sherlock, could you see about moving Finn’s line about Endor to the part where Finn and Rey are working on the Falcon? If anything, maybe we could hear the beginning of Finn’s like while the camera is still in the cockpit with Poe and Chewie, like we’re doing a J-cut. The whole line doesn’t have to be used. Just whatever fits and still makes sense.
I am honored to have been chosen for this task! lol I didn’t spend too long on mixing, but here’s a rough test:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/184g4AqJx73cGdEvEOuSMQo7mc1vIJczA/view?usp=sharing
A few thoughts I had while working on this:
- The timing is very tight. Ideally, I’d want to let the scene breathe more; but I think that the added benefit of reworking the dagger concept would probably be worth that price.
- There’s not really enough room in Poe’s scene to begin the dialogue there.
- There’s a slight bit of music still when he says “The Endor System?” Hopefully it just sounds like some equipment humming away?
- It occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity for Finn to sort of call her out a little for using the dagger, to emphasize the “light” side of her inner conflict. The angel on her shoulder, as it were. Plus, it feels like it flows naturally into Rey’s “Shut up, boy. We have work to do.” response. (I never noticed how out of place her response feels in the original cut. Because it does feel like she’s responding to a line that’s not there. Thank you for ruining yet another scene in this movie for me.)
- Ideally, I wanted Finn to say something like “Endor? How do you know?” But neither of Finn’s "How do you know…"s felt like they fit tonally. So I tried popping in a line from earlier in the film - “Are you sure?” How do you feel about that?
Also, this may also be taking the idea too far, but what if, right before submitting to the Dagger and seeing Endor, Rey’s eyes change color to help illustrate that she’s going to the Dark? https://i.imgur.com/WAH1poF.png
That may be stupid. It’s way too late at night for me to be working on this.
Okay, here’s where I’m at, conceptually:
I wanted to try extending the Rey/Finn moment, to give us more time to play with. By doing so, I thought we could also highlight even more how far away from her friends Rey is getting right now.
And then, I started thinking, wouldn’t it make more sense for that scene to swap places with Poe’s scene in the cockpit? For the following reasons:
- It means that Rey’s contemplation (and thus, the audience’s) happens almost immediately after all of that drama that just went down on Kylo’s ship, (admittedly interrupted by the dumb Hux scene)
- The “landing gear busted” scene now serves as the segue into the “Endor Landing” scene, where it’s actually relevant. So rather than going “Rey drama -> Landing gear -> Rey reflection -> Landing”, it would go “Rey drama -> Rey reflecting -> Landing gear -> Landing”. (Seriously, who edited this thing?)
- Poe says that “They’re not following us,” but not a lot of time has passed yet, so maybe they’re still just catching up?
- There’s this awkward beat in the original cut, where the editing implies that Rey and Finn are trying to fix the broken landing gear. But that’s stupid, because:
A) If the landing gear is “busted,” how will fiddling with some random wiring inside the ship fix the exterior landing gear?
B) Finn and Rey give up after a few seconds anyway without fixing the landing gear, so apparently they don’t care if they crash.
C) Assuming the problem is internal, how would the First Order have damaged the landing gear from inside the ship when they were firing on it? Like…what? Or, did they walk in after capturing the Falcon on Pasaana, and deliberately sabotage the landing gear?? (“Bwa ha ha, now that we’ve captured this antiquated ship, if any Resistance operatives secure a Magic Password Medallion and sneak on board our cruiser to steal it back, they’ll have to crash land after they’ve already escaped us! That’ll show them! Ha ha ha!”) F*CK. ME. WHO WROTE THIS???
Like I said: stupid; I don’t think we lose anything by implying that Rey and Finn are just doing some random repair on a ship that was already considered “a load of junk” thirty years ago.
V1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/184g4AqJx73cGdEvEOuSMQo7mc1vIJczA/view?usp=sharing
V2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WyXHZZhkVrbW1iEaZi9tS9lGe1nPnLuw/view?usp=sharing
And seriously, if any of our VFX wizards want to add a shot of the First Order shooting the belly of the Falcon as it peels away, followed by some sparks to show the landing gear breaking, that would be amazing.
God, every time I look closely at a scene in this movie, it all falls apart even more. That said, the order of these two scenes is hardly a hill I’m willing to die on.