I like it a lot. It makes a lot of sense coming in from The Phantom Menace that we establish right away what the Trade Federation is up to.
Couple things:
Is the title a placeholder name?
In the crawl, it should be “led” by Count Dooku, not “lead.”
I’ll admit that putting Palpatine in Lincoln’s place was a really weird feeling at first, but I think it serves ROTS well in the way that it makes the Jedi’s suspicions against Palpatine feel completely ludicrous.
That comparison is already there, and the Separatists are already called the Confederacy. There are a lot of intentional historical parallels with the Civil War, with Julius Caesar and with Hitler. Lincoln did use emergency powers to raise an army really quickly and silence opponents during a secession crisis.
Making the Clone Wars about slavery just makes it more explicit, that’s all I was saying.
Couple ideas:
Make Luke a dead Force ghost from the beginning and minimize his role in the story. Imply that he died somehow or that he ascended to a higher plane. Make the plot of The Force Awakens about finding something else. Make Rey someone that Luke already trained, which explains why she starts so powerful. Maybe start the story with her training. Obviously this would require cutting out huge chunks of all three movies. Personally I would prefer to cut out almost everything in TLJ in regard to Luke, but that’s another topic and you wouldn’t necessarily have to to implement this idea.
Maybe instead of a map to Luke, TFA is about a map to the fleet of star destroyers (similar to the Katana fleet in the Thrawn trilogy.) Maybe the map is destroyed and Kylo gets the wayfinders as an alternative without the good guys knowing, where he meets Palpatine and finds out he’s got the fleet.
The anti-slavery thing does make more sense than what we had. I did like that there were hints that the Clone Wars were a little more ambiguous and less black and white than the American Civil War, but it’s not like the original portrayed the Separatists as anything other than evil either. You still have the ambiguity of putting Palpatine in the place of Abraham Lincoln lol
I really like your ideas. I prefer edits that change the movie’s structure and plot over ones that just tweak whatever the individual editor doesn’t like.
I feel like Solo and Rogue One don’t really feel like a part of the main saga considering we see basically nothing of the main characters from either the prequel or original trilogies. Did you do any tweaking to make those feel more like part of the sage?
Well, Solo has Han, Chewie, and Lando at least. Rogue One has Vader, Tarkin, and briefly Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Leia, and introduces the rebellion and the empire.
Personally I like Solo as-is with just the Darth Maul scene taken out, and I made a version of Rogue One with some trims to dialogue. It’s not ideal of course but I think it’s fun to think of them that way.
I thought about the neat idea of having the initial prequel trilogy condensed into the first episode of a trilogy that has the Obi-Wan miniseries and Rogue One follow it
Then again, some may call me crazy
Some people myself included did this with prequels, Solo, and Rogue One. But Obi Wan would probably be much better if it’s good.
Dang it makes Windu look even more ruthless lol
Probably would bump AotC up to PG-13
I like it. Sometimes the Imperial March is too on the nose and it would be better to save it for the first time hearing it in Empire Strikes Back.
This Polygon article provides an interesting interpretation angle to the series: Boba is not an incompetent hero, he is a villain, that just doesn’t care. 😁 https://www.polygon.com/star-wars/22929592/book-of-boba-fett-hero-vs-villain
I wonder if that would work as a way to emphasize his characterization in a fanedit as well.
This is really dumb, even for Polygon
I would like a link as well
The only quote out of those that was a direct Lucas criticism of the Jedi was
[The Jedi] sort of persuade people into doing the right thing but their job really isn’t to go around fighting people yet there are now used as generals and they are fighting a war and they are doing something they really weren’t meant to do. They are being corrupted by this war, by being forced to be generals instead of peacemakers. – George Lucas for E! Behind the Scenes - Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith
This makes sense and is true, and they were sort of placed into that situation by Palpatine. They could have done a more thorough job to investigate where the clone army came from in episode 2, and you can argue that that was because they were getting seduced by the power of having an army, but in the movie it just looks foolish. Yoda is already aware that the war is a bad thing, and all throughout episode 3 they are trying to end the war as quickly as possible and not drag it out forever.
