Edit is now available! OP’s been edited.
Any questions you got, as per usual, fire away, I’m all ears and happy to hear whatever you got!
New Imperial forces arrive at Mandalore!
Hey-Heyyyy, I recognize that planet approach 😃
This whole project is frankly astounding in its scope and execution. Just remarkable, remarkable work. And that trailer is the hotness, too. Everything about this looks top-notch. More folks should know about this.
(original art elements by Mayank Kumarr)
Hello There!
I’m going to tell you a story. A story of a faneditor who was folding laundry one weekend afternoon, with James Bond in the background. A classic story, one many are familiar with; it’s how most of my first viewings of Roger Moore’s entire era were done, in fact. But it wasn’t a James Bond movie, it was a YouTube essay ABOUT a James Bond movie. No Time to Die, specifically: the explosive sendoff to the Daniel Craig era, and direct sequel to Spectre, of which this editor had created an Alternate Cut months before.
And while this editor was tidily packing the drawer with neatly rolled up socks, ideas were sparking; editorial answers to the questions the essayist was posing. Scenes being reconstituted into shapes that might make the bow-tied young man in the video nod and go “Well played, clerk.” And the next thing he knew, he had flopped onto the couch with No Time to Die blaring, and the notes app was getting filled, the movie getting paused and rewound, like he still didn’t have vacuuming to do, and there was all the time in the world…
The above IS a true story. I wasn’t planning on doing No Time to Die, I was honestly just…fine with its grandiosity/largesse, considering its being EON’s final creative statement on the character. Sure, I agreed with folks saying it probably didn’t need to be 2hrs 43min, (!!) but: it wasn’t as tonally confused, or as somnambulisticc, or as yellow as Spectre, so hey!
And then Calvin Dyson, the bow-tied young YouTuber getting blackout schnockered on contriva-tinis in the background, broke through my shirt-folding zen with things that made that runtime seem… real unnecessary, actually! And after a focused rewatch for the first time in a long time, I found myself agreeing with a ton of his solid takes, (but do not look up my guy’s all-time Bond rankings tho, whew!), and now I was very much watching No Time from a POV firmly embedded in my Alternate Cut of Spectre. Which now, clearly, needs a partner.
So here we are! No Time To Die (Alternate Cut) - a leaner, meaner (almost 20min shorter!) telling of the story, with a little less narrative tail-chasing and a LOT more pep in its step on the way to a (still) explosive(ly) grand(iose) finale for Craig’s tenure as 007.
Bond still dies. This was a big-ol-hairy deal on release; I believe a lot of prior edits to this film were centered on undoing it. But like I said in the essay-thingy for the Spectre Alt Cut (Hey, what do we call these things we write to go along with our edits, btw? Do they have a name besides “self-indulgent sales-pitch readers are skimming to find the cutlist?”) - with EON relinquishing the character to MGM/Amazon, there’s a very clear demarcation point between eras, and it just makes sense to let their big swings stand as-is
Bond is still a (smartass) dad. A notable amount of the theatrical version is dedicated to this plotline being (artificially) turned into a mystery element. But it also just gives up on that mystery arbitrarily, so this Alternate Cut makes a few trims to simply… not raise the spectre (pun intended!) of Mathilde’s parentage in the first place. And the way looser vibe Bond’s got here? That ALL stays. I don’t know if the breezy smartassed back ‘n’ forths between Bond/his team/Blofeld are Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s doing, or if it’s just Craig coming in hot off Knives Out, both at the same time, or what… but I think it works like gangbusters so I didn’t try messing with any of that, tonally (although, again - a lot of this movie’s dialog scenes got touched in one way or another).
Safin is no longer Young Madeleine’s savior. In fact, the whole pre-titles sequence omits the mini-horror movie, which is instead heavily truncated & transformed into an actual flashback in her office, framed via the story she tells on the train in Spectre. (The Gunbarrel now irises open on the car leaving the tunnel at Matera, Italy; almost as if Bond & Swann drove straight here from Spectre’s ending - and makes for a nice bookend to the film’s final shot) Safin’s fixation on her is now vaguely creepy/familial, but most importantly - the contrivance where adult Swann doesn’t remember his California Raisin-ass face the SECOND she saw it is now gone! He’s just a vengeful, pop-eyed, slow-talking weirdo, who knows he can leverage her for exactly what he wants; which is more than enough for a Bond villain, really.
