EddieDean

Could do. And wasted is a much better solution there. But I’m no great audio editor, I mainly just wanted to make the tool for the community. I’m committed to finishing Clone Wars before picking up anything new!

Yeah, it’s a real mess, but with work could be improved. I pulled down the volume on that last bit. I don’t know how to pull ‘clean’ voice off a track mixed with audio, but just wanted to put an idea out there.

Here’s a messy example voice edit, to have Jar Jar both demonstrate some personal conviction, and explicitly suggest that the Queen seek their aid.

RogueLeader said:

An idea I would like to eventually play around with is to reuse the footage of Luke getting his hand shot, but have Boba be the one to shoot his hand instead of some random guard on the sail barge.

Basically, a summary of changes I’ve thought of making:

1. Make the jet pack sound effect sound a little beefier (sort of how they made it sound in Mando 201)
2. Have Boba immediately fire when he lands on the skiff, and the shot whizzes past Luke’s head. (You could potentially have him take a shot or two off while he is flying, but you might not want him to miss too much)
3. Rotoscope a yellow electric energy onto the cable wire Boba shoots around Luke. Although we see this cable wire without this effect in Mando, other media have depicted the wire with the energy, like here in Rebels (at the 1:25 mark), and it could add some nice visual flare to the scene that could make Boba cooler.
4. When the sail barge turret shot that knocks Boba down fires, we don’t really see it, just where it impacts. So maybe we could add a blaster deflection sound effect to imply that Luke managed to deflect it while he was tied up. You could also add a blaster shot that passes by camera when Luke flicks his lightsaber. I think this scene may have been trying to imply this, but it could be made clearer.
5. When Boba lands on the floor of the skiff, add some spark sound/visual effects coming from out of frame, emanating from his now-damaged jet pack.
6. As Boba is starting to aim his shot at Luke, you could add a some more brief sparks to help set up his new vulnerability more.
7. When Han says, “Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?” have him say this quicker, then add a Chewbacca growl, as if he is telling Han where he is, then Han swings based off where Chewbacca said he was. Han isn’t saying “Where?” as he is swinging.
8. Boba shot does not miss Luke, but makes contact.
9. Rotoscope Luke’s hand getting shot and his quick reaction shot and put them at this moment. (If there is trouble with making his reaction shot fit, maybe we could just put Luke shouting in pain over the hand insert)
10. Remove Boba’s scream (which many people have already done)
11. After Boba falls in, replace the Sarlaac burping with the sound of muffled blaster shots. It could imply he survives, or he still dies, but it depicts Boba as tough despite the circumstances.

And of course, you would remove his hand getting shot later on since we have placed it sooner.

You could make an argument that you might need to add Luke’s hand injury to any shots where we might see it, but we actually don’t see his injury on his hand after it gets shot even in the theatrical, so I wouldn’t say it is priority.
I would try and make any new blaster shots or any other new effects fit with the 1983 look. Nothing super modern looking.

It is still goofy that he goes in close range when he could’ve taken him out from a distance, but that’s Star Wars for you. If you wanted to rationalize it, you could perhaps give Boba a line or two during this scene. Maybe he could say something like, “He’s worth a lot” (that way you could use both the original and new dubs), implying that Boba might use the chaos to claim the bounty, that certainly must exist on Luke, for himself. This also makes Boba appear more self-serving rather just a Jabba lackey.
If that didn’t work, you could maybe reuse “He’s no good to me dead” or make it “He’s good to me dead” or just “He’s dead”. Boba works better when he says little, but these are just some ideas.

Building off of Boba ideas, I also had the idea of Boba being the one to catch Han and Leia trying to escape, rather than Jabba and literally everyone else in the entire palace hiding behind currents. When Han and Leia turn around to leave, you could reuse a shot of Boba standing in the palace, and point his gun at them, then cut back and show him raising his gun back up, knowing that he has them where he wants them. You would lose a minute of footage from this change though, and any runtime worth keeping may be crucial to keep one’s edit from being too short.

I may try to make Boba’s “death scene” my next project, whenever I have the time. Even though ROTJ is sort of the black sheep of the Original Trilogy, I still feel like there isn’t a definitive edit for this film that does a better job at putting it as close as possible to Star Wars and Empire in terms of quality.

