CaptainFaraday

I might as well get us started off.

People often post comedy gold in the Worst Edit Ideas thread, and sometimes, people even make those ideas a reality. This is a place to put them all together, as well as ideas that are intended to be funny but don’t fit the kayfabe of being an edit someone could earnestly suggest.

I like the second grade better for every screenshot.

Burbin said:

Tbh this has always been the way I saw the First Order. People always complain about how overpowered they seem because they have bigger ships, bigger walkers, a bigger Death Star, etc. but if you look at it from a story perspective they really always seemed much smaller than the Empire. In the OT you always got the sense that you were only looking at a fraction of the Empire’s might - the secret Death Star project in ANH & Vader’s personal quest in TESB. But the Empire had control over the entire galaxy, there was always a sense that there were other equally great imperial operations going on somewhere else, officers were surprised that the Emperor would take the time to contact Vader, and outright shocked when he decides to personally oversee the completion of the second Death Star.

Now compare that to the First Order, in TFA the galaxy is under rule of the New Republic so, despite being introduced as this misterious Emperor-like character, there really is no sense that Snoke has much else going on. Moreover, he seems highly invested in the Luke map plot, and is in constant contact with Kylo and Hux. Then by TLJ he’s outright leading the assault himself, so it really feels like he’s throwing everything the FO has to make sure the Resistance is wiped out. After the destruction of Starkiller & Holdo’s ram on Snoke’s fleet, the Battle of Crait is comprised of the crippled remnants of both sides, despite the FO still having the upper hand. TRoS really hammers home that the FO doesn’t have the reach to take control over the galaxy, it even brings up how their resources have been crippled by the destruction of the Starkiller. The ammount of Star Destroyers in Palpatine’s Fleet might look ridiculous when put toghether like that, but you can imagine the Empire had equal or even greater numbers spread out across the galaxy.

Really nicely put.

After Maul falls down the pit, dub in echoing dialogue sourced from TCW to indicate he’s still alive down there and is going to find a way off Naboo to get some robotic spider legs.

Peter Pan said:

There is the really dirty option to just trim the reaction shot of maul. Its the only shot the blood is in, you could easily shorten it by a second and skip the blood. You would only need to fix the audio afterwards to get rid of mauls grunt when the saber hits him. That could be a little tricky, but not really time consuming. At worst you would have to redo the saber-slashing sound effect and find a clean recording of the score.

I’d just move the audio forwards so that it starts at what is now the beginning of the trimmed shot, then shave the difference off the end of the audio sometime before whatever the next SFX is (Obi-Wan deactivating the saber, I think).

BrotherOfSasquatch said:

Hal 9000 said:

What could be done in TLJ? Make their flagship… smaller? Spell this out in the crawl?

Most likely, it woulds have to be something done in the crawl.

I always interpreted the First Order as being analogous to Daesh in the way the Empire was analogous to the Nazis. They’re a small group who nobody took seriously because they assumed there was no way they could sieze so much territory so quickly, and then, they took over by siezing so much territory really quickly. My own edit of TLJ tries to evoke this in the crawl as so:

The FIRST ORDER reigns. The New Republic has been decimated, and in this state of galactic confusion, Supreme Leader Snoke’s armies have seized key territories and taken military control of the galaxy.

Only General Leia Organa’s band of RESISTANCE fighters stand against the rising tyranny, certain that Jedi Master Luke Skywalker will return and restore a spark of hope to the fight.

But the Resistance has been exposed. As the First Order speeds toward their rebel base, the brave heroes mount a desperate escape…

Damn, you’re right.

I think it would have to be both or neither for the two options on the red and blue dice. At least part of the explanation could be dubbed in Huttese and subtitled, but the central line needs to be in English otherwise it would stick out a bit.

EddieDean said:

Omni said:

• If you, like me, wish to remove both the moment that the fake Queen orders Padmé to go clean R2 and the scene where she actually is cleaning him and meets Jar Jar, you only miss two things:

1. The first part of a small subplot where Panaka gets impatient/distrustful with the Jedi
2. Padmé’s name.

The first one doesn’t matter very much, is arguably even good since there’s no payoff anyway, but the second one can be a big problem. We’d only learn her name when Anakin seeks her out in Coruscant before he’s rejected by the Jedi, which is a bit too late for us to gain a degree of intimacy we should already have with her character.

