The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 74

Here’s another little clip from the episode Mortis: Oops! All dream-speak!

I wanted to remove the Father’s references to real geography (“nowhere to go”) and replace them with something far more metaphorical, but which still transitioned into him sending Anakin to bed. The following Anakin-Father scene is WAY too explicit with the Father talking about how real they are, so is going to be cut entirely, but some of its dialogue, chopped up and reordered, made a nice segue into Anakin’s bedtime, with more dreamlike logic to it.

inmyslumber said:

Just a heads up that in the tracker, S02E08 and E09 both link to E09 and S02E10 links to E09. Links seem fine for S03 onwards, but it means S02E10 isn’t there.

Good spot!

They were the right episodes, just with out of date numbers in their title.

Fixed now!

Good progress on Mortis today!

It all feels good when executed as planned in my previous big post - removing explanations allows it to flow naturally with its own dreamlike logic even without being too clear about what’s going on. While light and dark characters remain clear, the father appears more of a passive guide who resides in a way station than a metaphor for balance.

• I’ve changed more dialogue than I was expecting, to decent effect I feel. Most visions and interactions with the Family are changed to some degree, and I think their conversations are nice and meaningful without being explicit.
• I’ve reordered the early set of visions. Now, Qui-Gon warns Obi-Wan that Anakin needs to find the balance before he encounters Father (and gets sent to bed). And then, Ahsoka meets Ahsoka, waking up fearing for Anakin, before we return to Anakin’s encounter with his mother. It just flows a bit more nicely than the originals.
• I’ve used Anakin’s meeting with Qui-Gon later, to lead Anakin to the ‘dark place’ where he’ll fight dark Ahsoka.
• I’ve not used the scene of Ahsoka being bitten by the Son to become dark, instead relying on her scene with her future self where she’s warned of Anakin’s dark influence. I moved a lovely shot of fire burning in Ahsoka’s eyes during the dialogue where future Ahsoka warns her of the dark within. I think that’ll carry us into dark Ahsoka just fine.

I just need to work on the couple of ending fights now, then I’ll do a pass of un-used dialogue to see if any’s worth salvaging, then it’s just a thorough audio transitions test and finalisation. I’d like to get this right, but I hope to have this finished this week. I’m excited to share it!

RogueLeader said:

Eddie, are music and dialogue pretty separate in the audio tracks? I’m guessing they must be if you’re able to rearrange dialogue fairly well. I’m curious if this would make restoring also feasible (you may have done this already in past episodes and I’ve forgotten/missed it).

Yep, aside from a couple of earlier episodes it’s all nice and separate. Often with echoes there’s residual voice in the other channels, but it’s rare enough.

Rescoring is totally feasible. I’ve done it lightly in a couple of places. Doing it in a major way is something I considered, though it would triple the time it takes me to complete each episode. It’s definitely something I’d consider when I’m all done, or if someone else wanted to experiment I’d be interested.

CMMAP said:

EddieDean said:

Here’s another little clip from the episode Mortis: Oops! All dream-speak!

I laughed hard at the rhym 😄 Well done.

Right?! And it’s a good metaphor too. Is he talking about tonight on his weird planet, or in the galaxy as a whole? I’ve kept a lot of dialogue that has dual meanings like that.

Oh MAN you guys, the Mortis episode is rendering now! I’m SO excited to share this one! This one was so much fun to make.

See if you can guess the new title. (It’s not ‘At the Crossroads’, my original idea.) It’s both perfectly fitting and a great pun.

RELEASED - S04E02 - The Living Force (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION.
• Our second episode of season four.
• Comprising the original episodes Overlords, Altar of Mortis, and Ghosts of Mortis
• Running 31 minutes.
• DOWNLOAD LINK is in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.
• Note: It’s recommended that you download this before watching, rather than streaming it directly from Google Drive.

This is a radical edit of the Mortis trilogy.

I recommend that you watch this episode without reading the following description at all. It is better experienced completely fresh, free from expectation.

…

I had a few major issues with the original story that I wanted to completely change. I felt that the arc was way too explicit about what the Mortis Gods were - real people with real powers that could threaten the Galaxy - whilst also having them be the most on-the-nose, blunt, heavy-handed metaphors for the Force. You can’t have it both ways, because the material conflict is cheapened if the spiritual/metaphorical world can have this level of influence.

