- Post
- #1618511
- Topic
- <strong>Star Wars Animated Film Collection</strong>
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1618511/action/topic#1618511
- Time
I just watched your edit of Bad Batch season 3. My feelings are complex.
The first thing I want to get out of the way is Galadantien’s technical skills are impeccable. Every episode jump is seamless, and you’ll never hear any jarring audio cuts. The theatrical intro crawl is very much appreciated too.
What I’m unsure about is the pacing, feeling it’s way too slow, but also feeling like that’s just the way the real season was set up. At first I was apprehensive about starting things right after Omega and Crosshair had escaped the facility. However, I think leaving that in mystery, as well as the Rex cold open you used to start the movie with an action scene, shows you really thought deeply about what makes the George Lucas Star Wars movies feel the way they do and you ‘get it’. All those elements help make things feel like a movie and not like a bunch of episodes put together. Also, the time you gain from that allows you to include things that are mere fanservice and other editors announced they would cut, like Ventress, but that I delighted at seeing.
However, the choice comes with drawbacks. Rex’s opening scene would feel a bit random if it was the only one, so you include a second scene in which Rex announces he’ll contact the Bad Batch, but the viewer never sees this happening. I almost feel like only including the first scene would have been better.
Following the events of “The Return”, in which the team forgives Crosshair’s betrayal at the outpost on Barton IV, the story enters a BIG narrative lull. The heroes are searching for the villains, who are searching for the heroes, and neither one has leads or manages to progress. The pacing slows to a crawl, but in a different way than when the Bad Batch arrived in Pabu on season 2; there, the peace and almost music-less moments feel like an earned rest after the frantic S1. On S3 (I’m not singling out your edit, but the season as a whole) it feels like padding for time. As your edit runs 40 minutes longer than most other editors’ SW TV edits, I think this is where you could have cut many scenes. Among these - Rex’s second scene, Phee calling the Batch, the Batch meeting Shand (I know this sets up Ventress, but I feel her arrival is self-explanatory). The resulting effect of this was that at the halfway point of your cut, I stopped and continued later in a second sitting.
The second half is much better, as it’s essentially one uninterrupted sequence from Pabu’s raid to the end. However, you still could have cut some fat. For instance, you could have hidden the shot where Crosshair misses firing the tracker when Omega is being taken away, and then just show the Batch in the forest approaching Tantiss, skipping any scenes of Rampart. I know Rampart needs to be established for Nala’s death scene, but you could have introduced him when Hemlock visits his cell, and I would have been none the wiser.
In the final count, brutal honesty forces me to admit I enjoyed Kinglucent’s earlier Bad Batch edits more. But, since he never edited S3, and I didn’t see how you tackled the material Kinglucent already had, I can’t compare you guys. For all I know, you worked with the trickiest source material, and despite that, you added very cool title crawls that Kinglucent couldn’t. Thanks for your edit.