Linus had a great journey of what these data recovery companies can do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSrnXgAmK8k
Pixeljoker can absolutely get that data recovered. Of all the edits out there, this is the one I’m most looking forward to.
Goodness Gracious, that’s a lot of questions, lol! I’ll do my best to address them all, but if I miss one gimme a shout.
My apologies. I get carried away sometimes.
- How did you bring the Prequel Duels into alignment with the Duels in the OT? - There’s two pronged answer to that. On the technical side the OT Duels are cut on the wrong frames which makes them feel slow. If you use the same cutting techniques that Ben Burtt used in the Prequels, they can hit with the same speed/force (except the famous SC38, but I came up with an unorthodox way to fix that problem).
On the other hand, the Prequel Duels suffer from sequencing issues (that’s why they feel “overstimulating and hollow” as you correctly pointed out), but if you resequence them to match the sequencing of the OT Duels, they also line up nicely. That’s exactly what I did to make the Grievous Duel more engaging.
I’m glad. I’m quite interested in seeing the results.
For the record, I’m not of the opinion that the OT duels are too slow, tho I find the ANH one a little clunky. I think the Vader and Luke duels are perfect the way they are, but I’m still interested in seeing your versions.
- How did you address the “power levels” of the duelists across the SAGA? - I made a single story decision, and then recut all the duels to serve that decision. Basically, there’s a story problem when it comes to the duels. The visual symbolism is telling one story, and the dialogue is telling another. The dialogue says that Luke must train hard enough to tear down Darth Vader in a death match, whereas the visuals say he must stay his hand to break the cycle of violence.
Watch the Visuals: Maul cut’s down Qui-Gon, so Obi-Wan retaliates by cutting Maul in Half. Dooku cuts off Anakin’s arm, so Anakin cuts off his hands and kills him. Obi-Wan de-limbs Anakin, so Anakin kills Obi-Wan out of revenge. Vader cuts off Luke’s hand, so Luke cuts off Vader’s hand, BUT!!! in that moment Luke stops and looks at his own hand. The reason he does that is because he finally understood the meaning of his vision in the Cave of Evil. If he cuts off Vader’s head, he becomes Darth Vader, and the cycle of violence and revenge continues. That is why Luke throws away his lightsaber and says he’s a Jedi like his father before him. The Jedi in the Prequels had become like the Sith, engaged in the never-ending cycle of revenge. That circle must be broken for balance to return to the Force. Obi-Wan’s sacrifice in A New Hope is actually his most important lesson to Luke. He is showing Luke the way to bring balance: lower your guard and sacrifice yourself. If you recut the OT so that Obi-Wan and Yoda tell Luke he must “face” Vader but cut all mentions of them telling Luke to kill him, the whole SAGA suddenly makes thematic sense.
But the dialogue isn’t ever explicitly telling Luke to kill Vader.
While the trilogy builds up to Luke being skilled enough to fight Vader, it’s not saying he should murder his father in rage.
It’s telling him to face and defeat him, but warning him that he might have to kill him out of duty, if he has to. Whatever it takes to render him a non-threat to the galaxy’s freedom.Luke is Vader’s blood, thus he’s their only hope of defeating him (besides Leia, but she hasn’t even started her training yet).
The Jedi aren’t counting on Vader being conflicted (as is what happens), nor do they want Luke to give into a dark side power boost, so even sending Luke to fight Vader is risky, because normally, in the ROTJ-era, they’re equals in terms of power and skill (which is essentially peak Force-user).
But again, Luke’s their best chance. As such, he needs to go in with full conviction.Obi-Wan and Yoda don’t believe there’s any good in Vader. Of course they don’t, Vader is a cold-blooded monster, at this point.
What they didn’t know is that he still had a genuine soft spot for his son, beyond wanting him for power.
But even so, Anakin doesn’t resurface until after two movies of psychologically and physically abusing his son to try and make him his too. Vader even sadistically gloats about turning his sister after killing him if he refuses, and watches him get excruciatingly electrocuted for over a minute.Vader’s stance is “Join me or die” (at least, that’s what he says, and thus, it must be accounted for). Luke has to be comfortable with fighting for his life and the freedom of the galaxy.
Luke can’t kill him out of revenge (the dark side, thus going down the path of an addiction to this dark magic that’s incredibly hard to let go of), but must be willing to out of duty, compassion for the people of the galaxy (the light side), if he must.Vader and the Emperor are space Nazis. Fascists’ endgame is always violence. If a supernaturally powerful space Nazi is trying to kill you because you won’t join him, you can’t just let him. Otherwise, you’ve let fascism win. This is why Anakin killing Palpatine out of love for his son is framed as heroic.
