Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Fan Edit Ideas thread... — Page 5

I loved the movie and would only recommend a couple of changes:

I understand why they didn’t use an opening crawl, but I think I’d enjoy the movie a bit more if they added one.

I was a little annoyed that the Tantive IV was jettisoned from the larger ship at the end. They should have transmitted the Death Star plans to Leia rather than physically putting a copy in her hands. Yes, there is an argument to be made that Leia was just stalling for time when she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a member of the Imperial Senate on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan.” That is a pretty lousy lie, considering Vader just watched your very ship jump into hyperspace to escape the battle over Scarif, but sure, there is an argument there. But Vader shortly after says, “I have traced the Rebel spies to her. Now she is my only link to finding their secret base.” To me that sounds like Vader and crew had to do a little sleuthing and it took a bit of time to catch up to them. You don’t “trace” a bunch of spies to a ship you just watched fly away.

I hope it could be possible for a fan editor to make it appear as if the plans were forwarded to Leia aboard the Tantive IV.

As someone who didn’t enjoy the movie, I toyed with the idea of cutting everything expect the final battle. Basically reduce the cast to nameless soldiers who are just attacking the base. The result would be a short movie. Don’t really know if it is possible.

It was a pretty solid film overall and had a lot of good ideas but the pacing was so slow at the beginning. If I did an edit, I’d just make it fast paced and more intense

Also, I’d add an opening crawl after the opening scene and remove the title card

darthrush said:

Darth Batman said:

It was a pretty solid film overall and had a lot of good ideas but the pacing was so slow at the beginning. If I did an edit, I’d just make it fast paced and more intense

Also, I’d add an opening crawl after the opening scene and remove the title card

How would you decide to transition between the flashback and the present with the title card gone.

I’d have the movie open with the flashback and then have the title scroll. It’d then pan down to a shot of the imperial planet, and then transition to Jyn’s first scene

I’d also add more John Williams music throughout the film

I think there are two potential ways to fix this apparent continuity issue regarding the Tantive IV receiving a physical copy of the plans or having it “beamed” onboard as Vader words it in ANH.

Honestly, a simple solution would be to remove the final two shots of Vader watching the Tantive IV undocking from the Rebel flagship. Not showing Vader see the Tantive IV might help alleviate the glaring obviousness of it clearly being a rebel ship and not a diplomatic one. Even though the Rogue One novelization says Vader notices the plans being handed off from rebel to rebel, I prefer to believe he was too focused on slaughtering them all to spot this trade off, which explains why he isn’t sure if the plans were beamed to the Tantive IV or the Rebel flagship or both. I can buy that, but seeing Vader sit there as Leia and Captain Antilles lie straight to his face about being a diplomatic ship when he literally just saw the ship flee the battlefield pushes it.

A more difficult solution would be to cut it in such a way that the person downloading the plans appears to be at the end of the hall, but instead, transmitting the plans to the Tantive IV. So Vader is charging down the hall to stop the plans from being transmitted. Maybe someone could generate a shot of the Tantive IV in the distance of the battle, or back and forth comm chatter between the two ships. The only issue would be explaining why soldiers wearing Alderaanian garb were on a Mon Calamari cruiser, and the coincidence that they just so happen to be transmitting to an Alderaanian ship.

This might be a hard change to make, and I’m okay with believing Antilles and Leia were playing with technicalities since no transmissions were actually beamed onto the ship, like Vader insisted. I think just not showing Vader actually see the Tantive IV would help this issue. But I’d be interested in seeing it if someone thought they could do it.

What the heck are you using as a source? I assume it’s pirated, whatever it is.

I’d replace all the music that was trying to evoke the main theme without being it with the main theme.
I would add a crawl.
I would remove all the captions for locations.
Was the bit on Knowhere even necessary?
If possible I would turn Tarkin into a hologram to pull him further out of the uncanny valley.
Drop most of the obvious fan service.
Drop some of the motivational speechy bits.
Try and make Leia look a little less artificial if possible.
If anything I would add even more smashed up Jedi related buildings so the Death Star really can clear out something substantial.

Jackpumpkinhead said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qt3OVPpjAs

These look great Jack! Definitely agree that it’s much better than the original.

Bingowings, I also wasn’t crazy about the score the first time I saw the movie, but Rebel Force Radio did a really interesting podcast analyzing the soundtrack and I have to admit I really appreciate it a lot more, even the title card theme, which I hated the first time around.

But honestly Jack’s new title cards makes it all around better, I would also suggest those in the “no crawl camp” to consider using a different version of the Rogue One theme. The Jyn Erso & Hope Suite has two different versions of the theme; the first can be heard around 3:20, and the second around 3:58. They both sound less triumphant and more bittersweet, which might be more fitting for the movie. Unfortunately those two parts don’t fade out the same way as the title theme does, but one could combine one of these versions with two fade outs present in this track, if possible: the one at 4:23 and another long one towards the end of the song, 5:08. Here is the track on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/w42CTq5QZtI

Regarding the title cards, it’s hard for me to say which one I like better. I love the way you have the letters turn like they did in some of the trailers, but also having it zoom out but with that color/font is a good middle ground. I honestly didn’t like seeing Star Wars above it at first but it actually looks fine in retrospect.

Bingowings said:

I would remove all the captions for locations.
Was the bit on Knowhere even necessary?

Haha, I honestly thought of Knowhere when I first saw it too, but I honestly just removing the location title cards would diminish that comparison a lot. If it is necessary or not is another issue though.

If anything I would add even more smashed up Jedi related buildings so the Death Star really can clear out something substantial.

