The Last Jedi : a Fan Edit Ideas thread — Page 15

I hear you guys, lol. Sorry Frink! LOL 😉

The whole idea of Luke wanting to kill Ben, (if only for a moment,) just doesn’t fit him at all. If only Rian Johnson had provided some background on what it was that made Luke take that leap.

Okay, but that’s kind of changing the entire point of Luke’s arc, which kind of makes the movie fall apart.

Drakul said:

I don’t see why it can’t fit him. I mean it may not be in line with RotJ Luke but in 30 years a lot of stuff could have happened to make him act this way in a brief moment of weakness.

100% true…although I wouldn’t venture into the TLJ review thread if I were you lol.

Gimpy said:

Had a thought for a slight change to TLJ. When Luke is “thinking” fleetingly about ending Ben Solo’s life, we should use Audio of Snoke saying something like “kill him!” If Snoke was the impetus for Luke’s actions, that would be much better than Luke himself thinking of doing it.

Better idea—Luke has a force vision of Palpatine’s iconic “do it,” and then Kylo has a force vision of Jar Jar stepping in bantha poodoo, causing him to wake up 😛

Thankyou Jeebus for my first big belly-laugh of the year around these parts. 😃

Either of those ideas would make worthy candidates for TF’s eventual ‘Ep. III: The Last Ridiculous Jedi’ edit I reckon.

(or should that be ‘Ep. III: The Not Quite Last Ridiculous Jedi’, seeing as we don’t know what’s going to happen in J.J.'s NEXT movie?)

…And just thinking aloud, but I quite like how the latest movie’s view of random, NON-'Jedi-trained ‘Force-sensitives’ appearing here-and-there in the Star Wars galaxy can retro-actively apply to Donnie Yen’s ultra-skilled ROGUE ONE character also. Personally, it helps me to accept his exceptional abilities much easier now, considering he was totally blind…and the way he managed to walk through all those shots unscathed - so I’ll definately consider Chirrut Imwe as indeed being someone who was ‘one with the Force’ in the truest sense, the next time I watch that movie.

I’m still going to lose that ‘broom lad’ ending from my own cutlist though - not saying that the funny ‘child-scaring monster’ moment and ‘Spielberg-ian’ final shot were a bad way to end things for audiences…but I’d just prefer to have that last hyperspace shot of the Falcon as the ending for myself as it leads us to the next instalment…to give this a more sombre finale, considering we effectively lost the Leia and Luke characters during this…and because I want reminded of ‘younglings’ as little as possible in my own version. 😃

NeverarGreat said:

If we’d gotten even a minute of broom boy in the Casino Bight scenes his ending would be much more defensible.

Um… what?

Also, Spielbergian? Not Lucasian?

Ehhhh disagree. I’m not sure that’d work or be even necessary. The broom boy character strikes just the right balance of randomness.

No TFA fanedit contradicts anything in TLJ. Removing the fat in TLJ is likely to have no consequence on IX.

Agree

I think that this movie has a good moral, which is, “self-sacrifice is setting the wrong example for those around you”. The following changes;

1. Luke is only acting like a mean old man, but he’s not doing it very well. He’s emulating Han Solo’s skepticism, but it’s not working out. He’s trying to frustrate Rey to get her to leave, but he can’t help but be good-natured. He’s trying to embody a lesson that he doesn’t himself believe, but he wants to believe. He wants to put the past behind him and believe the truth that jedi have always been set up to fail and that the jedi need to die. While this is still the truth, it’s more metaphorical and cerebral than he’s acting it to be. The jedi need to die because they emphasize self-sacrifice in such a way that the next generation only emulates the self-sacrifice. This will tie to edits of Holdo and Rose.

2. Cut out the majority of Canto Bight. Only give quick callbacks to the fact that Fin and Rose are having their own adventure, but don’t show all of the sequences. Only show the scene of them being arrested. Then the scene of Fin telling Rose not to enjoy this so much. Then the scene of them being in prison and finding a different codebreaker. Then the scene where Fin asks DJ why he’s ransacking his own ship. Then the scene where DJ asks for payment; have the conversation be interrupted by Poe contacting Fin and Rose. Linger a shot on DJ’s face. Then finish the conversation with him asking only for Rose’s pendant. Later, also linger on DJ stalling at the door to the tracker. Don’t make it clear what he is thinking, just that he is thinking. By having had the interruption before where Poe informs Fin and Rose about the evacuation, you can project DJ’s stalling as thinking about changing his mind when you view it a second time.

