Hello all - I just joined OT and so wanted to offer a bit of an introduction. Some of you may know me as “FanEdit” at fanedit.org. My account over there is currently glitched up and I have contacted an admin for help on that. I was away from fanediting for a while for a variety of reasons, including a recent move, loss of my editing computer and loss of interest for a while. I have completed a few projects for myself, including a fanfix of Quicksilver that I may submit to FE at some point.
With the new SW film coming out, I have been thinking a lot about the OT and PT and how I would edit them. At this point, I have pretty much written off the PT as unsalvageable. However, I think there may be a short bonus feature (around an hour) within ROTS. Instead I have focused on the OT and some fixes and streamlining there. Obviously, any of my ideas are up for grabs. If you like anything, feel free to use it. There is no telling when I will be able to start this project.
For those who have never seen the Star Wars Original Trilogy (ha!), the below contains MASSIVE SPOILERS. I apologize if this is a little hard to follow. I wrote this in sort of a stream of consciousness/brainstorming mode.
Goals:
- Luke is more of a loner. Luke’s two main concerns are 1) the destruction of the Sith and 2) ensuring the safety of his friends. He operates independent of the Alliance. Han & Leia are concerned about the military defeat of the Empire.
- No force ghosts. Ben is a disembodied voice, never explained. It could be: Luke’s imagination, Ben’s consciousness merged into Luke’s mind, Ben’s consciousness merged into the Force, or some other explanation. I prefer the second explanation, but will leave it to the viewer to decide.
- Luke is still Vader’s son, but he is not Leia’s brother. The romantic triangle between Luke, Leia and Han is somewhat real, but less pronounced due to deleted scenes.
- Ben doesn’t tell an outright lie about Luke’s father.
- Remove a lot of ‘feel good’ and other silly elements: Ewoks, corny humor, Emmperor’s cackling laughter, ‘family portrait’ group shot at the end of Jedi.
- Episodes V and VI are one film. The removal of several scenes is hoped to bring the total running time to about 2 hrs. Scenes to be removed: rescue of Luke on Hoth, speeder victories on Hoth, Luke’s arrival to Dagobah (he is already there. See below), Endor battle scenes. Expose scenes of Leia as Luke’s sister (she isn’t).
Cuts to accomplish goals:
Episode IV – titled simply Star Wars
- Ben doesn’t outright say that Vader murdered Luke’s father. He does still say that “a young Jedi knight named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights.” Cut “He betrayed and murdered your father.” Now Luke is left to make the conclusion that Vader killed his father. It is still a lie by omission, but not an outright fabrication. Now the only outright lie that Ben tells is “your father wanted you to have this (lightsaber) when you were old enough.” Impossible, since he doesn’t know that Luke exists. No other cuts in this scene.
- Han kills Greedo without a shot fired by Greedo.
- Leia doesn’t know that the Empire is tracking the Millenium Falcon and then proceed directly to the Alliance base anyway (treason? insanity?). Han’s comment about “not a bad bit of rescuing” is followed by Leia’s “I just hope the information in that R2 unit is intact.” The fact that they are being tracked is explained to the viewer by Vader and Tarkin’s discussion.
- Cut Luke’s reunion with Biggs in the hanger. Awkward to intro him so late in the film and Luke appears as more of a loner without this scene.
- Finally, after the destruction of the Death Star, Ben doesn’t tell Luke “the force will be with you always.” Saving that line for the end of Jedi.
Episodes V & VI Combined Film (Star Wars: Return of the Jedi or Star Wars: Empire or Star Wars: Jedi Ascendant)
Open with black screen and Kenobi voiceover: “you will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi master who instructed me.” This will take the place of “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…”
Opening Scroll:
“Soon after destroying the Galactic Empire’s battle station known as the Death Star, the hero Luke Skywalker left the Rebel Alliance. Acting on a command from his vanquished mentor, Ben Kenobi, Luke has travelled to the planet Dagobah and is training under the tutelage of Jedi Master Yoda, a small creature with an astonishing mastery of the mysterious power known as the Force.
Princess Leia, whose home planet was destroyed by the Death Star has joined forces with the fugitive Han Solo, aiding the Rebel Alliance in establishing a new hidden base on the ice planet of Hoth.
Unbeknownst to the Alliance, the Empire commissioned the construction of two Death Stars. The second Death Star now nears completion. Witness now the JEDI ASCENDANT.”
- My goals are to imply that the Alliance abandoned Yavin right after the destruction of the DS & awards ceremony and that Luke left the Alliance to seek out Yoda soon after the awards ceremony. Luke has been with Yoda for somewhere around 18 months to 2 years.
