The New Republic Movie Series EPIV: A Threat From Beyond (An Ahsoka Series Edit) [RELEASED]

Here is my edit of the Ahsoka TV Series.
With this edit I have decided to bring all my post ROTJ series edits under one banner “The New Republic” to fit in with the official Lucasfilm timeline and provide a theatrical continuity for people to watch and enjoy.
This edit is Episode 5, following on from the Mandalorian and Boba Fett edits.

This series was a challenge because there was about one and a half movies’ worth of decent footage. Rather than stretching it out to 2 movies I decided to condense it into one movie. The final edit is bang on 3 hours which is what I would define as the limit for a single edit. However, it does have a very good 3-act structure which makes the movie feel shorter than the 3 hours.

Here is the changelog.
There are a huge number of changes in this edit. Virtually every scene had at least some trimming. All music transitions have been worked on, often using tracks from the OST.

Opening Logos
Custom classic Star Wars opening crawl
Pan shot to New Republic Cruiser

Episode 1
Trim opening bridge shot to remove captain spinning in his chair.
Cut protocol droid “ship approaching, track distance mark….”
Cut Captain “what’s the word Comm”
Cut Comm “I’m receiving their signal now Sir”
Trim sequence of the shuttle landing in the docking bay.
Cut Captain “you put on a good show but I don’t buy it”
Cut Captain “just some over-confident imperial trash….”
Cut Captain “and you sir should have surrendered when the empire collapsed”
Transition wipe to Ahsoka approaching the Witch Temple.
Trim Ahsoka’s approach to the temple.
Cut Ahsoka bending down to rub the stone and moving the pillars to reveal the map.
Cut Ahsoka and the first droid staring at eachother. The sequence of the other droids revealing themselves has been tightened.
Cut Huyang “I don’t understand”
Trim sequence of Ahsoka’s shuttle approaching and landing on Home One.
Cut Ahsoka “Thrawn” when revealing the map to Hera.
Cut Ahsoka “nothing is certain, except our enemies believe they know where to look”
Cut Ackbar “General, the defence council is requesting an update on the incident”.
Cut Lothal ceremony scene. We transition wipe from Home One to long shot of Sabine on her speeder.
Tighten up the speeder sequence by cutting some long shots.
Cut Pilot “is she going to stop?” and “Sabine stand down”
Cut external shot of the communications tower.
Trim end shot of Sabine looking at Ezra’s hologram and opening shot of Baylan & Co. at the temple ruins.
Cut Shin “Master” & Baylan “Do as she says”.
Cut Sabine and Huyang exchange about him still being in one piece.
Cut long shot of Ahsoka & Sabine staring at each other.
Cut Sabine “no one would design a map you couldn’t read….”
Cut Sabine-Ahsoka chat about where Ahsoka is living and about being a Jedi.
Cut Ahsoka “I’m not sure that’s a good idea”.
Trim Huyang’s lightsaber report to cut unnecessary dialogue.
Cut Probe droids returning to Shin - we just see them tracking Sabine.
Cut Ahsoka & Hera talking about reasons.
Cut start of Sabine map opening scene and trim the rest of the sequence.
Cut Sabine “think I’m going on a trip” - droid attack is a bit more sudden.
Trim Sabine-Shin standoff.
Trimmed and re-ordered Sabine-Shin fight scene to cut the lightsaber strike. Shine force-pushes Sabine backwards and then departs because of Ahsoka’s arrival.
Cross fade via white screen to BAck of Ahsoka in the MedBay.

Episode 2
Trimmed and edited MedBay scene to remove reference to the lightsaber strike.
Used AI voice so that Sabine reveals the path to the galaxy starts “somewhere in the Denab system”. Ahsoka then leaves without indication of where she is going.
Entire droid head sequence is removed. The third MedBay scene is blended together with the first so that after Ahsoka leaves Sabine and Huyang have their conversation about her training.
Transition wipe to the Communications tower and Sabine returning there.
Cut Sabine getting out her armour. She now goes straight to her helmet - more impactful than the armour pieces.
Hair cutting scene remains intact.
Entire Corellia pliot removed.
Transition to Scene of Ahsoka returning to her ship (actually a Correlia scene but it’s an internal shot) and Sabine appearing in holo dressed in her armour.
Transition to Shin and Baylan arriving on Seatos. Scene tightened.
Transition to Ahsoka and Sabine meeting up and leaving Lothal.
AI line of Huyang used “I have just received a transmission from General Syndulla, long range scans of the Denab system have revealed the enemy’s shuttle landing on the planet Seatos”.
Transition to Morgan/Baylan/Shin on Seatos. Scene tightened to remove unnecessary extended shots.
Cut unnecessary exposition: Morgan “where grand admiral thrown is banished” and “across time and space”; Baylan talking about dreams and hopes and Morgan “the threads of fate do not lie”.

