Acbagel

Awesome! Well deserved. Changed The Clone Wars experience forever!

deagan said:

Acbagel said:
Also, Deagan, what did you think of the Shadow Council scene as a first time viewer? That’s the scene with old imperial officers talking about their future plans/needs. Did the placement work for you? I moved it up in the series to give us a better picture of the state of the Empire compared to where it originally was placed.

I tend to zone out during these sort of council/politic meetings, even watching the prequels (haha). I’m not too sure what “Pershing” is, or what they were getting at with “cloning” (sorry lul), but I don’t think its placement detracted from the story at all - it’s a good break from the action to check in on Gideon. Perhaps I’m not following the story too well, but this just felt like an introduction to a complex group whose plans would be better explained in time.

If anyone has watched Naruto Shippuden, they do a similar meeting with The Akatsuki to introduce the group’s goals, then they expand on the stories of each antagonist in later episodes.

https://youtu.be/moyStmyqQ_w

arabian said:
…with the mention of “I need protection, and we have to get rid of Mandalorians, and Pershing’s research is gone.” I mean, up to the scene prior, all we as the audience knew everyone thought Gideon was dead so WHY would he suddenly need like a ton of continued protection, the covert Mandalorians are all scattered now, and the Pershing message was literally sent 3 days ago where he said ‘I’m still working on it, boss! I’ll do better.’

While I agree with @Arabian that at that moment it seems the Mandalorians have dispersed, my impression was that the Shadow Council was getting close to finding them, and the meeting was ultimately for them to agree to get rid of the “pests.” Seeing as in Book 4, our protagonists successfully breach Gideon’s ship, maybe he was right to request protection from the Council?

As long as ACBagel has a plan to flesh out this group in future Books, I think this scene could pretty much fit anywhere as a breather.

Excited to see what you have next, love the films!

Thanks for the feedback on this, very helpful to read. The “Shadow Council” is something that was established in old Star Wars lore, and is something we get another glimpse of in this Mandalorian story. We get to see the goings on of one particular member of the Council, Moff Gideon, while others (for example, Moff Pellaeon and Admiral Thrawn) are going to be covered in future Star Wars shows (the coming Ahsoka show in August). So the main purpose is just to get a view of Moff Gideon’s tie in to the workings of the Council as a whole.

I’m still leaning toward removing Boba from this scene, as I don’t understand why he is in it. If he shoots Din, he should be fully ready to fight and retrieve his armor, but he just retreats. It felt like Boba gave up on retrieving his armor, because he was intimidated by Din’s ability to beat up some little raiders, but he could have sniped him and moved closer to his armor.

I’m not sure what the solution would be, but I was a bit confused as to why he retreated, even after trying to kill Din.

¯_(ツ)_/¯ Just my two cents!

That makes sense. However, on the flip side, the actual show just has Boba watch Din walk away with the armor and never confront him at all. I don’t know what is worse now since we are presented 3 choices:

1. Boba watches Din and never engages him (the Disney version)
2. Boba snipes at Din but lets him go rather than revealing himself (Acbagel version)
3. Cut out all scenes of Boba in this segment (Deagan proposal)

Unfortunately, all 3 have issues. The main problem with #1 is why would Boba peacefully watch Din leave with his armor? The main problem with #2 is similar, but why does Boba not engage Din in battle personally right there on the spot after shooting at him? The main problem with #3 is that we now present a scenario where Boba is completely unaware that Din, another Mandalorian, is on Tatooine at all. Further, Boba is actively searching for his armor, which Din finds before him, but then Boba never discovers that Din found the armor, so how does Boba know how to track him down later in the show to confront him about the armor?

Any other solutions that we’re not thinking of here?

I have completed the first draft of Book 5, going through the bug & story review phase right now, so we’re still looking good for a this week release. That final battle ended up being a doozy to edit! Had some details I needed to keep consistent throughout the battle and it was a maze of scenes to reorder. I’ll probably have some storyline changes to make so I won’t post the changelog until I get all the finer points worked out, but it’s getting close.

arabian said:

Acbagel said:

arabian said:

Also with regards to Book 5, I also hope that you are leaning more towards including the Pershing stuff, with the final lobotomy scene towards the end. And keeping the Shadow Council scene in Book 5 because I really don’t think it worked in Book 3. (Although, I do know you did a lot of work on Gideon’s hair.)

Are you meaning to say put the Pershing stuff in Book 6? And then add a Book 7? Book 5 is what I’m working on now which is largely the BoBF content and some other Mando stuff.

I don’t know how you’re doing it – and it sounds like you have some exciting plans – but just interweaving the Pershing stuff into the plot, and have the final lobotomy scene with Pershing come into play as a consequence of what side you choose. Many said there was no reason for the Pershing storyline, but I disagree. I DO think it should have been integrated throughout the entire season instead of just a one-off episode, but I think it did have a purpose. And I think that by weaving it throughout will show that purpose.

Pershing chose the wrong side; he chose the Empire (even the remnants), and in the end, we see the consequences of many getting happy results of not doing so (Carga–who only “worked” with Gideon to keep Nevarro safe and then turned against him right away, the Mandalorians getting a home, etc.) and those who didn’t (Gideon) and, of course, Pershing. So when we get our resolution scenes towards the end including the Pershing lobotomy scene, I thought it would add this bitter note, yeah, this is what happens when you stick with the Empire too long… and that those remnants still remain alive and kicking.

Now that I’ve got a full picture of Book 5, I’m officially starting Book 6 production! Hope to answer many of these questions soon. As I like to do, I am going to look for my ending first and then work backwards. My two options are to start with the Nevarro ending and work back from there, trying to extend everything to a Book 6 & 7, or to use the Season 3 ending and work backwards from there.

At this point, I think I am leaning towards a 2-book ending rather than shoving everything into 1 movie. For Book 5, I ended up using very little Luke/Grogu content so I have a good amount of that to show throughout Book 6 to fill in for the weaker parts of Season 3. Not yet sure if that would bump Pershing stuff into Book 7. Running an A/B/C plot with Grogu, Din, AND Pershing in one movie might get a little crowded.

Big Man Toe said:

Acbagel said:

Big Man Toe said:

Working on Book 5? Have you already finished Book 4? Damn you work quick

Yes! I released Book 4 on May the 4th! Been a LOT of late nights getting this series updated, but it’s been worth it.

I’m actually having a ton of fun re-editing Book 5. There was so much untapped potential there that I hadn’t realized before. I’m about 1 hour 30 minutes through the film so far and am anticipating a ~2 hour 10 minutes runtime? So I’m definitely more than halfway, and with such a big chunk of the ending being combat rather than new story, I should make it through the last Act faster than the first 2. I am very confident you guys will be pleased with the new story. It definitely does a gritty, crimeworld Boba Fett justice. And having Mando S3 at my fingertips has helped on Din’s scenes.

I know there’s a lot of talk about a Book 6 or 7 ending, but I just still don’t know yet. I like to let the story write itself rather than me forcing something either way. I love the Pershing storyline and think re-editing that in a new way to lead up to Gideon’s return sounds awesome, but I want a natural flow for the return to Mandalore and just haven’t gotten to the nitty gritty storyboarding of it all yet. Now that I have a clear picture of how my Book 5 is about to end, I am starting to get to seeing a vision for Season 3 content, but the major decisions are still yet to be made. I need to do a full rewatch of Season 3 first too.

Wow I do wanna say your fanedits of Mando and BOBF are my favourite so far. And I would also love a link to Book 4.

