WitchDR

I’d love to check out the rough cut!

If Sabine has to have the force, they shouldn’t have made her terrible at it in the beginning. The show spend it’s first few episodes basically telling you she’s terrible via Huyang. Instead she should have been able to use it to a small extent from the start, which could have easily been hand-waved away as something she learned how to do from her previous training with Ahsoka.

The way the show did it made Sabine’s force abilities feel unearned. Because she goes from not being able to move a cup just a few episodes earlier, to being able to push Ezra 30 feet across the sky. She even barely was able to grab her lightsaber in the very same episode, it’s just way to big of jump in power scaling. It could have worked if there was a “Oh I can do this.” moment in the show to justify her new “outlook” on the force, but there wasn’t.

I think the best way to correct this would be removing all of the earlier mentions and scenes of her being unable or terrible at using the force. Have her first time using the force be against her second fight with Shin, where she slightly pushes her. Showing the audience that she knows how to use it to some extent, instead of keeping the cup scene, where her face in that scene almost makes it look like she’s never seen the force or knows what it is lol.

I used ElevenLabs Voice Cloning. I only used one 5 second reference clip of Huyang dialogue to get that quality. It’s nowhere near perfect, but if someone spend time training the A.I., I think you could get a near perfect Huyang clone. I also pitched down a second track of the same dialogue and lower and raised the volume in certain spots to make it have the wobbly robot sound since the cloned voice didn’t really sound robot enough for me.

The Ahsoka lines such as “Thanks.” and “Where’s Sabine?” are also ElevenLabs Cloned lines.

honestabe said:

If you ever come back to this wonderful edit, I hope you can plug-in the Anakin force ghost from Ahsoka. He should be close to the same age and he does not have the confused look on his face.

Thanks again for making this edit in the first place.

That’d honestly be a great idea. Considering he’s at an angle that’s more similar to Shaw’s original stance, instead of being awkwardly front facing like the replacement. He’s also making a far better face lol.

This finale sucked honestly. Here’s some random notes.

How does Huyang know who Kanan was? Kanan changed his name from Caleb Dume after he went into hiding. I don’t really remember any moment from Rebels of Kanan telling everyone his old name, other than maybe Ezra or Hera? I guess someone could have given him this information off screen, just seems like a plothole to me.

I hate that Sabine has this “hidden potential” now. She couldn’t move a cup a few episodes ago, but can now throw Ezra across the air? What has happened in these last few episodes that justifies that boost in ability?

Why did the TIE Fighters fly straight into Ahsoka’s ships wings? There was more then enough time for them to get out of the way, but I guess they are just terrible pilots. If we needed to take Ahsoka’s ship out of the equation, there is a hundred better ways they could have accomplished this than that scene lol.

The scene of Ahsoka, Ezra, and Sabine deflecting blasts from the Stormtrooper’s just looked completely comical to me. I don’t know why, but I think it has to do with how horrible Rosario Dawson is with lightsabers. She always looks incredibly awkward and sluggish when she’s using them. But this has been a problem with the entire show honestly. The fight with Elsbeth in this episode was much better, but you could tell it had to be greatly sped up.

Why is Ezra not able to get a single zombie Stormtrooper off his back? Needs Sabine to help him while he pretends to struggle from a single arm around him lol. Scenes like that make it hard for me to take him seriously. But I guess you need to dumb down Ezra to make Sabine look good, right?

We got no conclusion with Baylan, and since he will have to be recast, it will make it hard to connect with his story going forward with a whole new person playing him. Unfortunate with Ray’s passing, since he was the best character in the show.

Other than those things, this episode once again felt like something that could have been 20 minutes of content. The whole show feels like something that could have been half the length. Just completely dragged out for no reason.

I was holding out hope that this show could bring me back in since I love both Clone Wars and Rebels, but once again this feels like a complete dud for me. So many misses in a row for the live action shows… Boba, Obi-Wan, and then Mando S3… Andor was great, but not enough to carry Star Wars.

This show is the definition of 20 minute episodes stretched to 40+ minutes.

This was a pretty boring episode imo. A 20 minute plot stretched to 40+ minutes. Like I said with the last episode, you should remove all of the bandit scenes from Episode 6. We could just assume they are part of Thrawn’s forces that leave with Baylan and Shin. They didn’t end up being some important third faction.

I’m curious how you’re going to remove Ahsoka and Baylan’s fight, considering Ahsoka steals his Howler and then arrives on it in the next scene.

Also after seeing what feels like a conclusion to Hera’s B-plot, I feel most of it can just go. It felt like it accomplished absolutely nothing.

I really wish Vimeo didn’t get so strict as of late, so much less cumbersome than Drive.

