Vladius

Remove episode designations! Roman numerals to the back of the line!

The idea is, you watch em in this order, with no episode designations:
A New Hope
Clash of the Jedi
The Empire Strikes Back
Agents of Evil
Return of the Jedi

This would work for the same reason that the 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6 order works better (see the thread about that) because it preserves the twists and develops the characters at about the same time they are introduced in the OT.

Proposed crawls:

STAR WARS

Clash of the Jedi 

The galaxy is at peace. The wandering Jedi Knights keep order

and justice in the lawless areas. 
 
In the darkness, a threat stirs. Led by the

warrior Darth Vader, the army of the greedy Separatist Confederation

makes an attack on the tranquil world of Alderaan. 
 
Two Jedi, Obi Wan Kenobi and his elder brother Qui Gon, lead the 
liberation of the conquered planet...

STAR WARS 
Agents of Evil 

The Republic's Clone Army is hard pressed to battle the Confederation. 
The Jedi are caught in the brutal fighting, spread thin across the galaxy. 

The evil Darth Vader has risen again. With the knowledge of the corrupted Jedi,  
he has swept into Coruscant and captured its Chancellor. 
 
Above the city planet, Anakin Skywalker and his mentor Obi Wan race to  
rescue the beloved leader...

Clash of the Jedi (or a better title) is Episodes I and II.

It starts off with the final battle of TPM, sans Gungans (if permission is obtained, perhaps Lone Gungan Edition's version.) This starts off with Qui Gon talking to the droid about taking the people to Coruscant, but flipped horizontally so he is going towards the end of the hangar where Maul arrives.

Naboo is Alderaan. Obi Wan and Qui Gon (both full Knights) are brothers. After the duel of the fates, Qui Gon's final words are taken as cryptic; Obi Wan only later finds out that a boy single handedly destroyed the control ship. The next scenes show the podrace and the events surrounding it, where Qui Gon went through considerable effort to free the boy from slavery. The camera pulls back, and an older, Ep2 era Obi Wan is watching the footage (recorded by R2 I guess) in the library (just a database he has access to, no Jedi affiliation.) The movie then proceeds as an even shorter Attack of the Phantom-esque cut of Episode 2, which is a pretty good standalone movie when edited correctly. Most of the new cuts would be in scenes with Palpatine where Anakin does not appear, and scenes with the Jedi, who are relatively unimportant. The idea is to keep the focus on the main characters, something the OT does very well.

The major changes are that Anakin and Padme as a couple are not secret, as there's no reason for them to be, and Anakin takes Padme to Tatooine, not because he has a vision of his mother, who isn't a slave, but because he wants to show off his new girlfriend to his mom, and his sister Beru. Only then, he finds out she's kidnapped. The Sand People aren't just some indigenous beast people, they're a failed attempt at making clones by the Confederation, which is why they're humanoid with the weird masks, and they're insane. Anakin has a real motive for revenge on the (real) bad guys, and Padme can be more forgiving - they are pretty close to animals, and they were specifically created to be evil barbarians. Padme is a hawk encouraging a normally peaceful Anakin to war, or at least a supporter of the creation of the army, which explains why she is a target of assassination.

Instead of a large, organized body, the Jedi are roaming warriors who decide what they want to do. The Jedi in the temple under Mace Windu work directly for the Senate. This explains why they don't send more Jedi to go fight Darth Maul, why Mace arrests Palpatine in the name of the senate, etc.
There could also be a subplot similar to Han Solo returning to help Luke blow up the Death Star. The Senate Jedi scold Obi Wan and Anakin for recklessness, but they show up at the end to save them anyway.
Ideally, borrowing Spence's idea, Darth Maul is just Darth Vader, which is an honorific title of the most powerful evil Jedi (no Sith, just evil Jedi.) In the next movie General Grievous is the new Darth Vader reborn, as other people suggested. This is an easy change to make as it can be done in the crawl and most of episode 1 isn't there.

