Erikstormtrooper

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120364096330

I'm planning to bid, with the intent to telecine the entire set.  If anyone here was or is planning to bid, let me know SOON so we can work something out.

 SWEET! Good luck!

2008 was a good Star Wars year for me. First, Adywan released Star Wars revisited. Second, I got the Master Replicas Collector's Edition Stormtrooper helmet (a UK exclusive), which is a great likeness for a great price. Third, Hasbro released its new big Millennium Falcon. And fourth, I've enjoyed the Clone Wars cartoon show (with my 6 yo son) more than I thought I would.

Looking forward, I can't help but be optimistic. The OOT will eventually come out in a decent release. Every year that passes brings us closer to that eventual release. I can be patient.

Star Wars has kind of become a buffet for me. Some things are good, some things are crap. I just pick out the good parts and forget about the rest. Once I realized it's ALL "Infinities", it became much easier to be a fan.

Man, I would love to own those covers.

The TPM one is so far out. It's like a surreal stream of blurbs and names from other movies. How exactly does that end up getting made?

For the AOTC one, it looks like they at least tried to have the Chinese translated into English.

In retrospect, I see I should have gone all-out for my custom Backstroke of the West cover.

This is pretty good for a laugh.

If you think about it, her version has a lot in common with Lucas' very early drafts of Star Wars.

JediChad said:

But the best III edit I've ever seen is by Killer Sand Box.

I've never heard of that one. What's it like? Is there a page somewhere where I can read about it? 

On Adywan's DVD, the layer break is at the start of the scene when Vader is walking toward the just-captured Falcon.

It is NOT after Tarkin says "Terminate her. Immediately".

FWIW, the few reviews this has gotten on Amazon are all very good. I just don't know if I can jump in to the the EU scene again. It's probably been 10 years since I read a SW novel.

Goodmusician,

Don't let internet lowlifes affect your passion and your desire to share it with others.

Here's a relevant story. I have a website where I offer scans of the stickers for Star Wars toys - all for free download. All the time, I see people profiting from my work with CDs of the images for sale, or even printed-out copies on adhesive paper. One ebayer even had the nerve to hotlink the images from my site. This really ticked me off, and it made me think about what I should do.

After blocking hotlinks from ebay, I decided to keep on doing what I always do. And I took it as an opportunity to try to do better than the profiteers by continually improving my work.

In the end, without an any army of lawyers, there's no way to stop people from reselling what I've done. As long as my work is out there being appreciated, that's all that matters. I can't help it if some people are too stupid to educate themselves or do a Google image search. 

doubleofive said:

THAT would be incredible.  Your 1 cent has turned to 5.

Thanks! I'm gonna buy me a piece of gum. 

bkev said:

Erik, are you in film?  Because THAT is the kindof thing that screams professional.  It would work wit hthe rest of the movie, too!

Nope. I'm just a guy with an active imagintation and a total lack of video editing skills. But thanks for thinking that I might be :)

As with all of my ideas I post here, anyone is free to rip them off for use in their own edits.

THANKS!

Hey, Adywan,

Let me just echo what SomethingStarWarsRelated said. Your Yoda changes: AWESOME. Very subtle, but effective. I honestly didn't think you'd be able to improve on the puppet, but you did. The only thing that I see that could possibly be improved upon is his eyes. Sometimes, when he turns away from Luke, his eyes seem to stare off in the distance. Seems like those times would be good for a squint or blink.

The new asteroid field looks nice too, but it's so small on my screen, I feel like I'm missing something. Any chance you have a non-comparison version of the clip just sitting on your hard drive waiting to be uploaded?

TMBTM said:

Okay, I have an idea, don't know what it worth... probably 2 cents.

One of the things that did not work for many people in ROTS is the way too quick turning of Anakin to the dark side. Now, if we can make more obivious to the audience that Palpatine is the "creator" of Anakin, maybe through midichlorians manipulations (I know Ady said: 'no midichlorians!"), we could somehow show that the order 66 has an effect on him too...

I told you... probably 2 cents.

That's an interesting take. It would at least require a shot where Anakin received the order (via hologram?). And does he get the order before he kills Mace? And even then, it could only really be implied that Palpatine's creation of Anakin is what caused him to turn.

Regardless, I totally agree that Anakin's turn was bumbled. Multiple reasons are implied by the movie, but it unfortunately settles on the "fear of Padme's death". I think a better approach would be to pick just one reason and discard all others. Anakin's suspicion of Obi Wan's relationship with Padme is littered throughout the movie, and I think it would be a bold edit to go with just that.