How about these links?

Attack on Cruiser:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gktSlWKezKU-XydWHUfd3IxMDnOnLqzM/view

Huyang Saves Ahsoka:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16i210vISm-52HAErEJ3kfUyQcrJi8GDH/view

Peter Pan said:

I used the arrival on Corellia, I can send you a link to the edit.

Yeah send it to me! And sorry didn’t intend to have those videos restricted. It should be fixed now.

What opening scene would you put in instead Peter Pan? If you move the attack on the cruiser scene, you’d need another scene that starts in space, so it can flow out of the opening crawl.

I can’t think of a scene off hand, but I’d love to see a mock up for that, cause I agree your solution would be the best.

The show really needs to be condensed into a single movie. I don’t think there’s enough good content here to make two separate movies.

We will have to see how long and how much fluff these last two episodes have. Cause we really need them to be about 30 minutes of usable content to get it down to a reasonable single movie runtime.

I was also gonna work on trying to remove the entire Hera and New Republic subplot. I hate that the NR won’t do anything. Especially considering one of their ships was just attacked and a prisoner freed. Them not wanting to help Hera in her pursuit makes zero sense.

Instead I was gonna have Huyang alone be the one to find Ahsoka:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/104Fzlcjm73AtwlizctAk790DRjRovFgv

Unfortunately the amount of work just wasn’t worth it. It’s doable, but I’m just not invested enough in this show to want to do all the masking it was gonna take to remove Hera’s squad from Seatos entirely.

Vladius said:

Baylan and Shin on the New Republic ship should be started in medias res with them already on the ship, because the explanation of how they got there is really dumb.

I showcased a cut like that over on Smudger’s edit. He ultimately chose to keep the opening as-is. I don’t think it’s perfect, but anything is better than leaving the stupidity of the captain’s plan in.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1G8OAwmEzlKftG-FEnWNMdF7ygFfFrmbs

daveybjones999 said:

Yeah, episode 3 is a bit tricky because of the spacewalk and Ashoka’s change in outfit. I think the only way to make it shorter is instead of removing the space walk you’d have to remove the dog fight instead and have them immediately find the ring and jump into that sequence and completely remove the fight with the 6 fighters. I also suppose you might be able to shorten the descent onto Seatos as well. Another way to save time in the episode is to 100% remove Hera’s subplot about disobeying orders and cut out the scene with the Senators. It’s also mostly easy to remove that subplot from episodes 4 and 5 as well, by only including the scenes of her leaving to help Ahsoka and removing all dialogue about it being an unsanctioned mission, in episode 4, and it’s mostly possible to cut around the New Republic stuff in episode 5, but you might have to wait on episodes 7 and 8 to see if the subplot is able to be fully removed.

I agree Davey. I think removing or heavily trimming the Hera and New Republic B-plot is where we’d be able to trim the most time out of the middle episodes.

I wish we could do away with them ever having a falling out all together. Their entire relationship is something that happened off screen that will probably be expanded in some comic or novel. As someone who enjoyed Rebels, I really hate that they have this whole relationship that we never saw.

I agree GLogus. The first 4 to 5 episodes would be an extremely boring first movie. But depending on the length of the final 2 episodes, it may end up having to be 2 movies. The way the show is structured makes it really hard to fully remove massive portions of episodes. It’s honestly a shame, because I think there is a really good single movie in there. But I really haven’t seen a way to achieve it yet, without outright removing full episodes.

I think Matt.F had the best solution for this. Relegating a lot of the first three episodes into the crawl instead, which would be a huge plus considering those episodes are about an 80% constant drag on the plot. And with that we could remove Ahsoka and Sabine’s weird relationship that never happened in Rebels, which would be a huge improvement to the show imo. We could start the movie with Ahsoka going to pick up Sabine to go find Ezra. With a little AI line work, I don’t think this would be that hard to achieve.

Instead of Ahsoka and Sabine having a prior “Jedi/Padawan” relationship, we could change the training scenes on the ship as the first time Ahsoka’s started to train her as a Jedi.

losthead said:

With episodes 5 and 6, I get the feeling you could very easily cut out most of the Hera and Jacen subplot, as well as the New Republic arriving on Seatos, and instead intercut Ahsoka’s WBW journey with Sabine and the others on Peridea? That way, once Ahsoka rides the whales, the witches alert Thrawn about it. I think it could make it a lot tighter, and we could reduce the Jacen subplot to an expository line. I also feel you could cut out the New Republic arriving, and have Ahsoka depart with no interruption. If they are still on Seatos and that becomes a plot point, you could easily slot in their arrival after Ahsoka leaves.

