STAR WARS: EP VI -RETURN OF THE JEDI "REVISITED EDITION"ADYWAN - ** PRODUCTION HAS NOW RESTARTED ** — Page 151

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

I like the structure of your opening. The plots points are vastly different in comparison to the original, but they honestly make a lot of sense.

I actually attempted to make an edit inside your edit. This is the first cut I’ve ever done, so let me know your thoughts. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y5ZUOb6-XaXDjLtnVwtdiNBEZeFayocU/view?usp=sharing

-Start the music a beat after 3P0 says “he agrees!”. I think that feels closer to the atmosphere of the cantina when everyone abruptly moves on after a conflict is settled. It’s also a little more chaotic with Chewy trying to yell over the music.
-Remove Landos helmet bonk on the ceiling
-Remove how long the shot of Lando pulling down his mask is. It’s way to in your face.

O00ll00O said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

I like the structure of your opening. The plots points are vastly different in comparison to the original, but they honestly make a lot of sense.

I actually attempted to make an edit inside your edit. This is the first cut I’ve ever done, so let me know your thoughts. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y5ZUOb6-XaXDjLtnVwtdiNBEZeFayocU/view?usp=sharing

-Start the music a beat after 3P0 says “he agrees!”. I think that feels closer to the atmosphere of the cantina when everyone abruptly moves on after a conflict is settled. It’s also a little more chaotic with Chewy trying to yell over the music.
-Remove Landos helmet bonk on the ceiling
-Remove how long the shot of Lando pulling down his mask is. It’s way to in your face.

Hey! I’m glad your giving editing a go! Tell ya what, lemme go ahead and repost this clip on my thread and we’ll chat over there. I don’t wanna sidetrack Ady’s Thread. 😉 When you see the repost, copy this response, and I’ll reply to that.

.Mac. said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

So back on topic for ROTJ:R, personally, I’m always up for reading and seeing what all ideas people would like to share about it, so share anything about it you wish here, Joy! I’m sure Ady won’t mind any extra potential ideas/concepts, especially if they’re video clips where we can actually see how it looks and feels. I am one who believes this movie needs as much of our ideas together as possible, and from there Ady will pick what he feels is the best and most appropriate option. Btw, I hope people don’t get me wrong, I still very much like ROTJ and it will always have a special place with me (and through the hard work of preservationists, we’ll still have the original), but if we look at this film objectively and compare it to the previous two films of the trilogy, at least imho, it isn’t quite on par (for various reasons), which is why, if Ady is wanting and willing, I’m a proponent for some bigger changes and not just VFX updates that ESB:R only needed.

Ugh, and of course “it’s late, I’m in for it as it is!” as it’s a work night for me. TGIF though! I’ll definitely be checking out the above clip as soon as I get the chance and let you know what I think, Joy!

Hey! Glad you’ve been enjoying the videos! My cut doesn’t give a scruffy nerfherder about the canon (because I’m working from the perspective of being the editor who is setting the canon), so some of cuts are probably a bit too radical for the kind of thing Ady is doing, which I’m super excited about, especially for the B-Wings, baby! But any time any editor wants to use one of my changes, I’m always happy to help out.

My general take on RotJ is that I completely agree with HAL-9000 that RotJ is the first “Prequel”. All of the editing and storytelling problems present in the prequels are already on display in RotJ. However, I also agree with Hal that it has the potential to be one the best if not the best of all of George’s STAR WARS films. Basically, you have to completely overhaul Jedi’s structure and then delete a bunch of the minor story points to make the film feel focused like A New Hope. If you do that, Jedi really sings!

An example of what I’m talking about is in the clip I posted. If you recut the Tatooine sequence as a heist film, where you’re coming in in the middle of a plan in progress, the whole sequence suddenly works. Then if you use that structure to rework a bunch of the characters: Make Jabba more Godfather-y and competent, Threepio never gets “captured” he and Lando have been working in the background to take jobs close to Jabba. Han has full eyesight during the Sail Barge Brawl, so his shot on the tentacle is Han Solo being dope, rather than goofing around, Artoo also never gets capture and sneaks aboard the Sail Barge of his own accord (Threepio’s dialogue in that scene shockingly makes complete sense of that change), and if you completely overhaul Luke’s lightsaber skills with the editing techniques developed for the Prequels (think Arena Battle), he suddenly feels like a Prequel Era Jedi Knight like he should at this stage.

