The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released) — Page 397

sherlockpotter said:

Brewzter said:

In the final scene of TFA, the Falcon approaches the island from this angle which lines up with how the TLJ VD map shows the ship parked on that coast. The map shows Luke’s X-Wing on the far left side of the island from this orientation- in TROS, the establishing shot of the island shows Rey burning Kylo’s ship in the same area of the island. Let’s call this spot the “inlet” as the TLJ VD does. Since Rey hears Luke first start lifting the X-Wing while she’s digging the Wayfinder out of Kylo’s ship and then is able to run over in-time to see it lifted, that further confirms that she burnt Kylo’s ship right at the inlet. Next, the TLJ VD map shows that the temple cliff where Luke dies is also directly next to the inlet. I checked the TLJ novelization which says that he’s watching a sunset as he dies, not a sunrise, which means the suns must set in the direction the inlet is facing. Since the original TROS shows the remaining sunlight in the establishing shot coming from that direction, it lines up with the novelization saying this occurs at sunset. At the end of the Ahch-To scene when Luke lifts his X-Wing from the ocean, he’s facing the ocean from the inlet and the sun rises behind him, which again confirms our now well-established sense of geography.

First off, that’s an insane amount of detail you had to track, so mad props to you for that.

I think the current goal of the scene is for Rey to arrive on Ahch-To at night, start burning the ship, then have the heart to heart with Luke, grab the lightsaber, and get out of there. In which case, as you said, “the sun rises behind [Luke]…when [he] lifts his X-Wing from the ocean.” So aren’t we good? I feel like the time of day/night still matches up.

It’s just a weird sequence of events. In the film, the whole thing seems to happen at midday over the course of about an hour. In the novel, doesn’t it say that it takes place from dusk to dawn (while they’re also under a time crunch)? So, does it take place during the day, or during the night? Is the film “canon,” or is the novel?

I think Neverar’s grade feels best in terms of visually tracking the passage of time, and also symbolically. So that has my vote, once those last new nitpicks are ironed out.

Thanks! It was definitely maddening at one point trying to make sense of it all haha.

And yeah I believe the current plan for Ascendant is for Rey to arrive in the early morning and then have the events on the island take place over the course of a couple of hours as the suns rise throughout the scenes. What I was proposing is to tweak the edit to follow what the novelization says, which is that she arrived in the evening, talked with Luke, slept overnight, then got the Wayfinder, and finally left in the morning. Given the location of the suns in the sky when she arrives and then when she leaves, this is actually shown in the movie, but I’m pretty sure it was just an oversight by the filmmakers and they intended it to be early morning to sunrise. Someone in the Story Group probably took notice and then just had it fixed in the novelization to say she was there overnight. Since I like this version more anyway, my idea was to just clarify it, but it might be a little tricky since the movie literally shows her starting to leave the hut to go get the Wayfinder immediately. I totally get why most people don’t want to see Ascendant attempt to include this, but I’ll definitely be trying to work it this way in my own edit 😃

A few random comments on things that have come up in the last sevenish pages:

• I love the night-time to morning idea for Ahch-To and Nev’s latest mockup is really getting close to being flawless. The shot of the TIE bonfire from behind Rey is so much better with the intense contrast.

• I do like TestingOutTheTest’s interpretation of Rey’s arc, but I don’t think her giving the lightsaber to Leia (and then getting it back a few minutes later) actually does anything for it. It feels totally half-baked, like an idea JJ and Terrio had but then forgot to expand on and just left in anyway. I also prefer the implication that Rey has been struggling with her training and ‘making excuses’ about it for a while, whereas leaving it in sort of makes it seem like this is the first time. I’m also not the biggest fan of the importance the films place on that saber to begin with; Luke only used it for a few years, long before he became a legendary Jedi Master, so it’s much more iconic in the real world than it ever was in-universe - it feels like another symptom of JJ’s love for the OT sort of meta-infecting the universe itself (see also “this is the ship that made the Kessel run in 14 parsecs!”), but that’s a whole different discussion.

