Acbagel

So I’ve got a working draft of Chapter 5 that is looking pretty good right now. I was able to sort through everything in Book of Boba and reorder it all into a brand new, focused narrative that clocks in at 2 hours 25 minutes. I’ll be updating the change log today, but here’s a few of the major changes:

• Boba is already an established Daimyo on Tatooine who has earned respect and fear simply for who he is. No more slowly building a gang of 10 people over 3 hours of storyline, no more everyone treating him like a joke, no more confused Boba trying to learn how to rule. This is a crime lord Boba that we would have expected to see, and this is established from the get go by using the ending scene of the D+ show with him walking the streets as one of our opening scenes. We can assume it’s been some time since Chapter 4 ended, maybe a few months. Enough time for Boba to take over Jabba’s forces and start to bring the local cities in line, but we enter the story as Boba is continuing to expand his rule instead of just beginning it.
• The main Tatooine conflict is 100% focused on the Pyke invasion. Though I thought the Twins and the Hutt cartel would have been a much better antagonist overall, they just bounce out of the story so suddenly that I don’t even see a point in including them whatsoever. The entire story is now reordered and refocused on the Mayor betraying Boba and defecting to the invading Pyke forces. The purpose of the whole conflict is thematically centered on foreshadowing Din and Boba as our Mandalorian “Messiahs”. I am hopeful that Mando S3 will continue this storyline next year!
• The three-act structure of this film goes a bit like this:

1. Act 1 is essentially a “what have our Mandalorians been up to” since the end of S2. We see quite the contrast of their lives since the conclusion with Moff Gideon and Luke. We are cutting back and forth between their two lives, slowly building up the coming conflict on Tatooine.
2. Act 2 is the escalation of tension on Tatooine. The prelude to the upcoming battle. A lot of the drama with the Mayor betraying Boba is presented here. This is getting Din to Tatooine, having him recruit allies etc.
3. This is the battle on Tatooine. There is a lot of content here that carries nearly the whole 3rd Act.
4. (Epilogue) After the Tatooine conclusion we go back to Mando and Grogu reuniting as we now have the setup for Mando S3.

I’ll go into full details on the change log now and you’ll get a much better picture of the plot there. But I should have a v1 ready to send out tomorrow!

bram222 said:

from what I’ve seen from chapter 1, looks nice. really like the idea to go the heist after the farm world and skipping the jawa subplot. I’m exited for your upcoming work. love a link for chapter 2,3,4,5

Thanks! I think that order of plot turned out really well too. Chapters 1 & 2 are fun watches since they are fresh takes on the story structure, but I think Chapters 3/4 are my favorites with how I was able to touch those up and retell some aspects. I’ll send you some links!

I haven’t updated the change list or written about it yet, but I’ve made a ton of progress on Chapter 5 and have a brand new story order that I think really helps form a coherent plot out of the messy Boba season. It feels very much in line with my previous work and I’m excited to share more soon. I’m aiming for a release of that sometime next week and will start writing out after the US holiday!

Peonthegrate said:

I’m planning on hopefully rewatching chapter 2 over the weekend.

Oh, thanks! I’m rendering a quick fix edit right now to send you instead.

But from what I remember there were a few small things I thought could of potentially worked better.

1.in the scene where Fett is gifted the Lizard, his first line of the scene is “you are warriors.”
I remember feeling like the scene would of played out better without that starting line as it felt like the scene started in the middle of a conversation.

On a review of the scene I also agree. I changed up the scene order here so we don’t have that line anymore.

Also, though the lizard scene in the D+ version is maybe a little silly. I remember something about the edits take on the whole removal of the lizard felt off. Felt like something was missing. I feel either you could try removing the lizard entirely, or making the lizard come out of his nose like in the original.

I’m not entirely seeing what you are here, but I did alter how the sand was thrown at Boba’s face a bit which might help take some focus off the lizard? I don’t see any reason to think something is missing by not having the lizard come out of his nose since it is no way hinted that it goes in in the first place. But let me know if you have some idea if it still feels off.

I also remember thinking that whenever Boba saves Fennec, that while I never liked the mods scene in the original where they repair her. I think it felt a little odd not seeing any if that in this edit. Perhaps you could show bobba taking her to the modshop but cutting the scene as he enters? Idk I’m just spitballing here, that may not look good in practice.

