Broom Kid

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!

kewlfish said:
A lot of people (including myself, so bias) have worked on keeping this portion of the movie in… so if we remove it all together… all that work we did goes into the trash. Just so we can cut a minute out of the movie.

I get that - and I don’t want it to seem like people’s work is unimportant, but conversely, you just also essentially argued that you did a ton of work to enhance one minute of film that can be just as effectively summed up and easily removed with a line of text in the crawl. It’s why this one beat is such a 50/50 for so many people looking in here 😃

Is it in there because it looks cool? Because it looks cool and provides “breathing room?” Can it be made to look even cooler? Those are all good and valid reasons to put a lot of time and effort and remarkable, impressive work into saving that one minute, and there are a ton of great options and possibilities for that sequence, either making it a little longer, or chopping it up and putting it in other places, etc.

But I would argue that using the sunk cost fallacy to fuel editing decisions can lead to some pretty rough creative dilemmas as well.

Interesting question regarding Mustafar that I thought I’d throw out:

Is the primary utility in keeping it simply that it works as a placeholder? Everyone seems to agree it doesn’t work as a scene or a sequence on its own, and that it’s more or less fundamentally broken, and the information it imparts isn’t necessary (or even understandable without extra-film context).

What is it about the scene that is prompting people to work so hard (and that work is pretty amazing, too!) in saving it? It doesn’t serve a particularly good story purpose, and the primary reason people seem to want it saved is because if it’s gone, the movie “moves too fast.”

The question seems to be this: Do we remove confusion and unnecessary complication by streamlining the film at its open with a Mustafar-free beginning - or - do we try to add more to the sequence for the sake of its providing “breathing room” at the beginning of the movie.

The aesthetics of it, and its ability to “take up time” seem to be its only real selling points. And that’s not a disqualification, either! Star Wars often has moments that exist solely because they look cool (Lightspeed Skipping is a great example from this very movie, in fact) so if Mustafar really looks that cool, then it’s fulfilling its only real purpose, and should be left in.

we really can’t cut alot of this movie out because we don’t have deleted scenes to fill in the time.

Is the point of an edit to make the story better, or to fill time? Why is hitting a pre-determined runtime a goal? Isn’t precisely the same instinct that led to this film’s problems in the first place? it’s possible that the flow and pacing of the movie actually feels better even if the movie is a fair bit shorter than its theatrical runtime was. It’s hard to judge without trying a bunch of ideas in their filmic context and getting a real sense of how that moves from scene to scene through the movie.

Also: reminder that yesterday, Neerb pointed out that removing Mustafar actually cleans up REY’s motivations and actions later in the film

https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1346448

the work being done on the potential edits to this movie is really something to see unfold, absolutely. I’m kind of astounded not only by the speed of the threads, but by how much really good work is being turned out, and how fast it’s getting turned around.

last week I wandered in here and didn’t realize how far behind I’d fallen, and spent a good 30 or so minutes paging through all the additions and seeing scenes get invented, realized, and refined with every new click was pretty astonishing.

Thank you to everyone putting in all that work, and especially thank you to everyone being exceedingly patient with people like me who are only putting in suggestions, haha.

I’ll go back to just reading and watching from the sidelines again, but wanted to say thanks.

DominicCobb said:
Exegol is supposed to be a new, unknown factor for both parties. If Kylo just waltzes up at the start of the movie it raises all sorts of new confusions.

Disagree, sorry. I don’t think starting the movie with him already at Exegol is confusing, much less confusing in any “new” way that the movie itself doesn’t already have baked into its very premise.

You’re putting a lot of weight on images of him flying through space junk. Watching his ship go through all that stuff doesn’t really change anything our heroes are doing later, or highlight how much harder it is for them. The two things aren’t really connected, and the effort to connect Kylo’s difficulties finding Exegol to Rey’s later difficulties doesn’t really pay off in any version of the story. Neverar just succinctly summed up what I’m getting at:

Whether or not Kylo finds Exegol immediately or two minutes into the movie, the fact remains that this supposedly legendary and remote world is now ‘found’ in the context of this film.

