The Starlight Project Part 2: The Last Jedi (WIP) — Page 5

GMatias said:

NeverarGreat said:

Further thoughts on changing The Force Awakens to serve TLJ, I could place some of the footage of the Raddus going to hyperspace into the destruction of the Hosnian system.

It might be going too far to show Holdo staring out of the window at the approaching lasers, but even placing the TLJ ships in the distance going to hyperspace in this shot would help.

If we see Holdo in this sequence, then the only dialogue necessary for the previous scene would be ‘General, the Republic is scrambling the fleet to assist us’.

Not sure if you ever got around to doing this, but I banged out a mockup of this idea tonight using the HAL9000 Hosnian destruction sequence as a base.

https://vimeo.com/503989106

Wasn’t until rereading the post just now that I realized I explicitly have Holdo looking out the window at an approaching laser (!) but I think it still works 😃

Interesting mockup!

I hadn’t really committed to doing this change, but I think anything more than a quick shot of frightened officers on the bridge of the Raddus would be too much.

Yeah, now that you mention it, I think we probably have seen Connix on D’Qar by this point.

The caption was thrown in to remind myself what she would be saying since I’d probably be using this is a silent film or foreign dub edit. The footage is pulled from midway thru TLJ - they’ve lost the medical frigate & Connix is informing Holdo they only have six hours of fuel left.

I went up & down on the amount of face-time to give the officers, erring on the side of more since we will come back to them soon-ish. I also liked the idea of Holdo staring down the incoming blast in defiance as long as possible, and wanted to see if I could make the timing work with just the color change.

Fun little exercise!

This is related to the current discussion in my TFA edit, but if I ever get around to making this TLJ edit, one of the changes would be to make Ben’s first lightsaber the Anakin/Luke saber.

This would solve the mystery of how Maz got the saber even without the visual of her getting it from Leia, and it is a story that could be entirely inferred from in-movie cues:

• The saber could have been found by Lando or Luke and given to Ben, but since we know Ben is obsessed with Vader’s legacy and collecting artifacts of that era, he would probably have sought out the saber on his own during his training.

• TFA establishes that the saber can impart troubling visions of the past, so if it was in Ben’s possession during his training it could have been used as a conduit by Snoke to turn him to the Dark Side.

• TLJ implies that Ben was so short on time that he didn’t search the rubble of his hut to make sure Luke was dead, and this could explain why he leaves the saber behind if it was also lost. The vision and flashbacks show Luke with his hand on R2, which may imply that Luke found the saber in the rubble and placed it inside R2 like he did in ROTJ.

• R2 being with Leia confirms that Luke at least sent the droid back before going into exile, and if the saber was inside R2 it may have served as a sort of apology, one that Leia couldn’t face.

• Since the saber can ‘call out’ to individuals, there is reason beyond the emotional one for Leia to want the saber far from herself, although she probably wouldn’t want to discard it entirely, hence why she would give it to a trusted and stable friend with knowledge of the Force such as Maz.

And this is where the movies pick up the story, though there are some reasons beyond this that I like the change:

• Kylo Ren’s saber appears unfinished and unstable, implying that this is his first attempt at creating such a weapon. Giving him Anakin’s saber firmly establishes that he hadn’t yet constructed his own, as well as emphasizing his youth during his training and confirming that his Jedi skills were not yet complete.

• Kylo specifically says that the saber belongs to him on Starkiller Base, which would be literally true with this change. Its ‘resistance’ to his power in that scene could be a more marked metaphor for how its ownership has changed on a deep level.

• Luke’s heartbroken look upon seeing the saber, and his rejection of the blade, is made more powerful if it is the literal representation of his hope in and ultimate failure of his nephew. His using the image of that blade in his final confrontation with Kylo would more strongly illustrate his acceptance of the past and his greater legacy.

• The image of the broken saber at the end of TLJ again more strongly resonates as the symbol of Luke’s broken Jedi Order and the enormity of the work left to do.

Sounds incredible, hope you someday do make a TLJ edit.

That’s beautiful, man. If it weren’t for the future EU I’d do that in a heartbeat, and maybe for some that wouldn’t be a concern.

It would also imply that his red, crackly saber is the first that he built himself, highlighting his incomplete skills or lack of total maturity.