It’s a LOT more straightforward as a story. Bond stories typically aren’t so complicated that you need the basic concepts of the plot repeated four or five times! Certainly not this one, but this one does it constantly. There’s 4-5 different, labored speeches about what Heracles is, how it works, and what it was intended to do - including one from Safin in the last 20 minutes. There’s the weird “is Mathilde Bond’s kid” thing that not only doesn’t go anywhere, but also makes MI6 look foolish: Moneypenny reports they’ve been monitoring Dr. Swann’s spot, but they somehow didn’t notice a slinky-smacking, crepe-crushing 5 year-old girl living with her?
The theatrical climax has the weird “potential buyers on boats” ticking clock on top of the missile ticking clock and the poison “ticking clock.” There’s even a weird bit in the pre-titles where Spectre has a sheep-barn on speed-dial? All that stuff is gone now, plus some more pacing/performance punch-ups via trimming off a LOT of conversational dead-weight throughout the film! Bonus: The loss of the last Heracles explanation leads to Bond vs Safin in the Poison Garden playing out a little differently, and hopefully more dramatically. Speaking of added drama…
The title song got a remix, and the end titles got replaced. I always thought it was a waste EON asked Billie Eilish and Finneas to do a song, and then suffocated the drums and the bass with a pillow, as if to make it pair better with Sam Smith’s flatlined, drum-free drone of a Spectre title song (Spectre Alt Cut, of course, puts Radiohead in its riiiiight plaaaaace). And then I learned that every time they perform it live, there’s not only a healthy bassline there, but they have a dude literally beating hell out of the drums! So I took audio from their Oscars performance, pieces of the Japanese import single’s instrumental track, and the film version, and blended them. For the end titles, I removed Louis Armstrong’s vocal version from On Her Majesty’s, and replaced it with a 1988 instrumental re-recording of the track for a John Barry retrospective album, which then fades into a specially-edited for these credits version of the No Time to Die suite found on Hans Zimmer’s “The World of Hans Zimmer” album.
This isn’t a massive overhaul of the film’s core storyline, nor am I trying to significantly rewrite it in the edit: No Time to Die (Alternate Cut) is an attempt to find the more streamlined version of that movie inside this theatrical release. It’s still going way operatic and grandiose for its final 15min; but with so many scenes trimmed and tightened up for pace and performance (This alt cut is 3min shorter than Spectre’s theatrical cut, and 18min shorter than what was in theaters!), and so many circular/go-nowhere subplots being deleted and/or trimmed down severely; the hope is that those big moments are no longer seen as self-indulgent & slow, but instead a li’l more finely calibrated to land the punches they’re throwing. Especially in juxtaposition to the (mostly!) untouched action and comedy beats - with a couple extra comedy moments newly introduced through a judicious cut or two.
If you would like to check it out yourself, feel free to SEND ME A DM here, or SEND AN EMAIL to straightcutsnochaser at gmail. PLEASE DO NOT JUST REQUEST A LINK BELOW. It’s not just a bigger chance I won’t see the request in the comments, but it’s also just straight up against the rules here! Any suggestions, comments, critiques, questions - whatever you got, I’m all ears!
NO TIME TO DIE (ALTERNATE CUT)
2hrs, 25min. 2.40:1 AR (1920x800), 23.976fps, Dolby Digital 5.1, Burnt-in French subtitles, soft English subtitles.
CHAPTERS
Theme still goes, though.
Most Anakin problems are rooted in Lucas’ late decision to age him down to single digits instead of letting him be a middle-school kid/pre-teen.
And honestly, his whole weird conception of the Jedi as super-repressed monks - which is only just now in the last 10 years getting seriously investigated as a terrible thing to have been in the first place. And frankly a massive disconnect from what he was alluding to in the first three movies. They were clearly samurai-ish, so there was obviously a code, but he turned them into deranged monks and then mandated we’re supposed to think of them all as good guys ANYWAY.
