The first thing that came to my mind was: wow. This is a fascinating project idea. One of the things that has frustrated me with Star Wars is the real-life time gaps between each trilogy. Lucas lost a lot of his vision and stamina when creating the prequels. The sequel trilogy suffers from lack of clear direction by Disney and Lucas leaving. I have been looking around for fan-edits that treat Star Wars as the multi-part epic that it deserves to be. Sadly, no one person has been able to edit all the movies. Your doing so allows for consistent vision and direction that has been lacking in the transitions from the PT to OT to ST.
You are making some bold decisions, and, to be honest, I’m stunned, excited, and a little worried. If I understand this correctly, the major changes are that Darth Sidious was not the puppeteer behind the PT; there is only one Death Star in the OT; Luke and Leia never have romantic intimate moments; the New Republic is based on Coruscant; as well as a few others.
I like a lot of the choices for the edits. The Hosnian System was very awkward to introduce, and using Coruscant makes the galaxy feel more at home with the Republic starting back up again. Luke and Leia kissing was an awkward misfortune of not planning ahead. When I was a child, I believed the ANH Death Star was the same one as ROTJ Death Star. I believe this is a smarter choice. It doesn’t feel like a new Death Star came out of nowhere when the first took so long to build. Removing Obi-Wan’s line about “never owning a droid” was a smart choice, as was keeping Padme alive at the end of ROTS.
In terms of the names of the movies, I am curious as to your reasoning for each of them. I would not use “Odyssey of Darkness” for VIII. It sounds similar to “Veil of Darkness” and I am a huge stickler for unique names. I hated VI being Return of the Jedi and then VIII became The Last Jedi – very awkward and poorly chosen, at first glance. Instead of “Odyssey of Darkness” I would go with “Echoes of the Past”. It keeps in-line with numerous moments in the movie being related to the past, but wanting to change it. (I appreciate removing Yoda’s scene entirely from this movie, as an aside)
I believe that Rogue One, as a movie, fits very well with the other three trilogies. In your creation, Galen Erso plays a much bigger role because he affects IV and VI. I think it would be fitting to treat this saga as a ten-part epic, rather than a nine-part epic, in your situation. I suggest making Rogue One into Episode IV in the title crawl. This would shift everything down one so TLJ becomes Episode IX and the real Ep. IX becomes Episode X in your saga. It fits well with your version of the saga.
P.S. I took a quick look at your shared Google Drive folder full of clips. I didn’t notice some edits, which is a good thing. They should be seamless and integrated into the movie. However, “audience with Boss Nass, in the swamp” had a very abrupt and awkward cut at the beginning of the clip as Boss Nass begins talking (At 18 seconds). The scene where Leia originally kisses Luke in the medical bay was difficult to follow. It was jumping around in a number of places and the reintroduction of OT deleted scenes were not very fluid with the scene. I also think it is important to remove the planet in the background of the Rogue One newly-created crawl.