And while Luke makes the right choice to not give into revenge, he still makes a mistake in completely letting his guard down, he leaving himself vulnerable to the Emperor’s lightning, which is exactly what Yoda and Obi-Wan warned him about. While this is remedied by the return of Anakin, that wasn’t the smartest thing to do.
Obi-Wan surrendered to Vader because he knows he can’t beat him, and Luke was gonna rush up to help him. The galaxy’s hope would’ve gotten himself killed too soon. Ben surrendered to teach Luke to let go and protect him and his friends, so they could escape.
Obi-Wan killing Maul isn’t wrong. He did it in self-defense. He was in a life-and-death situation and did his duty. There is no negative consequence to this kill, nor does Obi-Wan have any arc about revenge.
I hear ya, but while ol’ Ben doesn’t technically tell Luke to go kill his daddy, when Luke tells Obi-Wan he “Can’t kill his own father,” Ben’s responds, “Then the Emperor has already won.” To me that implies that Obi-Wan is telling Luke that he has to kill Vader.
To your main point on the logic of the duels. I can see how that would work, but I don’t think that was the specific logic Lucas was going for. I think STAR WARS’ narrative (like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter) relies on Religious Logic, specifically Christian Logic, to tell it’s story. A lot of stories in the Western Canon use Christian Logic to shape their narratives even if the stories themselves are not “Christian” per se.
Before I explain STAR WARS’ Christian Narrative Logic, lemme be clear that I’m not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn’t believe, lol! I agree with ol’ George that religious questions are important to ponder, but that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I’m just trying to show you how religious logic affects a story’s narrative structure.
Basically, in the Gospels, Jesus’ disciples think he is going to violently overthrow the oppressive Roman Empire and lead them to freedom. Instead, Jesus allows himself to be sacrificially killed in order to restore Mankind’s relationship with God, Nature, and other Human Beings by defeating Sin, Death, and Evil on the cross. In STAR WARS, the Jedi in the Prequels and the Rebel Alliance in the OT try to defeat evil politically and through warfare, but the real victory comes when Luke and Anakin both sacrifice themselves to defeat the Emperor. Does Luke’s decision to lay down his weapon make sense? No. Neither did his decision not to kill the Ewoks that captured him and Han a few scenes prior. Both of those irrational decisions lead to the Force being brought back into balance, whereas Anakin’s rational decision to try to save Padme from death, led him down a dark path. In this way Obi-Wan’s destruction of Darth Maul wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t lead to the Force being brought back into balance, rather it continued the cycle of violence. The Biblical/Christian narrative logic is that the restoration of loving relationships between God, Man, and Nature, and the destruction of violent cycles doesn’t come through victory in battle or politics, but through loving sacrifice. That is why the “victory” in Lord of the Rings comes through Frodo’s sacrifice, not Aragorn’s victory in battle.
Essentially, in my recut I tried to streamline the Religious Narrative Logic that I think George was aiming for. That’s not the only way to cut the STAR WARS SAGA, but I think it’s one of the best ways to stay as true as possible to George’s original vision. Hope that makes sense. 😉
I love this explanation so much
This is such an excellent edit. Very well done. Maybe it’s just me but I felt like battle of the heroes portions are of a slightly lesser quality than everything else. It just doesn’t look as sharp. Anyone else see this?
My guess would be the lack of sharpness is the ‘film grain’ that Bailey added to better match the much higher quality animation of the Clone Wars episodes. Since the Batttle of the Heroes fan film is serving as a ‘Force Vision’ that Ahsoka’s having, it worked for me.
As I discovered with his Galaxy of Adventures RotJ work, Bailey’s very good at coming up with creative solutions to these sorts of things. Obviously, the ideal situation would be for Disney to cough up the cash for a proper version of it, but I’m not holding my breath 😉
Heh yeah Disney is a joke. I totally gave up on anything Disney a few years ago. Fan projects are where the fun is. I’ll have a look at the Galaxy of Adventures stuff.
This is such an excellent edit. Very well done. Maybe it’s just me but I felt like battle of the heroes portions are of a slightly lesser quality than everything else. It just doesn’t look as sharp. Anyone else see this?
Thanks for the feedback! The Battle of Heroes was 4k but also was downloaded from youtube, so the typical youtube compression would be a factor. Also, as Bored at 3AM mentioned, I had to add a film grain to try to match the Clone Wars grain (battle of heroes had none), so it would make sense if they did look slightly different. But, that being said, I have watched this multiple times on my 75" TV and it looks great to me. I love constructive criticism, it helps make my (and our) edits better, but on this one, I don’t really see it.
