The Rise of Skywalker: Untold (Released) — Page 9

So it’s been a few days since I finished watching this and I figured I’d give my thoughts.

Overall? I think this is my favorite version of TROS which is saying a lot given I’ve had to rewatch this movie a LOT thanks to multiple fan-edits. I think in particular this is the first edit to really lean into what I’ve always kind of felt about the film. To me, TROS is not a bad film but a very frustrating one which needed tweaks and changes and this version makes those changes, including ones that I honestly did not think were possible such as cutting the kiss and considering what I heard from the commentary which did help to sort of set a baseline for what to expect? There are major kudos to be given. In particular, the effort that was put in with the use of sentence splicing and so on with VERY limited AI use only when it’s absolutely necessary needs to be commended since no joke, there are so many lines where I absolutely cannot tell that they were altered in any way with only a real handful of exceptions.

Really, my only criticisms are that some of Threepio’s lines can sound a bit off paired with some of his regular film dialogue and in particular there are moments where the Knights of Ren dialogue are… not really obnoxiously loud but kind of sound like the audio levels could be tweaked a tad because the impression I get is that one of them is damn near eating whatever audio set-up is in the helmet but that’s such a small issue and it’s so easily ignored by me.

I don’t suppose there’s any way to get a version of this WITH the Ben/Rey kiss? Yes, I’m still on about that 4 years later, LOL!

I get the reason behind cutting it. Unless you read into their chemistry in all their previous scenes together, it does kinda come out of nowhere.

Some people probably find it cringe in the same way as the Anakin/Padme romance. But I feel like that’s the entire point, actually. As the finale in the Skywalker saga, it’s supposed to wrap up the unresolved tragedy from Episode 3 where Anakin continues choosing obsession and control over true love. Only by Ben completely surrendering himself (self-sacrificial) can he finish what his grandfather started and save the one he cares about from certain death. It’s like poetry, it rhymes, and all that.

In my opinion, that is what the purpose of the sequels must be if Anakin is to remain the throughline as he should be. The original trilogy showed us that the love between a father and son can bring Anakin back, but it leaves the romantic love he shared with Padme unresolved. The idea that the romantic can also bring you back to the light if it’s non-possessive in nature is important to convey IMO. Otherwise, what are the sequels teaching us that hasn’t already been said better in the OT?

I’ll get off my soapbox now 😉

Exactly. And as I pointed out on page one–which ties into your point about Ben and Rey being the opposite of the unhealthy side of love we saw with Anakin and Padme–there is how Rey and Ben are the OPPOSITE of unhealthy and toxic. IMO, it’s just been very misrepresented.

Rey fell for BEN, not Kylo. She saw through Kylo, wanted to save Ben from the darkness he was lost in. But she realized at the end of TLJ that she couldn’t save him. He could only save himself. We saw awesome, healthy, NON-TOXIC-NESS on display because Rey walked away from Kylo when he wouldn’t stop being, well, Kylo, and continued to embrace the Dark Side. Unlike Padme who continued to reach out to a clearly too far gone Anakin.

Rey, OTOH, continued to want nothing to do with Kylo throughout TRoS. And when she saved his life, she let him know that she wanted to take BEN’S hand, not Kylo’s. And that was like a LIGHTBULB going off in Ben’s head. He could be loved as Ben Solo, something that he hadn’t realized. He didn’t have to be this dark, brooding bad boy, essentially. He didnt have to be like Darth Vader to be loved. He could try and be a good guy. That is who Rey wanted, that is who she cared for… the guy who had good in him.

Remember she had seen inside his head in TFA, she knew what his childhood and teenage years – where he had been manipulated and abused emotionally, mentally, and physically by Snoke. That was who she was reaching out to, the guy who, like her, was looking for a place to belong.

And in the end, BEN made the choice to reject Kylo Ren and save himself, and then go and try to help save the galaxy. He made the healthy choice and it was only at that point that Rey accepted him because he had rejected Kylo Ren.

