daneditor

I released a pretty standard fan edit of ROTJ a couple of years ago, but since then I’ve been playing around with a much more extreme edit. Instead of just cutting the stuff I didn’t like I’ve also rearranged scenes and tried to also add footage to address some of the film’s weaknesses.

Here are some of the major changes:

• Dagobah has been put to the start

• Luke and Leia aren’t related

• The conflict between Luke and Vader has been brought to the fore with new scenes and re-edited existing scenes

• There’s a new Boba Fett subplot. He’s sent to Endor by Vader and told to capture Luke. When Luke gives himself up to Vader, Fett decides to go and kill Han.

• The following deleted scenes have been added: lightsaber scene, sandstorm scene, bunker scene, Jerjerrod’s conflict

• Lots of footage taken from fan films, including: Vader Extincion, Revelations, Makazie One and Wrath of the Mandalorian

Here are the first few minutes (password is wordpass):

https://vimeo.com/65053835

The workprint has just been uploaded to Mega. If you want it send me a PM.

Ryan McAvoy said:

actually you know what, chewie doing a tarzan impression is one of the worst things in the whole 6 film saga. That needs changing deffo

Definitely. That was another must-go moment.

I don't think many of us "hate" ROTJ. Personally I find it suffers in comparison to the first two in a number of ways:

It feels like they're going through the motions. Lucas seems to just want to get it all over with, and the actors (except Hamill) are just pay checking it

It's too juvenile and toy-oriented

Han and Leia are given nothing meaningful to do

Fett dies embarrassingly

The ground battle on Endor is way too small and lacking in epic moments that the big finale should have

But it's not a bad movie per se, it's just bad compared with SW and Empire. Of course it's Casablanca compared with the prequels.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Sorry but...

"Took out Lando 'Yeehaaa' or whatever cheesy line it is, when they escape the Death Star"

That scene is one of the greatest achievements in human history! Including landing on the moon!

If I could wave a magic wand and do one thing from Star Wars it would probably be, blasting out of an exploding death star in the Falcon reathed in fire shouting Yeehaaa in Billy Dee's voice (Whilst wearing a flowing grey cape and suave moustache preferably)

I've watched that hundreds of times and I swear down I almost reckon hes not gonna make it everytime.  Goosebumps, chills down the spine and huge open mouthed smiling ensues every time.

But that just my personnal preference lol

Taking out the Lando yeehaaa was about the first thing I cut. I always hated it, and honestly if I couldn't have seamlessly cut it I may have abandoned the edit before going any further.

Ronster said:

daneditor said:

The original edit is online. Check your PMs. The other more experimental one is still being worked on, but I'll upload a workprint soon.

I did some shots in After effects about a year ago... They are really rough shots but I never got around to putting the sequence together... I might actually do this later on today or next week.

Basically a few things that everyone seemed to agree about in the collaborative thread was that The rebels rush for the port / deathstar attack had a few issues. I'll list the main points.

1. No Turret Defense and no ships got taken down by any guns turrets

2. It did not feel like they were being chased by ties across the surface

3. A few rebels needed to get blown up to show more of a struggle

4. No Coms chatter

5. No Shots of Tie Fighter Pilots protecting the deathstar

6. No Shots of tie fighters launching from the Hanger

So I have some clips that I did and I will string it together and post it here but what I found was that I could not get the pacing of it right it felt far too slow.

But I think it's time I had another go at it

This sounds really interesting. I'd very much like to see it when it's finished.

The original edit is online. Check your PMs. The other more experimental one is still being worked on, but I'll upload a workprint soon.

Ronster said:

Watched you clip Dan and it's pretty good...

I would like to see more.... Check out this If you can find a higher resolution there is some good stuff to use in that clip.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQOn8K5cggk

I'm always on the look out for usable footage for this edit - especially anything to do with Boba Fett or stuff taking place on Endor-like planets. Unfortunately that Adidas ad appears to be made of recycled footage from the OT. Thanks anyway.

I'll upload the current version of the radical edit at some point if you want to see it, but it's still nowhere near completion.

I've reupped 'ROTJ: The Dan Edit' to Mega, so if anyone wants it PM me.

