NFBisms

and to be fair, it’s not like most of us do either lmao

The nose art scene is gone, but I’d say what we got was better?

I suppose it’s odd that Anakin knows that Obi-Wan knows. Or that Rex knows at all. It felt like a very fanservice-y moment for sure, but I genuinely do not really care about much of anything else in this arc. I don’t particularly like the Bad Batch, and Echo honestly meant more dead (as another one of the fallen dominoes) than he ever did while he was alive. But more Anakin/Obi-Wan/Padme dynamic? I’m here for all that.

Speaking of Hal commentaries, I used to fall asleep to your prequel commentaries in my first year of college actually!
(revealing how old I am, roughly)

Not because you were boring or anything, but because your edits were the only videos I had saved on my phone for whatever reason, and our dorms had bad wi-fi at night. It was alright because I loved hearing you talk about how you went about editing the films, your thoughts on them, who helped you, and how, etc… I really enjoyed your dry sense of humor too.

Without any specifics, I just thought you should know you played some part in inspiring where I ended up in my real life atm. I don’t think I would have thrown nearly as much time into learning how to edit better if I didn’t think I myself could spend a couple hours a day practicing by editing those movies from your example.

Testing out a color grade for the final version…

It’s the conduit through which a lot of Legends stuff is somewhat canonized, basically. Things like Delta Squad or Quinlan Vos were in the show as references to the larger EU at the time. Without The Clone Wars remaining canon, certain things and characters would only be Legends now. It’s the middle of a Venn Diagram.

I kind of find it ironic given how TCW used to get flack for ignoring the EU to do its own thing. Now it’s the only canon media keeping a lot of that EU a part of the main lore.

ZkinandBonez said:

NFBisms said:

I wish they were finishing Crystal Crisis instead, to be honest.

They might make it into a comic or a novel like they did with some of the Maul episodes and the conclusion to Ventress’ arc. I think I read somewhere that Lucasfilm still treats these stories as canon, so it would be strange if they didn’t do anything with them at all in the future. Wasn’t there also a Boba Fett vs Cad Bane episode that’s still unfinished?

Well Crystal Crisis was just as completed as Bad Batch was - in animatics form - all those years ago. Fully voiced, foley’d, and storyboarded. The other incomplete arcs never got that far, which is why they were adapted into other media. If they were going to finish off either CC or BB, I would have preferred CC, that’s all I was saying. Adapting it into a book or comic would be a downgrade from its current form.

Bad Batch is fun, but that’s about it. Meanwhile, there’s good character stuff in Crystal Crisis between Anakin and Obi-Wan that directly works off of season 5 and plays into Revenge of the Sith, and probably the final Ahsoka episodes. More than clone trooper A-Team.

I wish they were finishing Crystal Crisis instead, to be honest.

I was actually thinking about a Save The Reveal edit in relation to my own the other day! If you cut the last half of New Canon Cut pertaining to Anakin, with some tweaks, you could easily create an edit where it doesn’t seem like Anakin turns to the dark side - without having to remove most of those early scenes.

Here’s proof of concept using clips from my edit:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SkKsTcRHBWuSvfqnD4ga9pf8xiIFERub/view?usp=sharing

Right off the bat, Anakin’s established as totally understanding of the Jedi’s POV on Palpatine, and even lobbies their concerns. Rather than being all-in on Palps, he just has faith that he isn’t as bad as the Jedi think he is. By removing his petulance and entitlement, his lashing out at Padme, he’s allowed to be at odds with the council without explicitly telegraphing a turn. It becomes an understandable wariness, not lingering darkness. Palpatine trying to turn Anakin against Padme is a key point, because with the next scene, it doesn’t necessarily work. Anakin will brood about it, but by instead confiding in Padme tenderly about his dreams, he rejects that manipulation. New Canon Cut puts him at a crossroads of two equally possible decisions, but have Anakin apologizing to Obi-Wan after everything, and it looks more like Anakin has come back around to the Jedi’s perspective. Especially if the last time we see him, he’s going to turn Palpatine in. The groundwork for the ESB reveal is still laid, but it’s not obvious.

EDIT: But I agree that this isn’t necessary especially since the best parts of ROTS are in the last act. I also think flashbacks to TPM and AOTC definitely don’t need to happen. 95% of the prequel story is in ROTS imo, not just 80. The context that would be missing is pretty irrelevant and sometimes works against the film.

Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback so far in private topics! I think when the new season of TCW ends, I’ll have a final version done. It’s now less about experimenting and doubling down on and polishing the decisions I’ve made that have worked for people.

