The Sequel Trilogy: Trilogized (a Work In Progress)

This project is aimed at making the Sequel Trilogy feel more like a interconnected trilogy and not one knock-off film then a reaction to that and then a reaction to THAT, each making less sense than the last. It’s clear there was no united vision here and Rian and JJ have very different ideas of what Star Wars should look like. Watching these movies in series is a disorienting experience, to say the least. The worst offender is easily TROS, which had the chance to balance things but instead JJ went with being reactionary and stubborn about what he wanted. The worst of TROS’s problems is that it brings in entirely new plotlines that have no basis in the first two films in the trilogy, most notably the revival of Palpatine with no real explanation and Rey’s shoehorned new parentage. This project will make edits to all three films (most heavily TROS) to make the whole thing flow and in the case of TROS, fix JJ’s terrible last-minute storytelling decisions. There is unfortunately no way to edit out or replace Palpatine being brought back, dumb and lore-breaking as it is. We will have to work with that, which means that we’ll have to start setting it up from the the first film. This will be done through the addition and moving around of a few scenes and dialogue being implanted into TFA and TLJ, alongside new crawls for all 3 films. These versions won’t make heavy edits to either TFA or TLJ aside from what’s been mentioned. The purpose of this fanedit is not to fix your qualms with Rian’s decisions or humour you don’t like but to make this feel like a trilogy, period. If you’d like to use these as a basis for future edits, feel free.

Here is a general overview of the changes I’ll be making:

• New crawl for TFA that hints someone we know might have returned and establishes that he’s responsible for building and sending the First Order as a threat. Here’s a work-in-progress:

"Beyond the edges of the known galaxy, a familiar ancient evil has returned and built an armada known as the FIRST ORDER.

With no help from the New Republic, GENERAL LEIA ORGANA has scraped together a RESISTANCE to oppose this new threat to the galaxy’s peace.

Luke Skywalker has disappeared. In a desperate attempt to find her brother before the FIRST ORDER can extinguish the last of the Jedi, Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku to find the key to Luke’s whereabouts…"

• When Ben is speaking to Vader’s helmet, ,add in a whisper of Palpatine saying “Find me…”

• The film’s cliffhanger ending with Noble Luke makes the transition to Scared Luke and throwing the lightsaber very jarring. To address this, TFA will end with Rey and Chewie leave with the Falcon for Ach-To. Cut to Credits.

• New crawl for TLJ (WIP):

"The First Order reigns over the cowering Republic. Supreme Leader Snoke deploys his merciless legions to seize military control of the galaxy.

Only General Leia Organa’s band of RESISTANCE fighters stand against the rising tyranny, certain that Jedi Master Luke Skywalker will return and restore a spark of hope to the fight.

Meanwhile, Kylo Ren, hearing voices from the beyond, searches for the source of an immense dark power beyond even Snoke…"

• New color grade for TLJ to fit in better with TFA and TROS

• Move the opening scene of TROS to the very start of TLJ. Pan down to Kylo flying in to Mustafar where we see him slaughter the natives and finding the Wayfinder. Having Kylo be aware of a bigger power than Snoke and searching for it ties into his growing resistance to Snoke that we see throughout TLJ and his decision to kill him. It doesn’t undermine his resolve to kill those above him and become Supreme Leader because he’s searching for Palpatine so we can kill him too. And that ties into the other scene we’re adding to the end of TLJ below.

• When we cut to Rey after the Resistance escape scene, it’s to Rey climbing the steps as at the end of TFA. We seamlessly work in her presenting the lightsaber and Luke throwing it away, making it feel like the scenes are from the same film.

• Before or after the broom boy scene at the end of TLJ, we see Kylo land on Exogol and face Palpatine. Now Palpatine’s line that every voice Kylo’s ever heard has been him has much more impact. A bunch of other changes to this scene:

• Palpatine doesn’t say “kill the girl”, he only says “find the girl”. This change will be made throughout TROS. Palpatine’s plan in this film doesn’t make sense if he wants Kylo to kill Rey but at the end actually wanted her there to be Empress. In my version, he’s telling Kylo to find her.

