StarkillerAG

I just had a bit of a eureka moment regarding how to structure the opening scene. According to my current plan, you only need to make one major change in order for the opening to work: make it seem like the Trade Feds know what’s going on from the very beginning. They’re immediately aware that the ambassadors are Jedi, and before Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon have even entered the conference room they’ve already made plans for what to do next.

Here’s the way I want to structure the opening:

• Cut straight from the opening shot to the captain saying “With all due respect…” removing redundant dialogue.
• After the Jedi ship lands in the hangar, cut to the first appearance of Sidious. This makes the Trade Feds seem more proactive, establishes that there’s a mysterious force at play here from the very beginning, and increases the tension in the conference scenes (since we know that the Trade Feds are planning to kill the Jedi). Also, cut the bit about making the invasion legal, as part of a general change to make the Trade Feds seem more like bullies: they know what they’re doing is illegal, but they think the Republic is too weak to stop them.
• Then, cut to the conference door opening, with TC-14 saying “We are greatly honored by your visit.” Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s conversation plays out in full, with Qui-Gon’s lines now having an added element of dramatic irony.
• Afterwards, cut to the first appearance of the Queen, as she has a tense conversation with the Trade Feds. Gunray’s denial that there are any ambassadors onboard now has a greater ominousness to it, since they still think their murder of the Jedi will succeed. Cut Gunray’s line “We would never do anything without the approval of the Senate”, as part of giving the Trade Feds a “screw you, you can’t stop us” attitude.
• Continue the scene the way it did originally, with Gunray cutting off all communications, resulting in Palpatine’s hologram shorting out. However, end the scene after the governor says “Invasion.” This both ends the scene in a much stronger way, and removes more talk about how the Trade Feds always adhere to galactic law.
• Next, cut to the Jedi ship being blown up, and toxic gas flooding the conference room. The action scene on board the command ship plays out mostly in full, but with the standard cuts (no “Destroy what’s left of them”, less Trade Fed cowardice).
• When Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon see the invasion army, cut Qui-Gon saying “This is an odd play for the Trade Federation.” Again, the Trade Feds aren’t concerned about legality. After Obi-Wan’s one-liner about how “The negotiations were short”, cut to the start of the invasion, and proceed from there.

So, does that work? It’s not a radical change like I had previously envisioned, but I think it really helps in terms of making the opening more engaging.

Have Obi-Wan kill Vader at the end of their duel in Kenobi. Then have the rest of the episode play out in full, but include a text card just before the credits roll saying this:

Through intense spiritual training with the ghost of Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan was able to master the Force. He traveled to the Imperial capital on Coruscant and slaughtered his way into the Senate chamber, killing the Emperor in front of the entire Senate. After seeing this, the Senate immediately declared Obi-Wan the new emperor, and he proceeded to bring peace and justice to the galaxy through his benevolent rule.

Kenobi is now the final installment of the Star Wars saga.

EddieDean said:

Here’s a little idea, I don’t know how valuable it would be, but it might be worth thinking about:

You could potentially move Padmé’s early conversation by video with the Neimoidians on their bridge to when she’s on Tattooine.

During the “The death toll is catastrophic”/“It’s a trap, send no reply” segment, you could follow that up a short time later with Padmé’s “The Trade Federation have gone too far this time” - and then follow that with the launch of the probe droids and eventual attack by Maul.

Does that make for an interesting throughline?

Sorry, but I don’t think that would work. Aside from what Peter Pan already mentioned about Padme not being on her ship at that point in the movie, the video call scene is too closely tied to the beginning of the movie for it to work anywhere else, and it seems a bit weird that Padme would reveal her location to the Trade Feds just to taunt them. It’s an interesting idea, but it probably wouldn’t work in practice.

NFBisms said:

What’s your archetype psychoanalysis for someone who thinks the sequel trilogy is extremely apolitical, but that Andor is antifa lmao?

