Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Redux Ideas thread — Page 126

JakeRyan17 said:

I’m just saying that if the movie came out in theatres that way, it would be confusing. It’s something new and different, with no introduction or setup, being introduced at the last possible moment.

Personally not a fan because of that. I guess the approach I try to make with any edit, fan or for work, is thinking story first, then cool looks. Doing something because it looks cool, even though it makes no sense, is kinda what gave us the mess that is Rise of Skywalker to begin with.

I have no comment on whether today’s audiences would understand it. But I definitely think audiences of the 1980s would understand it. I think it’s kind of a shame that theaters today are so full with armchair critics who can’t think for themselves that audiences being confused at the lightning being red is a genuine possibility. It’s lightning, that’s red. Not that hard.

I feel like I’m coming off like an asshole here, and I don’t mean to direct this at you, but I really hate that discourse around movies is so dominated by stuff like this. Oh, XYZ wasn’t explained, oh ABC isn’t set up properly, oh LMNOP is unrealistic, when all of this stuff makes sense if people one, stayed awake for the entire duration of the movie, and two, turned on the shriveled husk of meat inside their skulls they call their “brain”.

I blame pop critics like Cracked and CinemaSins.

SparkySywer said:

JakeRyan17 said:

I’m just saying that if the movie came out in theatres that way, it would be confusing. It’s something new and different, with no introduction or setup, being introduced at the last possible moment.

Personally not a fan because of that. I guess the approach I try to make with any edit, fan or for work, is thinking story first, then cool looks. Doing something because it looks cool, even though it makes no sense, is kinda what gave us the mess that is Rise of Skywalker to begin with.

I have no comment on whether today’s audiences would understand it. But I definitely think audiences of the 1980s would understand it. I think it’s kind of a shame that theaters today are so full with armchair critics who can’t think for themselves that audiences being confused at the lightning being red is a genuine possibility. It’s lightning, that’s red. Not that hard.

I feel like I’m coming off like an asshole here, and I don’t mean to direct this at you, but I really hate that discourse around movies is so dominated by stuff like this. Oh, XYZ wasn’t explained, oh ABC isn’t set up properly, oh LMNOP is unrealistic, when all of this stuff makes sense if people one, stayed awake for the entire duration of the movie, and two, turned on the shriveled husk of meat inside their skulls they call their “brain”.

I blame pop critics like Cracked and CinemaSins.

It’s instant-gratification social media in general. People have self-inflicted ADD and do not have the time to actually digest the latest media, they just want quick explanations and then forget about it 48 hours later. It’s why READING is becoming a problem in society as people can barely focus on a book, much less an article–notice how articles come with “5 min read / 10 min read” at the top nowadays?

People would rather watch a 10 minute youtube that explains a movie than actually watch a movie…and that’s sad, because it will eventually kill the artform. Other than autistic people like us here, the majority of people will not care about the minute details. Unless there’s some sort of major cultural change (on the level of the creation of the internet itself) that forces people to re-focus their minds, it’s just gonna get more and more shallow and superficial and lazy with details.

So, bringing this back on topic…other than a show like Game of Thrones, there isn’t much media geared towards rewarding people for dissecting every single detail. Say what you will about George Lucas’ storywriting abilities…he did have an eye for details. MAYBE Mandolorian will bring back that level of focus, but even that’s got a lot of potential problems with continuity and timelines since it has prequel-canon limitations.

Or it’s just looking at basic storytelling. Things get set up, then paid off. If something is established one way for 8/9 films, a sudden change at the end of the last film will make people question it.

The modern film trope i dislike is prioritising looks over story. Changing the colour at the last minute just because it looks cool and different has no real merit to me.

Someone brought up the changing of saber colours, and that’s a bit different: because it’s a prop. We are already accustomed to props, costumes, and even lightsabers specifically having various colours across all nine films. Making this change doesn’t impact the story with questions of “why is it different?” That’s been established and set up.

When it comes to powers, especially in a scene where under-developed powers are are already a major focus, adding another new and unestablished element will distract away from what’s going on. If sucking that much life out of them gave him so much more power that things have changed, why does he need them to kill him to get a new body? He’s beyond rejuvenated, what’s the point? This type of change gets in the way of storytelling.

Again, if you changed it everywhere, so the power was established as such, that would be different. But introducing a new, unexplained element that makes us question the motivations of the villain in the third act of the 9th film… that’s just bad storytelling.

And we can play the ageist game of “back in my day…” or whatever. That’s irrelevant. The purpose of the scene is that Palpatine gets rejuvenated. If he goes beyond rejuvenation to more powerful than before, his motives for the rest of the film no longer make sense. It’s always been implied Palpatine was stronger than he let on in other films, and he didn’t do the crazy antics like he does with the fleet, because he never needed to and it would go against his goals in those films.