The truth is simply that he didn’t really have a handle on basics like characterization and plot when he came back from a self-imposed creative retirement, and he never got that handle he USED to have back. He wrote all his heroes like robots and undercut any real dramatic forward motion whenever he could, and instead of making it better he fell back on “I meant to do it like that, of course” and because he’s the CEO there’s nothing you can really say to that.
But yeah, if Anakin starts at age 13 you have so much more opportunity to infuse him with a roguish personality from jump, and it’s easier to build that forward in the next two movies. But instead you start him at 9 and now nothing about him makes a lot of sense, or reads as recognizable human behavior.
But then again choosing to make him more or less the main character of not just the prequel trilogy, but BOTH trilogies (by default) by retconning the story to be about Anakin Skywalker’s fall and redemption (even though he never actually GOT redeemed at the end of Jedi, he just did one good thing for his kid before dying) he also completely goofed. Anakin should have been a SUPPORTING CHARACTER at best, and the POV should have been either Padme or Obi-Wan. But it obviously would have never occurred to him to make the Prequel Trilogy be ACTUALLY about Luke & Leia’s mom, in the same way the Original Trilogy was about Vader’s kid. Not Vader.
Vladius said:
Hypothetically if it wasn’t a Star Wars movie I don’t know how good it would be considered,
It probably would have got noms. The brand cuts both ways on this.
I haven’t watched The Acolyte but based on everything I’ve heard about it
Bro. You’re speaking on it to this extent and you haven’t even watched it? You’re just cherrypicking comments on it from people and calling that good so far as analysis of theme goes?
I think the issue people have with more than half of Star Wars not being good is that it could have been left alone and stayed good.
This was never going to happen. Was already not happening. The very first thing that gets produced after Star Wars is The Star Wars Holiday Special, LOL.
if you weren’t interested in EU books or video games or comics, you just didn’t bother, and it was out of sight, out of mind. Now we get major movies and TV shows with budgets in the high millions pushed in our faces
It’s not “pushed in your faces” anymore than the nonstop onslaught of books, games, comics, cartoons, and TV shows from 1984-2015. If you can “just not bother” with that, you can “just not bother” with this too, you know? Just skip a cartoon. Just pass on a TV show. Just don’t watch a prequel movie. It’s not hard to do this, as you’ve shown.
This is partially what I was talking about in the post! People take all of this so seriously, so deathly seriously, as if the stakes are really that high and they’re not, as evidenced by the fact you just said you can not bother and leave things out of sight and out of mind. Just keep doing that! The idea that you have to get mad because more than half of Star Wars isn’t good doesn’t make any sense to me. So what? Nothing that goes for this long, across this many different media, maintains a batting average better than .500 at the absolute best. Other Fandoms don’t do this to themselves when it comes to the fact their long running series has a bunch of stinkers in it.
it’s a lot easier (and more fun) to discuss this stuff when folks aren’t artificially placing life-or-death weight-of-the-world stakes on the media in questions. Star Wars isn’t so precious and breakable that Attack of the Clones or Rise of Skywalker or Book of Boba Fett is going to kill it.
I think the Last Jedi communicated its main ideas pretty effectively, I also think at this point the whole conversation about the film and what it did/didn’t do, and the metatextual aspect of discussion the discussions, has so thoroughly overwhelmed it, to where anything about the film is destined to get sucked into a timelocked field of battle that starts around January 2018 and encompasses the rest of that year.
It’s literally like when The Doctor trapped Gallifrey in a 3D painting - that’s The Last Jedi at this point. It’s a very well made movie, easily the closest thing IN the sequel trilogy to a Lucasian story, (and people keep sidestepping/avoiding this aspect - Last Jedi the only story Lucas actually liked and spoke well of - not just in the prequel trilogy, but really across the whole of the output post-sale) and you basically cannot engage with it past a certain point or you get hauled into a timeloop where it never stopped being 2018 and everyone’s basically waiting to indulge the ritual exercise and call-and-response prompts they all know by heart now.
