Bingowings

InfoDroid said:

Bingowings said:

I think Sidious is more cunning than that.

He started the Naboo crisis as a ploy to get Anakin (who is all sweetness now) into the Jedi fold and to weaken the Chancellor so he can replace him.

He is just using poor Maul as a Sith calling card.

Bumping off Qui-Gon defending a corrupt Republic turns Dooku, splitting and weakening the Republic and Anakin gets rid of Dooku and strikes the final blow against an already weakened Jedi Order and dying Republic.

He doesn't want Anakin yet, he wants the Jedi to train him so that he can learn to hate them.

As it stands in the movies in their current form, that's true, Bingowings.  But how much more of a dynamic could you add by making Anakin the McGuffin of the story?

In ANH it was the Death Star plans.  In ESB it was Luke.  In the prequels, we don't really have one, unless you count "Syfo-Dyas" which never really went anywhere.

These movies need an Ark of the Covenant... Something for them to chase.

 

The object to chase down is the the Trade Federation Invasion (that's the Death Star of Episode One) everything else is dancing in the background, just as who the Emperor and Vader and Luke's father is and how could the Rebels ultimately win danced in the background of ANH.

Episode Two should be a character building exercise with the plot becoming more complex and the dancing moving further to the front (and that too needs major restructuring to come close to fulfilling that goal).

Episode Three is closer to what it should be (the apparent triumph of evil) but it too needs a lot of work on it.

It makes sense that Anakin should be the ultimate focus of all six films (just as Luke is the main focus of OT in isolation) but for Episode One to work it needs to get our heroes from point A to Point C via Point B.

At the moment it's point C to point B to Point A and back to Point C.

The first episode needs a more simple structure to draw people into the more complex weave to follow.

Little details like having The Chosen One Prophecy and Dooku touched upon add the same flavour as having Jabba and the Emperor hinted at in ANH, something that leads into the next episodes without destracting from the coherence of Episode One as a seperate unit but they shouldn't be at the centre when there already is target that is barely being hit.

Owen-Lars-Kenobi said:

Matt_Kenobi said:

doubleofive said:

The more I think about it, there really is no excuse for Vader to not have his helmet on.  It doesn't matter how long we make the hallway or anything.  How come people can just go in and open the door without knocking or anything like that?

 

 I would imagine that the helmet has to be uncomfortable at best, and he might want to have it off when he could.  Also, only a few, select, people would have access to that room.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that Vader was experimenting with the force to see how long he could sustain himself withought the helmet for short periods of time.. or something to that effect.

In the "Shadows Of The Empire" novel Vader lies down in a iron lung booth so he can take all the gear off and keeps trying to use the Force to heal himself but it never works (I hate the idea myself I prefer to think of him locked in that thing all the time only getting his mask off in Jedi).

Presumably Vader likes his top officers to see him with his hat off as it's icky and adds to the general fear factor that Vader gives off.

Piett etc would then go off and spread it about just how hideous he is under that armour, which would grow more and more fearsome with each telling adding to his infamy.

It also shows that Vader as a sort of pride in his scars (like Darth Maul's tatts), an inverted vanity, each burn and cut was earned through fighting and he survives because of his will to do so.

Presumably people would have to have clearence to enter the chamber and only get there when Vader wanted them to, he's breaking in a new Admiral and seems to want to impress on Piett that he isn't a step on the ladder like Ozzel.

He is sitting there with his back to the door in a confined space with his scars showing almost tempting Piett to bump him off knowing he couldn't.

Like Palpatine tempting Luke by reminding him that he has no weapons and Luke could strike him down at any moment.

InfoDroid said:

Bingowings said:

Perhaps there should be a 'finding Anakin' subplot, another possibility is that the Jedi know that the Chosen One is out there somewhere. Qui-Gon has a premonition that assisting in the Naboo crisis is the key to finding this child and unlocking the meaning of the prophercy, which is clearly important to them and for the greater good (they just don't know how much damage has to be done before the galaxy receives the boon that the child represents). "I Have encountered a vergence in the Force", becomes "I sense a vergence in the Force".

Qui-Gon hasn't met Anakin yet but he foresees he will so the council send Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan to investigate the invasion and hopefully bring the Chosen One back with him.

Such a plot alteration would place Anakin further up the map of the story and foreshadow the rather wobbly way the Jedi deal with him in later life.

 

I've thought about going in that direction too.  Sidious sends Maul to Tatooine to look for this "vergence" he senses in the Force, instead of the Queen.  Meanwhile, the Council sends Qui-Gon.  It's a race between the Jedi and the Sith to find Anakin first.

 

I think Sidious is more cunning than that.

He started the Naboo crisis as a ploy to get Anakin (who is all sweetness now) into the Jedi fold and to weaken the Chancellor so he can replace him.

