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REY NOBODY - A Collaborative Thread — Page 8

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I wouldn’t mind that approach. I mean … he wants her to join him, and to go bad, you need that whole anger stuff by poking the bear.

“Because you are a PalpaWalker?”

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How are the final plans going in terms of Rey Nobody? I feel the scenes that need to be evaluated for this idea would be the hanger scene with Kylo Ren, the Ahch-To conversation with Luke and the Exegol confrontation with Palpatine. V2 of Hal’s project is coming quite soon, so I was wondering what the status is here so far.

The name’s Lawson. Noah Lawson.

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RogueLeader said:

Potential Scenes that Must Be Changed for a Rey Nobody Edit

I’m going to point out all scenes that are also related to new info regarding her parents. Some Rey Nobody edits will want to cut as much out about her parents as possible, while others will just reinterpret that information.

Potential cut - Kylo and Palpatine’s first scene. “She is not who you think she is.” (This line could be given a new context though.)

Parent scene - Rey gets a vision where we get a quick glimpse of her parents and Ochi’s ship flying away.

Parent scene - On Pasana, Rey sees Ochi’s ship and says something is familiar about it.

Parent scene - Rey picks up the dagger and senses bad things have happened with that blade. She hears her mother’s screams. (This could be kept as-is without the other references to her parents.)

Special Mention - Although Rey using Force lightning is meant to be an obvious connection to Palpatine, without the other related connections, this can simply be seen as a manifestation of her dark side abilities.

Parent scene - While waiting for 3PO to reboot on Kijimi, Rey tells Finn that she recognized Ochi’s ship.

Parent scene - During Rey and Kylo’s Force bond duel, Kylo tells Rey that Palpatine killed her parents because they were trying to hide Rey from him.

Rey Palpatine Scene - Kylo tells Rey that she is Palpatine’s granddaughter. (NECESSARY CUT)

Parent scene - After they escape, Rey says, “He killed my mother, and my father. I’m going to find Palpatine, and kill him.”

Parent scene - Back at the Resistance base, Finn tells Poe that D-O’s former mission was to bring a little girl on Jakku to the Emperor.

Rey Palpatine Scene - On Ahch-To, Luke says to Rey, “Because you’re a Palpatine.” (NECESSARY CUT)

Rey Palpatine/Parent Scene - When Rey confronts Palpatine, he has multiple lines related to their connection (NECESSARY CUTS)
“Long have I waited… for my grandchild to come home.”
“I never wanted you dead, I wanted you here, Empress Palpatine.”
“It is your birthright to rule. It is in your blood, our blood.”
“Weak. Like your parents.” Rey responds, “No. My parents were strong.” (Would need to be cut if you were to remove her parents being murdered by Ochi)
“Your master, Luke Skywalker, was saved by his father. The only family you have here is me.”
Later, as Rey is about to kill Palpatine, he says, “She will take her revenge”. (This line would need to be cut an editor was going to remove Rey’s parents being murdered by Ochi.)

This is all I can think of without going back and watching the movie.

I think we should decide if we want to include Rey’s parents or not and then start going through all the scenes and checking off the finished ones. I personally think the movie would be stronger keeping Rey’s parents as desert scumbags that abandoned her but it would take more editing to pull off.

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For those who check here regularly regarding updates: I would assume no one is actively working on a Rey Nobody edit. Seems like many of the people who made some of these test videos are busy with life or have moved on.

I would like to work on this more, but I just don’t have the time to sit down and make any progress.

And I agree that my preferred version of a Rey Nobody edit would keep her parents as desert scumbags.

The scene that I think is the hardest to make work is the Force bond duel in Kylo’s chambers. At least for me, it’s hard to replace dialogue because of how Kylo’s lines echo into the other channels. You could just cut the dialogue and let the fight play out in relative silence, but I also feel something has to be said here.

For what I have tried to do in the past, I wanted Kylo to basically tell Rey that Palpatine will kill her friends/the Resistance. Instead of setting up Rey wanting to kill Palpatine because he killed her parents, you set up Rey wanting to kill Palpatine because he will kill her new family.

I also haven’t found a dialogue combination that I’m really satisfied with, and I don’t want to use an AI voice or anything like that.

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hinventon said:

I think we should decide if we want to include Rey’s parents or not and then start going through all the scenes and checking off the finished ones. I personally think the movie would be stronger keeping Rey’s parents as desert scumbags that abandoned her but it would take more editing to pull off.

I did it that way. Here’s what I did:

  • Palpatine’s line about there being more to Rey is a non-factor, since I cut away after Palpatine says “everything” as I felt it flowed much better.

  • Removed Rey’s parents from her vision on Ajan Kloss.

