Delpheas

I agree with a lot of that Eddie. For me TCW is actually the best Star Wars so I have no issue with the awkward lies and lies of omission from R2, Obi-wan, & Yoda (and in my edits, 3PO) It’s all the same stuff as “My student Darth Vader killed Anakin Skywalker”

Though I do actually think Rey Nobody won’t have a huge impact on post RoS canon, because by the end she’s a “Skywalker” and that’s gonna be what is important for any future media in that era.

Yes! I like that ED. That approach to the arcs is well balanced and helps with the forward momentum of the story.

That idea is one that I would still love to see as the film needs it and I really like Rey having a purple saber at the end, since she should be carrying on Leia’s legacy of being something other than a Jedi.

Don’t do anything you don’t WANT to do, just cus others like the idea. If anything someone else can take the idea and run with it.

But if you do use it, Kylo having a vision when he grabs the Wayfinder would be a nice parallel to Rey having one when she grabs it later.

Also, Rey getting the Wayfinder needs to do something or it’s just like “why?” did she need to go after it. By using the recolored Mustafar scene you establish the Wayfinder as having a connection to the fleet.

So what if Rey getting hers lets her do something to help the Resistance by disabling part of the Order’s fleet or something?

Ok. I really like that. I’m assuming that’ll be in the scene where usually Obi-wan is like “I understand” and references Satine?

But yeah a balance is necessary imo so that her absence is felt, but the characters have to reference it so it feels different from the times there were two to three arcs in a row without her in them. Looking forward to it!

Are you planning on using the Son of Dathomir audio comic at all? Or just go with Maul’s reference in the finale to the Death Watch rescuing him from Sidious.

I was looking at Rey’s new saber in the final scene, and I was wondering if there was anyway that the framing of the jilt could be adjusted so that the whole hilt is in frame and then we see Rey actually ignite both sides of it?

There are hints throughout the film towards her having a saberstaff (when she’s training she pulls a stick to herself and uses it as a staff, and when she’s on the death star her vision has her with a saberstaff.) And it would be nice if that had some sort of visual pay off, even if it’s only in this final scene.

I haven’t read the whole thread, so I don’t know what your plans are for Ahsoka’s Trial arc, but one thing I noticed and disliked about the Trace Sisters arc being moved from s6 to s7 is that there are way too many episodes between when Ahsoka leaves and when the viewer sees her again.

So for my personal viewing order I moved the s6 Clovis arc to s5 where it belongs and then moved Ahsoka’s Trial arc to right before the Sifodiyas/Yoda’s vision arc. And then I start S7 with the Trace Sisters arc, followed by the Utapau arc. This way Ahsoka leaves and in the next arc Yoda is sad about it, and in the next (Trace sisters) arc Ahsoka & Anakin sense each other, and then Anakin & Obi-Wan have their convo about it on Utapau.

This helps Ahsoka’s leaving feel like it is having a continuous narrative impact, as it stands in the official ordering of episodes it’s a whole season after she leaves before its mentioned again by Yoda, and we don’t see Anakin & Obi-Wan talking about it until Utapau. Which is unacceptably long for a main character to be gone and unmentioned for.

Anyway, that’s my suggestion.

Aside from using HAL’s Padme lives ending I have made no changes to the film’s relationship to canon.

I might eventually try a “Naboo of Alderaan” version of the PT, but I generally don’t wanna break continuity with The Clone Wars, which is my favorite piece of Star Wars media.

I’m more likely to make a version where Anakin is not called Vader and we don’t see the suit, until episode 4. But who knows, I’m not super interested in making major changes to the films.

Outfit switching is absolutely fine by me 😃

Even if Hal decides not to use the Ajan Kloss base shot, I would love folks to continue working on it, as I think it could look decent and other folks might want to use it.

DominicCobb said:

They have a link to their Parler account in the description. That’s gonna be a very hard no from me.

Oh yeah, passing on that.

So I watched this with my wife, who also watched HotF with me. We really enjoyed it, and definitely appreciated the attempts to make Luke feel more consistent with the OT and Legends. The pacing was MUCH better and the inclusion of a number of deleted scenes helped with that.

