I suggest watching at least Resurgence and the No Palps edit for TRoS, just for two very different approaches to making changes.
Thanks for the suggestions. I watched Resurgence last week and will draw a few ideas from it. I’ve also seen the anti-cringe cut, but still need to check out the No Palps cut, HAL’s, and the Movies Remastered edit when that releases
(Might do a V2 of my TRoS edit eventually as the MR cut is still a ways away)
There are a few things in TRoS that draw on Legends plot points, like the hidden fleet, force clones, a revived Palps, even Rey’s parentage, but just pulling random pieces of lore and smooshing them together doesn’t make for good callbacks and doesn’t make up for the lack of showing Rey’s victory as a balancing of the light and dark.
True, and on the surface I’m cool with a lot of the ideas. I just don’t think they were implemented with care. My worst part of the entire film is the “I am all the sith”, “well I’m all the Jedi” lines. My goodness that shows a lack of understanding of anything about balance across the entire saga. If they were both equal representatives of their sides of the force then they should have evened out at a standstill. Or even if Rey won, the force would soon correct this by producing someone to wipe out the new jedi to even the score. Either way it’s a mess and displays a clear lack of understanding of the main theme of the force.
I haven’t watched HotF or FotJ yet, but I havee skipped around to look at some of the big changes.
- Luke constantly saving Leia is excellent, it establishes him as a character who cares deeply but has succeeded in basically every way that his father failed. He was able to hold his attachments lightly enough to do what needed to be done to maintain balance, but not so lightly he forgot to care. And the way you implement these changes is really strong.
Nice to see you agree, thanks. Theatrical was legitimately depressing when it came to Luke and Leia’s relationship. I wanted to show that even though they were apart, Luke was always watching over his beloved sister, and she knew it. That’s the Skywalker bond.
- When Rey arrives I would trim the lingering shots on her face and hand as she’s holding the saber to Luke. We already saw those in the vision in the last film, so I think this sequence would be helped by having her walk up and hand it to him sooner.
I actually did trim a lot of just what you’re saying. I’ll go through again to see if it can be smoothed out any more, but I had the same idea as you and did some work in that area.
- I appreciate what you’ve done to remove the movie’s ridiculous attempt to have the entire plot fallout in like 3 days. A huge part of TLJ’s (and TRoS) problem was the pacing and it’s helped quite a bit here.
Ah yes, the constant insistence on how many hours of fuel remainins makes even Rey’s segments with Luke feel so unnecessarily rushed. The way I restructured Act 1 helps to push off that countdown timer until later, giving Rey actual time to learn… and sleep.
- I wonder if it is necessary to keep Luke’s line “I will not be the last Jedi.” Him saying it at all goes against both his and Kylo’s insistence that what came before has to be surpassed, and in TLJ was certainly used to show that he had decided he was wrong about the Jedi. Though I am intrigued by his saying while showing Kylo a shot of Jedi Leia.
So I did toy with this line a lot, almost removed it. Decided it still worked and instead of the line being about Rey, in my cut it was about Leia, and here’s why… in Episode 9, Rey still clearly needs a teacher. Rey even calls her “master” and it was really off putting to me since it didn’t appear like Leia knew anything about the Jedi in 7 & 8. Showing that she is also a Jedi, as Luke is, should be a surprise for my viewers, and leave them anticipating more in the future. Also, since my film isn’t titled The Last Jedi, there isn’t so much emphasis on that one line. Luke is simply telling Kylo that he has underestimated his mother by fixating on killing Luke, and that may come back to haunt him in the future… Luke and Leia both trained as Jedi, but after Kylo, Luke realizes there shouldn’t be any new ones, although Leia already is a Jedi.
- Finn and Rose’s plot is much helped by trimming Canto Bight and using some of their deleted material.
That’s the goal! I still want to maintain the basis of their friendship for a love triangle aspect (that never really goes anywhere…) while not dominating the movie with a “b plot”.
- Keeping Kylo as the big bad is a good idea and well executed. It helps with this feeling less like an irreverent rehash of ESB and RotJ and more like it’s own solid Star Wars film.
Awesome, happy that worked for you. I read the novels and cannot find any reason for Kylo to be light or wavering after killing Han. It is so forced in there that it feels unnatural and weakens Kylo’s presence. They hinted at it non stop for 3 movies, making the payoff feel tired. If he turns in my cuts, it won’t be so obvious or clear cut. His weakness is caring for Rey.
- When Luke is fighting Kylo and we get the shot of him in the WbtWs, I think their needs to be a shot where we see him meditating on the island and then it melts away to reveal the WbtW and he gets the blue tint of the Force Ghost. This way there’s some intro for people unfamiliar with Rebels and the WbtWs, it could be assumed he’s ascending, that he’s become one with the force without dying simply because he’s so powerful. And the blue tint provides visual continuity with his appearances in the next film. And we’ve already seen him helping out, so as you said above there is no big reveal that he can. So this final one needs some more oomph on his end.
Hmm, I kind of like that idea. Struggling to think of a way to implement it, ill ponder it for a V2. To counter that point, in my cut I wanted this reveal to be more ambiguous and open to interpretation… maybe I missed the mark. Luke is a force ghost in the WbtWs, meaning that he has already passed away as one in the living force. Did this happen ala Ben Kenobi when Kylo cut through him and he faded away? Or perhaps… was Luke a force ghost in the WbtWs the entire film, having ascended long ago? Was he an illusion from the start, being projected as a real person from the WbtWs? What say you on that theory?
Anyway, those are a bunch of my thoughts. I’ll be more thorough once I’ve been able to watch both films back to back.
Thanks for your hard work!
Thank you so much for the well thought out message. I really appreciate that and love reading everyone’s thoughts. Let me know after you get a chance to sit down and watch through everything, would be interested to see if any of your thoughts change!