The problem with the modshop scene as a whole was the massive, unfixable continuity error when they filmed it. This scene takes place in the middle of the night, supposedly right after we see Boba walk up to her in the Mandalorian episode. However, in that same Mandalorian episode, Din comes across Fennec’s body in the morning-afternoon when the suns are bright and shining! So the timeline presented to the viewer is that either Boba waited over 24 hours until the following night to heal Fennec, leaving us with massive questions about why Boba waited so long & how Fennec survived that wound for over a full day bleeding out and cooking in the suns, or that Boba took her to the shop the same night and then placed her still unconscious body back in the sand during the daytime for Din to find in order to trick him…? Neither of those options make sense when you watch a chronological edit, and I truly think the director meant to film that scene as if it happened the same night of the original battle, but forgot about the scene in the Mandalorian where Din finds her body in the daytime.

I also extended the first flashback sequence with additional Kamino footage that I forgot about the first time around.

I think thats about it. Though I could be forgetting something, and I plan on watching it again in a few days hopefully. Overall loved this chapter especially.

Wonderful, this is just a quick fix edit I’m sending out now and will render a full fledged v2 if needed next week.

Ok, it’s been implemented and I also went back to start unifying the intro/credits of each film. Chapter 1 v2 is rendering now and I can send out links in a couple hours. Were you able to recall any other feedback from Chapter 2 that you think would help improve it?

Ok got a little bit of time to dive into Chapter 1 again for another version of those scenes. Here is the village lodging requests with a few changes, notably in slowing down some of the pacing you mentioned, as well as reorganizing/re-timing some of the conversation on the cart again.

https://streamable.com/xrc567

And here is a new montage of the time at the village! I think this one fits a lot more as we don’t have the building of barricades and as much of the “preparing for battle” feeling. Now it’s more peaceful, showing Mando just walking around doing his thing, sharing his “religion” (weapons) with the people, and even hinting at a bit of a love triangle! Let me know if this feels better to you.

https://streamable.com/6l9dbu

If this looks good I think I’m ready to render the v2 of Chapter 1 here and send it out to everyone who has been asking in DMs. Thanks for the support!

New sewer sequence is definitely the best one yet! I’d actually be happy with this version being the edit version.

Anjohan said:

Also, here’s the projects wonderful posters made by none other than ArtisDead. This guy’s on another level. To not cludder the thread with too many pictures, I’ll leave my favorite and link to the rest:

https://forums.fanedit.org/attachments/andob2b-jpg.2007/

https://forums.fanedit.org/attachments/andob5b-jpg.2009/

https://forums.fanedit.org/attachments/andob4b-jpg.2010/

This was from a while ago, but the links don’t work for me. Any chance you could post those in a way that is viewable? Would love to appreciate this person’s art!

Just dropping in to say how incredible your work here is. This is truly next-gen fan editing and you are on the forefront! Greatly inspires me to keep learning and improving on my own skills.

I’m happy with the direction things are going here, no further feedback from me at this point. I think it’s very close and just in the finishing touches stage.

Definitely interested in this and would enjoy seeing it when you get a chance to send a link. Thanks!

Update on the project:

I am still currently deep in progress on Chapter 5, but have hit a bit of a wall there with how much there is to do. I am trying to reconceptualize the whole plot with that content and I predict quite a lengthy project time compared to how I was able to complete the first 4 Chapters. So, what I’m going to do now is go back through Chapters 1-4 in the meantime to tidy up any bugs and implement a couple changes. As not many people have even watched past Chapter 2 yet, I feel like I have plenty of time to get back to finishing Chapter 5 long before everyone gets too anxious to see it.

Peonthegrate said:

Alright, back to the feedback on the clips of Episode 1:

Like I think I said earlier, the Mudhorn scene works a lot better now. I don’t think I got any real complaints there.

I’m pretty happy with this too, I think I’ll soft lock it in for now.

For “Villager lodging fix2” I think this works much better also. I’m unsure if this can be fixed, but the only semi-complaint I have here now is the last 20 seconds or so feel a bit sudden/rushed maybe. Basically everything after Mando says “I need one more thing.” Though part of me like how it feels fast. I’m unsure.

Now for the “Villager Job” I think this is better than what was previous done. Though part of me still feels a little off about it, but this may be because I’m used to the Disney+ version. I’m not much of a editor/film maker, so this may sound terrible in practice, but part of me is curious what the montage may sound like with the music but also with some background sound effects that were originally present.

