EddieDean

That’s a really nice idea, that the tracker itself is like a beacon in hyperspace. They are, after all, “caught on a string”, and a string can be traced back to its source.

One thing you’ll need to contend with if you take that approach though will be the green wireframe flythrough of Snoke’s ship, which they use to illustrate the plan, because that quite clearly zooms right into the centre of the ship.

Just watched this after TFA Starlight and TLJ Rekindled, and WOW. I can’t thank everyone here enough. It was clear, it was more straightforward, it was less of a torrent of ideas, and it demanded far less mental juggling. And, best of all, all of those gorgeous new CG additions and new scenes really, really landed. I can’t believe we finally have this movie in such competent shape. There were a handful of things I’d trim, which were beyond the scope of this project, but FINALLY it feels like the worthy successor to the sequel trilogy and the Skywalker saga that it should have always been. Two years later than I should have been, I’m finally at peace with this movie.

Hmm, well maybe we don’t cut to their reaction shots?

I think I’ve had a workable idea to help justify why the lightspeed ramming isn’t something that’s commonly done!

Why can’t it be done normally?

• It can’t breach shields.

Why can it be done in TLJ?

• Because as part of their infiltration of Snoke’s ship, DJ has just “slice[d] a slit in their shields”!

We’d spoken before about adding a shot of a screen on Holdo’s bridge showing that they’re lined up, as a way of achieving something similar, but what if it shows the ‘there’s a slit’ graphic instead? The shot of the screen showing the slit is even onscreen twice when it’s first shown, slightly differently each time. Plus, the particular ‘slit’ which gets sliced by DJ (as seen in the graphic) is almost exactly the same distance down the wing of Snoke’s star destroyer as the exact line her ship slices through it when it does the ram - just on the other side, so you’d just need to flip the graphic. You’ve then got the officer on the Star Destroyer tapping the screen as if he doubts the visual error - which you could move to before Holdo triggers the attack, to remind the audience what’s up.

As for why the Holdo Maneuver can’t breach shields normally, well, I guess that’s up to the viewer’s imagination, but it certainly works just fine with the fact that every important military asset is shielded - the Second Death Star, most capital ships, Scarif, etc. (Scarif even has a mechanism where you can bypass just a PART of a shield while keeping the rest up, as ‘slicing a slit’ would have done.)

And I know what you’re thinking - in TFA they explicitly use hyperspace to come out UNDER Starkiller Base’s shields. BUT we already have the answer for that - in TFA, it’s said that that shield has a “fractional refresh rate”, which lets them inside.

Merry Christmas you beauties! My official Christmas day is going to be in a week’s time, so I’m just now settling in for a full sequel fanedit trilogy rewatch with a good buddy of mine. Woop woop!

Just out of curiosity I took a look through the old community survey I ran back a year and a half ago.

The vast majority of questions which got a very strong response in favour of a particular change match to changes in this edit - things like the Snoke vats and the timing of the Palpatine reveal, simplifying the Final Order, its fleet, and Palpatine’s motivations. There was also strong support to make Mustafar more obvious, to remove the lightspeed skipping, to change the mechanism for how the force dagger guided Rey, and to make some of the references to prior movies less jarring.

Notably different is that at the time the community really had an issue with Rey Palpatine as an idea, favouring Rey Nobody. There’s still an appetite for a Rey Nobody cut these days but it feels like many people have come around to it more in the last eighteen months, as various edits have been able to integrate the idea more smoothly across the entire sequel trilogy. I’ve certainly flip-flopped back to favouring Palpatine (for the sake of canon, really), so I’m glad we’ve been able to make such peace with it. Similarly there was some split on how Rey self-identifies at the end, but I think this edit does a great job of making the original ‘Rey Skywalker’ moment far more earned.

Thinking back to around that time, we’d just had jonh’s force ghosts scene released. I think that was a really crucial edit for this community, because it gave a lot of us the catharsis we wanted for that key moment, and you could feel the shift back to hope that the movie was salvageable via an edit, which redoubled peoples’ commitment.

