Episode IX: THE SHATTERED SWORD - DETAILED SUMMARY COMPLETE — Page 3

RogueLeader said:

It was really fun overall! My thoughts will probably be very sporadic so bear with me. Also, my memory off all the plot points is a little foggy since I read it sporadically as you posted, so I definitely have forgotten things. Also, I definitely missed things too, like I totally missed that BB-8 “died” at first.

BB-8’s death was a last-minute idea I had when considering ANH and the trench run and realizing that no droid in the saga has ever specifically given its life for our heroes, at least to my knowledge. So it’s understandable based on the complete lack of buildup for that sacrifice. In the final version I’d definitely have some dialogue between BB-8 and Threepio about the Jedi ideals, and during the first Star Destroyer infiltration have dialogue about how BB-8 could navigate these hallways blind, that sort of thing.

You definitely came up with ideas I never really considered, like Maz leading a gang of pirates, the medieval-style planet, Hux fencing with a lightsaber and actually being good, everyone using the Force at the end. I think that works as nice counter to Thrawn basically wanting to destroy it.

Thanks! I had the collective Force idea right from the beginning and based the story off of that moment, but all of the other ideas came about through the writing process and my trying to push these characters into the most interesting versions of themselves, whether or not it actually succeeded.

I will say one thing I wasn’t expecting was your depiction of the Knights of Ren. I imagined them as entirely different characters than the one’s we glimpsed in TFA. In TFA they seem dark, rugged, and dangerous. Whereas the Knights in Shattered Sword feel like the valiant Knights of the Round Table. I do think the hellscape idea would be interesting.

Yeah, hindsight is 2020 on that one and I’ll definitely go in a different direction in the future.

One thing I liked was that every character had a moment, even background characters like Connix or the Resistance Doctor.

Exploring those side characters was really a lot of fun since they don’t need huge arcs, but once the battle required all hands on deck as it were, it forced them into battle situations where they could have interesting reactions. It was a happy accident for sure.

I think one thing I would do differently if I were rewriting Episode IX, would be to have a lot of conflict and tension between Kylo and the Resistance crew from the beginning, and have that relationship grow until they’re friends by the final act. I feel like after Kylo makes Finn the commander of the army towards the beginning of the story, a lot of that potential conflict within the group goes away.

Definitely. That’s actually one of the reasons I’m considering the Carbon Freeze aspect. In the first draft we have Kylo essentially die and go to the Netherworld in the first act, and this forces an abrupt 180 for the character. Another reason this 180 is required is because it’s the only good reason to keep him from returning to the First Order to seek revenge or reclaim his throne. So for the final draft, the Carbon Freeze forces his body out of the action while his spirit can continue to influence the plot through Rey. This also helps put her back in the spotlight where Kylo stole it when the fleet is training. I imagine that Kylo is speaking through Rey about how to best prepare for Thrawn but the crew doesn’t trust him, and by extension they start to mistrust Rey. She now has everything on her shoulders and is pulled in all directions at once. She must prepare the Resistance fleet while also seeking out a way to heal Kylo as well as find a way to somehow rebuild Luke’s saber and the Jedi order.

I also think the moment where Rey and Ben contemplate suicide in the dead ship is pretty dark for a Star Wars movie, but I guess we almost got Hux committing seppuku onscreen too. 🤷‍♂️

I went back and forth on that moment for a while, but ended up going for it because it was a rough draft and it’s usually best to be too extreme rather than too timid. But you’re right, and that moment will go if I decide to use the Carbon Freeze plot since Rey will be alone with no impetus to make such a dark choice.

As far what I would like to see happen, you actually hit a lot of the beats I would like to see. I, like many people, like the idea of the final battle taking place on Coruscant. We also get redeemed Ben, Poe as a leader, Finn with other stormtroopers.

Of course there are some things I would do differently. I have certain scenes in my head that I would like to see play out. I definitely think figuring out the climax is a hard thing to do, and I think that is part of the struggle for me. How do create a satisfying antagonist when you make the most compelling villain a good guy in the first or second act?

