The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] — Page 51

I’ll download them and use Plex. It was too bad, i was looking forward to settling down and watching one last night!

I passed this project along to someone I encountered through work who mentioned thinking about rewatching TCW but said, “But there’s no way I can do allll that again.”

Dissent on Umbara (s03e03), aggregating the whole Umbara arc, clocking in at 52:07, is nearly finished.

While I cut a lot, I feel like I haven’t really changed the plot at all, as this one contained a lot of redundancy or filler. I don’t think you’d miss the excised half hour at all.

Key edits:

• Throughout, I trimmed most of Krell’s hatred of Clones, making it seem (at least early on) more like he’s just a hardliner with extreme tactics.
• I massively trimmed the combat-heavy opening where Anakin’s leading the clones. Instead we get one scene of Anakin, Rex and Dogma, before Krell arrives to take over. Now the majority of the plot happens around the airbase.
• To streamline the early plot, I removed almost all fauna combat and almost all combat against Umbaran military hardware from the first couple of episodes. Also to streamline things, I only had Krell send the clones on one suicide mission (versus the walker tanks) rather than also in a straight line against the capital. You get all the key story beats this way, just in about a quarter of the time.
• I trimmed a little of the infiltration of the airbase as well as some of the surrounding combat and discussion.
• After the clones take the airbase, I trimmed some of the discussion there, most notably removing the scene where they test and crash the aircraft, because it doesn’t change the status quo.
• In the final episode, I preserved the majority of it, mainly just cutting down the hunt for Krell in the forest to remove his evil villain speech and to speed up his capture, while preserving a lot of his physical threat. I also slightly trimmed his jail dialogue to imply he’s already a Separatist rather than just doing this all on the hope he’ll get recognised.

I hope so! A lot of what I’ve cut is the nice shiny graphical stuff, because that was mainly the neon-on-black fauna and the neon-on-black Umbaran military hardware. And I can see people objecting to their removal even though they don’t carry any story. But there’s still loads of eye shiny to look at in this episode - the jungle, the tank fight, the aerial combat, the space combat, and then back to the jungle.

It’s taking a little longer to finalise for you guys because the audio is playing up. I think I’ve got some kind of memory or soundcard issue because while I was editing it the sound would turn off, and I’d have to play sound from another source to ‘reset’ it??? Either way, that carried across to the render, which is concerning, but I’m trying a fix now.

RELEASED - s03e03 - DISSENT ON UMBARA

Details as above, link in the tracker, PM for access!

S03E02 - Revival - is uploading now.
This was an easy one, with just two trims. I cut Palpatine’ sneer at the very end, since in TCW:R I don’t want it to be explicit that Palpatine is malevolent for the sake of a chronological watch.

The other trim was removing the references to Hondo’s base being damaged by Grievous. You may recall that due to my restructuring to make Maul more of a constant presence in this show, this particular episode (Revival) was the one which had the most impact on the plot when it was moved. Adi Gallia dies in it, which is fine since her other appearances are trimmable, and also Hondo’s base isn’t destroyed till the Younglings arc, which originally aired before this one. This was quite easy to fix - I just reference in the crawl that rival pirates have raided the base (explaining its destruction here), and then when we next see Hondo’s base in TCW:R I’ll explain that he’s rebuilt it with the funds stolen in this episode from Maul’s crashed ship, which we even see them recover.

This is the most radical change to the canon that my edit makes, and I think it’s very minor for such a high reward (that of Maul’s constant wildcard presence). I’d hope you’ll all agree!

I’d like to have given this episode a different name, because nothing in this episode relates to the concept of revival in any way, but I don’t feel like I have the right to rename episodes when they’re basically as-is.

Next up I’m going to quickly release a version of Assassin which removes the scene I’ve used elsewhere (even though Assassin isn’t one of the recommended episodes in my Quality Cut), then a little polish to the end of season two before I’m on to s03e04 - A Friend in Need.

RELEASED - S03E02 - REVIVAL

Details as above, link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM for access!

Hal 9000 said:

I passed this project along to someone I encountered through work who mentioned thinking about rewatching TCW but said, “But there’s no way I can do allll that again.”

I started rewatching the Clone Wars in July of 2019, almost done with Season 5 lol

Hmm. I’m just coming to polish up my s02e05b Assassin. Much like Lightsaber Lost, this isn’t one of my Quality Cut episodes (my ‘recommended TCW:R canon’) but it is one that I’ll include for people who want as much SW as they can get, whetever the quality. I used a scene from Assassin in my Corruption on Mandalore episode, so I’ve trimmed that out of this version so the two episodes don’t clash, and that’s basically all I planned to do here.

But I’m faced now with a dilemma. Ziro the Hutt doesn’t appear in any version of TCW:R now, with all of his episodes either relegated to being completely ignored, or in a couple of places chopped up for spare parts and used elsewhere, like my Cad Bane arc. But Assassin ends with the reveal that Ziro was behind it all.