Nothing valuable to add here other than approval. I especially like the idea of muted blaster shots once he’s in.

sade1212 said:

EddieDean said:

I’ve also just finished editing TPM down into just 18 minutes containing all of JarJar’s lines

Why even bother continuing the thread when it’s already produced the perfect version of TPM?

I’m tempted to slap on an intro and some credits and submit it to IFDB as Phantom Menace: 'Tis Demanded by the Gods Edition.

Anyway, in the sanity of morning, I’ve now realised that the file was rendering as huge because I forgot to tick the box for ‘only render this small section’, so I was rendering the entire movie instead. I’m an idiot. The new video is available in the spreadsheet now. I’ve added some notes in the sheet for a few words we might be able to make.

As I was working over this all yesterday, focusing on solely Jar Jar’s lines brought a few things into focus for me:

1. Good God, what an obnoxiously written character.
2. Other than the voice, a big failing of his character is that he has no personality. A proper character has well established wants, that the audience can relate to. He gives Qui-Gon his life debt, which essentially makes him a tag-along, and isn’t interesting, plus later he’s still confused that he got carried along in events. He wants to lead them to Otoh Gunga, then really doesn’t want to go back there, then is coerced into it, then he’s glad to be home even though he’s hurt and nearly punished there. He likes Theed (for a line), dislikes the heat of Tattooine (for a line), then likes Anakin’s home (for a line). He’s scared of a lot, though seems to be quite taken by Anakin, but this goes nowhere. His biggest happy outburst is “Wesa goin’ home!”, even though he hasn’t indicated that he wants that prior, and his world is currently under invasion, and Otoh Gunga rejects him. Arguably his best scene (!) is when he sympathises with Padmé on Coruscant, shows sadness and doubt, and gives her the seed of her plan. I think his main arc is that he regrets his exile and finds redemption when Padmé makes peace and he gets recognition, but this is so underdeveloped. In short, he’s both a genuine idiot, and worse, completely passive.
3. Passivity is so dull. Even dropping the idiocy and trying to reframe his passivity as opportunism still leaves him quite flat. But the problems are that he’s present in a load of scenes (major work to mask out), and used in a number of key scenes that’re valuable for other characters or world-building. He’s especially relevant to Padmé’s plot in a few places (and the Boss Nass alliance turns Padmé from macguffin into a character), so even when annoying, some of his scenes serve a useful purpose and I feel like we should be careful when cutting them.
4. I’m generally an adherent of not deviating too far from canon because of references in other media. But Jar Jar’s presence is limited to TPM and only lightly the other prequels and Clone Wars. My own TCW edit, and I believe all others on these forums, exclude him completely, so maybe there is room for even people who want it to fit with wider media to be comfortable with a re-dub.
5. That said, he (and his voice) are unfortunately such a familiar cultural phenomenon that outright replacing it may still be a stretch for some. But hey, the tool works either way, let’s see what people come up with.
6. I think, if working with his existing voice lines, one of his most obnixious traits is “Mesa”. He rarely says I and never says I’m. You could maybe preserve some of his weird patterns (and maintain lipsync) if you keep the ‘-a’ part of ‘Mesa’ but put it elsewhere in his speech. “I’m called-a Jar Jar Binks”, for example. That way it might just sound a bit more like an awkward accent, rather than idiocy.

Beyond trimming his idiocy and obnoxiousness, I think more work can be done on his passivity. I wonder if we could frankenbyte any new voice lines to actually give him some agency. Looking over my list, a few ideas:

• [to explain why he’s into Jedi, or Anakin once they talk about Jedi reflexes] Ohh, maxi big da force. (Mesa your humble servant?) (Perhaps even something using the word ‘sacred’: “Ohh, da force sacred.”)
• Queensa in trouble, das’ da last thing mesa wantin’! Come on! Hurry!
• Mesa wantin’ to help.
• This planet is piddy hot. Sun doin’ murder to mesa skin.
• Gungans get murdered too, eh?
• Mesa no dyin’ without a fight. Wesa warriors. Gungans got a grand army.
• Wesa gotta fight, mesa thinks.
• [about the Trade Federation] Gungans no likin’ monsters. De outsiders’ bosses will do terrible things.
• Da outsiders must be banished.
• [During the planning phase, if you want to have the Gungan plan be to draw the army out then retreat into the nearby swamp] Da safest place would be underwater. Wesa settin da outsiders up. Outsiders follow, we goin’ back. We retreat!

