(The Mandalorian+BoBF) The Way of Mandalore | A New Mandalore Movie Saga (Final Update in Progress) — Page 27

TheDimitrios said:

Always good to see this is making progress!

Regarding Bad Batch I hope we get a show that follows up on those plot lines. If Barris happens to be in it as well, there could be a nice way to do a Dark Times fan edit of BB, TotE and that new show.
Fingers crossed.

Honestly, a film or two of “The Dark Times” based on some animated plot lines with TotE and TBB might be pretty cool. Would be a hell of a task to pull off, but I do think it’s possible to have a movie or two about the Republic --> Empire transition that doesn’t solely focus on TBB squad. Something to mull over perhaps. Want to keep focus on TWoM here, but feel free to post in my TBB thread if you have other thoughts on a structure for that.

Final update, I have been working with a professional artist on slightly updating the logo for this series and creating a very well-designed movie poster for it as well. Not necessary of course, but I have put so many hours into this project over the years, it felt appropriate to create that for the final release coming soon.

Darth Sadifous said:

I know I would like to personally see a “completed” book five while you tinker with book six if you don’t mind. I think we all understand it may not be the final “product”. However, release things when you are ready and let us know if you need any suggestions in terms of structure or what not for book six. Anyways enjoy the rest of your weekend and may the force be with you!

I think I can manage to get Book 5 ready for release soon. It’s just one scene I can’t say I’m 100% certain on yet, but it might just be a couple of lines of dialogue I’ll change in the future so I’m going to move forward with prepping for release.

I needed a new local storage drive to contain all my files, and unfortunately, I messed up some of my source footage placement… I don’t believe I deleted anything permanently, I just didn’t realize where certain files were linked from and I “lost” them on the drive. As in I simply can’t find them. One of Boba’s segments I forgot I had exported separately and then reimported, so I’m trying to reconnect everything. I definitely needed more space and better organization, so this new drive was necessary, but I have been recently tied up trying to relink everything.

Other than that, not a ton of new updates on Book 6. The only major news to share is that I am now leaning toward once again cutting Dr. Pershing’s content. This movie is just getting too busy, and his story is such a distraction (though it’s individually well done) and every time I’ve reviewed an Act, it always interrupts the flow of the Mandalorians. By Book 6, I have too many characters as-is that need satisfying conclusions. Din, Boba, Bo-katan, and Grogu all get a spotlight in this movie, so to introduce Dr. Pershing AND conclude him here… It’s too much. I am heavily leaning toward cutting it, especially considering this movie is trending ~3 hours already, adding him in there is holding back the flow of the main characters. I may release the mini-film of his episodes as we’ve discussed here before.

Other than that, I have completed audio on a couple of previous scenes, but the next step is an intense dive into the Battle of Mandalore. I have to analyze this thing from top to bottom and see what I can do with it. Disappearing fleets, a base layout that shatters the space-time continuum, and plant-filled symbolic caves, oh my!

PS: What did you think of Tales of the Jedi/ Empire?

I disliked it. Episode 4 and the beginning of 5 were great, Grevious and Thrawn looked good, but other than that… Big no from me. Don’t want to bog down this thread as it’s off topic but I posted my review here: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Tales-of-the-Empire/id/116495/page/1#1588394

Hope The Acolyte is good! I haven’t read any of the High Republic material, so going in pretty blind. The marketing material has been hit and miss for me, but excited to give it a fair chance.

Hey, folks! I have successfully recovered and relinked everything from my SSD upgrade and drive reorganization. Nothing was lost and the project is back in action. As I began structuring the Battle of Mandalore, I made the Executive decision to cut Dr. Pershing. I put a lot of work into that episode so I still plan to release it sometime, might be a good “short film” watch to do between Books 5 & 6 in the future. But I desperately needed the runtime and it was way throwing off the pacing in general, so I feel much better about keeping Book 6 either right at or under 3 hours now. Going back into “full-scale” editing mode next week to get back to finishing this saga!

