daneditor

This sounds great!

Pagz: thanks for the review! I'll certainly think about your ideas for changing Jabba's subtitles if I release a version two; changing 'There will be no deal' back to bargain makes sense, it was so long ago that I wrote the subtitles I can't remember why I changed it. I probably just remembered the line wrong.

Cutting the first rancor scene: if I publish a 'Dagobah-at-the-start' edit the first rancor scene will come back, as it's a good way to show Jabba as a bad dude, but originally, as you note, I was trying to create some suspense for when the big door opens in front of Luke and the rancor appears. Truth be told I'm not hyper bothered whether the twi-lek meets the rancor beat is in the flick or not.

Sarlacc: I may change the editing back to a less jumpy version; I liked the way it jumps around from Luke to Leia to Han, I felt it added some suspense - but you're not the first person to complain about it. Taking out the Fett means you're bound to make it a little skittish though, there's only so much non-Fett footage.

Adding a transition before Han gets to the bunker: really good idea! I'll try it out, but I don't see why this wouldn't work. I can categorically confirm there is no way I'll be adding Paploo (or whatever he's called) on the speederbike. Never gonna happen.

I'm glad you liked the Battle of Endor stuff!

Re: Coruscant included in the round the galaxy montage; a mate of mine feels exactly the same way and gets extremely irritated when he talks about that scene - but it's not something that bothers me: the Emperor is clearly an incredibly unpopular tyrant; once he's dead the dark side powers he was using to maintain control dissipate. I think it's a nice coda, and one of the few SE changes I support.

Sorry about the PAL, I'll hopefully get around to uploading an NTSC dvd at some point.

Bingowings said:

"I assume the crawl to be a place holder not the finished text.

I could give it a bit of thought if you want suggestions along those lines.

Beginning the film with Jabba after making such a big thing about Luke in the crawl doesn't quite work either.

Really with the crawl as it stands you want to start with Luke.

If you want to start the film with Han as the focus of the first scene the crawl should be weighted that way (which may be problematic as Han is rescued less than half way through the film. In the round the main threats are the Emperor and the Death Star).

If you really want a scene like that I would start with the shot of Han frozen and turn around to see the court.

The audience needs to connect the new environment and new characters with someone they know.

So I would show them Han and then the full horror of where he is.

The album version of Lapti Nek (I know it's popular) isn't quite getting the mood if you want to use a version I'd use what you can from the soundtrack of the GOUT discs."


The crawl is indeed a temporary version, it's the best I could do in Sony Vegas in the few minutes I could be bothered to spend on it - the writing clearly needs to be tightened up, as well as the look of the crawl: if you have any ideas for ways of improving the crawl I'd love to hear them!

After getting back from a few days on the south coast I watched that 15 minute clip again, and although I agree the choice of Lapti Nek isn't right, the cold open works great (IMO) - it's a scene unlike anything in the first two films, and the audience is thrown into it without warning. Personally I really like the idea of starting that way - and certainly you can't start with Leia Boushh leading in Chewie without having previously set up that a) Jabba is a grotesque gangster who is firmly in charge around here, and not to be messed with, b) that Threepio is already there and given some kind of introduction (even if it's just a shot of him and the music swells), c) that Han is on the wall. So, while the dance number seems irrelevent I think it's essential, and there's no alternative scene that can be used to introduce Jabba's palace, unless you put back the droids wandering up to the palace and being led to Jabba - and that whole scene is, IMO, boring and is better off ditched.

The idea of starting with Han on the wall and then showing the dance scene might work, I'll try it out, although I think it is quite nice to (I'm repeating myself here) start with throwing the audience in at the deep end, with no idea what's going on, and end the scene with Han - to get out of the scene on a dramatic note that pushes the story forward and tells the audience where the conflict is (Han's in this awful place, helpless).

I'll look for other music to use instead of that SE Lapti Nek - I totally concur that it's not right.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

"Those ideas sound good Dan. You can probably find someone to help you in making a new crawl. Have you ever thought of a new opening crawl that has the title Revenge of the Jedi? Also, I thought of something. Could you take out all the Ewoks (seriously..I saw this done in a few edits) and replace them with Wookies? You could explain in a new crawl that the Death Star is located near the Wookie planet, then use Wookie footage from the Holiday Special and Revenge of the Sith. If these ideas are crazy and have been discussed before, I apologize."


