The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 39

jimbean said:

Just curious… Are you planning on putting something together for s01e00 (the microseries) in this current push, or is it one that will wait until after all the other episodes are complete?

I’ll do that one after the next (the Boba arc) then I’ll polish up all the early ones too, before getting back to the main episodes.

Interesting. I’ll certainly keep an eye on it as I go through, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Planning the Boba Fett arc now.

It’s a great looking arc, with some nice unique ideas, and a nice bit of bridging into the OT aesthetic. It could do with some trims, but it’s really good. The emotional core is Boba and his relationships with Killian, Mace Windu, and Aurra Sing. It’s kind of an Anakin episode that becomes an Ahsoka episode, which is perfectly fine. Plus, it’s got a lot of good ponchos in it, so you know it’s going to be high quality.

In the first episode, Boba infiltrates the cruiser, shows off some skeet skills, fails to kill Mace via a bomb, so takes out the whole ship instead. Anakin and Mace prioritise helping the cadets over pursuing the villains (nice and heroic). It’s one of those episodes where it feels like not much happens, but it’s good fun the whole time because of the character work. I reckon you could trim this episode a fair bit, though. The skeet stuff can probably go, though I’d still like to preserve some Killian since his personality is interesting and it pays off later when he demonstrates real sympathy for Boba.

In the second episode, the ship has already crashed (there’s one shot of it crashing in the newsreel which I may or may not be able to use), and Anakin and Mace go to the crash site to attempt to rescue the soldiers who went down with the ship. They encounter another Boba bomb and end up trapped, while R2 fends off monsters and the bounty hunters solo, tricks the bounty hunters into leaving, and then flies all the way to Coruscant to get help.

As much as I enjoy R2’s plucky resourcefulness, and his scenes are fun, I think his antics here distract us from the emotional core of this episode. I think I’m going to trim this quite heavily - now, the bounty hunters have set the trap on the crashed ship, kidnapped Killian, and left the planet entirely before Anakin and Mace arrive, so we don’t see them on the planet at all. (I’m happy to infer that having destroyed a Republic ship, they know that overwhelming force isn’t far behind.) Anakin and Mace dutifully look for survivors, before falling into the trap as before. Mace ruminates over Boba, and then the Republic rescue party just shows up and rescues Anakin and Mace. (Again, I don’t think that’s problematic at all, the crashing ship had comms and distress beacons.)

In the third episode, it even opens with Republic people going “oh look, turns out Boba kidnapped Killian”, so that fits nicely with my plans so far, and not having to see them on the surface. The bounty hunters go on the run to Florrum where they meet Hondo, and Ahsoka and Plo travel to the Coruscant underworld to see what they can find out. Plo even teaches Ahsoka (a bit more subtly) to slow down, rendering Lightsaber Lost basically useless now except for Yoda saying “teach younglings”. After some good Boba development he’s caught by Ahsoka and Plo and taken to jail on Coruscant, where he’ll stay until the Rako Hardeen arc.

Unfortunately, the episode ends a bit weirdly. Firstly, Aurra in the Slave-1 crashes out of sight with a big explosion, and the Jedi don’t bother to investigate that, apparently thinking “well she’s definitely dead so that’s wrapped up nice and neatly”, though it later turns out that both Aurra and the Slave-1 were fine. And secondly, the episode ends with Boba angrily saying to Mace “I’ll always hate you” and Mace responding with no more than a “yeah well tough, now off you fuck to prison”. Which isn’t a great conclusion. But there’s nothing that can be done about that.

In terms of the episode’s name, I’ve got no idea. The core of it is this kind of battle for Boba’s soul, and while we all want Boba to end up as a badass, what happens here is that we see his softness, and it’s good. ‘SINS OF THE FATHER’ is evocative and encourages the viewer to keep an eye on Boba’s behavioural inheritance from Jango, so maybe that, though it doesn’t really deliver on it. It’ll entice the new viewer at least.

As I say, I do think this episode renders Lightsaber Lost redundant, especially since the whole point of LL is that bit of character growth for Ahsoka. And with the Holocron crisis and now this exploration of the underworld, we’ve done a lot of Coruscant recently. Obviously I’ll keep the Lightsaber Lost link up and everything, I think I’m just going to downgrade it to the Complete Cut, for our completionists only. It would have been nice to add Lightsaber Lost’s ending to the end of Seven Warriors, so after she teaches the village she goes on to start teaching the younglings, but the context is too heavily related to slowing down and not losing your lightsaber, so I don’t think it could work.

