BedeHistory731

Making the Prequels with the attitude of “everybody knows the originals.” They should have assumed nobody knew anything going into it, teaching them along the way. That way, continuity with the OT would be respected.

The oddly unhealthy attitude towards women in the Prequels is iffy. Like that Pop Culture Detective guy said, “women lead to a loss of control for the hero, driving him to the dark side” (I’m paraphrasing here). It sounds like Lucas didn’t get his divorce out of his system that easily.

Sorry for the double post - I’m curious, will you be using any of the “4K” (because upscale) masters for enhancing the color grade, or are you carrying on as before?

Tobar said:

Is this a brand new audio mix as well? It has the Threepio narration over the death star plans and also has “Close the blast doors!”

That’s been there since 1997.

I’m curious - since the donation drive was successfully completed, when will the prize drawing be held?

I like seeing that, one of our own developing success on YouTube. Also, for those who don’t know, Gaffer Tape is the guy behind Dragon Ball Dissection! It’s easily the best Dragon Ball review series on YT.

I’m not sure it’s missing film masters so much as it is laziness on the part of Toei.

“Your mental health is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.”

• Marcus Parks

Mocata said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

So I rewatched that “SC 38 Reimagined” lightsaber duel for the first time since it was released, just to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Boy howdy, was it ever. And fans actually like this overwrought crap? And want it edited into the movie proper?

The same fans who think the Vader attack in Rogue One is the best scene in the franchise.

Those people are the worst.

Hal 9000 said:

The shot of the X-wings approaching the Death Star before everyone checks in is easily the worst SE update to the sequence. The extended shot of the ship models gliding across the screen looks less convincing than other, more dynamic shots elsewhere, and the R2 units look incorrect.
I wonder if it’d be feasible or desirable to create two more subtle shots using CG to approximate the two in the original version.

I like how the two shots became one in the SE, but I do agree that re-doing the bit to look more dynamic would be better. Also, one could suggest adding in different paint marks on the X-Wings, to better emulate the models. That way, Red 5’s nose stripes won’t change as much (and Ady will fix the wing stripes like he did the SD edition).

ChainsawAsh said:

Sifo Dyas said:

BedeHistory731 said:

I’ve been experimenting with trimming “I must obey my master!” while also incorporating Sir Ridley’s “Your mother once thought as you do” (albeit slowed-down). What prevented me from deleting “You don’t know the power of the Dark Side” was both Vader’s turn and making sure that Luke’s follow-up line made sense. The edit is a bit rough, but I’m sure Ady can do better working in the 5.1 mix.

Here it is.

The “I must obey my master!” line you deleted is very important. It tells the audience Vader’s relation to the Emperor, as it tells a lot about the Sith master-apprentice relationship.
Deleting it is a huge mistake.

Strong disagree on this one.

Indeed. Why would Vader be planning to overthrow the Emperor in the previous movie?

Could I please get a link to the edits?

Thinking back to the “Saving the Reveal” proposal - would it also work if a concealed face (via darkening) and recolored suit Vader still slaughtered the Separatist leaders as done in the movie? Changing the lightsaber’s color to red would help this, as would cutting the shots of Anakin and R2 leaving the ship on Mustafar. It resolves a loose end, while also being a good dramatic beat before Yoda vs. Palpatine.

I’d keep the references to “Lord Vader” in the scenes, which would work well for furthering the idea that this new “Vader” (who may be the old Vader, as we never see his face) is a/still is a serious threat.

I’m liking the ideas, Dom and Rogue! Restructuring ROTJ’s bloated first part is a fantastic proposal. I rather enjoy opening with the Emperor’s arrival, followed by the truncated R2/3PO arrival and the dance number/the Leia!Boushh scene. It gives us a better Luke reveal and immediately increases the stakes for the Galactic Civil War plot. While I like the thought of opening on Dagobah, it doesn’t have the same urgency as opening with Palpatine’s arrival.

An insert shot of Han in carbonite during the dance number is doable, especially if it means deleting a shot of that ugly Snootles puppet (the one that prematurely reveals Lando, preferably). If we have to cut Leia and Chewbacca, perhaps insert shots of Boushh interacting in the palace after Oola falls down the pit. You could also cut Lapti Nek (Does the rancor need foreshadowing? Do we need that awful puppet of Sy Snootles on screen?), going from the droid torture to gunshots in the throne room. You’d have to tweak the establishing shot of Jabba to be more appropriate (re-insert part of the hologram scene?). I’m just spitballing a few rearrangement ideas.

