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Unusual Sequel Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 72

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ben_danger said:

The whole child-soldier thing really bugs me about the ST. In the OT - I felt the battle between the empire and the rebels was fairly morally unambiguous. The empire was evil - the people fighting for it were likely culpable. But the element of recruiting child soldiers in the ST really makes me feel bad for the Stormtroopers and Officers who are killed.

I agree. I’ve tried to reduce the killing of troopers, especially Finn killing them from the trilogy as much as I could.

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Well, if Bad Batch follows the pattern from Rebels, they’ll stun everybody and not a single stormtrooper or villain person will die from the heroes’ hands. 😂

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ben_danger said:

The whole child-soldier thing really bugs me about the ST. In the OT - I felt the battle between the empire and the rebels was fairly morally unambiguous. The empire was evil - the people fighting for it were likely culpable. But the element of recruiting child soldiers in the ST really makes me feel bad for the Stormtroopers and Officers who are killed.

I think this idea could be taken two different routes:

Option A) Remove any implication of stormtroopers being child soldiers. Since the films never address that fact, it would be better to make the stormtroopers more responsible for their allegiance. It also might make Finn’s defection have a little more impact, since he presumably made the choice to join them in the first place. Also, Finn’s seems to have pretty normal social skills for a child soldier, and we never have to see him be deprogrammed from all the propaganda he must have grown up hearing. It definitely would’ve been interesting to see Finn and Poe at odds with each other because of their assumptions about the other faction, but then slowly form a mutual respect. Instead, they’re friends instantly.

Option B) Keep stormtroopers being child soldiers, but alter Finn and Poe’s blaster effects in IX to make it seem like they are stunning stormtroopers rather than killing them. This would at least make it seem like they are aware of the implications of their actions, and are actively trying to avoid killing people who were child soldiers, just like Finn. And you could potentially give the Sith troopers clone voices as well. Technically they’re child soldiers, too, but they weren’t taken from a family like Finn and Jannah were.

It would also be nice if you could imply that Jannah and the other troopers were inspired by Finn’s defection. She could say, “We laid our weapons down, like you.

Also, instead of Finn saying, “It’s real. I wasn’t sure then, but I am now”, I think it would be nice if Finn said something like, “This is where we belong. I wasn’t sure then, but I am now.” I honestly feel like there is so little payoff to Finn’s force stuff, it would be better to keep his scenes focused on Finn’s trilogy-long arc of finding something to fight for. Plus, it implies that Finn has now recruited the defected stormtroopers, who were inspired by Finn’s own defection. Unfortunately a lot of this is implied off-screen, but I think it is the closest we can get to Finn’s stormtrooper rebellion with the footage we have.

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RogueLeader said:

ben_danger said:

The whole child-soldier thing really bugs me about the ST. In the OT - I felt the battle between the empire and the rebels was fairly morally unambiguous. The empire was evil - the people fighting for it were likely culpable. But the element of recruiting child soldiers in the ST really makes me feel bad for the Stormtroopers and Officers who are killed.

Option B) Keep stormtroopers being child soldiers, but alter Finn and Poe’s blaster effects in IX to make it seem like they are stunning stormtroopers rather than killing them. This would at least make it seem like they are aware of the implications of their actions, and are actively trying to avoid killing people who were child soldiers, just like Finn. And you could potentially give the Sith troopers clone voices as well. Technically they’re child soldiers, too, but they weren’t taken from a family like Finn and Jannah were.

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What if instead of Hux being the traitor, Finn and Poe escape by convincing the stormtroopers who caught join them? Then this rebellious company joins them on the trip to Kef Bir. Probably not doable but who knows. Would at a lot more weight to their space horse charge at the end.

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 (Edited)

Ed Slushie said:

RogueLeader said:

ben_danger said:

The whole child-soldier thing really bugs me about the ST. In the OT - I felt the battle between the empire and the rebels was fairly morally unambiguous. The empire was evil - the people fighting for it were likely culpable. But the element of recruiting child soldiers in the ST really makes me feel bad for the Stormtroopers and Officers who are killed.

