sade1212

I love the idea to cut up ROTS as episodes also. It’d get you the fun of a ROTS/SoM mashup edit without the weirdness of switching between live-action and animation on a scene by scene basis. Plus, it’d give the politics stuff from ROTS, especially the cut bits, a bit more room to exist.

Edit: I gave this some thought and it’s sort of a mess - lots of shorter episodes. Not to hijack the thread or anything.

TL;DR - also spoilers

• ~28 minute episode of TCW (Ahsoka/Anakin part ways; Ahsoka meets Maul)
• ~22 minute episode of ROTS (Invisible Hand)
• ~28 minute episode of ROTS/Deleted Scenes (Anakin’s nightmare; Padme’s politics)
• ~21 minute episode of TCW (Maul collects info; Ahsoka captures Maul)
• ~33 minute episode of ROTS (Grievous vs. Obi-Wan; Anakin falls to dark side; Order 66)
• one ~40 or two ~20 minute episodes of TCW (Order 66 on the star destroyer)
• one ~50 or three ~15 minute episodes of ROTS (aftermath of Order 66; Mustafar; duels; Padme gives birth; ending montage) - this might be easier to work out if you restructure things to split Yoda vs. Palpatine from Anakin vs. Obi-Wan
• no idea what to do with the TCW epilogue

Full thoughts. Spoilers ahoy! Expand to read.

You have to start with TCW, because RotS doesn’t begin until at least 16 minutes into the first episode of the Siege of Mandalore, when Anakin and Obi-Wan run off to rescue Palpatine. That’d make a very short episode, though. There’s another 12 minutes of TCW after that before we get another indication of events in ROTS, so everything before that point (all of S07E09 and ~3 minutes of S07E10) could be one ‘episode’ with a runtime around the same as Chapter 14 of Mando. Unfortunately, the ROTS tie-in is Obi-Wan mentioning being sent to Utapau, but that occurs about 49 minutes into ROTS…

I’d propose that chunk of ROTS be split into two episodes. Firstly, a ~25 minute episode covering the Invisible Hand sequence, ending with Anakin finding out about Padme’s pregnancy. You could extend it by about a minute by reinstating some of the deleted material and possibly put the Grievous scene in at the end too so “one far younger, and more powerful” acts a bit of a cliffhanger. You could even put the scene of Palpatine putting Anakin on the council in here if you wanted, to get it in before the episode break, but I’m not sure it would feel right. This bit of ROTS, much like the Jabba’s Palace section of ROTJ before it, is very self-contained.

Then, a second episode covering the really Coruscant-heavy, dialogue-heavy part of ROTS, with the A-plot being Anakin’s nightmares leading to his conversation with Palpatine at the Opera, and the B-plot being Padme’s deleted scenes political effort against Palpatine, with the two mingling a little in that scene when Anakin shouts at Padme for being a separatist (which is mildly less weird if you put it after the deleted scene where Palpatine suggests “Senator Amidala is hiding something…”). This would have to go up to at least the scene where Obi-Wan gets sent to Utapau - which awkwardly has a pointless bit with Yoda on Kashyyyk, but I’m sure there’s a smart way to edit around that.

Then we could get another ‘episode’ of TCW covering everything from that holocall with Obi-Wan through Ahsoka vs Maul, up until Maul’s capture. S07E10 does a lot of stuff which strengthens ROTS - Ahsoka sympathising with Anakin re:his assignment to spy on the Chancellor, Almec’s “Skywalker…”, the Imperial vibes of Clones occupying Mandalore, discussion of the hypocrisy of the Jedi, everything Maul says about THE plan and Sidious, “he… is the key… to everything” - it’s all great. And Ahsoka’s faith in Anakin makes his fall hurt all the more. I think this is my favourite Star Wars. It’d be just 21 minutes, but very dense. You COULD include the ‘Obi-Wan has engaged Grievous’ conference call from the beginning of S07E11 at the end of this episode, but a) it’d be weird to see it in TCW before we see it in ROTS, I think and b) it’s clearly set the next morning after an implied timeskip so it feels like it should follow an episode break.

