He could mention that they were experiencing trouble with a tribe of sand people, the last time he spoke to her.
In my head canon they brought 3PO along to negotiate with them, but being the insensitive piece of scrap metal that he is he insulted the chieftain and made everything worse.
I wonder if we could add a line to AOTC that indicates that Anakin was staying in contact with Shmi through Palpatine, possibly without the knowledge of the Jedi. It would explain Anakin’s strong friendship with Palpatine and Anakin would already harbor a secret from the Jedi, long before his relationship with Padmé.
Thankfully we can dub Palpatine during their scene in AOTC without paying attention to lip-sync due to the lighting of the scene. However I struggle to splice together a conversation that works.
Maybe with an AI voice or a talented voice actor something similar to this could work:
Palpy: “…and so they have finally given you an assignment. Your mother would be proud.”
Anakin: “Have you spoken to her lately?”
Palpy: “Last I heard of her was two months ago, she told me Owen proposed to Beru, they are getting wed next year. Oh and your droid is continuing to scold about the jundland winds, hehe, she wanted me to ask you how to deactivate his vocal unit … It really is a shame that the Jedi won’t let you talk to her.”
Give Jar Jar agency, like this:
“Naboo has no Queen, Naboo needs no Queen”, the line of the Queen is broken, instead elected monarchs rule the planet. The last of the royal bloodline roams the swamplands of Naboo. To the local residents he is known as Strider, but to the people of Minas Theed his name is Jar Jar, son of Jam Jar. He is found by Qui-Gon the Grey, after the invasion of the ring-ships. They seek help from the Gungan, who retreated to Gunga Deep, intending to persevere the attack of Dooku the white, ringmaker (yes, he would replace the Viceroy). After they made their way to Minas Theed the parody falls flat, so they destroy the ring (-ship), Jar Jar is crowned and Qui-Gon the Grey returns to Coruscant.
Don’t forget Anakin Baggins. Without him, Jar Jar would not have gone very far.
Now that you mention it, Sting glows blue… And loses his finger (amongst a number of other body parts) and he throws something evil down a deep chasm.
Give Jar Jar agency, like this:
“Naboo has no Queen, Naboo needs no Queen”, the line of the Queen is broken, instead elected monarchs rule the planet. The last of the royal bloodline roams the swamplands of Naboo. To the local residents he is known as Strider, but to the people of Minas Theed his name is Jar Jar, son of Jam Jar. He is found by Qui-Gon the Grey, after the invasion of the ring-ships. They seek help from the Gungan, who retreated to Gunga Deep, intending to persevere the attack of Dooku the white, ringmaker (yes, he would replace the Viceroy). After they made their way to Minas Theed the parody falls flat, so they destroy the ring (-ship), Jar Jar is crowned and Qui-Gon the Grey returns to Coruscant.
I wanted to break up the tension there, because it should feel more like two friends having a good time. But I get what you mean, it sticks a little bit out, because their movement and position in the room doesn’t match that well with the rest of the scene. A bit like Anakin teleporting through the garage during his confession to Padmé.
I think we shouldn’t cut after Qui-Gon’s death, this plotline is problematic because it has two consecutive low points, but if we go from Qui-Gon’s death directly to Obi-Wan falling in the pit, we end up with one big low point that we can pair up with Anakin stranding inside the control ship and Padmé being captured.
It also adds a bit of dramatic effect, because had Qui-Gon lasted only for a few seconds longer, Obi-Wan would have joined him against Maul. With this order we can also place Obi-Wan bisecting Maul before the destruction of the control ship and Gunray’s capture, thus placing the moment of triumph last, followed by Obi-Wan attending to Qui-Gon.
However we would lose Anakin restoring hope through his destruction of the control ship, in its place we would gain a cool cut connecting the scenes stylistically, if we go from Obi-Wan killing Maul with a green saber to the green lights in Anakin’s cockpit replacing the red.
All in all it should play out like this:
1.-10. the same as Eddie proposed, that works really nicely, I think
11. Continue the Lightsaber fight into the force field room (maybe the most jarring cut, because the fight essentially jumps from one level to another with only a short establishing shot between them)
12. Anakin joins the space battle (same as Eddies point 11)
13. Lightsaber fight continues, Qui-Gon is killed, Obi-Wan screams and just as Maul turns around to face him, the force field opens. Obi-Wan fights aggressively, but is thrown down into the pit by Maul.