• I don’t think the Bestoon Legacy is Rey’s parents ship. The TFA flashback (and its reuse in TROS) do seem to imply that she watched them leave in it, but the name ‘Bestoon Legacy’ (Ochi of Bestoon) and D-O being onboard and all suggest to me it was Ochi’s ship. Plus, he must’ve gotten to Jakku somehow. I think in ret(con)rospect, we have to assume the Jakku part of the TFA flashback is a mixture of vision and flashback, and that little Rey never actually, literally watched that ship fly off while Unkar took her away. I’d assume that at some unspecified point after her parents sold Rey, Ochi arrives in the Bestoon Legacy, locates Rey’s parents, takes them on board for interrogation, flies off, and then kills them. Maybe Rey saw the ship fly off and sensed her parents were on it, hence that being part of her TFA vision/flashback or whatever. But there’s no way they sold her to Unkar seconds before Ochi flies away like the flashback would imply if interpreted literally, because that’s just silly. Rey also appears to ‘remember’ her parents being killed by Ochi, which isn’t possible, unless that bit of flashback/vision is just for the audience’s benefit. EDIT: Revisiting TROS; Rey does literally say “the day my parents left, they were on that ship”, doesn’t she? Implying they really did sell her right before getting taken by Ochi. Good God, what a retcon.

• I still believe editing TROS such that Rey’s parents were always bad people is feasible. Rey can still be mad that Palpatine killed them, even if they were terrible people. She does have reasons to hate him other than that too, such as him being Space-Hitler, his corrupting influence on Ben (to whatever extent she’s aware of that), and even surface-level stuff like Luke telling her she has to face him. I think the toughest question to answer with this change would be what was mentioned previously: why wouldn’t Rey’s parents give her up to save themselves? I think there’s a few ways you could come at that. Perhaps Rey’s Dad and his wife hated Palpatine so much they were willing to withhold that information just to spite him, even if it meant their own deaths, as someone (Jar Jar Bricks?) suggested earlier in the thread. It’s still essentially a sacrifice to save Rey, but it leaves them morally grey rather than having them be retconned into the loving parents that Rey wishes they were. Or maybe they did try to sell Rey out, but didn’t know exactly where she’d wound up - I’m sure there’s plenty of Jakku outside Niima Outpost - so Ochi killed them anyway. It does get a little contrived, I admit, but it’s not like this movie’s plot is rock solid as is, and I personally think it’s worth it to avoid undermining the TLJ reveal.

• Darth Muffy brought up deepfakes but they’d not actually help here at all. The faces of young Luke and Leia aren’t CGI like in the Mandalorian or Rogue One, they’re actually footage taken directly from ESB and ROTJ and composited in, so they’re 100% legit Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. They only look odd because of the extensive relighting and masking and recolouring done to get them to fit into the scene (and because they took Leia footage from the scene in ROTJ where she’s really sad lol).

• I’m sure everyone will be pleased to know Kylo canonically flew a TIE Scout to Exegol, which is a variant with a hyperdrive. You can always trust the expanded material to paper over goofs. I still like the idea that he steals Vader’s TIE.

• I would certainly like to see the “Leia sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path” line altered if anyone can pull it off well, because it adds this weirdly pessimistic vibe to Ben’s sacrifice. Rey taking Leia’s saber to ‘finish her journey’ or whatever is supposed to be a hopeful thing, right, but it just sort of feels like Rey accidentally makes Leia’s vision a reality and seals Ben’s fate. This weirdness is compounded even further in the theatrical film by having Leia only become one with the Force after Ben dies, and then everyone being happy ghosts without him (and also the scene earlier in the film which can be read as Leia distracting Ben so Rey can stab him), as this super uncomfortable sense that Ben’s death is inevitable and everyone (except Rey) seems kind of relieved about it rather than sad. I don’t think it’s intentional at all but it’s really strange.

sade1212 said:

• I don’t think the Bestoon Legacy is Rey’s parents ship. The TFA flashback (and its reuse in TROS) do seem to imply that she watched them leave in it, but the name ‘Bestoon Legacy’ (Ochi of Bestoon) and D-O being onboard and all suggest to me it was Ochi’s ship. Plus, he must’ve gotten to Jakku somehow. I think in ret(con)rospect, we have to assume the Jakku part of the TFA flashback is a mixture of vision and flashback, and that little Rey never actually, literally watched that ship fly off while Unkar took her away. I’d assume that at some unspecified point after her parents sold Rey, Ochi arrives in the Bestoon Legacy, locates Rey’s parents, takes them on board for interrogation, flies off, and then kills them. Maybe Rey saw the ship fly off and sensed her parents were on it, hence that being part of her TFA vision/flashback or whatever. But there’s no way they sold her to Unkar seconds before Ochi flies away like the flashback would imply if interpreted literally, because that’s just silly. Rey also appears to ‘remember’ her parents being killed by Ochi, which isn’t possible, unless that bit of flashback/vision is just for the audience’s benefit.

