EddieDean

Updated! There’re more ideas here than I was expecting!

CaptainFaraday said:

I agree with Jar, having a young Ian McDiarmid as Rey’s father would be a small change that would make a big improvement.

Also, just for fun, I’d love to see a) young Alex Guinness and young Sebastian Shaw deepfaked into the PT, and b) James Arnold Taylor and Matt Lanter deepfaked into the PT.

…Well, I did say that the OP would be free of judgment 😛

WitchDR said:

DylanB18 said:

EddieDean said:

• Return of the Jedi:
  • Sebastian Shaw unmasked Vader into Hayden Christensen

This deepfake is on youtube: https://youtu.be/cbrzXdiuxi4 , i think it looks awsome!
i also like the fact that they changed the voice to match haydens.

Stuff like this is truly exciting! I know to some this stuff is blasphemous, but I can’t wait to these truly implemented in a believable way. Hayden as Vader and Ewen as Alec in the OT is just perfect.

I agree. It’s definitely pretty blasphemous, but I can absolutely see the appeal for continuity in a cohesive single world. I’ll keep the OP as opinion-neutral, but I figured it would be useful to aggregate resources and discussion.

DylanB18 said:

EddieDean said:

• Return of the Jedi:
  • Sebastian Shaw unmasked Vader into Hayden Christensen

This deepfake is on youtube: https://youtu.be/cbrzXdiuxi4 , i think it looks awsome!
i also like the fact that they changed the voice to match haydens.

Nice one, added into OP.

I’ve spotted a few instances of discussion about deepfake ideas, and now that it’s becoming increasingly viable, I thought I might set up an index thread to aggregate all of those ideas, and link to their sources and implementations where possible.

I’m not listing these with any bias or preference, I’ll put all ideas here in the OP, leaving discussion of whether we should for the thread itself. It’s OK for these ideas to be a bit extreme here, I reckon, because the tech will only get better and then we’ll blink and find these viable. I’ll also include things which aren’t technically deepfakes but which serve a similar purpose, like Snoke tanks into Palpatine tanks.

Thanks also to oojason for linking me to some core resources for making this initial list easier. Feel free to chuck some more ideas out there and I’ll add them into this list.

• Prequel Trilogy:
  • Hayden Christensen Anakin into young Sebastian Shaw
  • Ewan McGregor into young Alec Guinness
• The Phantom Menace:
  • Fake Windu into real Windu at the end
• Revenge of the Sith:
  • Tarkin CG version into tighter deepfake Tarkin
• Solo:
  • Alden Eherenreich Han into Harrison Ford Han (demo by shamook)
  • Donald Glover Lando into Billy Dee Williams Lando
• Rogue One:
  • Tarkin CG version into tighter deepfake Tarkin (demo by shamook)
  • Leia CG version into tighter deepfake Leia (demo by derpfakes)
• Original Trilogy:
  • Alec Guinness Obi-Wan into Ewan McGregor Obi-Wan
    • (demo by shamook)
    • (version trained on Ewan’s appearance in the Obi-Wan show?)
• A New Hope:
  • Owen and Beru into their Prequel/Kenobi-series versions
  • Jabba into improved/ROTJ-style Jabba
  • New Scene: Vader reports Obi-Wan’s death to Palpatine (demo by Cinefy)
• Empire Strikes Back:
  • Luke from before the Wampa attack into Luke without scar
  • ESB Palpatine into ROTJ Palpatine
• Return of the Jedi:
  • The bearded Endor rebel into aged Temuera Morrison’s captain Rex
  • Sebastian Shaw unmasked Vader into Hayden Christensen (face and voice switch by Crimson Maul)
  • Hayden Christensen force ghost into an more mature/ROTS style appearance
• Mandalorian:
  • Luke CG version into tighter Luke deefake
    • (original version replacement by shamook)
    • (more complex version (over a new actor) by corridor digital)
• Sequel Trilogy:
  • Background characters into characters who appear later in the trilogy, especially Allegiant General Pryde
• The Force Awakens:
  • TFA Snoke into TLJ Snoke
• The Last Jedi:
  • TLJ puppet Yoda into OT puppet Yoda (test by Ebkas)
• Rise of Skywalker:
  • Snoke Tanks into Palpatine Tanks (full renders by Poppasketti)
  • Rey’s dad replaced by young Iain McDiarmind (demo by Fixing Disney Star Wars)
  • Luke and Leia flashback CG versions into tighter deepfakes

Some good ideas for potential audio sources here thanks to thebluefrog.

Artan42 said:

Or even better, replace Shaw and RotS Christiansen in RotJ with an aged up Christiansen. Shaw looks and sounds nothing like Anakin at all and should be removed from every version of the films, including the unmasking and especially in RoS:A.

I’ve always thought this was the right answer.

vranir said:

I just started watching these (Thanks for the access) and am trying to take notes so that I can provide detailed feedback. What you have done is refreshing and makes this series much more watchable for me. Still, I think there are things that I would try to improve if I were the editor, and I’d like to provide my feedback in case you find any of it helpful.