The Acolyte, however - I kinda tried to address/rectify this to some degree in my own edit: My belief is that show ended up getting compromised on the way from pitch to realized show mostly BECAUSE the idea that there was going to be a dark-side focused show that unambiguously shone a light on the Jedi as “not all that good, honestly” got kiboshed. So the show got watered down, and watered down, and the idea of a revenge story against Jedi who overstepped and deserved what they got in return… turned into a weird wishy-washy, mealy-mouth “mystery” whose POV got so muddied it basically became a mild sort of paean to “fence-straddling” as a valid lens to look through.
They HAD a show about intolerant cops covering up their own crime and the victims of that crime getting their payback. And instead they tried to make it weird apologia for the intolerant cops and their system of policing as a whole. Which was weird, because it’s not like this was a real-world institution. The Jedi don’t exist, and huge parts of the fictional universe literally DEPEND on that fake institution collapsing on itself due to corruption/hubris/disconnection from humanity. It made the show severely compromised as dramatic storytelling. Like the people making it were TOLD at some point that what’s important wasn’t even really the story, it was the sanctity of the not-real institution at its center. It wound up being a show without a country, for lack of a better term.
But then again - I think a lot of conversations about these shows/movies would be a lot less fraught in general if the underlying implication WASN’T that Star Wars is more good than bad (it isn’t) and that the stakes for each new entry WEREN’T sky high box-office/ratings/critical triumphs in the top 5% of anything else that’s ever been made, because I honestly think that’s beyond silly at this point. It’s just making it hard to actually enjoy and appreciate these stories for what they are when we’re constantly holding an artificial (and honestly incorrect) standard for minimm quality up as baseline.
It’s okay that about half of all Star Wars is frankly, not good. It’s fine. It’s not a massive insult, and it’s also not a new thing, either. It’s always been like this, and so many of the arguments that break out tend to break out because the people having them refuse to engage with it on anything other than All Or Nothing stakes.
Well hot damn, look at this. Pretty amazing.
Well hot damn! That’s a hell of a thing to hear, and thank you so much for the kind words!
WHEW.
I’m clearly talking about a poster coming into this thread and mentioning 120fps, so you can see who mentioned it by scrolling up. C’mon now. The post you just quoted entirely in full contains a sentence from me flatly stating “I’d like for whoever posted that BS “8K/120fps” rumor to source where that rumor came from, honestly, so we can just straight up write that source off wholesale.” so it shouldn’t be confusing, haha.
I’m not sure why you’re responding to me like “nobody said these things” when it’s pretty clear people said these things and I’m rebutting them in favor of the things you and I both seem to know, but you’re apparently annoyed that I know them?
I’m helping squash a rumor introduced into this thread, that Disney is going to take a restoration from the negative and then turn it into sold-at-retail, shown-in-theaters, screened-on-Disney+, 8k 120fps Cameron-esque AI-slopped “for the gamerz” type atrocity; squashing said unsourced rumor brought into this specific thread shouldn’t really be a bad thing, and I’m kind of confused as to why you’re annoyed by that?
Thanks for the extra context! And to add a little of my own - Fincher, Lee, and Cameron are, frankly, weirdos who seem to have gotten way too caught up in digital nonsense and AI adjustments, and have all caught a raft of shit for doing what they’re doing - especially when it comes to pretending like the movies they made 30 years ago were ACTUALLY made with modern equipment by the weird goateed men they are 30 years later. Lee’s basically not even a factor here anymore, and Cameron’s the only one still with any weight or power to force theaters to screen things in anything other than 2D 4K 24fps theatrically - and even in those instances it’s a tiny percentage of theaters that comply and those screenings aren’t going over well anyway.
I’d like for whoever posted that BS “8K/120fps” rumor to source where that rumor came from, honestly, so we can just straight up write that source off wholesale. I’d also suggest that, looking at what’s already been posted (the reddit thread, the YouTube Videos) we’re working with some pretty hard to argue with details, that are also being fed through some really squirrelly folks who are under the mistaken impression they have a lot of power they aren’t anywhere near holding, being super-nervous and scared about accidentally canceling a whole restoration that’s been ongoing for 3 years before the leak even happened and has now been formally announced a year and a half ahead of time, LOL.
