MTHaslett

Because of a way Christopher Lee spoke the lines (as opposed to the script Sluggo posted above), there's an opportunity in Dukoo's talk with Obi Wan for a simple cut (sound wise, it would have to be covered visually) to get the dialogue close to what Sluggo is asking for:

Dukoo: Qui gonn knew all about the corruption in the senate... he had learned the truth as I have.

ObiWan: the truth?

Dukoo: the truth. What if I were to tell you...

Much better, Sluggo. Good ideas, all around.

Now we just need a episode III editor to jump on the SOTDS bandwagon!

Grievous wouldn't be evil because of the eye change-- he's already evil. The eye change would "reveal" that he is actually Darth Maul.

If that's a cliche, so be it. I prefer a meaningful cliche to a meaningless Grievous. I'm simply grateful to finally come across a way to communicate that idea without massive amounts of additional (non existant) footage.

Can we slip that shot of Maul into the Lama Su walk-around scene?

It's not much, but it might be the least intrusive way to introduce the Maul/Grievous connection. If the shot were clean enough, it could be a great little dangler that wouldn't leave this movie feeling unfinished (at least, not anymore than the escape of Dukoo already makes it feel).

Then, a follow up change in an EpIII edit could be to simply have Grievous' eyes change color to Maul's eyes when he faces off with Obi Wan.

Obi Wan's reaction is pretty good for that reveal, if I recall correctly.  Just a thought. 

I'll add my small voice to Josh's about that smoke-rising shot. It feels very conclusive to me-- allowing that scene to end in a way that's visually poetic. That's something the OT did much better than the PT. (I'll even go so far as to say I like the ceiling shot in the meeting with Dukoo-- I just think we hold on it for a beat too long.)

But Concierge-- where did you get this idea? It's great!

Your idea makes the Maul role cooler than it's ever been. It makes Qui Gonn more important. It pulls the PT together with one small change.  I really hope we can pull this off.

I love Concierge's idea-- but the pay off has to be clear: Qui Gonn's purposes were noble-- he was NOT a Sith or a collaborator with Sidious. So Dukoo/Tyrannus needs to call Qui Gonn a useful fool whose idealism let him be used.

It's a really strong idea in that it fits perfectly with his over-the-top faith in Annakin. Qui-Gonn's maverick attitudes are more in line with what's really at stake than Yoda's. However, acting alone, Qui-Gonn does more directly than any other Jedi to aid Sidious. Though Dukoo organizes the separatists, Qui-Gonn finds Anakin, takes him from his mother, makes him a Jedi, orders the clones, and helps make Palpatine the Chancellor. Compared to Qui Gonn, Dukoo's a piker.

I only wish we could add a scene where Sidious and Dukoo go down to the lab to see Sidious creating Grievous out of the barely alive Darth Maul.

The pay off is the trick.

If Dukoo could announce in the end "It was me, posing as my apprentice, who ordered the clones" then it would be perfect. Right?

How about:

During Dukoo's long walk down the ramp toward Sidious.

Dukoo: "My old apprentice's last gift has paid off. The clones I ordered in his name are now operational, Master Sidious."

Sidious: "Welcome home, Lord Tyrannus. You have done well."

D: "I have good news for you, my Lord. The war has begun."

S: "Excellent. Everything is going as planned." 

Rats. Well... If we actually need Dukoo to reveal his masquerade then the only place he can do it is in the end when he meets Sidious. Otherwise, he's tipping his hand too soon and to the wrong people. The only one who should know he's  playing both sides is Sidious.

Thanks for considering it, TM!

I like this idea-- the pay-off should be that it was Dukoo posing as Qui Gon. At least that's a mystery with some intrigue for the audience and maybe we could be left to put it together ourselves that Dukoo was using his apprentice's name. It would add interest to the Obi Wan/Dukoo meeting.

If no fancy footwork can make Obi Wan say "Master Jinn was killed nearly ten years ago" then that line can be cut-- Obi Wan's surprise could easily keep him from interjecting that rather unnecessary info anyway.

Sy-dious made sense to me since it really is Sidious' plan. I imagined that, as a Sith, he could pose convincingly as a Jedi.  But throwing Qui Gonn's name in here is more visceral. It makes the stakes feel personal for Obi Wan. He has to get to the bottom of this for personal reasons as well as for the council.

Ripplin: [alternate language/reverse tracks] was a pretty lazy way of changing his voice)

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I'm not happy to find out Jar Jar was reversed-tracked in Magfan's edit because now I won't be quite so immune to noticing that anymore. However, the improvement was vast compared to my original experience of the film [i.e. the removal of the original dialogue and story points-- along with the removed irritation of hearing Jar Jar's childishness in English].

If that method was lazy, what realistic alternatives are there?

Having seen both Magfan's edit and the alternate English track in SOTDS, I have to say I prefer the distraction of subtitles to the distraction of that animated character spouting recognizable words in an unfamiliar voice.

How can we get a believable new alien voice, well-matched to Jar Jar's performance?

(It's fun to be back here-- hi TJ! hi Erik! hi Benja!)