Well, thanks! I’m glad you enjoy them. I love Star Wars and would make these just for myself even if I had no one to share with. But it’s a huge honor and pleasure to be able to spread my excitement and my vision with others. Sent you the latest movie

Big Man Toe said:

Working on Book 5? Have you already finished Book 4? Damn you work quick

Yes! I released Book 4 on May the 4th! Been a LOT of late nights getting this series updated, but it’s been worth it.

I’m actually having a ton of fun re-editing Book 5. There was so much untapped potential there that I hadn’t realized before. I’m about 1 hour 30 minutes through the film so far and am anticipating a ~2 hour 10 minutes runtime? So I’m definitely more than halfway, and with such a big chunk of the ending being combat rather than new story, I should make it through the last Act faster than the first 2. I am very confident you guys will be pleased with the new story. It definitely does a gritty, crimeworld Boba Fett justice. And having Mando S3 at my fingertips has helped on Din’s scenes.

I know there’s a lot of talk about a Book 6 or 7 ending, but I just still don’t know yet. I like to let the story write itself rather than me forcing something either way. I love the Pershing storyline and think re-editing that in a new way to lead up to Gideon’s return sounds awesome, but I want a natural flow for the return to Mandalore and just haven’t gotten to the nitty gritty storyboarding of it all yet. Now that I have a clear picture of how my Book 5 is about to end, I am starting to get to seeing a vision for Season 3 content, but the major decisions are still yet to be made. I need to do a full rewatch of Season 3 first too.

EddieDean said:

Acbagel said:

EddieDean said:

Here’s a video clip including both edits.

I got around the Greef situation by just cutting more. It’s not implicit that Greef is meeting Mando a long journey away from the city, so we don’t need travel scenes. Greef begins with his bodyguards, which is sensible even with this interpretation, since they did leave each other on bad terms. That’s the purpose they serve here, then we don’t need to see them again. Then I flipped the scenes so that Greef asks to see Grogu first - and the tension dissipating there as we see that he also genuinely cares for Grogu is what sells us on the fact that they’re now not going to get into conflict. Greef just seems legitimate. Then they talk about the situation a little, but Mando just says “I have a plan.” (I know you like it when we just get straight into the plan, rather than explaining it first!) We then have a quick montage, then just cut straight to Greef escorting Mando to the Imperials - if we notice Greef’s injury, we can assume he faked it to make it look like his capture of Mando was legit. A smooth musical transition helps sell this all too.

For the second scene, “You just got your bell rung, you’ll be alright” is a legitimate statement, rather than Cara being actually worried about his mortality. The flamer then immediately attacks, so we don’t waste any time with them forcing an emotional scene. Grogu works his magic, and IG opens the grate then picks up Grogu. Again the music then carries us to the scene of Mando walking - we don’t need a wipe. Mando updates them on the situation as he’s struggling, then he stops and tells them he can stand. He’s now OK, and has recovered from essentially just a temporarily disorienting knock to the head.

I don’t massively feel like that’s the turning point for him not hating droids - I always felt like that was more of an odd prejudice (plus IG is an assassin droid) that he just gradually gets over.

Interesting, that’s a solid edit and your cuts do work well enough that the concept could work. However, my next concern is that if I do end up altering the ending anyways, we are already looking at a 1 hour 57 minute runtime. Cutting out so much more would be pushing this film too far into the shorter end and I really don’t feel like it slows down too badly anywhere as is. If I were running long, I would definitely feel stronger about cutting there, but the runtime is spot on where I like it and it’s not like those scenes are necessarily bad.

Not so! This is from your book 2, which clocks in longer than the rest at 2:15. So it’s not massively longer, but I do think that both of those scenes hurt the pacing in an already oddly slowly paced finale.

Oh! You’re right, I’m mixing up my own films now. Yes, actually that Book 2 did drag on some so I am back in favor of shortening those scenes. Also, I think we discussed in DMs once, but the Grogu healing thing is pretty wack. I was willing to give it a pass orginally just because it was Yoda’s species and they’re so shrouded in mystery and a unique connection to the force, but they never went any further into his healing ability throughout the next 2 seasons. I am pro-cutting that scene. It also lessens the impact of him blocking the fire later since it’s 2 miracles in 20 minutes.

I loved your book 5, so what you’re saying about it there sounds very exciting!

I’m bringing back the Hutts in a whole new way. I can’t yet write out how it’s all going to play out as I’m still rewriting the Hutt dialogue to tie into the story better, but I’ve got some crazy twists and turns planned. Boba’s reign is going to have a completely different tone. He will be pretty well established to start, and then it slowly starts to break down as the Pyke chaos begins to set in and we see a need for his reliance on the Mandalorians which is such a major theme of The Way of Mandalore. Again, his story will be interwoven with Din’s journey. What makes me the most sad is that it is such a shame that Boba was not in Mando Season 3 content at all. Hopefully we get a Book of Boba Season 2 for a Book 7/8 Way of Mandalore?

EddieDean said:

Here’s a video clip including both edits.

I got around the Greef situation by just cutting more. It’s not implicit that Greef is meeting Mando a long journey away from the city, so we don’t need travel scenes. Greef begins with his bodyguards, which is sensible even with this interpretation, since they did leave each other on bad terms. That’s the purpose they serve here, then we don’t need to see them again. Then I flipped the scenes so that Greef asks to see Grogu first - and the tension dissipating there as we see that he also genuinely cares for Grogu is what sells us on the fact that they’re now not going to get into conflict. Greef just seems legitimate. Then they talk about the situation a little, but Mando just says “I have a plan.” (I know you like it when we just get straight into the plan, rather than explaining it first!) We then have a quick montage, then just cut straight to Greef escorting Mando to the Imperials - if we notice Greef’s injury, we can assume he faked it to make it look like his capture of Mando was legit. A smooth musical transition helps sell this all too.

For the second scene, “You just got your bell rung, you’ll be alright” is a legitimate statement, rather than Cara being actually worried about his mortality. The flamer then immediately attacks, so we don’t waste any time with them forcing an emotional scene. Grogu works his magic, and IG opens the grate then picks up Grogu. Again the music then carries us to the scene of Mando walking - we don’t need a wipe. Mando updates them on the situation as he’s struggling, then he stops and tells them he can stand. He’s now OK, and has recovered from essentially just a temporarily disorienting knock to the head.

I don’t massively feel like that’s the turning point for him not hating droids - I always felt like that was more of an odd prejudice (plus IG is an assassin droid) that he just gradually gets over.

Interesting, that’s a solid edit and your cuts do work well enough that the concept could work. However, my next concern is that if I do end up altering the ending anyways, we are already looking at a 1 hour 57 minute runtime. Cutting out so much more would be pushing this film too far into the shorter end and I really don’t feel like it slows down too badly anywhere as is. If I were running long, I would definitely feel stronger about cutting there, but the runtime is spot on where I like it and it’s not like those scenes are necessarily bad.

arabian said:

Also with regards to Book 5, I also hope that you are leaning more towards including the Pershing stuff, with the final lobotomy scene towards the end. And keeping the Shadow Council scene in Book 5 because I really don’t think it worked in Book 3. (Although, I do know you did a lot of work on Gideon’s hair.)

Are you meaning to say put the Pershing stuff in Book 6? And then add a Book 7? Book 5 is what I’m working on now which is largely the BoBF content and some other Mando stuff.

