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.
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?
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
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)
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/420388818That’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!
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
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.
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.
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.