Broom Kid

I’m not sure the way to improve this movie is to make it shorter

Why not?

This sentiment has been brought up in multiple justifications for leaving in scenes that don’t really work and aspects of the film that are broken, and it seems to point to the idea that a movie being short disqualifies it from being good? Or “better” in this specific instance.

It’s like there’s an arbitrary notion that the goodness of the movie somehow counts less if the movie is only 90+ minutes long. I don’t understand why - if through proper pacing and clever editing, which is usually only ascertained by actually trying ideas out and seeing how they work in the larger context of the edit - the only way to make the movie better seems to involve keeping all the broken bits that are already there and that we know don’t really work very well, and then adding even MORE broken bits to it and trying to tape them all back together, for the sake of not much more than being able to say “well, it’s not too short, at least.”

What are the targets that are most important to aim at and hit when it comes to making a better version of this film? Is overall run-time really one of those targets?

It’s not like Star Wars stops being “Star Wars” because it’s not over 2 hours long. Being a fan-editor is tough enough as it is considering all the things that have to be compromised before you can even start. Why add even more unnecessary complications and roadblocks to making the best thing you can?

I still don’t think there’s a romance implied on her part going towards him. I think he feels like a romantic attachment is something he can use (and enjoy should his ploy to flip her actually work), but I have never, in all my rewatches of The Last Jedi, seen it coming from her direction, towards him. I’m not denying there aren’t charged moments, scenes, and an undercurrent making itself felt. But I’m also saying that aspect was placed in the narrative for a very specific purpose, and that purpose came to its logical conclusion at the end of the movie when she rejected him outright.

Basically: He put it out there, sure. And she said “I don’t like you like that. I don’t like you at all.”

The throne room is a complicated, dramatically satisfying, amazing back and forth. But she’s not there to get a boyfriend. She’s there to win a war. He’s there to turn her so he can use her to fulfill his power fantasy. That’s the dynamic. It’s laid fully bare by the end what it really was, and said as plainly as possible in the text and the subtext by the end of the movie.

Reylo started as run-of-the-mill fun fanfiction and ended up becoming - basically - a political wedge issue within fandom circles. It grew to encompass symbolic aspects far beyond the story it sprang from, and came to represent larger fandom concerns (and legitimate injustices within those circles), and honestly was like a giant vortex of personal projection, fueled largely by substitution of symbolic meaning for actual meaning.

Within The Last Jedi itself, though? “Reylo” was basically feinted at and then shut down in its final two reels. And it was shut down BY Rey. Decisively, too.

If there was another planet it was possibly orbiting, that planet still would have been clearly visible by that point. You’d have seen the planet before you ever saw the “small moon”

And Han would have known if there was a moon or not because he looked at the charts before he jumped there. Plus any moon that WAS orbiting would have been destroyed when the planet blew up.

It just seemed funny to me that today was the first time I ever thought “hey, wait, of course it’s not a moon, there’s literally NOTHING FOR IT TO ORBIT out there.”

Thing that only just now occurred to me:

Why would anyone on the Millennium Falcon be surprised that the Death Star wasn’t a moon? Moons orbit planets. There are no planets around. Alderaan never even had a moon to begin with.

The cut implies a passage of time but visually it’s a pretty jarring cut. It doesn’t imply so much as it just jumps the suns ahead a couple minutes. I think the fix works fine as-is, but I was thinking about that jump and wondering how it could be made a little smoother and that’s when it occurred to me you can actually smooth out the “passage of time” aspect by repurposing the footage of the ghosts while removing the old woman entirely, plus providing an opportunity to “close the book” on the Skywalker Saga by actually irising out on the twins.

Also I think you could use one of the concert suite versions of Luke & Leia to build to the end credits in that case, too.

You are correct that it’s a binary SUNRISE either way. Force of habit has me referring to it the other way around.

While I’m already talking about “fixing” fixes that everyone’s already happy with:

the fixed ending has always sort of bugged me in that with a single cut the sunset goes from two suns stacked on top of each other (to mimick BB-8 in the frame, I’m sure) to the two sons separated (where the original intent is to have Rey and BB-8 silhouetted against them).

