Octorox

Surprise! I made a V2 of this. It’s uploading as we speak and will be available via DM or on MySpleen. I will try to be better about responding to DMs in a timely manner.

Here are the changes from V1:
-The deleted scene in Bail’s Office is moved up by one scene and features new “sunset” color correction to better blend with the surrounding scenes (courtesy of Hal9000)
-The deleted scene in Palpatine’s Office is moved until after Obi-Wan touches down on Utapau, allowing for a less jarring transition.
-There is only a single audio track in this version. Yoda’s communion with Qui-Gon is included but I kept the original Vader scream since this is an Extended Edition and not a fanfix.
-Yoda’s exile to Dagobah is moved up by one scene, before Padme’s funeral. This allows for the original ending and it’s music to play out uninterrupted. (transition courtesy of Siliconmaster482)

I thought that joke was very much in keeping with Yoda’s warmth and playfulness in the OT and I wouldn’t want to see it removed.

Thanks GLogus. I just don’t have all that much time to dedicate to editing these days, but never say never.

However, it sounds like you might be interested in Hal’s V6 of LOE with Alternate Ending. It reinstates Padme’s death, and rolls back a couple of minor things that were cut in previous versions. Unfortunately it doesn’t bring back Yoda’s fight with Palpatine, but there’s always L8’s edit and SiliconMaster’s ‘Revenge of the Sith: Rebalanced’ for that.

I’ll definitely update this thread if I make any progress.

DougieP said:

An alternative to Ben on Hoth that I quickly made up. I used Hals change of “the” to “a”.
“There you will learn from Yoda, a Jedi Master.”
https://vimeo.com/368321068

Has anyone ever tried to fix Owen not recognising 3PO in 4? With 3PO having his memory wiped in 3, 3PO would still introduce himself to Owen. Maybe during this, Owen would butt in saying “3PO?” or something. Im not sure what lines are available. 3PO would respond with “Oh…” in confusion. Not really thought too much into this.

Good effort on the Yoda clip, but I think his inflection makes it sound odd to end the sentence there. I think “A Jedi master who instructed me” is fine personally.

So I took a look at V3 workprint (actually my first viewing of Legendary all the way through) and I have to say that I think it all worked really well! I’m in the camp that loved the movie to begin with, but I think the edits you made definitely make it feel tighter and more focused in places. The deleted scenes are also integrated really well and feel like they always should have been there.

A few minor nitpicks:

I personally don’t care for the removal of the “Triple TIE combo shot”. I think the Falcon’s entrance on Crait now feels underwhelming. It just kind of shows up.

If it’s possible to redub the parking violation alien with Abednedo language, I’d like to see it. It’s true that aliens with accented English are not new to Star Wars, but it feels like distinctly a prequel thing rather than an OT thing. It’s also one more element that makes Canto Bight feel more familiar than alien compared to other Star Wars locales.

I wonder if it would be possible to adjust Poe’s dialogue during the prank call scene so that he’s clearly saying “General Hux” rather than “General Hugs”. I think that’s one of the elements that still makes the scene feel a bit too cheeky considering what you’re going for with the rest of the edit.

ChainsawAsh said:

All this is EU crap. That line makes Vader seem weak and with no agency in the movie. It’s why Vader kinda sucks in ROTJ compared to ANH/ESB, at least until he brings Luke to the Emperor.

To be fair, it’s not EU, it’s prequel stuff. Ady has said that the prequels have no bearing on his edits though.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to see that line go. One can argue that it weakens Vader, but we already know Vader is powerful. If he’s so afraid of the Emperor, it must mean that the emperor is that much more powerful. Besides, the more Vader seems thoroughly whipped by the emperor, the more impactful it is when he gets the upper hand on him in the end.

Hal 9000 said:

Now that I am starting to turn some of my attention to THE LAST JEDI, I hate to make this edit much longer than it already is. It’s already the longest Star Wars movie, and when I consider that my prequel edits clock it at as low as 1 hour and 50 minutes, I am wondering what else could be trimmed.