Someone who actually understands how politics works, rather than succumbing to oversimplified good-vs-evil propaganda. I love the politics of Andor for the same reasons you described: it has a strong message about rebelling against fascism, without showing said fascism in the ridiculous cartoonish way that the sequels did. The villains all have three-dimensional, compelling motivations, but that doesn’t mean they’re not evil. It toes the line between “Everyone who disagrees with me is literally Satan” and “Both sides are equally right somehow”, and does so brilliantly.

Vladius said:

With that said, Andor is going for a different tone. But I don’t think it’s necessarily just “darker” like people are saying.

Yeah, agreed there. If I had to describe the tone of Andor in just one word, it would be “real”. Every element of the series seems carefully chosen to make the Star Wars universe seem as grounded and believable as possible: the writing is full of subtle world-building rather than on-the-nose exposition, the set design prioritizes real sets and location filming over CGI backgrounds whenever possible, and even the actors look more ordinary and less “Hollywood-ish”. After the ultra-cheesy space opera of pretty much every installment from TROS onwards, it’s really neat to have a series that shows what it would be like to actually live in the Star Wars universe.

Agreed 100%, Vranir! I like the overall trajectory of the show, but it’s slower than any TV show should ideally be. I’m not sure that the “movie-length stories split up into 3 chunks” plot structure is really a good idea.

Honestly, the easiest editing concept that could potentially fix that is just combining the 3-episode stories into actual movies, with 4 movies total for the first season. None of the atmosphere and slow-burn character building cut out, just reformatting it into a more rewarding format.

Here’s another experimental order, heavily inspired by ScreamsInTheVoid’s post above. For this one, the focus is on a more “modern” introduction to the franchise for newcomers, while still showing the entire franchise as-is:

1. Andor (gradually introduces the classic Star Wars concepts in a more mature, modern way)
2. Rogue One (resolves Cassian’s story, and sets the stage for the OT)
3. A New Hope (the most natural follow-up from Rogue One)
4. The Empire Strikes Back (the most natural follow-up from ANH)
5. The Phantom Menace (begins a lengthy “flashback” series after the ESB revelation)
6. Attack of the Clones (the most natural follow-up from TPM)
7. Revenge of the Sith (the most natural follow-up from AOTC)
8. Obi-Wan Kenobi (bridges the gap between ROTS and the OT)
9. Return of the Jedi (resolves both the OT and flashback plotlines)
10. The Clone Wars (fleshes out the flashback timeline and begins the “Filoni-verse”)
11. The Bad Batch (the most natural follow-up from TCW)
12. Solo (only here because I didn’t know where else to put it)
13. Rebels (continues plotlines from TCW and sets up new ones)
14. The Mandalorian s1-s2 (continues plotlines from TCW and Rebels)
15. The Book of Boba Fett (basically season 2.5 of Mandalorian)
16. The Mandalorian s3 (the most natural follow-up from BOBF)
17. Ahsoka (continues TCW and Rebels plotlines even further)
18. The Force Awakens (the start of the grand finale)
19. The Last Jedi (the most natural follow-up from TFA)
20. The Rise of Skywalker (the “end of the franchise”, both thematically and chronologically)

Cool idea, but did you really need to post it in EVERY SINGLE THREAD about the Obi-Wan show? At a certain point, it starts to feel like spam. Still a neat concept though.

MalaStrana#2 said:

The PT was definitely adult

Ah yes, because a cartoon alien stepping in camel poop while an annoying kid yells “Yippee!” is “definitely adult”. Are you sure we watched the same movies? The OT is way more mature than the prequels could ever hope to be.

Overall, I agree that “adult” doesn’t really mean “good”, but it’s still nice to get a more adult-oriented Star Wars thing. So far, this show has felt like the antidote to Boba Fett and Obi-Wan: the focus is on telling a compelling, mature story with mostly original characters, rather than cheap callbacks and cameos held together by a flimsy excuse of a plot. This is the first Star Wars thing since Mando season 1 that feels like there was actually passion put into it.

Yeah, agreed with everyone else on Filoni’s lack of subtlety. It’s hard to take Clone Wars fans who gush about how “dark and mature” the show is seriously when the show literally states the moral at the beginning like an episode of GI Joe. Filoni has some good ideas, but he needs someone like Favreau to moderate his more childish impulses.

Darthrush, I don’t know if you’ve seen Hal 9000’s prequel edits yet, but he pretty much made the exact same change you did. The only real difference is that he reinserted the reaction shot of Obi-Wan looking up as Anakin jumps, which helps with some of the music issues that have been mentioned.

Still, it’s nice to have you back! It’s always great to see retired members of this site return.

rocknroll41 said:

If you say one bad thing about ESB on places like Reddit and TFN or one good thing about the ST you get ripped to pieces. Threads like this one here are a breath of fresh air, in that regard.

When it comes to Star Wars, sometimes I feel like this is the only sane place on the internet.

Yeah, it’s crazy how tolerant this sub is of wildly differing opinions on this franchise. You can hate everything from 1980 onwards, or you can love almost every installment, and your opinions will still be tolerated. There are arguments, sure, but they tend to be respectful debates rather than Twitter-esque namecalling.

G&G-Fan said:

Why isn’t his nightmare about Padme dying anymore?

There’s an explanation in the original post: one of the main goals of this edit is to change Anakin’s motivation from specifically saving Padme to saving everyone he loves in general. This should make it more believable that Anakin would take such drastic measures to prevent his nightmares from coming true, and make it even more tragic when everyone he was trying to save ends up turning against him.

SparkySywer said:

Darth Malgus said:

I think it might be simpler to just do it the way the Star Trek EU does and let people choose to integrate or not integrate whichever canon they want.

Well, no. Unlike most of you, I’m a person who actually cares about continuity. I would like Star Wars to be a multimedia project, a single universe made up of multiple media that’s basically consistent with itself and between the various stories, as much as possible. I’m absolutely in favour of the existence of and official continuity, I think it’s necessary. This doesn’t prevent the individual fans to create their own personal Canon, and in fact I am the first to do so. But I think the existence of a stable and consistent official continuity is important.

Why

Why not? Canon isn’t the biggest deal ever, but it’s nice to have everything in a fictional universe be roughly consistent with each other. That way, you get to avoid the confusion that comes with insanely tangled multiverse timelines, and every installment feels like it “matters” in the grand scheme of things.

BedeHistory731 said:

I love that we can now pick this book and movie series apart without judgement. Indeed, they were always shit!

Yeah, as the only kid in my school who didn’t like Harry Potter back in the day, it’s nice to be vindicated by history. 😉

If I bought it in 2012, I would pretty much go with Disney’s original plan for yearly movies, but executed much better. All three sequel movies would be written and directed by Rian Johnson: TLJ was a mess, but I think Rian could make something much better if it wasn’t sandwiched between two movies directed by his polar opposite. Rogue One would have script revisions to flesh out the characters more, and Solo would have Ron Howard directing it from the very beginning, accompanied by a December release with increased marketing. After Episode IX, the scrapped Boba Fett movie would be released, followed by the scrapped Kenobi trilogy.

I don’t really want to think about if I bought it right now: Star Wars, and Disney in general, has become a massive trash fire of low quality content that I don’t want to get involved with.

Shopping Maul said:

And heck, if the whole thing had taken a few minutes longer then all three of them would’ve been blown up anyway and the galaxy would never again have to worry about space gurus who have a very selective moral sense when it comes to violence, and also turn irreversibly evil when they lose their temper.

I feel like that was kind of the point. The Empire’s done for anyways, might as well stall Vader and Palpatine so they can’t escape, and maybe save your father from eternal damnation too. Luke explicitly says that he’s stalling for time in the scene itself: “Soon I’ll be dead, and you with me.”