Back to ROTS for a while then. Again, TCW forces our hand here - S07E11 begins with the ‘Obi-Wan has engaged Grievous’ conference call but just five minutes later we have Ahsoka feeling Anakin’s fall and Order 66. Obviously we should see the ROTS-angle on those events first. That means we’re going to have to let ROTS basically run from Obi-Wan and Anakin’s farewell all the way up to Order 66, which definitely feels like it ought to be the end of an episode (you could do the sad fadeout like S05E20 of TCW). This would come in at 33-minutes and vaguely has an A-plot of Palpatine seducing Anakin and a B-plot of Obi-Wan killing Grievous and getting shot down on Utapau.

We’re safe now for TCW to continue, but here’s where things get a little tricky - the rest of S07E11 and S07E12 (epilogue aside) take place continuously in the immediate aftermath of Order 66. Even the actual E11/E12 break is just a cliffhanger. You could easily do a 41-minute ‘episode’ here that just covers the entire rest of the Ahsoka, Maul and Rex’s story, but I’m not sure if it’d be good pacing overall to have such a long length of time prior to returning to ROTS, which has another 49-minutes of runtime we haven’t covered. You could split those 41 minutes of TCW into two episodes, either according to the pre-existing E11/E12 episode break, or a more natural stopping point; and those 49-minutes of ROTS could, at a push, be made into a 17-minute episode (everything between Order 66 and Padme leaving for Mustafar), a 20-minute episode (Padme on Mustafar + Anakin vs. Obi-Wan + Yoda vs. Palpatine) and a ~12 minute epilogue. Separating out Yoda vs. Sidious from Anakin vs. Obi-Wan would make things work much more nicely here, but that’s a fairly considerable fanedit.

Of course, we still haven’t answered the question of what to do with TCW’s epilogue. It can’t really come before we actually see Anakin’s reconstruction in the suit, but you can’t just make it a whole episode by itself, so you’d have to move at least ~20 minutes of the end of TCW into an episode after the end of ROTS, but that seem weird considering how ROTS goes to such lengths to set everything up exactly where it needs to be ahead of Episode IV…

Nothing glaringly jumps out to me there, but it’s been a few years since I last fully consumed the show. Once you start producing edits I’m sure I’ll have some feedback. Your plan seems sane and I’m eager to see it begin to materialise.

I get the lack of the Order 66 arc in the Mando cut (since it relies on the previous Domino Squad material and that’s a slippery slope to just turning the Mando cut into the Quality cut…) but how will you deal with its ramifications in the final episodes (Rex’s recorded message about Fives)? Just leave that as it is, since it sort of explains itself anyway?

Also, will you be producing different edits of the same arcs for various cuts? It’d be more work but allow some more flexibility for each cut.

I’m happy to produce a few edits for arcs which won’t take much more thought than just cutting out the intro and credits and maybe overlapping scenes from adjacent episodes a bit.

Will you just be using the SE audio, or have you considered alternate takes from his Battlefront voice work? I seem to remember it being discussed somewhere that he gave a better delivery for at least one of the lines elsewhere.

There’s certainly interest in the fact that the Republic is portrayed as a completely ineffectual opposition to Palpatine’s rise - the deleted subplot from ROTS where a group of senators gather together with the apparent aim of stopping Palpatine consolidating power, but achieve absolutely nothing except a completely useless meeting and thus doom the galaxy to 25 years of violent resistance, comes to mind. Palpatine’s use of a scapegoat enemy he himself manufactured to justify his forever war is also notable, as is the reference to the military-industrial complex via the Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, Banking Clan etc. And of course the visceral display of inequality and arrogance in how the Jedi and Senate literally live and work in ivory towers and great domes miles above the average people of Coruscant with whom they rarely seem to have any interaction (and even further from the Outer Rim), despite suffering, crime, slavery, and so on being very prevalent. These aren’t especially profound or controversial takes generally, but are a little spicier than what most movies aimed at a similar demographic have to say.

I agree that TCW rarely has much to say in it’s “political” arcs, since they’re mostly only political in so far as they’re Padme-centric. When it does get at something interesting re:Republic interventionism and whether the Separatists actually have a point, it’s undermined by always resolving to Republic good/Separatists bad. Off the top of my head, only the Ahsoka Leaves arc ultimately does anything I find interesting in that respect.

