Friday, March 23, 2007

Fixing Star Wars - Episode 2

Wow, were in the home stretch now. I think it was about 2 in the morning at this point... :)

Episode 2 is in pretty good shape. Mostly trimming for time and tempo, and patching to fit in the other changes we've made:
  • Cut Obi-wan's bartender friend, and reduce the library search. It slows everything down. Remember any scenes of Jedi training should have them older than five years old.
  • Remove the factory fight (and flying R2). It adds nothing.
  • Shorten the interrogation of Obi-wan and monster arena fight. The action doesn't climax until after the Jedi arrive, and then the stormtroopers arrive. This leads to some amount of saturation.
  • If that isn't enough time savings, the asteroid chase can also be removed. It adds little, and Obi-wan can still need Anakin to relay his message (Ben's ship is too small, or has a random failure).
  • Put in some conflict between Anakin and uncle Owen. That had to be the easiest connection back to the original trilogy, and Lucas dropped it on the floor.
  • Remember that Count Dooku is Darth Maul (per Episode 1). This can help to maintain the suspense on whether Dooku is good, evil, or just independent.
That is most of the changes. I will put together all the changes for 3, 4, and 5 into a final post.

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