Star Wars: The Anakin Saga

Sounds interesting. I’ll give it a watch. 😃

I’ll be a beta 😀👍

I really really really like this idea! If you want feedback I’ll be glad to give it!

I like this idea, im interested on watching it.
Keep it up!! The concept sounds very cool. 😃

Any update?

Okay, just got a chance to watch this.

First of all, I like the aspect of Episode 1 that you’ve chosen to focus on. The Anakin podrace plot in TPM was the best part of the movie IMO, and I’m glad to see (almost) no Coruscant scenes and very little Gungan action.

Interspersing these scenes into ANH has promise; since there are obvious parallels between Luke and Anakin, it feels appropriate to see Anakin’s time on Tatooine. However, I don’t think their placement quite works yet. For example, the first inclusion after the Tantive scene carries with it a feeling of narrative whiplash, as we are suddenly introduced to a bevy of new characters from 3 decades prior. They are talking about Tatooine, sure, but we are never told that Tatooine is Luke’s planet in ANH, so it’s a bit strange to be focusing on this. The same odd whiplash holds true for most of the other flashbacks. The fade outs after the Droid Auction and after the Binary Sunset seem like good places for flashback scenes, but the content of these flashbacks has little to do with the previous scenes and so they still feel out of place.

Going forward, I would ask: what is the goal here? You say it is to tell Anakin’s story, and indeed it focuses on this aspect above all others, but there’s still a great deal of extraneous plot for TPM. I’d argue that the story should be told from Anakin’s point of view, so it should not begin with Obi-wan and Qui-gon. In fact, the Naboo plot should have no place here, as Anakin has practically no understanding of this conflict, and in any case the plot for TPM makes little sense.

Watching this edit, I had an idea of how you could make this more about Anakin, and tie it together with ANH. It could start with the Tantive attack as normal, but after R2 and 3PO escape in the pod, it cuts to the deleted scene of Luke watching the battle and his discussion with Biggs. This establishes Luke as a hotshot pilot risking his life early in the film. Then the first we see of TPM footage is right after the dinner scene where Luke’s parents talk about Anakin:
“He has too much of his father in him”
"That’s what I’m afraid of"
32 Years Earlier
Cut to the middle of the podrace. We see Anakin neck and neck with Sebulba, and then one of Anakin’s engines catches fire, costing him his position. The next scene is Jar Jar and Sebulba, and this is where Anakin meets Qui-gon and company. Anakin notices Qui-gon’s lightsaber, Anakin invites them to his home, and they discuss their predicament over dinner. Edit out the fact that Watto doesn’t know about the pod - in this version Anakin has used this pod in several races.
Then there is the binary sunset and R2’s disappearance.
Later that night, Anakin and Qui-gon sit outside discussing Anakin’s future. There is the scene with Watto, where the dialogue has been massively cut down to only include the bit about the ship being the entry fee. Then Anakin fixes his pod and it ends with his ‘It’s working’ line.
Then Luke and the Sand People and his talk with Obi-wan. After this scene, as the music rises, cut to the beginning of the podrace. The race happens sans the parts used in the previous race, and there is no discussion of Qui-gon winning Anakin in a bet. The scene after the podrace is Anakin being informed that he has been freed and his emotional leave-taking. This mirrors Luke’s inner turmoil over leaving, and gives us more room between his refusal of the call and his sudden decision to leave.
Cut to the Imperial officers and the film continues as is.

I don’t know how much more of Anakin’s story needs to be told in this fashion. After Luke sells his speeder and we see the dark-hooded spy character, we could cut to Maul on Tatooine, and have the lightsaber fight where Anakin meets Obi-wan. Then in the next scene Luke and company see the Falcon and it couldn’t be more different than the queen’s starship. This would emphasize the decrepitude of the ship. However, including such a villain would draw attention away from ANH and onto the plot of TPM, and this would make the film feel very bifurcated. So I think it would be best to just end the flashback scenes with Anakin’s leave-taking.

Damn, this is what I get for not coming on for a while. I’d be interested in seeing this if you’re still giving out betas.

EDIT

Here are my comments from watching it:

-2 hours and 50 minutes is pretty long.
-If you’re going to have an Episode #, I would make this Episode I, not Episode IV.
-The audio in the crawl seems a little compressed, but it might be my headphones, or maybe it’s just how the Blu-Ray version is and I’m used to Harmy’s Despecialized.
-The cut between the escape pod falling (~7:27) and the next shot is pretty abrupt. If you’re sold on that cut, what I’d recommend you extend the previous shot’s audio so they fade into each other.
-The first transition goes black and silent for too long. I’d have the music come in earlier, and the “32 years earlier…” come in almost immediately after the music starts.
-The audio there sounds kinda compressed too.
-I really like the color correction and film effects you did to TPM.
-Sidious’s dialogue is kinda obviously tampered with, especially “I want her…”. For that line I’d have it be said while you can’t see his face.
-Not a fan of the font you used for subtitles, but it’s no big deal either.
-Jar Jar’s dialogue is also clearly tampered with. I’d use a foreign dub of TPM to replace his dialogue, like Russian or Hindi (although decent quality Hindi dubs are hard to find). That’s what I did. Although, my personal recommendation is to cut the scene entirely.
-There are a few scenes from TPM that should be cut for time. Like the “I’m a person and my name is Anakin” scene, and Obi-Wan in the desert.
-In the transition between the crew leaving Watto’s shop and the ship scene, the audio totally cuts out for a second. Also, it should be a few frames quicker, and the previous scene’s video shouldn’t be translucent. Same with the next transition.
-The transition between TPM and ANH (dinner to garage) has too much lag time, too.

