I mean, come on. Poe is clearly a cocky hero type in TFA. You’ll argue about anything, I swear.
And you’ll argue back, please be respectful.
I know, I’m as stupid as anyone. It’s all just fucking ridiculous.
Also, Finn and Poe can kiss on Crait!
I like that, though I’m not sure I buy the rest. Why is the guy who isn’t devoted to the cause telling the one who is how bad the war is? What is Poe learning exactly, and how is Finn learning his lesson? It’s a lot cleaner if Finn gets the “why we fight” story, and Poe’s story is focused on heroism vs. recklessness.
At least that’s how I feel and how Johnson felt. Maybe there was a different way to do it that’d work equally well, I don’t know. For me I don’t really have any problem with Canto Bight so I don’t really see why it should’ve been done differently. Different strokes I guess.
It seems very odd, that Rose the mechanic is teaching Finn the former soldier, who was pretty much enslaved as a child about the horrors of war, and slavery. This is the issue with many of the character arcs in TLJ, where RJ just uses them as tools to send whatever message he wants to the audience, whether it is consistent with their previously established character, and character history or not.
TFA set up Finn as a character who explicitly wanted to run. That meant that in TLJ they had an opportunity to finally do a “why we fight” sort of story for a main character, which is something that really hasn’t been done before in the series. Finn was a child soldier, yes, and they could have gone a different direction, but Finn’s characterization as just trying to save himself and Rey and getting out of it is not at all inconsistent with his character as previously established.
And I don’t think Rose’s place in it is odd at all, as they clearly explain her backstory.
It’s fine that Poe needs to learn about what it means to be a leader, but at the same time Poe is so over the top irresponsible, and hot headed, that it doesn’t really seem very consistent with the good natured, respected pilot and commander that was presented to us in TFA.
I mean, come on. Poe is clearly a cocky hero type in TFA. You’ll argue about anything, I swear.
Cocky hero type, and downright irresponsible to the point of disobeying a direct order, amd starting a mutiny are two very different things. If the opening scene of TFA told us anything, it was that Poe was the one pilot in the Resistance, that Leia trusted most of all. Why would she do that, if he was such an irresponsible hothead?
All we know about him is his character type. Otherwise his personality is pretty undefined and open to a lot of growth. But maybe he should have just stayed perfectly nice without any problems throughout the whole trilogy? That would have been really interesting. Just because Leia trusted him doesn’t mean he should be immune to mistakes.
I don’t know, both the Burning Homestead cue in TFA and the Vader unmasking bit they used here sounded distractingly identical to the scores I’ve heard so many times.
Maybe my post wasn’t clear. Those are indeed 100% the old recordings reused.
Also, Finn and Poe can kiss on Crait!
I like that, though I’m not sure I buy the rest. Why is the guy who isn’t devoted to the cause telling the one who is how bad the war is? What is Poe learning exactly, and how is Finn learning his lesson? It’s a lot cleaner if Finn gets the “why we fight” story, and Poe’s story is focused on heroism vs. recklessness.
At least that’s how I feel and how Johnson felt. Maybe there was a different way to do it that’d work equally well, I don’t know. For me I don’t really have any problem with Canto Bight so I don’t really see why it should’ve been done differently. Different strokes I guess.
It seems very odd, that Rose the mechanic is teaching Finn the former soldier, who was pretty much enslaved as a child about the horrors of war, and slavery. This is the issue with many of the character arcs in TLJ, where RJ just uses them as tools to send whatever message he wants to the audience, whether it is consistent with their previously established character, and character history or not.
TFA set up Finn as a character who explicitly wanted to run. That meant that in TLJ they had an opportunity to finally do a “why we fight” sort of story for a main character, which is something that really hasn’t been done before in the series. Finn was a child soldier, yes, and they could have gone a different direction, but Finn’s characterization as just trying to save himself and Rey and getting out of it is not at all inconsistent with his character as previously established.
And I don’t think Rose’s place in it is odd at all, as they clearly explain her backstory.
It’s fine that Poe needs to learn about what it means to be a leader, but at the same time Poe is so over the top irresponsible, and hot headed, that it doesn’t really seem very consistent with the good natured, respected pilot and commander that was presented to us in TFA.
I mean, come on. Poe is clearly a cocky hero type in TFA. You’ll argue about anything, I swear.
Could you potentially turn them into two separate scenes? One scene could be where Kylo is on his Star Destroyer, and he touches Vader’s helmet to confirm Palpatine’s claims and gain insight on how he survived, a look into the past.
Then Rey’s training montage would be separate, and Rey could have her own brief vision, maybe a brief glimpse into the future.Maybe that could be another way to help slow the film down. Either way, I think there might be some flexibility as far as how this scene could be edited.
You probably could, it’d depend on your intentions I suppose. This whole section of the film has clearly been heavily edited and reedited. So there’s a lot of room for changes, though unfortunately because it’s for the most part too short (rather than too long) there’s only so much we can do. Uncomplicating things and straightening things out could certainly help.
I really dislike how the quick flashbacks were edited in this movie so I would just remove all of them, and remove Kylo’s appearance during Rey’s training because it only makes things confusing.
I didn’t really care one way or another about the style of it, it seemed fair enough for what they supposedly were - force induced flashbacks and flashforwards. It’s definitely a little problematic when it comes to the latter however because we don’t know what we’re looking at in such quick flashes.
It’s definitely the first part in the movie where I was thinking wow the editing is all over the place. The way I envision my Rey Nobody edit I think I’d need to keep Kylo in there to watch the vision as well, but I’d probably want to restructure how it plays out. Maybe cut out seeing Kylo taking out the mask and touching it? So we see Rey, we see her have a vision, and then we see Kylo’s having it too? I guess the problem with that is I think we’re supposed to believe Kylo is what distracts her and makes her start destroying trees and whatnot. I think you could probably solve this by hearing his voice say something like “Rey, join me” and then Rey trips.
I mean JJ was originally going to start TFA with a severed hand floating through space so anything’s possible. I guess they thought it would get people attention. [EDIT: Wrote this before I saw Ash’s comment!]
Speaking of the flashback, apparently they were training on the same planet the Resistance Base is at, Ajan Kloss. But I’m like, why couldn’t it have been Yavin IV? At least Luke and Leia have a connection to Yavin, plus it would be a nice homage to Luke’s academy in the EU being on Yavin IV. You could start the flashback with an establishing shot of Yavin IV, and then add a bit of red hue to the scene perhaps to suggest the “planet-light” of the red gas giant. I guess it doesn’t add anything besides slowing the film down a little by adding an extra shot. Honestly I wouldn’t mind if the whole flashback was just cut, or at the very least, the lines about Leia’s vision were cut or trimmed.
Back to the helmet stuff. What if you modified that scene to change Kylo’s motivation to touch the helmet? Maybe Kylo is wanting to see if what Palpatine told him was true, and we can get a different kind of “force-back”. Maybe instead of random events, we could get glimpses that hint at how Palpatine survived and how it connects to the helmet (through object possession perhaps). Maybe Kylo could get glimpses of the Dark Side’s past (Palpatine) and the Dark Side’s future (Rey), and the intensity of this vision recombined their force bond.
Maybe it is really visceral for Kylo not only because it is providing backstory, but because he’s reliving how Palpatine manipulated him from a young age through Vader and Snoke. And maybe these strong feelings of isolation and loneliness Ben felt at that somehow reforges that bond with Rey, since those shared feelings are what made Rey and Ben relate to each other. So as Ben experiences these past memories, Rey experiences her own.
So to summarize, maybe Ben isn’t trying to use Vader’s helmet to somehow reconnect with Rey, but instead, he is trying to confirm what Palpatine told him, and the flood of painful memories and revelations inadvertently reconnects him with Rey, since those feelings are something they both shared. So not only could it be a more sympathetic angle for Ben to see how he was manipulated, but it could also give more clues as to how Palpatine survived.
It isn’t explicit that he’s reinstating the force bond, is it? That wasn’t how I took it and I assumed they might have had a few bonds in the meantime.
Those are some interesting ideas. There is definitely space there to get away with some fun editing stuff. I feel like you do have to be careful though, because the scene as is is already pretty confusing (which is why I’d want to simplify it). Your idea would seem to help explain why Vader’s mask is involved at all I suppose.
Yeah. Old school film composition par excellence as Williams does so well requires having the final edit in front of him to work with.
Yes. It really annoyed me that the exact same musical cue was used in the wipe to credits as TFA. This was the big finale and they just recycled the same recording from TFA. It comes off so lazy.
For what it’s worth I’m pretty sure it’s a new recording. Which actually makes it more inexplicable.
Well, they also thought starting TFA with a shot of Luke’s severed hand holding Anakin’s lightsaber drifting in space for a not insignificant amount of time, so…
Very true, and from what I understand that would have turned into a flashback montage of sorts. Funny how each film in the ST originally had tradition breaking openings and ended up ditching them - and TLJ’s would have been the least radical!
It’s one of the only changes in the special editions that I like, I think it can just be a simple edit to the audio track. I tried doing it myself but I couldn’t isolate the voices in the celebration scene so I could only let the music play but with no voices on top which feels weird to watch. I think someone could do it with a 5.1 mix, those usually have their own track for characters talking.
You might as well just use the audio from the Special Edition scene itself (rather than just the music from the soundtrack).
Also, Finn and Poe can kiss on Crait!
I like that, though I’m not sure I buy the rest. Why is the guy who isn’t devoted to the cause telling the one who is how bad the war is? What is Poe learning exactly, and how is Finn learning his lesson? It’s a lot cleaner if Finn gets the “why we fight” story, and Poe’s story is focused on heroism vs. recklessness.
At least that’s how I feel and how Johnson felt. Maybe there was a different way to do it that’d work equally well, I don’t know. For me I don’t really have any problem with Canto Bight so I don’t really see why it should’ve been done differently. Different strokes I guess.
Why is Kylo ‘talking’ to Darth’s mask if in the scene before he was informed that he never spoke to him? Is it just like, triggering a flashback in Kylo in the same way that the Skywalker Saber started one with Rey?
Honestly I have no idea. The scene as is makes no sense and really only serves to establish that Rey has a vision (which it barely does) and gives flashes to remind you of key moments in the last two films (Han’s death primarily). Clearly a casualty of editing.
According to the JP leaks, didn’t the film originally start with the Luke and Leia flashback, and then transition to present day Leia training Rey? If Kylo Ren re-forged their Force bond during her training montage, then it presumably would have taken place before Kylo met Palpatine.
I guess you could say Vader’s helmet and other Force-related objects can concentrate power to achieve more difficult tasks? Or Palpatine helped Kylo re-establish that connection through Vader’s helmet? I’m not really sure, that is a good question.
That makes as much sense as anything. If Kylo found the wayfinder in Vader’s castle then it’d especially make sense. What I don’t get is why they thought they could ever start the film with a flashback.
I guess they needed her parents to be sympathetic in order to fuel a revenge angle for Rey. But, you’d think the Emperor would be enough of a target that it might work without that.
Either way, I’m not sure if it’s possible to remove Rey Palpatine and Rey Revenge, given the film as is. There has to be something that can make its seem like she might go dark, otherwise half her scenes don’t work.
And just to make sure, because this movie went by too fast… is the chronology supposed to be that her parents went to Jakku and sold her to Unkar Plutt, then left in that ship we saw in TFA, then encountered the hunter, got killed, and then the hunter used their ship to go die on Pasana?
Yes I believe that’s correct.
Gotcha. I think that would work, but I also hope we can figure out a way to remove her parents being killed. If her parents sold her for drinking money, you know they probably would’ve sold her out to save their own skins.
I agree, but I don’t know how to solve this without feeling like a lot is missing. As is my plan is just to remove any mentions of them protecting her.
When you say Rey’s past, are you referring to the idea that he finds out Palpatine has her parents (who aren’t related to Palpatine) killed?
Yeah exactly (although we wouldn’t necessarily see it happen then, it would just explain how Kylo has that information if Palpatine didn’t tell him anything about Rey).
It’s not just nearly identical, it’s lifted from the soundtrack from AOTC. There are also snippets lifted from TLJ, TFA, ROTJ and ROTS sprinkled throughout the film.
He did the same thing by dropping in “Burning Homestead” into TFA during Rey and Kylo’s fight.
Why he couldn’t get Williams to simply rescore them is beyond me.
It sounded like a new recording to me, same with the ROTS “lift.” The others definitely seemed like the old recordings.
There are quite a few reasons, ultimately I’d think last minute editing is the primary culprit (same with when this happened on the prequels).
I feel like Cosmonaut Variety Hour’s perspective is a pretty fair assessment. He likes all the Luke/Rey/Kylo stuff, but he feels the Finn/Poe/Rose stuff is pretty weak in comparison.
RJ said he created Rose because he felt Finn and Poe had the same voice, but imagine the Rose and Finn conversation about war, but Poe took Finn’s place and Finn took Rose’s place. Poe likes being the hero and does whatever he can to win, but considering Finn is a literal child soldier, he knows all about the costs of war.
It’d come at the expense of one or both of their arcs, though.
Free edit idea (that I’m planning to use):
The sequence where Kylo touches Vader’s helmet, Rey trains, and there’s flashes of various images is just all over the place. To simplify, I’ll cut it down to just the images that relate to Rey, not Kylo to give some focus and imply this is where Kylo learns about Rey’s past. Then move the flashes of Kylo’s past (Han, Luke) to when his mask is being rebuilt, as a way to give some sort of explanation as to why he’s even doing that (his past is still haunting him, the mask is a shield). I’d probably also emphasize the flashes of Rey turning him down, so it’s almost like he can’t stand to face her.
I guess there’s a part with music nearly identical to a portion of “Return to Tatooine” from AOTC. But that doesn’t really count.
I just saw this film again and one thing stood out to me this time - at least three times in the first half of the film a character says something along the lines of ‘if we fail, it was all for nothing’. It gets rather tiresome, and the final time this happens is with C-3PO before he is mind wiped. I think a far stronger version of the scene would be to simply mute his dialogue, so he would walk away from the group in silence. Poe would ask what he was doing, and only then would he reveal his decision.
Yes, I really love this idea. Having a quiet moment with the “talkative droid” would be pretty effective I think. It makes the moment more serious if 3PO is silently thinking it over.
Yeah I like that too. It’s a nice moment but is poorly edited, feeling rushed. Might be worth trying to extend it as well, but this could do the trick by itself.
I like the “force Skype”, as it was called above, especially with various objects jumping between Rey’s and Kylo’s surroundings.
Wait…are you saying The Force can now instantaneously teleport objects?
It did in TLJ as well.
Just some drops of water on Kylo’s hand. Bue were they real or just a feeling?
TROS on the other hand has the literal interpretation of the Force Skype, as a physical manifestation, both Rey & Kylo being physically present in each other space. I didn’t like it at all, and find it so mundane, like a magician trick, where in TLJ it was a truly poetic idea.
Have you forgotten this?
The power to teleport objects with the force hardly seems to be a new power anyone could just pick up. Rey and Kylo are specifically stated to have a unique bond in the force that allows them to do this.
Please understand everything I say about the trilogy has an asterisk that says “excluding TROS.”
Before the film came out, Abrams and co. said there were references to every film in it. Is this true?
TPM: Qui-Gon’s voice, Ewan and Mace’s voices too I guess, the “balance”
AOTC: No idea. I guess cloning is mentioned and we see Snoke clones? I guess you could count Hayden’s voice for this, and maybe some of the other Jedi?
ROTS: Couple Palpatine lines lifted, Mustafar appearance (barely)
Solo: Lando’s outfit, Ben’s blaster (partly an Aftermath reference)
Rogue One: No idea, although I’ve heard originally Kylo got the wayfinder from Vader’s castle
ANH: The training remote, medals, the homestead, etc
TESB: Raising the X-Wing, Bespin, etc
ROTJ: The Death Star, Endor, etc
TFA: Obvious stuff
TLJ: More obvious stuff
Even TCW gets a reference (Ahsoka’s voice) and Rebels (the Ghost). Wonder what else there is?
I hope someday Lucas’s treatments do come out, I’d be curious. But knowing his past writing processes (on the OT and PT), it’s more likely than not that his treatments were pretty short and vague. More importantly, even if Lucas himself had made the films he would have certainly changed the story of his treatments significantly over the course of time. So the idea that they should have chained themselves to those treatments just because they had Lucas’s name on them is monumentally silly.
More importantly, the idea that evil will always return is “nihilistic” is ridiculous. It’s just factually true. The idea that evil can be defeated once and for all is pretty naive. It works for a fairy tale yes, but Star Wars has been becoming less and less a fairy tale with each new entry. The idea that evil will always return is sophisticated and nuanced (perhaps too much so for some viewers, which is why they ditched it in TROS), and the message that there will always be good to face that evil is anything but nihilistic. It’s the very heart of what Star Wars is - never ending hope in the face of potential despair.
Exactly. We do know that they kept some of what Lucas had come up with. They also revisited a lot of his abandoned ideas for earlier films. I would love to see his treatments, but if you read some of his other treatments, the final films came out much different. And in history and myth, evil is something always lurking and endangering the good we create. The idea that Star Wars should somehow deviate from that and must keep what the heroes of the OT worked so hard to win is indeed silly. Each generation has their own fight and some generations lose that fight (the PT).
