Timstuff

Meh, personally I like the vibrant shades of the original better. It could stand to be toned down a bit, but Geonosis is clearly intended from the start to be a red planet, and if you try to tone it down too much you start either bringing everything else down with it, or altering what the concept of the planet was in the first place (it always reminded me of Mars, personally).

BTW, I'm going to start working on dubbing over a scene of Jar Jar's dialogue from Episode 1 as an expiriment. I'm not a particularly gifted voice actor (to my knowledge, at least), nor am I particularly experienced in sound mixing (there might be some glitches in the ambient sound where I dub over Jar Jar), but hopefully the results are good enough to prove my concept of dubbing over Jar Jar with new voice acting rather than jibberish. I'll probably try several voices and see which one myself and viewers like best.

Hmm... I suppose if the smoke were moving it'd look better, then.

The composition of the one on the right is a big improvement, but I prefer the color pallet and black levels of the one on the left-- particularly the black in the emperor's robe, and the shadowy appearance of the area where he's standing. It feels more like he's been watching from the shadows the whole time, and is now stepping out to give his 2¢, which I believe was the original intention.

I really liked Magnoliafan's idea of changing Dooku's lightsaber color to keep it a secret that he's a Sith until the end. For the audience, he should come across as being a rogue Jedi / political idealist until Sideous shows up later, so his red saber should not come into play until Episode 3.

I don't really see the point in recoloring Jango. He's a different character from Boba, so he should have a different color scheme on his armor.

Here's an idea: steal this ion cannon shot from Command and Conquer 3, re-color it green, and then insert it for Alderaan's destruction scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-3VC1XGmfA&feature=related

Now there's a destruction shot for ya! After this shot, there could be a cut to the more traditional "KABOOM!" shot.

Davnes007 said:

Top = Palpy zaps Luke

Bottom = Palpy base jumping ;)

Dang, I have ALWAYS hated that matte, ever since I was a kid. A new and improved one one that doesn't look so obvious would be on the short version of my ROTJ wishlist.

EyeShotFirst said:

Garindan the Kubaz needs more apperances too.

Holy crap, my entire life I always thought that this guy had an elephant trunk on his face, but now that I see the detailed version I can see that the character is actually meant to be a humanoid who wears a mask with a cloth trunk! My childhood is ruined!

I would like to say that I am wholly against de-purpleing Mace Windu's lightsaber!

Having put some more thought into how re-imagined Gungans ought to sound, and for some reason my mind kept wandering back to the rather silly idea that they could have accents that sound reminiscent of Celtic-- like if a celtic version of Jim Varney was playing Captain Ahab, that would be Jar Jar's voice. It sounds wacky, but in my head it works. In the car today, I found myself reciting a bunch of Jar Jar's lines in various different voices and accents, and the one that seemed to sound the best to me ended up being a vague derivative of Scottish.

Something I would hope Adywan would consider for his edits, is that rather than dub over Jar Jar with an alien language and then use subtitles, try to actually find a voice actor who's willing to donate his services to the project and actually record new dialogue for him with a new voice. I thought the alien language worked pretty well in Magnoliafan's edits, but it did stretch the believability of the story a bit (like, why does everyone in this movie understand Gunganese?), and it also made it a bit more obvious that it was a fan cut since it doesn't quite seem like something that would be in a real, professionally released movie. Using an actual voice actor would be much yield much more professional and convincing results, assuming the actor doesn't suck (but really, what could be worse than the official Jar Jar?).

If I was going to come up with a new voice for Jar Jar, I think I might make him sound a little like Jim Varney-- on the raspy side with a touch of southern drawl. :^D

ChainsawAsh said:

Okay, here's my reasoning behind why Yoda and the Emperor should never be seen with lightsabers.  I'll focus on Yoda, but similar reasons apply to Palps:

Yoda is like the Buddha.  He's someone who's been enlightened, who is perfectly in tune with the Force and nature, and uses his unique position to guide others toward this path.  He's, for lack of a better way of putting it, better than using a lightsaber.  Beyond it.  He doesn't need one.  He's the perfect Jedi, and showing him fighting just like any other Jedi - good at it though he may be - cheapens his status and makes him no different than any other Jedi.  (This will bring me to another point later, but I'll tackle Palps first.)

Palpatine is similar, but on the other side.  He doesn't fight, he's mastered the Dark Side so well that he doesn't need to - he manipulates others into doing his bidding.  He has everyone around him wrapped tightly around his finger.  All he cares about is controlling everything, and he's damned good at it.  He's the perfect Dark Side master (I'm trying to avoid the term "Sith" here because I hate it), and, again, showing him fighting cheapens him and makes him no different than Vader or Maul or Dooku.

