The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 304

snooker said:

Here’s the opening of my Phantom Menace edit:

https://youtu.be/aAOsOddfx_M

It includes:

An entirely new opening shot.

Early introduction of Amidala.

A short skirmish to protect Theed.

Nute and Rune’s new voices.

OKAY that’s good as hell, also the alien voices you have going there are my favorite dubs I’ve heard by far!

RogueLeader said:

If I may make a suggestion for the framing of the first shot.

One of the cool things about the opening shot of A New Hope, that none of the other films have besides ROTS arguably, is the visual symbolism used to tell us everything we need to know about the two sides in a single shot. The Rebels are small, like the blockade runner, desperately trying to escape from the massive Empire, represented by the hulking Star Destroyer that passes overhead and made audiences’ jaws drop back in 77.

Could it be possible to create a shot in the vein of this opening with The Phantom Menace? What if when we pan down to Naboo, we can see the entire planet in the shot? Maybe the camera cold be even farther away, and Naboo could be relatively small, even smaller than the planet we pan down to at the beginning of TFA.

This could help show Naboo as beautiful, but isolated and vulnerable.

And for an entrance in the vein of the Empire’s great debut in ANH, numerous Trade Federation ships could enter the frame from every angle, from the top, the bottom, the sides, swarming the planet and slowly “blocking” our view of the planet. Controls ships, transports, even starfighters.

We could have a beat of silence similar to what you have in your mock-up, maybe a bit longer to help build audience anticipation, waiting for something to happen, then suddenly we hear the rumble and screams of starships as they pass the camera by. It might initially be strange for the Federation to approach from a farther distance, but the Empire Strikes Back actually set up the idea that ships can sneak up on a planet’s defenses if they jump out of hyperspace far enough away from the planet. Coming out of lightspeed too close to Hoth is what allowed the Rebels to know the Empire was coming, and led to Ozzel being “punished” by Vader. And since it seems like the Naboo government doesn’t know what is going on at first, this would line up pretty well with that idea.

It is possible rendering dozens of ships might be out of your range with your available equipment, though, so I understand if you couldn’t even be capable of doing this.

As far as the visuals go, I wonder if you desaturated the initial shot if it would help blend in with the rest of the scene, since the colors of the film seem a little muted and “filmic” rather than really popping out. Also, I felt that the engine glow was a little too intense for the control ships. If you also went with the idea I mentioned, I would suggest reinserting the shot of the transports entering the atmosphere, since an extra shot might be needed since the fleet starts farther away from the planet.

Also, not as relevant, but have you considered pitching Amidala’s voice up to not make it as deep throughout the film?
While I personally don’t like the use of TFA music, I understand why you wanted to add a little something extra to the music, although it would be nice if you could find alternate music from the TPM soundtrack or another previous one. Just my two cents on that though!
This is a pretty cool opening. The best version of this idea I’ve seen. Also really dig the voices for the Nemoidians! Good job so far.

EDIT: I would say TFA also has a metaphorical opening shot, with the shadow of the First Order blotting out the “light”.

This would be so dope, maybe a cold opening that starts with the villains could be done too

Elected Monarchies existed and do work, but are rather confusing especially with the modern definition of an absolute monarch. I think making Naboo a presidential republic would make much more sense, but on second thought having to replace every single instance of “queen” in TPM’s dialogue track sounds like a lot of work to replace something passable.

It may not be that big of a deal with there being no connection between Luke and Dagobah, but if there is some connection between Luke and Dagobah the line becomes much, much more interesting.

SparkySywer said:

It may not be that big of a deal with there being no connection between Luke and Dagobah, but if there is some connection between Luke and Dagobah the line becomes much, much more interesting.

It would have been interesting if Jedi had a genetic memory or group subconscious such as the Bene Gesserit of Dune.

I’ve been putting some deep thought into my own fan-edit project lately, and I believe that I have figured out all of the necessary changes required to preserve almost every twist and reveal in the OT, this is very important to me because I really love the idea of watching the whole series through in chronological order and still having information withheld from the audience (even though all of us know the truth and know the plot twists inside and out) I think it would be really cool to watch complete films that still tell the whole story but leave out little bits for storytelling reasons. So here’s a list of things that need to be cut in order for the PT to line up with Obi-Wan’s lines in ANH and ROTJ.

-Cut any mention of Anakin’s last name being “skywalker.” This one is pretty straightforward, just make sure nobody says “skywalker” in the PT, and nobody could put 1+1 together

-Remove yoda from the movies, this is crucial and actually serves the OT more because you can leave in all of the lines mentioning master Yoda, setting him up as a great Jedi Master. This is also no problem to me because Yoda is boooring in the PT, save for a few good lines.

-Remove Luke and Leia being born, this fixes a great many things, with this edit you know that Padme is pregnant at the end of the film but you don’t see her die (another continuity fix), you don’t know there are twins, you don’t know the kids’ names, and you don’t know when they’re born. “I have not gone by the name Obi-Wan since long before you were born” would imply that Padme had the kids a while after the fall of the Jedi, blurring the timeline a bit.