3. Cut the scene between Fin and Rose and instead, use Rose’s explanation of “that’s how we’ll win. By saving those we love rather than destroying those we hate”. By keeping Rose’s story short, it’s easier to connect it to Rose’s sister dying at the start of the film. This keeps the moral of the movie much more focused. This voice-over line will coincide with Kylo piercing Luke with his saber or the evacuation to clarify how this syncs up with Luke’s line about “kill me now and I will stay with you forever”. Luke doesn’t want to be killed by Kylo now, because if Luke is killed now, Kylo will always be haunted by Luke’s flaws. By having Luke not be killed by Kylo and by keeping Rey from having to kill Kylo, Luke saves both Kylo and Rey from being corrupted by the mistake of the fathers further.

4. Add some scenes where Holdo’s sacrifice is revealed to be reviled by the rest of the galaxy rather than admired. Insert a scene where aliens discuss how “not even the empire did something so dishonorable”. And that is why the galaxy loses hope, because they now believe that the resistance is just a group of terrorists and the rest of the galaxy believes it when the First Order calls them ‘rebel scum’.

5. Finally, Leia’s only injured half-way through the movie, after Kylo and Rey have already been connected. The scenes between Holdo and Poe are instead about how Poe deals with his demotion. Holdo doesn’t explain anything to Poe, because Poe no longer has any say. He’s instead given some wisdom about how he needs to hold on to hope. Instead, he plots with Fin and Rose to get a codebreaker. When Holdo is promoted in Leia’s absence, Holdo immediately orders the evacuation. This provokes Poe to commit mutiny, because he thinks that Holdo is being hypocritical, giving up hope the second that she’s given command and thinking that he can do it better. He doesn’t give her time to explain. This cuts out all the frustration that fans feel with Holdo witholding information from the crew.

Hal 9000 said:

FWIW, here’s my current intended cutlist for an edit of THE LAST JEDI. Of course, any of these may or may not be feasible once I actually have the ripped film to address in a NLE.

• Reign in the SNL opening with Poe and Hux.

• Remove or trim BB8’s wack-a-mole repairs (as part of broader effort to remove ‘Droids’ stuff, just like in AOTC and ROTS)

• Only because I’d already be editing the film at this point and not because this is in any way called for, try to have the first scene with Luke appear overcast as TFA was. Whatever filter used to achieve this could be gradually faded out over the course of the sequence.

• Somehow remove Maz’s Battlefront Skype call, if at all possible.

• Possibly replace ignition sound of Anakin’s lightsaber. (I do not recall whether this is needed, and a close re-listen to TFA showed me that they appear to have blended the original ignition sound with a new sound, which I can accept. If that’s the case in TLJ, that’ll work. If not, I plan to replace the ignition sound with that from TFA. I do, however, recall the quick red-guard headshot sound effect as being a non-ignition sound effect, which I will leave alone because I understand why its like that.)

• Keep the scene with Chewie about to eat a porg, though remove the final porg giving him the sad eyes.

• If deleted scenes make this possible, give Rey her promised third lesson from Luke.

• Undecided on removing the entire horse chase. If so, simply have Finn and Rose follow DJ out of the cell and we will revisit them later already in hyperspace. If the horse chase stays, perhaps cut away from DJ after he asks BB8, “Did you do this?” in order to remove more ‘Droids’ stuff. If the horse chase stays, either remove the final scene with broom boy, or else just remove the closeup with the ring.

• Remove BB8 commandeering an AT-ST, and ensuing jog toward an escape shuttle.

• Remove Poe’s “big ass door.” Hopefully that shot is static, so a simple crossfade or similar trickery will make it work, saying “Let’s just hope that door holds out,” or whatever the exact line is.

• Similarly, remove Finn’s unnecessary line about the battering ram being “old Death Star tech.” (Let’s never reference the Death Star in another ‘saga’ film ever again.)

• I’ll ask anyone here who is willing, to stabilize the crate Luke sits down on while talking with Leia. The filmmakers bothered to not have him physically interact with the ground, or make walking foley sounds, so this seems like a small but positive change to make. (You just gotta do stuff like this while you’ve got everything cracked open.)

• Remove the porg smacking against the Falcon window.

