I guess you can argue with that.
Ha! Didn’t see your earlier comment before coming back & responding to the prior one. Wasn’t trying to prove you wrong, but this did legitimately make me laugh.
One thing I’ve been thinking of is what Ben could do post-Kylo if an edit were to have him survive Exegol. I’ve seen ideas of him going off as a Caine-in-Kung-Fu-type nomad to try & atone for his actions, but that doesn’t seem like enough of a benefit for all the trouble of redeeming him. Even if he straight-up defected right after Exegol, yes he wouldn’t part of the First Order’s arsenal, but that still seems like missing an opportunity.
What if he went back & tried to shut down or de-escalate the First Order from within? As far as they know, he’s still Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. A good-guy Ben masquerading as Kylo could do a lot of damage to First Order operations by making some ‘disasterous’ orders before somebody figured out what was going on or his generals just rebelled against him. Obviously you couldn’t show much of this in an edit, but I think you could seed the idea given the right circumstances (like using foreign language dubbing & rewritten subtitles to change some dialogue).
Visually:
- A shot of Kylo’s ship heading back to a Star Destroyer.
- The shot of him in full Ren gear in a hallway before turning & going through a doorway. (TROS 1:07:15)
- Ben walking around the table at the First Order staff meeting (20:22 or so, after the shot of Boolio’s head on the table)
- Let that scene play out for the most part. Again, the dub allows dialogue re-writing but they are doing the same general bickering. And you made need to do some judicious cutting depending on if Hux or Pryde are alive or not in your edit at this point. But even if you just use General Conjurors & Soothsayers, it could be enough.
- When Ben goes for the force choke, cut out that guy getting choked & lifted. I go right back to the shot of Pryde talking about how great that fleet would be (moved it up a bit) & Hux’s reaction.
- Cut back to push-in shot on Ben soon as the choking General is out of frame. He’s about to give them all new orders.
- Cut from that to Hux & Pryde on the bridge right before Chewie is brought in (42:40).
- Cut to two shots of Ben looking out of a Star Destroyer window from the start of the TLJ extended incursion deleted scene (scar will need to be fixed).
Basically this is Ben going in and Jedi mind-tricking his command staff into following his obviously destructive orders. The bit with Hux & Pryde should help sell the idea a little more. (Ben staring out the window is where I cut to Rey looking in his direction from the Tatooine shot of her looking at Luke/Leia force ghosts - her smile is one of support & approval).
Typing all this out makes me realize its probably less broadly applicable than I’d originally thought because of dialogue replacement, but hopefully the general idea can spark an insight for someone.
If I have time this week I’ll try mocking this up.