So, I’ve started by just cutting down to that A plot. Starting with Cassian on Niamos (beach planet) as Keef, and then everything involving his arrest, imprisonment and escape, and then those final escape scenes ending with Cassian learning about his mother’s death.
I gave that a watch, and it ended up at right about 70 minutes. I still really enjoyed all of those scenes (except will likely cut that post prison scene of them getting captured in the net by the weird aliens). I can see now that the three acts of the prison arc are clearly defined by the three episodes that contain it, which makes sense and makes things easy for me.
It is going to be a challenge figuring out how to implement everything I wanted above. I think it would feel the most correct to start with an extremely cut version of the Aldhani heist, quick cuts, snippets etc as I outline above. The inciting incident.
However, I want to include the scenes of Mon Mothma and Luthen at the antique dealer. The only issue I am imagining right now is, I want to include their first meeting and the one immediately following the heist… but if I have the heist at the beginning, it doesn’t leave a lot of room to do that first meeting. It’s like Mon would be flying right back to see him with barely any time at all in between. So I would need to pad that out somehow without making it unrealistic.
My thought is, to immediately go from the first scene with the shortened heist, and jump to Mon Mothma at the senate fighting against Imperial overreach, as if word has not gone around yet about the heist, like it is happening simultaneously or very close at least. Then go to Mon’s first meeting with Luthen at the antique dealer. Then I’ll see what else I can pad it out with, before eventually going to the scene with the ISB discussing their response to Aldhani and how they’re increasing punishment for anti Imperial crimes. THEN after that, have Mon go to see Luthen again to confront him about being involved with Aldhani. But idk, still gotta figure it out.
After this intro sequence, we’ll go to Cassian on Niamos and begin the story proper.
Before I started I was having hopes of having fun introducing Luthen as the eccentric high brow antique dealer, before revealing his deep rebel connections. However I don’t think there is enough content to make it flow naturally. At most it would be a surprise for a few small minutes before Luthen and Mon’s discussions reveal his true nature. But similar to the bigger surprise I am creating of Keef’s true identity as Cassian, I want to have as many surprises like that sprinkled in. The Luthen one feels like a natural setup so if I can find a way to work that in as a little surprise for the audience, I want to do so. Even if it’s just for one scene.
As for the ending, I still want to do the intercut sequence for Act 3 as described. The beginning of the prison riot intercut with Luthen and Saw talking about having Kreegyr and his forces take the fall, and cutting to shots of the Ferrix battle implying that is Kreegyr and his forces.
I initially wanted to include Mon in this sequence, some of those final shots when she has to give up her daughter. But, I don’t feel the energy fits. Instead, I have wanted to end the movie on the scene of Cassian finding out his mother died. That sad music that leads out of that scene into the credits I think would be really great for a montage where we can include some of Luthen and THERE is where we put those final shots of Mon and her daughter set to that music.
After that, I would just some kind of transitioning dialogue. Maybe flashing back to when Luthen recruits Cassian, and including some dialogue from Luthen about the Empire, how bad it is or how relentless they are etc… and use that to transition to the final shots of the Death Star ending the movie.
But we’ll see. I am aiming to not exceed one hour of content Outside of the A plot in prison. So hopefully the final run time will land between 2:10 and 2:20, which to me is the perfect length for a Star Wars film.