But the central “dogma” of renouncing attachment is something Lucas always said was a good thing, and fear was always what led you down. He’s said that as recently as last year. https://youtu.be/V7LhwO0EGi4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi#Influences
"Lucas explained, the Jedi are trained, allowed and expected to love people, even their enemies, the Sith, but they are not supposed to form attachments and that’s because attachment led to the dark side of the Force.[9] When one was owning, having, possessing, getting or wanting and attaching to things, one become afraid to lose them, whether it to be pleasure, a person or experience. The fear of loss feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, thus, an attached person is selfish and unable to let go. The fear of loss turns into anger, which will lead to hate, and hate will lead into suffering, mostly on the part of the one who is selfish, because then one will spend their lives being afraid rather than actually living. Whereas compassion, the light side is caring and giving and thus it is love, and the opposite of attachment - it is everlasting joy, devoid of fear of loss and the pain of loss. “As long as you love other people and treat them kindly, you won’t be afraid.”[10]
Lucas, identifying himself as “Buddhist Methodist” or “Methodist Buddhist” stated that his philosophy of non-attachment, depicted in his movies was influenced by the fact that he was from San Francisco, the “Zen Buddhism capital of the United States”.[10] In 2020, he indicated that the Jedi were “designed to be a Buddhist monk who happened to be very good at fighting.”[3]"
Respectfully, Vladius, that definitely was intentional. Both George Lucas and Dave Filoni have said in interviews that the Jedi dogma seen in the Prequels was deliberately intended to be taken as a negative, and a factor in Anakin’s, the Galaxy’s, and the Jedi’s fall. (Whether or not that idea successfully landed for audiences is up for debate.) Dave’s explicitly said something along the lines of “that’s why they live in a literal ivory tower”. And the elements of TLJ where Luke criticises the dogmatic past of the Jedi order were apparently a feature of George’s original ideas for the sequel trilogy which he sold to Disney.
That said, whether or not we choose to emphasise or retain those intentions in a fan edit is of course entirely up to the editors.
I’m not posting that for conflict, just for information.
Speculating now, I think he intended that Qui-Gon was supposed to represent the first challenge to that dogma (hence his lower standing in the order), Yoda to represent entrenched dogma fading as he realises its flaws near the end of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan’s and Yoda’s meditations (in life and as force spirits) to represent their coming to understand an alternative existence within the light side of the force, and Luke as the intended inheritor of the new order.
Anakin would have been the first inheritor of the new Jedi if Qui-Gon hadn’t been killed, causing the tragic cascade that led to Vader, delaying the light’s revival. Luke was the new hope, delayed in his path by the presence of Vader. After Return of the Jedi, Luke sought to rebuild the order - already a better one based on the limited information he had, and under the guidance of the force spirits - but in his attempt to rebuild what was lost he still incorporated some of the old dogma, as we’ve seen recently. The tragedy he caused his own family with Kylo Ren and the failiure of his new/rebuilt order sent him, like Yoda and Obi-Wan, into doubt and exile, before the discovery of Rey (and his reconnection with Yoda) helped her forge what will follow.
The only force spirits we’ve seen have been those Jedi that challenged or questioned the order’s dogma, which seems deliberate. (And, for me, makes the final moments of Rise of Skywalker Ascendent all the more powerful, continuing that thread into Rey.)
Can you point me to those Lucas interviews? I’m still skeptical of that. I don’t think it landed for audiences at all until people came in after the fact to be contrarian and say that the prequels were underrated (“secretly genius”), and Filoni is a good example of that.
People are going to do the same post-facto rehabilitation of the sequels and have already started.
Like I said, I think his personal religious and political philosophy includes those Buddhist and ascetic elements and he felt that those were genuinely good things for the Jedi. He’s also said that attachment, fear of loss, and pleasure-seeking are what can lead you down to evil and that that’s what happened to Anakin.
It’s also unclear what people mean by dogmatism. Do they mean that instead of “no attachment” there should be “some attachment but not too much?” Or do they mean no rules on attachment at all?
In any case, whether it was Lucas’s idea or not, I just find the new Jedi he made incredibly uninteresting and completely different from what we saw in the original trilogy and all the material before the prequels, which Lucas also signed off on.
Basically, the Jedi being actually pretty terrible is a big part of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, and if you want to enhance the themes of Qui-Gon being the only one who’s really got the right way of doing things, it helps to make it about “the Jedi won’t allow attachment so he can’t even check on his mum” instead of “Qui-Gon was fine with leaving his mother a slave if it meant getting a strong Force user for the Jedi.”
I really don’t like this aspect people attach to the prequels. I don’t think Lucas intended it at all. He genuinely believes in eastern philosophy and the concept of detachment from material things, including people, to become more spiritual, and that the Jedi are good guys. You could sincerely argue that the Jedi were right to not want to train Anakin and to teach him to let go, because it did lead him into trouble. (The only aspect that goes against this is the contradictory Chosen One stuff, which makes it seem like the purpose of his existence was to get in close with Palpatine so he could bring him down much later. But that’s another issue.)
In any case, I think it’s better to just remove the attachment ban/forbidden love stuff altogether. From the Lucas perspective it doesn’t play well to a modern western audience and comes across as cold, and from the revisionist perspective it takes away Anakin’s agency and responsibility for his actions. It makes it less a personal tragedy and more some kind of weird cautionary tale about the dangers of suppressing people’s Freudian urges or something.
What’s more, TROS doesn’t actually change that or abandon it. Palpatine repeats the same stuff he says to Luke, to Rey, “strike me down.” They copy the part where he directs Luke/Rey to look at the battle going on (after this was already copied in TLJ.) They just ignore what he said or justify it by making it so she reflects his own attack back at him, like Mace Windu does.
Either way, you kind of just end the series with an old man’s face getting melted.
To be fair, the old man who was getting melted was the most evil person in the galaxy, so I don’t have much sympathy for him.
In general, I’m kind of glad TROS chose to eschew the whole “kill him and you’ll be just like him” trope. I get that it’s “part of the fabric of Star Wars” or whatever, but I’ve always thought it was stupid: Luke kills millions of underpaid, abused foot soldiers while everyone around him cheers, but the instant he meets someone who committed mass genocide it somehow becomes wrong to kill him? Despite all of TROS’s flaws, JJ realizing that idea is stupid is probably the best decision he ever made.
It’s not stupid. It’s because Luke would be acting in anger and doing exactly what the Emperor wanted, turning to the dark side in the process. The Force and the dark side have supernatural influence over the situation in a way that they don’t in a normal battle scene. The conflict is a primarily spiritual one and has nothing to do with the outcome of the Battle of Endor. “Soon I’ll be dead, and you with me.” That’s one of the Emperor’s temptations, to goad Luke into thinking he can reverse the losing battle, or take revenge, if he just works up the nerve to kill him.
Luke wasn’t going there to take out the enemy military leader or something like that (such as Obi Wan vs. Grievous.) If he was, it would be a sticky ethical question like it is at multiple times in Revenge of the Sith (such as executing Count Dooku and Mace Windu getting ready to execute Palpatine.) But that’s just not why Luke was there, it wasn’t about that.
Since the Empire is already built and the damage is already done, Palpatine is really only an old man who can shoot lightning bolts (and none of the rebels knew the second part.) It’s not Luke’s responsibility to carry out punishment. The Death Star and the Emperor are going to get blown up anyway, and he’s on a personal quest to confront/redeem his father.
I liked that one that used the people getting shot at in Star Trek Insurrection. Kind of silly but it worked.
Which edit was that, Vladius?
I honestly don’t remember, sorry. It was many years ago.
I liked that one that used the people getting shot at in Star Trek Insurrection. Kind of silly but it worked.
A lot of issues could be fixed by just deleting Attack of the Clones and putting the relevant Emergency Powers parts and Sidious meeting with Dooku parts in either the end of episode 1 or the start of 3. Have shots of the clones on Kamino play while Palpatine talks about the army. Maybe include Dooku meeting with the Separatist leaders. Other than the question of establishing how Anakin knows the Lars family you can mostly let the audience fill in the blanks themselves.
Oh Anakin probably went and saw his mom and freed her from slavery, but she died tragically and something bad happened with sand people. Oh Anakin and Padme ended up together, that’s nice. Oh the Trade Federation went and started a larger war and Palpatine made a clone army to fight them, and Jar Jar became a senator and supported him. Oh Palpatine got a new apprentice after Maul.
No wondering why the Jedi didn’t let Anakin see his mom, nothing about “forbidden love” or a ban on attachment (or sending Anakin to the romance planet, alone, with his crush,) no whiny teenager Anakin, no nonsense about the Jedi losing their touch with the Force or having a magic brain cloud remove their common sense. No elected queens. Obi Wan and Anakin have a friendly mentor-student/peer relationship.
People are going to say that the audience would get too confused but plenty of stories do this kind of time jump and it works, it tends to only increase audience interest as they piece together what changed.
I’ve said this before but people use way too many all caps words in their crawls. If you look at the movies they only do one or two.
In chronological order each count is 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 2, 6. So you’re right, and Rise of Skywalker (and the whole sequel trilogy) is an outlier. But I don’t personally think it’s a big issue - I think all caps is an easy tool to direct people’s attention to the core concepts.
It comes across as distracting and almost like self parody (in my opinion.)
I’ve said this before but people use way too many all caps words in their crawls. If you look at the movies they only do one or two.
My only criticism to an otherwise good idea is that I like how the audience gets to gradually realise the Republic is starting to fail across the prequels. It’s not obvious at first, as the different stakeholders attempt to keep up appearances to hold onto their positions (the Jedi’s ability to use the Force has diminished, the Senate has become a bureaucracy, everyone except Sidious is one step behind everything that’s happening across all three films), and in the end that’s their undoing as Sidious sweeps in at the last minute and knocks the final pretence of function out of a system that was already dysfunctional. (That’s drawing across AOTC and ROTS as well, but it starts in TPM.)
The problem with this is that it’s all conveyed through dialogue and there’s no visual element. Palpatine tells us that the senate isn’t what it once was and it’s all squabbling bureaucrats now. Count Dooku says it’s corrupt and Qui Gon knew all about it, and in the deleted scene he says that the Republic doesn’t work and it’s time to start over. Mace Windu tells us that their ability to use the Force is diminished and Yoda says the dark side clouds everything and it’s impossible to see the future.
But do we see this change? We don’t ever see the Republic or senate functioning correctly or incorrectly, so there’s nothing to judge it by. The senate scenes in TPM come across as slow, procedural and not a lot happening, but that’s not unusual for politics in real life. If anything following procedures is what a Republic is supposed to do. There isn’t so much as a shot of a senator taking a bribe or meeting with the Trade Federation. Ships can move pretty much instantaneously in Star Wars, so when they talk about actually checking out the blockade it’s not unreasonable to think that that’s a good idea. Also wouldn’t all the places that trade with Naboo also speak up about it since it affects them? You can explain all of this away with corruption but we have to SEE it happen. It’s a movie. Even if it were a book it would be bad to tell instead of show.
We also don’t see the Jedi using the Force to the degree that we would notice if anything was different. If anything they start using it more after that. There’s no scenes of Yoda or whoever else making prophecies about the future before it gets switched off. They just end up looking dumb for not using common sense instead of the victims of supernatural effects. Yoda says “only the Dark Lord of the Sith knows our weakness” and then this is never elaborated on or brought up again, we just have to take their word for it that there is a weakness and it’s getting used.
I recall Brian Blessed (who voiced Boss Nass) gave an interview where he said “I tried to make sure my noises didn’t interfere with dialogue”. He basically said that he thought that Jar Jar sometimes made noises on the line, and he has a lot of plot, so the audience would go, “What’s he saying? What did he say?” Anyway, I’m not saying Brian Blessed should be the authority on this, but I think it is a fair point.
This is exactly why I don’t like Jar Jar. His antics and his voice would be tolerable if you could actually understand what he was saying. Every relevant thing that he says is covered up with babble for no reason.
I also entirely disagree with the […]
Thank you, sade!
I must confess, I haven’t watched Rebels (or any other animated series). But that sounds interesting, thanks for the tip!
Let me try to explain myself: Of course, the idea that Balance is some sort of “greyness” is just an exaggerated, artificial metaphor that can only appear in a fairy tale (which is what Star Wars is to me). Of course, there is no such thing as good and bad either—there are only the subjective definitions of what is good or bad, right or wrong for the person interpreting a situation, action, or object (this is what sociology calls the “interpretative paradigm”).
This is debatable in the real world, but it’s certainly not the position that Star Wars actually takes. Good and evil are objectively real in Star Wars, or at the very least evil is. For Force users at least, it exercises a supernatural influence over behavior and causes physical corruption.
“Grayness” is less of a fairy tale viewpoint and more the moral relativism that you’re talking about. It’s what people try to add to Star Wars when they don’t like the idea of objective morality, because they feel it’s more realistic. I will agree with you that it’s exaggerated, artificial, and incoherent, but that’s all the more reason not to pursue it.
I strongly disagree with everything you’re saying but it wouldn’t be right for me to get into it here.
It could be funny to just have him drop a seismic charge in it as he’s flying by. That seems like the whole reason they came up with the scene and they just came up with a convoluted reason for it to happen.