That may not work for a montage type feel that you’re going for though.
I feel like it’s also slightly strange that we see them putting up walls and training and such during the montage, but never see anything come from it if that makes sense. I’m afraid it may feel slightly underwhelming seeing Mando train the village, only for that to be the end of that. Sort of like a lot of build up, with little pay off I’m worried about. This may come across differently though while watching the edit as a whole and not just a 1 minute clip.

I’m curious from a hypothetical standpoint if it may be worth trying to incorporate the raiders in some way, while cutting down a lot of it. Though that may be an avenue not worth exploring.

I do feel like I need to just watch this whole 30 minute segment uninterrupted now with the changes to get a sense of how the pieces are fitting together here, so I’ll get back to you on this. I am definitely onto something with this idea, I just need to make sure there’s nothing distracting in it.

EDIT: Also out of curiosity, will you be using the deep fake for Luke at the end of episode 4 by Shamook?

Yes! Already implemented in my Chapter 4 release

NFBisms said:

This is something I put together in the other Kenobi redux thread, just in case it could be relevant to this project in some way:

NFBisms said:

I was one of those suckers who was actually really excited for Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) because Deborah Chow and Kelley DIxon’s work on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad fuckin’ rule. Needless to say, that was a bit misguided.

So I took a crack at editing the show to be closer in tone and style to what I expected out of BB-verse alumni.

I don’t think I’m going to do the whole show, but it was just a fun little experiment. The edit isn’t supposed to be like BB/BCS fwiw, just approaching the material with some of the storytelling philosophy I learned from them.

At the very least, Deborah Chow’s sensibilities as a director were still conducive to being arranged in this way so at least some of my excitement wasn’t unfounded

Wow! This was absolutely incredible! I would love to see this included in Anjohan’s film if he likes it and it works with his cut. Amazing editing

Anjohan, in regards to the new rescue clips, the main thing that threw me off was the immediate transition to underwater, are there any other shots you could use to bridge the gap? Even something as simple as Obi walking down an alley or something that could make it seem like he is accessing the sewers

revel911 said:

Anjohan said:

Octorox said:

GLogus said:

Anjohan said:
I hope the removal of the lines “I killed Anakin Skywalker” and “Then my friend is truly dead” will help clarify to the audience that Obi-Wan still sees his friend in there and that killing him is just not in his heart. Thank you for a great assesment of the problem.

You’re gutting the whole series of its emotional climax! Too many faneditors get so caught up in their desire to preserve canon and continuity that they will sacrifice important thematic elements of a story. This whole series is about Obi-wan being haunted by his sense of guilt over Anakin and then finally being released from that guilt. It was a powerful moment of catharsis truly unrivaled by the rest of the series. An editor’s first priority should be helping a good story come to the fore. I also think a good fanedit works with the original vision of the media, not against it. You are trying to fix something that ostensibly breaks the OT, but I assure you, you cannot make the OT one bit better or worse with this edit; you can only improve the material that you’re working with.

I agree with this, and honestly I don’t see him not finishing Vader off as an issue. Sure, he recognizes that Anakin is gone, but recognizing it is one thing, and striking the killing blow himself is another. He couldn’t do it on Mustafar, and I think he still couldn’t do it here.

Well, I agree. I always did. But it still is an issue for most.

However, perhaps I should just re-insert the two lines - or just the “I killed Anakin Skywalker” and call it quits. The halfway point.

I don’t see it as a game changer either way. Episode 6 works almost as is (without Reeva).

To me, that’s the best it both. From Vader’s pov … Anakin is dead, but that doesn’t mean Obi feels the same. This will Be perfect.

Yes! I 100% agree with this too. Anakin can say that about himself, but Obi-wan doesn’t have to believe it.

I salute you on your efforts, thanks for the update post! Can’t wait to see the finished product.

I am in full support of everything in your latest update.

Anjohan said:

What about Obi-Wan not killing Anakin?