I couldn’t finish it because it’s pretty long. I’ll get around to finishing it, but I skimmed through and here are my comments on what you asked:

-No crawl for TPM is necessary. Just the one for ANH.
-Wipes were too slow. Wipes in my fanedits are about ~21 to ~27 frames long. Hover around there.
-It was absolutely a good idea to cut out C3PO.
-I love the low contrast and film effects, although maybe a little overboard in a few places.
-I would have used Harmy’s Despecialized instead of the Blu-Ray. That kinda bothered me, but I’m probably just really used to Harmy’s at this point. And it’s not a big deal if you like the Blu-Ray better as a source.
-Audio was a bit of a problem around cuts. The problem could be fixed by, whenever there’s a cut, fade in the audio from one side into the audio from the other.
-The audio feels compressed, although my headphones or computer just might be shite.
-I love the music added to the podrace, however there’s some music taken from AotC. One of my problems with that movie, and RotS, is that they reuse music from previous movies. Like literally use the same exact recording, even. If you’re gonna keep the AotC music, I recommend you remove that music from AotC.
-I don’t know what you mean by the Mos Eisley Droids Scene.
-Too many SE SFX.
-The flashback scenes are good foreshadowing. I like them.
-I like the new Alderaan explosion. The remains are a little weird, though.
-I like the new Death Star explosion, too, although the lasers lighting up should have came together, like in the Alderaan destruction.

As for the overall concept, I’m not entirely sure. It would work if you really put a lot of effort into tying TPM with AotC. Personally, I would have put AotC scenes in ANH, RotS scenes in ESB, and left RotJ on its own. But this can work, and I look forward to seeing it.

Well, I finally got to see your edit after so many failed attempts on downloading it, and here are my thoughts:
(Sorry about the very long text)
I like the idea of trying to tell a parallel story between Anakin and Luke, and it might work, but with some changes like the ones mentioned before me.
The placement on flashbacks is not bad at all, BUT, in my personal opinion I dont like it some of them(for example, I would preffer to match Luke watching the suns paired to Anakin watching his mother as he leaves, but idk if there would be enough time to tell TPM story that way), but my ideas wouldnt exactly work(i think), and sometimes the flashbacks feel too long that they could detract attention from ANH. The “32 years earlier…” works as how it is, at least for me, another crawl so early on the film again or even a second crawl at all, i dont think that would be a good idea.
Maybe the moments of TPM could be a bit misleading, specially Maul, it could detract a bit from Vader as for main villain, to be honest, I was expecting to see a quick cute to Anakin blowing The Federation space station before we get to the Death Star attack, it would had be a cool mirroring, but, now that I think of it, maybe it wouldnt make a lot of sense due to what is given from TPM via flashbacks.

I dont feel the cuts to be abrupt, at least not visually, the fading to black was good, and they are the correct speed for me. And the subtitles where fine, I didnt saw any errors.

It was a well condensed version of TPM, and I liked how the death of QuiGon could be paired to the one of Ben Kenobi, both apprentices lost their masters. The characters from TPM, well, its all fault of the source material really and the idea of making flashbacks from the movie, so, altho some feel a bit ‘‘meh’’ (Sidious and Binks for me), they are okay. And I didnt liked the voice of JarJar at all, really, it felt wierd to hear it, unnatural, is it backwards? And C-3PO out of TPM, good idea.

The way TPM was modified to look more old, with the film grain and contrast, i loved it, it looked really good, I would had liked to watch more TPM with that filter. The quality wasnt a distractor for me, but maybe it could be enhaced (i really dont know about that), and in my opinion you should had used either Revisited or Despecialized editions as base for ANH.

Fun fact, ANH audio has always bugged me, i dont know if I have such bad luck to always find a version where the quality of audio randomly jumps and varies a lot (i think the better example i could give would be on Luke’s room when he is cleaning the droids). I do think the ones that bugged me the most where because of that and not your editing, altho a quick cut between voices in TPM where the Queen and QuiGon decide to where to go each other when they are on the hangar and Maul appears, and also on the Deaht Star battle, I heared a quick short jump between music and effects, altho i cant remember where exactly. Replaced dialogue…I can only recall the one on the Padme throne room run/hangar, and the jumbling of the score, I noticed it too, not thaaaaat distracting, but noticeable anyways. The music to podrace, was good, yay.

The Mos Eisly Droids, you reffer to that scene where there was a big Ronto blocking the view before? Yeah, it looked noticeable, and also too yellow in comparisson to the other shots of Tatooine. I dont exactly know what you took out of SE appart from that, I could even say that you keeped all of them haha. The new Alderaan explosion looked really cool but, not very adequate for ANH, it looked ‘‘to modern’’ for the old footage that ANH brings. The flashbacks that Ben Kenobi had while talking about Anakin look convicing enough for me, but it looked a bit wierd that two of them where from ROTS and one from AOTC, but the AOTC one is the best to depict ‘‘and he was a good friend’’ line so that doesnt really matter, and the one where he is supposed to see Anakin burning, was good. The Death Star explosion, well, I like the idea of the 8 ligths being on and then exploding, but, its obvious to me that the explosion itself its from TFA, I can even see the rectangular dish of the Falcon and the quality its too high in contrast of ANH.

Overall, I liked the idea and Im totally positive on watching the next chapter on this project of yours:)