14. Padmé and her team are captured and brought before Gunray (I think we would need another shot bridging the two scenes)
15. Anakin enters the droid control ship but is stranded
16. Maul taunts Obi-Wan, the later grabs Qui-Gon’s saber through the force, jumps out of the pit and bisects his opponent
17. Anakin restarts his ship and destroys the control ship
18. The Gungans are freed and we see how the droid army collapses.
19. Add a shot or two of collapsing droids to the throneroom scene, the Naboo pick up their weapons and the Viceroy is captured. Our heroes were victorious,
20. but Qui-Gon fell in the struggle, Obi-Wan knees besides his dying Master and promises to train Anakin.
I don’t like how Obi-Wan is a total dirtback in this scene. First he loses, then he lectures Anakin, claiming that his need for victory is blinded him, only to fight on until he is victorious. If anyone is blinded by a need for victory in this scene it is him and not his apprentice, who fought more aggressively, but fair and unlike his master, showed some decent sportsmanship after the fight.
So I recut the scene to fix this. I also trimmed down Anakin’s aggression, so that their duel feels more like a friendly game. Apart from that I tried to stabilize some shots and match the colors to AOTC. I also stretched the footage vertically to make Anakin’s face look a little slimmer and slightly adjusted Anakin’s voice in the beginning.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZTKua5rx4h2pdeotFPaJ_bA5Isa50bLl/view?usp=share_link
To me, only the first one feels like a self contained movie and only because we have the Tatooine stuff to bind the narrative together.
The Hologram is there to throw a bad light on Padmé and Dooku is there to show that he has nothing to do with Jango’s actions.
Good idea, it actually references “the mistake of Naboo”. I think the whole scene will take a while for me to complete, but the audio is mostly finished. The only thing still missing is Dooku introducing himself, but I could upload what I have so far.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mqt9MeF9mr08sP-wQAHjMqGHJSuidcuf/view?usp=sharing
Finally got around to finish the scene. I must say I am disappointed in how it turned out, granted some of the masking is a little off, but the bigger problem remains and that is the quality of the original footage.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OMsP2KD0VSQV9rX3FQLquF_wAg55q8Ve/view?usp=share_link
The idea with this scene was to lay the ground for an edit that pushes the Kaminoans and the droid founders into a more active role. They hire Fett to disturb Padmé’s work (not kill her, explaining the stupid bugs). He also purposefully sets Obi-Wan on his tail, which will be emphasized by adding a shot of him preparing the toxic dart after meeting with Zam. Dooku and the separatist will play a more reactive role, they will only acquire the droid army as a reaction to the rising tension with the republic, much like padmé predicts during her meeting with he queen.
Moulin Rouge!
Lawrence of Arabia
Dr. Zhivago
We Are No Angels
In Bruges
Princess Mononoke
Knives Out
Murder on the Orient Express (not the new one)
Dr. Strangelove
Hot Fuzz
Life of Brian
Schindler’s List
Rocket Man
Shape of Water
Dead Poets Society
Amsterdam
The Life Aquatic
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Last Duel
LOTR
Oh right, there’s another one already. I forgot cuz it didn’t stick around on the first page long.
Anyway, what about non-SW focus threads? Would those be viable?
I agree with G&G-Fan, it would have to go into the “fan edits and projects for other properties” section. Thematically I would like to see a thread on LOTR edits that try to match the books more closely.
I’d vote for Episode II. I think, that out of the three prequels it has the biggest potential for improvement.
EDIT: However there are ulterior motives, I reckon. I am currently working on an alternate version of Padmé’s speech and I conjecture that the amount of feedback I will get is proportional to the attention AOTC gets 😄
Moin Moin
I had lost my wallet and yesterday I got a letter from the lost and found office. I went there today to pick it up and not a single coin was missing.
Great job.
Regarding the actors change in appearance, I feel like Anakin’s face is a bit wider and his shoulders are too. It makes him look older, more like in ROTS. Maybe you could mitigate the effect by slightly distorting the image.
My Christmas sweater has bloody LEDs that flash when I move, how can it get any better than that?!
Honestly the bigger “problem” with Luke and Leia being twins in Episode 3 is that Padmé and Anakin are always talking about THE baby, singular. How on earth does she not know that she is carrying twins?
