In a longstanding tradition I’ve just started this year I’ve decided to watch each ST films across Christmas Eve, Day, and Boxing Day (due to having seen the other 6 films millions of times since 1999).
Unlike the other two films I have seen TRoS more often and have seen a couple of different versions of Ascendant so I knew what I was going into here. Like with Starlight I did avoid the changes list to try not to notice what was new or not. What follows here is an unstructured wall of thoughts jotted down whilst watching.
I went for the Rey Palpatine version, like it or not, that’s what we’ve got now.
Added lines on Exagol fit seamlessly. The immediate acts of aggression in Rey’s training complete with vision incorporating the Sith eyes from Starlight, the cave from TLJ, and the throne from Ascendent work so well at that point.
After Starlight it’s odd to hear Vader’s theme accompanying his helmet rather than Palpatine’s considering who’s actually speaking to Ren through it.
The music after Rey is fixing the landing gear after escaping the Destroyer is slightly reminiscent of Ren’s theme but I do wonder if either his or Palpatine’s could be woven in here properly as she talks about wanting to kill him.
Leia halting her training because she wanted to be more like her mother is a good balance considering it’s implied Luke had exiled himself out of fear of becoming their father. It carries the unvoiced implication that Leia too was scared of becoming Vader much earlier than Luke was.
I knew where a lot of the generated lines were but they didn’t in anyway stand out.
I did have some issues. One that’s unfixable is the Resistance being back to their TFA strength so soon after TLJ and all the other resets to TFA even down to Rey’s clothes and hair, Abrams really went out of his way to muck up TLJ.
There’s a couple of instances where the subtitles don’t match the words (Poe says the followers ‘have been building something for years’ and the subs say ‘hiding something for years’). Also, considering the ‘never underestimate a droid’ theme and how kind Rey is to D0, it’s really jarring to see how badly everyone treats 3P0, yes he’s never taken seriously in the franchise but Finn and Poe are outright bullying to him.
Also I had to convert the file because it was crashing my Philips TV when playing it off a USB device. It plays other MP4s no issue, it just didn’t like this one.
I’ve not kept up with much of the new voice lines talk for V5 but I did have some thoughts.
Leia having some dialogue prior to sacrificing herself rather than Maz expositing. Something like she senses Ben is turning and needs to reach him once last time or something.
Palps seeding some clones around the galaxy to use as backups. Rather than Rey being referred to ‘grandchild’ explicitly there must be some way of making it more obvious that one or both of her parents were Palpy clones and it’s unexpected they had a child.
And finally have Palpy goading Rey into killing him to fulfil the rule of two as his successor rather than telling her he’s going to posses her. It’s simple for him to prey on her darkness considering what Ren has told him about her toeing the line but I find it fundamentally stupid to tell her he’s going to posses her. It possibly wouldn’t be too difficult to have him play the dying victim like he did with Windu now he’s supposedly found his worthy successor. Obviously his plan remains to possess his clone but he doesn’t tell Rey that.
The last two things absolutely lie outside the scope of this film and Hals style, but adding subtle World Between Worlds lines in space when Rey starts hearing the voices of the Jedi and replacing the out of place Han-llucination with Anakin finally being able to speak to Ben would fit the expanding world post-ST nicely.