Unusual Sequel Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 6

I agree with Nev, but the color correction you did to the conversation inside the temple cave looks pretty good in my opinion. I think if you wanted to separate that scene with the caretaker deleted scene (for the reasons you’ve previously mentioned), you could use that regrade and then start by removing the sunset establishing shot of the island that is in between the Rey lightsaber scene and when Luke’s VO “Lesson Two” starts. Just have Luke’s VO start over that shot of Rey instead.

Then whenever you cut back to Ach-To for the caretaker scene, you could start with that sunset island establishing shot and use the audio from where Rey initially hears of the “raiders” over it. So you could go from that establishing shot, straight to the shot of Rey looking outside at the raiders approaching the village.

RogueLeader said:

I agree with Nev, but the color correction you did to the conversation inside the temple cave looks pretty good in my opinion. I think if you wanted to separate that scene with the caretaker deleted scene (for the reasons you’ve previously mentioned), you could use that regrade and then start by removing the sunset establishing shot of the island that is in between the Rey lightsaber scene and when Luke’s VO “Lesson Two” starts. Just have Luke’s VO start over that shot of Rey instead.

Then whenever you cut back to Ach-To for the caretaker scene, you could start with that sunset island establishing shot and use the audio from where Rey initially hears of the “raiders” over it. So you could go from that establishing shot, straight to the shot of Rey looking outside at the raiders approaching the village.

My plan exactly.

And yeah, I actually got the cave scenes looking better than when I first tried. Initially I thought that’d be a lot harder but making the lightsaber stuff look like sunset is not as easy as I thought.

Yeah, when I read your idea on the caretaker thread I didn’t think it would be able to work, but the way it looks in your test, it definitely feels like it could take place literally five minutes after Rey plays with the lightsaber (and it makes more sense than it suddenly being sunset). This also makes think trying to make the color grade of the beginning of TLJ look less yellow and bright, and make it more like the end of TFA, would work better than trying to make the end of TFA look more like the beginning of TLJ, if that makes sense. It’s like trying to inject more sunlight into a scene works less than if you tried to make it less sunny. Just a thought.

I would personally leave the training stuff as is, for the reasons Nev mentioned earlier, but I am really curious to see if that caretaker restructure would work. Like you said in the caretaker thread, it might not work for pacing reasons, but regardless of that I think it would be a great approach for your edit, since no one has really tried that idea yet (since people either plop it right where it was meant to be, or they remove the caretaker stuff altogether like Hal does). It could be one of things that differentiates your edit from the the others, since it is starting to feel like it will eventually be the most edited Star Wars movie outside of The Phantom Menace.

So when you do that, will everything from the Caretaker scene to Rey leaving the island all be together, or will you cut away again at some point? I really struggle with understanding pacing and when it feels right to cut. I would be curious if anyone had their own perspective on that.

I don’t think TPM is any more prone to edits than the other two Prequels, especially given the whole “TPM is unnecessary” argument.

Anyway, back to the spy idea, when you say that it would be someone neutral just trying to get by, I can’t imagine it being anyone but DJ. It just suits his character so well. However, having him among the Resistance would be incredibly hard to accomplish.

Maybe they meet DJ in the brig on the Raddus?

What if we made the Guavian Death Gang simply troops of the First Order? The Irish guy could be a Knight of Ren, and the troopers could be special First Order Troopers, providing a reason to reuse such a badass design. Hell, they would’ve made sweet praetorian guards. Alas, none of this is really doable. You’d have to completely replace the Irish guy and the praetorian guards, which is just not possible.

RogueLeader said:

I would personally leave the training stuff as is, for the reasons Nev mentioned earlier, but I am really curious to see if that caretaker restructure would work.

I’m not sure I understand Nev’s critique, to be perfectly honest. Rey’s moves are unrefined but I don’t find the scene comical at all. Without saying why I moved the scene to where I did, I’m curious what your impression of the restructure is and what it might or might not accomplish?

Like you said in the caretaker thread, it might not work for pacing reasons, but regardless of that I think it would be a great approach for your edit, since no one has really tried that idea yet (since people either plop it right where it was meant to be, or they remove the caretaker stuff altogether like Hal does). It could be one of things that differentiates your edit from the the others, since it is starting to feel like it will eventually be the most edited Star Wars movie outside of The Phantom Menace.

I should mention I have no plans to share my TLJ edit. Besides the example I showed and my idea for the caretaker scene, my other changes are incredibly minimal (really just a handful of judicious trims).

So when you do that, will everything from the Caretaker scene to Rey leaving the island all be together, or will you cut away again at some point? I really struggle with understanding pacing and when it feels right to cut. I would be curious if anyone had their own perspective on that.