Also, Deagan, what did you think of the Shadow Council scene as a first time viewer? That’s the scene with old imperial officers talking about their future plans/needs. Did the placement work for you? I moved it up in the series to give us a better picture of the state of the Empire compared to where it originally was placed.

Regarding Book 5 production… Whew! I am giving this one a massive overhaul. I didn’t expect to need to do so, but I really, really want to nail Boba Fett as the crime lord we all wanted to see. I think I’ve got something special here folks. My last version worked, but this one is completely fresh with brand new ideas. Really pushing the limits of how much I can alter this storyline. You’ll need to wipe all your previous knowledge of this story going in and just let it play out in a whole new way! I am still hammering out the details, but I’ll get to building the changelog soon. I probably have another week of work to do on this film before it’ll be ready to release. But I’m excited!

EddieDean said:

Also, I made my own cut of your current Book 2, which removed Greef’s intended betrayal and the fireside scene (Mando just says “I have a plan” at their first meeting and we cut to him in cuffs meeting Werner Herzog), and also removed Mando needing to take off his helmet (he just “gets his head dinged” but then after the team open the sewer vent he’s walking - with help, through the tunnels). I found that both of these worked nicely to improve the pacing in that sequence.

How did you work around Greef’s guards and the number of Blurrgs? I remember that was the main reason I couldn’t skip around the night time scene.

I’m interested in seeing your rendition of the Din head injury. Do you feel that he still has the proper motivation to retract his hatred of droids without this experience with IG11? Especially considering one of the coming scenes he is visibly distraught over IG sacrificing himself. Something has to change him to go from hating IG to being concerned for him.

Hey, folks! I’m back after some time traveling for work, you’ve all been popping off with the feedback! Thanks, there’s so much to respond to, I won’t be able to address it all at once but you’ve given me quite a bit to ponder.

EddieDean said:

Thank you both for the kind words. It’s been a privilege working with Acbagel, who has impeccable technical skill and a real eye for the fine detail of making each scene feel great.

Acbagel, I really think it’s worth considering making two films. Your early intercutting sounds great, I think you really could close out that sequence with the pirate king content, as it’s such a punctual high that changes the status quo and feels earned.

And while Pershing’s content isn’t massively linked to the main plot, it IS at least foreshadowing for the reveal of Gideon’s clones. I think it could intercut with the remainder of the season to create a fantastic second movie focused purely on the return to Mandalore and Gideon’s role in it. And plus, it would pad the time nicely between the pirate king stuff (we found a home on Nevarro!) with the following stuff (actually, we’d prefer a home on Mandalore!)

I really feel like if you got a rough cut of that together it’d give you the sense that the season really works nicely as two films.

I strongly urge you to consider this!

I will indeed consider a 2-movie format for my ending. I am getting closer to working with that content, but still currently in Book 5 material. I haven’t had much time the last few days, but I’ve been trying to sort out which Luke/Grogu scenes to place in Book 5 vs 6. Definitely making progress on some new structure.

WtarSars said:

Check out this mandalorian fan edit trailer! https://youtu.be/kQUiHTCTSi0

Is this your work? You should probably make your own thread for this and share your ideas with this community. I’d love to follow your progress and watch your vision of this story one day.

arabian said:

OK, I watched Book 1 and I haz notes.
…

Arabian, I really appreciate you writing out all of these detailed notes for the first 3 films! That’s some good stuff. I will return to these posts in the near future to consider integrating some of your ideas in a future 4k release. In general though:

Book 1: I will consider altering the ending of this film. The ball into hyperspace scene is just so classic and punchy, it felt like too “easy” of an ending for me haha. That’s why I went with a softer, more peaceful approach with the Sorgan landing. But I’m not 100% sold on it and it is probably best for the first film in a saga to end traditionally like you suggested. And the Kuiil/IG-11 rebuild placement has always given me trouble. It felt unnatural to place it anywhere… Maybe that just means it’s not needed at all in either Book 1 or 2?

Book 2: Regarding the balance of the the Boba screen time vs Din screen time in Act 1. I really don’t know how to entirely solve that as the two need to cross paths chronologically in Act 2. Boba simply has 2x-3x more content to show before they reach this point though. EddieDean and I tried 3 or 4 different iterations of this opening storyline, even experimented with giving Din the full Sorgan raider plot (this just made the movie drag on WAY too long). However, your suggestion about Book 1’s new ending would give me more Din time to play with in Book 2, and some of your notes on the “connective tissue” between scenes might help with this too. I think it’s worth another shot in the future to try to address some of this. Either way though, the Boba v Din screen time balance flips the other way in Act 3 as they didn’t film content in BoBF that takes place here. So right now it’s like Act 1 = Boba heavy, Act 2 = Even Boba/Din, Act 3 = Din heavy. I thought that overall balance of the entire film worked at least.

Book 3:

deagan said:

I finished Books 3 & 4 and love these film edits! Reading @arabian’s comments, I thought I may echo some things. Note, I haven’t watched the Mandalorian show at all, and this is my first time watching the show (via your film edits)!

• I was a little confused at Boba aiming at Mando in the desert and then him walking away but I think that was from the show. Yes? No?

I too was quite confused by this scene. Mando fights a bunch of raiders after being shot by Boba, but then Boba just walks off? Perhaps removing Boba from this scene completely would suffice. Mando gets shot by raiders, and fights them off.

First of all, hello Deagan! What an interesting perspective you bring in watching this content for the first time in my edit. That’s quite an honor for me, and I really appreciate you sharing your views after that unique experience.

To address that quoted scene above, that you and Arabian both mentioned, perhaps I trusted super-nerd knowledge too much here. Boba Fett is the one who fires that shot at Din. You see him aiming the Tusken Cycler rifle from up high in the rocks, and then you hear the iconic crack! that only that type of rifle makes, followed by the signature orange blaster bolt coming from the top left angle that Boba just fired from. He is the one who shoots Din, followed by the raiders then coming in to do the dirty work on the ground. But perhaps if that isn’t clear enough to a first time viewer, I can add another scene of a close up on Boba firing the shot with a muzzle flash so we can actually see it happen. I was wanting to go for an element of surprise, but confusion should never be the end result. So actually, in the original show, Boba just watches Din fight the Krayt Dragon and then walks away. He never intervenes. I wanted to give him some more individual agency and show how he is pursuing his armor which is why I created this new ambush sequence.

• Oooh, I loved how you went from Boba telling Fennic “don’t touch my buttons” at the Sarlac pit to Mando trying to get Grogu to "touch his buttons’ and fix the Razorcrest and failing miserably. Beautiful connective tissue between those two scenes!

Thanks, Arabian, these are instances that I should try and focus more on finding to connect other transitions, especially in Book 2.

Another thing I noticed for this part, is that Boba says “I can’t see a thing!” entering the Sarlac pit, then immediately turns on the light of their ship. This felt a bit redundant and out-of-character, wouldn’t Boba the brooding and intelligent bounty hunter just turn on the light quietly?

“OMG, it’s so dark inside of this monster rnrn, omg!” turns on flashlight

Haha that’s a great point deagan. It does really feel like the script writer is force feeding Boba a line to say rather than something natural to actually deliver here. I can cut that!

I too was a bit confused by this character. Pel says “With my life.” then the film cuts to a conversation with a similar fish-person talking to Gideon about tracking Mando. Was the fish-person that Pel trusted telling the Empire of their location, or was it just coincidence that they were talking to a similar fish-person? If this fish lady did have more scenes, it may be good to add them to the film, to show that she can indeed be trusted alone with Grogu. When Mando gave Grogu to her, I thought she was a traitor, but Grogu just plays with their fish lizard baby thingy, safe and sound.

