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Star Wars Episode II: The Approaching Storm (Released) — Page 17

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Hey guys, so I have just finished my latest Re-Org of my collection, with all of Hal’s latest editions of his edits (thanks Hal btw). But I have run into a problem (darn OCD). I would like if possible, to have posters for Hal’s Prequel Edits that more closely resemble the official releases, so as to give more cohesion to the collection, and look more “official” in that respect. I have included a picture below to better illustrate what I mean. Any help on this would be great!

Also Posting on the Hal9000 Prequel Edit Threads, as well as the Poster Thread

https://imgur.com/a/cCyoZps

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Hello. Fanedit site, are those version 4 still, and not v5?

Google Drive for TAS is currently not working - others are ok

Should also add - Having watched V4 of this Trilogy a while back - Thank you very much for these improved films! Dont think i could go back to the originals now 😃

EDIT - Sorry ignore me, Master Link on Google is ok

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I love this edit because it improves Anakin’s character and salvages the love story. That said, I have a few criticisms.

Continuity Errors

In your edit, Anakin never loses his lightsaber, but Obi-Wan carries it while hopping out of the speeder.

In your edit, there is an establishing shot of the Naboo lake retreat before Anakin meets Padmé’s parents. This creates two continuity errors. First, the capitol is absent in the establishing shot but present in the background when Anakin and Padmé are walking in the street. Second, there is a different shot of the Naboo lake retreat before the floating pair scene, suggesting that they are still at her parents’ house. There is an easy fix: Replace the establishing shot of the Naboo lake retreat with the long shot of Anakin, Padmé, and R2 walking down the side street which was in the deleted scene.

Editing Choices

Changing “several thousand solar systems” to “a thousand solar systems” in the opening crawl and in Dooku’s speech is unnecessary. There are 200 billion solar systems in the Milky Way alone.

The shot of Anakin free-falling is meant to parallel Luke free-falling to his doom at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. The same sound effect occurs in both instances, emphasizing a contrast: Anakin risks his life because of his hubris, whereas Luke risks his life because of his refusal to join Vader.

Yoda sensing Anakin’s pain is a call back to Luke’s failure at the cave scene in The Empire Strikes Back. Both Anakin and Luke enter through a round opening. They move in opposite directions on screen: Anakin left to right, Luke right to left. Anakin sees his mother, Luke sees a vision of his father. Anakin decapitates the Tusken Raiders; Luke decapitates Vader. Both films then cut to Yoda, reacting.

Anakin’s “I killed them all” confession is emotionally powerful. That Anakin feels guilt for murdering the sand people actually demonstrates he is a morally concerned character. Although some dialogue must be cut, L8wrtr’s edit saves the scene.

The Senate granting Palpatine emergency powers flows more naturally after Count Dooku implies Palpatine is a Sith Lord. The two scenes reveal to the audience that a Sith Lord now reigns as dictator. If the scenes are separated, the emergency powers resolution loses its significance.

I prefer the droid factory scene over the deleted scene “Dooku interrogates Padmé.” In the deleted scene, Dooku offers clemency if Naboo joins the separatists. But Padmé could no more withdraw Naboo from the Republic than a U.S. Senator could withdraw his State from the Union. Surely only the Queen could secede. The droid factory scene - or an alternate capture scene - is crucial to the plot. It explains why Anakin only wields a lightsaber in the arena once the Jedi arrive. Without it, Anakin and Padmé seem to willingly walk to their deaths.

Scoring Issues

There is a noticeable, sudden change in key at the end of the “Encouraged to Love” scene and in the middle of the Obi-Wan and Mace scene.

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Yes, right after the chase scene we still see Obi-Wan with Anakin’s lightsaber. While it’s very brief, I think some people will notice. So if V6 eventually does happen, if the lightsaber could be painted out from Obi-Wan’s hand, that’d be great.

Another small thing I feel I should point out in the wake of V6 talks and whatnot, is to ask if the audio transition from the first Anakin/Padmé kiss to Kamino could be smoothed out a bit more. Maybe extend the shot a little bit so that the music can come to its original, more natural abrupt ending?