But I think there’s a way to fix that problem that gets rid of that jump cut, and also gets rid of the weird back-and-forth with the anonymous woman who shows up out of nowhere and prompts the “what’s your name” thing, while still using the Luke & Leia force ghosts.

HOW ABOUT THIS:

Rey buries the sabers, ignites her own, and gets up.

Instead of cutting to the old woman, cut to the shot of BB-8 against the sunset, with Rey’s feet walking left to right.

then cut to the empty desert, with the sounds of the falcon going through liftoff prep in the background, as Luke & Leia’s ghosts slowly fade in

Cut to the binary sunset, only now the silhouettes are barely-translucent ghostly shapes of Luke & Leia’s backs as they watch the Falcon leave the planet. Iris out

OR:

Cut to the empty desert, with the sounds of the falcon going through liftoff prep in the background, as Luke & Leia’s ghosts slowly fade in

Cut to the binary sunset shot with the Falcon leaving the planet

Cut to the close-up of Luke & Leia smiling, hold on it, and then Iris Out

but after copyright expiration

I’m not at all convinced this is ever going to happen, and currently have no reason to believe it ever will.

I mean, I’d love if Leia & Ben were in that lineup, and I think from a storytelling perspective (in the dramatic scenario where they’re both passed on in that moment, that is) it’s absolutely the right call, but I also understand how much extra work that is, especially considering how satisfied everyone is with how it looks now, both compositionally and technically.

But boy it would be nice if Rey’s master was actually behind Rey as she finally defeats Palpatine. Moving Ben’s sacrifice & resurrection of Rey is a smart idea not only for the reasons you just laid out, but because it makes this heroic culmination of the “be with me” set-up at the beginning that much stronger, with Ben AND Leia actually being with her (along with Luke, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin) when she destroys the Sith once and for all.

(I guess compositionally if you’re adding both Ben AND Leia you still get the symmetry the shot currently has - it’d just be 3 on each side instead of 2)

As it stands, it’s a bit of a dramatic failing that when Rey destroys the sith and achieves her ultimate victory, the two people closest to her at the time aren’t anywhere nearby, either spiritually or physically.

I really do like the idea of Ben healing Rey and disappearing (sans kiss) before she gets up and takes out Palpatine. There’s a couple problems with it though.

1. it takes too long. The cuts probably need to happen a lot quicker considering whatever’s happening is presumably happening in front of him. Cuts and framing can stretch out the reality of a sequence quite well and suspend disbelief in a LOT of ways (most horror movies simply wouldn’t function AT ALL if that kind of trickery weren’t available and automatically accepted by most audiences) but the length of time her resurrection takes really pushes it.

2. Even if you manage to cut down the resurrection length so that it could plausibly happen in front of Palpatine while he’s reveling in adulation and transformation (maybe cutting back and forth between the resurrection and the transformation to show he’s pre-occupied and doesn’t notice what’s happening would help - and would make trimming the length of the resurrection more feasible) once Ben (and Leia) disappear, you almost HAVE to then include both of them in the ghosts behind Rey. That’s a lot of work for a scene everyone seems to be very happy with, not just in the creating ghostly images, but in having to re-time and cut down the screentime the other ghosts currently have now.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

What did I miss?

You can scrub back to the start of the video on YouTube live, but even so, he basically says right up front that there’s not much he’s discussing that he hasn’t already put on his Vimeo over the years. The novelty is that it’s on YouTube now and he’s doing a live Q&A with the people in the live chat.

Also, we don’t know if he’s actually playing Boba. So far as I can tell, that’s just an assumption literally everyone made but nobody’s got confirmed. The other assumption is that he could also be playing Captain Rex but it seems like nobody’s even really trying to guess at option C, which is that he’s only playing Rex, and Boba won’t be in the show at all.

Either way, the idea that Disney is making any decisions based on a weird sense of antagonism doesn’t make any sense.

