PT Attack of the Clones: Director's Cut

I may have brought this up before on the temp forums, but I'll just make a new thread.

First of all, I think Attack of the Clones seems the most inconsistant out of all the prequels. Not saying that it takes away from the quality, but it had a very ambitious story to tell, and had to go through many rewrites and reshoots to achieve the final result. But what about the early version(s)? Here's a few notable changes I can think of off the top of my head:
- Much more coverage on Anakin and Padme, including the introduction of Padme's family
- Senate coverage immediately following Padme's assasination attempt
- Obi-Wan is attacked by Massiffs while spying on Geonosis
- The trial of Padme and Anakin was replaced by Obi-Wan's conversation with Dooku
- Obi-Wan and Mace speaking of Anakin on a landing pad was replaced by Yoda, Mace and Obi-Wan speaking in the Jedi Temple
- The droids stay onboard the ship; Padme and Anakin are captured by Jango as soon as they enter the facility
- Additional battle scenes on Geonosis and the Droid Control ship were replaced by 3PO and R2 scenes
- More scenes on Tatooine, an alternate re-introduction to 3PO
- Unused/alternate score would have been used

Now, not all of these scenes deal with pacing, as some are major plot points. Knowing this, I believe Attack of the Clones would be a drastically different movie given a different cut. Not saying it would be better, but it would focus on different aspects not explored in the final film. I'd be interested to see this, or any other movie given different treatments, just to see what could have been.

 

I agree with you on a few of those points. Some I'm impartial to, but I'd definitely watch a different cut of this movie similar to the one you described.

IMO Attack of the Clones was the most different SW movie there is - it shifted from the sheer action feel of the others to more of a slow paced intrigue type of film (till the end obviously). I think that AOTC had the potential to be something really great however some of the performances, dialogue and the way a few key scenes were done really drags it down.

Don't agree with the much more coverage of Anakin and Padme, however I would have preferred that their coverage be of slightly better quality. But I think that's a general complaint a lot of people have.

 

I would be more than happy to see all of those scenes in ATOC rather some of the ones we got on the film. However, I'm too interested in seeing more of Padme's family or even her love story with Anakin for that matter. I would have preferred to see none of it or all of it, not just a couple minutes worth of playing in a field.

 

is possible to just 'do a film again'? i find parts of AotC to be boring and convoluted (such as Kamino-i think its quite boring) and the dialogue of both Padme and Anakin is very much ...dull. It seems that it could have been much better given some more time in development?

 

There's already a Director's Cut of sorts of AOTC: The re-edited version on Blu-Ray (which is inferior to the theatrical version as the editing of the Coruscant chase is surprisingly bad).

 

The Coruscant re-edit is almost unnoticeable. At least when compared with the re-edit of the end of Yoda vs Dooku duel. That's why whenever I want to watch AotC, I use the DVD version.

 

I really wished Lucas had done with the PT what Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings films: Release a theatrical version, and then an extended DVD version for the diehard fans. It would have been cool to have a 2 hour 15 minute version and a 3 hour extended version on DVD/BluRay. There are alot of good subplots that go on in the PT that could have been fleshed out with an extended cut. Plus, Mr. Lucas could get more $$$ from all of us! It's a win-win!

 

More of what, though?

Extended battle scenes?
Extended Coruscant chase?
Extended love scenes?

 

Interesting. I didn't know they altered the end of their duel... what is so different that you won't even watch it?

 

Basically they changed the order of the shots, thus creating some continuity problems, including the score where you notice an abrupt change/break. Now Dooku's ship is still in the hangar when Yoda pulls the cane and looks remorseful begging the question for why didn't Yoda jumped to Dooku's ship after he saved Obi-Wan and Anakin. On the DVD cut, Dooku escaped from the hangar while Yoda was saving them and the music flowed nicely because that's how the scene was edited at the time.

 

When I saw the change to the end of ROTJ, I decided against purchasing the Bluray versions.


After what you just said, my avoidance deal keeps getting better all the time.

 

love AOTC,

visually the best star wars film

the blu-rays never interested me either

 

All SW movies have a great deal of deleted scenes and all, but what strikes me about Attack of the Clones is the different direction it could have taken. Different parts of the story would have been emphasized and whole parts wouldn't exist.

But in addition to that, I have no problem with added battle scenes.

 

Hm, additional scenes would have been nice. There was just too much story to tell, and some of the cut scenes would have made things a little more coherent IMO.

 

I remember the Padme's family deleted scenes. That would've altered the tone of the film.

 

I feel like AOTC had such an elaborate story that it should have been the longest movie out of the PT by a mile. There's so much going on in that point in time that the little amoutn of story that was there almost wasn't enough.

 

Would it thus be a prime candidate for a Special Edition Extended Edition? Perhaps.

 

I agree with you here. But having said that I don't think that adding scenes in to a new cut would make it a much better movie. I think that what is in the theatrical version would have been enough to make a great movie, but I find that the execution of some of the scenes is what prevents it from really being great, rather than the volume of story content. As others said above, it comes across as a bit dull and boring at times, and other times I think it also suffers from a few movie mishaps here and there.

But as a diehard SW fan I'd love to see the additional scenes just because I always love to see new content, good or bad.

 

You worded it perfectly.

 

If you had to genre box each of the PT flicks, Ep. 1 is the adventure flick, Ep. 3 is the tragedy movie, and Ep. 2 is the romantic flick, with a bit of a gumshoe noir mystery tossed in as a subplot. Also Tusken genoicde, but that is kinda deserving of it's own genre distinction. I think the area battle is a solid example of Lucas sort of riffing on classic genre tropes, the roman gladiator style flick, and he tosses in space alien bugs and big monsters and so forth.

 

I'd love to see Lord of the Rings-esque Extended Editions of all of the films. Along with the original theatrical releases.

 

You could edit out all the over the top love scenes but no one can deny the last 40min of AOTC is some of the best action of the saga...........

 

I would not only not add more Padme and Anakin, I would cut what little screen time together they had. That stuff was barely watchable.

 

I would completely agree with you on this. There is plenty of action for an entire neighborhood in the ending of AOTC.

 

I would like to see a Director's cut of AotC. I like about half of what you listed.
I would like to see the Senate talk about Padme's assignation attempt
The scene's with Padme's family would have been great towards the relationship between Anakin and Padme
I prefer Obi-Wan and Mace talking to each other about Anakin, for some reason
More battle scenes on Geonosis