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Attack of the Clones - Altered and Extended Edition (V.1 Now Complete and Released)

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 (Edited)

I’ve decided I’m going to be doing a fanedit of every movie in the trilogy, each with some sort of alteration and extension. Some films will have more alterations and extensions, others will have less. For example, ANH will have the Jabba scene taken out, some scenes from SC.38 edited in (with color correction and grain to make it match), and an extended and larger Battle of Yavin. For The Empire Strikes Back, I plan only to go full Adywan and add in more scenes of snowtroopers and Darth Vader in combat during the battle. Speaking of Adywan, I plan on using his OT edits as a starting base for my own. For the prequels, there will be more drastic cuts and changes, especially in regards to bad dialogue and silly scenes. The sequel trilogy and will have some mild changes, mainly in regards to removing out of place, over-the-top humor, and making the battle sequences feel less rushed and lackluster (this would again require some filming and VFX work). Overall, I want there to be as much tonal, story, and aesthetic consistency across the movies as possible.

I decided to start with the prequels because I currently have all the necessary footage and skillsets needed to edit these movies (however there may turn out to be a VFX scene or two I may need help with as the process unfolds). I’m working on an ROTJ edit, but there needs to be more content released (first Bucketheads Season 1 episode and Tydirium) before I can fully complete this edit.

So, on to Attack of the Clones itself. Here is the change list:

V.1:

  • Added in all the deleted scenes to extend the runtime. The deleted scenes in this movie, especially the ones featuring Anakin and Padme, aren’t perfect but are still superior to their romance scenes in the original cut. In this version, their romantic subplot is much slower and more natural compared to the “Shakespearian” version of the original. The first time Anakin and Padme kiss is at the arena, not by the lake on Naboo.

  • I’ve found that speeding up some of Hayden Christensen’s delivery of certain lines makes them more tolerable. Again, not perfect, but better than the original versions.

  • Cut as much of Jar Jar’s lines as possible unless they are relevant to the plot, like him taking Padme’s place in the Senate or him granting emergency powers to Palpatine.

  • Cut Jar Jar looking at camera in Padme’s apartment.

  • Cut Anakin’s line about wanting to dream about Padme.

  • Eliminate “Jedi poodoo” alien during the chase and other silly moments like the power coupling scene.

  • Add force pull sound effect when Obi Wan catches Anakin’s lightsaber during the speeder chase.

  • Cut as much of Anakin’s creepy/cringe dialogue throughout or anything that makes him seem bratty.

  • Cut Anakin’s “it’s not fair” line and the following parts about Padme feeling uncomfortable with Anakin staring at her.

  • Slightly speed up or slow down parts of certain lines to help negate the flat delivery.

  • Add in Dooku’s backstory as a flashback with Jocasta Nu’s narration.

  • Cut Dex pulling up his pants.

  • Add in the blooper scene of Anakin saying the soup is too hot to give Anakin and Padme a moment of levity and humor during their conversation on the transport ship headed to Naboo.

  • Cut the scene with Yoda, Obi-Wan and the younglings.

  • Add in the scene Mace and Obi-Wan on the Jedi Temple landing platform, as this conveys the information that’s lost by cutting the youngling scene.

  • Add in extended landing on Naboo to give Anakin and Padme more interaction to develop their romance.

  • Make the Padme and Anakin love scenes into more of a montage with less dialogue, cut their first kiss by the lake.

  • Add Across the Stars to the Anakin/Padme scenes where the dialogue has been cut.

  • Cut Anakin and Padme scene by the fire, instead add some of the family deleted scenes.

  • Restructure the Kamino subplot and romance subplot so they don’t jump back and forth as often.

  • Cut the “your presence is soothing” and “Jedi don’t have nightmares” lines.

  • Cut Boba shooting at Obi Wan in Slave 1. It looks very cheesy to have Obi-Wan get “blown up” twice within a very short period of time.

  • As Anakin and Padme arrive on Tatooine, replace the cart droid’s “okeedokee” sound with a more mechanical sound.

  • Cut some of Watto’s cringier lines, such as him pretending to be friendly to Anakin out of fear.

  • Cut any of Boba Fett’s lines that would make him seem overly evil or annoying. The goal is to have him seem like a normal kid.

  • Speed up Anakin saying to find my mother.

  • Cut Cliegg Lars saying that Anakin’s mother is dead and to forget about it.

  • Slow down Shmi’s head falling as she dies. In the original it’s much too abrupt.