Here’s the notes we had on things that we thought were weird or needing improvement.

Like I said in my other post, I think the shots of Luke & Rey staring at each other from a distance don’t work if we’ve already seen them as a vision. It is especially weird to have the shot of her holding the lightsaber out to him from a distance and then without the shots of her walking to him have her handing it to him. So just trim out the repeated shots of the staring and have her hand it to him asap.

After Luke hands Rey back the lightsaber, cut her putting it in the pack, just go right to him storming past her. I get the impulse, but it’s not really necessary.

The cut to Luke saying “you think what, I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all?” is rough, it feels like something is missing.

During lesson 1, right before Luke smacks Rey’s hand, she says something really garbled. I get what you were trying to do with trimming the joke down, but unless you can just have her reach out and get hit without the weird cut of her talking, I think it would be better to leave the full joke.

I really like the training montage, however by having it in the middle of the lesson, and ending on the lesson, it doesn’t quite give the impression of time passing. It needs something else, maybe a recolor at the end to give the impression it’s not the same day.

Also intercutting Kylo’s mask when the ground breaks kinda took away from the impact of being with Rey & Luke. Cutting right to Kylo after Luke says his thing about sensing that raw power before is enough to establish what he means.

During the fleet escape I don’t think cutting to Kylo’s broken mask on the floor adds anything, it kinda felt like an artifact.

Kylo taking the shot on Leia is well done.

And Luke saving Leia/them doing it together makes it feel like a much stronger moment and cuts down on how much focus is on Leia’s still body shooting through space. My wife and I really liked this moment, it was really poignant.

During Rey’s training the cut from “the legacy of the Jedi is failure” to the fleet is both musically and “lyrically” upsetting. By lyrically I mean, it feels like there is more to what luke was saying and it got cut off, and the musical cut is too abrubt. I was really enjoying this training sequence and it was over too soon imo. Maybe even having Luke repeat the line “It’s time for the Jedi to end” again here could help.

Finn messing with Rose’s hair during their break in is an odd moment that doesn’t add to characterisation and isn’t really good humor. I would cut it.

I think there should a moment or two longer with Snoke after he “welcomes” Rey aboard.

In the Yoda scene, as much as I enjoy the scene, I don’t know that it adds anything to this version of the film. In the theatrical it’s part of Yoda teaching Luke, but in your edit Luke already learned the lesson of failure. It’s what he’s been teaching Rey, so for Yoda to tell it to Luke doesn’t work, especially with Luke’s facial reactions. Maybe some trims will help. Idk.

If you can, adding a shot of Holdo on one of the transports before it blows will help, because my wife was wondering what happened to her and I shouldn’t have to explain what was going on based off your notes.

I think you should include Kylo’s version of the events at the temple, it’s part of him getting Rey to doubt Luke as a teacher, part of him tempting her and is necessary I think.

I don’t know if this is a you issue or a FGR issue, but in the shots of Luke after he retracts his blade, you can see it’s Anakin’s hilt, not Luke’s.

And in the film Luke’s “I won’t be the Last Jedi” as it showed Leia was a really nice moment.

Also, having watched the whole film, my suggestion for needing some visual context for the WbtW, such as showing the island fading away from Luke still stands. My wife was completely thrown, and while I appreciate the attempt to have ambiguity, there’s a difference between ambiguity and having no in-film context for what’s going on. But it was still cool to see Leia and Rey sensing him there. Well done!

Overall really well done. Looking forward to what you put together next.

I’m getting ready to engage with the No Palps edit again, cus after watching these two edits, I can’t imagine a version of tRoS with him in it that works at all.

Edit: After some more thoughts, I have to wonder about the effectiveness of some of this ecits goals. I think it succeeded it a lot of ways, but there are some aspects about Luke that I want to address.

In this edit you are attempting to do away with the part of TLJ where Luke is there to die and has cut himself off from the Force. That he’s ready and able to help those he cares about.

This raises the issue however of why he wasn’t helping in TFA. Why didn’t he prevent Starkiller base from firing, why didn’t he save Han, (and why doesn’t he know Han is dead) why did he only start helping after Rey showed up?

