logo Sign In

The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 9

Author
Time

Lifeincontext said:

EddieDean said:
I don’t think it quite counts as interesting development for Ahsoka, since she’s portrayed as merely competent here (which we already know), and her plot with Lux actually doesn’t go beyond a little jealousy, which is a shame after some of the earlier setup.

You’re doing great work here, man!

I do feel like I need to stand up for this arc, though. On my recent rewatch, I came to realize how important this arc was for Ahsoka’s development. First, it provides catharsis regarding the Ahsoka-Lux relationship for the audience, which is important; seeds shouldn’t be planted if they don’t go anywhere (which we sadly learned with the ST). I know the arc doesn’t do a great job coming through on it in the writing, but at least it addresses the relationship’s culmination/end. Second, while admittedly very subtle, there are two things Ahsoka struggles with here: her jealousy, obviously, meaning that she wants to hold onto Lux – a moment where she’s tempted to be possessive (a very Dark Side emotion)…but even more than that, she realizes that she needs to let go of her attachment to Lux (on a romantic level) AND her attachments in general (on a spiritual/Jedi level). This realization is then immediately challenged when she can’t save the girl Lux loves at the end, making her question her role as a Jedi and feel kind of powerless. It’s setting her up for more internal conflict that we see pay off with Barris in her trial arc.

I may not be adequately articulating what I’m trying to say here, but I hope you get the gist. I think it’s at least worth discussing.

Well argued! I’ll give it another look - especially the last episode in the arc!

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

You know what, I think you’re right. I think we need to get through the episode a lot quicker, so I’ll look into some restructuring. But that ultimate moment of loss, closure to Lux, and origins of Saw add up to Important. I think the Rebellion angle is least important here so perhaps I’ll focus on those characters and see what the heart is.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

S06E10 - The Lost One (First episode of The Yoda Arc) - Important - Quality Cut

First episode is separate from the others. It’s quite interesting, and while low on action, but by this point in the story I think we’re pretty invested in an investigation of the origins of the clones.

It adds an interesting wrinkle that you don’t have otherwise- the information that the Jedi became aware that the Sith created the clone army, and that they opted to keep it a secret and continue the war anyway.

This needs to come late, but I might give it an episode to breathe before dropping straight into the next one.

S06E11-13 - The remainder of the Yoda Arc - Important - Quality Cut

This one’s mostly fantastic, and contains a lot of revelation. As with Mortis, I think it’s a little hamfisted and demistifying, though I think this one will be far easier to cut around.

I’d like to remove there being a literal planet of the force where (some?) life began, and the five literal life-after-death spirits, but the rest can all work if that planet is merely a vision, and I use the occasional voice over from the spirits.

Instead it’ll run like this:

  • Yoda hears from Qui-Gon and opts to go into the deep meditation, where Qui-Gon directs him to Dagobah
  • Yoda enters the force cave on Dagobah and communes with Qui-Gon
  • First vision: The false peace of the temple, where Dooku is the betrayer
  • Second vision: The future deaths of the Jedi
  • Third “vision”: Yoda on the force planet, cut down to just the fight against his fear.
  • Voice over directing him to Moraband, which I think there’s a good chance I can change to Korriban with some audio editing. (The planet is canonically Korriban, George just wanted to use another name for this episode.)
  • Yoda awakens on Dagobah and flies to Korriban
  • Sidious notices “an opportunity”, and calls Dooku to help with the ritual
  • Yoda encounters the Sith snakes, Sith acolytes, Bane spirit, and then the Sifo-Dyas illusion which draws him into the trap
  • Spirit fight with Sidious, preserving all the metaphors and hints
  • As Yoda wakes, stay on a white screen, picking any of the remaining valuable quotes, ending with “there is another… Skywalker.”
  • Yoda denies his experiences to the council. “No longer certain that win a war, one can…”, and we play out the rest as in the episode.

You still get all the meat, we just preserve more mysticism.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

Maul: Son of Dathomir Audio Comic - Important - Mandalorian Cut

WOW. I’ve read this comic before but what an achievement the audio comic is!

The story itself is fantastic - Maul is broken out of prison and loses his cartel support while everyone fights everyone else and Sidious does more house cleaning. It’s important because it fills some key gaps.

But damn, what an experience the audio comic is. Voice work that’s really close to the original (especially Dooku, an amazing impression), sound effects, music, and really nice movement given to the static panels to add dynamism.

A great experience and I’ll definitely be watching more Audio Comics by these guys.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

Since we’re talking about a little reordering of episodes, I thought about the clone armour. The Phase I armour (which appears in episode 2) is used up until the Citadel/Mon Cala episodes, where it appears alongside the Phase II (which appears in episode 3), which then becomes the main armour.