He is just using poor Maul as a Sith calling card.

Bumping off Qui-Gon defending a corrupt Republic turns Dooku, splitting and weakening the Republic and Anakin gets rid of Dooku and strikes the final blow against an already weakened Jedi Order and dying Republic.

He doesn't want Anakin yet, he wants the Jedi to train him so that he can learn to hate them.

This and the Fan-O-Matic could serve as interesting counterpoints to each other.

The fan edit community is almost like a laboratory for finding in what we were given the continuations of the saga most of us feel were not.

I look forward to seeing this and other projects of it's type at the very least to see what works and what doesn't.

Just as I look forward to the radical redux prequel thread baring fruit.

InfoDroid said:

The focus should be on Obi-Wan, everything could be through his perspective.  If you eliminate the "finding Anakin" story, then Obi-Wan is there for every major plot point.

I think there has already been an attempt to do a Obi-Wan focused edit of the whole prequel trilogy (or did I just dream it?).

That's fine as a short film project but pointless as Star Wars Episode One.

Besides in TPM there is no 'finding Anakin' story as such, he kind of gets picked up by the others going (the wrong way) to Coruscant.

Perhaps there should be a 'finding Anakin' subplot, another possibility is that the Jedi know that the Chosen One is out there somewhere. Qui-Gon has a premonition that assisting in the Naboo crisis is the key to finding this child and unlocking the meaning of the prophercy, which is clearly important to them and for the greater good (they just don't know how much damage has to be done before the galaxy receives the boon that the child represents). "I Have encountered a vergence in the Force", becomes "I sense a vergence in the Force".

Qui-Gon hasn't met Anakin yet but he foresees he will so the council send Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan to investigate the invasion and hopefully bring the Chosen One back with him.

Such a plot alteration would place Anakin further up the map of the story and foreshadow the rather wobbly way the Jedi deal with him in later life.

ben_danger said:

InfoDroid said:

the saga is generally considered "Anakin's story" by most

 

i agree the total ani cut is a bit severe, but could the focus be shifted onto padme?

 

what if the PT is about padme reacting to anakin, and the OT is about luke reacting to vader?

Once again there isn't much more that can be squeezed out of Padme in TPM that doesn't involve putting in more Anakin and Natty is almost as bad and at times is just as bad as Jake and Hayden in these films.

A well paced plot can lift even the most leaden of performances so my instincts tell me it is better to concentrate on shifting the order of events around to tell a less meandering story.

Amidala's aim is to free her people so that should be a straight line and not a spirograph drawing.

Any news about this interesting alternate universe edit idea?

With all my thinking about 3 Death Stars, I'd almost forgot about the opposite direction.

InfoDroid said:

ben_danger said:

i know this sounds utterly stupid, but one of my friends suggested TPM would have been better without anakin. i think he meant that the character wasnt that strong. but what IF ani wasnt even in it? what if he just appears in II onwards? i have no idea how and what it would entail, but perhaps the smarter forum members can ponder such an idea.

 

 That's an idea that's so outrageous, that it just might work.  Since the saga is generally considered "Anakin's story" by most, I don't think anyone (including me) has ever seriously considered cutting his story out of TPM.  Visualizing it though, it's a definite possibility.  I think it would work better in a "prologue" type arrangement though than in a standalone episode, but yeah, definitely something interesting to try.

--ID

Less Jake Lloyd is always a good idea and how much more less can you get but none? None less.

But if you did that what would you have left?

It is Episode One, unless you want to go for a totally new PT (see Animated thread) and Anakin is now the main focus of the saga and there really isn't much material in TPM to shift the focus elsewhere.

There are plenty of examples of how little near orphan Annie can be made more tolerable so deleting him when there is almost as equally bad material elsewhere in there to be repaired too does seem more harsh than radical.

Episode One is a different animal to all the films that follow it.

In an ideal world it would be "The Hobbit" to the rest of the films "Lord Of The Rings".

The story really needs to be restructured in the same way that Jedi does to make it start and end with a bang and introduce the main characters in a lightish/fun way with moments of darkness which hint at the shadow that is to fall in the rest of the episodes.

That's why I suggested starting the film with the invasion of Naboo while Amidala is on Coruscant, that way she has to fight to get back (like the heroes have to go through trials to get to Yavin and save it in ANH) and have her ship attacked on the way so she has to land on Tatooine.

Some of the dullness of TPM comes from the going back and forth between Naboo, Tatooine and Coruscant with Naboo throne room scenes and Council and Senate meetings bogging it all down.

If the heroes went from Coruscant to Tatooine to Naboo, the linear flow of the story would give it better pacing as an introduction to the Star Wars universe.

doubleofive said:

Bingowings said:

He could come down in a little lift which would make him even more isolated.

