Yeah, this movie was definitely lacking more explosions. A few extra explosions and it would have been the best Star Wars movie, hands down.
Just had some more edit thoughts about the movie. Sorry in advance for the long post.
- Space Leia
I know a lot of people don’t like the space leia moment, but it personally works for me. If TLJ had been a book that came out when I was a kid, I would have freaked out when I got to this part. Though I am not arguing that there is something about it that throws most people off, so I wanted to suggest two possible changes to that moment that others might be interested in trying.
I think that moment not working for a lot of people mostly comes down to one shot, which is the initial shot of her “flying” toward the ship. It feels noticeably CG, and it is sort of a weird camera movement, but I think one thing that makes it feel weird are the “swooshing” sounds we hear as she (and the camera) pass by floating debris. I wonder if you only had the music during that shot, that it might alleviate some of that “weirdness”.
Another thought, a lot of people refer to Leia in this scene as “flying”, but I never saw it that way. To me, she’s pulling on the ship, which would pull her back towards the ship since she is less massive. I wonder if one could insert a shot of the ship door, and add the slight sound of metal creaking against some kind of pressure, to help imply that is what she is doing. If that was clearer maybe it could have worked for some more people. Maybe there is a decent shot of a door somewhere in the film, or one could do some fx work to the shot of her putting her hand against the door (maybe reverse it and rotoscope her out). You could put the shot right before she opens her eyes, and just trim the previous shot of her hand opening just a little shorter to make it fit in without harming the music.
I know a lot of people don’t care for this moment, and I think darthrush has done a really great job of removing it for those who want it out. But for those who want to keep it might consider trying one (or both) of these things out and see how it feels.
- Hyperspace Kamikaze
Another moment I loved was the hyperspace kamikaze. Although, a lot of people felt it raised a lot of questions, like why this maneuver isn’t more common, etc., etc.
I don’t think an answer for this isn’t exactly necessary. You could argue that does happen, we just don’t see it a lot, the ship was in the sweet spot transitioning between real space and hyperspace, and I believe the novelization said the Raddus’ size and experimental shields had something to do with the scale of the damage. But I do think there are some options for those who would like to add context for that moment.
I haven’t read the novelization, but it also apparently makes it clear that most ship computers don’t allow pilots to intentionally ram their ships into other ships, the computer just refuses to. In this case, though, Poe apparently had already put hyperspace coordinates into the Raddus. When Holdo went back to the bridge, the route was still plugged into computer, but now the hyperspace entry point was behind the First Order fleet. Apparently this made it easier to circumvent the computer’s failsafes, allowing her to make the jump. One might be able to imply this idea by two or three close-ups of the pilot seat screen, maybe generating a simple animation of the ship, the route, and the obstruction (The Supremacy). So you could generate a display showing when Poe sets up the hyperspace route, then later with the Supremecy blocking the path (flashing blue/red to show it can’t launch), then when Holdo overrides the failsafe, back to blue. You could actually use the display Finn looks at on the ship while him and Rose are on their way to Canto Bight, with some slight modifications, since it already has graphics for the Raddus, the Supremacy, and the other little Star Destroyers. And I believe there is an insert of the captain’s seat display when Poe checks the Hangar cameras.
Personally, my favorite idea for this has been Neverar’s, because it provides a solution that not only resolves major lore questions, but also contributes to the narrative by having the First Order’s technology being their key to their downfall. For those who haven’t read his idea, basically, the hyperspace tracking device sort of acts likes a periscope into hyperspace, simultaneously making a part of the ship exist both in real space and hyperspace. While ships in hyperspace can be destroyed if they collide with mass shadows of real space objects, these collisions don’t typically do damage to those real space objects, explaining why explosions like this don’t happen all of the time. In this case, though, since the Supremacy is connected to hyperspace, this causes the collision to happen, plus their sizes contribute to the catastrophic scale.
This is a really elegant solution, but I do think it may take quite a bit of work to figure how to do it, because it would require a bit of information to get across through implication (or maybe off screen dialogue). I won’t break it all down in this post though. So while I think this would wrap that plot point up in a nice narrative bow, I do think it needs to be thought through, and would require more changes than the first option. Maybe Nev has thought about this more, or others might have more ideas. I think it’d be worth more discussion.
- The Space Chase
I know some people felt the space chase plot felt a little dull, because visually, it doesn’t really feel like they are moving. It’s like a chase on a treadmill. I was also a little surprised that they left their base with only enough fuel for two hyperspace jumps (though the films don’t give us much context regarding how often ships need to refuel). I believe I have already mentioned this, but I was wondering if most people were okay with this, or were interested in having the chase be them jumping in and out of hyperspace. They’re still running out of fuel, they just have more than they originally did. This could also help answer questions like, why didn’t they send another ship to flank them, or why didn’t they just swarm their fleet with more TIE fighters than they could handle. This kind of change is doable, but would require some work. I am just curious who all would see the merit in this kind of change.
Despite changing this or not, I do think that specifying how many hours of fuel they have left should be removed whenever possible. They can still talk about how they don’t have much left, but giving them a definite timeframe raises more technical questions of how long it took Finn & Rose to get back and forth from Canto Bight and how long they were there, how long Rey was with Luke, etc., that I think are better left open to interpretation.
- Miscellaneous
The crawl mentions that the Resistance has been exposed, but the First Order already knew where the Resistance base was at the end of TFA. This is also kept in TFA: Restructured. Should this be altered in the crawl? I know someone has mentioned this.
Super super nitpicky, but I’ve had this idea about the moment Rey lifts the rocks at the end of the film. Instead of lifting it with one hand, and it looking almost effortless for Rey, could her other arm possibly be rotoscoped and flipped to make it appear she has both arms raised? Very superficial, I know.
This might be a strange one, but regarding the flashbacks, I think one could have the last shot before jumping into the first flashback be a close-up of Rey instead of Luke. This is to help imply that this is how Rey is visualizing Luke’s words, rather than Luke straight-up lying about what happened. He only left out a detail for Rey’s imagination, and this would also possibly help foreshadow that something might be missing. In the second close-up, the film already cuts to the Kylo’s flashback from Kylo’s close-up, implying that is how he remembers it. The same happens with the third flashback, where we cut from Luke, to imply how he remembers it, which is meant to be the truth. Hopefully this makes sense.
EDIT: I think you guys churning out edit clips have been making some pretty cool stuff that with the purpose of focusing the pacing and the narrative. I just thought I’d throw out some other random, more nitpicky ideas. Just because these are some of the issues I see getting talked about a lot online.