EDIT: Maybe I would like the voice Trooperman is using if I had an Episode 1 with that voice to go along with it. That is definitely part of my problem-- I don't consider SOTDS to be "alternative", but definitive. I want there to be a way to foresee this fitting with other edits of the other 2 prequels.

Thanks, Trooperman-- you have been as flexible and cooperative on this board as I've ever seen anyone. I like the bocce line too, I really want you to get everything you want for this edit. But the internal logic of Anakin taking an extra droid on his mission to save Obi Wan is too odd to be smoothed over in a couple side-remarks. I loved the original idea of getting rid of Threepio from ep 1. But having him show up here randomly isn't really optimal either.

I will try to look at the original 3p0 reunion scene again. I think there might be a way to go for the "really cool version" considering how much more interesting Anakin is in this edit. I would love if this scene could just not interrupt that awesomeness.

I never knew Magfan's Jar Jar was a foreign track played backward-- I guess that might bother me the next time I see it. However, I totally enjoyed having to read Jar Jar's lines. It allowed his backstory to be molded, made him less dumbed down and more OT.

I think they should have gone for Australian like you did-- letting that culture inform the Gungan design and sound would have made them way more appealing. But trying to mix that in after the fact in Ep2 is tough. There's so little Jar Jar to work with that it does, unfortunately, stand out.

I think SOME Dune footage really works to open the battle up beyond the original mass of missiles going -----> and then <-------- and then >x<!! In its current form, with ID4 elements in there too, I think the whole battle isn't quite what it will be.

Transforming that battle into something coherent is like taking hamburger and trying to reshape it into a cow.

I think finishing the battle (without getting into shot-by-shot advice) might be a matter of "less is more".  When the one trooper says "this battle is over before it's even begun" I think that says it all. Then the clones can demonstrate their ass-kicking ability and we move on. That's about all the coherent information available in all that footage. Everything else is just cg weapons blowing each other up.

All we really care about at that point is getting Dukoo.

mrbenja: I agree with you on the point of 3p0. It's just too early for him to be in this film IMHO. Maybe keep him silent, or redub his voice to indicate that he's a different protocol droid might work.

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I would love if we could eliminate 3p0, and that was the original hope. He has been successfully reduced and it really helps. The hope was also that the entire notion of Anakin building 3p0 could be cut out -- something to come in a later TM/Starkiller Ranch ep1 edit.

But if we change 3p0 into some other protocol droid, the problem remains that Anakin shows up on Tatooine without one and leaves with one. Why? What reason could he have, that we can demonstrate on screen, for taking that droid from Owen?

That is the problem to solve if we are to retain the non-Anakin built 3p0.

However, as time goes by, a TM cut Ep1 becomes less likely. He's got bigger and better things to do. So if a small compromise could be made, one solution would be to keep the Anakin-built 3p0 notion and tweak it so it fits this leaner and meaner edit.

I think Anakin looks so much better now, coming off his threat to rip off Watto's wings, that the "reunion" with 3p0 doesn't feel as awful as it used to.  I personally wouldn't change much of what's there except to remove the lines that reinforce Owen's notion of paying Anakin to take the droid.

I just screened it again and it is amazing. It's a totally different movie-- really almost the movie I would have dreamed of.  The number of things that work now but didn't come close to working in the original is amazing.

I have about ten small things I'd want to change, but two big ones: Jar Jar and Threepio.

If possible, I strongly "vote" for them to be reverted to Magfan Edit style. 

Jar Jar is so much a horrible fact of life in the PT that adding anything that makes him stand out MORE is just salt in the wound.  I think the voice and subtitle approach in Magfan's edit does a lot to diminish his presence. (I can't believe that, essentially, Jar Jar is the lynch-pin of Sidious' entire f**king plan! It's almost as if Qui-Gon saved this idiot Gungan, and the Republic fell as a result! D'oh!).

Threepio is in the same boat-- especially in this improved edit. Anakin comes off as so much more smart and disciplined and focused now.  To have him take Threepio requires much more backstory than can be filled in here, if we pretend Anakin didn't build him. The current idea, that Owen pays Anakin to take the droid makes no sense and diminishes Anakin's character. Why didn't Owen save himself the money and simply deactivate the droid? This "workaround" loses ground instead of gaining it.

I know you had your heart set on these changes, TM, and I thought you had good strategies. But after living with them a while, they have stopped "working" for me. I've come to see them as way below the standard set in the rest of this awesome edit. TM, I only mention these problems because EVERYTHING else is working so damn well!

Maybe I'm off-base, but I thought I'd bring my opinion here to the forum. Anyone else agree?

Whatever the case, I am eternally grateful for the amazing amount of good work you've done here, TM. I love this edit.

Hi TJDavis1138! Hi Trooperman! There's a reunion goin' on!

I am frankly hurt to hear bad news about InfoDroid. He is a great guy and has done great work (saving "Last Crusade" and "Temple of Doom" in my opinion). I was really looking forward to Crystal Skull edit.  That Starkiller Ranch thread was a heartbreaker because it was so fun, but that was when I went through a bit of a bad spot myself.

