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.
Can I have a link please. I’m sure I used to but I can’t find it now.
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.
In a longstanding tradition I’ve just started this year I’ve decided to watch each ST films across Christmas Eve, Day, and Boxing Day (due to having seen the other 6 films millions of times since 1999).
Unlike the other two films I have seen TRoS more often and have seen a couple of different versions of Ascendant so I knew what I was going into here. Like with Starlight I did avoid the changes list to try not to notice what was new or not. What follows here is an unstructured wall of thoughts jotted down whilst watching.
I went for the Rey Palpatine version, like it or not, that’s what we’ve got now.
Added lines on Exagol fit seamlessly. The immediate acts of aggression in Rey’s training complete with vision incorporating the Sith eyes from Starlight, the cave from TLJ, and the throne from Ascendent work so well at that point.
After Starlight it’s odd to hear Vader’s theme accompanying his helmet rather than Palpatine’s considering who’s actually speaking to Ren through it.
The music after Rey is fixing the landing gear after escaping the Destroyer is slightly reminiscent of Ren’s theme but I do wonder if either his or Palpatine’s could be woven in here properly as she talks about wanting to kill him.
Leia halting her training because she wanted to be more like her mother is a good balance considering it’s implied Luke had exiled himself out of fear of becoming their father. It carries the unvoiced implication that Leia too was scared of becoming Vader much earlier than Luke was.
I knew where a lot of the generated lines were but they didn’t in anyway stand out.
I did have some issues. One that’s unfixable is the Resistance being back to their TFA strength so soon after TLJ and all the other resets to TFA even down to Rey’s clothes and hair, Abrams really went out of his way to muck up TLJ.
There’s a couple of instances where the subtitles don’t match the words (Poe says the followers ‘have been building something for years’ and the subs say ‘hiding something for years’). Also, considering the ‘never underestimate a droid’ theme and how kind Rey is to D0, it’s really jarring to see how badly everyone treats 3P0, yes he’s never taken seriously in the franchise but Finn and Poe are outright bullying to him.
Also I had to convert the file because it was crashing my Philips TV when playing it off a USB device. It plays other MP4s no issue, it just didn’t like this one.
I’ve not kept up with much of the new voice lines talk for V5 but I did have some thoughts.
Leia having some dialogue prior to sacrificing herself rather than Maz expositing. Something like she senses Ben is turning and needs to reach him once last time or something.
Palps seeding some clones around the galaxy to use as backups. Rather than Rey being referred to ‘grandchild’ explicitly there must be some way of making it more obvious that one or both of her parents were Palpy clones and it’s unexpected they had a child.
And finally have Palpy goading Rey into killing him to fulfil the rule of two as his successor rather than telling her he’s going to posses her. It’s simple for him to prey on her darkness considering what Ren has told him about her toeing the line but I find it fundamentally stupid to tell her he’s going to posses her. It possibly wouldn’t be too difficult to have him play the dying victim like he did with Windu now he’s supposedly found his worthy successor. Obviously his plan remains to possess his clone but he doesn’t tell Rey that.
The last two things absolutely lie outside the scope of this film and Hals style, but adding subtle World Between Worlds lines in space when Rey starts hearing the voices of the Jedi and replacing the out of place Han-llucination with Anakin finally being able to speak to Ben would fit the expanding world post-ST nicely.
In a longstanding tradition I’ve just started this year I’ve decided to watch each ST films across Christmas Eve, Day, and Boxing Day (due to having seen the other 6 films millions of times since 1999).
I really like TLJ, it’s probably number 2 or 3 in my top 9 saga films list, it feels exactly like a TCW film, lots of humour (who can’t picture animated Anakin doing Poe’s bit with ‘Huggs’ at the beginning of the film), lots of new Force material and insights into how it works, deconstruction of the Jedi Order (not the Light Side, the Order itself), and heroes and villains hovering over the border.
I didn’t want a fanedit that changed much of anything about the film (well I’d have happily have lost some bits like Admiral Arsehole, could you imagine Luke being treated like Poe was after ANH? But also Poe’s mutiny, this is not Andor we don’t need a Resistance civil war) so I turned to the Extended Edition.
I have the workprint version, and the unfinished scenes, funnily enough, really don’t pull you out of the film at all. Sure you can notice them, but considering how many terrible effects (both practical and digital) exist in the endless re-releases of the OT I can cope with a couple of badly rendered backgrounds considering what the scenes add.
