Unusual Sequel Trilogy Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 113

Darth Raditz said:

Not necessarily connected to any of my previous ideas, but there’s a bit of dialogue from the DotF script Leia had that I’d love to see inserted back in. After Rey decided to go off alone, Luke & Leia have a discussion concerning her & the Jedi Order. Luke says the reason the Jedi Order lived in isolation is because the pain of loss leads to the dark side. Leia has a response that perfectly encapsulates her character:

“I’ve lost everything, and everyone. But I’d still choose to love.”

Not to spend a ton of time going into detail, but I was actually thinking about this line the day before you made this post!

I actually think an edit could potentially paraphrase this line, but have someone else say it in reference to Leia, rather than Leia herself.

For example, you could totally change Luke’s dialogue during the Leia’s training flashback. If the previous convo between Rey and Luke was about Rey being afraid of the darkness in herself, and the need for Rey to confront that fear, then this scene could continue that topic. Instead of Luke talking about Leia having a bad vision to explain why she stopped her training, maybe he could say something like: As the Force grew stronger in her, she felt darkness within herself too. Leia feared what she could do with that power. To give into hate. Throughout her life, Leia lost everything, and everyone, but in the end, she still chose love. That’s what she wanted to teach you. A thousand generations live in you now. But this is your fight. Your trial to face.

You could be more specific, that she stopped her Jedi training because she was afraid of the darkness she felt within herself. And after she started training Rey, she realized she shouldn’t have stopped, and wanted Rey to learn from her mistake.

This is a random thought that I may do nothing with, and it has been discussed before but I could see some potential of expanding on the idea that Rey can use Force psychometry, like Cal Kestis in Fallen Order/Survivor. There’s several instances where she has visions when she touches objects. You could lean into that and use it to explain why she seems to quickly gain powers. Maybe you could take these moments and add some kind of vision effect on top of them to make it clearer that they are things Rey is seeing in her mind.

In TFA, the Skywalker Saber
In TLJ, the the stone surface of the island during Luke’s first lesson, the glass wall in the Dark Side cave and Ben’s hand in the Ahch-To Hut
In TROS, the Dagger, the Wayfinder, and Leia’s Saber

The only time she has a vision that really isn’t trigger by touching an object is the vision she has at the beginning of TROS, but you could imply it’s triggered by Kylo Ren touching Vader’s helmet or the Mustafar Wayfinder, if you have that happen simultaneously.

That is indeed some pretty powerful dialogue, RL. The only trouble is that the line there has to explain whether Leia stopped her Jedi training or not, and it’s kinda ambiguous at the moment. Having enough space is also a concern.

The way I currently have it in my thread is (roughly) as follows: “But Leia feared the darkness in our father, choosing instead to follow our mother’s path. She surrendered her saber to me, and said it would be picked up again, by someone with the spirit to overcome that darkness.”

I’m not sure how that could be altered any more seeing as how there are time limitations. Although I do like the idea that it was a decision of possibly choosing hate or guaranteed love. I think that implication is already present, but maybe it’s not clear enough.

Yeah, you could just say something like, “When she started her training, she felt darkness grow within her. Leia feared what she could do with that power. To give into hate. So she left the Jedi path. Throughout her life, Leia lost everything, and everyone, but in the end, she still chose love.”

Something like that. I don’t think room for dialogue is a big issue, there’s a lot of dead air that could be filled in that scene. And I also think the whole “surrendering her saber to me” stuff isn’t really necessary so could be replaced. I think what you’ve written is already way better than the theatrical. I feel like the original feels very lore-focused than character-focused if that makes sense. Like it’s gotta answer questions, justify stuff. I like the idea of this tying to Luke reassuring Rey that Leia felt the same things she is feeling, and yours hits on that well too!

Yeah, I feel like yours would work best from a thematic point of view. Especially for a classic Rey Palpatine edit. Luke’s basically telling her, “Leia lost everything, she had every reason to turn to the dark side, or run away and hide like both of us tried to, but she chose to keep on fighting for what she loved instead.”

But there are people who appreciate the fan-servicey bit of mentioning Padme. Plus, what I was shooting for with my own was the implication that Leia literally struggled with the exact same darkness as Rey, as in my hypothetical edit Palpatine may have done that to both the Skywalker bloodline and Rey’s own.

I still think there’s wiggle room into the whole “you’re not doing this, the effort would kill you” of TLJ. I always took that as “you cannot be projecting what you are literally doing in front of my eyes, doing that would kill you.” Then, as what started as a connection by Snoke developed into a dyad, that further developed into being able to affect the physical plane that the other person was on.

