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Community Focus Thread 1: The Phantom Menace — Page 4

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sade1212 said:

EddieDean said:

I’ve also just finished editing TPM down into just 18 minutes containing all of JarJar’s lines

Why even bother continuing the thread when it’s already produced the perfect version of TPM?

I’m tempted to slap on an intro and some credits and submit it to IFDB as Phantom Menace: 'Tis Demanded by the Gods Edition.

Anyway, in the sanity of morning, I’ve now realised that the file was rendering as huge because I forgot to tick the box for ‘only render this small section’, so I was rendering the entire movie instead. I’m an idiot. The new video is available in the spreadsheet now. I’ve added some notes in the sheet for a few words we might be able to make.

As I was working over this all yesterday, focusing on solely Jar Jar’s lines brought a few things into focus for me:

  1. Good God, what an obnoxiously written character.
  2. Other than the voice, a big failing of his character is that he has no personality. A proper character has well established wants, that the audience can relate to. He gives Qui-Gon his life debt, which essentially makes him a tag-along, and isn’t interesting, plus later he’s still confused that he got carried along in events. He wants to lead them to Otoh Gunga, then really doesn’t want to go back there, then is coerced into it, then he’s glad to be home even though he’s hurt and nearly punished there. He likes Theed (for a line), dislikes the heat of Tattooine (for a line), then likes Anakin’s home (for a line). He’s scared of a lot, though seems to be quite taken by Anakin, but this goes nowhere. His biggest happy outburst is “Wesa goin’ home!”, even though he hasn’t indicated that he wants that prior, and his world is currently under invasion, and Otoh Gunga rejects him. Arguably his best scene (!) is when he sympathises with Padmé on Coruscant, shows sadness and doubt, and gives her the seed of her plan. I think his main arc is that he regrets his exile and finds redemption when Padmé makes peace and he gets recognition, but this is so underdeveloped. In short, he’s both a genuine idiot, and worse, completely passive.
  3. Passivity is so dull. Even dropping the idiocy and trying to reframe his passivity as opportunism still leaves him quite flat. But the problems are that he’s present in a load of scenes (major work to mask out), and used in a number of key scenes that’re valuable for other characters or world-building. He’s especially relevant to Padmé’s plot in a few places (and the Boss Nass alliance turns Padmé from macguffin into a character), so even when annoying, some of his scenes serve a useful purpose and I feel like we should be careful when cutting them.
  4. I’m generally an adherent of not deviating too far from canon because of references in other media. But Jar Jar’s presence is limited to TPM and only lightly the other prequels and Clone Wars. My own TCW edit, and I believe all others on these forums, exclude him completely, so maybe there is room for even people who want it to fit with wider media to be comfortable with a re-dub.
  5. That said, he (and his voice) are unfortunately such a familiar cultural phenomenon that outright replacing it may still be a stretch for some. But hey, the tool works either way, let’s see what people come up with.
  6. I think, if working with his existing voice lines, one of his most obnixious traits is “Mesa”. He rarely says I and never says I’m. You could maybe preserve some of his weird patterns (and maintain lipsync) if you keep the ‘-a’ part of ‘Mesa’ but put it elsewhere in his speech. “I’m called-a Jar Jar Binks”, for example. That way it might just sound a bit more like an awkward accent, rather than idiocy.

Beyond trimming his idiocy and obnoxiousness, I think more work can be done on his passivity. I wonder if we could frankenbyte any new voice lines to actually give him some agency. Looking over my list, a few ideas:

  • [to explain why he’s into Jedi, or Anakin once they talk about Jedi reflexes] Ohh, maxi big da force. (Mesa your humble servant?) (Perhaps even something using the word ‘sacred’: “Ohh, da force sacred.”)
  • Queensa in trouble, das’ da last thing mesa wantin’! Come on! Hurry!
  • Mesa wantin’ to help.
  • This planet is piddy hot. Sun doin’ murder to mesa skin.
  • Gungans get murdered too, eh?
  • Mesa no dyin’ without a fight. Wesa warriors. Gungans got a grand army.
  • Wesa gotta fight, mesa thinks.
  • [about the Trade Federation] Gungans no likin’ monsters. De outsiders’ bosses will do terrible things.
  • Da outsiders must be banished.
  • [During the planning phase, if you want to have the Gungan plan be to draw the army out then retreat into the nearby swamp] Da safest place would be underwater. Wesa settin da outsiders up. Outsiders follow, we goin’ back. We retreat!