Oh, very interesting! So these are actually two distinct characters of completely different species. The good frog-lady is a new species, but the Imperial spy is a different species that has been in a decent amount of other Star Wars content. Now, you do have a good excuse here as we only see this spy through that hologram shot so it’s not as clear, but I think on reviewing the appearance of the two characters you can see that they aren’t really alike? Other than changing scene order of this spy scene, I’m not sure how else I could make it more clear, but I don’t think it should be a problem? Is it less confusing after seeing these images though?

Thanks again all, I will get back to some of the other comments at a later date. I want to keep making progress on Book 5 for you!

May the Book 4th be with you. Links sent!

arabian said:

Just read this whole thread. Very interesting seeing all the changes and loved reading EddieDean’s input - such a brilliant SW mind.

Indeed, Eddie has come in clutch through this whole series, helping me catch bugs in my drafts, pitching new ideas and radical changes. Brings in so much experience from the Clone Wars project he mastered, it’s been great to bounce ideas off him and has improved this saga significantly.

Acbagel, I’d like to see the latest versions of these that you have done, please

And I have a suggestion for season 03, re the Pershing episode. Since many of us agree that it was well-written and handled well, I think enough of it (with some judicious trimming) can work. Cut the ep in blocks and spread the scenes between what is going on in Nevarro/Mandalore, with Mando, Bo-Katan, etc. Then have the final scene in this story be Kane lobotomizing Pershing. That’s your final beat. That is the why of that story. THIS is how awful the Empire is. You can’t escape. You can never escape. Even if you try. Once you’re in, there is no out.

I did have it interwoven throughout the whole film like you mentioned, up until the last episode of Mando Season 3 came out and there was no tie in at all to the larger story. The problem is that I have already intercut Din’s solo adventures and Grogu’s training into an A/B plotline through the first half of the film. Having an A/B/C plot structure with Pershing in there when Pershing never ties back into the A & B plots was super distracting. Which is a shame, because as I’ve said, I really liked those scenes. Maybe I’ll get a new spark of creativity and find a solution, but I need to get a better hold of my Season 3 film top to bottom first. It’s already looking on the ong end and I need to go through everything from scratch and decide what is needed to tell a focused narrative.

aleccaruana said:

I watched your first chapter and it’s overall my favorite feature-length ‘first’ Mandalorian film in terms of overall story and visuals. Just a few suggestions:

Wow! That’s high praise, thanks for that. I am most pleased that you had a good time with it. I hope your experience remains the same through the rest of my saga!

1. Love that you kept the opening bounty scene for characterization, but it could be further trimmed. Just cut from them walking to the razorcrest to the ship flying away, and then show Mando freezing him in carbonite and pan out to show all of the frozen bounties - this shows how successful and no-nonsense he is and tees up the offloading scene nicely.

I actually did have it almost exactly how you wrote there, but upon review, I needed just a tiny bit of characterization from the bounty since he reappears later on in the story and it is clear that the viewer is intended to know him. I also edit these movies with the idea that my viewers are going in totally fresh, with no prior knowledge of the episodes as if they are seeing this content for the first time ever. So I really liked the line we get from him about Din not taking his helmet off. That would be the first time we learn about this character trait and it is quite intriguing from the get go.

2. Trim down the Jawa + repairs sequence even more if you could. It gets a little slow in the second act.

Was there a scene in particular that seemed to drag on? The credits roll at 1 hour 59 minutes, so I don’t think the overall runtime is an issue, but if there is a specific moment that seems like it should move along I can consider another minor trim.

3. I agree that you need a third act after moving the wetlands to film two (the final sequence where they leave Nevaro is the best ‘film one’ ending beat in my opinion, so good idea). But the stakes of the prisoners arc are way too low and we don’t really get the sense that Mando is worried about Grogu if he’s willing to literally leave him in the hands of imperials on the planet. The idea that his interaction with the covert and memories of his own situation as a foundling increase the urgency of the rescue makes more sense. Also, Pershing shouldn’t have access to Grogu for more than a day or so, otherwise they would have the blood they need and Gideon would have no reason to recover him in season 2. I suggest that you have the prisoners episode happen on the way back from Arvala-7 to Navaro. It would still achieve the goal of making it clear that Mando is fed up with bounty hunting, but the catharsis at the end of the arc would be that he gets to go back to Grogu and reckon more with his decision to turn Grogu in.

I think the purpose of Act 2 (Prisoner bounty) is to show the monotony of the life Din is in. The low stakes of just another bounty and another day in the life hammer in his desire for something more, and he is able to later find that in Grogu. Yes, I also wish I had something a little higher stakes to work with, but Mando Season 1 is mostly made of slower side adventures, and I still think the prisoner storyline provides the best look into Din as a person and shows why he is tired of the bounty hunting lifestyle.

I suggest that you have the prisoners episode happen on the way back from Arvala-7 to Navaro.

Unfortunately, this is not an option due to the modifications on Din’s armor throughout the season. I am restricted to a certain order because of the in your face visuals. If I went straight from Arvala to the prisoner heist, Din would instantly appear in the next scene with a full cuirass of beskar armor that he hasn’t even received the materials for yet. I also don’t know how I’d play out why he even goes to do that bounty when he still has Grogu that he needs to turn in.

Also, Pershing shouldn’t have access to Grogu for more than a day or so, otherwise they would have the blood they need and Gideon would have no reason to recover him in season 2 It would still achieve the goal of making it clear that Mando is fed up with bounty hunting, but the catharsis at the end of the arc would be that he gets to go back to Grogu and reckon more with his decision to turn Grogu in.

Well I can do a double bag red blood cell donation in under 10 minutes haha, so I think either way Pershing has time to collect initial samples to begin research. We have no idea what Pershing was exactly doing with the blood or precisely how much he needed. We only know that he needed access to Grogu again because the initial samples were no longer viable to produce the desired results. There are a million different reasons why this could be the case.

Thanks for your feedback and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the other films as well. I’ll post here again when Book 4 is ready.

Book 4 will release tomorrow! Here are the change log notes to peruse in the meantime:

Book 4: The Way (v3 update)

