Synopsis:

The Phantom Jedi: A Star Wars Story transforms all eight episodes of Ahsoka Season 1 into a 2-hour, 34-minute high fantasy adventure feature film, complete with a classic Star Wars opening crawl and end credits.

Intentions:

As with many Disney+ shows, I thought this series was pretty good with fun moments and great, canon-pushing ideas- but was unfortunately plagued with pacing issues and questionable execution. My goal with this edit was to streamline and re-contextualize some of my personal concerns to express a coherent, enjoyable story for the audience If you haven’t seen the show (or any of the shows like The Clone Wars and Rebels), I’m curious what you'll think watching this fanedit as the first impression. Certainly, I also like getting feedback about what works or don't work in terms of the changes between the show and a movie fanedit- but I'm interested on how a story like this may come across to those who haven't seen the source materials.

Change List:

I’ll present the changes as a summary of the plot because there was a lot of editing to account for: 1. Lucasfilm logo, then “A long time ago in galaxies (plural) far, far away….” 2. Opening crawl. Provided context on the liberaton of planet Lothal (from Rebels) and majorly simplified the red crawl from Episode 1, then used that. 3. Start off with the attack on The Vesper. Then, Ahsoka in Arcana finds the star map and fights assassin droids. Cuts for pacing and dialogue. 4. Ahsoka meets with Hera regarding the escaped Morgan Elsbeth. Edits for pacing. 5. Removed ceremony, cut straight to Sabine Wren on her bike disobeying orders, then she isolates and mulls about Ezra at the tower. This introduces her character, her current life, and her wants/objective. 6. Morgan orders Shin Hati to Lothal. 7. Short cameo by Clancy Brown telling Sabine important news. I think this has a nicer, better effect now having removed the ceremony itself. It feels to me like a proper cameo. 8. Cut to Ahsoka and Sabine in the ship talking about Ezra and their complicated past as master and apprentice. Edits for pacing. 9. Sabine unlocks the map at her place, then gets attacked by droids. Loses to Shin and loses the map. 10. Sabine wakes up. Ahsoka clearly upset. 11. Ahsoka kills the remaining droid and brings its head to Sabine for clues. 12. Removed fake tension of head-bomb blowing up (it's a poorly executed scene of artificial stakes, IMO). Ahsoka brings her the head and Sabine figures out its from Corellia. Simple. 13. Ahsoka and Hera uncovers some imperial remnants in the shipyard and placed a tracking device on an outgoing hyperdrive core to Seatos. 14. Sabine, still depressed, decides to abandon her training but Huyang spells some wisdom. Cut to Sabine in her samurai Mandalorian armor. I didn’t show her cutting her hair so it looks like she’s about to commit sepukku. Cut immediately to Ahsoka receving transmission she’s ready and with a new haircut. They come together and go to Seatos. They train for a bit. 15. Removed senate council scenes. I found them primarily as a device to delay Hera from going with Ahsoka and then save her later. I don’t think it serves any real purpose to the story in hand. Ahsoka in hyperspace gets a transmission that Hera can’t make it because of Senate’s decision, and I think that’s all this needs. It’s direct and pushes the narrative forward. Hera rebels anyway and arrives later. 16. Ahsoka and Sabine arrive to Seatos. Space fight. Team gets stranded in the woods. They decide to attack the ground base where the map is. 17. They lose to Shin and Baylan. Sabine is given a proposotion. In my edit, I don’t present the resolution here, but instead we find that they’ve just disappeared. (I show the resolution as inserts much later on when revived-Ahsoka does her Sherlock-Jedi thing and it’s revealed to her through intercuts that Sabine gave Baylan the map and was taken as hostage. It’s a dramatic decision which I think works really well, IMO, but you'll have to see how it's executed). 18. World-Between-World scenes. Minor edits because we love us Hayden Christensen. 19. Young Jacen hears something. Removed mentions that he hears lightsabers. Don’t need to spell it out. Jacen hears it. Hera hears it. We hear it. It’s a feeling, and the cut works well. 20. Ahsoka learns her lesson and gets rescued from the wwaters. She hugs Jacen and then does her Sherlock Jedi thing as mentioned earlier. Cuts for pacing. 21. They hop on a space whale then cut to our villains arriving to Peridea in a whole other galaxy. 