The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 377

I just had an idea on how to reuse some of the dialogue from the deleted scene where Padmé meets with Dooku on Geonosis. What if Dooku was present during Padmé visit to the queen earlier in the movie? Instead of asking Padmé, the queen might ask Dooku whether he sees a way for the Separatist to return into the republic to which he might say that the republic cannot be fixed, etc.

This would introduce Dooku much earlier in the movie. However, you’d probably need to remove that Padmé suspects Dooku to be behind the assassination attempts because otherwise its weird that theyre meeting while she is in hiding on naboo.

One could maybe also add Dooku to the vote of no confidence scene in episode I. Show him sitting in a senate pod. Maybe he could get up and support amidala, saying something like: “Serenno seconds the vote of no confidence in chancellor Valorum.” One could even add Qui-Gon sitting in his senate pod as a small easter egg.

Adding the line about Gunray would fit so well with this. I guess the easiest way to add dooku to that scene is via hologram. Just place his hologram in the middle of the room in front of the queen.

I like the idea of adding dooku to qui gons funeral. I think the only difficulty is that you need another scene before that which introduces the character. And I don’t think adding him to the council really helps with that issue if he’s just sitting there in the background. Ideally we’d have a scene where he talks with qui Gon. Perhaps you could use the scene with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan on the balcony as a baseline, then try to swap out Obi-Wan for Dooku (that we only really see their silhouettes in this scene could help with that) and then add the dialogue from the tales of the Jedi episode.

The idea behind adding him to the senate was just that it could be interesting to introduce him as a political figure first.

In ANH, one of the ways we are shown Luke’s kindness is by having him treat droid’s like living beings.
In ROTJ, one gets scared that Luke only sees them as disposable tools when he gives them to Jabba, only for him to make sure to retrieve them later, showing he was never gonna leave them behind.

I think it would cool if in the first film, you can establish Anakin as having a similar kindness towards droids, but by the third film, make it clear that he views them as tools. It’s a good way to show a gradual psychological turn towards Vader, as one of Vader’s defining traits is his dehumanization and objectification of everyone around him.
Extend this to his troops. Anakin wanting to go back for the clones should be in episode 2. By episode 3, he’s so desensitized he cares only for the mission.

Here is my attempt to integrate the delegation of the 2000 scene into ROTS. Given that Palpatine wears the robes from his duel with Windu I always wanted to put the scene imediately before Sidious reveals his identity to Anakin. I also altered the dialogue between Anakin and Palpatine because I feel like Palpatines attempt at seeding distrust between Anakin and Padmé is too blunt in my opinion, so instead I tried to have them discuss the Jedi again which ties in nicely into Palpatine revealing his Sith identity. Still the dialogue could use some further tweaking and I’m still unsure about the transition to the other room, whether I should keep it or whether I should just use a hard cut to the other room instead.

Anyways, all feedback is welcome 😄

https://drive.google.com/file/d/149qa1bntNdWZPLIP-dEXHP1JwmsGJnVc/view?usp=share_link

For context, I made this scene for a fan edit of ROTS that restructures Anakin’s fall slightly and incorporate Padmé’s deleted scenes. For example the council will task him with spying on the chancellor before Anakin is put on the council by Palpatine. In fact, Palpatine wont put Anakin on the council because this again feels too plump to me (how does Anakin not notice that he is being played!?)

I might make a thread for it once it has taken more shape.

Here is something I have been thinking over the past week. Is there a way to have Padmé accompany Bail when he leaves coruscant in ROTS to save any order 66 survivors?

We would need to keep Anakin visiting Padmé after the Temple massacre because Padmé needs to know where Anakin went. So we would need to move Bail leaving coruscant (and maybe even him witnessing the massacre) to after Anakin visiting Padmé.

We could try to add Padmé to the shot of Bail and 3 others walking by the camera aboard the tantive when they leave the senate (maybe deepfake one of them to be padme? A close up of her emotions would be amazing but probably infeasible). Then we could replace Bail Organa’s hologram with Padmé’s hologram when Obi Wan signals them (this gives her something to do), that should be doable and we can get away with slight deviations with her voice because its a hologram.

Aboard the tantive (is that ship even the tantive? idk lol) you could have her join the discussion between Obi Wan Yoda and Bail after Obi Wan suggest changing the temple signal. We could add someone walking up the group while the camera is on Yoda (that way you only need to get a shot of some boots approaching which you could actually just shoot at home), then you’d need a shot of Padmé delivering some dialogue which would probably be the most difficult change.

Because adding her to the scene in the tantive’s cockpit while they approach the senate would probably be really difficult I’d probably cut that scene. The most important bits of information from this scene is that there is a special session of congress and Yoda’s line about entering the Jedi Temple. These things could be conveyed by Padmé during the scene before. She could say that they received a transmission that there is a special session of congress that they ought to attend. Then cut to Yoda who says that this will make it easier to enter the Jedi Temple (we could use the shot of his “little more knowledge” line for this).

