EddieDean

Thanks! I’ll roll all of this kind of thing into account.

Well, the first few seasons have some good development for Ventress, which leads nicely into the Maul content. And the Anakin/Ahsoka relationship, which also develops on Mandalore.

The major arcs beyond that which usually get moviefied are often major battles, but these don’t always have a valuable emotional core. So I think defining the arcs on those major metrics- Vital, optional, skippable, and great-but-not-vital, is going to be important.

sade1212 said:

I really like the idea to include the recent Star Wars TV intro from the Mandalorian - would be nice if it included TCW characters, but I guess R2 and Threepio count. Have you considered doing a sort of cold-open? I feel like the Mandalorian has used them very effectively - every time the music swells and the logo and episode name appear, it’s hype. Seems like a good way to give a little signal to the viewer to pay attention (and/or a trick to cut bits of the episode). Of course, you’d have to put the introductory text before the cold-open, but Solo gets away with doing that.

I’ll review this structure. I don’t want to do anything which limits my options, and every cut is a challenge so breaking to insert credits may add more trouble than the advantage of story it gives us. But I’ll certainly explore it.

szopman said:

I would personally start with a smudgers version of the first TCW movie, without the long introduction (the first part of the story is really boring and irrelevant, i mean the mission where anakin Goes to Christophis) centered on the battle of the planet itself with introducing Ahsoka.

Yeah, I’m looking at exactly this at the moment. Anakin needs to meet Ahsoka on Christophsis right at the start of the show, and it makes a load of sense to start with the Domino squad arc which really leans into clone culture in such a clone-heavy show. I think it’s neat. But I’m still going to query which elements need to be retained, and whether or not it is right to interlace these two arcs. It might be that our episode one is Christophsis and our episode two is Domino squad. Or that I produce a lightly or extremely lightly edited version of Smudger’s.

This is certainly going to be one of the biggest challenges of the project - when is it best to combine content, and when is it best to leave it separate? Leaving it split gives basically just a slightly polished version of the original presentation, whereas combining things can result in the problems other editors have encountered when moviefying things. The answer must be simply ‘do whichever is best to make a good episode narrative within the broader show structure’, but getting that right is going to be hard.

For example, Cat and Mouse, which is the first episode of the Christophsis arc, introduces some interesting things. It shows Anakin meeting Yularen - but do we care? It shows Trench being quite competent, and he shows up a couple of times near the end of the show - but do we care? It also features our first appearance in the show of Bail, doing good works, which’ll lead nicely into his appearance in the formation of the rebellion in Ep3 - but do we care?

Here’s another thing I’m working on right now, just to help direct my focus whilst I do my first pass review of the episodes:

What is the core of the story? I think it comes down to a few things, in two categories.

Firstly and most importantly, those characters and events which have the most development and add value beyond just the show itself, into the current and future state of the franchise:

• Ahsoka, in particular her growth and her relationships with Anakin, Bariss, maybe Lux Bonteri, and the Jedi Order as a whole
• Maul, and to a lesser degree the Dathomiri characters
• Mandalore, in particular Deathwatch and Bo Katan
• Key clones like Domino Squad, the Bad Batch, Fives, and Rex

Secondly and less importantly, the characters and events who bridge Eps 2 and 3, or add value for other elements of the franchise, such as:

• Anakin’s development and fall
• The ongoing mystery of the clone wars themselves (Sifo-Dyas, Order 66, both sides being played, etc)
• The fall of the Republic and rise of the Empire
• The ebb and flow of the war itself (relatively unimportant - implied throughout)

^^ PLEASE CHALLENGE THE ABOVE. I’D REALLY APPRECIATE FEEDBACK ON THIS. ^^

One unexpected thing I think I’m coming to realise from thinking about this is that a lot of the characters have content which is relatively unimportant to the QUALITY of the show. And I suppose that’s because the show exists in a place where it was filling in gaps rather than needing to carry all this weight for itself. That’s not to say that existing characters don’t get valuable development, so much as an acknowledgment that not every appearance of a known named character is necessarily valuable. For example:

• Anakin himself. Where we’re not getting more context for his fall, or developing his relationships, we don’t gain much from following him too closely. (Though we’ll probably still end up with loads of him for obvious reasons, so I wouldn’t worry too much about this one if you disagree.)
• Padme. She does get some development around her political competence and other skills, certainly rounding her out more than in the prequels themselves, but she does have some painfully dull episodes which shouldn’t be included just because she’s known.
• Obi-Wan, Dooku, Grievous. They’re all over the show but their A and B are relatively close together, so their journey from A to B is small, if touched on at all.
• Bail Organa, Yoda, Mace Windu, Plo Koon, Commander Cody, Saw Gererra, Hera’s Dad… All important SW names, and all present to varying degrees in the Clone Wars, but not all necessarily with strong stories in every appearance, even if they do reappear elsewhere.

Very, very interested in feedback on this one, folks.

I think I’ll cap out at 1080p, since it’s easier to work with (in terms of rendering time and storage space) and absolutely plenty good enough to watch, in my opinion. But I’ll aim to hit that where possible. Once cuts are made and worked out, it’s relatively straightforward to match up an improved video source to replace an older one, so if I later decide to backtrack on this decision, or upscaled sources of existing episodes are released, it’ll be low effort cost to make the change.

But there will be some episodes which stick out visually - The Tartakovsky episodes are a completely different style, the Son of Dathomir motion comic is completely unique, and I might include the Crystal Crisis arc even in its unfinished state, if it’s halfway decent. Story quality is master, I think.

But it’ll be important to establish some consistency to the episodes. Titles will probably be:

1. Star Wars TV logo (that Mandalorian uses, with the blue and red droids and masks)
2. The new Clone Wars logo used in season seven
3. The individual episode title in blue on black (named after the arc, ideally as consistently as possible, though maybe swinging a little more towards naming the event in the war - The Battle of Cristophsis, The Second Battle of Geonosis, Crisis on Utapau, etc - where possible, to give a little more of a sense of the conflict?)
4. A Solo-style blue-text single page narrative card to introduce the context for the episode

What would this exclude?

