You can make a good case for it, JJB. And I’d much prefer what you describe over implying she was already aware of Rey being a Palpatine.
Doesn’t make sense to go from “You’re a Palpatine” to “Leia saw your vision”. The vision is about Rey taking the Sith Throne, not about her being related to Palpatine. Going back and forth between the two makes the conversation lose focus.
True, but the two are inextricably linked. As Palpatine says, it’s her birthright to rule there. It’s clear that the dark side calls out to Rey (TLJ) and shows her these dark visions because of her heritage. It’s why Kylo Ren doesn’t experience the same things. While it doesn’t make much sense biologically speaking, one could think of it like the dark side as an entity gunning for the rightful heir to the Sith.
True, but the conversation starts with Rey outwardly confessing her vision to Luke, whereas her lineage is something Luke has to coax out of her, it’s clear that carries a heavier burden to her in the moment, and is what’s convinced her the vision will become true. Saying Leia knew about the vision but not her lineague is a much less impactful revelation, since we can assume she believed, like Rey did before the rest of the movie, that she could overcome it by focusing on her Jedi training. You might as well just say Leia sensed her pull to the dark, or the darkness inside her, which would work for the Nobody cut, but for the Rey Palpatine version it makes more sense for the conversation to stay focused on the big reveal.
True, but the conversation starts with Rey outwardly confessing her vision to Luke, whereas her lineage is something Luke has to coax out of her, it’s clear that carries a heavier burden to her in the moment, and is what’s convinced her the vision will become true. Saying Leia knew about the vision but not her lineague is a much less impactful revelation, since we can assume she believed, like Rey did before the rest of the movie, that she could overcome it by focusing on her Jedi training. You might as well just say Leia sensed her pull to the dark, or the darkness inside her, which would work for the Nobody cut, but for the Rey Palpatine version it makes more sense for the conversation to stay focused on the big reveal.
I quite agree. I think the “You are family” line makes the “Leia knew it too” line work much better.
Yeah but I happen to agree with Hal that Leia piecing together her lineage is insanely dumb. The only way it makes sense is in the context of the novelization where she was already having frequent conversations with Luke’s voice so it’s not a stretch to imagine that he told her - and he knows because he’s omniscient now or something.
Personally, I’d be fine with Luke saying “Because you’re a Palpatine? I had told Leia about it.” But Hal said he doesn’t like the idea of ghosts having that much power over things. I’d push back against that with the fact that it was Obi-Wan’s ghost who all but tells Luke that Leia is his sister so it’s not unprecedented whatsoever. Then again, Obi Wan knew that secret in life, but that’s a mild distinction.
Yeah, if it were up to me to rewrite Star Wars from memory while taking liberties in a postapocalyptic context, that’s one thing I’d tweak. I think the Jedi ghosts should function with ambiguity so that even if you wanted to say they were imaginary it wouldn’t change the story. The two instances that sort of do this is Kenobi in ROTJ and Luke in TROS, as their ghosts reveal novel, technical information to the living characters. It’s one thing to have your mentor pop up and encourage you to use what you know or even piece something together from what you know, and another to pop up and reveal previously unknown intel.
But that’s moot for our purposes here. Even so, though, it would seem sorta dumb to me for Luke to just say, “Well when I died I snooped around and learned that you were Palpatine’s granddaughter and so I told Leia.” But you’re right; I can’t really imagine how else Leia would possibly have known!
Imagine if R2-D2 had been shot by stormtroopers on the Death Star while attempting to come aboard the Falcon, and so Kenobi allows himself to be killed. Then when they make it to the rebel base, he appears as a ghost to deliver his omniscient insight about how to coordinate an assault.
All this is to say that I just can’t make any sense out of the idea that Leia knew. And so I would rather Luke take a “so what?” approach, as if to say “I’ve been there, kid” and tell her it doesn’t mean anything. It’d be nice to include Leia in the scene to a greater extent, and what the scriptwriters did sort of makes sense in an immediate emotional way even though it causes confusion and muddies the story up to that point.
I guess the difference is that the information that is revealed by the ghosts is never something that could massively change the outcome of the entire plot like what you described. In Luke’s case, it if anything only makes the potential for him to fall to the dark side greater because Vader is able to exploit is newfound connection with Leia. And in Rey’s case, it only provides her further justification as for why she should face her fears.
I will agree that the script writers were definitely only considering the emotional impact of the reveals in this movie, not whether they make sense logically based on what came before.
Ghost Obi-wan told Luke about Yoda and Dagobah, so I don’t think it’s a problem that ghosts can reveal new information. Though yes, in a perfect would it should be up to interpretation that the ghosts actually exist.
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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Ghost Obi-wan told Luke about Yoda and Dagobah
I think the difference here is that it is assumed that Obi-Wan knew this before he died. Luke didn’t know about Rey and Palpatine until AFTER he died. I think the real issue is, are force ghosts omnipotent?
The Skywalker Saga:
I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX
This is the way.
Well it’s never explicitly confirmed in canon whether Obi-Wan knew Yoda’s location while alive. I could just as easily assume he didn’t know it as a safeguard in case he was ever caught by the Empire and interrogated.
I’m also pretty sure that the current canon explanation for how Leia was able to contact Kylo on the Death Star wreckage is that ghost Luke taught her how to Force project herself in an instant. Dumb, I know. But it doesn’t stop there. The canon explanation for how Anakin becomes a Force ghost is that he is taught in an instant by Kenobi’s ghost.
It’s just a problem in Star Wars that you have to overlook one way or another. The ghosts are op (just like in the Lego games). And we’ve made them even more overpowered already because they assist in being able to kill Palpatine once and for all. I personally don’t see the harm in Luke divulging a secret about Rey to Leia so she knows what she’s getting into by training her.