Basically, what I’m saying is that Exegol being found is introduced so early on that trying to preserve any aspect of it as a dramatic payoff is rendered inert immediately. It only has utility as a setup, so it’s probably best to just make that setup as clean as possible. I’m not against Kylo flying through all that debris, or making the Mustafar Minute coherent through added VFX! But that’s a different approach than this one.

Also, I hope this isn’t coming across as “heated” at all! I’m not angry or annoyed by the conversation, and hopefully nobody else is feeling that way. Definitely not the intention, just trying to talk through the intended meanings of these scenes in the context of the film’s (and any edit’s) larger purpose, and figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and why.

DominicCobb said:

I mean yeah it’s completely different when the plot is literally about finding the planet.

I don’t know if I’d describe “The Rise of Skywalker” as being “about finding a planet” anymore than I’d describe Return of the Jedi as being “about finding the Death Star II.”

The plot is about THE HEROES finding the planet. Whether the bad guy finds it in the beginning or not doesn’t functionally affect their journey at all, really, which is partially why the Mustafar Minute feels as useless as it does. It’s prolonging the beginning of the movie for the sake of making the Emperor’s appearance feel like a payoff when it’s function in the story is THE SETUP.

kewlfish said:
one of the big complaints that many people had was that Palpatine showed up too early. It’s really gonna be picking the lesser of two evils - Palpatine shows up right away and out of nowhere, or gratuitous, flashy music video fight scene that makes no sense

It’s only “too early” if the buildup was meaningful and substantial, though. The problem with Palpatine showing up is that he’s showing up at all, and that’s not a thing you can really avoid in any cut of this film. The “lesser of two evils” comparison is really the best way to frame it. If you can prolong the “wait” to see him from one minute to two, and make the Mustafar minute a little more coherent, that’s cool as hell, and the work done on that front is SUPER-impressive, especially for how fast it’s being turned out.

But I don’t think that extra minute being added to Mustafar is really addressing the “too early” complaint. Palpatine’s appearance as “reward” for the viewer’s patience and attention is an idea that doesn’t have a lot of merit to it anyway. Him showing up isn’t really a “payoff” in the dramatic sense of the term, especially not as applied in this story. It’s the setup. There’s not as much reason to prolong it in that case. What you’re really prolonging is the beginning of the story. And you need him for that story to begin. The comparison to a marathon runner upthread is a good way to frame it: Rey and friends will have to run that marathon, and the drama is in their doing so. Starting with a villain meet-up doesn’t really shortchange anything dramatically. You don’t need to see the bad-guy completing the heroes later quest first. Especially when the completion of that quest is essentially a “music video” on fast forward.

poppasketti said:

Octorox, yes just a quick mockup for the video side of things. Thought about leaving it silent, but realized it would look frozen without the music coming out of the crawl (it really hangs there a long time).

Leaving it silent (just the sound of the ship approaching Exegol, and music only beginning at the landing) might work after the play-down from the main title.

DominicCobb said:
But what is important is properly conveying how far flung the place is, which is lost if you start the movie with Kylo already there, and yet it takes our heroes an hour and a half to reach it.

I think our villain having an advantage over our heroes isn’t a problem that needs solving that early in the film, though. It’s not a bad thing that our bad guy has access to the bigger bad guy’s lair and the heroes don’t know where that place is. It should be harder for the heroes to find the lair. That Kylo is there at the beginning doesn’t diminish anything. His being able to get there isn’t really the problem that the story is presenting us - our HEROES being able to get there is.

It’s not much different from Vader knowing exactly where Death Star II is and the Rebellion only just getting the location at the midway point of ROTJ. The notion that it was hard for Kylo to find the place doesn’t really serve any purpose in the story, and has no real bearing on anything that happens afterwards either.

Looks good but I don’t think the music transition here works at all, is it meant to be temp?

He said it was a mockup, so I’m pretty sure it’s just a temp crossfade from one cue to the other. it’d need either different music editing, or a complete cue replacement right up until he lands.

^^^ that’s the one.