No big deal for either of these, but it’d be cool if those two small things could be improved nonetheless.

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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.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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LordPlagueis said:

I prefer the droid factory scene over the deleted scene “Dooku interrogates Padmé.” In the deleted scene, Dooku offers clemency if Naboo joins the separatists. But Padmé could no more withdraw Naboo from the Republic than a U.S. Senator could withdraw his State from the Union. Surely only the Queen could secede. The droid factory scene - or an alternate capture scene - is crucial to the plot. It explains why Anakin only wields a lightsaber in the arena once the Jedi arrive. Without it, Anakin and Padmé seem to willingly walk to their deaths.

Actually, that part really does bother me, now that I think of it. I understand why he removed the droid factory scene, but the scene he replaced it with just feels so abrupt and awkward. It’s like “Hey, let’s go talk with Dooku” skip to suddenly at the table with Dooku “Oh hey that didn’t work, guess we’re gonna die”.

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I hate to keep bringing up l8wrtr’s edits in your threads, but I think it’s worth taking a look at how he approached the Droid factory scene, which I copied in my “sanded down” edit. It feels brief enough that it doesn’t bog down the pace of the film, I believe he also retains the deleted scene with Dooku, but only after they are captured as a sort of last ditch effort to salvage things.

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Hal 9000 said:

Thanks, LordPlagueis, for taking time to interact with the edit and propose potential improvements for V6.

You’re welcome. A few further suggestions:

  • The opening crawl asserts a thousand solar systems “have revolted”
    and calls Count Dooku “mysterious,” but the separatists have not yet declared war and the characters know who Count Dooku is. I would suggest revising the opening crawl:

A decade after the invasion of Naboo, the galaxy is fragmented. Thousands of systems have threatened to rebel against the Republic.

This separatist movement, under the leadership of the treacherous Count Dooku, has overwhelmed the Jedi Knights, guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.

Senator Amidala, the former Queen of Naboo, is returning to Coruscant to speak against a radical security measure which would inflame tensions and engulf the galaxy in a civil war…

  • To pan down instead of up, The Approaching Storm reverses the shot of the fighters and the cruiser before rotating but neglects to reverse the shot of the fighters and the cruiser after rotating. The rotation should change the relative vertical orientation of space.

  • The dialogue in the chancellor’s office flows unnaturally. Palpatine interrupts Mace Windu to express confidence his negotiations will succeed. Then Mace Windu finishes his sentence. Then Palpatine asks Yoda if he thinks it will come to war. But if Palpatine is confident his negotiations will succeed, why would he ask Yoda if he thinks it will come to war?

Perhaps reorder the dialogue:

PALPATINE: More and more star systems are joining the separatists. Do you think it will really come to war?
YODA: Hmm, The Dark Side clouds everything. Impossible to see, the future is.
WINDU: There aren’t enough Jedi to protect the Republic. We’re keepers of the peace, not soldiers.

Or cut the exchange between Palpatine and Windu.

  • When Anakin and Padmé leave Coruscant, Padmé tells Captain Typho “Take good care of Dormé,” but Dormé replies “He’ll be safe with me,” as if Padmé had told her to take good care of Captain Typho, the opposite of what she said.

  • I might have mentioned this, but there is an abrupt musical transition in the “Encouraged to Love” scene when the line “You’re exactly the way I remember you in my dreams” is cut. I would either restore the line or isolate the vocals and rescore the scene.

  • There is an unpleasant musical key change in the Obi-Wan and Mace scene where their dialogue is trimmed. I would separate the audio from the video and cross-fade the clips in Audacity to correct this.

  • It would be ideal to include Obi-Wan’s Jedi starfighter taking off, flying through the atmosphere, attaching to the transport ring, and taking off into hyperspace. Then fade to black, transitioning to the freighter arriving on Naboo.

  • Would it be possible to include the dream sequence but regrade a shot of Padmé sleeping from Revenge of the Sith in order to appear as if she is sleeping next to him? Octorox’s edit is similar.