Ohhhhh hell yeah! I love big detailed feedback like this. What a thing to wake up to. Thanks so much, buddy! Keep it coming!

Episodes 01x00 through 01x04:

01x00 - Dark Force Rising

• While you did a good job with the material, I still find the differences in art style and characterization between this and the rest of the series distracting. It’s not bad by any means, but this episode is not going to be part of my normal rewatch, especially since 01x01 does such a good job of introducing the characters etc.

I totally agree that it’s a bit too inconsistent with TCW’s tone and style. You’re welcome to skip it - and I do too. It’s mainly here so that people who enjoy that Tartakovsky flavour can do so with a slightly more TCW-appropriate plot - which mainly serves to fill in a couple of gaps, like the first Ventress meeting.

01x01 - The New Padawan

• I love the intro with finding Maul, but there is no relevance for this in the episode, or in the next few episodes. Is this really the best place for that cold open?

It’s a valid observation. This cold open doesn’t get payoff until mid season 3. The reason I first thought to include it was because it kind of acts like a promise to the audience - “Maul. Darksaber. Mandalorians. Coming soon.” - and since those elements are the ‘backbone’ of TCW:R (and I pull those plot elements forward to start a lot earlier) I thought it might be good to get them established up front. I’m trying to make this show more of a serialised drama than the anthology it began as. I could be convinced to remove it if enough people think it does more harm than good.

• Ventress talks with ObiWan as if she is an old girlfriend, but we get no context for that here. We also hear her talk about meeting them again, but outside of her mysterious fight with Anakin in episode 0, there is no known background for this ongoing interaction. She also mentions that ObiWan and the Republic were betrayed (as explanation for how the Separatists got there), but since that isn’t included in your series, is it really good to bring up? (Addendum: It becomes clear that Ventress talks with everyone as if she is an old girlfriend, but that’s not immediately clear in this encounter.)

Cutting all of the above dialogue may leave the fight too short, but is this scene even needed in this episode? You could start with ObiWan looking through the binoculars at the marching droids, or even with the battle in the street where Anakin jumps onto the turret droid. This would require rewriting the crawl to remove Ventress and dropping us directly into the action as Star Wars often does, with ObiWan and Anakin trying to help the people stationed on the planet hold off a Separatist army until reinforcements arrive.

I’m hoping you’ve seen v1.8 of this episode, which removes the Republic mole plot element, and has Ventress refer to her earlier meeting with Anakin. However you cut it, the encounter as depicted in this episode is definitely not their first - this is one of the reasons I opted to roll in the Tartakovsky episode, to depict their true first encounter. That said, I don’t mind people appearing for the first time on screen and saying “We’ve met before”. We don’t always need to see the context, for it to still be a coherent story, I believe.

Ventress is naturally sassy, as you’ve noticed, and Obi-Wan is naturally sassy too, so I think it’s OK to pick up on a bit of ambiguity in their relationship. In my mind this is THEIR first meeting, but that’s just how they both behave. I don’t think I’d want to cut any of this though, because even though it doesn’t add much to the plot, it’s fun characterisation which we’ll revisit more this season.

• It is confusing trying to figure out who is holding what position on or around the planet. There are droids everywhere and Ventress is there, but the Separatists land/invade at the end of the Ventress fight. There are Republic ships in orbit, and seemingly ObiWan and Anakin recently arrived, but then there are no Republic ships and communication has been cut off until the one Venator arrives with Asoka.

By removing the initial space scene with the bombers and the Ventress part with the Seperatists landing, the situation could be simplified. We would see a planet locked in kind of a stalemate, hear that communications have been blocked (ObiWan hasn’t been able to contact the admiral), and see that a single Venator has been ambushed trying to bring supplies and needs to get reinforcements. ObiWan says that their previous support ships (likely the ones that brought them there) were all destroyed at some prior point.

To my mind it works as follows: The Separatists have established an initial base on the planet and set up a space blockade. The Republic have a small staging area established somewhere else on the planet. The Republic can’t break the blockade, but they’ve been able to land Obi-Wan and Anakin (far from the action, hence the bikes). Anticipating Jedi involvement, Ventress has blocked Republic comms and allowed the Jedi to identify her ‘base’, deliberately to draw them to a specific location. Having the Jedi wrapped up trying to find her means they’ve been unable to investigate/mess up the Separatists’ landing of a much larger true invasion force.

I think that’s the original intention anyway, and I don’t think it’s contradicted. You could possibly streamline some of this, and while this episode certainly is one of the least good ones in TCW:R, I think it’s at least fairly well balanced and well paced. That said, I’d absolutely be open to suggestions here using the collateral available in the original episodes.

• The initial scene with the admiral, Yoda, and Windu is unecessary. The same information is communicated by ObiWan, the crew of the Venator, and Yoda when Asoka arrives.