So far the biggest things to fix:

• “Roger roger” elevator bit. Make the quality drop less noticeable or just remove altogether. There’s enough banter and wit in the rest of the first act now that I don’t need it anymore?
• Mixing audio better overall, but particularly in re-scored/radically edited scenes. Raising levels on Anakin/Padme conversation about lightsaber and timing the audio clips with the shots better.
• Intro Kashyyk scene needs wipe and maybe some extending.
• Reinstate some of Anakin’s attitude. Either in front of the council or only with Obi-Wan, but not in both.
• Use some different shots of Anakin in Anakin confronting Palpatine scene.
• Reinstate some of Palpatine’s orders to Vader, keep shot of him putting on hood.
• Clean up vfx in final Mustafar sequence (Obi-Wan listening to Anakin, Anakin igniting first)
• Re-add Qui Gonn voice.

I’m still open to feedback for the current version!

On the topic of Finn/Poe is there a way we could edit Poe’s moment with Zorii and give it to him and Finn instead?

EDIT: actually that would play as too funny to be any kind of earnest payoff for that possible romance lmao

Alright, I now have a cut with my most recent ideas available, PM for link. I’d want the final version to be along these lines but obviously I’ll need feedback. So it would be greatly appreciated!

A couple notes/thoughts about my own edit:

• I started from scratch this year. Plenty of my old decisions from old versions are present pretty much exactly as they were, but quite a bit is different. And because I’m no longer editing with Labyrinth of Evil (I’m still pulling from it, just doing it myself), some of the minor decisions made there are not here. You’ll still hear battle droids and clones. The original crawl is intact.

• Returning to fan editing was inspired in part by showing my little cousin the prequels over the holidays. There are things I retained simply because he liked/remembered them. He’s 10.

• I wanted to do a color grade like in previous versions but I figure I should wait until I have something locked down. Also everything I was coming up with was browner than I would have liked.

• I don’t think I fixed the storytelling as much as I changed the story, if that makes sense. What this has over the theatrical isn’t that it’s less “cringe” or is paced more mercifully/flows better. It’s become a somewhat radical edit - the characters are not really the same as the ones in the theatrical. They feel more like real, emotional people with character arcs. I’m particularly happy with how Padme comes across now.

• As far as fitting in with The Clone Wars - I don’t know what the new season will bring. But this works far better with what we have of the series so far than the theatrical. I will say, Christensen’s Anakin might actually come off as a nicer guy than Lanter’s here. This is because if I let Christensen be as badly tempered as Lanter, his relationship with Obi-Wan and the council became much less like the one in TCW. (Not to mention Hayden doesn’t pull it off with the same flavor of intensity.) If I committed to fully pacifying Christensen, it made him bland and more easily pushed around. It was a balancing act, and you have to account for how other characters treat him, not just the man himself. NCC!Anakin in that way feels slightly more influenced by OT!Anakin than TCW!Anakin. But it still fits.

• I’m thinking about renaming this, since I don’t know if I care about “New Canon” anymore after Rise of Skywalker. It’s still TCW-based obviously - with the consistency of character this sought to achieve - but TCW being a part of Disney’s canon doesn’t seem to mean much anymore. Maybe something more ROTJ-inspired, since it more directly ties into that,

• i forgot qui gonn

• i wish the kashyyk thing was better implemented

Shopping Maul said:

Wanderer_ said:

Shopping Maul said:

Well why the hell did Vader deserve redemption?
He didn’t, we tolerated it because Vader was well written and it was easier for us to feel that his love for his son was enough to make him turn back.

At least Kylo had layers, some obvious conflict.

Mm, this is an odd one. Vader had many more layers than Kylo. Vader was always in conflict, he was a slave to the dark side. Kylo chose to be the monster he became and I honestly don’t think the movies gave us reasons for him to have let darkness grown inside of him.

But that’s not true according to the OT. Vader was a straight up bad guy in ANH - choking dudes to death, torturing princesses, killing Obi Wan (quite happily I add - “this will be a day long remembered…”), and shooting down X-Wings. In TESB he relentlessly pursues the rebels, kills his subordinates for human error, tortures Han and Leia to get Luke’s attention, and finally gives Luke a ‘join me or die’ ultimatum (“don’t make me destroy you”).

Only in ROTJ is it suggested that Vader had ‘good in him’, and that was purely because Luke (see Lucas) suddenly decided it was so.

I agree Kylo had no backstory whatsoever, but the conflict within him is/was evident from the get-go. Vader had given himself over to darkness and was pretty comfortable with it in the OT. Kylo was not so adept at evil. In fact the way way Adam Driver played Kylo was how I wish Anakin had been played in the prequels, a truly conflicted soul. That “I want to be free of this pain” moment in TFA had more raw emotion in it than all three prequels put together.