But a lift wouldn't show off more of the interior... :-(

No but it would suggest more by saying that Piett and Veers had to go down many levels to get to Vader's otherwise isolated chamber.

Do not underestimate the power of imagination to fill in the blanks.

doubleofive said:

 

I'm going to have to agree with Vaderios and others.  It's a 8000-19000 meter (5-12 mile!) long ship, but from the reused hallways it looks like the entire movie takes place in about 2000 square feet.  We never see anything from the interior to make this look like the huge ship it is.  Maybe a change in hallway outside Vader's personal bunk would help that out.

And if there's all those officers outside, why couldn't they tell Vader about the energy shield?  I guess that Vader doesn't recieve calls in there, that's why someone had to go tell him personally, then he calls Ozzel from there.  It would help Veers' (right?) nervousness if there is no one around to help him if Vader decides to kill him.

He could come down in a little lift which would make him even more isolated.

As well as the party wig idea you could cannibalise and redress old faux fur coats too.

It depends on what you are after.

If you want a full body suit that could be be tricky (this guy has a nice Bigfoot suit which might give you some ideas http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/phoenix-yeti/ )but if you want a better puppet and arms you don't really need rolls and rolls of fur but just enough to cover Mr/Ms Wampa's modesty (or as Eric used to say "You can't see the join").

SilverKey said:

Bingowings, that picture of Dooku on the Jedi council looks really good! Great job man. I couldn't think of a way to do it, but this looks like something we could actually pull off. We need to give him other hands though, I think Plo Koon would like his back :P

 

In my defence it was 5am and I was wanting me bed...and aliens ate my homework...Your Honour.

vaderios said:

Star wars has always black space. This making the difference from the other movies that enhance the space with nebulas and other stuff.But w8 why a nebula in a star wars shot? Lets say this shot got an OT makeover.

-Angel

I think the Tantive IV should have the same livery as in ANH but clean and fresh (not beat up and scratched) so, your mission (should you chose to accept it) is give us a ROTS Tantive in ANH clothing.

While we are on the subject of Blockade Runners a possible radical idea could be a flash forward sequence at the end of ROTS showing the Tantive IV getting the plans from Skyhook and R2 fixing the ship (just like in the Radio Version) which would lead right into Episode IV (the building of the Death Star could be shown time lapse style with some desolves showing the change of ships as the thing gets built leading upto this scene).

DuTwan said:

Bingowings said:

teharri said:

Bingowings said:

I actually like some of these lines, Could some of them be used be extending the shot of Leia looking out of the window?

The footage itself is pretty much beyond restoration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1DHPi68ic&feature=related

 

Nice find Bingowings! I also agree that the footage is beyond repair.

 

Welcome back Vaderios

It might not be beyond restoration if Lucas released all the cutting room floor stuff to a professional team but I can't see that happening.

The level of acting in these clips is better than anything in ROTJ let alone the prequels. Harrison is very Han here in a way that he can't seem to bother to be in ROTJ.

 

 

 I suppose yea just im presuming that because Harrison believed Han Solo should of died in this episode he didn't really wanna act as much :S?

It wasn't just Harrison, for a lot of people ROTJ seemed to be a contractural obligation piece. ESB on the other hand seems to have been a real labour of love (all be it rather flawed as we have all discovered).

teharri said:

Bingowings said:

I actually like some of these lines, Could some of them be used be extending the shot of Leia looking out of the window?

The footage itself is pretty much beyond restoration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1DHPi68ic&feature=related

 

Nice find Bingowings! I also agree that the footage is beyond repair.

 

Welcome back Vaderios

It might not be beyond restoration if Lucas released all the cutting room floor stuff to a professional team but I can't see that happening.

The level of acting in these clips is better than anything in ROTJ let alone the prequels. Harrison is very Han here in a way that he can't seem to bother to be in ROTJ.

Darth Piccolo said:

could someone like vad try and get rid of the pink tint seen in the phantom menace it's annoying here is an example of my amature manip

I don't think that's a pink tint, it looks more like an attempt to match the pinkish marble of Reggia di Caserta (where the throne room scenes were filmed in TPM and AOTC) which might produce an ambient bleed. The battle droids were a weird hue in TPM too (something that a number of people on here want to change) using that as a guide I adjusted the general hue and it came out looking like this (a bit too yellow for my taste):

vaderios said:

Oh well thats a lot a good updates since i left.

Nicely done. Now im back to action again :)

 

-Angel

Yay!

SilverKey said:

ben_danger, I hate to disagree with you, but I don't think having Dooku on the council in TPM would work, because he and Obi-Wan can't meet before AOTC ("It's a shame our paths have never crossed before")....

• In his conversation with Obi-Wan, remove the line "...and together we can destroy the Sith!" and add in the line "The Republic can not be fixed. It is time to start over", taken from his deleted scene with Padme.
  
