The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 228

There is a bit of a problem with having the Gungans the Feds and most of the people on Tatooine speaking 'alien'.

The other Star Wars films only had a few subtitles with good reason, if you are reading subtitles you aren't looking at the picture.

It would make much better sense to dub most ofthe lines (or new ones) into more sober English without the ethnically worrying accents.

The only really problem is removing the existing lines and maintaining all the other parts of the soundscape.

That still is much more difficult than some people would have us believe.

Bingowings said:

There is a bit of a problem with having the Gungans the Feds and most of the people on Tatooine speaking 'alien'.

The other Star Wars films only had a few subtitles with good reason, if you are reading subtitles you aren't looking at the picture.

It would make much better sense to dub most ofthe lines (or new ones) into more sober English without the ethnically worrying accents.

The only really problem is removing the existing lines and maintaining all the other parts of the soundscape.

That still is much more difficult than some people would have us believe.

You are of course correct on all counts.

Still......while changing Jar Jar's voice would certainly help.....i'm doubtful there's a voice actor on this earth who could deliver a line like "meesa called Jar Jar Binks!" and make it sound at all passable.  It's admitedly a trade off.....but I ultimately will take the subtitles as the lesser of two evils.

Ideally, I'd actually like to remove Jar Jar entirely and be done with it, or maybe replace him with an entirely different character....but that's quite a tall order for a lone and/or small visual effects team.

The neimoidians are definitely better contenders for this though.  Mostly it seems the effort to change their voices stems from desires to change plot points in the movie......which is not a bad goal necessarily.  Considering the animatronics in the movie, it would be easier to get away with dubbing them over with english while still tweaking their dialouge.  This is probably worth exploring by someone with the means to do it.

Also....as far as removing dialogue goes.....I don't mean to suggest it's easy peasy.....but isn't most of the dialogue in the center channel on the soundmix?  Granted, there's a lot of new sound effects you'll need to remix in here and there........but it's not impossible............I think/hope. 

I meant more along the lines of writing new lines and getting a voice actor to deliver a more compelling performance than having someone else deliver the same lines (especially Jar-Jar).

Attempts have been made.

i like the idea of the trade feds speaking an alien language. the interpretor droid would make sense then, and could perhaps be placed in to translate lines more.

maybe at the end, when the viceroy is captured, he awkwardly utters "we - surrender" in english. would be quite a strong moment.

i think the best jar jar solution is rotoscoping. i did love the idea of c3p0 joining them enstead. a compromise however would be having them both there, and jar jar being translated by 3p0 too.

Sorry if this has been posted, I just never saw it myself, but I think it could be a great idea.

http://www.youtube.com/user/magnoliafan78#p/u/6/EiOA5iYckPs

One thing that should NOT be changed...

Shortening, or taking out Lightsaber fights (with the exclusion of any Yoda fight scenes. So unnecessary.) I see a lot of talk about how people here think the PT fights are "frivolous" and "over choreographed." I am STRONGLY against this line of thinking. 

You see, the argument is that these fights have no resonance because we don't care about the characters/plot. However, if Ady can correct those issues, then all of a sudden we have our epic lightsaber battles AND a coherent plot.  Maybe it's because I'm younger, and grew up loving the PT fights, but I would be crushed if they were to be shortened/deleted in any way. 

i'd be up for tension and struggle. so the windu - sidious duel is very strong IMHO.

i think the anakin - obi wan duel should be more like a cross between the ESB duel and ROTJ duel. Anakin overwhelms Obi-wan to begin with, then Obi-wan rushes him towards the end.

I'm all for dubbing aliens and Jar-Jars in the prequels, but I really don't think that alien languages is the answer.  Cause alien languages mean subtitles. And subtitles mean bunch of jibberish that puts you out of the film.

I mean, seriously, Jor-El spoke English on Krypton and no one complained. Odin and Thor both spoke English in Asgard and no one complained...

