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Some thoughts on the opening and the climax.
Honestly, I think a good exercise would be to see how much you could cut from the opening without losing any necessary information. How much fat could you trip in order to get to the good stuff?
The few times I’ve popped TPM up on Disney+ to skim through it while thinking about this thread, I can’t help but remember how boring this film is. There’s good stuff in there but it’s just meandering. Even John Williams score is meandering at times, especially at the beginning. This might be controversial, but it would be interesting if we could find a different track to rescore the opening with. Something with a little more tension or energy.
This might be cutting a lot, but I think it would be fun to cut the opening so we don’t see the Jedi uncloaked until they start fighting the droids. So something like this:
- Republic cruiser lands, maybe no convo with Nute Gunray.
- Cruiser lands, droid escorts hooded figures to meeting room.
- Alter droid dialogue and cut away before droid leaves room. Stays and asks if they’d like a drink or something.
- Cuts to first convo with Sidious. Take dialogue from first Gunray scene where the other Nemoidian says “The Jedi are here to force a settlement”.
- Palpatine responds with the “Begin landing your troops” line
- Cut Gunray asking if it is legal. Instead he immediately asks, “And the Jedi?”
- Cut the wide shot immediately after Sidious says, “Kill them immediately”
- Cut to insert of poisonous gas, but don’t show the Jedi.
- Then show them blowing up the Republic cruiser.
- Have the droids approach the meeting room door. Then it plays out similarly with the Jedi kicking ass. This would be the new introduction to Obi and Qui-Gon.
Yeah, you lose some dialogue between the two that is nice, but the latter half of the dialogue is meandering, and the droid leaving just to come right back is dull, and it is funny to think they could’ve just poisoned the Jedi’s drinks rather than poisoning them with a very visible gas (especially after they alerted them by blowing up their ship first).
Even if you didn’t cut complete scenes from the beginning, just a lot of trimming in general could help pick the pace up. For example, you could keep the scene between Gunray and Amidala, but it actually isn’t necessary, since most of that same info is reiterated in the next scene with the Queen and her counsel. There’s just a lot of over explaining in the beginning of this movie, and I think it might be more exciting if you try to show and not tell as much as you can.
I think I would also show the droid army capturing Theed before the Jedi decide to go to the Gungan city. I feel like capturing Theed is a natural place to end the opening sequence (sort of like the droids escaping the clutches of the Empire in an escape pod in ANH.) So the Jedi’s journey to the Gungan City and to Theed would be like the droids journey through the desert and to the Lars Homestead. The Nemoidians could later land in Theed around the same time the Jedi arrive there.
Also, a thought regarding the ending. I know the four different plot lines in the climax was a problem discussed even during the editing of the actual film. To help solve this, I wonder if you could “resolve” the Gungan battle before our heroes split up in the hangar. It could play out like this:
- When the Gungan battle starts, maybe have it play out up until the droids breach their shields. This would play out as sort of extended opening for the “climax” of the movie.
- Then we cut to our heroes sneaking into the city. This way our heroes are making their move when the droid army is already stuck in battle.
- Have the Gungans begin their retreat before our heroes split up in the hangar. This would be enough to consider this plot line “concluded” in the audiences’ minds I think.
- Cut Jar Jar’s extended antics while he is trying to escape the army.
- We could briefly cut back to the aftermath of the battle and show Jar Jar surrounded when we need to show our heroes at their lowest point.
This solution would allow the narrative to go from 2 plot lines to 3 plot lines, but never 4 at once.
I’m sure past editor’s have done some of these things to different degrees, but maybe these ideas could be useful to this discussion. You would have to keep an eye on runtime depending how much you cut, but honestly going back through this movie and remembering how dull it can be makes me a little more open to less than 2-hour version of this film.