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The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released) — Page 460

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Both of you keep critiquing the shape of the knife matching the wreckage. Yes, that is stupid, but I’m not arguing for that (especially since it’s already been removed in v1). So please stop bringing that up.

I’m only talking about the Sith runes. Other people knew what a wayfinder was (because they are necessary for deep travel into the Unknown Regions) but he was the only one who knew where this Sith one was located. He was probably told by Palpatine about its location, though (ya know, since it belongs to him).

In canon, he bragged about it at Cantinas and that’s how it got to Lando, and by proxy Luke. He clearly only inscribed the runes for bragging rights. Nobody else could understand what was written on it unless they were from Exegol (or knew Sithspeak).

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It’s not that the canon story has technical contradictions, it’s just that it’s very counterintuitive to the viewer. I really like the 3PO dub idea in principle, as it elegantly simplifies the dagger thing.
It’s still dumb, and it’s still just macguffin-ception, but at least this way it’s tied into Rey’s character, even if its clunky.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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Hal 9000 said:

It’s still dumb, and it’s still just macguffin-ception, but at least this way it’s tied into Rey’s character, even if its clunky.

I believe you meant to say maclunky, Hal. lol

I get that it’s much simpler to understand, and I agree. But that’s exactly the problem I have with it: what 3PO relays from the dagger’s inscription is TOO simple. As in, Rey likely could have figured out how to use the dagger to get to Endor without him telling her.

As a result, it really diminishes his sacrifice and their detour to Kijimi. And it also sucks that you have to remove even more from this film to make the idea work.

Maybe in text form it could work (where we see Rey’s thoughts while holding it), but in film? I kinda doubt it.

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The joke isn’t important. What is important is that imo it makes 3PO’s sacrifice and an entire portion of the film pointless because Rey didn’t simply hold the dagger while feeling either angry, fearful, passionate, aggressive, etc.

She seems to demonstrate those emotions quite frequently. So it would be like going through a whole bunch of effort and sacrifice to figure out how to solve a problem only to be told that the answer was right in front of your face the whole time. Sure, you could argue it’s tragic, but I see it as worse writing than what we currently have.

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Whether it’s a GPS coordinate or knowing to use the knife in a mystical way, it’s still a piece of exposition that they needed 3PO in order to reach. I guess it does soften the impact of his sacrifice in a way not to have something pretty concrete to gain from it, that’s fair. In movie parlance, you’d expect information like that not to be costly, and would arise on its own. Y’know, sort of like how it does in V1 with Rey hearing whispers.

I’ll give it to you, that is something to weigh and consider in assessing this potential alteration.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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To me, it’s an ok joke, but nothing that breaks the movie without having it.

Im still not sure your hang up about the 3P0 “sacrafice not meaning anything” with this edit. In this edit without him first mentioning it is clue AND translate it and Rey now understands she needs to give in to hte Dark to use it … it wasn’t possible without 3PO. So I don’t get the hang up honestly.

Heck, even in the regular cut of the movie, Kylo suddenly appears and destroys the Wayfinder. So everything the crew did regarding the finding of the Wayfinder was a moot point.

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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jarbear said:

Heck, even in the regular cut of the movie, Kylo suddenly appears and destroys the Wayfinder. So everything the crew did regarding the finding of the Wayfinder was a moot point.

Exactly.

In a normal movie, I’d agree that a character’s sacrifice should lead to concrete results, but this is TROS. The story is designed to waste your life, so I’d say the best option is to make the trip as funny as possible.

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I suppose the difference is that a GPS coordinate is something concrete enough for the audience to understand that only his translation would retrieve. But when you start stepping into the mystical territory, then the audience may begin to ponder if 3PO was even necessary because we don’t have any frame of reference for how such a thing would work. Anybody has the right to ask at that point: why didn’t Rey’s dark emotions allow her to “use the dagger” to begin with?

And as for Kylo doing that, it works because it’s the villain doing it. So there is a loss, but not because the crew did something wrong. Whereas in this case, it makes it seem like Rey wasn’t very bright for not figuring that information out on her own. So she did something wrong.

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Again not sure about the hang up … aren’t all these movies about the heroes learning and getting guidance about force stuff since they don’t know it all?

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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But from the drafts I’ve seen, 3PO literally just says “embrace the darkness” pretty much. That’s extremely vague. Does that mean if you are holding the dagger and you experience a dark side emotion that it will show you a flash of Endor? Because if so, that definitely isn’t information only 3PO could have given them. In fact, Rey could have discovered it quite easily on her own.

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I actually think Jar Jar is playing a great devil’s advocate role for this idea, because it does require a bit of work to figure this shit out.

That’s actually why I think having a more extended vision montage, in the vein of Dom’s edit of Kylo touching Vader’s helmet, would be beneficial to the moment she touches the blade. Rey blinks right as she says, “No”, in that shot where she holds the dagger. You could potentially slow her blink down, as if she were closing her eyes to focus, then go into the vision sequence. Get a few shots displaying Rey’s “darkness”, and she’s rewarded with a glimpse of the Death Star. Then Kylo interrupts her.

I think something like that could potentially show more intent regarding what Rey did to obtain that knowledge. So the audience isn’t left wondering, “If Rey just kept holding it in the cave, would it have eventually shown her the location of the Wayfinder?”

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I agree and its good to play it, since you gotta flesh it all out. It’s good to have Jar Jar or others ask all the thought provoking questions.

My thoughts too about the use of visions to help the audience understand what’s going on and it progresses from beat to beat based on the Kylo/Room scene and even if it is needed, maybe as she looks out at the DSII which may give us more breathing room to when the Jannah crew come, there appearance could break that vision or mini vision or whatever if needed.

For a thought on the actual translation of the dagger, could a call back to TLJ be used by using the term “reach out” like Luke told Rey on the rock?