• Added new Mandalorian Disney Star Wars intro
• New color grading & quality upgrade on Corvus
• Entirely re-created the intro with Ahsoka’s battle to set a completely different tone with a new order of events. Rebuilt the SFX from scratch and re-scored everything here. Hope you get chills on this opener!
• Cut out some lines between Ahsoka and Magistrate that were overly villainous. Throughout this Act, I have kept the focus 100% on Ahsoka trying to get information out of the Magistrate. No “If you do this I’m going to zap some innocents” as it was just cartoonishly evil, and not at all needed to create tension. In fact, I think it just distracted from what we are really invested in here. All of these intertwining stories that we’ve been building that are finally going to collide. Din, the Jedi, the Empire, the New Republic, Boba Fett! A bland villain plot that is resolved with no drama is not needed. All dialogue and scenes are edited to keep the focus entirely on the main narrative.
• Ahsoka ends the conversation by saying “Surrender or face the consequences” and then we cut to Din landing on Corvus, right in the thick of things!
• Cut some of Din’s walk through the village and asks about what’s going on with all the poor people. He is now guided straight to the Magistrate from the gates.
• Removed some bad wipe transitions.
• Removed some lines about how crazy evil the Magistrate is.
• Removed some Ahsoka Marvel reaction shots in the town battle.
• Rearranged shot order on Ahsoka’s walk down the street to continue building the intensity of the staredown.
• Re-edited the dialogue to again keep it focused on the main narrative.
• Removed a reaction shot of the troopers shooting at Ahsoka. (Brief rant on this: I absolutely loathe these 3-5 second zoom-in scenes where it seems like our protagonist is frozen in time. They ambush her, start shooting as she jumps to the rooftop, and then we get 5 seconds of random zoom-ins on enemies shooting her while Ahsoka is seemingly standing motionless on the rooftop. It is SO bad for combat pacing. Keeping one fluid scene where Ahsoka is constantly moving without all the zoom-in pauses that don’t appear to actually happen within time itself does wonders for entertaining action sequences.
• Re-ordered the battle sequence so Din hides his presence longer before coming in to ambush the remaining guards and begins his faceoff with the sheriff dude.
• Re-ordered the sequences between Ahsoka’s duel and the standoff.
• Re-edited Ahsoka and Din leaving the village to stay focused on the main storyline.
• I have cut Ahsoka’s apparent last-second mind change about Grogu and her unconfidently speculating “Well maybe you could go to Tython”. Now it appears as if she denies training Grogu because she is on another mission, but that she, in her wisdom, knows of another way to still have Grogu be trained as is needed.
• Re-edited the travel to Tython so it seems less like a teleport by moving around scene order.
• New color grading on Tython
• Cut out footage of Fennec’s mechanical belly
• Completely reordered the Tython battle, less of a back and forth of Din trying 3 different times to pull Grogu out (and spending like 5 min utes unconscious and then getting up like nothing happened?) and now it’s more a hurried and hectic battle to fend off the stormtroopers.
• Cut Fennec throwing her helmet at a stormtrooper
• Cut all the reaction shots of the laser coming from orbit, this laser literally freezes in time in the air so we can zoom in on everybody’s face and then continues again once our reaction shot scene is over. Can you tell I hate unnecessary reaction shots?
• Rearranged the scene order for the Razorcrest destruction and dark trooper deployment to give us some juicy back-and-forth drama between Gideon and Din instead of all Din and then all Gideon (plus, Kane says “The dark troopers will deploy momentarily” but then they deploy immediately. Now it actually is a few moments later)
• Moved Grogu in the cell to in between the travel from Tython to Nevarro for travel pacing purposes.
• Grogu’s hand motions for throwing the stormtroopers around didn’t make sense in the show. He’d pull his hands outward but the stormtroopers would collide inward etc. I have fixed all these discrepancies.
• Fixed a Disney bug where Mayfeld talks but his mouth doesn’t move (I’ve found a number of these phantom voice lines dropped on top of people. Usually, the actor will be off to the side of the screen and I guess they hope you don’t notice? It’s so easy just to cut around it though, I don’t really understand why they leave them in.)
• Rearranged some dialogue between Mayfeld and Cara regarding “Din’s kid”. If you remember from Book 1, Mayfeld didn’t really see first hand Din’s relationship with Grogu, so I’ve edited the dialogue so that he remains in a state of confusion about what is going on.
• Rearranged all the travel scenes from the prison world to Morak
• Upgraded some shot quality on Morak
• Completely cut out the need for Din to take his helmet off inside the Imperial base. Re-edited everything here for a new story presentation of these events.
• Cut out some way too blatant missed shots from stormtroopers on the Morak battle
• Cara now shoots the Imperial pilot mid-sentence rather than waiting forever.
• Re-ordered gameplan for the Gideon ship raid to stay on topic one at a time instead of jumping all over the place (Dark troopers, Grogu, Bridge)
• Fixed logical chain of events with the Lambda crashing into the cruiser (distances weren’t matching up between shots)
• Tightened up a couple of shots in the Din v Gideon battle
• Reduced the amount of blaster shots Gideon gets off on Bo before turning on Grogu
• Unified Credits presentation

Shoutout to EddieDean for helping with a lot of ideas for these v3’s! I’ll release Book 4 tomorrow and then move right into continuing work of 5.

WitchDR said:

I decided to throw a quick clip together to show the Scorpenek Droid error: https://vimeo.com/822212271

The rancor has already ripped off one of the blaster arms and destroyed the eye of the droid. Then when he throws it to the ground, it reverts back to having both it’s blaster arms and eye while it shuffles around on the floor. Only for it to again revert back to damaged once the Rancor rips the other blaster arm off.

Nice! That’s it, thanks so much. Great find, I’ll look for a way to address that.

gurgle1624 said:

Wow just wow!! The edit list is insane…I’m really excited to watch this.
Question…are the versions of the books you’ve worked on final or are those yet to come? I’ve been keeping each version you’ve released just so I can study the changes you’ve made, it’s a great progression in story telling. I’d like a link to your newest version please. I didn’t have plans tonight after I went to see Return of the Jedi in theaters again (I’ve already went to 4 showings, 3 more to go) now I have this to look forward to, thank you sir.

Awesome, sending you a DM now! Hope you enjoy it.
Haha wow, that’s a lot of RotJ! But nothing at all wrong with that. I saw a video of people leaving the RotJ showing for the first time back in '83, and the energy and reactions coming out of there were incredible. So enthused and satisfied, what a cool time.
This v3 update of The Way of Mandalore will be pretty much the final version. At some point in the future, I will go back through and upgrade the edits to 4k and maybe make some tiny changes, but this update is basically finalized in terms of my storytelling. Books 1-3 are updated and out now, Book 4 should actually be ready tomorrow, and then 5/6 sometime in May.

WitchDR said:

I, too, decided to watch through Book 5 first, since the Boba content was the worst and needed the most work.

Figured I’d share a few things I wrote down while watching:

Look at this, after 6 months I’m going back to make sure I find everyone’s feedback, so many thanks to all who have pitched in. Book 4 is already 95% good to go on the next update and is going through bug review right now, should be ready early next week, and I’m plugging through Book 5 as I write!

• At 13:45 there’s a weird fade out. It seems like the scene fading out, cuts off instead of fully fading into the next scene.

Fixed this fade

• Garsa Fwip’s “Apologies” line at 18:14 seems kind of awkwardly placed.

Indeed, it didn’t convey what it should have and I have thus removed it.

• I personally would love to see Boba’s missile fire at 19:28 removed, it always seemed stupid that he’d fire a shot at such close range. The only one who would probably get hurt from that is Fennec with no armor or shield. This isn’t a huge deal that’s worth changing, just something I’ve always thought.

Absolutely agree here too on review. I have removed this foolish decision.

• The scene from 20:25-20:33 could use some more work. The way the Gamorrean Guard puts the sword to the assassin’s throat, just to immediately take it away doesn’t seem natural. Also since you are implying the Rancor is already in the pit, I’d add some signs of life, i.e some Rancor growls or breathing when the gate begins to open. You could probably repurpose some of the Rancor’s breathing sounds from this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qd4YGjNSTs

Re-edited this scene so Boba now trails off saying “Well, if he isn’t going to talk…” and then Fennec acts on her own to immediately dump him into the rancor pit (now filled with Rancor SFX).

• The transition at 1:01:56 feels abrupt. I’d fade it out slower if possible.

Fade fixed!

• The transition at 1:45:12 felt a little awkward. Jumping to Boba flying through the air in the middle of the fight just seems too sudden after the prior scene. I don’t know how you would be able to fix this considering we never see them come out though. It’d probably work better with a buffer between those scenes, but that would require rearranging other scenes to that part.

