Opportunity! If you did want to have Anakin somehow actively guided through the force by Qui-Gon near the ending, without having to wait for him to die first, you could do something during the moment where Qui-Gon is meditating during the Maul fight’s pause. This’d add a bit of value to Qui-Gon, showing his awareness of both fronts, and perhaps even hinting that he deliberately led Anakin to the ship because he had a feeling that he’d be valuable there.
Anyway, I just spent some time on the ending, using Snooker’s as a base and exploring some of my other ideas. I found that a few of my thoughts don’t quite work - for example, you can’t have the Gungan plotline finish too early, because it’s just a bit sudden. One of the problems with recutting the ending is that each of those four plotlines has their own peaks and troughs, so there’s risk of whiplash if the energy in one scene differs from the energy in the next.
But I did find some opportunities I liked! The main ones being finding an earlier home for the Gungan surrender, cutting Padmé’s scenes in the palace, and reordering the conclusion a bit more.
As before, I’ve done only light audio smoothing, and alternate scoring in a few places would make this land better. I’ve also slightly reordered the horses/droideka shots but not fixed the audio there.
Here’s my attempt (16 min), based on trying to minimise cognitive load whilst balancing flow and narrative energy levels. (Key highlights in bold.)
The opening here runs like this, setting up all plots and ending with closing off the Gungan one:
- Gungans and droids face off up to the point where the shields are breached and close combat begins.
- Padmé’s team and Jedi guard infiltrate the city, Neimoidians show suprise, team makes it into the hangar.
- Pilots are freed and we follow them up into space and first combat with the droid control ship.
- Gungan battle turns bad as the droidekas take out horses and the shield, causing them to flee.
- Padmé’s team restate the plan to get to Gunray in the throne room, and they move to do that.
- Maul appears and the Jedi step in to deal with him; Padmé’s team must go alone. First plan change
- Droidekas block Padmé and Anakin activates his ship to deal with that; Padmé’s team run into the palace.
- Anakin heads into space.
- Gungans surrender. Now we have one less thing to think about, and jeopardy hangs over the other plots.
Then the middle, where the main focus is dealing with the changes to the plan, and everything goes wrong:
- Maul/Jedi battle continues from the hangar into the power room.
- Anakin joins the battle in space, and we see that he’s decent at it.
- Padmé’s team (running) get captured. Now the pressure (and focus) is on the other two plotlines.
- Maul/Jedi battle continues into the forcefield gates, they all pause.
- Anakin enters the droid control ship, his ship fails. This plotline’s in jeopardy.
- Maul/Jedi battle continues, Qui-Gon is killed. This plotline’s in jeopardy.
- Padmé’s team are brought to Gunray. “Your little resurrection is at an end.” Mission seems to have failed.
- Obi-Wan fights Maul, but ends up hanging in the pit.
Then the ending, featuring the turn, and victory:
- Anakin turns his ship back on, destroys the droid control ship, and escapes. Hope returns.
- Gungans are freed, and cheer. Brief high for this plotline, but no mission victory yet-
- Obi-Wan’s being taunted by Maul’s sparks, but jumps up and bisects him. Hope for the Obi-Wan plot
- Padmé’s team capture Gunray. Mission victory comes LAST, so we don’t get the high while Obi-Wan’s still in trouble.
- Back to Obi-Wan, for Qui-Gon’s death scene. *Now that the mission is complete, we see the cost of victory."
- Endings.
I’d still include some tweaks to some of Anakin’s more childish dialogue and actions, make it clearer that Anakin’s deliberately off into space, and tie in Qui-Gon encouraging Anakin through the force, but I think that’s roughly how I’d like to structure it.