FWIW, I’ve been able to avoid doing it so far, but I’m also not too hot on the edit at the moment, possibly because of it. To me, the lack of Reva as a primary antagonist for the first act only aggravates how pointless the action-oriented narrative feels. It’s just… stuff, happening. Obi-Wan is rescuing the princess, but why should we care if we know they’re both fine? Who were those these kidnappers anyway?
I have the character-driven opening and I know my character-driven endpoint, but the whole middle act is just a pointless adventure. Without an antagonist and their own [enigmatic] motivations to give any of it meaning, it’s just a really long stretch of “film” about nothing. That’s the opposite of what I wanted to accomplish here. The tonal exercise is one thing, but it needs to be in service of a narrative that even demands it.
To be more specific about what I actually intend when I talk about reinstating Reva’s orchestration, it’s more as a tool for Vader’s character, who I’d been tinkering with introducing earlier to ground the story more in Obi/Ani.
And then maybe Reva calls, Vader dangles the Grand Inquisitor carrot, and now earlier on, she has a motivation for us to latch onto as she’s ambitiously on her prowl. But it’s now contextualized as an extension of Vader’s will and his personal feelings, which provides at least the illusion that Vader and Obi-Wan are the centered heart of everything we follow.
She eventually has her own true motivations revealed, but as far as taking us through a “pointless” second act - Vader’s presence and all the drama that teases would be more tangibly present than just implied upper management.
You all probably think I’m trying too hard, making up problems for perfectly fine solutions, 😓 but this kind of creative exercise is what’s fun for me. I hope it’s not pretentious or arrogant or anything, but I’m inspired to edit at all when I can do something really different from the source material, really transform it n’ stuff. I love FanFixes, but I don’t think I can offer anything on that front that so many of you can or already have. Spence’s Edit for example is already my ideal realization of this show into a movie IMO. I’m not trying to “compete” or anything, I’m just messing around with my own sensibilities or inspirations.
That said, I’m definitely taking a break right now. Not for lack of ideas or really being in a bind, just general burnt-outedness on the stuff I have to do to implement each idea. I’ll be back soon though