Sure, it is kind of redundant. But it serves to allow the two scenes around it to breathe - otherwise you’d be cutting right from the prep for the attack directly into it, which would be a bit jarring. But it is harmless. And it reminds us that the Jedi are operating as part of the military, and that there’s an orbital component to what’s currently happening.

• Bail Organa only appears in two small scenes (one at the beginning and one at the end). Neither communicates much other than the easter egg of his presence. Should he really be there at all, or does it all flow better without him?

Again, valid, and if there’s enough arguments against Bail in this episode I’d cut him out entirely. He’s here for a few reasons, none of which are major: (1) Bail’s good! It’s nice to see him. (2) It gives us a BIT of jeopardy early on. (3) It gives the Anakin/Ahsoka relationship a BIT of reward later. But I agree, there’s not much to him there.

• I’ve watched several edits of the Prequel Trilogy and one of my favorite “improvements” is the removal of dialogue by the battle droids. The idea is that they are all networked and therefore only need to speak when communicating to other characters. It makes them less goofy and more threatening. I don’t know if you’d want to do a similar thing in your edits, but it may be worth considering. (Addendum: This could be much trickier in later episodes like The 501st.)

Nice, but having the battle droids speak is something that I think now needs to remain as part of the fabric of Star Wars canon, since it appears in many media now. So I don’t think we can dam this particular flow. They do also have some important lines later which give context to what they’re doing. What I have done throughout is try to minimise their annoying lines as much as possible.

• Not knowing the original version very well, I don’t know if anything worthy can be added. If all of the above is cut, it will likely take the current 28-minute episode down below 20 minutes. Is that too short, especially for what is essentially the opening of the series? I’m not sure. The episode does an excellent job of introducing Asoka, ObiWan, and Anakin, along with a lot of the Separatist droid models. It’s a much stronger opening than episode 0 or the vanilla episodes 1 and 2.

I’d certainly rather remove than add, since really ideally we just whip through this episode as quickly as possible. Episodes can run to any length, really, so long as they work, though once I get lower than 20 or higher than 50 is where I’d think about potential alternative presentations. I am open to changes to this episode which focus it more tightly, but I’d need particularly compelling arguments for the trims, I think.

01x02 - The Death Watch

• The number of quick shots in the opening strikes me as a bit overdone. We don’t need to see ObiWan in the cockpit, because we know it’s him from the crawl and from when he climbs out. I’m not sure we even need to see him undock from the hyperspace ring. The approach to the city is a nice introduction and reminds me of the opening to Attack of the Clones, but I could also imagine the episode starting with him landing and climbing out.

Interestingly, it did originally begin with him just climbing out, but I was convinced by others here to add more establishing shots. I will look into trimming them down though, to find more of a middle ground.

• There’s probably nothing that you could do about it (the available footage is the available footage), but it seems very foolish for ObiWan to call the duchess to help him check out what he knows is a Death Watch hideout when he knows that they are after her.

So! This is my most complex single scene edit, and I think it’s ended up about as good as it can now. Originally, Obi-Wan got caught in the facility by Death Watch and put on a Bond villain’s CONVEYOR BELT OF DEATH, which he called Satine (again knowingly into danger) to rescue him from. It was extremely goofy and I felt it really cheapened the Mandalorians in their very first appearance in this show. No good. She needs to end up there because that’s where the plot continues from, but with this restructure I made it so that at least he’s drawing her to what he believes is an empty facility. Best I can do here, I think. If it helps, bear in mind they spent a year together on the run so he likely trusts her ability to handle herself to a degree.

• Again, there’s probably not much you can do, but it would be nice if Anakin said something about where Asoka is when he shows up for escort duty. Maybe the crawl could be edited to reflect not only that he is taking her somewhere else, but specifically that he is dropping her off somewhere (maybe to visit family or something, if that makes sense in the context of the larger series).

It’s an option. Ultimately Ahsoka appears in about 70% of our episodes, but there are certainly still some where she doesn’t. The audience needs to get used to that, though I have attempted to keep her in at least every other episode, so that she remains the main character of this show. This being the first episode where she doesn’t appear, I wanted the crawl to explain that she wasn’t appearing whilst also not making too much of a point of it, so the audience wouldn’t expect to follow her.

That said, there’s a later episode I’m not using where Ahsoka’s in the Jedi temple studying and moaning to Anakin about wanting to join him on a mission. So I’ll look into including that, so we at least get her in the one scene and it explains visually to the audience what she’s up to where we don’t see her. Thanks for the nudge!

• The “stand by for lightspeed” mini-scene seems almost unnecessary and distracting from the scenes around it. I get that it shows why the view outside the windows changes, but I’m not sure it needs to be spelled out like that. You could replace it with the slightly-later establishing shot of the ship in hyperspace and remove that, making the Anakin ObiWan conversation a longer less-broken sequence.