Plus the Republic literally grows and enslaves child soldiers, which is sort of hilariously definitely a war crime, especially since the opposition are just droids so the Republic’s sentient death toll winds up way, way higher than that of the Separatists.

The Sequel Trilogy was pretty good overall, even if TROS was only a 3/10.

Most of the ST’s faults can be traced to J.J. Abrams and not Rian Johnson, who has a much deeper understanding of Star Wars and wrote a much more interesting and engaging movie.

Han appearing to Ben metaphorically makes vastly more sense than having Anakin’s ghost do so literally.

Redeeming Ben and having Reylo happen was the right call - too much is made about him being some abusive murderer considering this series is a mythic fantasy where our heroes also rack up huge kill counts and show even less remorse.

Victory Celebration is pretty generic and I much prefer Yub Nub (even though I didn’t grow up with the OOT).

Attack of the Clones is a comfy movie and is more emotionally resonant than Revenge of the Sith, which I find frustratingly hollow and disappointing.

Solo is really solid; better than Rogue One, which is overrated.

Star Wars movies should absolutely have something to say about politics, even contemporary politics, and I appreciate the Lucas-era movies for having some surprisingly spicy takes on American imperialism and how fascism can come about.

ROTJ would get absolutely savaged for the amount of runtime wasted on teddybears if it came out today, and only gets a pass because it’s been out for 37 years. It’s great, though.

I’d argue you should watch TCW and Rebels, but primarily for the recent history of Mandalore, rather than just for Ahsoka’s backstory. Appreciating the Ahsoka cameo better is nice, but it’s just that - a cameo. It seems a lot more significant to know about Death Watch, the Kryze sisters, Maul, various Viszlas, and specifically how Mandalore’s time under the Empire led to the Purge.

You could use ffmpeg for those things if you’re alright with a bit of command line. Getting audio would be “ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vn -c:a aac -ac 6 -b:a 640k output.m4a” and getting video would be “ffmpeg -i input.mkv -an -c:v copy output.mp4”, I think. I don’t know how Vegas would take those files, but they work well for me in Premiere.

Are you intending to only render it out in stereo rather than 5.1?

Remove Palpatine’s knowledge of the dyad and desire to use it for evil from the start of the movie.

Instead, he just tells Kylo to kill Rey. Don’t address the fact that you’ve now cut the explanation of how Kylo knew about the dyad. When Rey meets Palpatine, have him explain/imply he actually didn’t really want her dead, but that he actually wants to use her as a vessel, and that this only works because of their close genetic relationship - thus making it clear that, had Kylo gone ahead with killing Rey, Palpatine would have remained stuck in his decaying body (and have really played himself).

Explain in the Visual Dictionary that Snoke did know about the dyad, but don’t worry too much about why he didn’t tell Palpatine about it.

This will help… streamline the plot? I think? I’m not really sure why someone would make an edit like that.

This Daisy Ridley interview has some amusing tidbits for those who are as morbidly fascinated by this movie’s troubled production as I am. Bear in mind that it is an interview with children for a children’s hospital though.

“I hope they release the bloopers. We had to do this thing where we would do the scene with dialogue, and then it was helpful for JJ and Maryann (our editor) to get bits of us not speaking - for trailers and stuff - so a few times we had to do the scenes without dialog and we would all just wet ourselves laughing.” at 21:30

“Me and JJ had had a conversation where I was not the granddaughter [of Palpatine], and then we had a conversation a couple of weeks later where I was.” at 17:00

I also recently noticed that Chris Terrio says in the BTS documentary that “the hope at the beginning of the film that Sidious articulates is that the dyad will come together on the dark side” which lines up with one of the earlier leaked plots of the film, but doesn’t even vaguely reflect the final movie, where Palpatine doesn’t know of the dyad until very late in the movie.

It’s a shame Disney will never release any additional footage or Rinzler-esque books - but then again, maybe it’s the fact that big mouse doesn’t want you to know that makes it interesting.

