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Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Another Happy Sanding. (Released) — Page 2

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 (Edited)

Yeah maybe in a conservative cut it’s not useful to remove that.

The more I think about it, the more I believe I’d love this conservative cut to be Octorox’s EpIII extended editions with a few things dealt with I consider mandatory:

  • no “I’m sorry” master during the opening space fight
  • no R2 killing droids with oil
  • no Dooku cgi jump
  • no Palpatine going “yeah !” during Anakin v Dooku
  • I’m puzzled about “DO IT!” : maybe just remove “Good. Now: kill him” and let Anakin take the decision after only “DO IT !” (very unsure about that scene… what have you decided about that Octorox ?)
  • no Anakin whining during the Jedi Council
  • no ridiculous Palpatine close ups & melting face during the Windu fight
  • no Anakin killing kids (seriously, I hate that shot)
  • no “I saw your ship”
  • no “she has lost the will to live”

and a few silly things here and there removed or slightly restructured. A cut the same way Hal edited TLJ really (around 10/15 minutes cut, 5 added), the very same thing with the small very bad things removed and cut material reinserted.

Anyway I’m still highly hyped by this project, hope it comes to fruition in glorious audio-video quality 😃

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Collipso said:

i don’t get the “obi-wan should never refer to R2 by name”. honestly, it doesn’t change anything, because they’re still in the very same room and Anakin calls him by his name so… it just seems a bit pointless to me.

It’s an effort to reconcile Obi-Wan not “recognizing” R2 in ANH, when his actions in ANH can just as easily be interpreted as either Obi-Wan teasing R2 or just simply not caring about droids all that much.

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Collipso said:

i don’t get the “obi-wan should never refer to R2 by name”. honestly, it doesn’t change anything, because they’re still in the very same room and Anakin calls him by his name so… it just seems a bit pointless to me.

It’s a very small thing, for sure. I think the novelization of ROTS characterizes Obi-Wan’s attitude toward R2 and droids in general as somewhat dismissive in order to try harmonizing things with ANH. Probably also building on his comments about droids in AOTC.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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doubleofive said:

Collipso said:

i don’t get the “obi-wan should never refer to R2 by name”. honestly, it doesn’t change anything, because they’re still in the very same room and Anakin calls him by his name so… it just seems a bit pointless to me.

It’s an effort to reconcile Obi-Wan not “recognizing” R2 in ANH, when his actions in ANH can just as easily be interpreted as either Obi-Wan teasing R2 or just simply not caring about droids all that much.

i get that, i just don’t think it’s that effective in making it believable he wouldn’t remember R2 by Star Wars.

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Collipso said:

doubleofive said:

Collipso said:

i don’t get the “obi-wan should never refer to R2 by name”. honestly, it doesn’t change anything, because they’re still in the very same room and Anakin calls him by his name so… it just seems a bit pointless to me.

It’s an effort to reconcile Obi-Wan not “recognizing” R2 in ANH, when his actions in ANH can just as easily be interpreted as either Obi-Wan teasing R2 or just simply not caring about droids all that much.

i get that, i just don’t think it’s that effective in making it believable he wouldn’t remember R2 by Star Wars.

Oh no, I don’t think it’s effective either.

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He also doesn’t say he doesn’t remember R2, he says he doesn’t remember owning him. Actually be says he doesn’t remember owning ANY droid, which is just ludicrous, so with all the other white lies concerning his father and such I can easily in my head cannon believe he doesn’t feel like talking about it being Lukes father’s old droid.

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Wondering what the status is on this project and if it will ever come to fruition.

I am generally in favor of conservative edit of Ep 3. Hal9000’s is quite good, but I think it was a mistake to try to have Padme live by adding scenes from The Other Boleyn Girl.

I currently watch L8’s version as my go-to edit. However, one thing I strongly dislike is Anakin killing the younglings. I think it makes him irredeemable in Ep 6 and is also too dark for a Star Wars film. The security footage of him killing much older children gets the point across and is more palatable.

I also think people should get over the whole “Yoda shouldn’t wield a lightsaber.” He’s a Jedi; he knows how to wield a lightsaber. He does so all throughout The Clone Wars. It’s canon.

But those are just my thoughts. I feel like people are far less critical of the PT than they were even a few years ago, and thus a carefully crafted “conservative” edit is in order.

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Thanks GLogus. I just don’t have all that much time to dedicate to editing these days, but never say never.

However, it sounds like you might be interested in Hal’s V6 of LOE with Alternate Ending. It reinstates Padme’s death, and rolls back a couple of minor things that were cut in previous versions. Unfortunately it doesn’t bring back Yoda’s fight with Palpatine, but there’s always L8’s edit and SiliconMaster’s ‘Revenge of the Sith: Rebalanced’ for that.

I’ll definitely update this thread if I make any progress.