RogueLeader said:

Good thoughts, Bede! I don’t have many specific ideas yet for TPM redubbings, but I think there is a lot of potential for some solid ideas, like you mentioned. I’ll have to rewatch some of those scenes again!

Thanks!

II: It is really hard to change much about TPM to help with the Lars stuff. The simplest idea I have so far is to imply Anakin has made trips back to Tatooine to visit his mother inbetween films. So when they go to Tatooine, they go straight to the Lars homestead. 3PO will immediately recognize Anakin instead of thinking he is a stranger. You then cut all the introductions, and go straight to their conversation at the dinner table. Maybe it would confuse people at first, but I think people could pick up on context that Anakin actually may have gone back and freed his mom like he said, and she married a moisture farmer. Since Anakin might actually have some kind of relationship with Owen and Beru now, Anakin’s line, “These are good people, you’ll be safe with them” actually makes more sense. Maybe this would contradict with the Jedi’s rules of attachment, but I’m sure something could be worked out.

That would totally make sense. It just needs a few line trims to make it work, perhaps an overdubbed explanation during the nighttime scene at Padme’s apartment, when Anakin talks to Obi-Wan about his mother.

III: Why do you think showing the empty tank preserves the mystery more than just seeing the cloudy silhouette of a figure inside? In my mind you would cut the shots of the tank draining, so we don’t know if the figure is human or alien. Sorry if I misunderstood you!

Yeah, my bad. I misinterpreted how much of the body we see in the bacta tank. Still, showing it again in III would be a good way to keep up the mystery.

Are you saying keep Anakin going back to Palpatine’s office? I think it is important that the last place we see Anakin is in the temple.

I was thinking for a moment that implying that Anakin died in the office would be a good idea, but looking back, it’s best that the last time we see him is the ruminations scene. I’m not sure what we would cut to after it, perhaps Cody receiving Order 66?

Thanks for your reply!

You’re welcome! I love what you’ve proposed, despite losing so much of III. I’m a fan of Auralnauts’ videos, so I like a good redub-heavy project. A lot can be done with the extant visual material and new FX shots (since consumer/prosumer-grade material can come close to what the Prequels looked like). It would be a good “chronological order” edit, if one doesn’t do what I’d like to do (Episode I - A New Hope, Episode II - The Empire Strikes Back, Episode III - Labyrinth of Evil (either Hal’s edit or a prequel three-in-one), and Episode IV - Return of the Jedi).

RogueLeader, I really like what you proposed! It does involve some creative redubbing, but it seems doable (Auralnauts’ videos made good work of it). Keeping the surprise does eliminate some of the more “emotional” parts of III, but I like that it keeps Anakin’s fate ambiguous while also presenting some ambiguity over Vader. There are a few points I’d suggest:

I: You mention the idea of making Obi-Wan a full-fledged knight - I think that you can make the element of doubt work through redubbing the council to hint that they’re aware of Obi-Wan’s failure with “Vader” and are reluctant for him to teach again. Heck, Maul/“Vader” could be evidence that “too old” apprentices go bad. It would be Qui-Gon vouching for his former pupil instead.

II: I’m not sure what exactly you’d cut from the Anakin stuff on Tatooine (easing PT-OT inconsistencies. It would likely depend on what you do with TPM.

III: I would suggest showing Grievous or Palpatine looking at a bacta tank at some point. If it’s clouded enough to hide the person inside it, you can imply that it’s either the apprentice or Grievous’ empty tank. That way, it keeps up the mystery. I like the idea of calling both Dooku and Grievous “Darth Tyranus” and Maul/Anakin “Darth Vader.” It does prove to be an issue with the “Rule of Two,” but removing said rule really isn’t a problem for editing (compared to the redubbing and some visual changes).

Adding Obi-Wan picking up Anakin’s lightsaber while examining the temple ruins could also work to explain how he gets it for IV.

While I do agree that this is far more work than simply changing around some episode numbers on the crawls to make it go ANH-ESB-ROTS (or a three-in-one edit)-ROTJ, it’s still a worthy venture. Good work, RougeLeader!

JEDIT: Perhaps Mace goes to face Palpatine, cutting to Anakin’s flight to the office once we see Palpatine draw his lightsaber. We keep the ruminations scene in, as it’s an important emotional beat.

Oh my, that’s amazing! I really like the color swap.

Hal 9000 said:

But why would Vader head a criminal organization?

He has his hobbies. 😉

I like it, Snooker! I’m curious to see where you’ll go with the edit.

