Star Wars Episode I-III : The Rule of Two (Tokyotaitai Fan Edit)

Konnichiwa!
Newbie here! A few months ago, I completed my first ever fanedit entitled “Star Wars Episodes I - III : The Rule Of Two (Tokyotaitai Fan Edit)” that condenses 7hrs of the PT into a single cohesive movie (200mins). My aim was to remove certain subplots from the main storyline, whilst still keeping a few annoying and controversial bits in there for Star Wars newbies to form their own judgements as well (NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!).

A brief outline of the edits I’ve made :

• New introduction crawl.
• Starts with Ep I scene : Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi escaping to Tatooine with Queen Amidala.
• No podracing.
• The “midichlorian” scene is included, as I needed to strengthen why Qui-Gon believed Anakin was special since he has no clue how good his reflexes are at podracing.
• The “prophecy” scenes are included, to show that maybe Anakin’s insecurities were somehow predisposed onto him as a young child.
• Removed a lot of Jar Jar Bink’s dialogue, Queen Amidala’s double, The Gungan city, Anakin flying the starfighter (R2D2 is the true hero here) and the cheesy victory celebration at the end of Ep I.
• Removed most of Anakin’s creepy and awkward teenage dialogue from Ep II.
• I got rid of Anakin and Padme’s “our-love-is-forbidden” secrecy, tried to make their scenes together more tolerable and made them share their first kiss as they enter the gladiator-esque scene in Geonosis.
• Removed the Jedi Library, Obi-Wan meeting Jango Fett in his quarters, Shmi’s funeral, R2D2 and C3PO in the Geonosis Colosseum and Padme rescuing Obi-Wan and Anakin from Count Dooku’s hangar.
• Trimmed Obi-Wan and Anakin’s rescue of Palpatine in the massive space battle. Removed General Grievous here and the crash landing scene.
• Gone is the scene where Padme tells Anakin that she is pregnant. Instead, we find out when Anakin tell her about his premonitions after his nightmare.
• I also altered Anakin’s scene when he contemplates the joining the Dark Side at the Jedi Council Chambers by including scenes from Padme’s funeral (with some added effects) as a flash-forward premonition, to push Anakin over the edge.
• Obi-Wan’s fight with Grievous and scenes from the aftermath of Order 66 are shortened.
• No Jedi Temple massacre.
• Consolidated scenes from the Yoda-Palpatine and Anakin-Obi-Wan fight sequences so they would flow better.
• The end of the movie shows Sidious and Vader overlooking the construction of the Death Star, thus beginning the Rule of Two.

I would love to hear any feedback from the passionate OT forum community on where and how I could improve on the storyline even more. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Please send me a PM if you would like a link to view my work.

This is also my first attempt at doing anything like this, so please excuse any mistakes I’ve made. I truly love Star Wars and hope you enjoy my take on it too.

Domo arigato!
tokyotaitai

How long does this come out to be?

200mins

In my earlier edits, I tried to keep the running time under 3hrs. However, when I played it for my friends who aren’t familiar with the SW universe, they felt Anakin’s backstory in Ep I was a little disjointed. They were not convinced as to why Qui-Gon believed Anakin was special. So I had to pad it back up to make it more cohesive to a SW newbie.

Should I remove the scene when Anakin confesses to Padme that he slaughtered the Sand People, and possibly remove Obi-Wan’s scene with Count Dooku in Geonosis?

tokyotaitai said:
Should I remove the scene when Anakin confesses to Padme that he slaughtered the Sand People, and possibly remove Obi-Wan’s scene with Count Dooku in Geonosis?

Yep for the confession (how can Padmé marry him after that ?); keep the Dooku scene, in which there is the only mention of Jinn in Ep II, and I guess it’s important to understand Jinn had been trained by someone who has turned evil (probably after his former apprentice death), there is some kind of a pattern here (which shows that Lazy Lucas knew what is what doing, but sadly he was lacking someone to challenge him to improve his scripts).

If I remove Anakin’s confession to killing the Sand People, do I also remove all mention of the massacre? Seems like it was an important turning point for Anakin after Shmi’s death. I felt that without his confession, he would show no remorse as he was not conflicted enough about his actions. Any thoughts? Or just have him arrive in Tatooine to find Shmi’s grave?

tokyotaitai said:

If I remove Anakin’s confession to killing the Sand People, do I also remove all mention of the massacre? Seems like it was an important turning point for Anakin after Shmi’s death. I felt that without his confession, he would show no remorse as he was not conflicted enough about his actions. Any thoughts? Or just have him arrive in Tatooine to find Shmi’s grave?

I like what Hal9000 did. He kept the massacre, removed the confession, but kept Palpatine’s “remember what you told me about your mother and the sand people”. To make it so it’s something that he never confided in padme about, but did confide in palpatine, which he then uses to help seduce him to the dark side.

Darth Lucas said:

I like what Hal9000 did. He kept the massacre, removed the confession, but kept Palpatine’s “remember what you told me about your mother and the sand people”. To make it so it’s something that he never confided in padme about, but did confide in palpatine, which he then uses to help seduce him to the dark side.

Thanks for the feedback! I felt that there was never enough angst after Shmi’s death, even a longer massacre scene would’ve helped. Hence why I left the confession in to give him some scenes to grieve. But I see everyone’s point, it’s a poor scene in many ways so I’ll definitely keep that in mind when I do a re-edit.

I’ve never seen the version Hal9000 did, and would really like to view it. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

I would love a link to this edit 😃