Also as other people suggested, Geonosis and Tatooine are the same. The enemy army is hidden on the other side of the planet, maybe Anakin finds out from a redubbed (car salesman?) C3PO or a dubbed tusken raider.

For simplicity's sake, Boba and Jango Fett are the same, and the Federation and the Separatists are just the Separatist Confederation. Dooku is not named, but called "the Count," and this way, he shows up in the same movie as Qui Gon, which makes him being his master more powerful.
Yoda is not seen until the (Force only!) fight at the end, where the Count and Obi Wan both recognize him. Maybe there's an offscreen line where Obi Wan addresses him as master. He is a mysterious figure so when he comes next in ESB, it's even better.

Agents of Evil is mostly Episode III.
The main changes would be:
Darth Plageuis is Darth Vader instead, a legend.
Anakin keeps his visions about Padme a secret. She dies in childbirth while he is away, relatively early on. Anakin is too ashamed of his dealings to go to the funeral. The deaths of the Jedi feed directly into his ability to keep her alive. Mace Windu's death triggers a scene of her waking up, and the ruminations scene takes place after Anakin marches into the temple (of course he's crying!) This lets her stay alive long enough to be Leia's mom that she remembers. It also explains why she dies while she is still young; Vader no longer cares, and there are no Jedi left to kill to keep her alive. Bail Organa is the king of Alderaan after Padme is seen as dead, making Leia an actual princess.

This is a good video for this, credit to The Cutter:
Padme still alive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adxvS_vjOTo&feature=channel_video_title

The Cutter has another good one that's been posted before, where Padme "no longer has any meaning" to Vader http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GvpT_7BMAc
 

Obi Wan and Padme conspire (possible explanation by C3PO, he's not doing anything else on that ship) to fake her continued pregnancy in order to hide the children from Anakin, which is why she's still got the belly on Mustafar, unless someone wanted to do the creepy work of removing it.

Sorry about that, nevermind, I found it!

Angel said:

Are the cutscenes in HD?

Im afraid the quality differences might be too obvious :/

-Angel

Are you suggesting Star Maps on Tatooine and Coruscant? :O

Or putting the actual Forge in an opening sequence, or in the final battle?

SpenceEdit said:

Also, what if the new power source was a fragment of the Star Forge from KOTOR? Then it gives some context of what it can actually do, and why the TF would want it (build an unstoppable droid army.)

Yes please!
As long as that part of it is explained in the movie. It would be cool to maintain that the reason the Feds need Maul is so that he can operate it with the dark side, or that he's somehow deceiving them so he can take it later.

stretch009 said:

Yorick said:

Ok, I'll give this a stab.

For Episode 1 I'm a big supporter of Return of the Sith by a fan editor called Seciors. He's made the radical change of removing the Darth Sidious character from the film entirely. I feel this improves the overall experience in three ways. 1. It makes the Trade Federation appear far more assertive and decisive now that they aren't following someone else’s orders. 2. It makes Darth Maul's introduction and presence in the film far more mysterious. 3. The surprise that Palpatine is Sidious is retained.

Seciors has also removed all of the underwater sequence from the film. The Jedi now just head straight for the Palace and rescue the Queen. The first fifteen minutes of Return of the Sith is blistering entertainment - and this is coming from a pretty harsh prequel critic.

It's also worth noting that Seciors has also removed the terms "trade" and "tax" from the edit.

For Episode 2 I like L8wtr's Republic Divided. L8wtr is a good, thoughtful editor and he has rescued the Anakin Skywalker character as well as restored the Obi-Wan/Anakin relationship in this edit.

For Episode 3 I watch Kerr's Dark Force Rising. Lots of great cuts there to streamline the Revenge of the Sith experience.

 

I consider myself "in the know" when it comes to SW fanedits but I've never heard of Seciors or his/her Episode I edit.  It would be much appreciated if you could give me a bit of info about it including where I might find it.

Edit:  Just found it on FE.org : )

How would you compare it to L8's Shadow of the Sith?