• The now fairly famous up-front episode news style narration. This may be a bugbear for most. But being forced to use the existing narration would limit some of the options if I needed to get creative.
• The ‘fortune cookie’ moral. I don’t know if anyone particularly loved these, but they didn’t add much value, I thought.

Credits would probably be a faneditor credit, a credit to the original faneditor and/or upscaler source (if relevant), wider fanediting thanks, then rolling into the episode credits proper.

One thought that I won’t need to make a call on for a while, but which is worth thinking about, is on the content which is a lot shorter but still good.

We all seem to agree that one of the principles should be ‘quality no matter the length’, and also that pacing the whole is important rather than just grouping for commonality’s sake, and that we’d like to preserve the feel of a wide-ranging frontier war. But at the same time, it might be nice to group some of the shorter content which adds texture but doesn’t have too much of a bearing on the overall plot, as one to four ‘Tales from the Clone Wars’ anthology groupings?

One of the advantages here would be that you could incorporate all of the very best single standalone scenes from otherwise excised or truncated episodes. All of the good five minute chunks, split by fades and intertitles, that would be pushing it if we were to say “here’s a five minute episode to follow the last hour-long episode”. I guess it’d almost echo the Tartakovsky series.

Thanks Knight of Kalee. It’s interesting how much simply presenting it all in an accessible way is perceived as valuable. I’ll see what I can do there to make purely accessing and understanding it as easy as possible.

Hal, I’ll check out that channel, thanks. Man, if I could have you enjoy the clone wars, that’d be a hell of a prize.

OK, I’m starting work on this right away. I’d like this to be as collaborative as possible, so I’m going to braindump as much as I can in this thread, to get as much input as possible and to challenge my own opinions. I have the basics of editing down but I might hit places where I need to pick up a new skill. But here’s the promise: I’m going to see this project through to the end. I’ve got plenty of time, and I’m extremely motivated.

It might end up being somewhat of a living project (maybe new edits come out with better ideas, or new episodes get 4K AI Upscaled), but I’m on it.

Current step is a full watch-through of the series, AI Upscaled where possible, comparing individual episodes against fanedited ones where available, and assessing the quality of each element in isolation. I’ll share as many thoughts as possible here, especially around the episodes I think should be cut altogether, for the community to challenge.

And while it might appear here like I’m taking broad ownership of this project, and more than happy to produce the 49 edits, I’m absolutely on board with RogueLeader’s idea that this can be a community effort. Let’s at least establish some standards in order to present it all cleanly and coherently as one contiguous whole, but let’s absolutely edit this together where people would like to.

I watched your Clone Wars movie (extended) last night and can only commend you on the incredible technical achievement that this represents. The upscaling with your colouring has resulted in absolutely stunning episodes. It’s fantastic that you’re doing any of these at all, and I’m more than happy with what we have, but I’d absolutely love it if the whole show could be given this treatment in time.

No worries bud - thanks for saying, and for taking it well in stride. No harm, no foul 😃

One other thing I might end up doing is just adding a couple of tags to the episodes, for people who want to maybe watch a more trimmed version of the show. I’d probably use two main tags: VITAL would represent something unskippable if you want context outside of TCW, and SKIPPABLE would represent those retained but just not necessary for any broader context, and not particularly good. Those without either of those tags would be optional depending on how much you wanted to commit to. A final tag - GREAT - might represent those episodes which aren’t vital to the wider SW story or universe, but which are still just danged good.

Just addressing some of the earlier comments too -

idir_hh: I don’t know exactly if I’d call this streamlined, since I’d like to keep as much good content as possible. But I’d hope it’s at least particularly digestible, by measure of each episode being as good as possible.

RogueLeader: Agreed on Tartakovsky’s. It’s great in a different way to TCW, but still very welcome. It’s especially necessary to introduce Ventress and Grievous, and to get Anakin knighted. But it’s also just a whole load of fun, and establishes that anthology feel of the clone wars nice and early. I’ll find its proper chronological placement and where to break or group the episodes, but probably not touch it much beyond that.

Solemn.Philosopher: Thanks for the arc grouping list! It reminds me of one issue I’ll need to consider, that of the Domino Squad episodes. Because they’re an arc, but they are split by other episodes chronologically. I forget exactly how much time is implied to have passed between episodes, but I appreciate it’s more than just back to back. It would make sense to present them together, and very early (since it establishes some clone culture early after their introduction) but if they depend on time passing then that needs solving. Again, I’m brought back to Smudger’s, who used it as an alternative to the baby Hutt arc, but also used the intersplicing of both this and the Christophsis arc to give the sense of time passing to both. I’ll still interrogate all of the episodes involved, but I’ll probably end up favouring opening with Smudger’s - though I may replace what video I can with NumeralJoker’s.

That raises another thought, though. If we’re no longer beholden to the movie format, are some arcs (like Domino Squad, and Maul’s return and ascent) better served as peppered throughout the show than in large arcs? Might making it more episodic make this feel like a more cohesive and developing war, than focusing on specific areas and narrative chunks for so long? Probably mostly not, though I think there may be cases when this is the case. I’ll have to make a judgment call (and ask you all for input) when faced with choices like that, with the top two priorities being episode quality and then show flow.

That’s a good thought on pacing sade, so I’ve added to my plan “8. Make any changes necessary to better pace the series as a whole”. I think my approach needs to be to first make the best episodes I can, and then to look over the show holistically.

(I appreciate, at this time, that effectively I’m saying I plan to have a plan - but you’ve gotta start somewhere, and I’d like to do this top-down.)