The terrible thing is my whole rework of the opening sequence is just so I can cut directly from the Emperor’s Arrival on the Death Star II to the Rebel Fleet massing near Sullust. That one change COMPLETELY overhauls the tone of Jedi, and gets the hype train rolling for the greatest of all Space Battles. That specific change would probably work really, really well with the incredible stuff Ady is going to do.

.Mac. said:

regularjoe said:

.Mac. said:

Just had to share this short but spectacular clip from SkyForgeFilms:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nV4UeojnK8c

His work just keeps getting better and continues to impress! It would be a dream come true if there could be some collaboration between SkyForge and Ady for his expanded space battle in ROTJ:R.

I used that clip for my RotJ fanedits opening. In that context it represents the Bothan spies getting away with the Death Star II plans and the tracking device on one of the Corvettes is how Palpatine knows the location of the rebel fleet massing near Sullest.
From this scene I cut to Yoda and Luke on Dagobah.

I actually quite like that idea, regularjoe! Definitely in favor of somehow beginning the film with a bit more of a punch and excitement than it does originally. I imagine you also reworded the crawl to reflect the new opening and clue the audience in with what’s happening? And/or did you add your own comm chatter?

I used someone else’s custom crawl that indicates that Luke has returned to Dagobah.
As far as comm chatter, etc. I left it the way that it is. It doesn’t literally spell everything out however it leaves a breadcrumb trail to fill in some gaps.

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

Interesting resequencing.
I chopped the entire Obi-Wan scene, there’s just too much reiteration and nothing really new said…except who the other Skywalker is.
I did some selective cutting when Luke and Leia are talking on Endor to stay in step with this.
Now, just like in TESB where Vader reveals his paternity to Luke, it’s Vader and the Force sleuthing out that Luke has a sister during their duel, he threatens to turn Luke’s sister and that puts him over the edge.
Leia now announces to the audience the brother/sister thing as the she and the Force open up to one another and she connects the dots.

One thing that really does stick out and is probably an easier fix are those fake vector readouts of Vader’s shuttle. They look kinda tacky. If someone could get a real vector render made it would improve things. Or at least a more convincing fake. https://www.deviantart.com/ravendeviant/art/Imperial-Shuttle-Schematics-03-728200258

regularjoe said:

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

Interesting resequencing.
I chopped the entire Obi-Wan scene, there’s just too much reiteration and nothing really new said…except who the other Skywalker is.
I did some selective cutting when Luke and Leia are talking on Endor to stay in step with this.
Now, just like in TESB where Vader reveals his paternity to Luke, it’s Vader and the Force sleuthing out that Luke has a sister during their duel, he threatens to turn Luke’s sister and that puts him over the edge.
Leia now announces to the audience the brother/sister thing as the she and the Force open up to one another and she connects the dots.

I cut Leia’s reveal out of RotS, so that Ben scene is now the reveal, like it was originally. For the bit where Vader finds out about Leia. . . Hear me out. . . The ideal spot for that is actually during the scene where Luke turns himself in to Vader, specifically the shot where Vader silently stares off into space holding Luke’s lightsaber after Luke has just been put in the AT-AT. If you cut that scene like Vader is talking to himself as he turns away, “So you have a twin sister, your feelings have now betrayed her too.”, it plays exactly like the scene in IV where Vader senses Ben’s presence on the Death Star. The reason I think that works is that Luke just said goodbye to Leia (so she’s obviously on his mind), and Ghost Ben had warned Luke to be careful of his feelings about his sister, because they might betray him. The twin (pun intended) benefit of moving up Vader’s knowledge of Leia is that you can now recut the Throne Room Duel as a single extended sequence with no breaks (Bespin Style), brought on by the Emperor murdering Luke’s buddies with the Death Star laser, and Darth Vader’s final line to Luke, “Tell your sister, you were right.” hits with WAY more punch, because it means Vader was thinking about Leia this whole time, and Luke is just now finding out that his dad knew about his sister.

I would have shifted the reveal to match Leia getting shot in the bunker raid. Luke is trying to keep his mind blank but he senses Leia’s pain. This allows Vader in.

JoyOfEditing said:

Okie Doke. Here’s a link to my opening of RotJ up to the point where Luke walks in through Jabba’s front door: //drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EleIyLvBBrk-D8zN9zy23NJhEeg6FMcs?usp=sharing

Its an interesting idea, i feel like a slight resuffle of scene could definately improve the opening’s presentation. Ofc Adywan has remained much more restrained with edits on the previous two films but I know he has big plans for ROTJ so hopefully he does have something up his sleave to adress the Luke’s-training-elephant in the room.

