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The Original Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 29

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Peter Pan said:

I might be mistaken but wouldn’t that suggest that there are two sabers?

We see Luke working on one and cut to R2 and 3PO not waiting for him, so there is no time for Luke to give the saber to R2.
Maybe you could move Vaders arrival at the Death Star or Leia’s failed rescue attempt between the two scenes of Luke working on his saber and the droids walking up to Jabba’s palace.

Well I’m just imagining cutting around a few shots in the middle of the deleted scene, so it would go from Luke working on the saber to R2 emerging from the cave. The handoff still happens, but it’s unclear. I think that’s an interesting way to go about it because the location of the saber is unknown until the sail barge, perhaps as an effort by Luke to avoid violence until absolutely necessary.

This rearrangement also works to tease big elements of Act 1. Jabba’s voice is teased without revealing his corpulence, Luke’s black costume is teased in semi-darkness, and his saber is teased while obscuring its precise nature and location. We also don’t know where Lando and Chewie are, and are only guessing at their part in Leia’s plan. Leia herself is absent for the droids’ arrival at the palace, creating the anticipation of her fate, as well as that of Han.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the plan is far more clear, since there are two plans. Leia’s plan is unknown, but could presumably have included herself and Lando as bounty hunters taking Chewie in to gain entrance to the palace. When her escape failed, Luke realized that he must use his resources to get them out. He first sends the droids in an attempt to diffuse the situation diplomatically, and when that fails he goes in himself to mind trick or threaten Jabba. Failing this, he realizes that violence is the only answer.

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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I think these are promising ideas. Anything to get us to Luke’s arrival at the palace ASAP. You think we can get away with Leia and Chewie’s capture being addressed solely in the crawl?

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I wonder if 3PO could mention Leia’s attempt while on their way to the palace. Thanks to AI voices that should be feasible.

“Vader! Hologram, now!”

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What about saying that Leia has already been captured in the crawl, so that Luke’s entrance to the palace immediately follows Vader’s Death Star entrance?

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NeverarGreat said:

We would still need to establish that Leia has unfrozen Han, I think.

How about this:

-Crawl establishes that Luke is completing his Jedi training in isolation, leaving Leia and her allies to attempt Han’s rescue alone.
-Vader goes to the Death Star.
-Establishing shot of Jabba’s palace at sundown.
-Leia wanders through sleeping fortress, unfreezes Han.
-Sinister laughter from Jabba. “I know that laugh.” Cut to black.
-Indeterminate shots of Dagobah, darkness of the cave in the swamp. Voiceover from ESB. “Friends you have there.” “They were in pain.” “Decide you must, how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could…but you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered.” Reveal Luke in a cave working on a lightsaber. He does not activate it.
-R2 emerges from crevice on Tatooine. “We’re leaving? But what about master Luke? I thought he was going to rescue captain Solo…You mean we’re going to that horrible fortress…alone?” Cut to the theatrical version “Of course I’m worried, and you should be too. Lando Calrissian and poor Chewbacca never returned from this awful place.”

Spence’s ROTJ edit has an opening pretty similar to this except he has the Luke/Yoda Dagobah stuff between the DS2 opening & Leia sneaking unto Jabba’s. He uses the ‘Luke walking to the X-wing before seeing Kenobi’ footage to fade in over Jabba taunting a newly thawed Han to sense they are in trouble. He didn’t include the deleted lightsaber build scene tho but it still works.

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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RogueLeader said:

I’m also curious if there’s been any work to restore the Luke building his lightsaber deleted scene. Something I tried several years ago was having that scene take place on Dagobah rather than Tatooine, but I’m curious if a better quality version exists out there somewhere.

If you get any sort of inkling that something like this is out there, please let me know!

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I agree with Nev that we should see Han getting unfrozen. This is something the audience would want to see, and we wouldn’t want to do this off camera.
Also, we shouldn’t cut too many of Han and Leia’s moments, especially if the Bounty for a Wookiee scene, as well as the Leia and Wicket scene, are also being cut.

You could have a scene that introduces Jabba’s palace, shows the general debauchery, maybe see Oola fall through the trap door, but perhaps we could somehow show Leia!Boushh amongst the denizens of the palace. Then, when it cuts to night, we can see her sneak around to unfreeze Han.

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JEDIT: Watching these scenes again, it might work to keep quite a bit of the footage. After the Vader scene, introduce Jabba’s palace with the Max Rebo band and follow it with Bounty for a Wookiee. It would be easy to cut around 3PO here, even keeping the thermal detonator bit. Then we’d establish all the characters as well as Chewie’s fate in the cell. Unfortunately 3PO is in the background of several shots in the failed escape scene, but it would be fairly straightforward to paint him out, I’d imagine. Surely no more difficult than removing timecodes from deleted scenes 😉 Anyway, with this done it would work to keep Han being thrown into the cell with Chewie, and then after Han asks ‘What’s going on, Pal?’ Chewie’s remarks could be interpreted to mean ‘Don’t worry, Luke will save us.’ It doesn’t have to mean that Luke was always part of the plan, merely that Luke is on standby if it failed. In any case, this would serve as a good segue into Luke.

Then we could cut from the cell to Luke working on the saber in the cave and the droid dialogue afterwards.

