I vote to have a significant time jump and focus on the new leads for an entire movie.
You’re forgetting Luke coming back as special-creepy-Force ghost 😄
Not if you put Hoth 2.0 at the beginning of the movie with a radical restructure!
Don’t worry Hal, you made TFA restructured (among others), ain’t gonna hold you to any fire!
But I still think it’s a bad scene. Not only bad, but badly edited as well.
edit:@Dominic
well it looks silly. Don’t know how else to put it
@poppasketti
Well for me it would either be a drastic restructuring like I suggested above, or…
What you just proposed. A simple edit.
I think it would fix a huge majority of the movie’s most glaring problems, with the smallest amount of effort required.
I think Leia’s spacewalk is one of the biggest factors of people losing the plot in the theaters. It’s just so dumb…
I haven’t encountered a single person in my circle who liked it. Most either disliked it, or outright hated it.
I think this would be the quickest change anyone should do when starting an edit of this movie. Blow that piece of junk… OUT OF THE SKY!
There might be a way to make it work still. Most of the issues I pointed out above could maybe be worked out with some clever editing.
For example, Kylo kills Han, but Rey and Finn just… escape successfully.
Then she reaches Ahch-To and trains with Luke, and has Force-Time sessions as well.
Then the duel happens later as you pointed out, just cut Finn and the whole lightsaber pull thing. Don’t know if that’s possible.
Problem though is that with this, they would be going to a similar-looking location twice. 😛
The duel with Kylo makes no sense if Rey has been training for 5 years. Why would Kylo duel Finn first, why would Finn have Rey’s or someone else’s lightsaber, why would Rey get force-pushed unconscious if she’s had 5 years of training, and why would there be so much drama over who can force-pull the lightsaber if Rey was already practicing with it over the course of the last 5 years?
Also, where do you put the Force-Time sesions? She goes back to on Ahch-To for even more training? That’s redundant, a lot!
After IX however, there might be a way to simply cut this duel entirely. Rey trains, and has Force-Time sessions with Kylo, and it culminates in their temporary alliance in TLJ. Then they fight for the FIRST TIME using IX’s probable footage.
Something like that. A rethread of the OT but instead of the Luke/Vader fight in ESB they actually fight together, and THEN duel a la ROTJ
I don’t have such a huge problem with Rey using the Force from the get-go seeing as
I just wish this trilogy provided more exposition. It’s like if right now, people just LOATHE exposition to a point where film-makers just press CTRL-ALT-DEL and remove it all. It’s about finding a balance.
Yeah, if this edit idea doesn’t work with only TLJ (for mostly in-universe continuity reasons), it might work in the context of the whole trilogy being out, using shots from IX.
But another idea would be to simply say “to hell with their structure” and re-edit the whole trilogy as either 2 movies, 3 totally different movies in terms of structure, or something else.
There’s something truly great hidden somewhere within this trilogy. Some of the scenes in The Last Jedi are among the best this saga has to offer so far.
Rian said in an interview yesterday that the Knights of Ren weren’t in the movie primarily because the movie was already “full”.
link: https://soundcloud.com/empiremagazine/star-wars-the-last-jedi-spoiler-special
Well seeing all the great cut ideas people proposed in here so far, I’d say it’s because the movie is full of crap.
Studio-mandated crap perhaps? He said Leia’s horrible Mary poppins scene was Kathleen Kennedy’s idea = Studio idea, not his. What other ideas were not his? Sky is the limit.
I think it might be. I’m gonna be seeing it again soon, so we’ll see. One thing though. Would you include Ben declaring that he is the Supreme Leader and Rey leaving the ship/meeting up with Leia?
Still have to figure out the exact ending though, as I said I need to rewatch and rewatch the movie to know which shots are possible to include and which aren’t. Kylo declaring, I would say yes, Rey meeting the rest, not sure that’s possible without some VFX.