  • Cutting Anakin’s murder confession altogether implies that either (1) his actions were justifiable or (2) his actions were unjustifiable and he feels no remorse. Either alternative ruins Anakin’s moral complexity as a protagonist. If Anakin’s reference to slaughtering women and children like animals is cut, the love story is still believable. See L8wrtr’s edit of the scene.

  • Since the clones are genetically modified to be less independent and more docile, it is more logical for the Jedi to issue military orders to the clones.

  • Would it be possible to mute the battle droid’s “Roger Roger”?

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RE: “several thousand solar systems” versus “a thousand solar systems” - both sound awkward. Why not “thousands of solar systems”?

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ChainsawAsh said:

RE: “several thousand solar systems” versus “a thousand solar systems” - both sound awkward. Why not “thousands of solar systems”?

+1

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Also, personal preference maybe, but I’d prefer “star systems,” which sounds a bit more pulpy to me than “solar systems.” I’m not sure if “solar systems” is a phrase anyone says in the movies (excepting its use in this crawl, obviously).

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DominicCobb said:

Also, personal preference maybe, but I’d prefer “star systems,” which sounds a bit more pulpy to me than “solar systems.” I’m not sure if “solar systems” is a phrase anyone says in the movies (excepting its use in this crawl, obviously).

+1 for “thousands of star systems.” Leia even specifically uses that phrasing at Tarkin in ANH.

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Eh, the original AOTC crawl uses ‘solar systems,’ so it’s just something I didn’t alter when doing a new crawl. I kind of like it. Episode 2 is the only one of the three to credit Ben Burtt as ‘Sound Editor’ rather than ‘Edited by.’ So, for that one alone, he is credited in my version as ‘Editor’ and I as ‘fan editor.’

I will keep it as ‘solar system’ if for no other reason than it’s something unique to the original crawl and I’m weird.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Here’s a good example of what I meant:

Imagine the original teaser trailer for the original Star Wars. Imagine the narrator saying, “Aliens from a thousand worlds!”

Now imagine him saying, “Aliens from several thousand worlds!”

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Do what ya gotta do weirdo 😉.

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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You know, I watched this last night with low expectations, as I had not watched AOTC in its entirety in quite a few years, and I found myself enjoying this more than I expected to. There’s still some things (from George’s pen, not your cut) that still leave a bad taste in my mouth, BUT…I think I kind of like this movie now.

You cut some of Anakin’s cringe inducing dialogue and made Hayden’s performance shine a bit more. I also felt the relationship was more believable, thanks to the added scenes and cutting some of the creepier Anakin dialogue.

I can think of a few things that I might personally do away with, like any mention of the chosen one stuff. I just hate the prophecy stuff that was added in the prequels. There wasn’t really any of that in the originals, save for “That boy was our last hope” but I got more “He’s the only non-corrupted Jedi left”. Then by TPM George wanted to make Anakin a Christ figure who had the perfect genetic makeup for being awesome.

My favorite bit of the edit was cutting out the Yoda saber duel. It made Yoda feel all the wiser and all the more powerful, especially with Dooku giving him the slip like that.

I also liked that Obi-Wan’s detective work was streamlined to make Obi-Wan seem more competent and capable. This felt like the Obi-Wan of Guinness, and less like a good impression.

I think so far, this edit is my definitive AOTC. Now to give ROTS a preview.

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

<span> </span>

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So I know this will be an unpopular suggestion, but have you given any consideration to bringing back the Dex’s Diner scene with trims similar to what Cathy Fulcher-Baker did for her edit? clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtBAiWYWR6w&t=10m26s

The reason I ask is that I think this would allow you to include the scene from the theatrical cut where Mace, Yoda and Obi-Wan discuss Anakin, rather than the alternate “deleted scene” version with only Mace and Obi-Wan as you do now. While it may be slightly stronger dramatically, I think the visual effects in that deleted scene stand out as particularly unpolished. Additionally, Mace’s line that Obi-Wan “must have faith” in Anakin seems dissonant with his character in Revenge of the Sith, who clearly doesn’t trust him.