Ugh, this scene drove me nuts first time around. You’re right, there just isn’t any footage here because of the stupid Twi’lek’s insufferable commentary. However, your solution to rearranging other scenes to use as a spacer here actually did end up working out so that is what I have done!

Since I was watching this with more of a hawk-eyed view, I found an error that the creators left in during the Rancor fight with the second Scorpenek Droid. The scene at 1:56:51 shows the Rancor tore off one of it’s blaster arms, than at 1:57:00 the Rancor destroys the Scorpenek Droid’s eye. But the following scene at 1:57:15 shows that the Droid has both it’s blasters and it’s eye undamaged. Only for it to revert back to it’s damaged self in the following scene at 1:57:18. Not something that needs to be fixed, just found it funny I never noticed it lol!

Apparently I do not have an hawk’s eye, or even a bat’s eye, because I could not find this even going frame by frame. I’d like to fix it if I can find it. The timestamp didn’t line up since I already applied the above changes and I just couldn’t find what you were talking about here. If you can timestamp the Disney+ show one with this bug I’ll try to fix it in mine.

All around great job with this! I found this far more enjoyable than the original content. I’ll wait to see you’re newly improved Book 1 and 2 before watching those episodes, but I’m excited to dive into the others!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed this and I look forward to you seeing the updated one soon.

Sent to all, and fixed the changelog formatting above and added all the changes! (well… most of them)

honestabe said:

I would like a link for Book 3 at your earliest convenience.

I must say Acbagel, you must really be a glutton for punishment to draft that entire post on your phone. 😃

Haha oh no I actually had it already written in a Google Doc, I just copied and pasted on mobile but couldn’t do all the formatting on there without spending 6 hours on it.

We aaaaaarrreeeeee LIIIIIIIIIVE!

Book 3 is ready to go. Sorry for the poor changelog formatting below. I’m on mobile and can’t make the necessary edits but I’ll clean it up tomorrow (EDIT: Fixed). I wanted to make sure I got this out ASAP though. This log isn’t even complete or 100% accurate as this film kept growing and growing as I edited (EDIT: Yes, it is complete now), so there will be some fun surprises throughout. Book 4 is making great progress too, should have a much shorter turnaround time!

Book 3: The Tribes

• Added new Mandalorian Disney “Star Wars” intro
• The film now opens again on the Carnita Arena scene. This will take place in the Outer Rim and not on Tatooine as in my previous version due to the new story order. The Way of Mandalore takes place within the OneCanon theory, meaning it is ~12 years after RotJ instead of Disney’s proposed ~5 years after. The state of the Empire is as we see it not due to the immediate collapse post-RotJ, but due to the events of the Legends novels. As such:

Mando Season 1: 9ABY, +7 years = 16ABY OneCanon (Black Fleet Crisis begins at the end of the year)
Mando Season 2: 10ABY, +7 years = 17ABY OneCanon (Black Fleet Crisis ends close to the start of the year)
BOBF Season 1: 11ABY, +7 years = 18ABY OneCanon (Corellian Crisis happens sometime during this year, but other than Luke’s cameo in BOBF these stories don’t seem to intertwine)
Mando Season 3: 12ABY, +7 years =19ABY OneCanon (Right after the Hand of Thrawn duology. Mando Chapter 23 provides the perfect context we need about Thrawn’s current whereabouts, and I am moving a scene from there into this Book 3.)
Ahsoka Season 1?: 12ABY, +7 years =19ABY

We can be certain that Thrawn is in the Ahsoka show, and that lines up with his established “wait ten years and I’ll be back” line that he tells Pellaeon. HoT doesn’t have specific dates attached to its events, but the plot does occur over a few months. Luke and Mara marry maybe a month after those books end. That leaves plenty of space for Mando S3 & Ahsoka S1 leading to the inevitable return of our boy in blue himself.

