Are we still determined to keep the “silenced all communication” thing from Trevorrow’s script? I feel like it doesn’t have much relevance here, and it’s contradicted by Lando’s message reaching the entire galaxy.
And Babu’s reaching Jannah.
Honestly, in a scenario where you’re cutting out the chess and the lightspeed skipping, maybe just cut out the whole scene entirely?
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.
Beyond that I actually think the biggest wound that will be felt in edits that cut the scene out is that with the music building up and the TIEs chasing after them, cutting there really feels like you’re abruptly cutting the sequence short.
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.
I’m sure Hal would be the first to admit that he’s encouraged and enabled these sorts of discussions. And some great stuff has come out of them too. I just think out of respect for Hal and thread cleanliness in general, once he says he’s pursuing a certain idea, it’d be better to move further discussion of it to the general thread.
I have no love for the lightspeed skipping scene, and to me it’s more flippant than the SKB magical galactic death beam. I know I’m a geek weirdo and people shouldn’t care about this, but to me it’s sooo bad.
It’s okay Hal, anyone who thinks you’re a geek weirdo for that can make their own fan edit. Like me!
Yeah, this thread added 25 pages in the last week alone.
Exactly why I’ve been trying to convince others to shift some of these conversations to the ideas thread… It seems many newcomers can’t see the difference between that thread and a thread for someone’s specfic edit. 😐
It’s become an orgy of Mustafar establishing shots and fortnite broadcasts.
It’s pretty much been that way since the thread started. I gave up trying long ago.
Edit: Though Hal and DominicCobb make good points about the spy message. Hmm.
I just posted an updated crawl that fixes this issue. 😉
A good attempt, but I don’t know if it’s quite there yet. I don’t really like the idea of a mysterious broadcast in general, and I think referring to Palpatine as a new enemy might be a little too big/confusing a concept for a crawl. Perhaps instead of broadcast it’s “intel” or some such. As for what he’s looking for on Exegol, I’m still a little stumped in general, but particularly here. It has to be specific enough that we get it, but vague enough that it doesn’t give it away. I just think introducing an element like a third party in the war might be a bit much. But maybe not, I dunno.
The other thing that would have to get changed in this restructuring that I don’t think people have considered, is that the use of Palpatine’s theme in the TIE fighter attack in the iceberg would need to be replaced.
But isn’t the Resistance disseminating intel they got in the first scene before the FO should have had it to begin with?
Yeah, unfortunately restructuring fundamentally doesn’t work for that reason.
Perhaps there’s some way to get across the idea in the crawl that that Kylo and such know exactly what they’ll find on Exegol, but it’d be tricky as you wouldn’t want to reveal what it was in the crawl.
Personally I’d like to see the first RO one (coming in through the clouds) with the TIEs. I like what poppa did with the Swedish forest footage but I dunno to me the shot still doesn’t quite match either the Mustafar we know or the one we see in TROS.
I agree this would be the best shot. Unfortunately, it’s also the most difficult to paint out the shuttle. I may be able to try that sometime, but I have a few things going on right now! Just in case, though, can someone send me the shot in prores (or something else sourced from the Blu-ray)?
If anyone has the the 4K ungraded HDR stream that might actually be the best source, at least for the color correction. I don’t think people have realized yet how much these could help editors (think of the day for night scene in Hal’s AOTC for example).
Question: the shot through the clouds is very symmetrical and will definitely be recognizable no matter how you present it. Given that it’s not from a saga film I think it’s okay to be reused, but I wanted to check!
Personally since it’s not a saga film I don’t mind it. Plus with the color and TIEs it should look different enough. Or you could say it’s an homage.
“That is the burden of all editors.”
Sadly, I don’t think this should be a consideration in whether something gets used. The work is always appreciated, and fuels ideas and discussions that lead towards a final decision, but if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. I learned a lot from my former boss. We spent an entire shoot day getting one shot, and in the edit room he decided to cut it without hesitation. It turned out we didn’t need the shot and he was right.
Yep, this is why directors and other production members typically shouldn’t be editors on the same project. There’s a certain objectivity needed.
Personally I’d like to see the first RO one (coming in through the clouds) with the TIEs. I like what poppa did with the Swedish forest footage but I dunno to me the shot still doesn’t quite match either the Mustafar we know or the one we see in TROS.