The reason I mentioned that I felt it was her parents’ ship is because we don’t always have to adhere to canon in all regards with this edit. ‘Bestoon Legacy’ is never mentioned as the ship’s title in the movie. If it were his ship, the most obvious interpretation of those events would have to be that Ochi left Jakku without noticing the screaming girl behind him. Wow, that just makes him seem so stupid.

You can construe the vision to match what you suggested, but 90% of the audience isn’t going to come to the same conclusion I wouldn’t think.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why the writer’s decided that was his ship. It just creates way too many problems. It’s also a little bit of a junker on the inside, so why not give its ownership to, you know, junkers? I think Sith assassins would fly with more class.

EDIT: I feel I should clarify that the most elegant solution here would be to change the appearance of the ship in TFA and then remove all hints of Rey recognizing Ochi’s ship. I only suggest the above to avoid having someone do VFX work.

For those interested in playing with the puppets, I’ve put the clean backplate in my master clips folder, and here’s a direct link to the clip: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1geT4mYlgOu8wHf1j1tSzMiOIFOYnONvC

There’s a prores backplate and a prores 4444 of the front bottom of the stage with an alpha channel, with the idea that you can place puppets between the two layers.

I didn’t change the timing. I tried After Effects frame interpolation, but it really didn’t like the the dust in the foreground and got very wonky. Regular frameblending looked just okay (the alien moves a bit too much for it). If someone has twixtor or another interpolation software they’re welcome to try, as I think stretching an extra second or two out of the shot will be helpful!

I’ll try to work on the puppet show, I have some ideas >:)

snooker said:

I’ll try to work on the puppet show, I have some ideas >:)

Edit: and I mean no disrespect for the incredible RogueLeader, I just didn’t realize snooker was still around!

I’m delighted the Ach-to sequence is doing well, i had my fingers crossed than you guys would consider doing it since january,my quick example mockup didn’t go down well but then Nev came through with an amazing rendition and im so grateful.

I have a question, the Chewbacca scene on Kylo’s ship has been removed; rightfully so considering it exists to hold our hands and let us know he isn’t alive. Have you thought about removing the scene where C3PO gets his memories restored?
It’s a none issue either way, but there is zero reason for us to worry about C3PO losing his memories if he simply gets them restored so quickly.

poppasketti said:

snooker said:

I’ll try to work on the puppet show, I have some ideas >:)

Edit: and I mean no disrespect for the incredible RogueLeader, I just didn’t realize snooker was still around!

None taken! I love snooker’s creativity, so I really want to see what she comes up with!

Beyond the “taking one last look” moment the film treats 3PO’s memory wipe as a joke, probably because it’s not permanent and so it’s not meant to be taken too seriously. But if he didn’t get his memory back it would feel even more jarring/disrespectful how the other characters don’t seem to care much about it and how the film constantly makes a joke out of it.

Burbin said:

Beyond the “taking one last look” moment the film treats 3PO’s memory wipe as a joke, probably because it’s not permanent and so it’s not meant to be taken too seriously. But if he didn’t get his memory back it would feel even more jarring/disrespectful how the other characters don’t seem to care much about it and how the film constantly makes a joke out of it.

You’re right.

I don’t hate this movie, I dont even dislike it. It has some great moments, but man does it feel like it was written on set scene by scene

And in regards to what you said Hal, about changing the dialogue. If someone sent me all of threepios dialogue I’d be able to make him say “he”.

But it’s a non issue to be fair.

Hal 9000 said:

Eh, I’m happy just removing the asinine statement to the audience before it happens that it will be temporary.

You’d have to remove 3PO saying R2 is receiving a message from Master Luke. Unless you remove the first part of his line and add a syllable to read, “He (or this fellow or something) says he is receiving a message from a ‘Master Luke’.”

I really like the DOTF idea of having R2, who famously dodged a memory wipe in Ep3, manually recounting their history to him. But with what we have to work with, I don’t want to remove him getting them restored.

RogueLeader is way ahead of you. I’m sure he can pop in and share a clip of what he came up with (that I’m copying).