Something like this could be doable. Just have Huyang alone be the one to find her instead. Keep the scene of the ship lights over Ahsoka, but cut it right before the female pilot jumps in to grab her. Than you could change the dialogue during the scene where they discuss it when Ahsoka wakes up.

I tried doing a mock-up of Huyang and Ahsoka’s conversation after he saves her. Not entirely satisfied with it, but it’s something that could be fleshed out:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/104Fzlcjm73AtwlizctAk790DRjRovFgv

Changed it to Huyang using a scanner to find Ahsoka out in the water, and changed all his "We"s to "I"s.

If we intercut between Ahsoka’s episode 5 plot and Sabine’s episode 6 plot, it’d probably be pretty easy to remove Hera and the New Republic’s involvement altogether. And with how the NR has been portrayed, the less of them the better honestly. We already have the NR shutting down Hera’s search in Episode 3, so we have a reason for them not to be involved further. But we will have to see how Hera’s story unfolds in the next two episodes to make a final call.

Episode 6 honestly still had a lot of fluff. I was able to cut this episode down to 26 minutes pretty easily. I’ll send ya the cut in PM’s if it can help give you any ideas for cuts Smudger.

If episode 7 plays out with Baylon and Shin showing up with these bandits to attack Sabine and Ezra, we could easily assume that these bandits are just a part of Thrawn’s squad. Doing this could allow you to entirely remove them ambushing Sabine and every scene of them in this episode. Instead having their first scene be how ever they appear in the next episode with Baylon and Shin. But if Thrawn ends up betraying Baylon and Shin and the bandits team up with them instead, this may not work.

But we will have to see how next episode plays out, but this is definitely a possibility.

I think this is a great first cut Smudger! It flows far better than the first two episodes did originally.

I do echo something others above have mentioned though… the jump from Ashoka getting the map and then instantly being on the ship with Huyang afterwards. The dialogue about Huyang being too out of reach for contact needs to be removed, or you could reinstate Ahsoka trying to communicate with Huyang while in the tomb then jump to her on the ship with Huyang and allow the conversation to remain as-is.

Two other things I think could be fixed are:

• Ahsoka’s search for the map needs trimming. Too much walking around to each pillar. Could easily be tightened up.

• Also Sabine still has a hole in her back from the stab wound she received from Shin.

Here’s a trimmed down version of the map search and also the shot of Sabine with the back of her shirt fixed using masking:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s1LA58QGDZFkAIvYzGFHUjs8ui7cdPkJ
(Have to start putting clips on Google Drive, since Vimeo seems to strike everything down now)

Other than those things, I think this is pretty much the best it can get!

Would love to check out the first cut!

GLogus said:

I agree wholeheartedly, but I think you are referencing episode 5. Episode 5 was great, but like you said, it could lose a good 15 minutes and be much better off for it. Episode 4, on the other hand, was impressively paced and had me on the edge of my seat.

Oh sorry, I had episode 5 freshly on my mind and misread lol. Yes I would agree that Episode 4 definitely has the least amount of fluff in terms of all 5 episodes.

GLogus said:

Episode 4 was so good, including its pacing, that it imo it doesn’t any significant trims. All the other episodes, however, have felt needlessly slow.

It was definitely the best episode yet. But I would say the opposite. All of the search for Ahsoka and Purgil scenes were badly paced and need to be heavily trimmed. This episode could easily be cut down to about 35ish minutes as oppose to 49 minutes. The Purgil scene especially dragged on way too long. And all of the Ahsoka and Anakin scenes should be merged together with almost no jumping back to Hera constantly telling everybody to keep searching.

I got to say, after Ep5, I think this show is in dire need of a single movie edit. I really don’t think the first 4-5 episodes will make a good single movie for a two movie edit. Episode 5’s ending feels like the perfect spot for mid-way through one movie. The new Galaxy portion of the show serving as the finale of the movie.

But getting all 5 episodes cut down to only about an hour to an hour and a half would be extremely daunting. We will have to see how long these final 3 episodes are. But as of right now, I think this show would be best served as a 2h30m movie.

Man, I just decided to watch through these movies again recently and it made me remember about this post from years ago! I hope one day you revive this project G&G. Your Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Biollante hybrid was something I was so hyped about!

smudger9 said:

I’ve watched it back a few times and it now feels like Sabine has more of an emotional collapse as she sees help arriving. Shin still clearly wins the duel, so that plot point is retained.
It seems to work and I’ll edit out references to the lightsaber injury in the medical bay.

When you put it that way, I think that is a satisfactory work around. You did good on removing all the references. But there’s still the shot right before she collapses, where you can see Sabine has a hole on her back from where the saber went straight through her.

I tried masking out the wound and sent you the clip via PM if you want to use it.