• New color grading on the Arena world.
• Cut the shot of the Gamorrean duelist unconscious in the ring as it’s up and fighting again 2 shots later.
• Re-ordered the shots of the Gamorean getting shot so he doesn’t hold his axe up in the air for 10 seconds of reaction shots in the meantime.
• Cut Crime Lord demanding Din take his armor off “or I’ll kill you”. Din now acts with a more immediate agency before starting the combat.
• Cut all the ridiculous bare-handed punches to Din’s helmet in the combat, and cut some other shots that looked choreographed instead of realistic. Din is much more deadly.
• Cut Din saying “I promise”. Unneeded and sounded a little childish.
• New transitions from crime lord death to flying, to a new Grogu nap sequence to the X-wings waking them up.
• Rescored the X-wing tension scene and from here on out have removed ALL of Frog Lady.
• New color grading on Maldo Kreis (Ice World)
• Moved around the X-wing pilot dialogue across the chase to make more sense.
• Added some manual rotation to the chase scene shots to increase the appearance of the intensity of the Razorcrests motions.
• Masked out the egg basket in a number of shots
• After the ship sinks, Din’s first concern is now finding Grogu.
• Rescored Grogu’s little cave snack adventure.
• Countless edits on the spider chase scenes to preserve story continuity.
• Replaced VFX from Frog Lady’s blaster with Din’s blaster. Din now saves Grogu from the baby spider.
• Edited the X-wing pilot discussion to have story consistency with my previous films.
• New planet departure scene order.
• After Din and Grogu jump, we cut to Boba continuing to search for his armor, which, coincedentally, Din will soon begin doing too. I love the back and forth storyline carrying on from the last film.
• As the Razorcrest is in terrible shape right now, we will now cut back to Din and Grogu’s red wire scene about trying to fix their ship mid-journey.
• Replaced Din’s line to say Tatooine instead of Trask to fit my new story order. Now they go to Nevarro before Tatooine in order to get the needed repairs.
• This is more of a coincidence than anything, but Din directly references his run-in with the New Republic as the cause for needed repairs rather than the Trask fiasco when he talks to Greef. Since my “episode order” is 10, 12, 9, then 11, it’s just funny how the dialogue works out even better than in the original…
• Restored the “Nevarro overview” brief from Cara since I’m no longer using this content as a cold open, and also since I’ve been building up the Imperial presence, hearing more about their operations helps this narrative.
• Removed an ungodly amount of crappy wipe transitions on Nevarro.
• New color grading and source quality upgrade on Nevarro.
• Fixed a Disney bug where Cara raises her blaster in back-to-back scenes when the crew runs into the science techs wiping the drive.
• Hearing Dr. Pershing talk about the cloning program in the same film as The Shadow Council scene (which is ahead) is awesome. It unifies so much of what the “Empire” is doing.
• Restored the scout bikers sequence.
• Cut some shots of the scouts where the speeders look like they are moving way too slowly.
• Cut some cheering reaction shots.
• Fixed a disgusting Disney bug… Come on now: https://streamable.com/plzr9b
• WAY sped up the scout biker with a grenade kill shot.
• Fixed another Disney visual bug of Din in the cockpit. Again he does the same action twice. Lots of little post-production errors in this episode.
• Had to totally re-edit the scene order of the last TIE dogfight. SO many inconsistent distances between shots.
• After Nevarro, we now slide into the Gideon and the Shadow Council discussion. This new placement helps continue to build Gideon as the villain from my last film, expands upon the Imperial conflict we have been focusing more on, ties up the cloning program on Nevarro, gives us our first clues on Thrawn instead of Ahsoka dropping his name out of nowhere, and is a great back and forth since we just were introduced to the New Republic for the first time. You can begin to see that Din is getting leashed into something much bigger than himself. The scene is edited so the dialogue makes chronological sense for this new placement, as well as hair darkening masks placed on Gideon to hide some of the gray.
• New Tatooine color grading.
• Cut a couple of crazy Tatooine mechanic lines. She should be weird but not insane…
• When Din speeders to Mos Pelgo, I cut the nighttime talks with the Tuskens. It seems like he’s asking for directions, even though he just got directions, and it is set at night so it makes it seem like he travels for 20+ hours which makes no sense at all.
• Cut the Krayt Dragon “swimming” directly through the town. I don’t understand the physics behind how those buildings still stand with the size of the dragon. This scene also makes the dragon appear super skinny to navigate through the streets when in the later shots it is WAY more massive in its width.
• As Din rides back from the Krayt battle, we now see Boba on his tail as Boba fires his cycler rifle at Din to initiate the ambush.
• Cut some slow reaction shots and some more people punching Din’s helmet without reacting in the mercenary fight.
• Cut Din and Grogu shrugging at each other after the jetpack kill. It’s a Marvel-esque shot and also Grogu’s head placement doesn’t at all match the next scene.
• New color grade and soundtrack on Din’s walk back to town.
• Changed how Din learns of the nearby Mandalorians. The whole Mechanic knows a Bug who knows a Frog who has a husband who saw a mandalorian is terrible storytelling. I can’t do a ton to fix this all, but I at least cut out the bug middle man so it appears like Mechanic just heard from her contact.
• Cut some more mechanic nonsense. Her saying she likes her steak “medium rare” is way too earthy for me.
• Heavily reduced the “taxi” conversation & plot.
• No egg chamber drama from the Frog Lady.
• We now learn that the Empire placed the tracker on the Razorcrest on Tatooine instead. I removed Gideon’s mustache in all “tracker placed” shots for visual consistency with the shadow council scene.
• Using bits and pieces from the great Smudger9 and my own changes, we now have a travel and landing on Trask that doesn’t display the massive damage on the Razorcrest.
• A new cut from landing straight to the cantina. We don’t need to watch frogs make out.
• New quality upgrade and color grading on Trask.
• Increased the speed at which Din jumps after Grogu in the water.
• Built a whole new sequence for Din being trapped under the gate. Ominous Mandalorian funeral chants play while he is helpless to escape. The end looks nigh.
• Just as Din begins to sink to his doom, once more, he looks up and sees his brothers and sisters in arms come to rescue him. Cue Vode An intermixed with Bo-Katan’s theme.
• Cut some more bad wipe transitions on this world.
• Cut Din saying “mIsSiOn??”
• Cut out Din giving instructions to Grogu on how to behave with the Frogs when he drops him off for babysitting.
• Cut out some stormtroopers flopping around and jumping off the railing when they are barely punched
• Cut out the Mando squad taking forever to take cover under fire while blasters fly all around them.
• Re-edited Din and Bo-Katan’s argument about the deal changing to maintain tension and not have it so Din goes along with her idea. I have left it so we don’t know if Din is going to oppose her, but then the ship nosedives.
• Re-edited Gideon and Imperial Officer’s conversation to make it appear as though Gideon intended to have this ship get raided in an effort to kill Din and Bo. As we’ve seen before, he has no problem sacrificing his troops to accomplish this goal, so now it feels like it’s not a last-ditch effort, but perhaps even Gideon’s plan all along. As we had earlier established that Gideon is already tracking the Razorcrest, this appears to have been in the works for a while. (We even get the Long Live the Empire phrase reinforcement here from the Show Council scene!)
• Completely re-edited the sequence where Bo and the crew are pinned down. I have removed Din from all scenes here as we left him earlier not knowing what he was going to do. We cut back and forth between the crew pinned down and the vessel nosediving until at the last second, Din comes charging in out of nowhere to repay his debt to his Mandalorian family.
• Din now throws the detonators in one fluid motion as he falls from the hail of blaster fire.
• Fixed all the timing of the explosion and fire to actually make sense instead of waiting for a reaction shot from EVERY character while the fireball slowly plumes down the hallway.
• Cut Din saying “Come on follow me”. It’s a better vibe when we just see the Mandalorians work in unison without bay-talking each other.
• Removed some dialogue between Din and Bo-Katan so it remains more confrontational before she thanks him.
• We end with a quick take-off into space followed by a brief scene of Grogu using the force on his own to spin the ball on the stick. At the end of my first film, Din had to give it to him manually, and this now shows the evolution and agency that Grogu is developing through their adventures together as well as hits home the main theme that Grogu is on the path to being a Jedi… and Mandalorian? (Rescored this scene with a track from Star Wars Visions: Ninth Jedi)
• Unified credits based on new story order.

Darth Sadifous said:

Have you thought of potentially digitally adding Pedro Pascal’s head onto Din in the closing shot of season three? I do not know how hard this would be from a technological perspective, but from a character perspective and a story arc I think it could be a nice little payoff. From the end of season two, the show seemed to present conflict for Din in regards to his choice to take off his helmet to look at his child with “his own eyes” (it is like poetry). Then we found he had to atone for this by bathing in the water of Mandalore, kickstarting the quest in season three.

That is a great idea. I’m not sure how realistic I could get it to look… But ya know, when I get there I’m going to try. I’m a fan of it storywise I think.

Gala, if you meant to send something with your message there it didn’t go through right. If you see this, try writing it again so I know what’s going on.

Thanks everyone, hope you enjoy this third film! Crossing my fingers there are no massive bugs, this one went through the ringer a few times before it felt right. Have fun!

Tobar said:

BedeHistory731 said:

Exactly. Hell, TCW did a fine job trampling all over some very good Legends material. I miss Karen Traviss’ Mandalorians. One-dimensional, but still fun.

Karen Traviss was horrible to the fans and did more than her share of trampling on previously established lore. So when she had her meltdown it was one of the best instances of schadenfreude I’ve ever experienced. Still brings a smile to my face.

I had a multi-month back and forth email chain with Traviss when I was a kid about her Star Wars novels. Reading through the Republic Commando series while talking to her about it and having her explain things to me personally absolutely cemented my love of reading for the rest of my life. I don’t even know what happened with what you’re talking about, but she showed me nothing but kindness and genuine interest, and I am forever shaped by what she did.

Update on this! I’ve begun my Season 1 rewatch with the editors googles on. Got through the first 10 episodes and have to say, I’m actually enjoying it more than I did initially. Since I’m watching it trying to see the potential in the storyline, there’s definitely a legit possibility to present this content in a very digestible and entertaining format.

I’ll go more into detail over the coming weeks, but initially I 100% agree with Eddie that Season 1 is two films, with the first being 1,4,7,8,9 as the core narrative (with sprinkles of 5 & 3 to tie it together). Might pull a scene or two from 2 and borrow some of the travel shots, but I’m feeling good about this now. Really looking forward to watching season 2 for the first time too. Once I make these dialogue edits on wrecker, tighten up some of the kiddish nature, and do the ol acbagel frame by frame combat analysis I think we’re going to have a good time watching this together.

I would expect it to come later than May for sure. Based on his discord channel we should all be prepared to wait a number of months at least.

