DominicCobb

I wish we had access to Tagge saying “This Sith Lord has gone too far.”

canofhumdingers said:

So did anyone ever explain how Luke’s saber was supposed to have wound up in space in that version of the TFA opening?

I believe at some point in development there was a flashback montage that tracked the saber’s journey.

Darth Lucas said:

ChainsawAsh said:

DominicCobb said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Plus it makes Luke’s rejoining the rebels during the briefing difficult to handle.

And I say that as a proponent of the idea.

The other problem is, you can’t really break up the stuff on Dagobah. It’s really just two scenes, talking with Yoda and then talking with Ben. But it doesn’t make sense to cut away after Yoda’s death because if you want to cut back later to the scene with Ben, you’d end up wondering “well what has Luke being doing hanging out at this dead guy’s house?”

I’ve seen the idea knocked around to somehow do a background replacement and make the Obi-Wan scene take place on Tatooine/in Obi-Wan’s hut, but that seems…difficult to pull off at best.

Or you could just cut the entire Obi-Wan scene and not lose too much, perhaps.

You could always move the Ben scene to Endor right before Luke turns himself in. It wouldn’t take nearly as much work to make dagobah look like Endor.

I’ve heard that one before too. The problem though, is you’re still stuck with Luke meeting up with the fleet later (with Ben’s hut, you could hypothetically use the sandstorm scene). Plus Leia asking Luke “what is it” and him saying to ask again sometime.

fanedit

Sacrilege I know, but for those trying to improve continuity in the whole saga, in some cases it’s simply easier to change the OT rather than the PT where there’s a discrepancy. My goal for this thread is to compile a list of all the minor bits of dialogue or minor bits that have a potential for change, and then the suggested way to change them, and then hopefully examples of the change in action. Ultimately it’d be nice to have something like Hal’s PT edit care package, but for these specific OT changes (I know many have been done already for things such as Hal’s custom SEs).

ANH:

• Adywan added a battle droid to the sand crawler. Are there other spots in the film were PT elements could be added?
• Ben shows no recognition toward R2 and C-3PO. Suggested edit: “Come here my old friend.” Could also cut out Ben saying he doesn’t remember owning a droid, even though it doesn’t technically contradict anything.
• Ben’s line about the lightsaber. Suggested edit: “I wanted you to have this when you were old enough.” I believe this change has already been worked out in Hal’s edit (https://vimeo.com/343857900).

TESB:

• Ben’s line about Yoda, “The Jedi master who instructed me.” Suggested edit: “A Jedi master who instructed me.” I believe this change has already been worked out in Hal’s edit (https://vimeo.com/343932338).
• Another line about Ben’s training, “Was I any different, when you taught me?” Suggested edit: “Was I any different, when Qui-Gon taught me?”
• The infamous “other.” Suggested edit: “No, there is the other.”

ROTJ:

• Leia’s “real mother.” In my mind the simple solution is to excise this bit of the conversation entirely. What’s the best way?
• Vader’s line, “Obi-wan once thought as you do.” Suggested edit: “Your mother once thought as you do.” Lot of work has been done on this one recently (I believe this is the most recent attempt, getting close but not perfect: https://vimeo.com/362829979).
• I’ve always thought it’d be pretty neat to see a PT ship or two in the space battle.
• I think I’ve seen a few people mock up a shot of the Hayden ghost appearing at Vader’s funeral pyre. An interesting alternate to tie the trilogies together.

Hopefully this is just a jumping off point. Please let me know if you guys think of any others.

I would love to see something done to the hangar interiors, personally it’s a little obvious how small the stage was and they lit it to hide that fact.

ChainsawAsh said:

DominicCobb said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Plus it makes Luke’s rejoining the rebels during the briefing difficult to handle.

And I say that as a proponent of the idea.

The other problem is, you can’t really break up the stuff on Dagobah. It’s really just two scenes, talking with Yoda and then talking with Ben. But it doesn’t make sense to cut away after Yoda’s death because if you want to cut back later to the scene with Ben, you’d end up wondering “well what has Luke being doing hanging out at this dead guy’s house?”

I’ve seen the idea knocked around to somehow do a background replacement and make the Obi-Wan scene take place on Tatooine/in Obi-Wan’s hut, but that seems…difficult to pull off at best.

Yeah I remember being in favor of that back in the day. Don’t know if it’s possible but it’s a nice idea to imagine.

Or you could just cut the entire Obi-Wan scene and not lose too much, perhaps.

I personally wouldn’t really want to go that far, although I know it’s been done before.

ChainsawAsh said:

Plus it makes Luke’s rejoining the rebels during the briefing difficult to handle.

And I say that as a proponent of the idea.

The other problem is, you can’t really break up the stuff on Dagobah. It’s really just two scenes, talking with Yoda and then talking with Ben. But it doesn’t make sense to cut away after Yoda’s death because if you want to cut back later to the scene with Ben, you’d end up wondering “well what has Luke being doing hanging out at this dead guy’s house?”

ChainsawAsh said:

I like that sequence of events, but I feel like cutting the Boushh/Chewbacca scene makes the Lapti Nek bit feel like a non sequitur that only exists as foreshadowing, as opposed to a lead-in to the Boushh scene that also functions as foreshadowing. Plus, including the Boushh scene gives Threepio something to do immediately after his capture, which gives more connective tissue between that and Leia freeing Han than just using Lapti Nek, where Threepio is just a bystander who doesn’t do anything.

You might be right.

RogueLeader said:

These are some great thoughts, Dom!

Honestly, I think ROTJ is in this weird place between being a part of the “holy” trilogy, but also being considered the weakest of three. Yes, you could edit it dramatically, and it has been before, but imo I feel like there isn’t really a definitive fan edit of ROTJ, just a few good ones that introduce some cool ideas. How much can you alter without something feeling missing?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently since I’ve been reading Rinzler’s Making of book, and all the parts about the earlier versions are so tantalizing. It’s funny because nearly most complaints about the film and many common edit ideas were in fact addressed in earlier drafts and story conferences (opening with the Emperor arriving, for instance, is an idea I swiped from there). The book is sort of an interesting study in trying to decipher for yourself “what went wrong?” I think many would agree the film is a big step down from the previous two. The question, when it comes to editing, is how do you fix that. I think the reason you don’t see a lot of ROTJ edits vs. PT or ST edits (despite many who think that quality-wise it is probably on par with more than one of those earlier films) is simply because we’re so used to it and because we all grew up with it. Sort of similar to now I feel like I’m seeing more people include moments in their PT edits that were never included before, just because the moments were too memorable. It’s hard imaging the film in a different way.

So, you’re suggesting opening with the Emperor scene, which honestly is a solid idea. I think the one think you lose is a slightly ominous opening for Vader, since the first time we see him in this version of events would just be in a wide shot of him kneeling down (unless you inserted a new first shot of him somehow). I like your IX related idea by the way! We definitely need to keep that in mind.

The shot of Vader walking down his shuttle ramp is one of my favorites, and there are some classic lines in there. But ultimately you have to ask yourself will cutting the scene make the film better? I think it might. Something that always bothered me too is Vader says “the Emperor is not as forgiving as I am,” which feels like a big set up, but we don’t see him make good on this in anyway. I think it could be worth keeping the earlier scene if there was some way to show the Emperor’s wrath - I always thought we should have seen him take out his anger on Vader, electrocuting him. Not sure if there’s any way to accomplish that.

You’d probably also want to cut the business with the clearance codes and the shield and all that. Obviously it’s set up for later but I don’t think it’s necessary and it just starts the film off with boring dialogue.

If you cut the first Boushh scene, I think Leia & Wicket should be kept, at the very least to not make this film less than two hours long.

This is something that I struggled with a lot when I was getting into fan edits at first, but honestly sometimes there’s nothing you can do. My PT edits are all under two hours. I wish it could be helped, but I’d prefer to worry about runtime second.

The deleted scenes would be cool to add, but it just seem infeasible to add them seamlessly. And I think Luke’s introduction in the film is great as-is, and putting Dagobah stuff earlier would just ruin that mystique.

Well for me, if you’re not removing the hologram, it’s sort of like what’s the point. The other idea is that you get to imply Luke has been training with Yoda in the interim (which would explain his change in character). But I’m not really for the change anymore, myself.

Good idea putting the first throne room scene in place of where the Emeror’s first scene originally was. I also think graphics could be added to those weirdly blank view screens that could be relevant to some potential ST-foreshadowing as well, but not sure what exactly that could be yet.

You definitely need to cut back to the real bad guys in that moment, and if the Emperor’s arrival is being moved up, it’s actually quite fortunate that this scene exists to take it’s place and basically serve as a reminder. Otherwise it’s a scene I’d suggest cutting because it’s mostly pointless.

This, in my mind, would be the ideal restructure of ROTJ

• Crawl
• Emperor arrives
• Droids go to and enter palace, talk with Bib
• Droids go to the dungeon and speak with EV-9D9
• Lapti Nek, Oola falls into rancor pit
• Leia unfreezes Han, captured
• Luke arrives, fights rancor
• Sail barge assault
• Emperor speaks with Vader in his throne room (a scene I probably would have cut if not for the Emperor’s arrival being shifted earlier)
• Luke on Dagobah
• Then basically the rest plays out as normal

There are a few things I struggle with. A very popular idea is to put the Luke on Dagobah scenes at the start of the film. I like this a lot, because it opens the film with a bit more of that darker TESB vibe which should subtlety alter the tone for the whole film (whereas it’s otherwise just lost in the middle of mostly goofiness). The issues with this, however, is first of all that makes the film even slower to start, and adds a complication with Luke meeting up with the alliance later.

The “easy” solution, in my mind, is reinstating the ‘Vader contacts Luke’ deleted scene, which should carry a similar sort of feel (to make ROTJ seem a bit more apiece with where TESB left off). However, I don’t really think it’s feasible to get that scene into a decent enough quality to use. Same goes for the other great deleted moment, the sandstorm, which would be even harder to incorporate.

My other big problem with my cuts is that I worry I’ll short change Leia, what between the Boushh removal and my other long favored cut, the removal of her scene with Wicket. Seems a shame to cut down on what is already so slight a role for her, but it’s not like the two scenes add much, character-wise. I guess if I’m really struggling with it, the Boushh scene is the one to keep, since we get a pretty badass moment from her with the thermal detonator. But again I worry about the pacing of that first third of the film. Maybe trims in addition to scene removals would help.

RogueLeader said:

Really? I like the Boushh scenes. So the first time you see Boushh/Leia, she’d just be sneaking into Jabba’s palace at night?

I don’t have an issue one way or another with the Boushh scene, but when looking at ways to cut down the Jabba’s palace section, it is the first that comes to mind, as the main thing it establishes (prisoned Chewie) can be explained with 3PO’s line. Yes you do end up with Boushh’s first moment being sneaking around at night, but I’m not sure that’d feel too weird. I guess you also probably have to find a place to sneak in a shot of Lando since that scene has his reveal.

As far removing Luke’s message, i’d probably play around with potential subtitle options for Bib and/or Jabba, depending on how far the droids get. Because I could see them reaching Jabba and him rejecting them there.

Im in my head following the sequence of events, if one was to cut out the droids speaking with Jabba entirely. Then your first scene with him would be the Lapti Nek -> trap door sequence, which one could argue would be a stronger intro to the character. The main thing you’d lose though I guess is the establishment of Han’s carbonate block on the wall. I guess you’d have to insert a full on shot of it during Lapti Nek. I wonder if that works or is too small, but either way you’d probably want to get rid of 3PO’s captain obvious observation exposition.

The problem for me is the movie takes so long to pick up. You have the first scene with Vader, which basically accomplishes nothing. The droids enter Jabba’s palace, which is somewhat interesting, but it’s pretty drawn out and dialogue heavy (first walking to the palace, then outside the door, then in the main hallway, then talking to Jabba, then talking to EV-9D9 in the droid dungeon, etc.). Ideally in my mind you’d want to get rid of at least one of those scenes. Maybe if you want to keep Jabba you could lose the Bib moment or the droid torture (in my head I always thought to get rid of the latter). But the more I think about removing the Jabba scene, the more I like it (and removing the whole “gift” aspect makes the droid torture dungeon more interesting an threatening, in a way, since we don’t know what they’re going to do with them).