This one’s actually necessary deliberately to break the Anakin-Obi-Wan conversation, because it has a really awkward break in it which this scene needed to mask. The lightspeed scene was used here just because it was, if I remember right, the only viable option.

• This is a great episode. I have the impression that there was a lot more stuff with the assassin spiders in the lower decks - the way you handled them seemed just right to me. Everything in this episode blended well together. It had a steady pace and made me care about the characters and world.

Excellent! Yeah, there were about ten minutes of the spiders in the lower decks, being investigated, killing people, then coming up to the higher decks etc, but ultimately none of it served our core plot.

01x03 - Malevolence

• The crawl tells us about the big bad battleship Malevolence, but what if it was a mystery to the audience? It seems to be a mystery to the characters. They could know that Grievous is behind the mysterious attacks that are leaving behind no survivors.

In the original presentation Malevolence was a mystery for the first episode. However, in my presentation I merged the first two episodes so that there’s the time pressure of the Malevolence specifically hunting down medical stations - because it’s both a good tactical move for Grievous and extremely sinister, so it gave him a lot more menace than his usual goofiness. That required the change so that the ship was now known.

• I’m not sure about Grievous’ line about concern for troops being a weakness to exploit, because I’m not seeing how that’s being exploited at all in this episode, particularly in relation to the opening battle.

I can’t quite remember the justification here, but I think it was something along the lines of the fact that they were targeting medical stations was forcing the Republic to need to react to defend them (even though they’re noncombatants), drawing them away from other military priorities.

• I’m not sure that the initial scene on the medical station is necessary. It confirms that the threat is a warship (reduces the mystery and suggests that they know for a fact that it is coming - how?). The danger to the station is logically deduced later by Anakin, so this scene might be able to be skipped without losing anything.

I’ll take a look at this, thanks! It may be that it was just to put a human face on the threat, perhaps.

• It seems to me that there are too many short scenes in the escape pod. Maybe the first one could be joined into the end of the opening battle to increase plot cohesion. Maybe this could happen right after Grievous says to destroy the escape pods.

I’ll look at this one too.

• The first scene with the Malevolent in hyperspace is probably not necessary. It also contributes to the idea that Grievous doesn’t know exactly what he and his ship are doing.

Likewise I’ll check this one. If I remember right, the battle droid gives a bit of context for their intentions here.

• It’s strange that ObiWan contacts Anakin via holo after telling Yoda and Windu that he’s been in contact with Anakin. Is the ObiWan Anakin scene really needed? If cut, you would still have searching and the scene with Yoda and Windu, but the next time you cut to the shuttle, R2 would find the signal.

I’ll take a look at this too!

• When Anakin is talking near the Y-Wings he surmises the next target of the Malevolent. That would then make sense as the setup for the evacuations. If you cut the initial scene on the station and move the second one, where they discuss evacuation progress to sometime soon after this scene, the plot will make more sense. Note that the transition from the Y-Wing conversation directly to the Malevolent in hyperspace is excellent - don’t change that. It will be even better if we lose that earlier shot of the ship in hyperspace.

I think because I wanted to imply that Grievous is targeting multiple medical stations in that sector, and it’s just his path/next target which Anakin works out. This way, I can set up the threat much earlier, which I wanted to do to have it hanging over the plot and add a time pressure element to Ahsoka’s hunt for Plo.

• Why does Grievous know that Skywalker is leading the fighters? Why does he care? I suggest trimming his battle lines/scenes to eliminate the Skywalker references.

Maybe because Anakin’s just that competent? Or his ship is recognisable? I’m not sure. I’ll check this though, and trim as you suggest if it doesn’t quite work.

• Grievous says “impossible” twice, almost as if he doesn’t anticipate things going wrong ever. Since he clearly has an escape plan for himself, perhaps consider cutting the number of times he reacts with surprise to the battle going badly. Instead, keep him angry but deliberate in responding to the situation as it develops.

This is a really good shout. It makes him cartoonish, which I don’t like.

01x04 - The 501st Legion

• While I really like most of your crawls, this one gives a lot of information that is later supplied contextually. It’s good to introduce the idea of the cloning facilities and Grievous being hunted, but the part about the trainees is hit pretty hard and explained thoroughly right after this. The sentence about Captain Rex supporting Anakin but also inspecting facilities is a bit strange. Maybe change it to something like “Meanwhile, CAPTAIN REX, who normally supports Anakin and the 501st Legion, has been given a special assignment to inspect the local clone outposts, in order to prepare them for possible Separatist attack.”

I’ll revisit this. I needed to hint that failiure equals shittier jobs because originally they succeed, and I’ve changed this so they fail to better give the whole arc a three-act structure. I’ll revisit the whole though. I don’t have a big problem with Rex on inspection, because you can assume that even active assignment contains some administrative duties unless directly in combat.

