sade1212

Why can’t she be a Skywalker? I agree that it’s a bit of ham-fisted, predictable writing, and a somewhat odd choice for Rey the character considering her closer relationship to members of the Organa-Solo branch of the family, but given Terrio’s hangup with ‘dynasties’ I can see why they went with her being adopted into Luke’s family specifically, and it doesn’t strike me as being massively implausible or anything.

I wasn’t listing inconsistencies so much as I was listing things that would probably be different in the OT had it been made after the prequels. Questions that could perhaps come up if you were to watch episodes 4, 5 and 6 with the idea in your mind that they were sequels to episode 1, 2 and 3, without having any knowledge of the real-life production order (imagine you’re a young child). I’m fully aware of the real life explanations and the possible in-universe justifications, and I wasn’t passing judgement on whether the retcons were for better or for worse. And yeah, they don’t fight like actual geriatrics, that was meant humorously - what I was getting at was that none of the OT fights approach ROTS’ Anakin vs. Obi-Wan or Yoda vs. Sidious in sheer speed and spectacle, which may seem odd if you were watching the movies in episode order without secretly knowing the OT was made first.

Might be more suited for HAL’s thread, but it’s kind of dead so I thought I’d put it here. He mentions in his commentary that in Rey’s duel with Luke, his initial viewing reaction was along the lines of “oh, it’s Rey outdoing my hero again…” - but I’m not crazy, Luke wins the fight, right? He fairly effortlessly blocks every blow and then disarms her. She’s the aggressor, he has no intention of hurting her. She only ‘wins’ after that by drawing a lightsaber on him, and I can hardly hold it against Luke for backing away from that rather than attempting to continue to fight with a stick!

his full sentence has beeps

I had no idea Plo Koon was so foul-mouthed. You know, there is a reason they call him Master Plo instead of Master Koo-

I think my vote would be for option 2. I’ve obviously already made my case for Malevolence coming before Cloak, but I also think that your edit of Malevolence is a little stronger than Cloak, so it has that going for it too. I’m still totally onboard with the very early Death Watch stuff though, especially since that’s a quality episode to hook people in.

thebluefrog said:

with the Mandolorian subtly trying not to acknowledge them either

It’s interesting that this narrative has picked up so much steam considering how it has little basis in the text.

• The Mandalorian depicts a galaxy about twenty-five years prior to TFA, where the ruling power is the New Republic (the one mentioned and briefly seen in TFA). It’s implied to not have a fantastic grip on things.
• There’s an Imperial Remnant who explicitly mention “order” and are working on cloning/growing force sensitive lifeforms, very reminiscent of the jar of Snokes in TROS and Palpatine’s efforts to clone himself.
• Luke appears to be perusing the galaxy to rebuild his new Jedi Order, and seems quite sure of himself and his abilities, so I doubt he’ll take it well when all of that gets burned down (twice the pride, double the fall!).
• Grogu has used Force healing, a power only seen otherwise in TROS.
• Cobb Vanth is from the Aftermath novels, which were written explicitly as part of the “Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens” publishing effort
• The dropships from the Boba Fett intro episode are clearly supposed to be a precursor to the First Order dropships.
• Operation Cinder is from Battlefront 2 (and the Shattered Empire comics, which were also Journey to TFA material), which has a campaign expansion which takes place during the sequel era.

And they didn’t have to do this. Favreau, Filoni and co. could’ve decided to focus entirely on the low-level, grimy underworld stuff to avoid having to acknowledge the wider timeline whatsoever, but they didn’t. They decided to bring in Grogu, the Force, the New Republic, the Imperial Remnant, cloning, Luke, Cobb Vanth, and so on.

Edit: I do agree that there’s absolutely no way Grogu is going to die during the destruction of Luke’s temple though. Honestly, I don’t know why everyone just assumed that immediately - there’s about nineteen years in between Mando Season 2 and the temple getting blown up; Ben Solo is still only four years old when Luke takes Grogu. There’s zero chance of Grogu, the merchandising overlord, remaining absent for the entire rest of the show.

