NeverarGreat

AndersonCouncil said:

NeverarGreat said:

My biggest issue, other than the fragmented storylines, was that the starship chase and Godspeed Maneuver™ made little tactical sense.

Why couldn’t the First Order simply swarm the capital ship with TIE fighters until it went down? Why are all the ships traveling at a fixed speed? Why hasn’t anyone else used the Godspeed Maneuver™ as a weapon? It seems like a hyperdrive would be one of the most deadly weapons in the galaxy if just any ship could do this.

Oh, and I don’t care if Phasma stays or goes.

Absolutely! I was thinking this as well. If going to hyperspace can be done even with a ship in the way then surely the Rebels could have just used this method to destroy either of the Death Stars no? At least the first one as it had no shield generator to protect it.

Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense. The only thing I can think of is that this Republic ship is even larger than any ship the Rebellion ever had, and if Hyperdrives get exponentially more dangerous the more mass is moving through Hyperspace, it might only become a danger with very large capital ships. And at that point, the waste of such a ship would be widely considered too great a cost for a suicide maneuver.

As for the issue of why the First Order is slowly running them down rather than destroying them with TIEs, perhaps the reason could be that Snoke wanted Leia alive so she could personally surrender to him, and he would also suspect that she would be the most likely person to have the location of Luke. This could be easily communicated in the crawl, and that way the First Order would just blockade the Resistance base until after most of the island scenes and when Leia decides to launch her attack.

Putting my Starlight Project Part 2 Ideas here for now:

While the Force Awakens was a flawed film, it only required a modest restructure to improve the story immensely. The Last Jedi, while it ascends to greater heights, has some deeper structural issues. For example, there is absolutely no time-jump between movies, and immediately starts with a ticking clock that leaves no room for intervening character growth.
This edit, while not solving the time-jump issue, will at least allow for a more leisurely pace at the beginning of the story. Here is how it could begin:

The FIRST ORDER reigns.
Having destroyed the
Republic capitol, General
Hux has surrounded
the Resistance base and
awaits the surrender of
Leia Organa.

Leia, now the leader of the
defeated Republic, still hopes
for the return of the Last Jedi,
and is secretly preparing her
forces for a final desperate
attack against the ascendant
First Order.

Meanwhile, in deep space
aboard his massive command
ship, Supreme Leader Snoke
prepares to receive Kylo Ren,
son of the Republic and heir
to Snoke’s dark throne…

We open on Kylo Ren facing the wrath of Snoke, and after he smashes his helmet in frustration we cut to Rey giving Luke the lightsaber. The Ahch-to scenes are brought to the front of the film for the most part, with Rey’s communication with Kylo being the only cross-cutting. Now Rey is on the island for an undetermined amount of time, just like Luke’s training on Dagobah. Near the end of Luke’s lessons, we return to the Resistance plot and Poe’s attack on the Destroyer. From there the story progresses as usual, with some cuts or additions for time. The Canto Bight section is quite problematic however, and there will probably be more substantial changes to that section. The final act is excellent, and should require little to no change.

A whole lot of adults watched the Phantom Menace multiple times in the theater, believing that it was simply amazing but finding more problems with each viewing. But by the time AOTC came out, most people knew that the movies were hot garbage. I know I did, and I was still a kid. I remember going to ROTS out of morbid curiosity.

This trilogy is nowhere near that level.

Killing a student who had turned to the Dark Side is a very Jedi thing to do, from a prequel point of view. Even Obi-wan in ROTJ was saying that Luke needed to kill Vader, and Yoda said that there was no coming back after beginning the dark path. Sure, Luke seemed to grow beyond that in ROTJ, but the concept of killing a relative lost to the Dark Side was the primary conflict of that movie. I think he genuinely wrestled with that question, even at the end. To consider that he could return to that state of mind in a moment of weakness isn’t beyond the pale to me at all.

My ideas are in the Fanedit thread for now, but I couldn’t wait to post the new topic. 😃

Rhindle said:

Ironically, I think the prequels can be greatly improved with fan edits, but I don’t think there’s any way to fan-edit out the objectionable stuff in this one to make it better.

Wait, switch that, reverse it.

Still true - and I’m thinking The Last Jedi has a lot of that going on as well.

The issue for me is that we now get a sanitized vision of the galaxy where we don’t really see those class divisions between droid and human society that were extremely clear throughout the PT and OT. I’m left wondering if this is because the Clone Wars are a distant memory (and thus people really don’t view droids with suspicion anymore), or whether the filmmakers just forgot.