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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 (Edited)

You have an impressive knack for organization and attention for detail. Putting all that together was no mean feat. I agree with your observations on Jar Jar. I think if only he was a real character he would have been much less jarring.

The Gungan religion explanation was such a cheap way to get him to tag along. I’m having the life debt be Qui-Gon’s assertion and Boss Nass presumably goes along with it because Jar Jar is a burden. I like your ideas for actually giving him a personality.

The blue elephant in the room.

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I like it and what it does for his character (every little bit helps). The last line is very unclear though.

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Yeah, it’s a real mess, but with work could be improved. I pulled down the volume on that last bit. I don’t know how to pull ‘clean’ voice off a track mixed with audio, but just wanted to put an idea out there.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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 (Edited)

This is really promising! The first ‘Mesa’ comes off a little strong, but rewatching it it isn’t that bad. I do think that last line replacement is a little dirty, since you can hear a little music/sound effects in the audio still. I almost wonder if that line would be served better with some silence. Jar Jar lingers on that fact, and maybe it’ll seem like the gears are turning in Padmé’s head.

In that very first line, I assumed Jar Jar is saying ‘pasted’. I wonder if you could change it to “Gungans get wasted too, eh?”
Maybe the meaning of the word ‘pasted’ is clear to others, but maybe ‘wasted’ would be a little clearer to understand. Maybe you could make this change if you got the write W sound.

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EddieDean said:

Could do. And wasted is a much better solution there. But I’m no great audio editor, I mainly just wanted to make the tool for the community. I’m committed to finishing Clone Wars before picking up anything new!

Totally! Definitely the priority is CW: Refocused. This is something I plan on playing around with myself sometime soon. (Though now I also want to work on the Boba Fett idea I mentioned in the other thread… and work on the Rey Nobody edit…)
I think your test is a very good sign though that we can make Jar Jar easier to understand at the very least.

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EddieDean said:

That’s a really good shout. Is anyone able to provide a list? (Could copy my spreadsheet to use as a template, then I’ll merge them?) I’ve watched those episodes to death for my edit, please don’t make me watch them again! 😉

I can certainly give that a go. I’ll have a few spare hours Friday evening to get started. Can probably at least get his first two appearances done.

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Following up on an idea Mrebo and PeterPan discussed in the Prequels Redux thread, I’ve just watched the relevant scenes in my TPM rewatch and I think it’s possible to make it so that Qui-Gon frees both Anakin and Shmi. After the podrace in their house Qui-Gon says both of them are free, Anakin starts celebrating that he can train to become a Jedi, he asks if Shmi is coming with them, Qui-Gon gives Shmi a look that Anakin doesn’t notice but Shmi understands, and Shmi explains that her place is on Tattooine and she’s not going with them.

First of all, why bother doing that? Well, I think that it helps drives a few points home. It shows us the disparity between Qui-Gon’s ethics and those of the Jedi Council, instead of simply having Obi-Wan tell it to us later on Coruscant. It makes it clear that (in Mrebo’s words) “she is left behind because the Jedi don’t make allowances for parents tagging along,” but also that Qui-Gon is the kind of person who would free her anyway, while still understanding the difficult position it puts them in. All of this supports the thematic idea that Qui-Gon would have been the right person to train Anakin successfully, because he isn’t as dogmatic and black-and-white-morals minded as the Jedi Council. Anakin needed understanding and flexibility, which the Jedi didn’t offer - but Qui-Gon certainly seemed like he would have done.

It also means that Anakin’s frustrations with the Jedi arbitrarily forbidding him from seeing his mother in AOTC serves to highlight the whole “Qui-Gon and his lackadaisical approach to the Jedi Code was the right way to do things” idea, by absolving Qui-Gon of being (in retrospect) a complicit arm of the Jedi Council when it comes to Shmi, and Anakin’s attachment to her.

Basically, the Jedi being actually pretty terrible is a big part of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, and if you want to enhance the themes of Qui-Gon being the only one who’s really got the right way of doing things, it helps to make it about “the Jedi won’t allow attachment so he can’t even check on his mum” instead of “Qui-Gon was fine with leaving his mother a slave if it meant getting a strong Force user for the Jedi.”

“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas

TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars

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Ooh, that is a good one! She’s freed by the time of AOTC so that works, you’d just skip the scene with Watto and assume Anakin knew she was living with the Lars family. You’d also have to make the deal scene work with Watto in TPM. I wonder if Anakin can reference it in AOTC, perhaps using a line like “Attachment is forbidden. If Master Obi-Wan caught me doing this he’d be very grumpy” as they approach Tattooine. Worth investigating!

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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I wasn’t thinking about it when I watched the chance cube scene, but, I think it could work with a bit of clever editing. Make the bet for two slaves, like Qui-Gon originally wanted; Watto disagrees that a pod is worth two slaves, but greedily agrees to let chance decide, pulling out his weighted chance cube. He rolls it, Qui-Gon uses the Force, Watto is pissed off, telling Anakin that if Qui-Gon isn’t careful he’ll end up owning him too, etc as the rest plays out like the theatrical.

The only thing I can’t figure out off the top of my head is what to replace “red, the boy, blue, his mother” with to convey the idea that red = both and blue = neither.

“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas

TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars

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 (Edited)

Could you maybe skip that bit?
Qui-Gon: “I’ll wager my new racing pod against, say, the boy and his mother.”
Watto: “Hmm. Well, uh-”
[Cut to Jar Jar watching them to cover Watto being closer in the next shot]
Watto: “Deal*. But you won’t win-a the race, so it makes little difference.”

*(Could source this from their original deal. For a moment in that line above he’s got his back to the camera.)

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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That would work! Though I’m generally a proponent of retaining as much original footage as possible, lest a TPM edit become too short, so if it could be retained somehow, I think it would be worth keeping it in.

“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas

TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars

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I like this idea a lot, though I agree with Eddie that we might have to drop the chance cube. Which I would like to keep for the symbolism, but then again it doesn’t really count as Qui-Gon fiddling with fate, because Watto was 100% trying to scam him.

“Vader! Hologram, now!”

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CaptainFaraday said:

First of all, why bother doing that? Well, I think that it helps drives a few points home. It shows us the disparity between Qui-Gon’s ethics and those of the Jedi Council, instead of simply having Obi-Wan tell it to us later on Coruscant. It makes it clear that (in Mrebo’s words) “she is left behind because the Jedi don’t make allowances for parents tagging along,” but also that Qui-Gon is the kind of person who would free her anyway, while still understanding the difficult position it puts them in. All of this supports the thematic idea that Qui-Gon would have been the right person to train Anakin successfully, because he isn’t as dogmatic and black-and-white-morals minded as the Jedi Council. Anakin needed understanding and flexibility, which the Jedi didn’t offer - but Qui-Gon certainly seemed like he would have done.

It also means that Anakin’s frustrations with the Jedi arbitrarily forbidding him from seeing his mother in AOTC serves to highlight the whole “Qui-Gon and his lackadaisical approach to the Jedi Code was the right way to do things” idea, by absolving Qui-Gon of being (in retrospect) a complicit arm of the Jedi Council when it comes to Shmi, and Anakin’s attachment to her.

These are really good points!

“That’s not how the Force works!”

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CaptainFaraday said:

Basically, the Jedi being actually pretty terrible is a big part of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, and if you want to enhance the themes of Qui-Gon being the only one who’s really got the right way of doing things, it helps to make it about “the Jedi won’t allow attachment so he can’t even check on his mum” instead of “Qui-Gon was fine with leaving his mother a slave if it meant getting a strong Force user for the Jedi.”

I really don’t like this aspect people attach to the prequels. I don’t think Lucas intended it at all. He genuinely believes in eastern philosophy and the concept of detachment from material things, including people, to become more spiritual, and that the Jedi are good guys. You could sincerely argue that the Jedi were right to not want to train Anakin and to teach him to let go, because it did lead him into trouble. (The only aspect that goes against this is the contradictory Chosen One stuff, which makes it seem like the purpose of his existence was to get in close with Palpatine so he could bring him down much later. But that’s another issue.)

In any case, I think it’s better to just remove the attachment ban/forbidden love stuff altogether. From the Lucas perspective it doesn’t play well to a modern western audience and comes across as cold, and from the revisionist perspective it takes away Anakin’s agency and responsibility for his actions. It makes it less a personal tragedy and more some kind of weird cautionary tale about the dangers of suppressing people’s Freudian urges or something.

