The Clone Wars Arc Edits [OPINIONS NEEDED] (a WIP)

THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED TO PRESENT MY CURRENT PLAN FOR THESE EDITS

STAR WARS THE CLONE WARS: ARC EDITS

I am currently working on a collection of 1-2 hour edits to form a new mini-series of The Clone Wars. This is for people who want to enjoy the best arcs the show has to offer.

Editing will be minimal- basically blending the episodes within an arc to form a shortfilm

Each episode will get a new opening, featuring a Solo-like text crawl.

There will be 16 episodes in the full mini-series.
The episodes with a ‘*’ will be included in the ‘Essential 8’ package for the folks who want an even more condensed viewing of the show.

o The New Jedi (The movie edited down to 80 minutes)*
o Rising Malevolence (3 episodes)
o Domino Squad (3 episodes)
o Landing at Point Rain (4 episodes)*
o The Mandalore Plot (3 epidodes)*
o The Nightsisters (3 episodes)*
o Overlords of Mortis (3 episodes)
o Citadel Rescue (3 episodes)
o Darkeness on Umbara (4 episodes)
o Revenge of Maul (3 episodes- ‘Bounty’ not included)*
o The Lawless (4 episodes)*
o The Wrong Jedi (4 episodes)*
o The Conspiracy (4 episodes)
o The Bad Batch
o Sacrifice (4 episodes)
o Siege of Mandalore (4 episodes)*

Looking forward to hearing all the feedback and I’m greatful for how positive everyone has been so far!

Hell yeah!
If the mini series plan works out, Rebels will most likely get the same treatment.

What a coincidence! Last night I was plotting something like this out for a theoretical saga edit of mine that’s far far down the line. TCW would be part of it. I don’t know if I will pursue this but regardless here were my thoughts on edits. Also, keep in mind this is from literally yesterday so I haven’t though everything through.

STAR WARS PROLOGUE: Introduction of Anakin in the Phantom Menance followed by the Mortis Arc as the primary storyline. The Yoda arc from Season Six is interspliced here with the idea Yoda is traveling the force to rescue Anakin Obi-Wan and Ahsoka stuck in Mortis.

EPISODE ONE - THE CLONE WARS: Starts with Lair of Grevious, then the Mandalore Plot to explain Obi-Wan’s relationship with Satine. Then Grevious Intrigue followed by the Deserter, which runs concurrent to Rookies. End of the movie is Arc Troopers, big battle on Kamino ending with Ventress failing, and as a result Dooku exiles her.

EPISODE TWO - WITCHES OF THE MIST: The Citadel (great character development for the trio) running concurrent to Nightsisters, and ending with Massacre and a Darth Maul tease.

EPISODE THREE - DARK FORCE RISING: Darth Maul and Wrong Jedi in one movie. If edited well, Obi-Wan’s minimal appearance could be weaved through, so he returns from Mandalore just as the trial begins (for him to be seated there).

EPISODE FOUR - THE PHANTOM APPRENTICE: Umbara plus the Banking Clan trilogy from Season Six plus Ahsoka’s Walkabout (provided the quality gap isn’t too bad). We’d follow Anakin leaving Umbara and getting entangled in politics he doesn’t enjoy while his clones suffer on the front lines. Meanwhile his apprentice has challenges of her own.

EPISODE FIVE - REVENGE OF THE SITH: Clone Wars Season Seven plus ROTS

So this doesn’t work perfectly (my long-term plan is combining Season Seven with ROTS) but for a Clone Wars edit maybe you could take inspiration. I also wanted Mortis to be the start so I wouldn’t go pre-Season 3 Ahsoka design which is another limit you don’t have.

Those ideas are actually really cool. I wasn’t planning on doing too much arc mashing but I could be swayed otherwise.

I think your idea of having prequel live action woven with the Clone Wars animation could be a thing throughout all of your edits. Heck, you could even create and alternate, prequel trilogy with that concept!

One episode could focus on Anakin and Ashoka, which could use footage from TPM and AOTC

One episode could be a Maul episode, with duel of fates to open as a flashback

One episode to wrap it all up. Using the best moments of ROTS to close the whole thing off

Just relaying some ideas to help you out. I reckon some storyboarding would be in order 😃

Definitely a good plan, Kanemedhurst. I like most of the Clone Wars, so I’d advocate for keeping as much as possible - making as many arcs as you can and pruning the bad episodes and sketchy scenes from otherwise good episodes. You’re right that Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and Maul/Mandalore are the main threads of the show though, so depending on how radical you want to go with the editing you could see what you could do to really bring those into focus. Don’t forget the best clone/Palpatine/Yoda episodes though!

Szopman,
of course. that makes a bunch of sense. Some of the arcs I’m going to work on are based on my preference (Malevolence, Geonosis, Umbara, Mortis, The Unknown, Sacrifice). I can imagine my edits won’t use the episode format but will be numbered outside of the edit, so the complete viewing order is clear.

This plan will work for both OPTION 1 and OPTION 2. Although I’m currently leaning more over to OPTION 1.

Szopman,
I don’t see why not 😄 the editing in the intros are a little bit rough in my opinion.

Ok so from what I’ve gathered, there people who:

o Want to see a good amount of Clone Wars as an isolated mini-series
o Want only the essential arcs with the ‘4 corner’ characters
o Want the full cinematic treatment to marathon with the movies

I feel I can find a way around this with 3 different releases.

o OPTION 1
o 6-8 of those arcs released in a separate package for the real essential viewing
o (The hardest one) a full trilogy of 2 hours edits- Episode I telling Ashokas story, Episode II telling Maul’s story and Episode III being the shows finale story leading up to ROTS

The third solution would be done last as this takes the most time and would need more planning.

How does that sound?

Also a side note. All the arcs in the mini-series will be in chronological order. So it shall play quite smoothy 😉

Have you considered picking up where Smudger left off? At least a couple of his moviefied serials were about as good as anyone could get them, I reckon.

EddieDean said:

Have you considered picking up where Smudger left off? At least a couple of his moviefied serials were about as good as anyone could get them, I reckon.

That’s understandable. But I would prefer to do this project from scratch. I know it’s a shame he never finished his series of edits.

Thank you!
Would people be interested in updates for the mini-series?
Again, I’m doing little editng because I’m not interested in convo/scene cutting etc. but I can show how I’m apporaching the intros and the transitions between episodes.
The asthetics of an edit are very important in my opinion 😉

This is a throw-together of the intro:
This uses my idea of having the narration alongside the SOLO opening text.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=135gvy5cvGFwSmpuLeoeDFzq-1l8ZSTuc

Yes, you are correct.
I will change that and see how it looks 😃

Yeah I just saw that episode! It was an interesting presentation style.

I’ll play around as I go.

But the question is: Do we still want the the narrator over the text?