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Post #664535

Author
daneditor
Parent topic
The Phantom Menace: Radical Re-Edit
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/664535/action/topic#664535
Date created
10-Oct-2013, 6:33 AM

Thanks for the detailed review. I'll go through some of the key points.

"I've heard some Fed dubs before but this is the best.

It sounds like an authentic Star Wars alien language and because there is less said by Nute now it doesn't drag so much having to read the subs."

It's Turkish. Whoever did the dubbing came up with some decent antagonist voices, certainly miles more menacing and interesting than the bizarre original voices.

"I would have kept the intro to Jar-Jar but dubbed it so he is only Gungan on the planet (in this version) and in exile (in this edit he isn't the lone Gungan at all it's still their world and we see them getting captured).

His dub doesn't work as well. I fear he must speak the same language as the humans as he has dialogue heavy scenes which become a bit of a chore otherwise."


Jar Jar's voice is obviously a huge problem. I agree it's not great, but I put it through Audacity and made it a little deeper and less childlike than the way it started. I also did a test of me dubbing his dialogue in English - but that footage will never, NEVER be shown to anyone.

That first part of the scene with Jar Jar's introduction should really be in there. If nothing else then for pacing reasons (the first twenty minutes are on fast forward, just way too fast paced). But I think that's probably the worst scene in any SW film and I couldn't come up with a way to make it work.

Hopefully others (including Adywan) will dub Jar Jar into English and come up with a better explanation for why he's tagging along with the Jedi.

"The merge of the battle from the end and the escape from the hanger is seemless but pointless as everyone ends up there again anyway."

There's a couple of reasons I put the space battle right when the pilots are freed. It made sense to me that if a planet has been invaded the military will fight back as soon as it possibly can. It doesn't make sense to me that the pilots run away instead of getting in the fighters and counter-attacking.

The other reason is obviously because I knew I wasn't going to include the space battle in act 3 so that footage might as well be used in act 1. It's a 90 minute edit after all.

"I don't see why Sidious and Maul are openly walking around on Coruscant.

It makes more sense if that exchange happened on Naboo with Sidious as a hologram (or better still in a battle droid factory elsewhere in the galaxy)."


Nice idea, but way beyond my skills.

"Cutting the land battle improves the saber duel immensely. It does leave Anakin with nothing to do and leaves only Padme's adventures as a cut away."


You're right about Anakin not being given enough to do, but the space battle was something I was always going to cut. The implausibility of a 10-year-old destroying the villain's ship is just too stupid, IMO, and serves to undermine even further the credibility of the Federation. And anyway, Anakin has already won the pod race to help out the heroes, and in the hangar he destroys the destroyer droids to save Padme. Pretty good effort for a kid.

"I think with a production team doing new effects and bit more restructuring this film can be saved."

Totally. It might be the only prequel that is salvageable, but there's definitely potential for a not terrible SW film.