Episode 3
Cut Ahsoka/Sabine Training sequence.
Cut Hera/Senate Committee meeting.
Sabine/Hera force discussion scene tightened and trimmed. Scene opens with AI Ahsoka line “you were lucky yesterday, but I see you can still wield a lightsaber” - this creates a more meaningful scene having cut the training sequence.
Cut Huyang and Ahsoka talking about Sabine’s progress.
Trimmed Sabine & cup scene.
Cut Ahsoka “let’s see what Morgan has been hiding out here”.
Cut Sabine/Huyang discussion about standard Jedi protocol.
AI Huyang line “my last scan indicates that the enemy vessel is on the far side of the planet”. This is the final alteration to tie up the plot having removed the Corellia sequence.
Tightened the battle sequence. Cut Sabine/Ahsoka chat about tail gun presets. Sabine now quickly moves to the tail gun and tells Ahsoka she’s ready. The first battle segment has been cut. Sabine shoots down 2 of the fighters almost immediately. The cut makes it look like 3 have been destroyed, which compensates for cutting the opening of the battle.
Cut Sabine “2 more down”.
Approach to the hyperspace ring is tightened by trimming multiple scenes.
Cut the Morgan-Shin interactions.
Cut the initial scene of Ahsoka and Sabine assessing the damage to the shuttle.
Trim Ahsoka posturing on the outside of the shuttle.
Trim the flight through the whale pod.
Cut chat about almost dying multiple times.
Trim Ahsoka’s shuttle approaching the forrest.
Cut first shot of landed shuttle and Sabine/Ahsoka sitting in silence in the cockpit.
Transition to Baylan ordering his troops to search the Forrest.

Episode 4
Tighten scene where Ahsoka and Sabine chat about their plan.
Cut Baylan sending Shin and Marrok into the forrest - he has already ordered the search. We can assume that Shin and Marrok land in the forrest and start the hunt.
Cut scene where Ahsoka and Sabine suit up inside the shuttle. Baylan’s troops attack Huyang and Ahsoka & Sabine rush out to help. Huyang’s scenes are edited to create a better jump scare. He says “finally some progress”, turns around and is attacked.
Fight scene is trimmed.
Cut Huyang requesting Ahsoka and Sabine to stay together - it removes the urgency of the situation.
Transition wipe from Ahsoka and Sabine running into the woods to Baylan and Morgan looking at the Eye. Openning shot of the Eye was reversed to create a better wipe.
Cut Baylan “witchcraft”
Cut sequence where Hera leaves the fleet and heads to Seatos. This all happens off screen to save running time and to give her arrival a bigger impact.
Trim the standoff in the forest - Sabine shoots at Shin almost immediately.
Cut most of Ahsoka v Marrok. Ahsoka watches him twirl his lightsaber and immediately defeats him - rather like Kenobi v Maul in Rebels. He ended up being a nothing character, so I gave him a nothing death.
Cut one of the hyperspace calculations countdown scenes to speed the plot.
Trimmed Shin v Sabine.
Cut Shin “you will regret this decision” - she’s a much better character when she says very little.
Trimmed Ahsoka’s walk into the map area.
Trimmed
Cut Baylan “It is an unfortunate evil that speaks to a greater truth. One must destroy in order to create”
Heavily trimmed the start of Baylan v Ahsoka to get to the meat of fight much quicker.
Trimmed Baylan tempting Sabine.
Added audio from Ezra’s recording whilst Baylan is sensing Sabine’s feelings.
Cut Baylan having to tell Shin a second time to release Sabine.
Cut Baylan/Sabine and Shin walking towards their shuttle - this is a continuity error given that they arrive at the Eye in Morgan’s shuttle.
Cut Huyang radioing to Ahsoka and Sabine.