Great resources, thanks Rogueleader. I’ll add them to OP.

My test minute of my Jar Jar video/tool has taken over two hours to render, so I’ll have to muck about before I can launch it.

Mrebo said:

I think it helps greatly if we know that Shmi is no longer a slave. As difficult as it is for Anakin to try to forget about her, it’s more palatable if he knows she is free. I’d have this done in TPM and she is left behind because the Jedi don’t make allowances for parents tagging along. Qui-Gon gives a disapproving look and Shmi gets it and says, “my place is here. My future is here. It is time for you to let go.”

In AOTC I’d leave it implied that Anakin went back at least once, knows the Lars and plausibly had a conversation in years past with Owen about staying. So we would cut Watto in this telling.

I think the story is stronger if Anakin simply can’t let go of his mother even when she is relatively safe. Adopting Peter Pan’s idea to make it more explicitly the Jedi’s fault helps too. Especially with all of Anakin’s ranting about Obi-Wan holding him back which feels out of left field in the movie as is.

I don’t know if it might be cut so the line, “Mind your thoughts, Anakin, they betray you. You’ve made a commitment to the Jedi order…” applies to his dreams about his mother.

I think it’s also a lot stronger if we’re able to play up the angle that Anakin could have saved Shmi if only the Jedi would have let him. Being told “no attachments” and that indirectly leading to her death would have been a great way to increase Anakin’s mistrust of the Jedi Order.

RogueLeader said:

I know snooker had added plumes of smoke in a night establishing shot of Theed, implying that the Trade Federation was quelling some resistance or rioting that was going on in the city.

Does anyone have links to anything useful Snook shared?

evansj1983 said:

I suppose we should also consider his lines in the few episode of TCW he’s in (at least the ones that were Ahmed Best) if the goal is to have as much as possible to construct new words/phrases.

That’s a really good shout. Is anyone able to provide a list? (Could copy my spreadsheet to use as a template, then I’ll merge them?) I’ve watched those episodes to death for my edit, please don’t make me watch them again! 😉

CaptainFaraday said:

Damn, Eddie, that was fast!

Well, I’m motivated! I’ve just finished adding the time codes to the spreadsheet - no other info there yet though.

I’ve also just finished editing TPM down into just 18 minutes containing all of JarJar’s lines, all with a video timestamp. That’s rendering now and I’ll upload it soon. But it should give anyone who wants to edit JarJar’s voice the right tool to have all the sources, all the lines to change, and decent enough video to lipsync, that they can then extract their new audio from it in high quality to reinsert easily into their own edit. I’ve created that file in a way that I can easily fix it, add sources from the other movies, or other languages, so if anyone has any further needs from it let me know.

(Actually, it’s rendering as a huge file - does anyone know how to output from Sony/Magix Vegas at lower video? Or my best option to downscale the video easily after it’s done? I have a bunch of tools, I just don’t have any brain left.)

I haven’t edited any lines yet, because I’ve run out of sanity. But the tool will soon be available to anyone to make editing his voice easier. Democracy!

Right, here’s the in progress Jar Jar voice polish spreadsheet. Just all 108 of his lines in order so far, but now I’ll go through and grab the timecodes (I’ve got them highlighted in my editing software). Figured I’d post the sheet now in case anyone wants to pick out priority lines, or if they want to spot good sources to make key words like ‘I’m’, etc, or other replacements.

I’ll also mark the sources as dirty or clean in terms of background SFX (so we know if they’re usable), and add context. Once it’s in that state, whether or not I output anything decent, it should be a good resource for anyone else who wants to have a play around on their own - and if anyone makes a fixed line, I’ll add it in here too.

I haven’t added his lines AOTC or ROTS yet, can anyone pinpoint those?

