There are quite a few Rise of Skywalker edits out there, and a number of excellent ideas. After finishing my Fall of the Republic mashup edit of TCW/ROTS I was inspired by some of these ideas to make my own edit, drawing on what already exists and my own ideas.
I’ll be drawing on krausfadr’s Resurgence, joshuabri’s No Palp’s edit, DomincCobbs’ stuff, and Ascendant for a number of ideas, that I’ll detail down the road. Major shoutout to RogueLeader for a number of excellent ideas, some of which I’m trying to bring to life here.
Presenting
Star Wars - Legacy of the Force
A Delpheas the Wise Work in Progress Fanedit
My crawl adapted from krausfadr and joshuabri, with help from creativside:
The First Order rages
across the galaxy.
The Republic’s fragile peace
has been betrayed
and only the whispers
of Luke Skywalker’s
sacrifice serve to maintain
HOPE.
Despite the guidance
of General Leia Organa,
Rey struggles to find
BALANCE and hopes to
contact Luke’s spirit
to quiet her growing
fear.
Meanwhile, SUPREME
LEADER Kylo Ren heads to
the Unknown regions to
uncover his former master’s
final secret…
This is going to be a No Palpatine edit. And I know what you’re thinking, “that’s not gonna work”, but it does, surprisingly well I might add. Check out joshuabri’s edit if you don’t believe. However, I personally want an edit even more radical than just removing the central antagonist.
My long term plans are to make edits of the entire Skywalker Saga. I’m simply starting here because I think it has the most challenges and opportunities for me to learn new skills.
The work in this edit is going to proceed in three phases
Phase 1 will include:
The New Republic hasn’t been destroyed and will feature in the climax. Aside from the Starkiller base being a way to mimic ANH, the destruction of the New Republic always felt like a middle-finger to fans of the EU, where the NR played a major role in galactic politics during this era. So in my version, they’re still around, just re-tooled.
There is no Palpatine. I don’t necessarily hate Palpatine coming back in a clone to turn try and take over someone, it was in the old canon afterall, but I think it makes no sense for Rey’s story. In the EU it was all about Luke, Sidious, and Anakin and it worked. But Rey has no connection to Sidious, and shoehorning in this idea that she’s his grandfather was stupid. And a last minute choice according to Daisey Ridley. So he’s gone. Ren and the First/Final Order, and Rey’s internal struggles are the antagonists of this film.
Ren fights Vader (thanks to SceneFX for Force of Darkness footage) This helps establish what’s going on with Ren and his internal conflict.
Rey killed her parents (krausfadr). This helps fead Rey’s fear that she’s just going to hurt those she cares about.
Anakin replaces Han for Ben’s redemption scene. This accomplishes two things. 1) Ben isn’t manipulated to the light by Leia dredging up a memory of Han, it’s his choice, affirmed and encouraged by the person he’s been trying to connect with for years. 2) Anakin gets to play a small, but important, role in the finale of the Skywalker saga. And his final actions are helping to guide someone away from the choices he made. I’ve seen fairly convincing vfx of Anakin with Ben floating around on youtube, all it would need is possibly some better VFX integration, and a way to match up Anakin and Ben’s new and altered lines. (Check the first comment for my proposed script)
Ben lives. But he’s got a long road ahead of him, and we only get a hint of what that’s going to entail.
Rey is Nobody. I just didn’t understand the need to have Rey be a Skywalker if she wasn’t Luke’s daughter (which clearly she was going to be if you’ve watched TFA, read the TLJ novelisation, and watched the old interviews where Ridley was asked about Rey’s parentage and she said something along the lines of it being “obvious.”) So here she isn’t a Palpatine, she doesn’t take the Skywalker name, and when she’s on Tatooine there are no force ghosts. Rey’s looking forward.
Phase 2 will make any necessary adjustments based on feedback and any ripple effects from my edits of TFA and TLJ, as well as possible new VFX work from the community, such as Rey’s crackling Saber.
Phase 3 is likely to just be a version with Rey’s black outfit, so that’s way down the road.
I’ll be updating with the change list for act 1 soon.
Clips:
Ren is tested, part 2