American Hominid

If someone did that it would be easy to take Coruscant scenes from the other movies and modify them.  I'd rather see a Coruscant based directly on Ralph McQuarrie's designs.  Some elements carried over to the prequels, but McQuarrie's city planet is more gothic-deco.  ROTJ and TPM's version is probably the closest...

There are a ton of other paintings I'd like to link to (these two def emphasize the 'gothic' part, maybe giving the wrong impression without the context of others) but I can't find many of them on the interwebs, sadly.

Anchorhead - your post made me want to watch Graffiti, which made me check out the Wiki page too... according to that, George wanted Marcia to cut the movie but ended up doing most of it himself after the studio-chosen editor left.  ?

Also, the scenes in THX where THX and the other guy (Can't remember his name) are wandering away from the spotless prison and find the hologram guy, and especially the scene of THX racing from the biker cops at the end and climbing the tunnel are pretty great.  The smoke curling around the vehicles, the muted sound - and the use of Mozart against the sunset/rise. 

Glad to hear/see you're enjoying HTTE... the feel of the world (with respect to the OT as a whole, not just SW77, which probably matches better with the Daley novels and such) and the characters is pretty spot-on, I think.

Anchorhead, have you seen THX 1138?  It's even more esoteric and exposition-less than the beginning of SW.  And it's been a long time since I saw American Graffiti but people praise that one as well (for different reasons, but still storytelling ones). 

So I'm not sure it's accurate to say that Lucas is a poor storyteller, or that he over-explains things.  I think those might be accurate for some of his more recent films*, but it wasn't always that way.

*I actually like some bits of the prequels, however disappointed I am when they diverge from the cooler story that seemed to have been hinted/planned previously.

The name comes from Zahn's HTTE trilogy if I'm not mistaken.  And it's just Cracken - Airen Cracken.  I think it's supposed to be an allusion to the Kraken.

And the guy who appears in Jedi was probably assigned to that character by Decipher for their card game, if I had to guess.

A few interesting ROTJ possibilities:

Hasbro says the Mon Cal is an A-Wing pilot.  Going by the one shot we have seen, he's clearly a B-Wing pilot.  Perhaps this suggests that there are more space battle shots (exterior fighter shot(s)) in the deleted scenes (i.e., maybe he's associated with an A-Wing in this possible additional footage, like how some other pilots are associated with incorrect ship-types in the film itself).

Also, in that set of figures there's a guy named General Cracken.  According to the EU, he's this guy:

Their appearances certainly match.  Maybe we'll see more of the Rebels on the Falcon (or Home One) as well.

Also - does the one Treadwell shot (the far one) look colorized to anyone else?  It'd be strange, because of the lack of dirt/scratch removal, etc, but we do know that the previously-known versions of that scene were B&W.

Timdiggerm said:

Aah, that's a good idea - The "Imperial Facility" could be something on Couruscant itself. I imagine following the insertion vehicle down into the City, either covertly or literally blazing past defenses, could be pretty exciting.

Check out the rough draft of ROTJ - this is exactly the beginning of the movie (Endor is a moon of Coruscant, or Had Abbadon as it's known in this version).

About the Mon Cal pilot, I'm virtually certain that's a B-Wing cockpit but it may not match what's shown in the film (similar to how the other ones don't necessarily match) - Hasbro apparently is putting out a figure of this guy and calls him an A-Wing pilot.  In any case, at least the B-Wing pilot footage will be available.

Pretty sure this will help out with long-wished-for versions of the original trilogy... !!

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=80121

Well, besides that, if I ever did a prequel edit, I'd want it to  work with the OT as I remember it (rather than replace it in the narrative).  It'd be embracing the idea of prequels as backstory to be watched after the originals, and trying to maintain both what I imagined we'd see (and the parts of the prequels I liked) and some emotional resonance.

So I've been slowly developing an radical prequel edit idea in my head, and I think the concept is ready to share.  (Who knows if I'll ever do it, though.)  Features would include:

-Mixing events from all the prequels into one film of unknown length - as flashbacks (probably during The Duel) to tie them together and to add emotional depth to the duel, like an OT one.

-Naboo probably equals Alderaan.

-Obi-Wan is the main character.

-The title might refer to an interview Lucas gave shortly after the release of SW regarding the prequels, and/or the early "James Bond series" approach the saga could have taken.

-Stylistically it might ape Sergio Leone (westerns were an influence on the original films) - close ups and mismatching dialogue (both a stylistic choice and allowing for tracking dialogue from various places to refer to what I'd want it to).

-Little to no Yoda - he is a mystery for the OT (though this might be designed to be watched post-OT, or between ESB and ROTJ).  And the Jedi could be edited to be more like the reclusive and/or multi-professioned Jedi the OT implied - some of the more strategic-minded ones just having come together to form a council, since the Clone Wars are so widespread. 

-A title crawl, if used, would go back to an abandoned idea for ESB's crawl...

-Emphasize characters and situations from the OT whenever possible - Bail Organa and the Larses, Boba Fett, Alderaan, etc.

-Maybe Qui-Gon is Anakin's father?  No virgin birth needed... but this also may screw up the Larses.  But the scenes of QG and Shmi are actually pretty good, too...

-Include shots from the Clone Wars series of new-looking Y-Wings, if possible.

