InfoDroid

On the subject of killing Han, which has also been suggested,  I tend to agree with Lucas from a story standpoint.  If the heroes go through all that at the beginning of the movie to rescue Han, just to have him die at the bunker...it leaves the viewer feeling confused. 

If anyone's gonna die, it HAS to be Lando.  Self-sacrifice is the only way he can fully redeem himself for selling out his friends in Empire.  When it comes down to it, he said he was sorry, but never really paid any consequences for his betrayal.  Instead he was promoted to "General" and given command of a crucial assault on the Death Star. 

Lando must pay.  :)        

AxiaEuxine said:

I am sure I don't speak for just myself when I say I enjoy the EU, enjoy it immensely. Adywan has revealed that he intends to destroy the entire EU with his plans for ROTJ:R. I for one love your work Adywan and I respect that you dont want to ADD anything from the EU into your Revisted trilogy but pleeeeease dont make the entire EU irrelevant by killing off Lando, or any other major character.

Im begging here Adywan. Begging I tell ya.

 Why not just watch the original DVD then?  It's not like Adywan releases an edit and it suddenly becomes the only existing Star Wars canon. 

To the rest of the world outside this board, Greedo still fires first.  So, I don't think Lando is in any real danger of expiring.  ;) 

I like that...  :D

It would be hard though to get all of that exposition into the movie without either having a prologue which explains it or an entire crawl dedicated just to that.

BingoWings,

That's an interesting idea about the Neimoidians being worshipped as gods...has a Stargate feel to it.  It could work by using subtitles for Neimoidians and Gungans, but it would be tricky.  How can that be developed and tied into the reason they're invading?

Good job, Asteroid-Man!  I love your logo...LOVE the music...I like the direction you're going with the crawl.  It feels a lot like Gladiator (which I love) and works perfectly with the new music.  The mood you've created is great.

The typos that others have pointed out should be corrected, of course.  And ditch the Star Wars logo you have.  It's weird.  Go here and download this font and install it: http://www.abstractfonts.com/font/10476 

Shift + S gives you a perfect Star Wars logo.  :)

The only other thing I'd say is that you have a little music bleed-through from the original track which (as I've found) is unavoidable unless you scrap the soundtrack completely and create your own soundtrack with your own effects from the bottom-up.  Which I'm sure you're not going to want to do.  But, other than that, I'd say great start!  Thanks for posting the clip!  It helps to see what kind of quality to expect.  Keep it up!

--ID

My plans for the climax?  I didn't have any.  That's why it's only halfway finished.  ;)

No, seriously though, I hadn't planned to do anything drastic to the end, even though it needs it.  Not sure there's too much anyone can really do to make it like it should be.  That's what's so frustrating.  The very concept itself is flawed. 

I was going to cut out Indy trying to help Mac, which was lame.  And anything else that was truly offensive.    I wanted to add some Temple music during their escape through those water wheel things.  Didn't know what the hell I was going to do with Spalko's death and the UFO.  ...sigh...And the wedding I had planned to cut completely.  I wanted to end it with "Somewhere your grandfather is laughing."  Cue the music and credits...THAT's an Indy ending very reminscent of the ends of both Temple and Crusade.  Plus, the wedding reminded me too much of the end of Attack of the Clones.  What is it with Lucas?  Everybody's gotta get married!  It's so cliche.  Indy is James Bond.  He never gets married.  I love Marion and all, but no.

So, sorry I don't have many gems to fire at you there, Jones.  Now you see why I wasn't too excited about finishing it.  It's a blah ending to a blah movie.  We need some inspiration here on how to really, truly make it a worthwhile climax with the existing footage or even footage from another movie!!!

MTHaslett is a genius when it comes to this kind of thing.  He really is.  Where are you, Mark?

--ID

Nope, not scrapped.  It's halfway done.  Just trying to get inspired enough to finish it.  :)  What a dog of a movie.  Depresses me really.

But, I must say, I'm extremely proud of Jones1899 here for taking it upon himself to learn how to do all this stuff so he can finally make a version of the film come to fruition that he'll enjoy.