• Palpatine doesn’t say he created Snoke. We change the word “created” to “trained”. It is a lot less dumb to have Snoke be a real dark side user that Palpatine trained as an apprentice to lead the First Order as opposed to being a clone (which doesn’t fit with how he’s been presented since TFA).

• Take out the last part of this scene where Rey’s identity comes up again. In my version, she is not a Palpatine. This is exceedingly dumb and undermines one of the strongest themes of the ST: That your bloodline doesn’t matter and anyone can have the destiny of greatness. She is a nobody, period. Palpatine has been searching for her to turn her to the dark side and do his bidding, the same as he wanted from Anakin and Luke.

• The film ends on a cliffhanger. We see both Luke’s sacrifice inspire the galaxy (broom boy) and also the Sith Final Order Fleet rise. The Palpatine has been built up to for two movies and isn’t out of the blue. This leads to a finale with much more anticipation and with higher stakes than TLJ’s.

• New TROS crawl (WIP):

"Having schemed from the shadows for decades, a clone of the late EMPEROR PALPATINE brought terror to the galaxy through Snoke and the FIRST ORDER. Now he uses his shadow clone army to unleash the FINAL ORDER and complete his conquest.

REY, the last hope of the Jedi, trains for battle against the diabolical FIRST ORDER while KYLO REN closes in on her trail, determined to turn her to the dark side.

GENERAL LEIA ORGANA dispatches secret Resistance agents to find clues on how to find and vanquish this reawakened evil once and for all…"

• Couple key things here: how did Palpatine survive and build/hide a massive fleet of ships? We know from the prequels he’s a big fan of clones and cloning. Him having stashed a low quality clone of himself far away as a contingency makes some sense. Him continuing to use the Kamino tech to build a new clone army to build new ships is also within the realm of reasonability. It’s a better explanation than none

• We open to Finn and Poe’s mission where they receive the message from the spy and continue normally from there.

• There are too many useless fetch quests stuffed into the start of the movie which is cut together manically and fucks up the pacing. The most useless of these is the side mission to Kijimi. I’m going to attempt to cut it out entirely. Here’s how it’ll go: C3PO finds and reads the Sith Dagger. Instead of him saying he can’t read it out loud, we see his eyes turn red and use the audio from Kijimi. As he’s speaking we see the snake thing come up behind him and he’s interrupted. Unfortunately, you can’t edit out the Chewie fakeout but that whole thing happens and they leave Passana on Ochi’s ship. We keep a few of the scenes from inside Ochi’s ship but then - and this is the tricky part - We try to pass off the inside of Zorii’s hideout as the inside of Ochi’s ship. Since we see so little of the latter, I think it’s possible. Just like it happens in the movie, we see Ren’s ship pop up outside a window, the implication being that Ren followed them. Might need some After Effects here to remove the clouds in the Kijimi sky and make it look like space. Cut to them flying into Ren’s ship on Ochi’s ship. The ship scenes play out the same until Ren returns.

• Since Kijimi is being cut out, Zorii is also cut out from the movie (i.e from the battle at the end and final scenes)

• Remove as much of Finn’s “feeling” and “instinct” talk. Him being Force sensitive is never resolved and I don’t want to leave a dangling plot thread. I’ll remove as much of this as I can.

• Remove the reveal on Ren’s ship that Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter. Her reaction still makes sense if Ren is referring to her growing dark side powers (as evidenced by the force lightning). She leaves on the Falcon.

• In the Luke scene, take out Luke’s mention that he and Leia knew she was a Palpatine. This doesn’t make sense from a timeline perspective. This film still works with her discovering her potential for darkness without the Palpatine connection.

• In the final showdown scene, remove all of Palpatine’s talk about family and bloodline and focus on him trying to turn her dark. This might be a bit choppy but I think it’s doable.