  • Cut Anakin’s breakdown and him telling Padme he killed the sandpeople. In this edit, he killed the men of the Tusken Raider tribe, but not the women and children. Instead, the scene has been modified so he only expresses his wishes to stop people from dying. Padme wouldn’t love a full-on murderer, and Anakin shouldn’t have fallen so far this early.

  • Cut “so much” after Anakin says “I miss you” while standing by his mother’s grave.

  • Cut Anakin initially disagreeing to help Obi-Wan.

  • Add in a new music track (the Coruscant track from The Old Republic vidoegame) to the scene of the Senate granting emergency powers to Palpatine, as well as trim some of Jar Jar’s unnecessary lines.

  • Cut C-3PO and R2-D2 antics during the droid factory and the arena, instead they stay on the ship. Their “humor” during both the factory and the arena is extremely silly as well as very jarring and out of place.

  • Tone down the droid factory sequence to be a little less over-the-top.

  • Insert the trial scene before the arena execution.

  • Make Anakin and Padme’s love confession less wordy in order to avoid some of the poor dialogue.

  • Cut Padme jumping onto the Reek’s back.

  • Extend the Battle of Geonosis with footage from fan films and cinematics.

  • Cut Padme saying that they’ve got to get to the hangar––they don’t know where Dooku is escaping to yet. Instead, she just says to hurry up and get a transport.

  • Make trims in the ending duel with Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda and Dooku.

V.2:

  • Add the deleted droid control ship scene into the Battle of Geonosis (VFX needs to be finished).

  • Add more scenes of Jedi, clones, and droids, and various vehicles engaged in battle on the plains of Geonosis, using something like Unreal Engine to create the scenes.

  • Possibly add a snippets of battles in various locations in between the Acclamators taking off and Anakin and Padme’s wedding to bridge the two scenes. The goal is to really cement the line “begun the Clone War has.”

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I get what you’re trying to do, but I think this is a mistake:

–> Restructure the Kamino subplot and romance subplot so they don’t jump back and forth as often

Lucas juxtaposed these two storylines for a reason. By giving us Anakin and Padme falling in love in the Lake Country at the same time we (through Obi-Wan) learned about Kamino and the clones we saw love and war side by side. It made perfect sense juxtaposing the Lake Country and Kamino. You have the two young lovers falling on the one side, and the Clone army, set up for war, on the other.

We know that Anakin falling in love with Padme is going to eventually lead him to take the Dark Path, and the Clone Army is going to turn on the Jedi somehow. Having the introduction of the clones and the introduction of the love story juxtaposed is brilliant because here you have the two key forces that BRING THE JEDI DOWN: Order 66 and Anakin Skywalker falling in love. It’s so perfect.

If you take that away, you’re taking away that brilliant juxtaposition.

I do like some of your other ideas, though.

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 (Edited)

I agree with you about your analysis, and it’s not a drastic restructure. I think I lump together two scenes from each subplot, since I’m getting rid of their horribly creepy first kiss scene, Anakin riding those weird giant tick-looking creatures, and their conversation at night about whether or not to hide their romance. You still jump back and forth, it’s just streamlined because most of the romantic scenes are just atrocious. In replacement of those I added in the scenes with Padme’s family. Their romance will be much slower and more subtle in this edit, with their first kiss being at the arena.

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EditModd said:

I agree with you about your analysis, and it’s not a drastic restructure. I think I lump together two scenes from each subplot, since I’m getting rid of their horribly creepy first kiss scene, Anakin riding those weird giant tick-looking creatures, and their conversation at night about whether or not to hide their romance. You still jump back and forth, it’s just streamlined because most of the romantic scenes are just atrocious. In replacement of those I added in the scenes with Padme’s family. Their romance will be much slower and more subtle in this edit, with their first kiss being at the arena.

OK, I see what you mean. So many people seem to miss the importance of that juxtaposition and as someone who actually loves AOTC it drives me batty, so that’s cool. I see what you’re saying. That’s cool, that sounds cool.

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The first version of the edit is out now! PM me for a link. I’d love any feedback on the edit to see if there are things that needed to be added, deleted, improved upon, etc.

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Just completed an updated version of V.1! It has better editing, sound transitions, etc. and is higher quality. PM me for a link.