• Possibly remove the dice from the end. I guess it’s there to make you think Luke is physically present, then Leia leaves them behind, and then they disappear? I don’t know. It was one last thing to not understand in the movie. (Just kidding; the Jedi texts make a split second cameo after this point. Speaking of them, I won’t remove them because I’m sure they’ll play a role in XI, and people will ask how Rey has them just like people ask where 3PO’s red arm went in VIII.)

Unfortunately, I don’t really have any forthcoming ideas for real creativity aside from just removing things. I’m sure ideas will float up to our collective consciousness in time.

This! This is amazingly exactly what I was thinking! If you could only replace the stupid horse dogs with tauntauns. It would be pretty badass. And get rid of Laura Dern lol.

Overall I fundamentally disagree with the ideas behind the movie, especially the cynical prequel apologist (“mind blowing fan theory”) approach to the Jedi and Luke. In general the movie seems determined to ruin any sense of heroism or audience satisfaction. Any time a male character attempts to do something they are denied and punished.

HOWEVER there are a lot of great things about it that I like, especially anything with Rey and/or Kylo Ren. Mark Hamill’s performance is really good. That throne room fight is one of the best fights in Star Wars, period. I love the porgs and some of the other humor, and I like the idea of Canto Bight if it had less Lucas in it.

For the Luke/Rey/Ren half:
*I like ImperialFighter’s ideas. Luke is not a murderer or a liar, and generally he would be THE character to be optimistic about someone struggling with the dark side. It does make more sense for Kylo Ren to result from a misunderstanding. Luke might not try to kill him, but he could hover uncomfortably close like a helicopter parent to try to keep him on the right path.
*Hopefully there are some deleted scenes. The lack of a third lesson drives me nuts.
*I don’t like Yoda’s appearance or presentation at all. At the very least it should be tweaked so that he’s not stuck in the early ESB cackling trickster persona.
*Fix Snoke’s dialogue as it’s comically on-the-nose. Some of it also plagiarizes directly from ROTJ (and the Bible!)

For the other half, I have ideas for tweaking it but they would be extremely difficult to execute. It would be easier to cut most of it.
I absolutely despise everything to do with Holdo. Ideally any function she serves would be replaced with Leia. Leia would tell Poe the plan and he would dislike it for some legitimate reason (“they’ll still detect the transports!”) and mutiny directly against her. Leia puts down the mutiny with her cool Force powers (no ridiculous space flight, the bridge never gets hit.) However Poe manages to let Finn and Rose get away to Canto Bight. Trim Lucas shenanigans, newsboys, and several pieces of Rose dialogue. DJ stays a relative good guy and doesn’t betray anyone, but he does ditch them after they finish the mission. I also dislike it when a villain has no reason to keep captured heroes alive other than “to make them suffer,” so I’d prefer Phasma’s introduction to be coming out of the smoke. Cut Finn’s faux-action movie one liners. Poe, Finn, and Rose’s plan works but is costly in some way or temporary, giving just enough time for the fleet to jump to Crait. In order to salvage the whole thing, Leia sacrifices herself with the hyperspace ram. Gives more guilt and pathos to Poe, wondering if he made the right decision.
The Luke/Leia scene is nice though, so again, probably just cut all of the stuff in the middle.

I would like Finn to succeed at his sacrifice as well, or at the very least leave out Rose’s idiotic actions and nonsensical platitude, but none of that is really doable. So maybe don’t have Finn or Rose in the ships in the first place, or have them break off when Poe tells them to.

Also cut the kids at the end. (LOOOOK SKYWALKUH, JEEDAI MASTUH)

Hey peeps, this is my first post and to be honest my first time on this site but after seeing this film I’ve come to the conclusion it really needs an edit to change the one problem I have with the film, which is its tone. Yes, Space Leia and possibly fathiers need to go but for me the tone really turns this from a naturally darker second movie, with elements of fun to a mixed, messy confusing affair. My ideal edit would lose a lot of the humour that pertains to the elements of the film that are supposed to be more serious, the antagonists and the Luke/Rey scenes. For me, ridiculing hux, and having our Jedi that has lost faith telling jokes really confuses the scenes and the emotion in them. Off the top of my head scenes to be cut:

1. Second half of huxs interaction with Poe, not entirely as I want to keep the Poe delaying tactic in but get rid of the overacting from Gleeson.

