The Force Awakens : Fan Edit Ideas

I thought The Force Awakens was a lot of fun, with superb new characters and interesting conflicts and arcs. It looked good, sounded good and felt like Star Wars.

But…

I suspect the main criticism of The Force Awakens in the years to come will be this: it’s a rip-off of A New Hope. It’s kinda tricky to argue against that at a story level. It’s about a young, orphaned, force-sensitive protagonist stranded on a desert world who finds a droid with a mcguffin inside it. They then go on a journey across the galaxy, resulting in a huge X-wing TIE fighter battle over a Death Star (which is then destroyed) and an old man dies at the hands of a bad man in black.

Yet, personally, I only found the deja vu kicked in during the third act. The Starkiller Base I think is the culprit. I also suspect that many of the problems with the second half of the film (too much like A New Hope, the anti-climactic third act battle, how weird it was no one mentioned an entire star system was wiped out, the focus on characters superseded by a predictable, obligatory action scene) would be extracted just by removing this storyline.

The characters - old and new - are by far the best thing about this movie, and focusing on them throughout would have served the film better. It would set The Force Awakens apart from A New Hope instead of relying on another fricking Death Star to give the film stakes.

This is coming over way more negative than I actually feel about it. I enjoyed it massively and can’t wait to see it again. And that’s what excites me about fanedits of this movie, as distinct from The Phantom Menace et al. Underneath the flawed, irrational, nonsensical plotting of the prequels there were no interesting and lovable characters - just blank avatars. But with Rey, Finn, Poe and Kylo Ren this film has some great, great characters. The heroes are all likeable/lovable, and Kylo Ren is a much more complex and interesting character than I was expecting.

So I feel this is potentially exciting for Star Wars faneditors. If we nip and tuck The Force Awakens, and maybe add some deleted scenes to calm the frantic pace down a touch, then I feel this movie could be special.

Plus, for me at least, the x-wing battle in the middle of the film was superior anyway in terms of suspense and spectacle - and without the inevitable sequence of events that leads to a Death Star being all blowed up again.

The only question mark I can think of: was that Coruscant destroyed? If so, clearly that’s too important a plot point to cut out.

A few other changes:

Cut back on the callbacks. The 12 Parsecs routine and trash compactor was meta, which has no place in Star Wars. I love Joss Whedon, but thank goodness he didn’t direct this.

I’d like to end it one shot earlier as well. The final scene had slightly awkward editing all round, but surely you end on Luke’s face, given the whole film has led to that moment.

I’d also look to re-edit the fight between Kylo Ren and Rey so that Rey doesn’t beat him, but maybe just hangs on in there. I made this comment at fanedit.org, but if Luke had picked up Obi-Wan’s lightsaber and then fought Darth Vader on the Death Star it would have a) undermined Darth Vader, b) skipped Luke too far down his arc for a first movie in a trilogy.

I know that’s not a fair comparison given that Vader hadn’t just been wounded by Chewie after killing his dad, but how the scene plays out undermines Kylo Ren’s power, and stretches credibility.

Add your ideas below…

It felt like a re-boot even though it was not. I agree with this assessment but there were so many more questions now then answers from a story perspective. They could have added 40 mins in runtime to further explain everything thing like "What the hell really happened since ROTJ. How did they find Luke’s old saber? " I guess this how Disney make more money. Fin is the new Han, and Rey is the new Luke but there characters traits are now switched. From a story perspective it lacked originality. I might be onboard for helping u with this but I would wait to see how this plays out in the future movies.

I plan to make minor tweaks in the vfx and sound wise especially when it comes to Luke’s light saber… Mabey some space shots restore the way the falcons engine originally looked like flying in space from the original trilogy.

But over all this movie clearly is a lot better than the pre-Quils but, I’m still trying to get over the way they killed off Han Solo, he was one of my favorite boy hood characters. I am exhausted and heart broken. I think Ren is only a half baked Sith Lord. No Sith eyes? They mentioned he needed more training. I think the Fans wanted to see him wounded by chewie.

Luke did look good in the end. Still wishing he had some dialogue at the end. But out of the 6 official movies I would rank this at #3 beating ROTJ at #4.

Digitally change the lightsaber to make it Luke’s Lightsaber. The green one.

Cut the entire pirates vs beholders scene. That way Han Solo will still be Han Solo and not Jack Sparrow.

Cut the rotating camera in the end. Increase the music as Luke is turning around and cut there.

Add some more music here and there, the movie felt flat musically.

Loving some of the ideas in here. Really liked this movie but there were issues. Most Glaring: While some snippy/arrogant/joking dialogue is fine… having the Sinister Sith lord who just murdered someone be mocked by a rebel in no position to do so and Finn trying to impress Solo about being a high rank rebel are completely unnecessary/ridiculous, If Finn had been given more of a backstory and already killed people as a Storm Trooper his conversion would have been so much more powerful, Ray isn’t that developed and could have been shown on Jakku for at least 10 minutes more interacting with scrapers and her daily life, Hyperspace takes no time at all?!, Coruscant is destroyed but no one mentions it (perhaps use the footage of Leah feeling Hans death to show that someone felt it?),way too many call backs with "12 parsecs and trash-compactor, Han Solo instantly finds the Falcon?, BB8 being found next to ray in the middle of nowhere (her seeing BB8 at the scrap selling place would have made so much more sense), and removing sheets over the millennium falcon or r2d2 just to get a clap out of people was stupid.

Most of these issues could be fixed without much effort with just basic footage trimming. If an extended cut is ever released then that would give footage for the needed character development.