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Fair enough. I would still be interested in seeing your Ep 1 and 2 edits.

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Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up just yet but I’ve started tinkering with this again. Trying to find a narratively satisfying place to put the 3rd seeds of the rebellion scene and I think I may have finally cracked it. Borrowed a shot from Siliconmaster482’s edit which I believe was pulled from Attack of the Clones and flipped/color corrected.

Here is the clip: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ar3OOaZZGQ9oaf5ZGoqojil3Dj2Ugwy4

EDIT: Watching through it a few times, I may ultimately decide to wipe to the next scene after “Senator Amidala is hiding something, I can see it in her eyes”. Thoughts on that vs. how the clip currently plays?

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Agreed, nice work! And yeah, it was just flipped from AotC, I don’t think I did any color correction to it since it matched the time of day for my purpose.

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Octorox said:

Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up just yet but I’ve started tinkering with this again. Trying to find a narratively satisfying place to put the 3rd seeds of the rebellion scene and I think I may have finally cracked it. Borrowed a shot from Siliconmaster482’s edit which I believe was pulled from Attack of the Clones and flipped/color corrected.

Here is the clip: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ar3OOaZZGQ9oaf5ZGoqojil3Dj2Ugwy4

EDIT: Watching through it a few times, I may ultimately decide to wipe to the next scene after “Senator Amidala is hiding something, I can see it in her eyes”. Thoughts on that vs. how the clip currently plays?

Nice work!

I think the change is worth trying, but I think most of the issue is actually with the Anakin/Padme scene following the office scene. Anakin immediately acts suspicious because Obi-wan has been there, and while that wasn’t too problematic in the original coming right after his departure for Utapau, now it feels odd since he has presumably been gone a full day at least. I also think that scene in general is too schizophrenic with Anakin going from mistrust of Obi-wan to weariness back to mistrust and then doubtful of his own abilities. Removing the exchange ‘I feel lost’ ‘Lost, what do you mean?’ might allow a more natural flow.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
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Octorox said:

Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up just yet but I’ve started tinkering with this again. Trying to find a narratively satisfying place to put the 3rd seeds of the rebellion scene and I think I may have finally cracked it. Borrowed a shot from Siliconmaster482’s edit which I believe was pulled from Attack of the Clones and flipped/color corrected.

Here is the clip: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ar3OOaZZGQ9oaf5ZGoqojil3Dj2Ugwy4

EDIT: Watching through it a few times, I may ultimately decide to wipe to the next scene after “Senator Amidala is hiding something, I can see it in her eyes”. Thoughts on that vs. how the clip currently plays?

Nice, this is similar to how I did it in my edit (only I put the dream after the deleted scene). One minor suggestion would be to add a beat after Anakin asks if Obi-wan has been there before we cut to him saying his next line, only because the pacing feels a bit awkward on that edit.

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NeverarGreat said:
I think the change is worth trying, but I think most of the issue is actually with the Anakin/Padme scene following the office scene. Anakin immediately acts suspicious because Obi-wan has been there, and while that wasn’t too problematic in the original coming right after his departure for Utapau, now it feels odd since he has presumably been gone a full day at least. I also think that scene in general is too schizophrenic with Anakin going from mistrust of Obi-wan to weariness back to mistrust and then doubtful of his own abilities. Removing the exchange ‘I feel lost’ ‘Lost, what do you mean?’ might allow a more natural flow.

My intent with putting the two scenes in that order was to imply that Anakin is now suspicious not only because of Obi-Wan’s appearance in the second dream sequence but because of Palpatine’s suggestion that Padme is hiding something from him. In his mind, I imagine he’s having paranoid thoughts that the two of them conspiring together behind his back. I will try the edit you suggested, thanks.

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Your edit works very well, but it reminds me of a general issue I have with ROTS: it’s inconsistent with the tensions between Anakin and Padme/Obi Wan. The deleted scenes create a fairly compelling tension between Anakin and Padme - Padme has started the Rebel Alliance but Bail and Mon Mothma don’t want her to risk involving Anakin so she has to hide it, and Palpatine exploits this to make Anakin distrustful of her, so he blows up at her when she hints that she is actually plotting against Palpatine (“You’re sounding like a separatist!”). But then this doesn’t go anywhere. He goes on to kill Windu and join Palpatine just to save her, and we don’t see any conflict between them again until Mustafar, when he believes she has brought Obi Wan there to kill him. I get that Lucas needed him to somehow cause her to die for his tragedy to work, but the obvious cause for that conflict is him feeling like he’s destroyed everything just to save her and her totally not being on board with it, not her hiding something from him half the movie ago.