I am just tossing this around, but what do you guys think of the idea to borrow poppasketti’s approach to removing the Finn vs. Phasma duel? Compared to the theatrical TLJ, this hypothetical version of Finn’s journey would…

• Add the orientation early on from the deleted scene with Poe’s jacket
• Reinstate a sense of “wow I guess people get oppressed” from the Canto Bight balcony (compared to TLJ:L V2, anyway)
• Remove Finn and Rose racking up insurance claims across Space Vegas
• Remove his fight with Phasma, but reinstating the scene that demonstrates his resolve and references the earlier deleted scene

It seems like Finn would still have a good arc this way. The only concern that sticks out to me about the idea is that Phasma gets reintroduced only to die offscreen. I’d rather she not appear in the film at all if we go this way, but this is the way it would have to be. For this reason, I am leaning away from making this change, but I felt it was worthwhile to toss out there for discussion.

I know you moved away from this idea, but have you thought at all about revisiting it, considering the new Phasma shots Poppasketti created for an upcoming version of his edit? I don’t know that I have a strong preference either way, but it would seem your main sticking point with the change has been solved.

Loving the changes in this version. Moving the Mace/Yoda/Obi-Wan scene in particular makes that whole section of the film feel much smoother. This just might become my go-to for Episode III from now on. Awesome job!

Havoc n said:

Well it would remove the way palatine kills the other three Jedi within seconds while also making Mace look more arrogant.

Pretty much this.

Siliconmaster482 said:

Hal, you mentioned in your commentary that the non-existant ideal version of the movie would have Windu charge off to Palpatine by himself to cement this side of his character. Since we can’t do that, making him a quippy douchebag is close enough.

I remember that was one of the planned changes in Adywan’s edit of the film before he decided to give up on the prequel trilogy. I do think it would have been an improvement.

FreezingTNT2 said:

Nah, he should skip straight from Mace’s pre-Palpatine’s-“I am the Senate!”-line dialogue to Palpatine saying “It’s treason, then”.

Yeah, that’s how it’s currently cut and it works well. I just missed the line is all.

I know it’s probably too late to make any changes but have you considered restoring the “I am the Senate!” line? I just watched LOE last night and it was one of the few things I missed from the original movie.

ChainsawAsh said:

Hal 9000 said:

I find myself genuinely surprised at how well changing Vader’s line to Luke in ROTJ to, “Your mother once thought as you do” works. This is due largely to the audio work Sir Ridley and others have brought to bear. I’m not 100% sure, but I imagine it would be worth making at least an alternate audio track for a ROTJ project.

Here’s how the best version so far, from Sir Ridley, sounds when fully baked in. I included a few lines from Vader before and afterward. What do you all think about potentially going this route? Content-wise, it seems to be a meaningful alteration, given that this is a fan project which does not threaten the availability of the OOT. Padme beckons Anakin in ROTS, now Luke echoes this.

https://vimeo.com/362829979

I love the idea, and the timing of the line is perfect now, but the Vader-y processing/EQ still needs work to be seamless, I think.

Agreed, I really like the idea if the audio can be made to blend better.

Hal 9000 said:

Here’s the color grade for Bail’s apartment. I start out trying to roughly match the hue, though unfortunately not cloud coverage, of the prior scene. As the scene goes on, it gradually crossfades to a rough match of the following scene.

https://vimeo.com/359910083

That looks pretty damn good!

I think Order B would serve the main Labyrinth of Evil cut the best with its stated intentions.

If you’re willing to make major changes to your hypothetical conservative cut that keeps Padme’s death, I’d revert entirely back to the theatrical sequence aside from sticking “Yoda, Mace, and Obi-Wan discuss their misgivings about Palpatine” before Grievous lands on Utapau and Bail’s apartment scene in the same place it is in LOE.

I really don’t feel like the balcony scene serves a purpose unless it’s immediately followed by the nightmare sequence. It’s supposed to be a sort of “calm before the storm”. An idyllic moment before the inciting incident (the nightmare sequence in the original ROTS). I also hope you trim some of the dialogue in that sequence, particularly the “love has blinded you?” bit.

Hal 9000 said:

That’s how it’s supposed to work, but from a certain point onward the films fall drastically out of sync from about halfway through to the end. It’s been all three prequels, even though I never changed primary sources for Ep1.
Even if a ‘reconnect media’ worked perfectly at this point, it wouldn’t align with me fixing it manually before.