In terms of the placement of this episode relative to others I currently have near it, there are two main things to consider. Firstly, Aurra Sing. She just appeared in the Holocron arc working for Bane, and now she’s apparently leading this group. That’s OK - Bane’s clearly a way more senior bounty hunter so she might well take jobs for him while also progressing her own career - but the two episodes may therefore warrant a bit of breathing space. Secondly, Hondo. He appears in Seven Warriors (AKA Bounty Hunters), where he’s introduced as having a “history” (without details) with Anakin and Obi-Wan, but Ahsoka is also there. Ahsoka also engages a little with Hondo in this episode. In neither episode do they acknowledge having already met each other, so I think it doesn’t really matter what ordering I use. Hondo’s line about bounty hunters being scum in Seven Warriors is made a bit more fun if we know Aurra Sing is his ex-girlfriend, but I don’t think that’s a strong enough reason to reorder them. I think, in order to give Aurra a couple of episodes to shift from Bane mode to Boba mode, season two might look like this:

• s02e01 - Seven Warriors (AKA Bounty Hunters)
• s02e02 - Massacre
• s02e03 - Boba Fett arc
• s02e04 - Corruption on Mandalore
• s02e05 - Assassin (though I’m not certain I’m keeping this episode)
• s02e06 - The Return of Maul
• s02e07 - Senate Spy (intro to Geonosis)
• s02e08 - 2nd Battle of Geonosis
• s02e09 - Worms (aftermath of Geonosis)
• s02e10 - Maul Piracy

leaving season 3 to open with Ahsoka’s new look (after the trauma of Worms) and feature the shades of grey and Lux Bonteri arcs leading up to the Mandos finding Maul.

Got sick today, have the day off. Flipped through my shows and movies I never watch in Plex, and nothing felt inviting. So I watched part of a SMB3 speedrun video until nodding off.

Then. I remembered. I’ve got like 3 of these episodes I haven’t seen yet!

High five, fellow Plex bro. Pro tip, arrange your Star Wars media as a single Plex folder all set to TV series (as opposed to movies), that way you can present the whole thing to yourself in chronological order AND manage different fanedits of the movies (as, effectively, different ‘episodes’ of a given ‘show’).

Oh! Major idea! As discussed, I’m thinking of dropping Lightsaber Lost. Its main element, Ahsoka learning to slow down, is better covered by her behaviour near the end of the Holocron Crisis, plus her journey to the Coruscant underworld with Plo Koon in the Boba Fett arc. But the other nice element from Lightsaber Lost that would be nice to retain is the ending, where we start to see Ahsoka as a bit of a teacher, passing on lessons to younglings.

In that scene, she’s mainly focusing on slowing down and not losing your lightsaber. And that doesn’t really fit after Seven Warriors (AKA Bounty Hunters) even after doing a bit of teaching there.

But, the perfect placement for it could be as the final scene of the Holocron arc, where (1) she’s just kind of realised for herself to slow down a bit, and (2) ANAKIN’S JUST LOST HIS LIGHTSABER. So her saying “this weapon is your life” to the Jedi younglings can be taken in the new context that she’s going to tell them the story of what’s just happened, INCLUDING THE LESSONS SHE’S LEARNED FROM IT HERSELF. She’s demonstrating her own reflection on her experiences - that makes her wise, especially for someone so young. It also shows that Anakin’s sharing his own key experiences. And then her choosing to teach younglings, rather than doing it because she’s been told to, makes her seem more empathetic and more authoritative. (Then opening S2 with Seven Warriors, where she’s once again teaching - and confidently too - would continue to work well.)

Now, that would mean that the final scenes of the Holocron arc would be:

1. Jedi Council wrap up the plot
2. Anakin (and Ahsoka) go to Palpatine and both talk about how it was probably the Sith Lord behind it all
3. Ahsoka goes and talks to younglings about it all

So you’d lose the impact of ending on that nice sinister moment with Palpatine, BUT we all know how that ends, AND this is the Ahsoka show, not the Anakin/Palpatine show. This would make that episode even MORE of a good capper to the season, really bringing together all of her growth.

Nooo, I think I just got lucky. I have been thinking about this stuff for three and a half months straight now. Though it does go to show that you can’t over-plan for this stuff, you should always be ready to flex and change as new ideas come to light!

