The Original Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 8

Haha, I think you’re looking for the Worst Ideas Thread!

RogueLeader said:

Haha, I think you’re looking for the Worst Ideas Thread!

No it’s a great idea!!

An effort to smooth over the jump-cut in the hut scene.

https://streamable.com/omaga

This is my attempt to redo ROTJ’s ending with a non-diegetic piece from the 1983 soundtrack (namely, “Luke and Leia”). A bunch of other fanedits have done this (e.g., the Dan Edit), but I wanted to demonstrate it with the 1983 cut of the ending. I sped up the music a little, for better sync.

Here’s the vimeo link.

Password: fanedit

That is really great! I feel like something could be done at the very end to help transition to the credits music. It just feels a bit jarring, it feels like it is missing some kind of build up or something. But honestly that is a perfect track to use for the ending!

RogueLeader said:

That is really great! I feel like something could be done at the very end to help transition to the credits music. It just feels a bit jarring, it feels like it is missing some kind of build up or something. But honestly that is a perfect track to use for the ending!

Thanks! The way that song goes is that it builds up to a big note, then quiets down. I didn’t want to have the big note/crash happen, let the music quiet down (but not finish the song), then start the end credits (that felt more jarring).

“Luke and Leia” makes for a far better ending theme to the OT than “Yub Nub” or “Victory Celebration”/the 500 Nations emulation. Its tone doesn’t clash as much with the pyre piece or even “Leia Breaks the News” (which I like shortened, to eliminate envious Han).

Something that I don’t think I ever really got when I was a kid is that we’re supposed to be surprised that the Death Star II is operational. Obviously there’s lines of dialogue that set this up, but when you’re young you pay more attention to the visuals (at least I did), and while visually the second Death Star is incomplete, the weapon part of it is not.

So basically my idea is, what if the Death Star II is missing its dish? So we think there’s no possible way it could fire. But then, suddenly, it fires anyway (out of the recess that should hold the dish).

On a separate ROTJ note, does anyone have any idea how to have the droids get taken by Jabba without playing Luke’s hologram? Could you just cut from them entering the palace to being in the droid torture dungeon? Would that make sense? Maybe recut the scene with Bin Fortuna and add subtitles saying basically “yeah right an audience with Jabba, you two are ours now.”

Interesting ideas! I had never thought about that but that would make it more surprising if the laser dish didn’t even look complete.

I was trying to think of what could fill its place, and after some googling I stumbled across this art station post from a concept designer who helped model the Death Star in Rogue One.

Maybe something like this could fill that gap instead. The one thing I like about this idea is that it doesn’t really take away from the Death Star II’s iconic silhouette, and instead it could actually add to its ‘incomplete’ look, as well as differentiate it more from the first Death Star’s design.

Are you wanting to remove Luke’s hologram in order to save our first look at him for when he actually appears later in the film?

IlFanEditore said:
You could cut at the point where the gamorrean guards appear, so that the audience thinks they captured 3PO and R2, maybe?

Great idea. Jaba then gets introduced when Leia comes in with Chewie 😃
I’d also cut the trapdoor, it works better as a complete surprise for the viewer (and Luke).

RogueLeader said:

Maybe something like this could fill that gap instead. The one thing I like about this idea is that it doesn’t really take away from the Death Star II’s iconic silhouette, and instead it could actually add to its ‘incomplete’ look, as well as differentiate it more from the first Death Star’s design.

Yeah, exactly.

Are you wanting to remove Luke’s hologram in order to save our first look at him for when he actually appears later in the film?

Yeah, exactly. Truly a baffling decision to make up such a big reveal but completely undercut it.

I might try to make an example later and see what it might look like.

If that doesn’t work or seems too different, another option could be to remove a few segmented panels out of the dish itself, which might achieve a more subtle change that it could still make it feel incomplete. Although it might be less effective than completely removing the dish, it’s a potential middle ground.

Regarding the Luke hologram, I think how you handle it sort of depends on your interpretation of Luke’s plan. Do you want to keep the fact that Luke gifted the droids to Jabba, since it implies he wanted to get R2 in there? Or maybe he was betting on Jabba just keeping the droids for himself.