Option B) Keep stormtroopers being child soldiers, but alter Finn and Poe’s blaster effects in IX to make it seem like they are stunning stormtroopers rather than killing them. This would at least make it seem like they are aware of the implications of their actions, and are actively trying to avoid killing people who were child soldiers, just like Finn. And you could potentially give the Sith troopers clone voices as well. Technically they’re child soldiers, too, but they weren’t taken from a family like Finn and Jannah were.

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That’s an impressive colour change, but they still don’t look like stun settings. Stunners are either blue circles (like storm troopers in A New Hope, et al.) or what looks like a ball of electricity or lightning (such as Ezra’s stunner built into his first lightsaber).

It might be easier to replicate Exra’s stunner, rather than cutting the laser bolts completely and building the circles from scratch. If you can do the visuals though, I can help you get the corresponding audio in those scenes.

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An idea was discussed recently, possibly on a different thread, was Palpatine being stripped of his physical form and becoming more of a primal negative energy. While that’s maybe a little far, I think it could be neat having him as a sort of spirit (no, not a Sith ghost, Sith can’t do that) who needs a host to inhabit and tries to get Rey to act as that host. Remove shots of GLaDOS Palps and rearrange his lines about his spirit passing into her and it should be doable. Then of course he absorbs the energy of the dyad and emerges as a physical being once more.

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That’s a fun idea, how would you visualise it (beyond cutting shots of him on the harness out)?

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Smoke monster, obviously. Maybe that’s what that red nebula they fly through is.

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JakeRyan17 said:

That’s an impressive colour change, but they still don’t look like stun settings. Stunners are either blue circles (like storm troopers in A New Hope, et al.) or what looks like a ball of electricity or lightning (such as Ezra’s stunner built into his first lightsaber).

It might be easier to replicate Exra’s stunner, rather than cutting the laser bolts completely and building the circles from scratch. If you can do the visuals though, I can help you get the corresponding audio in those scenes.

I’m tempted to experiment with using the classic ‘blue circle’ stun effect on the troopers in TROS now…
Wish me luck!


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That’d be a fantastic improvement if you can manage it. I’ve always found it somewhat uncomfortable how our heroes are cold, unfeeling killers in TROS. Rey gets all choked up when she stabs Ben and decides to heal him, but she didn’t even flinch when she shot half his subordinates earlier.

At least in the OT, there’s nothing to contradict the idea that the Stormtroopers were voluntarily giving their lives to defend fascism, and thus they weren’t particularly sympathetic, but the ST makes it very clear that the First Order enslaves children and that quite a few of them would defect if given a chance.

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I really like changing the idea of changing the blaster bolts for stunners, removing the unfortunate implications of killing brainwashed soldiers. However I don’t know how convincing it would be, even with the circle stun effect, without erasing the blaster scorch marks on the fallen troopers’ armor.

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To be fair, there were some sparks when Poe got stunned in TLJ. Plus there weren’t any sparks when Hux got shot by Pryde, so you could argue that it depends on the material being shot rather than the type of shot used.

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I actually think it would be much easier to just remove all lines referring to the First Order stormtroopers being taken as children. I think it was just a few lines in TFA that mentioned it, so it should be pretty easy. It would make Finn’s decision to leave seem more unique, as if he was one of the few troopers who didn’t support genocidal fascism. It would also make it less weird that he kills his former comrades without a second thought.

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StarkillerAG said:

I actually think it would be much easier to just remove all lines referring to the First Order stormtroopers being taken as children. I think it was just a few lines in TFA that mentioned it, so it should be pretty easy. It would make Finn’s decision to leave seem more unique, as if he was one of the few troopers who didn’t support genocidal fascism. It would also make it less weird that he kills his former comrades without a second thought.

That’s a good idea too. Plus, I feel like knowing that he, at some point, chose to enlist in the First Order would make him feel like he has more of a character.

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You would also need to cut around Jannah’s dialogue where she says, “Not by choice. We were conscripted as kids, all of us.” The way the scene is shot and blocked might be difficult to cut around. Maybe an insert shot of BB-8 from TFA could be regraded and used to hide the necessary cuts.