Oddly, Phase II does appear in ARC Troopers (not a suprise, that was originally set a little later), but it also appears in Clone Cadets, which I thought was early in the war. I really think we need those episodes up first.

Canonically, the armour had a phased rollout, so I don’t personally have a problem with the idea that the Clone Army was launched in the Phase I armour, whilst they gradually upgraded the forces with Phase II throughout the clone wars, but I can understand if people have an issue with it.

We really should open with the Rookies arc though - it gives us some meat for Ahsoka’s light intro, makes us care for the clones, and also makes sense that the Separatists would target Kamino early.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

EddieDean said:
We really should open with the Rookies arc though - it gives us some meat for Ahsoka’s light intro, makes us care for the clones, and also makes sense that the Separatists would target Kamino early.

Totally agree. ABout the rest of your posts i can´t say anything right now. Have to read it first (inspiring and great amount of output)

Author
Time

Thanks. I don’t know if producing this many posts makes it a little hard to follow for people, but I suppose I’m focusing on each question/decision in isolation so at least they can be quoted if needed.

I wasn’t sure if posting this much would be valuable, or it it would come off as narcissistic. As someone who was a fan of fanedits for at least a decade before becoming an editor myself, I was always fascinated at the process behind the curtain, more so than just the outputs themselves. It inspired me to become an editor. So part of the reason I’m sharing so much is for those people who do find it interesting - and who might pick up editing in future (It’s fun! And easy to learn!). I also wanted to collect my thoughts, so if I’m not doing it here I’d be doing it somewhere else. And finally, of course, this way people can see for themselves and challenge the decisions, and it’s more likely to satisfy more people, including the audience who don’t participate in these forums but who still want the output.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

In my experience it’s just how these things get done. There’d be a sense of appeal to just emerge from underground with a cool thing, but collaborating opens up so many more possibilities. I think you should keep thinking out loud as much as needed.

My stance on revising fan edits.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Right, I’ve just run a one minute long clip through the full editing pipeline, from source, to conversion, to editing, to rendering. Just to see if I’d hit any snags. It’s all good news - conversion and rendering are lossless so we’re losing no quality or colour information. My editor is reading my 23.976fps converted file as 25fps and I’ll need to remind myself how to fix that issue (it’s common), and right now I’m not outputting the center channel in my render so we’re losing some audio, but that’s likely just a matter of settings - I don’t understand surround sound audio settings yet so I’ll upskill soon.

But the very good news is that, as Smudger9 informed me recently, there’s no music in the center channel. Editors of other sources will recognise this as a rare treat! When you’re editing, you have the video track, and one or more audio tracks - but usually voice and sound effects have music on their track, so if you’re trying to fix some simple dialogue for example, it can break the music in the background, and sound obvious. So it’s great to confirm that for the Clone Wars DVDs, the voice/soundFX is split from music/ambient. (Weirdly, it wasn’t perfect, in the clip I viewed there was one voice line in the music channel, but it looks rare.) This gives me way more flexibility for trimming and reordering dialogue, but also for changing dialogue (e.g. Moraband > Korriban).

I’ll muck about with those couple of issues, but this is looking good.

Plan now is to finish my watch through - probably tonight - then get to work on Cloak of Darkness / Lair of Grievous, because that episode is going to require all of the skills at my disposal, so it lets me refine them while sharing the content with you to get ideas together and collect feedback. Then I’ll probably take a breather, maybe watch over the series again in a preferred order, before starting the edits properly.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

I’d leave Moraband as is. I also have nostalgia for KOTOR, but if it comes up again in the new canon it’ll still be Moraband, and there’s no point confusing someone who doesn’t know about the change.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

EddieDean said:

Since we’re talking about a little reordering of episodes, I thought about the clone armour. The Phase I armour (which appears in episode 2) is used up until the Citadel/Mon Cala episodes, where it appears alongside the Phase II (which appears in episode 3), which then becomes the main armour.

Oddly, Phase II does appear in ARC Troopers (not a suprise, that was originally set a little later), but it also appears in Clone Cadets, which I thought was early in the war. I really think we need those episodes up first.

Canonically, the armour had a phased rollout, so I don’t personally have a problem with the idea that the Clone Army was launched in the Phase I armour, whilst they gradually upgraded the forces with Phase II throughout the clone wars, but I can understand if people have an issue with it.

We really should open with the Rookies arc though - it gives us some meat for Ahsoka’s light intro, makes us care for the clones, and also makes sense that the Separatists would target Kamino early.

I always got the idea that Phase II armor was worn only by ARC Troopers during the earlier half of the war and later spread to all the ranks in the clone army as the war progressed. For example, in the Citadel arc Fives and Echo, after they become ARC, are the only ones who have Phase II armor while all the non-ARC ones wear Phase I. So having the Domino Squad at the beginning of the series wouldn’t create any continuity issues.

