Unusual Sequel Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 19

Here’s how I might restructure the villain’s plan for the trilogy:

TFA

The crawl establishes that the First Order is intent on killing the last of the Jedi. This is the most important thing for them, though it is unclear why.

The Starkiller is multi-purpose. The interior has been hollowed out through mining to supply the ores necessary for the First Order/Palpatine’s fleet. After this it has been retrofitted as an experimental weapon by ambitious First Order leadership spearheaded by Hux. The fact that it was first used as a forge could be a mystery in TFA or only hinted at, but explained later on.

After Kor Sella is sent to the Senate the base begins charging, and everything from Restructured happens as planned except that the base is destroyed before it can fire like in the original. The Republic is not destroyed.

There are hints as to the true size of the hidden fleet and their provenance, perhaps placed into one of Rey’s visions or in Kylo’s interrogation of Poe.

TLJ

The crawl establishes that Kor Sella’s mission to the Senate has been a success and the Republic is in the process of relocating its fleet to D’Qar to bolster the Resistance forces.

However a Star Destroyer appears before the fleet is fully assembled and wipes out the planet (This uses footage from TROS and TFA). Only a few ships escape to join the Resistance, and these, we later learn, were tracked.

Cut to the island where Rey tries to convince Luke to join the fight. She doesn’t know that the Republic is gone, so doesn’t tell him that the First Order is on the verge of victory. Since Luke isn’t connected to the Force he can’t feel such a loss anyway.

Cut back to the Resistance base and Hux’s forces arrive to cut off their retreat. Cut the jokey attitude of the Resistance characters to match the grave knowledge that the Republic has been destroyed.

The film carries on much as before except that the final scene shows Kylo Ren finding Palpatine and his fleet instead of showing the Broom Boy scene.

TROS (or THE FINAL ORDER)

The crawl states that the First Order is moving quickly to gain control of the galaxy.

The first scene is Palpatine’s message to the galaxy. The full threat of his fleet is revealed.

Our heroes rush to find the Sith artifacts required to locate the Sith planet, etc.

The defeat of the First and Final Orders shows a montage of planets rejoicing, prefaced with Broom Boy relating Luke’s inspirational visage which reignited hope in the galaxy. This is bookended by him walking outside and seeing a First Order Star Destroyer broken and burning in the night sky above.

Rey visits the homestead. End Credits.

NeverarGreat said:

Here’s how I might restructure the villain’s plan for the trilogy:

TFA

The crawl establishes that the First Order is intent on killing the last of the Jedi. This is the most important thing for them, though it is unclear why.

The Starkiller is multi-purpose. The interior has been hollowed out through mining to supply the ores necessary for the First Order/Palpatine’s fleet. After this it has been retrofitted as an experimental weapon by ambitious First Order leadership spearheaded by Hux. The fact that it was first used as a forge could be a mystery in TFA or only hinted at, but explained later on.

After Kor Sella is sent to the Senate the base begins charging, and everything from Restructured happens as planned except that the base is destroyed before it can fire like in the original. The Republic is not destroyed.

There are hints as to the true size of the hidden fleet and their provenance, perhaps placed into one of Rey’s visions or in Kylo’s interrogation of Poe.

TLJ

The crawl establishes that Kor Sella’s mission to the Senate has been a success and the Republic is in the process of relocating its fleet to D’Qar to bolster the Resistance forces.

However a Star Destroyer appears before the fleet is fully assembled and wipes out the planet (This uses footage from TROS and TFA). Only a few ships escape to join the Resistance, and these, we later learn, were tracked.

Cut to the island where Rey tries to convince Luke to join the fight. She doesn’t know that the Republic is gone, so doesn’t tell him that the First Order is on the verge of victory. Since Luke isn’t connected to the Force he can’t feel such a loss anyway.

Cut back to the Resistance base and Hux’s forces arrive to cut off their retreat. Cut the jokey attitude of the Resistance characters to match the grave knowledge that the Republic has been destroyed.

The film carries on much as before except that the final scene shows Kylo Ren finding Palpatine and his fleet instead of showing the Broom Boy scene.

TROS (or THE FINAL ORDER)

The crawl states that the First Order is moving quickly to gain control of the galaxy.

The first scene is Palpatine’s message to the galaxy. The full threat of his fleet is revealed.

Our heroes rush to find the Sith artifacts required to locate the Sith planet, etc.

The defeat of the First and Final Orders shows a montage of planets rejoicing, prefaced with Broom Boy relating Luke’s inspirational visage which reignited hope in the galaxy. This is bookended by him walking outside and seeing a First Order Star Destroyer broken and burning in the night sky above.

Rey visits the homestead. End Credits.

Don’t forget to have Snoke be a follower of Sidious instead of being his creation. Simple, have it be mentioned in the opening crawl of The Force Awakens: The Starlight Project that “the First Order was formed under a follower of Darth Sidious.” Also, insert foreshadowing in Return of the Jedi that Sidious has been extremely weakened, keeping Anakin’s original sacrifice intact, and remove the Chosen One prophecy from the prequels altogether so that adding more dark-siders into the sequels wouldn’t ruin Anakin’s sacrifice.

Thinking about the opening to TLJ, perhaps we could go crazy and break convention:

After the ‘a long time ago’, open on the blackness of space. A light appears in the stars, glowing red and getting larger. A beam of energy streaks across the frame, and descends on the world of Hosnian Prime. Sella and others look up in horror as the beam incinerates the planet. Cut to black.

STAR WARS

Catastrophe! On the eve of a declaration of war, the New Republic has been devastated by a mysterious weapon from beyond the stars.