Regarding newsreels, I’m not sure. Consistency will be important, but again, I think quality must come first. Off the top of my head just now, the approach which gives an editor the most flexibility would be opening crawls or Solo-like text, because it’s text you can use to give whatever context is necessary, rather than demanding an edit be made around available sources.

I apologise if it at all came off as a criticism of your edits, Kanemedhurst. I’m not trying to belittle any of the fantastic effort and technical achievement anyone else has done. I’ve been watching and enjoying two-ish-arcs-as-a-movie edits for at least eight years.

What I’m trying to convey here is that the approach of attempting to adhere to a movie length presents its own particular challenges which - however well they’ve been handled by other editors like yourself - can be avoided if we don’t consider ourselves beholden to the movie length idea. And that to date, as far as I can tell, Clone Wars editing has focused on the movie length approach.

I mention other edits including your own for three reasons: Firstly, by way of comparison, because none of these edits exist in isolation, and all edits learn from and acknowledge one another even if they approach the shared goal via a different path. If my edits are good, they’ll be good because of all the work that came before them, not in spite of it. Secondly, because knowledge of these edits gives context to my theory. And thirdly (and leastly), because demonstrating an awareness of other approaches within this problem space establishes some credibility, which can be helpful when trying to foster input from other forum members. But on that last point, there’s a difference between establishing credibility (which is non competitive) and looking to boost appeal or to put down others (which is).

Of course, anything we produce is going to be subjective. I’d guess that far more people would prefer a series of movies highlighting the key arcs than would prefer a TV series of random lengths. But there’s no competition in this space - every time any fan edit gets released, the community as a whole benefits.

Either way, I hope that helps you feel like I’m not trying to compete or criticise. You’ve put a lot of thought into your edits so I’d absolutely welcome any input you wanted to give towards this project.

Well, it’s encouraging that nobody seems to think I’m mad for considering this yet. Thanks for the initial feedback on the idea, folks.

In that case, I’m going to get to work. I’ve long had a spreadsheet of notes on the Clone Wars chronology and various edits, so that gives me a good start, and I’ve got NumeralJoker’s edits, so I can switch out the old episodes with arcs, to give me the basis for each new episode.

First step now is to take each episode in turn and review it on its merits. Is it worth keeping? And if not, are there scenes or elements worth holding on to?

I started last night with the TCW movie. The Christophsis arc is decent enough, and necessary to introduce Ahsoka, but the Hutt baby arc is just horrible. It has too much “Snips”/“Sky Guy”/“Artooie”, the Hutt baby is in almost all scenes and isn’t funny or cute, it’s almost all action which is either bland or wooden, it’s Tattooine yet again (and terrible looking), it’s too early in the war for the Republic to be having to compromise and deal with gangsters, Ziro is a jarring character, Jabba loses his malice, and Padme seems incompetent.

I think, for all of these reasons, it absolutely has to go.

The Christophsis elements, like I say, are fairly decent, though I wouldn’t keep the content about a clone turning traitor. We’ve only just seen the creation of the clone army, I don’t think one of our first deep dives into the clones should be showing their failings. The Deserter did it better.

Any other thoughts there folks?

Finally, on sources: I’ll use NumeralJoker’s 4K AI Upscaled sources, but probably just the 1080p versions. With respect, 4K is probably overkill- and importantly one of the things NJ does after his upscaling is a full colour regrade, which you still get with the 1080p versions. I’ve been watching in 1080p and they seem absolutely stunning. Any objections?

HOW DO I GET THIS?

Please send me a PM for access to the TRACKER SPREADSHEET, which details episode progress and provides the download links. The tracker spreadsheet also has links to the summaries and details for each edited episode, to give you extra context for the decisions made.

PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK!

I would greatly appreciate your feedback! What did/didn’t you like? What worked/didn’t work for you? I’m especially interested in how the Maul/Mandalore content works seeded throughout, and how Ahsoka’s overall journey lands - I’ve given both of these particular focus.

This is very much a living project, and I am very open to making any future tweaks to absolutely anything in order to make this the best it can be.

If you’ve watched the show and enjoyed it, I’d really appreciate a review over at the IFDB.

WHAT IS THIS?

THE CLONE WARS: REFOCUSED presents the entire Clone Wars as a complete series of five seasons of about ten TV-length episodes each. Now structured and presented with the conventions of a more mature modern TV drama, it tells the complete narrative of the Clone Wars, retaining all the most important and enjoyable elements of the show, whilst trimming a vast amount of the weaker content, saving you over 17 hours total while still telling the same core narratives. Episodes have been refined, refocused, reordered and recontextualised to maximise story quality and viewer enjoyment, both for the show’s own complete end-to-end story, and for those seeking a supplement or introduction to new canon like the Mandalorian, Bad Batch, and wider Filoniverse.

It’s my intention that you should be able to replace the original official release of The Clone Wars with Refocused, losing nothing of importance for your enjoyment of the wider franchise, whilst getting the maximum possible enjoyment out of the story of the clone wars.

WHAT’S THE CURRENT STATUS?

The show is COMPLETE and POLISHED to a high standard!

AVAILABLE NOW:
(Expanded detail for all episodes is lower in this post.)