If he wasn’t helping before what is the impetus for doing so now?

And if reading the Jedi texts is what brought him his better understanding of the force, why attempt to burn the books? Again, this scene only confuses your narrative more. Are the texts good? Or bad? If they’re bad and him burning them is good, then in the next film Rey having them should lead her down a bad path, but if the texts are helpful, like they are in RoS and are what helped Luke, then burning them needs to go.

And during the third lesson, when he’s explaining that according to the texts “a true Jedi only acts to maintain balance, but that’s bs cus thr galaxy needs people who are always ready to help.” you need to clarify what lesson us and Rey are supposed to take from this. Is she only supposed to act when she can maintain balance even if people die, or should she save her friends? It was unclear. I would suggest trying to have him say that the OLD jedi are the ones who only act when trying to maintain balance, but a TRUE Jedi would be what the galaxy needs and save people. Or something.

And if possible these are things that need to be addressed in the film, and if you can’t make a change work cohesively in a way that is at least somewhat coherent to the viewer, my thought is that you might have to walk back a change or try a different approach.

Good luck!

That’s fair. Though the Anakin/Obi-wan bickering to me isn’t a Tartakovsky thing, so much as the team trying to stay close to the only Anakin/Obi-Wan content they had up to then, which was Anakin always whining about Kenobi and Kenobi always calling him “very young” and immature, etc… which even in AotC is grating.

My thoight is if the point is to end with the Knighting, then trimming the whiny banter would imo be helpful for ensuring believability when Obi-Wan suggests Anakin is ready to graduate. Cus if the only interactions they have up to that point are Obi-Wan telling Anikan to do stuff, and him ignoring Obi-Wan or whining about it, the viewer will wonder where Obi-wan got the idea that Anakin was ready. Just my two cents. 😃

Excited to watch this. And I’m very curious to see what you’re gonna do with the 03 Clone Wars stuff. Since that series is so tonally different and VERY action focused, which is fine for 3-5-15 min shorts, but is grating when edited together and most edits I’ve seen do nothing to trim the action. Or the awful AotC-esque Anakin/Obi-Wan “bickering”.

Personally I think the only relevant bits are the Ventress fight, the first appearance of Grevious, and Anakin’s Knighting. (And maybe the Anakin/Padme rendezvous right before, where 3PO’s gold plate is revealed, but only if you get rid of the sexy music)

Anywho, it might be a bit before I actually watch any of these eps since my wife and I just got into S5 for her first viewing.

If you could somehow use the Ren vs Vader stuff that would actually be pretty cool.

Either way, looking forward to v3. The idea of recoloring some of Mustafar as Exegol should help with the opening feeling so rushed…

And I personally love Rey using Leia’s crystal. 😃 and your recolor looks great.

I don’t know what Acbagel’s plans for tRoS are, but this edit feels like a strong companion to their TFA & TLJ edits.

Also I haven’t watched Ascendant yet, but in that edit’s changelog it mentions doing something to intimate that Leia helped Rey rebuild Anakin’s lightsaber, and I was wondering if that could be applied here at all?
At the very least, once Ascendant v2 is out, I think you should source the crackly saber effects for Anakin/Rey’s lightsaber.

And finally, I think Rey’s line to Leia about “earning” Luke’s saber is just so clunky. And there’s nothing in the previous films that setup her having that fear of being un-worthy. Though I do appreciate your attempts to show that her issue in this film is finally overcoming her self-doubt and her personal fear of failure/what it meant that she wanted to take Ren’s hand.

Edit: Looking at RougueLeader’s suggestion again for using the Ren vs Vader fight, I thought that the initiating factor could be Ren grabbing hold of the Wayfinder/Key. The Wayfinder tests him and his victory over “Vader” is accepted as proof that he won’t fail the way Vader did, and he is granted access to the Remnant Fleet.