And also, Luke didn’t turn irreversibly evil when he lost his temper. That was kind of the point too. Palpatine was cocky enough to think that Luke would instantly want to kill his father and turn evil just because of his brief moment of anger in the duel, but Luke proved him wrong by throwing away his lightsaber and declaring that he’d never turn to the dark side. Compassion is a stronger force than anger.

Evangelion is an incredibly overrated anime. I used to be a big fan, but now it just seems like a mess of half-assed ideas and inconsistent tone that thinks it’s way smarter than it actually is. It would be a genuinely great series if they just made 3 changes: flesh out the background lore and side characters, tone down the awful humor and creepy sex appeal in the early parts of the series, and replace the pretentious esoteric monologues with more of a “show don’t tell” approach to exposition. But in its current state, I wouldn’t call it a “cinematic classic” like everyone else does.

I have varying thoughts on what I consider the “true” Star Wars saga. Sometimes it’s just the OT, sometimes it’s the OT and the prequels, sometimes it’s Disney’s “Skywalker Saga”, and sometimes I even side with BedeHistory and only consider the original movie canon. It varies depending on my mood, and whether I’m taking the theatrical cuts or fanedits into consideration.

However, in general I tend to prioritize the OT above other pieces of Star Wars media. Those movies are the definition of cinematic classics (especially the original movie), and to group them together with the mostly mediocre franchise they spawned feels like a disservice. Some of the Disney installments can be decent, but they will never live up to the magic I felt when I watched the original classics for the first time.

RicOlie_2 said:

Half an hour, assuming it’s the only shows you’re trying to keep up with. Most people have several shows on the go. For me, the choice becomes one between Marvel and everything else (though usually I can keep up with both Star Wars and Marvel, if that’s all I watch).

Yeah, that’s the big issue with Marvel’s constant deluge of content for me. When it was just 2 or 3 movies a year, doing a big binge to catch up with the latest installment was pretty easy. But now, with them releasing 4 movies and 4 streaming miniseries every single year, it’s pretty much become a choice between “binge the latest Marvel” or “watch something actually good”. I stopped watching Marvel stuff after the Infinity Saga was over, but now it’s almost impossible to catch up.

Over all, this show was… I honestly don’t know how to describe it. I do know I didn’t like it, though.

Like I said after the premiere, the show’s number one saving grace is definitely Ewan MacGregor as Obi-Wan. He is clearly a caliber above his mostly amateurish co-stars, and he elevates a ton of moments that would otherwise be mediocre or even embarrassing. However, a good main actor can’t fix everything, and the mountain of deep-rooted issues with the show smother out what could be an amazing character-driven drama.

Plot-wise, this show feels like the “first draft” was really just a Lucasfilm-mandated check list of things the writers needed to include: Cool Force powers, big dramatic moments, callbacks to previous installments, all that typical Star Wars stuff. However, it doesn’t seem like the writers knew how to stitch all that corporate-mandated fanservice in to an actual coherent story. There were so many moments that didn’t feel earned, didn’t make a lot of sense, or were just plain stupid. It started out with just a couple minor issues, but slowly escalated until I had to turn my brain off completely during the final episode. Obi-Wan and Vader throwing mountains at each other has got to be one of the dumbest moments in the history of the franchise.

Also, everyone has already said it, but the cinematography and editing were really amateurish, and didn’t feel like “Star Wars” at all. Just like the plot issues, this didn’t bother me during the first couple episodes, but the weird editing and constant shaky cam got really bad in the second half. The climax of episode 3 breaks one of the most basic rules of editing, and it only goes downhill from there. Give me a fancy camera and a Disney budget, and I would probably be able to create a much more professional final product.

