- Messages
- 181
- Reaction score
- 301
- Trophy Points
- 73
HOW DO I GET THIS?
Please send me a PM for access to the TRACKER SPREADSHEET, which provides the download links.The tracker spreadsheet also has links to the historical working discussion (over on OT.com) for each episode, to give you extra context for the decisions made.
WHAT’S THE CURRENT STATUS?
The show is 100% COMPLETE and POLISHED to a high standard!WHAT IS THIS?
THE CLONE WARS: REFOCUSED presents the entire Clone Wars as a complete series of five seasons of about ten TV-length episodes each. Now structured and presented with the conventions of a more mature modern TV drama, it tells the complete narrative of the Clone Wars, retaining all the most important and enjoyable elements of the show, whilst trimming a vast amount of the weaker content, saving you over 17 hours total while still telling the same core narratives. Episodes have been refined, refocused, reordered and recontextualised to maximise story quality and viewer enjoyment, both for the show’s own complete end-to-end story, and for those seeking a supplement or introduction to new canon like the Mandalorian, Bad Batch, and wider Filoniverse.
It’s my intention that you should be able to replace the original official release of The Clone Wars with Refocused, losing nothing of importance for your enjoyment of the wider franchise, whilst getting the maximum possible enjoyment out of the story of the clone wars.
WHAT ARE THE PROJECT’S PRIORITIES?
Importantly, I want quality of experience to be the most important metric. Taking its cue from the current streaming Star Wars TV series, episodes are as long- or as short- as they need to be (ranging from about 20-60 minutes), in order to pace each story in the best possible way to enjoy the most emotionally resonant and exciting moments in a coherent, digestible, engaging narrative with a more consistent tone, without filler or cringe.Similarly, the show as a whole presents the episodes in a new, more compelling order - which doesn’t break canon - but which gives the best pacing, variety, and character balance, while allowing some of the more important and satisfying elements of the show to begin earlier and remain in focus, building in anticipation and excitement over time. Ahsoka’s growth is a core focus, Maul and Mandalore are ever-present growing threats, and each group of episodes presents itself as a coherent flowing season with a focused theme while developing the overall narrative of the show. Seasons are about ten episodes long, totalling about five to six hours each - about the same length as modern Disney Star Wars or Marvel seasons, to keep them accessible and digestible without making watching this show feel like a daunting task.
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
- MANDALORIAN (and Filoniverse) fans will enjoy a strong focus on Mandalorian culture throughout, the journey of the Darksaber, Ahsoka Tano’s character growth, some important development for Boba Fett and Cad Bane, and an exploration of Sidious’ interest in force sensitive younglings - I’m making a special ‘Mandalorian cut’ for people who want to focus on just those elements.
- EXISTING FANS of The Clone Wars will enjoy a tighter cut, with bad episodes and bad scenes minimised, the fat trimmed, the structure of the whole made more compelling, the pacing improved, and polish throughout - but all of the important and good stuff preserved.
- PREQUEL and OBI-WAN KENOBI SERIES fans will enjoy a deeper exploration of Order 66 and Anakin’s fall, new layers to Obi-Wan, Sidious’ scheming, and the shades of grey and introduction of third parties which make this predictable two-faction conflict anything but.
- WIDER CANON fans will enjoy the constant threat of Darth Maul, and closer looks at Saw Gerrera, Moff Tarkin, all your favourite bounty hunters, Jedi, and the force itself, and a deep exploration of Clone identity and culture, including Captain Rex, Delta Squad, and the Bad Batch.
- Fans of having all the meat with no filler will be well served by my main cut, as I’ll be cutting a lot of unnecessary episodes. But fans who enjoy more of the ‘fringe’ episodes will be pleased to know I also intend to release these as “bonus episodes”, to an improved standard as part of my ‘Complete Cut’ (see below.)
- Fans of goofy humour, villains losing their menace, childish moments, and the bland CG of the early seasons will regretfully find themselves poorly served by this edit, since there will be some limited removal of episodes and scenes which are both not important and hard to enjoy.
WHAT'S INCLUDED?
AVAILABLE NOW:
(Expanded detail for all episodes is in the next post.)
- Prelude & Prologue (2 episodes) - one telling a single story from some of the Tartakovsky 2003 microseries, and bringing it closer to TCW characterisation so it can act as setup for this show; and one showing Ahsoka’s birth and discovery by the Jedi.
- SEASON ONE (10 episodes) - covering Christophsis, Malevolence, Death Watch on Mandalore, Cloak of Darkness, Domino Squad, Ryloth, Death Watch on Coruscant, Nightsisters, and the Holocron arc.
- SEASON TWO (10 episodes) - covering Bounty Hunters, Lair of Grievous, Massacre, Corruption on Mandalore, Boba Fett, Return of Maul, Jedi Crash, a ‘Lost Clones’ anthology, and the Geonosis arc.
- Interlude (1 episode) - bridging these two seasons with some content highlighting Ahsoka’s growth and relationship with Padmé.
- SEASON THREE (10 episodes) - covering Heroes on Both Sides trilogy, Rako Hardeen, Revival, A Friend in Need, Zygerria, Trandoshans, Eminence, Umbara, and the Onderon arc.
- SEASON FOUR (10 episodes) - covering Shades of Reason, Mortis, Ahsoka’s Fall, The Lawless, Scipio, the Order 66 arc, Son of Dathomir (audio comic fan version), and Yoda’s Quest.
