boy6824 said:
@smudger9 I finished your edit and it was pretty great! its amazing how editing can really making a meandering story a lot more compelling haha. Overall i think its a pretty solid effort and i appreciate the time put into it. If you want some feedback i have a few things that i thought might be tightened up a bit!:
-like @g00b pointed out the fighter flight transition to fennec is a tad weird feeling. i think its actually because the triumphant nature of the launch into space is very abruptly cut short when he lands again. i think it would do the scene a lot of good to see him flying through space and even putting the scene back where he flies past the kid in the shuttle. I know that part of the scene is used later to show him leaving to see luke but i think it would do the other scene a lot of good. speaking of…
-like you mentioned, it might be better to excise the whole luke part entirely and add it onto the season 3 edit instead for mando. it doesnt belong at all narratively the way the current movie edit works and feels like some over extended epilogue. it also creates problems when you see grogus choice, which is supposed to be a big deal, smash cuts to him in the back seat which comes off much more comedic then maybe it should feel. it felt dramatically cheap i guess
-the final climax spend a tad too much time too with the mods and the free town people i think for what they have been built up to be in these current edit, it makes it last a bit too long i feel and the pacing ends up being off
-finally the last point i felt is that some of the flashbacks maybe should be added back, and this is really personal and i know you mentioned debating on doing that or not. if you remove the luke scenes and less climax scenes that frees up a lot of time i feel. but boba steeling his ship back and blowing up the sarlac and then the biker gang are such good beats it feels like a waste not to have them in, but for pacing if it doesnt work i understand. maybe doing it in montage form could help? also it feels like there wasnt enough time with the tuskins really to justify even spending some time with them in the flashbacks, maybe more scenes of them bonding like the train scene could help but it feels like something is missing still with them.
-as a minor quibble too, the fight scene between boba and fennec and the red shield guys is still incredibly goofy, that could be tightened up a bit to be faster paced and cooler and less clunky from the original episode
Anyways, i hope these points dont come off overly critical because i didnt spend a whole lot of time praising the rest of the work which i think was very very good. it made these few points stand out more since the rest was very well done! im guessing youve already considered most of these points anyways, but uit doesnt hurt to bring them up i hope! Lin
Thankyou so much for the Review and the points you make are the things that I struggled with most in this edit.
Let’s take the Luke scenes first. The first thing I needed to in this edit do was remove them from the middle of the movie because it totally details the story. This then meant removing Grogu’s arrival on Tatooine and hence his and Pelli’s appearance in the final battle. Once I achieved that the question was whether to leave in the Luke scenes or remove them.
My decision to keep them was for 2 main reasons:
- They are great scenes that I ultimately need in this movie series.
- Because I was trying to create a “Mando” episode 3 out of the BOBF I felt that I needed the scenes to give Mando enough plot and story progression.
However, it did always feel “tacked on” and way too easy for Mando to find where Luke was. What I will almost certainly do is have the scenes as the opening to episode IV and reference his search in the opening crawl. I can then hopefully
cut from Grogu being told he needs to make a decision to another scene without Din and have the reunion happen off screen.
Now, the starfighter transition. Again this is something I tried to fix but there just isn’t the footage to achieve this without removing the Rhodian child.
I’m really determined to keep the Rhodian child scene where it is because it works so well as a motivation and pointer for Mando’s journey and when I remove the Luke scenes it will give the needed emotional weight to end the movie, a bit like ESB.
I’m hoping that when Mando S3 comes it will give me enough new starfighter scenes to correct this transition.
With the Mods and Freetowners in the final battle, I felt I had to keep their scenes in because Mando recruiting the Freetowners is basically what brings Mando and Boba’s stories together. Without them having a significant part in the final battle it doesn’t give the stories a reason to connect. And since I removed the awful Mod speeder chase and the Krrsantan palace infiltration, the final battle is the only time we really see the mods “in action”.
For version 2 I will look at how it plays out removing the sniper scenes and remove that if it works.
The flashbacks… I must confess I really didn’t enjoy them as much as others, but ultimately I cut them down to the minimum in order to keep the story moving. In terms of Boba’s journey what we needed to know was how he escaped the sarlacc, how he lost his armour, how he became part of the Tusken tribe and learned to use a Gaffi stick (pays off in the Cad Bane fight) and how his tribe got destroyed.
I definitely wanted to cut that dreadful sand monster, and by doing that lots of other stuff needed to be cut. The train chase was cool and does explain the Pike’s spice trade, but the sequence was far too long and then you really need to explain how they get the bikes.
I did consider keeping the scene where he makes his Gaffi stick, but again it made the sequence too long.
The Fenec/Boba scenes and Slave 1 capture was in the edit until the very end, but I finally made a decision to cut them and add them
into my Mando 1 and Mando 2 edits to be released soon. Going to the sarlacc to find his armour never made sense to me, so I never intended to include that.
Finally the assassin scene. I did cut a little out, including the slo-Mo of Boba and the the electro staff. I’ll look at trimming it more for V2.
Again thanks for the input. Hopefully version 2, post Mando season 3, will allow me to put the icing on the cake! 😊