• I’m not sure that you need as many scenes about the trainees at the beginning. They seem a bit repetitive, especially with the one bounty hunter/trainer trash-talking 99. At the same time, I’m not sure quite what to trim without losing too much.

I’d need a particularly tangible idea here, I think. Back when I was reordering this episode to make it work as their failiure rather than their success, I mulled over each scene in isolation and ended up on this structure. We tried a few versions of this in the thread and this was where we ended up, though I don’t now remember the fine detail of this decision. Still, I’m open to suggestions!

• Though not by your choice, there remains a lot of battle droid oddness in this episode. The droids communicate a lot with each other verbally and are unable to pick up on things going on around them, like when the clones are trying to pass for a droid at the door to the facility. It may not be possible to make the battle droids fully appear an efficient and lethal force, but you may wish to make adjustments that direction. Again, I’ve seen Prequel edits where they eliminate the droid chatter and imply that they are all networked - it helps.

Yeah. The commando droids are set up as particularly tactically competent, but then immediately duped in the same episode. This plotline also depends on the “roger roger” joke I’ve never been a fan of. But unfortunately I don’t think there’s a good way around this.

• When Ventress meets Anakin in the DNA room, we again get the feeling that it isn’t the first time. Most of their interaction can go either way, but his line “without saying hello” directly implies that they know each other. If we accept episode 0 and maintain her presence in episode 1, that works. If you skip 0 and remove her scene from 1, this line also needs to be trimmed.

I personally think that this episode can serve as a good introduction for Ventress. When she first appears, Grievous calls her “assassin,” and she says that she was given orders from Dooku. This is pretty much everything that has been established in her prior appearances (besides claiming to be a Sith). If this is the first time we see her, we learn what need to know, and she gets to do something integral to what is going on.

This bears consideration. I’ll review this interaction with that in mind and see how it works.

• Why would Grievous know ObiWan by name? This again implies a prior interaction that was never shown. It wouldn’t be hard to trim that out of the scenes, making ObiWan (to Grievous) just some random Jedi that happens to be on Kamino. I like that the first time we see Grievous fight (if you don’t count episode 0) is vs ObiWan, who will eventually kill him in a rematch.

I don’t think it requires a prior interaction - Obi-Wan’s a Jedi Master (making him a fairly prominent public figure?) and also a leading general (making him the kind of person that the Separatists would have extensive intel on, which Grievous would have studied). I think we can safely have him be recognisable by the opposing general.

This was some really, really great analysis, thanks! Please continue to tear apart the future episodes. I know when I respond to analysis like this it’s usually negative responses - either me not being able to make a change, or me arguing for a thought process which I subjectively think justifies preserving the current version - but please don’t be discouraged by that. Everything that’s presented to me I promise I’ll properly consider, including going back to review episodes where necessary. And if I seem to be hanging on to a poor decision, I can often be overwhelmed by compelling arguments and community consensus.

Please keep it coming!

That’s such a sensible approach, Rogue. This isn’t a huge criticism but the sequel trilogy did a lot to bring back the aesthetic, character tropes, and villains of the OT, but it didn’t do much to make their return impactful to the Galaxy at large. It’s still an emotionally resonant story for the featured characters, but there’s no reason it needs to be a galaxywide story this time.

I was thinking that if I did shift the Bad Batch episodes in that way, that I’d only do that if I could preserve those scenes with those three characters within TCW:R.

New Bad Batch is out, which is great. Let’s not chat plot right now because I’m sure many won’t have seen it, but I have some thoughts on formatting/presentation:

• First up was the new silver Lucasfilm logo, over silence. Great, as I’m already borrowing that from Mandalorian.
• Second was not only the silver-blue-red ‘Star Wars’ franchise logo, but it was actually a custom one featuring battle droids and other prequel-era elements! I’d love to swap this out and use it in TCW:R once I can get a good DVD ripped version (or if someone can rip it from Disney+). Even if it turns out that these are specific per show, it’d be best to use Bad Batch’s rather than Mandalorian’s.
• Third was not only the new Bad Batch logo, but they actually opened on the Clone Wars logo (in red) followed by a burn effect into the Bad Batch logo. They are really leaning into this being a sequel series. Nice! I’d be very suprised if they kept ‘burning off’ the Clone Wars logo for future episodes, though I guess we’ll see on Friday.
• Fourth was the episode title, in extremely simple red text on black. I wonder if they’ll keep that up too, but it was cool for TCW:R that its sequel series will also put the names front and center.
• Fifth was, suprisingly, the news reel! Same music and narration as ever. Again, I’d be interested to see if they preserve this for all episodes or just this transitional one. They’d done a very good job at recreating some shots from ROTS in the TCW/BB animation style. If this is indeed preserved, that poses an interesting conundrum - keep my opening text or return to TCW’s newsreel? I think, having now got so much value out of being able to edit my opening text, that I must really preserve it - though it’ll be a shame that I had to break what would have otherwise been nice connective tissue. Ultimately the flexibility that my own text affords me will likely give the most value, especially for my first couple of seasons which do the heavy lifting in terms of improving the worst episodes of TCW.
• Notably absent was the TCW ‘fortune cookie’, the little moral lesson text preceding original TCW episodes. It was a cute-ish idea, but I’m glad I dropped it and I’m glad to see that Bad Batch dropped it too.
• The end credits were simple blue-on-starfield, with no attempt to dress them up any further than that. I could choose to downgrade mine back into something less heavy, but I think I’ll retain my new standard of credits over concept art borrowed from Mandalorian. Where Bad Batch doesn’t need the extra polish, TCW still does, I think, to help allow moments to land and be reinforced, and to help sell the human labour of love that went into this.
• We end on a new Lucasfilm Animation logo, which I might also steal.

