03 December 2013

My Star Wars Editing Projects

Boba Fett got me started on these projects
In June, while my wife was out-of-town, I decided to have people over to join me in watching something about which I had been curious: Why were people so into Boba Fett?  I knew that he was the bounty hunter who had captured Han Solo in episode V and was part of Jabba the Hutt's partying in episode VI, but why else is he so interesting?  So, I did what any curious person would do: I collated all of the appearances in either cinematic release or television appearances.  Of course, I had to find out all of the places that Boba Fett was shown first.  Then, I gathered them, which was a fun and engaging project.  So, I had the Boba Fett showing, which was great.  
One of my Projects: Removing JarJar from Episodes I and II

I felt good about my Boba Fett Project, however, I then realized "Why stop there?"  I find myself frequently defending Episodes I & II and I realized JarJar Binks had to be removed.  So, I created versions of Episodes I & II with as little JarJar Binks as possible and I also removed the horrible romance scenes in episode II and most of the podracing scene in episode I.

 I was satisfied with those outputs.  That is, until I read Nicholas Carlson's Business Insider posting, wherein he writes that people should not "watch the first prequel. It turns out you don't need to. That's good, because that movie is historically awful."  I realized that, yes, most of episode I is useless in the overall scheme of things, but there are some redeeming features that are worth watching in it.  So, I had to do something about that.

 I realized that my removal of certain elements in Episodes I & II did not go far enough.  I then removed most of episode I and a minority of Episode II: Episode I becomes entirely about the battle for Naboo and about the Jedi discovering the existence of Sith while Episode II largely remains intact, minus the romantic stuff between Anakin and Padme.  This yields 2.5 hours of screentime, roughly the length of either of these movies.

 Whoo!  For the time, I am pretty satisfied about this last project :)  
However, my next one will be to gather all of the Darth Maul material in the Star Wars: Clone Wars series....
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2 comments:

thanbo said...

Darth Maul was invented to sell plastic dolls. I don't think he had more than one line in the whole movie. If that.

BTW, re the new blog, I stopped reading you years ago because you gave up blogging, and I had no idea you had come back to it. Nice to know you're still around. I suppose there's some need for publicity, like commenting on other blogs and letting people know you're writing again, because I don't see many comments on your recent work here.

12/26/2013 1:04 PM
Drew Kaplan said...

Thanbo - Thank you for commenting!
Darth Maul had a few lines, although his role as a Sith apprentice may have been more important than who he was (although the Star Wars Clone Wars did a great job bringing him back to life and exploring his power).

As to my blogging, yes, I did step back in the summer of 2006, but kind of got back into it, although - as you pointed out - I wasn't involved with the JBlogosphere as much afterwards and still haven't been....

12/27/2013 9:47 AM

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