In a nutshell, both Boba Fett and this show seem like signs that Star Wars’s overreliance on callbacks and cameos has finally resulted in the franchise collapsing in on itself: The creators are relying on people’s memories of better installments to compensate for flawed storytelling, rather than actually attempting to tell a good story. Luckily, it seems like this trend might be broken pretty soon: Taika Watiti has promised that his standalone movie will feature almost no pointless fanservice or appearances from previous characters, and both Andor and the upcoming “Acolyte” series seem to be much less rooted in the mainstream saga than recent installments have been. If Lucasfilm can stop relying on cheap callbacks and start telling good stories again, I might keep being a Star Wars fan. It it doesn’t, however, I’ll vote with my wallet and move on to something better.

Anjohan said:

They should watch all seasons of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, analyze it and realize how good, female characters are written.

You mean as total psychopaths? I’m a big Breaking Bad fan, but female characters are really not Vince Gilligan’s strong suit.

Otherwise, I agree with your criticisms of Leia. I don’t understand why everyone seems to love her portrayal so much. A bit of precociousness and snark is fine, but having her do complex psycho-analysis of everyone she meets was a big mistake. Maybe it would feel more natural if Leia’s actress looked a bit older, but that’s out of the scope of a fanedit.

I don’t know if this is my “preferred” order, but one experimental order I’ve come up with recently is watching the theatrical OT, followed by the entire rest of the franchise (including the Special Editions) in chronological order. This is how it goes:

Star Wars (theatrical)
Empire Strikes Back (theatrical)
Return of the Jedi (theatrical)
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
The Clone Wars (until s7e9)
Revenge of the Sith
The Clone Wars (s7e10 onward)
The Bad Batch
Solo
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Andor (when it comes out)
Rebels
Rogue One
A New Hope (SE)
Empire Strikes Back (SE)
Return of the Jedi (SE)
The Mandalorian (s1 and s2)
Book of Boba Fett
The Mandalorian (s3, when it comes out)
Ahsoka (when it comes out)

This way, you get to see the Oscar-winning original classics in isolation, followed by the massive movie and TV universe that Disney has made based on those classics. The sequel trilogy can go in three different places: at the end of the viewing order to continue the chronological theme, after the theatrical trilogy to emphasize the nostalgic inspiration the filmmakers took from those movies, or removed completely to have the era that Disney is currently focusing on (Mando and its spinoffs) be at the end of the chronology.

Anchorhead said:

Just started the second episode and stopped for a moment. Temuera Morrison cameo? That’s a very distinctive voice. Noticed it before they even showed his face.

I know you haven’t seen the prequels, so I’m gonna clue you in: that’s not a cameo, it’s just his character. Boba Fett is part of a legion of clone soldiers that were basically the first generation of stormtroopers, created using the DNA of a bounty hunter called Jango Fett. Jango is played by Temuera Morrison, so as a result all of his clones (including Boba retroactively) are played by Morrison as well. The beggar in that shot is part of that legion of clones, out of a job after the Empire switched to civilian conscripts.

Alright, having finally seen the first 2 episodes, here are my thoughts:

Overall, the best way I can describe the show is “dumb fun”. I know that’s not a very flattering way to describe a show about one of the most tragic characters in the entire franchise, and I wish they focused more on introspection and character drama, but I’m not too bothered by it. It feels like an intentional continuation of the space opera cheese in the prequels, and for people who aren’t too bothered by that style it works fairly well.

By far the best part is the title character: Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan. He is an absolutely stellar actor, and he infuses this mostly corny series with some much-needed pathos. Unfortunately, that just means the subpar performances of the other characters stand out even more. This especially applies to the Inquisitors, who chew the scenery so much that they tend to be more hilarious than threatening (which isn’t helped by their mediocre costume design).

One of my biggest problems with the series is a character no one else seems to have a problem with: Leia. She’s way too snarky for a 10 year old who looks like a 5 year old, and the scenes where she runs away from people are absolutely ludicrous. Are we really supposed to believe that a 3 foot tall girl can consistently outrun legions of trained warriors?

But still, despite all the problems I have, I can’t bring myself to hate this show, because it’s just so fun. I was smiling like an idiot the entire way through. If they keep up this level of pure cheesy entertainment for the next 4 episodes, I’ll be a happy camper.