The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 2

TMBTM said:

TheoOdo said:

Naboo is retitled "Alderaan"

In this case Adywan will need to cut the extra OT SE Naboo shoots in his ROTJ revisited.

I think it's a good idea, but it could cause many editing troubles for a result that, perhaps, don't really worth it.

Well, that's an '04 addition and after all Adywan's edit was originally started to fix the problems with the '04 edit.

I honestly don't think it'll be missed. I was certainly unhappy to see it there for the first time, but maybe that's just me.

Yoda should NEVER be seen with a lightsaber.  Ever.

Neither should the Emperor.

NO ONE should use Force Lightning besides the Emperor.

And finally, NO PURPLE FUCKING LIGHTSABERS.

I'll sift through this thread later to "second" anything I like, and add more suggestions, but I'm getting ready for class at the moment.

ChainsawAsh said:

Yoda should NEVER be seen with a lightsaber.  Ever.

Neither should the Emperor.

NO ONE should use Force Lightning besides the Emperor.

And finally, NO PURPLE FUCKING LIGHTSABERS.

YES.

Yoda should NEVER be seen with a lightsaber.  Ever.

Even if I like watching the Sidious/Yoda fight, I understand your thought about that.

In my Silent Star Wars fan-edit I choose to let the end of the order 66 as the only moment we see Yoda with a lightsaber, because it's quick, elegant, Yoda don't wast time and energy jumping everywhere and he goes straight to the point. Even an old Jedi could do such a thing: focusing all his energy into a quick fighting move.

The only problem I have with all his fights in the PT is that in ROTJ Yoda dies at 900 because he's old and weak, so in ROTS he's something like 880... How could he turn from a fighting Jedi full of energy to a dying old creature in "only" 20 of his years? A bit strange.

There's no decent health care on Dagobah.

In the edit I'm working on (finish date 2015) Yoda not only doesn't have a lightsaber, he doesn't even take part on the battle field in the clone wars.  Yoda is too wise and too intune with the light side of the force to take part in a war.

Okay, just gone through the thread and read some suggestions, and here are the ones I like the most:

ben_danger's:
- i would vote to remove any noticable features of sidious so its actually a surprise when his true identity is revealed. would be cool to have dooku in his place on TPM, and to do away with the rule of the two.

I think that's an interesting idea.  And the "rule of two" is stupid.

I also like Bingowings' ideas, and if Ady doesn't implement them, I might actually do my own edit in the future along these lines. 

And, from TheoOdo:

* All lightsabers, excluding Sith lightsabers, should be changed blue. Why? Because then Luke's new lightsaber in Return of the Jedi has some meaning. It's the beginning of a new dawn for the Jedi. Whereas in the old republic they used blue sabers, in the new republic they will use green just as the founder Luke did. I think that would be neat.

I LOVE this idea.

Okay, here's my reasoning behind why Yoda and the Emperor should never be seen with lightsabers.  I'll focus on Yoda, but similar reasons apply to Palps:

Yoda is like the Buddha.  He's someone who's been enlightened, who is perfectly in tune with the Force and nature, and uses his unique position to guide others toward this path.  He's, for lack of a better way of putting it, better than using a lightsaber.  Beyond it.  He doesn't need one.  He's the perfect Jedi, and showing him fighting just like any other Jedi - good at it though he may be - cheapens his status and makes him no different than any other Jedi.  (This will bring me to another point later, but I'll tackle Palps first.)

Palpatine is similar, but on the other side.  He doesn't fight, he's mastered the Dark Side so well that he doesn't need to - he manipulates others into doing his bidding.  He has everyone around him wrapped tightly around his finger.  All he cares about is controlling everything, and he's damned good at it.  He's the perfect Dark Side master (I'm trying to avoid the term "Sith" here because I hate it), and, again, showing him fighting cheapens him and makes him no different than Vader or Maul or Dooku.

Now, back to the point I wanted to make from Yoda.  The Force needs to be a religious thing again.  The Jedi shouldn't be the Republic's fighting force like they're made out to be in the prequels - they work outside of the Republic.  They're trying to become in tune with the Force, much like Buddhism's ultimate goal of reaching enlightenment.  They should be highly-regarded, almost holy figures that try to keep the Force in balance, and only interfere with things outside of their own group when this balance is threatened.  "The guardians of peace in the galaxy," and all.  They practice lightsaber combat almost as a form of meditation, like martial arts.  They only use it when they must, and they certainly DON'T flip around all over the place wasting precious energy the way they all seemed to do in the PT.

In other words, the Jedi use the Force to find spiritual enlightenment, and only fight when the Force is at an imbalance, to right it.  The Sith use the Force for personal gain, which causes the Force to imbalance itself, kind of like a cosmic Karma.  That's the only difference, that's what the "Light Side" and "Dark Side" are.