-Reconfigure Anakin's fall to emphasize his conscious desire for order after seeing the horrors of the Clone Wars - the poison apple/mind control dark side never really appealed to me.

I'm sure there are a couple things I forgot... I'll add them as necessary.

Does this sound worth watching/thinking about?

The best-researched article I've seen on aurebesh and its origins in ROTJ can be  found here.  I'd explain it, but it's told as a mystery narrative and it's worth going along with it.

I dunno, that design is very, very close to the astromechs seen in the films; closer, as someone noticed, than are McQuarrie's early designs.  Which suggests to me that the picture is of a copy of the droids from SW, not the other way around.  Because the design evolution generally 'arrives' at the final design, not start with it, then change to something else, then go back to the original.  I could be wrong but it seems much simpler that way.  Especially since we don't know when exactly this picture was from.

During the space battle, it would be nice to see the Falcons gunners like Han and Luke in 'Hope. I love those gun turrets and targeting screens and it would be nice to see shots of the battle from that view point, see another couple rebel characters in the film and add some cool shots of imperial fighters getting taken out. You could maybe even add a bit of dialog between them and Lando at one point.

Shots like this were filmed but cut.  Perhaps we might see them on the blueray release... ?

Vaderios, about those unidentified fleet ships... I was always fascinated with them.  The Rebel fleet had two or three fighter types and three capital ship types at the end of ESB, and it felt like there was some mysterious stuff going on back there.  Of course the prequels have a glut of starship designs - but I kind of preferred it the OT way.

Anyway, there's a publicity image that had some different, but still unidentified, ships in it.  I could only find a low-res version but I'm sure with some hunting one could come up with a better one (I did find a bigger one but some of the ships were cropped out).

There also used to be a site that hosted commentaries on various SW topics (sort of a companion to the SWTC).  There was some discussion of the ragtag ships on there as well:

http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/trans/trans.htm#RAG-TAG%20Transport" target="_blank" title="web.archive.org/web/20030402115113/http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/trans/trans.htm#RAG-TAG%20Transport">http://web.archive.org/web/20030402115113/http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/trans/trans.htm#RAG-TAG%20Transport

http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/yhead/yhead.htm#more" target="_blank" title="web.archive.org/web/20030402115251/http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/yhead/yhead.htm#more">http://web.archive.org/web/20030402115251/http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/yhead/yhead.htm#more

Sorry for the momentary derail, but it was a point of interest.  And if these scenes are being redone (I have no idea if they are), it might be cool to see interpretations of these ships in more detail.

No, it was done for the first Ewok movie in the mid 80s: Little Cindel's parents get kidnapped by this giant called the Gorax, but get rescued by Wicket's people. This idea for a  shot was never used, but I wish it had! Man, I gotta rent the DVD of the Ewok movies to get inspiration for Ewok fighting!

It definitely appeared in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, which contained a mixture of preproduction work by McQuarrie as well as finished pieces commissioned specifically for the book.  The painting in question could fit into either category, but it appears to be much more "finished" than a lot of the other concept paintings McQuarrie did.  I suspect it was done for the book.

Davnes007 said:

TheBoost said:

doubleofive said:

TheBoost said:

...take out Artoo's beeping, and put in dialogue... 

I was seriously thinking about subtitling R2 and Chewie.

 We could dub Chewie, and he should talk like The Fonz.

I think he would sound better talking like Scooby-Doo.

 

He should talk like Fozzie in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fs7NUSWRCs

A messy idea for Boba Fett that wouldn't require as much (any?) new footage, though it's somewhat still disjointed:

Show Fett in Jabba's palace, possibly even on the sail barge (maybe up to the shot of him looking suspiciously at R2 just before R2 goes to the top level to launch Luke's saber).  At some point show Slave I in the distance taking off (the shot doesn't need to follow the ship from the surface, it could just be in the distance, then show it in orbit).  You could do a similar thing to the mockup of Fett talking to Vader in his cockpit, but instead have a holo of a Bothan and use some alien dialogue from somewhere else in the films (so as not to have to re-record anything), and subtitle it to make it clear who Fett has called.  Or just have it go to some Rebel leadership.  In any case, Fett doesn't even have to say anything.  The scene can cut off before he does.  (I like the Bothan idea because it presents a mystery for the audience that is only revealed in pieces, later on.)

Later, have Fett on Endor (a la the old Micro Machines set, haha).  Not sure what he should be doing - hanging around on the surface, with Vader, like on Bespin (though we need to generate an actual motive for him to be there).  Maybe Slave I is parked on the landing platform.  We see him in enough shots to establish that he's working for the empire.  Maybe he is the one to bring in Luke (though it would be simpler to have him only be with the officer who brings Luke in - that wouldn't require new lines).  When the battle breaks out, we could re-use footage of him from the sail barge battle (that he most likely didn't participate in, in this version), and/or pull in some shots of Jango if necessary. 

Then, Fett would be the one to corner Han and Leia at the bunker.  I could use the idea of having Han just say "I love you" as his last words, to cover that Leia doesn't have a blaster at this point (though I like the cuteness of her line recapitulating his from Empire).  We could have Chewie's AT-ST pull up while Fett and the troopers are saying "Get up," and then the "I love you" line comes (as discussed above).  Maybe a shot of Fett here (the footage from ANH and of him pulling his gun in the palace may come in handy here).  Then, the AT-ST shoots him and the troopers down.  Reveal Chewie as normal.