EddieDean

I remember! 😃 When I do this batch, I’ll pick that up too.

Very similarly to Andor, which I’ve also done this for, Arcane was released as arcs. Of the 18 episodes across two nine-episode seasons, you’ve got five three-episode arcs, followed by one kind of flashbacky standaloney one, then a duology. But I reckon there’s a nice little bit of polish there you could do to have them all balance out.

I wouldn’t cut a single piece of content - only reorder it for easier consumption.

The arcs are very solidly single units of story, with one minor exception:

1. Episodes 1-3 - The young siblings arc
2. Episodes 4-5 - The progress day bombing arc
3. Episodes 6-9 - The shimmer and civil war arc
4. Episodes 10-12 - The chem-barons arc
5. Episodes 13-15 - The Viktor’s sanctuary arc
6. Episode 16 (technically part of the final arc, but the Jayce stuff is set before the end of arc 5)
7. Episodes 17-18 - The Noxian war arc

So obviously for most of those they could be easily moviefied - keep the first instance of opening credits, make sure the closing credits cover all relevant content from the full three episodes, and the odd bit of smoothing round the episode breakpoints (light scene juggling if it helps).

As for episode 16, you’ve got two main plotlines: Ekko and Heimerdinger in the no-hextech universe in the past, and Jayce in the wild magic universe in the future. It would perhaps have been nice to split these out - having Ekko’s scenes saved for the finale where they’re most relevant, and Jayce’s scenes preceding his appearance at the end of episode 14. But there are some key points where, whilst not overlapping, these two episodes are quite tightly wound together by editing choices (with a few scenes in parallel tied to the same music choices). Even if they can’t be unpicked, having the scenes in Ekko’s world with Vander would nicely pair with arc 5’s reveal that the Singed’s beast is Vander.

That would make for a slightly longer movie 5, and a slightly shorter movie 6. However, the scenes of Mel in the Black Rose prison from arc 5 aren’t relevant to that arc, so could be moved to the beginning of arc 6. This is about seven minutes long, and the very final episode is also ten minutes longer than usual, so this would bring us closer to balance.

I don’t think we’d need to specifically force balanced viewing times, but potentially some of the end of arc 5 could be shifted into the beginning of arc 6 - you could end arc 5 on Jayce blasting Viktor, and open arc 6 with the fighting in the sanctuary, as the beginning of the Noxian war. There’s a nice breakpoint where Viktor’s been shot, the sanctuary residents start screaming, and then Ambessa gives the order to charge. Then you could open on the actual fight, which is covered by a Viktor voiceover, so could work as an opening. This wouldn’t be too different from how the ending of season one (Jynx firing the rocket at the Council chamber) transitions right into the start of season two (a montage of the damage and survivors). But balancing for time probably isn’t strictly necessary, and perhaps it’s best we see the fight and Isha killing Vander-beast in the episode which sets it up - though these two arcs are fairly back-to-back anyway.

Is there any interest in this?

+1

Hal 9000 said:

Toward the beginning of this project, I’d explored the possibility of replacing one word, and perhaps it can be done using AI.

That word is, “I’m [fixing] a droid, you wanna see? Come on, I’ll show you 3PO.”

EDIT: Also, there’s a line in Ep3 that would be good to replace as well. 3PO says, “I think I’m beginning to get the hang of this flying business,” in reference to lines from TPM and AOTC about him never having flown and fearing starships. Not sure what could go there instead; the scene doesn’t have any other dialogue.

Another EDIT:

I’m sure the tools are out there at this point for this to be possible with AI or whatever. I’d love to be able to simply snip out Qui-Gon’s final two words of “train him,” so that Obi-Wan’s actions show earnest initiative and fit what ROTJ gives us about taking it upon himself to train him because he feels he would do well with it.

That sounds good. What is the surrounding context for 3PO’s ‘flying’ line?

g00b has an excellent Rebels that keeps improving. I like Ahsoka as it is but there’s a few edits in the top couple of pages here. Haven’t seen much Batch.

And thank you!

That’s so good.

Definitely sounds like a good starter for ten, decent set of proposed changes. Good luck with the execution!

luissolano said:

CamSMurph said:

My preferred order at the moment is TFA: Starlight, TLJ: Rekindled and TROS: Ascendant (yours). That may change when Jar Jar Bricks and sherlockpotter release their versions, which will no doubt force me to choose between the two haha.

Is my prefered order too.

+1

That sounds extremely solid; well done! I’d love a link. I’m especially curious about your second movie - I think Cloak and Malevolence are both important to Ahsoka’s early journey. I’m interested to see how you handled Ryloth too, I did a lot of merging of plotlines there and really changed the narrative.

The only major elements that are notably missing from this, off the top of my head, are Zygerria, Umbara, Onderon, and the Order 66 arcs. Arguably Scipio too, but that’s weaker. Any thoughts on those?

Oh, and how did you handle the later Ahsoka-Mandalore content which also includes Lux Bonteri, without his introduction in the ‘Heroes on Both Sides’ arc?

If you’re curious to review some optional alternative approaches which could add value, I’ve got a few episodes that you might be interested in:

• My Ryloth arc, which intercuts Ahsoka in the air with Mace on the ground for a tighter plot.
• My Lair of Grievous/Massacre mix, which uses AI dialogue to frame the Lair of Grievous events as directed by Ventress for revenge against the Sith (rather than related directly to Cloak of Darkness), which then triggers the retaliatory massacre, giving her greater grief about her actions.
• My Corruption on Mandalore arc, which removes the poisoned kids plotline but reshapes the rest into a single Ahsoka-Padmé narrative.
• My Heroes on Both Sides arc, which removes the awful murder subplot and completely restructures the whole into a new narrative tht gives Padmé some real depth and a good bittersweet victory.

