Another LucasArts President steps down

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

That's a shame. The rest of the edit was pretty damn good. Wish you'd give it a go, but I can't exactly force ya.

I will watch The Phantom Edit then, and give them a comparison.

However, right out of the box I will tell you that L8wrtr has points over Phantom Editor by naming it Shadow of the Sith instead of The Phantom Edit; and for having a prologue-style opening crawl instead of notes from the editor. (Incidentally, there are notes from the editor, but they are in a special feature).

EDIT: I'm not going to bother with Attack of the Phantom. First, it's a dumb name. Second, L8wrtr's The Republic Divided is fantastic, so there's no need.

[Shadowknight1]

I don't get it. Where can you see these edits?

[Darth Marsden]

The appropriately named FanEdit.org. Lot of other edits there, have a look.

[Chyron8472]

You can get information about the edits from http://fanedit.org/

On the Star Wars Fan Edits page on that site, it says L8wrtr's Dawn of the Empire (Ep 3) is still "in the works" but it's actually finished.

Phantom Editor's Edits
The Phantom Edit
Attack of the Phantom

L8wrtr's Edits
http://fanedit.org/wp/l8wrtr/


Where to download them from (assuming you own the official movies--you are REQUIRED to by law in order to have a fan edit of said movie; and no one can buy or sell them):

Download JDownloader, then go to fanedit.info. There will be .dlc files associated with each editor. Download the appropriate .dlc file, and import it into JDownloader. The program should find the locations of the required files. Press the button to start (it looks like a Play button) and then wait for it to finish.
These are DVD, AVCHD or Bluray in size so it will take a while.

Remember: Never buy a fanedit from anyone; never sell it to anyone; and own at least one copy of the the official movie(s) first. Fan edits legally fall under the category of fair use, which means that no one can profit from them, and the copyright owner can't lose money because of them.

[MusicallyInspired]

I have both Phantom Edits and they're both great. Haven't seen any others, though. Attack of the Clones was so terribly terribly hard to watch. So many cringe worthy scenes. I could barely believe how much more watchable Attack of the Phantom made it. Many parts with the stupid dialogue were just muted right out, leaving just unspoken emotion. It actually worked WAY better than the cheesy dialogue delivered by Hayden's corny and clumsy acting.

[Chyron8472]

Well, I love The Republic Divided. It's fantastic. I also love the reasoning behind it:

The areas that I focused on for major improvements are

Friendship
We all know that Anakin and Obi-Wan are supposed to be “good friends” so it was quite disjointing to see Obi-Wan be a dick to Anakin throughout the movie, as well as Anakin be a petulant, ungrateful whiner. By cutting out the mutual antagonism we are left with two characters we can believe are friends. The audience wants them to be friends, and by eliminating the obstacles to that, we now can simply accept that we are watching two friends on screen.

We need a Hero
From the first frame, grown up Anakin is annoying. He’s timid and unsure one moment, disrespectful and bitchy the next. Audiences react so negatively to these extreme personality traits that the moments where Ankin is likable or heroic are lost. By carving out his creepy leering at Padme, his whining, and his unexplained outbursts of anger, what remains are glimpses of the hero we want to like and root for, at least as much as can be salvaged with the footage we have at our disposal.

A Love Story
People bash Lucas for the stilted dialog, and this is a fair criticism, however I can forgive that because it is par for the course in the Saga of Star Wars. What is perplexing is how he chose to have them resist their emotions. We all know that they will end up together so the ruse of them resisting is at best distracting, but worse it impedes the progression of the actual story. In addition to eliminating their resistance, it is key to also remove Lucas’ attempt to show how/why they fall in love. He forgot his own brilliant solution to how to tell a love story back from The Empire Strikes Back; don’t show it. We never see why Han and Leia fall in love, we simply have two characters we like who over the course of several scenes admit their love for each other. Fixing Anakin and cutting out the more on-the-nose aspects of the story results in a love story that is far more believable.

Action, Action, Action!
Again like Shadow of the Sith I focused on improving the pacing, particularly in the action sequences. The opening speeder chase is easily cut in half, similar to Attack of the Phantom most of the Obi-Wan/Jango fist fight is gone, and the asteroid chase benefits from a few nips and tucks. But more importantly, the Droid Factory Rescue is majorly reconstructed to eliminate not only C-3PO’s antics, but flying R2-D2 and Anakin getting trapped in the machinery. The battle of Geonosis is heavily redacted because quite simply, it doesn’t matter. It is robots fighting clones. No character that we are invested in is in danger so the sequence just eats up time. Lastly, the confrontation between Dooku and Yoda loses the saber bit. They fight with the Force only.

Dialog
Also, like Shadow of the Sith Most scenes have some modification which eliminate redundant and/or obvious exposition as well as poorly written and/or delivered dialog. Six scenes were so useless and/or poorly written that they were removed entirely.

