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The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 71

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Just chiming in to say I’d prefer seeing the Malevolence fire it’s weapon. I don’t think the threat of failure at the end is felt as well without seeing the weapon at the start. And I personally don’t think the weapon itself is particularly cheesy anyway.

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Thoughts on a Strike at the Heart:

I still believe the scene of Ahsoka being relegated to guard duty should be moved back here. Having those narrative elements with just absence in between feels wrong. I don’t think you need to justify why Ahsoka was not in the previous two episodes

When robo Seth Green shakes his head, you can tell he’s supposed to be saying something despite having his audio cut. I would either re-add his snark, or cut the shot entirely.

The abrupt way Bane’s conversation with the other bounty hunter begins is jarring. Is there a reason you cut much of the dialog from this scene?

The librarian’s conversation seems to start very suddenly, and the scene itself is oddly short. I think this could be remedied if Ahsoka’s punishment scene were brought back to this episode.

I would actually consider maybe paring down Anakin and Padme’s “romance” dialog at 7:10. It’s important to the plot so it can’t just be cut, but it’s not good (I don’t know why that task is apparently impossible for Star Wars writers)

13:02 How does Cad Bane know Skywalker?

It’s unclear how the senate hostage situation did anything to aid the holocron heist. It just kind of feels like a sidetrack for no reason. If anything it does the opposite by putting all of Coruscant on high alert and looking for Bane. It also makes the heroes look clueless and incompetent when we transition back to the holocron heist plot because they seem totally unaware that the stuff going down might be related the criminal that evaded capture only minutes earlier.

28:20 The “conversation” with Mace feels very weird here. It doesn’t feel like Mace is speaking in response to Obi-Wan, and Yoda’s reply is strange since the “him” he refers to (Bane in your edit) was not the subject of the conversation. They were discussing the holocron itself and then Yoda refers to the presumed Bane with a pronoun without anyone mentioning him by name. Grammatically it’s strange, and not in the normal Yoda way. I’m not sure why you got rid of the Bolla Ropal plot element that forced the changes to the exchange, but that might become clear next episode.

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Thoughts on the Future of the Force:

You spelled “artifact” the British way (artefact) in the opening text, which is something I don’t think Star Wars ever does; it’s lightsaber not lightsabre. Based on the times you post I’m assuming you’re European and that’s why you did this.

I see what you’re trying to do with the Ahsoka/younglings scene at the end, but I’m not sure if it works. Despite the McGuffin for the episode being younglings, Ahsoka’s relationship with teaching and/or lightsabers was never a theme that was touched upon. The connection feels… tenuous, especially for what is now a season closer scene.

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Well that’s season 1; I’m definitely going to take a break for a while after flooding these comments with my feedback. Again I hope I didn’t come off as too critical of the work you’ve done; my primary goal is to make it overall feel more professional and less noticeably a fan project.

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nmxuci5970 said:

Well look at my thought of politics of war, is my thoughts so bad.

Hey Nmxuci, sorry for not responding to this. I do always read your comments but sometimes I struggle to understand exactly the points you’re trying to get across. I don’t know if this is helpful - I certainly don’t mean it to sound patronising - but perhaps to work around the barrier of understanding it would be better for you to outline your thoughts as bullet points so that I can follow them in a more linear fashion? I apologise that that puts the responsibility on you - but I’m not sure what other options we have, and I would like to understand your thoughts.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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 (Edited)

Right, Cranyx, I feel like your really detailed reviews deserve a proper response.

Firstly, and most importantly: I really appreciate you doing this. Your critiques are fair and very precise, which is very valuable. So I’d ask you to please continue doing this as you work your way through the show! If you’re willing, it’d also be good to hear from you what you think does work, because that’s useful reinforcement. For example, (excluding the criticisms you’ve mentioned,) would you say the first season works as a complete end-to-end unit of TV? Is it an improvement over the original couple of seasons of content for you? Does it include and exclude the right episodes?