Now, back to the point I wanted to make from Yoda.  The Force needs to be a religious thing again.  The Jedi shouldn't be the Republic's fighting force like they're made out to be in the prequels - they work outside of the Republic.  They're trying to become in tune with the Force, much like Buddhism's ultimate goal of reaching enlightenment.  They should be highly-regarded, almost holy figures that try to keep the Force in balance, and only interfere with things outside of their own group when this balance is threatened.  "The guardians of peace in the galaxy," and all.  They practice lightsaber combat almost as a form of meditation, like martial arts.  They only use it when they must, and they certainly DON'T flip around all over the place wasting precious energy the way they all seemed to do in the PT.

In other words, the Jedi use the Force to find spiritual enlightenment, and only fight when the Force is at an imbalance, to right it.  The Sith use the Force for personal gain, which causes the Force to imbalance itself, kind of like a cosmic Karma.  That's the only difference, that's what the "Light Side" and "Dark Side" are.

At least, that's how I feel it should be portrayed.  It's in line with everything that's said about them in the OT, but completely shattered in the PT.

Unfortunately, I think the existing material in the PT prevents such a depiction, which is very, very sad.

I know this is a rather old post to be responding to, but it's something important enough that I felt compelled to respond to it. While this interpretation of the Jedi sounds all well and good, it is also a massive disservice to one of the Jedi's most important aspects-- they are the Jedi KNIGHTS, not Jedi MONKS. They are the guardians of peace and JUSTICE. Ultimately, Jedi prefer the olive branch to the lightsaber, but they are willing to use both depending on the situation. The Jedi are not soldiers, but they are chivalrous warriors just as much as they are enlightened religious students. If Yoda truly does consider himself above combat, then he can't really be considered a Jedi Knight, since he would essentially be filling the function of a monk.

Bingowings said:
While we are on the subject of things Sith, I'd have Anakin use force lightning on Padme ( I hear some hisses from the readers at this point).

At no point does Vader use this Sith skill in the OT but he chokes people left, right and centre (I've already voiced my hope that Adywan stops Luke from doing the choke move in ROTJ:R).

One of the more popular theories for why Vader doesn't use force lighting is because of his mechanical arms. If you think about it, using force lightning would likely fry the delicate electronics inside of Vader's arms since the lightning would be channeling out of his stumps, and having to have his arms replaced every time he kills a dude would probably not be a very fun ordeal. If it's possible to add the lightning effect without making it look cheesy, and it makes sense within context to the film, it may work.

And on a side note, I'd like to add that I don't want to see Mace Windo's iconic purple lightsaber messed with. Yeah, no-one else in the entire saga has one that isn't red, blue, or green, but that's exactly what makes it so cool. :(

I think that the "deadness" that some people have complained about with the prosthetic could be solved by adding a bit of red around the edges, though. Part of what gives out skin its color is that it's got red stuff underneath it. Also, I think that the prosthetic having living tissue over it is a much cooler sci-fi concept than simply being covered in a layer of life-like plastic. If such a polymer existed in the Star Wars universe, I'd be very shocked that they didn't already have it at the time of the Clone Wars. The flesh covering could also hint that the clone wars opened up new opportunities in regenerative medicine, since it's a field closely related to cloning-- that would explain why Anakin had to settle for a metal prosthetic, wheras only 20 years later, it's possible for someone to get a bionic hand that looks like the real thing.

Excelsior Prime said:

Please PLEASE tell me Reave is going to do a "Resparked" version of Revenge of the Fallen.

 

My beef with the "Resparked" version of Transformers is that it kind of stripped the human characters of a lot of their personality and character development, and it in general seemed to have a lot of contempt for the humor in the movie since so little of it was left in. I do not mind the fact that the Transformers movies are funny, I just think that most of the adult and bathroom humor in the movies shouldn't be there, and I think that Transformers 2 was about 30 minutes longer than it should have been (in addition to having more than a few plot holes, inconsistencies, an downright annoying moments). I know some people simply hated the human characters and Michael Bay's sense of humor altogether, so I suppose Resparked is more for them, but there are a lot of people (myself included) who overall liked the movie as-is, but were disappointed by the fact that Revenge of the Fallen was bloated, unfocused, and had a more sophomoric and inappropriate sense of humor.

I don't want a cut of Transformers 2 that's going to strip it of any personality-- I just want one that's shorter, coherently paced, more age appropriate (no humping, man thongs, robot scrotums, etc.), and has the presence of the twins reduced drastically. I've only seen the movie once so I'm sure there's more stuff I could nitpick through that I'd like to see changed, but overall I think a successful edit of the movie's goal should be to make it feel more in line with the 2007 movie, not to completely remove the humor and push the humans into the background.