It does keep quite a lot from the theatrical film, but at least you could cut it down from there to your heart’s content. Since everything is already established, for example, the extended droid entrance to the palace could be cut down quite a bit. Maybe just have the wide shot of the droids headed to the palace, then cut straight to them descending the stairs to Jabba. That would save the dramatic door opening scene for Luke alone.

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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3PO being behind Jabba when Han and Leia are caught was another issue I ran into when trying to restructure the first act back when I made a ROTJ workprint.

I wonder if you could potentially reuse the shots of Boba Fett from the Bounty for a Wookiee scene, and have Boba be the one that catches Han and Leia. You would avoid the goofy fact that apparently the entire palace is quietly hiding behind curtains during the entire scene, you’d avoid having to paint 3PO out of the scene, you’d give Boba a little bit more to do, make him look smart (seeing through Leia’s disguise), and you would conclude the scene more quickly this way.

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Thinking about how a crawl for this edit might look, it may have some similarities with TFA. To wit:

It is a time of legends. Striving to become a mighty Jedi Knight, Luke Skywalker trains in isolation on the desolate world of Tatooine.

Anxiously awaiting the end of Luke’s self imposed exile, Princess Leia gathers her allies for a daring rescue of Han Solo from the clutches of the vile gangster Jabba the Hutt.

Dreading further delay, Leia has set into motion a desperate plan to save captain Solo, fearing rumors of a threat that shall spell certain doom for the small band of rebels struggling to restore peace and justice to the galaxy…

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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“It is a time of Legends.” feels like it could only really open TFA. Maybe TLJ. Definitely not RotJ.

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Not perfect by any means though an attempt. Tried reinserting a cut shot of Luke from one of the ROTJ trailers into the film.

https://streamable.com/qlbvbv

Cleaned up some dirt from the original footage and masked the lightsaber. Would most possibly be more seamless if I were to denoise, regrain plus maybe some upscaling, but for the moment this is a work in progress.

If anyone wants the uncompressed video of the endeavour DM me.

“Get over violence, madness and death? What else is there?”

Also known as Mr. Liquid Jungle.

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Double Post

“Get over violence, madness and death? What else is there?”

Also known as Mr. Liquid Jungle.

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Very cool paja! This is right up my alley at the moment!

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Quick and dirty mockup incorporating the deleted scene of Luke in the cave with R2 into the Dagobah scene.

(Placing this earlier before Jabba’s palace and removing Luke’s lightsaber to keep the reveal later on)

“Get over violence, madness and death? What else is there?”

Also known as Mr. Liquid Jungle.

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paja said:

Quick and dirty mockup incorporating the deleted scene of Luke in the cave with R2 into the Dagobah scene.

(Placing this earlier before Jabba’s palace and removing Luke’s lightsaber to keep the reveal later on)

This is amazing! You should post it in the ROTJ community focus month thread. Are you gonna make a video of it?

My Star Wars Fan-Edits

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I shall!! I may sooner or later when I upgrade my specs aha.

“Get over violence, madness and death? What else is there?”

Also known as Mr. Liquid Jungle.

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Nah, I think it’s more believable that the accents would vary. Some British characters are with the Rebels. It’s a rule of thumb, not an absolute rule.

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With the excellent work on Anakin and Ben’s Ghosts for Ascendant I am kind of surprised we haven’t seen a similar attempt at making a new version of Anakin’s RotJ Ghost.

Unless we have and I’m missing it somewhere. I prefer seeing Hayden at the end, but with the look he gives, I understand folks usually using Sebastian. Has this been corrected?

My Edits:
Revenge of the Sith: Refocused Available

The Clone Wars Refocused: The Chosen One (Mortis Episode)

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Delpheas said:

With the excellent work on Anakin and Ben’s Ghosts for Ascendant I am kind of surprised we haven’t seen a similar attempt at making a new version of Anakin’s RotJ Ghost.

Unless we have and I’m missing it somewhere. I prefer seeing Hayden at the end, but with the look he gives, I understand folks usually using Sebastian. Has this been corrected?

I’ve written about several methods for it.

Option 1: Stock footage of full-body Hayden, tweaked to fit the shot (most difficult, since there’s not enough footage).

Option 2: Use a double with appropriate Jedi robes and a wig (akin to Adywan’s 3rd unit stuff), with a Hayden deepfake atop the double (less difficult, but it would require several attempts to nail - it might require outside help).

Option 3: Deepfake Hayden’s face onto Shaw, carrying over Shaw’s facial expressions (likely the easiest and fits with “canon age” argument - the hair won’t line up with Ascendant, though).

Option 4: Use better Hayden footage from ROTS to paste onto Shaw’s body (difficult and still has the “Shaw body” issue).

I think Option 2 is the best option, but I’d be open to any of them if they looked good. A good Hayden ghost has been my biggest wish for ROTJ fanedits.

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Some of the videos from the promotional tour for Kenobi are looking really good in terms of looking-for-good-Hayden-ghost-shots. He was certainly too young for the deepfake to be very good in 2003 but I think if we deepfaked 2022 Hayden it could look right. Even aging 2022 Hayden 10 years would work better than aging 2003 Hayden 30 years. I’d love to attempt something myself but don’t really have the means to do it right now…