Reading the changelog for Chapter 4 and wanted to give some input. This is only my opinion obviously as it’s your edit, but in my opinion it’s mistake in the grand scheme of these “Mando verse” shows to remove Episode 12 from Chapter 4.
As it establishes that something odd is going on with the empire, as we see what seems to be some sort of Snoke business and cloning going on in the Imperial Facility. I already view that as an important scene with what is currently in cannon, and believe it will only become more and more important as more gets revealed in the coming seasons of Mando.
For the same reason I personally think leaving in the Ahsoka Thrawn dialogue is very important as well. (Maybe not currently with what we have in Mando, but almost definitely will be important in the coming seasons/ Ahsoka.)
I understand cutting it for the Mandalorian plot, but I expect it will be important to the plot of the Mandalorian quite soon. Perhaps even a potential future “Chapter X” in your edits.
Despite the criticisms, I wanted to say that so far, from just skimming through the Chapters as I haven’t had time to watch through them fully, Im very much enjoying your changes. And loved your approach specifically with having Mando’s and Boba’s plots intertwine in Chapter 2.
I agree, I think you should leave the Ahsoka Thrawn dialogue in this edit as I believe it will play an important role in the Mandoverse later. Also, we the see the origin of the Beskar spear that Mando gets later which is also referred to in later episodes. Smudger also excluded the Ahsoka Thrawn dialogue and the origin of the Beskar spear scene from his edit which I always thought was odd as it’s setting up the future series. When Smudger was online (it appears he’s gone into hiding) he has admitted it was mistake and has plan to put it back in his edit in the future.
Thanks for the feedback guys! That’s some good stuff and definitely helping me think it through again.
-
Regarding Episode 12, I had initially thought to cut it as it wasn’t directly related to the current Mandalorian arc and it made this edit into an unnatural ~3 hour long 4-Act plot. However, as I have been going forward and editing even more (the changelog isn’t up to date), I have cut out a good chunk of time and may be able to shove back in some of Episode 12 as a Cold Open to the movie. There is a ton of mindless fighting and weird blue fish guy in that episode which I can heavily reduce and maybe keep that whole sequence to ~15-20 minutes total, which would allow us to keep the important bits of dialogue regarding the Empire’s cloning program that you mentioned. I will take another crack at it once I have a better handle of the full run time and see if this can be preserved and integrated into the natural flow of Act 1.
-
Regarding Ahsoka’s dialogue, I actually did not cut out nearly as much as what you’re thinking of with Smudger. He chose not to include any of the city raid or content about the Beskar spear whereas my edit literally only cuts Ahsoka’s two lines namedropping Thrawn out of nowhere. So mine does still maintain the origin of the spear, the presence of the Magistrate as a whole etc. I found it incredibly distracting to mention a character that has absolutely nothing to do with this show and was clearly intended to act as only a teaser for Ahsoka’s own upcoming show. When framing my project as “The Book of Mandalore” it really doesn’t make sense for Ahsoka to come in out of nowhere teasing her own show. That’s the main reason I cut the namedrop, so now in my edit it seems like Ahsoka is taking refuge on Korvus when the Magistrate begins to hunt her. However, if in the future we get some additional information about Bo-katan’s involvement in this scheme and it suddenly seems important to The Book of Mandalore or is somehow necessary to understand the content in the Ahsoka show, then it’s a very easy fix to add these 2 lines back in. As of now, I don’t think these lines will have any importance aside from a throw away teaser. I believe the Ahsoka show will provide more than enough context to understand its own plot without the context in Mandalorian Season 2 episode 5.
I do have some personal business coming up, so my Chapter 4 here is looking to be 1-2 weeks away from completion due to lack of access to my editing pc and wanting to spend some extra time to do this film right when I do return. I’ll still be active on the forums but won’t be able to work much on the edit for a bit.