I made the egregious error of watching RotS tonight with a thought towards how it will be edited when the time comes...
Wow man, I found myself saying "I'll have to cut that garbage" or "That's not necessary for the story" almost every scene, sometimes multiple times per scene. Disheartening.
RotS is just so bad and there's so little in it that's worth rescuing. Scenes can be saved individually, but the story as a whole is such a complete mess that it hardly matters. It's kind of funny in a way; RotS is widely considered the "best" of the prequels, and yet I find it to be the least salvageable.
I've got a whole bunch of Ep III edits downloading as I type, hopefully I'll find some inspiration there. I've also been browsing the radical edits thread and there's a lot of really interesting stuff there as well.
Radical edits, of course, carry with them certain challenges. Changing the story of a film to such a dramatic level can be difficult or even impossible in some cases. Still, it's an interesting thought exercise if nothing else.
If I could do some really radical edits I'd want to do away with Anakin as a child altogether and start things off with a teenaged Anakin under the tutelage of Obi-Wan. Or perhapos even better, omit Anakin from the first movie all together and leave as just Qui Gon and Obi Wan.
I would also like the Empire to come into existence much sooner. It's always bothered me that according to the current timeline as established by the prequels, the Empire is only 18 years old in ANH. The impression I always got from the film, based on how the Empire operates, how people talk about it and how Obi Wan in particular speaks of it, was that the Empire had been around for a long time. I would have guessed 50 or 60 years.
If I were making movies from scratch I'd start my prequels with the Empire already in power while the Old Republic fights desperately to survive. But that's me.
I've been mulling over some notions in the Radical edit thread and I definitely think I'm going to implement some of them, many others I'd already decided on using ages ago. I especially like the idea of Naboo becoming Alderaan. That just makes sense. It ups the emotional attachment to the planet in ANH, and it gives the audience a through line for the saga, rather than having an important planet that just disappears in the OT never to be mentioned again.
I also quite like the Geonosis is Tatooine idea. It'll take some colour correction but I think it should be doable. Having the first battle of the clone war fought on Tatooine would also help tie into the whole idea that Uncle Owen is afraid Luke will go off with Obi Wan the way Anakin did.
Jango Fett. I absolutely hated the inclusion of Jango Fett and how he ruins the mystery behind Boba Fett. I definitely like the idea of turning Jango into Boba, and removing all scenes where he takes off his helmet and most if not all of his dialogue, and removing the kid. This one seems considerably more difficult to achieve. I would also not make him the clone template.
Someone made an interesting suggestion that Anakin should use force lightning on Padme instead of choking her. Initially I thought that was a terrible idea, as I've always felt force lightning should be an Emperor only kind of thing, but the argument they gave was really compelling. Firstly, there's the idea that part of the reason Vader chokes people to death is a subconscious anger over his inability to breath on his own any more. I'd never considered that but it's an interesting thought. More pertinent though is this: Having apparently choked Padme to death, would Vader continue to choke people to death? Would it not be a constant reminder of how he murdered his wife? Finally, and best of all, If he uses force lightning on Padme and thinks he's killed her, then when he watches the Emperor use lightning on his own son it's going to trigger some very deep emotional reactions. Now the question is can I produce good looking force lightning?