Yeah I probably wouldn’t move anything else at first and see how it works. TLJ I feel is pretty excellent in terms of knowing when to cut to the next thread and when not to. Looking at how TLJ does it (which was of course inspired by ESB) in comparison to say AOTC is a great way to rethink the sequencing of the prequels (which cut back and forth with a frequency that kills the forward momentum).

There is a possibility that adding the caretaker scene on will lopside the island stretch there, though, in which case moving the Yoda scene elsewhere wouldn’t be a bad idea (though I’m reluctant to do this).

She’s learning to use it, hence the dumb reverse grip. It’s made clear when she chops the rock that she doesn’t know how to use it.

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

RogueLeader said:

I would personally leave the training stuff as is, for the reasons Nev mentioned earlier, but I am really curious to see if that caretaker restructure would work.

I’m not sure I understand Nev’s critique, to be perfectly honest. Rey’s moves are unrefined but I don’t find the scene comical at all.

The biggest issue with the scene for me personally is that the lightsaber is treated like a glowing stick rather than a deadly energy weapon. In the other Star Wars movies, characters took care to hold the saber away from themselves, but Rey almost immediately begins toying with it, flipping it around in one hand into an ineffective reverse grip (something that is almost always not done in sordfighting due to its limitations) and swinging it around with no regard for her surroundings, culminating in a complete loss of control and almost killing some caretakers.

So it’s not comical per se, except for the caretaker bit being played for laughs, but it does feel like it should be a strike against her readiness in the eyes of Luke.

Personally I don’t think the main purpose of the scene is to show her as unready, or for that to be Luke’s main takeaway.

NeverarGreat said:

And that would have been perfectly fine if she hadn’t already beaten Kylo Ren with one. Placed after that fight, it feels like ability regression.

I don’t really see how, considering the similarities of her “training” style of lightsaber weilding/swinging to the style she exhibited while fighting Kylo.

This is something that has been discussed multiple times in the past but I figured I would reiterate my thoughts on it on the radical edit ideas thread.

Of course one of the big issues with TFA is how it bears a lot of similarities with ANH. I think the existence of Starkiller Base had a big part to play in that comparison. It really is the one thing that I think made a lot of people begin to draw comparisons. I think Restructured comes as close as possible to alleviating that comparison by having the Resistance fail at destroying Starkiller Base before it destroys the New Republic.

Since TFA came out, there has been a lot of talk of try to make Starkiller Base a star forge-like device, or even a regular base for the sole reason of not wanting another super weapon. I have to admit that the idea of of Starkiller Base has grown on me over time, and it makes since for the First Order to want to emulate the Empire, but beyond not liking the repetitiveness of the super weapon plot device, I do think there is a genuine narrative reason why removing it would be an improvement.

Really, TFA is about finding Luke Skywalker. It is really what the first two acts of the film are all about. But as soon as Starkiller Base is introduced, that plot gets sidelined in order to focus on them wanting to blow Starkiller up. Not only that, but we get that weird plot-point of R2 having the other half of the map, but randomly waking up at the end of the movie and conveniently having it (which Restructured also alleviates to a degree).

While I think there would be a lot of problems to solve in order to make this work, I think a radical idea for TFA would be to make the third act be about sneaking onto Starkiller Base in order to get the second half of the map to Skywalker.

Let me try to outline some of the changes:

• Of course, all shots of Starkiller Base would need to be altered to remove the giant hole in the planet, and instead make it look like a normal planet.

• When Kylo is interrogating Poe, you could reuse dialogue from Rey’s interrogation so he tells Poe that they have the rest of the map, recovered from the archives of the Empire. By adding that, now Poe knows that the First Order has the rest of the map.

• You would want to use Restructured’s version of the Takodana attack.

• One of the hardest changes would be to restructure the Resistance base scene to remove them talking about Starkiller base being a weapon, or them wanting to blow it up. Possibly a solution could be found by redubbing Ackbar, 3PO or a random Resistance officer to give a nice, concise line regarding their objective, and make the scene much shorter.

• Slightly trim Hux’s speech to remove “this fierce machine…upon which we stand”, just something like “we will bring an end to the Senate…” instead.

• Also, replace the sequence of Starkiller draining the sun with a fleet of Star Destroyers orbiting Starkiller jumping into hyperspace in different directions, to imply they are preparing to invade the Republic.

• When Han and Finn get to Starkiller base, Han jumps in low to avoid the scanners rather than jump through the planet’s shield. Later, they use Phasma to get the map instead of lowering the shields. Would just need to replace the graphics on screen. Using Nev’s idea, Phasma sounds the alarm.