Very nice poster design, Asteroid-Man!  Great composition!

TheBoost said:

Making purple a sign of rank would seem confusing. A whole lot of the Jedi action we see are indeed masters on the council, so purple would not stand out that much. Also, would Obi get a purple blade when he achieves that rank?

Why would it seem confusing?  If anything, it eliminates the confusion as to why a purple lightsaber even exists.

Things tend to be less confusing when they have a known purpose.  Think of it like the karate color belt system.  Yellow belts, green belts, black belts...  It's the same concept, earned for the level of mastery they've achieved.  Think of how the purple stands out in a shot like the Geonosian arena during the charge, or the subsequent battle where there are many Jedi on the battlefield.

And no, Obi-Wan wouldn't have one because (it seemed to me anyway) he was just "filling in" on the council during wartime.  And of course Anakin wouldn't get one because they don't grant him the rank of Master. 

Then again, not every master is on the council either.  Look at Qui-Gon.  So, maybe it's reserved for only the top official council members only.  Who knows?  You could come up with any explanation you want to.  Anything would be better than having only one as it is now.   

Just one more sidenote about Council members having puple lightsabers.  To rationalize this idea, it may make sense in a battlefield situation for other Jedi to distinguish who is "leading the charge" in a potentially confusing situation.  The downside to this would be the enemy could also easily pick them out. 

Regardless, I have no problem with Dooku, Mace and Yoda or any other council member or "Advanced Jedi" having purple lightsabers.  Akwat Kbrana is right, it only serves to strengthen the Dooku element of the story.  It's a testament to how high a level he had attained in the order.

What about Ki-Adi Mundi?  We see him with a lightsaber in ROTS.  Maybe his should be purple too? 

JasonN said:

Darth Piccolo said:

all this lightsaber colors are annoying if adywan gets to the prequels, let all the jedi have blue lightsabers except for windu, yoda and dooku, they should have green to reinforce the rarity of such color and what vader says to luke in rotj

Yeah... because no faneditor will ever make the PT into a good or halfway decent set of films... except for Adywan, of course. :/

EDIT: Please note that I am not bashing Adywan - he's an excellent editor and it was through his Revisited edit that brought back my interest in Star Wars (something that I thought had been dead for the last ten years). However, I am just slightly tired and annoyed of coming across people that have this absolute-unyielding belief that unless your name is Adywan, your fanedit/s are worth less than s**t.

I know what you mean, Jason.  I get that feeling too.  It's incredibly frustrating.  Not taking anything away from Adywan, of course.  He deserves all the accolades he gets.  But he won't be making it to the Prequels for a long time.

Hahaha...I don't know...maybe I let something slip.  ;) 

I like the idea of the Bith band playing on those "intergalactic sports" screens.  In my Reborn edit, at the Coruscant nightclub I had added a few shots of the Bith/Rodian band from Jabba's Palace SE redux (since I wasn't planning to use them in ROTJ) and of course added new music.  I might try putting them on the screens.  That's an interesting suggestion.

I also added "Jango" hurriedly leaving the club after Zam gets her arm cut off.  As if he was supposed to be meeting her there.

JasonN, I thought you were making Qui-Gon the one who ordered the clone army...oh, wait...maybe that was Type12point.

I just want to take a moment and publicly apologize for what I said to Bingo and anyone else who was offended by my comments.  I had no right to say what I said and no right to even criticize him for doing something that is obviously well-intentioned.   He was right on every point and I was wrong.

It's out of character for me to do that, and I'm sorry for it. 

I harbor no ill-will toward Bingo, and I've PM'd him with a more in-depth explanation and hopefully he accepts my apology and it's water under the bridge at this point.

Anyone who has any questions about it can PM me directly.

Sincerely,

ID

Yes, and let me tell you why I think this is a good idea...