By the way I’m not against Vader’s redemption at all, in fact I thought it was a great idea. I just hate Luke’s POV. I do not understand why Luke was suddenly all gushy about Dad in ROTJ, nor do I understand why this took precedence over everything else that was going on. I’d have preferred a darker movie - one where Luke would be disillusioned with the whole Jedi thing (having been lied to by everyone concerned) and Vader’s turnaround would be a nice surprise while Luke was busy doing everything in his power to defeat Palpatine. But that’s just me. I cannot fathom why saving a war-criminal’s soul would make anyone a legend.

I mean, Luke’s primary influence from the moment he joins Ben in ANH - is his father’s legacy. He wants to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like his father. From that, he essentially follows the path his dad took, right down to when he brushes with the dark side in ESB. He ignores Yoda and Ben’s warnings by rushing in to confront Vader, and save his friends.

That’s when he sees an outcome of following that quick and easy path - Darth Vader - and is faced with making different choices than his father. By ROTJ, Luke has empathy for Vader because he finds that by following his father, he is Vader. He’s more or less been where he’s been. Everything he believed about his father had to be true at one point, but then he took a wrong turn somewhere, which Luke after ESB understands now more than anyone.

It definitely has potential to be naivete, but Luke ends up being right. The idealism that it is, is what makes him a legend. The fact that you, and probably many others in the galaxy, would become disillusioned where Luke didn’t is the point. That doesn’t really say anything about how you personally would have preferred the movie to go, but that’s the theme. It makes sense and isn’t “sudden.” ROTJ just contextualizes the previous set-up. Not that it couldn’t have gone in a different direction - that who knows, I might have preferred myself - but pretty much all the heavy lifting for it is done in the prior two films.

some of you all really missed out on your emo high school romances and it shows

On the contrary, I’d argue TLJ would land for more people if it was decidedly less Star Wars in genre/tone. Not that it would be better, but I think I think it would be more broadly appreciated if it owned the fact that it’s not a typical Star Wars story.

TLJ still tries to externally maintain itself as this classic Star Wars adventure, with quippy one liners from our spunky heroes, weird and wacky aliens, and of course the recycled imagery. The tone is there, the genre pastiche is there - and it works for the people it works for because beneath that surface, there’s much more going on. But if you don’t engage with the film in that way, I imagine it must feel quite pointless.

TLJ uses the Star Wars tone to inform its metanarrative, but a lot of it is about transposing classical ideals invoked by that tone onto a harsher reality. What does it mean to be Luke Skywalker after happily ever after? What does it really mean to fight for what you believe when the odds are stacked against you? Again I’m not saying it would be better, but the heart of the film would become more apparent to more people if it was heavy handed about “not being like Star Wars.” To some of my friends, TLJ was just a disappointing plot. And the plot wasn’t really the point, was it?

The deconstruction from the base of “Star Wars film” is what makes it smart and postmodern, but perhaps it would be more broadly received if it, like, tried to be The Dark Knight of Star Wars. Then I bet some 14 year olds* would have been blown away by Luke’s portrayal as opposed to thinking he was just shafted for bad reasons. Just a more obviously Not Star Wars affair to get people in a different mindset. More people would get into it for being different because it would feel different. I bet the people who like TLJ as it is now wouldn’t like it as much. Me included. But I would never know, would I?

This isn’t to say TLJ as it is, is at its core a bad Star Wars movie - I’d say it’s the only one in the ST with anything that builds on the OT’s themes. I just think it’s a shame Star Wars is such a brand, and not a series of stories now. TLJ leaned into the brand so that it could tell a new story. The Mando leaned into the old stories to be branded a little differently. I understand the mindset and it gave us TLJ, but I don’t feel as excited about the possibilities of the universe any more.

*not necessarily in age

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@idir: In the theatrical “It’s a system we cannot afford to lose” already implies that there is a Republic presence on Kashyyk before Yoda ever goes there, so this feeling more like a resuming of hostilities rather than initial invasion works okay enough.

I can definitely extend the scene because there is more of the battle I can use from Order 66, but I specifically want to use the Wookiee D-Day shot later because it helps with an audio transition there. Besides I like how it serendipitous-ly has some storytelling going on. It kind of portrays a wookiee morale boost after Yoda has arrived.

@snooker
As far as the jarring cut, would a wipe and/or planet shot help or anything? The original music transition is in itself already jarring - I literally didn’t do anything but fade it into the Invasion music - so it didn’t bother me too much that it felt very sudden.