It’s just a matter of interpretation. Since ESB, I always figured that talking to people via the Force was fair game. Granted, those times the participants were on the same planet/likely in the same system, but if Kylo & Leia would be meeting each other halfway rather than just one person reaching out to another then I’d buy it more. Plus, I also found Spence’s use of it in the beginning of his RotJ Final Cut edit to be acceptable, and who knows how far apart Tatooine & Dagobah are in the galaxy.

And no, that’s not an invitation to show me a detailed map of how far apart they actually are in the galaxy. 😛

Glad to know you were thinking the same thing, RL! For the sake of minimizing dead air, as well as keeping the Padme mention (since I’m a sucker for PT fanservice, especially in the ST), here’s my crack at it:

"She was quick to learn in our training, but she feared our father’s hatred within her. So, she stayed on our mother’s path instead. Throughout her life, Leia lost everything, and everyone. But in the end, she still chose love.”

My only issue is I’d prefer if Leia herself said that line rather than Luke saying it for her. Granted, these lines tend to be AI-generated anyway, but ideally, I’d want to use a Leia soundalike. Usually, I’m fine with AI for fanedits since they’re non-profit anyway, but I just grow more & more uncomfortable with it every day.

Ed Slushie said:

An idea I’ve had for a while but don’t think I’ve ever shared: to better parallel the Blue-vs-Blue duel from RotS, have the Skywalker lightsaber be red during the duel on Kef-Bir. (This would also just make the duel more visually striking, I think).
It wouldn’t have to be Red for the whole movie - it could turn red when Rey activates it in the Throne Room (implying that her vision in the vault made the crystal bleed) and then it could turn blue again when Ben gets it on Exegol.
I’ve tried editing this in myself but it’s very tedious - and given how quickly the edit that turns Leia’s Saber purple was made, presumably there are some people here for whom it’s easier (and the amount of time the lightsaber spends on screen between the throne room and the KoR fight isn’t much longer than the amount of screen time Leia’s saber got).
So if anyone else is interested in actually doing this I’d love to know.

So, I think this idea can work, but you’d have to edit Revenge of the Sith as well. A decade ago (ugh), there was a faneditor (I want to say Bob Garcia), who had an idea for Revenge of the Sith where as the Anakin/Obi-Wan duel on Mustafar progressed, Anakin’s saber would slowly change from blue to red. You couldn’t turn Rey’s lightsaber red at the start of the fight, but you could turn it red shortly after, carrying the same idea.

Darth Raditz said:

Granted, these lines tend to be AI-generated anyway, but ideally, I’d want to use a Leia soundalike. Usually, I’m fine with AI for fanedits since they’re non-profit anyway, but I just grow more & more uncomfortable with it every day.

Then why keep bringing up ideas that would require AI line replacements to nearly every other aspect of the film in order to make any sense? I think the mark of a good alternative take for TROS is that you only really have to change what Kylo tells Rey in the dyad duel and hangar scene, specifically. If you have to start fundamentally changing all the conversations outside of that one to accommodate your idea, that just means you’re fighting a losing battle to change the crux of this movie.

Ultimately, this movie IS about being confronted with an uncomfortable statement concerning your heritage/origin, and then trying to reconcile that with the idea that your origin shouldn’t matter, because your choices and relationships with others matter more in life. And in Kylo’s case, it’s moreso about domination and power leading to ruin regardless of trying to disassociate them from the Sith or his own destiny, and that choosing love is the ultimate form of empowerment.

I do think this new Luke voiceover line can work in my own edit, however. It would bring Luke’s whole lesson full circle when combined with him telling Ben on Exegol: “Choose love, Ben. Choose power.” And that, of course, would be a culmination to their previous conversation:

“The dark side has failed you, Ben. Like it failed my father.”

“Anakin was weak”

“His love for his family saved him. I wish it could save you, too.”

“I only did what I had to do.”

“You chose hate.”

“I chose power.”

Here’s how I could see the Luke and Leia flashback line going:

“She was quick to learn in our training. But Leia feared giving in to hatred like our father, and chose to follow our mother’s path, instead. Throughout her life, Leia lost everything, and everyone. But in the end, she still chose love.”