Could the message just be R2 beeping a bit to them (maybe with 3PO chiming in with surprise that they’re the gift, rather than the hologram. Then, you could add/change Jabba and Bib’s subtitles to provide the context: Luke wants to bargain for Solo’s life and he is gifting the droid’s as a token of good will.

RogueLeader said:

I might try to make an example later and see what it might look like.

If that doesn’t work or seems too different, another option could be to remove a few segmented panels out of the dish itself, which might achieve a more subtle change that it could still make it feel incomplete. Although it might be less effective than completely removing the dish, it’s a potential middle ground.

Regarding the Luke hologram, I think how you handle it sort of depends on your interpretation of Luke’s plan. Do you want to keep the fact that Luke gifted the droids to Jabba, since it implies he wanted to get R2 in there? Or maybe he was betting on Jabba just keeping the droids for himself.

Could the message just be R2 beeping a bit to them (maybe with 3PO chiming in with surprise that they’re the gift, rather than the hologram. Then, you could add/change Jabba and Bib’s subtitles to provide the context: Luke wants to bargain for Solo’s life and he is gifting the droid’s as a token of good will.

Yes there’s probably a couple different ways you could do it.

As for Luke’s plan, that’s never going to make sense. It’s probably worth pointing out that the original idea was that Luke needed to bring them out into the open on the sail barge because staging an escape/rescue in the palace would’ve been supposedly nearly impossible. That’s really the only explanation for what goes down but I can’t think of anyway to spell that out, so we’re left with what we’re left with. The question then becomes, do you want it to seem like things are going according to the plan or not? I sort of lean towards wanting it to seem like things just keep going wrong (bit more exciting), but they’re able to pull it out in the end (whether the set backs were planned or not being ambiguous). To that end, of the options I tend to think that the “gift” aspect should be left out, as should the scene where Leia/Boushh gives Jabba Chewbacca - so when we first see Chewie he’s already a prisoner (this is a pretty common edit idea, which is helped by the fact that 3PO has a line of dialogue that basically sets this up).

Of course the other thing propelling such changes is the fact that the Jabba’s palace section is just interminably long, so cutting out at least a couple scenes would do it a lot of good.

Really? I like the Boushh scenes. So the first time you see Boushh/Leia, she’d just be sneaking into Jabba’s palace at night?

As far removing Luke’s message, i’d probably play around with potential subtitle options for Bib and/or Jabba, depending on how far the droids get. Because I could see them reaching Jabba and him rejecting them there.

I wonder if that scene with Bib could end early, before they tell Bib they have to tell Jabba directly. So when they enter the main palace and Bib whispers in his ear, maybe he is telling Jabba what they said. Then Jabba could respond with his refusal.

Maybe after Bib whispers in his ear, Jabba can ask, “Who is your master?”

C-3PO: Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight.

Bib: [Huttese jibberish] Heh, he’s no Jedi.

Jabba: The Jedi are all dead. Captain Solo belongs to me now, and for this insult so do you…

EDIT: Or, “I will not bargain with a false Jedi…”

Sort of unrelated but regarding Leia in ROTJ, I think I’ve seen this suggestion before, but it would be interesting if Boushh had some kind of breathing sound effect that sort of made you think of Darth Vader. Like a subtle foreshadowing to their relation. Even a very slight, choking sound for when Leia strangles Jabba to death. Like father like daughter.

RogueLeader said:

Really? I like the Boushh scenes. So the first time you see Boushh/Leia, she’d just be sneaking into Jabba’s palace at night?

I don’t have an issue one way or another with the Boushh scene, but when looking at ways to cut down the Jabba’s palace section, it is the first that comes to mind, as the main thing it establishes (prisoned Chewie) can be explained with 3PO’s line. Yes you do end up with Boushh’s first moment being sneaking around at night, but I’m not sure that’d feel too weird. I guess you also probably have to find a place to sneak in a shot of Lando since that scene has his reveal.

