That works a lot better with the extra Leia shots, it’s much less confusing what’s actually happening. I think with the Maz line and a Rey line during the Ahch-To scene explaining what happened and her guilty feelings it will be much more clear.
Speaking of which, it would be a nice touch if we could hear Leia gasp, or hear her breath get heavy in the moment she senses it. A moment of breathtaking shock.
This is already a change present in Ascendant. I took Carrie’s grunt noises for Leia in Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens. Not sure if I still have the raw file though, I’d have to go searching through my Drive.
Also, RL cleaned up the audio files quite a bit ago. The delay in making the line has been my fault entirely I’ve been busy doing other things tonight. I’ll get to it tomorrow afternoon.
Taking a break from the Death Star Duel, here’s a tangential idea for TROS in general, elaborating on my Throne of the Sith concept.
The issue with the original idea was that while it solved quite a few plot issues, there was no deeper connection tying this to Rey’s story. So how about this:
Rey’s parents were cultists living on Exegol. They pledged themselves to the Sith, and baptized their gifted daughter to the service of Palpatine. However, after their daughter learned more than she should have of the Sith’s secret power her parents escaped Exegol and fled across the galaxy to prevent her from being killed.
Rey’s parents were traveling to Tatooine to find Luke, for they only knew of his homeworld and wished to give their Force sensitive daughter to him for her protection. However, they were waylaid halfway to their destination on the desert world of Jakku and killed.
Palpatine wants the child killed because she may know the secret of the Sith’s power. All Rey knows about Exegol now is that she saw herself on the throne, which she interprets as her desire to rule as the lord of the Sith, something that Palpatine is quick to encourage, going so far as to imply that she is his granddaughter.
When Kylo confronts Rey in his quarters and in the hangar, he says that she may be a Palpatine. However, he isn’t sure that he believes it, since there is no evidence that her parents were strong in the Force. Nevertheless, he believes that she has the darkness of the Sith within her in some form, a darkness which draws her ever toward evil.
When Rey arrives on Exegol and confronts Palpatine, she is eventually defeated and must turn to the Jedi for help. They tell her that the ways of the Jedi are knowledge and defense, and she looks inward and considers why she has visions of the Sith throne. She realizes that it is literally the seat and source of their power, and this is the secret that her parents died for. She redirects Palpatine’s lightning and destroys it, and this brings down the entire edifice and destroys the Sith once and for all.
In the final scene, Rey arrives on the planet that her parents had sought all those years ago, and there she finally claims the Skywalker name.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
That’s nice, but how would you even begin to convey that information?
Yeah it would take a ton of work to do all that. Although it does sound vaguely familiar to how I’d wish to expand on Rey’s background in a more canon-centric way. Like your idea, it would need to be clear that Rey’s father (Dathan, I think?) grew disillusioned with the cult on Exegol and escaped on Ochi’s ship from there. But not before stealing none other than Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from there!
That’s right, one VFX change at the beginning would be to put Luke Skywalker’s floating hand in a medical container just like in the comics.
But Dathan grows weary of the Force in general and pawns off the lightsaber to collectors before settling down on Jakku with a woman he meets there. It makes its way to Maz from there along with the supposed story of how it was acquired (assumed to be an extreme exaggeration). Which would explain why Maz says its “a good story for another time” because she doesn’t even believe it.
No clue how any of this could be communicated through lines though as it’s merely an expansion of stuff present in the movie so no lines could be replaced. But I like the idea that the Skywalker blade calls out to Rey in TFA because it was quite literally rescued from the Sith by her dad.
Most of the changes for this idea could happen with replaced Kylo dialogue during his two conversations on the Star Destroyer, since that is where he talks to Rey about her past. Changes are in bold:
“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.
“You are hard to get rid of.”
“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. I know the rest of your story. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“You were right…your parents were no one. Scrap dealers working on a Sith fleet.”
“Don’t!”
“But you were strong in the Force, so they sold you on Exegol.”
“I don’t want this!”
