Rogue One fans searching YouTube for information on alternate takes of the stand-alone anthology movie has led to the resurgence of another very important video: this bootleg version of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.
Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West as it’s often referred to contains hilarious English subtitles that were translated poorly from Chinese. While some are innocent and nonsensical, others border the NSFW line. This moment from the film, which features R2-D2 hiding from two battle droids while trying to rescue Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi from an elevator, is superb.
YouTuber GratefulDeadpool “synced the subtitles and the dub to HD video of Revenge of the Sith,” according to their description and even added the official Revenge of the Sith subtitles for viewers if they wanted to compare. According to Dorkly, the bad translations are the result of a “machine translation of the Chinese script to ROTS, which attempted to literally translate from Mandarin to English despite the multitude of barriers between the two languages.”
Although GratefulDeadpool published the video on Feb. 14, 2016, one of the possible reasons noted for the surge in popularity is because of Rogue One and people searching for alternate takes. Currently, there are more than 10,000 search results for “Rogue One alternate take.”
Since the release of Rogue One on Dec. 16, the existence of alternate takes has been a hot topic among Star Wars fans. Ben Mendelsohn, the actor who plays Director Orson Krennic, told Collider there was more than enough footage for an alternate version. Two of the film’s editors, however, told Yahoo! Movies that although director Gareth Edwards shot different takes for various scenes in the movie, there wasn’t enough left on the cutting room floor for an alternate version to exist.
Although a Rogue One alternate version may never be released — or exist — the fact that it’s brought more attention to Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West is a treat. The bootleg version also includes the infamously bad subtitled version of Darth Vader’s iconic “Nooooooo,” which was replaced with, “Do not want.”
The entire Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West can be seen above.