Revenge of the Sith... Unedited?

I didn't believe it exists. I've heard people say it originally showed Yoda going to dagobah, but I always took that as people misquoting a review. That's the only rumored thing I've heard missing.

Lucas has said that the film was trimmed down for theatrical release, as he felt that it moved slowly in places. There's supposed to be some material revolving around Padme starting up the Rebel Alliance, and more of the defense of Kasshyyk. Maybe that's the stuff they're referring to. I'm assuming we'll see it on the official DVD.

All I ask for the DVD is that they add back in the stuff about Qui-Gonn. If they do that, I'll be a happy man.

Most films get cut down from a very long intial cut. It's SOP. It's just the most do not have the kind of scrutiny that ROTS got.
The fact is that maybe some of the scenes the Lucas cut were not very good and not necessary to the story line. Like actully showing Yoda going to Dagobah was unnecessary. All we have to know to hook up with Empire is that he is going into exile.
You have to assume that these cuts were made by Lucas volutarily, since he has the muscle to make the film just about any length he choose that was not ludricous.

I'd say the start of the Rebel Alliance was a bit more necessary than Count Duckula.

It wasn't really the start of the Rebel Alliance though. It wasn't like they were talking about getting weapons, hidden bank accounts, and a base on Yavin. It was just them saying how they didn't think he would give up his powers and then some of them talking about how they would have to fight it. Padme then says something about not saying what doesn't need to be said. It sounds boring to me. I would like to see the shots, no doubt about that. But they are probably the last thing I would want put back into the film. Unless the performance was just mind-blowing, which I doubt it is. Besides, it puts a very boring introduction to the start of the Alliance, which of course does start in the senate, but still.

Hopefully the TV show will execute the start of the Alliance in the way it should be done.

That said, I would like to see the animatics of Yoda talking to Qui-Gon. Probably just him sitting there while Ben Burtt pretends to be Liam Neeson, but still...

Not when it takes twenty minutes of politicians sitting in a room, chatting. And even then nothing is learned that the first fifteen minutes of A New Hope don't already establish.

From what I remember when reading the ROTS script, six or seven weeks ago, the scene with Padme, Bail, Mon Monthra, and the other senators wasn’t particularly too long. It would be nice to add it back in, since that was Padme’s story amidst the sausage-fest. However, when I was watching ANH yesterday, having that sequence cut from ROTS didn’t detract linking up PT to the OT for me.

I bet I would have the same reactions to the cut footage for ROST as I had to the stuff Lucas cut out of AOTC. When I read that script, I thought “Padme addressing the Senate after her cruiser was bombed,” and “Anakin meeting her family” were both essential to the story, and thought they were bad calls on Lucas’s part to remove them after my first viewing. After seeing the deleted scenes on the DVD, I realized it was a pretty smart choice, since both sequences would have ground the film to a halt.

If anything I would like to see the “crazy Yoda” bit back in, when he’s fleeing Kashyyyk. Tarfull and Chewie snuck him off the planet a little too easily.

I feel that the meeting with Padme's family only made the love stuff stronger and made it make more sense. So, I hope they do drop that back in, especially with family showing up in "Sith."

That scene with the "start" of the Rebell Alliance at least reads like a very boring scene that deserved to be cut.

Just read a bit of the "Making of ...", so there was a version of the script that had Sidious basically telling Palpatine that he's sort of his father, pretty interesting ...

How does that work? Does Palpatine talk to himself a la Norman Osborn in Spiderman?

I don't know. The "Meet the Parents" sequence felt too much like "Dawson's Creek in Space" for my tastes. Granted as much as I love the prequels, the forbidden romance of Anakin and Padme will probably go down as the weakest aspect of the saga. I’m not saying I hate the love story. I just think it’s probably a feet not many could have pulled off perfectly.

Whoops, Anakin ...

I actually kind of liked those scenes for a couple of reasons. Of all the deleted scenes on the DVD I liked those the best. I like how amidst all the grand scale stuff -- confrontations in unusual places with unusual creatures and decisions that affect the fate of the entire galaxy-- there's this small scale normal ordinary domestic scene. Everything about it is so tonally different than most anything in the rest of the 6 movies. It struck me more like something out of a foreign romance film like Belle Epoque than necessarily Dawson's Creek.