This isn’t much of a fanedit in the usual sense beyond the integration and edition, but that is done seamlessly and the additional VFX work on the scenes fit in.
Though, having said that, I don’t know if it’s my version or not, but just after Poe pulls his blaster on Admiral Arsehole the visuals and sound cut out until the laundrette scene.
In a longstanding tradition I’ve just started this year I’ve decided to watch each ST films across Christmas Eve, Day, and Boxing Day (due to having seen the other 6 films millions of times since 1999).
For TFA I’ve not seen the original since getting the DVD or Starlight since the first draft. I decided to ignore the change list until after watching it which was definitely the right choice.
Starlight doesn’t feel like a fanedit at all, there were no points of having to ‘fill the plotholes in yourself’ that often occur with fanedits where material is missing that would be needed for the changes. Mentions of Illum, Starkiller Base being a oneshot weapon to destroy the Republics capital, the clear focus on the Resistance not being the Republic, everything that makes the film not feel so much like a soulless remake of ANH (we had that already, it was RotJ).
Oh, and Chewy not hesitating and immediately blasting Ren followed by activating the detonators whilst he’s still there was fantastic. I wish the ST had lent into him as a character more.
The best part however, is the added darkness to Rey in a way that allows for Starlight to fit into either a ‘Palpatine’ or ‘nobody’ ST. It does follow that somebody who raised themselves on the edges of society would turn to the ‘easier and more seductive’ side of the force and the Sith whispers that follow after she fails the mind trick (twice!) followed by the Sith eyes before cutting a slice out of Ren feel really natural and flow nicely into TLJ (you didn’t even hesitate, you went straight for the Dark).
I know you’re constantly working on adding more and more to your edits (looking through the radical ST ideas thread), but whether those come to fruition or not, you have a complete film here.
Ready for Christmas: NeverarGreat’s The Force Awakens: Starlight, Bobson Dugnutt’s The Last Jedi - Expanded Edition, and now Hal 9000’s final version of The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant.
This should be the first time I’ll sit down to watch the definitive version of the ST.
The link I was sent a while ago is asking me to request access. Is this usual?
If Sabine has to have the force, they shouldn’t have made her terrible at it in the beginning. The show spend it’s first few episodes basically telling you she’s terrible via Huyang. Instead she should have been able to use it to a small extent from the start, which could have easily been hand-waved away as something she learned how to do from her previous training with Ahsoka.
But that’s exactly what it’s about and why adults have always made terrible Jedi students since ESB. She’s spent her life not using the Force so will be terrible at it because she’s got 20 years of mindset to undo. Then, when it matters the most it clicks for her.
She’s not lifting an X-Wing, she’s accelerating a 70 odd kilo human who’s already magically levitating themselves, the extra dozen or so metres into a slowly moving wide target. That is in no way not possible for somebody who has probably been taught the theory of levitating even if she couldn’t do it herself until then.Maybe they could have focused on her PoV for all this a bit more, but, at the end of the day, it’s not Sabine’s story.
It’s not just that she’s an adult. Luke had extreme potential in the Force and it still took him time to fully unlock it. The problem is Sabine’s prior training is all offscreen, with nothing to back it up from Rebels (and no, training with the Darksaber does not count). And even still, they still bumrush her from barely being able to pull a saber to throwing Ezra through the air in the span of a few minutes. It took Luke at least days of training to get to where he is by the end of Empire and he’s still not great at it. And he has much more potential than her.
They needed to sell it much better than they did. Sabine honestly shouldn’t have unlocked anything this season tbh. It ends in a failure with Thrawn escaping anyway. Let the audience feel the amount of time and effort she had to put into it rather than one single training sequence and some offhand remarks to OFFSCREEN training. The way they presented it, I just don’t buy it.
I don’t get what the issue with it being offscreen is. It’s not like Luke’s five mins of backflipping in a swamp acually explains any of the skills he has in RotJ or The Mandalorian, you have to assume Yoda acually tought him useful stuff off screen.
Sabine has already done the start of the combat training way back in Rebels and I’m perfectly happy with her having had the Force related bits off screen between then and this show. Fits with Luke and most of Anakin’s training (you know, as we don’t see any of the bits between TPM and AotC onscreen).
