The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 154

brash_stryker said:

Timstuff said:

Nothing in the OT suggested that green lightsabers were special

I agree, but this isn't my personal reason for wanting green sabers (at least largely) removed from the PT. When we originally saw Luke ignite his saber for the first time in ROTJ, our reaction to having only seen blue before wasn't "it must be a rare crystal" but rather "holy shit, a new colour!"

That moment is lost for new viewers if the PT is full of green sabers.

It's possible to preserve the impact of Luke igniting his saber though, but in a different way. Instead of "holy shit, I've never seen that colour before" it could be "wow, he's got the same colour as dooku, how symbolic".

Like I said, it's not worth the trouble. To me, that'd be like trying to remove Anakin turning into Darth Vader in the prequels to preserve the impact of the revelation in Episode V, but more frivelous. For me, the scene where Luke ignites his lightsaber was more "holy sh** he built himself a new lightsaber" than it was about the color. Just like there is no-one who doesn't know Darth Vader is Luke's father, there's no-one who doesn't know that there are green lightsabers, regardless of whether or not they've seen the movies.

No matter how much you change the movies, you're not going to re-create the exact same reaction you had to the movies when someone else watches them. Star Wars has changed pop culture in such a profound way that there are certain aspects of it that aren't coming back. When I watch star wars the color of Luke's ligthsaber doesn't mean anything, and to the general public it doesn't either. Rotoscoping out all of the green sabers from the prequels is not going to change that.

As for the argument against what a gold saber would convey to the audience about Dooku-- to me, it would convey that perhaps he's explored the galaxy enough in his time to discover a rarer type of crystal. Things turn yellow when they get old, so a gold saber would give a sense of antiquity that would go well with Dooku's older fighting style.

I think I am leaning towards blue and gold as the two front runners for Jedi!Dooku's lightsaber. I nixed purple from my shortlist because that's Mace's signature saber color, and I don't think I'd use green because that would make Dooku's duel with Yoda less visually dynamic.

If he has a blue saber, then in Revenge of the Sith when he duels Anakin, the two blue lightsabers could be a bit of a foreshadowing to when Anakin duels Obi-Wan. However, gold would save the visual of two like-colored sabers clashing for the climax of ROTS, and in addition to making the duels more visually dynamic it would also give Dooku a unique signature. However, as has been said, giving him a unique lightsaber would potentially make the ambiguous nature of his character a little too obvious, but that's debatable.

Anyway, here are two manips I did in Photoshop.

So, blue is probably the way to go, but gold still has potential IMO.

Some more manips

Blue looks fine to me.

If green were to signify the rank of Master (and require more skill to construct) it would explain Vader's remarks about Luke's saber.

Luke has obtained a rank always denied Vader when he was a Jedi.

True, but then why didn't Obi-Wan have a green saber? Would we then have to go back and recolor his from Episode 4? The line of logic in changing the colors of people's sabers other than Dooku's takes us to some pretty dark territory, and I'd rather not explore it. Changing Dooku's saber has a significant impact on the story, but to me trying to come up with some kind of system for who should have what color lightsaber just ends up as a tedious mess. I think this is an example of "just because Lucas signed off on it does not mean there's something wrong with it." :P

Anyway, I do agree though that blue would be fine for Dooku's saber. Let's let Mace be the one with the weird lightsaber, hehehe.

I like JasonN's approach too of giving purple to all the highest ranking Jedi including Dooku.

Mace's big purple mighty weapon does smack at Jedi bling.

I kinda like yellow because it's not quite Jedi and not quite Sith. It's ambiguous

brash_stryker said:

Ghost said:

And its totally unnecesary.  It would be pointless to change because SW is too mainstream.

Eh?

As for your comment about not symbolizing anything, what about Dooku's saber in certain edits? How can you say that doesn't make his character more ambiguous rather than a typical bad guy?

Turning all the prequel sabers blue (or blue and any other colour besides green) is the only way of preserving the impact Luke's saber had in ROTJ.

Well maybe you don't care about that as much as I do, but it was a great cinematic "Holy shit" moment for me anyway.

Changing them all to something other than green is essential if you have an edit where Dooku (and maybe qui gon seeing as he was a bit of a rogue too) and Luke are given Green sabers. That way Luke echoes the father of the rebel alliance, and you're uncertain how things will pan out, seeing as Dooku was killed for trying to do the right thing.

The way I see it, there's a few options:

1. Qui Gon, Dooku and Luke are the only ones with Green Sabers. The rest are all changed to blue.
2. Dooku and Luke are the only ones with green sabers.
3. Qui Gon and Luke are the only ones with Green Sabers. Dooku has something completely different e.g. purple, orange, yellow, etc.
4. Luke is the only one with a green saber in the whole saga. Everyone else has blue, except for Dooku who has one of the aforementioned "radical" colours.

I'm undecided which method I prefer. With Qui Gon keeping his green saber, there's a sense that the last hope for the order is lost come episode 2, when we see that the remainder of the order is dogmatic and uniform.

#3. :)

I think the only lightsaber colors in the entire saga should be blue, green, and red. I think Yoda, Windu, Dooku, and Luke should be the only ones with green.

