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The Original Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 12

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Has anyone played with overlaying Boba’s two vocal performances in ESB, time shifting to sync, to see how it sounds? Like his real voice is muffled but just audible over his modulated one?

My stance on revising fan edits.

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I’m glad to see someone keeping this thread alive, honestly. It doesn’t get as much attention as the other two, due to people considering two thirds of the trilogy perfect already.

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Thanks for sharing that, sade! It seems like Hal has a big interest in an older Anakin, or a Hayden/Shaw fusion. This might be something that would interest him to see.

Yeah, I agree A. Starkiller. I think now that the Saga is complete, it might be worth reflecting on the OT and see if there are any new ideas for changes that could be made to the original films.

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I really like it! If we want just Anakin appearing, I’d say this aged-up Hayden works pretty well. Any shots of him pleased from ROTS should suffice (since the unemotive Anakin from the '04/'19SE looks dreadful).

If we’re using the original “three spirits” shots, it’d be a worthwhile experiment to try out different Anakin footage in those two shots. It could either be a new head on Shaw’s body or aged-up/Shaw-merged Hayden’s entire body.

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I’ve talked about inserting a Pryde cameo into TFA or TLJ, but what about sticking one in the OT using footage of a young Richard E. Grant? He did say he served Palpatine in the days of old.

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I’ve probably mentioned this before but I always wanted the Jedi of the Old Republic era to only have blue lightsabers. That way Luke’s ROTJ one has more significance. A potential opening scene cold be Luke in his X-wing. Flying near Yavin trying to salvage a Kyber crystal from the debris cloud of the Death Star. As he reaches out with the Force. Vader telepathically tries to contact him but he shrugs it off. A crystal fragment is found. Luke pulls it to the ship and Artoo captures it with his claw arm. It is green because of its prior use in the super laser. Palestine turns the crystal sacred to the Jedi into super weapon. Luke restores it.

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Oh yeah, I’ve always wanted the Jedi to be all blue. That’s more of a prequel change, though.

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Bingowings said:

I’ve probably mentioned this before but I always wanted the Jedi of the Old Republic era to only have blue lightsabers. That way Luke’s ROTJ one has more significance. A potential opening scene cold be Luke in his X-wing. Flying near Yavin trying to salvage a Kyber crystal from the debris cloud of the Death Star. As he reaches out with the Force. Vader telepathically tries to contact him but he shrugs it off. A crystal fragment is found. Luke pulls it to the ship and Artoo captures it with his claw arm. It is green because of its prior use in the super laser. Palestine turns the crystal sacred to the Jedi into super weapon. Luke restores it.

Since the Death Star presumably ejected material throughout the Yavin system, it stands to reason that there could be crystal fragments on Yavin 4. Luke could go there in search of one.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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 (Edited)

From a practical perspective, I could easily see how having Luke find a crystal floating in space could be cobbled together in a simple way, rather than needing to create a new sequence of Luke going on a ground mission.

You could reuse various shots of Luke in his X-Wing that you can intercut with. You could take one of the shots of R2 in the X-Wing, and add a claw element that can grab onto the crystal. Maybe someone could do this with CG elements, but I also could see someone using blue screen to film the claw grabbing the crystal (crystal on a string, maybe?), then adding it into the shot.

The biggest thing would be creating the “Death Star debris” elements. This is something else you could possibly achieve by filming “debris” elements behind blue screen, using similar techniques that they used to create the asteroid sequence in Empire. If it were me, I think I might take pieces of styrofoam and repaint them to look like chunks of metal, then film them in front of a blue screen with my camera on a track.

I think if you did this, you would also need to establish that there is a giant crystal in the Death Star in the first place. Maybe you could take the reactor shot from ROTJ, and add it into ANH, but with a giant green crystal in the middle. You could also perhaps add a giant crystal into the Death Star II as well. Or, maybe the Death Star plans animation could have a green diamond shape in the center of the Death Star to indicate that it is the power source in the middle of the Death Star that the proton torpedo overloads.

Although I don’t necessarily think this is a essential idea, recently I thought it would be interesting to explore reediting Return of the Jedi so it is in a chiasmus structure with A New Hope. Basically, Return of the Jedi would have story beats that parallel A New Hope, but in reverse order. So, for example, the first scene of Return of the Jedi would parallel the last scene of A New Hope. So maybe you could parallel the Throne Room ceremony in ANH by placing the Emperor’s arrival at the beginning of ROTJ. Then you could create a new final shot of ROTJ, a blockade runner flying overhead, that could reflect the opening shot of ANH. Basically, the imagery and narrative beats would come full circle.

Bingo’s idea of Luke returning to the site of the Battle of Yavin would fit rather well with this idea. If it presumably came after the first scene (whether it be Vader or the Emperor arriving at the Death Star), Luke flying through the Death Star debris would reflect the second-to-last sequence in ANH, the Battle of Yavin.

I would be interested in exploring this idea of making Return of the Jedi reflect the narrative beats and imagery of A New Hope further if anyone else is interested. If anyone else is curious about the chiasmus idea, Robert Lockard did some articles about it a long time ago. Here is his article about Empire Strikes Back and how it has symmetrical story beats from beginning to end. He also did an article on the Back to the Future trilogy, and how the whole trilogy has this narrative reflection as well. Interestingly, the middle film, in both the case of Back to the Future Part 2 and ESB, ends up reflecting itself once it reaches the midpoint (both of that single film, and the trilogy as the whole). In Back to the Future’s case, Part III ended up reflecting Part I. In other words, the end of the story reflects the beginning. So it would be interesting to approach a potential ROTJ edit with this in mind, and how it might be possible to have the end (ROTJ) reflect the beginning (ANH).

