The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 267

It might be fun to see someone try this in an edit of all three films: https://www.reddit.com/comments/3qvj6w

It would mean taking all the Jar-Jar footage and spreading it over 3 films or making new Jar-Jar footage. But it would be cool to actually do the character well rather than just cutting him out.

Frink actually does a good job at giving him some kind of wacky dignity but this would be an interesting alternative. He could replace Maul and Sidious as the power behind the events in the first two movies at least.

Heck it might even be possible to have him replace Grievous 😄

I’ve heard of remove Jar Jar entirely* but add in more of him… well that’d be certainly interesting.

*by the way I’d love to see a Jar Jar-less TPM, though I can only imagine how much work that’d be. But I don’t think it’s entirely possible to remove Jar Jar only because, oddly enough, it’d be really tricky when it comes time for AOTC.

The idea of the thread is to think the unthinkable. Almost every edit limits Binks so adding more and changing the character over time gives us another what if scenario to play with.
The great thing about these ideas threads is it does’t take that many man hours to think something through.
Rendering extra Jar-Jar or adapting the character so he can be bigger and less pointless however takes time and effort.

Silly Radical Idea of the day -

It has been suggested that Anakin has his ‘skywalker’ removed to better hide his relation to Luke within the OT.

Well what IF Luke is never named ‘Luke’ in the PT (and the same for Leia)

Ben is Obi-Wan’s name within the OT to hide his identity - so perhaps Luke is also a rename too? Maybe it could be something exotic like ‘Obi-Wan’, ‘Qui-Gon’ etc as if that is a Jedi name.

It sort of relates back to Aragorn and Gandalf having Elessar and Mithrandir as secondary names within LOTR too.

Followup ROTJ edits might then relate back to this alternative name - maybe as Luke comes of age as a Jedi?

An extremely radical and so-difficult-as-to-be-impossible idea for The Phantom Menace that has been bouncing around in my head for years now would be to not only remove Jar Jar from the narrative entirely through complex editing, masking and rotoscoping, but to actually REPLACE him with another character - namely, with C-3PO!

C-3PO would be a droid in Queen Amidala’s court that gets dragged along with her when they make their escape from the planet. He is placed down where the astromech’s are where he would still bump into R2-D2 and have the ‘how rude!’ line as R2 sasses him before shipping out to repair the ship. When the Decoy Queen is tasking someone to clean the brave little droid, she could instead give the job to C-3PO who would be all affronted by the very notion as it’s not part of his programming or duties. Instant ‘meet-cute’ for the two droids!

The protocol droid could handle a trimmed version of the one poignant scene Jar Jar has, asking Amadala if she believes that her people are going to die, however such an undertaking would probably work best if it followed something similar to the Lone Gungan Edition and excised all the other Gungan’s from the film as well.

Obviously such a feat would require not just scrubbing all traces of Jar Jar from the movie, but would also require filming an actor in a C-3PO costume to then edit into the scenes, as well as find a good Anthony Daniels impersonator to record new dialogue as well. And all the headaches it would no doubt cause for sound editing etc.

Smithers said:

Has anyone thought of starting the clone wars at the end of TPM? It would make AOTC pick up faster and give more history to the wars

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I think it works better for the story on so many levels.

coinilius said:

An extremely radical and so-difficult-as-to-be-impossible idea for The Phantom Menace that has been bouncing around in my head for years now would be to not only remove Jar Jar from the narrative entirely through complex editing, masking and rotoscoping, but to actually REPLACE him with another character - namely, with C-3PO!

C-3PO would be a droid in Queen Amidala’s court that gets dragged along with her when they make their escape from the planet. He is placed down where the astromech’s are where he would still bump into R2-D2 and have the ‘how rude!’ line as R2 sasses him before shipping out to repair the ship. When the Decoy Queen is tasking someone to clean the brave little droid, she could instead give the job to C-3PO who would be all affronted by the very notion as it’s not part of his programming or duties. Instant ‘meet-cute’ for the two droids!

The protocol droid could handle a trimmed version of the one poignant scene Jar Jar has, asking Amadala if she believes that her people are going to die, however such an undertaking would probably work best if it followed something similar to the Lone Gungan Edition and excised all the other Gungan’s from the film as well.

Obviously such a feat would require not just scrubbing all traces of Jar Jar from the movie, but would also require filming an actor in a C-3PO costume to then edit into the scenes, as well as find a good Anthony Daniels impersonator to record new dialogue as well. And all the headaches it would no doubt cause for sound editing etc.

Bingo suggested something similar a while back - but I think it was the idea of having a Trade Federation protocol droid join them. Qui-Gon’s sarcastic and dismissive relationship with Jar Jar would work well - so if it COULD be done it would be amazing.

Good luck green-screening/CGing a shiny reflective droid in though!😉

Ah, yeah I probably saw Bingowings suggest that years ago - the idea got stuck in my head somehow and that is probably it! Unfortunately, it would be impossible all round but the results for the narrative would be very satisfying, IMO - and C-3PO being a Trade Federation droid that gets swept along with the Jedi could certainly be cool as well, although it would take more work to set up than just having him dragged along with the Queen. He just has to be looking flustered in the background of some early Queen scenes to establish that he is her protocol droid.

Adywan has access to a physical performer with a film quality Threepio suit so it may be possible to remove Jar-Jar and film the actor in similar locations so the reflections on the suit match the existing material.
Filming the actor infront of set shots rear projected onto a screen would have a similar effect of creating plausible reflections to aid fitting the suit into the footage. In ROTS they did a rather good job of correcting the reflections to remove cameras etc. I’m not saying it would be easy but Ady does seem to like a challenge and other edit artists do too so there is probably an old school solution to many of these idea proposals.

you meen hes a …?

C-3PO could get dirtied up pretty quickly, basically once they hit Tatooine… before that he would have to be shiny though, if he was a protocol droid for either the Trade Federation or the Queen (though he could land in mud on Naboo and get dirty very quickly as well if he was coming from the Trade Federation).

Revisiting an old idea I had for a new opening to The Phantom Menace, plus some other half-baked ideas kind of thrown in as well…

https://vimeo.com/150149316

Password: fanedit

The main idea is that the opening of The Phantom Menace is drastically reduced, so that the movie starts with the invasion of Naboo and just goes quickly from there, moving the story along more quickly. My idea was to do something similar to the Lone Gungan Edition, removing the Gungans entirely apart from Jar Jar. The crawl would be rewritten, setting up that the Nemodians are invading, the young Queen, Amidala is in peril and two Jedi (and their faithful servant Jar Jar) have been sent to rescue her…

It’s been kind of mixed up now with another idea I was playing with - without sounding super-pretentious, it was to invoke the influence that Kurosawa and The Hidden Fortress had on the development of Star Wars and in particular the earlier drafts which Lucas dusted off as his basis for The Phantom Menace’s script. Basically it would take the Japanese dubbed version of The Phantom Menace, make it black and white, add some film grain, edit where appropriate and use subtitles to rewrite the story.

But I don’t really have the patience or skill to pull off an edit like that… still, I do think it’s amazing how much better just making it black and white and playing with the contrast can make the prequel footage look so much better…

They’re just called Naboo. Their art and architecture and design is called Nubian.