RogueLeader said:

EddieDean said:

Actually, screw it. I can see this task very clearly, I’ll pick it up. Editing Clone Wars needs a different type of free time, I can work on this Jar Jar voice idea without it distracting from it.

If you think it wouldn’t be too bad, that would be cool! Maybe you could play around with one or two lines just see if the idea will actually work.

Yeah, I’ll post a couple when I’ve had a play. Need to dig them all out first.

Actually, screw it. I can see this task very clearly, I’ll pick it up. Editing Clone Wars needs a different type of free time, I can work on this Jar Jar voice idea without it distracting from it.

Vladius said:

I liked that one that used the people getting shot at in Star Trek Insurrection. Kind of silly but it worked.

Which edit was that, Vladius?

Yeah, personally I’d rather conservatively improve Jar Jar than replace him entirely, but there shouldn’t be any competition in this thread; it’s all about ideas and assets, not decisions.

Data analysis is always a great start. Got something to do? Start with a spreadsheet and break that shit down.

I honestly don’t think tweaking up Jar Jar’s voice would be that much work, so long as the voice track is isolated from the music. He can’t have more than 50 relevant lines, and I think a little would go a long way. If I wasn’t focused on Clone Wars I’d pick this up right away.

It’s just about starting it in the right way- get the source file into an editor, watch it through slowly, with each line add it to a spreadsheet and maybe also add a little text over the corner of the video including the timestamp (for ease of future editors replacing it). Video doesn’t need to be high quality as it’s just to help line it up and check lipsync. Cut everything else out, leave the master voice track present (as a source) but muted, make a new voice track to copy to for mucking about with, render. Ideally as two different audio tracks in case people want access to the source still to make their own changes.

I know actually getting the voice right might be a bit of a challenge but he’s so loose and goofy that it must be easier than most to at least get it better than it is.

RogueLeader said:

Jar Jar Binks

In regards to Jar Jar, instead of totally dubbing him, I’m curious if it would be possible to play around with his dialogue to simply tone down his sometimes confusing Gungan dialect. A few examples:

“I spake” to “I speak”
“You saved my again” to “You saved me again”
“More did you spake?” to “More did you say?”
“Ex-squeeze-me, but de mostest safest place would be Gunga City” to “De safest place would be Gunga City”
“’Tis embarrassing. My afraid my’ve been banished. My forgotten. Da bosses would do terrible things to me. Terrrrrible things to me if me goen back dere” to “Tis’ embarrassing. I afraid I’ve been banished. I’m forgotten. Da bosses would do terrible things to me. Terrible things to me if I go back dere.”
“Wesa goen underwater, okeyday?” to “We go underwater, okay?”
“My warning you. Gungans no liken outsiders, so don’t spect a warm welcome” to “I’m warning you. Gungans don’t like outsiders, so don’t espect a warm welcome.”

Obviously how doable this would be would depend on how easy it is to isolate Jar Jar’s dialogue, and if you could find the right pieces to frankenbyte the dialogue changes. I recall Brian Blessed (who voiced Boss Nass) gave an interview where he said “I tried to make sure my noises didn’t interfere with dialogue”. He basically said that he thought that Jar Jar sometimes made noises on the line, and he has a lot of plot, so the audience would go, “What’s he saying? What did he say?” Anyway, I’m not saying Brian Blessed should be the authority on this, but I think it is a fair point.

And of course, basically every TPM edit in the past has toned down Jar Jar by cutting certain scenes or lines whole cloth, or muting Jar Jar’s voice, but I’m curious how possible it would be improve the dialogue that is necessary without overdubbing Ahmed Best’s performance. Because I think one issue with cutting a lot of Jar Jar is that if you cut too much Jar Jar, the edits feel less invisible as they should if you’re going for an edit that could pass as a theatrical release. This method might allow an editor to keep more Jar Jar, but make him less annoying. Another positive thing about this route would be that you probably could get away with these dialogue changes without Jar Jar’s mouth movements being noticeably off, since the CGI twenty years ago wasn’t as true-to-life as it can be now.