The title says it all, I’m trying to gather as much footage of Jango as possible and I don’t want to miss any potential source.
Can you point to any bits that stood out in particular?
I always struggle to judge the quality of the audio, when it is a heavily reconstructed dialogue like this one. The problem is, that you are hearing it 200 times over the course of assembling it and by that time you understand every word it says, no matter the small shifts in volume, color and pronunciation.
Quite similar in fact, to how you learn to understand a particular accent and then it is hard to judge how comprehensive your new bit of dialogue really is.
Good idea, it actually references “the mistake of Naboo”. I think the whole scene will take a while for me to complete, but the audio is mostly finished. The only thing still missing is Dooku introducing himself, but I could upload what I have so far.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mqt9MeF9mr08sP-wQAHjMqGHJSuidcuf/view?usp=sharing
Now I was hitting this thread, because I wanted to ask a question. I spliced together a short holo-message of Dooku giving a speech about the republics downfall and the failure of the Jedi. The idea was to give the separatist more of an identity and to give Dooku a proper introduction.
The sound file is about 30 seconds long and it sounds a lot better with reverb to it, so I was thinking about adding a big hologram of Dooku to the deleted senate scene after the first attempt on Padmé.
However I fear that my footage might not be enough and therefore I was thinking about adding a shot of a bar or club, similar to place Zam is hiding, where the speech would run on a screen. This would also allow for a reaction shot or two of bystanders hearing the speech and that leads me to the question I wanted to ask:
Does anybody know a scene from another (sci-fy) movie that could serve as a template for this?
Nice work paja, I am intrigued what your version of the second race would look like, given what you have cut.
Rotoscoping hair is hell
I’d like to have the Jedi themselves gradually become authoritarian over the course of the PT. At the beginning of Episode 1, they’re more like academics, diplomats, and thought leaders with no formal power in the galaxy, having given it up at the beginning of the long peace they live in. But this long peace is coming to an end, and the Jedi, reminiscing their past as defenders of peace and justice in the galaxy, illegally intervene in this war. This should be portrayed as a good thing, if they hadn’t, the bad guys would’ve just chewed up whatever planet they invaded and moved on to the next, and the Republic was incapable of stopping them without the Jedi.
The enemy responds by escalating the war to deal with the Jedi, to the point where the Jedi can no longer handle the war on their own. The Republic is at risk of being conquered, and the Jedi save the Republic by seizing more power and mobilizing a large, centralized army capable of fighting a galactic-scale war. Since the Jedi have been the boots on the ground, this army is answerable to the Jedi, not necessarily the Senate, giving the Jedi essentially more power than the Republic. After Episode 2, the galaxy may as well already be in the same political state as it is under the Empire, the only major difference being that the Jedi, who are trying to do the right thing, are in charge. The Senate won’t be dissolved until Episode 4, but in Episode 3 they’re just rubber stamping what the Jedi want to do anyway. Again, this should be something the audience is on board with. If they didn’t do this, the Republic would have been destroyed and someone far worse would have been ruling the galaxy.
The Senate would be more like the Roman Senate than the American Senate, where all the Senators have important bureaucratic jobs outside of legislating. Palpatine is the Jedi’s representative in the Senate, a very prestigious role before the PT but not powerful until the war happened. But now, Palpatine is essentially the commander-in-chief of an army which is more powerful than the Republic, and all he has to do to seize complete control of the galaxy for himself is to get the Jedi out of the picture. He does that, and that’s it. He sells this seizure of power easily, because ostensibly the only difference between the Jedi’s regime and his is that his regime is more effective and not self-sabotaging with allegiance to, like, ideals and morality. Now that Palpatine’s in power, the “Republic” easily wins the war they always should have been able to.
I wouldn’t want the audience realizing the Jedi were doing anything wrong until it’s in retrospect at the end of the trilogy. The Republic is cripplingly stalled by corruption and enough Senators are in the pockets of the enemy that the Jedi are the only ones capable of fighting a truly evil enemy, but they have the strategy of white blood cells and put the galaxy in a worse position because of it. If Palpatine’s behind the enemy here too, this could be his real plan, counting on the Jedi Code’s complete intolerance of the dark side to get them to seize power for him.
That would have been great.