TLJ, again, set this up beautifully – which had actually started in TFA. So, yeah, it’s like poetry, it rhymes, and brings the whole saga full circle. Removing the kiss, the romance removes this important strand that weaves Anakin/Padme throughly to Ben/Rey. In TFA, Kylo/Ben said he wanted to finish what his grandfather started.

What his grandfather truly wanted was to save the woman he loved. In the end, that’s what Ben/Kylo did. He saved the woman he loved. He, in fact, finished what his grandfather started. But, again, the romance, the kiss is needed to complete that poem.

So, I’ve watched Untold twice now and I can safely say I like it a lot, I didn’t love it, if I had seen the original theatrical version then maybe I would have loved this. I am certain it has nothing to do with your work and everything to do with the source material you salvaged this from.

I loved that you gave Kylo agency and purpose, I loved that Luke Skywalker’s actions in The Last Jedi actually meant something and had inspired people across the galaxy, I loved that in all three of these edits Rey’s pull to the dark side was teased and felt like it had actually culminated into something almost resembling a plot point, I loved that it could be interpreted that Palpatine hadn’t returned but the force was using what little was left of Palpatine to turn Rey to the dark side, and when that plan failed, resurrected Palpatine instead as a last resort. All things that (at least to my understanding) were not present in the original.

I made notes since I believe you said you were looking for feedback:

• inconsistent audio levels, it was either too quiet at times or too loud, the dialogue suffered the most from this.
• new dialogue needs better audio mixing, it’s pretty obvious which dialogue was new to this edit as it often wouldn’t blend well with the rest of the audio track.
• The Sith voices were perfect, (I believe you said you voiced them?) absolutely incredible, they sounded like they were meant to be there in the theatrical version all along. However, they are too quiet, they definitely need to be louder. Don’t be shy, you did a great job and they deserve to be heard.
• So when Rey first speaks to Leia, it is dead quiet all around them, it’s quite eerie and distracting, it’s on desperate need of some atmosphere, I believe it’s raining in that scene? Maybe some rain would help with that and maybe some sounds of busy people really quiet in the background as well would help with that scene.
• The intelligence drop scene with the Falcon coming in for the landing (on my second watch, admittedly this seemed like less of a big deal but…) It feels way to quiet and could definitely use some music nothing too loud or too energetic, that comes in later for the chase but definitely something small, quick and establishing could really grab your attention as it is, I swear, on my first viewing I almost lost interest in what was going on.
• Poe and Fin’s return to ‘Not-Yavin-4’, Poe’s little establishing shot before he pops up out of nowhere with Rey and Poe is a little bit jarring, I’m sure your options were limited but I was left wondering if there was a better solution.
• The sequence of events then goes: (Rey reads book) to (Fin, Poe, Rey) to (Rey training) to (Fin, Poe, Rey) to (Rey reads book) to (OKAY NOW WE’RE LEAVING). Again, I have to assume you didn’t have many options, in fact I seem to recall hearing that this ROS in particular was just constantly moving with no room to breathe but it felt a bit weird so I had to mention it.
• The scene where Rey is looking off into the distance and Poe says, “What is it?” and Rey says, “Nothing” and then the scene ends doesn’t seem to serve any purpose and I would say maybe it should be removed but given my previous point maybe it’s more necessary than I realised?
• The Storm Troopers talking about the Knights of Ren are barely audible, especially with the music blaring over them.
• The Knights of Ren could probably be a bit quieter in certain scenes, funnily enough, because of their voice modulation, they don’t really seem like they need any additional mixing, their voices seem to occupy the space they are in the most convincingly, second only to Kylo’s sentence mixing.
• When the gang fly away in Ochi’s ship, I couldn’t help but feel as though things got a bit messy around here, I think the shot of the Millenium Falcon being towed should be moved to later on in the timeline, so that we have Ochi’s ship taking off and then immediately wiping to an establishing shot of Ochi’s ship floating in space. This way it’s easier for the audience to keep pace with where the gang are now (they’ve just gone from desert to ship to space) and keeping that unbroken for as long as possible is for the best. The falcon being towed can be placed later, when it starts to become relevant again, just before the shots of Kylo revisiting it.
• The Victory cry on Kijimi is great but it too easily can go unnoticed. When Zorii says, “listen” that should be the immediate cue for it to start and it should be much louder, perhaps there could be an initial victory cry just before Zorii says, “listen” to prompt her, or perhaps it should go dead quiet just before Zorii says, “listen”.
• D-O’s voice sounds very unnatural, some kind of voice modulation would do really well here, it also needs to be lower in the mix and could use some kind of an effect depending on the environment it’s in, so that it can blend in with its surroundings.
• I’ll simply put, C-3PO’s new dialogue does not sound like C-3PO, the dialogue is good, but if you’re using an AI to get it, you need a better AI model.
• Again, I couldn’t help but find the editing around the “The ship was attacked” dialogue to be a bit choppy and unconvincing and again, I’m sure you did the best you could with what was given to you.
• There’s a distinct audio pop in one of Kylo Ren’s sentence mixed lines, it’s somewhere around, “I can sense the darkness in you, such pain”.
• I imagine Hux would be giving commands in his own star destroyer, so scenes where Hux and Pryce appear to be sharing a command centre don’t really make sense to me, but perhaps it makes sense to you, I know you have them dying together in the same attack and that part looks good but they’re very obviously not in the same room together.
• Fin and Poe reunion: Fin and Poe making eye contact with each other is sandwiched between some very ill-fitting and repetitive additional and unnecessary shots.
• The first shot of Pryde when Palpatine makes contact with him looks very unconvincing, is this a shot of Hux with Pryce’s face stitched on? The biggest issue is the lighting around his eyes and his face isn’t very well attached to the neck, I would maybe recommend shrouding most of the body in darkness with the eyes lit up in that scene … maybe?
• I think Palpatine’s monologue to “his faithful” should be moved to much earlier in the film, I don’t know where exactly but we already know he’s back, putting him in earlier builds him up, it gives us some time away from Fin, Rey and Poe to let their side of events breathe for a bit. It keeps things tense you’re anticipating him a lot more, it’s honestly kind of weird to just hear that he’s back but not see or hear him until the very last thirty minutes or so. If the speech is placed earlier, more time passes between that scene and the scene where Rey slowly makes her way into the Sith Temple, which should provide the audience with an ‘oh damn’ moment because we just got a little reminder to what she’s about to walk into.