EDIT: Damn, it works even better in context than I’d thought! She goes and teaches the younglings JUST AFTER SHE’S SAVED A BUNCH OF YOUNGLINGS. She’s literally just had the experience of realising how important the future generations of Jedi are, so she immediately goes about starting to get involved in their training, setting her on the path which continues through Rebels with Ezra all the way through to Mando with Grogu. FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK this was a really lucky get.

Here’s a clip of the new ending to A STRIKE AT THE HEART (my Holocron Crisis episode), which also now serves as our season one finale, incorporating the very last scene from LIGHTSABER LOST, which is getting downgraded.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GdsdMv-GGFyv8H950c5-vofQBLzLvjHO/view?usp=sharing

See how that feels, and bear in mind that in this episode:

• Anakin lost his lightsaber, causing real risk to the people he needed to protect and the woman he loves
• Ahsoka had her padawan braid taken away before declaring she’d earned it back
• Ahsoka, herself a padawan, nearly died by being thrown out an airlock

I would say, slow the wipe from Ani/Sid to the Temple down if possible, it moves really quickly.

Done! I’ll render that full episode again soon, unless anyone has any other technical things to add?

I’ve also just finished uploading the edited version of Lightsaber Lost, which now ends one scene earlier.

I’m also now uploading the full SINS OF THE FATHER (the Boba Fett episode, though I’m open to alternative names), which should be up in about three hours.

Onward to the Tartakovsky prologue, and then I’ll polish the earlier episodes before moving on to a new one.

Planning my Tartakovsky episode now. In total I’ll make four episodes out of the microseries:

1. Muunilinst/Yavin/Hypori - the components which serve as the prologue to The Clone Wars: Refocused
2. Mon Cala/Dantooine/Ilum - an optional early ‘tales of’ anthology episode (continuity cut)
3. Nelvaan - an optional late episode (complete cut)
4. Coruscant - an optional episode immediately prior to the finale (complete cut)

It’s the first one that I’m working on now. (The other three will come after I finish all ~50 episodes in the full quality cut.) Tackel’s given me a copy of his 4K AI upscale to use as a source, and it’s playing nice with my editing software so we’re all good.

This episode will work as follows:

• The full intro with Yoda’s narration
• Most of the land battle on Muunilinst
• No IG/clone lancers. I think having this many IGs cheapens them, and lancers are such a weirdly specific military type in a scifi war, that aren’t used again.
• No Dirge. I think he’s too biologically unique for Star Wars. I’ll just trim around him so the clones take the building.
• All of the sky battle above Muunilinst
• All of Ventress’ training, except for the cat disguise thing as it’s a weird ability not used again. I may move this scene earlier, to before Muunilinst kicks off.
• All of the scenes on Yavin
• All of the scenes on Hypori with Grievous
• All of the wrap-up scenes until Anakin gets knighted and flies off to join the war again
• Inclusion of the scene of Dooku training Grievous from later in the microseries, possibly moved to where I’m taking the Ventress scenes from.

That gives us everything we need to get going with TCW:R. I don’t want to change how overblown it all is, because that’s part of the fun of Tartakovsky. And as much as I would like to, I can’t change the voicework which really doesn’t match TCW at all. I also don’t think I’ll wrap my usual credits around it, instead leaving it closer to the original presentation, mainly to emphasise to the viewer that (while useful) this episode is kind of its own thing.

This first episode will be called DARK FORCE RISING, because:

• It introduces two new villains - Ventress and Grievous
• Its emotional peak is the light/dark scenes with Anakin, which hint at the darkness rising within him
• It features the clone army, a rising force which nobody realises has a dark origin and purpose
• And, of course, the Separatists and the clone wars are ultimately the machinations of Sidious

Can’t wait to see it!

Just watched Maul’s Return. As dumb as it is to conjure up Maul from the dead, it was pretty engaging. I guess that snake was a dumbass though when a guy who pretty plausibly claims to be Maul’s brother shows up. He still tries to feed him to Maul (same species) and is surprised to find him still alive. He deserved to be killed.

Yeah, that snake’s not great. I’ve trimmed it down as much as possible, it’s quite goofy originally. Glad you’re, as a newbie, starting to enjoy Maul. He becomes a great character, ultimately making his return completely justified.

RELEASED - SINS OF THE FATHER (BOBA FETT ARC) - RELEASE CUT

My production number 209, episode number TBD (early/mid season 2)

Notes as above. I also took out the weird line where Hondo implies that his species plus Aurra Sing’s species could have made a human kid. I only really took out the skeet scene from the first episode, but I could trim that episode further if people feel like that part is a bit slow.