You got the YouTuber not quite parsing what’s being given to him by folks who honestly think they can get a whole restoration shut down because they happened across a coding mistake that made this stuff visible on a private YouTube channel (which was happening whether they saw it or not, LOL) and people who are - honestly - ritualized and by force-of-habit, conditioned to disbelieve and poke holes in anything positive, to revert to figuring out how this is George Lucas’ fault and how he can still ruin it singlehandedly, and cite contract stipulations that don’t exist, to rationalize how none of this is actually coming to pass, despite the fact most of these details were already out there for a full month before an announcement even got made…
And now you ALSO apparently have folks who have no clue what’s going on, chiming in off to the side with “Rumors” based on misunderstanding how the restoration even works, seeing that the team is scanning some components of the OCN and the Interpositives (if not all of elements needed!) at 8K resolutions (if not higher) and presuming that means the restoration team (which, looking at the reddit descriptions of the leaks, isn’t even Lucasfilm OR Disney, but a third party working with them) is pulling a James Cameron on old trash 2K elements from decades ago because (???) and then just… saying it, and then other people just sharing it (with no accreditation) because (???)
It’s not coming back. I’m not sure where that rumor got sourced from but that source wasn’t provided and I’m betting it’s not a source anyone should be paying attention to anyway, LOL.
Why would you need to UPSCALE a restoration from the OCN? That just… doesn’t make any sense. The only way that rumor takes any sort of hold is if the person making it up knows the audience they’re trying to share it with thinks about this stuff like it’s video games.
Lucasfilm isn’t going to artificially motion interpolate this to 120fps. Nobody wants it. Almost nobody can watch it like that. There’s no point.
Not sure if this has been discussed here yet but:
New rumor going around is that the theatrical re-release of Star Wars A New Hope planned for 2027 will be the original, unaltered version… but they might use AI to upscale it to 8k/ 120 frames per sec.
This isn’t going to happen, LOL. 8K isn’t even viable as a home or theatrical format, and won’t be for awhile (if ever). Audiences have cleanly rejected HFR everytime they’ve had it placed in front of them. There’s no market for it and therefore no reason for a careful restoration to then get run through a big ugly AI process to upscale it to a res nobody can clock at a framerate nobody likes.
Besides which if they’re actually doing new scans from the OCN the scans themselves could likely be natively done at 8k (scanners can scan negatives as high as 12k) there’d be no need to artificially upscale them further.
The number of theaters that can actually DO 120fps is like single digits, I’m pretty sure?
Also, they don’t have to have George “sign off” on anything. He sold the company over a decade ago. They’ve never needed his permission for any of this. His permission came with a $4bil price tag.
I know this thread was bumped for a completely different reason, but reading through this time capsule from almost 10 years ago is a bit of a trip, especially coming right after Andor S2 (and speaking personally, especially after finishing/releasing an edit of Rogue One about a month ago myself, LOL).
I think you gotta look at the rest of the calendar, and also take into account the way Disney tends to use catalog re-releases. They’re usually not events unto themselves, they’re more like a way to block-book theaters so as to lock down screens for big releases. Revenge of the Sith is a great example this summer - it was scheduled the way it was specifically to ensure screens were maximized for the Thunderbolts release. You wanted the Revenge of the Sith re-release? You had to get Thunderbolts (and agree to a set run for Thunderbolts). Or the reverse: If you weren’t happy about how long you had to hold onto Thunderbolts, the fact you were getting Revenge of the Sith as its lead in should make you feel a little better.
Considering Disney doesn’t seem to have anything in 2027 until Starfighter on May 28th (which is a bigger release, and a new one) I think it’s possible, with this announcement being this far out, we could be looking at not just the original theatrical cuts (in fact I think that’s all but a certainty here) but they’re waiting to spring not just that on us, but one-week runs of Star Wars (April 30th-May 6th) Empire (May 7th-May 13th) and Jedi (May 14th-May 20th) with all 3 running for the final week (May 21-27th) leading into Starfighter (May 28th)
Something like that, maybe.
I think it’s also possible if they’re still calling it “A New Hope” it’ll be Star Wars 81.
