Oh for the extended ANH briefing scene where Tagge mentions Sith…
Okay, part 2 now. This was from the most recent version as it had the interval in the middle.
I’ve watched series 1 a few times since it came out but I’d not rewatched series 2 since it released despite thinking it was mostly improved so I was less familiar with the overall structure. I do recall most of the things that were cut (some for the better like the whole Elrond in Adaar’s shack, some for the neutral like the Troll or Sauron’s return).
Overall, the biggest takeaway from this film edit is it’s incredibly tense. It is a constantly building feeling of doom that makes the culmination in Eregion feel earnt and really hinges on the Annatar/Kelly B relationship which feels so much more satisfying to see uninterrupted over at least 2 hours without wasting time on Númenórean politics or proto-Hobbits.
The focus on the rings and the constant use of the RoP ring theme works surprisingly well considering the whole beginning was lifted from series 1 but (barring a few issues) flows into the series 2 material well.
The Khazad-dûm stuff works really well as well with only vague hints of the Balrog being present and not actually awakening until Annatar shows up then not actually bothering with Dwarves until Durin starts getting closer. Nothing, unfortunately, can be done about how quickly the ring takes over Durin (despite that being the literal opposite of how Dwarves work) but I could possibly be generous and attribute that to Sauron’s physical presence in Khazad-dûm and really close in Ost-in-Edhil. I assume the show’s eventual plan is to have the Balrog go back to sleep even deeper and the Dwarves to start mining the Mithril in the third age once they’ve all forgotten about it and their rings to work slower after the Battle of the Last Alliance.
The issues I thought the edit still had though were:
Firstly, though we do start off in the Númenórean camp after the eruption, it might have been nice to show a few shots of them as it looks a bit like Galadriel rescued only Theo then ran off. I don’t think any speaking parts are needed, just something to show they mostly survived.
Secondly there’s some timeline issues mostly from the original. I don’t quite think the week of travel between Eregion and Lindon is enough time to build a new forge, I would probably just let that be intuited as a different workshop lower down the tower. The next is the constantly changing times of day across the siege of Eregion. I recall that being a massive issue with the show as it was as it looks like they couldn’t decide how long the siege was supposed to be lasting for and how much filler to add. I don’t know if it’s possible to grade the scenes differently.
Lastly, Elrond still says ‘look to the north’ when referencing the Dwarves. It’s not massively clear where Ost-in-Edhil specifically is as it’s built into a mountain with another range to the west (which don’t appear on the maps) but it is at the least west of Khazad-dûm and the sun rises in the east, neither sunrise nor Dwarves are coming from the north.
Overall I think this was better than the first film even, and again, the only way I’ll watch the show now. Hopefully there’s a nice way of integrating series 2’s Númenórean material with series 3 when it’s out. But above all, thank you for removing the intensely uncomfortable moment between Elrond and the woman who is older than than the Sun, the cousin of his great-grandfather, and his future mother-in-law.
I received the links for these a while ago but I was waiting on the Christmas holidays to watch them.
I’ve only watched this film so far and overall I’m really happy with it. Despite being a massive Tolkien book fan (though FA rather than SA admittedly) I never hated the show as it was (beyond the basic idea of trying to get 5 series out of the 10 paragraphs in the LotR appendices that Amazon had the rights to). But I think this film is probably the only way I’ll watch series 1 now.
The narrative is now strictly linear and follows each of the two main plot lines (Númenor and Khazad-dûm) in a satisfying manor and only introduces the Southlands when it becomes relevant. It also feels like long enough is spent in each plot to keep things moving unlike the frantic switching of the original. The most improved part was the cutting of the pointless switching of character motivations even within the same episode. Now the character arcs of ‘Halbrand’, Galadriel, and Míriel all follow logically and don’t swap back and forth over who wants to go and who wants to stay.
All of the major relationships are kept intact except for Isildur and his friends (which may cause an issue come the next film as at least one in in the Faithful).
There’s only a couple of minor issues I had:
The first is I missed the opening in Forodwaith as I feel it’s important to the RoP version of Galadriel to show the extent of her hunt for Sauron and the actual finding of the glyph (though the context was there and still worked narratively).