As I’ve given this idea more thought, I’ve come to realize that I do appreciate detaching Rey receiving Leia’s lightsaber and overcoming her darkness as something she prophesied would happen to Luke. I think things are already confusing enough in this movie with one vision that is supposedly fated to happen, introducing yet another one - a seemingly contradictory one to the initial vision, at that - seems no bueno. Plus, this ties beautifully with Rey’s later line to Palpatine: “All you want is for me to hate, but I won’t.”

Because, like I said, fanedits are non-profit anyway. Whether I like it or not, the technology still exists, and finding a convincing soundalike isn’t always the easiest answer if you don’t know where to look or have the money to hire said actors. No need to get all aggro about it.

That is a good summation of what TROS is about, though. And it is better to focus more on making Leia’s lightsaber something with meaning to her & Rey’s character, rather than making it part of a different, third vision.

I’m only “aggro” about it because, for me, that’s the only thing others can do to me that will wake me up from a stupor and obsession with any particular idea I have. Which is usually helpful so I can consider things from different perspectives. If people don’t say anything in an upfront way, then I’m likely going to miss something, and whatever I’m working on isn’t going to be as good as it should be.

Granted, I do appreciate it much more when criticisms come with their own recommendations. The reason I don’t have any recommendations for you is because, from my perspective at least, I’m already pursuing all these ideas in a much more attainable way in my own thread.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I’m only “aggro” about it because, for me, that’s the only thing others can do to me that will wake me up from a stupor and obsession with any particular idea I have. Which is usually helpful so I can consider things from different perspectives. If people don’t say anything in an upfront way, then I’m likely going to miss something, and whatever I’m working on isn’t going to be as good as it should be.

Granted, I do appreciate it much more when criticisms come with their own recommendations. The reason I don’t have any recommendations for you is because, from my perspective at least, I’m already pursuing all these ideas in a much more attainable way in my own thread.

That’s fair. It’s hard to backup ideas when you don’t have the skills to make example clips. I’d like to make my own fanedits one day, but that’s very much a back burner hobby at the moment. For now I’m content spit-balling ideas in the hopes it helps someone else out with their edit.

Yup, you were probably using the wrong method of making the AI lines. You can thank RL again for discovering the proper way.

In my opinion, the flaw with the idea of “cycles” is that there should really be another sequel trilogy if that is the case, and on and on into infinity. I don’t think anybody genuinely wants that. TROS ends with the return of the Jedi for a second time, with no discernable difference from the first go around. Which to me suggests that the uniting tissue between each trilogy ought to be the Jedi and Sith trying to control the will of the Force. And finally coming to terms with the fact that the Force cannot be controlled, and it is up to the galaxy to let it and its avatars do only what it wants. Otherwise, everything is thrown out of balance. In the case of the sequel trilogy, the only reason things repeated themselves is because Palpatine was supposed to die in ROTJ, but he cheated the will of the Force in a way even it couldn’t forsee, causing all the events from the OT to essentially play out again. Except this time he actually stays dead thanks to the intervention of the Force ghosts.

I really like this Jolee Bindo quote from Knights of the Old Republic.

“Malak is a tyrant who should be stopped. If he conquers the galaxy, we’re in for a couple of rough centuries. Eventually it’ll come around again, but I’d rather not wait that long. So we do what we have to do and we try to stop the Sith. But don’t start thinking this war, your war, is more important than any other war just because you’re in it.“

I do think the Skywalker Saga is the definitive conclusion of the war with Palpatine, but I think it is naive to think that future stories won’t deal with conflicts between good and evil, good guys and bad guys, the dark side and the light. Hopefully they take a different form than the Sith, but I’m sure the new Rey movie will deal with the New Jedi Order addressing some new type of conflict or enemy, and that’s what I’m talking about.

A franchise called “Star Wars” is likely never going to have a happily ever after that is permanent. There’s always going to be some conflict or war that has to be fought. I mean, you say, “ there should really be another sequel trilogy if that is the case, and on and on into infinity.” That’s sort of what is happening though. We’re getting at least one movie that is forward in time that is 100% going to deal with some type of conflict or dilemma. And, the franchise is already going back in time to show countless other wars and conflicts that happened before the Skywalker Saga. 25,000 years cycling through war and peace. And even if Episode IX is the end of that and there is never a dark side wielding enemy ever again, there clearly has been a cycle of war between the Jedi and the Sith for literally a thousand generations. You can’t argue that. But maybe it is over now, but the point that I would suggest trying to make in this hypothetical type of edit is that regardless of whether or not the cycle is broken with Palpatine’s death, that peace and balance is worth fighting for even if it isn’t permanent. But maybe it is!