As far removing Luke’s message, i’d probably play around with potential subtitle options for Bib and/or Jabba, depending on how far the droids get. Because I could see them reaching Jabba and him rejecting them there.

Im in my head following the sequence of events, if one was to cut out the droids speaking with Jabba entirely. Then your first scene with him would be the Lapti Nek -> trap door sequence, which one could argue would be a stronger intro to the character. The main thing you’d lose though I guess is the establishment of Han’s carbonate block on the wall. I guess you’d have to insert a full on shot of it during Lapti Nek. I wonder if that works or is too small, but either way you’d probably want to get rid of 3PO’s captain obvious observation exposition.

The problem for me is the movie takes so long to pick up. You have the first scene with Vader, which basically accomplishes nothing. The droids enter Jabba’s palace, which is somewhat interesting, but it’s pretty drawn out and dialogue heavy (first walking to the palace, then outside the door, then in the main hallway, then talking to Jabba, then talking to EV-9D9 in the droid dungeon, etc.). Ideally in my mind you’d want to get rid of at least one of those scenes. Maybe if you want to keep Jabba you could lose the Bib moment or the droid torture (in my head I always thought to get rid of the latter). But the more I think about removing the Jabba scene, the more I like it (and removing the whole “gift” aspect makes the droid torture dungeon more interesting an threatening, in a way, since we don’t know what they’re going to do with them).

Outside of the Jabba stuff, the other idea I have for the opening is in regards to that Vader scene. If it doesn’t accomplish anything, why not star the film with the Emperor’s arrival? Isn’t it sort of redundant to have two arrival scenes anyway? It would start the film off on a more exciting and monumental note.

Rise of Skywalker speculation below

I’m stealing someone’s idea here (don’t remember who), but what if the Emperor’s shuttle had a red stripe instead of a slightly darker grey one? And, if were making his arrival the opening, what if the Star Destroyer he’s coming from also has a red stripe? It’s my understanding that in the TROS teaser, you can faintly see a red stripe on an old Star Destroyer. The speculation being, is this something that is affiliated Palpatine himself, considering his apparent return? If so, this could be a way to tie the trilogies together.

This, in my mind, would be the ideal restructure of ROTJ

• Crawl
• Emperor arrives
• Droids go to and enter palace, talk with Bib
• Droids go to the dungeon and speak with EV-9D9
• Lapti Nek, Oola falls into rancor pit
• Leia unfreezes Han, captured
• Luke arrives, fights rancor
• Sail barge assault
• Emperor speaks with Vader in his throne room (a scene I probably would have cut if not for the Emperor’s arrival being shifted earlier)
• Luke on Dagobah
• Then basically the rest plays out as normal

There are a few things I struggle with. A very popular idea is to put the Luke on Dagobah scenes at the start of the film. I like this a lot, because it opens the film with a bit more of that darker TESB vibe which should subtlety alter the tone for the whole film (whereas it’s otherwise just lost in the middle of mostly goofiness). The issues with this, however, is first of all that makes the film even slower to start, and adds a complication with Luke meeting up with the alliance later.

The “easy” solution, in my mind, is reinstating the ‘Vader contacts Luke’ deleted scene, which should carry a similar sort of feel (to make ROTJ seem a bit more apiece with where TESB left off). However, I don’t really think it’s feasible to get that scene into a decent enough quality to use. Same goes for the other great deleted moment, the sandstorm, which would be even harder to incorporate.

My other big problem with my cuts is that I worry I’ll short change Leia, what between the Boushh removal and my other long favored cut, the removal of her scene with Wicket. Seems a shame to cut down on what is already so slight a role for her, but it’s not like the two scenes add much, character-wise. I guess if I’m really struggling with it, the Boushh scene is the one to keep, since we get a pretty badass moment from her with the thermal detonator. But again I worry about the pacing of that first third of the film. Maybe trims in addition to scene removals would help.

I like that sequence of events, but I feel like cutting the Boushh/Chewbacca scene makes the Lapti Nek bit feel like a non sequitur that only exists as foreshadowing, as opposed to a lead-in to the Boushh scene that also functions as foreshadowing. Plus, including the Boushh scene gives Threepio something to do immediately after his capture, which gives more connective tissue between that and Leia freeing Han than just using Lapti Nek, where Threepio is just a bystander who doesn’t do anything.