Similarly, the planet they’re on seemed to struggle with the same dichotomy: It’s both a real planet in real space and a force nexus with shifting geography and seasons, and it’s inside a space pyramid, and the things that happen there can affect the Galaxy, and they ride around the magical planet on mundane speeder bikes. Again, pick a lane.

I also objected to some major sequences. Having Anakin demonstrate that he’s the literal balance by overpowering the literal lightside and literal darkside was many steps too far for me, and showing Anakin (and the audience) his future (including the destruction of Alderaan and the Vader mask) was both again way too overt, and in the story quite worthless as he literally gets that memory taken away. Likewise, the plot of the Son actually wanting to escape makes uncomfortable implications to the canon, and goes nowhere.

Anyway, I have sought to remedy these things aggressively. If we have to choose what the Mortis Gods are, then like other visions in the canon, they are tests, trials, messages, visions, metaphors, lessons, dream-speak from the Force. Mortis cannot be a real space - it is a dreamscape or vision quest within a force nexus, like the Dagobah cave.

But let’s talk about what’s good in the original episodes! There are some great visions, conversations with ghosts, and mystical nonsense. They all stay. The arc’s most important addition to the canon is Ahsoka’s final interaction with the Daughter, since in future media (including the Mandalorian) she’s sometimes accompanied by Morai.

That element, of Ahsoka and Daughter, drove the shape of the rest of the content and conclusion. It requires that we see the conflict between the Family and the others, so I retained all of the major beats of that conflict.

The major change required to make all of the above work, which affected almost every scene and conversation, was to turn the entirety of the plot into essentially an extended, shared, Dagobah cave vision sequence. The Mortis Gods have been stripped of almost all agency - they are now metaphors made manifest within the dreamscape, like Luke in Vader’s mask from ESB. They exist as guides and trials - until the third act conflict, which empowers them, making them mirrors of our main characters and the forces that surround them. They essentially then grow into performers of a morality play, showing our characters what their actions will cause on the Galactic stage if allowed to play out. The story then, at least, has a full dreamlike narrative - even if not a literal, perfectly logical one.

Oh, and having Qui-Gon’s ghost appear in this arc gave me a lot I could play up - skip the next section if you want more suprises.

Noteworthy changes:

• Regarding placement, this episode feels like it belongs late in the series, at the time of mystery and darkness. Placed here, with the Ahsoka content, it leads very nicely into the next Ahsoka-focused episode (Ahsoka’s Fall, which will also hopefully be made more meaningful with my plans for the following Scipio arc.)
• The episode is titled ‘The Living Force’, for the Qui-Gon connection and because it’s a great pun. It’s also a gentle jab at how ham-fisted and clumsy the original arc was, which I can’t resist.
• The opening crawl reminds us of the Chosen One prophecy (which I’m not a fan of, but this episode is all about that so we might as well lean in), and Qui-Gon’s position as an outsider Jedi and supporter of Anakin. We then recontextualise the original distress signal as explicitly Qui-Gon’s, because I’m heavily playing up his involvement.
• Speaking of which, Qui-Gon is all over this. I got extremely lucky with a bunch of lines from a vision of child Anakin and Qui-Gon from the Tartakovsky miniseries (which I’m not otherwise using in my edit of this show or that one). The lines fit perfectly in a good number of places, and I’ve used them to have Qui-Gon more explicitly involved in the plot, perhaps as its instigator. There’s also a secret Qui-Gon line which I’d be interested to know if anyone spots, with a fun bonus implication.
• References to the planet as a real place have been minimised, to keep it dreamlike. Through the scenes I’ve chosen to cut, there’s now no time spent flying, crashing, or repairing the ship, or riding around on speeder bikes, to also keep it dreamlike.
• Dialogue implying that the Mortis Gods have their own agency have been minimised (until they start to reflect our characters), to also also keep them dreamlike. They almost never talk amongst themselves when our main characters aren’t there.
• Main characters notice the weirdness but question it a lot less, also like a dream.
• Mortis Gods give our main characters far more ambiguous explanations for things. I made certain that there’s a valid metaphorical interpretation for every line of Mortis God dialogue - so like with David Lynch, everything “makes sense” whether the audience understands it or not.
• Before coming to the planet, Anakin has a dream of meeting the Son, to cement him and his conflict with the Dark as the central character and conflict of this story (and because that scene has explicitly dreamlike VFX).
• They are taken to the ‘planet’ via white light instead of seeing the space diamond.
• Reordered some of the visions, mainly for flow and a little extra tension. Anakin’s mother isn’t the Son, that’s left ambiguous (like Han in TROS), though I use some Qui-Gon dialogue to imply it’s an important test/message.
• I removed the scene of Son-gremlin biting Ahsoka to turn her dark - instead she goes dark after the warning from her future self in her vision, and I used a gorgeous shot of her with fire in her eyes to help sell this transition.
• Using the scene where Daughter and Son in beast forms grab Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, we bypass some unwanted content to get Obi-Wan and Daughter to the dagger (which has a valid metaphor that works for how it’s wielded in this episode if you look closely!) and get Ahsoka and Son to the top of Son’s tower for Anakin’s trial.
• I used the scene of Qui-Gon (in ghost form) talking to Anakin to guide him to Son’s tower, instead of to the well of the dark side.
• I quite heavily recut the conflict between Anakin/Ahsoka and Daughter/Son to imply that D/S are empowered by A/A’s conflict. Now, as each of the ‘real’ characters act, their mirror characters act in a similar way, with growing intensity.
• We transition from Anakin using Daughter’s life force on Ahsoka into Anakin waking up at Father’s temple. (Father’s dialogue helps this work just fine.) I’ve had to trim a little of the emotional response to Ahsoka’s resurrection out of necessity, but hey, it’s all a dream now so we don’t need to linger.
• Removed: Anakin isn’t challenged by Father to choose light versus dark (his other actions during this episode prove he’s the Chosen One). He’s not expected to remain on Mortis. The main characters don’t leave, Ahsoka doesn’t get captured, and they don’t return and crash-land then have to repair the ship. Son doesn’t plot to kill Father, and Father doesn’t mourn Daughter for long (they’re not real people!) Son doesn’t show Anakin his future nor does Anakin turn dark before having his memory erased. Son doesn’t want to leave Mortis.
• I hope you like it when the screen fades to white and then a character wakes up confused, because the original did that twice and I’ve added two more!

Anyway, this was an absolute blast to produce. I really disliked the original episode but I think I’ve managed to make something I really enjoy, which hits all of the core beats in a completely new way that feels like it fits a lot better with the canon. I hope you all enjoy it too!

Onward to another great Maul episode, where shit goes DOWN.

I’ve caught up on this thread now, and I’m so excited to watch your Mortis episode. It’s my favourite episode of TCW, and it honestly sounds like you’ve significantly improved it! I’ve been holding off watching TCWR until it was all completed and I had time to watch it, but maybe now is the time to start slowly watching through them. I’m pretty excited.

RogueLeader said:

Eddie, what you’ve done with this episode is brilliant. Watching it I couldn’t even remember what had been cut. It doesn’t necessarily feel like anything is missing.

Thanks so much! I’m really stoked that you enjoyed it. I was really hoping it would work for you guys.

First, some suggestions…

I’ll look into those.

• I can probably extend the opening out of hyperspace, I’m sure I can find the right audio.
• Likewise I can probably do a little more with the introduction to Daughter/Obi-Wan going to the altar. I deliberately put Qui-Gon’s “Trust in the force” late in the prior scene as if it’s slightly hanging over this one, but I don’t think that quite lands. I’ll see what I can source.
• I’ll also think about a clean introduction for Daughter in her conversation with Son.
• I’m not sure about changing lightsaber colours. I always found “Red=Dark” too on the nose, it’s not part of Star Wars’ original language. The death star laser was green, TIE fighter lasers were green, X-Wing lasers were red, force lightning was blue. It was only Vader’s lightsaber that was red originally, and later other Sith. Even in more modern content it’s not always used - the Nightsisters’ magics are green, for example. So I don’t feel like we always need to use that shorthand. (For the same reason, I wish Son didn’t use red lightning - in fact I’d be more inclined to change that to blue.) I also feel like Ahsoka’s not explicitly Sith here, so much as ‘corrupted by the dark’, which is a subtly different distinction. And I don’t have a problem with Son’s tower being green, for the same reason. That said, I also don’t know how to palette shift a single moving component, so I would be very interested to learn how to do that.
• I agree that the resurrection-to-awakening transition is a little too quick. I’ll see if I can let it breathe a little more.