SandMTV, how do you even find these threads? It seems like every few days an ancient thread reappears because you’ve stumbled across it. There’s quite a few Siege of Mandalore/Revenge of the Sith mashups now, and Bobson Dugnutt has completed a project adding lots of other deleted footage to ROTS.

You don’t want to use Aimersoft or any other tool to crudely resize it, because VEAI works best if you just feed stuff in at its native resolution (sometimes, a slight downscale prior to processing can actually help). There’s a lot of information about this here and in Joel Hruska’s other posts about his Deep Space 9 project (warning: Star Trek).

This is straying fairly off-topic; I’m pretty sure there are already other topics for this.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to derail another good thread into the dark wasteland of TLJ/Holdo discussion with my haircut comment.

I’m pretty sure we got Bad Batch/Martez sisters because they were mostly done already, and the Siege of Mandalore needed most of whatever budget Disney was willing to provide for the new season. AFAIK we’ve never seen any early animation for Son of Dathomir, so it may have been nowhere near as far along in development as those two and thus financially unfeasible to finish. I don’t think Grievous invading Coruscant even got scripted. We did see early animation for the Boba vs Cad Bane, Dark Disciple, and the Crystal Crisis on Utapau arcs, so I speculate that they were also up for potentially being finished, but I can empathise with why Filoni/other relevant decision-makers picked the episodes they did. We know Bad Batch was a backdoor pilot now, and it gave us a bit on Rex, Echo and clonehood in general, as well as a chance for a final adventure with pre-Vader Anakin, and I presume Martez sisters was picked for a reason very similar to EddieDean’s philosophy here: focus on Ahsoka. I hope that the other arcs get animated one day but I can’t see any reason why Disney would possibly shell out the funding now that they’ve already cashed in on the ‘final season’ marketing hype and all.

That depends very much on how you upscale it. If you just do a ‘Nearest Neighbour’ upscale to 1080p, then yes, it will be made up of ‘giant pixels’: 2 or 3 pixel wide/tall rectangles. If you perform an upscale with a different algorithm - bilinear, or Lanczos, or any of the upscalers you can use in AE/Premiere like Adobe’s Detail-Preserving Upscale algorithm, or Red Giant Instant 4K etc. - then you most certainly won’t have ‘giant pixels’. Unfortunately, there’s not much point doing that, because those upscalers are, frankly, only slightly better than what your TV already does in real time when you play 480p 576p files on a 1080p or 4K screen.

The real trick comes with machine learning upscalers. Unlike algorithmic upscalers (the ones described previously) which essentially just perform some maths on the image, these actually have some sense of what they’re looking at. They’ve been ‘trained’ for many many hours on pairs of images, one low res and one high res, to be able to notice patterns and recognise things in a way much closer to how we as humans perceive images. The most consumer-friendly of these currently is Topaz Labs’ Video Enhance AI, but others exist like TecoGAN and SOFVSR. Getting a good result out of these requires a good video card, lots of trial and error, and plenty of patience, however.

I think the Martez sisters arc got a lot of undue hate for being dished out weekly over the course of a month while everyone was chomping at the bit for the Siege of Mandalore (separate from the absurd backlash to hairstyles with shaved bits). It made the slow pace and plot inefficiency very apparent, even though quite a few arcs are like that. Still, I’d be interested to see how much you can chop it down without feeling like it loses anything.

I think I liked it more than the Bad Batch arc. Clone Force 99 themselves are just clichés and the villains are back to being Season 1-3 tier. Anakin is fun, I suppose, with his secret rendezvous and tendency towards killing his enemies. It just doesn’t really feel at home where it is in the pacing of the series IMO, but Anakin’s long hair model forces it to be there, and since we now know that it was actually a backdoor pilot for the next animated series, I doubt you could drop it from any of your cuts.

I’d leave Moraband as is. I also have nostalgia for KOTOR, but if it comes up again in the new canon it’ll still be Moraband, and there’s no point confusing someone who doesn’t know about the change.