 

PLEASE ELABORATE

I'm new here. I've been obsessively reading this thread, though, because I've really wanted to fix these movies for a long time.

Three main ideas:

1. Anakin is the "droids" of the prequels. What do I mean by this?
In the original Star Wars, 3PO and R2 were the perspective characters, based on a duo of peasants in the Hidden Fortress who observed the action. Most of the opening is spent on them, and their wandering through the desert has a surreal, wondrous, almost art film quality before they meet Luke.

I think Episode 1, starting off not only a new film series but the entire series, should have a similar character. I think this character should be (an obviously much more quiet) Anakin. This fits in with R2 being, as Ben Burt described, a sort of toddler. He's childlike and takes things in from a distance, helping out when needed. This also works as foreshadowing, for him becoming more machine than man.

The film could start off on Tatooine, with Anakin going through a normal day and running into something much larger than himself. He would be beneath the notice of everyone until after the podrace. He need not have actually built the podracer, but he could be a podracing fan and an amateur tinkerer and student of mechanics who does much, much better once Qui Gon teaches him to tap into the Force. This "opening" also has parallels to Luke having work to do at the beginning, except that Anakin is literally enslaved, which garners more sympathy.

2. Totally Radical Changelings
So, the opportunity for a changeling to do something interesting in Episode 2 was completely shot, except for being able to use a line about it.

With all the ideas about Grievous transforming into Maul, Qui Gon being Dooku, Palpatine hiding his true appearance, the identity of Darth Vader, and so on, I decided to try and make them all into something cohesive.

The Jedi rely a lot on Eastern philosophy and religion. Why not incorporate something else? Namely, reincarnation.

So, in this new prequel universe, one of the uses of the Force, particularly for its most powerful adherents, is to become a changeling. Becoming a changeling allows you to reincarnate. This is how Yoda has lived 900 years, how Palpatine is an ancient evil, and where Force ghosts come from. Midichlorians can stay (yay! :D) as the kind of cells that rebuild your body after its passing, so Anakin having them (and comparing his amount to Yoda's) actually means something.

However, if you are evil, and your soul is corrupted, you require machinery to preserve your new body.

Prime examples: Qui Gon, after his death as a renegade but a good guy, is reincarnated into Dooku, no machinery. Darth Maul is a changeling who is reincarnated as General Grievous, the "droid general." Palpatine tempts Anakin with the idea that he can give Padme this reincarnation (perhaps giving up his own, making it seem more plausible,) which is already established at this point, and he is clearly a master of it. As proof of concept, perhaps Palpatine manipulated Dooku into giving his reincarnation to Jango, turning him into Boba, which also explains why his ghost doesn't show up after he dies.

This provides additional reasons for why a clone army would be so valuable in this time of shifting identities: they're all exact copies of non-Force people, so they can't change alliances after they die.

To preserve the surprise of Darth Vader's identity, you could give all changelings some sort of "tell" that differentiates them from other people (maybe a ring or a twinkle, nothing too serious,) and give the newly-suited Vader this quirk, letting the audience know that this is someone else who has come back, and telling them to keep an eye on him to try and figure out who he is. Since so many bad guys have died, he could be any of them. Anakin actually dies at first.

This also means we don't need to do complicated work trying to turn actors into other actors. Just reincarnate them, like in Doctor Who.


3. Padme is a warmonger.
It's way more interesting that way. Just cut out some stuff, and she's a war hawk for the Republic, spurring Anakin on until she realizes the problems of her actions. Combined with the reincarnation idea, this adds some tension - the audience knows she's not pure enough for it to work, as much as Anakin believes. The Queen keeps decoys because she's paranoid. The Queen attacks the Federation head on and takes down Valorum because she's headstrong. Padme accepts Anakin's genocide, because she might have done the same in his position. Padme quips about diplomacy with sarcasm, which actually makes it funny. Dooku/Gunray want to kill Padme because she'll create the army. I'm sick of weepy Padme, and this gives her personality and makes it believable that she could be Leia's mom.