Finally read through this, it sounds fantastic. Thoughts:
- Not important at all, but is Exegol supposed to be Moraband/Korriban? Wookiepedia doesn’t seem to make that link.
- I love the idea of using Kijimi to enhance the Luke’s inspiration subplot. Some new background voice chatter should be helpful there, like the finale’s "For Skywalker!"s. It’d be great to get graffiti, as people have suggested, maybe even explicitly showing Luke’s face or a stylised version of his facedown on Crait.
- The only change I’d prefer to avoid would be that I’d rather keep the Palpatine reveal early, so it hangs over the movie for longer.
- Well, that and maybe preserving Rey claiming the Skywalker legacy at the end. I think it makes sense for her to declare the identity that she’s worked so hard for.
This next thought might not quote belong here, but shifting the improved Mustafar Minute to the end of TLJ might do us some good. Ending TLJ with Rey shutting out Kylo, then the radio/whispers of ‘find me’ followed by Kylo raiding Mustafar and finding the Dark Power (unidentified) on Exegol means that offscreen time can be spent with the First Order collaborating with Palpatine to enhance their fleet. It would also parallel TFA nicely: TFA has the coda where Rey leaves the main plot to find her hope, and TLJ would have the code where Kylo Ren leaves the main plot to pursue a new power.
Thanks, Eddie! I really appreciate your insights, especially given your experience with your awesome Clone Wars edits!
Moraband, Korriban…not sure. I was mainly going off of Clone Wars since I just watched those episodes recently. It’s just kinda weird to me that they’d create another “Sith Planet” just for this film (like geez, how many do they need?), so I wanted to try untangling that knot a bit. I suppose, for what I was planning, it doesn’t really matter what the true Sith Planet is. (I was going to use one of those 3PO AI bots, so I guess whether or not it’s even included depends on how good it sounds.)
Graffiti on Kijimi would be awesome to add, but I don’t know how to 3D track elements into the film. If anyone wants to lend a hand with that, I would love to include it!
For Palpatine, I’d rather not go back to TLJ; my goal is to minimize him, not spread him out over more of the trilogy! I know, it’s a pretty radical plot change; maybe it won’t work in practice, but I promise, it’s really cool in my head! The way I envision it, basically, is that Palpatine feels less like his own character, and more like the symbolic manifestation of the darkness building within Rey. (It’s kind of like…you know in the Narnia films, how the White Witch keeps coming back to tempt the Pevensies? She’s in those sequels more for character reasons than plot reasons, and that’s how I want to treat the Palpster.) The Sith Fleet is the in-universe excuse for bringing him back, not the metatextual reason for why he adds value to the story.
I want the showdown with him to feel very personal for Rey, rather than Rey fighting him by default because she’s the only character with a lightsaber. And that’s why I’m going to such lengths to remove him from as much of the story as possible - because it should be Rey’s story. He never tried to kidnap her as a child, he didn’t have some grand plan to lure her to Exegol - she goes to Exegol to face her own demons. Palpatine’s plan is solely about launching the Sith Fleet, not about Rey. And if it’s so straightforward, I don’t think we need to dwell on it beyond that. (Ironically, by making the mechanics of his plot more surface-level, I’m trying to add a lot of symbolic/abstract depth to the characters.)
Again, it works in my head. We’ll find out (if I ever finish this) if it works in practice!
For Rey Skywalker, I think I less hate the actual declaration (especially with the different shot used in Ascendant), and more so just how clunky and awkward the setup is with “Rey WhooooOOOOOooo???” (I wonder if there’s a way to introduce “Rey Skywalker” more organically? Luke says “Never forget who you are.” Rey: “I’m a Jedi - Rey Skywalker.” Something like that.) Although part of me also thinks she shouldn’t have to declare herself a “Skywalker” in order to have value as a person. She should learn to accept that being a Nobody isn’t a bad thing - she can still be a good person and accomplish great things without being part of a legacy.