In Star Wars, lasers alwaus cauterize flesh upon impact (which would probably happen in real life, too). We couldn't really tell if Luke's Hand was just burnt plastic or burnt flesh in ROTJ, only that the stuff beneath the burnt skin was mechanical.

Heh, I definitely would not be expecting the arm scene in ESB to be anywhere Terminator in terms of blood-- i think just hinting at a bit of meat around the edges of the skin would be enough to get the message across without going far beyond what one would expect in a PG-rated movie. Also, due to the design of Luke's arm, I don't imagine there'd be blood on the actuators themselves, and since it looks like there's only a thin layer of skin there, as opposed to the Terminator which has muscle tissue over his skeleton as well. However, if Adywan feels like he can manage something meatier than what I demonstrated and still make it look believable, I wouldn't complain.

Darth Solo said:

You ever have a prostetic limb attached that exactly matches your own skin tone at that moment in time? And Hammil dont have a 'real' hand from that point onwards anywayz.

Dead argument.

Although if you want more modern Terminator 3 SPFX then please continue.

Funny you should mention that, because I was thinking about how the hand would be a lot more convincing if it were a bit "meatier."

I like the idea that there is organic tissue covering the bionic hand, and it makes it a bit more convincing within context to the story, since it provides a believable concept for how the arm can integrate with Luke's body. Perhaps regenerative medicine can't re-create lost bone, but since the Clone Wars the technology is now good enough that they can re-grow tissue to go over bionic limbs. Obviously, the present-day George Lucas would probably shy away from showing a drop of blood, but since that's a non-issue I'd love to see Adywan add in some pseudo-terminator blood like I demonstrated.

Bingowings said:

Seeing as everyone else seems to be raking the ashes of this discussion here was my take on the accretion disk :

I would prefer that the disc be more to the left, but I do like this general concept. The interpretation that it's a new star rather than a galaxy is a much better interpretation IMO because as has been said before, it serves well as symbolism to give the audience hope. If it's doable, I'd like to see it.

Personally, I don't m ind a little goofiness... But there was just way too much in this movie, and a lot of it was way too crude. Seriously, how can they add characters like The Twins and claim "they're there for the kids," and then have show two dogs humping? I mean, parents were gasping about the masturbation convo in the first movie, but this movie made that scene seem G-rated by comparison.

My ideal cut wouldn't be a totally de-humored version, but rather something that manages to be similar to the first movie. The first movie IMHO had a good balance of humor, action, and drama, whereas the sequel was excessive in everything but the latter.

I definitely like the idea of a leaner cut of TF2 without the dog humping. I actually liked the movie enough that I'd be happy to see it again as-is, but it definitely should have been at least 30 minutes shorter. There's plenty of frivelous junk and maybe an action scene that could easily be cut out while still keeping it coherent. I think that this movie has tons of potential for fan edits, so I look forward to seeing what people do with it.

Also, while I like the idea of editing Soundwave's voice to give him the classic vocoder sound, aside from that I'd be pretty leery of trying to "fix" any of the other robots to be more G1-like. Even if it were technically possible to recolor or modify certain characters to look more like the G1 versions without making it look sloppy, it doesn't really seem very constructive to me. Ideally, a fan edit should be able to take a hard look at a movie, and cut or rearrange stuff without sentimental bias, with the end goal being a film that is better. Trying to put a G1 filter on the robots seems more like an oldschool fanboy nitpick to me than it does an actual improvement. Personally, I like the robot designs in the movies just fine for the most part (except for the twins since they look like retardicons), and I think that at best, making them look more like the G1 versions would be a sidestep in quality. The only real change I would make (besides filtering Soundwave's voice) would possibly be getting rid of the whole "split personality" gimmick on Arcee. If there was a way to make her appear to be just one bike and one robot, I think that would be an improvement since it didn't really make much sense in the original cut.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens with this. I enjoyed this movie a lot already, but if given the right cuts I think it could easily be on par with the original 2007 Transformers film. Also, if there's any way someone could make a 1080p HD fan cut using the Blu-Ray as the video source, that would kick ass!

Well if that were the case, then all you'd really havel left from the original cut would be the actors... And really, I think 99% of people would rather just watch the original classic Toho Godzillla than that. :p

Yeah, that screen shot of Qui Gon's spirit at the end had me really excited. I bet Magnoliafan had some great sutff in store for us, but his last post in this thread, and even his last blog entry was over a year ago, so I am a bit worried. I guess I shouldn't expect his Episode 3 project to be finished, or those special edition Balance of the Force and Clone War cuts he was talking about. :(

Well, there's still some hope that Adywan will actually get around to "Revisiting" all 6 Star Wars Episodes, although I'd say that's a pretty long shot too. I'd be impressed if he actually got Empire Strikes Back rivisited out this year, so even if he does intend to do the next 4 films, it would probably be several years before we actually see them.