Indeed. That’s the reason for Thrawn. If I thought that Hux alone could carry the film, or even Hux and the Spirit of the Sith, that would be fine. But Hux is specifically described as being weak, and the Spirit of the Sith is a rather nebulous threat which directly impacts Rey and Kylo only. I suppose Hux could be made to threaten Poe and Finn together while the Sith battle Rey and Kylo, but none of these villains seem to have any interest in battle strategy. I don’t know, maybe Thrawn should go precisely because I like him so much. I just feel like the First Order needs some redeeming quality in terms of its leadership.

I think you do a pretty good job of it in a unique way. I think I followed it pretty well for the most part. I typically get lost in action scenes, but I think I kept up with what was going on for the most part! I do think your second draft ideas are interesting, although I’m skeptical about Kylo being in carbon freeze and seeing how that would play out.

You and me both. I’m hoping to go in a more fantasy/dark fairy tale direction with act 2 when Rey and Kylo are joined in this way and going on this journey to Kylo’s last stronghold.

I do think Rey and Ben need to be close together whenever the climatic moment happens. I think it felt weird to me, that Ben was having this dramatic moment but Rey wasn’t really there with him, even though they are the two main characters. I don’t know if that makes sense.

I can see where that would be an issue. I tried to make it clear that they were communing through the Force at this moment, but especially if they are physically apart for all of act 2 they should be physically together at the end. It will require some more thought.

A part of me is tempted to write out my own rewrite, but seeing how much you wrote, the prospect is slightly intimidating. 😂

I’d love to see your take on it, even if it’s a brief summary. Even if it’s not as visible as a fanedit, it’s definitely been more rewarding, at least for me. 😃

If I were to do that, it would end up being a complete re-imagining of the sequel trilogy with different characters, factions, and themes. Not that I haven’t considered such a project, but in fanwriting I find it more fun and interesting to work within the constraints of the pre-existing characters and story, which is more a creative exercise than an imaginative one.

Update:

I’ve been working for quite a while on a final draft of the above story, but in the refinement it has become practically new except for in its broad plot elements.

However, I have gradually conceived of a far more thematically relevant tale necessitating a new plot. The new story does away with Thrawn but is still in its early stages, yet this crystallized for me at about the halfway point of writing the ‘final’ draft. I have half of a story sitting on my computer, a story which I can’t imagine I will finish.

So, is there any interest in this half of a story before I scrap it in favor of a new attempt? It feels like a shame to leave it languishing, what with its full dialogue and description, especially since I felt like I finally found the soul of this story in Finn’s journey to save his brethren soldiers.

Ah well, here it is regardless:

https://mega.nz/file/OYUlGaBA#85MxTtHpqiITM-uIy3uF06ia9eJLfKxucgQFIfTuk-U

If you think that novel is wordy, you should see my notes 😉

The reason Thrawn was included in my first and second drafts was due to him fulfilling a specific need in the story - I felt the story needed a ‘cold’ antagonist to contrast against Hux and Kylo’s ‘hot’ antagonism. However, as I continued to develop Hux I saw that he could have a cool, calculating side. In addition, the Knights of Ren could be written however I wanted them to be, so putting Thrawn in the mix was overkill. It’s a shame since in theory he’s my favorite character of the lot, but if he doesn’t fully fit the story he must go, especially since there are so many other characters that need our attention.

Yaeh, that’s another area I changed to fit better with existing lore. Now the Knights are Luke’s former students who have bought into Kylo’s (and Luke’s pre-TROS) ideology of letting the past and the Jedi die. I am now concieving them as growing even more extreme in their thinking than Kylo himself, to the point that they could be easily swayed to ally with Hux to destroy Kylo, who is quickly becoming the last vestige of the Skywalker legacy.

Keep in mind though, the half-script stops after Rey’s first meeting with the knights, which hadn’t yet been transformed into the darker versions. It’s one of the reasons I stopped where I did, and I intend in the new version to introduce the knights much sooner.

I hope you like the unfinished version though, I believe there’s a lot of good there that will be carried over to the new script.