- Dugnutt’s edit restores the Shaak ti death scene at the start of RotS. Does Clone Wars/your edit contradict this at all?
- Dugnutt makes the decision in his edit to use audio from the Qui gon Liam Neeson dialogue from TCW in the qui gon scene in RotS. From what I can see, you do still include that content in your Refocused Season 4 finale “Cosmic Force”. So my question is, is the “Cosmic Force” episoe you cut truly and completely necessary? In the end, it wont bother us if it is, we’ll just acknowledge that some content gets reused. I would prefer Dugnutt just not include it, but I havent found a bettr RotS edit, the others Ive seen just change and remove too much of the movie.
Mostly yes. A vision in TCW shows Ti dying at the temple at the hands of Vader (a deleted scene that only exists as stills).
Maybe try Numeral Joker’s cut of RotS. It’s the extended film with the SoM arc woven in. Unfortunatly it also has the non-canon 2D CW bits at the start.
If Sabine has to have the force, they shouldn’t have made her terrible at it in the beginning. The show spend it’s first few episodes basically telling you she’s terrible via Huyang. Instead she should have been able to use it to a small extent from the start, which could have easily been hand-waved away as something she learned how to do from her previous training with Ahsoka.
But that’s exactly what it’s about and why adults have always made terrible Jedi students since ESB. She’s spent her life not using the Force so will be terrible at it because she’s got 20 years of mindset to undo. Then, when it matters the most it clicks for her.
She’s not lifting an X-Wing, she’s accelerating a 70 odd kilo human who’s already magically levitating themselves, the extra dozen or so metres into a slowly moving wide target. That is in no way not possible for somebody who has probably been taught the theory of levitating even if she couldn’t do it herself until then.
Maybe they could have focused on her PoV for all this a bit more, but, at the end of the day, it’s not Sabine’s story.
So I thought I’d share a few ideas I’ve thought in my head for editing Ahsoka and fixing some lingering questions:
- So for Huyang, a big question for me is why he’s with Ahsoka rather than Luke: So an idea I liked was that he’s sticking with Ahsoka because she’s the last from before the Empire and he feels a connection to the generation of padawans he’s taught, Ahsoka being the last one left. I’m not sure where a dialogue an AI created voice line could fit but it would be good explanation.
- Another thing with Huyang voice AI ideas is to try and see if it’s possible to move his conversation to Ezra about Sabine’s family fate on Mandalore to much earlier episodes to get the audience to understand why she’s willing to anything to get Ezra back.
- Another AI voice/ voice over idea could be used on Morrok: his dialogue could explain he’s magik created from the Great Mothers in Peridia to give him a more solid explanation rather than just not explaining him.
- I’d also fix the remnant troopers making them feel more human by adding voice lines for them & conversations, making them more competent shots too.
- For story beats I’d also make sure for Sabine force moment- I’d have Ezra do the full jump no help and Sabine (who doesn’t use the force in this edit) would have to make a choice to go save Ahsoka or go with Ezra.
- Oh and I’d also tweak Huyang’s line about Sabine being worse than a youngling in terms of force potential, maybe a line emphasising her untapped potential might make the finale land moments better.
Some great ideas if they can be done well. I especially like ideas 2 and 5. Both Ezra and Ahsoka seemed totally fine with Sabine’s reckless and irresponsible behavior. I was dumbstruck by the lack of accountability! Your idea might help to emphasize her reasons for doing what she did.
Also, I have no issue with Sabine having some Force ability, i.e., being a skilled Mandalorian warrior first and a novice Force user second, but her pushing Ezra like that was just silly and unearned. Huyang was right in pointing out her inadequacy. (When the Force can do anything, and anyone can use it, it makes the most interesting thing in Star Wars completely meaningless.)
I also want to add that the zombie noises that the Night Troopers make is ridiculous—far more laughable than creepy. In fact, the Night Troopers coming back to light was pointless because they didn’t actually pose a threat.
The idea that anyone can use the force is introduced in A New Hope
And expanded in ESB. ‘Do, or do not. There is no try’. Sabine realises she can and stops trying and all the training she’s undergone now works because she now can ‘do’ rather than ‘do not’.
For some reason fans in general have a video game idea of the Force that isn’t based on what the films or TCW presents.
Damn that’s both quick and good work.