Here's an idea I had regarding his quick turn (but not relating directly to the "reason"). It seems to me that when he confronts Palpatine and discovers he's the Sith, he's almost ready to kill him, but he changes his mind so quickly later. Instead, as per George's original plan, edit the scene in Palpatine's hallway so that Anakin seems conflicted by Palpatine's admission. He ignites his saber breifly, but after some prattle from Palps (insert "reason" here), he turns off his saber, and Palpatine smiles. Scene ends. (Anakin never alerts Mace. The Jedi already suspect Palpatine will not turn over power. I think there's a deleted scene that may be useful here). When Mace shows up, Anakin is nowhere to be seen. But he's actually sulking conflictedly in the shadows (maybe footage from the council chamber scene could be darkened and rotoscoped). While the duel continues, Anakin experiences his true turn: an emotional crescendo where we hear in his mind waves of overlapping voices (Qui Gon: "He is the chose one", Palps: "I see you becoming the greatest of all the Jedi", etc etc.). The voices continue and jumble up, getting louder and becoming unbearable (the right music could really sell this). Just as the voices reach a peak and crash into silence, Palps seems to be beaten. Anakin, now turned, suddenly steps out to quietly dismember Mace. After the electrified Mace flies out the window, the kneeling Anakin simply says "I will do whatever you ask, my master."

And that's my 1 cent.

For me, Episode III was the only prequel to have any emotional engagement. On the first viewing, I was pretty moved. I actually felt for Vader as he appeared in the OT.

But on later viewings, when the emotions didn't hit me as hard, I began to see the faults (stupid droids, no Sifo Dias resolution, Sidious's goofiness, Anakin's reason for turning, etc)

I think Padme was the real wasted character. She went from almost being the main character in Episode I to being a pretty incubator in Episode III.

skyjedi2005 said:

...

A reason why i am sure Lucas hates empire, as he has said it is the worst film in the saga.

Sky, I know Lucas had issues with the production of Empire, but I've never heard about this hatred you mention. Do you have any more info on that?

And Tiptup, are you readheaded? ;P

Are you referring to galacticsenate.com?

JediMasterFisher said:

why does everyone care about a minor character so much. Please just keep him there. He was put there for a reason to complete his saga character (which is minor)

You obviously care a lot about him. Otherwise you wouldn't mind if he was taken out. But he was originally put in there to please Fett fans; it had nothing to do with the story arc of his character (there was none at that point).

I think we all like Fett, and we want him to be treated respectfully. If he has to die, we want it to be a good death. If necessary, someone with an accurate Fett costume could act out some bits (I know some people in the 501st).

Regarding the Sarlacc beak, I could live without it, but the beak version might be necessary because of the poor quality of the GOUT.

It would be great if someone could put up a torrent of the latest version.

I used to have one of these, but not any more. It was the scene where Luke and Leia swing across the chasm.

I wonder if it has Luke's missing throw ;)

AxiaEuxine said:

What do you plan to do? Have Dooku cut off Anakin's arm, sigh and then board his ship and leave? 

I hate to keep popping in with other edits to check out, but ...

The Phantom Editor's version of Episode II (Attack of the Phantom), successfully removes the lightsaber fight between Yoda and Dooku. Dooku does some force-throwing and lightning, and then he just reaches over and causes the column to start falling onto Anakin and Obi Wan. As Yoda stops the column, Dooku gets away.

Seriously, any time Yoda has a lightsaber battle with a Sith, I feel like I'm watching the dali lama and Osama bin Laden have a knife fight.

For anyone interested, A Digital Man's edit of the opera scene in ROTS is awesome. He subtly removes reference to the midichlorians, but everything else is the same.

negative1 said:

lucas faces a no-win situation, you can't please the old fans, because it wouldn't 'match' what he wanted for the PT, and of course the people that like the PT sometimes find the OT clunky, slow, and outdated....

You phrase this like the PT either had to be the way it was, or it had to be slow and outdated to appeal to the OT fans. But that's not true, and it wasn's a no-win situation. It's entirely possible that Lucas could have told basically the same story while pleasing the OT fans. As an example of this, see the Clone Wars TV show.

vote_for_palpatine said: 

you can't have your cake both ways, and eat it to..

This is my favorite mixed metaphor ever. Thanks for contributing a new phrase to my vocabulary!

Ha! I hadn't even noticed that. So this is like a 3-way with cake? yummmmm..............

C3PX said:

Wow, just saw this thread for the first time. It all seems so familiar somehow... LOL, reminds me a lot of the Starkiller Ranch... and various other prequel edit idea threads that have dropped off page one and disappeared over the years.

One thing I have mentioned before is my personal edit of TPM, one time I went in and just hacked everything out of the film I didn't like. It is much shorter, the changes are drastic, but the story is the same and I think it worked quite well.

First, I kept the opening sequence in the eyes of Qui-gon and Obi-Wan only, no switching back and forth from heroes to the villians. I think it ultimately speeds up the pace of the opening, and makes the villians more villianous. They are waiting to meet with some one, their ride explodes, poisionous gas, robots, try to cut through the door, bigger robots, excape into the vents, stall away and meet up on the planet.

They run into Jar Jar, but they don't ask him for help, I cut the conversation a little, they take off running and Jar Jar says, "More did you say?" and runs after them. Next shot of them they are on the steps of Theed, Jar Jar followed them. No Gungan city, no submarine. Kind of weird Jar Jar just follows them and they don't bother to ask why, but I think it works well enough.

