Hal 9000

Hey, glad you could join us here on the forum!

That clip was made with that script in mind, with some changes. It seems to be received well, and I do like how it emphasizes that whatever his motives up to that point, by now his power-mania has enveloped him. However, it seems that removing his mention of overthrowing the Emperor may be missed. And it would feed into that narrative of Anakin going mad with power. He makes a similar move in ESB, pitching the same idea to Luke.

If it had been feasible in the earlier scene where Palpatine pronounces him ‘Darth Vader’ to remove the idea that Palpatine has not actually mastered the ability to cheat death, then removing that dialogue on Mustafar would make more sense and paint Anakin/Vader as enjoying a sense of righteous loyalty to Palpatine.

But, it can’t really be removed without gutting the scene and obscuring his motives to the point that it suffers for it. So… it was worth pursuing, but it seems better to leave that part out (meaning in).

Hey that’s pretty cool! And if anyone would like to create such alternate audio tracks I’d be glad to include them and nudge them into sync with any future project updates.

Here is a different take on Anakin and Padme on Mustafar, modeled on an idea from the aforementioned redditor. The key idea is to emphasize the disconnect between the two, as Padme petitions him to focus on love and he persistently emphasizes power and control. For your consideration.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5gYsaiUCXGLyS_ilZ0db_4jA_C0wxdo/view?usp=share_link

I love this project, big fan. Please use AI to replace all characters with their original actors, for tomorrow. Thanks!

Message received about the younglings, Kenobi notwithstanding. I’ll have to think a bit about the “cheating death” dialogue, but I’m inclined to leave it as is. LOE has become an established offering, and so it’s probably better to let it be for the most part.

If I moved scenes around so his nightmare is shown earlier, I could keep his meeting with Yoda so that we do understand his motivation clearly without it coming up at all at his Sith dubbing. But again, LOE is partially defined by moving the nightmare to later.

I’m working on what I hope will be, and intend as, the final update to this project.

[Hold for laughter.]

Here’s what I’m planning, including a few ideas from redditor HighGroundIsOP.

• Given the Kenobi show, I’m relenting on youngling stuff. (The Ep2 scene with Yoda will remain out, though.) Since Kenobi makes a meal out of Anakin unambiguously killing kids in a more graphic, direct onscreen manner than ROTS, I’m going to reinstate the scene itself as well as two other uses of the term. Also, since the child actor himself lent his voice for Ascendant, that’s an additional factor.

• For the main version, but not for the alternate ‘Padme dies’ version, I’m removing dialogue during Anakin’s Sith knighting about working together to cheat death. Given TROS, omitting this smooths out one’s thought process in the world of fridge logic. And, it sets Anakin up as someone who is loyal and believes he’s aligned with the right person. Even leaves open an old-school headcanon about Vader’s prolonged existence literally depending on Palpatine. This does, however, require losing the line, “Just help me save Padme’s life.” This reverts to an earlier version of LOE basically. (I left these lines in the alternate version because even though they wrinkle TROS, the touchpoint about Anakin’s ironic obsession with saving Padme is too valuable to cut.)

• Taking the redditor’s suggestion about Anakin and Padme on Mustafar. The idea is to have Anakin consistently respond to Padme’s pleas by highlighting his power.

• I’d like to see Anakin offer his thoughts to Padme about feeling lost and wanting more, but because I don’t have a nice segue into the scene without the nightmare, it’d likely be an awkwardly short scene with nowhere to be placed.

• One of the big ideas of LOE to begin with was to marry Q2’s use of ‘Other Boleyn Girl’ footage to depict Padme surviving on Alderaan and Corigar’s restructure to defer Anakin’s nightmare until after political motives have been established. However, I wonder if the order of scenes I am using for the updated alternate version would be better for the main version also. We’d get the nightmare first as in ROTS, then the opera scene, then Yoda’s counseling session along with the rest of the string of talking scenes about political factors. Really not sure, as it’d be a big change to LOE but I feel it’d help the movie. Seems like I’m leaning toward it, though.