Episodes 5 & 6 - Scenes on Seatos intercut with scenes on Peridea.
Cut Hera finding Huyang.
WBW scene is trimmed and now runs straight into the Ryloth flashback scene. The Ryloth scene is heavily edited to shorten it as much as possible.
Transition to Hera and Huyang at the henge.
Remove Hera trying to sense the lightsabers with Jacen and the ships taking off to find Ahsoka. The scene now ends with Jacen saying “can you hear the lightsabers” and cutting to Ahsoka battling Mandalorians in the flashback.
Mandalore flashback edited to speed up the sequence as much as possible.
Cut Republic ships searching for Ahsoka.
Transition to episode 6 sequence where the Eye arrives at Peridea.
The preceding scenes from episode 6 (Ahsoka and Huyang talking about temple stories and Baylan talking to Sabine in her cell) have been removed.
Approach to surface of Peridea tightened.
Cut Shin “More witches”.
Cut Sabine being taken to her cell.
Cut scene where Ahsoka wakes up on her shuttle - adds very little.
Transition to scene between Hera and Ahsoka on the henge.
Cut Jacen “I’ve been in a starship before”.
Trim Ahsoka’s force reading of the orb.
Cut Hera/Ahsoka “So she’s alive”. “She was when they left Seatos”.
Cut Scene in Ghost cockpit where Hera talks to Mon Mothma & Ahsoka appears to announce that she knows how to follow Sabine.
Transition to Baylan & Shin on Peridea.
Cut Shin “With good reason, sometimes stories are just stories”.
Cut Sabine “Ahsoka, what am I doing”.
Trim Sabine attempting to open the cell door to quicken the scene.
Trim Thrawns entrance scene.
Cut Thrawn “well speak to me of this loose thread”.
Cut Thrawn “you would not be the first”.
Cut Sabine “Thrawn”
Trim the Sabine/Thrawn conversation to remove the painful pauses.
Cut scene where Sabine is given her howler. We now cut from Sabine asking about a ride to the door opening to reveal her riding a howler. Cut one shot of her exiting on the howler.
Transition to the Ghost and X-wings taking off from the henge.
The Seatos departure sequence has been heavily edited. I have removed almost all of the interaction with the New Republic fleet. They now arrive and Hera immediately tells them to get out of the way as the whale pod passes through. Ahsoka’s walk outside the shuttle to communicate with the whale has been cut.
Cut scene where Sabine is attacked by the marauders.
Cut scene of Thrawn and Morgan talking about their primary objective.
Cut scene where Sabine chastises the wolf.
Transition to Sabine arriving at the site where the rock creatures are. Scene tightened to remove long pauses. Cut Sabine”you’re embarrassing yourself”, “No. it wont hurt you”, “you must know Ezra Bridger”.
Cut scene of Baylan and Shin finding the dead marrauders.
Transition to Great Mothers telling Thrawn of another. Cut Thrawn talking about death and resurrection.
Trim Sabine approaching the rock’s camp.
Cut Sabine avoiding Ezra’s questions about how she arrived.

Episode 7
New Republic tribunal cut.
Trim Anakin/Ahsoka training scene. This is moved forward and placed between the last 2 scenes from episode 6.
Trim Ahsoka/Huyang cockpit scene and cut interaction about how hopeless their plan is.
The Whale exit scene has been heavily trimmed to speed the pacing and remove unnecessary chatter.
Cut Thrawn telling Enoch to withdraw the fighters. This tacical withdrawal made the plot overly convoluted.
Trim Ahsoka flying through the debris field and landing.
Cut Sabine telling Ezra that she was Ahsoka’s apprentice and about things being “complicated”.
Cut scene where Thrawn asks the Great Mothers to find Ahsoka. This creates a fantastic hard cut from Ahsoka sensing Sabine to the face if the Great mother as they reveal Ahsoka’s location.
Trim the Ahsoka/Sabine force sense scene.
Cut Sabine talking about a familiar feeling. We already know this because she senses Ahsoka and telling Ezra adds nothing.
Cut Stormtroopers boarding the attack ships.
Trim the Marauder ambush scene.
Cut 2 shots of Ahsoka and Huyang in the shuttle.
Cut the Huyang/Ahsoka chatter about the plan going wrong last time.
Ahsoka v Baylan is almost completely cut. All that remains is them meeting and the first lightsaber strike. Huyang then fires at Baylan and Ahsoka escapes onto the howler. This second duel added nothing. I left the minimum to explain how Ahsoka arrives on a howler.
Ground battle tightened by cutting and trimming multiple scenes.
Ezra’s cringey offer of being taken a prisoners has been cut.
Cut Thrawn and Morgan looking at the Battle scene hologram - unnecessary exposition.
Cut Thrawn talking about time being on their side.
Cut most of the final reunion scene. Ahsoka hugs Ezra and we cut to the Episode 8 material - the rest of the scene destroys the pacing of the final act.

