I’ll take a scran! Thanks Spence.

Obviously this is all in flux until the future content comes out, but maybe to shore up the little eight-episode narratives a little better (and accommodate the Loki 2/Ant-Man 3 content), it’d go a little more like this:

• PHASE ONE: TESSERACT (as per OP)
• PHASE TWO: ESCALATION (as per OP)
• PHASE THREE: DISASSEMBLED (as per OP)
• PHASE FOUR: AFTERMATH (as per previous post)
• FIRST INTERLUDE: THE MULTIVERSAL WEB (as per previous post)
• SECOND INTERLUDE: MULTIVERSAL MUTANTS (as per previous post)

And then-

PHASE FIVE: BRAVE NEW WORLDS
This one’s pretty incomplete so it’s mainly my dumping ground for as-yet unconnected items, all mostly showing us new faces and secret societies.

• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
• Wakanda Forever (ideally would go a bit earlier, though it introduces a lot that’ll be more relevant after this point more than pays off stuff prior to it)
• Eternals (technically comes soon after the Snap/Blip, but I headcanon that the emergence is caused by an inevitable post-global-trauma baby boom)
• She-Hulk (has an Eternals cameo moment)
• Secret Invasion (seems utterly irrelevant to the plot of The Marvels, apparently)
• Moon Knight
• Werewolf by Night
• What If? season two (likely falls around here, since it might remix any currently released property)

THIRD INTERLUDE: MULTIVERSAL COLLISIONS
Focusing on concluding the outstanding plots and their assumed tie-ins with the MCU. That said, if X-Men '97 and/or Spider-Man: Freshman year become relevant to MCU canon, maybe this splits out into two seperate interludes again.

• Loki season two (Let’s put this earliest in the phase, as if the way it ends causes even more of the multiversal fuckery we see in these movies.)
• Deadpool (continues the Fox X-Men thread, plus his fourth wall breaks are also often multiversal)
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (introduces Miles and continues the collision of worlds. Also, these are just excellent so let’s just watch them as part of the expanded MCU)
• Logan (is excellent, and is spoiled by Deadpool 2 so must go before it)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (really shows worlds smashing together, especially through the spidery lens, and lightly implies it’s aware of No Way Home)
• Deadpool 2 (can go here since it features time travel, which is allowed to muck things up relative to Logan)
• Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (we assume will conclude that trilogy, and may feature other cameos/tie-ins)
• Deadpool 3 (reportedly will bring both Deadpool and Fox Wolverine into the MCU, via the TVA, and is likely to be cameo laden)

It then seems like most of the currently announced projects should line up nicely towards the next Avengers movies:

• Echo
• Agatha: Darkhold Diaries
• Captain America: Brave New World
• Fantastic Four
• Thunderbolts
• Blade
• Avengers: The Kang Dynasty
• Avengers: Secret Wars

But we still don’t know where the next MCU Spider-Man or Shang-Chi will fall in that, nor Daredevil, Armor Wars and Ironheart, Wakanda, or Vision Quest.

Eh, it’s the one that slows the movie down for me 🤷

I definitely think ‘despair’ is stronger than ‘sorrow’. This is the state of the Galaxy - the loss of the Jedi would be more of an ‘oh fuck, anything bad could happen’ rather than a big ol’ boo hoo. I also think ‘facing extinction’ is stronger than ‘emboldened by absence’ (and the emboldening is implied enough either way). Those first two paragraphs I think Nev is right to have locked in.

That said, I don’t think ‘chaos’ is quite the right move (in the same way that I don’t think ‘overwhelming’ is) for the state of the Republic/Senate. Yes, the First Order have emerged, and they are ‘claiming supremacy’ over space BEYOND the NR, but I don’t think they’re an immediate threat to the NR. That’s why I think it’s valuable to emphasise that the scale of the threat is unknown (potentially huge). The NR doesn’t want to react in a panic, both because this might turn out to be manageable, and because it equally might turn out to be an existential threat - so that’s what’s causing at least a frustrating indecision and political deadlock. My feeling is that the NR would be paralysed by endless debates because (1) they don’t have enough information, and (2) a mis-step could be very costly both in terms of pissing off the FO and causing panic amongst the populace. Thus, our ‘brave’ senators decide that they have to urgently act (and without support), risking exposure and a reaction from the FO, for the sake of gaining hope, and more information.

Perhaps ‘fearing the scale’ could be worded better, but I feel like that concept is right for the third paragraph’s first couple of lines.