On Pasana, Rey sees Ochi’s ship and says something is familiar about it.

  • I can’t find that moment. When is it?

While waiting for 3PO to reboot on Kijimi, Rey tells Finn that she recognized Ochi’s ship.

  • Well damn, I missed that, but it’s added now.

  • Removed Finn and Rey’s conversation after the star destroyer escape about Palpatine being responsible for Rey’s parents’ deaths.

  • Wiped from Poe and Lando on Ajan Kloss to Rey on Ahch-To, skipping Finn’s interaction with D-O and subsequent interaction with Poe.

  • Removed Luke’s acknowledgement of her Palparentage by cutting to inside the hut after Rey says “Myself”.

  • Removed Palpatine’s references to Rey being his granddaughter in the final battle rather effortlessly.

  • Most importantly, combined Rey and Kylo’s two confrontations aboard the star destroyer, moving Kylo’s dialog to the scene in his quarters and excising the hangar encounter entirely by having the Falcon appear instead of Kylo’s ship. Could use some polish, but it’s functional.

All the other stuff alluding to her dark side is left in since there’s no reason to assume it’s familial. Dealing with the temptation of the Dark Side is just standard Jedi stuff, so I don’t see any problem with leaving it in.

I left in “She will take her revenge.” to preserve the flow of the scene, since it’s pretty vague and broadly applicable. She’s supposed to strike him down in anger, so it can be presumed his actions as literally the worst person ever not to mention currently threatening everyone she knows and loves are enough to make her crave vengeance.

Keep in mind that these are mixed with the other countless changes in my still overall unfinished edit, so this is not the go-to base this thread is looking for, but if I can be of any assistance, I’d be happy to help.

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Interesting changes Anakin! Some of your changes sound like they could be useful.

This is an idea in relation to Ascendant, but I don’t want to bog down the thread with Rey Nobody talk.

Even though I personally would prefer more extensive changes to a definitive Rey Nobody edit, I’ve still been wondering if we could potentially come up with a version of Rey Nobody that would allow people to choose Rey Palpatine or Rey Nobody audio track.

I know Hal has already cut some things from Ascendant that would help with this. For example, I think he is already cutting the line “for my grandchild to come home”. He might be cutting the Empress Palpatine line, but if he isn’t, you probably could cut “Palpatine” and get away with just “Empress” since it is in a wide shot.

• “It is your birthright to rule here”

This audio could be changed to, “It is your right to rule here”

• “It is in your blood, our blood.”

This one that you might have to cut. At the very least, you could cut the shot of him saying “our blood”, and just make him say, “It is in our blood.” He says that line in a wide shot, so you could just remove it for the Rey Nobody track.

Palpatine calling her weak like her parents, and then her saying her parents were strong and saved her from him wouldn’t have to be cut, since it doesn’t necessarily imply she’s a Palpatine. I hate this line, but it can be kept depending on how her parents are handled. It’d be nice if she could just say, “They saved me from you” if you had to keep anything.

• “Luke Skywalker was saved by his father. The only family you have here… is me.”

This line could be addressed with a slight trim. For the Standard Ascendant, you could trim it so when he says, “…is me” it has already cut to Rey. For the Nobody version, the line is cut, and the line is recontextualized. He says, “The only family you have here…”, pauses, then looks up, revealing the Resistance (her family) fighting for their lives. Palpatine even calls them her new family a few lines later, so this implication works well.

• Luke: Because you’re a Palpatine.

I actually think Hal said he changed this scene so you probably don’t have this line anymore. But I’m not sure if he cut him saying, “Some things are stronger than blood.” I feel like this line would need to be cut too. Maybe you have Luke say that line as he is sitting down if you felt like he needed to say it.

Or, you could just cut Luke’s Palpatine line, but in the the Nobody version, Luke says, “Leia saw it, too.” Now he is referring to seeing the vision of her on the dark throne, rather than knowing she’s a Palpatine. You can keep Luke saying that Leia saw her spirit and heart. And now when Luke says, “Some things are stronger than blood”, you could interpret that to be him saying that Rey and Leia’s bond was so close, that it was stronger than blood and she understood Rey completely, like a mother would understand her daughter.

• Kylo: Your parents were no one. They chose to be. To keep you safe.

“They chose to be” is the key line here. Without making any cuts, maybe you could change the line to, “Your parents were no one. But they chose to keep you safe.”

• Kylo: You’re his granddaughter. You are a Palpatine.

Not to toot my own horn, but Kylo’s dialogue could be changed to something like the two tests I have here.

RogueLeader said:

Here’s a rough test for their hangar interaction: https://vimeo.com/447063673

And here’s an alternate line read for Kylo near the end of the scene, keeping closer to the original line: https://vimeo.com/447069546

After going back through this, I feel like this ends up being basically what Dom had planned for his TROS workprint.