Glad you are giving it a read! Let me know what you think of the big dance number 😉

Personally, I felt like any ‘what if’ story should have to confine itself to the limitations of what could be filmed, so Leia’s part was always going to be brief. It’s a constraint, but an important one to me.

I actually have never played a Knights of the Old Republic game(!) but I’m sure the situation of dueling on a sinking ship is something that has been done so many times that it has become a trope, and none the worse for having been done again 😃.

The Finn Stormtrooper angle feels like the heart of this particular treatment to me, so it was going to be introduced as early as possible. In fact, the idea of centering the story around the hijacking of a Star Destroyer, with the ship becoming the primary location, was what drove me to work on this angle. None of the previous films have focused on the interior layout of the ships or had plotlines happen within them, so I felt it was time since they’re basically like cities in space. From a tactical perspective it’s actually quite crazy to even attempt taking such a large vessel with a force as small as the Resistance, so I’ll admit I got quite lost in that space and realized that I could devote an entire film to that and ignore the bigger story.

As for the larger story, I think a coup is almost essential for this to work; Hux vs Kylo is a drama that deserves to be brought to the fore, and Hux must prevail at least in the short term since he did so much failing in TLJ that he absolutely needs this win early on to rebuild his reputation. Hux deposing Kylo needs to happen no later than the end of act 1.

In my first versions of the story, I had Kylo suffer grievous wounds and be incapacitated for an act, but in thinking more on this I realize that Leia being so incapacitated is the logical solution. I was initially averse to it due to it being so similar to TLJ, so the best thing to do is acknowledge this event and perhaps build off of it. For example, Leia is secretly dealing with an inner wound sustained during her trials in TLJ, which leads to her passing close to death in act 1.

Finally and most importantly, there’s Rey. I’ve spent the most time wrestling with her story, trying to simplify it to its core essence. Right now, I believe that Rey’s most pressing concern must arise from the end of TLJ and her grappling with having no place in the story and being unable to let go of the past. She finds all of her value in Han, Luke, and Leia, these legends of the past to whom she’s desperately attached. When Leia’s health fails, she begins to lose the last connection she has with this past, and therefore feels like she will have no place in this story if Leia dies. She believes that Kylo is solely responsible for Leia’s condition and she will do anything to save her, even if that means turning to the Dark Side to save the ones she loves from death.

Kylo, strong enough with the Dark Side to possibly save Leia’s life, cannot do so without violating his determination to let the past die. Rey cannot let go of the past enough to overcome this dark temptation. Both of them must change, but in opposite directions. Ben must save the past, in the form of Leia’s life. Rey must bury the past, in the form of her need for a great and legendary family.

This conflict is the core of my next treatment.

That’s quite the breakdown! I don’t think I’ll be able to respond directly to every point you raise, but I’ll do my best. 😃

Also, please keep in mind that any critiques I may have are coming from a place of admiration, because I’ve really enjoyed everything you’ve written between each draft and I like seeing it improve. I actually think it has gotten better with each draft!

Aw thanks. Looking back at where it started, some of the ideas seem quite bizarre, but it’s all grist for the mill I guess.

Lol, really? You haven’t played Knights of the Old Republic? Sorry for spoiling the game for you then!

Don’t worry, I’m not an avid gamer so I probably won’t play it, despite hearing such good things.

When thinking about my own rewrite (or at least my ideas for a rewrite), that’s what I try to think about when it comes to what to do about all of the characters. Kind of like with Poe, when you look at TFA to TLJ, clearly we see a hero learning to become a leader, so in IX, we have to see that come to fruition, and him becoming that leader has to be his arc.

Ironically, TROS touches on all of these things, but in the most surface level way possible, so it is nice to see in your version these things take center stage, rather than afterthoughts to the Palpatine goose chase.

Poe definitely needs to become a leader, and taking Leia out of the equation early on will definitely help with that.