It’s all good! And again, thanks for reaching out! Even if we didn’t actually find anything, it still led to me realizing I need to incorporate a new check into the process if/when I do this again, and I’d always rather check something you think you found rather than have an actual error just sitting in there because nobody piped up 😃
And most of all, thanks for giving it a shot and your time in the first place - I’m just glad you’re watching, and hopefully it’s working!
Really? That’s odd! Firstly, thanks for the heads up on catching any audio weirdness, it’s appreciated.
Are you listening to the audio downmixed to stereo maybe? That particular transition got worked on a fair amount, specifically to make sure the center channel didn’t get lost in the sauce vs the L and R music coming in underneath it. I did also test it quite a bit in 5.1 (and also tested it downmixed to 2.0 in my headphones) - but I didn’t actually check it to see what would happen if a streambox or a receiver handled the 5.1 to 2.0 downmix to speakers on its own.
edit: Okay, I just checked the 20:04 point by streaming the edit from my home server to a screen where I can only listen downmixed to stereo (on headphones I dont’ normally use! - I don’t know if/when I’ll be doing another edit but I need to keep this in mind for if/when I do as part of the pre-publish checklist, LOL), and before I even continue - at 20:04 her audio is actually still the theatrical mix in the center channel anyway, so any jumps/dips in the center there is just the movie being the movie - although the L/R is starting to blend the original audio w/ the replacement cue shortly after that point (I’d have to open the ProRes when I get home to see if that cue starts to come up in the C as well as the L/R, I don’t 100% remember off the top of my head rn) right around Mon saying “of this… superweapon.” - at that point I cut the rest of the line and bring up the full replacement cue.
I did notice after that, the two lines she and Jyn trade (“And if I do it?” “We’ll make sure you go free.”) do sound a little lower due to the downmixing (Not as much L/R info to fold back into the Center due to the isolation processing I used) but at 20:04 - that’s just what happens in the movie? I didn’t actually do anything to her or Draven’s dialog there, it just plays as it did in the theatrical.
Great stuff as always!
Did you want to consider using Broom Kid’s edit of the Jedha jail cell scene? Fixes the newly created continuity error in the “We’ve been in worse cages than this one” … “This is a first for me” exchange?
Such a tiny but impactful fix.
I can shoot whatever is needed over to NFBisms, no problem. I’ve got the ProRes final of what I did for the SE, I can pretty easily clip out whatever’s wanted (the “Fuck the Empire” version of Maarva’s self-eulogy, the continuity-fix of the Partisan imprisonment) and send it over at request, no sweat. The only thing I’d note is that there would likely need to be a slight color-correct pass done on that scene to match this project’s space, as I don’t think the SE and this share the exact same look. But it might also be a slight enough difference that it won’t be noticeable at all due to the location.
Whatever anyone needs, lemme know, I’m on it. 😃
So after all the feedback and critique I’ve gotten in the past couple months since the initial release – and thank you again so much for everyone who decided to try it out - it’s a lot of STUFF out there to watch, that you all decided to take a shot on a fanedit at all, much less watched it and reached back out to leave your thoughts, good AND bad - it’s really appreciated! – I decided this past weekend to go back to the lab and rebuild the cut to address some of the most commonly brought up points!
THE PRIMARY CHANGES ARE ALL STILL THE SAME: none of the storytelling content has changed, so the primary cuts/changes as described in this post still apply. The Plex description still fits:
The Acolyte: A Star Wars Story is a kung-fu revenge flick about a creepy cop, who bumrushes a coven of moon witches minding their business at the ass-end of space to kidnap their kid. This, inevitably, screws up both the kid and her twin sister, who he leaves for dead after causing the total destruction of everything she’s ever loved and covering that up for the next 16 years. Naturally, Sith happens.
All the major cuts are still present, and the shifts in terms of tone and character motivations are still locked in. Sol’s still a sweaty creep, Qimir’s still the only lead character with anything like moral integrity (!), Yord is Yord, etc.