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I will storyboard a crystal-gathering sequence, i think. It sounds like it could be fun!

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Awesome! This has definitely got me thinking about playing around with an alternate version of Return of the Jedi that acts as a definitive end to the story. Maybe it is time to resurrect Revenge of the Jedi. 😉

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I’d prefer it if the green crystal was Qui-Gon’s, with Qui-Gon being the only prequel Jedi with a green blade. That way, it seems like a “full circle” kind of moment.

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BedeHistory731 said:

I’d prefer it if the green crystal was Qui-Gon’s, with Qui-Gon being the only prequel Jedi with a green blade. That way, it seems like a “full circle” kind of moment.

Definitely agree with that. I’d also make Leia’s saber use that crystal, although working out the continuity for that would be tough.

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One of my dream edits has always been to move Obi-Wan and Luke’s conversation to his hut on Tatooine.

I’m going to really try and work out a Reverse-ANH structure for ROTJ

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I had been mapping out some thoughts for a semi-radical ROTJ edit, but I started to wonder if keeping the Second Death Star could contribute to the film rhyming with ANH.

Here are some of the major complaints of Return of the Jedi that I remember:
There being another Death Star.
Going back to Tatooine.
Jealous Han.
Boba Fett’s death.
Ewoks.
I know some people didn’t like Luke and Leia being siblings either.

I would be curious to here some people’s issues with ROTJ. I know this has been discussed pretty thoroughly countless times. I have a feeling as more prequel kids have grown up and are now more active on this site, perhaps there might be more people who like these aspects of ROTJ. But I still think it would be worth playing around with a ROTJ edit that tries to address these major complaints, as if the original trilogy was the only Star Wars that we ever got.

EDIT: Unfortunately, I feel like many of the problems that keeps ROTJ from reaching the heights of the first two films are pretty ingrained in the film. The cinematography is a downgrade to the dynamic and creative choices Kershner and Suschitzky made in Empire. But maybe poor dialogue and goofy moments could be cut, and more interesting visual locales could be created to make Death Valley and the Redwood Forests feel more alien than they currently are.

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Hello!

Help need find infos its SW fan cut release/edits: One german member’s edited the SW4 movie in very long time (25 years!) added with extendeed/deleted scenes taken from various source. (vhs,Super8,dvd,ld and any more) Its edit time infos (taken from previous years the net) 180 minutes. Edits contains german and english audio dubbed tracks. These edits one-two or higher times preserved from fan clubs private screenings only for the previous years. (~2010- to any year) These edits name and available? Sample videos from YT’s probably deleted its few months. (Not found.)

PS: Sorry for bad english.

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RogueLeader said:

I would be curious to here some people’s issues with ROTJ. I know this has been discussed pretty thoroughly countless times. I have a feeling as more prequel kids have grown up and are now more active on this site, perhaps there might be more people who like these aspects of ROTJ. But I still think it would be worth playing around with a ROTJ edit that tries to address these major complaints, as if the original trilogy was the only Star Wars that we ever got.

I could spend A LOT of time talking about my issues with this film. 😉
Aside from the points that get brought up a lot, one thing I would look at is playing around with the pacing of scenes on Endor. You can play up the fact that Leia is missing for a bit (after the chase). Cut down certain shots to remove goofy expressions. Change the music to insert some tension. This was something I made a long time ago but I still like the ideas behind some of the changes I made (even if most of them are poorly executed…or I would continue to developed further):

https://streamable.com/zve2u9

  • Han stepping on a twig, thus alerting the trooper to his presence, was incredibly lazy storytelling. I like my change to the scene, but it was mostly for fun. I feel like something else should trigger the troopers instead.
  • Adding as much believability to our main heroes’ actions is a must.
  • Playing around with the Leia and Wicket scenes helps address why she just pops up in the Ewok village out of nowhere.
  • Generally, I liked what I did to the Han/Luke “Where’s Leia?” scene. It adds more tension and just…it heightens everything a bit more to where one might sit up and pay more attention.
  • Just cutting down the humor…or at least allowing it to happen at more strategic times will help quite a bit.
  • Ignor the Vader/Palps scene at the end…I didn’t do anything to it. 😛

SSWR’s YouTube channel

Attack of the Clones: Alternate Timeline Edit Thread:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/SSWRs-Attack-of-the-Clones-Alternate-Timeline-Edit/id/66888

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Also my other ROTJ ideas from long ago:

https://streamable.com/2zj0fd
https://streamable.com/gjl4y8
https://streamable.com/76hqcm
https://streamable.com/rlj93s
https://streamable.com/y4ye1l
https://streamable.com/nkrvwo
https://streamable.com/zve2u9
https://streamable.com/wjnrpd
https://streamable.com/b774v9
https://streamable.com/xipw3l
https://streamable.com/gopouv

SSWR’s YouTube channel

Attack of the Clones: Alternate Timeline Edit Thread:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/SSWRs-Attack-of-the-Clones-Alternate-Timeline-Edit/id/66888