• Take out all references to him being Yoda's apprentice. I don't think that fits, considering Yoda's comments on Jedi training in ESB.

This way, I think we can give his character a little more depth

What do you guys think?

That line could be deleted or altered (he is certainly a Jedi of high enough rank to be on the Council and that might put him in a better position to fiddle with the archive records):

but if he is Qui-Gon's former Master the barriers that held back Qui-Gon from taking (or even wanting) that position may apply to him also.

I agree with both of your other changes but I would also amend Obi-Wan's line "Qui-Gon Jinn would never join you" to a shorter and sweeter "Qui-Gon Jinn? Never..." (as if the idea was more preposterous than insulting).

I know Lucas argues that Star Wars is a like a poem with repeated themes but he does tend to just use that as an excuse to cut and paste lines from the other films (and Ewan doesn't deliver the line well anyway).

It might be possible to fiddle around with the dialogue from this or the other prequels to change the line (ironically by cutting and pasting words from other films).

The Yoda/Dooku confrontation could do with tinkering (some have proposed removing the sabre clash altogether because though it's fun it kind of weakens Yoda to see him hopping around like that) others have suggested removing the force lightning as they see this as something which should be kept for Palpatine alone.

Whatever the changes snipping that revelation out should be a doddle.

I actually like some of these lines, Could some of them be used be extending the shot of Leia looking out of the window?

The footage itself is pretty much beyond restoration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez1DHPi68ic&feature=related

HotRod said:

TMBTM said:

It reminds me when the little droid kicks Jar Jar in the nuts at Watto's shop.

 

Man, that guy on the vid is an annoying twat. Can't even say Lando's name right. Number 1 fan my arse....Sad old man!!

 

;)

 

 

He comes across as actually being a rather nice guy (perhaps a little too enthusiastic), some of his video's are side splittingly funny and he has actively campaigned (with the emphasis on camp) for safer and better made toys (and gee does he have a collection...he basically has an aircraft hanger of almost every toy and video game ever made...makes you wonder how he spends his evenings).

And he does have a point here.

rcb said:

it looks believable minus the people.

It might be possible to make something like this and digitally remove the puppeteers, it would add a sense of weight to an AT-AT close up, especially if the camera was undercranked and the footage manipulated.

TMBTM said:

I think it's subtle, adds to his character when it comes to his feelings towards the Jedi, Qui-Gon and the Republic as he explains to Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones, and it doesn't contradict anything.

Welcome!

Not a bad idea but Maybe a bit confusing placing it right after the "master or apprentice?" line. The audience would know that he's not Sidious unmasked (the beard!) but it would lead to think that there's a link. (and could be really confusing if Sidious face is completely hidden through all the movie.) But after all, there is the pan on Palapatine face... that should be enough hint to the audience to  not make confusion.

Also adding a new character at the very end of the movie is a bit odd. But why not, and I agree it would add more depth to the character. It would be a nice scene on its own; it's just the moment it is integrate that bugs me a little.

 

Sorry for my english.

French guy here.

JasonN (and a few other editors like MagnoliaFan) remove Sideous' face:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgM8GbfjS3A&feature=related

I think the Dooku insert is great for two reasons, one it could work as possible alternative Master and set up Darth Tyrannus for the second and third parts but also it could be seen as the beginning of Dooku's fall with the loss of his former apprentice due to the inaction of the Jedi.

So it is actually a rather radical change.

It might be possible to create a line (from sampling elsewhere) where Dooku says something along the lines of "Goodbye my old friend".

I think the Episode One bit in the title removes or plays upto the any confusion the audience might have (it's safe to assume that they will know that other episodes exist).

doubleofive said:

Sluggo said:

Mark Hamill would never kick or punch someone in the groin.

Jay and Silent Bob dare to disagree with you on that one.

It's ironic that Cocknocker looks so much like the Galactic Heroes figures (from a joke in an adult spoof to a range of rubbish toys for toddlers).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVAy4J6Fy6w

Everybody on here wants to help make these films as good as they can be, if only the bods at Lucasfilm felt the same.

Ziz said:

It's a one off scratchbuild from a guy in Spain.  People have emailed him about it and he won't give out the secret.

Anything that can be made once can be made twice (though it may be too late for this project).

Maybe if you did e-mail him and took a nice little Spanish (or Brazilian) holiday you could end up with some footage that might be useful for ESB:R and ROTJ:R.

Do we have any originaltrilogy.com agents in the field who could shoot the material for you?

I'm surprised (what with the success of similar robotic toys on the market) that Lucas hasn't got a company like Wowwee to make a model like this one already.

This is a lovely motorised model, it might have saved so much time doing certain shots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34tgu7ULkeM&feature=related