These are some great thoughts, Dom!

Honestly, I think ROTJ is in this weird place between being a part of the “holy” trilogy, but also being considered the weakest of three. Yes, you could edit it dramatically, and it has been before, but imo I feel like there isn’t really a definitive fan edit of ROTJ, just a few good ones that introduce some cool ideas. How much can you alter without something feeling missing?

In this case, I think all of these different options just have to be tested, and see what still feels coherent, or seamless, even.

So, you’re suggesting opening with the Emperor scene, which honestly is a solid idea. I think the one think you lose is a slightly ominous opening for Vader, since the first time we see him in this version of events would just be in a wide shot of him kneeling down (unless you inserted a new first shot of him somehow). I like your IX related idea by the way! We definitely need to keep that in mind.

I think Bib Fortuna speaks enough in this scene to where you can add enough subtitles to provide enough context for what is happening.

I think the droid torture room could still be kept so we can know that 3PO and R2 have been given new jobs within the Palace.

You could easily add an insert of Han frozen in carbonite in the Lapti nek scene, but you actually get glimpses of him already in it. But still, I think an extra shot would make that clear (I don’t think anyone would complain if you cut out an extra Sly Snootles shot). At first I also felt it would be a scene where nothing happens with that the Chewbacca/Boushh scene, but you can transition it in a way to where it feels like it leads right into Leia sneaking into the Palace. And it still functions as an introduction to Jabba’s character through 3PO’s point of view.

Originally this sequence is the beginning of the Bounty for a Wookiee scene, but you instead could cut to the sunset Palace establishing shot, maybe still hearing some muffled laughter and screams. I think it would be cool if you turned this into a night shot, as well.

You could then wipe to scene where Boushh sneaks into the main palace room. Show Leia freeing Han, all that jazz. Leia and Han get captured. Han hears snarling in his cell and it turns out to be Chewbacca! This being Chewie’s introduction is an interesting idea.
(Also, what if Jabba was hiding behind a holographic wall rather than just some curtains?)

If you cut the first Boushh scene, I think Leia & Wicket should be kept, at the very least to not make this film less than two hours long.
The deleted scenes would be cool to add, but it just seem infeasible to add them seamlessly. And I think Luke’s introduction in the film is great as-is, and putting Dagobah stuff earlier would just ruin that mystique.

Good idea putting the first throne room scene in place of where the Emeror’s first scene originally was. I also think graphics could be added to those weirdly blank view screens that could be relevant to some potential ST-foreshadowing as well, but not sure what exactly that could be yet.

Again, I feel this is something you just gotta experiment with. Try it without the first Boushh scene, and try it with it, then compare and see which works better. I get why you are suggesting that though. I would like to see without it, but if keeping felt necessary you could just cut out 3PO mentioning Chewbacca earlier in the film.

I’m going to think about what Bib could potentially say to them in that first scene.

ChainsawAsh said:

I like that sequence of events, but I feel like cutting the Boushh/Chewbacca scene makes the Lapti Nek bit feel like a non sequitur that only exists as foreshadowing, as opposed to a lead-in to the Boushh scene that also functions as foreshadowing. Plus, including the Boushh scene gives Threepio something to do immediately after his capture, which gives more connective tissue between that and Leia freeing Han than just using Lapti Nek, where Threepio is just a bystander who doesn’t do anything.

You might be right.

RogueLeader said:

These are some great thoughts, Dom!