SO WHAT’S DIFFERENT THEN? Well, the two most common critiques that I thought I could actually address were that:
There was a little bit of confusion regarding Osha’s false imprisonment and then the prison ship’s crashing being handled via a very short mind-read from Sol. So now we actually see the interior of the prison ship and Osha in her cell, as well as at least one of her cellmates, the wiry guy that Sol eventually mind-probes later (and Vernestra dismisses like “it doesn’t matter, let her rot on Carlac, case closed buddy!, let’s take the win here!”) - and the mind probe/Force Vision later is more detailed so it (hopefully) makes way more sense what’s just occurred.
My intention to highlight the homage to the Kill Bill part of the original pitch? Maybe a little overcooked in the execution, LOL. I was trying for “crispy” with the visuals and more than a few people felt it ended up at “deep fried.” So when I said I rebuilt it, that’s what I did: I took the final edit, and then I took the original files, and re-did the edit cut-by-cut. Once that was finished, I applied image processing completely from scratch. It’s been given a film emulation pass still, but both the color grade AND the film elements are more conservative than the more aggressive attempt to emulate an early 2000’s digital intermediate.
There are, as part of that, some re-done wipes and transitions, and a few added wipes and dissolves (and two silent reaction shot replacements in two diff scenes) as well, for a little extra spice. There are TWO new shot deletions, both centered on Osha:
When Qimir approaches Osha just before the Khofar Trap/Massacre is sprung, and she goggles at him with a look that can only be described as “whabadawhobadawhuah??”
Shortly after Qimir’s helmet is knocked off by Jecki, and he and Sol are facing off across the clearing, when Osha rushes in from the forest and pulls up short with a look on her face that can only be described as a “buh-buh-whuahhhh??” Now, she just pops out behind a rock shortly after Yord appears in the clearing, which makes a little more sense being as they were rushing in together anyway.
All in all, this has added a total of something like 20 seconds to the runtime. So it’s still just 2hrs and 14min.
It is being compressed now and should be replacing the original link at around 9pm PST this evening (07/28/2025).
If you have already gotten that link from me, just re-download from that same link, and you should be good to go. If you HAVEN’T downloaded this fanedit of The Acolyte yet, direct message me here, or send an email to straightcutsnochaser at gmail. PLEASE DON’T JUST REQUEST A LINK IN THIS THREAD - mostly because it’s against the rules here, but also because it’s way better odds (never tell me the odds!) you’ll get lost in the sauce that way vs. just directly messaging me.
Any suggestions, comments, critiques, questions - whatever you got, I’m all ears! Thanks!
Re-did the trailer for this thing after finally getting the hang of trailers post Acolyte & Rogue One edits. At some point I should probably knock one out for Solo and Spectre, too. I was never 100% happy with the trailer I made initially so… new one!
oooooh
That’s a pitch for Episode 14’s potential new title, yeah? I like that one.
Maybe call it “Trust Goes Both Ways?”
The trailer shot insert works real well
Broom Kid, the link to your clip show is dead, so I have no idea what it contained. Do you still have this to present?
I don’t, sorry! Funny enough, that clip show/proof-of-concept reel of some ideas ended up getting iterated on and iterated on to the point it just… became its own edit.
Also, plan to include an adjusted score-only audio track since Broom Kid provided one. May need some additional material of course.
This I can do, and will do happily once the edit’s locked. It’s definitely gonna need adjusting due to any reinsertion of scenes but it can definitely be done.
Hey everyone, quick heads up: I updated this to v2 recently while I was putting the finishing touches on the Rogue One: Special Edition. It’s now 23 seconds faster than the last cut! Still looks the same, still sounds the same, still sticking to that dog-eared Del Rey paperback feel.
“Wow,” you might say. “23 seconds. Oh boy.” Yeah, don’t get too excited Princess. I know. You see, what had happened was…
In the late stages of finishing the Rogue One: SE (available now, btw!) I was waiting for some stuff to do some other stuff, and I remembered that there were always 4 or 5 things in Solo that I’d meant to pull out of that edit, that I’d just… spaced on! Maybe if I’d slowed down like I had done on Rogue One, I wouldn’t have forgotten in the first place, LOL. So I just dragged the old “Solo.Alt.Final.Forreal.V5.Ugh.ProRes” into Final Cut while I was waiting and… did 'em!