I think this idea has legs. I don’t think it’d be too tricky to start - one could watch through TPM and Jar-Jar’s couple of other appearances, taking notes in a spreadsheet of each line, timestamped. You’ve then got that for quick reference to identify your available replacement sounds. Isolate those lines in a working project to create common source replacement words (“I’m”, “I”, “Me”, etc), then take each line in place and replace what you can to tidy it up whilst preserving the meaning, ideally against the video to check for acceptable lip-sync.

Vladius said:

I’ve said this before but people use way too many all caps words in their crawls. If you look at the movies they only do one or two.

In chronological order each count is 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 2, 6. So you’re right, and Rise of Skywalker (and the whole sequel trilogy) is an outlier. But I don’t personally think it’s a big issue - I think all caps is an easy tool to direct people’s attention to the core concepts.

Plus, you could just switch ‘invaded’ with ‘blockaded’ and ‘bring the Queen to safety on the capital planet of Coruscant’ with something like ‘negotiate a peaceful solution before the conflict escalates’ if you wanted to preserve the blockade angle.

Oof, just spotted something else to amend what I’d just said-

Queen Amidala (the figurehead) is the macguffin, Padmé (revealed in the third act as the true Queen) is a character with real agency. This way you don’t reveal that Padmé is Queen until the right moment.

Perhaps-

The GALACTIC REPUBLIC is failing. As
its Senate becomes more complacent,
QUEEN AMIDALA, elected ruler of the
planet Naboo, stands as a vocal champion
against corruption.

With the Republic’s ability to protect
its worlds diminished, the greedy TRADE
FEDERATION have invaded her home system,
in an attempt to force her compliance.

The Jedi Order, mystical wielders of
THE FORCE and defenders of the Republic,
have dispatched Jedi Knight QUI-GON JINN
and his apprentice to bring the Queen to
safety on the capital planet of Coruscant.

The key factions are the Galactic Republic (complacent, corrupt, unable to act), the Trade Federation (greedy, opportunistic), and the Jedi Order (protectors, mystical, act semi-independently of the Senate). The key characters are Queen Amidala (champion of democracy) and Qui-Gon (a Jedi Knight). The plot is escape from invasion.

Compare to the original crawl: The key factions are the Galactic Republic (in turmoil, bureaucratic), and the Trade Federation (objecting, greedy), and Jedi Knights (protectors, mediators, act on behalf of the Supreme Chancellor). The characters are the Supreme Chancellor (leader) and two Jedi Knights. The plot is taxation leading to blockade leading to negotiation.

With my suggestion you could perhaps do more to explain how getting the Queen to Coruscant might actually help (beyond just escape), but I think early dialogue captures some of that. It doesn’t explain what the force actually IS, nor does it hint at the dark power behind these events.

CaptainFaraday said:

So that gives us a solid backbone:

• The Trade Federation invasion is the simple well-defined threat we care about, that the main characters are invested in stopping.
• The solution is to get Padmé off planet to Coruscant, which they believe is their best chance.
• Qui-Gon is our main character driving this plot in line with that goal.

There’s your opening crawl.

Job done. What’s next?

ImperialFighter said:

EddieDean, I’ve just come across this excellent ideas/discussion ‘INDEX’ notion that you’ve come up with, and can see that you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into your first topic descriptions which focus on THE PHANTOM MENACE movie initially.

Great stuff, and you’re laying things out very comprehensively which will prove useful as this progresses.

I look forward to seeing what gets posted on each of your individual topic threads eventually, and hope to add a few of my own ‘personally subjective’ thoughts and ideas at some point, when time allows.

Thanks for your time and efforts with this - oojason will approve, I’m sure! 😃

Thanks! It’s not intended to tread on the toes of other movie threads or the radical ideas threads, so I hope it doesn’t do that. And similarly I know there are key index threads, but seem to serve the purpose of being comprehensive lists, whereas what I’m trying to do here is put together context for editors and idea generation.

RogueLeader said:

I’ve been thinking about the movie since you made this post, so I’ll share some random thoughts I’ve been having.

The Crawl

I like the direction of the crawl you posted, Eddie.