Malevolence nitpicks:

• Again, Padawan gets a capital letter, for some reason.
• Interestingly, this time around you’ve done the opposite with the intro transition, having the episode audio come in before the picture does. I think it could be slightly more gradual, but I understand that the music is tough and the usable footage is limited because of originally having the newsreel audio.
• At 2:15 you have a stray frame from a different shot.
• Ditto at 3:22, we see a single frame of Plo Koon in his cockpit.
• The audio cut on the word ‘worse’ and the fade at 7:44 is odd, like the show is cutting to commercials and back or something.
• Similar for the fade after the cut at 8:10. Is this a footage limitation or something you added?
• Again, a fade at 16:46; are these necessary to make up for missing footage?
• The audio cuts out too early at 17:20.
• I hadn’t even realised you’d replaced Plo’s dialogue until Ahsoka abruptly cuts him off mid-sentence for a hug. I quite like intercutting Plo’s dialogue with the clones getting ioned, but Ahsoka just butting in out of nowhere doesn’t really work for me. The footage reversal for the wipe is also not subtle.
• At 18:28 when Yularen says “Skywalker”, the audio editing seems a little odd, like the music suddenly lowers (presumably to mute whatever Ahsoka is mouthing) and then it comes back in.
• I hear voice echoes at 29:11.
• At 29:23, Anakin looks like he’s about to say something else and it’s a little odd that he doesn’t.
• I think Plo starts speaking too soon/abruptly at 29:40.

I’m enjoying this excuse to rewatch TCW and engage with it a little more than I did the first time. I don’t really remember the original episodes, but this edit makes a pretty fun short movie. You’ve merged the episodes well. The start is really engaging, as it quickly makes Grievous seem brutal and coherently sets up the threat. The medical station scenes work cleanly where you’ve put them. All the Plo Koon rescuing stuff is enjoyable enough - Anakin and Ahsoka’s interactions are exactly the sort of set-up I did feel was needed for the nitpicks I mentioned in my last post; and even though we haven’t seen lots of Anakin/Ahsoka missions, this episode does a good job implying there’s been a few offscreen.

The Shadow Squadron space battle section is watchable but not my favourite aspect of Star Wars. Whatever editing you did in this bit worked for me, though I can’t say I recall how it was originally. I was freaking out wondering how you’d managed to drag another thirty minutes of episode out after the Malevolence blew up but thankfully it’s just an accidentally left in black screen, haha.

Re: Cloak of Darkness - Though I see what you’re saying about it being more interesting for Anakin to palm Ahsoka off to Unduli and then later actually accept her in Malevolence, I’m not sure it really does that much for Cloak of Darkness. To some extent I think that scene you mentioned from the end of the movie, “…you might just make it as mine”, already shows he’s warming up to her emotionally anyway. I get that Ahsoka is already quite Anakiny even without his influence, but the interrogation scene in Cloak still feels like something of an callback to Anakin interrogating Zam in AOTC to me. Delaying Cloak would also allow some more time between Ventress’ appearances for her to have heard about who Ahsoka is. Definitely just a matter of personal opinion, though, and luckily there’s not really anything preventing someone from watching these edits in a different order.

Cloak of Darkness nitpicks:

• Padawan usually gets a capital letter.
• I feel like the intro music lasts for too long over the footage of the ship before any actual episode audio comes in.
• Ahsoka going apeshit on Gunray in the interrogation feels like a very Anakin thing for her to do, but you don’t get the impression she’s spent very much time with him yet, so you can’t really read it as his influence.
• “Skywalker’s not here to save you now!” isn’t a reference to anything, right, because this is their first meeting? Again, seems a little premature, unless you can justify it as her referring to the events of Christophsis.
• Ditto for “Master Skywalker should be proud”.
• The end credits transition is really smooth here, but the long black screen is a little offputting. I can’t think of how’d you fix that though. Fade out slower? I assume the footage doesn’t allow it.

Any edits you’ve made to the actual contents of the episode are seamless!

While your idea to have Anakin immediately palm Ahsoka off is an amusing one, I think there’s just too many little references in this episode to Ahsoka being Anakin’s Padawan for it to work perfectly. If anything, perhaps this episode would be better placed a bit later so we can interpret it as Anakin’s unorthodox style rubbing off on her a little.

There’s some odd dialogue in these early episodes, haha. Ahsoka’s not that bad in your cut of Christophsis but she’s pretty chronic in this one: “hairless harpy”, “bog witch”, etc. Harsh words for a woman she’s never even met! I think someone else observed earlier that Ahsoka also doesn’t have any hair. I’m not at all advocating for cutting it though, because watching her become less snippy is sort of the point.

