Revenge of the Sith - a corgicar edit (Disaster averted)

Revenge of the Sith - corgicar cut


[youtube:1vvz2g7n]


The final chapter of the Star Wars prequels is reimagined as a serious tragedy where events conspire to push Anakin Skywalker to the brink where he must choose between the Jedi, who distrust him, and Chancellor Palpatine who offers him hope for Padme's survival. No scene has been left untouched. Entire sequences of the film have been rearranged for maximum impact.


original film name: Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
film studio name: Lucasfilm
Date Original Film Was Released: 19 MAY 2005
Date Edit Was Released: March 22, 2009
Original Runtime: 146 minutes
New Runtime: 115 minutes

About this edit:

Just what the world needs! Another Star Wars edit. I do love these and wanted to attempt one of my own. In this edit I am trying to concentrate on Anakin, his fall, and what caused it.

In order for Anakin's fall to be a true fall the circumstances in which he makes his decision to submit to Palpatine must be altered. The necessary elements for this are already there for this to occur but are not properly emphasized. In this version, it is the Jedi who drive Anakin into the arms Palpatine with lies, disdain and distrust.

Palpatine is correct. The Republic is long since dead. It no longer functions. He is bringing order to the galaxy. The Jedi are plotting to overthrow him. The only problem with this is that he is also evil.

Anakin lives in a world in which the only person who truly trusts others is Obi Wan Kenobi. The only person Anakin trusts is Palpatine. He is even suspicious of Padme. No one in this world truly trusts or confides in others. Gone are the long pointless conversations. Anakin and Padme love each other but do not confide in each other. (As a side note, the only real "mistake" The Phantom Editor made in Attack of the Phantom is to include Anakin's confession to Padme of murdering Sand People. It is much more power if the only person he truly trusts with his secrets is Palpatine.) The Jedi Council openly distrusts Anakin. Mace Windu is openly hostile. At the beginning of the movie Anakin discovers his own order is hostile to him, and the wife he is not allowed to have is pregnant with children that should not exist. His nerves are frayed.

With ADigitalMan's kind permission, I incorporated many elements from his excellent edit of this film, such as new voices, the crawl he used for his special edition as well as his restructuring of Yoda's scenes to include the disembodied voice of Qui Gon Jin.

In addition to the story line tweaking, I am attempting to streamline the movie's editing and am following The Phantom Editor's lead as much as my limited technical skills will allow. Unnecessary exposition has been removed. Scenes now contain only the essential information they were intended to convey and the meaning of others has been slightly altered. Clunky editing in action scenes has hopefully been spruced up a bit. The edit was done in 5.1 in order to allow this.

Entire sequences have been reordered in order to alter or heighten their impact.

For instance:

The 1st half hour has been reorganized to create the impression that events conspiring to pile more and more pressure on Anakin, pushing him to the breaking point. Everyone is plotting and keeping secrets from those closest to them. After rescuing Palpatine, he is told by Padme that she is pregnant. Not such a happy scene, now. They're both upset and worried. This is more compelling, I think. Anakin is so upset by this he misses a briefing on the war and is reprimanded by Obi Wan who is very concerned with Anakin's closeness to Palpatine.

Anakin is next asked by Palpatine to serve on the Jedi Council because he fears they are plotting against him. This is immediately followed by a hostile confrontation with Mace Windu in the Jedi Council Chamber. Following this meeting, Obi Wan tells Anakin the Jedi want him to spy on the Chancellor, confirming Palpatine's suspicions of a Jedi plot.

Meanwhile, Padme is plotting to create the Rebellion with Bail Organa swears to keep this from Anakin.

This sequence of events culminates with Anakin's nightmare premonitions of Padme's death in childbirth. However, instead of confiding in Padme on the balcony. He dresses and goes to Palpatine, beginning his real slide to the Dark Side. This occurs right at the 30 minute mark.

DVD - Features:
1. 115 minutes NTSC
2. Motion menu

Time needed for the edition: Way too long. About 2 years on and off, but if I'd had the time 3 months of steady work would have sufficed.

This sounds very interesting. I never had too many issues with RoTS, until I saw snippets of people working wonders with the film...proving there was still too much exposition and bad scenes.....will try to check this out.

I'll check this one, sounds great.

Yeah, me too. The description sounds great. I'd like to see what you've done with it.

Hey Corgicar, did you make any changes to the opening space battle/rescue sequence to make it less jokey and more serious?

yes

Okay...let me rephrase....

Hey Corgicar, what changes did you make to the opening space battle/rescue sequence to make it less jokey and more serious?



Unless it's a secret or something...

Nah, not a secret.

I eliminated some dialogue, specifically Anakin's lines about "this is where the fun begins" and some of Obi Wan's dialogue while evading the missiles. I also went into sequences and cut them down to make them more direct, specifically, the buzz droids both on Obi Wan's ship and the R2 buzz droid fight.

I did leave "Have you noticed the shields are still up" in, because I thought that was genuinely funny. But, right now, I can't remember if I cut Anakin's line "Sorry, master." If I didn't I should have.