I will bounce back and forth between finalizing the Special Editions of the earlier books (this is simply enhancing SFX, double-checking colors, and adding Mando’a/consistent story elements as I alter Book 6), re-releasing Book 5 to match the events of Book 6, and completing Act 3 of Book 6 so I can prepare for the final release. Still waiting on some elements from the other artist I previously mentioned, so I want to tie at least the final Book 6 release into that and call this project COMPLETE! … at least until 2026.

In the meantime, if anyone has thoughts on how to improve Mando S3 E07 & E08 (the final two episodes), the time to share is now. Will be going frame by frame through everything over the next couple of weeks and completing this edit. So let me know if you have general or specific ideas for improvement. Once I have a solid game plan, I’ll drop my big-picture idea for it here as well.

Finally, I have gotten a few DMs about if I’m going to do an Acolyte edit. I will say, maybe. I think the show is begging for one, and I’m sure at least a dozen other people are going to jump in the mix to do it. So it depends on the timing, my interest as the season goes on, and if anyone else steps up to execute the same ideas I’ve had for it. I know I don’t want to touch it until we see more of the show’s episodic structure between the past and present because flashbacks could really change the plans in my head for it all. If you’re interested in my thoughts or reviews about the show, I have been writing detailed reviews of its lore and cinematic attributes here: Episodes 1/2, Episode 3.

Patali said:
Book 2 remains my favorite movie. To me it feels the most like a single movie rather than several TV episodes put together. I say that with love, I’ve watched your first 4 films and think they are all the best way to enjoy these series. But it seems, if you’re keeping almost all of the different plots as you’ve done, that it is a feeling that is impossible to get away from entirely. Book 2 did the best IMO.

I remember you saying that from your initial reviews! That is very interesting, I love that perspective. Personally, I would say it’s my least favorite of my films, but it’s definitely the most unique/individualized out of them all so it makes sense that some would prefer it based on its structure. I agree that in order to make the other films more “movie-like” rather than still feeling somewhat episodic, I would have to cut a lot more content. I could definitely make them all feel like movies, but I think that would bring the series down to ~4 movies instead, and to me, it always feels bad when TV shows are cut down way too much into movies because the character development is so slow in TV shows, I never feel like I’ve connected as I do in movies that are designed to function around that timeframe.

Will be really interested to hear what you think of Book 6 eventually, as it’s structured similarly to Endgame where it doesn’t have a standard movie structure, but rather it’s a long-form sequence of connected building events that culminates in a final battle.

BOBA: I am Boba Fett.
FENNEC: Boba Fett is dead.
BOBA: I was.
CUT

I think that “I was.” line is great. And when you cut out the cringy “left for dead on the sands” and leave it just as “I was.” I feel it implies something greater, like Boba isn’t just referring to the Sarlacc and Jabba’s palace, but even more that he is saying “I was.” as in his whole life from when his father died, that moment in the opening. He was dead inside until he found his new family. It says a lot with two words, and through the magic of editing turns a cringy line into great writing.

Awesome! I love this idea. I will double check the delivery of the line and its tone to make sure it works in my edit, but I’m all for it on paper. Makes a lot of sense thematically. Thanks for the suggestion. As I go through all of the Special Edition edits, I’ll be referring back to your reviews of each movie too, so thanks again for writing those.

milkbundt said:

These all sound amazing! Could you please share a link with me? Thank you so much!

Sent! Would love to hear your thoughts after you watch.

Book 6 update:

I’m ~50% through my first pass of edits on the Battle of Mandalore. It’s a doozy! There is so much going on that is horrendously paced, so I don’t yet have enough to fully share the plan. I’m trying to break down everything in chunks to see what the various elements of the battle there are so I can restructure the whole thing. Currently, I have listed:

Arrival on Mandalore & entry into the base - I am planning on completely altering the whole “native Mandalorians” plotline. I thought it was incredibly distracting and added very little other than some cool-looking primitive armor sets. But overall, very forgettable characters that were tacked on at the last second and given a ton of forced dialogue. I am hoping to reframe all of this as occurring on Nevarro BEFORE they leave for Mandalore. The whole dinner and “boat” journey will act as an Intertribal council/Landsmeet where the various leaders intend to settle their differences and get on the same page before liberating Mandalore. Thankfully, the wastes of Nevarro look quite similar to the nothingness of the Volume setpiece of Mandalore… So with some crops and color grading, I think this might work, but not 100% sure yet. Might have to call an audible and replace it on Mandalore.

