Alrighty, I’ve done up four different versions of this exchange, because why not, right? That’s normal and healthy behavior. All of them remove Luke’s one line of “It was fear that kept me here.” Honestly, seeing it in practice, I like it even more this way - not only does it avoid (arguably) ignoring Luke’s feelings of guilt in the previous movie, not to mention undoing one of Rian Johnson’s fundamental goals when writing Ep. VIII - but it allows Luke’s declaration of “I was wrong” to hang in the air. The added space gives Rey (our protagonist) a moment of genuine self-reflection, one that is no longer interrupted by Luke’s prattling.
Version 1 - The Basic Trim: https://streamable.com/3qr20n
This version cuts out Luke’s one line, and then tightens the space around it a little to avoid excessive dead space.
Version 2 - The Early Cutoff: https://streamable.com/wqo8f2
Luke interrupts Rey’s explanation, deciding not to entertain her flawed justifications. This version also plays with a slightly redone version of Luke’s “I was wrong” line, where I repitched it a little and made the word “wrong” a bit louder, to make Luke sound more forceful. (It’s less, "Oh yeah, I was wrong about that. Sorry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ " and more “You moron, don’t you remember that I was wrong? You’re the one who told me that in the first place!”)
Version 3 - The Early Lesson Three: https://streamable.com/muk1wo
Luke frames their entire conversion around his long-promised Third Lesson to Rey - finding her courage, and embracing her title as a Jedi. For this version, I decided to reverse the shot of Rey between “I was wrong” and “What are you most afraid of” - Now she looks up at Luke when he mentions “Lesson Three.”
Version 4 - The Later Lesson Three: https://streamable.com/4742xw
Luke talks about fear and courage, and then imparts one final wisdom to her as his Third Lesson.
Both Versions 3 and 4 feature a slightly retouched version of Jar Jar’s “Lesson Three” cleanup, which was based on JXEditor’s design. I’ve run the “three” through a compressor to balance out the audio levels a little bit more, and I condensed/overlapped the gap between the words slightly to try and make it flow better. I also performed some noise reduction on the word “Lesson,” because there was some slight music in the background that I was noticing with the absence of music in Early Lesson version. We can play with that though.
These can also be mixed and matched depending on how people feel about them. Maybe you like the early cutoff in Version 2, but you also want to incorporate “Lesson Three” somewhere? Or you like the idea of the Early Cutoff, but you’d prefer it more with the original “I was wrong” audio track? Maybe you hate it all!
I’m curious what everyone thinks!