There a couple of other little touches in these scenes that are different and I think add an extra dimension. First the two girls that are delighted by the presence of R2-D2 and start playing with him. It seemed to me to be a geniune reaction by people who, unlike everyone else in the saga, don't see a droid everyday and take them for granted. It accentuates the low key, normal people element. Then the next scene with the pictures hanging on Padme's wall. You don't see keepsake photos like real people have in a Star Wars movie. The context created by these little details and the less overt love story elements contained within the scene I think might have strengthened the love story arc. I could be wrong about that since I've never actually seen the movie as it might play with those scenes put back in. At any rate considering that Padme's family is shown at her funeral, it seems as though the scenes do rightfully belong in Episode II.

Back to the main topic, an unedited version of ROTS raises more questions in my mind. For one what exactly differentiates an unedited vs. edited version of a movie? Is it all 100 hours of raw footage? Is it the first rough cut? Certainly there's the obvious whole entire scenes that existed in the shooting script, were shot and then removed. But even scenes that do survive have little pieces trimmed away. To this day I'm still disturbed by Han Solo's girlfriend in Mos Eisley.

Funny, I don't remember Padme wrestling with her conciensce over Anakin, Palpatine and the group, and also the threat of arrest that they all felt was there in ANH.

Nothing can be as boring as the entirety of the Utapau sequence.

Uh, that was in the film...

Yes, this deleted scene seems to be.

No it wasn't. He mentions that Plaeguis could create life through midis, so it's sort of implied. In the earlier version of the script, they had a more direct, "I willed the midichlorians to create you" and a "So in a way I am your father" and a "search your feelings" moment. I imagine this was during the part were Anakin discovers he's the Sith Lord.

Strangely, I do remember these zingers: The Emperor is bad, the Empire is evil, and it must be stopped... which is essentially, in a roundabout way, where the senators ended up in those scenes.

I actually think that in this case an strong implication was probably a better way to handle this then a flat statement.
And I am not a huge Lucas fan by any means.
Lucas was cutting ROTS to the length and pace that he felt would be most effective as a film, and if that meant that a lot of stuff that the die hard fans would like to see got left on the floor so be it. He was correct in that decison, although how well he suceeded in the end in making an effective film is open to debate. But He was right in not including a whole lot of background stuff that A. Would have slowed down the film and B.was not really necessary. We know the Rebel Alliance will form we don't to see a long scene explaining the how and whys.
But I agree it might have been more interesting then all the freaking Grevious stuff.
As for the deleted "Meet the Parents" scene in AOTC, still another case of "Good Concept, Bad Excution".
And Nothing could have saved the Padme/Anakin love story in AOTC short of a complete and total rewrite of the love scenes, which did not happen....

That line sounded pretty literal to me.

Me too. There's a lot of debate going on about this, and I don't understand why. There is no reason on earth to include that story in the dialogue if it's not there to explain Anakin's divine conception. I don't see how there can be any debate on this point at all. The Phantom Menace sets it up, Revenge of the Sith slams it home. It's right there, and you don't need Palpatine saying "And so you see, Anakin, I am therefore your father. Ipso Facto." Only a nine-year-old would need it spelled out any clearer.

Sure there is. Palpatine could be (again!) twisting the truth around; to seduce Anakin in this case. Perhaps he feels that if he replaces Obi-Wan as Anakin's father figure it will make it that much easier to turn him to the dark side. Considering that Palpatine goes on to lie about having the power to save Padme, again in an effort to bring Anakin closer to him, I don't see why it's such a stretch to believe he's lying here as well.

I like to think that Anakin was created as a neutral and he's being twisted by both the light side and the dark side when in fact he was created to serve neither, only to bring balance.

Exactly. I'm glad Lucas dropped the "I'm sort of your father" speech during the revision process. Too many audience members would have taken Palpatine for his word. People need to stop debating about the origins of Anakin. The correct theory is the one Qui-Gon thought of; The Force itself created Skywalker.