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Respectfully, Vladius, that definitely was intentional. Both George Lucas and Dave Filoni have said in interviews that the Jedi dogma seen in the Prequels was deliberately intended to be taken as a negative, and a factor in Anakin’s, the Galaxy’s, and the Jedi’s fall. (Whether or not that idea successfully landed for audiences is up for debate.) Dave’s explicitly said something along the lines of “that’s why they live in a literal ivory tower”. And the elements of TLJ where Luke criticises the dogmatic past of the Jedi order were apparently a feature of George’s original ideas for the sequel trilogy which he sold to Disney.

That said, whether or not we choose to emphasise or retain those intentions in a fan edit is of course entirely up to the editors.

I’m not posting that for conflict, just for information.

Speculating now, I think he intended that Qui-Gon was supposed to represent the first challenge to that dogma (hence his lower standing in the order), Yoda to represent entrenched dogma fading as he realises its flaws near the end of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan’s and Yoda’s meditations (in life and as force spirits) to represent their coming to understand an alternative existence within the light side of the force, and Luke as the intended inheritor of the new order.

Anakin would have been the first inheritor of the new Jedi if Qui-Gon hadn’t been killed, causing the tragic cascade that led to Vader, delaying the light’s revival. Luke was the new hope, delayed in his path by the presence of Vader. After Return of the Jedi, Luke sought to rebuild the order - already a better one based on the limited information he had, and under the guidance of the force spirits - but in his attempt to rebuild what was lost he still incorporated some of the old dogma, as we’ve seen recently. The tragedy he caused his own family with Kylo Ren and the failiure of his new/rebuilt order sent him, like Yoda and Obi-Wan, into doubt and exile, before the discovery of Rey (and his reconnection with Yoda) helped her forge what will follow.

The only force spirits we’ve seen have been those Jedi that challenged or questioned the order’s dogma, which seems deliberate. (And, for me, makes the final moments of Rise of Skywalker Ascendent all the more powerful, continuing that thread into Rey.)

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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Well said, Faraday.

Eddie, I like the directness of your approach. I struggled to think of how to make it happen in that scene.

My solution leaves much implied but I really like that Qui-Gon pulls off yet another stunt. Only I’m not sure if it gives enough to the viewer. A possible assumption is he traded the winning podracer for her freedom.

Here’s what I’ve been working on to free Shmi:

https://streamable.com/r4eaim

https://streamable.com/jzmu8b

The blue elephant in the room.

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 (Edited)

Here’s a quick little mockup of the deal just being a straightforward ‘the boy and his mother’.

There’re a couple of alternate ways you could cut that, but that’s a simple one. Music transition at the cut seems fine too.

One other idea I had, if you still want a little Qui-Gon manipulation, would be to add in the shot of Qui-Gon waving his hand (originally to manipulate the dice) as he’s saying ‘the boy and his mother’, or just after it. There you’d be implying that he’s using a mind trick to get Watto to accept.* There’s maybe a conflict there with him failing to mind trick Watto earlier. However, you could read that as Watto rejecting the first attempt because he STRONGLY wants spendable money, whereas the second attempt succeeds because Watto’s mentally WEAK to gambling, something that Qui-Gon’s now realised he can exploit. That’d also give Qui-Gon a little arc (fail > succeed) but also be a little manipulative for a Jedi - perhaps emphasising his less dogmatic side as he does something a little wrong to achieve a greater right.

*You could also split the scene of Jar Jar looking left and right around that shot, to emphasise it. He looks from Watto to Qui-Gon, we see Qui-Gon’s hand wave, he looks back from Qui-Gon to Watto as we see Watto accept. Might help tie it together.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

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Nice work! I agree about the little Qui-Gon arc and characterisation that leaving the hand wave in would do. It would also explain why Watto’s mad when he leaves the conversation, and let you leave in his comment about Qui-Gon as he passes Anakin. Plus, it’s easy to cut Watto in the earlier scene saying “I’m a Toydarian,” to make it sound like he’s saying a mind trick won’t work on him because he’s not weak-minded, not because it arbitrarily doesn’t work on his species.

Which I never really interpreted that way, though. I parsed it more like someone saying “I’m Sicilian, I won’t fall for the switched cup routine,” and it’s just an easy line to misinterpret, like “You’re a big guy / For you” in The Dark Knight Rises.

“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas

TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars

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Yeah. And thinking about your whole idea, even if the viewer is watching TPM first, and doesn’t have the context that parents can’t come with Jedi when they go away to get trained, Shmi explains “my life is here”, which implies enough to make that element of it work.

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