logo Sign In

The Last Jedi : a Fan Edit Ideas thread — Page 18

Author
Time

Snoke&mirrors said:

darthrush said:

Hal 9000 said:

I’d like to somehow extend the final shot of the Yoda scene to allow a few seconds more for the score to wind down and let it all sink in before being jerked back to Finn and Rose.

My idea is to put it right after Kylo declares himself the Emperor. This means that after the Yoda scene we would transition to Crait. I think that would help the Yoda scene feel more in place. We hit the low point in the movie, and that’s when we get Yoda’s speech about failure. And then it is followed with the rest of our characters rising up to the mantle, especially Luke.

This sounds very intriguing. It might slightly foreshadow Luke’s entrance too on the nose but I think it’ll allow the scene to breath better

That’s actually part of the reason for it. I like having Luke feel like he is a part of the movie for the entire story. In the theatrical cut he kind of drops out of the main picture for a while but if you move the Yoda scene then his decision to leave and help his friends feels a lot more natural.

Return of the Jedi: Remastered

Lord of the Rings: The Darth Rush Definitives

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Has anyone here tried looking into a radical edit that would invert the structure of TLJ? It was first proposed by Detective on fanedit.org, I simply went into more details and fixed the incoherences. Btw I absolutely agree with everyone here concerning the editing. It’s atrocious and my main negative with the movie. Definitely something to fix.

Anyway, like I said the edit is radical so bear with me until the end here. It’s also quite unique.

It would go like this, and it would require some minor TFA editing as well:

  • We would open with an action setpiece – Hoth 2.0 – along with a suitable crawl. No Finn, no Rey, rest is the same (except no rocks blocking them). Luke projects and the Resistance escapes.

  • The rest of the movie begins to play-out as it does right now. The First Order are chasing Resistance ships, which is quite logical since they literally just got saved by Luke and the First Order is running after them. Trim the non-essential stuff, the jokes mainly (basically what everyone in here is saying to cut).

  • Cut mary poppins Leia and go with her being injured, or just remove it altogether and have her being fine (something lots of people have discussed here so far).

  • No more reluctant Luke. He trains Rey willingly since he just used the Force to save everyone. No “cut out of the Force either”. He’s just a bit grumpy which is understandable given Kylo’s backstory which he will explain to Rey, in time. There’s also another reason which I will cover later.

  • Now for this whole timeline to make sense, and to give time for Hoth 2.0 to happen, TFA must end on Rey leaving. She finds Luke here in this movie, not the end of TFA. Fortunately, this edit has already been done. Thank you DigiModification, and others. 😃

  • The movie also cuts the Casino sequence and most of the Resistance stuff since it doesn’t really matter to the overall story if Hoth 2.0 happens at the beginning. Blow it out of the sky. We’ll see how feasible that is with the blu-ray release, but Finn and Roses’s sideplot is of no consequence to the Throne Room Sequence. Which brings me to…

The single most important point of all this restructuring –

  • The movie ends on the epic Throne Room climax, and on an emotional climax and pay-off too since it’s a huge moment for both Kylo and Rey, the actual main characters of the story!

A huge problem with the theatrical TLJ is they that they seem to forget who the main characters are, especially Rey. She basically disappears for 10 minutes in the climax of the story… how did that get past editing?

Think about it, the Throne Room Sequence is the only way this movie should ever have ended, it’s the real ending to the main characters’ arcs in this story. The rest of the original ending (Crait), although hauntingly beautiful, has little to do with the actual main protagonist and is, thus, misplaced in this story.

  • Now that leaves one last problem: Luke’s death.

Since they decided to go forward with this, we don’t have a choice – he has to die. Might as well make the most of out of it, and make this edit work, since I believe it’s the only way to make this whole ending thing work out.

The events of TLJ don’t really prevent us from having Luke train Rey while being… dead this whole time! It would also explain why he disappeared in TFA’s crawl. He died! Kylo Ren killed him, during the flashback when the temple collapsed on him. IMPORTANT: Remove the part where Luke even THINKS about killing Kylo. Kylo simply killed him by making the temple fall on him (intentionally or not), period. Luckily some posters here seem to have already figured that part out, kudos to you guys!