• Add offscreen Resistance dialogue to say something about Han and Finn being exposed, or the alarm being set off, which then leads to Poe and Black Squadron to attack Starkiller Base as an distraction for Han and Finn to escape.

• During the dogfight, I was thinking some pilot chatter could be added to mention something about a tractor beam. This could be what the Oscillator is. (alternatively, the Oscillator could still be an oscillator, and Starkiller be like a factory and Black Squadron still wants to destroy it. Depends on if the ground destructions could be cut out or not.) If the Oscillator was a part of the tractor beam system, the shot of the X-Wing crashing into the ground in front of Han, Rey and Finn could be used somehow to imply this.

• Because of this tractor beam, they can’t leave, which is why they still try to go destroy it with the explosives. [Interestingly, according to some early TFA leaks, Hux originally might have had some kind of tech on Starkiller base that could pull ships to the ground, so it could be fitting].

• So when Kylo kills Han, instead of intercutting between that and Starkiller destroying Hosnian Prime, we cut to a scene of a fleet of Star Destroyers entering Hosnian Prime’s orbit. We could use footage from the D’Qar battle in TLJ to have multiple First Order dreadnoughts enter Hosnian’s orbit, then fire their cannons down onto the planet. We then could cut to the shot of Kor Sella as she watches those lasers come crashing down on them, destroying everything. This new sequence would be a combination of TFA footage, TLJ footage and some newly created shots. But structure-wise, it could play out similarly as it does in Restructured. After Han dies, cut to one half of Leia’s reaction shot, show First Order fleet destroying the New Republic, then cut to the latter half of Leia’s reaction shot, then back to Starkiller Base.

• Also instead of the sun disappearing, you could just make clouds block it out, or even a Star Destroyer.

• Chewie blows a hole in the building. Poe could fly in and blow it up but not exactly necessary. You would definitely probably want to avoid using Poe’s Death Star trench run at least. At some point you could add pilot VO about the tractor beam being disabled, or use a monitor shot from the First Order base to show the tractor beam being “drained” sort of like the shot of Obi-Wan turning it off in ANH. Some First Order VO could be used in this instance too.

• Throughout the rest of the Starkiller sequence, you would want to remove any shots of the ground breaking apart. I don’t know how feasible this is, but two possible solutions. If it is impossible to completely remove, you could have Starkiller be some kind of Star Forge device that they still destroy, my only gripe with this is how it kind of contradicts thee idea that arms dealers are selling weapons to the First Order, but I guess those two things aren’t necessarily incompatible, if arms dealers are selling them certain types of weapons, and even designs/schematics. A second option would be to make Starkiller look like it has giant cracks and rivers of lava in certain areas on the wide shots of the planet. Maybe one could add lava to that shot of the mountain on Starkiller right before Rey’s interrogation scene (it would be sort of reminiscent to some TFA concept art of a snowy planet with lava on it).

[If making Starkiller a star forge was necessary, you could keep the planets appearance similar, and the draining the sun thing, and have shot of Star Destroyers coming out of it earlier in the film, like an idea Neverar had. It would also visually explain how the Empire was able to rebuild unnoticed, and you could still have the Resistance destroy it. But wanted to try to come up with a solution that keeps the focus just on the McGuffin (aka Luke and the map) as much as possible.]

• Okay, so Rey beats Kylo, and when Chewie rescues them on the Falcon and they leave, one or two new shots would need to be made of them escaping Starkiller Base, since you can’t use the shots of the planet collapsing. You could still use the shot of the Falcon and the X-Wings jumping into hyperspace.

• Once they get back to the Resistance Base, have some Resistance VO say that Finn has the map as they’re carting him away. (Since it would be hard to create inserts of a hand holding a thing that has the map on it, we would have to stick with the implication that Finn got it when Phasma pulled it up. Then we would hear a Resistance tech or pilot confirm that he has it once we’re back at the base.)

• BB-8 could tell R2 the good news through beeps, which makes R2 wake up with excitement. Also, we would need to alter 3PO’s dialogue to tell R2 they found the map or that they can find Luke.

There probably would be a lot of smaller changes throughout as well, but I do think it such an edit could be possible. The big thing would be that there would need to be multiple shots with brand new effects, but by by removing Starkiller base and focusing on Luke, I think The Force Awakens would be a lot stronger than it already is. I think if enough people wanted to see this change and we figured out how each necessary change could be executed, then doing the fx work becomes pretty straightforward, and could be something that just gets knocked out over time.

Would be interested to hear people’s thoughts on this.