Interesting…my home theater screen is 135" so maybe that was part of it. I’ll check it out on some other screens. I’ll hang on to this edit for sure. Can’t wait to show some friends
This is such an excellent edit. Very well done. Maybe it’s just me but I felt like battle of the heroes portions are of a slightly lesser quality than everything else. It just doesn’t look as sharp. Anyone else see this?
PM sent
This is next level stuff! The Utapau duel really works well with how you’ve done it. Way more engaging. Impressive work on Grievous’ death
Cheers! It actually works even better in terms of the full sequence (From Obi-Wan Landing on Utapau to Order 66). If you wanna see that full section PM me, and I’ll shoot you a link. Throughout the process of recutting the Prequels, I was constantly shocked at how close George was to three masterpieces. All the pieces were on the board, just not in the right order.
This is next level stuff! The Utapau duel really works well with how you’ve done it. Way more engaging. Impressive work on Grievous’ death
Can I just say that I love all the thought and energy being put in to this? I’ve always liked the prequels but thought they were just short of being excellent. I’ve watched a lot of edits and appreciate the skill and time being put in to them.
Personally, I’m in favor of shifting the idea of 3PO being built by Anakin to him finding him in a scrap pile or taking him home from Watto’s shop or whatever that ends up being. To me it feels much more realistic.
I love the idea of modifying Bail’s dialogue to saying he’ll take Padme and Leia to Alderaan. George Lucas should’ve done this from the beginning and created a lot of continuity problems when he didn’t. I think with those adjustments you wouldn’t even have to include the scene of Natalie Portman from whatever that other movie was with her holding the baby.
The reinsertion of Yoda vs Palpatine is a welcome return. I’ve always loved that. For Yoda vs Dooku Yoda was originally just a little too much out of control. I’m sure lots of you have seen this but the second version in this clip is excellently edited and could be used here.
I agree with it being fast paced. For the bank heist or whatever it’s called in the middle it was like Cassian gets put with some randos for a few minutes, gets a small briefing of the plan, flies the thing out of there and then you never see those people again lol
The edit is extremely well done though. I couldn’t notice any obvious cut points and everything flows pretty smoothly overall. The only minor note I have is how the one main guy (can’t remember his name) is talking to Saw and then all of the sudden he’s in his ship trying to get away from the empire tractor beam ship. I never finished the actual show and am not sure if that’s how it was originally, but that cut was a little jarring for me.
I’d like to see this as well. I’ve seen Smudger’s two movie edit. It’s well done but even that is too long for me lol
Thanks!
Who made the Rebalanced edit? I can take a look at that.
Siliconmaster482 did it. That thread is here: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Revenge-of-the-Sith-Rebalanced-Version-1-5-Released-Now-with-Subtitles-and-More/id/63587
This sounds like an awesome project. Visually, Hal’s and Spence’s edits look quite a bit different with Spence’s having added film grain and some color alterations. How will you handle that?
TPM - Spence’s edit is my goto version. I agree with others for keeping Otah Gunga pretty much the way Spence did it. I’ve seen other edits where it’s cut completely and I feel it totally screws up the pacing. Personally, I don’t mind some of the two headed announcer stuff. The theatrical version is too much but trimmed the right way it works well. The pod race in Spence’s edit is extremely well done.
ATOC - Spence’s edit is darn near perfect imo except for cutting the entire Yoda/Dooku duel. I think at least some of it needs to stay. I will say that the scene at the beginning where Padme is reunited with Anakin and Obi-Wan is so well done in Spence’s edit. It’s such an awkward conversation in the theatrical version but Spence fixed it wonderfully. Use that for inspiration.
ROTS - I really like the Rebalanced edit. Not sure if you’ve seen that but I thought it struck a good balance of dialog. For my personal copy I reinserted the theatrical version of everything between when Obi-Wan jumps up to the high ground and him returning to the ship to leave Mustafar. I know a lot of edits cut out “I have the high ground” and other dialog around it but I love it. A good edit for me should also have Yoda vs Palpatine so I’m glad you’re keeping this.
I’d love to be a tester for these. Thanks for the care being put into the audio. I have a 7.2.4 setup and can’t stand it when an edit is finished in stereo.
Darn…sad face
I am a big fan of these edits. However, the added film grain and color adjustments to the picture take me a bit out of it. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way…maybe not. Would there be any chance of putting a version out there without the picture adjustments?