Well, as I’ve now answered the point about Qui-Gon, I always interpreted this scene that Obi-Wan felt he had inflicted enough damage on his old friend. I never once questioned why he left him like he did on Mustafar, but having heard you guys debate it over and over again have made me wonder if this is a huge problem for most? If so, I’m open to more ideas…

This is the last thing that does bug me a bit. Here’s my suggestion… Save the end of Obi-Wan & Anakin’s fight from “AotC” for the end of the final fight between Obi-Wan & Vader in Episode 6. Instead of Obi-Wan saying “Then my friend is truly dead,” (this is the line that confuses me, because if that statement were true, then why would you not kill him here to protect Luke and Leia?) and instead have Obi-Wan complete his reflection on their duel as student & master. This way it comes across as trying to teach Vader the lesson he tried to teach Anakin long ago instead of a strange contradiction of his words and actions, and it brings a conclusion to the flashbacks we saw in the Episode 5 content. To compliment this change, also change the end of the Episode 3 duel by having Vader say his “The years have made you weak” line as Obi-Wan is rescued by the robot, further showing that Vader didn’t want to fight a weakling Obi-Wan.

Now, at the end of the series with these changes, Vader & Obi-Wan’s relationship has developed into something more complicated & co-dependent. Vader won’t kill Ben because he wants to fight him at his best, & Ben won’t kill Vader because he still considers Anakin his friend, he wants him to grow & gain the wisdom that Ben knows he’s capable of learning.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi: A Star Wars Story” or “Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

“Kenobi”

Peonthegrate said:

I’ll look at these again hopefully later today. I checked them out yesterday and they were all improvements especially the mudhorn. Ill get back to you though with more details.

Thanks, I appreciate it!

I’ll also hopefully give my thoughts about chapter 2 as I saw that a few days ago and absolutely loved it.
I’m especially intrigued about how you handle the books of bobba fett in Chapter 5. As chapter 2 was outstanding I thought.

Wow, that’s good news actually. I was most concerned about Chapter 2 feeling “off” in some way compared to the others, but it’s good to hear that the overall idea panned out.

I’ll get back to you though about notes of chapter 2 as there’s was a few relatively small issues I had. But again. Overall thought chapter 2 was fantastic, and loved the way the story was presented.

Yeah, a review like the last one would be super helpful. Once I finish up those changes on Chapter 1 and read your notes on Chapter 2 I’ll probably touch those up and re-release before finishing Chapter 5.

Speaking of, this is a hard one to make! How I’m approaching it is that I’m just organizing all scenes into something chronological that makes sense between the Boba/Din stories. Then I’m going through every single scene to cut it into the best version of itself, but then I still have to take the film as a whole and figure out the most compelling cut with all of the scenes. There is a lot of extra footage in this Chapter. Even edited down a good deal (change log is waaaay behind), my original cut without trimming the fat is still over 3 hours so I have some brainstorming to do. There’s a silly amount of Boba “building his empire” content that I think will help do the trick when I remove as my initial plan is to present Boba as already being relatively established as Daimyo compared to the D+ version.

Looking forward to hearing your take, Anjohan!

I won’t beat a dead horse with my overall disappointment in the production of this show as a whole, so for me this finale was as expected after seeing the rest of the show. There wasn’t anything overly unique or deep, plenty of plot holes to complain about, but if you touch up the key elements I think the “cool” moments can be better brought to life.

The main things I would recommend to change in the finale are:

• Somehow fix the logic of the star destroyer chasing the frigate/obi wan’s escape shuttle. The whole pursuit really threw me off from the get go. Why can’t they use a tractor beam like on the Tantive IV? If they can’t, why not deploy fighters? Why does the entire star destroyer have to pursue Obi-wan instead of just vader’s shuttle? I would truncate as much of this nonsense as possible to keep it focused on a sensible pursuit of Obi-wan.

• I don’t see any value to the conclusion of the Reva storyline. I realize D+ is trying to set her up for a future appearance in another show, but man I think the best conclusion to her story in movie is for her to die on Jabiim last episode. Let her show the folly of dedicating your life to revenge. Owen fighting her off with a metal moisturizer pole was beyond absurd, and every cut away from Vader-Obi to the Reva farm ridiculousness was killing the vibe in a major way. Also the way Obi-wan fights Vader and then instantly teleports to Owen’s farm within minutes was painful. If you don’t even include that entire farm sequence and present his journey back to Tatooine as some time going by before his moment with Luke I think that’s the move.

There’s a lot more I could say but I’m more interested in hearing your review and vision for the content!

First off, Chapter 4 is released! See the updated change log and let me know if you want to watch it. I’ve just started on Chapter 5.

Peonthegrate said:

Wow, definitely much better on the Blurg. No real complaints there I think.

Good, I’m happy with the new transition and will finalize that.