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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I’m definitely willing to see what is come up with. But I personally see this is as a lot of effort for something that doesn’t seem like too big of a deal. I guess I’m in the minority there, though.

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To be fair, I’m the one who originally suggested this idea (though not originally for Ascendant), but even I’m not totally sold on the line that replaces 3PO’s Babu Frik line (but it is more of a matter with what is available than Sherlock’s excellent work and effort).

I think you’re right that it isn’t that big of a deal, which is why I don’t think anyone would be super heartbroken if we decide it doesn’t work. I think my original intent was that the just to make the logic of the movie a little cleaner. Plus, the idea that you’re replacing nonsense with something that could potentially serve the main character’s arc. May not work though.

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You have to tap into the dark side to sense the secrets the blade holds. (Which is why it’s important to not have the sith whispers until after we find this out.)
Why would Rey internationally do dark side things out of nowhere? She doesn’t know how to get it to work until they decipher what it says, and so she then taps into the dark side and sees Endor. And that ties into “the quick and easy path” as Yoda calls it. Rey is slowly giving into the dark side.

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The Babu Frick line is just classic Star Wars nonsense to me and I would hate to see it go. Plus it keeps the scene at a length that doesn’t truncate the movie even more. Plus, why would Janna offer to take them to the wreckage if she has no idea who they are?

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So icecream, by that logic 3PO would have to say that you have to commit dark deeds to get the blade to show you the location. The way we had it before is that any dark side emotion would trigger it (which is also the same as tapping into the dark side). And yes, fear is a dark side emotion.

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Like I said previously, I agree that leaving the translation as is works fine (fine for TRoS levels, that is). Somebody inscribed the location of the Wayfinder on an ancient whispering dagger, it could’ve been Palpatine, Ochi or one of those smelting monkey fellas, and I guess the sith runes cause the blade to whisper guidance towards the Wayfinder. Maybe it could be inferred that the blade was given to Ochi in order to retrieve Palpatine’s Wayfinder. I say this to mean it’s fine to leave it as is on V1 if the dub changes don’t pan out.

But, at least on paper, I think the 3PO dub could be a net gain. The main positives I see are that it gives us a chance to directly address the whispers that are now prevalent in the film, cement them as an inherent property of the dagger. It also allows us to tie this to Rey’s descent to the darkness. It would work like this: We see Rey is still fighting against her inner darkness, you could say she’s still holding on, trying to be a Jedi. The new dagger translation would tell her she needs to let go and embrace her darkness in order to find the Sith Wayfinder. It’s not something she would’ve done willingly, but now she thinks there’s no other way and so she gives in, which leads her down the dark path and completely messes with her. Now there’d be a nice parallel on Exegol, where Palpatine would again tell her she needs to embrace her darkness, she’d again think there is no other way, but thanks to Ben now she’d be able to resist.

This makes it way more interesting than the theatrical cut where her descent to the darkness is basically “Oh no, I’m Palpatine’s grandaughter, I guess I’m destined to become evil like him! It’s in my genes!”. Here it would be more layered and tie better with the previous films, and this would also be helpful to the nobody cut.

And as a nice bonus now all of the dagger can be ancient, runes and all.

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^yes please.

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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Emphasis on when you said “at least on paper”

It does sound nice and all, but we have no content except what is in the films to work with. I doubt there is a sufficient way to show the difference between “embracing the darkness” as you say and experiencing the darkness on screen. It’s something that could be done in written form, but not likely with what we have.

I’d imagine most of what we try would end up looking like her experiencing the darkness - and I already stated why that is problematic earlier.

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RogueLeader said:

I actually think Jar Jar is playing a great devil’s advocate role for this idea, because it does require a bit of work to figure this shit out.

That’s actually why I think having a more extended vision montage, in the vein of Dom’s edit of Kylo touching Vader’s helmet, would be beneficial to the moment she touches the blade. Rey blinks right as she says, “No”, in that shot where she holds the dagger. You could potentially slow her blink down, as if she were closing her eyes to focus, then go into the vision sequence. Get a few shots displaying Rey’s “darkness”, and she’s rewarded with a glimpse of the Death Star. Then Kylo interrupts her.

I think something like that could potentially show more intent regarding what Rey did to obtain that knowledge. So the audience isn’t left wondering, “If Rey just kept holding it in the cave, would it have eventually shown her the location of the Wayfinder?”

Two other things I suggested before, to help make it more apparent: coloring Rey’s eyes Sith yellow just before/after the vision; and also, in the vision montage itself, I think it would be neat if we could replicate the same kind of filter that was used in Episode III. Not only would it have significant Dark Side implications, but it would also help to differentiate it from the other visions Rey and Kylo have during the movie. Plus, I think it would be nice to have a little callback to the Prequels.

Here’s a thought: with the new Dark Side Knife idea, could that be the influence that pushes Rey to activate Force Lightning? Like, the Dagger is really starting to unlock her Dark Side potential more than ever before, which is why she couldn’t use it immediately? Maybe add a couple of Sith Whispers right before the lightning launches or something.

The Rise of Skywalker: Untold - A “Rey Nobody” edit of Ep. IX | Looking for voices and VFX - Please reach out if interested!

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Yep, emphasis on “on paper”, we’ll have to see what can be cooked up. Though most of what I describe are things already present in the original and/or V1, by splitting Kylo and Rey’s vision in the beginning we already get to see the inherent darkness Rey is struggling with, we already see her descent more and more into the darkness, which culminates on the DSII, where she is supposed to be following these dark whispers. The proposed changes would just help bring these things to the forefront.

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To match what I said previously, maybe the new vision could include Kylo’s “You’re still holding on! Let go!” Or at least the “let go” bit, to make it more obvious what she does/needs to do.