I didn’t even notice the AI lines or know that they were a thing. Then again, I only watched the series once and it was on a whim after all the episodes were out as I thought this was mostly a throw away series like almost every other disney star wars product (I think we know what the exceptions are).
I agree that the opening act worked pretty well but there was that moment when Baylan and Shin show up a the henge where I was thinking, “Wait, where’s Morgan? Didn’t they just pick her up?” But oh well, it ended up working out okay.
A v2 would be nice to clean up the third act a bit more but overall I liked it.
Anyone else watch this yet? It’s very well put together imo. I thought the last act still dragged on a bit but not nearly as bad as sitting through the last three episodes of the show. That’s the fault of the show’s writing and not Mr. Patterson’s. I loved the approach to fixing the Sabine saber stab among other dumb things - just remove those scenes completely. That and many other welcome changes, removals, new VFX, and scene reordering made this a much more enjoyable experience.
Thanks Kai!
I agree and wouldn’t have a problem with that dialogue being left in. In general the tone of battle droids’ voices in ep1 are much more monotone and serious compared to ep3 where they just sound downright silly.
I’ve been watching these…so much better than Disney’s trash.
Can I get a link to this? I’ve been looking for a good Ep 3 edit. I liked Hal’s but wasn’t a fan of Yoda/Palpatine being removed. Your edit looks like it should be good but I’m not sure I can live without the high ground or chosen one dialogue from Obi-Wan. They are some of my favorite lines.
Man I really like this edit…maybe even more than the Shroud of the Dark Side edit. It flows so well and pretty much all the cringe is gone (I still can’t stand “I tRuLy DeEpLy LoVe YoU” but you handled it well). The beginning of the film is handled so well and the inclusion of the training scene from Kenobi fits perfectly. The dialogue and pace is so much better.
Now, I will say that the entire ending moves a little too quickly with everything between Yoda and Dooku being removed. Feels like it goes from the battle to everyone back on Coruscant in a matter of seconds. I remember the ending of Shroud of the Dark Side feeling pretty well paced, but I’ll have to revisit that one. The only thing that was pretty jarring for me was the quality of some parts of the deleted scenes. I know they are what they are but the added film grain made them that much more distracting.
Overall well done!
Could I have a link to this please? Looks awesome
I’d love a link to the updated version. Thanks!
Finally got around to watching this. It was great. I never finished the show because I got bored with it. This edit was so much more exciting. I was genuinely nervous before the prison break as I hadn’t seen it before. If I had to nitpick it’d be nice to see how Cassian ends up in prison. I know it’s mentioned in the opening crawl but I still felt a little lost there.
This is a great edit. I enjoyed it. Well done!
So that’s a wrap! The Edit is complete and rendering. I just need to sort the artwork and I will release it over the weekend. PM if you want a link.
One final clip… Shin v Sabine with the lightsaber injury.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xjuJFpsI72RcskvOuHRfVY-Kz9DshdRu
I liked the slice version but this works just as well. Nicely done
Hello everyone! It’s been some months since Shamook was kind enough to provide the source files of his Rogue One deepfakes, and as I noted back then the deepfakes themselves were a lot sharper but the surrounding footage was of lower quality.
Well I was finally able to take the time to redo my deepfake implementation, only using Shamook’s source quality files this time. Not only is the source quality much higher, but the files also included all the shots that were missing from the Youtube video. Previously I used alternate sources for these shots (save for one where I couldn’t find any source), they blended better than the original CGI but still they were lower quality and weren’t a perfect match to Shamook’s work, now all the shots are of equal quality and source so the whole thing is way more cohesive.
Here’s a preview of all the new clips:
https://vimeo.com/588713975
pw: faneditMost of the work had to be redone but the process was a lot more straightforward this time around. With just a bit of noise the footage blended pretty well, as well as some small fixes, fades etc . I kept the clips the same lenght and name so that is easy to replace the previous versions. (I also learned that exporting lossless is unnecessary and creates ludicrous file sizes so now all the clips only come at 2.16 GB).
I’ve created a Google drive to share this new version and will be sending the link to everyone who previously showed interest, if anyone else would like the link feel free to PM me. Huge thanks to Shamook for sharing his work and making this possible!
This looks amazing! Sorry if I missed it somewhere but has this been put into a full edit of the movie? If so, where can I get a link?
I watched these and thoroughly enjoyed them. This is canon for me. Yes, ep 9 got a little wacky, but it was so much better than the dumpster fire Disney gave us. If this was the story in the movies I would’ve gone to the theater 10 times for each one. After seeing Jake Skywalker I certainly wasn’t going to pay to see rise of garbage in the theater.