I feel like if you went straight from the crawl to this shot and you showed it to someone who hadn’t yet seen Rise of Skywalker, they’d have no idea there was a whole weird disjointed sequence that preceded it, and they wouldn’t be at a loss or adrift for what happens in the following sequence on Exegol, either. Mustafar is more or less extraneous as it is in the finished film.

That shot above just needs some new music editing/cue replacement (something closer to what was actually used in the clip) to smooth it out.

I don’t know, nobody flying to Exegol seems particularly stressed by doing so. The “difficulty” is completely no-sold by the actors in the various cockpits, and is made apparent solely through visual noise and VFX filler substituting for storytelling.

The closest comparison in Star Wars I can think of is “There’s Always a Bigger Fish” from TPM, where neither of the Jedi seem too freaked out by giant leviathans coming after them. But in that instance, there’s at least Jar Jar expressing how dangerous and freaky this whole thing is, and some POV shots showing just how close the close calls are. There’s not even a Jar Jar analog for any of the “traveling to Exegol” scenes in TROS though. It’s just actors doing “business as usual” miming of flying in between VFX shots of a whole bunch of stuff on screen that ships aren’t really having any problem steering around.

Poe and Finn have more visible trouble escaping the ice planetoid than anyone in the movie has getting to or leaving Exegol.

I think any amount of “buildup” there is negligible though. The openings to each movie after a tilt down usually aren’t exciting at all. Ominous or mysterious, sure - which is what the tilt down to Kylo’s jumping into frame would be - but I think the difficulty of getting to Exegol isn’t really an idea that needs setting up beyond what comes later.

The idea that it’s at all that difficult to fly to Exegol is completely blown apart by the events of the film no matter what: The film goes out of its way by the climax to point out it’s not really very hard to navigate the path there at all (since roughly 5 million ships keep popping in and out of the system going both ways) - the real hard part is knowing where to go

FWIW: I think moving Leia’s body disappearing to immediately after reaching her son is a decent idea. I’ve never at all liked the idea that Leia effectively dies when “Kylo” does, but her corporeal body just lays under a sheet for the next half hour of the movie. It’s such a weird way to “pay homage” to Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia, by using the suggestion of her dead body as not much more than set dressing.

If her body disappears just before she distracts Ben, it removes that sort of distasteful use of the character from the film, AND it makes Maz’s explanation of what’s even happening with her a little more coherent - we literally see it take “all she has left” to do that.

Neerb said:

This whole Mustafar thing is starting to border on fan film for me, personally. We have repurposed footage from Rogue One, National Geographic, and Battlefront 2, but in the end the scene is still going to be as rushed, choppy, and poorly explained as it was in the theater. If anything, it might be getting more confusing to follow (we’re currently at three very different establishing shots). None of Hal’s edits have felt this “fan film” before, and that’s not even accounting for all the other crazy special effects stuff that’s going into this fan edit.

On that note, I’m also not totally sold on Rey’s outtake visuals for her final line. It’s a weird camera angle for such a dramatic moment (which makes sense, because it’s B-roll), and it also has an odd sort of slow-motion effect when she turns.

That’s the thing about the Mustafar minute, though: It’s so poorly edited in the released film that there’s really only two options for making it work in a fan-edit: Completely creating the elements you need to make it work as a piece of visual storytelling, or jettisoning it altogether.

The simplest, fastest, and cleanest method to “fix” the Mustafar Minute is to just delete it (in terms of visual or narrative info it’s almost completely useless and unnecessary), but I understand why people are loath to do that, there’s multiple reasons why people would prefer to try rescuing the footage that’s there. But the only way you can rescue that footage in the opening is to augment it with stuff that either was never shot, or was shot but is completely unavailable to anyone making the fan-edit.

The only other option is to lean into how disjointed and nonsensical it already is and use it solely as flashback fodder, mixed in with a vision that contains other flashbacks and flashforwards.

however: I think the alternate angle of Rey saying “Rey Skywalker” is actually BETTER than what’s in the film - I disagree that it’s a weird camera angle, I think it’s honestly a unique choice to feature the hero in profile declaring her hero status overtly (that’s what the scene really is), and I think it works better because of that - it’s very “comic book cover”

With Clone Wars, it’s not a case of the show being aired out of “correct order” - the fact the show jumped around in time was intentional in the early seasons (as Tobar pointed out), as it was closer to an anthology series than a narrative arc. That “anthology” idea got phased out later in the show, but the “correct” order is the one you saw on Netflix.