Here’s a thought - what if we just cut the first scene, but preserve the second? What if Padmé’s cleaning R2 just because she feels like it, rather than being ordered? She’s Queen, so she can do as she pleases, and she’s not exactly busy with official business. This way, one of the first things she’d do when given a bit of liberty is choose to clean up a little robot - hinting at both her humility and compassion (similar to Rey with BB8) and her interest in droids (and perhaps mechanics).

One of the weaker plot points in the prequels is Padmé and Anakin’s romance, and one of the weaker plot points in TPM is the connection that Padmé and Anakin seem to develop that isn’t exactly well explored on screen. But if she has a natural interest in droids (and mechanics), that could help show why she’s drawn to Anakin when she sees he’s built (or repaired) his own, C-3PO. It’s arguably one of the better scenes relating to their character development together in this film (as much as people tend to skip it because it’s world-shrinking). And showing her compassion (plus highlighting it in the crawl, if you like) also shows why she’s drawn to a boy who acts so selflessly.

That works really well. You don’t even need to lose the other scene - just trim Padme being ordered to clean R2.

evansj1983 said:

CaptainFaraday said:

I like it - the mouth sync was a bit soft in the prequels with Jar Jar and Watto anyway, so I’m not sure it’s a dealbreaker. I’d suggest moving the Huttese line to earlier, when he first mentions Cleig Lars, then Anakin’s “I’d like to know,” then “he married her.”

I’ve tried it that way around. The audio cuts are a little squiffier than in the original but I just wanted to see what people think about this ordering. Now I’ve watched it a few times I feel like we may need to repurpose some of the lines from earlier to “Believe it or not, I heard he … married her” to pad it out a little.

edit: Here are both versions with the “believe it or not”.

edit2: realized that I probably needed to more than move some shots around. We now have redundant line near the end. This is what I get for trying to do this while also running around after a toddler! Will fix it in a bit. But at least it’s good for seeing the new placement.

edit 3: Here is another go for both versions and an attempt to remove the redundant lines near the end of the second version. Audio is now far from perfect but, again, this is more of a proof of concept. I think the “believe it or not” doesn’t work in the first version so I’ve removed it there but kept it in the second.

I think the final one works great! I really like Anakin stopping Watto from reminiscing in Huttese in this context; it has this little undercurrent of the malice he’s going to show to the Tuskens.

Also, bolded for emphasis, because damn isn’t that a mood.

Eddie - I generally try and retain as much as possible, especially with TPM, which as you said yourself can easily get edited down significantly shorter than all the other SW movies if you’re not careful. So anywhere it could theoretically be retained, I’m trying to probe for a way to do it (then, people have greater flexibility with what changes they want to include, and how much of the runtime it bites out of the movie). I agree that the scenes are hardly necessary, especially in this new version of events.

Eddie again - I think a different line would have to go before “That won’t be necessary,” since leaving it to Jar Jar is what he just asked Jar Jar to do. Other than that, I can’t wait to see this cut together, I can’t believe how well it all fits.

Omni - That’s a great idea.

Go the whole hog and make it fit with the PT by changing the line to “I seem to remember owning a droid.”

EddieDean said:

Docking Bay 54 said:

Hi, new here. How can I get a copy of this? The changelog makes this edit sound fantastic!!!

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for any fan edit of TFA and TLJ that compliment this edit visually, canonically and pacing wise??

I’d recommend TFA:Starlight and
TLJ:Legendary to precede this. All three edits, while made by different people, included a lot of cross-collaboration and shared goals.

TLJ Legendary was also Hal. You might have mixed the titles with Rekindled by Poppasketti?

Using Qui-Gon’s line to Anakin, “Stay in that cockpit!”, add a Qui-Gon Force Ghost after Maul is cut in two telling him to “Stay in that pit.”