If Nev’s shutting this down that’s grand, buuuuuut-

I feel like that new wording implies that the senate itself is being oppressed, and that it’s commissioning the resistance as a direct response to feeling overwhelmed. It’s also kind of implying that it’s only the daring senators who are overwhelmed/oppressed.

I agree that it’s still a better angle than again reinforcing that they want Luke back, but I think those two lines could be put to slightly better use. Thinking about the angle here, we want to distinguish between the state of the Senate and the actions of the ‘brave Senators’. As for the motive, senatorial indecision is a bit bland, and anything too specifically political is a bit dry, but fear of an unknown which could be a huge threat could cover a lot of ground - explaining both why the Republic is hesitant to respond with force and indecisive, and why some want to act in secret.

So, perhaps-

Fearing the scale of this
emerging threat, daring
Senators have secretly
commissioned the pilots
of a brave RESISTANCE
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

That way, the Republic’s struck by fear of a threat they don’t yet know the size of, but the ‘daring’ ones are acting in spite of that fear, which is nice and dynamic- if implicitly risky and desperate.

It’s coming along! Just needing to find the time- I might have some meaty time to deep dive it a couple of weekends from now. The third movie is an absolute beast- so much prison content, I need to rebuild a lot of audio transitions. But I’m chipping away.

That’s fair - I think “secretly funding” covers that a bit more than directly “commissioned” (or “supporting”), then. And in terms of structure of what’s being explained, I think they should be “secretly funding” the resistance, who have “sent” pilots/a pilot.

“…
Senators have secretly
funded a brave RESISTANCE,
who have sent their most
daring pilot to find
the last Jedi and restore
the light of hope to the
darkening stars…”

I don’t love “commissioned” for pilots, I think “supporting” is stronger.

I’ve been thinking about Attack of the Clones a bit lately. Spence’s recent tightening was really good, but every time I watch or think about this movie I always find the early car chase sequence really off-putting. After the droids in the factory, I find that scene the most egregious.

So why not remove it altogether? Since we already have an attempt on Padmè’s life with her ship being bombed, that gives us enough of a reason for Anakin to be assigned her protector, and I’m sure there’s a way to use voicework to tie the bombing to Obi-Wan’s hunt for Kamino.

I feel like that trimming could really improve the pace, and combined with the usual tightening, the addition of the Anakin/Kenobi training scene early, and the addition of the usual deleted scenes with Padmè’s family, you’d end up with something more focused and interesting.

I could do without the animal fight in the arena but I think that’d be my ideal structure.

I’m making good progress on the third movie. I’ve done a lot of reordering in order to make the timeskips not break B-plot storylines, and am paying a lot of attention to which scenes cover days versus which cover a few scenes in a single day. I’m also paying more attention to the big punchy moments (including their big punchy audio cues) in order to give them room to land.

I’ve merged a couple of scenes into one, and in so doing cut a few shots out, but they’re largely redundant shots of Ulaf struggling when we’ve already been shown that in other shots.

It’s flowing nicely so far…!

Loki season two was excellent, and as you say should sit after Ant-Man 3. But that’s OK, the third interlude can slide back a bit. I’ll see how this shapes up after The Marvel’s and the next few releases up to Deadpool 3.

Ah, fair enough. I’ll get caught up on Loki just now.

Oh yeah, I meant Rekindled too.

VineSauceShamrock said:

Hello again Hal 9000! I don’t know if Ill ever watch the sequel trilogy, Im kinda of going out of my way to ignore everything that happened post Disney, and stick to the old EU, but if I ever do give them a try, I can promise you those will be the ones I watch.

Honestly I’d give those sequel edits a serious try. And you’d probably enjoy moviefied versions of some of the Disney stuff. If you’re game, I bet this community would love to hear the opinions of a first-time viewer who hasn’t even seen the original versions! You’re the “hypothetical first-time viewer” that we often edit for…!

Spoilers for The Marvels below!

I’ve been thinking a bit more about this, based on the knowledge that Fox Spider-Man and X-Men are becoming increasingly important to the MCU. I also observed that the first three phases, as I have them, break neatly into arcs of eight items each. I still think that anything multiversal should follow from Loki season one and What If, so the concept is clearly explained first (and, in What If, we remix a lot of what came immediately before).