2. Cut Luke’s “Go away” to Rey as it comes across more like a grumpy neighbour who won’t give you your football back.

3. Cut the scene with Luke tickling Reys hand, it takes away the dramatic tension even though I giggle at Hamill.

4. Trim the scene where Rey tells Luke she was cleaning her blaster and it went off, sounds crude and again makes it feel pedestrian like Luke is her flat mate.

5. Cut the “Jakku is nowhere” line a really interesting scene cut short by a dumb joke.

6. Cut the iron Easter egg for Hardware walls, it’s really jarring.

7. Cut Luke winking at c3po, and him dusting his shoulder, he’s going to face the man that killed Han Solo and he’s quipping?!

For me, these changes alone would really help the film feel darker. I don’t mind even the dumb humour of Canto Bight because the jokes are with characters we aren’t supposed to fear or be emotionally tangled with.

Honourable mentions for cuts would be the milking scene and the light saber toss but they fit the tone of Luke being a weird old hermit who has given up the Jedi and the weapons of their order.

I cannot wait to see the edits I’ve seen on here. I’ve never tried to do anything like this before but I enjoy the movie (I know it seems I’m in the minority) I think it’s a fan edit away from being a great film.

Hopefully I can use this site to help me learn and fix my gripes with TLJ

Cool username. 😃

darthrush said:

Snoke&mirrors said:

Hey peeps, this is my first post and to be honest my first time on this site but after seeing this film I’ve come to the conclusion it really needs an edit to change the one problem I have with the film, which is its tone. Yes, Space Leia and possibly fathiers need to go but for me the tone really turns this from a naturally darker second movie, with elements of fun to a mixed, messy confusing affair. My ideal edit would lose a lot of the humour that pertains to the elements of the film that are supposed to be more serious, the antagonists and the Luke/Rey scenes. For me, ridiculing hux, and having our Jedi that has lost faith telling jokes really confuses the scenes and the emotion in them. Off the top of my head scenes to be cut:

1. Second half of huxs interaction with Poe, not entirely as I want to keep the Poe delaying tactic in but get rid of the overacting from Gleeson.

2. Cut Luke’s “Go away” to Rey as it comes across more like a grumpy neighbour who won’t give you your football back.

3. Cut the scene with Luke tickling Reys hand, it takes away the dramatic tension even though I giggle at Hamill.

4. Trim the scene where Rey tells Luke she was cleaning her blaster and it went off, sounds crude and again makes it feel pedestrian like Luke is her flat mate.

5. Cut the “Jakku is nowhere” line a really interesting scene cut short by a dumb joke.

6. Cut the iron Easter egg for Hardware walls, it’s really jarring.

7. Cut Luke winking at c3po, and him dusting his shoulder, he’s going to face the man that killed Han Solo and he’s quipping?!

For me, these changes alone would really help the film feel darker. I don’t mind even the dumb humour of Canto Bight because the jokes are with characters we aren’t supposed to fear or be emotionally tangled with.

Honourable mentions for cuts would be the milking scene and the light saber toss but they fit the tone of Luke being a weird old hermit who has given up the Jedi and the weapons of their order.

I cannot wait to see the edits I’ve seen on here. I’ve never tried to do anything like this before but I enjoy the movie (I know it seems I’m in the minority) I think it’s a fan edit away from being a great film.

Hopefully I can use this site to help me learn and fix my gripes with TLJ

I really like almost all of your ideas here and agree with your take on the movie. I do however have a soft spot for Luke winking 😉 But dusting off the shoulder can definitely go.

I like Luke tickling Rey and the nowhere joke. Those are two of the few that work imo.

I’m ambivalent on the nowhere joke, but I loved the tickling joke.

I definitely find the reed joke to be an authentic Luke moment. Its one of the only scenes where his OT persona seems to surface for a brief moment in my opinion.

After watching a popular you tube info video which says that there’s a deleted scene set just after the “where’s Han?” Line that is an emotional one where Luke reacts to his friends death, I’m hoping that there’s a few more darker Luke moments to come. There’s also a scene in which Luke gives Rey the missing third lesson which is also darker. I think if these make it onto the blu ray it would really help change the tone of the film, and maybe even negate the need to delete some of the better Luke humour moments as they now would be earned in respect to his character.

It would also further enhance Luke’s quirkiness and dismissiveness of Rey because he will have earned the audiences pity. Thoughts?