To feel properly in place it would need new dialogue, but you could put it in there as is and would work well, again building up the runtime and continuing to add context (plus as RL said the concept is another way your edit brings the film back to the original concept)

((and thinking about the original DotF concept has me wondering if the stuff people were working on in the Ascendant thread for having Ren start on Coruscant could be used here…))

Watched the movie, here’s my thoughts:

Love the restructured opening, it feels so much less formulaic that way. Showing us Jakku before its peace is disturbed by the FO was a great choice.

In general your edits were seamless and only added to the enjoyment of the film. TFA was already the best of the ST, but you elevated it by helping it not feel like a ANH rehash. I appreciate what you did to imply that the reason Han left was tied to Ben’s fall, and not him just being a jerk.

The visions throughout were great and helps the ST establish their own storytelling format distinct from the ones the PT and OT use.

I have really only 2 thoughts for things to improve on:

From Hux “if the droid is on Jakku we’ll find it” to Rey eating, I think the wipe needs a softer gradient edge, possibly to be at an angle so it feels more Star Wars. It just looked weird.

I would suggest not having the weapon fire on the New Republic at all. The destruction of the NR has no bearing on the next two films at all. In the next movie the Resistance says they’re not getting help from their allies, which could be seen simply as a continuation of the NR refusing to help. And then in the third film when the fleet shows up, it can be said by somebody that the Republic finally came through.

Aside from the fact the movies never explore the implications of the destruction of the galactic government, the plot point is one of those that serves to undo the OT, and just doesn’t need to happen.

Acbagel said:

Delpheas said:

Very excited to watch this and HttF, and really intrigued to see how you fix TRoS’ mess of new material and badly done Legends references.

Excited to see how my cuts change the experience for you, for better or for worse!

One of the reasons I’m taking a bit of a break before starting TRoS is one, to rest after putting nearly 100 hours of work into TFA and TLJ, and two, to take time to watch other Ep. 9 edits and gather my own ideas. I think TRoS has less potential for Legends fixes than TLJ did, so while I have some big picture ideas for my next edit, I still have a lot of research and planning ahead before I even open my editing software.

In TLJ I was able to flip character motivations and arcs, but in TRoS it’s going to be more about managing the saga/lore destroying themes… I have plans for Leia, Kylo and Rey, but there’s still a lot I need to process. Ep. 9 is my least watched Star Wars film at only 3 completions, so I need to get a better grip on JJ’s story before trying to transform it into my own.

I suggest watching at least Resurgence and the No Palps edit for TRoS, just for two very different approaches to making changes. There are a few things in TRoS that draw on Legends plot points, like the hidden fleet, force clones, a revived Palps, even Rey’s parentage, but just pulling random pieces of lore and smooshing them together doesn’t make for good callbacks and doesn’t make up for the lack of showing Rey’s victory as a balancing of the light and dark.

I haven’t watched HotF or FotJ yet, but I havee skipped around to look at some of the big changes.

1. Luke constantly saving Leia is excellent, it establishes him as a character who cares deeply but has succeeded in basically every way that his father failed. He was able to hold his attachments lightly enough to do what needed to be done to maintain balance, but not so lightly he forgot to care. And the way you implement these changes is really strong.

2. When Rey arrives I would trim the lingering shots on her face and hand as she’s holding the saber to Luke. We already saw those in the vision in the last film, so I think this sequence would be helped by having her walk up and hand it to him sooner.

3. I appreciate what you’ve done to remove the movie’s ridiculous attempt to have the entire plot fallout in like 3 days. A huge part of TLJ’s (and TRoS) problem was the pacing and it’s helped quite a bit here.

4. I wonder if it is necessary to keep Luke’s line “I will not be the last Jedi.” Him saying it at all goes against both his and Kylo’s insistence that what came before has to be surpassed, and in TLJ was certainly used to show that he had decided he was wrong about the Jedi. Though I am intrigued by his saying while showing Kylo a shot of Jedi Leia.

5. Finn and Rose’s plot is much helped by trimming Canto Bight and using some of their deleted material.

6. Keeping Kylo as the big bad is a good idea and well executed. It helps with this feeling less like an irreverent rehash of ESB and RotJ and more like it’s own solid Star Wars film.