At least, that's how I feel it should be portrayed.  It's in line with everything that's said about them in the OT, but completely shattered in the PT.

Unfortunately, I think the existing material in the PT prevents such a depiction, which is very, very sad.

I've always felt they were frivolous, excessive eye-candy, where the OT fights were emotionally intense and character-driven.  Who doesn't love the Vader/Luke duel at the end of ROTJ, right after Luke screams "NEVER!" and goes batshit crazy at Vader?  It doesn't matter that they're not being "dynamic" or "energetic," there's much more emotion and meaning in that short sequence than in any of the long, visually impressive PT duels.

And the "rule of two" is stupid.

Well, (Lucas speaking mode:) even in the original trilogy there is an echo of that "rule of two", when Vader asks Luke to join him so they can destroy the Emperor and rule the galaxie as father and son. Vader knows that once Luke is converted to the dark side, the Emperor will not need him anymore.

The Phantom Menace:

1. Cutting out as much Gungans and Jar-Jar as we possibly could, seems like a great idea to me.

2. Midi Chlorians need to go completely, that whole scene with the blood test could probably be scrapped now that I think about it.

3. No poop jokes

4. No dumb podrace commentary

5. No more "Yippee!"

6. Cut a lot of the bad dialog between Anakin and Padme.

7. Make the space battle as painless as possible, maybe take off the auto pilot so he doesn't seem like complete luck? IDK

8. Make Sidious much less obvious, people who haven't seen the OT shouldn't be able to identify that it's Palpatine.

9. Make Yoda less hidious as a puppet? (We need better source material)

10. No dumb celebration at the end, end it with the Windu/Yoda talk?

11. Please don't touch the Maul fight! If anything edit it into one continuos fight?

Attack of the Clones:

1. Cut as much love dialog as possible, it's just to painful. That also goes for the romping scenes, Portman and Christensen were voted least believeable couple for a reason. It would be interesting to try to make it seem like Padme just fell for Anakin because she thought she was going to die, or because she was stressed out? Maybe try to make it seem like she never really was into him as much as he was into her?

2. Cut out the diner guy (I forgot his name), there is a nice deleted scene in there that is of the droids analyzing the darts that could go in there if needed.

3. Make the Sifo Dias plot either make sense or dissapear.

4. No bar scene with deathsticks.

5. Zam isn't a changling but only shifted at the end in effect of dart poison.

6. At the beginning Yoda no longer feels warmness in his heart for Padme or something ridiculous like that.

7. No padawan map scene, the kids while cute were not pivotal in any way.

8. Shorten the arena scene if possible, I thought most of it was cool, but it never really seemed like it was going to end.

9. No droid factory bit, they looked like idiots running around, again I think there is a deleted scene that could be inserted showing a meeting with Dooku.

10. Take out the whole speeder chase in the beginning or shorten it way down

11. I personally like the yoda fight and wouldn't want to see it taken out.

Revenge of the Sith:

1. I know that it cant really be changed, but what makes me hate this movie so much is the fact that Anakins fall is SO DAMN QUCIK I can't relate to it at all. He goes from Telling Obi-Wan he loves hims, and the next time he sees him he is trying to kill him? He was super good and then super bad? What? The only thing I could think about doing is to take the scene out where Obi and Anakin talk before Obi goes to Utapau, that way there may be more tension between the two? But his unreleastic fall always made this movie practicly unwatchable.

2. Cut some of the opening space battle (buzz droids?)

3. I did like R2's oil slick thing, we need some comic relief, maybe just make the super battle droids not talk?

4. Take out the balcony scene with Padme and her hair. It's painful to my brain.

5. Take out Lucas kid, if Ki-Adi-Mundi couldn't kill those clones why should a preteen?

6. Make it be just Mace that takes on Windu so we don't have to see the others die so pitifully. Now that I think about it, it would be AWESOME to have Mace go alone, frankly bad-ass in my opinion.

7. Take out some of Grievous's coughs if you can, he was a cool idea and he was jst so damn sick all the time.

8. Find some better way to do the birthing scene, as well as fixing up her death. Losing the will to live? I've lost the will to live sometimes but I always bounce back! Maybe Anakin crushed her Trachea or something clever like that.

That's all off the top of my head, hopefully they make sense to others. If I think of anymore I'll post them. 

TMBTM said:

And the "rule of two" is stupid.

Well, (Lucas speaking mode:) even in the original trilogy there is an echo of that "rule of two", when Vader asks Luke to join him so they can destroy the Emperor and rule the galaxie as father and son. Vader knows that once Luke is converted to the dark side, the Emperor will not need him anymore.