I’ve long thought (since the film came out) that they should have gotten the second part of the map from Starkiller base. It’s so obvious a solution, you don’t even need to get rid of the super weapon aspect, as long as that goal is in place the climax would suddenly feel more a piece with the rest of the story anyway. If there’s a way to fan edit it in, I’d like to hear it (though I’m skeptical).

Haha, thanks. I was planning on being productive tonight but that didn’t happen!

Yeah, it definitely requires a lot more work, but the groundwork has already been laid down by Restructured, at least.

And if we went with the Star Forge idea, it would require a little less fx work (or an equal amount if you have to generate those Star Destroyer shots), but more dialogue regarding Starkiller could be kept. The Resistance Base discussion would still be heavily trimmed, but a little less so than if Starkiller was a regular planet.

If you just tried to cut out every instance of them saying “weapon”, “laser cannon”, “Death Star”, “gun”, you would be left with something usable.

If you kept their mission of destroying the base, their mission becomes a little more unfocused (find the map AND, ironically, destroy the planet). You could keep the layout the same, but just swap out Starkiller Weapon with Starkiller Factory, but that would defeat the purpose of wanting to keep it focused on Luke.

And you’re right, having crazy tech in Star Wars is definitely a part of its style, but the craziest thing Empire Strikes Back had was the Super Star Destroyer, and in this version TFA would still have the First Order Dreadnoughts.

I mean if you did the Star Forge idea, would you have Phasma lower the shields and give them the map? Or just have no planetary shields?

Like I said, I think making Starkiller a Star Forge alone would still be a worthy idea to try and implement. I would at least see if it is possible to have the third act still focus on the McGuffin if possible too though.

Either A) Phasma lowers the shields and also gives them the map. Maybe you could generate a shot of the screen where we see the shield lowering, and then later when she stands, we see the galaxy map on the screen, or vice versa.

Or B) there is no planetary shield, and Phasma just gives them the map (and possibly sounds the alarm). Black Squadron is either trying to destroy Starkiller (the weapon or the forge), or they are purely a distraction for Han & Finn. The oscillator could be turned into a tractor beam generator as well that they have to destroy.

EDIT: Han might say shield during the briefing scene. He mentions the shields having a fractional refresh rate during the hyperspace scene, but that can be cut, since later he says, “If we go any higher they’ll see us!”

Han during the the “that’s not how the Force works!” scene, he says “Then how do you know how to disable the shields?” That can be cut.

The only time it might be a problem is that when they get inside the base, he does say, “The shields?” and Finn in the same shot says, “I have an idea.” Either you could use some effect to make him not say anything. Or just cut that interaction and we can assume Finn figured something out. Or move that “I have an idea” line, to later. Or possibly cut to a different shot, maybe a cutaway to Chewie if possible, to remove that “shields” line. Removing any mention of the shields is possible I think.

What if you just cut that briefing scene altogether?

Also, that would be a cool idea for your edit! They fail their mission, but if Rey has “seen” where Luke is, it would also help justify why Rey of all people has to find him.

OutboundFlight, after I wrote my long post I went back to the first page of this thread and saw you suggest the very same thing, in a briefer way. I thought, “Outbound might like this!” Keep up with our conversations about it if you want because we could always use an extra perspective for problem solving!

The thing is, if we go the route of Starkiller just being a base, then the only thing we know they might be after would be the map.

Poe would tell Leia that Finn worked on the base, Finn tells Leia his friend was taken and that he has to get back to there. Leia asks him to tell them everything he knows. With an edit I mentioned earlier, Poe would know the First Order has the rest of the map already from his interrogation. When 3PO inserts BB-8’s portion of the map, he says it is incomplete and they don’t have enough information to find Luke.

The next scene is the R2 scene, where 3PO says he probably wouldn’t have the rest of the map in his back-up data (in this version he wouldn’t, but this scene would reiterate the objective). Next, Leia and Han talk, and a Resistance officer tells her the recon on the First Order base has come in (they know where the base is now).

The next scene is Rey’s interrogation, where Kylo could remind us again that they have the remaining portion of the map. If we cut the briefing scene, the next Resistance scene would be them getting ready for their mission, everybody running around and such. With no mention of a weapon or that they need to blow up anything, the audience is left to assume they are going to get the missing portion of the map, because that is what the movie has been telling us they are after.

When they hold Phasma hostage, we could simply change the screen to show a starfield map, and we would know that they are getting the map and they wouldn’t even have to say, “the map”!

And like I have mentioned before, we could rearrange some of the X-Wing dogfight shots when necessary, but we could add pilot VO that simply says, “We have to disable their tractor beam!” That’s really all we need to know about the “oscillator”. And the tractor beam has a stronger narrative purpose than just being a convenient weak spot of the weapon.

All of this is with the idea that Starkiller is just a normal planet.