You also run into the issue of Finn’s name. You’d basically need to cut it in a way where Poe asks Finn’s name and he just immediately answers with Finn.

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Also, aren’t the First Order officers talking about stepping up raids to get more kids in TROS, something that is referenced to happen on Kimiji?

There doesn’t seem an easy way to go in either direction with this. On the one hand, cutting the child conscription makes the sequels even more reliant on OT concepts, while leaning into the child conscription only highlights Finn’s bizarre actions.

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I mean… this never bothered me as much as everyone else. I guess that even though they were trained “since birth” or whatever Hux says, all the stormtroopers that don’t defect do choose to stay. Finn, Jannah, and the rest kinda prove that those who didn’t defect didn’t want to defect. Finn killing those he was close to is always in self-defence as they’re trying to kill him.

Of all the issues in this trilogy, that just doesn’t register to me.

The idea of changing the guns to stunners is kinda fun, reminds me of the animated shows where the heroes never kill (humanoids) with blasters, only stun. It’s kinda comical and something I thought was Disney until I paid closer attention to Clone Wars and realised it’s likely Filoni’s call.

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NeverarGreat said:

The problem is that the children are never given a choice, whereas a recruit clearly made a decision to join. Pretty sure no officer ever came up to them and said ‘anyone who wants to leave, here’s the door.’

Sure, but the indoctrination would be present regardless. Hitler Youth wanted to become Nazis and SS, and would have conscripted (some who were older did). So while they weren’t technically kidnapped children, and technically chose to join…

The difference is negligible at best to me. I know people that were indoctrinated since birth to be hateful bigots, and we were even once friends… but we’re not now, and by all accounts they believe I deserve to die for existing. So it’s not as unrealistic as I feel is being presented here.

The point of difference isn’t about them being presented the choice to defect, mutiny, or run, but rather that some people chose it knowing they were risking their lives. That’s what makes Finn heroic, even if he is “murdering his friends”…

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My own personal opinion, I’m really not a super fan of all the kidnapping, or even recruiting children that there is in Star Wars nowadays. Even when the villains (the First Order) do it, it’s still kind of really uncomfortable that this is just a fact of the Star Wars universe now.

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I mean, none of the Space Nazis’ actions are meant to be comfortable… same with their regular genocides. We’re not meant to be fans of villains’ actions.

I get that it’s illustrating something awful in the real world, but that’s kinda the point. That’s how fascist armies are built. The ideals of fascism are kinda childish, few reasonable adults choose it. It’s only through indoctrination and childish needs for vengeance that people choose it. So, kidnapped as physical children or mental children, it doesn’t feel like as big a difference to me.

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Well, I just have much more sympathy for someone who was indoctrinated and forced to join a fascist army, while I have very little sympathy for someone who joined a fascist army by choice. In the former option, they aren’t bad at heart, they were just brainwashed. In the latter option, most of them would have to be really bad in order to willingly sign up for this. It’s not really the same in my opinion.

Here’s all the things we would need to change in order to do this, from what I can tell:

  • Cut Finn saying that his only name is FN-2187, replace with audio of him saying “I’m Finn.”
  • Cut Phasma looking at a picture of Finn as a kid and talking about his indoctrination process.
  • Cut Finn saying that he was taken from a family he’ll never know and raised to fight.
  • Cut Finn telling Phasma his new name (most edits cut this scene due to excessive comedy anyways).
  • Cut the First Order officer talking about harvesting the galaxy’s young.
  • Cut Jannah talking about being conscripted as a kid, possibly inserting the Falcon cockpit bit to cover up the position change.

I think it could definitely be possible, and wouldn’t affect the runtime very much.

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It would make it so that Finn wanted to join the First Order, which in and of itself wouldn’t make sense.

And brainwashing can happen at any age, either way there would be a level of brainwashing happening. I feel like we’re just looking for excuses to not care about people dying, which… I dunno. Kinda goes against the “empathy” argument to me.