logo Sign In

Post #1265439

Author
bagthesnoot
Parent topic
The Last Jedi: An Amalgamated Edit (Released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1265439/action/topic#1265439
Date created
20-Jan-2019, 10:19 PM

The Last Jedi, for me, had wonderful high points and equally dismaying low ones. I feel that it has the potential to be one of the best of the Star Wars movies, and that feeling has been so insistent recently that it’s compelled me to stop just lurking around this site and instead to try putting something together myself.

This is my first attempt at anything resembling an edit, and, in terms of original work, it’s very basic. Essentially, I just took my favorite parts from The Fallen Knight by Clark Zuckerberg and from TLJ Reimagined by Ryan Glosemeyer and spliced them together, and then changed a few things on my own.

The basic idea is to remove the “Canto Bight/Codebreaker” and “Poe’s Mutiny” plots completely since they were extraneous and poorly written. Unfortunately this doesn’t leave very much for Finn and Rose to do, but I think Finn actually still has a nice little arc where which he starts out wanting to distance himself from the Resistance, but by the end decides to commit to the cause and actually inspires the rest of the group. And Rose is (hopefully) still in this cut just barely enough that if they decide to actually write her some good scenes in the next movie instead of giving her bad lines and a half-assed plot, it’ll work.

As for Poe and Holdo: I felt that The Fallen Knight cut too much, whereas TLJ Reimagined cut too little. In this version, Poe never mutinies, but he does realize that Holdo is planning to use the transports, and it’s implied that she just tells him the plan instead of keeping him in the dark for no good reason. It’s not perfect but I think it works ok, though I would definitely be open to ideas/criticism. I think the main problem is that Poe still doesn’t know about Crait being an old rebel base until he’s already on the transport, but to my mind it’s not such a big deal. Maybe Holdo just told him most of the plan, not all of it. Also we never see Leia recover from her mini-coma, but I think it’s implied enough by the scene in which she appears to wake up a little and whisper “Luke.” And it’s mentioned in one scene that she’s recovering, so I’d say we don’t necessarily need to see it onscreen.

I don’t have a precise cutlist, but as far as I remember here are the main edits that I added myself:

  • Cut Leia telling Threepio to “wipe that nervous expression off [his] face”
  • Luke no longer makes his “alright, that pretty much is nowhere” joke (I just didn’t really like that line)
  • Yoda doesn’t hit Luke with his cane (he’s a Force ghost, after all. I also didn’t like the line that accompanied the whack)
  • Poe doesn’t say anything about a big-ass door (modern slang like that feels out of place to me in Star Wars)
  • Holdo just says “May the Force be with you” without the back-and-forth with Leia (the original lines felt awkward to me)
  • There’s no shot of dead Snoke with his tongue out in the throne room (it was silly, I thought)
  • Various cuts to Poe’s scenes concerning fuel, transports, and the chain of command
  • Cut the joke when Kylo and Hux issue identical orders during the Battle of Crait–now it’s just Hux saying it
  • Cut Rey’s triple Tie Fighter shot in the Falcon
  • Cut Finn’s “miniaturized Death Star tech” line

Other notes:

  • I used Glosemeyer’s version of the Leia space scene, in which Luke appears to assist her through the Force. I can’t overstate how much I like the way he did this.
  • There are no Caretakers in this edit (thanks to Zuckerberg, I believe)
  • Most jokes/silly scenes were were cut/trimmed
  • I didn’t like how Glosemeyer cut some of the final conversation between Rey and Luke, so I used the original version of that scene. I used Glosemeyer’s cuts and scene order for most of the first half of the movie though, and switched to more of the Fallen Knight at the end.
  • Luke dies in this edit because he’ll be dead in Episode IX.
  • I left the scene with Yoda where it was in the theatrical version, but I’ve heard good things about moving it to right before Crait, so at some point I’d like to check out how people have done that and maybe make that change myself.
  • The slow-motion part of the Luke-Kylo duel is gone, but I’m not totally sure about that decision.

There is one major issue (a side-effect of my not having any idea what I’m doing), which is that I used a compressed file for one of the edits I drew from in order to fit it on my computer, so the film switches between resolutions a few times throughout. It doesn’t bother me that much, but it’s kind of annoying and I’m guessing some people would find it more or less intolerable, especially on a big screen. If anyone knows a way to make the file all one resolution after the fact, I would be grateful to hear it because so far as I can tell the only fix is to completely redo the whole thing using files that match.

PM me if you want a link! And again, comments/criticisms are welcome!