The Mudhorn scene is better for sure, I feel like there’s a few pieces still missing. Mainly with the audio, I feel like the Mudhorn should be making some more noise around the 35 second mark based off of its movements.

• The first time the Mudhorn attacks and knocks over Din feels maybe a bit too abrupt/sudden. That may be unfixable due to the footage available.
  And at around the 1:00 mark there’s virtually no ambient sound coming from the environment or the Mudhorn when he smashes into the wall.

I wonder if it’s better to take an entirely different approach to this encounter seeing as there isn’t much establishing footage. My next idea would be for Mando to still enter the cave, but edit it as to not seem like he is intentionally going in there looking for something, but more that it’s just an inconvenient geographical obstacle in his way back on foot without a Blurg. (Hence the reason Kuiil said it was impossible to travel through that land without a Blurg mount)

Should I improve upon that first video above or rock with this cave idea?

https://streamable.com/5lycic

The lodging scene is definitely better as well. I still think it seems a bit odd that the two men seem interested in Mando solely because he’s a Mando which they find interesting I guess. And willfully allow him and Cara to stay without any mention of them being there to protect them or any reason they may want them there in the first place.
though , again this may be difficult to fully flesh out with the footage available. I like the scene of Mando giving Cara the credits much more now also. However it seems weird again to me that he’s paying her to come along for seemingly little reason.
Plus he says “ready for round two” which makes it seem there will be a fight ahead, that never comes.

Ok, I’m taking another crack at this idea a bit too. What I have changed is that now we only hear the farmers talk about having a job but that “We didn’t even tell you what it is yet”, however Mando is interested as soon as he learns about the isolated area. He now does not pay Gina to come as protection, but brings her along generally as a favor as she is looking for refuge too. The pay off in this “job” they do is shown a few minutes later. They now generally help out the village with defensive structures, blaster training, plus Mando gets some more time to bond with the nice lady. Also, in the next scene when Gina references how they’ve been there a few weeks we now have some idea as to what they’ve been up to.

Villager request: https://streamable.com/81371t

Villager job: https://streamable.com/xudy1e

Peonthegrate said:

I was finally able to watch your edit, starting with Chapter 1. I wanted to say that overall I loved this edit, and thought you did a very good job. Though I do have a few criticisms that I hope come across as constructive! As the positives far outweigh any of the negatives.

Awesome, thanks so much. This seems like exactly the type of feedback I’m looking for when I go back through to release a v2.

A Small one that I had was the removal of Mando learning how to ride the Blurg. I didn’t have an issue with this from a story perspective, just that for me from where the scene was cut it felt like… the viewer was missing something. Perhaps it’s cause I’m used to the original, but it felt a bit too much like the scene cut halfway through the middle of a scene to me.

I took another look and I do agree with you on the scene feeling like something was missing, so I reworked the transition with the visuals and audio. The problem was the abruptness at which Din was walking in the next scene indicating that something had occurred to agitate him, so by changing the shot and soundtrack between the events we no longer see that agitation and feel like we missed something.

https://streamable.com/yhjp4l

Let me know if that looks better to you!

Similarly to this, I liked the idea of the Mudhorn scene change, though this one didn’t work as well for me. It seemed like the Mudhorn “spawned” out of nowhere almost, and some of the cuts have Mando all muddied and beat up, and the next cut has Mando looking clean and uninjured. Perhaps there would be a way to show more of the Mudhorn scenes without the entire Jawa subplot to avoid these few issues mentioned.

In the same way, I have tried to reconstruct some of the shots around here to make the appearance of the Mudhorn more ominous and happen in a way that seems less like it “spawned”. I think the back and forth cuts I added in here help us see that Din notices it first so the viewer has a better clue that something is approaching them offscreen until we see the beast ourselves. I also adjusted all scenes to keep consistency with the armor damage. Again, let me know if this looks better to you.

https://streamable.com/6jegcw

The next issue I personally found was on the farm world. I LOVE the idea of what you did here, and it worked 90% of the time for me. It’s possible I just missed what the scene was trying to say. But with the new added context, or I guess removal of context that Mando is supposed to be defending the town, it felt very weird to me that Mando seemed to randomly ask the two men who approached him at night at the Razor Crest for their credits for no reason other than to bring Cara Dune along. It just felt weird that he was able to ask for their credits with nothing in return.

