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Star Wars: Turn To The Dark Side - Episode 3.1 edit mixes the prequels

ImperialFighter

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Just came across a mention of this on the io9.com site. It's a kinda Topher Grace-inspired, 3-in-1 prequel edit by 'Double Digit', which was flagged up on several sites in the last couple of days.

Sadly, the Vimeo link has been taken down already, but if you Google Star Wars: Turn To The Dark Side - Episode 3.1, then you can at least see all the various mentions of it, and read the responses if you wish. Personally I liked reading through a lot of the comments, as I always find it interesting to see what different people think of differing prequel edit choices in general.

Anyway, here's a couple of links to be going on with about it - http://kotaku.com/someone-edited-st...tm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=fridayPM

and this one which goes into quite a bit of detail about it -
 

TomH1138

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Yeah, someone posted about this on Facebook. Unfortunately, the link to the video had already been pulled by the time I tried to watch it. Still interesting discussion, though!
 

ghouldetail

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there's torrents of it out there. I stumbled across it yesterday without knowing anything about it and thought I'd see what it is. I haven't watched it yet though, I was thinking maybe tomorrow if I get time
 

MrGone

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Just got done watching it. The above mentioned review is pretty spot on for the most part. There were some really good ideas in this edit, I liked how it opened(it starts with the Darth Maul fight and thats all of Episode 1 you get), and I really liked how it ended(with Vaders helmet coming down, and then him breathing..fade to credits). There were some good edits made in this(extremely limited Jar Jar and no Midichlorians to be found), and some really bizarre choices(Obi-Wan shows up on Geonosis for no reason, there is almost no Clone War at all). So, they made a good effort, but I feel like maybe they needed another pass or two. Hell, could have been alittle shorter. If you like the Prequels, this edit isn't for you and if you're no fan of the prequels this certainly won't change your mind. They tried, I'll give them that.
 

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I also had a look at this. Is it worth it? Um....nah, not really.

Probably my taste more than anything, but allow me to explain.

I found things in this edit improbable. People just seem to do things for no reason, as another review above said, Kenobi just seems to kick around aimlessly for a while, always seeming to end up in the right/wrong place.

I didn't like the crawl too much. Technically fine, but content seemed a little off....it was all too simple to explain away the few events that are shown from TPM. I found it improbable that a lone person, Sith or not, would just rock up to a planet to take it over or even just start making some trouble. And from there it starts REALLY quickly. The footage used from TPM does indeed start with the lightsaber duel at the end. We have no real idea, aside from the vague explanation on the opening crawl, who these people are. Merely giving the viewer a loose fact about what is going on means that we don't care. Oh, some guy with a beard just got run through with a shiney pole...was he a good guy? Should we be upset? Cheering? Who knows?? Some little green guy hobbles around and says some stuff to the younger guy in the brown cloak who DIDN'T die, they burn up the beardy dead guy and then it jumps into AOTC...

We find ourselves in an elevator. There is another beardy guy who looks a lot like the young guy who DIDN'T have a beard before. He is chatting with some obnoxious, surly teen-ish kid who is getting all grumpy and creepy....especially when they meet some sea horse dude with an annoying voice and some grinning girl who immediately goes to bed after some token chit chat about, apparently, someone trying to kill her.

Now, I am not really going to go on too much here....the rest of the review will just be more of this. Just too much stuff happening without really knowing why, who, what....nothing. Just people doing stuff for some reason.

I know the original films did this too, but certainly not to THIS extent.

I really don't understand this trend of starting an all in one PT edit with the Maul/Jinn/Kenobi duel. I mean, yeah, by all means, PLEASE get rid of as much of TPM as you wish! But either leave enough so we can understand a little (even if the originals barely did...) of what is going on, or just cut it out altogether and start the damn thing with AOTC....and then cut out most of THAT too! As this edit is we just keep getting hit with established characters who clearly have some kind of history. It just doesn't work...not for me anyway.

The edit is by far mostly made up of ROTS. That's not a bad thing I guess, but the Yoda Palpatine fight is still there.

Loads of Jar Jar as well. Considering we have hardly any TPM and there is no scene of a creation of the clone army, Jar Jar doesn't have to be there at all. And really, if we could all wish only a single thing away from the PT, it'd be Jar Jar.

I didn't much like the ending either. Last shot is the helmet lowering onto Vader, AFTER the scene where Kenobi hands over Luke on Tatooine. It placed too much importance on Vader within the saga. It just didn't sit well with me.

Technically it wasn't terrible. A few abrupt and awkward cuts and dissolves and the beginning of the end credits scared the hell out of me with how sudden it kicked in.

