The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released) — Page 519

Kylo Ren’s voice is just Adam Driver’s normal ‘Ben Solo’ voice with a filter, no? It’d take some effort to duplicate the filter but it’s certainly possible.

I would personally just add this one line from the novel from right after his body disappeared 😉

szopman said:

I would personally just add this one line from the novel from right after his body disappeared 😉

+1, it makes the most sense and would fit canon nicely

I’d just like to put out there that I don’t think “no one’s ever really gone” would be a good idea for a line. It had its place in VIII, and I get why they reused it for the IX teaser, but it might come across as too cynically meta if place in IX itself. I mean…

Also, that saber clip looks great Movies Remastered.

All I’ll say is this… no one’s being hurt by having these lines run through the AI. Even if we don’t want a specific line to be put in this edit, it would still be nice for it to be done for others. So I’d appreciate it if it isn’t too much of a bother for “No one’s ever really gone” to be run through for those who want it. Like I said, doesn’t have to be in this edit, but let’s play nice here.

ohhh thats a nice incorporation of nuance. i really dig it. nice foreshadowing.

I pretty much re-wrote the dialogue in the first scene with Kylo Ren and Palpatine. Some lines are changed to make them feel less Chris Terrio-y, some are changed as I feel they sound more right than in the original film, I’m not going to spoil the rest, but they do have footnotes.

I feel like some of the new dialogue can be accomplished through AI synthesizers or whatever. Anyway, here you go.

[The enormous Sith Citadel comes into view, shrouded in darkness and lightning. Ren leaves his ship, draws his lightsaber and activates it as he walks to the temple’s opening. Brief cut to black. Ren descends down a hexagonal platform into the catacombs of the planet, filled with worn statues of ancient Sith.]

PALPATINE: At last.

[The platform finally lands. Ren, seeming uneasy, makes his way towards the source of the whisper, as lightning illuminates in the darkness.]

PALPATINE: [continued] Snoke trained you well.

KYLO REN: I killed Snoke. I’ll kill you next.

PALPATINE: My boy, Snoke was just your beginning. I have always been the whispers [as Snoke] you have ever heard [as Vader] all your life. [breathes]

[Ren, unshaken, proceeds further into the citadel, his path lit by the blade. He eventually wanders into a room in the citadel filled with Sith acolytes, connecting wires to a vat filled with red liquid and several mangled, deteriorating bodies — all closely resembling Palpatine, unique from each other in their own mutilated ways, reminiscent of Alien: Resurrection, except for one that closely resembles Snoke, but with some of Palpatine’s facial features[1].]

PALPATINE: The First Order was your own failure. I can give you so much more.[2]

KYLO REN: You’ll die instead.[3]

PALPATINE: I have died before.

[Ren turns around to seek the source of the voice.]

PALPATINE: The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be… [lightning illuminates his face] unnatural.

[It is clear that his body hasn’t exactly been so kind to Palpatine. His body is frail, his skin pale. His eyes empty but glowing white. He spreads his mangled fingers[4]. Ren thrusts his saber forwards, holding it mere inches away from the former Emperor’s throat.]

KYLO REN: What could you give me?

PALPATINE: Everything.

[Meanwhile, a massive fleet of Xyston-class Star Destroyers breaks through the icy ground and emerges into the tempestuous sky.]

PALPATINE: The might of the Sith Eternal[5] is soon to be ready. It’ll be yours if you do as I ask — kill the girl, end the Jedi, then strike me down in anger, and my spirit will pass into you. We will be one. We will rule together as the new Emperor.[6]

[Kylo Ren lowers his saber.]

PALPATINE: But beware, she is not who you think she is.

KYLO REN: Who is she?

[Palpatine smiles sinisterly as thunder rumbles and the scene cuts to black.]

[1] This would replace the original theatrical shot with Snoke clones and poppasketti’s current shot with Palpatine clones. It drives home the inference that Palpatine is shitty at making clones — let alone any lifeform — with his tech, whilst also having to sacrifice the explicit nature of the reveal that Palpatine manufactured Snoke himself, pushing said reveal into inference… that Snoke was made from another one of Palpatine’s shitty, failed clones.

[2] One idea the film establishes is that the First Order hasn’t exactly doing so well in the year after The Last Jedi. It is reinforced by the First Order seeming smaller than in the previous two films, and Kylo Ren wanting to take Palpatine’s fleet for himself so the First Order would, as he, himself, puts it, “become a new Empire.” This change reinforces that, and I feel it helps separate the First Order from Palpatine and his fleet and makes it more of its own thing.

[3] I changed it to that because, well… basically, I’m like: “How would Palpatine dying first give Kylo Ren the ‘more’, exactly?”

[4] Yes, the shot of his hands is moved here, to immediately drive the point home that his clone body is rotting and decaying. And I feel that, as a side effect, that it’d get MisAnthro Pony to shut up about Palpatine lifting the fleet.

[5] In canon, that is the title of Palpatine’s Sith cult. However, here, it is used to refer to the fleet as a whole, replacing the title “Final Order”, as I feel Palpatine would want the Sith to be eternal and rule for eternity, you get the picture. Hopefully, other lines that reference this name can be AI-changed into “Sith Eternal”.

[6] This accomplishes a similar goal to in the actual Ascendant edit — setting up the stakes for later. I do like the idea in the actual edit, but I feel it muddies Palpatine’s plans and the inference that he has been planning to possess Kylo Ren after he kills Rey and, thus, destroys his “conflicted soul”. So, I made the inference from the theatrical cut explicit. Yes, the parallel to The Last Jedi was intentional.