So when he says he came here to die, I assume he’s saying that even the afterlife sucks.
Who says Star Wars is uninteresting?
I think this line should be cut 😛 (as should everything that makes him reluctant to train Rey in this edit)
Has anyone here tried looking into a radical edit that would invert the structure of TLJ? It was first proposed by Detective on fanedit.org, I simply went into more details and fixed the incoherences. Btw I absolutely agree with everyone here concerning the editing. It’s atrocious and my main negative with the movie. Definitely something to fix.
Anyway, like I said the edit is radical so bear with me until the end here. It’s also quite unique.
It would go like this, and it would require some minor TFA editing as well:
We would open with an action setpiece – Hoth 2.0 – along with a suitable crawl. No Finn, no Rey, rest is the same (except no rocks blocking them). Luke projects and the Resistance escapes.
The rest of the movie begins to play-out as it does right now. The First Order are chasing Resistance ships, which is quite logical since they literally just got saved by Luke and the First Order is running after them. Trim the non-essential stuff, the jokes mainly (basically what everyone in here is saying to cut).
Cut mary poppins Leia and go with her being injured, or just remove it altogether and have her being fine (something lots of people have discussed here so far).
No more reluctant Luke. He trains Rey willingly since he just used the Force to save everyone. No “cut out of the Force either”. He’s just a bit grumpy which is understandable given Kylo’s backstory which he will explain to Rey, in time. There’s also another reason which I will cover later.
Now for this whole timeline to make sense, and to give time for Hoth 2.0 to happen, TFA must end on Rey leaving. She finds Luke here in this movie, not the end of TFA. Fortunately, this edit has already been done. Thank you DigiModification, and others. 😃
The movie also cuts the Casino sequence and most of the Resistance stuff since it doesn’t really matter to the overall story if Hoth 2.0 happens at the beginning. Blow it out of the sky. We’ll see how feasible that is with the blu-ray release, but Finn and Roses’s sideplot is of no consequence to the Throne Room Sequence. Which brings me to…
The single most important point of all this restructuring –
A huge problem with the theatrical TLJ is they that they seem to forget who the main characters are, especially Rey. She basically disappears for 10 minutes in the climax of the story… how did that get past editing?
Think about it, the Throne Room Sequence is the only way this movie should ever have ended, it’s the real ending to the main characters’ arcs in this story. The rest of the original ending (Crait), although hauntingly beautiful, has little to do with the actual main protagonist and is, thus, misplaced in this story.
Since they decided to go forward with this, we don’t have a choice – he has to die. Might as well make the most of out of it, and make this edit work, since I believe it’s the only way to make this whole ending thing work out.
The events of TLJ don’t really prevent us from having Luke train Rey while being… dead this whole time! It would also explain why he disappeared in TFA’s crawl. He died! Kylo Ren killed him, during the flashback when the temple collapsed on him. IMPORTANT: Remove the part where Luke even THINKS about killing Kylo. Kylo simply killed him by making the temple fall on him (intentionally or not), period. Luckily some posters here seem to have already figured that part out, kudos to you guys!
I mean, going forward with this saga, Luke is dead no matter what, might as well make it a nice twist, and make Kylo Ren even more threatening in the process since he killed Luke… and Snoke now! Would give more gravitas to it all. It would also mirror Snoke’s weird death by having Luke die the same kind of death. Both masters are now dead.
Luke’s force ghost would explain all of this to Rey, like he does in the movie. His character arc of transferring the fate of the Jedi to Rey in the theatrical stays pretty much the same, but sadly, Yoda will have to be cut because it makes no sense in this edit. The little ins and outs of Luke’s motivations would have to be worked out on a scene-by-scene basis, whether he is a little bit reluctant at first or not at all. Depends what works best.
