I showed the scene to my girlfriend who wasn’t clued-in beforehand, and it took three playthroughs before she figured out what was happening.
So I think we should definitely look at slowing it down a bit, though even if it was unchanged it would still be a dramatic improvement to the film.
Watching the scene again, I think it would work to simply duplicate the theater shots, and put one after the establishing shot of the children that shows Luke simply facing the AT-AT, then show the closeup of the children looking in rapt attention, then the existing shot of Luke deflecting the fire followed by the children laughing.
I appreciate you showing it to her! I always like to think of the hypothetical first-time viewer when making certain edits, so it’s great to get that perspective.
And that idea is sorta what I have been thinking. Maybe I could slightly scale the shot up so it looks slightly different (or scale up the fireball shot), but as far as the action goes, just have Luke and the AT-AT literally just standing there. At the very least, Luke could step forward a little or something. But the important thing is that the minimal-to-no action might help the audience register what the puppets are. Because in the fireball shot, your eyes just sort of follow the action of the puppets, rather than focusing on the puppets themselves. If that makes sense.
And I’ll also make it clearer that Rey is reacting to hearing “Skywalker”.
Yeah, keeping the wide shot on the introduction to the puppets and then zooming in on the fireball shot would be the logical way of doing it.