Thanks, LordPlagueis, for taking time to interact with the edit and propose potential improvements for V6.
Obi-Wan carrying Anakin’s saber for a shot or two seems like a moviemaking continuity error that can happen when things are cut, and is worth losing the antagonism between these two characters. I imagine it would have been difficult for the hypothetical filmmaker who made this change during post-production to even paint it out.
The establishing shot of the scene with Padme’s family is low-resolution and unfinished. Including it would be more technically correct though, so let me see about this when I have the movie ripped and in front of me. It may be worthwhile to change it to that.
You’re probably right about the “thousand” point. I think for me the idea stems from the crawl. “A thousand star systems have yadda yadda” sounds better to me than “several thousand.” I guess it just sounds artificially inflated. Perhaps I could undo Dooku’s modified line but leave the crawl as it is in TAS. It would still jive with any non-film continuity because of Dooku’s confidence of his Separatist movement radically expanding.
I see a superficial parallel between the shots of Anakin and Luke falling, but I don’t think keeping the shot improves the scene or film. With the Yoda scene, it seems shoehorned in just to be a parallel. I will say that this goes well with Yoda sensing Anakin’s pain later as he heads to confront Dooku. But, I do not like the Qui-Gon yell caught in the middle. So I think this’ll remain Anakin’s dark secret.
Anakin confessing the Tusken slaughter was deliberately removed and I prefer the film without it. It speaks to a more believable romance developing, and Anakin sharing things with Palpatine he doesn’t with anyone else.
Interesting point about the sequencing of Palpatine accepting emergency powers. I moved it in order to be able to move from the Dooku deleted scene into the arena more smoothly. This would definitely be a Plan B, but it might be worth mocking up a version of the droid factory scene to see how it plays.