Hal 9000

nl0428, I see what you mean about that order of the sequences; the music does seem to more naturally build up to the dramatic rendition of Duel of the Fates as the trio fight. However, for my part, the cut from Anakin flying up into the clouds to the duel continuing is burned into my brain and it doesn’t feel quite right to cut to Padme and company without a blast of music. I think I will leave it as is for my version, but kudos for finding an interesting change to make.

Here’s a good example of what I meant:

Imagine the original teaser trailer for the original Star Wars. Imagine the narrator saying, “Aliens from a thousand worlds!”

Now imagine him saying, “Aliens from several thousand worlds!”

Yeah, the line about creating life is back, along with one about cheating death as Vader is pronounced. I figure if Palpatine plays into TROS, even if only briefly, it’ll be thematically relevant.

I don’t really care for the way the line has to sound in Ep1 of “It’s possible he was conceived by the [Force].” It doesn’t seem seamless to my ears, though I bet L8wrtr did as well as anyone could with the idea. He has no father, and that’s all that’s important. I do not believe Palpatine ‘fathered’ Anakin; The Force did, even if partially in response to the shenanigans the Sith were cooking up. See Darth Plagueia in your local bookstore.

I think the first seeds of rebellion scene almost has to be placed where I have, due to the lighting and time of day. It’s late morning, not approaching sunset as the Anakin-Obi walk ‘n talk or traffic scenes. Even so, it feels more natural than breaking up the latter two scenes mentioned. My opinion; there’s several edits that have placed the scene in both spots.

I’m not sure about Yoda and Qui-Gon… the scene would need new scoring to be extended. The reaction shot of Yoda opens his eyes seems to suggest surprise, and it may be a little awkward to have him respond verbally to Qui-Gon prior.

Eh, the original AOTC crawl uses ‘solar systems,’ so it’s just something I didn’t alter when doing a new crawl. I kind of like it. Episode 2 is the only one of the three to credit Ben Burtt as ‘Sound Editor’ rather than ‘Edited by.’ So, for that one alone, he is credited in my version as ‘Editor’ and I as ‘fan editor.’

I will keep it as ‘solar system’ if for no other reason than it’s something unique to the original crawl and I’m weird.

That’s hard for me to play in my head so I’ll have to see about it next time I’ve got everything in front of me, but I imagine the theatrical will feel more ‘right’ to me just because I’ve seen it a million times. But I’ll see about it!

Thanks, LordPlagueis, for taking time to interact with the edit and propose potential improvements for V6.

Obi-Wan carrying Anakin’s saber for a shot or two seems like a moviemaking continuity error that can happen when things are cut, and is worth losing the antagonism between these two characters. I imagine it would have been difficult for the hypothetical filmmaker who made this change during post-production to even paint it out.

The establishing shot of the scene with Padme’s family is low-resolution and unfinished. Including it would be more technically correct though, so let me see about this when I have the movie ripped and in front of me. It may be worthwhile to change it to that.

You’re probably right about the “thousand” point. I think for me the idea stems from the crawl. “A thousand star systems have yadda yadda” sounds better to me than “several thousand.” I guess it just sounds artificially inflated. Perhaps I could undo Dooku’s modified line but leave the crawl as it is in TAS. It would still jive with any non-film continuity because of Dooku’s confidence of his Separatist movement radically expanding.

I see a superficial parallel between the shots of Anakin and Luke falling, but I don’t think keeping the shot improves the scene or film. With the Yoda scene, it seems shoehorned in just to be a parallel. I will say that this goes well with Yoda sensing Anakin’s pain later as he heads to confront Dooku. But, I do not like the Qui-Gon yell caught in the middle. So I think this’ll remain Anakin’s dark secret.

Anakin confessing the Tusken slaughter was deliberately removed and I prefer the film without it. It speaks to a more believable romance developing, and Anakin sharing things with Palpatine he doesn’t with anyone else.

Interesting point about the sequencing of Palpatine accepting emergency powers. I moved it in order to be able to move from the Dooku deleted scene into the arena more smoothly. This would definitely be a Plan B, but it might be worth mocking up a version of the droid factory scene to see how it plays.

Dominic, I can see that working really well… with the use of the nightmare.

LOE will remain as is, but I’m glad to vet it some more, heading into the final version. (For reals this time.)

Thanks for reminding me that L8wrtr tackled it that way. It seems a little jarring to me, but I’ve got an over-sensitive ear for these three particular movies’ transitions, which… no one should develop.