I’d honestly suggest sticking with that order myself, if only because you get to see the show grow into itself, as opposed to having a later, more polished version of the show inserted into the early, still stumbling version of itself. I think that makes the experience of watching the show more jarring, in fact. Same reasons I don’t think the “Machete Order” or any viewing order of the films other than chronological works, really. Same principle that makes the Special Editions an incongruous and not-very-well-liked viewing experience: retroactively trying to fit new things into older things just highlights the difference in tone and execution, and calls the wrong kind of attention to itself.

Frank Oz

Jackpumpkinhead said:

I’d be interested in seeing how this stacks up against “Solo: The Bold One” regrade

Well this is the first I’ve ever heard of THIS. I looked at the KK650 regrade of Solo before but didn’t think it was all that much of an improvement. Found a reddit thread about the project

https://www.reddit.com/r/fanedits/comments/a6utr9/solo_the_bold_one_a_new_colour_grade_of_solo/

but can’t find any links, torrents, or anything. It’s a year old reddit thread and I don’t have a reddit account because I believe in positive mental health, LOL.

Anyone have any idea how to get a hold of this Bold One regrade?

Fang Zei said:

Who said anything about Disney+? They’ll probably never do that. I was talking about physical media.

I brought up Disney+ because that’s the most likely/plausible means of the original versions being released now. Physical media is a dying entertainment niche, and for the purposes of the argument you were making re: financial incentive and rewards, at this point the prioritized financial rewards they’re seeking come through online VOD rentals and subscriptions to streaming platforms. Physical media releases are a secondary or tertiary concern. The now-normalized practice of making digital versions available three weeks before the physical copy drops was a big part of that.

Don’t get me wrong - I had the same hopes you’re describing in that post, and I allow those hopes to take up space in my head and heart every time there’s a new release announced, because that’s the best time to have those hopes and let them live a little. The Skywalker Saga set showed me openly hoping for the things you suggested, you can even check my post history and see me putting them out there, LOL!

But when that hope doesn’t bear fruit (and it hasn’t for about 20 years now), I let it go until a time where it MIGHT apply again. And right now I’m not seeing any reason to revive it, because once again it seems pretty clear that nobody’s preventing the original version’s official release, and there’s not really any financial incentive applying pressure against that unwillingness to release it. Lucasfilm doesn’t want to do it right now. Nothing’s stopping them. They just don’t care to do it.

Fang Zei said:

Maybe, but I’m not so sure just how much loyalty they’ll feel once they start feeling the pressure from the higher ups at Disney to make them as much money as possible by any means necessary.

The money Disney is losing isn’t about to be made up by releasing the Original Trilogy to Disney+, though. That’s not feasible or plausible. Lucasfilm is already driving a lot of traffic to that platform (and to Disney in general) as it is and it’s not really having much of an effect on those losses, because those losses aren’t really FROM the movies division. Disney’s losses are being most strongly felt in the parks being closed, and sports being gone. Theaters being closed is hurting them, yes, but that’s not a particularly large concern in the face of their owning their own streaming network. They just moved the Hamilton release up a year and a half, for example.

As for George, half of that $4 billion he got paid in the sale was in Disney stock, not actual cash. It’s in his interest to see the company do well,

The original versions aren’t big enough for that to be a concern. They just aren’t. It’s not a money thing. Lucasfilm just doesn’t want to do it right now. They probably will, eventually. But there’s no weird conspiracy behind it. No contractual stipulations, no distribution problems. And it’s not a spite thing, either. They just… don’t want to do it.

For now.

When they do, it probably won’t be due to money concerns, either.

Fang Zei said:
The consensus seems to be that the people currently in charge at Lucasfilm feel a sense of loyalty to George,

It’s this.

I happen to think it simply comes down to greed on Disney’s part and the desire to maximize profits.

Not this.