• Depending on if it it can be done in a way that doesn’t look cheap or cheesy, I’d like to actually have the Force Ghosts of some of the Jedi who speak to Rey show up on screen, especially Anakin. It can even be a mostly static shot and it would tie together the saga better. We’ll see on this one.

• Kylo dying is a terrible end to the best character in the ST. He survives. Just like Rey healed his fatal wound without dying, he too can heal her and live. After he heals Rey and they kiss, we cut away. Soon after, we only see Rey leaving on the X-Wing.

• Remove weird Lando/Jannah scene which is also dangling and unnecessary.

• in the final scene, we remove the cringey “Rey Skywalker”. Add her line from earlier where she says “Just Rey” to replace “Rey Skywalker”. This better fits the theme of the ST: she realizes that even if she doesn’t come from some special bloodline, it doesn’t matter. She is no one, and that’s enough.

• The money shot: in the final double sunset shot, as Rey and BB8 face the waning suns, we see in the far distance, silhouetted against the pale light, the shape of a TIE Fighter, the very same one flown by Ben to Exogol. Fin.

I’ve already started making the heavy TROS edits on the HD camrip to see the extent of what is and isn’t possible and I may share clips if that turns out to look good. Otherwise, I mainly just want feedback on these ideas until the HD version drops. I really want to end up with a version of this trilogy I can enjoy watching without whiplash.

You have some great ideas and I’m looking forward to stealing some of your edits for my own eventual cuts of this trilogy.

I’d question your decision to make Palpatine another clone. It doesn’t really add anything - I for one am okay with the explanation that Sith cultists partially reanimated Palpatine’s corpse using the dark side (it seems to me it’s not just the original Sidious possessing that corpse, because he definitely hasn’t been ‘all the Sith’ this whole time, has he?) - but it does raise the question of there being more clones on top of the the one Rey explodes in this movie. Endless Sidiouses!

I’m not sure if cutting Kijimi would be more trouble than it’s worth. AEing Zorii out of the entire film is going to be a lot of work for little payoff. Personally I’m hoping for an extended edition to improve the pacing, but some others here are thinking of digitally extending shots with slowmo or freeze frames or masking out the backgrounds of shots and retiming them etc. If I were you I’d wait and see what can be done on that front before attempting to excise the entire planet. It’s unfortunate, because I agree that, focusing exclusively on the main plot, having Threepio just give the information when he first reads the dagger seems like an easy dubbing edit and a good streamline, but Zorii and the business with the force bond and rescuing Chewie really complicate the issue.

Do you reckon the GPS tower or whatever can be cut from the movie? It immediately becomes irrelevant because Pryde decides to move the navigation to his ship anyway. Also, do you think it would be feasible to keep the ‘Final Order’ as the ‘First Order’? It’s just so horrendously cheesy, and also worsens the feeling of TFA and TLJ being irrelevant.

EddieDean said:

These are all really good ideas, and this sounds like a great start. I’d disagree with sade on TROS Palpatine being a clone (body) though. The first factor here is that cloning tech does exist in Star Wars, and the second factor is that Palps not only falls down the reactor shaft in ROTJ, but the entire station later explodes. Since Palps masterminded the Kamino cloning plan, it stands to reason that he thought about having backup bodies for his spirit to inhabit.

Sure, I don’t disagree that Palpatine could have clones of himself, and that his corpse not being completely obliterated is somewhat farfetched (we do see most of the DS2 intact though, down to Palps’ throne even, despite it clearly entirely disappearing in ROTJ). My key issue is that the major victory of this film is Rey destroying Palpatine, but if we’ve already established for the audience that this Palpatine is merely one of many clone bodies, there’s unfinished business. Everyone is celebrating while the audience sits there thinking “Can’t he just move to another clone body again?”.

You guys bring up an interesting point about the effect of making Palpatine a clone. What other explanation would work which could be provided in a crawl and still have some basis?