“You repressed their betrayal”
“No!”
“But then…they stole you back.”
(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”
“They rescued you from Palpatine…and paid the price.”
“Stop talking.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Rey, your parents sold you to the Emperor, to be trained from birth as a Sith. But your parents regretted their decision. They found you, and rescued you. They wanted Luke’s protection…but they never found him.”
(Rey sees her parents get killed, and Vader’s helmet is broken.)
“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.”
…
(In the hangar, the revelations continue)
“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“Because you are the heir to the Emperor, adopted by Palpatine and raised in his shadow. And you know his only weakness. I’ve felt it.”
“You were being trained by the Emperor to rule the galaxy. By the time you were six you were learning the secrets of his power. Darkness is your destiny…just as it is mine. Join me, Rey, and we’ll kill him…together.”
(Removes his helmet)
“You know what you need to do. You know.”
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
The important thing about all this is to establish that it is Rey’s early exposure to the Dark Side that has informed who she is today. We already know from the OT that having an evil relative doesn’t matter, so it doesn’t really matter if Rey is a Palpatine or not. But what does matter is a person’s training and their actions, especially in regard to the Dark Side. And for this story, what matters is that Rey understands that the throne is the secret to the Sith’s power, and this is why Palpatine wants Rey dead. He implies that she is his granddaughter to redirect attention to bloodlines and distract her from the true secret.
In this concept, the Dyad would be deleted from the film. The Sith Throne would essentially replace this deleted subplot, as the throne concept is at least thematically supported by the Wayfinder quest.
It would be nice to incorporate the lightsaber into the story somehow, JJ, but as you said it’s not something that could organically be fixed though adjusting existing dialogue. Perhaps a visual of the lightsaber in a flashback would be the only way.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
JEDIT: Updated the dialogue to bring Rey’s parents in line with TLJ. They were scrap dealers providing material for Palpatine’s fleet on Exegol when they sold their Force sensitive daughter to him, later regretting their decision and rescuing her, bringing her to Jakku where she would be safe.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Back to the restructured version of the Leia death scene… I have three different Maz lines to choose from so far. If you don’t particularly like any of them, I can always generate more, it’s not big deal:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12XeFsicStMhkSPQO2x1haMWOkhJaPZRy?usp=sharing
The next step for me is to create a voice clone specifically of Rey when she’s on Ahch-To. I was originally going to use this for two purposes:
But now it sounds like if we did reinstate Leia knowing a secret about Rey, that we’d prefer it to be that Luke told Leia her lineage. In which case, “She still trained me” would work.
I really like that “Palpatine trained Rey” idea, Nev. It feels like the best of both worlds: the “anyone can save the galaxy” message of Rey Nobody, and the intense internal conflict of Rey Palpatine. If you have Starlight as your default version of TFA, it even explains all the moments of Rey tapping into the dark side throughout that edit: she was subconsciously remembering what Palpatine taught her.
If I had one complaint, though, it’s that an edit that uses that idea would probably have to scrap the whole “Palpatine wants Rey dead” thing entirely. Instead, Palpatine’s plan throughout would be for Kylo to find Rey and return her to him, so she can resume her training. But obviously, Kylo isn’t very fond of not even being Palpatine’s second-in-command, let alone ruling the galaxy. So, he plans to find Rey, pretend that he’s following Palpatine’s instructions by taking her to Exegol, and have her team up with him to kill Palpatine once they arrive.
My preferred Skywalker Saga experience:
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX
My first thought is that I still don’t like what they did with Poe. Before this movie, I thought that Poe had come from the New Republic military, which would give each main character a very different background, with Poe being the heroic Republic pilot, Finn being a dastardly Stormtrooper, and Rey being a scavenger from nowhere. Now the dynamic is far less interesting. So I thought since we’re able to change pretty much any voice now, that Zorri could have different dialogue, indicating that Poe was only posing as a Spice Runner for a while to infiltrate Zorri’s crew:
“Your friend never told you? He worked undercover as a spice runner for a long time.”