Besides, those prequel movies are already cold, inhuman, fake and unrelatable-looking - so, why add an unintelligible language and alienate, say, Nemodians even more? 

MagnoliaFan did an outstanding job dubbing Jar-Jar (in that YouTube video). And, personally, I think that's the way to go.

Okay, I'd be content if Adywan cut that "lightsaber fight while climbing the tower, and swinging on ropes" part of the Mustafar duel, and I'd be totally chill with a complete restructuring of the Palpy vs Mace duel (the editing there is HORRENDOUS.) 

But I don't want him to go overboard, and try to make the fights "match" the OT fights. And by that I mean make them shorter less choreography/flipping. Not that I don't like the OT style, I love it, but I love the prequel fights even more.  

 

I always saw the PT fights as cotton candy. It looks good and tasty, but after too long my teeth hurt and I have a stomach ache. OT fights for me are like a fine perfectly cooked steak. Mmmmmm steak. It looks meaty, it tastes great, and I feel fulfilled.

Point being the PT fights were filled with needless flipping and for me lost all sense of the danger of it all. They just went at each other like they had wet noodles, with no thought that it may take off their heads in the madness. In the OT, they seemed fully aware that they were holding a lightning bolt, and carefully picked their swings. I always go back to the ESB duel. Giant Vader crashing down with one demolishing swing after another, and Luke barely holding onto his weapon every time. IT. LOOKED. DANGEROUS. The first time I saw it I was one the edge of my seat wondering when Luke's arms would give way and he would be done. And man was he broken by the end. It was just a level of realism that is completely lost in the prequels.

A compromise with this whole alien thing is to have the Neimoidians speak Nemoy when talking amongst themselves and in basic when with others. The same with the gungans and the sith.

In fact, it would be cool to have maul speaking in another language entirely.

Realism? Dude, it's not like they CGI-ed the swordplay in the Mustafar fight. That was their actual movements, in real time. So if they actually did that, that means it's in the realm of possibility. I don't know why two actors awkwardly swinging laser swords at each other is any different from two actors SKILLFULLY swinging laser swords at each other. 

Point is, while some people may like the OT fights better, that doesn't mean the Prequel fights should conform to them. At least in my opinion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb4YMtqPhNU&feature=related

This I would say, is an example of how you can keep the Palpy/Mace fight in your words, "dangerous" and suspenseful, while still retaining the Prequel fighting style.  

Palpatine dimmed the lights so that it'd be harder to see him, allowing him to speed through the room undetected and kill the Jedi. The flicker effect also has a secondary purpose: it hides that terrible CGI-Ian McDiaramad's Face-On-Stunt-Double-Effect quite well. :)

Actually, this BobGarcia guy has some fantastic ideas for drastic changes to ROTS. Here are a few that caught my eye. Most of them are just visual changes but still...food for thought.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THBRvtxNPvE&feature=related

Anakin Voice Change

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ0rrilAXtM

Emperor gets a more O.T. hologram.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c3tV_Qh6TQ

Darker Version of Utapau Arrival.  

Rather than have the lights just flickering on and off by themselves, you should just have the lights off but have a 'flash' whenever the lighsabers connect with each other that momentarily lights up the room... might help sell the 'dimmed room' attack and the tension :)  

coinilius said:

Rather than have the lights just flickering on and off by themselves, you should just have the lights off but have a 'flash' whenever the lighsabers connect with each other that momentarily lights up the room... might help sell the 'dimmed room' attack and the tension :)  

Hey man, it's not my edit. Don't ask me to change anything.

haraldo23 said:

I'm all for dubbing aliens and Jar-Jars in the prequels, but I really don't think that alien languages is the answer.  Cause alien languages mean subtitles. And subtitles mean bunch of jibberish that puts you out of the film.

I mean, seriously, Jor-El spoke English on Krypton and no one complained. Odin and Thor both spoke English in Asgard and no one complained...

