I love the level of thought that’s going into this. It’s fantastic that you have L8WRTR’s and HAL’s excellent versions to mull over and help inform your own changes. This definitely feels like the first of the ‘third generation’ of prequel fanedits.

This might be too much of a tangent for your thread, eyepainter, and it’s certainly not a request for you to make this change, but I wonder if you’ve got any insight into the idea of removing the Naboo ground battle between the Gungans and droids altogether.

It’s something I’ve been considering for a while, and like I say not a request of you, but since you’ve been interrogating the movie so completely lately I’d be interested to know if you think it’s workable (in any edit, not necessarily yours).

For me, the ground battle always takes me out of it, firstly because we have no emotional investment in any of the characters there, but secondly because it’s so CG. The landscape itself looks fake and unnatural to me. I wonder if the sky battle and Maul fight, with the threat that the droids are in Theed, could be sufficient to close out the movie.