So, to summarise, I think I’ll steal the Bad Batch’s franchise logo and final Lucasfilm Animation logo, although I’d be curious to see if they preserve the TCW>BB burnoff logo and the newsreel intros.

I might also steal the TCW>BB burnoff logo for the actual Bad Batch episodes of TCW:R though! (If I don’t just turn those episodes into Bad Batch’s episode zero instead.)

OK, I really want to make that last idea work, because it’s way more emotional.

I want it to play out as:

• Dooku announces to the Republic: “Fuck you, and also Mina Bonteri is dead”
• Padmé and team desperately try to rally senators, to find Onaconda has been attacked
• Padmé goes wandering alone, to echoing voices in her head, something along the lines of:
  ** Onaconda: “I just want peace”
  ** Mina: “To peace.”
  ** Dooku: “Mina Bonteri is dead”
  ** Mina: “To peace.” (again)
  ** Padmé: “To hope.”
• Padmé gets jumped, but gets away. This is Dooku’s plan succeeding - she now can’t rally the senators and heads back to her apartments to recover.
• Whilst being tended to by Tecla, she really listens to a real citizen’s problems
• Padmé makes the speech - she didn’t need to nudge potential on-the-fence senators into supporting her since her impassioned speech created a groundswell of support
• Padmé’s team celebrate. I realised that in order to pay off my idea of going a bit emotionally deeper with this one, that Mina Bonteri deserves a bit of payoff at the end (which she never got in the original episode), so as they celebrate I’ll try to have the team toast Mina, something like- Bail: “To Senator Bonteri.” Padmé: “To Mina.”

This is going to take some time!

Right, I’ve got the first two thirds fully edited with transitions complete. The last third is a little trickier than expected while I play around with a few options for scenes which transition us from seeing Onaconda’s injury to Padmé being out alone to get jumped by the thugs. I want to get in something realistic - though I know Padmé’s a little careless with this sort of thing so I do have some leeway. Ideally I’ll be able to use the scene I’m working on now, taken from Senate Murders, where she and Bail and Mon Mothma discuss what was Onaconda’s murder but is now his assault (plus references to Mina’s murder) to make Padmé seem like she’s going to brashly start knocking on undecided people’s doors because she’s pissed, though I might have to settle for something more minor like her just checking in on Onaconda, or maybe even just leaving the senate building to go home (in which case the street where she’s jumped is just a far lower level of the senate block). Mainly I want to minimise the chance that someone would accuse Padmé or her retinue of outright stupidity. We’ll see where it ends up.

That said, I’ve spent my edit-brain for now, so I need to take a break, so I probably won’t get this done today. Not far now though!

Edit: Hm, I just had another idea. I could go straight from the news of Mina’s death and Onaconda showing he’s injured to Padmé wandering alone in the undercity. There I’d play some echoing audio of both Mina and Onaconda talking about their desire for peace, to show that it’s filled Padmé’s mind and she’s taken herself for an unsafe walk. I’ll give this one a try too.

Dammit, I really want to keep going, but I know I’ve spent my energy for today.

Thanks! I’m ultimately not going to be reframing Onaconda, but I’ve reordered some scenes and cooked up some dialogue to achieve the following:

• Padmé, Bail, and Mon Mothma are now more of a team. There’s a feeling that they’re competent strategists - deliberately drawing the Senate conversations into a particular direction so that essentially Bail and Mon Mothma set 'em up, so Padmé (the best speech maker) can knock 'em down. (I did cut a lot of good Bail stuff from the episode, so I’m glad I got to reemphasise him in this capacity.)
• The two thugs are now not mere thugs used for hassling senators, but assassins who specialise in killing them. What was dialogue where they talk about how many senators they’ve just intimidated is now them giving Dooku their senator-killing credentials because they expect to be asked to put a hit on her. But Dooku now references “my master’s plan” - which now refers to (1) the now-preceding conversation where Padmé spilt the beans to Palpatine, making Dooku’s use of the assassins an immediate reaction to this suprise threat, and (2) the fact that he CAN’T have them kill her, implicitly because Padmé is necessary to the corruption of Anakin to the sith. (Why Dooku would allude to this to some assassins is a little stretch, but I think it’s important for him to tell the audience, and the Sith in TCW do have a history of oversharing with their assassins, so I think it’s fine.) So now their plan is simply to harm Onaconda to draw Padmé out, and then to only injure Padmé enough for her to not be able to deliver her speech, which fails due to some lucky police presence.