Yeah, but Vader's just sick of being the Emperor's puppet - he's power-hungry at this point and wants to rule on his own, not be the underling of someone he knows will never relinquish power.  He knows, however, that he's not powerful enough on his own to stop the Emperor - but with Luke at his side, they may win.  It has nothing to do with the "rule of two."

All the droid's voices in Revenge of the Sith changed drastically from the first two episodes. They now sound like high pitch cartoon voices and it sickens me

Yeah, but Vader's just sick of being the Emperor's puppet - he's power-hungry at this point and wants to rule on his own, not be the underling of someone he knows will never relinquish power.  He knows, however, that he's not powerful enough on his own to stop the Emperor - but with Luke at his side, they may win.  It has nothing to do with the "rule of two.

Yeah that's true,  you can see it that way or (now that we know the PT "rule of two" ) that Vader is also trying to "save his skin" by turning Luke into his own apprentice before the Emperor does. I know that is probably not what Lucas had in mind when he shoot that scene in ESB, but now that we have to deal with the prequels I just try to find ways to live with them ;)

However I'm not against cutting that rule in a PT fan edit.

TheoOdo said:

TMBTM said:

TheoOdo said:

Naboo is retitled "Alderaan"

In this case Adywan will need to cut the extra OT SE Naboo shoots in his ROTJ revisited.

I think it's a good idea, but it could cause many editing troubles for a result that, perhaps, don't really worth it.

 

Well, that's an '04 addition and after all Adywan's edit was originally started to fix the problems with the '04 edit.

I honestly don't think it'll be missed. I was certainly unhappy to see it there for the first time, but maybe that's just me.

The shot need not be entirely wasted. It could be stuck at the beginning of the celebration scenes in Episode 1 (minus the hideous Gungan cry).

If Tatooine and Geonosis were merged for an altered Episode 2 the Tatooine celebration could be used there to mark the removal of the Federation from that world.

As for the Yoda/Palpatine lightsabre thing, I don't have a problem with the idea (a Jedi uses the Force for defence and even master Jedi would use a lightsabre to defend himself and others). Palpatine would use anything to attack someone in his way, when stealth, scheming and manipulation fail why not use a sabre? His fighting style was interesting and unique too. The main purpose of the fight isn't to kill but to manipulate Anakin into making a final choice by placing himself under Windu's blade so it's inkeeping with the whole Sith way of doing things. It just looks a little clumsy the way that the idea is executed.

I wouldn't have Palpatine maimed into looking the way he does.

It would be difficult to achieve an edit to alter this but I'd have had him slowly transformed into the mess we see him in ROTJ because of advancing age and being consumed by his own evil, rather than getting a Force Lightning blow back.

It might be possible to stick his unaltered face over the top of the prune version in the key scenes of ROTS to get this across.

The naming of Vader scene is really out of place, Palpatine goes from a subtle Mephistophelean performance to a comedy bad guy in a few seconds. He doesn't even match the version we see in ROTJ.

While we are on the subject of things Sith, I'd have Anakin use force lightning on Padme ( I hear some hisses from the readers at this point).

At no point does Vader use this Sith skill in the OT but he chokes people left, right and centre (I've already voiced my hope that Adywan stops Luke from doing the choke move in ROTJ:R).

When I was a child I used to think Vader used this method of killing and torturing people because he himself can not breath unassisted and I still like this idea.

If the old Force choke constantly reminded him of killing his pregnant wife would he keep on doing it, thus rubbing his own nose in it?

If he had used Sith lightning on Padme it would explain the sudden delivery of her babies and even go some way to explaining her death in child birth.

It would also explain why Vader never does it again and underline the horror in Jedi of seeing Palpatine do the same move on Luke.

See it all makes sense now.

I hope?

thunderclap said:

I know Adywan is planning on re-editing the prequels but I'm curious if anyone else here has watched the Slumberland edits?  A lot of what people are suggesting have been done in these cuts.  Adywan may in fact be able to go off these cuts instead of re-doing them completely as the Slumberland edits are quite good.

Thanks for letting me know about the Slumberland edits, (they had somehow fallen off my Radar).

I've started to download them now and I'll give them a good look.

Are they up anywhere in a smaller format (AVI for example) my connection is awful here and it would take forever to get the disc image versions?

darthmunky said:

TheBoost said:

Honestly, I don't mind TPM, although about 60% less Jar Jar would be nice.

Or 100% less Jar Jar... You seriously enjoyed TPM more than AOTC? Wow, I liked Hayden Christensen like 5 times more than Jake Lloyd and he was soo annoying in AOTC. I found he was alright in ROTS though.

 

 Not to derail the thread, but it seems to me that TPM is a somewhat childish adventure story, and succeeds in that regard far close than AOTC succeeds to be a romance or a mystery.

Here's an idea... how about we find ANSWERS to the questions ObiWan investigates in AOTC. THAT would be a radical idea.