I also was confused about how exactly you used the fireplace eyes shot of Ahsoka. Could you explain that a little more? I may have just missed it.

This relates to Ahsoka’s vision of her future self. I moved an extreme close-up shot of Ahsoka with fire in her eyes to match the dialogue where future-Ahsoka says “There’s a wildness to you little one. Seeds of the darkside planted by your master.” It’s subtle but cute.

I’m still trying to figure out the secret Qui-Gon line you’re referring to! I thought it might be “control your fear” before he sees his mother, but you mentioned that so I guess it isn’t it. Also, did you add something to that voice? Because at first it almost sounded like the Father. Which would raise some interesting questions. Is this a test from Qui-Gon, or from the Father, and Qui-Gon is simply guiding Anakin through the Father’s test? Or, is this all something Qui-Gon has put together to help them through what’s to come? Or, Qui-Gon just guided them to this place (a place he may have once visited himself) and let the Force take it from there? I may have just misheard the voice thing, but I like the mystery of it all.

Secret answer:

So you’ve kind of come round to the same curious implication via an unintended path! The secret line I’ve added is very subtle - at the very end, when Father says “You are the chosen one”, I had Qui-Gon deliver exactly the same line at the same time, so you’re actually hearing both voices. As if when Father accepts it, Qui-Gon’s getting his confirmation too. Is Qui-Gon the Father? Was Father Qui-Gon’s test made manifest? Is Qui-Gon puppeting this entire scenario? Or is he simply witnessing this as Father does? (As an aside, rather than having Father represent balance, as he more explicitly does in the original, I quite like implying here that he’s simply ‘The Force’, and his children are his aspects - the light side of the force, etc. Then his metaphorical death (which more literally happens when Vader kills Palpatine) is later followed by a movie which explicitly states “The Force (re)Awakens”.)

I don’t think this is what you were referencing, but before Anakin enters the Son’s lair, do you have Qui-Gon say, “Take only what you take with you.”? Kind of awkwardly worded but I think it works. Since to me, Qui-Gon’s not talking about what he’s physically carrying, but what he’s emotionally carrying. And this could imply that the darkness within him is what has corrupted Ahsoka, and not the Son. BUT, if the Son is simply a manifestation of Anakin’s own darkness anyway, it’s one in the same.

Yes, that’s the line. I had “-only what you take with you”, so had to use that line’s “take” twice to make a full sentence. I’d prefer a “bring”. (It maybe could become “Trust only what you take with you”?? Would tie in with the earlier line “Anakin will not be easy to deceive.”) It’s definitely the weakest of the added Qui-Gon lines, but your interpretation is what I was going for. I liked one interpretation that “what you take with you” includes the darkness within Ahsoka, since that comes from Anakin’s influence.

Speaking of which, I’m not sure how you interpreted the dagger metaphor, but I took it like this:

The dagger is a metaphor for self-sacrifice. I don’t think Obi-Wan understands this until he sees the Daughter jump in the way to save her father, and then sacrifice the rest of her life force to save Ahsoka. To me, this foreshadows Obi-Wan eventually sacrificing himself to not only save Luke, but transfer “hope” from himself to Luke. I think this is touched on with the “There is no hope” and “There’s always hope!” lines.

That’s absolutely valid! I think there are a lot of options here. For me-

The dagger is Obi-Wan training Anakin as Qui-Gon would have wanted. If Obi-Wan had done that, Ahsoka wouldn’t have inherited Anakin’s darkness (he first wants to use the dagger to “cut her free”). Then at the point where he throws it to Anakin (attempts to give Anakin the training he needs to overcome his darkness), his darkness (Ahsoka in this scenario, perhaps implying Anakin’s persistent attachment issues) catches it and hands it to the Son, representing Anakin’s full corruption. From therein, it represents Obi-Wan’s failiure and Anakin’s Vader persona - it kills the light, and then the balance, so that Anakin (himself, without the blade, redeemed from the dark) can finally kill the dark. (In the real-world scenario, Ahsoka ultimately managed to escape influencing Anakin to the dark, but his attachment to Padmé was the alternate attachment which still led him astray.)

