The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released) — Page 655

This conjures sad feelings but I’m happy to hear it too! You’ve more than accomplished the goals you set out for these projects. I totally relate to those feelings of wanting to move on, so I think it’s smart for your mental health to retire these projects for yourself, and let new editors build off them in the future if they want.

Hal 9000: “I am officially retiring everyone . . . after I complete this list of 500,000 things that will take the rest of my life.”

😃

can i have link for the V3?

Thank you to Hal and everyone else in the community! I enjoyed collaborating with you all.

Just got done with a watch party of v3, and everyone really liked it. They said everything from the plot to explanations of Palpatine’s return/fleet were much more clearly laid out and understandable. It was also exceedingly apparent that the film touched on the core themes of Star Wars. In other words, it “just felt like Star Wars”. The Force ghosts contributed greatly to a feeling of conclusion and finality in this 9-episodic saga. Especially Ben Solo’s ghost at the end, which makes Rey’s identity with the Skywalker family more touching and believable. The new ending makes you feel good because it seems like the gang is going on more adventures together!

Only two things were picked up on:

• The lipsync of Poe in the Resistance briefing is off. The voice did sound near perfect, however. Granted, there’s not a lot we can do about this. It’s worth noting that this is one of the only AI lines that was spotted (so we did good work there!)
• The new shading of Leia’s lightsaber looked too blue in the flashback. A viewer was confused when Rey ignited it on Exegol and it was purple. However, I’m confident this was merely a problem with our TV because it looks perfect on my laptop. Not sure what exactly happened here.

Overall, as I stated before, this is a magnificent edit. I didn’t ask for ratings, but at least in my books, it goes from the original being a 6.5/10 to a 9/10 easily.

Like I said, I’m 99% sure it was the TV color settings. It looks fine on my laptop.

I did just remember that I received one rating, although it wasn’t numerical. He said that it was the best of the sequel trilogy (after having seen Starlight and my hybrid edit of Rekindled/Legendary). Which was surprising. That being said, he never liked TLJ, and TROS was admittedly made for those who didn’t like that movie.

Glad to see V3 has released. I gotta say the A.I. voices do feel noticeable to me, though I’ve looked at these scenes way more than most, I’m sure the average viewer wouldn’t pick up on it, and the Kylo lines do sound smoother than the previous sentence mixing.

The one A.I. voice addition I’m not so sure about is Leia. I thought trimming out that whole “it’s what you would do” interaction was a much smarter change, and giving Rey back the lightsaber without a word feels more emotional and personal, Rey understands what she’s saying through her actions alone. It’s odd and unnecessary to have her spell things out from off-screen, and it’s the kind of dialogue we would remove if it was originally in the movie.

The AI voices are pretty noticeable to me, though I haven’t been able to test it on anyone else (I’ve seen various cuts of this movie too many times). Poe does sound a bit off, and Rey’s lips didn’t seem to match when she said “ram” instead of “skip,” but maybe not a deal breaker?

I think Kylo’s early AI line might stand out most to me, though. For one, I personally dislike Kylo calling Palpatine a “rotting clone.” I guess I was in the minority on that during the earlier chats on it, but it still feels awkwardly expository and weirdly knowing of Kylo, like he read the script before coming down here. “You’re a ghost” gets the same idea across when combined with the earlier red vats of Palpatines while sounding more theatrical, like “ghost” is also referring to Palpatine being an old has-been and not just “you are a literal specter possessing a body.”

But besides that, while the AI voice does sound like Adam Driver, it doesn’t sound like Kylo in that scene; his follow-up “what could you give me” sounds much deeper and echo-y, almost like he’s wearing the helmet, and having those two lines in basically the same sentence really makes it stand out. If the new line couldn’t be made to match the old one, I wonder if it would have sold better redoing the old line in AI as well.

Sorry how negative this all sounds; a lot of great work has been put into this edit already, but AI voices were always going to be one of the harder sells as far as “would this have worked in the theater,” at least for me personally. Even the professionally done ones with Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian/Boba Fett really dragged those episodes down for me. But this edit is still a fantastic achievement.

For what it’s worth, I put like 2-3 additional AI lines into v3 before watching it with the others. And even then, when I outright asked them what lines seemed off, they said that Poe’s mouth movement was off and that Kylo’s line at the beginning seemed new because it mentioned a clone.

That was it.

Neither of them had seen the movie since it first came out and purposely forgot a lot of it. So essentially first-timers.

Burbin said:

The one A.I. voice addition I’m not so sure about is Leia. I thought trimming out that whole “it’s what you would do” interaction was a much smarter change, and giving Rey back the lightsaber without a word feels more emotional and personal, Rey understands what she’s saying through her actions alone. It’s odd and unnecessary to have her spell things out from off-screen, and it’s the kind of dialogue we would remove if it was originally in the movie.

I agree with this. But I didn’t want to be the sole dissenting voice since everyone else seemed to be on board with it. Lol.

My name is in the special thanks? I mean at best I feel I’m just a dingus who has a love of Star Wars but… damn if that doesn’t feel sweet.

Also, I was wondering if you could PM the link to V3 since this looks so, so cool.

So I just finished watching the edit. Overall still very enjoyable but I feel I have to echo the sentiment some people have shared, the AI voice lines are very noticeable or at the very least, the ones for human characters that are full decently long sentences. Now in some cases it’s not that bad, Kylo’s line to Palpatine that he’s a ghost in a rotting clone for instance works well, it’s just the sound is off, it’s kind of hard to describe but it overall doesn’t match the bass of the Kylo line before it and Leia’s small lines work though I’d contest that the second line is not needed. The biggest triumph for me is the line about lightspeed ramming where I’m assuming because it’s a single word, a lot of effort was put into ensuring this line matched the tone and flow of the sentence. Then there’s Poe’s speech and I feel a lot of it is distractingly monotone and doesn’t quite match Issac’s weary reads from the film. It’s especially noticeable in the line that was taken from TROS but put through the AI to I assume keep the flow which has him drop Exegol. Maybe on their own time someone can experiment with mixing in the original movie lines to see what that’d do since as is? It’s kinda distracting.

As for the other aspects of this edit? I really like how tight this is. Just a lot of small edits here and there that don’t distract from the main film and add little touches. I personally still have my own hang-ups on certain scenes like the ghosts but all in all? This is likely the best version of this story I will see and it has been a blast watching through each and every version.

For Kylo’s AI line, I reduced its pitch by a decent amount before giving it to Hal. I wonder if it might have helped to pitch up the line present in the original film to help bring them in line with each other?

For Leia’s saber line, my thinking was that “Rey, never be afraid of who you are” speaks only to the idea that there is an inner darkness in her that she should have the courage to face. Whereas with the added line, it gains a second meaning in that Leia is telling her that she’s a Jedi and she should never doubt that about herself. Which ties in with her modified one-liner to Palpatine: “I am a Jedi”. She’s repeating what Leia directly told her.

I kind of agree with the general sentiment on the AI lines. I think the “lightspeed ramming” line is nice and unobtrusive and a couple others I can take or leave, but overall the pure additions tend to be a bit distracting, particularly the Leia lines.