JEDIT: Here’s the order of scenes again, for reference:

Anakin learns Padme is pregnant
Greivous arrives on Utupau and speaks with Sidious
Nightmare, Anakin walks out of bedroom
Opera scene (excised mention of Greivous intel, since it’s not followed up with for a while)
Yoda’s counseling session
Anakin misses briefing and Obi-Wan warns him of Palpatine
Palpatine appoints Anakin to Jedi Council
Council doesn’t like this
Bail’s apartment deleted scene
Anakin is asked to spy on Palpatine
Jedi traffic scene
Anakin and Padme talk about their political views and have a bad time
Troops setting up on Khshyyyk, and LOE continues more or less the same from here until the ending (same as current alternate version ending)

PM sent.

Yeah, I think that’s enough to pacify the question about whether what we have at present could be improved by AI. 😃

I don’t think that would make sense to how we’ve made things to be.

I think “I’m” is more fitting since she’s responding to what Palpatine just said. But I agree, it sounds fair to attempts to use an AI voice and see how it does compared to what’s there, even though I’d be hard pressed to replace it!

Thanks, JJB, I will be glad to bake those in and see how they match up. Could you try generating a few alternate deliveries of Rey’s first line, “You lightspeed skipped”?

Maybe ask ChatGPT how to describe a child’s intonation when asking something like, “What’s your name again?” with their pitch rising throughout the whole sentence.

And yeah, krlozdac, I agree! I wish it were at all practical or realistic to rent out a theater or something and congregate for a viewing.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I asked GPT-4 to describe his voice and put that in there.

That’s hilarious. And no, I don’t think I had gotten anything for Rey to allow re-extending the lightspeed skipping part of the conversation.

Yes, I have all those lines saved and I believe I have implemented all of them that I would like to use into my timeline, although I can’t boot into the OS to check at the moment.

About the “come home” line… for an artificial line and setting aside the creepy factor that comes with that (although less so than what they actually did with Leia in TROS overall), it is an affecting line delivery. I can’t tell for sure whether it’ll sound as smooth as it’d need to with full reverb and all, but I’d be interested in pursuing that to see.

Yeah, I think the only real missing piece is 3PO dialogue, which is not strictly necessary but would be nice. The two bits are the little conversation with the stormtroopers and when he’s working on the Falcon.

Perhaps 3PO could have an AI generated delivery of a form of the line as it stands in V2? “I am a highly trained Resistance spy,” or maybe “I am a dangerous killing machine” or “I am an expert saboteur.” I like the line as we have it, but it’s not obvious why he should know what the “Resistance” is.

For the line onboard the Falcon, perhaps, “What tedious work. What we really need is a mechanic, ideally an R-2 unit!”

I’m not even sure offhand. I think I have everything laid in aside from 3PO stuff.

I don’t know that anyone here has the skillset or experience to use this. I’m just still amazed that what JJB has done so far sounds as good as it does, allowing targeted use of it to solve real problems.

Anyone have a copy of the ‘Corigar Cut’ of ROTS from 2009? I’d like to archive a copy since it was a big influence on my own edit.

Wookiees can go for months without using the toilet.

But when they do…

PM sent.

Up to this point even, we’ve been less primed than in AOTC to view him as creepy, and I think that shot is meant to show us that he sees through her disingenuous “makes me feel uncomfortable.” As delivered in the context of Anakin’s tirade in that scene, Padme’s line reads as fully earnest. But here I hope it reads closer to its intent as a deflection of her feelings for him.

I’ll keep this in mind and refer to it here in the event that there’s yet another update, but I still intend for what’s out now to be final. I know better than to say “never,” but I’d very much like to get to a point of these prequel edits being finalized or laying fallow.

PM sent.

It made for an abrupt ending to a short scene to remove it.

I’ll bear it in mind, but I don’t see cracking AOTC open again anytime soon.

PM sent.

It is a perfect way to button up the continuity, explaining why Vader is not hot on the trail pursuing Kenobi.

I don’t imagine anything we did to Ascendant interfering too badly, unless they were to throw in a line explaining the potential continued absence of Adam Driver. Or show Leia’s saber in a flashback.

And if the crawl is good, I won’t rewrite it! I didn’t originally for TLJ, until we decided it would be nice to massage in a bit of exposition about the galactic politics going on out there after TFA destroyed Buenos Aries. I do like a good crawl, though, and it just depends, but I’m not petty. (Am I?)