• Prelude & Prologue (2 episodes) - one telling a single story from some of the Tartakovsky 2003 microseries, and bringing it closer to TCW characterisation so it can act as setup for this show; and one showing Ahsoka’s birth and discovery by the Jedi.
• SEASON ONE (10 episodes) - covering Christophsis, Malevolence, Death Watch on Mandalore, Cloak of Darkness, Domino Squad, Ryloth, Death Watch on Coruscant, Nightsisters, and the Holocron arc.
• SEASON TWO (10 episodes) - covering Bounty Hunters, Lair of Grievous, Massacre, Corruption on Mandalore, Boba Fett, Return of Maul, Jedi Crash, a ‘Lost Clones’ anthology, and the Geonosis arc.
• Interlude (1 episode) - bridging these two seasons with some content highlighting Ahsoka’s growth and relationship with Padmé.
• SEASON THREE (10 episodes) - covering Heroes on Both Sides trilogy, Rako Hardeen, Revival, A Friend in Need, Zygerria, Trandoshans, Eminence, Umbara, and the Onderon arc.
• SEASON FOUR (10 episodes) - covering Shades of Reason, Mortis, Ahsoka’s Fall, The Lawless, Scipio, the Order 66 arc, Son of Dathomir (audio comic fan version), and Yoda’s Quest.
• SEASON FIVE (5 episodes) - covering Martez Sisters and the Siege of Mandalore, cut to fit chronologically around your watch of Revenge of the Sith.
• Epilogue & Coda (2 episodes) - wrapping up the post-TCW story arcs for two of its major characters.
• Bonus Episodes (optional):
  – A movie-length recap of Ahsoka’s story from Star Wars Rebels for those who’ve already watched the show but want to catch up before the Ahsoka show airs
  – The Citadel arc
  – The Younglings arc
  – Tales From the Clone Wars, aggregating some of the spare Tartakovsky 2003 microseries content with some Forces of Destiny shorts to tell a few small bonus tales that bridge seasons 2 and 3.
  – Lightsaber Lost
  – Assassin
• English Subtitles for Season One (thanks g00b!)
• Full Season and Episode Posters for Plex for all episodes (thanks g00b!) - examples here.

COMING EVENTUALLY:

• English Subtitles for all episodes.
• More bonus episodes - less good content, and not part of my recommended watching order, but optional extras if you want more of characters you’ll see in wider canon, or just ‘as much as I can that isn’t completely painful to watch’.
• Extended versions of four popular arcs. (Not recommended, but requested by some.)
• (Potentially) SEASON ZERO comprising Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones turned into episodes

WHAT ARE THE PROJECT’S PRIORITIES?

Importantly, I want quality of experience to be the most important metric. Taking its cue from the current streaming Star Wars TV series, episodes are as long- or as short- as they need to be (ranging from about 20-60 minutes), in order to pace each story in the best possible way to enjoy the most emotionally resonant and exciting moments in a coherent, digestible, engaging narrative with a more consistent tone, without filler or cringe.

Similarly, the show as a whole presents the episodes in a new, more compelling order - which doesn’t break canon - but which gives the best pacing, variety, and character balance, while allowing some of the more important and satisfying elements of the show to begin earlier and remain in focus, building in anticipation and excitement over time. Ahsoka’s growth is a core focus, Maul and Mandalore are ever-present growing threats, and each group of episodes presents itself as a coherent flowing season with a focused theme while developing the overall narrative of the show. Seasons are about ten episodes long, totalling about five to six hours each - about the same length as modern Disney Star Wars or Marvel seasons, to keep them accessible and digestible without making watching this show feel like a daunting task.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

• MANDALORIAN (and Filoniverse) fans will enjoy a strong focus on Mandalorian culture throughout, the journey of the Darksaber, Ahsoka Tano’s character growth, some important development for Boba Fett and Cad Bane, and an exploration of Sidious’ interest in force sensitive younglings - I’m making a special ‘Mandalorian cut’ for people who want to focus on just those elements.
• EXISTING FANS of The Clone Wars will enjoy a tighter cut, with bad episodes and bad scenes minimised, the fat trimmed, the structure of the whole made more compelling, the pacing improved, and polish throughout - but all of the important and good stuff preserved.
• PREQUEL and OBI-WAN KENOBI SERIES fans will enjoy a deeper exploration of Order 66 and Anakin’s fall, new layers to Obi-Wan, Sidious’ scheming, and the shades of grey and introduction of third parties which make this predictable two-faction conflict anything but.
• WIDER CANON fans will enjoy the constant threat of Darth Maul, and closer looks at Saw Gerrera, Moff Tarkin, all your favourite bounty hunters, Jedi, and the force itself, and a deep exploration of Clone identity and culture, including Captain Rex, Delta Squad, and the Bad Batch.
• Fans of having all the meat with no filler will be well served by my main cut, as I’ll be cutting a lot of unnecessary episodes. But fans who enjoy more of the ‘fringe’ episodes will be pleased to know I also intend to release these as “bonus episodes”, to an improved standard as part of my ‘Complete Cut’ (see below.)
• Fans of goofy humour, villains losing their menace, childish moments, and the bland CG of the early seasons will regretfully find themselves poorly served by this edit, since there will be some limited removal of episodes and scenes which are both not important and hard to enjoy.

WHAT WAS YOUR APPROACH?

Most importantly, I maintain an active dialogue with the community in this thread throughout the project, to gain insight, feedback and ideas, and to challenge and validate my own assumptions and decisions. Your comments are always welcome, and there’ve already been a lot of examples where the community have made the outputs materially better than anything I could have done in isolation.

I first completed a holistic review of all episodes in chronological order, identifying episodes’ importance and quality, and where episodes could be grouped into thematic arcs or where existing arcs could be split. (The early pages of this thread contain those reviews, and I urge you to check them if you’re interested.) I’ve conducted additional full reviews as I’ve been working on the project, and continue to do so. After the first review pass I produced a reordering for the whole, which has seen some revisions as the show broke into a few natural groupings. The first priority in the reordering was to emphasise the show’s core and most rewarding plotlines (Maul, Mandalore, and Ahsoka’s development) and to give the full series more of an ongoing serialised feel than the current anthology feel, and allowing the show to build slow-burn anticipation towards the excellent conclusion. The second priority was to standardise the tone, to avoid the inherent tonal whiplash of the anthology format (beheadings and child hunting one week, and Jar Jar dancing next week). The third priority around that central spine was to pace and vary the rest of the quality content, ensuring no continuity is broken.