I'm not gonna change the title to Revenge of the Jedi; it's rare to find something I agree with Lucas on, but I don't think Jedi should see defeating the Empire as revenge.

I hope you're right that someone will volunteer to write the crawl for me. :)

I'm not taking the Ewoks out; in my opinion it would be impossible to make it work - and the edits I know of which tried didn't seem to pull it off; the narrative would suddenly have huge holes in it with all that stuff missing.

As for the Wookiee planet being situated near the Death Star - it's an interesting idea, but it would take someone with far more talent at editing than me to pull it off successfully - and anyway, I don't dislike the Ewoks too much in my edit, the most glaring infantile stuff is gone.

Thanks for all the feedback and ideas!

I'm going away for the next few days - when I get back on Sunday I'll go through the specific points made about the clip, and then create a Mark 2.

Inspired by the ideas people have been circulating around here - particularly Possessed's ROTJ thread - I've started an experimental version of ROTJ, which includes the following two significant changes:

- Luke on Dagobah at the start.

- Luke and Leia are no longer related.

So I've put together a rough cut edit of the first few minutes:

http://rapidshare.com/files/443111780/jedi3015-tes20.rar

Bear in mind a few things: I can't professionally replicate the opening crawl (if someone who can would be willing, I'd be massively grateful); the crawl itself also needs to be re-written at some point; the editing is not especially slick yet, but hopefully you'll get the gist.

Personally I really like this a lot: it means a lot of the early droid stuff can be ditched as well as the long (and dull) Obi-Wan scene, and the jumping around the galaxy makes the Jabba's palace sections feel more mysterious.

Any feedback would be appreciated. :)

I'm sorry to hear this - it was shaping up to be a great edit.

I downloaded the ROTS review via this site, which worked great:

http://download.uzeik.net/eng.php

I really like Attack of the Phantom but Shroud of the Dark Side will be (assuming the edit gets finished) by far the best episode two edit. It's stunning.

I've got a VGA port but for whatever reason I can't get it to work on my external monitor. I spent a couple of hours pressing Fn/F4 repeatedly which is supposed to switch it to the monitor on HP laptops, but nothing happened.

About the NTSC DVD: I probably won't do one, just because I'm not sure how to. I may figure it out at some point but right now I'm too busy with non-editing things.

Thanks for the kind words! I'm happy to see people enjoying the edit.

About the last transition, it's something that's not perfect but it took ages to get the final scene audio to that standard and I'm satisfied that it's acceptable. I may do a version two next year if a high quality copy of the Luke lightsaber construction scene appears, and then maybe I'll improve the last transition and take out 3P0's "It's Captain Solo and he's still frozen in carbonite" line while I'm at it.

The PAL dvd has been uploaded to Rapidshare,so I'll get it onto fanedit info soon - although it's bare bones, so if anyone does want to download it be warned there ain't much on there except a 4gig mpeg of the edit, chapters, and I added the original ending with BSG music that once ended the film. The NTSC xvid was going to be uploaded now but it's on my other laptop and I bust the screen last week, so that's on hold until I find the 100 quid to fix it.

You could always put the Vader DS2 scene at that point.

Just watched your rapidshare clip - really good. I don't think it's too prequel-esque at all.

I've been playing around with ROTJ myself the last day or so, inspired by the discussion here. Putting the Dagobah scenes at the start do work well, but I've come unstuck with what comes after the flight from Tatooine. I originally thought I'd put the Obi Wan scene at this point, but it makes no sense that Luke would go back to Dagobah for a chat with Obi Wan. So I put that after Yoda's death - but now I'm completely stuck: presumably Luke goes with the others straight to the rebel briefing, but there isn't a single usable shot of him there; if there had just been a head shot of Luke when he greets Leia it would be workable.

Possessed, what is your solution to this? I can't think of any way to make it work; as the protagonist of this film Luke, were he listening to the briefing, would have to be shown at least once during that scene.