That’s a good point, I have adjusted the shots and voicelines in this scene to rectify that. It now should appear as though Din is more proactive in his request both to the villagers for housing, and for bringing Cara along as extra protection for Grogu while also giving her the refuge she desires as well. He pays her with his own credits now.

https://streamable.com/5824vq

I also found it a bit odd that the Widow at the farm told Mando “thank you” as he finally left. As from what we saw (unless I’m missing something) he didn’t do anything except take payment to lie low there for awhile? and never did anything for them.

Another good catch, thanks. This scene is easily fixed by simply removing that dialogue and letting them look at each other, wondering what life they could’ve had together. Glad to know this whole village idea worked in general though and with these couple touch ups it should play out without a hitch now!

Final thing, maybe I’m crazy but it almost feels like there’s some sort of filter over the video itself. I could just be seeing things, or it could be because the file size. I’m unsure but it seems like the colors are different than what’s on Disney+, as well as it seems there’s some Aliasing on small lines.

I didn’t do anything with the colors or anything like that, but I can try for a higher quality render next time and see if that does it.

• a very small thing that’s not really a big issue. Is the credit cards at the end reference now cut scenes. Not a big deal but thought I’d mention everything I could think of.

Yep, I’m aware of some inconsistency of credits/intro cards throughout each chapter and will be going through all of those to unify the technical presentation in the v2’s.

I hope nothing came across as too critical, as besides those few things I loved every other change and thought it was seamless. I’m especially looking forward to Chapter 2 now!

Not at all, that feedback was very helpful and I hope the fixes look better. I’ll finish up Chapter 4 soon and then render this v2 once a couple other people leave reviews too.

WitchDR said:

Would love a link to Chapter 3!

Sent! Made some good progress on Chapter 4 today and also found a great way to include Episode 12 as requested. Check out the updated Change log for details!

Links have been sent out and I am back working on Chapter 4 again. Going to be toying with including Mando Episode 12

Peonthegrate said:

Reading the changelog for Chapter 4 and wanted to give some input. This is only my opinion obviously as it’s your edit, but in my opinion it’s mistake in the grand scheme of these “Mando verse” shows to remove Episode 12 from Chapter 4.

As it establishes that something odd is going on with the empire, as we see what seems to be some sort of Snoke business and cloning going on in the Imperial Facility. I already view that as an important scene with what is currently in cannon, and believe it will only become more and more important as more gets revealed in the coming seasons of Mando.

For the same reason I personally think leaving in the Ahsoka Thrawn dialogue is very important as well. (Maybe not currently with what we have in Mando, but almost definitely will be important in the coming seasons/ Ahsoka.)

I understand cutting it for the Mandalorian plot, but I expect it will be important to the plot of the Mandalorian quite soon. Perhaps even a potential future “Chapter X” in your edits.

Despite the criticisms, I wanted to say that so far, from just skimming through the Chapters as I haven’t had time to watch through them fully, Im very much enjoying your changes. And loved your approach specifically with having Mando’s and Boba’s plots intertwine in Chapter 2.

stevepaynter said:

I agree, I think you should leave the Ahsoka Thrawn dialogue in this edit as I believe it will play an important role in the Mandoverse later. Also, we the see the origin of the Beskar spear that Mando gets later which is also referred to in later episodes. Smudger also excluded the Ahsoka Thrawn dialogue and the origin of the Beskar spear scene from his edit which I always thought was odd as it’s setting up the future series. When Smudger was online (it appears he’s gone into hiding) he has admitted it was mistake and has plan to put it back in his edit in the future.

Thanks for the feedback guys! That’s some good stuff and definitely helping me think it through again.

1. Regarding Episode 12, I had initially thought to cut it as it wasn’t directly related to the current Mandalorian arc and it made this edit into an unnatural ~3 hour long 4-Act plot. However, as I have been going forward and editing even more (the changelog isn’t up to date), I have cut out a good chunk of time and may be able to shove back in some of Episode 12 as a Cold Open to the movie. There is a ton of mindless fighting and weird blue fish guy in that episode which I can heavily reduce and maybe keep that whole sequence to ~15-20 minutes total, which would allow us to keep the important bits of dialogue regarding the Empire’s cloning program that you mentioned. I will take another crack at it once I have a better handle of the full run time and see if this can be preserved and integrated into the natural flow of Act 1.