PM for a link to the tracker.

OK, I’m rendering my episode zero, the Tartakovsky Microseries episode, now. I’m calling it DARK FORCE RISING as above. The full episode runs to about 56 minutes. That should be uploaded about four hours after posting this.

As above, it is Muunilinst/Yavin/Hypori, minus Dirge and the lancers, minus Ventress’ cat disguise (the cat is now someone else), plus Dooku training Grievous.

I ended up reordering it more than expected, to make it a bit of a tighter narrative, as follows:

• After Yoda concludes his narration by mentioning that Anakin’s special, we cut directly to Anakin’s dream about being kid Ani with Qui-Gon. In the original there was no context for this dream, and where it is now there’s still very little context, except that for the viewer it kind of ominously sets up this episode and the rest of the Clone Wars. I also moved it up front as a way of starting the episode and the Clone Wars with saying goodbye to child Anakin and Qui-Gon, a kind of “we’re moving forward from TPM/AOTC.” That might not totally work but it didn’t totally work where it was anyway, so I don’t really mind.
• After Palpatine sends Anakin and the clone army off to war, we cut straight into Dooku finding Ventress. Now all of the military prep happens at the same time as Dooku training Ventress, so it’s less like he just met her in the arena and then immediately sent her off to kill Anakin. We then cut to more army prep, then more Ventress prep, before we kick off properly. It just feels a bit better paced this way.
• Then into Muunilinst, with some slight reordering so there’s less intercutting. We get a bit more space battle than before, then the landing on the planet right the way through to victory, then back to the space battle for Ventress’ arrival and we follow that plotline right through Yavin.
• The prior scenes originally were split by Ventress’ introduction, but now I use that break to introduce Grievous being trained by Dooku (but not the later half of that scene with Sidious). This does take away the slow reveal of Grievous in the later Hypori plot, BUT it achieves two things: Firstly, in this training Dooku actually teaches Grievous “you must break them before you defeat them”, and then it makes Grievous’ stealthy fearful introduction a demonstration of him following that advice, so it’s still impactful. And secondly, it’s a cool scene, and since this ‘chunk’ of Tartakovsky is the only part I consider necessary for my Quality Cut (that is, I’m not recommending people watch any other parts of Tartakovsky if they want context for the CG clone wars), I wanted to get that initial setup for “I’ve been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku.”
• I moved the shot of Yoda having an “oh shit” meditation moment to right after Anakin’s just completed his rage-fueled attack on Ventress. Now in context, he’s reacting to feeling the darkness rise in Anakin. A viewer could choose to imply that it’s this feeling which compels him to agree to Knight Anakin and later grant him a Padawan, in the hopes of keeping him on the right path.
• We then get all of Hypori uninterrupted, then all of the original endings to this section of the miniseries. This takes us through Anakin’s Knighting, Anakin and Padmé’s secret meeting, C-3PO’s golden paint job, and Anakin flying off with his new haircut. I then cap this off with the scene which originally ended the first half of the microseries, where Yoda ruminates about the rising darkness as thunder storms overhead.

The original is a bit of a mash up, aggregating the original three minute long clips often with quick transitions and abrupt audio cuts. I’ve tried to smooth that where possible, and tried to make my own transitions as clean as possible, but the one cut of my own that stands out to me as still a bit jarring I’m going to allow for now since the original permitted things like that too.

This episode isn’t wrapped in my usual TCW:Refocused trappings, because it does kind of stand alone. I added my own credit and Tackel’s for the upscaling, but didn’t touch it otherwise.

Since I’m in the zone I’m just quickly going to put together the cut scenes from this half of the microseries now, those being Dantooine/Mon Calamari/Ilum, which I’ll call ‘TALES FROM THE CLONE WARS’ as part of my Continuity Cut.
(As a reminder: My main edit is the ‘Quality Cut’, which contains my recommended content and viewing order, but the ‘Continuity Cut’ is extra stuff for those who want every single nugget that ties in to wider canon but that doesn’t utterly suck.)

Oh bollocks, that rendered version has rendered at 90 min long. It’s only 60 min of content followed by 30 mins of black screen, but it’s a massive file. Balls. I’ll upload it anyway just in case anyone’s super into it, but in the meantime I’ll re-render it to the proper length. Give me another 4h…

I’ve just updated my tracker to also contain links back to the relevant forum discussion for a given episode, just for the extra context.