I then sorted and presented the reordered whole in an easy-to-understand way for four audiences: Those wanting context for the Mandalorian (and wider Filoniverse), those wanting the most high-quality Clone Wars TV show they can get, those wanting the most content that ties to existing continuity, and finally those simply wanting as much bearable Star Wars as possible. You can see this below, and the top left of my spreadsheet makes it clear which episodes to watch based on your preference.

I then established a set of standards for presenting episodes themselves, with new titles, introductory text (here’s why I’m doing this), and end credits evocative of polish and high quality, to package each episode in the most attractive way. Forum member McFibb has produced stunning new musical arrangements, and I’m using concept art over the credits (like the Mandalorian does), in order to help set the new show’s tone. See an example here. (Be aware this is the slightly out of date 1.0 version, and that the credits timing is refined in 2.0.)

I then produced the edits in priority order, based on my ‘Quality Cut’ (see below). This means the very best and most important episodes (45 of them) for a complete end-to-end viewing of The Clone Wars: Refocused. Now I’m moving on to the bonus episodes from the less important Cuts (about ~16).

For each individual episode of TCW:R, I conduct a further review of its component TCW episodes, identifying the core emotional backbone of the arc, content to highlight, downplay, or restructure, and in the case of more complex episodes I look for opportunities to recontextualise scenes or themes, or add scenes from other episodes, in order to produce more value. I share these thoughts with the community here and then set to work executing the cut. I generally produce either a RELEASE CUT (complete or very nearly complete) or a REVIEW CUT / WORKPRINT (requires a little polish or extra thought) of each episode, after which I incorporate community feedback to refine each episode further. All of this is easily tracked in the TRACKER SPREADSHEET, which you can PM me directly for..

HOW ARE YOU PRESENTING THE CONTENT FOR EACH AUDIENCE?

I’m producing four ‘cuts’, really four curated lists, to direct viewers to episodes which give them the experience they’re looking for. The top left of the tracker spreadsheet uses colour coding to help you identify the episodes you might want to watch.

Initially I’ll produce the Quality cut episodes (which include the Mandalorian cut), but I’ll follow that up with the remaining ones for those who want the extra material.

WHAT SOURCES HAVE YOU USED?

1080p Blu-ray rips of the majority of the Clone Wars CG series, the ‘Crystal Crisis’ unfinished episode (via the ‘Ahsoka’s Decision’ fan video created by Cinematic Captures on Youtube), the Tartakovsky Clone Wars 2D microseries (NumeralJoker’s 4k upscale), some Forces of Destiny shorts, and the Son of Dathomir Audio Comic from Audio Comics / The Lore Master on Youtube (which is necessary to a core plotline, but presented well).

ARE YOU ANY GOOD AT THE TECHNICAL SKILLS REQUIRED FOR EDITING THOUGH?:

• Here’s a really CUTE ALTERNATE USE of some (silent) shots of baby Ahsoka from one of the newsreels used to much more powerful effect in context here.
• An example of a COMPLEX EDIT TO A SCENE is here, showing how I removed the goofy conveyor belt scene from the first Mandalore episode.
• An example of the NEW PRESENTATION of the episodes (intros and outros) is here. (Note that this is v1 but I’ve recently upgraded the presentation to v2, which is slicker and better times the credits to the music.)
• An example of a NEAT TRIM WITH CHANGED DIALOGUE is here, where I cut out much of the Nightbrother trials to allow them to focus solely on Savage and Feral.
• An example of a FULL EPISODE BEING TIGHTENED is here, where I cut the middle episode of the Boba Fett trilogy down from 22 minutes to 8, focusing only on the key beats which move the plot forward or have some emotional resonance.
• An example of an EPISODE WITH A CHANGED NARRATIVE is here, (26 mins), where content from the episodes Corruption and The Academy is combined into an all new narrative.

DETAILED CHANGELIST:

• OVERALL STRUCTURE:
  • So naturally each episode itself is traditionally edited, but this is a full series edit so a lot of thought has gone into reordering and recontextualising some of the episodes themselves. As I started work, I found that the ongoing story naturally broke into five seasons of about ten episodes each - nice, digestible chunks, each about the length of a season of a Disney live-action show. Within each season, I pay attention to the overall narrative, the balance of characters between episodes, the development of the characters and most importantly the development of Ahsoka.
  • The most significant reordering comes from the Maul and Mandalore plotlines, which are very strong and well paid-off in the finale, so I wanted to get them running far sooner, making them almost the ‘spine’ of the show. I therefore took any episode which featured Maul or Mandalore and strung those out throughout the show - generally splitting these arcs into individual episodes rather than presenting them aggregated (as fanedits have tended to do in the past). This way, Maul and Mandalore get to act as ever-present wildcard threats (kind of like Moff Gideon in the Mandalorian). This required minor trims in a few places so as to not break canon.
  • I also wanted to allow Rex and his relationship with obedience and loyalty to be a plotline that developed across the show, but without drawing focus from what I want to keep as our main characters and storylines. I achieved this by having a single ‘Rex explores loyalty’ episode each season, which balances nicely. In the second season, that episode is a special anthology episode combining the Rex/Clone parts of the episodes Hidden Enemy, Gregor (from Droids in the Void), and Deserter.
  • I am also preserving the secret of Sidious’ identity until Revenge of the Sith, for those who want to watch this in chronological order or with a first-time viewer.
  • Since the original show (especially earlier on) was very much an anthology show, episodes often had little bearing on one another, main characters often didn’t appear for a few episodes at a time, and the show had quite arbitrarily allocated premieres or finales. I’ve tried to remedy this a little. I’ve cut the seasons into more thematic chunks, worked on narrative flow and character balance between episodes, and I’ve chosen premieres and finales which more punctuate the theme of the season, or particularly test our main characters. Therefore, our flow is now as follows (clickable links take you to further detail for each episode):
• PRELUDE & PROLOGUE (Optional)
  • s01e00 - DARK FORCE RISING (51:05) is a prelude to this series which covers the Anakin and Dooku/Ventress/Grievous plots from the start of the Tartakovsky microseries up to the point where Anakin gets knighted, reordering it into a single narrative. It brings the characterisation far closer to TCW, so the episode can act as a bridge between Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars.
  • s01e00b - LIFE AND DEATH (20:30) is Ahsoka’s prologue, a flashback to her birth and discovery by the Jedi, taken from the Tales of the Jedi miniseries.
• SEASON ONE: “Conflicts erupt in the early days of the Clone Wars.” (5h37m, cutting ~6h) begins the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka, shows the initial separatist strikes, establishes our key villains, starts to explore Clone culture and Republic overreach, and has the triggering events behind our rolling plotlines:
  • s01e01 - THE NEW PADAWAN (21:02) covers the Christophsis arc from the original Clone Wars movie plus the Ventress plot from Hidden Enemy. It’s now one tight episode that gets us through the key parts quickly, cleanly, and far less painfully, serving as an alternative (and more enjoyable) introduction to The Clone Wars.
  • s01e02 - MALEVOLENCE (29:10) heavily interleaves the Plo Koon rescue from Rising Malevolence and the bomber strike from Shadow of Malevolence into one more compelling narrative focusing on Ahsoka’s character and Anakin’s training, and only a couple of scenes from Destroy Malevolence are maintained as a conclusion.
  • s01e03 - THE DUCHESS OF MANDALORE (36:42) covers The Mandalore Plot and Voyage of Temptation, removing Obi-Wan on the Bond-villain conveyor belt (clip here), adding a scene to explain Ahsoka’s occasional future absences, and cutting the below-decks mystery on the Coronet and the mini-spiders (whilst maintaining the horror element and an assassin spider droid).
  • s01e04 - ASSASSIN (21:59) is Cloak of Darkness with slightly tighter focus and character work.
  • s01e05 - THE 501st LEGION (46:06) gives us a little mid-season peak, concluding a few threads with the focus that I’ve now set up in my first five episodes. It aggregates the whole Domino Squad arc together, tightening Rookies, and cutting quite a lot from Clone Cadets to make this full story have a natural three-act structure, having the combat test end in failiure and their punishment being the Rishi outpost, allowing their victory there and on Kamino in the content from ARC Troopers to be what makes them members of the 501st.
  • s01e06 - RESISTANCE ON RYLOTH (38:04) cuts Storm Over Ryloth and Liberty on Ryloth into a single narrative where Anakin and Ahsoka (in her first command) try to break the blockade above Ryloth while Mace Windu on the ground tries to enlist Cham Syndulla and deals with Ryloth’s politics.
  • s01e07 - THE DEATH WATCH (24:34) is the original Duchess of Mandalore episode with only a couple of light trims and one scene moved, with the addition of a scene originally from the Holocron arc disciplining Ahsoka for her disobedience at Ryloth and effectively explaining her absence until the finale.
  • s01e08 - CHILDREN OF NIGHT (52:13) cuts the whole Nightsisters arc into one, removing the invisible Dooku fight (which is good but returns us to the status quo), reduces the recruitment trial to focus just on Savage and Feral, and removes Anakin and Obi-Wan visiting the Nightbrothers (a redundant scene). (A future extended version will reinstate the invisible Dooku fight for those who miss it.)
  • s01e09 - A STRIKE AT THE HEART (Part 1) (35:12) borrows Smudger9’s idea to turn Hostage Crisis into a distraction to enable the Holocron Heist.
  • s01e10 - THE FUTURE OF THE FORCE (Part 2) (37:10) covers Cargo of Doom and Children of the Force, removing Ropal and the concept of the ‘Kyber Crystal’, and adds a scene from Lightsaber Lost to bring Ahsoka’s season one arc to a solid conclusion and emphasise a major aspect of her character that’s developed in future media.
• SEASON TWO: “The Clone Wars spread chaos and instability across the galaxy.” (5h37m, cutting ~4.5h) showcases Ahsoka’s growth and maturity, explores more of the galaxy’s scum and villainy, shows the cost of the war to the ‘little guy’, and continues our ongoing plotlines:
  • s02e01 - SEVEN WARRIORS (24:00) is Bounty Hunters pretty much untouched.
  • s02e02 - MASSACRE (34:17) recontextualises a tightened Lair of Grievous as being triggered by Ventress leaking its’ location to the Jedi, leading into Massacre which is now more personal for Grievous and more of a source of guilt for Ventress. Old Dahka no longer appears, making Talzin the resurrector.
  • s02e03 - CORRUPTION ON MANDALORE (26:30) intercuts Corruption and The Academy into an all new, far tighter single narrative, bringing Ahsoka and Padmé to Mandalore at the same time, cutting out the poisoned drinks subplot, making everyone’s decisions sensible, and minimising the annoying kids.
  • s02e04 - LIKE FATHER, LIKE CLONE (47:34) tightens the Boba Fett trilogy of episodes heavily for pacing and focus, removing the skeet scene, lots of R2’s antics, and the traitor Castas subplot.
  • s02e05 - TALES OF THE LOST CLONES (45:16) is an anthology episode focusing on clone individuality, and highlighting Captain Rex. It aggregates the traitor clone plot from Hidden Enemy, the Gregor plot (with a lot less cringe) from Missing in Action, and the Cut Lawquane plot from The Deserter.
  • s02e06 - ATTACHMENTS (25:35) is Jedi Crash tightened up. (It’s a less important episode but is placed here to balance out the season.)