There were a few more radical ideas back then which ultimately didn’t lift off - things like changing some of the planets to known ones from the rest of the saga, or making Rey’s force lightning gold. I’m sure there’s still room for them in other edits, but like TFA Restructured and TLJ Legendary, I think this edit has threaded the right balance in terms of adherence to canon. The big thing the survey missed (discussion had only just started on the idea at the time) was making the Skywalker saber cracked like Kylo’s, which I’m so glad got pulled off in the end.

Anyway, I found it interesting to think back to the time when TROS was still fresh and this edit was in the very early stages. It’s amazing how far it’s come and a lasting testament to all of the contributors here for their skill and persistence.

Oop, just caught a little audio glitch in s01e08 - Children of Night. I’ll fix and reupload that soon.

Edit: It’s fixed and rendered, and uploading now. Should be about two and a half hours from now until it’s uploaded.

Edit 2: Uploaded now as v2.1.

For me it’s TFA Starlight, TLJ Rekindled, and TROS Ascendant. All three were finalised after TROS’ release and have similar goals - of making the sequel trilogy as consistent as possible, and strengthening the core character arcs. The changes in TFA Starlight and TLJ Rekindled are respectful to the canon, whilst making changes for the better.

Oh hell yes! I’m really pleased to see this here! If you can share your links please, I’d love to watch these and feed back as you release them.

I’ll definitely be watching this from the perspective of the episode 1 and 2 content being ‘Clone Wars season zero’, to see how well that works.

Question: How are you cutting the end of ROTS? Would the Siege of Mandalore arc naturally interlace with it?

regularjoe said:

How about a community effort to distribute this, I remember last time drive limits were impacting people’s ability to access this.

Anyone should be able to get a Google drive and host. I propose that anyone who downloads it then reuploads it to a Google drive and makes clear in this thread that they can be PM’d for a link.

(RE)RELEASED - S01E08 - Children of Night (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our eighth episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising the entire original Nightsisters arc.
• Running 52 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.

The Nightsisters arc is a popular arc with good reason. It focuses on the internal politicking of the Sith and the Nightsister/Nightbrother darkside cults, has some great development for Ventress and a little development for Dooku, and gets the ball rolling on the Maul plotline which is very important to the show. I placed it here in the chronology because the Maul(/Mandalore) content is so good that I wanted to make it the ‘spine’ of my show, an ever-present threat that throws the idea of the Clone Wars just being a predictable two-party conflict into doubt, that adds threats and characters that we don’t know the outcome of even if we’ve seen the movies.

Ahsoka is absent from this episode, but since our last episode put her on archive guard duty, that’s explained well enough (well, better than the original episode, which didn’t explain it at all, at least).

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘Children of Night’ to highlight the various self-styled ‘children’ of Dathomir - Ventress, Talzin, the nightsisters and nightbrothers, and Savage.
• The opening text lightly reminds the viewer of the current state of the war: After all of the opening strikes against key targets, both sides have now bedded in for what they realise is going to be a longer war than they anticipated. The Jedi are meditating on the future, which I think works thematically, but I also use here to lightly explain why Anakin and Obi-Wan are in their Jedi robes rather than their more military garb (a costume change which originally happened for season three of the original show).
• It’s pretty much the entire trilogy of episodes stitched together, with only minor trims, other than-
• I removed the scene of the Nightsisters trying to assassinate Dooku directly using invisibility spells. It was a fun combat, but it returned us to the status quo, and I’m not a huge fan of adding too many new force abilities. Instead now Talzin’s plan is always the subterfuge of sending Savage as a sleeper agent.
• I trimmed the recruitment of Savage heavily. Now, there’s only one trial, and Ventress only selects Savage and Feral to fight - implicitly because she can see that Savage is the strongest, and she needs to use his feelings for Feral to break him.
• I cut the references to Iridonian versus Dathomiri Zabrak. It’s not something relevant to the plot, and it’s the kind of thing that, if you cared about it, you’d have already looked it up on Wookieepedia.
• I also cut the scene of Anakin and Obi-Wan at the Nightbrother village. All they learn there is to visit Talzin, which they should have done first anyway (other dialogue refers to Dathomir as the ‘planet of the witches’, and Obi-Wan later shows he knows that ‘women are dominant on this planet’), and the Nightbrothers aren’t as important to this story or to the Clone Wars as a whole, beyond Savage. Instead they just fly directly to the witches.