I really will try to cut Kijimi though because to me it felt like a filler fetch quest and didn’t add much to the movie. The only part I liked was it giving Poe more of a back story but Zorii isn’t even interesting enough. Whether it’s doable I’m not sure yet.

New ideas I’m adding to this:

• Kylo goes to rebuild his helmet at the end of TLJ before he goes to Exogol
• Take out C3PO R2D2 moment. Not needed if you don’t have the memory wipe
• I agree with the idea of using freeze frames and digital slow mo to lengthen shots and pacing
• Remove the dagger lining up with the death star ruins bit. There’s enough footage to show that she just went into it and was pulled to the right place
• Give Ben a line of dialogue after he turns good. I think I’m gonna take either the “fight it” of his “don’t fight it” or “I feel it too” and have him communicate that to Rey through the Force before she teleports the saber to him
• Remove destruction of Kijimi and Planet killers. We see a massive fleet, that’s enough.
• Gonna try cutting out the control tower business altogether
• Remove like from end of TLJ where Leia says her son is gone. She still has to believe in him for the sequence in TROS to work
• Add Leia’s like from TFA to TROS where she says “there’s still good in him” change “him” to “you”. Also add “I [have to] believe that”. I might add a shot of Leia smiling from earlier in the film here after “Ben”. Perhaps she’s projecting herself there like Like did and that effort is part of what kills her.

All great ideas! I especially like the idea to move Kylo’s helmet repair to TLJ, since otherwise he goes bare faced for a year then suddenly repairs his helmet one day for no reason. Reusing Leia dialogue from earlier films is a power we have that Abrams did not and I think your ideas would help sell her as a stronger presence in TROS.

I know you’ll disagree but both the concepts of Rey Palpatine and Rey Skywalker serve the theme you’re talking about, that your bloodline doesn’t matter and you choose your own destiny.

Vladius said:

I know you’ll disagree but both the concepts of Rey Palpatine and Rey Skywalker serve the theme you’re talking about, that your bloodline doesn’t matter and you choose your own destiny.

But it still means to you have to belong to some great bloodline in order to be strong with the Force. That Rey was actually a random girl meant that it could have been anyone who could rise up to defeat evil and Skywalkers and Palpatines didn’t matter. Anyone could be a hero. That’s broom kid. Now we’re back to, if you’re not one of four families, you can just forget it. Having her be a Palpatine still narrows the story to “will you accept the destiny in your blood or reject it” which is Kylo’s and Luke’s journey again as opposed to an open ended question of “who and what will you choose to be when that question is truly yours to answer?” I found that much more interesting than Rey Palpatine.

I agree. Having the granddaughter of Darth Sidious decide to stand up for good and become a Jedi absolutely plays into the whole “your lineage doesn’t matter” theme of the previous two movies.

Shadester9 said:

Vladius said:

I know you’ll disagree but both the concepts of Rey Palpatine and Rey Skywalker serve the theme you’re talking about, that your bloodline doesn’t matter and you choose your own destiny.

But it still means to you have to belong to some great bloodline in order to be strong with the Force. That Rey was actually a random girl meant that it could have been anyone who could rise up to defeat evil and Skywalkers and Palpatines didn’t matter. Anyone could be a hero. That’s broom kid. Now we’re back to, if you’re not one of four families, you can just forget it. Having her be a Palpatine still narrows the story to “will you accept the destiny in your blood or reject it” which is Kylo’s and Luke’s journey again as opposed to an open ended question of “who and what will you choose to be when that question is truly yours to answer?” I found that much more interesting than Rey Palpatine.

I originally felt the same way because Finn and Rey were sharing equal time and both were ordinary people scraping by and trying out lightsabers and Jedi stuff and getting lucky. But then Finn was kind of sidelined in TLJ, and Rey didn’t actually get any training from Luke. I was never one of those people that said Rey was a Mary Sue, but I do think that her level of power and importance should be explained somehow.

While I might disagree with some minor changes you plan to make, I consider erasing Rey’s parentage and foreshadowing Palpatine’s return absolutely necessary. I like your approach and I hope you find these changes doable in a convincing way.