At one point in time I was really hoping that there would be some kind of resolution to the flaws of the Jedi Order, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the new Rey movie addresses that in some way, but I think from both an in-universe and narrative standpoint it’s unlikely the Jedi will make some fundamental philosophical change that avoids Jedi from falling to the dark side. Even in Legends, where Luke more clearly shook up the old Jedi ways and made it something grayer, plenty of Jedi still fell to the dark side. And good guys being corrupted or bad guys being redeemed is such a huge theme in Star Wars that making some big storytelling decision that the Jedi are “fixed” now and no Jedi will ever fall again just is unlikely. Where’s the fun in that? The Jedi can be better but that internal conflict will always exist and need to be confronted by future Jedi.

It also speaks to reality as well. Sure, we don’t have Jedi/Sith, the Force, galactic wars, but humans are imperfect, and so is civilization. We’re always fighting for peace in our communities and also within ourselves, and it is a constant struggle. Just because those things aren’t permanent doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for those things. That’s just what I’m speaking to. Star Wars might not have a happily forever after, but there’s plenty of happily afters for every new adventure they decide to tell.

I don’t disagree with the idea that there needs to be conflict again. But the Skywalker saga sets up in Episode 1 that the main character is meant to bring “ultimate balance” to the Force. The fact that only 20-30 years pass before that balance is lost and a pseudo-Empire reigns again is insulting. The only way any of this makes sense to me is that something “unnatural” happened which caused this ultimate balance to be delayed. Which we of course know is what happened when Palpatine returned. And this is why I think Rey needs to be equivalent to Anakin in terms of being the chosen one reincarnate, and not really a Palpatine.

In my opinion, future conflicts, specifically the Rey movie, should take a page out of George Lucas’ sequel trilogy scripts. They need to be fighting crime syndicates and street-level foes, not people with the potential to destroy the universe. Sure, there can be dark-side users, but they shouldn’t be Sith and they shouldn’t have grand ambitions to snuff out the light side of the Force. They should be like Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati. I think George was going to give a similar treatment to Maul and Talon. Neither of them would be Sith, but they’d be interested in making as good a life for themselves as possible at the expense of others.

Think of it like the difference between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Hobbit (if you ignore the movies) is a simple tale with excellent stakes and interesting developments. However, the fate of Middle-Earth is never at stake. Then you get to Lord of the Rings, which is comparable to the Skywalker saga in that if the heroes fail, all will be lost.

TL;DR - We need only Hobbit-like stories post sequel trilogy. Or, in Star Wars terms, conflicts in the same style as the TV shows like Mando and Boba Fett. If a writer wants to do one where the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance, they DESPERATELY need to go back in time to the Old Republic. It’s such an untapped goldmine that they refuse to touch.

I don’t think any of your thoughts really contradict my point either. Maybe the Sith in particular were the cause of this major unbalance that needed to corrected. I don’t think that fact really goes against the idea of there being a cycle of war and peace that just inherently exists in the universe, both ours and Star Wars. And, like I said, you can’t deny that cycle has existed up until the Skywalker Saga, and maybe ultimate balance is achieved by the end of TROS, but it still would make sense for the characters within the story to address that cycle. Especially if they thought balance HAD been restored and the cycle broken. So history repeating itself would make them question everything: if this war will ever end, if balance can truly be restored. Even the idea of there being a second chosen one raises the question of how often has the Force produce such beings? Regardless, maybe all of that ends up does end up happening by the end of the Saga. Both of those facts can be true. That the Sith cancer was destroyed, the Force has been healed, ultimate balance has been restored, but that doesn’t mean there will never be enemies to fight again. I think addressing it kind of future-proofs the franchise by pointing that out. I definitely agree with you that it would be nice for the Rey movie to be small scale and I hope for that too, but I honestly doubt there will never be a large-scale threat that takes place post Skywalker Saga.

Also the whole idea behind addressing this idea of the Star Wars cycle was to twist the way the ST just riffs off the Original Trilogy by making it a strength rather than a weakness. Or at least by making it sort of the point. I mean, all of the elements are already there. This just connects the dots.

It felt wrong to a lot of people that the happy ending of the original trilogy was replaced with the happy ending for the sequel trilogy. I just think a lot of that can be mitigated when the story addresses the fact the Clones Wars, the Galactic Civil War, and the First Order-Resistance War are all a series of wars that are inherently a part of life in the Star Wars universe. There are all just civil wars. Even the Jedi/Sith conflict is arguably a civil war if one religion split from the other.