Yeah, the Force ghosts appearing in the final confrontation of Ascendant is the one thing that I somewhat dislike. It’s understandable why many people count this as the main selling point of the edit, but for me it feels too much like the end of superhero movie or something.
On a related note, here’s a change that I implemented to the Rey and Kylo Death Star duel, posted to the general thread so as not to derail this one: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1568060
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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
I didn’t mean to diss that incredible work - I think it’s 100% necessary for the end of the Skywalker saga. I only brought it up because it’s worth considering in the discussion of how powerful Force ghosts ought to be.
Also, the way the scene plays out originally is a more blatant ripoff of Iron Man vs. Thanos. I’d say adding the ghosts and changing her line actually alleviates some of those similarities.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right about the Force ghost thing. I agree that Luke knowing things by virtue of being a ghost and passing these things along to the living should not be a reason for any decisions about changes to make or not make.
And Nev, that’s an interesting idea for a restructure. It’s a little unclear, but that might even make it slightly more interesting.
I do remember awhile back going on a few different forums on various sites to see what people were saying about Ascendent, and I do recall the Force ghosts being brought up a little. I think I even remember one specific comment saying it would’ve been perfect if the ghosts appeared, but didn’t raise their hands and actually “helped” Rey in the physical fight. Just that they were there for moral/spiritual support. To be fair, we don’t know if that is actually all they’re doing anyway, but the raised hands do imply they are passing some kind of energy to her I guess. Then again, some people complained that Rey managed to kill Palpatine WITHOUT any help, so it’s to each their own after a certain point.
I think it makes sense that Luke could’ve told Leia after he became a ghost since passing knowledge was established in the OT.
Nev, I’m commenting on that in the other thread.
Rey harnessing otherworldly power to banish the Sith spirits for good is a much better ending than Palpatine just blowing up because he catches his own lightning to the face, it also explains why Rey would die from whatever she did to destroy Palpatine. The four ghosts also work as a visual representation of the past Jedi literally “standing behind her”, rather than just disembodied voices that encourage her to stand up. And the force ghosts were established from the very beginning as “more powerful than you could possibly imagine”, it’s neat to end to the saga seeing them finally be allowed to directly interfere in the conflict.
All good points!
The stuff we can now do with Zorri alone warrants a v5. Sorry, Hal 😉
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tiDKw2bx3SstVF2k7Sr_Q4eaccAoXCwd?usp=sharing
Very nice!
Also, a small sound tweak suggestion: On Passana after we establish the Knights of Ren in their cool but useless photo shoot, there’s a really atmospheric shot of the desert and the ship in the distance, which gets almost instantly ruined by unnecessary bickering about needing to find ‘a useful droid’. It would probably be easy to cut these lines and pick them back up with Threepio’s line about going back to the Falcon, giving us a few more seconds of sinister mystery to take in Ochi’s ship.
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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
JJB, you’re suggesting that we depict Poe as never having actually been a spice runner but doing so only undercover, and so he’d be taking our main characters back to a group he was working to betray all along? Seems foolhardy, even for him. I do like the Skywalker line, to contextualize what we are seeing going on there and add to that thread we tried to build up.
Certainly not going to promise a V5, but I will note these alternate lines for the moment, as well as Nev’s idea to mute lines for that shot.
It was RL’s idea which was inspired by Nev. The goal is to make it so that Poe is still the morally righteous one of the trio which plays better off of the ex-stormtrooper and scavenger. It makes it more funny that Finn is poking at him for it because it probably genuinely annoys Poe that he had to do that stuff. Plus, it lines up better with canon than the retcon which TROS introduces. He could have done this mission for the Republic at any time while he was working for them. True, it’s stupid of him to go back, but desperate times and all that. He definitely did not want to get caught by Zorri, that’s for sure.
Right, that’s sort of the idea. It seems foolhardy either way going back to that crew. I know it was cut for Ascendant but Zorii says he wants to blow Poe’s brains out, which feels fitting if he was actually a rat or undercover cop, basically. The sentiment that she wants to kill him is there regardless.
I’m not typically one to care for canon, but all the novels and comics before TROS established that Poe was a New Republic pilot before he left to join the Resistance. Zorii’s line contradicts that, and leaves no room for that to still make sense. You could keep the same line, but have Zorii say, “-left to join the Republic”. I’d be happy with even that little change.
Or, maybe Zorii just found out Poe was working undercover, rather than Poe having somehow screwed up their operation.
I get what Terrio was going for, giving all of our heroes a shady past, but it just hadn’t been established that way at all for Poe up until that movie. And it is kinda weird to have the Latino character turn out to be a drug runner imo. Having him be undercover sort of mitigates that.
Yeah, and to expand on that, when Finn asks Poe how he knows how to hotwire a speeder, to me it makes sense that someone in a paramilitary organization like the Resistance would be able to do that. It only makes sense that Finn is surprised by Poe’s hotwiring if it was previously established that Poe was from the by-the-book New Republic. If Poe’s history was unknown, there would be no reason for Finn to be surprised that a guy in the rough and tumble Resistance had some shady connections.
In short, the writers took the assumed canon of Poe’s backstory as a springboard for subverting that canon for surprise value, but by negating the canon they negated the whole reason for the subversion, like a sort of canon ouroboros.
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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Hello there, I found out about this project via Reddit and as a fan of the sequels, who nevertheless has some criticisms of the trilogy, I’m quite curious to see what has been changed in these fan edits and how the viewing experience will change as a result.
What possibilities are there to watch it?
I would be very happy about an answer.
Many thanks in advance.
Sending you a PM.