Speaking of which, I’m curious if you are keeping the spirit possession stuff in the next draft. It is a compelling idea, but as I’m reading it, I do feel like it leads you into similar problems with just having Kylo unconscious for an act of the film. It feels like we’re not really getting Kylo, or feeling his character a lot. It’s like he’s being overshadowed by whatever is possessing him. Kind of like when I read the DotF, it’s hard for me to picture Adam Driver acting out some of those scenes.

From the sound of your new conflict between Rey and Kylo, I’m guessing not. I do love that conflict, by the way! As the filmmakers have said, IX was always meant to be Leia’s movie, but with her death, unfortunately she could only be in it so much. The idea of writing her out of it tends to be a common idea, or she dies really early on, which does happen in your previous drafts. But, the idea of making the central conflict for Rey and Kylo revolve around saving Leia is really interesting. For one, it’s a great parallel to Padmé, and a nice way to mirror that conflict. And I can see it having interesting
meta narrative implications.

Yeah, I was feeling the same thing about Kylo and the possession. I’m not even sure that Snoke will appear in any form in this next draft, to further focus in on the primary cast. I think that the Snoke possession had become basically the Palpatine plot and had become the very thing I swore to destroy.

When it comes to Kylo, or the Stormtroopers, or the Officers, the important thing is that as they align themselves with our heroes, that it happen at a believable progression. I know we only have one “movie” to work with, but I feel like there needs to be some kind of setup -> buildup -> payoff. This was something I wasn’t too fond of with your initial drafts, because it felt like the stormtroopers and Kylo aligned themselves ideologically with our heroes rather quickly. What you did with your following draft, where Finn’s big speech didn’t work, was rather amusing and kind of goes in that direction of what I’m talking about.

Plus, slow progressing these relationships are a good way to maintain conflict between the characters. The longer they have ideological differences, the more they can challenge each other in each scene.

For example, I think there is a lot of great potential with the officers like Ventess (I keep saying “Ventress” in my head, lol), especially to butt heads with Poe. I like the idea of the officers being harder to really “join” the Resistance than the stormtroopers. Maybe they’re really only helping them because they have their Supreme Leader prisoner, and their loyal to him and not to Hux. But this gives Poe and Ventess time to talk about why they believe in each other side, and eventually they come to some mutual understanding.

The Ventess character name was really a placeholder and I only realized after a few chapters about the similarity to Clone Wars. She would have been a diehard First Order adherent who sold out our heroes to Thrawn until realizing her mistake deep into act 3, if she did at all. She’s the embodiment of a person that can’t be convinced no matter how well the heroes roll persuasion.

I’ve talked about this before in other threads, but I felt like a missed opportunity of the ST, that could’ve set it apart from the OT, was to show the “reunification” of the Republic. Sure, the Rebels restored the Republic, but the Empire, and even the First Order, came from the Republic too. At the end of the OT, it seems like they just tried to get rid of the Empire, but the Imperials were still there. It would be interesting if through the understanding between Poe and Ventess, it leads to some kind of peace or reintegration of the two factions. But then again, maybe that doesn’t align with what the political allegory should be for this film.

I do like the idea of a reunification theme, but as with the Ventess character, I feel like there are too many lifelong fanatics in the First Order to really save it. The conversion of the Stormtroopers is about as far as I think is reasonable to take the idea of peace, and any conflict with the old guard would almost certainly end in a battle to the death of one side or the other. At least that’s my gut feeling on the faction, and I don’t think I’m talented enough to make true reunification feel organic on the page.

But more on Kylo, I do think something that would be beneficial to the story would be if Kylo didn’t just flip from bad to good. I like the idea of Kylo having to work with our heroes a little reluctantly, whether be as a prisoner or what, and he still has his own goes, but as the story progresses, he might learn from the other characters and realize how he has been wrong. I know your new draft is gonna have Kylo it in more, but that is a definite issue imo with your previous version. I feel like there is a few missed opportunities to have Kylo interact with the various characters of the Resistance. But even when he is working with them, I like the idea that he still has his own agenda. Like, he believes after they work together to take down Hux and his traitorous Knights, he’d be able to retake control of the galaxy again. So in a way he still is a bit of an antagonist even if they are working together. And I feel like that bad-to-good shift shouldn’t really happen until the end of Act 2/beginning of Act 3.

