So I watched this with my wife, who also watched HotF with me. We really enjoyed it, and definitely appreciated the attempts to make Luke feel more consistent with the OT and Legends. The pacing was MUCH better and the inclusion of a number of deleted scenes helped with that.
Here’s the notes we had on things that we thought were weird or needing improvement.
Like I said in my other post, I think the shots of Luke & Rey staring at each other from a distance don’t work if we’ve already seen them as a vision. It is especially weird to have the shot of her holding the lightsaber out to him from a distance and then without the shots of her walking to him have her handing it to him. So just trim out the repeated shots of the staring and have her hand it to him asap.
After Luke hands Rey back the lightsaber, cut her putting it in the pack, just go right to him storming past her. I get the impulse, but it’s not really necessary.
The cut to Luke saying “you think what, I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all?” is rough, it feels like something is missing.
During lesson 1, right before Luke smacks Rey’s hand, she says something really garbled. I get what you were trying to do with trimming the joke down, but unless you can just have her reach out and get hit without the weird cut of her talking, I think it would be better to leave the full joke.
I really like the training montage, however by having it in the middle of the lesson, and ending on the lesson, it doesn’t quite give the impression of time passing. It needs something else, maybe a recolor at the end to give the impression it’s not the same day.
Also intercutting Kylo’s mask when the ground breaks kinda took away from the impact of being with Rey & Luke. Cutting right to Kylo after Luke says his thing about sensing that raw power before is enough to establish what he means.
During the fleet escape I don’t think cutting to Kylo’s broken mask on the floor adds anything, it kinda felt like an artifact.
Kylo taking the shot on Leia is well done.
And Luke saving Leia/them doing it together makes it feel like a much stronger moment and cuts down on how much focus is on Leia’s still body shooting through space. My wife and I really liked this moment, it was really poignant.
During Rey’s training the cut from “the legacy of the Jedi is failure” to the fleet is both musically and “lyrically” upsetting. By lyrically I mean, it feels like there is more to what luke was saying and it got cut off, and the musical cut is too abrubt. I was really enjoying this training sequence and it was over too soon imo. Maybe even having Luke repeat the line “It’s time for the Jedi to end” again here could help.
Finn messing with Rose’s hair during their break in is an odd moment that doesn’t add to characterisation and isn’t really good humor. I would cut it.
I think there should a moment or two longer with Snoke after he “welcomes” Rey aboard.
In the Yoda scene, as much as I enjoy the scene, I don’t know that it adds anything to this version of the film. In the theatrical it’s part of Yoda teaching Luke, but in your edit Luke already learned the lesson of failure. It’s what he’s been teaching Rey, so for Yoda to tell it to Luke doesn’t work, especially with Luke’s facial reactions. Maybe some trims will help. Idk.
If you can, adding a shot of Holdo on one of the transports before it blows will help, because my wife was wondering what happened to her and I shouldn’t have to explain what was going on based off your notes.
I think you should include Kylo’s version of the events at the temple, it’s part of him getting Rey to doubt Luke as a teacher, part of him tempting her and is necessary I think.
I don’t know if this is a you issue or a FGR issue, but in the shots of Luke after he retracts his blade, you can see it’s Anakin’s hilt, not Luke’s.
And in the film Luke’s “I won’t be the Last Jedi” as it showed Leia was a really nice moment.
Also, having watched the whole film, my suggestion for needing some visual context for the WbtW, such as showing the island fading away from Luke still stands. My wife was completely thrown, and while I appreciate the attempt to have ambiguity, there’s a difference between ambiguity and having no in-film context for what’s going on. But it was still cool to see Leia and Rey sensing him there. Well done!
Overall really well done. Looking forward to what you put together next.
I’m getting ready to engage with the No Palps edit again, cus after watching these two edits, I can’t imagine a version of tRoS with him in it that works at all.
Edit: After some more thoughts, I have to wonder about the effectiveness of some of this ecits goals. I think it succeeded it a lot of ways, but there are some aspects about Luke that I want to address.
In this edit you are attempting to do away with the part of TLJ where Luke is there to die and has cut himself off from the Force. That he’s ready and able to help those he cares about.
This raises the issue however of why he wasn’t helping in TFA. Why didn’t he prevent Starkiller base from firing, why didn’t he save Han, (and why doesn’t he know Han is dead) why did he only start helping after Rey showed up?
If he wasn’t helping before what is the impetus for doing so now?
And if reading the Jedi texts is what brought him his better understanding of the force, why attempt to burn the books? Again, this scene only confuses your narrative more. Are the texts good? Or bad? If they’re bad and him burning them is good, then in the next film Rey having them should lead her down a bad path, but if the texts are helpful, like they are in RoS and are what helped Luke, then burning them needs to go.
And during the third lesson, when he’s explaining that according to the texts “a true Jedi only acts to maintain balance, but that’s bs cus thr galaxy needs people who are always ready to help.” you need to clarify what lesson us and Rey are supposed to take from this. Is she only supposed to act when she can maintain balance even if people die, or should she save her friends? It was unclear. I would suggest trying to have him say that the OLD jedi are the ones who only act when trying to maintain balance, but a TRUE Jedi would be what the galaxy needs and save people. Or something.
And if possible these are things that need to be addressed in the film, and if you can’t make a change work cohesively in a way that is at least somewhat coherent to the viewer, my thought is that you might have to walk back a change or try a different approach.
Good luck!