RELEASED - S04E02 - The Living Force (V2.0)
- RELEASE VERSION.
- Our second episode of season four.
- Comprising the original episodes Overlords, Altar of Mortis, and Ghosts of Mortis
- Running 31 minutes.
- DOWNLOAD LINK is in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.
- Note: It’s recommended that you download this before watching, rather than streaming it directly from Google Drive.
This is a radical edit of the Mortis trilogy.
I recommend that you watch this episode without reading the following description at all. It is better experienced completely fresh, free from expectation.
…
I had a few major issues with the original story that I wanted to completely change. I felt that the arc was way too explicit about what the Mortis Gods were - real people with real powers that could threaten the Galaxy - whilst also having them be the most on-the-nose, blunt, heavy-handed metaphors for the Force. You can’t have it both ways, because the material conflict is cheapened if the spiritual/metaphorical world can have this level of influence.
Similarly, the planet they’re on seemed to struggle with the same dichotomy: It’s both a real planet in real space and a force nexus with shifting geography and seasons, and it’s inside a space pyramid, and the things that happen there can affect the Galaxy, and they ride around the magical planet on mundane speeder bikes. Again, pick a lane.
I also objected to some major sequences. Having Anakin demonstrate that he’s the literal balance by overpowering the literal lightside and literal darkside was many steps too far for me, and showing Anakin (and the audience) his future (including the destruction of Alderaan and the Vader mask) was both again way too overt, and in the story quite worthless as he literally gets that memory taken away. Likewise, the plot of the Son actually wanting to escape makes uncomfortable implications to the canon, and goes nowhere.
Anyway, I have sought to remedy these things aggressively. If we have to choose what the Mortis Gods are, then like other visions in the canon, they are tests, trials, messages, visions, metaphors, lessons, dream-speak from the Force. Mortis cannot be a real space - it is a dreamscape or vision quest within a force nexus, like the Dagobah cave.
But let’s talk about what’s good in the original episodes! There are some great visions, conversations with ghosts, and mystical nonsense. They all stay. The arc’s most important addition to the canon is Ahsoka’s final interaction with the Daughter, since in future media (including the Mandalorian) she’s sometimes accompanied by Morai.
That element, of Ahsoka and Daughter, drove the shape of the rest of the content and conclusion. It requires that we see the conflict between the Family and the others, so I retained all of the major beats of that conflict.
The major change required to make all of the above work, which affected almost every scene and conversation, was to turn the entirety of the plot into essentially an extended, shared, Dagobah cave vision sequence. The Mortis Gods have been stripped of almost all agency - they are now metaphors made manifest within the dreamscape, like Luke in Vader’s mask from ESB. They exist as guides and trials - until the third act conflict, which empowers them, making them mirrors of our main characters and the forces that surround them. They essentially then grow into performers of a morality play, showing our characters what their actions will cause on the Galactic stage if allowed to play out. The story then, at least, has a full dreamlike narrative - even if not a literal, perfectly logical one.
Oh, and having Qui-Gon’s ghost appear in this arc gave me a lot I could play up - skip the next section if you want more suprises.
Noteworthy changes:
- Regarding placement, this episode feels like it belongs late in the series, at the time of mystery and darkness. Placed here, with the Ahsoka content, it leads very nicely into the next Ahsoka-focused episode (Ahsoka’s Fall, which will also hopefully be made more meaningful with my plans for the following Scipio arc.)
- The episode is titled ‘The Living Force’, for the Qui-Gon connection and because it’s a great pun. It’s also a gentle jab at how ham-fisted and clumsy the original arc was, which I can’t resist.
- The opening crawl reminds us of the Chosen One prophecy (which I’m not a fan of, but this episode is all about that so we might as well lean in), and Qui-Gon’s position as an outsider Jedi and supporter of Anakin. We then recontextualise the original distress signal as explicitly Qui-Gon’s, because I’m heavily playing up his involvement.
- Speaking of which, Qui-Gon is all over this. I got extremely lucky with a bunch of lines from a vision of child Anakin and Qui-Gon from the Tartakovsky miniseries (which I’m not otherwise using in my edit of this show or that one). The lines fit perfectly in a good number of places, and I’ve used them to have Qui-Gon more explicitly involved in the plot, perhaps as its instigator. There’s also a secret Qui-Gon line which I’d be interested to know if anyone spots, with a fun bonus implication.
- References to the planet as a real place have been minimised, to keep it dreamlike. Through the scenes I’ve chosen to cut, there’s now no time spent flying, crashing, or repairing the ship, or riding around on speeder bikes, to also keep it dreamlike.
- Dialogue implying that the Mortis Gods have their own agency have been minimised (until they start to reflect our characters), to also also keep them dreamlike. They almost never talk amongst themselves when our main characters aren’t there.
- Main characters notice the weirdness but question it a lot less, also like a dream.
- Mortis Gods give our main characters far more ambiguous explanations for things. I made certain that there’s a valid metaphorical interpretation for every line of Mortis God dialogue - so like with David Lynch, everything “makes sense” whether the audience understands it or not.
- Before coming to the planet, Anakin has a dream of meeting the Son, to cement him and his conflict with the Dark as the central character and conflict of this story (and because that scene has explicitly dreamlike VFX).
- They are taken to the ‘planet’ via white light instead of seeing the space diamond.
- Reordered some of the visions, mainly for flow and a little extra tension. Anakin’s mother isn’t the Son, that’s left ambiguous (like Han in TROS), though I use some Qui-Gon dialogue to imply it’s an important test/message.
- I removed the scene of Son-gremlin biting Ahsoka to turn her dark - instead she goes dark after the warning from her future self in her vision, and I used a gorgeous shot of her with fire in her eyes to help sell this transition.
- Using the scene where Daughter and Son in beast forms grab Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, we bypass some unwanted content to get Obi-Wan and Daughter to the dagger (which has a valid metaphor that works for how it’s wielded in this episode if you look closely!) and get Ahsoka and Son to the top of Son’s tower for Anakin’s trial.
- I used the scene of Qui-Gon (in ghost form) talking to Anakin to guide him to Son’s tower, instead of to the well of the dark side.
- I quite heavily recut the conflict between Anakin/Ahsoka and Daughter/Son to imply that D/S are empowered by A/A’s conflict. Now, as each of the ‘real’ characters act, their mirror characters act in a similar way, with growing intensity.
- We transition from Anakin using Daughter’s life force on Ahsoka into Anakin waking up at Father’s temple. (Father’s dialogue helps this work just fine.) I’ve had to trim a little of the emotional response to Ahsoka’s resurrection out of necessity, but hey, it’s all a dream now so we don’t need to linger.
- Removed: Anakin isn’t challenged by Father to choose light versus dark (his other actions during this episode prove he’s the Chosen One). He’s not expected to remain on Mortis. The main characters don’t leave, Ahsoka doesn’t get captured, and they don’t return and crash-land then have to repair the ship. Son doesn’t plot to kill Father, and Father doesn’t mourn Daughter for long (they’re not real people!) Son doesn’t show Anakin his future nor does Anakin turn dark before having his memory erased. Son doesn’t want to leave Mortis.
- I hope you like it when the screen fades to white and then a character wakes up confused, because the original did that twice and I’ve added two more!
Anyway, this was an absolute blast to produce. I really disliked the original episode but I think I’ve managed to make something I really enjoy, which hits all of the core beats in a completely new way that feels like it fits a lot better with the canon. I hope you all enjoy it too!
Onward to another great Maul episode, where shit goes DOWN.