So all in all we’d need to do 3 things:

-add Padmé to the party leaving the senate aboard the tantive (maybe a deepfake could work idk)

-replace Bail’s hologram with Padmé

-create a shot of Padmé delivering a line about there being a special session of congress

That would give her a lot more agency during the second half of the movie^^

Spartacus01 said:

I’ve been thinking that, now that AI makes it possible to convincingly redub scenes, it might be possible to edit the Prequel Trilogy to remove all references to the midi-chlorians while still keeping the Chosen One prophecy intact.

For example, in The Phantom Menace, during the scene where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan speak before the Jedi Council, you could slightly change Qui-Gon’s dialogue with AI. Instead of saying that Anakin was conceived by the midi-chlorians, he could simply say that Anakin was conceived by the Force. I don’t think that would require a huge change, and it would let you preserve the prophecy without the whole midi-chlorian concept.

As odd as it might sound, I’ve actually seen quite a few people who like the idea of the Chosen One prophecy and Anakin being destined to destroy the Sith and bring balance back to the galaxy, but who really dislike the midi-chlorians. An edit like that could satisfy both camps by keeping the prophecy while completely removing the midi-chlorians from the story.

I wouldn’t be surprised if an edit like this already exists. Because a small dialogue change like changing “the midichlorians” to “the force” can be done without AI. There are plenty of instances where qui Gon says “force”, there’s probably a suitable take you can use to slot that change into the existing scene. And I really wouldn’t be surprised if somebody had already done that.

AI is slop due to it stealing content and regurgitate garbage. AI can be used to further research, but it cannot and never will be able to create.

For a similar effect, you could hastily photoshop Anakin shirtless and then dump a gallon of water onto the floor.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I will concede one point - these aren’t the best illustrations. But that’s because Julio was using Chat to generate them. Chat is a large language model with a poor image generator integrated into it. There are so many better AI tools out there for this purpose that produce a much more quality result.

There has been an internet myth for some time now that AI is super costly in resources, namely water. Google’s technical paper on this subject concluded that, for Gemini at least, the average text prompt only uses about 5 drops of water (link to the page/paper). I would hope that everyone here uses substantially more than this in order to shower every day. 😉

But ultimately, the specifics are irrelevant to the larger issue here. This whole interaction with Julio could have been handled so much better. Instead of everyone dog piling on him and AI (this is slop engagement), you could contribute to the conversation with something like: “It seems you have some interesting ideas under the surface here. Could you please express them in more detail to us instead of relying only on AI illustrations?” And then once the ideas have been shared, if you take an interest in them, you could say: “Wow, that sounds cool. Is there any way that I could help you see your project to fruition so that you don’t have to rely entirely on AI? I’m skilled in x, y, and z.”

The irony of it all is that your hostile responses will only encourage him to use AI more and not interact with this community at all. And that would be a 100% justified reaction. This is the exact reason I described this behavior as gatekeeping. We need less of that, not more, if we want this forum to return to what it was like in the late 2010’s.

With all respect, the truth is that AI will never be art. I say this as no attack on anyone. I say this from a moral and environmental standpoint: those servers destroy ecosystems at an alarming rate, and they are incapable of creating anything actually new or good. That said, taste is subjective and there are people who find stolen content good. To each their own.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

To tie this larger discussion back in with the point of this forum (Star Wars!) please take a look at this recent quote from the Maker himself. Personally, I disagree with George that it should be used by professional filmmakers (who likely have big budgets to employ people), but I appreciate his open-mindedness.

I agree to disagree. That said, I think it would be interesting to see in a non-AI way, a possible addition of the Palpatine father reveal that was in one of the Revenge of the Sith scripts. It would provide a greater parallel with Luke’s own conflict between his choice between his duty and his father.

The fall of the Republic and fall of Anakin both have the same problem: we never really get to see them in their hayday.

Just as we hardly get to see the hero Anakin was before he becomes Vader, we never see the Republic in its Golden Age.

The originals are allowed to start in a galaxy consumed by civil war because that was the original starting point, we’re not asked to miss something we haven’t been shown, we’re already invested into this war because of the characters. We root for the good guys because we feel the oppression of the Empire. But once you start making Prequels where you expect audiences to care when the Republic falls, you need to show something worth saving.

Corruption shouldn’t already have taken hold in Phantom Menace. Only on the verge of it.

The movie should open similarly to Gone with the Wind; despite its problematic aspects in terms of historical accuracy, its a masterclass in filmmaking. We need to see the beauty of the world we’re meant to mourn before its lost.

Imagine that the introduction is the opposite of A New Hope’s opening shot: instead of a massive oppressive Imperial ship pursuing a small Rebel cruiser above a barren desrt world, numerous ships of all different shapes and sizes fly freely with grace and enjoyment above a lush Naboo. We see Naboo’s beautiful landscape, families and children enjoying themselves, allow ourselves to get a good feel for its culture and people. Then the Federation comes in, and the conflict begins.