Episode 8
Cut Thrawn ordering the Tie Fighter attack.
Trim scene of Morgan being given Nightsister powers. Cut her being presented with the sword.
Trim Ezra lightsaber construction scene to remove unnecessary dialogue.
Cut TIE fighter attack sequence.
A lot of trimming in the finale to remove unnecessary static shots, shots of Thrawn looking angry, trim overly long shots and remove some of the battle action that doesn’t advance the plot.
Ezra’s force jump is edited so that Sabine doesn’t aid him. Sabine then leaves to help Ahsoka.
Cut Ezra using the Stormtrooper’s commlink.
Cut Shin joining the marauders.
Cut the Ezra/Hera reunion.
Iris out to credits and the Main theme.

A worthwhile project. I look forward to seeing it.

szopman said:

Smudger9, did you maybe consider combining Ahsoka and “The Mandalorian” into one film series?

It seems eventually all those shows will lead to one big crossover event - Dave Filoni’s movie.

Plus, Ahsoka already appeared in your previous “Mando” films and Thrawn’s return was hinted there before.

So, if you made them all just “Star Wars” films, this one would just be a continuation of some storylines that started in the previous stories.

Absolutely. Lucasfilm updated their Eras timeline this week so I’ll probably go with “The New Republic” as the logo for these. I’ll wait for the end of the Ahsoka series before committing to this and I’ll also need to tinker with my Mando S2 to include the now essential Ahsoka/Morgan confrontation.

EP1: Mando S1
EP2: Mando S2
EP3: Ahsoka S1 P1
EP4: Ahsoka S2 P2
EP5: BOBF
EP6: Mando S3

EP1: Mando S1
EP2: Mando S2
EP3: Ahsoka S1 P1
EP4: Ahsoka S2 P2
EP5: BOBF
EP6: Mando S3

WtarSars said:

Please cut the stab wound somehow. Tired of Qui-Gon death having less and less impact.

Totally agree here. I would love to get rid, but you can’t edit it out without leaving a huge plot hole. It would take some serious special effects and dialogue changes to pull that off. Way beyond my skill set 😞.

yoshif8tures said:

There’s a typo in your crawl. It should be trail.

Also could you consider a new title? Heir to the empire only makes one compare it to the Zahn trilogy.

The whole map thing also sounds like the sequel fetch quests again too, find the damn map that tells us what to do next blablsbla

smudger9 said:

So we’re 3 episodes in and this series is ripe for a Movie edit. It has more of a Star Wars theatrical feel about it than the previous TV shows and feels like a sequel to the OT thanks to the New Republic world building.

Filoni suggested in interviews that the series would have one linear plot with no side quests and that is certainly how it’s playing out. As a result this season may need 2 movies to cover it.

So here are my thoughts on the first 2 episodes.

1. This is screaming out for a classical Star Wars crawl using an abridged version of the crawl from the show leading into the opening scene which feels very TPM (I love the opening of TPM!).
2. There isn’t a huge amount that can actually be cut because each scene is crucial to the plot. I was hoping to cut the whole Correlia sequence but there is a lot of crucial exposition in Episode 3 that references it. I’ve cut the Lothal celebration ceremony which makes for a far better introduction to Sabine - very much like young Kirk’s intro in ST09.
3. Quite a few scenes can be slightly trimmed to help speed up the pacing, remove the odd bit of cringey dialogue and try to make Ahsoka less monotone.
4. There are too many transition wipes - I love a good transition wipe but only to represent the passage of time. Some of the scene transitions are far better without them.

My current cut of the first 2 episodes is 81 minutes from 87 minutes of footage, so not much of a trim… yet! I’m not sure about a title yet. A Threat from Beyond is one I’m toying with, but for now I’ll go with “Heir to the Empire”.

