Return of the Jedi Jabba's Palace Musical Number Recut

The talented people on these boards have fixed most of the more annoying "fixes" to the SE and 2004 DVD versions of the movies, and I now have HD versions that are pretty awesome (thanks adywan!) But ROTJ has gone mostly untouched, and to me "Jedi Rocks"; the new improved Jabba's palace musical sequence, is almost impossible to watch.

So I figured I'd try my hand at re-editing this sequence to use the original Lapti Nek song, but use scenes from the special edition so I would still have full HD resolution. Here's my first rough cut, working off of the original German HD broadcast.

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

What do you guys think? It's cut a little faster than I would have liked, but that's a result of having to chop the footage up.

Nice one, killrmonkey.  Looks great!

I still prefer the original footage, but I can certainly live with this as a compromise.  I hope Adywan adopts a similar approach.

As vbangle says it's a lot better than the 97/04 version but the music doesn't fit the scene and the CGI is still a mess (as were the original puppets).

The idea of a musical number, in my view, just doesn't work.

It worked in the ANH Cantina because the band were in the background and fitted the setting.

Here there is clearly some sort of exotic (in Jabba's eyes) dance routine going on, so the music should match that sort of style (arabesque burlesque not disco) the band should be hardly seen and the dancers should take centre stage.

My views on that are posted here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/ESB-and-ROTJ-Wishlist/post/361058/#post361058

As for this cut, to get it to work better it needs a few sounds added to the score to match things like the background singers and the percussion.

The shots of the little lizard with the flute thing need to be cued up to the equivalent sounds on the tune.

But otherwise a really nice attempt to get rid of the worst excesses of the SE version (no tonsils, Yay!).

It might be nice to post this stab on the wishlist thread as well as that has been going for a lot longer and may last longer as a thread and serve as an inspiration to others.

Thank you all for your feedback.

I agree this entire scene is a compromise. I too prefer the original puppets, and if 1080p footage of them was available, my preferred cut would be to restore the original scene.

I also love the idea of this scene being more like the exotic dance performance that it seems to be. I'm sure the desire to make the movie very kid friendly in 1983 prevented it from being more than just suggested. It would be cool to see someone edit it like that though, but there is even less Oola in the 97/04 version to make it work in HD. 

I'm reworking the first half of this scene; a bunch of the shots in there were just filler that I didn't feel worked. The shot of the little lizard guy was one of them; I think the shots of him near the end work better with the music, because he seems to be rocking out with a riff in the song. It's a challenge making the new performance fit the old song, but I did try to pick shots that seemed to work; they need to be aligned a little better because I was concentrating on roughing out the sequence; but I'm going to go back and fine tune it.

I like the idea of adding some musical cues to make it fit better. I would love to give the backup singers something to do musically.

I made a couple of changes to the first half that I feel flow better and fit the music more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7omDRTzbmM

This is amazing, do you have a high qual .avi you could put up on Rapidshare?

Not bad at all! I wonder if something could be done about the background singers mouths being open.

Cool edit, kllermonkey! As you mentioned, it's not perfect, but you did a great job in combining the "best" from both versions.

This may come off as sacrelige but I thought I'd just throw it out there: there is a (short) musical number in Jabba's palace in the animated Clone Wars too. I couldn't find the clip on YouTube, but even though it's a cartoon, it looks and feels less like cartoonish than the 04 version.

The music in that scene is a little more exotic. There is another musical bit from the Clone Wars movie that might work too. Here are the links:

Jabba's Chamber Dance

Seedy City Swing

Maybe it's possible to use those tracks to create a shorter, maybe more Oola centered and less childish musical number for ROTJ.

I was thinking something along the lines of Salome's Dance from Blade Runner (only not that because it's too immediately recognisable).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHxWBt8JtEQ

If anyone knows of a piece of music that's similar but obscure enough to go un-noticed or maybe there is a composer/musician/band out there that can run up something like it, that would be grand.

Cadavra said:

Does anybody by any chance know whether someone ever created a HQ version of this clip or something similar?

i will send you a link.

pm send Cadavra.
please command here.
thanks

My suggestion for ROTJ:R has to do with this funnily enough.

I came across a track that I thought that might work as a replacement. I do not mind Lapti nek but It is an idea to cut the puppet singer and just have the blue elephant on keys. Anyway listen to the track.

Billy Preston- outa space the original 45.

Seems it so good it has been blocked. Sorry for typos tired.

benduwan said:

pm send Cadavra.
please comment here.
thanks

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