But if we wanted to give Fox X-Men and Spider-Man more breathing space, again with the priority of introducing as little as possible as late as possible, how might that look? After endgame, you could go:

PHASE FOUR: AFTERMATH
Focused solely on what’s next for the main characters and wrapping up existing plots as much as possible before we get into the multiverse:

• Spider-Man: Far From Home (follows quite soon after Iron Man’s death, addresses his successors and the need to deal with ‘Avengers-level threats’)
• The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (follows a while after Captain America’s retirement, addresses his successors and the status quo for the more grounded world, gives a hint at Wakanda)
• Thor Love and Thunder (shows what’s next for Thor, New Asgard, and the Guardians, and placed here gives enough pacing before returning to the Guardians in this phase)
• Netflix Daredevil (Some of it) (sets up Matt’s appearance in No Way Home, and Fisk’s appearance in…)
• Hawkeye (shows the fallout of Hawkeye’s retirement and Black Widow’s death, is christmassy)
• Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (is christmassy)
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (does introduce some new characters and ideas, but it shows us what Carol, Bruce and Wong are up to, so we’ve now got the full post-Endgame state of the Avengers. I could have put Black Panther here but (1) they’re isolationist, (2) T’Challa has died, (3) it’s mainly set about a year after T’Challa’s death and (4) that one introduces lots more new ideas too. At least you get a little hint of what Wakanda is up to in TFatWS. Also, this puts Captain Marvel on the board ahead of her appearance in The Marvels.)
• Guardians of the Galaxy (Volume 3) (at least feels fairly conclusive, even though it’s not a crossover/Avengers-type finale)

FIRST INTERLUDE: THE MULTIVERSAL WEB
Focused on introducing the multiverse through the lens of variants of known characters, especially Spider-Man, and lightly sets up Dr. Strange as the MCU’s main multiversal guardian.
(Here, and with other similar phases/interludes, we allow the stories from other universes to be told out of time - until they become relevant to the MCU chronology. What If? was flashbacks, and I think it’s easiest to digest Spider-Man and X-Men content within this context too. You could play this interlude as early as just after Far From Home, or even start this thread right after Endgame but put Far From Home sometime during this, since it does hint at the Multiverse [and if they end up casting Jake Gyllenhaal as Reed Richards as well as Quentin Beck we might end up with a weird multiversal retcon here anyway].)

• Loki season one (is timeless, introduces the multiverse)
• What If? season one (demonstrates the multiverse concept and remixes everything from before as a means of farewell)
• Maguire Spider-Man 1
• Maguire Spider-Man 2
• Maguire Spider-Man 3
• Amazing Spider-Man 1
• Amazing Spider-Man 2
• Spider-Man: No Way Home (brings us back to the MCU’s present and gives us the first true multiversal collision of Earth-616.)

SECOND INTERLUDE: MULTIVERSAL MUTANTS
Focused on the best core X-Men movies (an interesting group who don’t yet have an MCU analogue), and starts to hint at their future overlap with the MCU.
(As with the previous interlude we’re out of time with our X-Men stories until they start getting pulled into our MCU chronology. And we headcanon that X-Men style time travel basically starts to fuck up the canon of a given timeline, which is rumoured to get paid lip service in Deadpool 3.)

• X-Men: First Class (introduces the X-Men nicely)
• X-Men (the original movie, re-introduces the X-Men and the modern day setting and characters)
• X-2 (the original movie’s sequel, and is good, but I reckon we can skip the third one)
• X-Men: Days of Future Past (ties together the past and present eras, is great, features other Pietro, and shows some time-fuckery which sounds like it’ll be relevant to the future of the MCU)
• Wandavision (has the multiversal Pietro tease, which we later learn is possibly ‘a dream of a parallel universe’, and gives us Monica Rambeau and sets up Wanda’s next appearance)
• Ms Marvel (placed here to pace Wanda’s two appearances, is another ‘celebrate the MCU’ show, will be relevant shortly, and identifies Kamala as a mutant)
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (gives us Strange, Wanda’s big bad moment, the Illuminati featuring another prof. X and another Maria Rambeau, teases for the future, and more multiversal threats)
• The Marvels (features Kamala, Carol, and Monica Rambeau, and I won’t spoil you with detail here but it really fits with this group)

THIRD INTERLUDE: MULTIVERSAL COLLISIONS
Focusing on concluding the outstanding plots and their assumed tie-ins with the MCU.