I understand being upset about the revisionism, and worse, the concerted effort for the revisionist version of things to take precedent over the original versions. I get all that, and I agree…

…but I definitely wouldn’t refer to Jeremy Bulloch as looking “Clint Eastwood-ish” there. I mean, if you maybe want to stretch it, sort of Chuck Norris-ish. And either way, he definitely doesn’t look like more of a badass, stoic, tough sonofabitch than Temuera Morrison does.

I didn’t know Treat Williams was an extra on this movie until today, though. That’s pretty cool.

And even the Carrie thing was an unforced error, because there was nothing about Rise of Skywalker that necessitated digitally resurrecting her out of old footage. It wasn’t a necessity that they do that, much less in the weird way that they did it either.

Respectfully addressing the character’s death off-screen wasn’t even considered, and in the execution, they ended up doing the opposite of “honoring” her.

That works really well! Did you stretch some of the music to fit the on-screen actions? It matches the dramatic beats in a way I wouldn’t have expected.

Could the “Leia’s Theme” section of that trailer music starting at around :30 work for when Rey calls Leia’s saber to her? I think it might time out correctly so that it naturally leads into that Star Wars theme you’re using.

It might even work so that the piano version of “yoda’s theme” plays just as she’s saying “I am all the jedi.”

To be fair, “melancholy and sentimental” is also how I’d describe “Burning Homestead,” especially considering the scene it was originally written for 😃

Honestly, I think if there’s a way to extend what Williams already wrote for the “I am all the sith/jedi” scene (to account for the extra shots of ghostly jedi) that might be the “best” solution, but I think the trailer music version of Leia’s theme could work as well. Probably from :30 to 1 minute.

https://voca.ro/mMEfbyCfBso

There are various clean versions of that music available online - and I’m certain there are more than a few orchestral/string recreations of it to be used too. The most famous one is a recreation by “samuel kim music” should be pretty easy to find on YouTube.

Another idea might be to use the version of the Force Theme that Williams originally wrote for “Rey catches the Saber” in TFA, which then got tracked over by Burning Homestead.

That is really good!

Is there a rendition of Leia’s theme (or even Han & Leia’s theme) that might work better there than another needle-drop of Burning Homestead? Burning Homestead worked in The Force Awakens because the music was tied to Luke and specifically Luke “answering the call,” so repurposing it for Rey finally doing the same thing achieved a pretty remarkable effect.

I think maybe a similar version of Leia’s theme getting used there might make more sense considering it’s her saber that Rey’s catching this time.

Octorox said:
By removing it, you’re also robbing the movie of the only significant action setpiece in the first act (and arguably the only unique or visually interesting setpiece in the entire movie), which makes it feel like a bit of an exposition dump for the first 20 minutes or so. RoS as-is isn’t much more than a pretty roller coaster ride. I wouldn’t try to rob it of one of the few elements that works.

This would be my counterargument for keeping it too, but if the rationale is “I just don’t like it and I think it sucks” there’s really no way to talk someone out of that, haha.

Apologies for my contributions to this thread becoming less “Hal’s prospective edit” thread and more like the unofficial replacement “general edit ideas” thread, but I guess that’s one of the side-effects of so many very talented people congregating in here and making “what ifs” into mock-up reality at lightning speed. Forums are sometimes like that - you put up guardrails but when everyone at the party notices there’s a bunch of really cool stuff happening in the living room, people will crowd in there and start spilling drinks while they dance 😃

again, apologies. Thanks for hearing us all out and being so patient.

gotcha. thanks!

I went through and I must have missed it: Why is lightspeed skipping/chess being deleted?

Hal 9000 said:

In the extended podrace intro, the farting animal is extended to wonderful effect. It’s a hell of a fart there.

That thing is taking an invisible shit. I wonder if they got cold feet at the last second and decided not to render the actual fecal matter. I don’t remember ever seeing that before, but that’s pretty obviously intended to be a poop joke, not a fart joke. Now I’m imagining the conversation in the edit room where they have to cut that gag down and make it “clean”

Which reminds me - I’m pretty certain Anakin actually says “oh shit” in this shot at :50

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9NYH3NQwgc

The Emperor’s theme doesn’t really fit all that well there in the first place (although I like that uptempo rendition of it) so I don’t think you really need to change the music. The sequel trilogy’s score definitely plays a little faster/looser with leitmotif usage anyway.

