Random idea regarding Palpatine:
One gripe I’ve heard people bring up before is Palpatine committing the “Evil Gloating” trope when he tells Rey that if she kills him, his spirit will pass into her.
Palpatine: You want to kill me. That is what I want. Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you, as all the Sith live in me.
This may have been suggested before, but I was thinking this line could be moved to Kylo’s first scene with Palpatine, replacing Palpatine response after one of these two lines:
Kylo: I killed Snoke. I’ll kill you.
or
Kylo: You’ll die first.
I personally think it would fit better to replace Palpatine repeating the “to cheat death” line that doesn’t do anything beyond being a callback. Either way, I think this change would accomplish a few things. First, we get a stronger explanation and understanding of Palpatine’s true nature and means of survival at the beginning of the film rather than the end. Second, it provides a good reason for why Kylo didn’t just immediately kill him. And third, it creates dramatic irony during the climax, because we know what is at stake if Rey kills Palpatine, but she doesn’t. So hopefully the audience would react by thinking, “No no no, Rey, don’t do it he’ll possess you!”
RL, this is brilliant. I liked the idea so much I did a quick test. The timing for the Kylo part is perfect, and most of Palpatine is obscured anyway so you can pretty much put in whatever dialogue you want there and not have to worry about the lip movements matching:
https://vimeo.com/424408915
faneditOut of curiosity, I also rendered a clip of the Rey section with those lines removed and it works pretty well here too. Since Palpatine mentions Rey’s hatred in the next scene, cutting it here and leading into the empress line makes me not even miss the moved dialogue over to the Kylo scene. (P.S.- It’s not Rey ‘Palpatine’ in this version)
https://vimeo.com/424408966
faneditExceptional creativity, man. This really does change some motivations, as you stated previously. Plus, it removes the prequel redundancy dialogue, which you really don’t need if you show Palpatine in the clone tanks. I don’t miss the callback at all by making the change. Well done.
JEDIT: It’s also interesting that going this route makes Kylo the true vessel. Palpatine has been grooming him for quite a while, but Kylo doesn’t want to be taken over, so he decides he’ll take Palps up on his offer instead…more ships, more power…all he has to do is kill the girl who is a threat to them both (and Palps would likely betray him later). This simple dialogue switch sets up motivations now for a good chunk of the movie and eliminates the silliness of Palpatine wanting Rey to kill him at the end of the film, seemingly out of the blue after he’s wanted her dead the whole movie. Now, we know much earlier why he wants this and that Rey is now Plan B with Kylo taken off the Sith board. Genius…
Wow, those concepts were executed and worked better than I could have imagined! Love how it takes out the redundant RotS line and how it brings those aspects of the Emperor to the front of the film.
On an unrelated note, I really enjoyed your Vader battle with Kylo Ren clip, that was very well integrated into the overall scene and I think it would be a great addition to the movie. Please go through with making the fully realized version of that moment. Even if not many edits would use it, I would certainly add it to my own definitive cut of the film.