True. Also, the EU doesn’t concern me unduly. At the very worst you’d have to revert to the canon lore that Ben built a saber with the added stipulation that it looks like Anakin’s or was modified later in his training to appear that way, and both explanations comport with Ben’s growing Vader worship.

Yeah, really nice idea!

This would add a whole new dimension to Han’s “where did you get that”.
Brilliant.

GMatias said:

NeverarGreat said:

Further thoughts on changing The Force Awakens to serve TLJ, I could place some of the footage of the Raddus going to hyperspace into the destruction of the Hosnian system.

It might be going too far to show Holdo staring out of the window at the approaching lasers, but even placing the TLJ ships in the distance going to hyperspace in this shot would help.

If we see Holdo in this sequence, then the only dialogue necessary for the previous scene would be ‘General, the Republic is scrambling the fleet to assist us’.

Not sure if you ever got around to doing this, but I banged out a mockup of this idea tonight using the HAL9000 Hosnian destruction sequence as a base.

https://vimeo.com/503989106

Wasn’t until rereading the post just now that I realized I explicitly have Holdo looking out the window at an approaching laser (!) but I think it still works 😃

Now that Nev’s TFA:Starlight is complete, I’ve just come here, and I can’t believe I missed this post even though it’s nearly a year old. I think this is a brilliant nod forwards that helps achieve more of that cohesive continuity that the sequels lacked.

Anyway, I mainly came here to ask, Nev - while TFA:Starlight was largely built on HAL’s TFA:Restructured, what would you use as your base for TLJ? HAL’s TLJ:Legendary is great, but there’re other edits to TLJ which have built on that base, like Poppasketti’s TLJ:Rekindled.

I would definitely consider using Rekindled, since to my eyes it’s the best version of that film so far.

Double Christmas!

Well this is still all preliminary, since I haven’t actually done any editing on this. You may recall I had some crazy ideas for TFA that ultimately didn’t pan out when put into effect, but even if they don’t work at least everything will have been considered. My guess is that neither scene will be cut, ultimately, but cutting them at the outset will make their absence known, and more importantly illuminate exactly what is important about those scenes.

For example, in TFA I originally cut the throwaway line about the trash compactor, but later it became apparent that the line was necessary in explaining Phasma’s fate in the film in a way that couldn’t be ignored.

I think I’ve had a workable idea to help justify why the lightspeed ramming isn’t something that’s commonly done!

Why can’t it be done normally?

• It can’t breach shields.

Why can it be done in TLJ?

• Because as part of their infiltration of Snoke’s ship, DJ has just “slice[d] a slit in their shields”!

We’d spoken before about adding a shot of a screen on Holdo’s bridge showing that they’re lined up, as a way of achieving something similar, but what if it shows the ‘there’s a slit’ graphic instead? The shot of the screen showing the slit is even onscreen twice when it’s first shown, slightly differently each time. Plus, the particular ‘slit’ which gets sliced by DJ (as seen in the graphic) is almost exactly the same distance down the wing of Snoke’s star destroyer as the exact line her ship slices through it when it does the ram - just on the other side, so you’d just need to flip the graphic. You’ve then got the officer on the Star Destroyer tapping the screen as if he doubts the visual error - which you could move to before Holdo triggers the attack, to remind the audience what’s up.

As for why the Holdo Maneuver can’t breach shields normally, well, I guess that’s up to the viewer’s imagination, but it certainly works just fine with the fact that every important military asset is shielded - the Second Death Star, most capital ships, Scarif, etc. (Scarif even has a mechanism where you can bypass just a PART of a shield while keeping the rest up, as ‘slicing a slit’ would have done.)

And I know what you’re thinking - in TFA they explicitly use hyperspace to come out UNDER Starkiller Base’s shields. BUT we already have the answer for that - in TFA, it’s said that that shield has a “fractional refresh rate”, which lets them inside.

I don’t think that jives with Hux and the other officer’s reactions. They register an immediate, credible threat as soon as they infer what she’s doing.

Hmm, well maybe we don’t cut to their reaction shots?

That’s a really nice idea, that the tracker itself is like a beacon in hyperspace. They are, after all, “caught on a string”, and a string can be traced back to its source.

One thing you’ll need to contend with if you take that approach though will be the green wireframe flythrough of Snoke’s ship, which they use to illustrate the plan, because that quite clearly zooms right into the centre of the ship.