I think if that was kind of the theme an edit were highlighting, it can help justify repetitive decisions like Starkiller Base, another Jedi Purge, Palpatine returning, etc. Because it emphasizes this idea of the cycle. History repeating. The wheel spinning. Generations forgetting and then making the same mistakes. It makes those story decisions feel more necessary because it adds to the point that the story is trying to make. If the events of the ST were what achieved the ultimate happy ending, then it still feels like it just stole that happy ending from the original trilogy. The ORIGINAL happily ever after.

Do you get what I’m saying? Return of the Jedi was THE happy ending. The only way retconning that really feels earned is if the Sequel Trilogy was trying to say that there really is no absolute happy ending. There are a series of bad beginnings and happy endings. If TROS is just replaced ROTJ as THE happy ending, then you’re kind of like, “What was the point of going through all of this again?”. The cycle theme kind of addresses that there will always be wars (external and internal) to fight, but even fleeting peace is worth fighting for. It just gives the ST another strong, coherent theme that connects each film that, upon release, we’re criticized for being a little disjointed.

But I definitely agree with your hopes that now the Sith (or at least the Banite Sith) are gone for good, and we will have a new and improved Jedi Order for future stories to explore new ideas. Regardless, I think this theme would probably always be relevant because of how universal it is. And like I said, the theme is arguably there already in the movies. You could emphasize them with new AI dialogue but you probably could still manage it without it.

But I def agree that they should start getting into Old Republic stuff! Crazy that they still haven’t.

That is a completely fair criticism, and exactly what the hardcore fan sentiment would have been had they gone with the Rey backstory I’m pursuing in the other thread. I can already hear the raging YouTubers saying: “They really just brought Palpatine back so a girl could do a better job at being the chosen one.”

With the new Avatar: The Last Airbender remake coming out soon, I think there’s a very good analogy to put here to clear this up. Like you said, we don’t know exactly how often the Force has created these “chosen one” beings. Perhaps, just like the Avatar, there is a long line of succession here. And the chosen one is continually reincarnated into a new person whenever the will of the Force is violated too much. Anakin destroyed the Jedi and the Sith because both orders just wanted to control the Force. To go back to our analogy here, Aang is to Korra as Anakin is to Rey.

Under this new thinking, I suppose it would be okay for this process to continue on and on. Because, from a certain point of view, it’s the same essence maintaining that ultimate balance in the Force every time. It’s a retcon of the chosen one prophecy, but satisfactory enough to justify continually creating new content. And as Yoda says, they could have misread the prophecy. Perhaps what I’m describing could be the true meaning of it all.

I just wouldn’t even know where to begin with all this in an actual edit lmao.

Lmao, I just realized that the answer is right in front of me.

“I’m starting to think it’s impossible. To hear the voices of the Jedi who came before.”

“A thousand generations live in you now. [Each had one chosen to restore balance].”

And of course the voices that reach out to her later. If those could be replaced with Anakin and random people’s voices instead of fan-servicey cameos, it would actually make sense. Each one could be a “chosen one” from a past generation. I think Luke and Leia could be included too since they’re the offspring of the chosen one.

The new Leia flashback test is really beautiful, I’ve gotta say. Thanks guys. This is why collaboration is always key in these things. Honestly, I think this should be in Ascendant v5:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SH4R3i8wNuwrP8bN85aLe82Tn5E87vBj/view?usp=sharing

I’m not sure if I’m gonna pursue the idea I had above only because future canon content certainly won’t oblige by it. The requirement of a “chosen one” being born of no father means the Jedi should have recognized that trend occurring in every generation at some point. But it was a fun thought experiment nonetheless.

Yup these tests are just that: tests. Not necessarily what the final product would sound like. I just pasted the line in there, really.

I just found notes I scribbled years ago on switching around the order of scenes in TRoS to integrate the original idea of Palpatine being on Coruscant. The star destroyer is recontextualized as Coruscant interiors while Pasaana is recontextualized as Coruscant’s natural surface deep underground, eventually leading to the Sith Temple beneath the Jedi Temple (Lucas idea they were trying to integrate here) where Palpatine waits. Wild idea and no clue if it’s doable but there you have it.

Even if we had access to it at the moment, it would only really be useful for establishing shots due to copyright. They’re not gonna allow you to describe certain things like “lightsaber” or “TIE fighter”.

We’re gonna have to wait for the open-source, community-made models which are trained on the Star Wars films themselves. This might be another 5 years. Any company which allows Star Wars images to be generated with their software are gonna be sued into oblivion.