“I’m still digging myself out of the hole you put me in when you were called back to the Resistance.”
The bigger issue with Poe’s scenes is that there’s almost an arc but not quite. It would be really nice if we could establish that Poe has some reason to believe that people won’t join the war, perhaps stemming from his inability to recruit Zorri to the Resistance years ago. So the conversation between Poe and Zorri on the rooftop could be changed to indicate this, since Zorri’s mouth is always covered.
Or, we could use this opportunity to shore up the ‘For Skywalker!’ subplot that Ascendant introduces. The first indication of Luke’s inspiration is the festival, and the final result is the massive fleet and the voices, but it feels like there could be one more clue to this result:
“Wanna come with me?”
“I can’t walk out on this war. Not until it’s over. Maybe it is. We sent out a call for help at the battle of Crait. Nobody came. Everyone’s so afraid. They’ve given up.
“And then they saw Luke take on the whole First Order all by himself. Things are changing, Poe. The First Order wants us to believe that we are all alone…but there are more of us.”
I wanted to repost this here so that I can hear more thoughts about new Zorri lines. I do think that with v4 of Ascendant we’ve given Finn’s character some purpose with Jannah and co. being directly inspired by him. I think these changes would also elevate Poe’s character in a similar way. I’ll start creating a Zorri voice clone.
Sounds good about the Zorri lines, JJ. I’m glad someone else feels like there’s value to be had there 😃
Back to the restructured version of the Leia death scene… I have three different Maz lines to choose from so far. If you don’t particularly like any of them, I can always generate more, it’s not big deal:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12XeFsicStMhkSPQO2x1haMWOkhJaPZRy?usp=sharing
I think Alt 2 is the best one, though it is still a bit too…confident. Maz in this scene is noticeably more subdued, speaking slowly and quietly for R2 alone.
I really like that “Palpatine trained Rey” idea, Nev. It feels like the best of both worlds: the “anyone can save the galaxy” message of Rey Nobody, and the intense internal conflict of Rey Palpatine. If you have Starlight as your default version of TFA, it even explains all the moments of Rey tapping into the dark side throughout that edit: she was subconsciously remembering what Palpatine taught her.
If I had one complaint, though, it’s that an edit that uses that idea would probably have to scrap the whole “Palpatine wants Rey dead” thing entirely. Instead, Palpatine’s plan throughout would be for Kylo to find Rey and return her to him, so she can resume her training. But obviously, Kylo isn’t very fond of not even being Palpatine’s second-in-command, let alone ruling the galaxy. So, he plans to find Rey, pretend that he’s following Palpatine’s instructions by taking her to Exegol, and have her team up with him to kill Palpatine once they arrive.
I think the ‘kill Rey’ angle would work, since now Rey is presumably damaged goods for him and also knows his weakness. When she manages to find her way back to Exegol despite the hit he put out on her, he may reconsider and decide he does want her back, or he is just planning on having her kill his body so that his spirit can possess her like the theatrical film implies.
The biggest issue with this idea for me is that Rey isn’t a nobody, since she was chosen specifically by Palpatine to be his heir. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a version of this story where Rey’s involvement in the plot isn’t highly coincidental. At least here her parents were actually nobodies and she isn’t related to Palpatine by blood. It gives us a neat dynamic where she is attempting to avoid completing the dark path she started down as a child and the light path she has chosen as an adult, but to do this she must actually travel back to the place where she was raised and confront her evil foster parent.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Taking a break from the Death Star Duel, here’s a tangential idea for TROS in general, elaborating on my Throne of the Sith concept.
The issue with the original idea was that while it solved quite a few plot issues, there was no deeper connection tying this to Rey’s story. So how about this:
Rey’s parents were cultists living on Exegol. They pledged themselves to the Sith, and baptized their gifted daughter to the service of Palpatine. However, after their daughter learned more than she should have of the Sith’s secret power her parents escaped Exegol and fled across the galaxy to prevent her from being killed.
