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Post #1391557

Author
sade1212
Parent topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1391557/action/topic#1391557
Date created
7-Dec-2020, 6:04 AM

I love the idea to cut up ROTS as episodes also. It’d get you the fun of a ROTS/SoM mashup edit without the weirdness of switching between live-action and animation on a scene by scene basis. Plus, it’d give the politics stuff from ROTS, especially the cut bits, a bit more room to exist.

Edit: I gave this some thought and it’s sort of a mess - lots of shorter episodes. Not to hijack the thread or anything.

TL;DR - also spoilers

  • ~28 minute episode of TCW (Ahsoka/Anakin part ways; Ahsoka meets Maul)
  • ~22 minute episode of ROTS (Invisible Hand)
  • ~28 minute episode of ROTS/Deleted Scenes (Anakin’s nightmare; Padme’s politics)
  • ~21 minute episode of TCW (Maul collects info; Ahsoka captures Maul)
  • ~33 minute episode of ROTS (Grievous vs. Obi-Wan; Anakin falls to dark side; Order 66)
  • one ~40 or two ~20 minute episodes of TCW (Order 66 on the star destroyer)
  • one ~50 or three ~15 minute episodes of ROTS (aftermath of Order 66; Mustafar; duels; Padme gives birth; ending montage) - this might be easier to work out if you restructure things to split Yoda vs. Palpatine from Anakin vs. Obi-Wan
  • no idea what to do with the TCW epilogue

Full thoughts. Spoilers ahoy! Expand to read.

You have to start with TCW, because RotS doesn’t begin until at least 16 minutes into the first episode of the Siege of Mandalore, when Anakin and Obi-Wan run off to rescue Palpatine. That’d make a very short episode, though. There’s another 12 minutes of TCW after that before we get another indication of events in ROTS, so everything before that point (all of S07E09 and ~3 minutes of S07E10) could be one ‘episode’ with a runtime around the same as Chapter 14 of Mando. Unfortunately, the ROTS tie-in is Obi-Wan mentioning being sent to Utapau, but that occurs about 49 minutes into ROTS…

I’d propose that chunk of ROTS be split into two episodes. Firstly, a ~25 minute episode covering the Invisible Hand sequence, ending with Anakin finding out about Padme’s pregnancy. You could extend it by about a minute by reinstating some of the deleted material and possibly put the Grievous scene in at the end too so “one far younger, and more powerful” acts a bit of a cliffhanger. You could even put the scene of Palpatine putting Anakin on the council in here if you wanted, to get it in before the episode break, but I’m not sure it would feel right. This bit of ROTS, much like the Jabba’s Palace section of ROTJ before it, is very self-contained.

Then, a second episode covering the really Coruscant-heavy, dialogue-heavy part of ROTS, with the A-plot being Anakin’s nightmares leading to his conversation with Palpatine at the Opera, and the B-plot being Padme’s deleted scenes political effort against Palpatine, with the two mingling a little in that scene when Anakin shouts at Padme for being a separatist (which is mildly less weird if you put it after the deleted scene where Palpatine suggests “Senator Amidala is hiding something…”). This would have to go up to at least the scene where Obi-Wan gets sent to Utapau - which awkwardly has a pointless bit with Yoda on Kashyyyk, but I’m sure there’s a smart way to edit around that.

Then we could get another ‘episode’ of TCW covering everything from that holocall with Obi-Wan through Ahsoka vs Maul, up until Maul’s capture. S07E10 does a lot of stuff which strengthens ROTS - Ahsoka sympathising with Anakin re:his assignment to spy on the Chancellor, Almec’s “Skywalker…”, the Imperial vibes of Clones occupying Mandalore, discussion of the hypocrisy of the Jedi, everything Maul says about THE plan and Sidious, “he… is the key… to everything” - it’s all great. And Ahsoka’s faith in Anakin makes his fall hurt all the more. I think this is my favourite Star Wars. It’d be just 21 minutes, but very dense. You COULD include the ‘Obi-Wan has engaged Grievous’ conference call from the beginning of S07E11 at the end of this episode, but a) it’d be weird to see it in TCW before we see it in ROTS, I think and b) it’s clearly set the next morning after an implied timeskip so it feels like it should follow an episode break.

Back to ROTS for a while then. Again, TCW forces our hand here - S07E11 begins with the ‘Obi-Wan has engaged Grievous’ conference call but just five minutes later we have Ahsoka feeling Anakin’s fall and Order 66. Obviously we should see the ROTS-angle on those events first. That means we’re going to have to let ROTS basically run from Obi-Wan and Anakin’s farewell all the way up to Order 66, which definitely feels like it ought to be the end of an episode (you could do the sad fadeout like S05E20 of TCW). This would come in at 33-minutes and vaguely has an A-plot of Palpatine seducing Anakin and a B-plot of Obi-Wan killing Grievous and getting shot down on Utapau.

We’re safe now for TCW to continue, but here’s where things get a little tricky - the rest of S07E11 and S07E12 (epilogue aside) take place continuously in the immediate aftermath of Order 66. Even the actual E11/E12 break is just a cliffhanger. You could easily do a 41-minute ‘episode’ here that just covers the entire rest of the Ahsoka, Maul and Rex’s story, but I’m not sure if it’d be good pacing overall to have such a long length of time prior to returning to ROTS, which has another 49-minutes of runtime we haven’t covered. You could split those 41 minutes of TCW into two episodes, either according to the pre-existing E11/E12 episode break, or a more natural stopping point; and those 49-minutes of ROTS could, at a push, be made into a 17-minute episode (everything between Order 66 and Padme leaving for Mustafar), a 20-minute episode (Padme on Mustafar + Anakin vs. Obi-Wan + Yoda vs. Palpatine) and a ~12 minute epilogue. Separating out Yoda vs. Sidious from Anakin vs. Obi-Wan would make things work much more nicely here, but that’s a fairly considerable fanedit.

Of course, we still haven’t answered the question of what to do with TCW’s epilogue. It can’t really come before we actually see Anakin’s reconstruction in the suit, but you can’t just make it a whole episode by itself, so you’d have to move at least ~20 minutes of the end of TCW into an episode after the end of ROTS, but that seem weird considering how ROTS goes to such lengths to set everything up exactly where it needs to be ahead of Episode IV…