As posted at FE.org:

I also really like JasonN's idea of Dooku not being associated with the Sith whatsoever. Granted, Christopher Lee makes a great Sith Lord...and it has been argued that making this change would diminish the extent to which Palpatine has manipulated things, BUT...I think MORE importantly, having Dooku as an enemy, seeing what "a Jedi" is capable of, it causes Anakin (and the audience) to get more comfortable with seeing a Jedi as the bad guy. And it plays right into Palpatine's hand. Especially in ROTS. After the duel, Anakin hasn't beheaded a Sith...he's killed a Jedi. This Jedi was the enemy. And later, when Mace stands in the way of Anakin's needs to save his wife, it's much easier for Anakin to make the mental transition that Mace - a Jedi - is now his enemy too. If Dooku could plot to overthrow the Republic, then certainly Mace or Yoda are capable of that as well.

Anakin doesn't live in the same black-and-white, good-and-evil world Luke was born into. Anakin exists in much more of a gray area, where people aren't necessarily what they portray themselves to be. Making Dooku a "good" Jedi who feels he's doing the right thing but still happens to be an antagonist to our heroes, is much more interesting than this Sith nonsense. Lucas' idea of "twists and turns" are much more akin to the scripts of professional wrestling, where a good guy will turn sides and go bad just for the shock of it all. A month later, he recants and gains the love of the crowd again. But it doesn't work in a movie like this. Not when you're trying to portray realistic characters in an unrealistic world, at its core I think that's what Star Wars (at its best) has always been about.

The viewer's mindset should always be the same as the main character's. Like Anakin himself, we shouldn't know who to trust...the galaxy should be off-balance in a way...and the only character who we should trust implicitly and feel 100% comfortable with is Palpatine...at least we know HE'S a good guy. (and here's where your improvements in securing "Sidious' secret identity" will come in handy) Good thing he's in charge. Too bad the Jedi are trying to buck him at every turn. Why don't they like him? We do. The only thing made to feel appealing should be his singular vision of "peace". Until we find out in Episode III that Palpatine has been the villain all along, but by the time we realize it, it's too late to stop it. We have to witness and participate in the fall.

If this is the way you've approached it then I think your sensibilities on this are well-founded, JasonN. It will definitely be an improvement to the credibility of the storyline.

Addtionally, on the subject of the purple lightsaber:

Color has always been important in the Star Wars Saga. I always thought that it would make more sense to give Dooku the purple blade to signal that he's a turn-coat. I mean, if blue = good and red = bad and you're not sure if Dooku is good or bad, then purple makes perfect sense for his character. Additionally, purple has always been associated with royalty, and Dooku IS royalty.

I remember there being a lot of speculation after AOTC came out on whether or not Mace would turn bad, suggesting the purple saber was a hint to the audience that he would enact some kind of betrayal in episode III... But like so many other things in the Prequels, Mace's saber color was actually void of any meaning at all.

Anyway, unlike some of the other attempts to re-color Dooku's saber, MagnoliaFan's in particular, your version has no hint of red bleeding through. It looks really good. You should be proud. Up to this point you've made a lot of really good changes. And I'm actually glad there's so many different edits of these movies, because I think the community keeps building and improving on what has come before. It seems to be a collective experience.

I'm waiting for the DVD's. :)

--ID

Niether will I.  My thoughts about it have been clearly stated.

Username: DarkFather
Join Date: April 19, 2008

Username: Akwat Kbrana
Join Date: April 28, 2008

Username: InfoDroid
Join Date: April 25, 2005

Thanks for the help, Guys.  But I don't need to be lectured on how to use the forum's features.  The point is, I shouldn't need to hit ignore.  It just shouldn't be happening.  Period. 

No, that was you being a douche and it's been pissing me off for weeks and really turning me off to this forum lately, so I finally had to say something because you're doing it in almost EVERY thread!

Bingowings said:  This thread is about letting people discuss what lengths fan edits can go to and what good they can do.

It's not about board policing policy (there is a thread about that already) http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Fan-edit-forum-rules-and-FAQ/topic/5950/ 

 LOL!  You're trying to police me NOW!  Maybe you don't even realize you're doing it.  

BingoWings said: "I think it's important to remind everyone about the topic title.

vaderios has effectively showed us that at the very least TPM need a colour fix but this thread is really about ideas that may radically alter the prequels.

It's a spring board for editors who want to take the existing material and really shake it up, rather than just nibble at the edges.