I’d say with this as an example, you have to be really careful with the Dagobah scene. There is not a whole lot of room to cut around so I would say comprimise would be the only option for a cohesive scene. It feels very trunkated to me, as we are entering mid conversation, so when this is first establishing scene of these characters in the film, it is very off putting. But naturally you couldn’t start much earlier without revealing that this is the first encounter with yoda since ESB.

So perhaps it would be best (if ady were considerng shuffling scenes) to yes put this scene here (before Tatooine), but comprimise and keep the orginal start of the scene where this is his first returning to Yoda, they talk perhaps over alterntive footage (where Yoda isn’t in bed) and “start his final training” then cut to show the infiltration of jabba’s palace, then cut back to luke “completing his training” (perhaps use the ben scene to bridge? or keep it after yoda dies) with a final conversation with Yoda as he dies then he returns to Tatooine to save everyone. That way it feels a bit more like the Bespin sequence where its clear at least some time has passed. And don’t forget confronting Vader is his last challenge to become a true Jedi Knight.

I don’t have the scenes on hand to see exactly what dialog and footage there is to work with, but its late and i need sleep cus reading my own post im not 100% sure it makes sense.

So at least for this nerf herder, I might prefer an edit that doesn’t remove nearly as much (and that’s coming from someone who’s actually okay with excising existing shots/scenes [within reason of course, lol]) as I’d want certain scenes to have both flow and still make enough sense for a first-time viewer - even if it might mean keeping some of the flaws (and that’s where Ady often applies his magical brush at concealing much of that!). Otherwise, I still very much enjoyed this, Joy! Thank you for sharing it and I’m sure Ady will see something in there that works for his vision 😉 I look forward to seeing more of your clips!

And Joy, if you’re at all interested and have plenty of free time (emphasis on “plenty”), I invite you to take a gander through my ROTJ wishlist. There you can see much of my thoughts regarding ROTJ and understand my take on certain scenes (including what I think can be deleted/trimmed) and, who knows, perhaps there’s something in there you’ll like for your future editing 😃

Haha, I totally get y’all’s concerns on the pacing/lack of setup. I think the thing to keep in mind with my cuts are that I’m doing all six of Georges films at the same time to align all of them, so the Jabba setup has already happened in the Phantom Menace’s Podrace scene. I also MASSIVELY reworked Dagobah in Empire, so that the single scene of Yoda’s Death would make sense in Jedi (I’m trying to do a Dark Crystal style setup where the first scene sets up the Emperor, and the second scene is the death of the eldest mystic (Yoda)). Because you’ve seen so much of Yoda in the Prequels, and you know from the Prequels that Vader is Luke’s daddy, you don’t need the bit where Yoda confirms this (I’m pretty sure that scene was put into Vanilla Jedi because so many folks were convinced Vader was lying at the end of Empire). In short, the Yoda scene doesn’t feel too short in the scale of the full saga, but it would be WAY too short/unsatisfying, if you don’t have the Prequels.

FYI I was never actually arguing that Ady should use my recut for his version of Jedi (I don’t think it will match at all with the other two, lol). I was just trying to give an example of how you can indeed effectively start on Dagobah, if you want to. 😉

I don’t have a ton of free time at the moment, but go on you can PM me anyway. I just can’t promise that I’ll look it over in a timely manner.

As far as Jedi being the best of all six, I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think you can actually get it pretty stinking close to the level of VI and V, with the just the material from the Vanilla Cut. If you wanna see more of that, I’d hop over to my thread (right now we’re talking Attack of the Clones, but we’ll eventually get to recutting the Sail Barge, the Final Duel, and other cool Jedi stuff, and I really don’t wanna sidetrack Ady’s thread down a rabbit hole, haha!).

Cheers!

