I enjoyed watching this edit a great deal. It will probably be my go-to from now on. A shame that it won’t ultimately lead anywhere, though. I just have a few nitpicks:
- I would have preferred the whole version of Osha’s testing. This was the only cut that a viewer noticed, and he hadn’t seen the show since it came out.
- You could save a lot of time by removing the fake wakeup vision that Osha has from the crash. I realize that this sets up her future hallucinations of child Mae, and possibly explains why she suddenly suspects her of the murder at the edge of the cliff, but in my opinion it messes with the pacing too much. Without it, I also think the scene at the cliff is more revelatory/interesting.
- Without the line that their midichlorians are split evenly, I’m not sure why Sol thinks he needs both girls to prove anything about the vergence.
- I guess I’m confused what happened to the rest of the witches - is the intention supposed to be that they killed the rest?
- I’d remove the weird, almost predatory scene between Sol and Mae strapped to the ship, mostly because we don’t actually learn anything from it anymore since the final flashback is shifted to Brendok. You could possibly even experiment with their next scene together, removing the reveal that he killed their mother, to save that reveal for Brendok itself.
- In general, you could probably tighten up Sol catching on to the fact that “Osha” is Mae earlier - shortly after the part where the camera holds on him for almost a minute (he’s clearly piecing things together). I don’t think many of the tracker scenes are necessary here, they’re just cringey comedy. The “Corcoran” cut accomplishes this quite well.
If you look into some of the areas I suggested, you might be able to trim this edit down to a more digestible 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Thanks for the feedback!
That is the full scene of Osha’s testing. I agree it feels too short, but that’s how it’s presented in the series. The only thing I cut was the final shot of Indra looking at Sol.
I have the same views about the fake wake-up. I tried a few edits removing it but none really worked. Unfortunately that dream sequence is pretty essential to the story. Osha needs a reason to suspect that Mae is alive, and that is the only option.
I removed mention of the midichlorian symbionts for several reasons. Firstly I didn’t want to expand their lore any further given their controversial nature amongst fans. I left in what fits with TPM.
Secondly I actually think having physical “proof” that the twins are the same person takes away from Sol’s character arc. He is driven by this belief and I like it being a theory to him, rather than a fact. It still doesn’t change the fact that he needs both twins to prove that they are the same person.
I left the fate of the witches for the audience to decide… were they killed by the Jedi or the fire? Including the Kelnacca fight scene in the final flashback made it way too long, and the fate of the other witches isn’t that important to the story.
I tried several edits of the Sol/Mae scenes aboard the cruiser and reduced them as much as I could. The issue with cutting things further is that they need to get to Brendock before Mae escapes. That pretty much rules out cutting the scene where Mae is restrained.
Basil and PiP were the most frustrating part of this edit. I wanted to remove them completely, but they are tied to the core plot which makes it almost impossible. I tried it several times, but I couldn’t come up with anything I was 100% happy with.