Onward now to the Holocron arc, the two parter which concludes this season, which shouldn’t take too long to polish.

Nearly done with Nightsisters too. I improved a lot of the audio transitions, and trimmed a couple of scenes. Hopefully get through that tomorrow. It feels right as the last episode before the two-part season finale, following the tradition of having a big escalation before the end of a season. And it gives a nice deep dive into the two least explored major villains of our show, so I think this whole season is going to feel very “right” when it’s done.

(RE)RELEASED - S01E07 - The Death Watch (V2.1)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our seventh episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising the episode originally called Duchess of Mandalore, BUT notably NOT any content from the episode originally called Death Watch. (I’ve essentially flipped the two names for my edit.)
• Running 24 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 the episode originally called Duchess of Mandalore, where the Duchess is attacked on Coruscant by the Death Watch following her escape from them earlier in the season. It features a good amount of politics between the Republic, Separatists, and Mandalore’s two main factions, giving us some good interesting ‘third party’ content early in the series, as well as that valuable Mandalorian focus which I’m keeping present throughout my show.

The content from this episode is largely untouched. It’s split from the prior two episodes in the original ‘Mandalore trilogy’ mainly because they didn’t need to be back-to-back, and this way, we get two bites of the Mandalore apple this season, helping reinforce that Mandalore is going to be a running plot. We also get our first sight in TCW:R of Padmé without it being boring, and our first sight of Coruscant’s underworld. We also get some scenes set in locations originally designed by Ralph McQuarrie during the production of the Original Trilogy, back when Coruscant was known as ‘Had Abaddon’.

I’ve added a couple of scenes originally used during the holocron heist arc, where Ahsoka is disciplined by the Jedi council (originally for insubordination at Felucia, now in context for insubordination in our previous Ryloth episode). The Jedi assign her guard duty of the Jedi archives, which effectively explains to my audience why she’s not present in this or the next episode (Nightsisters arc), until she rejoins the plot during the following episode (Holocron Heist arc).

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘The Death Watch’, to highlight the return of a key reoccuring threat in TCW. And it sounds cool.
• Used the opening text to remind the audience of the situation with Mandalore. I also mention here that, after the initial strikes of the war, the Republic has now realised that this could be a longer and more complex war than they intended, so they’ve summoned the Jedi back to Coruscant to scry into the future. I’m doing this partly because it’s an interesting angle but partly to explain why the Jedi wear their season three robes in my next episode (Nightsisters), where I’ll open with mention of their (scrying) meditations being interrupted, which is probably about as well as you could explain that temporary costume change, given that I think it’s the greater good to place that episode as early as I can.
• Opened the episode on Ahsoka being disciplined for her disobedience at Ryloth, before transitioning into this episode’s original opening.
• Moved one scene of Dooku telling Sidious that their plan is going fine earlier, to where their plan WAS going fine, as opposed to the original placement where it came after showing their plan starting to fall apart. This placement also helps clarify why Republic overreach on Mandalore would be a bad idea.
• Removed the idea that Satine has to hand herself in as ‘a distraction’ so Obi-Wan can sneak into the senate to deliver the true recording to Padmé. That was always a slightly odd/risky idea, and I didn’t like the implication that the Republic senate building’s security was so lax, so now Satine suggests Obi-Wan gives it to Padmé (which he should be able to freely do without scrutiny as he’s a senior Jedi) and she implicitly just stays in hiding while he does that.

Onwards now to Nightsisters, which only requires basic polish, then the Holocron arc, where I’ll remove the scene I’ve moved to this episode.