The two problems I have with putting the Dagobah at the start:

1) When Luke was training on Dagobah during Empire he left when he found out Leia and Han were in danger - now he knows that Han is in even graver danger, so for me it's a blatant character contradiction for him to go back to Dagobah now instead of help rescue his friend

2) Presumably if Luke doesn't go to Dagobah after Tatooine he goes with the rest to the rebel briefing, so must have been there for the whole of that scene - but there isn't a single shot of Luke you could use to show that he's there listening to Ackbar and the rest

OzoneSherrif said:

"Been watching the Return of the Jedi: Dan Edit (by Yads) does he post here? he cut out a lot of the silliness. it's awesome."

I do post here sometimes - thanks a lot for the compliment, glad you enjoyed it :)

I don't like the scene at all, but I think it's important to indicate that they're now 'part of the tribe'.

Yeah that was a great little idea that JasonN had, one of the best things about his edit

Yeah you need to add the Greedo fight; 'Attack of the Federation' also includes it

Exactly, and that's what I did in my edit of Sith: you show Order 66, then at the end of the montage show Bail flying to the Jedi Temple, it's on fire, and that kid gets killed by Clonetroopers. That's all you need to show.

I don't think it would work even if somehow Bob was able to pull it off. After the Obi Wan/Anakin fight the rest of the film is a sombre montage, with a couple of small dialogue scenes mixed in - a Younglings massacre wouldn't fit tonally; plus, it makes no sense anyway: the Jedi are defeated, Palpatine is officially Emperor, why does Palpatine wait so long to attack the Temple?

I don't see what's wrong with the Clonetroopers attacking the Temple during the Order 66 portion of the film - after all, Clonetroopers are shown killing the Jedi, why not show them killing Younglings at the same time?

I like the idea of Anakin dreaming (fantasising) about killing the sand peple.

This is off the top of my head, and probably crazy: what about if he thinks he dreamt it - due to Palpatine's dark side powers combined with Anakin's subconscious suppressing it - and right after Anakin kills Mace, Palpatine lets the truth hits him: that's he's a mass murderer. You could then add a montage showing Anakin feeling the pain he inflicted on the sand people, followed by Anakin's "What have I done?"

mrbenja0618 said:

"I keep hearing it's a giant leap for Anakin to kill kids.... No it isn't.... He did already.... He killed innocent women and children in AOTC... It's not leap.... He's been in the dark side already. He's been freaking saturated in the dark side like a pig sitting in it's own feces. But that sucks too for the plot. We wanted to see a fall, and Anakin is on his face in the first scene. Brilliant."

It's a huge difference: between a moment of out of control rage and grief immediately after his mother's death... and a clinical decision taken to walk through the streets of Coruscant, enter the Jedi Temple and murder all the kids there. How you can't see there is a WORLD of difference is bewildering.

Again, it all feels too abrupt: one minute he's a Jedi with doubts, then two minutes later he thinks all the Jedi are evil? Enough so to kill a load of kids? It needs to be more gradual. And it should only be after he's been screwed up by the fight with Obi Wan and is told he's killed Padme that he finally becomes totally 'evil'.

Maybe it's just me but him killing the Jedi kids is a deal breaker - it's the moment I no longer believe what I'm watching. Instead of genuine character development it feels like the plot cogs clumsily turning.

I get that the reason for Anakin killing the Jedi kids is to get the dark side power to save Padme - I just don't BELIEVE he would do it. He's conflicted, confused etc, but it's one giant frackin' leap to child murderer (and no, it's not comparable to killing the sand people, which was done in spur-of-the-moment blind rage)

You're right - Anakin's turn must be believable, it's key to the film working... which is why for me the whole scene of Anakin one minute being a conflicted Jedi, the next going off and murdering a load of kids is the real problem. It's totally unbelievable. If Palpatine instead tells him to go to Mustafar to kill the Separatist leaders - well that I can believe Anakin would do.

Lucas was tinkering with the 'turn' until the last minute, but he missed the real problem: the idea of Anakin killing those kids is ridiculous.