This is the section of issues I had with the film that I’m assuming are a part of the theatrical cut:

• Kylo appears to come out of hyperspace when he reaches Exegol, but that shouldn’t be the case as we just watched him navigate there by hand.
• Why is C-3PO going with them?
• Rey just has a blaster now? She pulls it out of nowhere.
• Why does Fin question Poe’s hot wiring skills? Seems like a pretty standard and important skill to have as a Resistance Fighter (I know this “sets up” Poe’s criminal past but it’s weak and lazy).
• Poe’s arm seems fine in the final battle but is in a makeshift sling again after the fact. (I mean, I get it, life and death and all, but it just seems a little disjointed).

Anyway, I fully intend to watch this a third time with your commentary track playing, which will almost certainly explain everything and make me disagree with everything I just wrote XD .

Great work sherlockpotter, I hope you’re proud.

Oh, and it makes total sense that Rey and Kylo never kiss, I never really saw a romantic connection between them anyway. 😃

I really respect your dedication. I am looking forward to your finished project, but I just want to offer up some constructive thoughts. I totally follow your logic, and see your vision especially around 1:22 of the clip, but you are doing drastic editing on already completed and compressed footage, so the dynamic range will be unforgiving. That is to say, the brightened fire doesn’t look “filmic” overexposed like it sounds like you were going for, its digitally totally blown out, the tie fighter shadows are lifted from an already crushed state, so now they are distorted, and the general scene blacks/shadows are quite crushed now. From a “realistic” camera perspective, if the scene was exposed for such jet black shadows in the new regrade, then the fire would look like the 1.0 grade, because the scene is already very underexposed. If the shadows were left intact, then mayyybe the fire would be blown a bit, but it would have to come from the capture itself, its difficult to fake that kind of natural looking film overexposure with fire.