That’s three for that episode. I don’t intend to do any heavy editing for these extra episodes and extended versions, they’ll be more just wrapping them in the TCW:R trappings and giving them a single polish pass. But I’ll prioritise them.

I still come back to the movie in my mind from time to time. Obviously Smudger has created an excellent movie to open TCW. In my observation Smudger is focused on the pure quality of the individual movie experience with his - so each is extremely well paced and satisfying standalone. Whereas, I think my focus would be a bit more around treating the movies as part of a very serialised whole, and retaining (objectively weaker) moments that Smudger would have cut for quality and in-the-moment focus.

In essence, any movie I’d make I’d want to keep compatible with my episodic TCW:R, being able to just directly replace a handful of episodes. I think Ahsoka’s early episodes, like Assassin and Malevolence, are important to her arc. I don’t know if you need the Malevolence itself, but I really like the Ahsoka-Plo storyline there. I think there’s a plot that could work which uses the 501st trilogy as the spine, with Assassin’s story about Ventress grabbing Gunray as the prelude to 501st’s invasion, and the 501st’s imminent invasion as the motivator for the urgency which gives Ahsoka the conflict about saving Plo in Malevolence.

Yeah, the extended versions of all of the major arcs are on the cards.

The Deserter is already included (the last part of the three-part ‘Tales of the Lost Clones’ anthology, my episode s02e07). But I’ll push the others up, they’re popular requests.

TheDimitrios said:

It would be great to have the Padme Funeral scene from Totj in the last episode!

I don’t intend to do this, mainly because it doesn’t pertain directly to the plot of TCW (it more directly follows RotS), and I don’t want to interrupt what I consider to be a flawless ending in TCW’s final episode. Better experience for the viewer is simply watching Tales of the Jedi: Resolve after RotS and the finale of TCW:R. (Which is how I have it presented currently.)

TropicHawk said:

Thank you so much! That’s exactly what I was looking for!

EDIT: Oh! Since you’re asking about other potential updates or inclusions, I figure I’ll throw in what I’d personally love to see, although I recognize I’m likely in the minority on this: Part of what I’d love to experience when going through Star Wars chronologically is a steady build-up to the Death Star, and that begins with an explanation of the Kyber Crystals and how Jedi obtain them. (That’s why I like the Ilum content from CW’03.) So, I personally would love to see a shortened/refined version of the episode where the younglings obtain their Kyber Crystals.

I can do this, I’ll bump the refined version of this episode up the priority list for next to work on, and add it as an ‘extra’ episode alongside other ‘interesting but not vital to your enjoyment of TCW’ episodes.

sgscobie said:

Taking requests… Yes, that you please make your edits more easily accessible either on Google Drive, Gofile, pCloud, or Vimeo 😉

I’ll host my content wherever is cheapest for bulk hosting. I currently have 500GB of fanedits - happy to take suggestions. Google Drive (free version) isn’t feasible due to some of its restrictions.

Folks, not quite a promise as who knows how life goes, but it looks like I’ll have some time coming up soon to put a bit more work into this. Is there anything I’d previously promised, or anything else relevant to TCW, that you guys would like me to prioritise? (For example, minor fixes, extended versions of episodes, etc)

Oh, I see what you’re saying. Looks like I never did upload that one. I’ve added it now, to the Extras > Bonus Episodes folder, and added a link in the spreadsheet.

That one got combined into the season 2/3 interlude.

Ah, OK. Well, the green ones are definitely the good ones. How are you handling Asoka’s development, insofar as her early appearances (in the weaker episodes) establish the character flaws that she later overcomes? How are you handling the anthology feel, with many (great) arcs having minimal Anakin/Ahsoka?

Oh, interesting! What made it into your Clone Wars movies?

Also great. Can’t believe this was so easy. It’s bugged me for years.

If I remember right, Rebels never uses subtitled language, even for characters we haven’t ever seen using Basic before. But who cares! It’s your edit buddy. It sounds like a nice touch, and honestabe’s idea is a good one.

Sure - send me a PM and I’ll share from there.

JeromeTheEditor said:

On the topic of the speed force scene, I tried my best to fix it only using the shots that were available. Can’t tell if it works tho.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TXMVxHg7gEI6g8naHVJjCws5Npi1Atc4/view?usp=drivesdk

Honestly this is totally good enough. If it can be improved beyond this, excellent, but great work.

smudger9 said:

EddieDean said:

Looks great. Why cut Maul talking to Jesse about the grand plan? That was always one of the highlights of the episode for me.

We get most of that exposition in Maul’s interactions with Ahsoka and I didn’t want to detract from those scenes. The whole arc hinges on Maul luring the Jedi (ultimately the wrong Jedi) to Mandalore so the focus should be on that dynamic.

Maul revealing the nature of the grand plan to a clone didn’t feel right for his character. Clones are beneath him.

Sounds great either way. I’ve always been a big fan of yours. What’s next in this series for you? What’re your major plans for the remaining content? Any thoughts on an alternative opening movie? As you have, I’ve thought this content to death, so if there’s any valuable perspectives I can offer I’d be happy to.

Looks great. Why cut Maul talking to Jesse about the grand plan? That was always one of the highlights of the episode for me.