I have an idea for the scene when Kyloe meets Palpatine, which, in your version, happens at the end of TLJ. I wouldn’t have the whole scene here, just one line from Palpatine: “At last” and one or two frames showing his face in the shadow. Then Kylo points his lightsaber at him, implying he wants to kill him. The rest of the scene would stay in TROS.

I feel that seeing the Sith fleet rise right after Luke restores the spark of hope in the galaxy would negate his heroics to soon after his sacrifice. The suggested version would mirror the original ending of TFA with Rey finding Luke but their actual exchange happening in the next film. (I know you want to change that, but I like the original ending of TFA.)

Another suggestion: keep Snoke being a Palpatine creation and the shot of his Snoke clone bodies. Snoke’s biggest motivation in TFA and TLJ was finding and killing Luke Skywalker. That makes sense if Snoke is Palpatine: he wants to take revenge on the man that killed him and took down his Empire. And than springing into action the last phase of his grand plan when Luke does die and the final obstacle for his Imperial restoration is cleared.

This might be the best possible way to save this trilogy in the most gentle manner there is. I love it and already consider this could be my new GoTo-ST.

Just three things:

• In the crawl for TFA, I wouldn’t call this returned ancient evil familiar just yet. That decreases the room for suspense.
• Just like Dr. Krogshöj sayed, make Snoke either a clone made by palpatine or maybe a dead body (e.g. the exhumed body of an anccient sith-lord, but this doesn’t even needs to be deepend) occupied by Palpatine. But make it a mere vessel controled by Palpatine rather than a moreorless independend individuum driven by his own will.
• That said, I’m totally pro Clone-Palpatine. The real one died at the end of VI. The clone was created by him as a safety blanket (stashed secreatly on Exegol, treasured and then activated by the cultists).

EddieDean said:

Do we need to retain the Chewie fakeout? What if Rey just kills him and that’s it? It leaves a nice shadow over her character for the rest of the movie.

+1 if this can be implemented successfully, though I imagine you and I will be the only two that are for this idea.

ChainsawAsh said:

EddieDean said:

Do we need to retain the Chewie fakeout? What if Rey just kills him and that’s it? It leaves a nice shadow over her character for the rest of the movie.

+1 if this can be implemented successfully, though I imagine you and I will be the only two that are for this idea.

Nope, I would be fine with it to (if it’s doable)

I’m back to work on this.

Question: before I painstakingly have to do it myself, has there already been a regrade of TROS done on here by someone else?

A year or so later… are you still working on this? I ADORE most of the ideas of this. (Although I’m not a fan of Zorri at all, I LOVE Babu Frik and would hate to lose him.)

Dr. Krogshöj said:

I feel that seeing the Sith fleet rise right after Luke restores the spark of hope in the galaxy would negate his heroics to soon after his sacrifice.

There never should’ve been a continuation of TLJ. Ever. The canon timeline, not just the main saga, should’ve just ended at the boy looking at the stars with hope. Period. End of story. Zilch.

Continuing the story and creating any new threats AFTER TLJ strips away any emotional impact from Luke’s sacrifice and inspiring the galaxy with hope, even if TFA and TLJ, themselves, remain untouched. Because what was the point of Luke’s sacrifice if TROS or DOTF or whatever continuation even exists? It was all for nothing since Palpatine came back anyways in TROS, or Kylo was gonna search for some planet-destroying Force ability in DOTF or the Resistance struggled against the FO in both Episode IX’s.

…

…

Nah, I’m just kidding. Do you not understand that everything is temporary? You really think it only matters if it lasts forever? By your logic, TFA destroys ROTJ’s ending by destroying the Republic and Jedi and resurrecting the Empire. Logan destroys the previous movie’s ending by turning the world into an apocalypse and killing off all the mutants. Civil War destroys The Avengers from 2012 by having them break up. Nothing ever lasts forever. Everything is always temporary.

Besides, TLJ was always gonna have a sequel.