Sorry I haven’t responded yet, but I’ve had to take my mind off the hook for a while regarding Star Wars in general and this edit in particular. After TROS, everything’s felt a bit surreal. It’s the sort of movie that I feel like pushes the ST into such a campy, turn-your-brain-off direction that any work these fanedits could do is practically meaningless. I suppose that there is still value in them as standalone projects, but those are the feelings I’ve been grappling with. In addition, the total sum of work I’ve put into Starlight has, for me, not been equal to the result. Many things about it are a mixed bag, as your excellent feedback has pointed out. Not that I am opposed to criticism, quite the opposite! But I know that a lot of work must still be done to make this the edit that you have all been hoping for, and I’m not sure that I’m up to the task. But let’s get to the specifics!
I’ve read all of the points but there are so many from quite a few people on the forum and in PM form that I should probably just go through the big issues at once:
BB-8’s scene after the interrogation - I’m still hoping to turn this into a more developed little scene. Otherwise I’d have to revert to the sequence of events in the original which is rather nonesensical.
Rey’s pre-interrogation dream - I’m on the fence about this. Maybe I can make it good enough to work, but on the other hand perhaps less is more here. There are a lot of dreams and visions going on with this edit, and this is the one that is least integral despite setting up the final scenes of the movie.
Rey’s final dream - Several people have mentioned that the TLJ clips are too out of place, and I’m inclined to agree. If the previous dream stays in, my intention is to remove the TLJ moments and simply rely on the iconography of the island. This will probably be enough to avoid whiplash with this new ending.
Starlight vs Restructured on Hosnian destruction - The consensus here seems to be that Restructured did this best, putting it right after Han’s death. Since I edited that sequence for Restructured, I will consider that a compliment 😉 But seriously, I’m actually leaning toward keeping the Starlight version, reason being that this version satisfies one of the goals of the edit - that of tightening the logic of the film - where Restructured bends the time logic even more with an extended death and destruction sequence with a cutaway to Leia before Chewie fires on Kylo. The original theatrical version took me out of the events with just the Leia cutaway, so Restructured is actually worse in this regard. Also, despite being a slightly more effective one-two gut punch, this requires the weapon to charge again and has a plot-jolting scene with Hux and Snoke to reset the tension. Hopefully I can get some new dialogue for the Hux countdown scene and re-include it. As for Leia’s cutaway, I think it might be good to cut down the Oscillator explosion even more to get more quickly to her reaction, and smooth the music where the cutaway originally happened.
Speaking of sound, that seemed to be the source of a lot of issues. I’ve already done some work in this regard post release, but your comments on sound issues are very helpful since I have trouble identifying all of them.
On a more positive note, I’m glad that people have responded so well to many of the changes such as the regradings and small tweaks throughout. The voices before Kylo kills Han started off as a weird little idea that few people remarked on at first, but seems to be a hit. I also haven’t heard anything about quite a few things I’ve put into the film or removed, and I’m curious if that’s because they’re not worth commenting on or whether they’re so seamless as to avoid detection. Probably the first, but I can always hope that in a few cases I’ve performed a magic trick 😃
So I know that this started out a bit pessimistic, but I’m glad people have overall enjoyed the work and want me to continue. And it will, maybe not right away but at some point when TROS has settled and we can get to work on that as well.
Thank you all so much! You are really the reason I enjoy doing this, after all 😃