So in this version of the film, Palpatine basically saw a vision of Rey usurping him in the future, and sent Ochi to find/kill her. Rey’s parents turn out to still have some love for their daughter and they don’t tell them where she is. It’d be nice to not contradict the “filthy junk traders” characterization from TLJ, but I think Hal has already done some work to keep it from being overly contradictory.

So really, you end up with maybe 7-10 audio changes, and maybe 5ish small video trims.

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Interesting ideas, but it seems it’d be a little too much to pull off with merely audio changes. However, I think a ‘minimal changes needed to make Rey remain a non-Palpatine’ would probably be the way to go for the alternate cut of Ascendant.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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You could maybe change “They wouldn’t say where you were” to “They didn’t know where you were”.

A bit goofy to forget even where they left the kid? Maybe, but it’d keep the scumbag aspect in.

Watch Adventure Time

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Always love reading your ideas, RL!

If Hal thinks a fully separate version is going to be necessary for Ascendant Rey Nobody, I’d also be more inclined to remove mention of her parents being nice and helping to protect her. So stuff like:

RogueLeader said:

So in this version of the film, Palpatine basically saw a vision of Rey usurping him in the future, and sent Ochi to find/kill her. Rey’s parents turn out to still have some love for their daughter and they don’t tell them where she is. It’d be nice to not contradict the “filthy junk traders” characterization from TLJ, but I think Hal has already done some work to keep it from being overly contradictory.

I’d rather just remove her parents entirely. Come to think of it, if we remove her parents sparing her from Ochi, would it be better to just outright remove the implication that Ochi was hunting Rey at all? I think the only other time it would be mentioned would be the scene with Finn and Poe - “He was sent to find a little girl on Jakku” or whatever. Could that scene be reframed to just be D-O has the data on Exegol because Ochi was involved with the Sith?

RogueLeader said:

Palpatine calling her weak like her parents, and then her saying her parents were strong and saved her from him wouldn’t have to be cut, since it doesn’t necessarily imply she’s a Palpatine. I hate this line, but it can be kept depending on how her parents are handled. It’d be nice if she could just say, “They saved me from you” if you had to keep anything.

I did a test at one point of Palpatine mocking her, calling her “Weak, like your parents,” and not having Rey respond to that. I thought it worked well - it suddenly hearkened back to her parents being filthy, drunken junk-traders, as if he was stripping Rey of her newfound confidence and abilities. It’s really just that awkward shot of Rey bleating about “My parents were strong…” that doesn’t fit at all.

RogueLeader said:

I actually think Hal said he changed this scene so you probably don’t have this line anymore. But I’m not sure if he cut him saying, “Some things are stronger than blood.” I feel like this line would need to be cut too. Maybe you have Luke say that line as he is sitting down if you felt like he needed to say it.

I wonder if Old Man Luke has any dialogue to say basically, “I know your folks were losers, but we’re not defined by our parents. Some things are stronger than blood.” Probably easier just to cut it entirely though.

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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Hal 9000 said:

Interesting ideas, but it seems it’d be a little too much to pull off with merely audio changes. However, I think a ‘minimal changes needed to make Rey remain a non-Palpatine’ would probably be the way to go for the alternate cut of Ascendant.

What do you think of the sample clip someone did of the hanger scene where Kylo Ren tells her she will kill Palpatine and take the throne. Essentially, Palpatine wants her dead because he sees her as a dangerous threat to overrule him.

The name’s Lawson. Noah Lawson.

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sherlockpotter said:

I’d rather just remove her parents entirely. Come to think of it, if we remove her parents sparing her from Ochi, would it be better to just outright remove the implication that Ochi was hunting Rey at all? I think the only other time it would be mentioned would be the scene with Finn and Poe - “He was sent to find a little girl on Jakku” or whatever. Could that scene be reframed to just be D-O has the data on Exegol because Ochi was involved with the Sith?

Don’t get me wrong, I also would prefer to remove her parents entirely. I was just thinking what could be done with minimal changes. The least amount of effort. It’s been two years since release and we still have very few Rey Nobody edits. Plus, if you take out her parents, you have to cut out a lot of the stuff regarding Ochi and the ship, as well as heavily change the Force bond duel, since it revolves around what happened to her parents.

If Hal feels like a whole other edit would be necessary, then I think you could make these changes, but it seems like Hal would still prefer to keep the changes minimal.