Edit is coming along nicely, I’m really excited to share it!

I hope I can do them justice. Bear in mind this is mainly removal and reordering rather than addition, so there’s a limit to how much value I can add.

I’m not quite able to use that idea I mentioned above, since Onaconda accompanies Padmé to the talk with an on-the-fence Senator. (I’ll still be able to get some value out of reframing Onaconda though - and I can actually use more scenes from Senate Murders to put Padmé in danger and continue to highlight some more of Padmé’s opposition.) But this bit of work just now has helped me realise I can trim a lot more whilst keeping it focused.

I’ll be keeping the storyline centered on a single political issue (other than the attempt at peace via Mina Bonteri) - the Republic needing a loan to buy clones. I’m vastly reducing the way it was originally split into two parts and the volume of those two elements - firstly the deregulation of the banks, and secondly the loan against huge interest, because those just aren’t emotionally interesting. A lot of their context is still present, it’s just said the once instead of emphasised about three times each, and our main focus is “the clone loan is expensive and war is harmful to our people”.

I’m instead using scenes from Senate Murders to bookend things, because they set up Padmé’s support network, and now the whole episode becomes more of a study of the people around Padmé - both those who support her, and those who oppose her - so it essentially works as a study on the depths and complexities of the political arena, around Padmé in particular.

I’ve also changed the bad guys’ motivations - now, the Separatist-aligned Republic Senators plan the bomb plot, but after Padmé talks to Palpatine, Dooku quickly contacts the thugs to have them specifically target Padmé’s retinue. This way, the thugs’ relative incompetence is explained by the fact that this was a relatively spur-of-the-moment plan to take advantage of the chaos that their plan A was otherwise already going to cause, to specifically target Padmé now that she’s shown quite how competent a threat she is.

(I’m aware this is the third plan/essay I’ve written up on this episode! I had thought it’d be an easy one, but in the end, cutting three different-but-similar politics plots into one single narrative has been quite the challenge!)

The episode is fully planned now. I’m going to chill this evening, but I hope to crack the execution of it tomorrow.

Knight, if you’re up for a bit of homework, I’d be very interested in your review of my episode if it’s watched with the three original episodes which went into it freshly in mind. No obligation if that’s too much of an ask though!

Thanks buddy! I love to hear words like that, I like to share the process. It’s a shame this episode’s taken longer than expected, but I’m glad I paused - it means the end project will be that much better! I’m going to get to work on that idea now - though it’ll take a little while as I need to dig back through what I’ve removed in case I need to re-include it.

Ah, YES! I think I’ve cracked this politics episode.

I was having a bit of a problem with two Padmé-Bail conversations, trying to trim them down and combine their audio to streamline the plot a bit, but it was really hard to make that work with matching the lipsync whilst tying it to the geography of the two walking around a room together and keeping the coversation flowing properly. So I decided to take some time to mull this all over, and I think I’ve got the answer:

I realised that, since I’m massively minimising Onaconda in TCW:R, I could reframe him into some other role, in order to emphasise Padmé’s importance and have Dooku recognise her as a very legitimate threat.

Now, instead of being the senator for Rodia, Onaconda becomes Padmé’s liaison with her constituents. Dooku’s hiring of thugs to hassle senators now becomes a specific attack on Padmé’s support network to force her out in the open. They beat up Onaconda, meaning that Padmé now needs to directly spend time talking to her constituents, which lets the thugs catch up with her. I’ll preserve much more of the action scene now to emphasise the physical threat. We drop some of the complexities of the loan etc, and this way the focus is much more on Padmé’s competence as a humanising orator.

It’s definitely worth waiting to see how this particular comic story arc plays out before we assume anything, but it definitely seems to be the implication from this one.

That’s really great, I think that’s very effective at dealing with that one particular criticism.

This might be a little egotistical here, but I feel quite vindicated by seeing that the lengths of the first three episodes of The Bad Batch will be 75m, 31m, and 28m.

That’s all valid. And I certainly agree that in terms of the importance of what I’ve been saying specifically to Leia and Ben’s story, it’s fairly minor, because that plotline isn’t particularly well developed for Leia and Ben.

Well, after she says “I am Iron Man” you could have it so the energy from the infinity stones more obviously injures her too.

I respect that analysis, Faraday, though I’d challenge your final line there where I believe you’re saying you’d prefer fear not to be a motivating factor.

However, I think it’s important to preserve and permit fear (both of loss and of other natural fears), because I think the message that the movies are trying to convey is that it’s how we react to our fear that’s important.

