The Rise of Skywalker: Untold (Released) — Page 8

nice, i would happily check it out when released!

sherlockpotter said:

And while I’m working through the queue, I thought you all might be interested in seeing the new trailer I cut for the film!

That is some impressive trailer you’ve cut there - and am very much looking forward to see this when it is released. 👍
 

Exactly! Coloring Leia’s saber purple is one of my favorite changes in Ascendant, and I really wanted to showcase it more!

I really enjoyed this!

3 things I would take to the bank and would love to see incorperated into other edits:

. Setting up the Sith eternal at the start and slowly building up to revealing Palpatine’s return midmovie felt like an actual reveal rather than the silly opening revelation we got in the original. For me in has the same impact as the Hal’s switch of the hosnian prime destruction in TFA. I can imagine in a rey palpatine version Kylo revealing Rey’s heritage in the hanger would be a lot more impactfull than in the og, like a one two gut punch reveal, first that Palpatine has retuned and then that Rey is his grand-daughter (set up earlier with the lightning powers and dark visions)

. Kylo Ren’s visit to the falcon and force semi-omniscience are a great addition to his character work and power development.

. Leia actually being involved in force healing Ben and that being the cause of her death makes a lot more sense than in the original.

Huge congrats on the release! This was the kind of radical re-edit I thought was impossible after seeing the movie in the theater.

I’ve sent you a dm 😉

Having watched it, I wanna reiterate how mindblowing it is, the extent to which this community has been able to come together for so many ideas and big visual and audio changes.

TROS is a bummer of a movie for two main reasons:

1. The backsliding and retconning of character arcs and story points set up by TLJ. I think you deal with this beautifully with your changes, especially your use of Sith whispers, the reworking of the famous Kylo/Rey scenes, and expanding the “for Skywalker” theme that Ascendant started with your great changes to Kijimi and elsewhere. TROS’s reliance on contrived plot points and macguffins is also pretty wack. This edit does a lot to make it more palatable.

2. The ending. I need to vent about the ending again, because that’s naturally the main thing on my mind, even after watching a fantastic fanedit. So I thank you in advance for your patience 😉

The sequels set up the idea that the failures of the Jedi brought about Vader, and now have brought about Kylo Ren, meaning something needs to change for the cycle to be broken. TLJ states that despite the failures, Luke was wrong for wanting the Jedi to end, and so is Kylo for wanting the past to die. The galaxy needs a legend, and it needs Jedi, but since we know the Jedi of the past were flawed, the new Jedi need to be different, incorporating the lessons of the past failures. They need to transform, they need to change. TROS basically ignores this by making sure Rey is just fulfilling the legacy of all the past Jedi by killing the Sith to death (?).

Not to mention “bring him home” also doesn’t happen. Vader ruins his entire life and body and destroys the whole Jedi order, and, after decades of tyranny, rectifies this by sacrificing himself for his son and the galaxy. But Kylo’s story is different. Bringing home the lost boy is the goal for Ben since TFA. I know he’s like 30, but his arc is painted more like a tantrum-prone teenager who goes down a dark path and eventually realizes the error of his ways, because a girl (his peer) and his parents (!) still relentlessly believe in his goodness. His life is not over once he turns back to the light, it’s just beginning. He’s not Vader, he’s more like Zuko. Buut nope, he dies because that would be too difficult to write (although not in the minds of Driver, Kennedy, Filoni, et al, since they greenlit the Hunt for Ben Solo, but I digress)

There is nothing any fan editor can do to fix this, it can only be resolved by future movies or other types of fan works.

There are also some more unfortunate parallels with the ending of ROTJ, where we see a montage (in the special edition) of different planets celebrating the victory, whereas in TROS we see a montage of destruction. Destruction of the enemy, but still destruction. Where in ROTJ we see Luke mourning his father, and then reuniting with his friends to celebrate victory, in TROS we don’t see Rey mourn Ben, we see her going off to an abandoned desert house to bury the past.

I love your ending where she at least flies off into the sunset with her friends, onwards to new adventures. This is so far the best version of TROS that can be engineered with the material given. Thank you for your excellent work! This was well worth the wait.

KumoNin fully summed up how I felt after watching this simply absorbing ‘Rey nobody’ edit last night. 👍

The skill, passion, and commitment into evolving a fairly unwatchable official version of TROS into this beautiful and captivating edit is something to behold.

It was also really nice to see a project with such a thoughtful trailer, as well as blu ray and DVD covers, a poster, Release Notes with a full and comprehensive changelist, a video highlighting just what goes into dialogue placing, and also another for VFX breakdowns… as well as a rather unforgettable ‘alternative ending’ video!

This was truly a memorable and project - proving just what can be achieved by the amazing talents on here.

Kudos and credit to everyone involved on this - and to sherlockpotter especially for pulling this all off - my cap is doffed.
 

I’ll be watching this again come the weekend. And likely again soon after that as well.
 

Octorox said:

Just took a look at this last night. Really impressive effort overall. In particular, I think the work done to delay the Palpatine reveal into later in the movie was really effective. My only criticism, and I don’t know if this is colored by my familiarity with the original movie, is that sometimes the sheer amount of ADR and repurposed shots can give the impression that entire scenes were cobbled together in the edit. I particularly felt that way with some of the Hux stuff. However, short of filming new scenes, I don’t think anything can really be done about it.

I saw in the special features you had a segment about sentence mixing techniques, which was impressive since I assumed many of those scenes were AI. About how much of the new dialogue replacement would you say was sentence mixing vs. AI vs. new voice acting?