Definitely an essential episode for establishing Ventress, so it’s unfortunate that very little else interesting occurs besides Argyus’ betrayal (and death lol). Luminara Unduli is a really wooden character here, effortlessly slotting right into that humourless, overly-arrogant Jedi master archetype, to the point where Ahsoka doesn’t even learn anything this episode. Gree getting clunked while monologuing is hilarious though.

I’m pretty sure you’d have thought Rian destroyed Star Wars to an even greater extent if he had revealed that Luke left his daughter to fend for herself on a desert planet for fifteen years while he hid on a lovely island drinking green milk and crying with his bird friends. Plus any idea that Rey was trained as a child is odd, because if she was old enough to receive significant training, she’d have been old enough when she was left on Jakku that she’d have not completely forgotten about it.

Maybe it’s the (in the British sense, mind you) republican in me but I don’t get the obsession with inherited power. Sure, Luke’s dad was a powerful force user, but we have no indication that Sheev Palpatine, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Mace Windu, Ahsoka and so on came from any family background of using the Force. There’s some odd writing in TFA around her knowledge of things like Jedi mind-tricks, but it’s hardly the only instance in the film where JJ writes Rey as if she’s actually watched the original trilogy.

There’s not much point fanediting movies you believe fundamentally have a bad story line, because there’s not that much you can do to change that with the available footage. Rather, it tends to attract people who, as SparkySywer says, believe there is a good story here, and engage in “constructive” fanediting.

While that’s certainly true, I’m pretty sure it’s intentional. I think whether it works for you or not comes down to if you ultimately think Rian was being smart or pretentious.

Luke is there to challenge Rey, Rose is there to challenge Finn, Holdo is there to challenge Poe - they essentially are antagonists for our trio of protagonists from the previous movie. I very much assume you’re supposed to dislike Holdo, because Poe is the audience surrogate for that plotline and he certainly dislikes Holdo at first. Ditto for Luke - many people talk about being shocked and disappointed that Luke is so unlike his old self, but that’s because Rey is your audience surrogate there, and she’s also confused and angry that he’s not the Luke Skywalker she’s heard of in the myths. Perhaps to a lesser extent with Rose because the audience doesn’t necessarily agree with Finn’s plan to escape and save Rey, but later on when he just wants to get the Canto Bight plot line over and done with, whereas she wants to save the fathiers, I think it applies.

I can’t help but feel adding in some positive interactions at the start of each relationship just to then pull the rug out would only add to the feeling that the movie is hyper-obsessed with never doing what the audience expects. I do agree that the way it is in the movie might lead to some people not “forgiving” the antagonists when they redeem themselves later in the film, even though our protagonists do.

She buries them near Shmi so there’s already some idea that it’s a Skywalker family grave plot.

You could try a little colour correction on the Bail shot or something. For me the issue was more that Anakin and Ahsoka just silently respond with weird head gestures though.

I particularly enjoy HAL’s suggestion in the commentary that Korr Sella (Leia’s envoy) is “that girl from Doctor Who”, despite her not being played by Freema Agyeman or any other actress who ever appeared in Doctor Who.

Yeah, I somehow still haven’t finished watching this two hour commentary track despite starting days ago…

Edit:
“Final scenes in Star Wars don’t have dialogue.”
(':

I watched Christophsis.

Good stuff:

• That Maul scene, and the music you’ve used for it, does a good job of hinting at what’s to come.
• The intro music is very, very sick.
• The scene-setting text reads really well, in my opinion.
• Thanks for fixing the weird chair/table thing; the editing of the Ventress fight is cleanly done now.
• The new wipe to Obi-Wan and Anakin in the towers works well.
• Your smart use of various bits of audio over totally different footage (like the Yularen bombers line, or the Bail transmission) is ingenious and never struck me as too much of a stretch.
• I was never confused about what was supposed to be going on; your combined and streamlined plot is coherent and well conveyed. The little bit of Hidden Enemy at the start does a good job of setting up the “trouble” Anakin and Obi-Wan talk about later.
• Whatever editing you’ve done to the movie portion is solid. If you trimmed any specific lines, I didn’t pick up on it.
• Loathsome isn’t missed, even if I did enjoy Obi-Wan winding him up with war crimes.
• The episode absolutely feels like it should begin and end where it does. I’m glad there’s not an additional hour of searching for Jabba the Hutt’s son who then never makes another appearance, or anything like that.