EDIT: Moved it to the Redux Ideas thread.

Did you mean for that to go in the general ideas thread Testing? I feel like that’s a more appropriate place since this thread is for a film edit.

sherlockpotter said:

I’ve been tinkering with that Poe/Zorii scene. Unfortunately, after getting my hands dirty with it, I think Cap was right about this one and I was wrong. The way Oscar delivers the Crait line, I have to agree that it feels awkward to try and segue from that to Keri Russell’s line. So here’s my rough suggestion. I may be overthinking this, and I almost definitely overengineered it. But that’s okay.

Changes:

• Swapped Poe’s line “Maybe it is” to later. Replaced it with a Poe sigh, from Disney Infinity, as a segue into the Crait discussion.
• Added “over” to “Maybe it is [over].”
• Cut some footage to remove “Everybody’s given up.”
• Changed Zorii’s line from “I don’t believe you believe that,” to “I don’t believe that,” mainly to make the line less clunky.
• Added Zorii saying “Just listen…” (Ideally, I’d want to find a better instance of Keri Russell saying this, so please let me know if you can think of any.)
• Added some “For Skywalker!”s. Looped some footage to linger on this moment a little longer, and allow it to resonate.
• It felt a little empty to me here, so I popped in some Force Theme.
• Removed Zorii saying “Remember?” I can only assume that this was a (very weak) reference to some past adventure she had with Poe; but that’s…kind of weird, right? Wouldn’t Poe have already learned not to give up, if he’s already gone through all of this? (Poe’s is less a character arc, and more a character trigonometric function.)
• Slid Zorii’s dialogue around a bit in the scene for pacing purposes (and to synchronize head bobs).
• Swapped around a couple shots of Poe, so that he nods after “There’s more of us.” (This also allows the final shot of the scene to hold a little longer, so I think it feels less rushed when we cut to the next scene.)
• Added combat sounds in the background throughout the conversation, but brought up the volume levels slightly when Zorii tells Poe to listen to it. (For a final mix, I’d want to confer with axlanian and get a sense of how he’s working on the combat audio for Kijimi.)

Also, I was thinking, perhaps it would be better to just have generic “rebellion” sounds when the gang lands on Kijimi, without any calls to Skywalker – they can hear that the Kijimi-imians are fighting the First Order, but don’t know why. Maybe Poe’s used to people fighting here? It is gang turf, after all. It’s only when Poe, at his lowest, hears the calls “For Skywalker!” that he realizes they’ve been fighting for something greater. That the Resistance has indeed brought hope. That perhaps, the war isn’t completely lost after all. (Perhaps, should he call on them later, his allies might even show up…?)

I don’t think this would affect any potential graffiti we’d add. Maybe the gang is still bummed that Chewie violently exploded, so they’re a little distracted and not paying attention to the details around them.

https://streamable.com/0lwmhz

wooooow! this is brilliant. A few edits here and there with the eq and things and this is perfect. I hope this gets added to the movie.

Hate to be the sourpuss over so many of these proposed changes, I just think the original scene/dialogue is fine as is.

Changing Zorii’s line to “I don’t believe that (the war is over)” suggests she has a stake/opinion on the ongoing war. Along with the rest of the dialogue changes it makes it seem like she’s basically admiting to Poe that she’s part of the Kijimi rebellion, right after saying she’s planning to abandon it all and flee, alining with Poe’s sentiments that everyone’s giving up. It’s just an odd contrast. I feel the Kijimi rebellion stuff should be kept as subtle background since we’re so limited on what can actually be shown, bringing it to the forefront just exposes the limitations of being a fanedit.

Could Zori just say “No, you don’t believe that”?

Burbin said:

Hate to be the sourpuss over so many of these proposed changes, I just think the original scene/dialogue is fine as is.

Changing Zorii’s line to “I don’t believe that (the war is over)” suggests she has a stake/opinion on the ongoing war. Along with the rest of the dialogue changes it makes it seem like she’s basically admiting to Poe that she’s part of the Kijimi rebellion, right after saying she’s planning to abandon it all and flee, alining with Poe’s sentiments that everyone’s giving up. It’s just an odd contrast. I feel the Kijimi rebellion stuff should be kept as subtle background since we’re so limited on what can actually be shown, bringing it to the forefront just exposes the limitations of being a fanedit.

Mostly agree with this. Beforehand she goes on about how she “can’t stand the cries anymore” and wants to go on her own adventures, so those ideas are partially conflicting. That’s why it’s supposed to be a surprise when she shows up on Exegol later on.

Yeah, the Zori stuff in general is weird. I wish it was more of Poe who was convincing Zori that there are “more of us”, rather than Poe being so hopeless. But, I guess it is sort of necessary for his arc. But he even gives up at the battle of Exegol basically. Everyone is begging Poe to tell them what they should do, and he basically says, “Well, I guess we’re all gonna die now…” I guess it isn’t bad, just wished they would’ve expressed Poe’s growth as a leader in a different way.

Add Palpatine’s spinny-scream from ROTS as he explodes (Cinefy idea)

I think the better idea would be putting in his death scream from RotJ and then putting in the second half of the spinny-scream and re-pitching it to match with the RotJ would be/sound more… right. Yeah, you get the point. Thoughts?