The second is the sending of Elrond to Eregion where Kelly B has instructions for him only for him to be directly answering to Gil-galad in Lindon the rest of the film. I don’t have any ideas for how that can be resolved due to the show completely ignoring, then speedrunning the friendship between Eregion and Khazad-dûm. It’s possible it’ll feel better come the next film.
The third is minor, the resolution of the ‘Durin tricks the Elves to give him a table’ joke and when Elrond tells him the Elves are dying seems to take place far to far removed in the film and could be brought forward a bit.
The final bit is this film might have succeeded in making me not hate the ‘Mithril can stop the Elves from decaying in Middle-earth’ plot as (so far anyway) it looks to me like the edit is implying Gil-galad is specifically looking for Mithril and that Kelly B may already have the idea for the rings (or at least using Mithril for magic) but I’ll know more when I’ve watched the second film. This alone would make the edits vastly superior to the show.
The actual quality of the edit is well done as well. There’s no obvious cuts or splices and I didn’t hear any audio cuts or breaks and I don’t know if it’s had any audio edits or I’m just more familiar with the soundtrack (I’ve been listening to it a lot over the years) but it feels a lot more memorable like the LotR films.
These leaked shots look absolutely gorgeous, so much depth that had been lost in the various editions.
Whilst I typically prefer many of the changes Lucas made to the Original Trilogy, I look forward to seeing what comes of this. In any case, this new restoration will give fan editors so much better material to work with, and we should be excited for the wellspring of creativity that comes with it.
I think in an ideal world these would be released as are and also used for the base for the 2011 blu-ray special editions as well.
I’m sure they’d look fantastic, if only Imgur wasn’t blocked.
Well go do it then. There’s at least 2 extended version of the TCW film and several of the show, go sign up for one of those voice changing LLM sites and dub it yourself.
I’ve seen the work done using the Starlight Mini upscaler on some DS9 laserdiscs that produces a final level of quality comparable to the TNG blue rays after manual processing with it. I’ve not seen it tested on anything as low quality as the OT deleted scenes but I am highly curious as to what it could do for especially the RotJ scenes as they’re of higher quality than the other two. It’s something that would need a skilled editor regardless as none of these models are plug and play yet.
I think the restoration models are much closer to useful than the purely generative ones that produce motion from stills however the predictive scene fillers are really useful, especially for background replacement or opening the matte for full screen picture.
There are open matte versions of the saga films out there?
I’m not sure how I’ve missed this version as it looks like exactly the sort of version I’d want to see. I’m cooler on the SC38 material than most as I’ve never seen a cut of it that looks in any way like it fits, but it’s not exactly a deal breaker. On the other side, the restoration of these deleted scenes are some of the best I’ve seen considering the starting quality. And keeping as much SE material as possible is also good, with ANH I can’t think of a single change that wasn’t neutral or an improvement on the original (except those stupid extra rocks around R2 in from the Blue Ray!).
There are two speeches. Zeb is watching the one from the Senate with Imperial commentary on Chopper, this is the same one as the one in Andor.
The second speech is the one where she calls the Rebels together and is only in the Rebels episode but is the one they talk about having her make at the end of Andor.
As the speech from the Senate in Rebels is framed with Imperial commentary it is either the end of her speech we didn’t hear as the power was cut or an Imperial edit put out to try take control of the narrative. Either way, it isn’t a live version of what was made in Andor.
It’s also possible it’s a direct retcon between the animation and live action in the same way Hera is suddenly 50cm taller or Mon has a different haircut but it’s still possible to just see it as different parts of the same event with only minor mental gymnastics.
Live action Ahsoka is shit, unfortunately
Nope. It’s great.
The tricky one is Padmé’s death. I can’t determine which has the strongest weight in the cultural hivemind - “I remember my mother” versus her dying onscreen in childbirth.
It’s got to be the latter. If only for the whole thing being overshadowed by the ‘dying of being a bit sad’ part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daxgI8q-QJg - This is a concept scene based on the unreleased Revenge of the Sith deleted scene of Obi-Wan’s first conversation with Padme (the one Anakin references during the “A Jedi Lost” scene). I doubt you could get away with actually using this scene because the AI voices still aren’t there yet, but I wanted to leave it here in case anybody could find a use for it or improve it somehow.