In general terms, you’ve identified that I’m perhaps too heavy-handed with some cuts (axe versus scalpel, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as you say). And with you being very familiar with the base content, I appreciate your perspective that there’s maybe some good stuff I’ve cut that I could have left in. I don’t disagree with that - but this may simply be a matter of different subjective priorities between us, and (respectfully!) it may just be that the original may be a better match for your tastes than this edit. But you’re quite right that I should do what I can to make this not feel like a fan edit.

Taking the opening of the 501st as an example, I agree that the intro doesn’t give us much to work with with the characters, but that’s deliberate - I’m not intending that the audience build an emotional connection with the clones that’ll quickly die, instead wanting only to show that Domino squad has disunity, and I think that the only necessary takeaway from that episode in terms of the clones is the names of Rex, Fives, and Echo, for familiarity that’ll be developed more later.

Similarly, with the invisible Dooku fight in the Nightsisters arc, it is absolutely a good fun scene, and I was suprised to find I wanted to cut it, but while I’m not aiming for a specific runtime in any episode, it was more of a matter of pacing here. It is a scene that the plot can bypass, and the key to this plot was the introduction of Savage and the final five-way combat, which it only took us away from. That said, once that episode is ‘locked in’ (probably after I finish the full series) I’ll release an extended version with that scene added back in. I definitely think that we don’t need to see the other two challenges though, because they’re very redundant action with characters we don’t care about, whose only purpose is to whittle them down to Savage and Feral.

I suppose an important note here for other participants in this thread is that, because I (respectfully) think that Cranyx and I may have differing priorities, I find it particularly helpful when others jump in to agree with Cranyx’s criticisms. (Hopefully it’s clear I still very much respect the feedback, and I’m not trying to dismiss it at all here, so much as wanting to emphasise that in a lot of places I’m fairly confident in my decisions - but having multiple people agree that a certain approach should be reconsidered can help snap me out of that where necessary. You guys know better than me whether or not you’re enjoying an episode, and my assumptions can only take me so far.) For example, the note that the Malevolence should be seen to fire is now received loud and clear, and I’ll add those scenes into the opening of that episode. It’s sometimes hard to find the balance point on the spectrum of ‘goofy looking versus useful to see onscreen’ (among other things). I think you’ll struggle to convince me to reintroduce the Mandalorian conveyor belt of death though…

Other thoughts:

  • All of your technical observations (cuts, audio, transitions, dialogue issues, narrative gaps, establishing shots, etc) I’ll review once more for certain.
  • s01e01 - I’ll see if I have a better option to transition from the Ventress fight to the arrival of Ahsoka, though if I remember right I can’t move the Yularen scene here because it’s needed to split the Ventress fight, which has gaps. (As you’ve spotted, there aren’t many available establishing shots I could use there either, though I may be able to reorder the opening a little and start on the planet before cutting back to space)
  • s01e02 - I get your point on restoring clone dialogue. As I said above, I don’t want to lean too heavily into clones, especially early on, because I want to be clear with the viewer about who our main characters are. But I’ll rethink this and see where restoring it may add value over the current version.
  • s01e03 - If I remember right, in the original episode Satine does teleport to Merrick so he can capture her, then once they leave the room Satine and Merrick teleport away, forcing Obi-Wan to run after them.
  • s01e04 - I might re-add Ventress placing the bombs. I figured suprise was fun, but perhaps the audience should know. I’m interested what others think on whether the new Ventress dialogue works. I don’t want to edit just for the sake of it, especially if it feels jarring.
  • s01e05 - I think I want to stick with my structure, but I’ll certainly review the other smoothings you suggest.
  • s01e06 - Same as with 501st, I think these two episodes interleaved is the approach I want to take for the Ryloth arc, but I’ll review your suggestions.
  • Openings - While trimming exposition from episodes is one facet of incorporating my opening text, that’s a more minor one; the major factor is that the original episodes had the expository newscasts, which required a replacement. I don’t think I have any alternative options here, so I have to rely on asking the audience to accept the text. Trims to in-episode opening exposition are very minor - I don’t think I’ve ever actually consciously done it.
  • Closings - I agree that it’d be nice to have a few options for closing out episodes with music. I like the music that plays over the credits, but transitioning into that music in other ways based on the tone of the ending would be preferable. Music composition/editing is something I have zero skill with, so my only option here is via help from others. I’m certain though, that I don’t want to end on the original series’ bombast.
  • s01e07 - Interested in others’ opinions on whether Ahsoka’s discipline belongs in Death Watch as opposed to the finale. Since she’s disobedient at the cost of lives in Ryloth, I think the scene works fine as discipline for that, but I suppose the main question is whether the scene belongs in Death Watch at all, where it serves to take her off the playing field for a bit. I think we had broad agreement that this approach was valid, but happy to reopen that line of thought.
  • s01e09 - Yeah, I really don’t like the Mace Windu dialogue in the ending, but I just have no options here. Ropal and the idea of the Kyber crystal is a waste of time plotline that makes Bane seem really weak, which also feels like a trimmed episode that happened offscreen only to be summarised in the following episode’s newscast. It resulted in this awkward scene with Mace, which is a shame.
  • s01e10 - Indeed, I’m not American so I’m content to spell the word as “artefact”. You guys can work around that, I’m sure! If it helps, I suggest a headcanon for you that, since Imperials seem to mainly be British, that Galactic Basic uses the British spelling for some words 😉

All said and done, I’ll reiterate that I hope that none of this comes off as dismissive, and I greatly value your input.

This isn’t to hand off the responsibility for this edit, but if anyone did produce alternative cuts of episodes I’ve edited - for example a less radical 501st - I’d happily add my series’ opening and closing conventions (if that was wanted), host them, and add them into my spreadsheet. I’m very open to community collaboration here.

To just add, I currently plan to release extended versions of the following episodes:

  • The Nightsisters arc with the invisible Dooku scene
  • The Geonisis arc with the Anakin/Ki-Adi-Mundi prongs of the attack
  • The Rako Hardeen arc with the Box episode reinserted
  • The Umbara arc with more of the visually interesting combat from the first couple of episodes

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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EddieDean said:

I think you’ll struggle to convince me to reintroduce the Mandalorian conveyor belt of death though…

I mean… sure, go for it. (…did it work? Did I convince you?)

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it’d also be good to hear from you what you think does work, because that’s useful reinforcement

This is, unfortunately, more difficult to do than pointing out what doesn’t work. My approach to my reviews was to watch your edit, and when I felt that something didn’t work quite right, hop on over to another tab my legally purchased DVDs of The Clone Wars to see what exactly was changed vs the original. When everything works fine, then I don’t notice the edit at all, which is the goal. I will say that I think your episode selection is a very good one, and focuses on the highlights of seasons 1/2 while leaving out forgettable and bad episode arcs. I’m still not sure how I feel about including the Nightsisters arc this early (and I’ll admit the continuity of their outfits bugs me a bit), but maybe I’ll see how it works together moving forward. I think you’ve also done a really good job trimming out a lot of unnecessary gags and asides that were mostly there to fill out the runtime or make jokes that didn’t always land.

501st

I’m aware that the cuts were deliberate in order to only give a brief introduction to the characters, but what I think this ends up doing is creating a strange half-measure of introduction. What is left is still in the context of setting up and building off of conflicts/plot threads that are now just left dangling in an unsatisfying way. If you really just want the bare minimum of telling us who the characters are, I would almost say go hard in the other direction and leave out Cadets entirely. Rookies was designed to work on its own, so it at least gets the job done. The downside to this would be that 99 just kind of pops up out of nowhere for the finale.