So the projection on Hoth 2.0 was his force ghost all along, and so is the rest of the movie. He’s projecting his living self to train Rey, so no VFX required, or minimal (remove silly scenes like the tittie-milk though). What’s not said directly (but heavily implied visually) is that Luke trained in this for years post-ROTJ, and even surpassed Master Yoda and Obi-Wan in that aspect: he can make himself look real, even as a force ghost! He still can’t interact with objects, hence hal9000’s cut proposed in this thread about making the box he sits on NOT move, and remove every shot where he interacts with real stuff
Or there could be a faint Force Ghost effect VFX added to him, which shows that he decides how he appears (for continuity with IX).
Obviously Leia knew all along, which would require a small line of hers to be removed in TFA (Leia saying “Luke…” when they complete the map) That would also explain why she seems so defeated/sad since TFA – Luke is dead, Ben Solo went to the Dark Side… huge blow 😦
It would make their reunion at the beginning on Hoth 2.0 also more bittersweet as she knows by then that Luke is dead. She’s still happy to see his ghost though, which is awesome.
But don’t forget, the main PURPOSE of this edit is to switch the Throne Room sequence at the end while still going with what they established so far in canon.
I actually think that by the time IX comes out, this kind of edit will make even more sense in retrospect since this next movie will probably be all about Rey and Kylo Ren (again with a strong supporting performance by dead-Luke), so TLJ should, too, have been only about Rey and Kylo Ren, hence this edit. Hell, combining this edit with IX might even be possible.
Sorry for the huge wall of text, I am just a huge fan with lots of ideas and who watches lots of fan edits 😛 I’m also a decent screenwriter so I could actually rework TLJ’s script (taken from Disney when they release it) to make the skeleton for this edit, if need be.
What do you think? Possible, not possible? I’ll watch TLJ a lot more when it comes out so for now I go mainly from memory.
I actually think it would be possible to have Rey train with Luke before doing any of her stuff, but it would require a huge restructure of both TFA and TLJ
By the way, the more I think about it, the more I think it would make sense if TFA and TLJ were combined into 1 long movie.
There’s no timejump anyway.
Possibly yet another rumor but
“Original Cuts of ‘Star Wars’ May Finally, Possibly Be Re-Released for the 40th Anniversary”
http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-original-cuts/
“Every now and then there’s a new rumor that the original, unaltered, non-Special Edition cuts of the Star Wars trilogy are on the verge of being re-released to the public. Sometimes the rumor says the original trilogy will be re-released in theaters, other times they say the movies will be available in high-definition on Blu-ray for the first time officially. Now a new rumor has emerged regarding the release of the Star Wars original cuts, but this one is somewhat more credible.”
Let’s hope there’s some truth to it!
I don’t understand the problem people have with titles for planets.
It’s the same with GOTG, it helps us know where we are, why not let it in?
I am very much in agreement that Rogue One is the new Episode III
…
If only there were worthy episodes I and II as well 😛
I hope those 10-20 minutes of deleted scenes on the Blu-ray will be fully finished with the special effects. I’m really wanting an Extended Edition Cut for The Force Awakens on a custom Blu-ray from someone here on OriginalTrilogy.com
Me too, that would be awesome! I hope the deleted scenes don’t contradict any scenes in the movie though.
There’s definitely something to that Technicolor look though 😃
This looks the best imo!
Would it be the kind of colours featured on a despecialized v3.0?
That’s exactly it. Also happens with a lot of lights on the Death Star.
I can’t say if it is in their print or not, but I just had a look at one of mine, and I adjusted it (very sloppily, not worrying about colour and blowing out the whites to try and force any bleed to show) to be at a similar contrast level, and the print I have here doesn’t appear to have the smearing.
Just curious but how did you adjust it? 😃
Thanks for doing this Harmy! I’ll patiently wait for the v2.0, just watched the bluray a month ago and, well, let’s just say I’m tired of all these Lucas additions -_- Hayden force ghost was just the hit in the gut in the end.
Your previous Despecialized editions are amazing, so thanks for that as well!