Supposed to be easy. And if this was a fresh project that I did correctly and straightforwardly, it probably would be. I have so many nested sequences for the prequels, which I now know is a supremely bad idea for FCP7. It crashes very often when any of them are opened, no matter how much I clean out of them; those nested sequences are just part of what has to be there to get the projects up and running. If I did want to go back, I might as well create the whole video stream from scratch, manually searching for each shot or section between edits and painstakingly checking everything, and I don’t have it in me. Not after just doing close to that for V6 for 2 and 3.

Ah, interesting. That’s a tough one. Definitely not worth the headache then.

Hal 9000 said:

Before anyone asks, I would like to address this recent post from Schorman13 in which he announced an update to the source material for this fan edit (and LOE): https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/schormans-HDTV-Star-Wars-Saga-Preservation/id/16702/page/5#1290777

While I welcome an update to his project, I cannot reconcile the idea of manually reconnecting each separate clip in the movie to my existing timeline and all the headache-inducing logistics involved with it with the seemingly mostly academic improvements to be appreciated. My FCP7 timelines for all three prequel edits are so convoluted and barely able to be reckoned with, like a house on fire and on the verge of collapse while you hurry to gather precious belongings.

In other words, my life situation makes it necessary to pass on revising my AOTC edit. I wish this update had come 6 weeks sooner, but I have got to move on. I know you’ll forgive me, and it does pain me not to pursue the best for this project, but I am happy with V6 and have never noticed any issues with the source material. If I went to the, what for me now would be a very tall order, trouble of remastering it yet again it doesn’t seem like there would be much benefit at all.

LOE is already ready to go, so even though the same issues would apply in a lesser degree, I reach the same conclusion for the same reasons.

I remain happy with TAS being complete in finality, and look forward to bringing LOE into the same state soon.

I’m perfectly happy with the quality of V6 and I haven’t used FCP7 in a while, but wouldn’t you just need to use ‘reconnect media’ to repoint the source file to the new file? That should automatically update everything in the sequence since you are swapping out the ‘master’ file that it’s referencing.

There are other characters in Canon with similar armor: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pyre

I wonder how possible it would be to augment him with other gear like shoulder pads and a second bandolier like was previously attempted for the other shots. The single bandolier is just so trademark Chewie.

MalàStrana said:
As for the Jar Jar stuff, when Dom talked about his own edit he mentioned he would be putting this kind of stuff back, so rewatching those two short scenes I’m like “well, why cutting that in the first place anyway since there is nothing bad ?” (good idea to leave the senate emergency power scene as it was in v5 though). It’s also probably unconscious for most of us, with what we recently learned with Ahmed Best difficult time with the Jar Jar bashing.

Thanks for bringing this up. I was actually really affected by Best talking about his mental health struggles brought about by toxic fan reactions to his character. Obviously he put his all into executing Lucas’s vision for the character, which is what any good actor would do. It made me rethink the way the fan edit community has discussed the character in the past.

I don’t want it to be perceived that I’m advocating removing the character or Best’s performance. My goal in supporting the removal of those two small moments is the same as the Phantom Editor’s, who originally removed those moments in his edit of the film. I believe that by removing JarJar stumbling over his words (and especially Padme seemingly cutting him off because she can’t even tolerate his presence for more than a few seconds) the audience can infer that the character has matured between films and buy the idea that Padme would appoint him to take over her duties while she’s away. The idea is to dignify the character, not to deingrate him.

The removal shots look seamless to my eyes. Still not sold on the recolor. It looks technically proficient, but I think it would be better to remove him from all shots if possible and if the audio could be worked out.

So, I’ve been given Hal’s blessing to create a hybrid version of V5 and V6 for those who feel some of the changes in V6 are not to their taste. To determine what people want to see, I’ve created a survey. I already have a preliminary hybrid edit up on MySpleen, but based on the survey results I may create an updated version.

Here’s the survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3H5LC2L

So I created a survey to get a sense of what people would like to see in a hypothetical V5/V6 hybrid version of The Approaching Storm. I intend no disrespect to Hal here, who I think has done a tremendous job of crafting his preferred version of the film and listening thoughtfully to community feedback. Hal, if you’d like me to take this to a separate thread I can do so.

Here is the survey link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3D98YQ7

I personally wouldn’t worry too much about runtime. The best length for a film to be is as long or short as it needs to be to tell the story as effectively as possible. If you do include that change, do it because you think it improves the film, not because it makes the runtime shorter. Pacing is another issue entirely, as I’ve seen short films that are poorly paced and long films that feel positively brisk.