Jimmy? Brian! (Pop! Pop!) I didn't know it was you little man. I didn't know.

Just because you saw a couple of insert shots of Padme's family at the funeral is hardly justification for sticking them back in AOTC. The "Meet the Parents" scenes are nice, but out-of-place with the rest of the film.

Off the subject, last night I watched "Dominoes" for the first time in years. Man it brought back some bad memories. How long has it been since you watched one of the greatest films of 1996 again?

Here’s how I take the mystical parentage of Anakin Skywalker.

In the old documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga,” Mark Hamill narrated a line about Luke’s coming of age. He basically said that the Star Wars films were about “a boy becoming a man and discovering that he holds all the world’s possibilities for good and evil.” Anakin was born of the Force. Anakin was therefore born of good and evil, which the Force is both. It shows that Anakin had all the worlds’ possibilities in him from birth, he wasn’t destined for evil. There is a dark side and a light side and Anakin differed from the light and went towards the dark. Qui-Gon and Palpatine are both right, in their own way.

I also took Palpatine’s insinuation regarding Anakin’s birth to mean that his Master created the vergence in the Force that lead to his birth, not Palpatine. If his Master could create life, yet Palpatine needs Anakin’s help to discover this technique, it doesn’t make sense that he used the technique and then suddenly got a case of amnesia. That’s if you believe that Palpatine wasn’t just flat out lying about it in the first place.

I personally think there was some truth to what Palpatine said. I think he did kill his Master in his sleep. I think his Master did have the power to life via midichorlians and the power to manipulate them. I don’t think that Palpatine every learned that though. I think he killed him before he ever got the chance, or his Master being an evil Sith withheld and didn’t actually teach him everything he knew.

The Prophecy was supposed to say that the chosen one would destroy the Sith and then bring balance. Why would the Sith force that creation and put that into play? I think it just happened and Palpatine knew that he couldn’t really win against the chosen one since fate was involved, so he did the next best thing and manipulated the kid into following him. Once Anakin was a Sith, only something sneaky like killing him in his sleep would do the trick. I bet that cunning fellow had those sorts of precautions worked out. The dude was probably around ninety when he died, so in the end, he pretty much wins. The guy got a good 40 years of dastardly troublemaking behind him before he dived down that futuristic conveniently placed hole in the middle of his makeshift throne room.

It’s also worth nothing that McCallum says he thinks Palpatine created Anakin. So that’s the most official we’ve got on that, until the DVD commentary of course.

And to reply to the post above me, I think the family scenes would work. But I am curious if they fuck up the time line and Obi-Wan's adventures.

You're talking about Palpatine's reasons for telling the story. I'm talking about George Lucas' reasons for telling the story. Step out of the movie reality for a moment and look at the scene as a piece of storytelling instead of a literal event. There's no reason to include a lengthy piece of dialogue that doesn't forward the story in some way. And since we're told the virgin conception story in Episode I, it makes sense that this concludes that thread.

And even taking it from within story/character parameters, there are flaws with that viewpoint. First of all, does Anakin even know of his unusual conception? He's never commented on it. Secondly, your contention that it would make Anakin see Palpatine as a father figure makes no sense whatsoever, since Anakin doesn't know yet that Palpatine is even a Sith, much less that he's the apprentice of Darth Plaguis.

There are only two reasons for this conversation. From the storytelling perspective, to give the audience a possible explanation for Anakin's Jesus origin. And from a character/manipulation perspective, so that Palpatine can casually drop into conversation that the Dark Side will allow him to save his wife. Palpatine lying about the conception part really doesn't get him anywhere with Anakin unless Anakin already knows he's a Sith, which he clearly doesn't.

When Palpatine tells the story of Darth Plagueis he says he could manipulate midichlorians to create life and also stop people from dying, so the power to cheat death, as Sidious later describes it, was a separate power which only his master had accomplished, although Palpatine may have been lying about that.