I don't know. Maybe I am being harsh, but it just didn't work for me. I can't recommend it. It is fine for interest's sake I guess, but it sure won't change the way you see the films.
 

DominicCobb

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How/why did this gain so much publicity?
 

T-Bone

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DominicCobb said:
How/why did this gain so much publicity?

I blame Topher Grace....he invented fan editing, didn't he???

But yeah, from reading up, apparently whoever did this one was heavily influenced by Grace's much hyped hardly seen PT edit.
 

ImperialFighter

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Here's something I mentioned over on OT.com, so I thought it was worth adding here too -

Someone over there also brought up this Star Wars:Turn To The Dark Side - Episode 3.1 edit last week, and linked to these particular comments about it on reddit.com, even though the Vimeo video had been removed by that point -
However, when I read through that link, I noticed that there was *another* Vimeo link 14 comments down by someone called haier which was still working at the time.

I presumed it was going to link to the Star Wars:Turn To The Dark Side - Episode 3.1 edit by 'Double Digit' that all the commenters were talking about at that point...but it turned out to be a link to a completely different 3-in-one prequel edit called Star Wars:A Last Hope instead!

As I was curious to see how it looked, I immediately downloaded it (using RealPlayer). Unfortunately, I didn't manage to mention it here in time, before it too was removed. However, I thought some of you might be interested in hearing some details about it, now that I've got some time to describe it -

First of all, I'm afraid I've completely forgotten the name of the person who put it up on Vimeo, as I didn't take note of it properly at the time (it was under a different name to that guy 'haier' who put the link up, I remember that)...but I recall that he mentioned in his video description that it was inspired by what we know of Topher Grace's edit, and that since Topher wasn't putting his version online, that he was putting a similar one up.

And I also recall that someone who'd watched both 3-in-one edits said in the comments below the video, that he considered it a better version overall compared to the Star Wars:Turn To The Dark Side - Episode 3.1 edit that was getting all the attention that day - of course, views on what *should* be edited out or kept in, vary wildly from person to person when it comes to prequel fan edits. :)

(It's too bad that all the descriptions and comments also disappear when a video gets removed from Vimeo)

I haven't actually had a chance to watch the whole thing through yet, but I've checked how it starts and finishes...and it seems to be roughly similar to the online descriptions of Topher Grace's version, where we basically kick off with the 3-way duel with Darth Maul...and end on a shot of Vader. But there's certainly bound to be plenty of differences between this cut and how Topher's edit turned out...as well as some differences compared to the Star Wars:Turn To The Dark Side - Episode 3.1 edit too, judging by the description about that in the link shown in my previous post.

Anyway, here's some details on how the Star Wars:A Last Hope edit starts and ends -

The usual fanfare music, logos and wording begin, followed by this scroll -

STAR WARS

Episodes l - lll

A LAST HOPE

There is unrest in the Galactic
Senate. A separatist movement,

under the leadership of the
mysterious Count Dooku, has
made it difficult for the limited
number of Jedi Knights to maintain
peace and order in the galaxy.

Subsequently, the Galactic Senate
approved the creation of an
ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
to assist the overwhelmed Jedi.

Meanwhile, Supreme Chancellor
Palpatine has secretly dispatched
two Jedi Knights, Master Qui-
Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-
Wan Kenobi, to put an end
to a shipping blockade led by a
dark lord named Darth Maul...

We then pan downwards to the usual roar of the red ship passing across our viewpoint towards the blockaded planet, as familiar music from the 'Phantom Menace's 3-way Darth Maul duel now starts to fade in...

...and as the music swells, we then cut to the ship travelling downwards toward a bigger, circular blockade ship...

...and we then fade into a wide-angle shot of interior illuminated platforms as distant, tiny figures of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are seen fighting Darth Maul just before he kicks Obi-Wan over the edge...

The remainer of this duel footage then continues uninterrupted right up till the point where Obi-Wan holds the dying Qui-Gon who asks him to train the 'chosen one' (and that's *all* of the 'Phantom Menace' footage that we see)...

...and we then fade into a Coruscant cityscape from 'Attack Of The Clones', and then see an elevator rising with small white words saying 10 years later on the lower right-hand corner, which are then 'swiped away' by a passing flying transport...

...and we then cut to the conversation between an older Obi-Wan and Anakin going to meet Padme in her quarters about guarding her, and continue onwards from there...

So that's how this edit starts out, and I know there's a deleted scene or two included further on, such as where we see Padme's family. And now here's the way it's ending has been re-structured -

...the Obi-Wan/Anakin duel is inter-cut with the Yoda/Palpatine duel throughout, before Obi-Wan eventually walks away from the dying Anakin after telling him he was supposed to be the 'chosen one'...