Not my thread, but if we were to remove Mustafar I’d much prefer starting the film at the point where Kylo’s TIE is flying through space with the Wayfinder, rather
Was anyone ever suggesting to open the film on Exegol, skipping the TIE beat?
Lotta people suggesting it in the past couple pages.
I’ve been saying to cut Mustafar since day 1, but never meant to suggest we pan down from the crawl to Exegol, I always meant for it to pan down from the crawl to see Kylo in his TIE following the Wayfinder to Exegol. Is the reason everyone dismissed this idea until apparently just now just because people assumed we’d skip the TIE beat, too?
I think it’s sort of a thorny web no matter which solution is used, trust me I’ve mulled over many different permutations.
My other hot takes:
The way I feel is that if you know the chronological order exists, you might as well do that, but yeah the truth is there’s not much of a compelling reason why you need to. I also don’t think the quality of the show differed that much over the years but that’s another conversation.
Oh my God.
I just had a terrible thought.
Palpatine in TROS is about Trump. Evil came back up from nowhere but don’t worry because “there are more of us.”
I 100% believe this, most people assumed TFA, RO, and TLJ were anti-Trump anyway, so they leaned into it here (see also “We go together” aka “Stronger together”).
That’s not surprising, I think I recall seeing something where Bob Iger really doesn’t like Trump.
I’d think it more a JJ thing. I believe Iger shut down speculation that RO was political.
Yeah I never really got any messages like that out of RO.
It’s just generally anti-fascist, as is typical for SW. People latched onto it simply because of when it was released.
Oh my God.
I just had a terrible thought.
Palpatine in TROS is about Trump. Evil came back up from nowhere but don’t worry because “there are more of us.”
I 100% believe this, most people assumed TFA, RO, and TLJ were anti-Trump anyway, so they leaned into it here (see also “We go together” aka “Stronger together”).
That’s not surprising, I think I recall seeing something where Bob Iger really doesn’t like Trump.
I’d think it more a JJ thing. I believe Iger shut down speculation that RO was political.
Personally I don’t think this particular shot works, it’s a rather bland, monotone view of Coruscant and, besides recognizing it from AOTC, I wouldn’t buy this particular shot as one from TROS.
Off the top of my head, it’d take a lot of work (including removing the smoke), but something like the establishing shot of the Jedi temple when Yoda and Obi-wan storm it in ROTS has a better look in a few different ways.
Oh my God.
I just had a terrible thought.
Palpatine in TROS is about Trump. Evil came back up from nowhere but don’t worry because “there are more of us.”
I 100% believe this, most people assumed TFA, RO, and TLJ were anti-Trump anyway, so they leaned into it here (see also “We go together” aka “Stronger together”).
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.
And that’s okay.
No heat whatsoever just passion of course but sometimes these conversations are circular in a way that isn’t productive.
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.
A problem with that is that Kylo still gets there within almost the first minute of the movie either way, and Mustafar answers almost no questions at all for the audience. It tells us where Kylo’s wayfinder was before he found it, but it doesn’t tell us why he knew to look for it on Mustafar in the first place, or why he knew to look for it at all.
This is why my alternative solution is to show him traversing the nebula, making it clear he still needed to follow the Wayfinder to get there, he didn’t just know where it was the whole time.
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.”
You’ve gotten to the point where your argument doesn’t make any sense.
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.
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.
I like that line and I don’t think it contradicts anything. The ghosts showed up because Rey was able to use her power to call on them. They’re also not “alive” because well, they’re ghosts. The thousand generations still live in her.
Yep.
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.
I mean yeah it’s completely different when the plot is literally about finding the planet.
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.
That’s not really what I meant, the literal difficulty of flying through the nebula and all that is not that important. 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.
Disagree.
Not my thread, but if we were to remove Mustafar I’d much prefer starting the film at the point where Kylo’s TIE is flying through space with the Wayfinder, rather than right on Exegol. First of all, it’d allow for more buildup to what is a pretty big reveal, second it gives a little bit of excitement to the opening, third it shows how difficult it is to get to Exegol (important considering the whole film is about getting there), and finally it’s just a killer piece of score I’d hate to lose.
If some VFX wiz could make that shot work as an opener I’d love to see it.
The worst one is probably the hardest one to change (“a thousand generations live in you now”).
If the helmet scene is used at the start, would there still be a place for Dominic’s Kylo vision?
I mean my initial idea was to place the vision during the helmet reforging scene, so maybe.
