The Knights of the Republic - A Mandalorian-esque TPM edit (WIP)

I, like many of you, recently finished the second season of The Mandalorian. With it over I found myself with a sizeable Star Wars shaped hole in my life. So, I decided to start my first ever Star Wars edit inspired by the Mandalorian.

The aim:

To cut The Phantom Menace down to a TV episode length keeping the focus squarely on the two Jedi’s

Objectives:

• Minimise Jar Jar Binks to a nearly mute background character
• Remove scenes that are not centred on either Qui Gon or Obi Wan or develop their narrative
• Remove all reference to Anakin Skywalker who is now known simply as ‘The Boy’ as an allusion to ‘The Child’
• Remove all reference to the prophecy and the midichlorians
Keep run time to 50 mins or less.
• Recreate Mandalorian titles
• Recreate Mandalorian creates using concept art for the Phantom Menance

So far I am roughly 2/3 of the way through producing a work print for this. There are some hefty narrative changes from the theatrical release of The Phantom Menace most notable the Jedi never visit the Gungan city and the podrace doesn’t take place. Full disclosure I love the podrace but it doesn’t serve this edit. This isn’t Anakin’s story, this is the story of two knights of the republic. I decided to call the episode 'Chapter 4: The Boy" as an allusion to Baby Yoda and to Episode IV. It can be imagined as a stand alone episode in a none existent TV series.

Samples:
https://vimeo.com/494105410
https://vimeo.com/494105610

I too have a Mandalorian sized whole in my heart right now. It’s a neat idea, and those two samples look very promising.

Best of luck!

Thanks dahmage. It’s all very rough at the moment. I think I’ll be ditching the Mando theme in favour of a section of fuel of dates. Also Qui Gon kind of pops out if no where at the start of the other sample. I’m happy with the removal of Jar Jar now I just need to make it all mess jarring

Yeah, i was impressed how well the removal of jar-jar worked in that fight.

Thanks, I’m looking forward to sharing some other scenes in the next few days.

Since it’s supposed to be a single episode from a lost series, you could start with “previously on Knights of the republic” intro with a 30-second montage of things cut from your edit that might still provide some backstory

Do you plan on doing similar fanedits for ep2 & ep3? If yes, consider naming them non-sequential episode numbers to further the idea that they are scattered episodes of a missing series; so this is ep4, the next ones could be ep9 & ep15 for example

Ice said:

Since it’s supposed to be a single episode from a lost series, you could start with “previously on Knights of the republic” intro with a 30-second montage of things cut from your edit that might still provide some backstory

That’s a really nice idea although I’m not sure what footage I could use as I’m mainly cutting the podrace, some of the political stuff and the Gungan plotline.

Ice said:

Do you plan on doing similar fanedits for ep2 & ep3? If yes, consider naming them non-sequential episode numbers to further the idea that they are scattered episodes of a missing series; so this is ep4, the next ones could be ep9 & ep15 for example

I’m not sure, I feel the plot of Episode 1 is more conducive to this type edit than episodes 2 and 3. Potentially I could do one for episode 2 focused exclusively on Obi Wan but honestly the Anakin plotlines from 2 and 3 don’t really have much to offer this project.

Thanks Jack. I’m hoping to do some more work on this today

Making steady progress.

I have three days off coming up and hope to use them to finish the initial workprint. If anyone would like to help by previewing it let me know.

Update: It turns out that bryantmh had already upscaled the TPM deleted scenes and was kind enough to share them with me saving me a job. They used Topaz lab’s software to upscale them which was what I was planning to do and the results are pretty impressive. So now I can reinstate the Farewell to Jira scene and actually explain why Qui Gon and the boy are running to the ship.