Honestly, I think ROTJ is in this weird place between being a part of the “holy” trilogy, but also being considered the weakest of three. Yes, you could edit it dramatically, and it has been before, but imo I feel like there isn’t really a definitive fan edit of ROTJ, just a few good ones that introduce some cool ideas. How much can you alter without something feeling missing?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently since I’ve been reading Rinzler’s Making of book, and all the parts about the earlier versions are so tantalizing. It’s funny because nearly most complaints about the film and many common edit ideas were in fact addressed in earlier drafts and story conferences (opening with the Emperor arriving, for instance, is an idea I swiped from there). The book is sort of an interesting study in trying to decipher for yourself “what went wrong?” I think many would agree the film is a big step down from the previous two. The question, when it comes to editing, is how do you fix that. I think the reason you don’t see a lot of ROTJ edits vs. PT or ST edits (despite many who think that quality-wise it is probably on par with more than one of those earlier films) is simply because we’re so used to it and because we all grew up with it. Sort of similar to now I feel like I’m seeing more people include moments in their PT edits that were never included before, just because the moments were too memorable. It’s hard imaging the film in a different way.

So, you’re suggesting opening with the Emperor scene, which honestly is a solid idea. I think the one think you lose is a slightly ominous opening for Vader, since the first time we see him in this version of events would just be in a wide shot of him kneeling down (unless you inserted a new first shot of him somehow). I like your IX related idea by the way! We definitely need to keep that in mind.

The shot of Vader walking down his shuttle ramp is one of my favorites, and there are some classic lines in there. But ultimately you have to ask yourself will cutting the scene make the film better? I think it might. Something that always bothered me too is Vader says “the Emperor is not as forgiving as I am,” which feels like a big set up, but we don’t see him make good on this in anyway. I think it could be worth keeping the earlier scene if there was some way to show the Emperor’s wrath - I always thought we should have seen him take out his anger on Vader, electrocuting him. Not sure if there’s any way to accomplish that.

You’d probably also want to cut the business with the clearance codes and the shield and all that. Obviously it’s set up for later but I don’t think it’s necessary and it just starts the film off with boring dialogue.

If you cut the first Boushh scene, I think Leia & Wicket should be kept, at the very least to not make this film less than two hours long.

This is something that I struggled with a lot when I was getting into fan edits at first, but honestly sometimes there’s nothing you can do. My PT edits are all under two hours. I wish it could be helped, but I’d prefer to worry about runtime second.

The deleted scenes would be cool to add, but it just seem infeasible to add them seamlessly. And I think Luke’s introduction in the film is great as-is, and putting Dagobah stuff earlier would just ruin that mystique.

Well for me, if you’re not removing the hologram, it’s sort of like what’s the point. The other idea is that you get to imply Luke has been training with Yoda in the interim (which would explain his change in character). But I’m not really for the change anymore, myself.

Good idea putting the first throne room scene in place of where the Emeror’s first scene originally was. I also think graphics could be added to those weirdly blank view screens that could be relevant to some potential ST-foreshadowing as well, but not sure what exactly that could be yet.

You definitely need to cut back to the real bad guys in that moment, and if the Emperor’s arrival is being moved up, it’s actually quite fortunate that this scene exists to take it’s place and basically serve as a reminder. Otherwise it’s a scene I’d suggest cutting because it’s mostly pointless.

An idea for Bib’s dialogue.

3PO: We bring a message for your master, Jabba the Hutt.

Bib: De Jabba wanga?

R2 beeps. Cut to wide shot of droids, cut 3PO mentioning gift. Keep R2 beeping, cut to a close up shot of R2 beeping. Even add a reaction shot of a Gamorrean if you wanted it to last longer, but the idea is R2 is telling Bib the message, so R2 needs to beep a little longer than usual.

Bib: Ne Jabba no bodda. Jabba won’t bargain.

Bib: Eez ai ota. He has what he wants

Bib: Kiz ata u mudi. But we do need droids…

Bib: Me chadda so gudi. So we’ll accept this gift!

C-3PO: Gift? What gift?

Bib: Lu cha! Take them!

[Insert C-3PO panicky dialogue here]

How about starting with Luke on Dagobha, intercut with Jabba’s palace? This way time would flow better on both sequences.

Luke’s entrance would still work as long as we remove the hologram. He leaves Dagobah a full Jedi, but the first time we see him as such is when he enters the palace.

Some edits have actually done this, but it’s sort of like we said, it seems like the first time we see him at all should be when he enters Jabba palace.