Unusual Sequel Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 103

That’s true! Maybe we could play with a few different variations of that. Though it might not be obvious initially that destroying the throne is the key.

And yes, I’ve considered that too. I wanted to keep it vague so we don’t really know if Palpatine is hearing Anakin. But even if he did, he might not realize what that fully means until he gets a taste of their power. And Anakin doesn’t say anything about that means beyond “balance”, wish means nothing to Palpatine.

EDIT: He knows they have a bond, but maybe his evil Sith heart just wouldn’t even consider the power something like the dyad would have. It’s possible if you were watching it from a first-time perspective, you wouldn’t think it is contradictory for him to react like that.

EDIT: I know others have considered reintegrating his trailer line, “Your coming together will be your undoing”, and this could be an appropriate context to add it back in. I’d probably swap it out with “Unseen for generations”, which just raises more questions than answers.

Not to derail the topic, because I think it’s a worthwhile discussion but I’ve been fostering this idea in my mind about what could be done to alleviate the pacing of the first act. I’m sure people have brought this up before but what if the opening search for the Wayfinder in Mustafar is skipped over? No Star Wars movie has ever opened on a montage and even with the added establishing shots in Ascendant, it feels disorienting for me to jump around so many locations in such a short amount of time. What if the movie opens with Kylo Ren arriving on Exegol?

I’ve seen this done in the fan edit by reddit user StraightCutsNoChaser called The Third Cut and it was effective enough. The only thing is that the crawl would have to set up that new opening.

I’ve come up with this:

The spark of hope burns!
Following the heroic sacrifice
of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker,
the tyrannical FIRST ORDER
silences acts of insurrection
across an inspired galaxy.

As Rey, sole heir to the Jedi,
continues her training, General
Leia Organa dispatches secret
agents to gather intelligence
for the rising RESISTANCE.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader
Kylo Ren follows clues left by
his former master to a hidden
location, sensing that it holds
a dark power that could be a
threat to his rule…

Later on, during Rey’s vision there could be added glimpses of Kylo Ren flying through the Nebula using the Wayfinder. This would explain why she’s suddenly studying the device in the Jedi texts whilst she waits for the Falcon to come back and it would also visually establish the Nebula and the Wayfinder in Kylo’s ship, which both things will pay off in the third act.

Now in retrospect, it can be inferred that the clue referred to in the crawl was the Wayfinder. You are able to cut out Mustafar and retain all the relevant plot material.

I think this way the movie doesn’t have to jump around as much and it doesn’t have to get the audience asking awkward questions about what the Wayfinder is, what is it doing on Mustafar, who is Kylo massacring and has the added bonus of motivating Rey looking up the Wayfinder on the Jedi texts.

If Palpatine AI is on the table, there’s definitely things that can be done. His mouth isn’t visible for a lot of his dialogue.

In particular his first scenes with Kylo and Rey are ones where there’s space for exposition. If we’re trying to make the throne the source of power, there’s space in one or both of those scenes to spell that out - either subtly or explicitly.

One thing I’m looking at in particular is some sort of explanation for why Palpatine had her parents killed, which doesn’t really make sense. You could use for Rey Palpatine or Rey Nobody (depending on parental involvement).

Something like changing

"It is your birthright to rule. It is in your blood. Our blood.”

to

“I killed your parents to fuel the darkness in you. Through pain, I gave your life meaning.”

I absolutely love the idea of the Exegol Throne being a powerful Sith artifact with power over the dead. Who about taking a few of the Sith cultist & putting notable Sith/Dark Jedi in their hoods to imply they’re unwillingly brought back from dead (Maul, Dooku, Ventress, Snoke, etc.). Show that Palpatine’s not the only person who was affected, just that he had the most will to take the operation over.

I just realized: Why not replace the shot from TROS of Leia clinging to Han’s medal with the shot from TLJ with her holding Han’s dice? It’s something that means more to the Sequel Trilogy rather than being a callback, & it further sets up the idea of Leia summoning Han’s force ghost for Ben later on.

DZ-330 said:

Darth Raditz said:

I just realized: Why not replace the shot from TROS of Leia clinging to Han’s medal with the shot from TLJ with her holding Han’s dice? It’s something that means more to the Sequel Trilogy rather than being a callback, & it further sets up the idea of Leia summoning Han’s force ghost for Ben later on.

She doesn’t have them, Luke does. Doesn’t he take them off the Falcon in TLJ and then they aren’t seen again?

Yes, they’re still on Ahch-To, probably in Luke’s hut. Unless Rey managed to steal them along with the texts (but that sounds unlikely since she doesn’t even know Luke removed them in the first place).

So, with the advancements with AI to generate new dialogue that fits into the films, I wonder if that could be used for this deleted scene seen in the TROS documentary on the Blu-Ray in order to make it workable for fan edits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpPjvA49ukQ

Obviously, it would have to take some more work seeing that one would have to figure ut what they’re even saying in this scene. Plus, you have the added challenges of green screen replacement in the background. But, this could be a valuable asset if it’s fixed!

Is somebody really skilled at reading lips? I’m super curious to know what they’re actually saying in that scene.