I’d recommend checking out the latest version of Restructured. It pushes the Ilenium plot point until the very end of the movie, and all that is necessary to remove it for good is to reinstate the Ackbar scene in its place.

At least here it’s explicit - the entire trilogy is a game of Exquisite Corpse.

But that’s also a wonderful opportunity for interpretation and re-imagining. Not even George Lucas can claim ownership of this sprawling and contradictory set of tales formerly known only as Star Wars.

With my biggest issue being the fragmentary storyline, I’d like to see an edit where the First Order is still hunting for the Resistance base at the start of the film. This would require using a modified version of TFA Restructured, where they never learn of the Ilenium system in the first place.

With this change, I could frontload The Last Jedi with Luke and Rey material, picking up right where we left off in the previous film. There would be more time to breathe (and reach out!) in this part, now that there’s less of a ticking clock Resistance plot to draw us away from Rey’s journey. It could be implied that she spends a great deal of time on the island trying to get information from Luke and learning things on the way.

Near the end of her time on the island, we’d introduce the Resistance as the they try to evacuate their base. The slow, illogical cat and mouse fuel plot can then be reduced. Rose and Finn still travel to Casino planet, but only because Rose knows from experience that their hacker can be found there.

The rest of the movie plays out pretty much as it is. I agree that some of the humor is too much even for Star Wars, like the AT-ST. It should be quite grim after the Casino planet.

Broom boy should probably stay. It’s just a great moment.

Collipso said:

If Luke went to the island to die why was there a map?

Maybe they suspected that Luke was looking for the First Jedi Temple, and the Church of the Force was the first group that actually figured out where that temple might be.

Luke need not be involved in the map’s creation.

Collipso said:

Is there a repeated Poe shot? The one that he looks over to the hole in the oscillator. Is that the same one used for when he’s looking at the Starkiller’s laser?

I think so.

Originally I had used the shot of the female pilot reacting to an explosion (which I think fits better), but I suppose it was too obvious a repeat if the original scene was going to be played verbatim. I think some editing could be done to put her reaction back in the Starkiller firing and simply remove that reaction from the original scene.

Whenever I get that deleted scene from SirRidley that should be the only thing I have to do, unless I’m missing anything.

Yeah, it even manages to subvert the fact that it’s a middle chapter, and that’s wonderful. I am so glad that there are few obvious paths forward in this galaxy, because that means that whatever comes next will be different than any previous Star Wars movie.

It could go anywhere, with any time jump. There’s room for our heroes to have years of adventures before facing the final chapter.

She may not get a hero’s death, but she certainly got a hero’s life in this, and I’m so much happier for it.

I’ve read tons of reactions to this movie and the one thing that people who hate it all seem to agree is terrible is the ‘Space Leia’ moment. People who like the movie largely don’t mention it.

I don’t know what that means.

For the record, I thought that did look a little weird, but I ended up quite enjoying it.

My biggest issue, other than the fragmented storylines, was that the starship chase and Godspeed Maneuver™ made little tactical sense.

Why couldn’t the First Order simply swarm the capital ship with TIE fighters until it went down? Why are all the ships traveling at a fixed speed? Why hasn’t anyone else used the Godspeed Maneuver™ as a weapon? It seems like a hyperdrive would be one of the most deadly weapons in the galaxy if just any ship could do this.

Oh, and I don’t care if Phasma stays or goes.

Just got back from seeing this.

My overriding thought from beginning to end: This is an absolutely Exquisite Corpse.

Rian takes JJ’s entry, laughs at it, and savagely ends the two most useless characters while finishing the trilogy in one movie, giving Abrams nowhere to go if he attempts to make a ROTJ lookalike.

Sure, I could pick apart the logical gaps in the spaceship pursuit and the Godspeed Maneuver™, but that’s for a future fanedit.

This movie is multiple main course meals, and for that alone it’s worth putting up there with the Original Trilogy.

They are a single adjustment, yes. But I would have to fine-tune this using a lot more frames before I’d be happy with it.

Comparing the Sword in the Stone Amazon WEB-DL to my digitized VHS, there’s a lot of the typical oversaturation, but in addition I found that the blue/cyan part of the spectrum had been brightened. This resulted in the once-murky forest becoming very bright and unnatural:


Here are the two example images with the same correction:

Oh good.

That was pretty forced.

I’m hoping that’s the case. Of course we’ll see in the next few days. 😛

Yep, I think I might have read a major spoiler in the comments of a comedy video about avoiding TLJ spoilers.

People suck.