But according to the timeline, it's hard to say if Sidious created Anakin oe not. If Anakin was 9 in TPM then Palpatine could have already been the Sith master before Anakin's conception, or become the master shortly thereafter. Either way would have given him ample time to train Darth Maul.

I kind of like the idea of Sidious merely usurping the grand work of his master, Darth Plagueis the Wise. It makes Sidious into more of a weasel.

Can you imagine the backlash from Christopher Lee if he was cut out of his final scene in TWO trilogies... Jesus.

Good theory. I know there is some truth in Palpatine's tale of Darth Plagueis. I just don't think the Sith set out to create "The Chosen One." Anakin was more than likely a side effect of the Sith's tampering with the Force. Palpatine wasn't even aware of Skywalker until Qui-Gon showed up with him.

Could we please stop attributing virgin births with Jesus only? Virgin births appear in all the world's mythologies, not just Christian mythology.

A valid point. I take back the Jesus reference.

So... did kungfumonkeyboy ever get the copy he said he might receive?

Don't be a jackass.

Nobody said there wasn't. There just happens to be one virgin birth that is a billion times more famous than the others. You don't have to nitpick every word of every sentence. Fucking internet....

I wasn’t being a jackass, chief. I was making a polite request. Is it so hard for people to think of something, besides Jesus, when addressing the spiritual motifs in Star Wars?

I suppose if you consider Dionysus, Krishna, Osiris, and even Hercules to be mostly obscure mythological figures then yes. I think Jesus just happens to be the most pervasive in our particular culture at this particular time. Equating Anakin with Jesus can be an appropriate way of shorthanding an explanation of his character given the cultural relevance. But sometimes I can't help but feel as though there is an underlying fundamentalism at work there. "Lucas must have looked only to Christian mythology. Where else could he have looked? The Bible is 100% factual and 100% original." It may not be true, but given the current sociopolitical climate it's starting to become an automatic reaction.

Interesting, I always figured ROTS would have a big reveal where Palpatine is Anakin's father. I was disappointed when it didn't show up.

Give. Me. A. Break.

Jesus is the most popular virgin birth in our pop culture. To disregard it and forbid mention of it because it offends your good sensibilities is ridiculous. Mentioning Jesus doesn't automatically mean someone is saying there are no other virgin births in any other mythologies. They're drawing parallels to Jesus because it just so happens that Jesus, whether or not you believe in the guy, is the big virgin birth story in our culture today, and it would have to have crossed the mind of any writer who does a virgin birth in their big space opera mythology, especially an American writer.

What you're doing would be no different from travelling to the Middle East and making a "polite request" for everyone to stop talking about this Mohammed guy. Sorry, pal. That's the culture.

What a jump you make, from somebody equating this with Jesus' virgin birth to somebody being a fundametalist. You're just reacting too emotionally to a comment that makes perfect sense, and you're not really making any more sense than many of the most radical "fundamentalists" I suspect you don't like.

Get a grip of yourself.

Having said that;

I felt that it would have been cool to have another "I am your father" moment in the prequels, but to be quite honest it would have been too "cute" and maybe even diminish that moment as it happened in ESB. In a way it's kind of good the way it is right now, it's hinted but not said explicitly for you so we can make our own conclusions, and so that it's revelation didn't have anything to do with Anakin's turn.

I'm looking forward to the DVD commentary to see if there's an explination why that was removed.

Sigh.

Wasn’t this thread about an extended version of ROTS? I just knew if I made that comment, somebody was going to take it the wrong way. I just never thought it would completely derail the discussion. The funny thing is the person I directed the post towards got the point and moved on with their life.

As far as what Lucas intended, it’s pretty clear if you’ve read anything with him on the matter of spirituality and mythology, that he’s not a Christian, or at least not anymore. Most of his research comes from Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", which just happens to have a chapter on virgin births.

As for the “traveling to the Middle East” analogy, I'm sorry, so the internet is a Christian realm only, or that America is a Christian theocracy? This argument doesn't make sense to me. I find it even more disturbing you consider Christ to be a pop culture icon.

Someone is having a hard time distinguishing logic and emotion in their own brain.