I think this edit is still in compliance with all the Starkiller Ranch ideas, so the work has not died yet. When I get ahead enough, I definitely intend to revisit that Episode I take we started. Someday there will be a Starkiller Saga.

Shroud of the Dark Side shows how long and hard it is to really polish one of these massive re-edits. But the result is so much closer to the movie I wanted to see.  And Trooperman is still working on it!

I have been away a long time, but popping back in here today and finding this thread alive and kicking a$$ is like Christmas coming early!  Great stuff, Trooperman!! I hope school is going great and life and all that important stuff.

I was honored and grateful to see an earlier cut of this when I was helping TM out with some story ideas-- I loved it then and watched it over and over. As many have said, I could "see what you're going for" at every change. The overall effect is to raise the movie up several notches because you make the characters matter. "Character" is the best special effect.

I'm thrilled that people are getting a sneak peek and contributing. This will definitely push the envelope in regards to what a lot of people think can be accomplished with a fan edit.  I'm glad you're back at the helm, Trooperman!

Hey yo!

Here's a fan edit worth knowing about if you haven't seen it yet-- '50s style RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK! Link

This Youtube vid captures a lot of what inspired the original Raiders -- I mean literally inspired it.  I didn't realize how much Chuck Heston was the prototypical Indiana Jones.

do you remember classic movies, where the newspaper rotates while the camera closes in from afar until the paper stops rotating and you can read the headline in close? Another interesting montage was seen near the beginning of Sky Captain, as far as I remember. Some kind of a newspaper montage in these fashions could perhaps be inserted between the happy family on top of the mountain and the Dean Stanforth bible sequence.

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I think this is an excellent suggestion. Their use is often in cross-dissolves with other action and the spinning headlines could be played over the action of Dean Stanforth going through Indy's office. I would recommend using several newspapers in a row-- tell the story one headline at a time as Stanforth moves along: "Suspected Red Professor Faces Hearing" "Committee Debates Fate of Marshall's Professor Jones" "University Apologizes to Jones; Reinstates Position".  (Not right, but that kind of thing?)

This "old fashioned" technique is perfectly in line with the "b" movies that inspired this series, like the "line on the map," the musical in Indy2 (which ID mercy-killed) and the whole character of Indiana Jones.

The downside is that none of the other movies do it.  That doesn't bother me considering how much good it would do here.

Looking again, I agree there is not enough footage. 

We're only missing a few shots to make it work though if we capture the heroes after Indy's fist fight at the ants; then climb down the cliffs, integrate the shots of our heros and the Russians at the foot of the falls, send the heroes ahead to solve riddles with the Russians coming up more closely behind (mowing down Indians as incentive to the captives); slim down the puzzles that get us into the Chamber of Gods (or whatever) and bring the Russians in right away.

With just a couple more shots, this would have been possible. 

Alternately, would it be possible to bring the Russians closer-- so that Indy at least knows the Russians are coming?  This would be more about laying in sound effects and manipulating the footage to create the right cause/effect reactions.

Anyway, I'm very interested in this edit because my personal opinion is that this movie feels the closest to being a true sequel to Raiders-- in spite of all its many problems.  I'd love to get it as close as possible to finally see that character from the first movie ride again.

In response to the call for ideas tha tmight help act 3, I just had one.  It's a bit rough and I haven't looked at all the footage it would require, but it sure tightens things up and ramps up the tension.

In a nutshell, here's the idea: Keep the Russians in charge after the ant scene. Make everything Indy does to get inside the temple into something he's doing under pressure from being a captive of the Russians. 

The hard part, obviously, is there isn't enough footage to do it perfect.  But the impression can be easily created by taking the shots of the russians following those blinking light things and incorporate them into the scenes of the same locations where Indy first reaches them.

This means: Don't let Marion drive the duck over the cliff and help them escape.  Cut the waterfalls entirely.  It also means the pressure to solve each puzzle makes more sense and the ending is about Indy going into a situation he thinks is bad, but that he's being forced to face -- rather than sort of waltzing into it and then deciding it was a bad idea after the fact.

Anyway, maybe it's too much.  But it sure gets at the heart of why that part of the movie drags.  The bad guys aren't doing anything and Indy's motivation is vague.  Pressure him into it and the scenes make more sense.

Woo-hoo!  Done with college!  Boo-yah!

Now I can surf the net all day and all night!!

I could even go see Last House on the Left tonight-- if my wife would let me.

Paul and Trooperman, you're bringing cheer to the season!  Way to go!  I can still provide the audio as needed, I'm glad there will now be a place to send it.  This is exciting!

Thanks to everyone involved!

Hey PaulisDead2221, are you looking at the material yet?  May I ask when you anticipate coming to a decision about taking this over or not?

Thanks!

Thanks Trooperman!  It's good to be recognized :)  I guess you and I will kick it around over a beer in a Malibu fish&chips shop someday.

Infodroid-- I just had a wild ass idea about how to handle this movie without a flashback. Good timing, huh?

Watching your edit brought out so much of what is great in this movie and made me see an even better movie hidden in the material...

Anyone want to hear ideas for another edit on this pile of rough diamonds?