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That is very well done. I think that is a very good idea because the deleted scene sticks out very badly to the rest of the footage.

The Skywalker Saga:
I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX
This is the way.

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Hard to disagree too much with that. Let me sit on this for a bit, but I do like it and it makes good sense.

I’m leaving away from the droid factory action sequence, partly because I’m hoping to cull a line from it for 3PO to replace his line as they leave Tatooine. And, reviewing Q2’s edit, he manages to include the deleted scene sans action sequence and keeping the Senate scene following Dooku’s conversation with Obi-Wan. Sure, Anakin seems meek, but I’m sure as part of the diplomacy angle he agreed to he needed to surrender his weapon. Then the bad guys screw them over.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

I’m leaving away from the droid factory action sequence, partly because I’m hoping to cull a line from it for 3PO to replace his line as they leave Tatooine.

Fair enough, but I do want to point out that I don’t think l8wrtr’s edit of the Droid factory scene includes R2 and 3PO at all, so you’d likely be able to use the line elsewhere if you adhered to a similar edit. Ultimately it’s your edit and I think the way it plays now works, even if it does seem a bit odd that they sneak into a secret entrance only to immediately sit down at the negotiation table.

Hard to disagree too much with that. Let me sit on this for a bit, but I do like it and it makes good sense.

On second thought, the deleted Obi-Wan and Mace scene does add some connective tissue to the Kamino mystery that isn’t there without the “Yoda & the Younglings” scene, which I don’t think anyone wants back. Without the presence of either of those scenes, Obi-Wan goes straight from not finding Kamino in the library to arriving on the planet, with no mention of someone possibly deleting the files from the archive.

You could add the edited-down Dex scene anyway, right where it was the theatrical cut, but I don’t think it allows you to remove the deleted Obi-Wan and Mace scene like I had previously thought. At that point, it might be best just to leave things as they are, even though I kind of like the idea that Obi-Wan has weird alien friends/informants.

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I think including the droid factory sequence would mean I wouldn’t be upgrading to the new version myself, but hey, I’ll always have V5 either way!

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Octorox said:

So I know this will be an unpopular suggestion, but have you given any consideration to bringing back the Dex’s Diner scene with trims similar to what Cathy Fulcher-Baker did for her edit? clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtBAiWYWR6w&t=10m26s

The reason I ask is that I think this would allow you to include the scene from the theatrical cut where Mace, Yoda and Obi-Wan discuss Anakin, rather than the alternate “deleted scene” version with only Mace and Obi-Wan as you do now. While it may be slightly stronger dramatically, I think the visual effects in that deleted scene stand out as particularly unpolished. Additionally, Mace’s line that Obi-Wan “must have faith” in Anakin seems dissonant with his character in Revenge of the Sith, who clearly doesn’t trust him.

That is trimmed very well. It works on good multiple levels. One, it gives a destination for Kamino. Since the records of Kamino are “missing” in the Jedi archive scene, it would be pretty impossible to find a single planet in a single galaxy when there are 100s, if not 1000s in the Republic, let alone the unknown regions which makes up even a bigger chunk! It’s like finding a needle in many, many, many haystacks. And in the current edit, Obi Wan finds it pretty easily in one shot. Heck, look at The Force Awakens … there is a map that leads to Luke that is missing about 15-20% of it which makes it impossible to find him without the missing piece!

Also, I will say despite the Mace and Obi Wan scene contextually a better scene, it is visually distracting since it is both incomplete and is in a lower resolution. Again, I like the dialogue much better, but it is a bit distracting visually.

So with this edited scene, it removes the silly-ness but keeps the important information.

With that, do keep out the Yoda and kids scene as well as the droid factory scene that has been mentioned. The is too silly and introduces abilities R2 does not show in the original movies. It was very goofy when I first saw it and kept thinking “How the Heck is R2 flying around but dines’t do that in the OT? There were several opportunities that would have been super helpful!!”

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”