Nitpicks:

• There’s an odd “whoop” sound in between the Star Wars logo disappearing and Maul’s ship appearing, at 00:24.
• “What are you?” sounds strange because of how you’ve had to work around the music replacement. I don’t think it adds anything, necessarily, anyway - if you’ve seen The Phantom Menace, you know that’s Maul, and if you’ve seen Mando you’d recognise Bo-Katan and the Darksaber. I think the scene is more effective with just the music.
• I’d be tempted to adjust the ellipsis on “Months earlier …” to a Star Wars-style four periods, even though it’s not technically correct. This applies to the intro text as well, on the last line about Ventress being cunning. I don’t know why Star Wars has used incorrect ellipses forever, but it has - except for the ROTJ crawl. It might be a Flash Gordon thing.
• The audio transition between the intro and the episode itself could be a little more gradual, I feel. Maybe they’re just musically incompatible in some way though.
• Some kind of background audio cuts out abruptly at 4:53 towards the end of Yularen’s sentence.
• When Bail says “Separatist forces have overrun our position!” at 6:38, it doesn’t have the radio filter that the rest of what he says does, even though he’s not any more on screen than he is the rest of the time.
• The tanks shot at 6:55 still strikes me as odd but I can’t think of how else you’d be able to deal with it.
• At 7:07 there’s a stray frame of the shot of Cody and the other clones in the tower with Obi-Wan before it cuts to space.
• At 7:56 the reversed footage is noticeable because Yularen starts mouthing silent words.
• The music coming in with the clones at 7:57 is super, super abrupt.
• The cut at 21:10 could use a bit more of an audio transiton, I think. Nope, like that in the original movie haha.
• Bail really does just appear from absolutely nowhere at the end and Anakin and Ahsoka’s non-verbal responses (and the framerate interpolation of the shot of Anakin) are quite odd and remind me of the awkwardly silent extras in Star Trek: TNG. I’d cut that entirely if possible. I think Bail adds a little bit of weight to the rest of the episode, but if keeping that side plot necessitates keeping this scene at the end I’d vote to cut him entirely.
• At 25:29 the cut to Ahsoka has a noticeable background audio cut also. I agree with your rearrangement of this though.
• The transition to the credits still needs work, but you know that already.
• “Produced by Cary Silver” is off-centre.
• Have you considered using Topaz Gigapixel AI, ESRGAN, or Waifu2x to make the background art for the credits higher res?

Observations irrelevant to the edit:

• I never noticed the first shot of Ahsoka shows off her Padawan braid, like a visual response to Anakin’s line, before.
• Christophsis the planet as seen from space looks hilariously bad in the movie, compared to how it is in Cat and Mouse. The cities are drawn on so vaguely it looks like a placeholder.
• Obi-Wan and Yoda trolling Anakin by assigning him a padawan wasn’t really a very wise idea, was it. Oh, shocker, the guy who gets really attached to people doesn’t take it very well when we later (SPOILERS) accuse her of being a terrorist and effectively kick her out of the Jedi Order.
• All the Ahsoka and Rex interactions feel more significant now knowing the Siege of Mandalore.
• “I’m the one with enthusiasm!” feels like an ATLA line to me.
• There’s some really low-res environmental textures. Surely it wouldn’t have cost that much more to not use videogame-tier textures for the world; it’s not like the series had to be rendered in real-time.
• Those droids are just soda cans.
• Ahsoka is remarkably competent for a 14 year-old, even right from the start. Clearly the Jedi Temple’s training regime pulls no punches in teaching preteens to be soldiers.
• “…but you might make it as mine.” and the first use of Ahsoka’s theme is a really great moment that just gets better and better as Ahsoka’s story continues in other media. I give it < 3 years before she meets Luke in canon, and that’ll make it hit even harder next rewatch.

I don’t think it’s a good argument to assume people will already have knowledge of the original trilogy through cultural osmosis. While probably true, it’s conceding that knowledge of the OT is in some way beneficial to appreciating the prequels.

Yeah, despite the numbering they absolutely are prequels. Imagine you were born under a rock and started watching Star Wars from Episode 1. You’d think the Imperial March was just a motif for Anakin doing bad stuff. The clonetroopers and Venators would stir absolutely zero familiar imagery in your mind. Jango Fett’s son would seem like a strange thing to focus on. Anakin being renamed to “Darth Vader” would probably conjure a laugh because it’s a nonsense word and you do not yet associate it with a big scary cyborg man. “Luke” and “Leia” would hold no meaning for you, and neither would Owen and Beru watching a twin sunset. etc.