Again, I think the big thing that needs to be figured out is the Force bond duel scene. If all focus was put on figuring that out, then I think the rest of the changes will come down to trimming/cutting different bits and pieces. I think for it to work well, Kylo needs to be talking about Palpatine killing the Resistance/her friends. A part of my issue has been getting the dialogue to work, but also having to do the hard work of readjusting all of the audio tracks the echo Kylo’s original dialogue.

I wonder if Old Man Luke has any dialogue to say basically, “I know your folks were losers, but we’re not defined by our parents. Some things are stronger than blood.” Probably easier just to cut it entirely though.

It probably would be easier to cut it. So much of Luke’s dialogue during that scene is on Rey, and not showing Luke talk at all, so it would be a shame to have to cut one of the few shots where you see him talk, but I think it would make things simpler.

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Yeah, I think the hangar scene and the force duel scene are the most important pieces. I think the hangar scene RL made was in the right direction though. I’m not great with audio like RL or Sherlock is but I definitely think we should focus on those scenes first.

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Master Lawdog said:

Hal 9000 said:

Interesting ideas, but it seems it’d be a little too much to pull off with merely audio changes. However, I think a ‘minimal changes needed to make Rey remain a non-Palpatine’ would probably be the way to go for the alternate cut of Ascendant.

What do you think of the sample clip someone did of the hanger scene where Kylo Ren tells her she will kill Palpatine and take the throne. Essentially, Palpatine wants her dead because he sees her as a dangerous threat to overrule him.

I don’t have a robust opinion but do have a sketchy memory. I’m pretty agnostic about Rey Nobody, just checking in for now but I’ll implement whatever is deemed best by the time it’s ready.

My stance on revising fan edits.

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I’m surprised nobody here has tried doing a mockup of her conversation with Luke, and only one person did a mockup of her confrontation with Palpatine.

I think RogueLeader’s mockup of the hanger scene is the best one, and I think the Force bond duel in Ascendant is fine the way it is.

The name’s Lawson. Noah Lawson.

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DominicCobb has a full edit that includes Rey nobody floating around as a workprint. Once I finish my Episode III edit I’m probably also going to work on some mockups myself.

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If I remember correctly, DominicCobb’s is the edit where Rey killed her parents as a child? That’s definitely a cool idea - it seems like it would be easier to implement, because flashback moments are built into the story, and you can keep a good chunk of Kylo’s existing dialogue (“You don’t know the full story,” etc.) - but I’d be interested in seeing if anything could be done with the Kylo Bedroom fight to avoid mentioning her parents entirely. After everything that went down in TLJ about Rey losing her dependence on her parents, it feels like it regresses her character somewhat to still have Rey defined by their fate.

Not that any Rey Nobody edit is “easy” to pull off…

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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Is it possible that lines referring to blood may still be left in? It could refer to the Dark Side nature and destiny, rather than a blood relationship status.

The name’s Lawson. Noah Lawson.

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Octorox said:

Now that Ascendant V2 is out, I made a Google Doc with what are think are the minimum dialogue changes needed to sell Rey Nobody. Most of these changed were inspired by (or copied from) DominicCobb’s workprint: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cPqS3MOUOwC-t1xQu4rbxbzq4laJ996bjQDPIViOmUI/edit?usp=sharing

I’d like to put together a workprint myself with these changes, I just need to figure out a lossless audio workflow.

Have you cobbled together Kylo saying “but you aren’t”? That’s an interesting idea.

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Awesome document! It’s way less dialogue edits than I thought it would be.

For the last one, I had an idea, but your mileage may vary on how it would alter the scene in a practical editing sense. Have Palpatine say, “But the only family you have here…” and then he opens the roof to show all the Resistance losing the battle. He later refers to them as her family too, unless I’m misremembering it, so it would lean into the “found family” theme of the movie to make the villain derisive towards it.

“It’s like rhymetry. They poem.” - Leorge Gucas

TROS Novelisation: The Faraday Edit, TLJ: Stoic Edition, ROTS: The Faraday Nudge, ROTS Ultracut: Order 66, Kenobi: Faraday Cut, Godzilla Vs Megalon, Godzilla Vs Gigan, Godzilla: Final Wars, The Light Rises, Faraday Jr.'s Star Wars

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DominicCobb said:

Octorox said:

Now that Ascendant V2 is out, I made a Google Doc with what are think are the minimum dialogue changes needed to sell Rey Nobody. Most of these changed were inspired by (or copied from) DominicCobb’s workprint: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cPqS3MOUOwC-t1xQu4rbxbzq4laJ996bjQDPIViOmUI/edit?usp=sharing

I’d like to put together a workprint myself with these changes, I just need to figure out a lossless audio workflow.

Have you cobbled together Kylo saying “but you aren’t”? That’s an interesting idea.

Not yet. That one is kind of wishful thinking but I’m going to try.