Great suggestion, I fully agree that the world building and self contained storyline in the Pershing episode was some of the most well written and directed content in Season 3. I enjoyed it a great deal. It definitely doesn’t fit into the overall narrative of The Way of Mandalore due to there being no payoff at all, but I am 100% in favor of creating a mini “anthology” episode out of it as an optional bridge between book 5 & 6. I had it planned and spread out throughout my book 6 up until the last episode when it turned out that nothing in it had any impact sadly.

It’ll be a pretty easy edit to complete too. Probably just some minor alterations and a trim or two. I’ll dive into it after I release Book 5.

EddieDean said:

What’re your plans for Luke training Grogu and Grogu rejoining Din?

Grogu trains with Luke across Book 5 and Act 1 of Book 6 before rejoining Din (if I can pull this VFX off) underneath the mines of Mandalore after experiencing a vision of captured Din when he is deciding on the lightsaber v armor scene. R5 flies the N1 back to Grogu, Grogu jumps in and flies it to Bo, then they go to get Din.

So book 6 Act 1 is Grogu training and Din going to Mandalore alone (he receives his “baptism mission” in Book 5 now), Act 2 is Grogu training with Mandalorians and some of the Nevarro battle, Act 3 is the final Mandalore sequence.

Thanks for the feedback Eddie and Peon. I’m still considering all options for Book 6 (and possibly 7). In general, I’d rather conclude my saga on one amazing movie rather than two average movies by padding it with scenes just for the sake of using all the content. I consider this Season 3 content to be more akin to what I had to do with BoBF (where I cut out ~2 hours of raw footage in order to tell a new, focused narrative), but I’m open to being proven wrong if I can find a way to make 2 compelling films. My main concern is my Books 1-5 really don’t have a dip in storytelling quality in any of them. It’s not like Book 4 is “the weakest one” but you have to “power through to get to the good stuff” in Book 5 or something. I think the narrative in all 5 is pretty top tier across the board, so I worry that splitting all of season 3 into two films will cause a drop in quality at the end of the saga and make it drag.

I will soon share my scene structure draft for Book 6 though and see if you all feel like it’s missing anything important. I am, at the moment, suspecting that I can tell the best story possible through ~2.75 hours of Mando S3 content combined with my VFX scenes, but I could be wrong! I’ll give some previews of that next week. The primary cuts I’m planning are the Pershing storyline, the raptor chase, ~50% of the Nevarro scenes and pirates, and the Plazir side quest. So adding any one of those back into Book 6 would require me to add another one of those into Book 7 in order to make 2 hour runtimes. The raptor is I suppose what I’d miss the most, but then I have to add something else into Book 7…? And I really don’t think adding anything else from those other cut segments is beneficial at all. It’s like in my BoBF I reframed everything so those Hutts never come in as they were a huge distraction that never went anywhere at all. I think that a few plot threads in S3 are like that. But if you think any of those above S3 scenes are crucial I’d be interested to hear.

I’m still planning on having Book 3 released Monday/Tuesday. Here’s a draft preview of something I’ve been working on: https://streamable.com/5xcxwl

Minor Mandalorian Season 3 spoilers below!

Well, my friends, we have the complete picture. I think it will be a long while before we get any new Mandalorian content from Disney. That last episode very much felt like a closing chapter. I am curious as to if Mando S4 will ever see the light of day. Perhaps it may come out in 2025 without Filoni’s direct involvement (which seems to have been how the majority of S3 was produced), or even be pushed way back behind Filoni’s movie. Whatever happens with the future of these characters, it’s going to be at least two years before we get anything new here. It definitely cemented my suspicion that I can only make one film out of this whole season.

I had initially planned to use Pershing & Kane’s content as a B plot throughout the whole film, eventually leading to Gideon’s return, but wow that content did not connect to anything whatsoever. I thought this last episode would bring at least a hint of a payoff to the 45 minutes we spent with them out of nowhere, but it rendered it a total waste of time. That’s all getting cut in my edit now.

I have a general storyboarded order of how I want things to play out and it’s a realistic runtime. But I have a TON of VFX to do… I’ll be parterning with at least 3 other editors (Dazman, Movies Remastered, & ildiem) to collab on some scenes we all have interest in making. Next week I’ll share some of my storyboarding ideas for Book 6, so if you have any suggestions in the meantime, please do share.

End of spoilers.

Book 3 update:

I was planning on having this film ready to go on Friday, but upon review… I really need to create a hair darkening mask and track it on Gideon’s Shadow Council scene. The white-grey is just too noticable, even with as many lighting tricks as I can pull off. I need to manually mask him having black hair. I can get it done, it’ll just add a couple days of additional work. Aside from that, I’m going through one final bug fix review and swapping some scenes around, but we’re probably 85% complete at this point. I’m going to shoot for a Monday release of this, and then the turnaround on Book 4 should be much faster as well. Might even get both out next week as I already have Book 4 ~40% updated while I was waiting on some bug review reports on Book 3. Excited to share my new ideas and hear your thoughts as well. Please feel free to share spoilers here starting tomorrow, and let me know if you think anything across all 6 of my books need changing considering the entirety of the character arcs we were provided with.

So many wonderful ideas in here, that’s a lot to unpack! Much of this could turn out very well if the right context can be presented. I especially love the change to include BoBF final battle as part of an episode. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

I’m starting to do some VFX removing Grogu from many scenes as well, so DM me if you want to collab on anything and split up the work.

Wow, that finale was shockingly lackluster, and my expectations were not high at all going in.

I am extremely tired of the trope where the captured protagonist gets casually escorted down a hallway by two careless guards and escapes in 20 seconds. Seriously, Gideon? That does not at all seem like a strategic move he would’ve made as how he has been portrayed as so cautious and forwar thinking. Why did he even send Din away in the first place? Apparently he was going to interrogate him, so he valued something Din knew to such a degree that he didn’t want to kill him on the spot. But then to barely send an escort for knowledge that was so valuable that he wouldn’t kill Din in the midst of battle… I’m just not buying that plot convenience.

Then Din almost immediately escapes by wrecking the two miserable armed guards… Then doesn’t pick up their blasters and is whining in the very next scene that he is unarmed?? What? In the words of Qui-Gon, “Are you brainless?”

What happened to all the TIE fighters and Bombers? So they tear the cruiser to shreds in orbit and then just abandon the battle? These ships don’t have hyperdrives, so where did they all go…? Why did they not completely demolish the Mandalorian drop ships or attempt to shoot down all the Mandos jetpacking down? They by FAR outnumbered the Mando fleet and had incredible air superiority.

How did the Darksaber break? It’s made of pure beskar, Din had marveled about it being the most impressive beskar-created weapon he’d ever seen, yet it shatters from a slight squeeze from Gideon’s augmented suit? Yes, I understand that new Phase of Darktrooper armor provided extreme strength enhancements and could likely snap a bone in half, but snap beskar in half…? No. Din’s beskar spear survived an orbital bombardment that blew a starship to scraps and the spear didn’t even have a dent or a scuff. Yet Gideon can casually crush it in his palm? Plus, Bo’s hand was still gripping the saber when he does this move, and she treats it like a bruise or maybe a small broken bone when even if he could generate the strength to crush beskar, her hand should be turned into pulp.

I could go on about the pacing, terrible slew of fast wipe transitions, incomplete VFX etc, but we can all see this episode and season just didn’t get the TLC it deserved. This is a real shame and I am feeling pretty dejected about the state of Star Wars right now. I do have faith in the Ahsoka show, but if that doesn’t generate hype we are headed for some dark times my friends.