Got a chance to watch this Friday, I’ll go over some small things I noticed before getting into the bigger picture.
-Our first into to Mando is him just strutting about (mostly) devoid of context, when a more effective intro would be when he first enters the butchery where his mark is hiding.
-The first use of flashbacks is weird, since it has Boba crawling out of the sand passing out, cuts to him in the baacta tank…only to immediately cut back to Past Boba at night, getting mugged by Jawas. Any way to cut that shot of Present Boba in the tank?
-It’s both impressive / weird with how much you were able to cut of the Tusken Raiders. Impressive in that it saves on time, but weird in how what seemed to drive Boba’s change from bounty hunter to well-meaning mob boss has been removed from the edit. Maybe it would work better if our first look at the Tusken’s came after the intro of the Mods (paralleling how Boba employs them to give them purpose with how the Tusken’s did the same for him), or if our first look at the Tusken’s was Boba getting the brain worm put in his head?
-I don’t like that the cut from Boba bonding with his Rancor to Mando’s commercial flight landing on Tatooine has no transition between the scenes, it’s very distracting.
-If possible, the first thing in this edit should be the talk between Boba & Fennec, as it perfectly establishes Boba’s motivations of not being a plaything of rich idiots that don’t care about the lives of other people.
-So I guess Cobb Vanth’s dead in this version of events. Maybe after Fennec kills the Pikes & the mayor, we cut to Vanth being healed in the baacta tank, then cut to Boba & Fennec strutting around Mos Espa.
-I love the match cut from Grogu being presented with a choice to him riding in Mando’s new starfighter. Perfect.
Now for the bigger fish:
- This edit is in desperate need of Cad Bane in it. The series itself treats the showdown between Boba & Bane as the culmination of Boba’s character arc (Fear vs. Respect, self-interest vs. thinking about others, cruelty vs. mercy, etc.) but there’s just a whole lot of nothing because most of their history is told in other media.
I’ve not seen all of Clone Wars, but I think there’s a partial fix for this. You can include some of Bane’s dialogue from Clone Wars in Boba’s early flashbacks, then, when Boba comes to see the Tusken Tribe has been massacred, you could have a hologram of Bane saying “this planet belongs to the Pike Syndicate” as a sort of calling card for Boba to respond to. This also helps to get rid of the utterly useless plot thread of a random speed biker gang being the ones how killed the Tuskens & sooner establishes Bane as the final boss.
- As others have said before, I’m not a fan of how the last 20 minutes is when we get all out our Grogu/Luke Skywalker content, especially since you can some up it’s purpose in a few words: Mando goes to see Grogu, is told he can’t but leaves a gift, Grogu’s training but his heart’s not in it so Luke gives him a choice, Grogu chooses to go with Mando. If Grogu needs to be in this edit, maybe something like this would work.
-After Mando rejoins his guild, we cut to Luke & Grogu training, showing how our lone wolf & cub are acclimating to their old tribes.
-While Grogu is training, maybe he sees Mando being excommunicated, & that’s what causes him to break the training remote? Imply Luke senses it to & that’s why he knows Grogu’s heart isn’t in it.
Then we can have Mando & Grogu reunited at the end. It’s still awkward, but hopefully less awkward. It’s also why I almost want more Tusken scenes inserted back in, then you enhance the “found family” themes in the show, as displayed with Boba & the Tuskens and Mando & Grogu. Then the central core could be “sometimes you go on a New Path, but sometiems paths branch back.” That or cut the Grogu scenes altogether, or release a Grogu cut & a Grogu-less cut?
All in all, I did really like this edit. It’s much more focused than the original show was, though it could be even more so.