I mean, going forward with this saga, Luke is dead no matter what, might as well make it a nice twist, and make Kylo Ren even more threatening in the process since he killed Luke… and Snoke now! Would give more gravitas to it all. It would also mirror Snoke’s weird death by having Luke die the same kind of death. Both masters are now dead.

Luke’s force ghost would explain all of this to Rey, like he does in the movie. His character arc of transferring the fate of the Jedi to Rey in the theatrical stays pretty much the same, but sadly, Yoda will have to be cut because it makes no sense in this edit. The little ins and outs of Luke’s motivations would have to be worked out on a scene-by-scene basis, whether he is a little bit reluctant at first or not at all. Depends what works best.

So the projection on Hoth 2.0 was his force ghost all along, and so is the rest of the movie. He’s projecting his living self to train Rey, so no VFX required, or minimal (remove silly scenes like the tittie-milk though). What’s not said directly (but heavily implied visually) is that Luke trained in this for years post-ROTJ, and even surpassed Master Yoda and Obi-Wan in that aspect: he can make himself look real, even as a force ghost! He still can’t interact with objects, hence hal9000’s cut proposed in this thread about making the box he sits on NOT move, and remove every shot where he interacts with real stuff

Or there could be a faint Force Ghost effect VFX added to him, which shows that he decides how he appears (for continuity with IX).

Obviously Leia knew all along, which would require a small line of hers to be removed in TFA (Leia saying “Luke…” when they complete the map) That would also explain why she seems so defeated/sad since TFA – Luke is dead, Ben Solo went to the Dark Side… huge blow 😦

It would make their reunion at the beginning on Hoth 2.0 also more bittersweet as she knows by then that Luke is dead. She’s still happy to see his ghost though, which is awesome.

But don’t forget, the main PURPOSE of this edit is to switch the Throne Room sequence at the end while still going with what they established so far in canon.

I actually think that by the time IX comes out, this kind of edit will make even more sense in retrospect since this next movie will probably be all about Rey and Kylo Ren (again with a strong supporting performance by dead-Luke), so TLJ should, too, have been only about Rey and Kylo Ren, hence this edit. Hell, combining this edit with IX might even be possible.

Sorry for the huge wall of text, I am just a huge fan with lots of ideas and who watches lots of fan edits 😛 I’m also a decent screenwriter so I could actually rework TLJ’s script (taken from Disney when they release it) to make the skeleton for this edit, if need be.

What do you think? Possible, not possible? I’ll watch TLJ a lot more when it comes out so for now I go mainly from memory.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

I think it might be. I’m gonna be seeing it again soon, so we’ll see. One thing though. Would you include Ben declaring that he is the Supreme Leader and Rey leaving the ship/meeting up with Leia?

Author
Time

I can tell I am not the only one with ideas for editing this movie, I loved most of the film (and I’ve seen it 7 times) my list of changes would go like this.

  • Cut Finn and Rose (and their story) from the film almost entirely.
  • Cut a lot of the “Guardians of The Galaxy” style modern humor from the film.
  • Remove Leia flying through space.
  • Add emphasis to “Balance” during Rey’s training.
  • Find some way to work in Sir Alec Guinness as either a physical Force Ghost or maybe just speaking to Luke or Rey.
  • Clean Up plot holes between TFA and TLJ.
  • Give Luke Green Saber instead of Blue.
  • Make the Rey/Kylo scenes seem less romantic.
    I have been thinking of Titles since my first viewing of the film and I believe I have decided on Star Wars The Last Jedi: Balanced Edition

Now, May That There Force Be with y’all… Ya Hear.

Author
Time

LivJackell said:

I think it might be. I’m gonna be seeing it again soon, so we’ll see. One thing though. Would you include Ben declaring that he is the Supreme Leader and Rey leaving the ship/meeting up with Leia?

Still have to figure out the exact ending though, as I said I need to rewatch and rewatch the movie to know which shots are possible to include and which aren’t. Kylo declaring, I would say yes, Rey meeting the rest, not sure that’s possible without some VFX.