I don’t agree with everything your saying but it is important to remember Flash Gordon. Star Wars, like old space opera serials, is supposed to be a never ending saga, where we know no matter what the heroes will always be there to save the dar. If the evil can be defeated for forever, that’s it’s not really never ending is it?
This gets back to the fact that I fully believe that many people just fundamentally did not want to see movies made set after ROTJ, whether they say so or not. Simply put, to make a story set after ROTJ, you needed to undo that ‘happily ever after’ victory. What made TFA and TLJ so great is that they didn’t just wantonly undo it, they gave a thematic reason for doing so that justified their addition to the story. TROS… not so much.
Lots of people wanted to see movies made after ROTJ, but they wanted new stories, and new settings, not a reset to Empire vs rebels without so much as an explanation. There’s nothing wrong with The New Republic facing a new thread, or even a thread with some links to the past. However, the ST presents us with a New Republic as ineffective as the old one, when Palpatine took control. That is a very cynical outcome, especially since our heroes fought and bled for its establishment.
If the PT taught us anything it’s that we should never fully trust our political institutions. The heroes fought for freedom, and they had it for 30 years. The fact that the system that was put in place ended up failing doesn’t discredit their achievements. Again, the cyclical nature is the whole point, and the cynicism of such an outcome is precisely the thing that serves as the main conflict of the trilogy. The hope in the OT was hope in the face of tyranny. The hope in the ST is hope in the face of cynicism and despair. It’s a permutation and a maturation of the themes of the original films.
Maybe it’s not what you would have done personally (I’m not sure if it’s what I would have done) but it’s crazy how stubborn people are that they won’t take something at face value and they can’t get past the simple fact that it’s not what they imagined. So what? Look at what the films are actually saying. They’re wrestling with these exact things.
I hope someday Lucas’s treatments do come out, I’d be curious. But knowing his past writing processes (on the OT and PT), it’s more likely than not that his treatments were pretty short and vague. More importantly, even if Lucas himself had made the films he would have certainly changed the story of his treatments significantly over the course of time. So the idea that they should have chained themselves to those treatments just because they had Lucas’s name on them is monumentally silly.
More importantly, the idea that evil will always return is “nihilistic” is ridiculous. It’s just factually true. The idea that evil can be defeated once and for all is pretty naive. It works for a fairy tale yes, but Star Wars has been becoming less and less a fairy tale with each new entry. The idea that evil will always return is sophisticated and nuanced (perhaps too much so for some viewers, which is why they ditched it in TROS), and the message that there will always be good to face that evil is anything but nihilistic. It’s the very heart of what Star Wars is - never ending hope in the face of potential despair.
It’s nihilistic, because it’s become cyclical, fighting the same evil over and over with diminished returns. Ben’s redemption works, because he is a great actor, but it’s also less impactful than Vader’s redemption, because we have seen it all before. Same goes for Palpatine’s death. Aside from being a very poorly set up character in this trilogy, it was very unlikely they could top the character’s death in ROTJ, and surprise, surprise it’s spectacular visually, but emotionally vapid, another deja vu.
The cyclical nature is the whole point. I’m not going to argue with you about how it concludes, because there’s nothing to argue. They fucked it up.
There’s nothing wrong with introducing new threads, and new challenges for characters old and new, that expand the universe, and the lore of the Star Wars universe, just look at the Mandalorian. It is very telling that the ultimate fate of one of the characters at the end of the season is so much more emotionally impactful than for any of the characters in the ST. Aside from better writing (imo), the fact that the Mandalorian isn’t just recycling story beats from Star Wars’ greatest hits is, what makes its story and character developments surprising, and impactful, and what makes this series fairly univerally loved.
I don’t see how that makes sense as a comparison, The Mandalorian is telling a story separate from the main saga. I also cannot comment on how it ends, because I have not seen the finale yet. And the idea that it is better because it’s original is silly. It has the same level of fan service as any of the films, and most of its plots come recycled from old westerns and samurai films. What matters isn’t whether the story has been told before, but how well they tell it. My favorite episode of the show is chapter 4, and that’s a story that has been done countless times in the Star Wars universe. And I wouldn’t be so sure that the series is “fairly universally loved,” I’ve seen plenty of detractors and know quite a few people who think it’s an outright bad show. Using audience consensus to back up your argument isn’t really going to help you any, it’s impossible to accurately gauge and it doesn’t mean anything. By all accounts TFA is the most popular thing Disney has done with the Star Wars brand and yet I’m sure that fact doesn’t change whether you think it was successful, nor should it.