Maybe that overhead shot of the U-wing and the giant Jedi statue could be reinserted? Wouldn’t make a big difference but it would add a little bit more to it maybe. Might be redudant though since the other shot of the same or similar statue is in Bodhi’s first scene.

Jackpumpkinhead said:

since i am in the “no crawl for Rogue One” camp and i was disappointed in the hideous opening title card (Jason Ward of Making Star Wars said it looked like someone made it in MS Paint 5 minutes before the movie was released, and i have to agree with him) i decided to make my own title card. The following video is a mockup of the title card that was in the film and then i made 4 title cards of my own. i am trying to decide which one i like best for my inevitable edit of this film. let me know what you all think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qt3OVPpjAs

Really well done!

One minor thing: In the movie, there is also movement of the camera through the starfield, so that it’s not static. I really liked that effect and would like to see it in the reworked title crawl as well.

Now for the title itself: I really like the turning letters as in some of the trailers, but I would prefer if the title went away from the camera instead of coming closer. And I’d make that movement start earlier while they’re still turning or at least fade it in slower, since right now the turning and the movement afterwards seem very disconnected.
I also liked the idea of the “mirrored” lines appearing around the title itself but I wouldn’t go with STAR WARS: ROGUE ONE but keep the original title/logo with ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS Story since I like the focus on Rogue One instead of Star Wars in the title and I’d keep it this way for the title card.

So my personal favorite would be number 4 with the official A Star Wars Story logo and a receding title.

Bodhi Rook establishes Radio Contact with the Tantive whilst it is flying to Tattooine

Once the Shield gate is down the plan’s are transmitted to the tantive (Far away out of firing range) and as say the Death Star monitors that a transmission was being sent off planet because it’s on their own band width and they possibly could struggle to jam it and at that point the decision to fire on the planet is made.(Highest security Priority un-jammable signal)

Just as the plans are being uploaded to the Tantive and just as it completes sending the transmission the deathstar fires on the dish. But Too Late it got through…

Darth Vader then jumps in to the location of where the transmission is sent on the devastator.

A chase Between the Tantive and the Devastator Ensues

We See Jyn and Cassian on the beach being wiped out by the Death Star Blast.

We See the Profundity oblitterated

We see an Establishing Shot of Tattooine with a very Small Star destroyer and Tantive

We See Luke Looking through his Binoculars on Tattoine (This replaces the opening shot of Star Wars 77)

We then Cut to the Tantive shot of the explosion where it get’s hit above tattooine and being hauled into the Belly of the Devastator the Clamps attach. (the Clamps disengaging Reversed from R1.) Perhaps we follow 3p0 and R2-D2 for “they destroyed the main reactor, we’ll be destroyed for Sure” only.

An Alderaan Soldier (Instead of Death Star Plans) Has Obi-Wans Image and Location in Dune sea put on the Credit Card Darth Vader Slasher Scene ensues. As The Door Shuts the soldier shouts “Goooo!” (not Launch)

The Rebel with the Card say’s “Prepare the Escape Pods” we see the Back of Leia Only

The Alderaan soldiers in the corridor on the Tantive are waiting armed training their guns at the door the Door explodes

End Credits

Optional Insert Biggs scene on Tattooine. >>> End Credits

The Idea is that We do not follow the droids in this but when you watch Star Wars you see the Sequence from a different perspective. This is the best I can come up with.

As one Long 4 hour film it would also work this way. with the re-insertion of the opening shot from Star Wars in that Instance.

The Other Option is to move the Vader Slasher scene over in to Star Wars. and the End of the film would in that instance I guess be simply having the Devastator jumping in on the Tantives Location and the start of the chase.

Ronster said:

We See Luke Looking through his Binoculars on Tattoine (This replaces the opening shot of Star Wars 77)

Suggested ending on Luke with the deleted scenes a few pages back. Feel it makes more thematic sense and also creates a nice parallel with Force Awakens also concluding with Luke.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Ronster said:

We See Luke Looking through his Binoculars on Tattoine (This replaces the opening shot of Star Wars 77)

Suggested ending on Luke with the deleted scenes a few pages back. Feel it makes more thematic sense and also creates a nice parallel with Force Awakens also concluding with Luke.

I guess it depends on your intended viewing order really. If you were imagining ROGUE ONE as a film to be viewed post-ANH then LUKE might make sense (just as another cameo). You could even have R2 on the Tantive IV tuning in on a computer terminal and accidentally picking up the plans as they were being transmitted to the main Rebel ship.

Personally I’d prefer to think of ROGUE ONE as pre-ANH viewing, so would cut back on the cameos and obvious references, let ROGUE ONE tell its own story.

I think the best thing to do is show (if possible) the Tantive receiving the transmission.

Then from there it’s a secret / mystery that R2-D2 has the Plans inside him. Until we hear Leia’s message in Star Wars in front of Obi-wan.

That’s also another reason for swapping out the credit card to simply be Obi-wans geographical location and perhaps a flight path for the escape pod and trajectory . A lot of Aubersh Text job done. Keep it quite Vague

This way nobody knows where the plans went which is cool.

I rather that not every detail needs to be spelled out. It retains the mystery in Star Wars a bit better. And also keeps C3-P0 in the Dark about the secret mission.

I honestly think there are a number of choices but I think Rogue One should be kept self contained if possible. That’s why it’s a nice chance to show Luke with Binoculars because It just will never work in Star Wars 1977.

I guess it’s an excuse for a Cameo shot but it means it would not ruin Star Wars that way. with repeating too much footage.

Would you move Slasher Vader in to Star Wars though? and extend the attack on the Tantive?