I think the big complaint of the original crawl is that it got people’s heads scratching before the movie even starts. The goal of the crawl should be clarify things for the audience. Get everyone on the same page, keep it simple. Think about the original Star Wars opening crawl. It gives some background, but we’re left with a few simple ideas: There’s a big, evil empire, and there’s a rebellion fighting against them. A easy to understand tale of underdogs fighting against tyranny. We also get the gist of the basic plot: the bad guys have a super weapon, and the good guys stole the secret plans for it. We also learn about Princess Leia and her crucial role in this mission.

With this TPM new crawl, there are a few key words used that I think help establish important themes or ideas for this trilogy: complacency, corruption, and greed. These words highlight the problems in the final years of the Galactic Republic, and it establishes people like Padmé trying to fight against this corruption, and personally paying a cost for it. I think centering Padmé as an important character in a new crawl is a great idea. It might do a better job at investing the audience in her journey from the get-go. Like you mentioned before, a common point made about this movie is how it feels like there isn’t a main protagonist. Maybe Padmé technically isn’t, but I think anything would help to give more characterization to this ensemble.

Brilliant set of thoughts, RogueLeader. Following your thoughts on the crawl/set up for the movie-

What you said about the fact that Padmé arguably isn’t a main character in this episode, but is still important to the plot, made me realise the following: Padmé IS the Death Star plans. The actual thrust of the movie, for the first three quarters, is that we have to get the Death Star plans to the rebellion. (We have to get Padmé to Coruscant.) If everything’s framed in that way, there’s a clear and simple goal for the main characters that’s easy for the audience to grasp. The character who keeps things moving in that direction is Qui-Gon (the analogue to Obi-Wan in ANH). Their chance encounter with Luke (Anakin) brings him into the fold while Qui-Gon is still working on the goal of bringing Padmé to Coruscant. The twist in TPM compared to ANH is that getting Padmé to Coruscant doesn’t help - they leave Coruscant dejected with the Death Star (Trade Federation invasion) still a threat. But the day is ultimately won by the allies they picked up along the way, and the unexpected gift of Luke (Anakin).

So that gives us a solid backbone:

• The Trade Federation invasion is the simple well-defined threat we care about, that the main characters are invested in stopping.
• The solution is to get Padmé off planet to Coruscant, which they believe is their best chance.
• Qui-Gon is our main character driving this plot in line with that goal.
• A chance meeting with Anakin makes him our second main character and suprise addition.
• On Coruscant, we learn that the Republic is not our salvation, and the plan changes. At this point Padmé picks up more agency (becoming our late-game third main character instead of the macguffin) and the party decide to act together to save the day.
• On Naboo, Padmé and Qui-Gon serve to further the new plan (failing and coming into jeopardy but still helping enable its success), but Anakin, our suprise addition, emerges as the hero whose actions defeat the invasion, saving the day.

Along the way, the rest of the content would be seen as world-building ideally handled as deftly as ANH did it - not too much cutting away from the main plot, giving the audience information in a sensible order, etc. Establishing the core setting (the state of the Galaxy) belongs in the crawl (but IMO should be whatever best sets up the Trade Federation invasion and Padmé as the solution clearly.) The rise of Palpatine is a background event that’s triggered by but doesn’t need to be central to the plot. The things that leave us with anticipation for a future movie are Qui-Gon’s twist death handing over his role to Obi-Wan, the Jedi’s doubts in Anakin, and the fact that a dark presence may have manipulated this plot for sinister ends.

Thinking about it like this, I’m led to another couple of thoughts:

1. If you set up the Republic as failing in the crawl, there’s (interesting?) doubt about whether the plan to get Padmé to Coruscant will succeed, and the reveal that they’re too bureaucratic to help will give the audience good evidence to hammer that point home. I also feel like the most valuable word to describe the Republic is complacent, because that best explains how these guys think they can get away with full-on invasion. (And going for invasion first, rather than blockade, not only gives you the actual threat in the crawl, but also avoids the fact that the blockade is replaced with a single ship by the climax.)
2. The Gungans aren’t vital. Since they are effectively used as a tool by Padmé in line with the party’s goals in the finale, they could still serve an edit, but if you had an alternative group for Anakin to save during the finale (say, shots of Naboo citizens being oppressed and surrounded by battle droids) they’d be skippable.
3. If we take Padmé as the macguffin, then the main force against her is Maul (as a tool of the unknown Sith Lord), and Maul’s use in that role should be emphasised. While Maul is alive, the threat against Padmé is emphasised. (I suppose we don’t actually need to know why he’s targeting her, with my suggested perspective, since targeting her still brings the core plot into jeopardy and Maul’s master’s motivations remain a mystery at the end of the film.) Therefore, I’d have the ending ordered as: Gungans draw out the forces from the city to enable the infiltration, and are captured (if we see them at all). The party infiltrate the palace to capture Nute Gunray. Anakin takes a ‘safe place’ in a ship, but Padmé is interrupted by the arrival of Maul, so the Jedi step in to stop him so she can continue the plan alone. We follow Padmé until she fails. Now the plan’s in real jeopardy. Maul is able to handle Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan at the same time, and when he kills Qui-Gon, we believe he’s more than a match for Obi-Wan, left dangling in a pit. He’s likely to kill Obi-Wan, and then he’s coming for the Queen. This is the point of highest jeopardy. Then roughly at the same time, we have Anakin destroy the ship and Obi-Wan destroy Maul. The invasion is defeated, saving the people, and Maul is killed, saving the Queen.
4. I wonder if more could be done to emphasise Anakin’s agency. Perhaps when he’s in the cockpit, we could hear echoes of dialogue we’ve already heard as he remembers them: “That’s a droid control ship.” “We will send the pilots we have to knock out the droid control ship.” “You catch on pretty quick.” “Mom, you say the biggest problem in this universe is nobody helps each other.” “There is no other way. I may not like it, but he can help you. He was meant to help you.” [Anakin turns on the ship and flies off to space.]
5. I think the biggest value add, which may now be more within our grasp, would be additional shots of the invasion being felt by the Naboo.

ImperialFighter said:

EddieDean said:

I’m trying to present this section from an ‘editor’s perspective’, highlighting the key plot points, structure, character development and interactions, topics of dialogue, scene linkages, references, etc. It’s in as close to original order as possible, with cut scenes placed in roughly the right place. Let me know if there’s anything relevant that I’ve missed.

EddieDean, I look forward to adding a thing or three to your ongoing series of topic threads eventually.

Just a little thing for now, but can you also include a description of the ‘deleted scene’ of Yoda arriving at Dagobah in this one too? - while I have my own firm preference of how I’d like to see it incorporated into a re-edit of the movie, perhaps you could just add it at the bottom of your scene descriptions if you don’t have a preference of your own. It’s not readily obvious where it should go, as there’s optional places to put it if anyone chooses to include it.

Isn’t that a Revenge of the Sith deleted scene? If there was one made for Phantom Menace though, I’ll add it in.

I partially agree- I think the modern TV shows mark the gold standard middle ground between OT-style and overdoing it like the prequels did. It feels like Disney have settled on the right aesthetic balance which feels like it fits with the OT whilst being a bit more modern. I’d like to see the PT content downgraded quite a lot, but the OT content upgraded just a little.

That is a fun slow realisation for the trilogy, especially with the chronological mindset, but I think my personal priority tends towards strengthening the individual movie by boosting Padmé’s character and taking out a few layers of political ambiguity.

Mrebo said:

EddieDean said:

Indeed!

I would say, one thing that I think I probably should encourage in the threads is staying on target and avoiding the particularly radical ideas. I’m talking things like comedy versions, black and white, heavy metal, replacing the language with an alternate track and doing it all as subtitles, etc etc. Those feel to me more like passion projects to create a truly alternative experience, rather than “a Star Wars movie you could have feasibly watched at the cinema”, like TROS Ascendent.

Beyond that, I’m on the fence about things like three-in-one movies or re-dubbing whole characters, but I think I should let the community make that call.

Disagreement welcome!

I think three-in-ones are a different animal but maybe the discussions will help inform those who want to go that way.

Yeah, I’d certainly be interested to hear about good approaches from three-in-ones that could help a one-on-one edit.