Fear of loss, fear of harm, fear of death, etc - all of these things will exist within all beings forever, BUT we can still choose to act on our fears (and the emotions they generate) in a healthy, positive way.

The Jedi of the Republic feared loss so avoided attachments - but this came with its own cost. They raised Jedi only from a very young age so they could cut attachment out of the equation. Qui-Gon, we know, followed a slightly different Jedi path than the rest of the Council, and ultimately was the one who managed to get Anakin trained, even though he was officially too old. He knew there’d be attachments. That put the Jedi Order (and the Jedi that followed after the fall of the order) on the path which, though it included Anakin’s fall, ultimately led to a new type of Jedi - the Jedi of Rey’s generation. I think Lucasfilm are pushing this particular throughline.

And this is more speculative now, but perhaps that’s what the Chosen One prophecy is about. “Bringing balance to the force” was never about the quantity of Jedi and Sith institutions, nor the dogma of the lightside and the darkside, but about fixing the Jedi Order’s mistaken unhealthy approach to fear, turning force philosophy into a balanced viewpoint which permits fear but teaches healthy management of it. I think this is supported by the fact that the Sequels tried to lean into balance within both Rey and Kylo (as much as they didn’t do well putting that on screen), and ultimately Rey’s saber being a new colour rather than one of the usual binary options.

I think ‘fear is natural, learn to manage it’ is a really, really strong message.

But this way, yes she lost the life of her son, but no she didn’t lose him in spirit. (This way, the addition of a Ben force ghost at the end would compound her success, and act as a sweet-end-of-bittersweet fulfilment/subversion of her vision.)

The lesson took three generations - Anakin’s failiure, Leia’s middle ground, and Luke finally getting it enough to pass it on. While I agree that it doesn’t quite land here in terms of the character ramifications for Leia and Ben, I think the broader message of the saga here is very strong, and should win out.

Whoah.

Edit: Wait, hang on. We know the Sequel trilogy often had names which were directly related to other characters.

Kylo = Skywalker + Solo.

So how about this:
It’s not Luke
It 's not Luke
‘S no’ ke
Snoke

Too much of a stretch? That ‘ke’ at the end there is suspicious either way.

And damn, if there was one person Palpatine would want to clone into a servant, it’d be Luke…

-1 for changing “Death” to “Birth”.

If we change it to “Leia foresaw the birth of her son”, we’re implying that parenthood is sufficient reason to quit being a Jedi - as if you can’t both become a (force using) major player on the galactic stage and also raise a child. This also doesn’t quite work because she remains a politician and general, both major player roles, whilst still having young Ben.

As it stands, as “Leia foresaw the death of her son”, that’s saying that Leia (implicitly) saw her son’s birth and existence, but then (explicitly) saw that continuing down the Jedi path would end in tragedy, so she sought to focus on her political and military strengths instead of leaning into the force as a solution.

We have to remember that one of the main themes of the Star Wars franchise is that fear of loss leads to the darkside.

• Anakin feared the loss of Padmé, and this gave him an emotional vulnerability which Palpatine was able to exploit. (Hell, Anakin even foresaw the death of Padmé, leading him to become Darth Vader.)
• Luke feared the loss of his friends, abandoning his training under Yoda and going to face Vader on Bespin too early.
• Luke later feared the loss of his sister, which on the second Death Star was almost successfully exploited by Palpatine in the scene where Luke almost gives in to the dark and batters Vader against the throne room railing.
• Leia feared the loss of her son, which in the current context we could view as a similar potential vulnerability if she continued down the Jedi path.

She’s also proven quite right - Luke loved and trained his nephew Ben, overreacting (or at least acting too rashly in the moment) in response to his fear of losing Ben to the darkside. He recognised his failure in that moment as a reaction to the fear of loss yet again, leading him to question that core belief, and ultimately to shut himself off from the force and go into exile.

Luke even teaches Rey as one of the core lessons, “confronting fear is the destiny of the Jedi”. What fear is he referring to there? I think it’s safe to say, fear of the loss of a loved one. Luke learned this lesson - too late for himself, but in time to pass it on to Rey as the inheritor of the next generation of Jedi. Leia recognised the threat of her feelings for Ben should she become a Jedi, and sought to avoid the issue by not continuing down the Jedi path.

The Jedi of the Republic knew of this vulnerability and forbade emotional attachments - romantic love and parental love. Ultimately, the Sith under Palpatine were able to exploit this forbiddance too. I believe that the later journey of Luke and Leia (from about ROTJ onwards through the Sequels) is about them recognising that denying love is just as dangerous as permitting it, and that instead, healthy emotional processing of emotional attachments (and learning to let go) is part of the solution.

It’s a tragic irony that Luke’s fear of Ben turning to the darkside helped turn him to the darkside, and also that Leia’s fear of Ben’s death ultimately put him on a path which still led him towards his death - but it’s a triumph of Leia’s love and willpower that she was able to help return Ben to the light before he died.