- SEASON FIVE (5 episodes) - covering Martez Sisters and the Siege of Mandalore, cut to fit around your watch of Revenge of the Sith.
- Epilogue & Coda (2 episodes) - wrapping up the post-TCW story arcs for two of its major characters.
- Bonus Episodes(optional):
- A movie-length recap of Ahsoka’s story from Star Wars Rebels for those who’ve already watched the show but want to catch up before the Ahsoka show airs
- The Citadel arc
- Tales From the Clone Wars, aggregating some of the spare Tartakovsky 2003 microseries content with some Forces of Destiny shorts to tell a few small bonus tales that bridge seasons 2 and 3.
- Lightsaber Lost
- Assassin
- English Subtitles for Season One (thanks g00b!)
- Season and Episode posters for the entire show (thanks g00b!) - examples here.
- English Subtitles for the rest of the episodes.
- More bonus episodes - less good content, and not part of my recommended watching order, but optional extras if you want more of characters you’ll see in wider canon, or just ‘as much as I can that isn’t completely painful to watch’.
- Extended versions of four popular arcs. (Not recommended, but requested by some.)
- (Potentially) SEASON ZERO comprising Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones turned into episodes
WHAT WAS YOUR APPROACH?
Most importantly, I maintain an active dialogue with the community in this thread and over on OT.com throughout the project, to gain insight, feedback and ideas, and to challenge and validate my own assumptions and decisions.Your comments are always welcome, and there’ve already been a lot of examples where the community have made the outputs materially better than anything I could have done in isolation.
I first completed a holistic review of all episodes in chronological order, identifying episodes’ importance and quality, and where episodes could be grouped into thematic arcs or where existing arcs could be split. (The early pages of this thread contain those reviews, and I urge you to check them if you’re interested.) I’ve conducted additional full reviews as I’ve been working on the project, and continue to do so. After the first review pass I produced a reordering for the whole, which has seen some revisions as the show broke into a few natural groupings. The first priority in the reordering was to emphasise the show’s core and most rewarding plotlines (Maul, Mandalore, and Ahsoka’s development) and to give the full series more of an ongoing serialised feel than the current anthology feel, and allowing the show to build slow-burn anticipation towards the excellent conclusion. The second priority was to standardise the tone, to avoid the inherent tonal whiplash of the anthology format (beheadings and child hunting one week, and Jar Jar dancing next week). The third priority around that central spine was to pace and vary the rest of the quality content, ensuring no continuity is broken.
I then sorted and presented the reordered whole in an easy-to-understand way for four audiences: Those wanting context for the Mandalorian (and wider Filoniverse), those wanting the most high-quality Clone Wars TV show they can get, those wanting the most content that ties to existing continuity, and finally those simply wanting as much bearable Star Wars as possible. You can see this below, and the top left of my spreadsheet makes it clear which episodes to watch based on your preference.
I then established a set of standards for presenting episodes themselves, with new titles, introductory text, and end credits evocative of polish and high quality, to package each episode in the most attractive way. OT.com Forum member McFibb has produced stunning new musical arrangements, and I’m using concept art over the credits (like the Mandalorian does), in order to help set the new show’s tone.
I then produced the edits in priority order, based on my ‘Quality Cut’ (see below). This means the very best and most important episodes (45 of them) for a complete end-to-end viewing of The Clone Wars: Refocused. Now I’m moving on to the bonus episodes from the less important Cuts (about ~16).
For each individual episode of TCW:R, I conduct a further review of its component TCW episodes, identifying the core emotional backbone of the arc, content to highlight, downplay, or restructure, and in the case of more complex episodes I look for opportunities to recontextualise scenes or themes, or add scenes from other episodes, in order to produce more value. I share these thoughts with the community here and then set to work executing the cut. I generally produce either a RELEASE CUT (complete or very nearly complete) or a REVIEW CUT / WORKPRINT (requires a little polish or extra thought) of each episode, after which I incorporate community feedback to refine each episode further. All of this is easily tracked in the TRACKER SPREADSHEET, which you can send me a PM for.
HOW ARE YOU PRESENTING THE CONTENT FOR EACH AUDIENCE?
I’m producing four ‘cuts’, really four curated lists, to direct viewers to episodes which give them the experience they’re looking for. The top left of the tracker spreadsheet uses colour coding to help you identify the episodes you might want to watch.Initially I've produced the Quality cut episodes (which include the Mandalorian cut), but I'll follow that up with the remaining ones for those who want the extra material.
WHAT SOURCES HAVE YOU USED?
1080p Blu-ray rips of the majority of the Clone Wars CG series, the ‘Crystal Crisis’ unfinished episode (via the ‘Ahsoka’s Decision’ fan video created by Cinematic Captures on Youtube), the Tartakovsky Clone Wars 2D microseries (NumeralJoker’s 4k upscale), some Forces of Destiny shorts, and the Son of Dathomir Audio Comic from Audio Comics / The Lore Master on Youtube (which is necessary to a core plotline, but presented well).PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK!
I would greatly appreciate your feedback! What did/didn’t you like? What worked/didn’t work for you? I’m especially interested in how the Maul/Mandalore content works seeded throughout, and how Ahsoka’s overall journey lands - I’ve given both of these particular focus.This is very much a living project, and I am very open to making any future tweaks to absolutely anything in order to make this the best it can be.
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