I do wish there was a way to make it clearer that Obi-Wan is getting something from [the dagger] moment. Like, a close up of him observing what’s happening would be nice, but the only sort of close up is when he is shielding his face from the light. Like when the screen goes white, hear Obi-Wan say, “I… understand”, but that might be too on the nose.

That would be nice, but I think it’s best if our characters don’t fully understand what they’ve seen yet. Obi-Wan still needs to go through his failure and find inner peace before he is able to truly commune with Qui-Gon again. And the characters will still ultimately act out much of what they have seen today - it’s only Ahsoka who manages to sever herself from this implied fate. For example, I deliberately placed the most ‘explanatory’ Qui-Gon lines over Anakin sleeping/waking, so they can be remembered or forgotten by him at the viewer’s discretion.

That’s what I love about what you’ve done with this episode. These interpretations were arguably already there, but now they aren’t bogged down by all the other stuff with them trying to get off the planet and what not.

And I think the question of “Balance” benefits the most from what you’ve done with this episode. With the way it ends, there is clear analogy being made to the morality play the Mortis gods depict, and what Anakin eventually does to bring “balance” as George laid it out.

It’s funny, because I think this edit simultaneously simplifies the message, but also, through vagueness, increases the mystery. I could go on more about what I got from this episode but I’ll stop my long post for now. Great job, Eddie!

Exactly! Many of the metaphors were absolutely as written by George/Dave/Christian Taylor, but muddied by a lack of focus and an unnecessary need to hand the viewer too much. It should have been an episode that had people questioning it for years on forums afterwards, arguing about the interpretation of this or that line or action.

(Though, it is kind of fun trying to work out the “true” interpretation when the real answer is “I cobbled some of this together from nonsense”!)

One question though - how did you find the additional Qui-Gon lines? Ultimately a value-add?

Thanks so much for your analysis!

CaptainFaraday said:

I’ve caught up on this thread now, and I’m so excited to watch your Mortis episode. It’s my favourite episode of TCW, and it honestly sounds like you’ve significantly improved it! I’ve been holding off watching TCWR until it was all completed and I had time to watch it, but maybe now is the time to start slowly watching through them. I’m pretty excited.

Thanks, Faraday! I really hope you enjoy it. If I remember right, you were one of the strong voices in support of me keeping this episode back when I announced plans to remove it, so thank you very much for your encouragement!

RogueLeader said:
Yes, the additional Qui-Gon bits totally help increase his presence, and it adds to the sense that he is guiding them through this.

Awesome!

Could you just push that line “Trust in the Force” to the shot of Obi-Wan walking with the Daughter? I think I recall that line not being totally necessary for the previous scene, but it benefits Obi-Wan’s lack of questioning.

I could do! I could move it later, so the conversation goes:
Obi-Wan: “I don’t understand.”
Daughter: “When you reach the altar, it will give you what you need.”
Qui-Gon: “Trust in the force.”
This way, it helps justify Obi-Wan essentially being given a useless response by Daughter, though it doesn’t solve the issue at hand.

I think “Take only what you take with you” line does work, but it might be worth playing with alternatives. Maybe cobble together Anakin saying something like, “What’s there?”

I like this, I’ll give that a crack.

Didn’t notice the secret line! Nice touch, I’m glad I came to a similar conclusion.

Oh, another suggestion! I wonder if you could squeeze in Ahsoka saying, “Master!” when Anakin wakes up.

Yes, this is a good shout, I’ll try to do that.

Yup, totally makes sense! I’ll see what my options are.

That’s completely awesome to hear Rogue, I love hearing stuff like this. Your Dad sounds great.

I did want to mention that I think I saw a rogue frame during the scene where Dooku hires the bounty hunters. You may have already noticed that and saving it for your next polish export.

Which episode/rough time was this?