Nightsisters

My recommendation to bring back the invisible fight is one I feel less strongly about than others, so long as you can make the following dialog feel more clear (I also gave feedback on that specifically as well in case you decided to go that direction.) Same goes for the first two fights - just make it feel more natural (I really don’t like the new phrase “let the game begin” and the cut from Ventress saying “begin” to someone else saying “begin” is weird.)

Mandalore

I agree the Dr Evil conveyer belt is goofy, but the way the replacement is handled feels very disorienting and confusing to watch on its own. I’d have to take a really close look at the original scene to see if there’s a way it could be handled better.

artefact

Just gonna point out that there are a number of instances of Star Wars spelling this specific word the American way, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them use the British spelling of words in general: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sith_artifact

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cranyx said:

artefact

Just gonna point out that there are a number of instances of Star Wars spelling this specific word the American way, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them use the British spelling of words in general: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sith_artifact

Looking at the sources it’s only written that way in books because the books are American published. The word never appears onscreen in-universe or in crawls. The only word that is spelt differently that does appear in the crawls is ‘armored’ in ANH and RotJ.

Eddie, I’d say stick with whichever you want. Imperials have pronounced Lee-a and ley-a, zed and zee, and lef-tenent, loo-tenent all interchangeable so it’s not unreasonable to assume their spelling is also varied.

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Hey y’all, I made my own edit of The 501st Legion with the entirety of “Clone Cadets” left in. I also did some editing to “Rookies” to make it lead into “ARC Troopers” more smoothly. I always felt that it was strange for Greivous to retreat at the end of Rookies but then attack immediately afterward in Arc Troopers. The runtime is 1 hour and 2 minutes; here’s a list of changes:

Clone Cadets:
Cut “Looks like they were well-trained, perhaps the finest soldiers I’ve ever seen” at the end of the episode because I thought it was silly for a group that had failed the test twice already to suddenly turn in to the finest soldiers ever, especially since there are far finer clones than them.

Rookies:
Cut “I don’t want the Republic to find out we’re coming.”
Cut “We can leave nothing to chance. That base cannot be allowed to alert the Jedi that we’re coming.”
Cut the scene with Grievous saying “We can’t let a few puny clones stop us.”
Cut Grievous’s retreat entirely
All these cuts were made from a logical standpoint. If the attack on Kamino hinged whether the Republic found out or not, then why did Grievous continue his attack even after he was revealed to the Republic, and especially after retreating moments before? Now, it seems like Grievous was going to attack anyways and the Rishi Moon ambush was just an extra measure. I don’t know if any of what I’m saying makes sense, but if you watch it I’m sure it would make more sense.
Cut Echo and Fives being promoted to the 501st because it didn’t flow well into Arc Troopers.

Arc Troopers:
Cut the introduction scene with the intercepted transmission because it’s information that everyone already knew.

If anyone wants to watch it, PM me and I’ll gladly give you a link 😃

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I look forward to watching it. Let me know if you’d like me to include it in the spreadsheet as an alternative edit.

Folks, apologies for very slow releases lately. Work’s really picked up so I’m very swamped at the moment. I’ll continue to grab what time I can, and I don’t think this busy period should continue to last for too long, but I wanted to acknowledge it.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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I think you and a couple other people should watch it and make sure they like it first before it gets added to the spreadsheet.

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Mind sharing a link nlp?

“You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view” — Obi-Wan Kenobi

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Thoughts on Seven Warriors:

I agree that this is a good introduction to the seasonal theme of bounty hunters, as well as Hondo. However, if you are keeping the original thematic focus for season 2, it seems odd that you would split off the Cad Bane episodes from being included as part of that to be the season 1 finale as opposed to leaving it as Ryloth. If we’re trying to keep thematic cohesion, you properly label season 1’s as “conflicts erupt in the early days of the clone wars”, and the battle of Ryloth feels like a proper capstone to that (This is also one of my hesitations to include the Nightsisters arc in S1). If this was because you wanted to keep each season to 10 “episodes” then I would definitely encourage you to not be too concerned with that aspect; some narrative aspects are going to have more content than others and it would be better to keep them grouped based on those aspects.

