I had posted this on Fanedit.org, but here it is for anyone else who's interested in what we were planning:
Jorge (killbillme) emailed me recently about the possibility of him attempting a Reborn-style edit...he asked about the ideas we had and structure we were attempting with this project...
My response to him turned out to be a fairly good overview of what our intentions were for this edit, and since many others have PM'd me with similar requests, I thought it might be appropriate to just post my response on the forum here for whoever else had a passing interest in what we were trying to do and may want to take a shot at doing something similar themselves at some point.
My message to him was as follows:
"We were inspired heavily by the structure of the Godfather Part II, as you know...so watching it again is a good starting point. Aside from that, our approach was to find the "thematic rhymes" between Luke's story and Anakin's story and match them up into what I like to call "pillar sequences" where the two time periods intersect or seem to be happening simultaneously. We called them pillars because by placing them at pivotal points, they sort of hold the rest of the story up. For instance, Luke's discovery of Owen and Beru's murder being intercut with Anakin's discovery of his mother at the Tusken camp...or the "Belly of the Beast" sequence, where we have our heroes trapped in the corridors of the Death Star and our heroes trapped in the Geonosian arena...once you know where the pillars are lined up, then you know everything that you need to show between those points in both storylines.
I hope that makes sense to you. Trying to effectively use words to describe a concept that lives totally in an audio/visual realm is extremely difficult.
The two characters that act as the main connective tissue between the two storylines are Artoo and Obi-Wan. We also set out to tell the story so that the secret of Anakin = Vader isn't apparent until he reveals it to Luke on Bespin. Vader's true identity wouldn't be revealed for certain until the very first scene of ROTJ.
Our design was to begin with a short, 5-minute teaser at the start of each of the three episodes. For the first episode, the teaser would be a prologue (featuring the events of Episode I, boiling it down to "what would a person who has never seen Star Wars before really need to know in the first five minutes?") We began with the final lightsaber battle in Episode I, strung all of those sequences together without interruption, which turned out beautifully to see it all as one piece. After Obi-Wan cuts down Maul and Qui-Gon dies, we moved back in time to the events leading up to that important moment. We took narration by Ian McDiarmid from the "Musical Journey" DVD which gave it a great "storybook" feel and took it all the way through a very brief and truncated version of TPM until Qui-Gon's funeral...resting on the shot of Palps at the pyre...fading out...then blasting to the Star Wars logo and crawl. There was a lot of debate about whether or not to even include a crawl...we went back and forth, but ultimately decided to keep the crawl in tact.
The first twenty minutes or so of ANH proceeded as normal up to Luke at the sunset scene....then, being very careful with the music, we fade to coruscant cityscape - night...a subtitle reads "22 YEARS EARLIER"...moving exterior shot of Padme's apartment (taken from ROTS) and we start Anakin's story with the scene of him and Obi-Wan on the balcony. We had completely redone the Zam chase with new music, sound effects and everything else. We also had redone the nightclub. Added music, a Bith/Rodian band, and established that Jango was waiting inside the club...he makes a quick escape when Obi-Wan slices Zam's arm off. It's also important to note that as the story continues, instead of cutting back and forth from Anakin/Padme to Obi-Wan's story...we cut all of the Obi-Wan Kamino mystery storyline and focused entirely on Anakin/Padme for this first half.
There was a scene added that actually (stylistically) depicted them making love after their (now full) kiss on the Naboo lakeside, which I thought was important to show to strengthen the bond between them and make it a much more serious relationship from the get-go. We used a sequence with Hayden from the movie Factory Girl (heavily tweaked) to accomplish that goal. That sequence ends with "We could keep it a secret..." to "You're right...it would destroy us..." Then we fade to Uncle Owen looking for Luke in the courtyard. ANH would continue as normal up to Obi-Wan telling Luke "You must do what you feel is right, of course..."
That leads us into a new nightmare sequence that begins with Anakin flashing back to his first meeting with the Jedi Council in Episode I. Yoda warning him his fear of losing his mother might prove to be dangerous. Weird shots of Shmi, Tusken Raiders, off-kilter audio, etc. Anakin and Padme decide to go rescue her the next morning. And we follow through as normal (with certain cuts) from there up to the major crescendo story pillar of the first half, which is the Owen/Beru/Shmi death scene...we ended the first half with Shmi's funeral and reversed the shot panning down and placed it at the end so it would pan up into the sky as the last shot of the first half. Dramatic rendition of the Force Theme...and "Intermission" would appear at this point.
The second half (on the next disc) started with Obi-Wan and Luke atop the mountain overlooking Mos Eisley spaceport...and you can pretty much visualize how it continued from there. Obi-Wan's Kamino mystery storyline is edited together into a single, flowing storyline and it just continues...culminating in a grand finale at the end where the two storylines intersect...Luke's success (at the Death Star) mirroring and contrasting Anakin's failure (at the hands of Count Dooku). Two paths. One destiny.
ESB was going to open with the ROTS opening space battle and the duel with Dooku as the teaser. Of course we planned to edit out all the garbage and truncate it to a tight 5-minute opening...no ship crashing or any of that. I think it ended with "His fate will be the same as ours"...tension builds up musically and then blast to the Empire crawl.
The trailer gives you an excellent idea of exactly where we were headed with this film...the storylines we wanted to connect and so forth...
At the end, Luke communicates telepathically with Vader from the Falcon, intercut with Padme and Anakin "reaching out" to each other on Coruscant through the windows..."Padme's Ruminations" and then, of course, the classic ESB ending.
By the time you get to Jedi, it's a no-brainer. Jedi was to pick up right where we left off with Anakin & Padme staring out their separate windows...leading right into Mace confronting Palpatine at his office and the ensuing lightsaber duel followed by the "knighting" of Anakin as Vader as the 5-minute teaser. "You will be known as Darth...Vader." "Yes, My Master." Tension builds musically...blast to the Jedi crawl.
Now we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Anakin IS indeed Vader. The Dark Lord wasn't lying on Bespin. So, now we see him as none other than Darth Vader 20 years later arriving at the 2nd Death Star.
There were so many other little intricacies we were aiming for throughout, but that's all the detail I'll go into for now...but if you have any questions, please let me know. This is how WE were going to do it. It's by no means the ONLY way to do it. And maybe not even the best way. That's for you to decide. I tried it...gave it my best shot...couldn't make it work without a clean, music-free audio track. I was really trying to make the Prequels better than they can be...that's what killed it, I think. I wanted to change too much.
Aw, well...my hat's off to you if you can pull it off. It'll be a lot more fun watching it than it will be making it...that's for sure...so I wish you the best of luck and truly hope you succeed."
--ID