TNT, I always likes 3-in-1, so I’m curious about how you’ll handle it. I’m a Blackened Mantle guy, an edit where I liked the decisions made (fake subtitles paired with the Japanese dub, Grievous is Maul, etc.).

snooker said:

I don’t even care about preserving the Yoda reveal in Empire, it’s just that he’s sooo boring in the prequelsssss.

Indeed! I like having the situational irony in ESB with Yoda (who we know from I, II, and III) screwing around to test Luke. You can even argue that Yoda gets a character arc as the result of his prequel appearances (pompous, dogmatic ass in the prequels becomes a humbled, humorous, wise, but still dogmatic master in the OT).

Still, my attitude towards prequel rewrites is to keep all of the OT twists intact. We never see Yoda, we assume Anakin (and/or an additional Obi-Wan pupil) is dead at the end of the trilogy, and we only see the birth of one kid.

snooker said:

I’ve got a hot take: Yoda should only appear once in the prequels, and it’s in his scene with Obi-Wan near the end of The Phantom Menace

Exactly! Whenever I’ve done prequel rewrites, Yoda has been exiled by the Jedi for dogmatic disputes. Only Obi-Wan (and Qui-Gon/Dooku) know where he is (Dagobah). That way, the ESB surprise is enhanced (instead of us laughing with Yoda, knowing he’s just messing around with Luke).

While it’d be impossible to totally cut Yoda from the three movies, one could chop him out in a three-in-one edit with some difficulty.

I’m just annoyed they couldn’t find a woman VA to dub the female pilot in ROTJ. Also, what changed to allow Dennis Lawson to use his own voice in ROTJ as well?

Matt.F said:

“We weren’t doing anything that I think Peter Cushing would’ve objected to. I think this work was done with a great deal of affection and care. We know that Peter Cushing was very proud of his involvement in Star Wars and had said as much, and that he regretted that he never got a chance to be in another Star Wars film because George [Lucas] had killed off his character. This was done in consultation and cooperation with his estate. So we wouldn’t do this if the estate had objected or didn’t feel comfortable with this idea.” John Knoll, VFX Supervisor.

Please feel free to go ahead and be outraged anyway, and create an ‘ethical’ cut of the movie!

Meh, ethical or not, it still looked awful. Prosthetic makeup, like in ROTS, would have been fine. Either way, I like this cut sparing us having to look at it.

Also, just chill. Don’t try to write off OP as “whiny” and “outraged” because he disagrees with you and has different values from the filmmaker.

Matt.F said:

Peter Cushing was an actor.

Tarkin is a character. Do you see the difference? I can assure you Peter Cushing’s ‘corpse’ as you emotively wrote is quite undisturbed. Perhaps you should issue a fatwa on anyone who makes an image of someone who has passed?

Seems mock moral outrage is all the rage online today though.

It’s entirely normal to think that the CGI face looked terrible and may have been disrespectful, so it’s not “mock moral outrage.” There are serious ethical issues around this practice.

I like the editing as it is, but I’d recommend rotoscoping in appropriate backgrounds for the cutaways. It might help fix the issues that Rouge Leader described. I’d also recommend getting to the Tantive IV through a dissolve instead of a wipe.

JEDIT: Now that you’ve moved 3PO and R2 to the end, would you consider cutting out their Yavin appearance?

SomethingStarWarsRelated said:

Matt.F said:

Actually talking of voices, and from the same opening scene with the ‘ungloved hand’, the blond Imperial Officer who says “Inform the Commander that Lord Vader’s shuttle has arrived” speaks with a very noticeably American accent.

If you watch ESB and ROTJ back-to-back its actually quite jarring to hear the US accent from an Imperial officer right at the start of the film - in ESB the British accent was the voice of the Empire’s officer class and it gave the Empire a certain haughty aristocracy that worked very well.

Hardly a game changer but I think redubbing a British accent for that officer would be a nice little improvement to the movie.

Excellent point. I always thought that dub wasn’t very well done anyway. Doesn’t this dude show up later to deliver another line to Piett too?

Actually, other than Piett, are there any other officers that DO have a British accent? The “send three squads to help!” guy might be quasi British…I don’t know.

The Moff guy is also British in ROTJ, as is “Sir, we’ve lost our bridge deflector shields.” Still, some redubs would be good for ROTJ (adjusting dialogue).

joefavs said:

Forever baffled by the apparently common impulse to show fan edits for someone’s first viewing. Maaaaaaybe for the prequels, but the OT? Seriously?

It mostly applies to ROTJ. I’d rather kids not have to see “jealous Han,” too much Ewok chicanery, and some really clunky dialogue. They can watch the original alongside it, of course.

With ANH and ESB, I say have the fanedits as additional viewing (since it’s the best way to see the SE’s).