I was wondering if you would remove Hondo’s lines about having already met Anakin and Obi-Wan, but after watching the scene again, I think it probably makes up too much of the conversation to not have its absence be extremely noticeable.

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Thoughts on Massacre:

I was looking forward to checking this one out for a few reasons. First, it acts as a follow up to the Nightsisters arc, and would help me better form an opinion on whether the shuffling of episode order works better or not. Second, your description claims that it is one of your ambitious edits with a new narrative, which I usually have more feedback on.

3:20 It is unclear from the cut what is going on when the scene first cuts to the Lair of Grievous plotline. I know from your notes that it’s supposed to be that the Ventress told the Jedi where Grievous lives, but that is not clear at all from the context given. It almost feels like a non-sequitur since no one had ever even mentioned Grievous. When we eventually cut back to the Nightsisters, they clearly seem preoccupied with their own stuff and give no indication that they are going to or would want to go after Grievous.

5:32 Grievous’ dub here sounds really off, mostly because the audio source you used was from a transmission and has a lot of distortion that Star Wars adds to their holograms (you’d think that they’d have better telecommunication technology with all their future shit but w/e)

Dooku’s conversation with Grievous doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. He says that the Jedi are in his house, then points out that Ventress is at Dathomir (I assume that the implication here is that he is telling Grievous that she is behind the first statement, but that isn’t made clear how that would happen or why) Finally, Grievous’ line about “I will rest when those witches are dead” seems at odds with his line about “I’ll play your little game”, which indicated that he is only doing this at the behest of Dooku instead of for personal vengeance.

You’re right that Dooku never had a personal grudge against Ventress, but I think the original episode gives a fully satisfactory and complete explanation for why Grievous was sent to lead the attack: 1) Grievous’ role is largely as an attack dog for Dooku, the political leader of the Separatists, and Dooku wants them dead. 2) Grievous feels a loyalty to the Separatist cause (ironically arguably more so than any of his actual superiors) and Ventress was a traitor to that cause.

I agree with your notes that while Lair of Grievous as an episode has some great Grievous moments but also a lot of filler that can be removed. However I still think it works better as a follow up to the Assassin plotline or possibly its own standalone story albeit pared down. Here I think it mucks about with the pacing too much by having the Nightsisters content essentially put on pause for 10 minutes after initially starting with them.

On a similar note, including the epilogue with Savage feels sudden and disconnected from the story we had just watched. As per your notes, I understand that you want to build up hype for the upcoming Maul plotline (especially since you separated part 1 of the 4-part story about it), but I think it takes a really excellent and tragic ending that already existed for Massacre and distracts from that emotional gut punch.

I think that this episode reinforced my hesitations regarding putting the Nightsisters arc so early. I think part of the reason it might seem like you need to separate this episode from its quadrilogy is because otherwise there would be a really big gap between when the Ventress/Maul arc is introduced and when it picks up again in the Brothers and Sisters arc, but I would argue there is no harm in having of it hold off until later. I know you said you wanted to spice up the first couple seasons since they are weaker than what comes later, but spreading it out like that ironically does the opposite of this series edit’s claimed raison d’etre: making the whole story feel more focused.

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Thoughts on Corruption on Mandalore:

I’ve been curious about this episode looking at the list because it uses two episodes I never saw. Full disclosure: when I watched the series I used a guide to skip a lot of episodes that weren’t as good, and these were on that list. Let’s see if your edit can bring it up to par with the rest of the “good episodes”

“Lasting change can only come from within” Ahsoka is apparently the kind of person who would say the best way to beat systemic failures of the state is to just vote more.