Was green ever mentioned as a Jedi colour before ROTJ? - I've seen at least one early trailer for ROTJ where Luke had a blue saber glow.

Seems like it was just the real world getting in the way of storytelling - much like Sam Jackson wanting a purple glow.

I'd be fine with there only being blue. The Sith only have red.

People seem to be bent on fixing things with colours but I think there is more to it than that.

I lost interest in Dooku as a character as soon as he lit up his saber - but if he had to be seen with one at all I would say blue - as in one that he'd kept from his Jedi days.

Having a radical colour would seem to imply that he'd want to show it off - make people associate him with that colour. But he still seems to want to hide his past and only use his saber when he's cornered. - he seemed relieved when Jango stepped in to defend him in the arena.

Really, he should have been able to talk his way out of any situation.

Bingowings said:

Luke has obtained a rank always denied Vader when he was a Jedi.

I think you forget there is nobody left to deny Luke, regardless of whether something is appropriate he's going by his own judgement now. ;)

I posted this on the previous page, but I think the lightsaber colors are the least of the prequels' problems. It only makes sense to discuss them when an edit changes Dooku from a Sith to a rogue Jedi. And even then I wouldn't make it more complicated then it is. Just give him the established Jedi colors of blue, green and purple (weren't there purple sabers on Geonosis, or was that another case of bad AOTC colors?). I just can't picture Dooku sitting down and think about what color would reflect his unaffiliated position the best.

On another subject: I was thinking about trying to make TPM a bit more a part of the PT. As it is, it's a rather standalone movie, it's very different in feel from AOTC and ROTS. Biggest problem is the time gap between TPM and AOTC. Pretty much everything established in TPM is reset in AOTC: Anakin is literally another person and Padme is not a Queen anymore.

My idea for TPM was to change the Trade Federation's motivation for the blockade of Naboo. As pointed out in that 70 minute review, Naboo is a very lush planet, it's difficult to imagine them dependent on trade for food. How about changing the Trade Federation to a Separatist movement to start with? They could be after Naboo's rich natural resources, and use the blockade to force Amidala to sign the treaty to join them. This sparks debate in the Senate about this budding Separatist movement (and could also involve Dooku a little earlier), and could lead to AOTC.

Then, we could establish in AOTC's crawl that the Separatist movement has grown, and more planets are leaving the Republic to join them. The Republic has responded to this by creating an army of clones. The vote Padme returns to Coruscant for is about the deployment of the army. This could omit the entire mystery-that-isn't of Kamino, which would make the Jedi look smarter and leave more room for Anakin and Padme's story.

SilverKey said:

I posted this on the previous page, but I think the lightsaber colors are the least of the prequels' problems. It only makes sense to discuss them when an edit changes Dooku from a Sith to a rogue Jedi. And even then I wouldn't make it more complicated then it is. Just give him the established Jedi colors of blue, green and purple (weren't there purple sabers on Geonosis, or was that another case of bad AOTC colors?). I just can't picture Dooku sitting down and think about what color would reflect his unaffiliated position the best.

I agree. All this nonsense about re-coloring lightsabers other than Dooku's is getting silly, and it smells of reaching to me. I mean, where does it stop? Why don't we change Luke's ROTJ lightsaber back to blue while we're at it, since it's possible that Lucas didn't originally intend to have more colors than blue or red?

Really, just leave it be. There's never been anything in the movies or expanded universe to support any of these wild ideas about what color lightsabers each character should have. If you want to make it so that Dooku's force alignment is ambiguous then it makes sense to change his saber's color, but with anyone else the change is both frivolous and petty. I see no good reason to change anyone else's saber color, and to me a change like that would be about as useless as changing the names of planets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k87uhti2HQg

a little experiment. wondered if applying the technique of tilt shift photography (http://www.visualphotoguide.com/tilt-shift-photoshop-tutorial-how-to-make-fake-miniature-scenes/) would make it seem more like a miniature.

i also tried it with an old photograph filter, and then with the overall desaturation that ive applied to AOTC with relative success.

all done in photoshop!:)

youtube really screwed the quality, but im hoping it may improve after processing, let me know if its still terrible and ill reupload it elsewhere.

I'm on this side of those wishing to leave the lightsaber colors alone, unless there's a really good reason for it (for instance, changing Dooku's color so he's no longer a Sith).  However, let's keep in mind two things:

1) This is the Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread

2) Any ideas that are put into play will be done thru a fanedit.  As such, if you think something is a bad idea, say so, then let it go.  You don't have to watch the edit.

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

Also the link is not working...I'd love to see that link! :D

Corrected:
http://www.visualphotoguide.com/tilt-shift-photoshop-tutorial-how-to-make-fake-miniature-scenes/

Post it elsewhere SSWR. I just can't tell the difference. But can you go into a bit more detail on what you're doing and what we should be looking for? I get that you want to make it look like a minature. I don't know.. Just not sure what I need to look for.

Thanks for the link JasonN.... Now I get it. Interesting... Is this something you would like to try to make the PT seem like OT?