I feel like I’m missing a couple of things, but these edits would really help to watch the series in order. The thing I’ve realized about making changes like this is that you realize how shoehorning in a bunch of OT-era stuff in the prequels makes no difference to the story being told, when stripped down, the story of the PT is about Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme, and Palpatine. Nothing is added to the films by throwing in unimportant OT characters. Yes, Yoda is important, and yes Luke and Leia are important, but not YET. This is why we didn’t see Han and Leia having a kid at the end of ROTJ, it’s not only that Kylo Ren (or the solo twins for that matter) hadn’t been conceptualized, it’s that each trilogy should be complete in their own right, each trilogy should stand on their own as films rather than simply exist to serve films that were already made. This is why Rogue One wouldn’t make sense on its own, and why the Hobbit trilogy was so bad.

“A young Jedi named Darth Vader, he was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.”

The only story necessary for the prequels to tell is the story of a jedi knight who turns to the dark side and betrays the Jedi, then proceeds to kill a ton of them, Luke should be seen by the audience as some random Jedi’s son, and that’s it. There’s no reason to give Luke and Vader the same last name, and there’s no real reason to see Vader’s children being born. When the twist finally comes in ESB, the audience should be 5 movies in and still be in as much disbelief as Luke is, the prequels really could serve the twist rather than take it away. Man, what a shame these movies are.

I struggled so much with trying to keep all the plot twists in my first ROTS edit, especially becuase of Obi Wan’s line in ANH.
Right now, while reading your suggestions, I’m feeling dumb. I think that would work perfectly…

Smithers said:

-Remove yoda from the movies, this is crucial and actually serves the OT more because you can leave in all of the lines mentioning master Yoda, setting him up as a great Jedi Master. This is also no problem to me because Yoda is boooring in the PT, save for a few good lines.

This is the only one that I am not sure about. You lose his convo with Obi-wan at the end of TPM, all the council scenes get screwed up, and you lose the meeting with Obi & Bail at the end of ROTS. Plus, then when he shows up in ESB you gotta wonder “Where was this guy in the first three movies?? When did he train Obi-wan???”

timdiggerm said:

Smithers said:

-Remove yoda from the movies, this is crucial and actually serves the OT more because you can leave in all of the lines mentioning master Yoda, setting him up as a great Jedi Master. This is also no problem to me because Yoda is boooring in the PT, save for a few good lines.

This is the only one that I am not sure about. You lose his convo with Obi-wan at the end of TPM, all the council scenes get screwed up, and you lose the meeting with Obi & Bail at the end of ROTS. Plus, then when he shows up in ESB you gotta wonder “Where was this guy in the first three movies?? When did he train Obi-wan???”

You some decent yoda scenes for sure, but the part with obi-wan is completely summed up at the end when he says to anakin “the council has granted me permission to train you, you will be a jedi, I promise” so the entire scene can be cut. As for the council scenes, almost every single one of Yoda’s lines is redundant due to mace windu or ki-adi rephrasing the exact same thing. The important parts of the Bail Organa scenes work fine without yoda, some special effects are needed but making custom mattes aboard the Tantive IV wouldn’t be too hard. My personal edit avoids the Bail Organa parts near the end so I’m not worried about that.

As for the whole “where was this guy?” point. I’ve decided that putting an empty seat in the council meeting room would be pretty cool, leaving in all mentions of him makes the audience aware of his existence, and given that Yoda serves no major purpose in episodes I-III it wouldn’t hurt the story nearly at all.

It’s hard as hell to imagine, but I’ve been editing these movies for a few years now and believe me I know them inside and out. The only Yoda material that I would miss is a couple of lines, and that’s it.

On that note, this is something I’ve learned from editing these movies, it’s that less is more. Most of the time we really don’t need everything to be spelled out for us, we don’t need to see Owen holding baby luke, we don’t need to see and hear exactly what every character is doing and feeling, so much of the end of ROTS can be left up to the audience’s imagination, ANH takes place 20 years after the fact, there’s no reason for all of the “loose ends” to be quickly tied up at the end. Hell, I’ve even seen a couple edits that don’t show the darth vader suit at the end, and honestly, it didn’t hurt the movie at all. I think George Lucas had very little faith in his audience, he believed that if everything wasn’t explicitly explained then we’d get lost, but as edits and reimaginings of the films continue to get made, the more we realize that the more unnecessary filler gets added into these movies, the more constraints it puts on the universe. This is why many fans are being led to believe the Star Wars universe is so limited, we keep getting spoonfed information that we really wish we didn’t know, it’s why all of the “easter eggs” in RO were hated and why many moments in the first half of SOLO were so bad. But don’t take my word for it lol, we’ll see what people think as more radical edits start to come out, we’re JUST starting to scratch the surface on this stuff.