Rey’s parents were traveling to Tatooine to find Luke, for they only knew of his homeworld and wished to give their Force sensitive daughter to him for her protection. However, they were waylaid halfway to their destination on the desert world of Jakku and killed.
Palpatine wants the child killed because she may know the secret of the Sith’s power. All Rey knows about Exegol now is that she saw herself on the throne, which she interprets as her desire to rule as the lord of the Sith, something that Palpatine is quick to encourage, going so far as to imply that she is his granddaughter.
When Kylo confronts Rey in his quarters and in the hangar, he says that she may be a Palpatine. However, he isn’t sure that he believes it, since there is no evidence that her parents were strong in the Force. Nevertheless, he believes that she has the darkness of the Sith within her in some form, a darkness which draws her ever toward evil.
When Rey arrives on Exegol and confronts Palpatine, she is eventually defeated and must turn to the Jedi for help. They tell her that the ways of the Jedi are knowledge and defense, and she looks inward and considers why she has visions of the Sith throne. She realizes that it is literally the seat and source of their power, and this is the secret that her parents died for. She redirects Palpatine’s lightning and destroys it, and this brings down the entire edifice and destroys the Sith once and for all.
In the final scene, Rey arrives on the planet that her parents had sought all those years ago, and there she finally claims the Skywalker name.
Nev, your idea sounds so cool!!!
I had the idea a few years ago of revealing that Rey as a Padawan with amnesia; who misremembered her master as her mother
But this sounds so much better and it would make of lot of sense considering how Rey was presented in the previous films (And it’s definitely an improvement over what Episode IX originally presented)
I’ve added two quiet options to the same link - https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/12XeFsicStMhkSPQO2x1haMWOkhJaPZRy
‘quiet 2’ is perfect, at least to my ears! I added that the first half of the line to the timeline and it just worked. Version 10 is uploaded with that line.
https://mega.nz/folder/aQcRgLrR#YHPDi5zV2VSgLIqTr0SFjg
Now for some bad news. I’m not using my normal Premiere workflow for this scene, instead trying to learn how to use the free editor of Davinci Resolve. This means that I haven’t figured out how to work with 5.1 surround sound, so everything is in stereo right now. I’d like to figure out how to produce a proper finished product here, but for that I’d want to use the unedited film. So for now, consider this a glorified mockup.
Of course, if someone else had the inclination to produce the final version of this scene, I could provide all the clips and sound effects along with my sincere thanks. Otherwise, I’ll just plan on figuring out this new software at some point 😉
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
My goal was actually to have it line up so that you cut out all the words that I gave you. Did you try it that way as well? There is a noticeable cut to me at least.
I bet it would work that way as well, but to do that I’d have to rebuild the ambient sound around the entire line instead of just that spot, and, well, my struggle with 5.1 in Resolve is real.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
That’s a really neat idea, Nev. It bends the canon a little more than I’d tend towards, but it’s certainly elegant, and kind of retroactively wraps around the earlier films nicely. And it straddles Rey Nobody/Rey Palpatine nicely too- in this, she’s his ‘granddaughter’ in the sense that she’s his inheritor, a trainee or asset he’s known (of) since she was a child.
I could potentially help with a final version of/when it comes to that.
I worry the Rey backstory stuff could be too complicated. A positive of this version would be that you could keep the movie as close to the theatrical version as possible but still make Rey not a Palpatine, or at least not one by blood.
On the other hand, you still have some retroactive issues, like her parents having a change of heart and being good or whatever.
I like this quote of your’s Nev:
We already know from the OT that having an evil relative doesn’t matter, so it doesn’t really matter if Rey is a Palpatine or not. But what does matter is a person’s training and their actions, especially in regard to the Dark Side.
This is why I do sort of keep coming back to “Rey killed her parents”. It doesn’t really contradict the last 2 films, and it stills makes it so Rey doesn’t have an important backstory. Plus her own actions in the past define her potential destiny, not her parentage. Makes it different, but not convoluted. Your general audience member would understand it.
