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Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Redux Ideas thread — Page 59

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Another potential use of the fanfilm is to use it at the Death Star ruins, maybe a joint ‘vision’ Rey and Kylo are having…the bits where Rey sees herself turned to the dark side, she can see Ben decapitating Vader.

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drakesepi0l said:
Maybe I’m alone in this, but I think that since it’s already established in canon that Rey is a Palpatine, we should just keep that, improve it but not deny it, even if we don’t like that narrative decision. Changing something like that it’s too big.

To each then own, but personally when I do a reedit, it’s all about head canon. For instance, there’s no “Chosen One” in my prequel reedit, nor any “will of the Force.” No midichlorians, either.

And technically, it’ll be a cinch to remove “Rey Palpatine.” I love the idea others have had to make it so that she accidentally killed her own parents. I’m gonna work a “memory” of that into Kylo’s interrogation of her.

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StarkillerAG said:
I personally think Rey Palpatine needs to go. I couldn’t care less what the canon says.

Amen!

[Option] 2. Rey accidentally killed her parents, causing a conflict over her inner darkness. . . .

Option 2 is the most difficult, although the payoff might be worth the extra VFX work.

I don’t think it’ll prove that difficult (depending on how much one wants to elaborate on it with flashbacks or visions). The initial “killing” would be a short clip involving splicing together Rey’s flashback of her parents leaving (TFA) and her hand in the air shooting lightning (TROS).

I also intend to pad the backstory with parts of this excellent 9-min. fan film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zRGaVi59bs

I’ll also insert flashbacks and a Dark Rey vision into her interrogation.

It also occurs to me that possibly Dark Rey could be combined with Force-lightning attacking Resistance ships in TROS, so that she fears destroying her own friends. “Always in motion, is the future,” said Yoda – so the Force-lightning attack would be an actual glimpse of the future, only she thinks she’s the attacker, rather than Palpatine.

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idir_hh said:
Any ideas on how to keep Ben alive?
“as I once fell, so will the last Skywalker” is depressingly anticlimactic considering the title of the film.

I’m toying with this, but am drawn to the poetic justice of Ben actually accomplishing what he said he would do: “finish what you [Vader] started.” It would be an ironic twist that he sort of both mirrors and completes his grandfather’s self-sacrifice.

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CassusFett said:
I am removing force healing from my edit. So, Kylo dies on the death star after being stabbed by Rey. In other words, Ben is never redeemed. As a result, Rey cannot be healed by Ben, so she tragically dies after defeating the emperor.

Also, I am removing the entire McGuffin chase. Meaning Rey goes straight from Leia to the death star to find the wayfinder. Its an imperfect solution, but its workable, and it removes the worst parts of the movie IMO. It does a great deal to fast track Rey Nobody because it removes Ochi and the flashbacks about her parents.

I like some of this. I also plan to remove the scavenger hunt. How would you go about connecting the dots without the in-between hunt?

As to no Ben at Exegol, and Rey dying at Exegol, how do you think you might manage that without the climactic battle looking like something is missing?

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ChainsawAsh said:
. . . I don’t know how well eliminating the search for the Wayfinder stuff will work without cutting the movie down to less than 90 minutes…

If it were only a TROS reedit, you’re likely correct. Myself, I’m editing all 3 sequels as one.

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RogueLeader said:
Random thought, I wonder if we could frame Snoke as Palpatine’s apprentice, . . .

Imagine if Abrams had simply revealed that Snoke was actually Darth Plagueis, and had once again cheated death? Would that not have made for a better story??

Hmm, that was just me speculating, but now I’m wondering: could the name “Palpatine” be removed from TROS, perhaps adding a flashback of “the story of Darth Plagueis the Wise”? This could have huge ramifications for the entire saga - implying that Palatine in the prequels may actually have been Plagueis himself.

This could actually work in a reedit that eliminates the “Rey Palatine” angle.

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Unnatural” 👀

Peace is a lie
There is only passion…

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 (Edited)

I have no idea where this could be useful, but the actors that played Ezra and Mace (CW) are both on Cameo and it might be possible to have them say any new lines we might want?