- Introduce new Death Star early in the film with opening scene from Ep. VI. Possibly open film with this scene then onto scenes of Luke in training. Emperor will arrive on DS after Bespin Escape & ending scene from Ep. V.
- First scene of Luke on Dagobah training with Yoda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=infZSKB5L9I. Now, it appears that Luke has been training for several months. Ben isn’t seen or heard. The difficulty here may be that there is possibly an insufficient intro of Yoda.
- Alliance is on Hoth. Begin with Han returning from patrol and talking to the general about leaving. The imperials attack before he can leave. Luke is never on Hoth. Cut rescue of Luke and his medical treatment (he has never been to Hoth). Cut speeders success against walkers. The battle is a rout by the Empire with no real imperial casualties.
- Eventually, Han & Leia end up on Bespin and are captured/tortured. Luke leaves his training to rescue them. Again, Ben isn’t seen or heard. Luke arrives and things play out with Vader. Luke reaches out to Leia via Force and is rescued. Return to fleet. Plan for rescue of Han as Lando/Chewie leave. It should appear that the rescue occurs right after the events of Ep. V, not years later.
- Leia infiltrates the palace and frees Han from carbonite. She doesn’t bring Chewie as a prisoner. He is already a captive. She is captured and made a slave. Han is thrown in cell with Chewie. Droids arrive and deliver message from Luke. Luke arrives and allows his own capture. No monster fight. They are taken to the pit for execution and Luke rescues everyone. No Boba Fett at palace or pit. I will be following cues from a fanedit of Ep. VI by Spence for these scenes.
- Luke goes back to Dagobah. The others return to the fleet, where they learn about the new Death Star. Cut DS briefing scene right after Leia volunteers to go with Han to Endor, before Luke arrives. Luke doesn’t arrive nor take part in the mission. Cut direct from Leia volunteering to R2 Chirping and 3PO “Exciting is hardly what I would call it.”
- Yoda death scene mostly intact. Yoda tells Luke he must face Vader. Luke witnesses death of Yoda. Yoda dies but the body doesn’t disappear.
- Alliance prepares for assault of DS. Vader allows shuttle to pass through to Endor. Luke is not part of the mission. Cut Luke’s arrival at Alliance fleet, aboard shuttle and on Endor. Instead, he flies direct to Endor from Dagobah and surrenders, so he can face Vader.
- No Ewoks. No real resistance is encountered on Endor. It is a covert mission after all and the most successful covert missions should succeed without a shot fired. Instead of the Ewok telling C3PO about the back door to the base, it is R2 that gives that info. Insert scene of R2 chirping and tweeting from earlier in Ep VI, then 3PO says “he says there is a hidden entrance…”. Only one guard is encountered at back of base and he is easily captured. Cut both speeder bike chase scenes, all Ewoks, all battle on Endor. Sequence: They recon the base, R2 alerts about back entrance, Han and rebels capture guard, make entry, capture base, set charges and destroy it. These scenes will be intermixed with fleet scenes and Luke’s scenes as appropriate.
- No scenes where Luke reveals Leia is his sister (she isn’t) either to her (he isn’t with the team on Endor) nor to Vader. During the duel, he attacks Vader from his hiding place after Vader taunts him about his friends. Cut before “especially…your sister” Go directly from “your feelings for them are strong” directly to Luke attacking.
- Probably cut Han and Leia seeing destruction of the DS, Leia says she loves Luke, Han says fine, he will leave them alone. I would like to keep the scene with Leia saying “it’s not like that” (but not “he’s my brother”) and they kiss, finally resolving the love triangle for Han and the film viewer, but this scene may be unusable due to background victory shouts of Ewoks. Also, at this point the scene is not really needed. It is clear Leia is with Han.
- Film will end with galaxy wide celebrations then to Luke burning Vader’s body and being told “the Force will be with you always.” Cut to final credits. No final scene of the team celebrating on Endor and no Force ghosts. (again taking cues from Spence edit)
Problems:
- Music cues hard to edit around.
- have to avoid having too much of story being implied and not shown.
- Current computer is not robust enough to run editing software. My editing laptop was broken by my son.
Need to learn additional editing techniques (wipes, pan & scan, Scrolls, etc)
Thoughts about PT:
- Abandon completely.
- Remake Episode III as a short (1 hr) film to be a bonus feature to Jedi.
I welcome thoughts or suggestions. Also, I would be willing to collaborate, if someone is that interested in the project. As I said, it wiil be a while before I can start to work on this, but I wanted to capture some of my thoughts.