Besides, those prequel movies are already cold, inhuman, fake and unrelatable-looking - so, why add an unintelligible language and alienate, say, Nemodians even more? 

MagnoliaFan did an outstanding job dubbing Jar-Jar (in that YouTube video). And, personally, I think that's the way to go.

I think it is possible to find someone who could redeem the character.....but I honestly think I prefer Jar Jar's original voice to that clip.  I mean no offense to magnoliafan as his edits are currently my favorite reedits of the prequels.....but it doesn't do much to help the character.

Also....It's true that if you're reading subtitles you're not paying full attention to the visuals of the film.......but maybe in Jar Jar's case that's actually a good thing.  Anything to draw attention away from the overly cartoonish antics is probably a welcome thing.

Holy......the execution and presentation needs some work....but this idea is actually quite brilliant.  I agree with having the lights off permanently (and I would add in a VFX shot of palpatine closing the window blinds) and having the strikes of the sabers light up the room, but I would go even further by using some digital lighting and rotoscoping to reveal bits of the scene as the lightsabers by......and by having palpatines TRUE face appear in this scene as the lightsaber passes by him....which would be much more doable with quicker shots and restrictive lighting.

The effect would add more tension to the scene, would hide the poor choreography and cgi mcdiarmid, and would also clarify that Palpatine *is* hiding his appearance and it's not sith lighting that messes his face up.  It would make him appear more threatening and scary and would even add something to Mace's decision to just straight up kill this guy when he has the chance, having seen his true nature.

A quick rough mockup to illustrate.

MrInsaneA said:

One thing that should NOT be changed...

Shortening, or taking out Lightsaber fights (with the exclusion of any Yoda fight scenes. So unnecessary.) I see a lot of talk about how people here think the PT fights are "frivolous" and "over choreographed." I am STRONGLY against this line of thinking. 

You see, the argument is that these fights have no resonance because we don't care about the characters/plot. However, if Ady can correct those issues, then all of a sudden we have our epic lightsaber battles AND a coherent plot.  Maybe it's because I'm younger, and grew up loving the PT fights, but I would be crushed if they were to be shortened/deleted in any way. 

This thread and the others like them aren't uniquely Adywan centred.

They are for proposing ideas for anyone to use.

I can only speak for myself but personally I find much of the PT  saber action looks more like dancing with neon than fighting with laser swords so I'm not so hung up about altering them, especially when some of the end results already achieved have greater resonance, even with the same wooden acting attached to them.

Now if someone could somehow turn wood into flesh as well as make those duels feel like two or more people genuinely fighting and not just whirling their legs and coloured glow-poles in time with the music, I will be as happy as Kenneth.

haraldo23 said:

I'm all for dubbing aliens and Jar-Jars in the prequels, but I really don't think that alien languages is the answer.  Cause alien languages mean subtitles. And subtitles mean bunch of jibberish that puts you out of the film.

*facepalm*

Perhaps a small improvement could be made to the prequel duels by making them look somewhat less choreographed. I did a small experiment with the Obi-Wan/Maul duel by running a segment of the footage backwards. It gives the movements a bit more supernatural rather than it looking like a practiced dance recital.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6t_N7ZgRCI

MrInsaneA said:

Realism? Dude, it's not like they CGI-ed the swordplay in the Mustafar fight. That was their actual movements, in real time. So if they actually did that, that means it's in the realm of possibility. I don't know why two actors awkwardly swinging laser swords at each other is any different from two actors SKILLFULLY swinging laser swords at each other. 

Point is, while some people may like the OT fights better, that doesn't mean the Prequel fights should conform to them. At least in my opinion.

You know, that's like arguing that a real gun fight is just like a paint ball war. You act differently when you know your life is danger, but with paint ball you know you're not going to die from anything so you do things that would be foolish and risky in a real gun fight.

PT looks like paint ball.