I’m currently working on a project to have all Star Wars movies be put together, have the best possible versions (best fan edits/releases), have mistakes removed, and be easily watched back to back. If anyone would like to send me ideas for when I start editing Episode 7 here is my project: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-Redone/id/17642/originaltrilogy.com/id/Star-Wars-Redone/id/17642

Someone should remove those godforsaken crossguard blades from Ren’s lightsaber. Also, as an added bonus, change the blade colour to something other than red (Dark green would be nice.).

I’ve already seen Ren’s lightsaber in the trailers and teasers. I don’t need to see the entire movie to know I hate the design and always will.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I’ve already seen Ren’s lightsaber in the trailers and teasers. I don’t need to see the entire movie to know I hate the design and always will.

To the dark side this one has fallen.

I loved the opening scenes on Jakku - but the scene with the tentacle monsters feels like it belongs in a different (and less good) movie. I’d like to see it cut entirely. It’s just a question of whether Rey would have returned immediately to Jakku if the CGI monster scene/emergency hyperspace jump hadn’t happened.

I think what bothers me about it: after their escape from Jakku the film was crying out for a few quiet character moments between Rey and Finn. So it’s not just that it’s a blatantly CGI creature (and a total waste of the guys from The Raid) but the audience and the characters needed a moment to breathe.

Can somebody remove the new Death Star? I think the movie would be much better.

Given time, someone definitely will. And I don’t think it would be too complicated in terms of plot restructuring.

Personally, found the theatrical cut enjoyable. But it’s still interesting to read these ideas (and reassuring to read his relatively mild they are compared to the last three films).

However, I do have a feeling I’ll end up wanting an edit that incorporates some of the deleted scenes. JJ said there should be between 10-20 minutes on the bluray.

As far as fan editing the film goes, it’s hard for me to even consider right now because I love the film so much, but, like others, I too am interested in what deleted material there is. I do feel like this film could stand to be about ten minutes longer.

Make the blaster fire sound like it did in the OT.

Would anyone rethink how they’d edit the PREQUELS now that the sequels have started? Any themes/groups/characters that could crossover?

I was wondering if the starkiller base had some alternative purpose other than a doomsday device - that perhaps geonosis might be an earlier version of it?

Hal 9000 said:

Nah, I really don’t think anything about TFA made me rethink anything I’d done for my prequel edits at all. If anything, it would reinforce the goal of making the PT conform to the OT somewhat. However, Max Von Sydow made a vague allusion to balance of the force, so I wonder if that doesn’t get brought up again.
And once I saw Snoke onscreen, I thought, “Wow, that really could be Plagueis after all.” I still highly doubt it, but who knows.
I wonder if JJ wanted us to think the planet that got destroyed was Coruscant, or maybe just made it look like Coruscant so that we would take his meaning that he’s ‘destroying’ the prequels.

Coruscant is the republics home world and it was destroyed. As with the whole system. It is interesting to point out it was also the empire’s home planet so I am conflicted as why the first order would destroy this planet because are they not some of them from there?

Also about Pelagius I thought darth sidious killed him? Why would anyone think his is Snoke?

Sorry for my spelling. I’m on my iPhone.

I’ve just checked the novelization, and the city shown in the destroyed Hosnian system is referred to as “Republic City”. The woman shown, I think, is called Korr Sella, Leia’s envoy.

towne32 said:

I’ve just checked the novelization, and the city shown in the destroyed Hosnian system is referred to as “Republic City”. The woman shown, I think, is called Korr Sella, Leia’s envoy.

This is all correct. Hosnian Prime was the planet’s name. You can find out more about the politics of TFA in the Visual Dictionary.

That’s one of the only things I wish would be in the movie… moar politics! Haha I guess others might feel the same, but as crazy as it is, the film needed to be just a teensy-wince clearer about the political situation. The prequels were bloated with poorly-executed political bog, and this film contained absolutely zilch!

If they filmed anything on Hosnian Prime. Anything regarding Kor Sella and her relationship with the Republic and Resistance, I’m sure there’s a spot to edit that in and not sacrifice the pacing!

Other than that, I’m pretty content. The final shot is a bit too swirly. But I think that’s the only wide shot of those two looking at each other, so I don’t think you can replace it…

Honestly the only changes I would make are some subtle trims to a few bits of humor that felt unnecessary to me. And that’s not even all the humor. Other than that I thought it was pretty much fantastic.

sans_fi said:

Digitally change the lightsaber to make it Luke’s Lightsaber. The green one.

Why? Ren wants the saber because it was originally Vader’s. If it was Luke’s saber from Jedi why would he want it at all?

nightstalkerpoet said:

3. The crawl also was a bit too “personal” with the use of “Luke” and “Leia” so frequently.

-ORIGINAL:
Episode VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed.

With the support of the REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.

Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where an old ally has discovered a clue to Luke’s whereabouts….

-MY SUGGESTION:

Episode VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last of the fabled Jedi Knights, has been destroyed. Fear once again grips the galaxy.

To combat the growing threat, the NEW REPUBLIC has enlisted the help of Skywalker’s twin, General Leia Organa, to lead a brave new RESISTANCE. In a desperate attempt to find her brother and gain his help in the conflict, General Organa has dispatched her most daring pilot on a secret mission to the desert planet of Jakku. There, an old ally waits, claiming to have at last discovered the key to finding Luke, and with him the salvation of them all…

I agree with substituting the names, but I don’t think the sentences need to be changed that much. They don’t have to be longer to be better. I also think the crawl should stay as three paragraphs because they’re timed to the music.