I suppose it comes down to my major issue with ROTS: Anakin gives the impression that he earnestly believes the Jedi have betrayed the Republic, and him, and are evil - all because they turned against Palpatine. That fits with his loyalty to Palpatine earlier in the film, certainly, but completely overlooks the fact that Anakin discovered Palpatine was a Sith Lord, claimed he himself wanted to kill him, and then encouraged Mace to go and face Palpatine. From that point onwards, Anakin has no reason to believe Palpatine is the right man to be leading the Republic or anything like that - that’s all been thrown out of the window. This guy has been lying to him for years! The only motivations Anakin has to go along with anything he says is a) his desperation to save Padme and b) his desire to not be killed by the Jedi for dehanding Windu in a moment of panic. He shouldn’t have any kind of actual loyalty to the Chancellor he thought he knew. But then Palpatine starts talking about how the Jedi are going to attack the senate next and Anakin seems to fully buy into it. Is he just pretending so Palpatine doesn’t kill him? He basically tells Padme that he was planning on overthrowing the Chancellor once he’d learned his “new powers”. But then his dialogue with Obi Wan really seems to strongly suggest that he isn’t just playing along with Palpatine’s narrative about a Jedi betrayal, but actually legitimately believes the Jedi are evil. I suppose you could just say he’s deluding himself to feel less bad about what he’s done but it seems like such a cop out for what could be an emotionally compelling and relatable fall to the dark side.

Sorry for the irrelevant rant, but it seems like Lucas just couldn’t decide between two different storylines, one in which Anakin joins Palpatine without realising he’s a Sith Lord due to Palpatine turning him against his friends and the Jedi, and one in which he joins Darth Sidious as a desperate act to try to save Padme to follow up on his fear of loss and guilt in AOTC. Anakin’s loyalty to Palpatine in ROTS after the Sith Lord reveal just seems bizarre and makes him seem stupid. It makes sense that Vader is loyal to Palpatine by the time of the OT - he outright states he can’t disobey his master, he’s essentially a broken man who obeys Palpatine as a slave because he has nothing else left until Luke shows up - but in ROTS he’s a powerful force user trying to save his wife. His actions are almost relatable up to him chopping off Windu’s hand - he really didn’t expect Windu to outright kill Palpatine and had to make a split second choice - and I can follow his thought process through “What have I done? I’ll do anything, just help me save Padme’s life, I can’t live without her.” but then after that he just acts like a brainwashed sociopath, rather than a man forced to double down on a bad decision he made while overwhelmed with emotion.

Sorry, rant over.

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You’ve definitely nailed it sade. I remember even as a kid thinking Anakin’s statements about the Jedi being evil didn’t track. Lucas was obviously combining disparate elements and not meshing them together well, or fleshing them out. I think a lot of us feel the same way, but it can be good to lay it all out like that. The question becomes how can we take what we have and improve in in a fan edit. I know Hal’s take, for instance, is to reduce the prominence of Padme’s potential death, to make it merely the tipping point for Anakin (rather than the primary motivation).

My approach is moreso to take what’s already there and just sand down the bumps, so to speak, with the goal of trying to emphasize that it’s a matter of loyalty between the chancellor and the order. For instance, one change I implemented that I haven’t seen anywhere is simply removing Anakin saying he’d like to kill Palpatine. That way, even though Anakin turns him in, he’s just doing that because it’s what he’s supposed to do as a Jedi. It’s definitely the kind of change I suggest for anyone else doing an ROTS edit.

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Hope we’re not hijacking you’re thread, Octorox, by having this discussion. Just let us know if you want us to move it someplace else.

sade makes a good point that there still seems to be this element dropped where Anakin is suspicious of Padme hiding something from him. Anakin seems to think something is going on between Obi-Wan and Padme (not necessarily romantic), and so when Anakin sees them together on Mustafar, it is like his fears are almost immediately justified, causing him to have such an extreme reaction and choking Padme. This is sort of where I got the idea to restructure the seeds of Rebellion scenes to imply Padme might be meeting with Obi-Wan, “a Jedi she trusts”, about the Rebellion and the conspiracy against Palpatine.

Additionally, I wonder if you could somehow tie Anakin executing Dooku with Anakin not being made a master (maybe the Jedi could review security hologram footage of his death), if that would help solidify Anakin’s views as the Jedi being hypocritical, and just as selfish as the Sith.

Alternatively, you could cut out more of the “Jedi are evil” lines and try to focus more on him just wanting to save Padme and selling his soul for it.

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No need to apologize! I’m happy to see that my clip generated a lot of interesting discussion. I definitely agree that there are a lot of half-explored ideas regarding Anakin’s motivation to turn. Rogue, could you elaborate on your idea of restructuring the seeds of Rebellion scenes? That sounds interesting.