JEDIT: also Snap Wexley

After being beaten and battered by prequel hate, I promise not to be that to the next generation.

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idir_hh said:

  • Han and Luke call out “Ben” as he is about to strike Rey, I added this to make it more of a collective effort from the big 3 to reach their kid.
  • Added in Leia looking at Han’s medal intercut with Kylo getting stabbed and her death.
  • rearranged the healing scene with Rey first expressing that she wanted to take his hand, than using her hand to heal him (I think it helps in building up to the kiss later on), she then runs off as Kylo looks in aw…
    https://vimeo.com/400042403

Nice technical work there, but I’ll never buy the “Reylo” idea. It severely diminishes one’s character to be in love with a mass murderer – yet in other respects Rey’s character is so upstanding. Thus it’s a massive “Huh???” In fact it’s even worse than the utter lack of chemistry between Padme and Anakin in the PT.

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NeverarGreat said:
To be fair, she picked it up much more quickly than anyone else in the galaxy, including the literal Chosen One.

There is actually an explanation in TLJ for this, the whole ‘darkness rises and light to meet it’. . . . The only thing worse than that would be to actually provide such an explanation, which would alienate those who have accepted the prior explanation as well as coming so late in the story that everyone else has already made up their minds.

In short, pulling that thread in the eleventh hour will just make a mess.

Not necessarily. Just make Rey already a Jedi trainee when TFA opens.

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RogueLeader said:
I wonder if we could have the dyad concept introduced in The Force Awakens. Maybe when Kylo and Snoke first speak via hologram, it could go something like this. . . .

Great suggestion.

Then, in the climax of TROS, as she is chanting “Be with me” and the camera floats up to the sky, we could once again hear the indecipherable Force whispers, but this time they crystallize into the voices of the Jedi.

Hmm, what if the “Be with me” scenes were repurposed so that it’s Rey trying to draw Ben back to the light?

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jarbear said:
I like the idea of adding, or hinting, or whatever about the Dyad thing in TFA since it is later spelled out in TROS. I think it would also satisfy people to understand how she “powered up” so quickly in the movies. Much better explanation then JJ’s response in TFA that she “downloaded” all of Kylo’s training.

Sound reasoning there, jarbear.

The issue with an “overpowered” Rey is that zero groundwork was laid within TFA to lead the viewer to expect or just roll with such a thing. There could easily have been a flashback, or a holocron instruction, or Force-users discussing Force lore, wherein is mentioned the rare, periodic emergence of a phenom who is uber-intuitive with the Force. Even TFA’s term “awakening” could’ve been used.

Had that been done, people like me wouldn’t have tended to view Rey as a Mary Sue.

But when you have no such conceptual groundwork, and then Rey (whose actual character I liked!) repeatedly defeats in lightsaber combat a Force-user who’s been trained by Luke Skywalker and has the potential to be another Vader, well . . . a lot of us just didn’t buy it.

Of course that problem won’t exist in my own version.

I am fine with rare abilities or rare things in Jedi

Me too.

Since, well, it invalidates the previous two trilogies. If there is supposed to be a so called “balance” of Dark and Light side users … then the Rule of Two is invalid if there were 1000s of Jedi before.

Good point - although for me the “balance” notion is philosophically a dead-end, so I nixed it from my reedits.

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snooker said:
Ben Solo lives.

Is it just me or do Dark Siders who come back to the light in the broader Star Wars universe tend to get away with the atrocities they committed while “taking a walk on the wild side”?

You see this a number of times in the EU, but it’s even implied in ROTJ, when Luke says to a “redeemed” Anakin: “I’ll not leave you here to die; I’ve got to save you.” Part of me has always thought: Save him for what? A war crimes trial and summary execution?? Cuz that’s surely what he deserved.

So Vader dying was actually poetic justice - exactly as it is for Kylo/Ben.

While I’ll still give some thought to Ben surviving, I’ll likely come down on the side of his paying for his crimes by his self-sacrifice.

(Would love to see a sample of Force-ghost Ben alongside an old Anakin.)