• Deadpool (continues the Fox X-Men thread, plus his fourth wall breaks are also often multiversal)
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (introduces Miles and continues the collision of worlds. Also, these are just excellent so let’s just watch them as part of the expanded MCU)
• Logan (is excellent, and is spoiled by Deadpool 2 so must go before it)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (really shows worlds smashing together, especially through the spidery lens, and lightly implies it’s aware of No Way Home)
• Deadpool 2 (can go here since it features time travel, which is allowed to muck things up relative to Logan)
• Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse (we assume will conclude that trilogy, and may feature other cameos/tie-ins)
• Loki season two (I haven’t seen yet but exists out of time and seems to fit neatly here because-)
• Deadpool 3 (reportedly will bring both Deadpool and Fox Wolverine into the MCU, via the TVA, and is likely to be cameo laden)

PHASE FIVE: BRAVE NEW WORLDS
This one’s pretty incomplete so it’s mainly my dumping ground for as-yet unconnected items, all mostly showing us new faces and secret societies.

• Wakanda Forever (ideally would go a bit earlier, though it introduces a lot that’ll be more relevant after this point more than pays off stuff prior to it)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (should remind us that Kang is coming, though I don’t know if this placement conflicts with Loki 2 yet)
• Eternals (technically comes soon after the Snap/Blip, but I headcanon that the emergence is caused by an inevitable post-global-trauma baby boom)
• She-Hulk (has an Eternals cameo moment)
• Secret Invasion (seems utterly irrelevant to the plot of The Marvels, apparently)
• Moon Knight
• Werewolf by Night
• What If? season two (likely falls around here, since it might remix any currently released property)

There are two main schools of thought for the Original Trilogy: Those seeking absolute purity of the original releases, and those seeking modern polish.

For the latter, as Nev has mentioned, you’ve got Adywan’s Star Wars Revisited, which are “the special editions as they should have been”. They’re an absolutely meticulous and painstaking depth of polish.

For the former, you have Harmy’s Despecialised editions, which seek to present a restored version of the movies which you could have reasonably seen in the cinema in 1977. And you also have the 4K series (4K77, 4K80, 4K83 for each of the three OT movies) which seek to present that original vibe carefully upscaled to 4K.

I can’t much speak to prequel trilogy three-in-ones, other than (and due to) a personal belief that you’d always lose something that way, and that there is value in the prequels when a layer of polish is applied, and that supplemental prequel content like Tales of the Jedi and Clone Wars are also valuable both on their own and to recently released content.

As for the sequels, there’s an excellent loose-but-related trilogy comprising TFA Starlight, TLJ Rekindled, and TROS Ascendent, which many hold up as the pinnacle of sequel tightening. TROS Ascendant is probably the single fan edit which gives you the most value-add compared to the original movie, and has been a spectacular multi-disciplinary collaboration.

Others are generally more of a matter of personal taste, but there’s a variety of great TV-to-movie edits of recent Disney TV content, of various lengths based on how much you want to preserve. They’re generally in the first few pages here.

Great feedback buddy, thanks. I agree with you on Maarva’s death- I can’t remember why I flipped the reveal (it’ll have been a technical need) but I’ll see what my options are.

I’ll finish work on movie 3 and give these a little longer for feedback, then see if I can refine them even more. Audio is my weakest skill, but I’m learning…

That’s a perfect suggestion. Love it. Two (long) interludes.

Just picking up the last remaining movie for a polish/chronology pass - movie 3. We’ve got the througline of Cassian going to Ferrix, Niamos, and Narkina prison, with a 30-day time skip in the middle of his incarceration, and a few key beats about the Public Order Resentencing Directive in the B-plots that serve it well at key points. There’s a solo Dedra plot about her taking over the Morlana sector from Blevin, a Syril plot of him getting the Standards job, and their overlap plot of Dedra’s interview of Syril (“less than a month” after he starts) and him stalking her (continuing their conversation from “last month”). We have two Mon plots - firstly her escalating rebel activity via Tay Kolma during a party, and secondly her meeting with Vel as they begrudge their situation. So I’m just now trying to work out the best pacing and placement.

The main thing I’d like to gain over the current version is moving more storylines later, to better break up the Narkina plots.

Syril has a key moment - seeing the news announcement about the Aldhani heist (on the day of his interview) - which must come early, but after that we can take a breather on his storyline so I can push that back. The other main imposition is that Mon’s party storyline and meeting with Vel each happen during a short window, so I need to be careful about where they fit around the Narkina timeline so too much time doesn’t pass there while they’re ongoing. The Syril/Dedra conversations will hopefully work in the slots where more time on Narkina needs to pass.