Ambushed by Beskar Imperials - Reframing this as our Mandalorians are overwhelmed and pushed back further into the base rather than the show presenting it where they absolutely annihilate the ambush and choose to go deeper.

Trapped by Gideon and Paz’s Last Stand - Restructuring everything here to make it actually make sense why Paz sacrifices himself.

Axe Flies to Space - This one is tough because Axe bails in the initial ambush, and he flies to orbit for SO long. It’s incredibly jarring every time we cut back to him in this plotline. Haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to handle this whole plotline of the TIEs attacking the capital ship just as Axe sends down reinforcements. I can guarantee you that I am not leaving it in the same order/context as the show though, it was extremely poorly executed there.

Bo-Katan Hides while Waiting for Reinforcements - I think it’s incredibly dumb how her squad enters the base, then exits the base and flies to a cave, then flies all the way back to the base and enters again. All the while… We have no idea what the Imperials are doing. Din is randomly wandering around and 1v1,000’ing the Imperials and Gideon while the entire attack force is hiding on a cave farm for 20 minutes. Restructuring all of Bo’s Squad’s movements here. They’re now losing the battle, flee from Gideon, escape into a heavily truncated cave section without flying away, and then will re-enter through the main hanger when the reinforcements join.

Din’s Capture and Break-out - Man, this is a bad sequence of events. Going to try to sync up some events to actually explain how Din breaks free of capture because it’s a huge eye roll why they randomly send him off “for interrogation” with only two lackey guards escorting him away. Makes no sense why Gideon considers him so important and does not oversee him whatsoever, and then freaks out when he escapes, somehow can’t track him down in his own base where there’s a perfect holographic GPS on his every move, then Din somehow wanders into the cloning center and… yeah.

Din Wanders Around - There is a huge chunk of time to solo Din walking around trying to find Gideon. It’s some decent action sets, so I don’t want to cut it, but I need to restructure and pace it differently. The whole timeline of the battle is completely thrown off by this segment. I just don’t understand what the Imperials are doing, there is no urgency whatsoever. No plan to address anything that is happening.

Gideon’s Clones - Maybe this will be a controversial call and someone can persuade me otherwise, but I am planning on cutting everything to do with Gideon’s clone army. It was my #1 worst part of Season 3 because of how shallow and glossed over it was, and Gideon’s rage reaction to their destruction is on my “Top 10 Worst Star Wars Dialogue” list. I thought his reaction was so comically over the top and out of nowhere that it completely took away from the battle with Din. I thought the show always hinted that Gideon was cloning in preparation for Project Necromancy and Snoke/Palpatine, not that he wanted to overthrow the entire Imperial Remnant by himself with his personal army of force-sensitive clones. It’s very easy to remove and I see no benefit to this random alteration at the last minute that has no resolution other than “Oh, look, I accidentally ran into some cloning tubes, let me blow them up real quick”.

Battle with Gideon - I think this is the best part of the whole battle, so I plan to simply do my classic acbagel frame-by-frame edit here.

Ending Sequence - This show ends so abruptly after the scene where Grogu saves them, and unfortunately, there’s not a ton I can do to change it. I’m still hoping to actually be able to show some of the space battle and have Boba join there as the reason the TIE’s aren’t obliterating everyone (seriously… where tf did they go? There are dozens to hundreds of ships in this base and we saw a ton fly to space and obliterate the Mando capital ship, and then they just vanish from the entire episode?) and also add Boba to the ending ceremony. I am planning to redo Armorer’s speech with some AI since I have a great model for her, but overall I just want to extend this sequence. Looking at options for how to slow it all down into more of a montage.

With all that said, I still need to cut 15-20 minutes out of the film, but I think that’s at a healthy place. Back to work!