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RogueLeader said:
This reminds me of early TFA theories about Rey being a former Jedi padawan that had her memory blocked through the Force, sorta like Revan.

That sounds fantastic. Too bad there doesn’t appear to be a way to depict that in a reedit.

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snooker said:
Maybe the crawl explains that Kylo Ren is searching for a rumored hidden fleet that he can use to dominate the galaxy. The Resistance learns about this and wants to stop them. The fleet becomes the macguffin.

That is almost exactly what I’m planning on, except that I’m going to make it a “rumored Sith world” rather than simply hardware.

Regarding Ben’s helmet: What if he rebuilds it to block out all Force-voices, both good and bad? Maybe he’s trying to be truly independent. This could be a good twist after he learns Palp is out there.

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 (Edited)

Star Wars is for 12-year-olds. It’s a fairy tale. Most kids don’t have genocidal tyrants as parents, but a kid that has a rocky relationship with his dad might relate to the struggles between Luke and Vader. The physical scar of Vader cutting his own son’s hand off is meant to reflect the emotional scars a parent can deliver to their child (perhaps some physical ones as well). I don’t know if I could forgive my dad if he literally cut my hand off, or if he killed my own mother, or tortured my sister, or was a literal serial-killer but seeing Luke forgive his father, and still have faith in his inner good, could help me be able to forgive my own father for things he’s said and done in the past.

It’s the exact same thing with Ben Solo. Ben Solo is the kid that has gone down the wrong path in life. They’ve lost their way. He’s hurt or disappointed the people who love and care about him. Ben Solo represents the idea that even if you’ve done bad things in life or have disappointed your loved ones, you can still come back from that and make amends. This message would be much stronger if Ben Solo actually survived and had to continue his life on a better path. Paying for your actions through self-sacrifice works for a paternal figure like Vader, but the same ending for a coming-of-age character like Ben is, in my opinion, weak and lazy writing. Paying for your actions through death is a rather pessimistic resolution for a character that younger audiences are meant to relate to. I’ve seen so many people get hung up on this idea of Ben Solo being a war-criminal or mass-murderer in-universe, but it seems to me many Star Wars fans forget what purpose Lucas always intended for these stories to serve. They measure Star Wars on the standards of reality rather than allegory.

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NeverarGreat said:

In TLJ the Rey/Ben dynamic feels very much like Rey is being drawn towards trying to ‘fix’ Ben, which is definitely a thing that can happen in romantic fiction with ‘bad boy’ characters.

Perfectly valid point. Well, like I implied earlier, the dynamic between the two of them really is the best element of the sequels.

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RogueLeader said:

Star Wars is for 12-year-olds. It’s a fairy tale. Most kids don’t have genocidal tyrants as parents, but a kid that has a rocky relationship with his dad might relate to the struggles between Luke and Vader. The physical scar of Vader cutting his own son’s hand off is meant to reflect the emotional scars a parent can deliver to their child (perhaps some physical ones as well). I don’t know if I could forgive my dad if he literally cut my hand off, or if he killed my own mother, or tortured my sister, or was a literal serial-killer but seeing Luke forgive his father, and still have faith in his inner good, could help me be able to forgive my own father for things he’s said and done in the past.

It’s the exact same thing with Ben Solo. Ben Solo is the kid that has gone down the wrong path in life. They’ve lost their way. He’s hurt or disappointed the people who love and care about him. Ben Solo represents the idea that even if you’ve done bad things in life or have disappointed your loved ones, you can still come back from that and make amends. This message would be much stronger if Ben Solo actually survived and had to continue his life on a better path. Paying for your actions through self-sacrifice works for a paternal figure like Vader, but the same ending for a coming-of-age character like Ben is, in my opinion, weak and lazy writing. Paying for your actions through death is a rather pessimistic resolution for a character that younger audiences are meant to relate to. I’ve seen so many people get hung up on this idea of Ben Solo being a war-criminal or mass-murderer in-universe, but it seems to me many Star Wars fans forget what purpose Lucas always intended for these stories to serve. They measure Star Wars on the standards of reality rather than allegory.

Well said.