I decided to do something a little… Unusual. I exported my edit to an MP4 file, then I started a new editing project on DaVinci Resolve, added the MP4 file, and started reworking the edit by moving the Yoda scene. This gave me a quick and easy way to access both the original and HAL9000/Poppasketti ideas for Yoda’s scene. I sat down and watched the HAL/Poppasketti version, which moves the Yoda scene to just before the Crait battle. Here are my thoughts at the moment.
The second half of the film has been the most challenging part of the edit so far. A lot of this has to do with the film’s unusual structuring job. In most movies, there’s only a need for one final showdown, not two. Unfortunately, there’s no way to really fix that gaping issue, because the first ending takes you into the second ending. So, my hope was high that moving the Yoda scene might fix that issue. And to my disappointment, it didn’t.
I don’t think it’s a bad change, per se. Moving Yoda’s moment does an interesting job at making a lot of things take place over the course of one night, which strangely enough, gave the film a faster pacing. I was surprised that Luke’s scene when he wakes Leia up from her coma actually worked well, especially since it’s placed after the “caretaker village sequence” deleted scene I’ve added in. The end of that scene, where Rey gets mad at Luke for abandoning “some old failed husk of a religion” gives the next scene, where he communicates with Leia, some much-needed character development for Luke.
And yet, the whole thing just felt so… Off. Like I said, the edit still suffers from the hair-pulling double ending, and I’m not sure there is a way to fix it even with the placement of Yoda. I suppose the advantage is that the two endings now take up roughly the second half of the movie, while previously, it took up the last 45% of the film, but the structure still feels a little messy. I think I’ll go with the HAL/Poppasketti arrangement, but I’m not gonna call it a life saver for the movie. I’ll see if I can come up with more ways to fix the structure of the film before I commit to the HAL/Poppasketti arrangement.