...and we then cut to Padme lying inside her ship as she asks if Anakin is alright, as Obi-Wan looks on worried...

...and then cut to the ship taking off with C3PO at the controls...

...and then cut to the ship landing at the planetoid facility...

...and then cut to the medical droid telling Obi-Wan, Bail, and Yoda that although Padme seems healthy, they are losing her and don't know why...

...and then cut to Padme giving birth to Leia and Luke and naming them, before she dies saying there's still good in Anakin...


...then after we see Yoda looking sad, we then cut to Bail, Yoda, and Obi-Wan on the Tantive IV, discussing hiding the babies (with no mention of Qui-Gon afterwards)...

...then cut to the Tantive IV ship flying to Alderaan as Bail gives baby Leia to his wife...

...and after the close-up of baby Leia, we then cut to Obi-Wan arriving at the homestead on Tattooine, as he then gives baby Luke to Beru and Owen...

... and after they gaze at the twin suns in the distance, we then cut to the close-up of Anakin's metal arm slowly dragging himself along, as the Emperor's ship then lands and he finds him and kneels beside him...

...and then cut to the Emperor's ship landing on the Coruscant platform, as Anakin is taken out on a medical stretcher...

...and then cut to Anakin now suited-up on a table as his helmet comes down, and the movie ends with the side-on close-up of his helmet being attached, and heavy breathing... - although I seem to recall reading somewhere that Topher's edit ends on the frontal shot of Vader after the table he's on rises up...I could be wrong about that, and it might end on the side-on close-up shot too, for all I know.

(Note: The Vimeo video of the Star Wars:A Last Hope edit was 2 hrs. 9 mins. 27 secs. long, by the way...and ended abruptly after the last shot of the helmet attaching, with no music or credits appearing afterwards)

So that should give you a rough idea of how this particular edit was structured, as far as it's beginning and ending go anyway - certainly something similar to Topher's shorter 1 hr. 25 mins. long version. I just thought it was worth describing, seeing as it seems to have appeared around the same time as the Star Wars:Turn To The Dark Side - Episode 3.1 edit that was getting all the attention last week.

But at the end of the day, these kind of 'condensed' 3-in-one edits can't really satisfy me personally, as there's *much* more prequel footage that I'd still prefer to keep in my own versions eventually. And there's also the fact that I agree with a lot of the points made in the link I posted in my previous post...and would rather include a lot more of Qui-Gon's character in the first place for instance, so that his death by Maul has much more of an effect by the time it happens.

But as an exercise in radically cutting the prequel footage down to a single, self-contained movie that can exclude the 'younger' Anakin and Jar Jar, I can certainly see how some might prefer this kind of 3-in-one edit.
 

Moe_Syzlak

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Some of the ideas are good but the editing is shoddy in places. There is visible old scroll during the new scroll for example.

The scroll itself does a good job of eliminating the need for everything from Ep1. I'm happy to see the Maul duel intact however I've seen edits that deal with Maul's death better. As in the original, Maul seems to just stand there and get killed.

The transition to Ep2 material is okay but there is no need for the ship flying in if you're eliminating the attack on the landing platform. Just use the ext. Apartment establishing shot if you're starting in the apartment. Why leave Jar Jar in the apartment scene!?! I still feel Anakin and Padme's first meeting should be in the apartment scene. The whole apartment scene needs trimming.

Zam refers to hitting the ship, but that scene was cut so it is extraneous. I still like the subtitled Zam to reveal the location of the bounty hunter.

This edit spends a bit more time on the Anakin/Padme romance which I think is a good thing, but other Ep2 edits have made these scenes less painful.

Obi-Wan goes directly to Geonosis in this edit as well. This seems to be the new thing, especially for 3 in 1 edits. I do think it works.

Since Anakin's trip to Tatooine to try to save his mother is the first time we see that planet, some additional cuts would help streamline these scenes. There is no need for Watto for example.

Pretty much the entire Droid Factory scene has been cut and it works for the most part. Also much of the battle in Geonosis has been cut including any duel with Dooku. Yoda and the troopers rescue the jedi and it cuts directly to the wedding on Naboo. It's a bit abrupt.

From the wedding it cuts to after the Palpatine rescue. Obi-Wan talking about Anakin as the hero when we haven't seen any heroics is weird. This also leaves Dooku's fate unresolved and the first mention of Greivous later is odd, especially as he is never seen in this edit. This highlights the biggest issue with this edit, IMO, the villains are unclear. I'm not sure if Dooku scenes such as the one where he reports back to Sidious on Corscant can be inserted later in the film to help create a consistent villain rather than going from Maul (who dies immediately) to Dooku (who just disappears with no explanation) to Greivous (who is mentioned but never seen).