Author
Time

Knight of Kalee said:

I always got the idea that Phase II armor was worn only by ARC Troopers during the earlier half of the war and later spread to all the ranks in the clone army as the war progressed. For example, in the Citadel arc Fives and Echo, after they become ARC, are the only ones who have Phase II armor while all the non-ARC ones wear Phase I. So having the Domino Squad at the beginning of the series wouldn’t create any continuity issues.

I think that’s the right interpretation, it feels like what they were implying by showing it in the Rookies arc.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

sade1212 said:

I’d leave Moraband as is. I also have nostalgia for KOTOR, but if it comes up again in the new canon it’ll still be Moraband, and that’s no point confusing someone who doesn’t know about the change.

I’m not sure - I think Korriban has more cultural weight even though Moraband has appeared in live action, so if I had to guess, I’d guess it’d reappear as Korriban, not Moraband. That said, it’s easy enough to revert if the canon/culture changes. There have been times before when editors have made a change to best suit interpretation but that they’ve later softened over time - much like with Hal’s more recent prequels which are more forgiving to the original material.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

S07E05-08 - Martez Sisters arc - Important - Mandalorian Cut

Introduction of the lovely Anakin model, so we can’t see him from a prior episode after this one.

An important episode, this- lots of nice heavy doubt from the ‘small people’ about the Jedi, a nice personal lesson for Ahsoka, and we put the big three final pieces of this edit in place for the finale.

Its good moments are good, though it does need a fairly heavy trim for pacing - almost all of the first episode can go, most of the second, and almost all of the third. And even the fourth can be tightened quite a bit.

The Martez sisters are fun, with some trimmable frustrations, but they really only serve Ahsoka, so she should be the focus here.

The big question is, is it worth getting rid of all of this so we can save the Ahsoka reveal until the finale? I think probably not, since most people know Ahsoka’s alive later anyway, and it’s a bit of a breather before the finale.

S05E09-12 - Siege of Mandalore - Vital - Mandalorian Cut

Obviously vital for all cuts as it’s the finale, and the momentum behind the restructure.

The “It’s been a while” moment will likely hit best if we have quite a few episodes without Ahsoka, so I might pad it with a few more episodes where she doesn’t appear. That said, I don’t want her out of the show for too long, since she’s the heart.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

What about the Bad Batch arc? I scrolled up and I can’t find it.

For a second when you put the Martez sisters arc as important I thought it was a joke. I honestly hated it. I don’t think I’ve ever been more exasperated while watching this show then when they dropped the spice. I thought for sure it would be excluded.

My Star Wars Fan-Edits

Author
Time

Yeah, I’ll be hitting over a couple of the more frustrating points quite quickly. There’ll only be one prison break, for one thing.

I haven’t reviewed Bad Batch or Crystal Crisis yet- I only had time to watch two arcs tonight so I thought I’d watch both Ahsoka ones back to back.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

EddieDean said:

Yeah, I’ll be hitting over a couple of the more frustrating points quite quickly. There’ll only be one prison break, for one thing.

Good to hear that! The arc was good on paper but it overstayed its welcome by the end.

Author
Time

Goddamn, that finale. What an amazing piece of work. Easily up there with the very best SW movies abd the best moments from the Mandalorian.

This whole project has to turn the show into the best path which takes us to that end.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time

I think the Martez sisters arc got a lot of undue hate for being dished out weekly over the course of a month while everyone was chomping at the bit for the Siege of Mandalore (separate from the absurd backlash to hairstyles with shaved bits). It made the slow pace and plot inefficiency very apparent, even though quite a few arcs are like that. Still, I’d be interested to see how much you can chop it down without feeling like it loses anything.

I think I liked it more than the Bad Batch arc. Clone Force 99 themselves are just clichés and the villains are back to being Season 1-3 tier. Anakin is fun, I suppose, with his secret rendezvous and tendency towards killing his enemies. It just doesn’t really feel at home where it is in the pacing of the series IMO, but Anakin’s long hair model forces it to be there, and since we now know that it was actually a backdoor pilot for the next animated series, I doubt you could drop it from any of your cuts.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

The sisters themselves aren’t that bad. A little annoying, sure, but not as bad as countless other, worse characters in both this series and franchise. I guess their worst “sin” is their plot-mandated idiot mistakes which contribute to the padding, rather than the concept of the characters themselves (how they challenge Ahsoka’s perception is one of the nicer elements of the arc). And also I remember many people were expecting arcs such as Son of Dathomir to be adapted, so quite a few were left underwhelmed it got excluded in favor of Bad Batch/Martez sisters.