Overall, the opening through the landing of the crashing ship has been cut by around a 1/3 or more. But, I'm ball-parking while at work.

Sounds good. So, I'm assuming you got rid of a lot of the Artoo humor? And what about the cockpit battle droids and that awful Neimoidian captain?

Sounds very promising. I'll download this and check it out.

I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. So, I used ADigitalman's Neimoidian Captain. Also, I cut from the Hangar Bay fight after they land, to Grievous (who I cut way down) hearing the Jedi are there to the Jedi finding Palpatine - they know where he is they just go there. The fighting on the way is silly and unnecessary IMHO.

Oh, well that's even BETTER than I hoped!!! This is a definite must-see then.

Great - now, I have expectations to meet. :-(

corgicar said:

Great - now, I have expectations to meet. :-(

Click to expand...

lol, expectations been high man

Well, I am looking forward to comments both positive and negative. That's how we learn.

I have created cover art for this edit. I hope you like it. I just loved the front image and could not resist to use it.

download here

Okay I've just seen it. But it's 3 AM here in france I really need to sleep!
Let's just say that I found some technical problems, but none of them really ruined the movie to me. This edit shows us a better turning to the dark side of Anakin. It's what this movie needed the most: more time on character developement. The new reorganization of the scenes helps about that, and are most of the time REALLY smart.
Rating and more comments next days.
Now I go to bed!

Whoa! Boon, that's awesome, thanks! Makes me want to redo the menu.

TMBTM,

Wow, thanks. Looking forward to what you have to say, especially the technical issues. I'm still learning, and I'm game for jumping back in. I'd like to do this a dual layer at some point, anyway.

So, first sorry for my english is not always very good and this review may sound a bit messy from time to time.

The technic:
I don't feel much qualified for making a technical review and I've seen this edit on my PC monitor, not on TV screen, so maybe I did not see it the best way I could.

All I can tell is that that there are several picture jumps through all the movie (not too many, but noticeable). But as most of them are in the middle of a shot (and not at the cuts) I feel it may be more of a compression problem rather than an editing one. (exemple: the clone that receive the order 66 before he turns to kill Yoda.)
The picture could have been sharper.
Sometimes I felt that the score was too much behind the sound effects, but I really can't tell if I'm right or wrong on this matter. Let's see others opinion on this one.
Some cuts felt a bit rough to me (very few in fact, just 2 or 3 audio ones, and those ones even can be called "done on purpose" but did not work for me). But it's not too distractive.
Even with this few flaws I think it can stand by standar quality of FE.org, maybe other people with better eyes will give their opinion about this matter.
All in all, without being amazing, it worked fine with me.
6/10


The edit:
It was the first time I watched a ROTS fanedit and I found it very good.

In the first 40 minutes we now see that Anakin's mind is already quite twisted by Palapatine. He is already almost a dark character. Which makes his later complete turn to the dark side much more believable.
Speaking of Anakin/Padme love story: less scenes between them, the better. I mean, the purpose of their love story in this episode is that more and more things separate them. So it makes sens to me to cut most of their long scenes.
The Pace worked for me, even if no buzz droids and less time spent in Grievious battleship would have been nice (Every time I watch ROTS I think Lucas spent too much screen time basicaly saying: look, two jedi are rescuing the Chancellor. Jesus, it's even in the text crawl at the begining of the movie and 20 minutes or so later we are still stuck here.) In this edit the opening could have been even shorter IMO, but the political plot start very fast after that and is quite interesting and well executed. The reorganization of the scenes really brings some new blood to the movie.
The deleted scenes are very well edited. While they loose a bit the audience about the time that passed (is it the morning, the evening, the next day? etc...) I think it's a good thing. It shows that the events don't happens all in a couple of days and also helps to make Anakin's fall believable. It's not "Hello I'm the good guy" immediately followed by "now I am the bad guy" anymore. It takes time.
There are plenty of nice smart cuts here and there, and also new voices from time to time, music added etc... so it's not just changing the order of big scenes.
So the editing choices worked for me, most of the time, and the sum of all of them makes a better movie than the original IMO. Maybe some people will complains (like I did) about buzz droids, or maybe Palpatine and Yoda jumping everywhere etc... But this edit focused more on the plot than the annoying details, at least that's the way I felt.
Maybe a version 2.0 of this edit with less annoying details and a shorter opening battle would be my personal fav.
I am french so there is still 20% of spoken english that I don't fully understand while whatching a movie without subtitles. So, even if I know this movie quite well, there might be some plot holes that could have escape me.
8/10

I rate this edit 7/10.
Could have been more if the technical stuffs were perfect (I think it deserved a better quality, so it's a compliment in a way ) and if some annoying (or what I think it's annoying) details would have been changed.
All in all a great moment that shows once again that Lucas really had all in his hands to make a truely great movie but has lost it somewhere.



EDIT: can't rate and comment at fanedit.org right know, but I will tonight.