Throwing my two cents here.

Yay red lightning.

But keep in mind, it’s not really red like a lightsaber. It’s got a pink-ish hue.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/2/2a/Epguide316.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120312233700

Also, I’d make sure every time he uses his Sith Lightning is red. So both when he’s firing it at the fleet and when he’s shooting it at Rey. Otherwise it’d just get confusing.

On a completely unrelated notes, has the fact that he magically gets his Windu-deformations and new clothes ever been discussed? Cuz as it stands, he got rejuvenated, then ran behind the Sith Throne, got naked, but on new clothes, and ran back around to walk through the fog and go “look what you have made”.

Maybe someone could try superimposing Sidious’ red robes over the robe he wears when he’s goading Rey into killing him. That’d be a start.

Also, has it been already suggested to making the Sith Eternal Acolytes chant “Sidious” instead of “Palpatine” (them calling him by his Sith name makes more sense)?

Just got back from seeing the brand-new Star Wars sequel in the theatres - you know, The Empire Strikes Back? It was fine and all, but I really didn’t understand how Luke got his lightsaber out of the snow. I don’t remember Ben ever saying anything about telekinesis being a force power, so I was very confused. And then Darth Vader used it later in the film to throw stuff at Luke! Why didn’t he throw stuff at Ben when they were fighting in Star Wars? Plot hole! They should’ve gotten me to write the sequel.

On a more relevant note: editing Palps’ lightning to be red when he’s zapping the fleet would require a lot of work, since there’s a few shots of it lingering on the ships, and Exegol’s so blue that you’d have a hard time trying to limit a hue adjustment to just the lightning without doing a bunch of manual masking/rotoing. I chose the shots with Rey for my test since they’re composed such that all the lightning is on one side of the screen and bunched together, making it more straightforward to work with. I am a total amateur though; perhaps some VFX God like Jonh could pull it off.

Palps’ costume change is pretty weird; the rest of his appearance makes sense as him being juiced up on dyad energy, but it’s not addressed why or how the fabric of his robe turns red as a consequence of that. To some extent, this further justifies not needing to explain the red lightning. TROS runs very heavily on ‘rule of cool’ and I think leaning into that with Jonh’s force ghosts, red lightning, fanservice rescores etc. works better than trying to edit around it. You could rather straightforwardly black out the red bits, but it’s not that big of a deal. The opposite - adding red to his earlier costume - would be much more work.

Edit: It has come to my attention that the official Rise of Skywalker teaser poster features red lightning, meaning it is actually more canon than the movie itself, since the poster came out first. /s

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Brewzter said:

I wasn’t even aware they were chanting actual words, but I’d be down for it to be Sidious.

Curious that Sidious got name-dropped in TLJ but was only referred to as Palpatine/Emperor in the movie that actually featured him.

sade1212 said:
You could rather straightforwardly black out the red bits, but it’s not that big of a deal. The opposite - adding red to his earlier costume - would be much more work.

Edit: It has come to my attention that the official Rise of Skywalker teaser poster features red lightning, meaning it is actually more canon than the movie itself, since the poster came out first. /s

Oh wow, blacking out the red bits would be the easier route 😄 completely flew over my head, didn’t think about it.

Although the red lightning on the poster, I think it’s supposed to represent that wormhole that leads to Exegol.

Knight of Kalee said:

Brewzter said:

I wasn’t even aware they were chanting actual words, but I’d be down for it to be Sidious.

Curious that Sidious got name-dropped in TLJ but was only referred to as Palpatine/Emperor in the movie that actually featured him.

I think it was to enforce the “House Palpatine vs House Skywalker” aspect that JJ was trying to push.

Anakin Starkiller said:

It’s not really all that noteworthy since both Palpatine and Sidious are names that were only used in the Prequels, so either way it’s an acknowledgement of them. Then again, the Emperor had always canonically been Palpatine and was established as such in additional material, so maybe Abrams called him that not 'cause of the Prequels but 'cause it’s what was on the box of his childhood action figure or something. The same logic applies to the use of the word Sith.

Yeah, but I mean, Dooku and Maul never call him “Palpatine”, they call him “Sidious”, because they’re Sith. Padmé and Obi-Wan never address him as “Sidious”; they use “Palpatine”. The whole point is that there’s his public identity, and then his real Sith identity. Wouldn’t it make sense for the Sith Eternal to call him “Sidious”?
Like, JJ probably made them call him “Palpatine” because, like you said, it’s probably the name that was on his action figure as a kid, and a last name enforces the whole House Palpatine thing. But if you’re gonna tie his resurrection and this entire cult to the Sith, and Palpatine’s got a Sith name… i feel like they’d use his Sith name over the commonly known one.