Determined to complete their victory, the First Order has tracked the shattered remnants of the Republic fleet to the planet D’Qar, determined to capture General Leia Organa and the location of the last Jedi.

With not a moment to spare, Leia orders an immediate evacuation, desperate to preserve the last spark of hope for a return of galactic peace…

Also: Make it clear in the crawl for TLJ that the First Order is intent on capturing Leia instead of destroying her so that she can be compelled to tell them Luke’s location. This will require cutting some of Hux’s lines, but I think it would still track with the rest of the movie. Kylo intentionally avoids firing on Leia when he senses her on the bridge, and Snoke only decides to wipe out the Resistance after he has the location of the island from Rey.

This allows for the TROS scene of the planet destroying to stay in TROS as a visual reminder of what the mysterious weapon must have been. I also like that only the Emperor is able to actually destroy planets.

The plan of Palpatine comes into clearer view now. In TFA the goal is to corrupt Luke’s Jedi order with Snoke and kill Luke, and also corrupt the Senate. In this way he would win without ever firing a shot. However since Luke disappears and the Resistance is formed to find him, he is forced to send the First Order out looking. Hux actually throws a spanner in the works with his failed Starkiller idea, which turns the Senate to seriously declaring war on the First Order, and requires him to destroy the Senate and fleet altogether. Then with Luke’s death he feels able to openly declare his supremacy, not counting on Luke’s effect on the galaxy and the existence of Rey.

NeverarGreat said:

Thinking about the opening to TLJ, perhaps we could go crazy and break convention:

After the ‘a long time ago’, open on the blackness of space. A light appears in the stars, glowing red and getting larger. A beam of energy streaks across the frame, and descends on the world of Hosnian Prime. Sella and others look up in horror as the beam incinerates the planet. Cut to black.

STAR WARS

Catastrophe! On the eve of a declaration of war, the New Republic has been devastated by a mysterious weapon from beyond the stars.

Determined to complete their victory, the First Order has tracked the shattered remnants of the Republic fleet to the planet D’Qar, determined to capture General Leia Organa and the location of the last Jedi.

With not a moment to spare, Leia orders an immediate evacuation, desperate to preserve the last spark of hope for a return of galactic peace…

I really like this!

I would go a step further and say put that before the Force Awakens. The ST doesn’t have a clear understanding of how the galaxy works. There’s a Republic, but we never visit it. There’s a Resistance that is technically not a rebellion but in practice really is. There’s a First Order that is technically not an empire but in practice really is.

If TFA had a cold open destruction of the Republic, and everything the OT stood for, I think we’d instantly understand…

1. Why the ST has reset to the OT, which builds on the themes from TLJ, without feeling contrived.
2. Why the First Order is a threat and Luke is necessary NOW.
3. That everything was fine before the dark side got involved.

The only problem with that is that you would have to lose the introduction to Kor Sella which is the only explicit link to the Republic in these movies.

Is there some way to make Han a full-blown force ghost? I know it completely contradicts the prequels, but I don’t really care.

The FO appeared comically overpowered in TLJ, beginning to colonize the entire galaxy and dominating everything despite appearing on the scene only recently and having their doomsday device destroyed. After TFA, I expected TLJ to open with a power vacuum in the galaxy.

It would seem that having a weaker FO in TLJ would compliment how TROS opens. However, the Resistance still needs to be cast as the last sliver of hope in that movie. I’m not sure much can be done, perhaps just reworking TLJ’s crawl to sound less bleak and remove Rey’s offscreen line about the FO controlling all the major systems within weeks.

The FO’s power in TLJ is shown primarily through the fleet, so getting rid of most of the accompanying Star Destroyers would help. If the Hosnian destruction were placed at the beginning of TLJ Rey’s line would have to be removed anyway, and the loss of the Republic here would be ample reason for a loss of hope for the galaxy.

I guess the line about “miniaturized Death Star tech” could probably be put back into TLJ.

Rey shouldn’t utter “they were nobody,” allowing Kylo to state the supposed facts. For Rey to say it after searching her feelings confirms it as gospel to the audience. Kylo can just say, “Say it: they were filthy junk traders, who sold off for drinking money. You have no place in this story…”

The Emperor’s laugh can be added as Luke gazes into Kylo’s mind, linking him with his turn to the dark side.

This would probably be too hokey, but you could try adding a distant laugh or something after Snoke is killed. Even if it was done well, it’d pull away from the drama going on.

Some Palpatine-related audio could be added to Rey’s Force vision in TFA. Does he address Rey by name in TROS? If so, add that.

Also, we now have Palpatine saying “Luke Skywalker,” which just might work in fan edits of ESB that modify the McDiarmid Emperor scene to stick to the original version’s dialogue. Up to now the closest we could come is “young Skywalker.”

Hard to tell whether it’d be a good fit in context until we can actually try it out.

Does anyone think it would be possible to add his Force ghost behind Rey while she’s fighting Palpatine?
Not necessarily his actual ghost at the end of ROTJ, but any of his PT shots masked and edited to look like a ghost.

Personally. Ok.
But I just asked if someone thinks it is possible to have a believable Anakin Force ghost.

IlFanEditore said:

Does anyone think it would be possible to add his Force ghost behind Rey while she’s fighting Palpatine?
Not necessarily his actual ghost at the end of ROTJ, but any of his PT shots masked and edited to look like a ghost.

Maybe a gif of photorealistic fanart of Force ghost Anakin? If not, maybe use his EA Battlefront II model and edit it so it wouldn’t look out of place?

DominicCobb said:

I guess I mean my edit idea is to remove his ghost from ROTJ, which means you don’t have to do the much harder job of adding him to movies he’s not in (I have no idea how to do that).

I see your point.