  • s02e07 - MONSTERS (34:36) aggregates Brothers and Revenge, getting us to and through Lotho Minor quicker, with a light trim to Ventress to allow this to be placed here in the chronology.
  • s02e08 - SHADOW OF GEONOSIS (Part 1) (23:27) is Senate Spy, reducing Clovis’ creepiness and a little of Anakin’s more overt behaviour.
  • s02e09 - ASSAULT ON GEONOSIS (Part 2) (37:31) aggregates Landing on Point Rain and Weapons Factory, trimming the battle for the sake of pacing and letting Ahsoka and Barriss’ fates linger a little longer. (A future extended version will reinstate some of Anakin’s and Ki-Adi-Mundi’s action scenes for those who miss them.)
  • s02e10 - TERROR OF GEONOSIS (Part 3) (40:00) interleaves Legacy of Terror and Brain Invaders into a single narrative emphasising the mystery and horror of both stories (borrowing some of Smudger9’s ideas), and makes some trims for focus.
• INTERLUDE (Optional)
  • s03e00 - DREAMS OF DESTINY (22:42) tells a little story highlighting Ahsoka’s growth and relationships so far, using the episode Practice Makes Perfect from Tales of the Jedi as a framing device to add a few Ahsoka-focused Forces of Destiny shorts.
• SEASON THREE: “Shades of grey emerge as the Clone Wars grow more complex.” (6h14m, cutting ~2h) focuses on a more competent Ahsoka now learning more of the complexities of war, shows all our main characters facing more complex situations and being forced into compromises, and has our running plotlines escalate and finally draw together:
  • s03e01 - THE POLITICS OF WAR (32:03) is an all-new narrative, aggregating and restructuring the peace discussions with Mina Bonteri and the clone loan from Heroes on Both Sides and Pursuit of Peace, using some scenes from Senate Murders (but not the plot about Onaconda’s murder).
  • s03e02 - THE DEATH OF OBI-WAN KENOBI (55:56) streamlines the Rako Hardeen arc, removing the first time (of two) where Obi-Wan is kicked off the ship, the final coda where Anakin defends Palpatine against Dooku, and The Box storyline, keeping the focus on Obi-Wan working with the criminals and Anakin’s emotional reaction to the events. (A future extended version will reinstate the content from The Box for those who miss it.)
  • s03e03 - PIRATES OF THE OUTER RIM (24:13) is Revival pretty much untouched.
  • s03e04 - TEMPTATIONS (24:53) is A Friend in Need pretty much untouched.
  • s03e05 - SLAVES OF ZYGERRIA (44:34) is the second two episodes of the Zygerria slavery arc pretty much untouched (you don’t really need the first).
  • s03e06 - THE SHADOW COLLECTIVE (24:48) is Eminence pretty much untouched.
  • s03e07 - HUNTED (45:28) is the Trandoshan arc pretty much untouched.
  • s03e08 - DISSENT ON UMBARA (52:12) streamlines the Umbara arc, making Krell more of a hardliner and less of a cackling villain (though preserving his core motivations), and trimming a lot from the first episode in the arc to keep the focus on the Clones’ reaction to Krell’s orders. (A future extended version will reinstate some of the earlier combat scenes for those who miss them.)
  • s03e09 - REBELS OF ONDERON (Part 1) (32:56) transitions the training in A War on Two Fronts directly into their first insurgent actions in the city in Front Runners, removing a couple of unnecessary combat scenes, focusing on the emotional stories of the rebels.
  • s03e10 - KINGS OF ONDERON (Part 2) (36:35) has the rebels flee the city immediately after freeing Dendup in The Soft War, pursued aggressively by Rash, and skipping Hondo’s inclusion in the battle from Tipping Points, keeping the focus on our rebels and keeping the jeopardy high and the action more tense.
• SEASON FOUR: “Conspiracies abound as the Clone Wars spin out of control.” (6h48m, cutting ~2h) focuses on unexpected events, like the Mauldalore plotline and the core mysteries of the war, and will be a journey into darkness for many of our main characters:
  • s04e01 - THE OLD WAYS OF MANDALORE (24:54) is Shades of Reason pretty much untouched.
  • s04e02 - THE LIVING FORCE (31:07) is the Mortis arc heavily restructured and cut, turned into essentially an extended, shared, Dagobah cave dream sequence, where everything is a much less explicit and much more metaphorical Force vision, and Qui-Gon’s presence is enhanced.
  • s04e03 - THE ENEMY WITHIN (Part 1) (45:27) is the first two episodes of the Ahsoka’s Fall arc, with one minor trim.
  • s04e04 - THE FORSAKEN (Part 2) (44:40) is the final two episodes of the Ahsoka’s Fall arc, with a few minor trims.
  • s04e05 - DELIVERANCE (24:34) is The Lawless with only the explicit reference to Sidious’ identity removed.
  • s04e06 - THE HAND OF GREED (01:07:17) is the Scipio arc lightly trimmed, using the ‘Ahsoka’s Decision’ fan scene from the unfinished Utapau arc as a way to lightly imply his jealousy here could be linked to the loss of Ahsoka.
  • s04e07 - THE RENEGADE (53:41) is the Order 66 arc with diversions removed, and the focus kept on Fives’ perspective so the mystery is preserved for the audience as he investigates.
  • s04e08 - THE LEGACY OF SIFO-DYAS (24:15) is The Lost One, pretty much untouched.
  • s04e09 - SON OF DATHOMIR (40:57) is the canonical comic story Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir turned into a viewable audio comic (with full voice acting and sound effects) by Audio Comics / The Lore Master on Youtube.
  • s04e10 - THE COSMIC FORCE (50:51) is the Yoda’s quest arc, restructured to make most of his journeys part of the Dagobah cave vision.
• SEASON FIVE: “Darkness falls on the Galaxy in the final days of the Clone Wars.” (5h22m including RotS, 3h02m without, cutting ~2h) will focus on the very final days of the war, and wrap up all of the remaining dangling threads:
  • s05e01 - A NEW DAWN (01:01:52) is the Martez Sisters arc, cutting the droid action scene and the redundant escape and recapture, and slightly tightening the sisters, keeping the focus on the emotional beats and Ahsoka’s growth.
  • s05e02 - THE SIEGE OF MANDALORE (34:24) is Old Friends Not Forgotten, opening on the Anakin-Padmé scene from A Distant Echo (from the Bad Batch arc) and ending on the former opening scene from The Phantom Apprentice (which naturally followed from this episode’s content).
  • s05e03 - THE MASTER PLAN (24:56) is The Phantom Apprentice, without its original opening scene (now used in my previous episode).
  • s05e04 - LOYALTY AND FATE (47:47) is Shattered and Victory and Death, back to back, and removing an odd reference to clones knowing of “Darth Sidious”.
• EPILOGUE, BRIDGE, & CODA
  • s05e05 - RESOLVE (14:06) is Ahsoka’s epilogue, the Tales of the Jedi episode Resolve (also erroneously called Coda in some places), pretty much untouched.
  • s05e06 - FULCRUM OF THE FORCE (1:44:43) is a SPOILER-FILLED movie-length recap of Ahsoka’s complete story from Star Wars Rebels, intended for people who’ve already seen that show but want a refresher ahead of the Ahsoka show.
  • s05e07 - OLD WOUNDS (13:59) is the show’s coda, using content taken from the Star Wars Rebels episode Twin Suns, with the Rebels-based content stripped out, to act here as closure for the Maul/Obi-Wan plotline if you’re not planning to watch Rebels.
• BONUS EPISODES are not recommended but are available for those who want them (check the tracker spreadsheet to find which cut these belong in, and their info pages for more detail):
  • s03e06b - THE CITADEL RESCUE (48:40) is the Citadel arc, tightened, with the focus kept on Anakin/Tarkin and Ahsoka.
  • s04e01c - THE ANCIENT ARCHITECT (1:01:52) is the final three episodes of the Younglings arc, lightly trimmed for continuity and to slightly minimise kid goofiness.
  • s03e00b - TALES FROM THE CLONE WARS (33:18) aggregates the remaining content from the start of the Tartakovsky microseries into one anthology episode.
  • s02e01b - LIGHTSABER LOST (24:28) has some minor polish and excludes a scene I’ve used elsewhere, but is otherwise intact and watchable.
  • s02e05b - VISIONS (21:10) is the episode originally called Assassin, excluding a scene I’ve used elsewhere, but otherwise intact and watchable.
  • More planned - most of which will be completed after I finish all my main episodes. You can check the tracker spreadsheet for more info on what I will or won’t include.