I also don’t think the Original Trilogy works very well as a sequel to the prequel trilogy, if you know what I mean. You might have questions like - why does Luke only have to train for a few weeks, or a year at the absolute most, to become a Jedi? Why doesn’t Obi-Wan mention that Luke and Leia are related so they don’t keep kissing one another? How come no one can jump anymore, and fight like geriatrics? What happened to Sidious’ lightsaber skills? Why does Vader never mention Padme? How on Earth does Leia remember a mother who died thirty seconds after she was born? Why does Obi-Wan continue to wear Jedi robes on Tatooine? Why doesn’t it occur to Obi-Wan and Yoda that some of the ten thousand other Jedi might have survived? I mean, all of these little nitpicks exist anyway, but watching in release order makes them less apparent unless you’re being deliberately anal.

I’m listening to the commentary for this now, and there’s a fantastic sense of impending doom hearing HAL talk about Rey’s parentage. We were all so blissfully oblivious back then.

I’ve been trying to use EBSynth to change Rey’s costume colour but it’s pretty hit or miss and you wind up essentially having to mask it anyway.

Greedo literally tells Han that he’s about to kill him. I’m surprised Han even decided to waste time saying “I’ll bet you have!”.

I can give black robes in the final scene a shot, but I’m not entirely sold on the symbolism. Are they black because it’s a funeral of sorts, or to imply she’s integrated Ben Solo somehow, or to imply something about the force alignment of her new generation of Jedi?

I feel like the black robes would make most sense in the part of the movie where she’s worried about turning to the dark side, to draw a closer parallel to her vision of Sith Rey - but then you’d lose the white/black duality between her and Ben on Kef Bir and Exegol, which would be a shame.

The five minute edit of Lair of Grievous is neat, and coherent enough (aside from Grievous having no legs in that one shot haha), but I wouldn’t put it on the end of Cloak of Darkness. It doesn’t add much besides, well, getting to see the Lair of Grievous - and him actually succeeding in killing a Jedi for once - so I don’t think it’s worth the hassle to shoehorn it in. I’d vote to save it for the Complete Cut.

Try selecting the edit and the readme together and then downloading them as a zip.

Trim Kylo’s line to “You’re Palpatine.” (and similarly adjust Luke’s to “Because you’re Palpatine.”).

Rey has to come to terms with discovering she was, in fact, Palpatine this whole time. This allows the movie to explore challenging moral questions like “Does being an evil person make you an evil person?”.

The guy on Exegol is just some faker; that’s why Rey - the real Palpatine - blows him up.

Fantastic work! Like Cinefy says, it’s not too distracting in the other shots, especially since it’s not blowing around as much, so this is a great improvement. Have you thought about applying the same effects to Luke’s ghost on Tatooine?

I see the symbolic purpose of it being the blue saber since it’s specifically the one he threw over his shoulder at the start of the movie, and that Kylo wanted so badly in TFA, and I get that blue looks more aesthetic against red on Crait… But wishing Luke had projected with his green saber is my one guilty fandom-menace-tier sequel opinion.

I got the impression he was projecting as Ben remembered him in order to encourage Kylo to not think too much about it, but the blue saber is a big giveaway. Obviously Kylo was really, really, very angry, so it’s totally plausible that he didn’t notice, or assumed Luke was using a different blue saber, but it seems unnecessarily reckless on Luke’s part considering he went to the effort of otherwise looking like his younger self, hair and robes and all.

And now that the Mandalorian is giving us imagery of Jedi Master Luke - the “legend” that Luke is intentionally trying to leverage at the end of TLJ - having that green saber, it feels like a reprise of it on Crait would tie better symbolically into Luke’s franchise wide arc. After all, even if it isn’t the exact same saber he rejected at the start, I think seeing Luke accept a lightsaber again is essentially the same.

I think using both would’ve been odd, though. We’ve never got the impression that Luke duel wields like Ahsoka, and it would’ve struck me as quite over the top.

Yeah, I’m too new (joined 2018) to have ever been familiar with any of the old members that get alluded to. This is the forum for Star Wars fanediting, as far as I’ve ever been able to find anyway, regardless of what might or might not have happened in some off-topic section years ago. The recent modding hasn’t struck me as unreasonable (though perhaps I don’t have the full picture).