-JoE

I undertand where you’re coming from but what I’d say from the sources mouth is that Lucas explained himself he had different plans for ROTJ and like ANH and ESB, the films changed a lot over the course of pre-production. The diffence with ROTJ was that his inicial plans included setting up the sequal trilogy with many plotlines being planned to continue on to the sequals. (ie the identity of Luke’s sibling) however following ESB George was becoming fatigued with SW and inicially decided not to persue a sequal. Only later with access to filming technogy he felt would remove the barriers to creativity he had be so frustrated with, did he persue the prequals.
My point being what you are perciving as prequal like, is more byproducts of creative burnout and last minute changes. The prequals’ development is well documented and understood to be mostly sourced from George’s isolation form other creative, with no imput from anyone willing to correct him on mistake and him being left not only to direct (which he has been vocal about not enjoying) but worse of all being left to create dialog without interance… which anyone could tell you was a recipe for ear torture. But thats the issue of making a sequal/prequal 20 years later with now grown up childhood fans, who think on some level you are the god of your own creation and they couldn’t possible correct you.
(this is why treasures like Sam Witwer are so great as he was willing not only to speak up and correct Dave Filony, his direct boss, but even argue character motivation with Lucas himself and be 100% right about it).
So yeah I get how and why this film feels similar but also why people see very different flaws.

G&G-Fan said:

I don’t agree that ROTJ is the “first Prequel”. It’s different from the other two OT movies, but not any more then ANH and ESB are different, and it’s closer to those then the Prequels. It’s character-focused rather than plot-focused, the plot isn’t as convoluted as the Prequels, it’s methodically yet effectively paced (IMO), the visuals are far more prettier, and the writing is clear and well-articulated where it needs to be and subtle where it needs to be, unlike the Prequels where it’s often either muddy and messy or on-the-nose.

I find it interesting that Hal said that, since he didn’t make an edit of it in the same vein as his Prequels.

I think Hal and I are coming from a technical standpoint. (If I remember that Hal post correctly, he was saying Jedi is his favorite). When you crack open these films as an editor, you see them completely differently than you do when you’re experiencing them as a viewer. From an experiencial standpoint, I 100% agree with you (I like the Theatrical Cut of RotJ WAY better than any of the Prequels because it’s tone much closer to IV and V), but from a technical editing standpoint Jedi is closer to the Prequels than it is to IV and V.

ROTJ has a lot of the same problems as the Prequels. It’s definitely a step down from ANH and ESB. Its why its the one OT film I’m most looking forward too getting the Adywan magic. It’s currently broken in every version. Not so with the first 2.

I personally really like ROTJ, it’s one of my favorite SW films along with ESB, ROTS and RO.

I love the dynamics between Luke, Vader and the Emperor in the third act, and how that it’s conveyed by the cinematography and the music for those scenes. I also really enjoy the first act in Tatooine, even though I was never tol interested in the SW underworld, the film manages to make it very entertaining IMO. The only part that I think drags a little is the second act with the Ewoks, but I think that these scenes and the influence of the Ewoks in the film is not as great as some pople make them, and they can be ignored as a secondary aspect of the plot.

Is this even relevant to the Revisited edit? I don’t recall Adywan intending to heavily cut the movie up like this and adding any of the deleted scenes at all?

Braltika said:

Is this even relevant to the Revisited edit? I don’t recall Adywan intending to heavily cut the movie up like this and adding any of the deleted scenes at all?

I think he is intending to recut the start of the film especially the rescue sequence. but yeah he has said he catagigorically will not add deleted scenes. The only new contened will be the extra sequences in the battle of endor, from what i understand.

Braltika said:

Is this even relevant to the Revisited edit? I don’t recall Adywan intending to heavily cut the movie up like this and adding any of the deleted scenes at all?

In another post I made years ago I had Luke turn up at Ben’s hut which was meant to be the rendezvous place and Ben gives the talk there. Completing the conversation that started Luke on his journey. Explaining that Leia is his sister explains why they are both impulsive when it comes to saving people they are attached to over saving the galaxy. Its a very Anakin thing.

doubleofive said:

Ady has been planning this edit for at least seven and a half years. I doubt anyone can say anything he hasn’t already considered, or hasn’t been mentioned in this thread over the last 150 pages.

Aye, I understand that and I’ve been following the project since before the release of his ANH (just not on this site so yes, it might have been discussed in the earlier 149 pages). His edit ‘philosophy’ so far has been to do better colour grades, enhance the SFX and somewhat revert the SE changes. It’s not listed in his initial post for VI that he wishes to alter the Tatooine part besides getting rid of the horrible SE additions, fix SFX and goofy stunt work. Also no mention of adding deleted scenes (which I believe would be near impossible at this moment, even with the current A.I. tech around).

So yes, it’s an honest question really, I was not trying to police the conversation here, sorry if it came across that way 😃