Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: The Starkiller Cuts (WIP)

Ever since joining this site, I’ve always wanted to do my own edits of the sequel trilogy. There are many great edits of the prequels out there, but unfortunately it seems like the overall mixed reception to the sequel trilogy has stopped people from making similar edits of the sequels. With this project, I’m planning to make my own version of these movies, tailor-fitting them to my own personal preferences.

For now, here’s a taste of what to expect:

• No Palpatine whatsoever. He’ll be completely removed from TROS, and Snoke will be explained as a Dark Jedi from the unknown regions of the galaxy. Kylo Ren is the main villain of the final movie.
• Increased time skips between the movies. Artoo’s awakening has been removed from TFA, causing Rey to take one year to find Luke’s island in TLJ. The time skip between TLJ and TROS has been extended to three years, giving the First Order time to build the Sith fleet.

Those are just a couple of the overall changes. I’ll post more shortly.

After thinking over it for a bit, here are some ideas that I want to try in TFA:

• Cut Finn seeing the death of his stormtrooper friend. It introduces a weird subplot with humanized stormtroopers that’s never really continued throughout the rest of the trilogy, and Poe killing Finn’s best friend makes their relationship afterwards feel really awkward.
• Cut Kylo freaking out when he hears about Finn and Rey for the first time. It’s a pointless comic relief scene that makes Kylo feel like a joke, and it implies a past between Rey and Kylo that was never really expounded upon.
• Cut the whole deal with the Rahtars and Kanjiklub. It adds nothing to the movie, and just drags the pace down. Because of this, Kylo’s first conversation with Snoke has been postponed to after the heroes are spotted in Maz’s cantina, and the scene with Vader’s helmet that was originally there has been postponed a scene later.
• Starkiller Base still destroys the New Republic in that scene’s theatrical place, but the reaction shots of the heroes observing it are gone. It completely destroys any sense of internal consistency with how far apart things are from each other.
• Cut Kylo freaking out when he realizes Rey escaped, for the same reason I cut his earlier freakout moment.
• The First Order no longer discovers the Resistance base’s location in this movie. It was always a lame attempt to add tension to the final act, and removing it helps the time skip between TFA and TLJ feel more believable.
• Like I said already, Artoo doesn’t give the map to the Resistance, leading to Rey going on a one year search to find Luke. The credits roll after the Falcon jumps to hyperspace.

Will you use any of the edits/ideas from Hal’s or Neverargreat?

EddieDean said:

Will you use any of the edits/ideas from Hal’s or Neverargreat?

I’m honestly not sure. I mostly want this trilogy to be my own edits, without taking any clips directly from other peoples’ work. I’ll still take inspiration from other edits, but I want these versions to stand on their own.