Book 6 update:

I completed my first full pass on the Battle of Mandalore! I can’t even say Act 3 is even in the Alpha stage yet, I’d still say it’s “being filmed” per se… But I have everything organized into chunks, started making combat edits and changing some scene orders, game planning on how to resolve everything, etc. So I’ve gone all the way through the battle scene by scene to categorize everything, and I can start to see a vision for it. It’s a very tough battle to fix. The timings of events are beyond reconcilible. I will explain some of that after my next pass, but it’s genuinely the worst edited segment of the whole show. The order of events is truly impossible, there are massive missing chunks that were cut/unused for whatever reason, extremely choppy pacing, no cohesive geographic mapping to the base, and so much more… And probably the worst wipe transitions I have ever seen in Star Wars. Still a lot of technical and story work to do, but it’s coming along.

vranir said:

Very excited to see your take on Mando S3. The original version was so incredibly mediocre.

Yeah… I’d use harsher words than mediocre though. There are some very good individual scenes, but as a whole it’s a huge step down. Even with the action choreography and missing VFX… I have found multiple stormtroopers in this final battle that have the “X” red tape on them, meaning the VFX team was supposed to CGI the armor on them or put a blaster bolt there but they missed it, so there are background characters with un-CGI’d prop pieces. The whole production was just very, very rushed and sloppy, for whatever reason, this season just did not get the time and care that other parts of the show did.

Patali said:

I did just watch the scene again, and there isn’t a TON of room after his “I was.” line. So it would be a tight cut. That being said, I’m pretty sure your cut from him saying “I am Boba Fett” was already pretty tight because it cuts right away to Fennec. So, I think it will be possible but you’ll have to look and decide. But thanks for considering it.

I checked this out and agree that it works! Will be in Book 2 for the “Special Edition” release soon.

That’s interesting how you view Book 2. I will be honest, I think the big factor and reason why for me, is that I actually really liked BoBF, especially the flashback sequences. I love the Boba character in general. In fact, years ago now when “The Mandalorian” was coming out, I was literally asking “Why couldn’t this have just been Boba Fett?” Like literally Boba Fett finding the child etc lmao. Which in a way I think COULD have worked. That could have been Boba’s redemption story, since the child is an orphan just like him.
But thats just my fan fiction.

Actually, in the early scripts, the whole show was about Boba instead of Din’s role. They couldn’t work it out with timing for Temuera and also wanted a blank slate rather than having to deal with the complexity of Boba’s character. There were even plans for Boba and Luke to interact, but they cut it to tell a “smaller” story instead. I agree that if done right, I would’ve loved to see Boba instead as the main protagonist!

And yes I’m the most excited for Book 6 because it will be having not even watched Season 3, so I will be a good guinea pig for you to try that out on

I am super interested in seeing your review on everything. Definitely giving me motivation to finish quickly!

Darth Sadifous said:

Hey Acbagel, I am looking forward to the revised Book 5 and the eventual release of Book 6. Also, I would not mind a standalone book of Dr. Perishing’s arc if that is in the cards.

As for cutting Moff Gideon’s clone plot from the final, I would be down for that. However, I am cautious of this approach as this plot point could play into the announced Mandalorian movie. I believe Giancarlo Esposito even playfully eluded to this possibility in a fairly recent interview when asked if he could return. Just something to think about, but you could always alter down the road if it does indeed influence the upcoming 2026 film. I can’t wait to see what you have been cooking. Take care for now and may the force be with you!

I really don’t think they’d go back to Gideon… They have to know the kind of eye rolls they’d get for that. His appearance in S3 was already way more than enough IMO. But yes, I can always re-edit if something becomes important in the future. Excited to see how the upcoming will fit into my re-edit saga one day! From what I have access to right now though, the cloning plot is a terrible distraction that adds to the conclusion feeling extremely rushed and unsatisfying.

Hendrik1104 said:

Hey, your work sounds amazing. Just wow how much time you spent for this project. Would be honored to get a link to watch it.
Greetings from Germany.

Greetings! Thanks for watching, I sent you this project and the Sequel Trilogy that you requested. Hope you enjoy!