Honestly the original scene never quite looked right in the first place, so whoever did the original night conversion edit really did the best they could with what they had to work with, and it already looks decent. I think some of the color shifts you made near the end of the clip are nice, but again with the very limited dynamic range, there’s a bit of distortion/banding, which could outweigh the benefit of the adjustments.

Best wishes on your progress!! And don’t let this internet stranger’s comments get in the way of your vision mate, you’re doing an amazing job.

It was a bit difficult to describe, but I found some photos I took of a bonfire to explain better. the flatter, dimmer looking fire comes from a night scene that is darker than real life, so the camera is exposed for the fire. When the scene is balanced, the fire will still look ‘normal’, just brighter, maybe a touch of highlights in the flame center, but the scene will still have lit detail. An overexposed night scene will look brighter than real life, and that is what causes the fire highlight clipping, but even then the clip is only the inner part of the flames, with an orange clipped highlight, just like in the TLJ frame.

in this case it makes sense for your scene to appear more evenly exposed with small hints of highlights, rather than reducing the exposure even more to pitch black, and then nuking the flame lighting, those are opposite ends of scene exposure. It seems to be early morning right before the sun rises (seeing how the lighting changes at the end of the clip), so it makes sense that scenery is visible, while not blowing out the fire.
I hope this explains what I meant! https://ibb.co/yBFk4hpS

Here is a quick lighting test I did from youtube footage (sorry for the poor quality) that hopefully shows more of what I was talking about: https://ibb.co/6JFQVv0r

The lighting can still look like dawn/night, have an intensity in the flames, and still keep the background and flame detail without extreme luminousity clipping on whites and darks.

Yes! That’s an improvement, great work! The white clipping especially is much better.

If you were going to add anything to the scene, I’d personally recommend lessening the amount of emphasis this moment has on Chewie and making the parallels to Rey’s parents leaving her on Jakku more clear. Whether this is through audio or some brief video clips is up to you. I ripped them from the channels in TFA when Rey is being drawn to the saber in the basement.

The reason some people don’t like this scene is because it’s random that she shoots lightning out of her fingertips just because she’s struggling with the transport. In other words, trauma/PTSD is a more compelling case for a burst of power like this than mere impatience.

That’s fair, and I think it depends on the edit. If the cut doesn’t otherwise make Rey’s parents or abandonment trauma central (yours), then I agree that bringing it up heavily in this scene risks feeling like half an arc. In both of my versions, though (Nobody+ and Canon+) the parent wound is one of the main things the edit is built around. The point isn’t that Rey gets neat closure with her parents, it’s that Kylo and Palpatine weaponize the wound that has defined her since TFA. Even if her parents had noble intentions in the canon version, Rey grew up with the trauma of being left behind, and the desert outburst is that same fear of loss erupting through the Force.

To respond to the Chewie question, I think that it feels less deceitful the further you place it away from when the transport explodes. Personally, I would place the footage right after when Rey latches onto the ship. So that way it seems like Chewie is reacting to the sudden halt of the transport. Its current placement toward the beginning in the alternate version feels a bit random.

I’m also pretty sure that somebody on this forum made a clip where you can see another transport taking off in the corner of the screen. If you’re going to play with people like this, I’d highly recommend having an out such as that for when people rewatch! lol

I think you’d have to go through the (shudders) thousand pages of the Ascendant thread. Using terms like “ship” or “transport” with Control + F on each page. But even then I doubt the link is still available, so you’d have to hope that whoever authored it is still using their account on here.

I remember it was very subtle though. I think they just took the main ship flying, cut it out, mirrored it, and had it flying in the opposite direction for like a second or two.