Already there seems to be some moves in that direction with some new edits but I don't want us to lose focus on the mission statement.

Some of the colour changes are radical (when they set a very different mood) but the case for a clean up has been made here now."

Is this really necessary?  I for one was enjoying the screenshots Vaderios was posting.  It was an inspiration to me.  So why cut it off at the head?  What was it hurting?  It was generating excitement over what was possible with mere color correction of the Prequels. 

That's just one example of many.  We also have him trying to police the board with this very thread.  But, BingoWings is not on trial here and I'm not the prosecution.  I simply wanted to bring his attention to it, because others might be offended and not speak up.  I'm not like that.

And no, not trying to "come out of the woodwork" to poison the forum here either.  That's laughable.  My reputation and history of participation here speaks for itself.

Oh, it's not just this thread, Bingo.  It's almost every thread.

But again, not trying to give you a hard time.  I'm sure you're sincere in your compulsion to help.  It's just that it can be a little off-putting sometimes and I want you to be aware of it.

Personally speaking, I don't need anyone telling me what I should or shouldn't be contributing to a thread unless I've violated the forum's rules somehow.  And in that case, it's a mod's responsibility to inform me of that. 

Well, we've never needed a nanny here at OT.  As long as I've been around, (and despite the aforementioned negative tendancies I've observed) people have been pretty mature and decent to each other for the most part, compared to other boards.

The mods step in when they need to. 

Well, I was just curious because I've been frequenting this board since around '04/'05 and haven't noticed you until fairly recently.  It just seems like you try to steer almost every thread toward your personal preference or your idea of what the discussion should consist of.  Your posts are worded somewhat authoritatively and can come across as dismissive (or worse) pushy, so I just wondered if you held some sort of official position here I wasn't aware of.  That's all.

No offense.  Maybe you're just a "take charge" kind of person.

Bingowings said:

Normally I'm against sectarianism in discussion threads but my attitude for this thread is bring it on (both sides) if only to keep it off the other threads.

 BingoWings, are you a mod?

TheBoost said:

I think what Phantom Editor did was great... he edited the movie as an editor. He didn't try to re-write it...

Well SOMEONE has to.  Someone has to make it right.  Lucas certainly didn't.  The Prequels could have used a few re-writes.  And now that the technology is available to us at home, what's wrong with trying to make it better?  Of course, "better" is subjective.  But what I've noticed over the years is that this board is heavy on people with opinions and light on people with any sort of real technical or artistic skill.  So what you end up with is a group of people with talent being critiqued and many times discouraged by those who really don't have much talent at all.  

Even Adywan has had to endure a lot of crap from naysayers for the decisions he's made, and he's delivered a final product far beyond anything that a fan has yet produced.

I started out as just a reader on this board, and over time took it upon my self to learn how to edit and do all this stuff so I could fix some things that had bugged me for years.  Obviously, I wasn't going to wait around for Lucasfilm or anyone else to do it.  I make my edits available to the community on the off chance that someone may have felt the same way about certain scenes and might enjoy the changes I've made for myself. 

I don't want this to sound as if I'm condemning anybody on this board, and none of this is specifically directed at you TheBoost.  There are actually quite a few members who have been incredibly gracious and incredibly helpful, who have consistently made valuable contributions to the fanediting community here without ever making an edit of their own.  People like Sluggo, Ripplin,  Ben_Danger, Vaderios and many others.  They are supportive and they're enthusiastic.

But, for the most part, the attitude here is not like that.  There are many people who are against changes of any kind.  If that's the case, then why are you participating in a fanediting discussion on a board centered around "Fan Edits, Preservation Efforts, and Other Fan Projects"?  There are others who just feel the need to crap out their negative opinion onto everyone else's head.  And then there are those who I call the "Unpleaseables", these are people who want to see changes made, but whatever you put out is never going to be good enough for them.  

Anyway, before I get off on too much of a tangent here...the point I'm making is that you can trash other people's efforts all you like, but can't truly appreciate the amount of work that goes into a fanedit without trying to make one yourself.  That's the only way you're going to see your "opinion" come to fruition.          

--ID