NeverarGreat said:

So when he says he came here to die, I assume he’s saying that even the afterlife sucks.

Who says Star Wars is uninteresting?

I think this line should be cut 😛 (as should everything that makes him reluctant to train Rey in this edit)

Author
Time

Daxtreme said:

Has anyone here tried looking into a radical edit that would invert the structure of TLJ? It was first proposed by Detective on fanedit.org, I simply went into more details and fixed the incoherences. Btw I absolutely agree with everyone here concerning the editing. It’s atrocious and my main negative with the movie. Definitely something to fix.

Anyway, like I said the edit is radical so bear with me until the end here. It’s also quite unique.

It would go like this, and it would require some minor TFA editing as well:

  • We would open with an action setpiece – Hoth 2.0 – along with a suitable crawl. No Finn, no Rey, rest is the same (except no rocks blocking them). Luke projects and the Resistance escapes.

This makes a lot of sense, though probably unfeasible with the actual footage we have. I’d add have LEIA unblock the escape rocks with the Force, with or instead of Rey.

Author
Time

Yeah, if this edit idea doesn’t work with only TLJ (for mostly in-universe continuity reasons), it might work in the context of the whole trilogy being out, using shots from IX.

But another idea would be to simply say “to hell with their structure” and re-edit the whole trilogy as either 2 movies, 3 totally different movies in terms of structure, or something else.

There’s something truly great hidden somewhere within this trilogy. Some of the scenes in The Last Jedi are among the best this saga has to offer so far.

Rian said in an interview yesterday that the Knights of Ren weren’t in the movie primarily because the movie was already “full”.

link: https://soundcloud.com/empiremagazine/star-wars-the-last-jedi-spoiler-special

Well seeing all the great cut ideas people proposed in here so far, I’d say it’s because the movie is full of crap.

Studio-mandated crap perhaps? He said Leia’s horrible Mary poppins scene was Kathleen Kennedy’s idea = Studio idea, not his. What other ideas were not his? Sky is the limit.

Author
Time

Wacko idea combining both movies:

Why not let Rey go to training before the whole Starkiller thingy is even introduced. Make it a mellow entry to the story where the villain (Kylo) still stays mysterious. She arrives and starts her training after retrieving the lightsaber and having been confronted with Kylo once.

Fast forward 5 years. First order has built starkiller base. Rey is in full training mode. Now, somehow mix together the ship chase and the starkiller thing and the planet being destroyed and rey and kylo having their first lightsaber fight and things suddenly make much more sense. She now has had the training to justify holding up against Kylo a little.

Not sure about the details (would like to include Snoke etc. as well) but that can still be worked out. Lots of stuff would obviously fall away.

Author
Time

The duel with Kylo makes no sense if Rey has been training for 5 years. Why would Kylo duel Finn first, why would Finn have Rey’s or someone else’s lightsaber, why would Rey get force-pushed unconscious if she’s had 5 years of training, and why would there be so much drama over who can force-pull the lightsaber if Rey was already practicing with it over the course of the last 5 years?

Also, where do you put the Force-Time sesions? She goes back to on Ahch-To for even more training? That’s redundant, a lot!

After IX however, there might be a way to simply cut this duel entirely. Rey trains, and has Force-Time sessions with Kylo, and it culminates in their temporary alliance in TLJ. Then they fight for the FIRST TIME using IX’s probable footage.

Something like that. A rethread of the OT but instead of the Luke/Vader fight in ESB they actually fight together, and THEN duel a la ROTJ

Author
Time

TomArrow said:

Wacko idea combining both movies:

Why not let Rey go to training before the whole Starkiller thingy is even introduced. Make it a mellow entry to the story where the villain (Kylo) still stays mysterious. She arrives and starts her training after retrieving the lightsaber and having been confronted with Kylo once.

Fast forward 5 years. First order has built starkiller base. Rey is in full training mode. Now, somehow mix together the ship chase and the starkiller thing and the planet being destroyed and rey and kylo having their first lightsaber fight and things suddenly make much more sense. She now has had the training to justify holding up against Kylo a little.

