Unusual Sequel Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 18

I think the best way to make Starkiller just a Base could be something like this:

The Resistance needs the second half of the map, and Poe knows it is on Starkiller Base because Kylo told him during his interrogation. Han and Finn sneak onto the Base and get Phasma to give them the map, but the First Order is alerted to their presence and engages a planetary tractor beam that will prevent any ship from leaving the planet.

Black Squadron flies in to try and disable this tractor beam (the oscillator) so Han and company will be able to escape. The squadron wonders where the rest of their fleet is.

Meanwhile, we see the First Order’s Fleet surprise attacking the New Republic homeworld.

Poe manages to destroy the tractor beam after Chewie blows a whole in it, and after their duel with Kylo Ren, they escape the planet.

I do think that Starkiller could provide some benefit in the long run, but that might be worth discussing later.

Speaking of the First Order, I definitely think that the First Order should be framed as the reunified Imperial Remnant, in order to separate itself more from the Sith Fleet. Nev’s most recent TFA: Starlight crawl is a good example of that direction. I basically picture that you could frame the galaxy as somewhat split between factions, like 60-40% or 70-30%.

I almost wonder if you could go in the opposite direction and introduce the Sith fleet earlier. That’s what destroys the Republic. That’s what looms over the galaxy throughout the trilogy and why so few are prepared to join the Resistance.

TROS seemed to be setting up the First Order vs. the Final Order, but nothing came of it, so why make them two different things? Fuck it, have Palpatine’s broadcast during the destruction of the Republic. Don’t know how the hell you proceed from there but it’s an idea.

I think that there are too many threads that would get tangled up by trying to intersect the movies too much.

I think the movies could be set up politically this way:
TFA - There is a cold war between The New Republic and a newly unified Imperial remnant known as the First Order. The Resistance is on a mission to find the last Jedi. The First Order launches a surprise attack on the New Republic.

TLJ - War rages across the galaxy, but things aren’t looking good for the crippled Republic. The Resistance struggles to survive as they try and hold out for Skywalker’s return, which is why Snoke lays siege to their forces in particular. Luke makes a heroic stand against the First Order and ignites a spark of hope throughout the galaxy.

TROS - Despite the First Order’s significant hold on the galaxy, the hope Luke inspired has ignited rebellions across their territory. Their resources are spread thin, and they’re desperate to find a solution. The new Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren, goes on a quest to find the source of his old master’s power.

The important thing, in my opinion, would be to find ways to foreshadow the existence of Palpatine in the previous two films. Maybe Vader’s helmet in Episode 7 could give Kylo a vision that hints toward Palpatine involvement. Things could be thrown into Rey’s vision as well.

When Snoke died, we could see the “blue flames” drift away from his body to imply a part of Palpatine’s spirit left it or was destroyed. This idea could also be applied to Vader’s helmet, and we could alter a scene in TROS to make it look like they accidentally destroy it and a “blue flame” dissipates from it as well.

I would also cut out any lines regarding a “Final Order” and let people assume the red troopers and other red dressed Imps are just First Order. I don’t think the implication should be there is a whole other Imperial remnant hiding deeper in the Unknown Regions, just the Sith Cult and the Emperor’s hidden Imperial armada.

Yeah that all makes sense to me. I honestly have no idea how you tease Palpatine to be honest, besides maybe just adding his music haha.

JEDIT: if the Rey Palpantine angle is kept perhaps Adam Driver could taunt this instead throughout his “noboby” taunts with Rey in TLJ. As I’ve suggested elsewhere it might also be wise to have him travel to Mustafar and Exegol prior to killing Snoke and his Praetorians. TLJ Luke can also be redubbed to foreshadow Palpantines return perhaps.

If this is done and works, then a TRoS extended cut would be in order rather than a massive overhaul (some conservative trims still needed ofc)

Many good ideas, for me the easiest changes (given the existing footage) might be:

• Palpatine can be revealed much earlier just by visions and transmissions (on TROS the transmission is a simple text).
• Star Destroyer cannons might be connected to Starkiller base firing.

These 2 things give plenty of options regarding story, as others have said above.

orchidal said:
*addendum: is it possible to kill off Leia in her ship (TLJ)? I’d think that that’d be narratively speaking the best place for it to happen.

No, you need her to turn Kylo into Ben, thus eventually resurrecting Rey.
It’s Leia’s power that allows Ben to do that (besides defeating the Knights of Ren and surviving a death pit) 😉

4throck said:

orchidal said:
*addendum: is it possible to kill off Leia in her ship (TLJ)? I’d think that that’d be narratively speaking the best place for it to happen.

No, you need her to turn Kylo into Ben, thus eventually resurrecting Rey.
It’s Leia’s power that allows Ben to do that (besides defeating the Knights of Ren and surviving a death pit) 😉

Or maybe it could be adapted into Rey’s healing of Kylo, that simple act of compassion, that turns him back into Ben?

Leia’s “Ben” which distracts him could easily be delivered from beyond the grave. That would probably make more sense than her lying down and force skyping it to him so hard that she dies, anyway. Even Mace Windu, who never learned how to be a force ghost and has been dead about 50 years, managed to communicate through the force to Rey.

I feel like there needs to be some expansion of the Leia/Ben moment. As is, it just feels comically abrupt and confusing. I figure what makes most sense would be additional lines for Leia. Even just adding something as simple as “Come home” would add something.

sade1212 said:

Leia’s “Ben” which distracts him could easily be delivered from beyond the grave. That would probably make more sense than her lying down and force skyping it to him so hard that she dies, anyway. Even Mace Windu, who never learned how to be a force ghost and has been dead about 50 years, managed to communicate through the force to Rey.