It’s weird to have the Scooby gang talk about discovering a conspiracy, when that whole adventure just happened off screen with no fanfare or attention. I’m assuming that was part of the cut content

“bring all witnesses and evidence of this crime to me in this secluded, private place.” I wonder what will happen.

lmao ENHANCE

“you’ll know the signal when you see it” What is the purpose of being cryptic right now?

Overall I don’t have many inputs on the edits specifically aside from maybe needing to add the scene of the kids actually discovering the corruption instead of just telling us that they did. It’s not the most compelling episode, but that’s because of the source material as opposed to anything you changed. Out curiosity, if this were not tied to the Mandalore plotline which you said you wanted to focus on, would you have included it?

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Folks, I need to officially take a break from this project for a while. I’ve got too many spinning plates in life right now and a lot of mental overhead, so I need to say out loud that I need to put this to one side so that I can take the pressure off. The project isn’t dead, but 16 months straight on one obligation is heavy, and I need a breather. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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I have an idea that might interest you. Have you ever thought about creating a TCW fancut/fanedit that could fit into the Clone Wars Multimedia Project and the pre-Filoni lore? If you did, you’d be doing the Expanded Universe fans a huge favor, that Is, the fans who don’t despise TCW at all but prefer the Clone Wars Multimedia Project, that is, the books, the comics, the novels and the video games set during the Clone Wars that were created between 2002 and 2006. Fans like me.
To create such project you should eliminate everything that contradicts the Multimedia Project (no Maul, no Mandalore, no Ahsoka, no Quinlan Vos, no Barriss Offee, etc.) and keep only the TCW episodes in which Ahsoka is not shown and in which the protagonists are only Anakin and Obi-Wan, such as the episode set on Pantora and a few others. You should eliminate the episodes in which the Clones are too more Independent either.

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

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EddieDean said:

Folks, I need to officially take a break from this project for a while. I’ve got too many spinning plates in life right now and a lot of mental overhead, so I need to say out loud that I need to put this to one side so that I can take the pressure off. The project isn’t dead, but 16 months straight on one obligation is heavy, and I need a breather. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.

You’ve earned any break you would take, Eddie. 😃

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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NeverarGreat said:

EddieDean said:

Folks, I need to officially take a break from this project for a while. I’ve got too many spinning plates in life right now and a lot of mental overhead, so I need to say out loud that I need to put this to one side so that I can take the pressure off. The project isn’t dead, but 16 months straight on one obligation is heavy, and I need a breather. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.

You’ve earned any break you would take, Eddie. 😃

Cheers, Nev.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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Take your time Eddie, we all appreciate everything you have done for us and are hopeful for your epic return.

Take care mate, and get some well-deserved rest.

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Darth Malgus said:

I have an idea that might interest you. Have you ever thought about creating a TCW fancut/fanedit that could fit into the Clone Wars Multimedia Project and the pre-Filoni lore? If you did, you’d be doing the Expanded Universe fans a huge favor, that Is, the fans who don’t despise TCW at all but prefer the Clone Wars Multimedia Project, that is, the books, the comics, the novels and the video games set during the Clone Wars that were created between 2002 and 2006. Fans like me.
To create such project you should eliminate everything that contradicts the Multimedia Project (no Maul, no Mandalore, no Ahsoka, no Quinlan Vos, no Barriss Offee, etc.) and keep only the TCW episodes in which Ahsoka is not shown and in which the protagonists are only Anakin and Obi-Wan, such as the episode set on Pantora and a few others. You should eliminate the episodes in which the Clones are too more Independent either.

That is well outside the bounds of this project and would involve nixing the vast majority of the series.

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EddieDean said:

Folks, I need to officially take a break from this project for a while. I’ve got too many spinning plates in life right now and a lot of mental overhead, so I need to say out loud that I need to put this to one side so that I can take the pressure off. The project isn’t dead, but 16 months straight on one obligation is heavy, and I need a breather. I’ll be back as soon as I can be.

“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas

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