It seems pretty good for the concept. But it seems to use the TCW voices for the AI. JAT and EMG are probably the two closest matched between the PT and TCW but it still unfortunately stands out a lot.
It is an interesting concept, especially for PT edits, the ability to streamline a lot of the dialogue without having to cut scenes out in their entirety.
Numeral Joker/Mecha Salesman has done Episodes I-III, Solo and the Clone Wars films (their episode III contains the non-canon 2D Clone Wars stuff and the SoM from TCW though).
Bobson Dugnutt has done Episodes I, III, and VIII.
I don’t think anybody has done Episodes IV, V, VI, VII due to the poor quality of the deleted scenes (or the timestamps on VII), though there are restorations attempts. Bobson Dugnutt has made Episode IV The Darklighter Cut which adds the Biggs scenes to IV. Somebody (might have been Bobson Dugnutt again) was working on a workprint version of V but I can’t find that.
IX and RO don’t have any deleted scenes (well, RO has the trailer scenes from a different cut of the film but I don’t think they can be integrated…
‘Get away from her you… bitch’ is the only change needed. The rest of the film was perfect.
An interesting perspective I regret I don’t share.
It’s after only Alien and Alien 3 (the AC) for basically everything. Sure, it doesn’t really add anything interesting to the lore like Prom and Cov did but it’s pacing, tension, small scale plot, set peices, and relationships between the characters is better than Aliens or Resurection.
‘Get away from her you… bitch’ is the only change needed. The rest of the film was perfect.
Like you, probably - if you are a SW fans or love to hate SW -, I watched The Acolyte, very uneasy,
Not like me, no unease at all.
besides all the politics and the modern ideology that gets in the way of good storytelling,
Politics! In Star Wars! Gosh, Lucas must be turning in his chair!
Especially as, compared to other shows like Andor or TCW, Acolyte has basically zero political dimension beyond a small segment of showing the stagnation of the Jedi Order. Unless by ‘politics and the modern ideology’ you’re getting at something else that should probably be spelt out in the open…
to which Disney seems to thinks that telling SW stories through TV series is still a good idea (Skeleton Crew, and so on until…)
It is a fantastic idea; Ewoks, Droids, CW, TCW, Rebels, Resistance, Mando, Andor, Ashoka, and BoBF. There’s only OWK and possibly this that might have been better as films, but the TV show format has worked perfectly for the franchise since Droids and Ewoks first came out.
Skeleton Crew is, of course, not out nor has any substantial information being released for you to form any opinion on how well the format will work for it.
I would like to prove my point stated earlier: the bad pacing and bad editing is what mainly plague The Acolyte.
This was the only part that’s relevant to your edit.
Gods, this place is really in danger of turning into Reddit, having to trudge through paragraphs of low effort YouTube grifter regurgitation to try find out what’s been changed and why.
Calm down.
No. Lazy regurgitation helps nobody. Either read it or don’t.
Like you, probably - if you are a SW fans or love to hate SW -, I watched The Acolyte, very uneasy,
Not like me, no unease at all.
besides all the politics and the modern ideology that gets in the way of good storytelling,
Politics! In Star Wars! Gosh, Lucas must be turning in his chair!
Especially as, compared to other shows like Andor or TCW, Acolyte has basically zero political dimension beyond a small segment of showing the stagnation of the Jedi Order. Unless by ‘politics and the modern ideology’ you’re getting at something else that should probably be spelt out in the open…
to which Disney seems to thinks that telling SW stories through TV series is still a good idea (Skeleton Crew, and so on until…)
It is a fantastic idea; Ewoks, Droids, CW, TCW, Rebels, Resistance, Mando, Andor, Ashoka, and BoBF. There’s only OWK and possibly this that might have been better as films, but the TV show format has worked perfectly for the franchise since Droids and Ewoks first came out.
Skeleton Crew is, of course, not out nor has any substantial information being released for you to form any opinion on how well the format will work for it.
I would like to prove my point stated earlier: the bad pacing and bad editing is what mainly plague The Acolyte.
This was the only part that’s relevant to your edit.
Gods, this place is really in danger of turning into Reddit, having to trudge through paragraphs of low effort YouTube grifter regurgitation to try find out what’s been changed and why.
