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As keeping with my other “-X” edits (extended), I have decided to go ahead and tackle this one as a break from the OT and Indy films. Wasn’t going to do this one, but charged my mind when I saw Gigawattboy’ Shadow of the Sith edit. For me fixing Jar Jar (or removing him completely) was the only way I felt this could be overhauled, but I after seeing seeing Shadows and the Jar Jar voice redub I was shocked how something so simple (maybe it wasn’t simple) can make all the difference (I’ll even go as far to say makes its almost like watching a different movie). Even though this is an extended, It does not include all deleted scenes and is trimmed in spots, so technically it’s more of a straight up edit that includes some deleted scenes where I thought they helped.
This edit uses the following (2) as a hybrid base:
- Cloak of Deception
- Shadow of the Sith
Cloak of the Deception I think has been the benchmark for Phantom Menace all these years. The edits in this are too numerous to mention, but I’m sure most have seen this one …still a great edit is if you want the original Jar Jar.
For those not familiar with Shadows of the Sith, the game changer here is that Jar Jar now has an Australian accent, which I think works and makes him finally understandable …The lines are delivered perfectly and are in-sync. New voice really fits the character and makes him more grounded - not so much off the rails. Fan editor “Gigawattboy” also changed voices for General Tarpals, Boss Nass and the Neimoidians. I decided to leave them as is as they did not bother me as much other than some tweaks they needed by keeping their original voices. I did use new Tarpals voice though.
This will be 2K and 5.1 Audio mix
Still a WIP, but here are my additional edits:
-Calling it the Phantom Menace so uses the original crawl, but change the Lucasfilm logo to the vintage one.
-A more vintage color grade (+ film grain) for specifically Tatooine, inside the federation ship (too clean and blue), Naboo streets, inside of the castle in which I wanted the color to be more vintage and and for theed, Renaissance and nobile looking. The sets in the first part of the film were too pristine for a prequal to a 1977 film I thought. Tatooine was fine as is but I wanted to match the OT even more. From coruscant onward, it’s whatever the base footages had. In examples below, corrected is to mean personal choice since original color is technically not wrong.
• Fixing all the scenes where the Nemodians mouths and dialogue go out of sync. This always stuck out to me as lazy editing since they certainly had the technology to match it up at the time.
• Removed Jar Jar removal of doing the 12ft jump and spinning dive before going into the river to Gungan city with the Jedi. This is in other fan edits, but I added a slight water disturbance for where he goes in front of the Jedi (walking in) and Jar Jar doesn’t talk before he goes under in that final shot which I felt is neededed to see where he is since he is not diving now.
• Added in and restored the deleted waterfall scene. Jar Jar also trimmmed here some to have less clumbsy antics.
• Removed an audio glitch in the center channel when Qui-gon uses force push on battle droids when they are rescuing the queen. It sounds like a operator saying “go” and then there are some electronic beeps (not from the droids)
• Fixed a background with Qui-gon where flowers where on the wall but in the scene before they are pink and faded in color vs purple and one is missing from view since in the first shot he is standing to the left more and covers it. The shot is an amazing composition (almost like a painting) with 3 levels of depth, but ILM must have colored the flowers to make them pop and then forgot to get the other shot of the same.
The Race
- Added all the Huttese subtitles for “Beed”, the green head on the 2 headed announcer. Translations are taken from the script and a Huttese translator site for a few that the script left out.
• Fixed Jabba’s subtitles where he says welcome to the Boonta Eve, but the sub title only says welcome, yet Jabba clearly speaks the entire longer sentence.
• Added Jabba starting the race with spitting the frog, but added the shot where the frog comes at the camera to his mouth.
• Added some shots from the deleted pod racer scenes, showing more racers. Some of these shots are high enough res and show some very creative alien and pod racer designs that I felt added to the sequence and was a shame they were cut. Most of this is in the intro
• Removed Ratts Tyerell getting killed since the added deleted intro shows his family and mentions wife out of the hospital with a new born. It’s a neat little sequence, but then he is killed a few minutes later. Kind of dark. Understood why the family scene was removed, but rather have it in and then just not show the racer’s death with some simple edits
• Edited the pod race itself some to remove many duplicate (or extremely similar) shots to make it flow better .
Trimmed each lap to be ~ 1.50-2:40 sec, as laps had very different durations. The updates includes some of the extra lap #2 footage (cleaned up and restored even further ), to help even it all out.