Outside of the Jabba stuff, the other idea I have for the opening is in regards to that Vader scene. If it doesn’t accomplish anything, why not star the film with the Emperor’s arrival? Isn’t it sort of redundant to have two arrival scenes anyway? It would start the film off on a more exciting and monumental note.

Rise of Skywalker speculation below

I’m stealing someone’s idea here (don’t remember who), but what if the Emperor’s shuttle had a red stripe instead of a slightly darker grey one? And, if were making his arrival the opening, what if the Star Destroyer he’s coming from also has a red stripe? It’s my understanding that in the TROS teaser, you can faintly see a red stripe on an old Star Destroyer. The speculation being, is this something that is affiliated Palpatine himself, considering his apparent return? If so, this could be a way to tie the trilogies together.

RogueLeader said:

I might try to make an example later and see what it might look like.

If that doesn’t work or seems too different, another option could be to remove a few segmented panels out of the dish itself, which might achieve a more subtle change that it could still make it feel incomplete. Although it might be less effective than completely removing the dish, it’s a potential middle ground.

Regarding the Luke hologram, I think how you handle it sort of depends on your interpretation of Luke’s plan. Do you want to keep the fact that Luke gifted the droids to Jabba, since it implies he wanted to get R2 in there? Or maybe he was betting on Jabba just keeping the droids for himself.

Could the message just be R2 beeping a bit to them (maybe with 3PO chiming in with surprise that they’re the gift, rather than the hologram. Then, you could add/change Jabba and Bib’s subtitles to provide the context: Luke wants to bargain for Solo’s life and he is gifting the droid’s as a token of good will.

Yes there’s probably a couple different ways you could do it.

As for Luke’s plan, that’s never going to make sense. It’s probably worth pointing out that the original idea was that Luke needed to bring them out into the open on the sail barge because staging an escape/rescue in the palace would’ve been supposedly nearly impossible. That’s really the only explanation for what goes down but I can’t think of anyway to spell that out, so we’re left with what we’re left with. The question then becomes, do you want it to seem like things are going according to the plan or not? I sort of lean towards wanting it to seem like things just keep going wrong (bit more exciting), but they’re able to pull it out in the end (whether the set backs were planned or not being ambiguous). To that end, of the options I tend to think that the “gift” aspect should be left out, as should the scene where Leia/Boushh gives Jabba Chewbacca - so when we first see Chewie he’s already a prisoner (this is a pretty common edit idea, which is helped by the fact that 3PO has a line of dialogue that basically sets this up).

Of course the other thing propelling such changes is the fact that the Jabba’s palace section is just interminably long, so cutting out at least a couple scenes would do it a lot of good.

RogueLeader said:

Maybe something like this could fill that gap instead. The one thing I like about this idea is that it doesn’t really take away from the Death Star II’s iconic silhouette, and instead it could actually add to its ‘incomplete’ look, as well as differentiate it more from the first Death Star’s design.

Yeah, exactly.

Are you wanting to remove Luke’s hologram in order to save our first look at him for when he actually appears later in the film?

Yeah, exactly. Truly a baffling decision to make up such a big reveal but completely undercut it.

Something that I don’t think I ever really got when I was a kid is that we’re supposed to be surprised that the Death Star II is operational. Obviously there’s lines of dialogue that set this up, but when you’re young you pay more attention to the visuals (at least I did), and while visually the second Death Star is incomplete, the weapon part of it is not.

So basically my idea is, what if the Death Star II is missing its dish? So we think there’s no possible way it could fire. But then, suddenly, it fires anyway (out of the recess that should hold the dish).

On a separate ROTJ note, does anyone have any idea how to have the droids get taken by Jabba without playing Luke’s hologram? Could you just cut from them entering the palace to being in the droid torture dungeon? Would that make sense? Maybe recut the scene with Bin Fortuna and add subtitles saying basically “yeah right an audience with Jabba, you two are ours now.”

doubleofive said:

Matt.F said:

I suspect this is probably well known, but something I just read today that the escape pod shot used several times in Spaceballs is actually unused footage shot for Star Wars.