Imagine how tiresome every thread for TPM or AotC would be if, instead of discussing the edit, there were endless, pointless, non-constructive posts of just whining. Who cares what your opinion is on any SW after 2016, it’s unrelated to any fanediting.
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/the-last-jedi-expanded-editon-released/id/81637
Just PM him. It may take some time to get a reply but it’s worth the wait.
That’s good news things are comming together better for you.
Tales of the Empire is soon to drop, and features Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee.
It looks, from the trailers, like there might be a Morgan Elsbeth flashback to the Massacre episode, which I included in TCW:R as part of the episode ‘Retribution’, my s02e02. You might be wondering if I’m going to edit that episode to include the Elsbeth content.
I don’t plan to.
There’s a simple reason for this: TCW:R focuses on the narrative of the Clone Wars. It’s a similar situation to how I handled TCW season six’s Bad Batch arc - in that case, even though the Bad Batch episodes happened during the clone wars, really they’re part of a different narrative, the Bad Batch narrative. The Bad Batch arc of TCW really should be treated as ‘episode zero’ of the Bad Batch show, a flashback to set up its current narrative.
Similarly, whilst Morgan being present during the Nightsister Massacre is set during the Clone Wars, Morgan as a character doesn’t join the narrative in a significant way until Mando season two (at least 28 in-universe years later, or over about 70 real world hours of content later if watching chronologically). Or at least, assuming Morgan’s TOTE episodes are set during the Empire, her main narrative will happen somewhere in the Empire era, not during the Clone Wars.
I’ll likely acknowledge at least the Barriss Offee content in my ‘Follow-on content’ section, but I don’t think either will need to be incorporated into this show.
As far as I can tell it’s not the same massacre but one that happens at the end of the war, the one from the Darth Maul comic where Talzin is killed.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a LaserDisc of DS9 before. But the quality jump here is really something compared to the DVDs.
I can’t find it on the UK version. Shame, I’ve been trying to find extended versions of all the 2000s pre-MCU films where they exist.
I believe they claimed that the reason they made Rey’s appearance so similar to TFA is for the sake of the reused footage of Leia. But I’m not sure why they couldn’t just use more CGI to make changes possible. As for the Resistance, we are planning on changing Zorri’s dialogue on Kijimi so that it’s clear the people there are rebelling against the First Order ever since Skywalker’s sacrifice. This would help explain why the Resistance is larger than at the end of TLJ.
I did read that but it doesn’t make sense, Any scenes of Rey interacting with Leia are shot with a body double and Leia’s face out of frame. It just looks like more of Abrams regreting skipping the middle film. The Kijimi stuff would make sense, the FO moving into a Resistance cell looks clear.
We are currently discussing an idea like this on Nev’s TROS thread. The idea is to maintain Rey’s parents as nobodies because that was the crux of TLJ’s reveal. Rey was only claimed to be a nobody by association in that film. So Rey can be a clone of Palpatine, similar to how Omega is a female clone of Jango Fett, and this way the reveal isn’t retreading ESB and is more pivotal for Rey’s character since she was quite literally created to be a vessel for Palpatine and take the Sith throne. Rey’s parents are nobodies that adopted/rescued her from a Sith cult, similar to how she will be adopted by the Skywalkers at the end of the film. The reason Rey doesn’t see her parents in the mirror cave of TLJ is because she doesn’t have any, biologically speaking - the long line of identical Rey’s is a hint at her nature of being a clone. And the reason Palpatine always wanted her dead is because he was paranoid that one of his clones could take all of his followers or simply have enough power to kill him as Rey eventually does.
I like that pattern. Considering how Bad Batch and Mandalorian seem to be moving into the cloning lore, Rey being the clone and not one of her perents is a smart move that won’t isolate this edit from the larger franchise in a way that ‘Rey Nobody’ would.
The above change I mentioned should make it less stupid that he’s telling her his exact plan. Again, if Rey’s sole reason for existence is exactly what he’s describing, it may fill Rey with enough dread and hopelessness to consider actually doing it.
One thing the ST (and specifically the edits I chose) does is show how necessery the Jedi Order searching for children is. Rey goes for the darker, easier path every time and finding out that being nothing more than a fresh clone plays on everything that’s built up so far so much more than the raw film or this version of this edit.