BrotherOfSasquatch said:

So, with the advancements with AI to generate new dialogue that fits into the films, I wonder if that could be used for this deleted scene seen in the TROS documentary on the Blu-Ray in order to make it workable for fan edits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpPjvA49ukQ

Obviously, it would have to take some more work seeing that one would have to figure ut what they’re even saying in this scene. Plus, you have the added challenges of green screen replacement in the background. But, this could be a valuable asset if it’s fixed!

I’ve tried taking a stab at seeing if this scene is usable for anything; however, with my limited skills, the scene is too low quality because it’s a zoomed version of something in the corner of the screen in the original documentary. Topaz upscaling didn’t do much for me in bringing the scene to some acceptable quality. Be happy to see if others can get th quality of the footage improved

jadenkorr41 said:

BrotherOfSasquatch said:

So, with the advancements with AI to generate new dialogue that fits into the films, I wonder if that could be used for this deleted scene seen in the TROS documentary on the Blu-Ray in order to make it workable for fan edits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpPjvA49ukQ

Obviously, it would have to take some more work seeing that one would have to figure ut what they’re even saying in this scene. Plus, you have the added challenges of green screen replacement in the background. But, this could be a valuable asset if it’s fixed!

I’ve tried taking a stab at seeing if this scene is usable for anything; however, with my limited skills, the scene is too low quality because it’s a zoomed version of something in the corner of the screen in the original documentary. Topaz upscaling didn’t do much for me in bringing the scene to some acceptable quality. Be happy to see if others can get th quality of the footage improved

Oh dang. I had no idea this was from the corner of the screen during the BTS doc… 😕

When Palpatine absorbs the Dyad, Ben and Rey fall to the ground. This is the perfect opportunity to send Rey to King’s Cross Station. Heck, DotF did just that. This can be used to exposit absolutely anything, though preferably more cosmological elements. It can look like anything since it’s all in her head / the Force. Animation, rotoscoped live-action, shooting new footage with a 9 year old Rey, simple spheres of light, anything goes, really. Then she gets whatever message she needs to hear and wakes up on the ground and starts chanting for the Jedi to be with her.

Yesterday I came across WhillsConsortium’s radical 3-in-1 and noticed they merged D’Qar and Ajan Kloss, declaring them both to be Yavin IV. Then I remembered I had my own idea kicking around to merge Starkiller Base and Kijimi. That’s when it hit me: if we do both those things, we can have consistent bases of operation for both sides throughout the entire trilogy.

Removing the superweapon angle is my preferred approach to Starkiller Base so at that point blowing it up is easily excised. It can simply be attacked, seriously damaged, but nonetheless usable for the next two films. Blowing up Kijimi, which would either no longer make much sense or could be recontextualized as the Sith Eternal asserting dominance over the First Order. Either way, it’s absolute trivial to remove, so it doesn’t really matter.

One minor issue is that neither base would appear in TLJ as it stands, since there’s no snow, grass, or jungle planet nor any permanent planetary base besides the abandoned one on Crait. While we’re on TLJ, it’s worth mentioning the space battle at the start of the movie would need to be recontextualized as no longer being the evacuation of D’Qar. This is once again absolutely trivial, since the only indication of such is a few shots at the start that could easily be removed.

Anyway, I think this would work well with my approach of making the ST about balance in contrast to the dominant light in the PT and dominant darkness in the OT. Everyone is on equal footing with their own permanent base. No more underdogs.

That would be interesting. If you were removing the superlaser I would go with the idea that the dreadnaught destroys the NR capital, which reframes the attack on it in TLJ as Poe wanting to get revenge for it. I think Snooker made a mock up of it and it looked great. Makes the FO seem like a much smaller group too.

The dreadnought destroying the capital has been my plan since…even before the dreadnought was a thing. I was pleased when TLJ came out that it gave me the dreadnought on a silver platter to off the senate with. I will say I’d never even considered Poe’s attack on the dreadnought being recontextualized as revenge but that makes perfect sense.

Where would you put the NR attack in TFA? I think it would work well to have it where the attack is in restructured, and then you could say that the FO was using starkiller as a red herring to distract the resistance from the dreadnaught deploying. You wouldn’t be able to get the main characters immediate reactions but it could work.

Edit: You could also get a little meta with the ANH connections and have the rebels assume that the FO is building a new superlaser and rush to destroy it, which plays right into the FO’S plan to distract them.

That second idea might just be brilliant. A clever subversion of expectations.

We’d need the Dreadnaught vfx, starkiller vfx to remove the laser, and some ai lines to sell it, but I feel like it could be done.

Along with the same line of thinking Starkiller has, I’ve always thought it would be interesting to have Passanna(?) be Jakku again.

Her parents’ ship never made it off the planet? I guess this calls for the old “child Rey electrocuted the ship” trick.

Personally, I’ve been pushing in the other direction to make Pasaana into a unique world, first by making the sky green, and hopefully down the line giving it a tropical beach look like Scarif. I have a decent but unpolished mockup of a beach where the Falcon lands.

Jakku being Tatooine is a must in my book. It makes sense thematically (it rhymes with the other trilogies by serving the same purpose Tatooine does in them) and it looks virtually identical.

I do like the idea. A few things that are missing:

• Han’s yell of “Ben!” from TFA should be the sound that interrupts his attack.

• The shots of Leia need to be reimplemented somehow during the healing process to make it clearer that while life is leaving her its being given to Ben.