Did people really hate them because of their haircuts? What a stretch, though after seeing similar unfounded criticism for sequel characters such as Rose or Holdo it doesn’t surprise me how toxic some people can be.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Bad Batch arc was fun, so I liked it.

My main problems with the sisters is that one of them was really annoying (she wouldn’t ever shut up about her ship to the point where it was beyond obnoxious; and again, literally the worst decision they could’ve made in that situation was dropping the freakin’ spice) and the arc dragged out for way too long. It felt like filler and nothing important was happening. And Knight said another reason why it bothers me: they legit neglected doing an animated Son of Dathomir or a Canon Invasion of Coruscant by Grievous to do… this. Those two would’ve been amazing and are stuff I’d actually like to see. The latter could’ve been a good opportunity to portray Grievous as an actual badass instead of a loser and it would’ve shown off the awesome new model they made for him too (speaking of putting good models to use, let’s just say I hope the ending of Clone Wars isn’t the last time we’ll see that Vader model). And I don’t need to explain why they should’ve adapted Son of Dathomir.

It wouldn’t bother me so much if they had more episodes and therefore were able to do those two arcs plus the three in the actual season, but limiting it to three arcs and choosing the Martez Sisters one over Son of Dathomir is just beyond stupid, especially since Son of Dathomir has LEGIT ACTUAL IMPORTANT PLOT DETAILS THAT ARE NEEDED IN ORDER FOR SIEGE OF MANDALORE AND THE END OF SEASON 5 TO MAKE SENSE. You shouldn’t have to read a comic book in order to understand the plot of the series. I have absolutely nothing against comic books (Vader comics are my favorite Star Wars thing Disney has put out period) but when making a series you need everything important to be in the series itself, not supplemental material. Anybody who doesn’t know that the Son of Dathomir comic exists will be left super confused by Season 5’s ending and then suddenly Maul is back running Mandalore in Season 7. Besides Son of Dathomir is incredible and deserves to be animated.

Like seriously, is it me or is all of the best new Star Wars stuff in the comics?

^ Case in point

People hated Rose and Holdo because Rose is an obnoxious, annoying hypocrite (zaps Finn for trying to abandon the resistance but then runs him over when he tries to save everyone, dooming them all) and Holdo is unreasonable, legit hides her plan from everyone for no reason (imagine if Mon Mothma in ROTJ just hid her plan from everyone and nobody knew what was going on; Han or Luke would have every right to try and prosecute her if her plan looked like it was going to get everybody killed. Or if in ANH Jan Dodonna only said “Just send a bunch of X-Wings out at the Death Star.” Of course people are going to rebel, it looks like you’re just incompetent and getting a bunch of people killed) and the “moral” of her hiding the plan from everybody else was dumb political stuff I won’t bring up because I don’t want this thread to become all political. Watch Vito’s video on The Last Jedi, it’s pretty much perfect. Sure people made fun of Holdo’s hair but that’s because they hated the character anyway for other reasons and were therefore prompted to make fun of her more, if she was a well written character they wouldn’t have done that. Like think about it, when you hate someone because of who they are as a person, you’re more likely to make fun of things like their appearance. It’s really that simple.

My Star Wars Fan-Edits

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Let’s keep TLJ chat out of this thread- it’s contentious, and has little bearing on the Clone Wars.

But I agree that the Martez sisters, while they do have some endearing traits and two lovely character models and animation, do repeat their more annoying traits a little too much, and both make some frustrating bad calls.

Oh, and regarding missing arcs: I’m still hoping that the bad batch TV show adapts the arc about Boba Fett Vs Cad Bane.

The Clone Wars: Refocused | Andor: Movie Omnibus

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Sorry, I didn’t mean to derail another good thread into the dark wasteland of TLJ/Holdo discussion with my haircut comment.

I’m pretty sure we got Bad Batch/Martez sisters because they were mostly done already, and the Siege of Mandalore needed most of whatever budget Disney was willing to provide for the new season. AFAIK we’ve never seen any early animation for Son of Dathomir, so it may have been nowhere near as far along in development as those two and thus financially unfeasible to finish. I don’t think Grievous invading Coruscant even got scripted. We did see early animation for the Boba vs Cad Bane, Dark Disciple, and the Crystal Crisis on Utapau arcs, so I speculate that they were also up for potentially being finished, but I can empathise with why Filoni/other relevant decision-makers picked the episodes they did. We know Bad Batch was a backdoor pilot now, and it gave us a bit on Rex, Echo and clonehood in general, as well as a chance for a final adventure with pre-Vader Anakin, and I presume Martez sisters was picked for a reason very similar to EddieDean’s philosophy here: focus on Ahsoka. I hope that the other arcs get animated one day but I can’t see any reason why Disney would possibly shell out the funding now that they’ve already cashed in on the ‘final season’ marketing hype and all.