I feel like moving mustafar and palpatine to later in there not only works, but you don’t have to do AS much work to the sequence now, either. You can probably pull the stop on the Star Destroyer and the TIES coming down from it to the planet surface. And so far as “buildup” goes, I feel like putting that sequence about 15 minutes into the movie serves that concept better than trying to stretch one minute into two.

Rey’s still referencing the lightspeed skipping that’s been cut, though (I think that sequence might as well stay in, myself)

Hal 9000 said:

idir_hh said:
Liked the idea so I made a quick test. It works really well with Poppa’s tie fighter’s flying above the forest, would be nice though to have a shot of Vader’s castle with the 3 fighters flying by to tie it all together.
https://vimeo.com/420388818

That’s pretty good! The TIEs provide the sort of POV we follow to get us down to the planet surface. I wish it could be Hux and Pryde on the destroyer, as it feels weird to follow the ties away from Kylo to… Kylo.

I wonder if there’s a way to take the three ties coming into view from the original tilt down, and have them basically entering the Mustafar sky (think the tilt down from the fireworks in Jedi to reveal the Endor forest), with Poppa’s TIEs coming in once the tilt is fully finished and set. That seems like the smoothest way to get to Mustafar’s surface from the crawl: Follow the three TIEs straight into Mustafar’s atmosphere. It could also smooth out the transition from starfield to blackness, by introducing another transition from blackness to grey/red, and then the forest/landscape. Once it settles, POPPA’s TIEs enter from the left edge of the frame as the initial 3 TIEs disappear into pinpoints.

I think S1 of the Mandalorian was very leaky as well, wasn’t it?

Ultimately it ended up really not mattering at all. IIRC even the fact there were “yodas” in the show didn’t really have that much of an impact. The Mandalorian’s success has made it pretty clear that whatever market there is for spoilers is so small as to be almost inconsequential.

Plus, keep in mind: This isn’t really Filoni’s show, it’s Favreau’s. Not to say Filoni isn’t annoyed that sites like Slashfilm are reporting on things before they appear in the show proper. But it’s probably just that - an annoyance at best. I don’t think these leaks are going to hurt the show itself in October. There’s enough time between now and then that most of this stuff will probably be forgotten in the meantime 😃

It’s more about not smashing straight to the Palpatine reveal. If nothing else, the Mustafar provides a little buildup and anticipation of the Palpatine reveal.

I don’t know that it provides any buildup or anticipation, though. Theoretically it could, but the structure of the story (and its execution in the film itself) prevents that. I agree that Mustafar is supposed to possibly function as buildup, but I don’t think it does that at all, and even in its originally written form, it’s function as a “mystery” for Kylo to solve is perfunctory: The movie starts with everyone in the theater knowing Palpatine is here. Treating Palpatine’s presence as the payoff at the end of Kylo’s mini-journey just seems like an empty storytelling pursuit (and is likely why the sequence got cut to ribbons in the main edit in the first place). Especially since Kylo almost immediately shrugs him off afterwards. So it’s a mystery that isn’t very mysterious, solved very quickly, and then effectively rejected by the person who solved it. That doesn’t make for a good “payoff.” But if you just “smash” to his first appearance in the movie, it does work as the setup it functionally is in the narrative. Thinking of it as a “reveal” feels rooted in an extra-narrative importance derived from the character’s position in pop-culture, and not due to any of the story’s actual demands in the first act.

HOWEVER: The ideas for moving the sequence to later in the movie, using it in a flashback, or withholding Palpatine’s presence for a much more substantial amount of time (closer to the end of act 1, 10-15 minutes into the movie instead of at minute 3 or 4) could lend itself to his very appearance actually being a “payoff” or a “reveal” a little more, but that would necessitate a considerable restructuring of the plot points along the narrative arc.

There’s a ton of really fun and interesting ideas flying around on every page. The last few posts on this one are a good example, too!