I don’t think it would be good for me to pursue that order for this set of scenes without making use of the nightmare. I think LOE’s existing sequence for this chunk of scenes is best as it already is, given what it is going for overall.

Yeah, I thought about that, too. That’s how my oooold edit has it, actually.

However, I think Obi-Wan arriving on Utapau ought to ramp up momentum a little bit, and going back to the slow talking scene in Palpatine’s office doesn’t feel right.

This edit takes after L8wrtr’s, and develops his idea of having Anakin take out the droid control ship in order to save the day, rather than as a trivial matter after Padmé saves the day. In COD, Anakin knocking out the droid control ship is what allows Padmé to capture the viceroy.

^ lol

Well, I think Silicon’s idea for how to include the apartment scene works really well… without also including the sunset Palpatine office scene.

Seems to me that we have two options for V6. One is to just leave things as they are, which would be:

[Wookiee battle] > [Anakin and Obi-Wan make up] > [Sunset Palpatine office scene] > [Obi-Wan arrives on Utapau]

Or, including the apartment scene would be:

[Wookiee battle] > [Anakin and Obi-Wan make up] > [Anakin and Padmé in apartment] > [Sunset Palpatine office scene] > [Obi-Wan arrives on Utapau]

In this setup, I am concerned that the sunset Palpatine office scene would become a little bit more of a pacing killer. However, we would go from Anakin making up with Obi-Wan to becoming concerned that he stopped by without his knowing, then to Palpatine prompting him to more explicitly entertain the idea that Padmé has something to hide.
Again, the wipe from Anakin and Padmé after the line “you expect too much of yourself” to the establishing shot of Palpatine’s office will probably feel boring.

It sounds to me like one should keep one scene or the other, but I’m open to feedback.

He uses the word at least once in holographic form while reporting to the room full of political people as Anakin and Padme watch.

I don’t happen to have the edit already, but could you post a clip? If not I’ll seek it out and check what it’s like. Thanks as always for tossing out an idea!

I am unable to remove the sounds of 3PO’s servos as he walks during the shot of Obi-Wan carrying Padme off her ship and Bail saying they will take her to medical center. If the droids are indeed painted out of the birthing scene, they will still be depicted leaving the ship. If that’s the case, do you think its worth removing them from witnessing the birth?

JEDIT: I removed the shot, and it looks pretty okay. Nevermind.

Thanks for the clarification and prognostication!

I’m glad to hear J.J. sought out some sort of agreement with those people about how to end things.

Has anyone heard anything about the Skymaster version lately, or know where I can seek out news? I’m hoping to scope it out for my ANH project that’s nearly finished.

Ridley, that looks gorgeous! I can’t imagine anyone at Lucasfilm doing any better, 1997 or today. The characters’ faces and various surfaces each reflect the flicker at appropriate levels. The tunnel and its flicker are a good midway point between the newer movies and fitting in well with the 1977 aesthetic (or even a hypothetical GOOD 1997 SE aesthetic). The color looks good to me, just a little green to reach forward to the newer movies but not overwhelming.
If you feel like anything needs adjusting, I defer to your judgement, but I can’t fault it for anything. I’m very pleased with it.

Just read about “new desert planet Pasaana.”

It’s a minor thing, but if you want a desert planet why not pick Jakku or Tatooine, and if you want a new planet then why another desert planet?

That would be a purely academic question, and I’m not sure what names I would put to the edits if that’s what I was doing. I really like “rebalanced,“ but that’s obviously already been used. 😉

If I had any names to choose from at all, including prior fan edits, my top choices would be for each episode:

Balance of the Force
The Republic Divided
Labyrinth of Evil

Also, if Ridley does want to encode crawls that have the original titles, episode one should be modified to exclude a cheeky reference to the original title within the crawl.

Okay, thanks. So, basically it means there are more colors available when presenting the picture.

OutboundFlight said:

Lol, it’s been blocked by Disney. Only a matter of time now.

Not a good thing. I hope if any hammer falls it does not spread to others he recklessly endangered.

Bobson Dugnutt said:

A livestream of him editing in real time, must be thrilling stuff.

Cutting away from Jar Jar drop-throwing the wrench earlier works just fine with some audio tweaking.

While the original version of this scene is embarrassing to watch, I think it works rather well when heavily abbreviated. It’s just the bare minimum of the structure of the scene and his shenanigans.

Maybe it’s all the 20th anniversary of TPM coverage lately, but I am feeling a little more generous toward the movie than I was when I did V1 of this fan edit.

Ha, hard to argue with that. 😉