I'm still searching for good quality DVDs of Magnoliafan's edits. I was able to find torrents of them, but they are very slow to download and I've been told they have very "meh" video quality (also, they're not as convinient to put on my TV or share with my friends & family).

I wish I could get some kind of progress report on MagnoliaFan's special edition dual-layer discs, and his/her Episode 3 edit! I thought Episode 3 was a pretty decent film, but it definitely had a lot of weak spots that kept it from being on part with the original trilogy. I can't wait to see what Magnoliafan comes up with to fix it up, especially after seeing that teaser image of Qui Gon's spirit in the ending!

I am a life long fan of Godzilla, and I have gotten a lot of flack over the years from some of my fellow fans because I am one of the only ones who liked the 1998 remake. It had completely mis-cast lead actors and some very questionable directorial and story descisions, but I enjoyed the action scenes and liked the fact that it was a movie that tried to take Godzilla seriously again. In fact, I would dare say that it was in large part because of this movie that Toho made Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, which IMO is one of the best Godzilla movies ever made (and like the 1998 film, it pushed itself as a legitimate sci-fi movie rather than a self-parody).

Looking back, the movie obviously isn’t as good as I thought it was when I was 12, but I still hold to it that the movie isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be, although many of the critisims towards it are valid. Inspired the many high quality edits I’ve seen of films that had great potential but didn’t meet it, I am currently planning to make a slimmer, more definitive cut of a movie that I feel gets ragged on a lot more than it should. Unfortunately I won’t be able to start working on it until some time in October since I don’t have any editing software on my new computer yet, but I am in the planning stages and I’m open to suggestions any of may have about how to make the movie better (within my means).

My overall goal with this cut is to make a film that is better paced, and has a reduced presence for that irritating blonde chick “Audrey.” I recognize that trying to fix the human element in this movie is sort of like trying to polish a turd, because frankly the directors and writers didn’t have a clue. If I had whatever footage I wanted to work with, I would make a movie that focused on Hank Azaria’s character “Animal,” because he was cool and actually worked well in an action movie. Or, in my dream world, I would have cast an actual action star instead of Matthew Broderick as the “Nick” character (my dream would have been Arnold Schwarzenegger). But that’s not the reality of the situation, so instead I’m left with the task of making a film that focuses less on Audrey, and more on Nicks POV. There’s not much that I can do in terms of Matthew Broderick being totally miscast in the role, but I can at least get rid of the hair pulling aggrivation of Audrey’s frequent whining and voice screeching.

Here is a list of changes I am currently planning to make to the film:

•The newsroom sequence w/ Audrey whining to her boss about her promotion will be cut
•The awkward conversation between that nerdy redhead and Nick deleted about Nicks’ marital status will be cut, as will be most of the former character’s onscreen presence
•Several tweaks will be made to Godzilla’s debut sequence, cutting some parts and possibly incorporating some unused footage from the trailers
•Reduced presence of “Mayor Ebert” sub-plot
•The “I think I lost him” Friday the 13th line in the chopper chase will be cut
•In the looter scene, the octopus movie playing on the TV will be replaced with footage from the original 1954 Godzilla movie
•George Washington statue gag deleted
•The sequence in Animal’s apartment where Audrey is “crying her eyes out” will be cut completely-- her and Animal sneaking into the Madison Square Garden is more of a twist later
•Several scenes w/ Animal and Audrey following the French agents and Nick will be removed for annoying dialogue, and because of the stupid wiggling dead fish
•Audrey’s blubbering during the hatching scene removed
•Several shots of Nick and / or Audrey running will be cut (if possible), because they look pathetic
•Nick’s “gumball defender” scene will be removed.
•Surviving baby Godzilla will be moved to the end of the credits as easter egg, where it should be
•At least one of the two bouncing tire shots will be cut – seriously, repeating a joke doesn’t make it funnier.
•Puff Daddy’s butchering of “Cashmier” in the end credits will be replaced with “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult, followed by the classic Japanese Godzilla theme (or vise versa, I haven’t decided which way yet).

I’m sure I’ll see more places to tweak the film once I get into the editing process, but those are my primary places of interest at the moment. If you have any ideas for places where the movie could use some trim, please feel free to suggest them! I’m open to outside ideas.

Can someone give me a hand unpacking the files for this edit? I downloaed The Matrix Hacked Reloaded and The Matrix Hacked Revolutions from rapidshare through fanedit.org, but the first file part of both movies is a .exe, and I am using a mac so I can't run it. Any suggestions that don't involve copying to a disc, switching to my Windows partition, unpacking, copying to another disc, and switching back to my Mac partition, and then burning?