Interesting question! I went back through the script changes, and here’s the rough breakdown:

• Approximately 37.23% is original recordings/submitted voice clips
• 39.31% is completely dialogue spliced out of official audio and dialogue clips
• 4.95% is mostly dialogue spliced, with some specific AI additions
• Around 18.51% is completely AI generated

All of those techniques are selected on a line by line basis and interwoven together. Hopefully each feels homogeneous with the other changes (and of course, with the original script). A lot of work was done mixing and balancing everything - volume, EQ, reverb, pitch, etc.

And yes, several scenes were cobbled together in the edit lol! With the Hux stuff specifically, he was originally killed halfway into the film for treason. Since he’s no longer a traitor in Untold, it felt awkward to have him disappear for most of the film - hence the repurposed shots.

KumoNin said:

Vader ruins his entire life and body and destroys the whole Jedi order, and, after decades of tyranny, rectifies this by sacrificing himself for his son and the galaxy. But Kylo’s story is different. Bringing home the lost boy is the goal for Ben since TFA. I know he’s like 30, but his arc is painted more like a tantrum-prone teenager who goes down a dark path and eventually realizes the error of his ways, because a girl (his peer) and his parents (!) still relentlessly believe in his goodness. His life is not over once he turns back to the light, it’s just beginning. He’s not Vader, he’s more like Zuko. Buut nope, he dies because that would be too difficult to write (although not in the minds of Driver, Kennedy, Filoni, et al, since they greenlit the Hunt for Ben Solo, but I digress)

…

I love your ending where she at least flies off into the sunset with her friends, onwards to new adventures. This is so far the best version of TROS that can be engineered with the material given. Thank you for your excellent work! This was well worth the wait.

I know there was a fair bit of discussion back in the day about making Rey the one who dies while Ben survives on Tatooine. Ultimately, I didn’t go that route because A) I couldn’t think how to do that convincingly, given the amount of new FX work that would seem to require; and B) I wanted to end the movie in more or less the same place as the theatrical version, in case Rey comes back in the future. But it is possible that some editor is pursing that direction still.

And full props to Hal and Ascendant for letting Rey be with her family at the end! Even just moving the chess scene to the end is such a clever, subtle change that adds so much.

I’m definitely against killing Rey too, for the record 😄

WOW! Just watched this, and it’s an extremely impressive edit. Technically flawless (well, could you turn up the initial Sith voices a bit?), but absolutely every narrative change landed for me - you’ve demonstrated an extremely deft hand for making the right calls on a huge volume of changes. Removing and smoothing loads of weird and unnecessary C-plots gave a lot more space for the (much improved) B-plots to shine. And your work on the A-plots (the fleet being the known threat, the Palpatine reveal, the Rey-Kylo relationship) gave the movie a far, far stronger spine. Major highlights were the Leia plot, the early Rey-Kylo conflicts, the rise of citizens against the First/Final Order, and the way less messy ending. Amazing job.

I was always a Rey Palpatine purist, because I figured Disney won’t let us ignore that canon forever, but until the Mouse forces my hand, this is my new primary version. Excellent work.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who’s watched and commented on Untold! I’ve really enjoyed reading all of the positive feedback to the project, and I’m so glad this version seems to be resonating with so many others!

oojason said:

This was truly a memorable and project - proving just what can be achieved by the amazing talents on here.

Kudos and credit to everyone involved on this - and to sherlockpotter especially for pulling this all off - my cap is doffed.

I’ll be watching this again come the weekend. And likely again soon after that as well.
 

Thank you, oojason! To echo this point, this was absolutely a collaborative project, and I couldn’t have done it without the community sharing their time, talents, and ideas. Not to mention everyone who contributed to Ascendant before this. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and I’m incredibly grateful to all of you!

EddieDean said:

WOW! Just watched this, and it’s an extremely impressive edit. Technically flawless (well, could you turn up the initial Sith voices a bit?), but absolutely every narrative change landed for me
…
I was always a Rey Palpatine purist, because I figured Disney won’t let us ignore that canon forever, but until the Mouse forces my hand, this is my new primary version. Excellent work.

Not gonna lie, I was worried when the new Rey movie was announced that it would invalidate what I was working on - at least that problem has been averted for now! I’m hoping TROS having such a negative reaction will encourage Disney to not mention the Palpatine stuff again, even if we do see Rey again in the future.

Thank you for the feedback as well! If anyone else notices anything that needs to be tweaked (such as turning up the Sith voices), please let me know!

Octorox said:

sherlockpotter said:

EddieDean said:

WOW! Just watched this, and it’s an extremely impressive edit. Technically flawless (well, could you turn up the initial Sith voices a bit?), but absolutely every narrative change landed for me
…
I was always a Rey Palpatine purist, because I figured Disney won’t let us ignore that canon forever, but until the Mouse forces my hand, this is my new primary version. Excellent work.

Not gonna lie, I was worried when the new Rey movie was announced that it would invalidate what I was working on - at least that problem has been averted for now! I’m hoping TROS having such a negative reaction will encourage Disney to not mention the Palpatine stuff again, even if we do see Rey again in the future.

Thank you for the feedback as well! If anyone else notices anything that needs to be tweaked (such as turning up the Sith voices), please let me know!

I hope that my comment did not come across as overly negative. I want to emphasize that you really did a great job with this!

Oh gosh, no, not at all! You were very kind, and your critiques are legitimate! (Some of the more structural ones may not be straightforward to address, but it’s definitely worth thinking about for potential future updates!)

I can’t improve if I don’t know what to fix, you know? That’s all. :)