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Snooker! Thank you, I may very well take you up on that! Your work on Ascendant was amazing!
Honestly, where I’d love to take the story is: I’d have the last shot of Rey be of her hugging her new family. She is then completely removed from the epilogue, and instead Ben arrives on Tatooine. He’s returned to where it all started, in order to create a new beginning for himself. Last shot of the film is him, silhouetted against the binary sunset, as John Williams’s score swells around him.
That said, I’m also trying to be realistic. The amount of VFX work, in my mind, would be enormous. Even if we strip it down to the bear essentials and make some concessions, you’d still need a shot of Kylo flying away from Exegol, and from Rey, after the battle. (If I were directing the movie from scratch, I’d probably also include shots of Ben in the cockpit and jumping to hyperspace, but you could probably work around those.)
What do you do after that? Assuming Rey still goes to Tatooine (because trying to remove her from all of the shots wouldn’t be feasible), I’d probably structure it like this: Rey stands up, senses something, looks over. Rather than seeing Ghost Luke and Leia, she sees Flesh Ben walking up. (Something like the shot on Pasaana, but you’d have to paint out the smoking wreckage of the ship behind him.) At that point, I see three options:
- Ben joins her on the Falcon. You see Rey walking away, BB-8 in tow, and then Ben following her. They fly away together. You’d need to comp Ben into the shot somehow.
- Rey stands and waits for Ben. They stand silhouetted together. I’m not a fan of this - I support Hal’s decision in Ascendant to not leave Rey stuck on another desert planet for her final shot in the series.
- Rey ditches Ben. She walks away, the Falcon flies off as Ben is silhouetted. This feels like the worst one to me. It’s just a rehash of their same relationship - he chases her, she escapes, Ben is left alone and forsaken.
So, talking it all out, you’d minimally need four new VFX shots to make #KyloLives work in this version of the film:
- A shot of his ship flying away after the battle on Exegol.
- A shot of him approaching on Tatooine.
- A shot of him seeing Rey from afar.
- A shot of him following her to the Falcon.
Truth be told, that’s less than I thought it would be; but it’s still more than I’m capable of doing. It’s an idea that I’d love to see realized, but one that I’ll put near the bottom of my wishlist. If someone else is willing to help build the shots, I would be happy to include them!