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 (Edited)

Just created a mockup for a Clone Wars “ending montage” for a potential V.2. It’s very rough and has no sound effect or score, and is more of a proof of concept. It uses clips from the Dark Times and several other cinematics. When V.2 comes around I hope to make my own cinematics to match the aesthetic of the first clip from Dark Times. The purpose is to really cement home the idea that the Galaxy is now engaged in a full-scale war, and to adopt George Lucas’s early ROTS ideas of wanting a montage of the Clone Wars, albeit in a different way.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/654684814

Password: fanedit

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EditModd said:

Just created a mockup for a Clone Wars “ending montage” for a potential V.2. It’s very rough and has no sound effect or score, and is more of a proof of concept. It uses clips from the Dark Times and several other cinematics. When V.2 comes around I hope to make my own cinematics to match the aesthetic of the first clip from Dark Times. The purpose is to really cement home the idea that the Galaxy is now engaged in a full-scale war, and to adopt George Lucas’s early ROTS ideas of wanting a montage of the Clone Wars, albeit in a different way.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/654684814

Password: fanedit

I like the concept, and I think this could really work within the context of your edit!

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T-202 said:

EditModd said:

Just created a mockup for a Clone Wars “ending montage” for a potential V.2. It’s very rough and has no sound effect or score, and is more of a proof of concept. It uses clips from the Dark Times and several other cinematics. When V.2 comes around I hope to make my own cinematics to match the aesthetic of the first clip from Dark Times. The purpose is to really cement home the idea that the Galaxy is now engaged in a full-scale war, and to adopt George Lucas’s early ROTS ideas of wanting a montage of the Clone Wars, albeit in a different way.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/654684814

Password: fanedit

I like the concept, and I think this could really work within the context of your edit!

Thank you! I really appreciate any positive comments or criticisms, or people taking the time to follow this edit. I’d have to find a good music track to fit in, hopefully something from Battlefront II would fit in well.

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EditModd said:

Just created a mockup for a Clone Wars “ending montage” for a potential V.2. It’s very rough and has no sound effect or score, and is more of a proof of concept. It uses clips from the Dark Times and several other cinematics. When V.2 comes around I hope to make my own cinematics to match the aesthetic of the first clip from Dark Times. The purpose is to really cement home the idea that the Galaxy is now engaged in a full-scale war, and to adopt George Lucas’s early ROTS ideas of wanting a montage of the Clone Wars, albeit in a different way.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/654684814

Password: fanedit

I like the idea a lot of showing some of the Clone Wars in the movie. AOTC has always had a “blue balls” feeling in the ending for how it spends the whole movie building up the war and then ends right when it starts. That said, it feels a little weird just plopping in a 3 minute battle scene like that. I’d experiment with cutting back-and-forth between the movie footage of the clones with some quick cuts to the battle scenes.

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ifjg said:

EditModd said:

Just created a mockup for a Clone Wars “ending montage” for a potential V.2. It’s very rough and has no sound effect or score, and is more of a proof of concept. It uses clips from the Dark Times and several other cinematics. When V.2 comes around I hope to make my own cinematics to match the aesthetic of the first clip from Dark Times. The purpose is to really cement home the idea that the Galaxy is now engaged in a full-scale war, and to adopt George Lucas’s early ROTS ideas of wanting a montage of the Clone Wars, albeit in a different way.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/654684814

Password: fanedit

I like the idea a lot of showing some of the Clone Wars in the movie. AOTC has always had a “blue balls” feeling in the ending for how it spends the whole movie building up the war and then ends right when it starts. That said, it feels a little weird just plopping in a 3 minute battle scene like that. I’d experiment with cutting back-and-forth between the movie footage of the clones with some quick cuts to the battle scenes.

Yeah I get that it does feel a little weird, and yeah I’ll definitely try the cutting back and forth. And I agree about the blue balls feeling, TPM really should’ve been the start of the Clone Wars, and AOTC should have really focused on the war itself and Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship. Nothing I can do to change that though that would be an insane edit.

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So I just watched through the edit, and it makes the movie so much better! the only thing I don’t understand is why did you cut off the Naboo plains scene?

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DevDog said:

So I just watched through the edit, and it makes the movie so much better! the only thing I don’t understand is why did you cut off the Naboo plains scene?

I personally just thought the scene where Anakin rides the grass tick/cow thing and the two of them rolling around in the grass was pretty silly and seemed like something out of a rom-com, and I wanted their romance to progress much more slowly and naturally in this edit.

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Would love to check this out could I get a link please?

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can I get a copy of this edit, please?

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Can I have a link? I’m interested in this.

«This is where the fun begins!»
(Anakin Skywalker)

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Id very much like a link for your aotc edit thank you 😃

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I don’t think he’s sending links out anymore.

Just a lover of STAR WARS EU.