I agree with that. There’s no version of a future draft where Kylo turns completely good by the end of the story, and at best I think he will find some peace while it is implied that he will work for years toward atonement.

Again, I’m just thinking out loud. Obviously they don’t have to be this way. Just suggestions that I think can help make the story more engaging up until the climax.

Speaking of engaging, maybe it is more of an issue because it is written word rather than visual, but I do feel like I personally lose a little interest during the simulation runs. I know it is sort of necessary to acclimate the two groups, but I feel like the stakes aren’t as a high as they should be, for the final film in the saga, since they are just practicing. Then again, this time does allow our characters to interact instead of chasing senseless MacGuffins.
But maybe it is just because I struggle keeping up with the action of space combat when it is just prose. Maybe it would help if there was B Plot with action, maybe Hux and the Knights chasing leads and destroying Resistance cells, while the A Plot were our heroes prepping for the final battle or whatever. That might help raise the stakes of their predicament.

The simulations are definitely an idea that has lost some luster upon further rewrites for the reasons you say. It’s definitely more of a Star Trek idea, and in fact I watched a DS9 episode soon after writing version 1 that did almost that exact thing, much to my amusement. So yes, as much as I like it in theory, it’s best left for a Star Trek story.

And maybe you did this and I just skipped over it, but I guess what could help raise the stakes is the fact that the bulk of the Resistance, and the only piece of Kylo’s First Order faction, are on this single ship. One ship amongst a galaxy full of overwhelming enemies and scattered allies. And this one ship could become a microcosm of what the galaxy could the potentially be: A unified people, despite their differences.

You’re right, Kylo’s fleet was actually made up of the ships which were sliced up in the Holdo Maneuver and then pieced back together in the months following. I don’t know if I ever described the Shattered Fleet by name or where it came from, but it was to be a visual representation of the scars of war, with Kylo’s destroyers all having nasty weld marks across their hulls like scars, and it is one of these ships which the Resistance captures. The rest had been sent back to the Supremacy, which in canon has docking bays for quite a few Destroyers and in this version of the story is in the final stages of repair.

You’ll see the full First Order armada near the end of the treatment you’re reading, made up of ships new and old. My thought is that the First Order used its new ships in TLJ to chase down the Resistance, while it had many older ships in reserve which were enough to exert its will through the rest of the galaxy. The First Order in this way is actually quite fragile in its forces, casting a threadbare net over the galaxy so to speak.

But, I don’t know know how much else has change in your newest draft, so much of this may be totally pointless! Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me rambling on like this. Definitely do what you want to see. This is your rewrite after all. Maybe these are some suggestions that can get your creative juices flowing, but I’m excited to see what you have regardless if you use any of this or not!

I don’t think it’s pointless at all, I’m just super happy that some value has come from all this thought and effort. It’s also quite fun to toss around ideas, and I’m feeling better about some of the ideas for the next draft now that you’ve sort of echoed a lot of my thoughts.

The big goal for the next attempt will really be in focusing the story down to its fundamentals, and really hit the two themes; the major theme for Kylo and Rey of letting the past die, and the minor theme for Finn, Rose, and Poe of saving what they love.

PS: It took me awhile to write this post and I’ve since read the dance scene. I wasn’t sure what to expect with the festivities, but I really enjoyed it actually! It was a good moment for our characters to bond like normal people.

Glad you liked it! This is one aspect which I really want to delve into in my next draft, namely the ensemble aspect of the story. Looking back over the entire saga, there really hasn’t been a film to truly commit to the ensemble, instead either focusing on a single character or small group, or splitting up a larger group to focus on individual stories in a single film. I feel like ROTJ suffers from this the most, since Han and Leia are practically non-characters by Act 2 as the story focuses on Luke. This works, but only just, and it’s one of the things that has driven this rewrite. I want the final chapter of the saga to grow beyond individual characters and truly make the story a group effort where every character is instrumental. Perhaps it’s unrealistic and overambitious, but it continues to be my goal.