This one’s a bit more work than the other three movies, but I’m on it. Hope to have it to you all soon.

And that’s movie 4’s release version rendering now too. I’m very pleased with this set of improvements. What I’ve done with this pass is shifted some of the content around to better pace the opening so time passes more naturally. Anywhere there’s an implied passage of time (such as Bix getting caught the morning after Maarva gets sick, or the Imperials making progress with their plans from scene to scene), or where there are indicators for the time of day changing on Coruscant (like window shots, or Imperials taking off their outdoor jackets), I’ve made sure to pad that with an appropriate scene - usually long Mon Mothma ones. I think this flow really works.

This has had a neutral-to-beneficial effect on Vel’s story, putting her a bit more in focus in what I think is an interesting way:

1. She’s on Ferrix, implicitly already looking for Cassian but dissatisfied about it.
2. She goes to talk to Luthen, is annoyed to meet Kleya instead, and is told ‘you’d better get in the game and kill Andor’.
3. While on Coruscant, she visits Mon, who’s pimping out her daughter. Now, she was already frustrated, and now she’s emotionally compromised. She turns her blame to Luthen.
4. She goes to Luthen’s shop to confront him - but he’s away again. She doesn’t follow protocol and acts up - though ultimately still concedes that she’ll head back to Ferrix, since Cinta’s told her that Maarva died.
   This is only a slight reordering to Vel’s original story, and it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. I think it just puts her frustration with Luthen in a bit more focus.

NFB, I used exactly your suggested structure for the early Vel-Kleya scene, it gave the best dialogue flow. Not a major change at all, but hopefully my most major change.

Ooh, interesting. I never got past the first couple of episodes but having it a bit more focused like this feels digestible. Are you cutting anything out, or just reordering?

I’ve just run a polish pass on Movie 2, which I’ll call ‘Declaration’. It’s a synonym of both ‘announcement’ and ‘manifesto’, two subjects of this episode, and of course the action is a Luthen’s declaration of war. (Also this way I don’t steal an existing episode name.) NFBisms said this one was flawless already, but there were a couple of transitions I just wasn’t happy with, so I went back to it. It was suprisingly hard, actually, because the transition which stood out most to me had a big knock-on effect when trying to shift scenes around. I ended up pulling one of the Dedra-Blevin meeting scenes earlier, which actually serves the timeline a lot better, making more time for Blevin to go establish the base on Ferrix (newly re-added), and better aligns with Maarva’s comments in movie 3 that the Empire moved in to Ferrix early. Very happy with this one - it’s rendering now, and it’ll be uploaded shortly after.

NFB, as for your comments on movie 4, that’s a fair point. I think I need to stick with this ordering, because (1) movie 4 needs to open on the Maarva sickness content, (2) having Vel meet Kleya on Coruscant wouldn’t fit before it in movie 4 (with enough implied time passing for her to come to Ferrix), and (3) putting Vel and Kleya in movie 3 would interrupt the end of the prison break and not match the plotlines of that movie. But as you suggest, small dialogue trims in that scene would convey the same context without being a radical ommission. I’ll see.

OK, first movie is fully polished. Those two transitions took some reordering to make work, turning them into four transitions, but now they’re all lovely and smooth with nice audio cues. I’ll reissue all four movies when I’m done with the lot, but if anyone wants movie one version 1.1 now, PM me. (NFBisms I know this was one you specifically called out.)

Right, I’m picking these back up for a polish pass, hopefully a final one. I don’t know if anyone’s had time yet to review the current versions but I’d love feedback if anyone’s had the time. I’ll probably edit in order of easiest to hardest - 1,2,4,3.

I’m interested in thoughts on shifting a little of the content in movie 3 (Narkina) around, as per a couple of posts above.

I know I don’t want to remove anything I don’t have to, but I’m thinking of cutting the shot from the very end of the second episode, of Andor walking on Ferrix directly toward camera as dramatic music plays, since that feels very much like a “we’re ending the episode here and it needs to be dramatic” shot, so even rescored it might land in that way and interrupt the smoothness of the transition? That said, I appreciate that it’s very iconic.

losthead said:

After each crawl, we still pan down through space, just to land on the next Star Wars logo, and the crawl begins anew

This is it fellas, we’ve cracked it.