This cut also retains the Yoda/Sidious duel which I loathe. I'm in the camp that feels Yoda should never use a lightsaber. And I much prefer the way Downfall of the Old Republic ended the Anakin/Obi-Wan duel.

I like the birth of the twins and death of Padme intercut with the "birth" of Vader. I can get behind ending the Vader stuff with the helmet being put on but I can't support moving this to the very end. I still think it should end on binary sunset as it did theatrically.

Overall I think this does some things better than Downfall of the Old Republic and some things worse. I think I now fully support the 3 in 1 approach to these films but think much can still be improved.
 

TomH1138

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I haven't seen this edit (the one initially mentioned), but considering the almost universally negative feedback on it, it's a shame that this one, out of all fan edits, has received such media attention.

Part of the problem is that much of the media has been treating this like it is the Topher Grace edit finally released. That's what I initially thought myself, after reading some misleading articles!

I think it might be fun if we could steer our friends towards a better edit than this one. Is there a 3-in-1 edit done by someone from this site that's considered fairly definitive?
 

Zarius

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I often thought about starting Episode I with the final half of the pod race, that way you can introduce Anakin and set him apart from his mother and you have instant background for when he eventually returns. I don't think you need to add "X Years Later" for these scenes either, most people watching the edits are die-hard superfans anyway, they know who's who...

...Actually, I'm kind of surprised Lucas did'nt have the chance to go back into "A New Hope" and insert the words "X Years Later"
 

Dethryl

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I pretty much agree with what everyone else has said. I thought some choices were clever. Others were jarring and threw me out of the attempted narrative. Watto was where I gave up.

I thought the opening worked IF you accepted that there's an Episode before this one where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had an adventure while getting to Naboo, found Anakin who is only a bit younger than when we see him in this film, and ends on a cliffhanger just as they're about to descend to the planet. Then this film starts, and it opens with an action scene.

I thought the Dex scene was a sloppy cut. There's no Jedi Archives scene. Obi-Wan goes directly to Dex for help. Contrary to some reviews, I did not hear the name Jango Fett or Fett mentioned (I was listening for it), so even though it was a bit weak, I could at least follow it. Dex gives Obi-Wan directions to Geonosis where he will find the people who made the dart, and thus when Obi-Wan arrives, he's looking for a bounty hunter. I liked Dooku's denial, and he could be seen to be telling the truth from a certain point of view, because Fett is acting as a bodyguard. It's muddled, but it's no worse than some of the mumbo-jumbo in the official cuts.

The droid factory scene was sloppily cut out. They show the capture, but I think it would have been better to cut from Anakin and Padme going inside to talking with Dooku, a scene which isn't included. This whole part moves very quickly, which is a shame. The duel between Dooku and everyone is cut. Yoda saves the day with the Republic Army (pre-existing), and then it goes into the Geonosis battle and then into the opening battle from Episode 3.

All in all, I'm not impressed so far. The good ideas and storyline are shadowed by the sloppiness in too many other places. This is a decent version 1, but I believe it needs the constructive criticism of some thoughtful people for a version 1.5.
 

Zarius

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I found yet another "Topher Grace" attempt on Youtube called "Star Wars I-III: A Phantom Edit"
 

TomH1138

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Yeah, here's the link:

(...or is it not OK to post that? For now, I'm removing the link myself until I'm sure.)
 

Zarius

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TomH1138 said:
Yeah, here's the link:

(...or is it not OK to post that? For now, I'm removing the link myself until I'm sure.)

Wise move. There's no download link per say but I know websites you can easily use to rip and grab it
 

TomH1138

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Yeah, between the stepkids and the cat, I only got 3 hours of sleep yesterday, so I wasn't thinking very clearly when I posted that link earlier. :)
 

Zarius

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Is it me, or is Youtube getting pretty lax on some fanedits? I've seen a lot up there lately, not all of them are refined as the ones here, but still a lot
 

Kal-El

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Zarius said:
Wise move. There's no download link per say but I know websites you can easily use to rip and grab it
Websites? The thing we use to download our very own fanedits does that too (going along the not naming anything specific path).
 

TV's Frink

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Zarius said:
Is it me, or is Youtube getting pretty lax on some fanedits? I've seen a lot up there lately, not all of them are refined as the ones here, but still a lot
Just about everything I upload there gets blocked these days.
 
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