2. Regarding Ahsoka’s dialogue, I actually did not cut out nearly as much as what you’re thinking of with Smudger. He chose not to include any of the city raid or content about the Beskar spear whereas my edit literally only cuts Ahsoka’s two lines namedropping Thrawn out of nowhere. So mine does still maintain the origin of the spear, the presence of the Magistrate as a whole etc. I found it incredibly distracting to mention a character that has absolutely nothing to do with this show and was clearly intended to act as only a teaser for Ahsoka’s own upcoming show. When framing my project as “The Book of Mandalore” it really doesn’t make sense for Ahsoka to come in out of nowhere teasing her own show. That’s the main reason I cut the namedrop, so now in my edit it seems like Ahsoka is taking refuge on Korvus when the Magistrate begins to hunt her. However, if in the future we get some additional information about Bo-katan’s involvement in this scheme and it suddenly seems important to The Book of Mandalore or is somehow necessary to understand the content in the Ahsoka show, then it’s a very easy fix to add these 2 lines back in. As of now, I don’t think these lines will have any importance aside from a throw away teaser. I believe the Ahsoka show will provide more than enough context to understand its own plot without the context in Mandalorian Season 2 episode 5.

I do have some personal business coming up, so my Chapter 4 here is looking to be 1-2 weeks away from completion due to lack of access to my editing pc and wanting to spend some extra time to do this film right when I do return. I’ll still be active on the forums but won’t be able to work much on the edit for a bit.

Hey, sounds great, would love to take a look!

Anjohan said:
Sadly, Episode 2 will be the Leia Kidnapped plot - and with the removal of a lot of cringe, believe me, it works a lot better. Seen the edit many a times now, and what removing dumb shit does for this series/film - you have no idea!

This I do believe! It’s actually astonishing how those little adjustments in removing the distractions help the entire experience. When the viewer isn’t constantly being pulled out of the show, everything just keeps building up and absorbing you in.

Anjohan, since it seems like we won’t be getting an explanation as to why Vader let Obi-wan leave in Episode 3 as he appeared angry about it in episode 4, I have cut a draft for how to make Obi-wan’s escape through the fire seem less like Vader intentionally let him go. Still would need a lot of soundtrack work but as a concept I thought something along these lines would make it more believable: https://streamable.com/kmx5y8

gbroyce said:

link please? would also love to hear what your plans for the next movie are as well as your vision for Episode 9. Also after watching the clips on Vimeo and reading the reason why I almost wish you put palpatine saying “kill him” from ROTS for shadowing his return, but absolutely love the clips and the change list I read through.

Sent! I’ve actually released Episode 8 in its beta form and Episode 9 in an alpha cut, so you can find the links to those threads in my signature.

I thought about adding that “Kill him” line in someway, but since the thought only crosses Rey’s mind in the novel and isn’t actually an audible communication, I think it’s best to just see the results of her thought through her aggression.

Hope you enjoy, feel free to post a review when you watch!

If you do have a way to enhance this episode into content for your edit Anjohan, then I will certainly support you in that endeavor.

I was expecting an explanation for why Vader didn’t go through the fire and a look into his psyche after seeing his master again, some deep Obi-wan character development after meeting Anakin for the first time in a decade, and redemption for the threat of the inquisitors, but this episode did not touch a single one of those aspects. Yes, we saw Kenobi start to get back into form but it was only seen in his actions in combat, not felt through good character development.

This was the shortest Star Wars live action episode we have ever had in anything, and for me the poor pacing overshadowed the few good moments that were present (Obi-wan in the water hallway, the tomb of dead Jedi, and Leia holding Obi’s hand). Like I said, there was only 15 minutes of screen time from when Obi-wan stepped foot on the inquisitor base to when he escaped with Leia. We were given the shortest live action production in the history of Star Wars after what happened last episode which makes no sense to me. From the get-go the pacing was wonky with the random rebel guy changing his mind in 30 seconds after suddenly remembering his deceased wife. Wade was introduced and died within 2 minutes, but it seemed like we were somehow supposed to care about him. Tala open hand godslaps a stormtrooper and shoots 2 of them precisely THREE seconds of screen time after Reva walks away… The hallway door hadn’t even closed yet, Reva was literally 10 feet down the hallway during this escape, how did she not turn around after hearing the blaster fire? I am flabbergasted as to how this is acceptable production quality. Perhaps I am letting expectation ruin this for me, but this was a 3.5/10 episode for me, very disappointing and by far the worst of the show.

Maybe there is a way to combine the best parts of Episode 2 with this episode 4 to make a coherent Act 1?