7. When Luke is fighting Kylo and we get the shot of him in the WbtWs, I think their needs to be a shot where we see him meditating on the island and then it melts away to reveal the WbtW and he gets the blue tint of the Force Ghost. This way there’s some intro for people unfamiliar with Rebels and the WbtWs, it could be assumed he’s ascending, that he’s become one with the force without dying simply because he’s so powerful. And the blue tint provides visual continuity with his appearances in the next film. And we’ve already seen him helping out, so as you said above there is no big reveal that he can. So this final one needs some more oomph on his end.

Anyway, those are a bunch of my thoughts. I’ll be more thorough once I’ve been able to watch both films back to back.

Thanks for your hard work!

Very excited to watch this and HttF, and really intrigued to see how you fix TRoS’ mess of new material and badly done Legends references.

Oh, I am so excited for this. I would love a link!

Regarding Fall of the Republic, I actually ditched the idea of the days and just have it cut together in the traditional way.

I also know it seems odd to cut back and forth between animation and live action, but it’s not that weird really.

As for cutting it into episodes, totally for that too.

Just dippeed into this, and it looks really great. Eddie there’s a number of excellent ideas and I love how you’re working with the ideas of the community as well. My older brother would probably really like the Mandalorian cut. Though I’m much more of a completionist myself, and Ahsoka is my fave so…

As I said in my PM, feel free to look at what I did for my Fall of the Republic edit for the finale. 😃

I was actually getting ready to post that this is basically finished!

Because NFBisms’ cut is “unfinished” and in 720p, with a standard stereo mix, I won’t be doing a 1080p/5.1 surround release, so take that however you will.

I’ll have it available hopefully by the end of the weekend, and yeah, I’ll message you Eddie.

As for changes to RotS, I’ve mostly left that footage untouched aside from the changes inherent in NCC. I trimmed a few bits and pieces here and there to help with the integration of the Clone Wars scenes. It’ll all be in the change list which should appear in the OP in a day or two.

I did decide not to include Sidious’s “Day of Revenge” dialogue over the march on the temple. It works nicely if the march on the temple happens immediately after he says “We will have peace”, but NCC rightly moves Vader’s temple attack to after his visit to Padme.

I’ll probably also do a “Padme lives” alternate ending, but that’s not a priority for me.

I’m excited to actually release this! I’ve never felt like I had a releasable edit before. 😃

I hope folks enjoy it.

It only doesn’t make sense when strictly compared to the comics, but it isn’t, imo, that much of a stretch to believe that Bail Organa and Padme couldn’t come up with a story of her survival that would keep them safe from the Emperor/Darth Vader.

According to Leia her birth mother died early in her life anyway, so it doesn’t bother me.

My ending goes like this:

-Birth of Twins/Darth Vader
-Bail/Kenobi/Yoda discuss next steps
-Ahsoka and Rex finish burying the Clones
-Yoda goes to Dagobah
-Bail and Padme go to Alderaan
-Kenobi goes to Tatooine
-Vader finds Ahsoka’s lightsaber
-Obi-Wan’s warning to the Jedi plays over the credits

I might consider an alternate ending, but I plan on pairing this with my own version of RotJ where we see Padme’s funeral while Leia’s talking about her mom being sad, pretty, and dying.

I’m touching it up, but since the last workprint of the ROTS: New Canon Cut seems to be the final version, this edit will probably only ever also get a polished workprint. Hopefully before the end of 2020, or as a January release.

Excited to add this to my collection!

So I to finally got around to updating the NCC footage to the most recent revision, which led to one or two changes in the scene order that I really like.

As an experiment I added Sidious’s “Day of the Sith” Voice Over to the Temple March and Kenobi’s warning to the Jedi to the credits.

I’ll go through it this next week and put together a a new version of the cutlist to share here.

Stylistically I am flirting with three things:

Two versions of the 3 1/2hr film:

1. Having title cards throughout that “separate” the film into Days 1-5, with Day 5 being “Empire Day”

2. No title cards, just normal flow.

Or

3. Splitting the film into 2 parts around 1hr 50min each, with no title cards.