I'll start a new thread at some point for the other, more radical edit, it's getting too confusing in here.

Bingowings said:

The footage in it's raw state does match up much more than I expected it to.

It does feel like much of it is there just for the sake of it though.

The story is about our heroes and villains so concentrating suddenly on these new characters is jarring.

Maybe if the Tydirium sequences were linked to some shots of Mon Mothma listening to transmissions from Home One, when we see the briefing the footage will plug in more to the stories of Luke, Leia and Han.

Apologies, but I'm not sure what footage you're referring to. Do you mean the opening scene of those two people getting away from Coruscant? If so, that scene has since been cut from the edit. You're right - starting with two complete strangers was very jarring.

If you mean the brief shots of Tydirium landing on Endor, that's still there, but it's only a few seconds, and IMO it adds some atmosphere to the scene.

I've been going through old hard drives looking for the original Vegas files, and can't find them - which rules out redoing it in HD. So the best I can do is upload the 4 gig mpeg, or convert that down to around a 2 gig x264.

stretch009 said:

Your workprints are pretty good but for me it's all about your original V1.0.  That is by far my favorite way to watch ROTJ.  There's just one problem with it, the poor video quality.  When I watch the OT in HD a lot of times I want to finish it with your V1.0 but it's such a drop in quality I usually don't.  I know you said you don't have what it takes to make an HD version but maybe someone else could.  It would be ideal if someone could take Harmy's upcoming ROTJ 2.0 in all it's despecialized, color-corrected, high-definition glory and use your V1.0 to make the ultimate HD edit of Return of the Jedi.  I know you probably would want to move the Yoda scene to the beginning and make other alterations but I think V1.0 is great as it is and if it was upgraded to HD would just be the HD V1.0 also and you could go from there with other HD edits.

I'm working on an HD version of Jedi right now - but it's the radical edit, not the original one. Do you have the DVD of version 1 or the AVI? If it's the AVI it's an Xvid, which would certainly explain the poor quality. Thankfully I've discovered x264 since then.

timdiggerm said:

Nice! Definitely looks better.

If you have the time/resources, I'd replace that long shot matte though. One of ROTJ's many terrible matte paintings.

Sadly, replacing matte paintings is way beyond my skill level.

I spent the afternoon playing around with restoring some deleted scenes in Avisynth:

https://vimeo.com/62509661

(the first half is the original deleted scene, then the cleaned up version)

password: password

dowremi said:

Hello everybody. This is my first post on this forum and I really enjoyed reading through this thread. Lots of great ideas.I love love love Star Wars.  But  last night I was episode two  for first time in over a year and I literally felt pieces of my soul dying everytime Anakin (Hayden) spoke to Padme.

I say redub Anakin's voice to give him more charecter and maybe even use some CG to change his facial expressions. It shouldnt be to hard because most of the time he's standing still and just moving his lips.

The same should be done with Padme.

I know this probably can't happen but I like the idea.

You should check out the rough cut of an ep2 edit called Shroud of the Dark Side. Anakin has been redubbed to really good effect.

The bit at the end is obviously quite rough, but otherwise I liked it. The cuts during the fight worked nicely.

AntcuFaalb said:

Starting Scene #1!

Cool! I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

This is really good. Nice work.

darth_ender said:

The shots from that exact time came from The Force Unleashed II, I believe the Battle over Kamino.  It's good stuff there, and I was really pleased to include every second from the actual battle.

Seeds of Darkness...that's probably from your edit, actually.  There was some stuff from the battle that I didn't recognize but I did like, so I kept it.  I'll have to take a look at it now :)

Yeah, I tried to eliminate the most obvious BG stuff, but it was such a good video, I had to include some of it.  I hope you enjoyed the story overall.  I found it fun to make, and I hope to make some changes in the future at some point.

I did enjoy the new stuff. I personally wouldn't have included as much space battle footage, but that's the thing about it being your edit... you make it the way that you like.

I downloaded that YouTube video from The Force Unleashed. Pretty good footage and in 720p which is a plus. I might pilfer it for my edit. Thanks.