Either way - Fox never had anything to do with the original versions not being distributed. That was never at any point anything other than misguided fan speculation repeated so often on forums and comments sections that people just took it as read and repeated it themselves. There was never any inkling that theory had any basis in fact, it just sounded plausible-ish provided you didn’t look into it too closely, and nobody “winning” arguments on a messageboard was inclined to do that anyway.

It’s the same with the “Lucas built a clause into the contract” story that has since replaced the “Fox won’t let them” story that’s been mooted for almost 10 years. Lucas never built a clause into a contract, and Iger never agreed to such a clause. The entire notion of the clause even existing is a fan invention.

The holdup is Lucasfilm. Not Disney. And the people with the power to get it done at Lucasfilm don’t want to do it. If they did, it would be done already.

Is there a shot of that cask with the doors fully closed before they start opening?

I wonder if, after the tilt down where the stars disappear but before the planet & ships come into view, you could have the doors open on the mask. It would need some nimble music editing, but I think you might be able to go straight from the tilt down to that thing opening up with a pretty clever cut and some brightness/contrast adjusting on the surface of the cask itself.

I also wonder if, opening straight on Vader’s burnt mask, you could combine parts of the Mustafar minute with his visions (it would need more cutting back and forth, and decreasing the amount of time spent watching him touching the mask - split those shots up into smaller cutaways, basically) and his taking his hand away and whirling out of the room would then cut straight to him flying to Exegol.

Maybe that’s the only real way to make the Mustafar Minute make sense without having to create establishing shots in VFX - build it into visions/flashbacks, so its disjointed nature is absolutely presented as intentional, and not a result of bad editing making the sequence incomprehensible.

If the combined vision/mustafar killing spree ends on him grabbing the wayfinder and cuts back to him taking his hand off the mask and leaving the room, it should work.

The biggest plus to that idea is a conceptual one: It imagines a behind-the-scenes consideration of the film’s story that was, so far as anyone can tell, never even considered.

Adding that to this movie is a good idea, but it’s a good idea that I don’t think can be applied to the film as it is. It needed to be applied to the film before it was written.

omnimuffin said:

I had also had some thoughts, re: Mustafar; first, if somebody wanted to try their hand at rendering a Vader’s Castle approach shot, I imagine that a rip of the models/assets from Vader: Immortal would be extremely helpful here.

Second off: I wonder what the feasibility of adding of the statues from Vader: Immortal to the bog on Mustafar would be, because it IS supposed to be sacred to her/her followers. Here’s some concept art of the statues, though a model would almost certainly be able to be pulled from the Immortal filesystem.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B-znJKMA6k-/

Third, and this is less directly related to Mustafar, but I wonder if there’s a way to restructure the scenes to imply that the ‘helmet reconstruction’ scene is taking place on Exegol.

The Mustafar suggestions are great, and if there is someone with the time, knowledge, and wherewithal to create actual establishing shots of Mustafar for the beginning of the movie, that’d be the only real way to save that opening “Mustafar Minute.” The open really only works one of two ways:

1. tilt down - cut Mustafar ENTIRELY - and start with Kylo jumping into frame in front of the nebula.

or

2. tilt down - follow Kylo’s shuttle and fighters into Mustafar’s atmosphere, cut to those ships landing, cut to an establishing shot showing where they’re landing and where they’re trying to go (Vader’s Castle) in the same frame. Then you can cut to Kylo fighting pretty easily.

The second one makes Mustafar Minute comprehensible and useful to the story, but it necessitates a lot of elements that don’t exist in the film (or don’t exist at all right now).

very curious to have a look at this!

The screenshots as posted seem stretched to 16x9, however. I’m guessing that’s inaccurate to what the rip itself looks like?

IIRC, this laserdisc was also mastered to a lower IRE level, leading to the blacks looking crushed unless brightness/contrast were adjusted on the display itself - something to do with the difference between the Japanese and North American markets? I’m not completely sure on this, and could be wrong (someone please correct me if I am), but I know from personal experience with the disc that it definitely looks a lot more contrasty and crushed than other late-era laserdiscs.

Thanks so much for doing this, and posting it. The amount of work is tremendous!