The question is, is a bad explanation for her death better or worse than no explanation?

Maybe putting something like “The ailing General Leia Organa” would help set it up, either way.

I also feel like Kylo needs to expound a bit on the fact that he thinks he “can’t go back.” As is it’s just one line tossed in there, pretty close to when Leia contacts him. If it’s established earlier that he thinks his mom has given up on him, it’d be much more powerful for him to be contacted by her.

Wait…am I the only one who interpreted the Leia/Ben scene as Leia “inhabiting” Ben’s spirit to try to turn him, which distracts him so Rey can stab him, which ends up killing Leia?

As in…Rey, in a moment of Dark Side weakness, is the one who killed Leia?

I thought that was extremely powerful and the perfect motivation for Rey to try and pull an Obi-Wan/Yoda/Luke and go to Ach-To to give up and die. And it seemed explicitly foreshadowed by her thinking she accidentally killed Cheque earlier in the movie.

ChainsawAsh said:

Wait…am I the only one who interpreted the Leia/Ben scene as Leia “inhabiting” Ben’s spirit to try to turn him, which distracts him so Rey can stab him, which ends up killing Leia?

As in…Rey, in a moment of Dark Side weakness, is the one who killed Leia?

I thought that was extremely powerful and the perfect motivation for Rey to try and pull an Obi-Wan/Yoda/Luke and go to Ach-To to give up and die. And it seemed explicitly foreshadowed by her thinking she accidentally killed Cheque earlier in the movie.

That’s interesting, I did not get that at all. But I suppose it’s as reasonable an explanation for what they were trying to do as anything.

Wow. Okay. I thought that was 100% the intent of that scene and was pleasantly surprised with the amount of balls JJ had for having Rey be the one to kill Leia, even if it was an accident on her part.

If that’s not what happened it might legitimately knock down my opinion of the movie a peg or two…

DigMod said:

My idea is to treat the sequel trilogy like a Star Wars Infinitities story. The idea would be that the Rebellion failed at Endor, Palpatine never died, Luke either dies on the Death Star or on Crait, Rey is the other hope Yoda refers to, Darth Vader learns how to transfer his life force into Kylo Ren and seeks to overpower Palpatine, etc.

The presentation would be slightly different and along the lines of the opening scenes of TROS but with Blue text a la Solo to describe the new history leading up to the infinity story. I’m still fleshing out in my mind of how it could all work, but I’ve realized after TROS that I don’t believe I can fix or create continuity with the OT, nor do I have the desire to.

I wish JJ would have utilized the force realm Ezra found in rebels and retconed the entire saga a la Donnie Darko or the Kevin timeline of Star Trek. This approach is as close as I can get and accept what we’ve received. Hopefully I can find a way to pull it off.

Oh my God, THIS. Absolutely THIS.

Well, I’m going to keep believing that’s what happened as my headcanon because it was one of my favorite things about the movie.

But since I was sure the Internet would be calling for Abrams’ head over that choice and…no one is, clearly that wasn’t even close to the typical interpretation of that scene.

That is an interesting idea Ash! Maybe you could just cut Maz’ line to help imply that.

That’s also an interesting idea you had DigiMod! Maybe your new TFA could start with an alternate ending to ROTJ?

ChainsawAsh said:

Wait…am I the only one who interpreted the Leia/Ben scene as Leia “inhabiting” Ben’s spirit to try to turn him, which distracts him so Rey can stab him, which ends up killing Leia?

Not the only one. It’s a possible interpretation. TROS is open to interpretation on that regard.

TROS has parallels to themes straight out of Christian Theology (resurrection, trinity etc). People still debate those after centuries 😉

Whatever you got out of the movie is true to you.

Long time lurker, I’m excited to finally join this community! I think we could really make something special out of the sequel trilogy.

I would say that it actually won’t be too hard to make Palpatine’s presence in the sequel trilogy more natural. Here would be my general layout.

Episode VII: Palpatine should never be explicitly mentioned in this one, but he should be strongly hinted towards. In order to gain this effect, I think we could use the classic fanediting trick of turning Snoke’s dialogue into a new language (a Sith dialect), and using subtitles to rewrite him and Kylo Ren’s interactions. Through these subtitles we would make it clear from the start that Snoke is more of a gatekeeper/messenger for some higher power. He can motivate Ren to continue his sith journey by dangling the carrot of meeting the “dark lord” or something along those lines, creating intrigue.

Episode VIII: this is where we need to see Palpatine so that his inclusion in the finale will feel not so out of left field. We would double down on Snoke bringing the mysterious figure up throughout the film, until Kylo finally kills Snoke and decides to go directly to him himself. We would then use the Kylo Ren and Palpatine scene at the end of this film, to build a major cliffhanger that leaves fans wondering what will happen in the finale while hopefully not feeling like Palpatine is an ass pull.

Episode IX: can mostly proceed as it was, and what we do with Rey’s background can go whatever way. If we want a better scene to establish Palpatine’s public presence, we could do a recut version of the Hux Nazi speech from TFA. Instead of Hux delivering his speech, we could have the first order army watching a hologram of Palpatine as he delivers his Fortnite speech. From there he could be the final boss that Rey and Ben overcome.