I think making the Sith Throne a “secret” that doesn’t really get spelled out until the climax could potentially leave the audience confused. I think it is a safer bet to make it clear early on in the film that the throne is the source of Palpatine’s power to cheat death. Then, at the end of the film, you could decide how you want to clarify how Rey decides to destroy it. The voices of the Jedi tell her, internal monologue, something. Does Rey really need a connection to Palpatine beyond the power he offers? It’s not like Rey briefly being his adopted child is going to make the audience think that she actually might join him more than any other option.
I guess it does give you the angle of “Rey has been trained” if you want to try and address that question.
So, putting simply, her backstory would be this: Rey’s parents were followers of Palpatine. They gave up Rey to be trained as a Sith and eventually be Palpatine’s heir/apprentice, but they had a change of heart and ran away with her. They hid her, then got caught and killed. The trauma of Rey’s abandonment made her forget everything.
It could be interesting if Palpatine tried to manipulate her, and say that her parents took her away from having a better life than they did. Hmm.
Speaking of Rey killing her parents, didn’t Palpatine also kill his own parents in Legends?
EDIT: I will say the toughest thing about the Rey Palpatine/Nobody stuff is deciding on an angle and the dialogue. If some kind of consensus could be made on that, I don’t think it would be so hard to actually make the scenes with the dialogue. Just need some brainstorming to come up with something.
Nev, if you can send me the elements used other than the film’s soundtrack I’d be happy to recreate it in 5.1. (And send the stereo mock-up.)
I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently.
Yeah I cannot find that audio clip of Leia grunting for the life of me. Hopefully Hal still has it accessible through Ascendant’s timeline because Octorox shut down his Lego audio files a while back.
Nev, if you can send me the elements used other than the film’s soundtrack I’d be happy to recreate it in 5.1. (And send the stereo mock-up.)
Thanks so much Hal, you’re the best!
I’ve put all of the sound effects I used in a folder within the original folder link:
https://mega.nz/folder/aQcRgLrR#YHPDi5zV2VSgLIqTr0SFjg
These are just the first sound effects that I found online to drop into the mockup, so I’m sure there are better sound effects out there.
And looking over the Davinci timeline, I see that the final render isn’t even in stereo but in mono, which makes sense because the program did some weird thing where it split the 5.1 audio strangely into left and right channels and I would have definitely noticed if it was rendering like that. I can try to see if it will output in stereo, but I don’t know how much that will help.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
I think the Rey killed her parents is a great idea that I could see being in a theatrical version of the film, it gives a proper reveal in the hangar and connects to her destroying chewie’s ship while not contradicting anything else. What would need to change to make it happen? Maybe a vfx shot of the ship crashing?
While I do like the idea in terms of how it lines up with things, it reeks a little too much of Reva for me. The idea that a tiny, mostly untrained child could either blow up an entire ship or take an entire lightsaber through the torso just because they have some angry thoughts is kinda insane.
Rey killed her parents is something that I was definitely thinking about using, but in watching Ascendant I was having trouble figuring out how it would work in practice. We would absolutely need some sort of reveal there, a VFX shot of Rey hitting the ship with lightning like she did in the desert, which is no small task.
Another question that arises from this is how does this affect Ochi’s ship? Is this the same ship that carried her parents away from Jakku, and if so then how is it on Pasanna and not wrecked in the Jakku desert?
As far as I can tell in canon, the ship is named the Bestoon Legacy and Rey’s parents used it when hiding Rey on Jakku, at which point Ochi discovered the ship and Rey’s parents and killed them. He then found some festive beads belonging to her parents which led him to believe that Rey was on Pasanna.
So for the plot to make sense in canon, Rey must damage the ship enough to kill her parents but not enough to destroy the ship itself. Then Ochi could find the ship and the festival beads would lead him to Pasanna.
The big problem with all of this remains the fact that the ship Rey sees is the one on Pasanna, and this doesn’t fit neatly into any story about Rey’s past, even the official one.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)