Shoya Haa’runi said:

Su’cuy vode! Can’t believe I missed mando’a being added, kandosii! On that topic however, in the original folders I received I checked in book 1 but it hadn’t updated to include the special edition. Do I have outdated folders? And to mirror everyone else here, can’t wait for the final updates!

Su’cuy tug’yc! If your link leads to a folder with a poster and trailer, that should be the special edition version. You can check around 18 minutes into the film to make sure they’re speaking mando’a there. But I’ll DM you again just to make sure.

Darth Sadifous said:

Hey Acbagel, just checking in to see how things are progressing. I know last time you posted that Book 6 was in an almost pre-alpha phase. Have you been able to problem solve some of the issues you were running into with the sequence of events, etc. Has a revised Book 5 been locked in or are things still shifting due to you tinkering with Book 6? Don’t mind viewing clips if you need an extra set of eyes/ feedback. Eagerly looking forward to this cut. Also, do you think you would even attempt an edit of The Acolyte? I wish you the best and may the force be with you!

Hello, Darth! Progress went a little slower than anticipated, my company had to move offices and that took me out of production for a whole week, but I got some good time in the last few days and I’d say I’m right on the edge of having a full alpha cut completed. I watched the first 1.5 hours of the film last night and made some additional cuts and touch-ups. The pre-alpha was still sitting at over 3.5 hours, so I have a good portion I’m forced to cut out. It’s a little bit painful making cuts on things I worked a long time on, but sometimes it’s simply necessary. My Plazir-15 storyline dragged on far too long and I had to trim it down quite a bit. Some of Boba’s sequences needed cut down a bit too for better balance with Din’s scenes. There is just a lot of story to work with and I need to find the right flow for it all, trying to keep it focused on the main theme of gathering the clans to retake Mandalore but having some side adventures along the way. We’re getting closer! I could release some small clips from the Mandalore base battle soon, I’m really loving how I’ve paced some of the segments.

The main hold-up with releasing Book 5 is that my Din and Grogu reunion in Book 6 uses parts of the travel scenes to Ossus. So since I haven’t 100% finished the sequence in Book 6, I don’t have an exact split of the scenes worked out yet to avoid repeats. Once I get through that, I’ll be ready to re-release 5. I just received the first draft of my final release poster yesterday and it’s looking amazing! Exactly as I sketched it out. The artist is very talented. It’ll look like a very high-quality rendition of one of my other posters… Really excited about it!

Regarding The Acolyte… I don’t know. I won’t say never, but I’d be more motivated to work on Ahsoka, Kenobi, redo my Sequel Trilogy films, etc. I do think it would be vastly improved by an edit and I certainly have ideas, but I don’t think it adds much to the Star Wars mythos. I’d have to entirely recontextualize the events to feel good about releasing that story, and it sounds like a fun challenge, but I don’t have the passion for deep diving into that show right now. It took me ~3 years after The Last Jedi before I could stomach watching it enough to start doing an edit haha. I’m friends with Movies Remastered and have helped him on a couple of his edits, so I’m currently doing some Sith eyes tracking on Qimir for him, but that’s as much as I can handle right now! Maybe one day…

Can you render and save your pre-Alpha 3.5 hour cut? It might serve as a good basis for those of us who’d like a two movie version of season three… 😉

EddieDean said:

Can you render and save your pre-Alpha 3.5 hour cut? It might serve as a good basis for those of us who’d like a two movie version of season three… 😉

Haha, the struggle of not having enough content for two strong movies, but too much for one… The stuff I just cut out that I’m referencing are very superfluous scenes in my opinion. I just removed the “Droid bar” scene in Plazir, and trimmed down some of the briefing scene Boba gets from the palace droid. That saved me 5+ minutes right there. So little things that maybe add a tiny bit more context to the world, but ultimately have nothing at all to do with getting the clans to retake Mandalore. And for a saga finale, I want to avoid some of what I thought Episode 9 did wrong by focusing waaay too much on the little individual events rather than wrapping things up on the grand scale.