I personally like the medium facial structure the best - it nails the balance between the TCW exaggerated structure and real life, in my opinion.

https://youtu.be/OpNr5CosahY

Eyepainter said:

Change Darth Vader’s suit color from black to pink, and then digitally add painted rainbows and unicorns to his suit as well.

That reminds me of when players hacked the game to make their Vaders pink as an act of protest against Battlefront II arbitrarily limiting character creation for paywall reasons.

Peter Pan said:

CaptainFaraday said:

2. I like that new structure! I wonder if there’s a way of keeping more of the original scenes, though - maybe the Jedi are going to the Droid Control Ship first to either end the invasion diplomatically, or they think the Queen is being held there, depending on dialogue options. It could even be a deliberate trap for them to go there first, since Sidious would know the Senate has dispatched Jedi to go there and rescue the Queen.

Maybe Gunray could tell the Jedi that they have the Queen on board to lure them into a trap?
This would make him more active and less dependent on Sidious.

That’s a good idea. Is there Gunray dialogue we could repurpose?

I’m also wondering if there’s any Liam Neeson dialogue from other movies that could be used to help sell it all - surely he talks about traps or similar in one of his action/thriller movies.

I like it - the mouth sync was a bit soft in the prequels with Jar Jar and Watto anyway, so I’m not sure it’s a dealbreaker. I’d suggest moving the Huttese line to earlier, when he first mentions Cleig Lars, then Anakin’s “I’d like to know,” then “he married her.”

A handful of semi-related thoughts:

1. Maul has two lines in the movie and I think both could be more compellingly replaced by TCW lines, and perhaps even a few dubbed in when his mouth isn’t onscreen to make him slightly more talkative. I like poetic TCW Maul better than mute TPM Maul.

2. I like that new structure! I wonder if there’s a way of keeping more of the original scenes, though - maybe the Jedi are going to the Droid Control Ship first to either end the invasion diplomatically, or they think the Queen is being held there, depending on dialogue options. It could even be a deliberate trap for them to go there first, since Sidious would know the Senate has dispatched Jedi to go there and rescue the Queen.

3. With the “blockade becomes a single ship” thing, could we a) add more ships in the background in the later scene, and b) add a coloured stripe to the main Droid Control Ship to differentiate it? That way, Obi-Wan* can say “that’s the control ship” and the line serves a dual purpose.

Edit: I started typing this before Eddie had published his comment. I like the idea of removing all the other ships at the start better.

4. What work has been done in the past to cut the victory celebration at the end? I enjoy that scene just fine and I get that it’s a mirror of ANH, but it feels weird to go from this uneasy ending where things are left on a very mixed note to a huge “hooray, we did it!” ending. I personally like the idea of the final shot lingering on Palpatine by the pyre, but I can’t imagine the iris out or musical cue would work for that.

*Or whoever says it, I rewatched the movie a few days ago but I don’t remember that detail.

For me, it would be getting Rose Tico to say “The shuttle’s being towed!” for my TLJ edit, lol.

That would strengthen the “Queen Amidala is the equivalent of the Death Star plans” concept. What are your ideas?

I agree, there’s definitely a handful of lines across the Saga that I’d like to be able to Respeech.

I like it both ways as well. Qui-Gon’s saber has the symbolism so nicely explained by Eddie, but Maul’s saber has a nice thematic turn by showing that the raw power which Sith believe gives them true strength (two blades! It must be twice as good!) always ends up being their downfall when it’s challenged by hope (Obi-Wan is at the worst disadvantage possible, and turns it into what lets him win instead). That “raw strength fails compared to hope” theme runs throughout the Saga, eg. an unstoppable Empire’s might ends up being no match for a small band of Rebels with hope.

Just for organisational purposes, to list the current concepts being worked on in some capacity:

• Redubbing Jar Jar with his own voice to alleviate some of his more distracting vocal quirks
• Qui-Gon freeing both Anakin and Shmi
• Obi-Wan bisects Maul with Maul’s own lightsaber

Apologies if I’ve forgotten any!