Meh, I prefer having a not yet contextualized inciting incident, as opposed to this plot point casually dropped in a scene that felt like it ended already. I really don’t like how “What about the droid attack on the wookiees?” just comes out of nowhere in the council scene, and that’s what takes Yoda out of Coruscant.

It didn’t feel like anything we needed to be paying attention to. The focus felt like it should be on Anakin sitting in on the council meeting after rejection, they’re doing business as usual - defeat of Grevious ends the war, “the outlying systems you must sweep,” etc. It’s just off to me that this important point is just dropped for the first time there.

At least even if we don’t know what this Kashyyk scene is about yet, it clearly starts a new plot, and makes it feel like the later council meeting is actually following up on something. They’re discussing events we the audience saw. It honestly flows better to me this way, having the set up and payoff happen from beginning to end with everything else. Rather than in the middle of the film.

I use the original transition later to break up the mototony of the political stuff, and its placement implies that Palpatine is who gives Anakin his nightmares.

how’s this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a_1zCE-ar5HLc_3X0hoJrEbfsJOP1txU/view?usp=sharing

Thx, I really only post the iffiest stuff I’m currently working on, since I need to see what exactly is really stretching it. Finding a way to end that part of the conversation is definitely what I was having a lot of trouble with. Where does it start to get weird?

I could always leave it hanging until Padme changes the subject. Rearrange the lines a little more optimally.

As far as Hayden’s voice, it’s not a different accent he’s just inflecting more than the monotone we’re used to, which I think is better tbh.

i’ll be the editor brave enough to edit in full penetration, just you all wait. it’ll fix everything

edit: would you believe i immediately regretted posting this

Here’s another preview of earlier on in the edit:
[removed to be tweaked]

“General Skywalker!”

I rescored Anakin and Padme meeting for the first time in the film, with the score from when they were really meeting for the first time in TPM. It’s a good callback, and TPM has my favorite prequel soundtrack anyway (don’t @me). It also lends itself to their conversation, it evokes those same feelings of innocence and possibility that having a child can give. Anakin is happy, it’s a happy moment!

Anakin turns to the dark side for Padme, their relationship has to be painted as this good thing, not the possessive and jealous affair it is in the theatrical.

After is where I put the droid attack on the wookiees. It sets up Yoda going there later, and I needed a buffer in between the reunion and the next scene… Anakin and Padme on the balcony discussing where on Naboo they want to bring the baby. (gardens, beautiful bc love, etc.)

Jumping straight into the politics like in previous cuts/Hal’s almost undid some of the endearment I built to Anakin’s character at the start, so I wanted to ease us into Coruscant life by letting Anakin be with Padme a little more. He’s in love, he laughs - he doesn’t go straight into supporting a would-be dictator, and there’s more to him than just his strife. He’s about to become a father!

“Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough…”

In the establishing shots of the scene, instead of Anakin just staring at Padme, I’ve spliced together the end of a conversation between the two about giving their child his lightsaber. This further ties the film into the original trilogy, specifically those lines Old Ben has to Luke when he gives him the saber. By depicting Anakin as an excited soon-to-be dad, that sets up father and son’s later connection a lot better. In the theatrical, the child seems almost like an afterthought, if not a massive inconvenience. Here, it shows Anakin does what he does not just for Padme, but his family.

I’m just going to adjust the levels a bit on the “Don’t ask me to do that” and “I’m so sorry” (or just remove it, I’ll see how people receive it), and add that dramatic cue Chips suggested for Obi’s appearance. This should more or less be the last thing I figure out before I have a workprint ready.

I like the movie and even I think it’s unwieldy and unclear, for the record. It is a not great scene. But it thematically tracks to me regardless of if Luke was coming or not. Rose was saving a guy she cared for in a human act of desperation. “The cause” in such a moment is so muddled by survival instinct - it didn’t matter more than saving/being with the people she loved. The idea is that that is a more pure intention than destroying an enemy, and how we care for each other is where good comes from. “How we’ll win.” Those acts can add up to true heroism, saving lives and not further taking them.

This pursuit of a fight to end all fights, the concept of a war to be won and an ending to be reached, are some of the things TLJ wants to show is an unrealistic, bad goal. Finn and Poe’s stories throughout the film are supposed to be examples of actions made towards those goals. The fact that Finn would/could have done damage and bought time is irrelevant to the message, because his sacrifice would be a selfish one. Motivated by anger and validation. That’s what the scene is about, but it just doesn’t do anything to stop people from thinking about its mathematical yields compared to other sacrifices. Which is ultimately its problem.

(altho that skimmer was fucked imo idk how you guys thought he was going to succeed)

^yeah, I think that’s what I’ll go with

here’s how it is rn:
https://vimeo.com/390390964
password: fanedit

redemption is a lie