Thanks for the feedback, djonesed. I’d agree with your critique of both episodes, but I think I’ve reached the limits of my options here (unless anyone else has an amazing idea). I think they’re my weakest two episodes, but they’re good enough, and at least (in my opinion) far better than what we were originally presented with.

I will rethink the Malevolence fades though, just in case.

I know that using opening text isn’t ideal, but as you’ve acknowledged, I think it’s the best option I have available for keeping the quality of the actual body of the episodes high.

Keep it coming!

Loud and clear, folks.

Technically, both are possible. The dialogue in the discipline scene will definitely work for both versions, and I’ve checked that I could remove the scenes from Holocron and still have it paced correctly.

Opinion time - what do you guys prefer?

1. Ahsoka DOESN’T get punished for her disobedience at Ryloth (s01e06), but remains offscreen until the Holocron Crisis arc (starting s01e09), where she is disobedient at Felucia, then gets assigned the guard duty that pays off in that episode.

-OR-

2. Ahsoka does get punished for her disobedience at Ryloth via a new scene added at the start of the following episode (s01e07), being assigned guard duty that’ll explain her absence until the Holocron Crisis (s01e09), in which it’ll be resolved. In this version, we won’t include the Felucia scenes.

Ohhhhh yeeeeeah!

(RE)RELEASED (WITH A NEW STORY) - S01E06 - Resistance on Ryloth (V2.0)

• RELEASE VERSION, now brought up to my more polished 2.0 standard.
• Our sixth episode of the first season (Be aware I’ve shifted the first season around a little.)
• Comprising content from the episodes Storm Over Ryloth and Liberty on Ryloth. (IMPORTANT: The prior v1.x version of this covered Supply Lines and Storm Over Ryloth, but not Liberty on Ryloth, so this story is all-new. Worth a look if you’ve seen this one before.)
• Running 38 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 my version of the Ryloth story, originally told over five parts. I use only Storm and Liberty here because it focuses on the core plotlines of this arc, which also happen to be the strongest - Ahsoka’s first command, Anakin and Ahsoka breaking the blockade, Mace Windu meeting with Cham Syndulla, and the politics between Cham and Orn Free Taa. Because these episodes share some characters (notably Mace and Wat Tambor), they tied together nicely. I’ve placed it here for character balance in the season, and as a light follow-up from the events of my episode Assassin, which features Neimoidian subterfuge.

I’ve changed this since the original because the original jumped around between too many plots, since Supply Lines had two on top of the core from Storm. The Cham content in Supply Lines wasn’t as valuable as that from Liberty, and as much as I like Bail, his plotline was too disconnected from the main plot and too heavy on Toydarians and Jar Jar. I didn’t use Ambush here because it’s a very weak episode (other than that one scene with Yoda and the clones in the cave), and I didn’t use Innocents of Ryloth because it was a fairly middling and quite unimportant episode (even accounting for Waxer, Boil, and Numa, which is a cute plotline but hardly core.)

As it stands now, this episode tightly tells the story of both the ground and air attempts to liberate Ryloth from Separatist occupation, highlighting Ahsoka via her first failiure and the lessons she learns from it, and Cham Syndulla and Ryloth’s politics which’ll pay off more in Bad Batch and Rebels. Pleasantly, the villains in this one are quite competent, so there’s genuine threat.

Noteworthy changes:

• The episode is titled ‘Resistance on Ryloth’, for the popularity of Ryloth in Star Wars fandom, and to highlight the Cham Syndulla angle.
• The opening crawl establishes that the swift attack on Ryloth is a result of the Republic’s distraction at Kamino (as seen in my prior s01e05), and references Ryloth’s stolen military data (as hinted at in my opening for my s01e04 which featured Nute Gunray’s liberation by the Separatists).
• The opening crawl also establishes that only Mace Windu has made it to the surface, but that Anakin and Ahsoka are leading the counterattack on the blockade. The blockade is now supplying the bombers in what is now almost exclusively a firebombing campaign, explaining the relative lack of ground forces on the planet and adding to the blockade’s importance.
• I intercut between both Storm and Liberty, having both stories progress in parallel, with amended dialogue to allow both stories to reference each other.
• I used almost all of Storm, though I trimmed the start of Liberty where Mace has led his forces through a really exposed pass, and removed all references to the force bridge, which I didn’t want highlighted. This required a little restructuring to the final assault, though it still matches the music nicely. I also cut a few of Liberty’s scenes together, making Wat more overtly disobedient (mainly for expedience).
• The stories conclude with Anakin and Ahsoka breaking the blockade, then Dooku’s final attempt to bomb Mace and his forces during the assault on the capital, before Anakin and Ahsoka arrive from the skies to take out the bombers and save Mace and the Twi’leks, bringing both stories neatly together.
• I shifted and colour-corrected the earlier scenes of Anakin and Ahsoka shooting down bombers into the final sequence, to give it a bit more punch, and to remove them from the earlier scene to avoid a continuity error.
• I made a few trims to droid banter but they’re largely inoffensive here. I kept the reference to droids no longer requiring a control ship, which is useful exposition, but it’s also one of the show’s better jokes.

This episode (re)release took me a while as it was a brand-new episode created from scratch, but there’s nothing radical needed for the next few episodes so I hope to get them upgraded to 2.0 standard more quickly.

Another great and very competent edit. Again, the narrative completely works, and it’s a really neat movie-length telling of the core story of the second season.

Like the first, I think you could have had slightly fewer wipes, but that’s barely an issue. Though one thing I noticed with both this and the first one was that when you cut from the static starfield (that hosts the opening crawl) down to the pan down to the initial action, it’s almost like the blacks become a little grey? Hard to describe, but there’s something just a little jarring with that transition, and I think it’s to do with black levels.

Really enjoyed this. I could see the huge amount of work you put into the restructuring to make the narrative seamless, and I appreciated your moving of lines from cut content to keep their value in this movie. Excellent work.

Only nitpick would be the transitions- I didn’t feel like any were necessary, most notably that final iris wipe after Gideon’s darksaber reveal, which came fast after another transition.

I wish! But my other option worked just fine, at least. It’s all coming together nicely though. I’ve got the structure and audio of the ending all working, I’m just working on some colour matching to try to extend Anakin and Ahsoka taking out the bombers now, then I should be able to wrap it all up and render it. Not long now!

Edit: Watched through my workprint and I’m really happy with the structure. I’m going to remove a few transitions and smooth over the audio in a few places but I think this episode comes together well.

Bummer indeed! Either way, I’ve made a lot of progress on this episode now. Given the start a little longer to breathe, and I’ve done all of the intercutting through the plot of Supply Lines, now with just the last few scenes of Liberty on Ryloth to go. Feels good though, look forward to getting this one out to y’all.

Ah shit! Shit, shit shit! I can’t use the scene that way because it introduces a continuity error. At the time I want to place this, in the space part of the story Yularen is injured in bed, so he can’t appear here. And since he’s in the middle of so many shots, I can’t crop around him. Balls. I can’t trim his injury either, as Ahsoka’s plot depends on it and he wears a bandage in the space scenes.

OK, well that’s great to hear guys, thanks. I’ll definitely add the radio SFX to the first shot of Anakin talking from Mace’s perspective, and tidy up the new audio a little more.

I’ll also see about my options regarding that shot of Yoda turning, which allows me to change Yularen’s voice line. Though with this scene coming later I think the original lines about no reinforcements coming might make sense in context.

I’ll probably follow up this scene with Mace stepping out at the site of the massacre - kicking off his plotline - meaning that those intro scenes I posted above will be more focused on Wat Tambor’s strategising and the space front, so a bit less of an exposition dump across lots of locations.

And Burbin, I agree. I’ve now watched through this pairing a few times as I’ve been working out the right pacing of the scenes, and it definitely feels like it’ll work well as a single story - better than the original (split episodes) and my first attempt (with Supply Lines), I think. Always lovely when a new episode comes together like this.