StarkillerAG said:

I don’t think they were actually chanting any real words. It was just vaguely evil sounding gibberish.

They were. Once he goes “Look what you have made”, they go “Palpatine! Palpatine!” and then transition to vaguely evil sounding gibberish.

Anakin Starkiller said:

Knight of Kalee said:

Brewzter said:

I wasn’t even aware they were chanting actual words, but I’d be down for it to be Sidious.

Curious that Sidious got name-dropped in TLJ but was only referred to as Palpatine/Emperor in the movie that actually featured him.

It’s not really all that noteworthy since both Palpatine and Sidious are names that were only used in the Prequels, so either way it’s an acknowledgement of them. Then again, the Emperor had always canonically been Palpatine and was established as such in additional material, so maybe Abrams called him that not 'cause of the Prequels but 'cause it’s what was on the box of his childhood action figure or something. The same logic applies to the use of the word Sith.

I was actually fearing they wouldn’t call him Palpatine in this movie because of the “ignore the prequels” mindset.

Brewzter said:

It’s instant-gratification social media in general. People have self-inflicted ADD and do not have the time to actually digest the latest media, they just want quick explanations and then forget about it 48 hours later. It’s why READING is becoming a problem in society as people can barely focus on a book, much less an article–notice how articles come with “5 min read / 10 min read” at the top nowadays?

Absolutely, people are completely losing any attention span. I’ve shown two different friends the saga for the first time recently and both of them couldn’t watch the movies for more than a couple minutes max without looking at their phones constantly.

They also don’t WANT to find details. Like, they’ll miss things and be confused, but can just ask someone to explain and boom, they’ve got their answer and lost interest.

Caring about the details is becoming a lost part of the artform.

Last Jedi used Sidious and Rise of Skywalker used Palpatine based on the desire of one filmmaker to tie into the entire saga, and the other to just make a sequel to his film from four years prior and tie into his childhood toys.

A lot of Luke’s motivations were solidified by the conversation where he uses Sidious’ name: and describes the plot of the prequels. Abrams did everything he could to ignore as much of the saga as he could. He remade A New Hope, gave some nostalgia, didn’t complete any character arcs, then four years later strings together something that references his movie and a scene from RotS. He prioritised looks over story at every turn, and the films are so shallow because of it. Johnson told a story, even if people didn’t like the story he told. There are layers and connections to evolving the saga as a whole.

It’s a name that was created for that storyline. Palpatine, much like the term Sith, was used for the OT and its marketing materials. Sidious was treated as his truer name, with Palpatine being more of the disguise.

Every other film in the franchise, including first instalments of two other trilogies. This wasn’t like Lord of the Rings, where it’s one story spread over 6-9hrs. It was a first story, but he failed to tell a complete story.

JakeRyan17 said:

It’s a name that was created for that storyline. Palpatine, much like the term Sith, was used for the OT and its marketing materials. Sidious was treated as his truer name, with Palpatine being more of the disguise.

Every other film in the franchise, including first instalments of two other trilogies. This wasn’t like Lord of the Rings, where it’s one story spread over 6-9hrs. It was a first story, but he failed to tell a complete story.

Was the word “Sith” ever uttered in the original trilogy, though? (excluding early drafts, deleted scenes and the EU material). Can’t remember if it did.

I believe I’m falling in a middle ground between you guys. I definitely think TFA could have used a lot more originality but it’s a fine film, and I like Johnson’s themes and character arcs for TLJ even if their execution was hit-or-miss.

Anyway, Rise of Skywalker is a film that’s already packed with fan-service, and seeing as there’s not much we can do to turn it around and make it a more character-driven story, I’m open to embracing more fanservice elements (red lightning, green Sith magic, name-dropping Sidious, etc.).

Knight of Kalee said:

JakeRyan17 said:

It’s a name that was created for that storyline. Palpatine, much like the term Sith, was used for the OT and its marketing materials. Sidious was treated as his truer name, with Palpatine being more of the disguise.

Every other film in the franchise, including first instalments of two other trilogies. This wasn’t like Lord of the Rings, where it’s one story spread over 6-9hrs. It was a first story, but he failed to tell a complete story.

Was the word “Sith” ever uttered in the original trilogy, though? (excluding early drafts, deleted scenes and the EU material). Can’t remember if it did.

Sith was never said in the OT. Nor was Palpatine or Sidious. In the EU, sure, but not the actual movies. Remember when the emperor’s name was Cos Dashit?

Ewok was never said either, for that matter.

And, for all intents, “Darth” was a first name until Phantom Menace where it became a title. Phantom actually was a massive lore dump for the Sith in general.

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