I have two options here:

1. Just end on Ahsoka’s return to Coruscant and the beat of “we don’t know who did this”, with some context in the opening text to vaguely imply Padmé’s many enemies (which’ll be developed later in my s03e01 The Politics of War episode) EDIT: I’m going with this one
2. Maintain the Ziro ending, but have him not appear before or after this episode, so he’s implicitly just some minor criminal with a grudge. I could use the intro text to give a bit of that, though getting explicit would give away the ‘reveal’ and it wouldn’t be very impactful.

I don’t mind too much either way, since this isn’t an important episode to my edit, it’s just one I’m including as a bonus for people who already know they like this one.

What do you guys think?

I’ve just started watching and am a few “episodes” in. Really am enjoying it so far.

I have a few things of note though that I’m not crazy about.

In the first episode where ahsoka is introduced, I find the the bail organa scenes feel to me very out of place compared to e everything else.

Also a mino personal preference complaint for the rookies set if episodes, I like all the changes that were made, but I personally miss the droids asking if they take prisoners and heavy saying “I don’t”. I normally am not crazy about one liners like that, but for there I think it fits.

RogueLeader said:

I like option 1 a lot more. I think the ambiguity would give viewers something to chew on.

Yeah, I think that’s probably cleanest, especially since we do return to Padmé quite soon after this episode.

Peonthegrate said:

I’ve just started watching and am a few “episodes” in. Really am enjoying it so far.

I have a few things of note though that I’m not crazy about.

In the first episode where ahsoka is introduced, I find the the bail organa scenes feel to me very out of place compared to e everything else.

Also a mino personal preference complaint for the rookies set if episodes, I like all the changes that were made, but I personally miss the droids asking if they take prisoners and heavy saying “I don’t”. I normally am not crazy about one liners like that, but for there I think it fits.

A few people have mentioned that about Bail, I think I’ll try a no-Bail version.

Noted on the Domino Squad trilogy, I’ll think over that scene some more.

Keep it coming! 😃

Oh boy, such usable feedback! Thanks so much guys.

Assassin (without Ziro, leaving the ending ambiguous) is uploading now. Then I’m going to do A Friend in Need, since that should be fairly easy, then work through all of the feedback to date. We should get a good burst of activity these next couple of weeks.

T-202 said:

I was watching The Blockade of Ryloth and noticed at around the 29 minute mark the audio is very out of sync with the visuals, It happened on both my laptop and phone.

I’ll check that, thanks.

djonesed said:

corruption on mandalore is labeled s02e05 and v1.0 in the spreadsheet but the linked file is named s02e04…(v0.1)?

Yes, I’ve decided to reorder those (just to better spread Ahsoka’s presence across the season) but haven’t got round to actually doing it yet. I’ll make that all clear in a specific post for it soon - probably with a bit of reordering to season one too, based on the earlier about developing Ventress.

Imhotep, I won’t give a detailed response to each of your points, suffice to say they’re all noted and I’ll run through them with my polish pass, but to be specific about a couple:

• I’ll do something extra with the bomb droids
• I’ll slightly switch up the imagery whilst Padmé walks alone
• Nice idea Imhotep (and Artan!) on the Tekla dialogue reordering.
• I know what you mean about Pursuit of Peace, I liked some of the drier politics too, but I think generally they’d put people off and that we probably should be a bit more punchy.
• I think I’ll stick with the truncated start to Umbara, even though those early fights are pretty, mainly because popcorn isn’t true sustenance! Since they’re the only real content cut, I figure that if someone really objected, they’d probably prefer the entire original quadrilogy over my edit.

RELEASED - s02e05-B - ASSASSIN

This is not part of my Quality Cut, which is my recommended way to watch the series. Instead this episode is just part of the Complete Cut, for people who want everything except for the most objectionable content. I’ve edited this episode now because I stole one of its scenes to use in a more important episode in my Quality Cut, so I’ve trimmed it out here just so the two episodes don’t clash. I also trimmed the ending with Ziro the Hutt since he doesn’t appear anywhere else in TCW:R, so instead it ends on ambiguity as to who’s behind the assassination. But since in my s03e01 we see how many political enemies she has, we can simply assume it’s one of them.

Link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access to the tracker.

My s03e04 - A Friend in Need is also done and rendering right now!

Don’t have much to say but I recently watched a few episodes and appreciate having this series, WIP though it be.

Released - s03e04 - A Friend in Need

This is the first episode I’ve not edited in the slightest other than adding all of my usual opening and closing content, so I’m crediting myself only as ‘presented by’. I did think about trimming the R2D2 droid stuff, but it’s good body horror and it’s the good side of plucky/noble R2.

Great episode though, tying our season three opener to the ongoing Mandalorian plot.

Link in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access to the tracker.

I’m going to do the Maul Shadow Collective episode next as it’s another low-to-no edit and I’ve got the wind in my sails.

Hal 9000 said:

Don’t have much to say but I recently watched a few episodes and appreciate having this series, WIP though it be.

There’s never any pressure to review if you don’t want to, but I’m curious what a new viewer’s thoughts about the existing episodes would be! What’s strong? What’s weak? How’s it pulling together as a whole?