I've just gone through the videos. From what I've noticed the biggest changes appear to be during the battle of Endor. Lots of other dogfight material added there. The best stuff IMO is from Seeds of Darkness - it's a real shame there isn't a DVD quality version available online. We could probably scavenge five minutes of usable footage from it. Also, I laughed when Galactica showed up in the middle of the battle. :p

At 17:22 and then 17:35 in video 3 there's a couple of nice shots of the battle. Can you tell me what they're from?

gobalicious said:

This looks absolutely fascinating.

I'm not entirely on board with starting the movie with the rebel spies escaping.  It seems like too much of a rehash of the opening of ANH.  But I'll leave judgement until I see the rest of the edit.

Let me take a stab at the opening crawl.  I'd like to keep the traditional three paragraph format, and shorten it up a bit to be consistent in length with the other movies.

 

After his disastrous duel with Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker has returned to complete his Jedi training under Master Yoda.

Impatiently waiting for Luke, Lando Calrissian has infiltrated the palace of vile gangster Jabba the Hutt in hopes of rescuing Han Solo.

With the Rebel Alliance scattered across the galaxy, the Empire has begun construction on a second Death Star.  In a daring mission, two rebel spies have stolen plans for the weapon and now flee carrying the last hope for the Rebellion....

 

 

I take your point about the opening being a rehash of ANH. For me, I like the similarity - and no, I'm not about to start talking about rhyming and poetry, and such crap. But it sets up the climax of the movie in the opening scene, which is scriptwriting 101. And starting a SW movie with a space battle always seems more appropriate.

I like your crawl, BTW. The truth is I wrote the one in my edit in about 5 minutes, and it shows. But as you'll see when you watch the edit, the words aren't the only problem with the crawl.

darth_ender said:

I really enjoy the opening to this new version of your experimental edit.  I recommend it to anyone.  Some of the other changes are quite interesting as well.  This is a fantastic edit, and though I know daneditor plans on doing more to it as sources improve, as it stands now, it's a pretty fun take on ROTJ.

Thanks for the kind words.

I've been working on this so-called experimental edit of ROTJ again the last few weeks, and have made some pretty big changes.

Here's the new opening of the movie to show what I mean:

http://www.mediafire.com/?f9p83mns4kkudz8

To put it in context, here's the crawl that immediately precedes that opening:

Relentless in their pursuit of the Rebellion, Imperial forces led by Darth Vader have pushed the Alliance to the fringes of the galaxy.

Meanwhile Luke Skywalker has returned to Dagobah, believing that only a fully trained Jedi will be powerful enough to rescue Han Solo from the clutches of vile JABBA THE HUTT.

While the Rebellion appear doomed, the Empire has begun construction on a second DEATH STAR.

In their most desperate hour, two Rebel Spies have successfully penetrated Imperial defences on the capital planet of Coruscant, and stolen plans to the terror weapon. Now they must flee the system and safely deliver the plans to the Alliance....

This edit now includes footage from the following Star Wars fan films:

Broken Allegiance

Vader Extincion

Revelations

Seeds of Darkness

Knightquest

SW:THX

Tydirium

Also, there is footage from the ROTJ deleted scenes, from the Interactive Board Game, and from Star Tours 2.

The edit is online now. If anyone wants it just PM me.

I've been meaning to post a message about Tydirium's relaunch. If that fan film ever gets released it will be HUGE for us. ROTJ edits will never be the same again.

No worries, and good luck with your edit.

Honestly, I can't remember too many specifics. Most of the changes were to the audio: originally the music I added was way too loud, and there were loads of poor bits where all the multiple audio sources weren't blended together well (like the foreign voices).

I remember adding a bit where the Trade Federation explain that Sidious was responsible for building their empire. Plus the Naboo invasion was changed a lot - stuff from a couple of the Trek movies added. Also, I think in version one I hadn't yet removed the midichlorians, but that's gone now.

I really hope you had version one - because I'm pretty sure for a while version two was on FE, and it would suck if you're downloading the same version twice.

Anyway version two is 1 hour 27 mins 1 second, so if that's the exact length of the copy you have then you've already got it.