Been deep-diving this thread today and wanted to note a few things that jumped out at me:
I was working on a 3-in-1 fanedit of the OT that just had one Death Star (and one rebel base on Hoth).The 3-in-1 part didn’t pan out in a way I was satisfied with, but I’ve been thinking about reviving the project and giving it another go, or maybe trying a different format like a 6-part series.
There being two Death Stars has always been something that bothered me though and this makes it extra relevant.
My plan was to cut out the whole Battle of Yavin from ANH. After leaving the Death Star, they head to the Rebel Base: Hoth, but the Empire gets there too (since they’re being tracked and all), and they storm the base, and don’t wait for the Death Star to destroy the Rebels, they want to make double sure the Rebels are crushed and the destruction of Hoth would be more symbolic. I had the idea of moving the Trench Run fight to the Battle of Hoth, and having Gold Leader fail to destroy the Death Star, damaging it, but killing Tarkin. However, I never got around to implementing it.
I’m expanding the scope of my B&W dubbed adventure serial edit from just the Sequel Trilogy to the whole saga (1-9+R1) and this Death Star idea and its ripple effects over the rest of the OT are really landing with me.
It’s not something I’d LIKE to do to ROTJ since I don’t really like the sequel trilogy’s story…but:
There may be a way to change the Emperor’s explosion slightly to have his energy “leave” the Death Star and dissipate into space offcamera. Just an implication that something went off into space that leaves it open to how his “ghost” got into the clone body.
This is also something I think could work and be open enough for interpretation that other FEs could use it for ST fodder or just ignore it as a cool flourish. I think just quick 1- or 2-second establishing shot from outside the Death Star between when the ‘spirit’ blast comes out of the tunnel and when it reverses back in (about 1:56:29 or so) with a similarly colored flash should do it.
Lots of good ideas in this thread!
(In my ST era I have Palpatine basically possessing Ben Solo in my ST edit and one of the ways I justify that is the shaft explosion IS him breaking up his consciousness and sending all these bits out to, if not the Force, then the Midichlorian ‘cloud’ (for lack of a better term) with the hope that he can reconstitute it in some form later. I end up having Vader’s helmet acting like a beacon for Palpatine to do that in Ben’s subconscious because (1) the helmet/armor gets a full blast of his ‘spirit’ in that explosion, (2) it survives relatively intact since Luke takes it off the Death Star before it blows, and (3) Ben presumably keeps it close to him for a while so its ‘Palpatine spirit radiation’ infects him over time. Or something like that…)