So, yeah. Twenty-three seconds. I’m not even rounding down, buddy. But you’d be surprised (or maybe not, considering this movie) at how many little callbacks, overexplanations, and on-the-nose moments could be fit into :23 seconds (Spoilers: It’s about five of 'em). I guess to make this v2 post interesting, I should actually note the primary changes the Alternate Cut makes to the movie, which I didn’t when it first released:
PRIMARY CHANGES: Not every microedit or dialog trim has been noted, but the major edits and changes to the film are below (v2 changes in italics.)
Lucasfilm/A long time ago title card replaced with modified versions of Return of the Jedi’s (taken from TN1’s 4K83 scan, modified by Ooohteedee for his OTD83 project)
Movie begins with a Star Destroyer dropping out of lightspeed and approaching planet cutting to second half of “Han Solo: Imperial Cadet” deleted scene. Star Destroyer scene by YouTube user Coastlake via their “Blender Test 003”. This opening transitions straight to Mimban, deleting the entirety of Corellia.
New title card (taken from Theatrical Trailer) dropped between shower gag and Han & Chewie’s post-rescue conversation. “What’s your name anyway?” gag trimmed up
Gang campfire discussion trimmed for pacing and to improve comedic beats, and ensuing Coaxium heist edited slightly to reduce extra explanation/exposition.
Han’s punch-interrupted apology to Beckett trimmed for pacing/performance.
L3’s confrontation with the tranya addict running the droidfight ring trimmed to remove fanservicey callback
Approach to Kessel Mines, and securing of station for 2nd Coaxium heist edited for pacing/performance/removal of fanservicey wookieepedia flexing.
Maul appearance and conversation with Q’ira completely deleted.
Showdown with Beckett edited so Han no longer goes to him after shooting him down.
Han & Chewie meeting with Enfys lightly edited for performance
Iris out to credits brought forward in time with music crescendo and hyperspace tunnel.
If you already have the edit, and you’re like “I don’t need a v2 just to make it less than 30 seconds shorter” – Heard chef! Thanks for giving it a shot in the first place! If you have the edit and you’d like the update, just re-download at the link you already got, the file’s been updated (In fact, anyone who has reached out in the last 3-4 days already got v2!)
If you’ve never gotten this edit before but this seems like something you wanna try out, PRIVATE MESSAGE ME A REQUEST, OR EMAIL ME DIRECTLY AT STRAIGHTCUTSNOCHASER AT GMAIL. DO NOT JUST REQUEST A LINK DOWN BELOW Not only is “link plz” not a great way to get noticed, not only will site ownership probably just wipe it out (it’s against the rules here!) but it’s honestly way better odds you’ll get seen and get your request fulfilled faster if you just PM me, anyway. 😃
Any suggestions, comments, critiques, questions - whatever you got, I’m all ears.
EDIT IS NOW AVAILABLE
PRIMARY CHANGES: As usual, the sheer number of edits/microedits for pacing and to remove redundant/awkward dialog beats would make a complete changelist pretty exhausting to look at, but the bigger alterations will get noted below (and in cases where changes from prior fanedits remained as the edit evolved, the original edit will be named)
Notes on keeping Darth Vader: This is one of the scenes I feel actually is enriched by Andor Season 2, even if it was primarily received as fanservice at the time. Firstly, as plot - Vader’s threats are why Krennic goes to Scarif and orders up all of Erso’s planning papers. But dramatically/thematically - Krennic in Season 2 tends to be deployed as THE self-consuming fascist ceiling Dedra Meero is going to smash against in the Empire. She’s going to get greedy for power, get manipulated, try to end-run that manipulation, and get ruined for it. Krennic does so with ONE finger. And in this movie, Krennic finds out he’s got a ceiling, too. Tarkin - amidst HIS achievement (!) - takes his project after over a decade, he tries to end-run Tarkin, and Vader, without even putting a finger on him, shows him how disposable he is, and maneuvers him straight to the place where he dies. It’s like poetry. It rhymes. Now where have I heard that before…