The other drastic thing I did was the podrace, I don't remember how long it was, or how short I managed to make mine, but I really cut the sucker down and sped up the pace. The end result was what felt like a much higher speed race, more like a drag race than stock car racing. I shortened it to one lap, so now it is just zipping through canyons and people blowing up left and right. I used the Beggar's Canyon track from the Shadows of the Empire soundtrack, as has become the standard fanedit scoring for that race, and my whole race runs no longer than the duration of that track.

I am by no means an audio guy, I just don't have an ear for music. I actually really like the stripped down edit of TPM I made for myself, it is my ideal version of the film, but the audio is very rough. If somebody every did an edit with drastic cuts like this with rescoring to cover the cuts, I think it would be a really good edit of the movie. Ultimately you can edit Jar Jar down to a minimum, and he is not too annoying at all, to me this is much more effective than redubbing him (I am a very big opponent of redubbing, I have just never seen a fan edit in which it really worked that well).

Just thought I'd mention these, as I have never seen a current edit go this far before.

C3PX, a lot of your changes are things that I've wanted to do if I ever got around to it. Any chance you would share your edit?

Trooperman said:

This is still something people want to see, right?

Yes yes yes!

JoeyJoeJoeJr. said:

What would have been better would be to make the whole situation more soap opera-ish and make Obi-Wan / Padme / Anakin have more of a love triangle. Maybe have it where Obi-Wan saves Padme instead of Anakin in the Gladiator scene. Have some romantic interludes between just Padme and Obi-Wan and perhaps one where Anakin misinterprets what he sees, just before he really crosses over to the dark side (jealousy is not a light side of the force trait). None of this "I can save her from impending doom if I listen to prune-face" bullcrap. Then when Padme follows Anakin to Mustafar to try and talk some sense into him and the stowaway Obi-Wan emerges, in a split second he figures the child that she is carrying is actually Obi-Wan's and that she is trying to manipulate him. In a flying rage he force chokes and perhaps force pushes her where she is mortally wounded before Obi-Wan can react. Then a climactic lightsaber duel that doesn't drag on so much, 3 minutes max. Have some trash talking between the two like:

Obi-Wan: You sick bastard! Has your new dark master warped your mind so badly that you would kill the woman you love whom is carrying your child?

Anakin: My child?! I saw what happened between you two when we were on Planet X!

Obi-Wan: Unlike you, Anakin, I have not so willfully abandoned my Jedi Knighthood. I'll admit to being tempted, but I never gave in to my desires. I don't think you can say the same.

Anakin: Liar! You two have been conspiring against me all this time! Trying to keep me from reaching my full potential! Well my new master has nurtured me and now I am even more powerful than you... or any of the Jedi for that matter!

Obi-Wan: Your arrogance has gotten you into trouble before, my young Padawan. Don't think this time will be any different.

Anakin: *Evil laugh* Padawan?! You insult me for the last time, [sic] Master. After I am finished with you, I will erase any memory of the Jedi from the galaxy. My master and I will let no one stand in our way!

 

Then as Obi-Wan delivers what he figures to be a killing blow, lopping off both of Anakin's arms and a blow to the back rendering his legs useless.

 

Obi-Wan: Forgive me, Anakin. I never wanted it to end like this. (Holding his lightsaber at Anakins throat)

Anakin: Nonsense! It's what you wanted all along! To steal Padme away from me! Well I stole her away from you just now, didn't I?

Obi-Wan: My duty is to kill any Sith I encounter without any hesitation. (Retracts his lightsaber). Instead I will let you die slowly, not because I am cruel, like you. No, I will allow you to live just a little while longer because I once loved you like a son. You will never know that feeling, because today you demonstrated your total lack of regard for innocent life. First you slaughtered our younglings and then you killed Padme along with your unborn child. I want to give you a chance before you draw your final breath to reflect on why she came to you. She still saw some good in you, Anakin. She thought she could save you. (Kneels closely to Anakin and whispers). The only thing you stole from me was my faith in you... that you were the chosen one.

Then Obi-Wan returns to the ship, realizes Padme is barely clinging to life, they get to the rebel base, the twins are born, she dies yadayadayada, roll credits....there's your movie.

This is actually very good.

C3PX said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Why should he not post?...

 

Why? Because he disagrees with some peoples opinions, that is why! Because he is against, George, and the PT, and the (mostly) finished version of the OT. How can anybody go about their lives and live happily when there are people out there on the internets that disagree with them? The voices of opposition must be silenced! We cannot give up until George's honor has been defended and all tongues concede that he IS the Master Story teller of our age, the ages that have come before us, and all the ages that are yet to come!

Long live the Master Story teller! Long live his wonderful movies and television shows! Long live his great beard and his flannel shirts! Death to his enemies and opposition! Death to the incompleted versions of his films! Death to those who obsess over them and fail to see the light!

Damn, man. That was classic. I wish I could buy you a beer for that.