I think we should limit our canon to just the 9 films. A trilogy of trilogies. Thankfully Rogue One and Solo are standalone, so we can avoid them entirely without many contradictions. TCW and Rebels, while good parts of the story, are not the main focus and shouldn’t be catered too. We should make the prequel films are good as possible.
I think we are all pretty close to the same page, just leaning in various directions on certain things, which I think is a good thing for this kind of discussion. Some might feel we should cater to the TV material on a certain matter, whereas others feel a bigger change could benefit the story, or vice versa. EddieDean made this guideline earlier: The TV series are not [unbreakable canon], though we should try to avoid any major contradictions unless otherwise unavoidable.
Obviously the degree of “trying” and what is and isn’t “unavoidable” is the grey area. But these are just situations where we weigh the pros and cons and discuss it. I still think good ideas, even if they might contradict the TV shows, should still be up for discussion.
That being said, I fear this thread will quickly become a mess. I could go on and on with possible changes from all over the saga. I suggest we start with fixing bigger story contradictions, like Leia remembering her mother. After that we narrow down, focus on the prequel’s overall story and the clone wars origin. Then narrow down further, focus on the individual changes for the TPM, and so on. Then the originals, then the sequels (by then ep 9 will have come out).
I agree with you there. I don’t want this to become a mess. While I love discussing the more subjective changes, I think concentrating on continuity issues would be the most focused strategy for now. We were debating on creating separate threads for the individual films earlier, but I wonder if maybe dividing threads into the three categories (progress reports and general discussion, continuity discussion, story improvement discussion) or something similar would help prevent conversations from getting tangled. Or just have two, one for work (this one) and another for general idea discussion.
I think it’d also be helpful if the OP updated the first post to include a list of all the agreed changes (and editing progress for them) so everyone can know what’s happening easily.
I’ll totally do this. I’ll probably post a simplified version of the spreadsheet/list that EddieDean is working on.
Here are all the major contradictions through the saga I can think of. I think we should focus on inter-trilogy changes first:
–Leia remembers her mother
–Obi-Wan never remembers R2 (fix: “old friend”)
–Your father wanted you to have this (fix: “would’ve wanted”)
–Death Star I takes 19 years, II 3 (fix: cut the cameo in ROTS or use Snooker’s sovereign with his permission)
Hal also had an idea of putting the laser dish on the equator to imply that it is a prototype Death Star rather than the final one we see in ANH.
–Who made the Death Star again? (fix: cut the cameo in AOTC)
–The Jedi wear hermit robes (we probably can change this but worth mentioning)
–Anakin is no “good friend” (fix: edit AOTC throughout and remove temper tantrums)
–The First Order somehow rose from nowhere (fix: end ROTJ without galactic montage, it’s only a major victory not end of the war)
I haven’t mentioned this on the Revisited thread, but I think it would be interesting to have a shot of Star Destroyers jumping into hyperspace in various directions after the Death Star is destroyed to hint that the Empire might not be gone forever. Maybe I should post this thought, but I agree with you and I also think the Ady will make a similar version of this concept.
–Luke doesn’t kill Vader but almost murders Ben (how about instead of him attacking that causes the rise of darkness, it’s his refusal to fight the rising darkness which is more true to his character)
–Snoke (fix: Darth Plaguies)
–The rebels didn’t accomplish anything (fix: merge the resistance and new republic… leia is commanding a regiment in the outer rim)
Although I personally lean on the side of lighter Sequel edits, I do think these things merit more discussion. And at the very least, discuss how such changes could be hypothetically implemented. While I don’t know about changing Luke’s moment of weakness, I’ve thought about ways to change it, and ways to foreshadow Snoke (maybeplagueismaybenot) possibly.
I definitely agree that I would like more political recontextualization in the sequel films though. I think Restructured helped pave the way for that. I have a few ideas that I would like to discuss with you as well!
I’m going to put all of these on a list, thanks OutboundFlight.
CourtlyHades, I definitely agree that ESB could probably go pretty much untouched. Personally, I think I’ll eventually have a box set of all the films, and in them I’ll have the theatrical version and an edited version of each film (so probably the Despecialized for the OT). So for me, I think ESB should still be different from Despecialized. That’s why for this I think it would be nice to use Adywan’s Revisited as a basis, and maybe make two or three additional changes that I think 95% of people might not even notice.
I can do voice acting if you would like, I can do a pretty good Palpatine and I can accomplish a Snoke using audacity. As well as Yoda and a few other voices.
This could come in handy! Thanks for the offer Zerome.