22. Here we are introduced to Thrawn and Sabine is brought to him and is released. Cut out scene of her bringing stuff with her like weapons, snacks and shit. The two mercenary Jedi follow. 23. Sabine finds those adorable snail puppets and then finds Ezra. 24. Ahsoka arrives and is bombarded with space mines. Thrawn does his strategy tactics to flush her out to Sabine and Ezra, far from their Destroyer. Thrawn orders some troops to eliminate the Jedi. 25. Baylan abandons Shin and the tide turns. Cuts for pacing. 26. The Nightsisters turn Morgan into her final form. 27. Removed scene of Ezra building his blue lightsaber. He just comes to Ahsoka and Sabine and says “hey, just finished…” while holding up a new lightsaber. It fits and lets us focus on Ahsoka and Sabine first and foremost. 28. The team attacks the castle. Edits for pacing. Sabine and Ezra fight some undead night troopers toward the end. They win and Sabine assists Ezra up onto the Destroyer. 29. Removed moment of Ezra talking to comms and pretending to be a stormtrooper. I know that’s very Star Wars but it kills any and all surprise or dramatic effect when you see him later back home with the stormtrooper outfit on (which he shouldn’t have kept on in the first place, but whatever). Removing this moment interestingly makes the ending emotional which I’ll point out at the end. 30. Sabine decides to stay and help Ahsoka. Ahsoka kills Morgan and the two jump to their ship and fly towards the escaping Destroyer. 31. Thrawn throws out some sick lines to Ahsoka as he vanishes into hyperspace. 32. Removed scene of Thrawn arriving to Dathomir which I’ll explain later. 33. Sad Shin takes up as leader of the Nomads. Baylan in a literal cliffhanger. 34. After the journey of finding Thrawn and Ezra, Sabine and Ahsoka instead found each other. Force ghost Anakin shows up. I only show his back. I think this is the point of this show- character arcs between both Ahsoka and Sabine from estranged to a proper Master and Apprentice relationship that Ahsoka couldn't with Anakin. Like I said, I think this show has great stuff in it, and I think it's worthhilighting these things instead of cutting them out, IMO. 35. I switched it up, instead of above being the last scene, this is the last scene: Stormtrooper shows up to Hera. Now that I’ve removed the Ezra pretending to be one at the ship earlier and Thrawn arriving to Dathomir, you have slightly less confidece who this is. Oh my god, who is that? Did Thrawn sent a stormtrooper? Is it undead? Oh that’s Ezra, that’s nice. I also made edits so Chopper immediately comes up to him before we even see the stormtrooper. During this scene, I replaced its music with John Williams music at the end of The Force Awakens when Rey meets Luke for the first time. I think the music works here because the reunion has similar vibes. This is my last scene. You never see Thrawn arrive, but Ezra made it home- which means Thrawn also made it home. But now it’s a new hope. 36. Classic Star Wars end credits, and "For our dear friend, Ray Stevenson"

Additional Notes:

My biggest concern was the ending. The best way I could mitigate the disappointment of Baylan not getting resolution was to make him and Shin strictly mercenaries at the beginning. I killed MANY darlings by removing hints and dialogue “starting a new cycle and going to where it all began” and things like that so that they appear to be just followers of orders. I did maintain his dialogue about the failure of Jedi as Baylan is fighting Ahsoka, but now this serves the character development themselves as opposed to the plot. You get to know him more. So as mercenaries when Baylan decides to abandon Shin, you feel for Shin. It changes the battle conditions, and you just watched a man leave the student you assumed he "cared for" seemingly no good reason. It’s a more concentrated feeling and then later you realize he may have some bigger shit to fry. But it builds drama and disappointment and character for Shin. Mini rant: Xiono is meant to be annoying, but I don’t expect Hera and Mon Mothma to be incompetent, so why not bring merit to "holy shit there are 2 force users who massacred a New Repulic convoy and we caught them in 4k?" I eliminated this personal issue by removing those council scenes completely as I mentioned. So no Mon Mothma scenes here, I’m afraid. Anyway, I just wanted to put together a movie that's something fun for myself instead of having to trudge through some admittedly slow paces of the season again.

Other Sources:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens