader doesn't mention Leia why does Luke suddenly attack? Ator, a couple of pages back, solved this problem, but I haven't got round to editing it yet. It'll mean reediting the entire battle of Endor... not a particularly appealing thought.

I also don't love the fact it'll make the edit three or four minutes shorter, and I wanted to get it up to two hours, not cut back to 1h45m.

Reegar said:

Does anyone have Daneditor's ROTJ edit to upload onto MySpleen?

It's not on MySpleen because it's only a workprint. I'd rather wait until I was happy with it before uploading it there.

If you want to see the latest workprint send me a PM.

... and I assume you're talking about the radical edit. If you're talking about the other ROTJ edit I did a few years back it's on fanedit.info.

Interesting ideas. Do you have any clips you can show us?

darth_ender said:

Ronster said:

Perhaps if the Death star kept Shooting down a few more capital ships whilst they were trying to destroy it that would go some way to fixing the lack of tension of what was causing them to potentially lose the battle.

I do like this idea.  I also really wish that we would see the order to destroy Endor from the Emperor, as well as Jerjerrod following that last order.  I think that drastically adds to the tension, especially with proper music and color correction.  I did include a rough job of this in my signature in part 4, and I think it works well in concept.

The ebook contains a clip of Ian McDiarmid reading those lines, so it's probably doable now, between that and the Jerjerrod deleted scene on the blu-ray.

The other interesting clip I thought on the ebook was Lando and Han's goodbye in the hangar. With some careful editing that scene could become something much more emotional and less cheesy. It's in black and white so way beyond my skills to fix, but Adywan could probably do something with it.

Bingowings said:

If some of that dialogue can be processed/re-recorded it would would go some way to redeeming Obi Fib Kenobi in a fan-edit.

I was thinking exactly the same thing. The Obi Wan line and the stuff about "great weakness you carry" would be something I'd like to put into my edit. Maybe even end the scene with the weakness line and then a few seconds of Yoda looking sad. Rather than showing him die, which always seemed contrived to me, just end the scene there.

Getting this whole LD on lossless format would be amazing. I'd love to play around with this scene.

I'm pretty sure MKV Merge can split MKVs in two without re-encoding. That's probably your best way around the FAT32 issue (other than making the file smaller).

Thanks for the detailed review. I'll go through some of the key points.

"I've heard some Fed dubs before but this is the best.

It sounds like an authentic Star Wars alien language and because there is less said by Nute now it doesn't drag so much having to read the subs."

It's Turkish. Whoever did the dubbing came up with some decent antagonist voices, certainly miles more menacing and interesting than the bizarre original voices.

"I would have kept the intro to Jar-Jar but dubbed it so he is only Gungan on the planet (in this version) and in exile (in this edit he isn't the lone Gungan at all it's still their world and we see them getting captured).

His dub doesn't work as well. I fear he must speak the same language as the humans as he has dialogue heavy scenes which become a bit of a chore otherwise."

Jar Jar's voice is obviously a huge problem. I agree it's not great, but I put it through Audacity and made it a little deeper and less childlike than the way it started. I also did a test of me dubbing his dialogue in English - but that footage will never, NEVER be shown to anyone.

That first part of the scene with Jar Jar's introduction should really be in there. If nothing else then for pacing reasons (the first twenty minutes are on fast forward, just way too fast paced). But I think that's probably the worst scene in any SW film and I couldn't come up with a way to make it work.

Hopefully others (including Adywan) will dub Jar Jar into English and come up with a better explanation for why he's tagging along with the Jedi.

"The merge of the battle from the end and the escape from the hanger is seemless but pointless as everyone ends up there again anyway."

There's a couple of reasons I put the space battle right when the pilots are freed. It made sense to me that if a planet has been invaded the military will fight back as soon as it possibly can. It doesn't make sense to me that the pilots run away instead of getting in the fighters and counter-attacking.

The other reason is obviously because I knew I wasn't going to include the space battle in act 3 so that footage might as well be used in act 1. It's a 90 minute edit after all.

"I don't see why Sidious and Maul are openly walking around on Coruscant.

It makes more sense if that exchange happened on Naboo with Sidious as a hologram (or better still in a battle droid factory elsewhere in the galaxy)."

Nice idea, but way beyond my skills.

"Cutting the land battle improves the saber duel immensely. It does leave Anakin with nothing to do and leaves only Padme's adventures as a cut away."

You're right about Anakin not being given enough to do, but the space battle was something I was always going to cut. The implausibility of a 10-year-old destroying the villain's ship is just too stupid, IMO, and serves to undermine even further the credibility of the Federation. And anyway, Anakin has already won the pod race to help out the heroes, and in the hangar he destroys the destroyer droids to save Padme. Pretty good effort for a kid.

"I think with a production team doing new effects and bit more restructuring this film can be saved."

Totally. It might be the only prequel that is salvageable, but there's definitely potential for a not terrible SW film.

Rage00 said:

I am also interested in obtaining a copy of the Return of the Ewok and Other Little Films dvd. It would make a great addition to my ever growing collection. If anyone knows anymore information please let me know.

It's on MySpleen. If you need an invite PM me.