Leaving Tatooine onward
• Fixed the washed out sky color for the Darth Maul’ scene where he jumps on speeder to get from the ridge down to the Jedi leaving and the fight. It was almost as if it was shot on different days or something.
• Planning to fix maul’s washed out sabre color during that first fight, unless another fan fixes first.
• For the first daytime padme’s quarters, Removed 4 sec of just Panaka walking past Anakin and Jar Jar and Anakin scratching the back of his neck and Palpatine saying some random line from the conversation before about no stability. Scene starts now with "The republic was not what it once was. Just gets us into this scene a little faster since it Is just a dry policy dialogue scene.
• Jar Jar will be removed from all scenes in the next Padme’s quarters at night. It seemed odd to me that he is kind of lurking in the shadows with her vs the jedi who he has a life debt with. It kind of shifts to now he is going to just hang with her the rest of the film. Removing him from these scenes also removes all the dialogue between the two of them on what she should do as advised from him. It seems a little off that he is telling her how to rule since he is just a side kick/servent. It could go either way, but to me, Padme seems to make her decisions on her own anyway. He is also removed from all scenes when Palp and gang comes in.
• Added clock wipe transition vs side wipe transition between daytime jedi counsel discussion and deleted cutscene at sunset with Obi and Qui-gon which than goes into sunset jedi test with Anakin. I like using Clock wipe to better show the passage of time if it’s going to be a cut to 4+ hours later in the story.
• Removed Jara Jar having a half of a battle droids falling from the sky and on his back and then him running around scared and stepping on them so they fire their guns every time with direct hits to other droids when he steps on one in a scene of slapstick comedy.
• Removed the part of Boss Nass’s conversation making Jar Jar a general scene since he already released Jar Jar to the Jedi to fulfill the life debt. Does not make sense he would take him back and start re-assigning him jobs, this also removes the silly jar jar fainting and getting to be a military general for not really doing anything strategic or warrior -like. He simply thanks him for bringing them all together.
• Removed Jar Jar getting blasted of his ride and landing on the tank turret, then getting a blue ball and juggling that and letting it slip and land in the hands of a battle droid driver who than takes it inside the tank and it blows up – was just a lot of Jar Jar clowning around .
• Removed Jar Jar’s “they are broken” line… He just pushes one over now to make sure.
• Removed shot of Jar Jar on the beast in the parade waving goofy at the crowd saying " hello" “how dee dee”…just extra silliness I did not feel is needed.
•Removed Jar Jar getting his foot caught dismounting the beast. Again one last attempt at physical comedy that doesn’t work.
• Removed Jars Jar’s last medium shot in the ceremony where he waves his hands in the air does a “whoo hooh”. Could have left it, but might as well be consistent since I have removed almost all yippis, oh no’s and whoo hoohs
Landscapes
Much of the landscape for the final battle is pretty dated and heavy on early CG tech. This came out before computers could get photorealistic. Kudos to George for the effort back then, but it doesn’t hold up and even EPII and III, which had much improvement. There are alot of shots that had cartoony mountains and fields with pretty flat solid colors. I tried to fix where I could… A few samples, still working on more:
Removed many additional “stating the obvious” & duplicate lines that seemed to be over the final battle.
• Removed the pilot “Dineé Ellberger” saying “what’s that?” from line “It’s blowing up from the inside”. Eliminates the pilots constantly asking questions to each other about what is going on. Happens a lot with the Naboo pilots.
• Removed Anakin saying “look” and pointing" there they are" to the audience (R2 is not in his line of site to see him point so it’s just for us)….This is when he is approaching the ship
• Removed Anakin saying “Let’s try spinning, that’s a fun trick” so he is more confident in his skills and not so much experimenting how to pilot, we know already he is an ace.
• Removed Anakin saying “I’m trying to stop” twice…. changed to just stating it once.
• Removed the #2 in command Nemodian “Rune Haako” saying impossible to get through our shields (mouth is not even moving) this is in reaction to Anakin getting in and destroying from the inside. Works better for him to just say “Impossible” after he gets told what has happened, he obviously got through the shields. I also fixed mouth sync issue here.
• Removed Anakin’s double “Who hoos” when exiting the control ship. The second one with his fist held high is the better one and stronger delivery showing for the first time his pilot leadership persona…just trying to stay consistent, since all his “yippi” type lines are being trimmed.
The 3D Treatment
Creating an additional HD full stereo 3D version of the film, since we never got the official theatrical 3D version as a home release. working on the 3D in tandem with 2D cut.
…more to come