Not sure about the details (would like to include Snoke etc. as well) but that can still be worked out. Lots of stuff would obviously fall away.

That’s an interesting idea. I wonder how well it’d work in practice.

I’m itching for TLJ blu ray to come out so I can see how well a lot of the concepts in this thread work.

Author
Time

There might be a way to make it work still. Most of the issues I pointed out above could maybe be worked out with some clever editing.

For example, Kylo kills Han, but Rey and Finn just… escape successfully.

Then she reaches Ahch-To and trains with Luke, and has Force-Time sessions as well.

Then the duel happens later as you pointed out, just cut Finn and the whole lightsaber pull thing. Don’t know if that’s possible.

Problem though is that with this, they would be going to a similar-looking location twice. 😛

Author
Time

TomArrow said:

Wacko idea combining both movies:

Why not let Rey go to training before the whole Starkiller thingy is even introduced. Make it a mellow entry to the story where the villain (Kylo) still stays mysterious. She arrives and starts her training after retrieving the lightsaber and having been confronted with Kylo once.

Fast forward 5 years. First order has built starkiller base. Rey is in full training mode. Now, somehow mix together the ship chase and the starkiller thing and the planet being destroyed and rey and kylo having their first lightsaber fight and things suddenly make much more sense. She now has had the training to justify holding up against Kylo a little.

Not sure about the details (would like to include Snoke etc. as well) but that can still be worked out. Lots of stuff would obviously fall away.

I do like the idea. I think having the link between kylo and Rey established in the first movie is great. This would be a way to do that. The climax of his alternate force awakens movie could be the evacuation of the resistance base and the destruction of the first order dreadnaught. Poe does his ludicrous attack on it and blows it up with the sacrifice of the heroes of the bomber squadron. Cut to end. Open with canto bight maybe because the fleet is being followed by snoke in the supremacy and they need a slicer… Then Hux and snoke go to star killer base. The throne room is in star killer base. This also avoids the catastrophicly ill thought out hyperspeed to take out the supremacy. Instead the slicer routine works and they escape. Only to find out the starkiller base will destroy planets.

Maybe… It would require some fancy editing and the source material may not be there to do it. I’d love to see it attempted though.

Author
Time

All I know is that TLJ (and maybe TFA, I didn’t notice) didn’t have any of the traditional wipes and disolves!
Any Edit worth its salt should re-incorporate them.
I’m excited for all your work!

Author
Time

TFA had 14 wipes and TLJ had 12.

Author
Time

TLJ’s wipes looked pretty bad imo. They were there because they had to be there - they were out of place and way too fast.

Author
Time

While they looked different I don’t think that they were too fast. But to each his own I guess.

Author
Time

But did they look like the traditional wipes?
I saw it 3 times and didn’t notice

Author
Time

I’ve been following this thread for a while, and I see so many interesting ideas flying around. I think we’ll have a lot of fan edits!

I’m wondering if anyone else is in line with what I’d like to see, as it’s getting hard to parse what people intend to make with their edits.

Is anyone else planning on doing this and basically only this?

1) Remove or dramatically scale back Finn and Rose’s storyline
I love Finn, and Rose is a nice new character, but their storyline is wasted on them and has the following awful bits: Maz’s silly phone call, Casino planet, fathiers, Finn’s fight with Phasma, BB-8 piloting walker, Rose’s “saving” Finn with high speed collision that should have killed them both and also prevented him from saving the rest.

2) Remove Leah’s spacewalk
make it just an explosion, perhaps in a few quick flashes show them putting the oxygen mask on her and then in the recovery bed.

I think it would cut out 20-30 minutes of the movie, without needing any material that isn’t there (I think). I find the ideas about restructuring 7 and 8 interesting but mentally exhausting. I just want the parts I found distracting removed, because the stuff I liked (Luke / Rey / Kylo) I loved!

Author
Time

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.

  • 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.)

I really like your intended cut-list. And I’d be happy to try stabilizing the crate for you. Sounds like a fun challenge!

Author
Time

Leah, daughter of Anikan and Padame.