CAN I CONTRIBUTE?

Please contribute however you like - up to and including editing remaining episodes! Here’s guidance if you want to make your edits fit in with TCW:R’s style. I’ll gladly include your edits in this project.

In this thread, I try to braindump as much as possible, in order to involve others in the process and for the interest of potential faneditors. If you’re interested in the history of this project I urge you to read through to see the thought processes involved - please feel free to dig any up to challenge any of them, even if a lot of time has passed! In the tracker spreadsheet you can find easy links back to each episode’s main discussion, if you’d like to continue the conversation.

I’m especially interested in help from anyone who can take a piece of concept art and animate it subtly like those in the end credits for the Mandalorian!

The original first post, including the idea which a few of the posters below are responding to, can be found here.

thebluefrog said:

Anakin Starkiller said:

I still think Palpatine being the ultimate evil of the ST was the way to go.

They had the perfect opportunity in one small scene to fix all the complaints about Snoke AND also fit the storyline: SOLO. Instead of Maul being the criminal empire leader cameo, just have a younger (unscarred, too) Snoke.

One scene explains where Snoke was during the OT, where he got his power/money, why he dresses in an ostentatious glittering robe (he’s a wealthy crimelord, not a sith lord), where he got obsessed with the Solo family, and thematically wraps up his role in the cycle of revenge.

I actually really like this idea.

Yeah, I think that looks absolutely lovely. Maybe that’s a tad more of an aura than of the green smoke that I’d imagined, but I think that adds real value and gives a nice sickly clash with the red of Palpatine’s robe.

JakeRyan17 said:

I’ve been thinking about taking The Hobbit, and possibly Lord of the Rings after, and restructuring it into a TV/Limited Series format that can better handle the episodic nature of the narrative.

Just bought the theatrical cuts to have some music work solved for me (goodbye Goblin King song).

I’ve just released a TV-to-movie edit of the Hobbit, and have started the same with LotR! I’m really proud of my Hobbit season, and I think it presents the worthy successor to LotR that it should always have been.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Third-Age-Season-One-A-Hobbit-Movie-to-TV-edit-Released/id/76864/page/1

I use Adamdens’ three-to-two cut as the base (with plenty of my own edits on top), and found that not only does the narrative break really neatly, but the TV format gives you a couple of neat options to deal with some issues that movies just can’t solve.

Check the forum thread for details and videos, or PM for links!

(Sorry to hijack your thread, Hal! This’ll be the one and only time I mention it here!)

This is a fantastic achievement, for the community at large and especially Hal. Well done! I really hope we get that last couple of changes. And of course, much like with Hal’s light-touch edits of TFA and TLJ, I also look forward to whatever follows, using this as a base!

JakeRyan17 said:

I still feel like connecting Palpatine to the Son raises more questions than it answers…

Definitely agree. Though red doesn’t necessarily directly equate to Son.

I’ve always been a big advocate of Clone Wars nods, but I always found the popular Mortis arc way too on the nose and demistifying.

idir_hh said:

Anything that diversifies the colour pallet on Exogol gets a Yes from me.

Grey with green smoooooooke!

I do like the look of this, and I have advocated for leaning a little more towards Clone Wars stuff, especially that Palpatine may have been resurrected in part through Nightsister magic. But I’m not sure if it feels a little videogamey to imply he’s ‘levelled up’ a bit. I also think Star Wars leans a little too heavily on the ‘Change the colour = intriguing’ trope.

Will you use any of the edits/ideas from Hal’s or Neverargreat?

NeverarGreat said:

“Somehow, Hal’s computer returned.”

Applause