Here is the opening sequence. I’m really keen to hear people’s thoughts on the series now and as it progresses. I’ve watched Episode 3 and was less happy with it, there are quite a few cuts I’d like to make. Sadly Ahsoka’s outfit change means I’ll probably have to keep the Clone Wars-style space walk, which I didn’t like.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OnELfvXkANNCjv7flpBOrGnhu_iwP_ci

Good spot. The crawl will be fine tuned once the series is finished. Regarding the title, Heir to the Empire is almost certainly going to be a placeholder. I need to wait to see how the series pans out before settling on a title. “A Threat from Beyond” is one possibility.

WitchDR said:

I definitely hope we can end up cutting more. I’ve went through all three episodes countless times in Vegas, just trying to find ways to remove large chunks out of it, but just keep coming up short. Only really being able to trim scenes, instead of completely removing them.

I think these 3 episodes only really have about 45 minutes worth of good content in total, but it’d require some absolute radical editing and ideas to get it there.

Here’s some of the stupid things that could hopefully be tackled:

• The New Republic captain allowing Baylan and Shin to enter the ship, knowing they are lying about being Jedi

Maybe we could start this scene in the middle of the fight instead? Skip the whole boarding part all together. We could try something like this: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/859635415
I feel like adding the alarm sound just helps bridge the scenes together. We would have to recolor the cock pit in the ship establishing shot, since it isn’t lit up red.

• Sabine taking the map to her place, just so the bad guys can easily get the map

Probably can’t be fixed.

• Sabine being stabbed by Shin, only to be completely fine in the next episode like it never happened

Probably can’t be fixed.

• One of the assassin droids staying behind at Sabine’s just so they have a new clue to where they need to go

What if we made the droid Sabine beat, the one they take the head off of instead?

• Shin and the other pilots shooting at Ahsoka on the wing instead of just shooting her downed ship

Like you said, the whole Clone Wars-esque Ahsoka space walk scene can’t be removed.

And I agree with you on the awful pacing of scenes. I think almost every single scene needs some level of trimming. So many scenes drag on far too long. Too many shots of characters just standing and staring at each other, or showing us each character walking to every spot they need to be at in the following scene.

I really would love if the community could brainstorm some radical ideas for this, cause I think there’s something really great here unlike most of the live action shows. But it just needs a lot of work to get there.

Your opening cut works well and is definitely an option. However, in terms of the opening scene pacing I much prefer the TPM-style we got, rather than being dropped straight into battle like Rise of Skywalker (probably because of my dislike for that movie!).

I agree on all your points. I hadn’t considered cutting the Ahsoka droid encounter. I’ll have look at that later.

Episode 3 can be trimmed quite a bit. I’ll start working on that this evening.

Matt.F said:

Maybe going from a reworded crawl straight to the Corellia scene as an opener could be a radical approach? The crawl can have the ‘Rebels gang’ of Ahsoka, Sabine and Hera together and unified from the off, and investigating suspicious Imperial activity at the shipyards. The encounter with the Sith and the tracker on the engine part then leads them on into the rest of the plot.

That would do away with all the tedious (and unnecessary) scenes of Ahsoka and Sabine being estranged, and do away with the silly Rubiks cube map.

If you’re looking to cut a big sizable chunk off the run time to make the series movie length then that could work?

I think that’s too radical for now. There is a lot of good material in the opening episode, and essential if you haven’t seen Rebels.

Here is my attempt to remove Sabine’s lightsaber injury. The audio is just central channel so not complete, I’m just seeing what the general consensus is with the cut.

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/860341775

liambrazier said:

Not in front of the episode but could the space walk be cut by going from Shin saying “almost got them” to Morgan when they’ve lost sight of them, straight to them landing on the planet like they used the chance to slip away?

It’s a possibility. I haven’t sat down to mess around with episode 3 yet, that’s a job for this weekend. The main continuity issue is Ashoka’s outfit change. If it wasn’t for that, cutting the space walk would be easy 😞.
This may be something that doesn’t become clear until the season is completed… we will probably get more footage of Ahsoka in her standard outfit in the cockpit with Sabine that can be cut in.

WitchDR said:

She obviously appears more wounded than she should be, but it may be the best that can be done. You’d also need to remove the hole in her shirt on her back.

I think it’s a far better solution than leaving the stab in though.

I’ve watched it back a few times and it now feels like Sabine has more of an emotional collapse as she sees help arriving. Shin still clearly wins the duel, so that plot point is retained.
It seems to work and I’ll edit out references to the lightsaber injury in the medical bay.