What’s up with the structure of the Battle of Exegol? At ~1 hour 49 minutes, we see Finn and Jannah choose to stay on the Star Destroyer to fire the cannon at the bridge. They don’t appear again until ~2 hours - 10 minutes later, after the entire Ben/Rey team-up sequence, Rey’s Jedi telepathy, and Palpatine’s death - when they fire the gun. I get that the idea is to synchronise the big victory of both battles, but it’s no wonder that I lost track of what was going on in the theatre! I’m looking for ways to restructure it but I doubt I’ll spot any great insights that J.J. Abrams didn’t.

Din isn’t completely covered by beskar; he could still be shot in various soft areas, or beheaded, or otherwise dismembered, or stabbed in the side etc.

There’s a clone helmet graffiti and her fulcrum symbol in the back.

Reckon she’ll be back for the season finale, like how some characters came back together at the end in Mando Season 1? Or is her backdoor pilot done and awaiting the Rebels sequel series to be announced?

EddieDean said:

These are the episodes that I intend to exclude from my edit altogether.

• s05e10-13 - the Aberfar / droid commandos arc, for having goofy abrasive characters and a horrible setting

I know you did mention Gregor already; but besides Mortis this is the only totally excluded arc which does have any important continuity. It’s been a while since I watched it, but is there any hope there for just a ~20 minute thing featuring Gregor being a Commando and not much else?

The whole idea of fanediting is for the editor to make something they feel is subjectively better than the original/other edits, or at least interesting enough to be worth making. No one would bother making an edit that they believed someone else had already completely nailed, so there’s always some implied criticism there, but I think we all understand that this is the case because taste in edits is extremely subjective. For instance, I don’t work on my personal edits of the saga movies because I think HAL9000, NFBisms, Siliconmaster etc. are trash editors or something; it’s because there’s always a few things in any edit that I’d like to see done differently, or ideas I’ve had that I’d like to try out.

I got the impression that EddieDean’s not criticising the individual skill of other faneditors, but rather the concept of turning TCW into a series of full-length movies in general. This doesn’t mean edits that do try to do that suck; just that EddieDean thinks there’s potential in a different format. Re: “forcing yourself” to adhere to ~two hours; I only read this as being in contrast to his plan to release edits of much more variable lengths. Going for a “film format” implies that the edits would be all be approximately feature-film length, and it’d be odd if one of the “films” in a TCW film edit series was suddenly 30 mins long instead of 90 or 120, right?

I don’t mind the shorter montrals. Ahsoka’s TCW look is most iconic, and they always looked a bit over the top to me in Rebels. I know that Shaak Ti’s were huge, but some size variance amongst Togruta hardly breaks my suspension of disbelief. I was really impressed by the makeup and costume design being so faithful otherwise.

Obviously you’re a long way off even thinking about it, but would you consider tackling Rebels in a similar way? It’s a far more episodic show, not really structured into arcs, so it might be tougher to whittle it down.

I agree that anything that makes TCW feel less obviously like it had no idea where it was going until Season 3 or 4 would be a good idea (on the condition that it’s executed reasonably well).

Should’ve been Yogu.

/s

I’ve started my own thread for my various TROS edit ideas; but I thought I’d do a little promotion in here. Here’s my current draft of the ending Tatooine scene. The major edits (besides what TROS:A already does) are the moving of the questioning woman to near the end of the sequence, a minor VFX edit to one of the shots of Rey to make her look sadder, the removal of the lightsaber ignition and the needledrop of Anakin’s theme. I explain things a little more in the other thread.

I agree with some of your criticisms of Mortis - it is weird, and not subtle. My main concern re: excluding it or chopping it up is Morai, who appears prominently at the end of the Siege of Mandalore, and also in Rebels. You sort of need to recognise that she’s connected to the Daughter and Ahsoka’s resurrection or she’s just a random bird. That, and the appearance of the Mortis Gods in Rebels, as mentioned previously. I know that you’re not necessarily prioritising things just because they’re interconnected with other stuff, but the Mortis mythology certainly seems like something Filoni intends to develop further in the future. It feels to me like a significant thing that TCW establishes.

Like you say though - nothing stopping anyone from just watching it, or even making their own combined fanedit for the arc in the same style.