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Sure! Basically, the idea stems from two issues I had with the movie. First, Padme is heavily underutilized in this movie, and second, the “seeds of rebellion” scenes are not as significant as they seem. Yes, the first two deleted scenes do establish that Padme had meetings with what would become the rebellion, but all it builds up to is her confrontation with Palpatine as part of the “Petition of 2000”, and nothing comes of that meeting whatsoever. She never really seems to contribute to the proto-rebellion in any way. You could argue that Padme represents the last attempt at democracy before the Republic falls apart, but it ends up giving Padme little impact on the movie.

While I have never attempted it, I believe that if you could rearrange the scenes, it could recontextualize her story a lot.

So, chronologically, the first deleted scene we see would be when Padmé meets with Palpatine about the Petition of 2000. Palpatine “reassures” them that he’ll do the right thing, but does not promise that he will make no further amendments. This version would cut the reference to the regional governors, and just refer to more constitutional amendments in general. This scene would occur right after Anakin and Obi-Wan’s conversation about spying on the Chancellor. Both scenes are sunset scenes, so I think they fit pretty well one after the other time-wise. So, Obi-Wan asks Anakin off-the-record to spy on Palpatine, and then he would immediately go back to Palpatine’s office, where he is meeting with Padme on behalf of the Petition of 2000. Palpatine begins sewing doubt in Anakin regarding Padme’s honesty early on in the film.

The next deleted scene would be the meeting in Bail’s apartment. In this scene, the senators discuss Palpatine appointing Regional Governors across the Republic, which goes against the Petition of 2000’s wishes of making no further amendments to the constitution. This can’t go on any longer for them. Now, the “organization” that Bail alludes to more obviously appears to be referring to what eventually will be the Rebellion rather than the Petition, and going forward, everything Padme does is clearly for this new Alliance. The stakes have risen, and they can no long rely on simply democracy in a corrupt system. I do think this scene could be trimmed too, like how Padmé is being a Palpatine apologist, since she would have already seen that Palpatine can’t be trusted.

This scene should take place right before Anakin and Padme’s conversation about the Republic (where Padme is wearing the same outfit). Now, Padme’s hesitation to agree to not tell anyone clearly relates to wanting to talk to Anakin about it. Anakin, having previously been made suspicious by Palpatine, calls out Padme for sounding like a Separatist and snaps at her for pushing the subject. Padme drops it, and realizes that she can’t talk about this with Anakin.

The third deleted scene would be when Padme talks to the Senators about involving the Jedi in their “conspiracy”. The senators are hesitant, but Padme wants to talk to a Jedi she trusts. Originally, this scene ends with Bail telling her to wait, and try to see what the Petition of 2000 can do first, but we would cut all of that and leave the senators thinking on her request, not knowing if they agreed to it or not. This would make the scene rather brief, but I think it is important to keep. This scene would take place after the Opera scene (preferably right after), but before the “Has Obi-Wan been here?” scene between Anakin and Padme. By putting it before that scene, the “Jedi she trusts” would be heavily implied to be Obi-Wan. Plus, since the previous deleted scene established that Padme can’t talk to Anakin about it, it helps support the idea that Padme is getting Obi-Wan involved with the Alliance instead. That connection could also add further rationale for Bail’s connection with the Jedi, since Bail goes the temple immediately after the purge begins, and then goes looking for Obi-Wan and Yoda soon after. It could give the implication that Padme helped establish that connection between the Jedi and the future Rebellion leader.

Also, not having an actual scene where Padme and Obi-Wan meet could be a benefit, because it could put the audience in the shoes of Anakin, giving us the feeling that Padme and Obi-Wan are going behind our (and Anakin’s) back. The “not knowing” could help add some legitimacy to Anakin’s paranoia. In this version of events, Palpatine isn’t wrong about the seeds of doubt he plants in Anakin. Even though they have good intentions, the Jedi and a group of Senators are really making plans against the Chancellor. For obvious reasons, of course, but Palpatine is still technically right. He made them react exactly the way he wanted them to, and now when Anakin sees Padme and Obi-Wan together, it all but confirms to him what we have been seeing throughout the movie. By Palpatine sewing seeds of doubt earlier in the film, as well as giving Padme further motivations, I think it could actually add more perceived subtext to scenes with Padme just by the audience knowing there is more going on behind the scenes. Now everything Padme says could be interpreted in different ways.

To sum it up:

  1. Padme deleted scene #3 after scene where Obi asks Anakin to spy on Chancellor
  2. Padme deleted scene #1 before scene where Padme tries to talk to Anakin about the Republic
  3. Padme deleted scene #2 right after Opera scene (at the very least before Obi leaves Coruscant).
    [Trims throughout to remove any contradictions.]
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Huh, I actually really like this idea in theory, but without any scenes of Padme and Obi-Wan interacting, I don’t think the implication that she’s talking about Obi-Wan and not Anakin will be as a strong as needed to sell the idea. I’ll think on it.

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I like this idea a lot. I’d love to see it all in context to see how it works.