Simplify
The Obi-Wan Kenobi mystery hunt reveals a great many questions, most of which not only go unanswered in Episode II, but Episode III as well. Because there is no payoff for the great mysteries of his search, the convoluted plot points are truly useless. I have simplified Obi-Wan’s search for Padme’s assassin so that the story can move swiftly, cleanly and also saving Kenobi for being revealed to have an intellect less than that of a 5 year old Padawan. Relieved of this contrived plotline, the story now moves more cleanly. The illogic of the Jedi accepting the mysterious Clone Army remains, it’s an unavoidable WTF moment, but the rest of the non-sequiturs are removed or toned down.

Also, L8wrtr includes commentary tracks in each of his edits.

[DAISHI]

What were those 3 hour critiques of the movie?

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by DAISHI

What were those 3 hour critiques of the movie?

What are you referring to?

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by DAISHI

What were those 3 hour critiques of the movie?

If you're referring to Plinkett's reviews, here's a link.

If you weren't, you should watch them anyways because they're hilarious and also do a fantastic job of analyzing the movies.

[Chyron8472]

Meh. I like The Distressed Watcher's reviews of the prequels better. For one thing he doesn't have an annoying schtick like Plinkett does.

http://blip.tv/thedistressedwatcher/...rt-one-3593824

[Shadowknight1]

Hm, I don't have the hard drive space for these things, so unless someone can point me to a place I can watch them online, they're not for me. Honestly, my problems with the prequels come down to one simple thing. Lucas isn't a director. He's a special effects artist. The best Star Wars didn't even have him as a director. His editing is piss-poor at best, sometimes even in the OT. Case in point, the scene at Obi-Wan's hut. Adywan recut that scene and it worked so much better than the original scene did. In fact, I love Adywan's cut of A New Hope for the most part. He fixed the screw-ups that ILM did, and I liked that he made the fight between Obi and Vader a bit more intense(though god, why did he add Battle of the Heroes?) and the extra stuff during the Death Star battle.

[DAISHI]

Lucas needed someone else to direct and rewrite his materials. Like in the original trilogy.

[MusicallyInspired]

Totally.

[nickh]

[QUOTE=Shadowknight1;648414]Lucas isn't a director. He's a special effects artist. QUOTE]

That’s an interesting point to me, because I think CGI played a massive part of why things went so wrong with Star Wars – and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for that matter.

Granted, CGI opened the door to allow Lucas to do things that wouldn’t have been possible before, like set large parts of the story on Coruscant for instance, but I’m of the belief that it’s most effective when used as little as possible. I have a problem with computer generated characters because I think they stick out like a sore thumbs; I’d much rather have a guy in a suit! I didn’t look at Chewbacca or the Wampa (that is the name of the ice beast thing right?) and think ‘that looks like a guy in a suit’, I thought ‘that looks like an entirely plausible alien’, but if I watch Obi-Wan talking with the people on Kamino, or bloody Jar-Jar Binks, I think ‘that’s blatantly a computer image’ and it ruins things for me. It’s hard to explain – it seems illogical to complain about realism in a fantasy sci-fi film, but I want to be able to believe it. I also much preferred the spaceships and vehicles in the original trilogy for much the same reason. Detailed models look so real because, in a sense, they are! Admittedly, the explosions look pretty rubbish, but that’s when CGI should be used.

I feel a bit uncomfortably criticizing Lucas too much, after all it was his genius creation, but I believe that technological limitations actually fuelled his ingenuity. I think that if it weren’t for the Star Wars moniker, then the prequel trilogy would’ve been heralded as one of the biggest flops of all time.

[DAISHI]

I think George Lucas is a great big ideas guy. He had this thing, Saga of the Whills, there were lots of good, big ideas. But he sucks at whittling it down and getting the best out of it, he needs people to do it for him, essentially.

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by Shadowknight1

Hm, I don't have the hard drive space for these things

You don't have 9 Gig of free space for a DVD?

hmm... I guess this is a gaming forum, and I myself did have to plug in my old hard drive to have the space for my movies (as my primary hdd is filled with Steam games)


I don't think you're going to find it to stream online. You'll either have to download it or else someone will have to mail it to you on disc.

[Burnwurscht]

LucasArts nowadays is just a rediculous shadow of its glory past.

The studio was a legend and created legendary games, but what they pulled off in the last years is so sad that I do not even want to read any news about LucasArts anymore.

I still pray to god that one day they will sell all their adventure IPs to Telltale so we can finally see some sequels.

[GaryCXJk]

I am still waiting for the Monkey Island game where Morgan takes over Elaine's body to make ghost babies with Guybrush. Oh, and as a side effect Elaine also gets preggers.

[Vainamoinen]

Hopefully and probably, Morgan LeFlay doesn't belong to LucasArts.

[Darth Marsden]

Originally Posted by GaryCXJk

I am still waiting for the Monkey Island game where Morgan takes over Elaine's body to make ghost babies with Guybrush. Oh, and as a side effect Elaine also gets preggers.

Thought.

Morgan hijacks Elaine's body and has sex with Guybrush. Elaine doesn't get pregnant, but Morgan gets stuck in her womb, and due to voodoo stuff eventually is (re)born as a human, but is also Elaine and Guybrush's daughter.

Wacky hijinks ensue.