I know there was a bit of talk about the escape pod shot earlier in the thread so thought perhaps this might be worth sharing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=EfkNvOOiZ_8

I’ve never heard this before and I’m not sure I believe it. The escape pod shot in ANH is well-known as being the first shot completed, and nothing about the Spaceballs design resembles anything else in Star Wars.

I thought the first completed shot was a Death Star turret firing? Your point stands regardless, of course.

sans_fi said:

Inspired by Sir Ridley, I thought to myself, What if I projected the image of the Death Star into a proper sphere that had the correct volumes of the superlaser, the trench, and the cuts in the surface as the Death Star II?

Here is a broad test. It allows you to move the view slightly. At some point you start seeing the trick, but it could be a nice tool to get static different points of views (by reparing the image a little) or to get slight movement like Sir Ridley suggested.

https://youtu.be/jkrWhBfGcBg

This is pretty cool. The only things you have to keep an eye on though are the shadows (which don’t move) and the lights (which appear to move independently of the place they should be attached).

ChainsawAsh said:

It’s much more effective as a character study of a religious man having a crisis of faith and being forced to literally confront it head-on.

Perhaps this is why I like it so much. Horror movies have never really been something that have ‘scared’ me, so I always have a hard time judging that aspect of them. But The Exorcist is one of the best horror films beyond the scares, which makes it one of my favorites. Probably why I usually gravitate to something like Jaws as my all time favorite horror movie.

act on instinct said:

I haven’t looked very deeply into the making of TLJ but at some point I was led to believe the original cut was longer and some scenes were moved around at some point. Not atypical but I did personally find the final pacing odd, maybe tightening the already longest episode so far in the saga accounts for some of the character motivations not feeling perfectly in sync for everyone? Depending on how things were moved.

All films have an initial cut that’s longer than the finished product. With TLJ, though, it’s easier to see what was cut due to the fact that they actually included most (if not all) of the deleted scenes on the BD, and you can also easily tell how far into the process they were cut by how finished the effects are. As well, some of the deleted scenes clue you into earlier, different sequencing of the film (like, originally cutting back to Leia and the Resistance after Rey explains the situation to Luke, rather than staying with them on the island).

As for the final result, because those scenes are available, you can pretty much decide for yourself if tightening it up hurt or helped.

Hal 9000 said:

^ Not sure what you mean, Dom. If there are exceptions, the neo-fundamentalist-SW-orthodoxy seems to have failed out the gate.

I mean, the concept of a novelization/adaptation is sort of an outlier to begin with anyway. But more important is that I don’t think their intention is for the canon to be as stringent as fans have made it out to be.

Hal 9000 said:

Surely that was intended to her mother or father, right?

For all the ‘everything is canon now’ hype, it still seems that TLJ really massaged and ignores some of the details from the TFA novelization.

I don’t mind that it does, but they just shouldn’t insist it was going to be otherwise.

I think the novelization is the exception though right?

ATMachine said:

FreezingTNT2 said:

Can anyone tell me why Kylo suddenly changes from wanting to build a new order and let the past die to just deciding to be in charge of the First Order? It is not at all clear what prompts this change of heart.

Directorial musical chairs.

Within one movie? News to me.

Broom Kid said:

The First Order is the new order he’s talking about. He’s already part of it, and now he’s running it. He wants her to join him so they can run it together.

This. He’s the Supreme Leader now. How else would he stir shit up and rule the galaxy if he didn’t have an empire he was in control of?

But also this

ChainsawAsh said:

Rey rejecting him, right? I thought that was pretty clear.

Rey’s rejection is definitely a set back. In a way it perhaps mirrors Anakin’s proposal to Padme to overthrow the Emperor and take over the galaxy. Once she says no, it takes a toll. Looks like this will likely be explored in TROS.

Tobar said:

Interestingly, for some reason they’ve uploaded the first episode of season 2 to Youtube for free:
Into the Unknown | Star Wars Resistance

Are the ratings for it that bad?

I mean they might be, but this wouldn’t really be an indication. It’s a fairly common marketing tactic these days (I believe they even did the same thing with the first episode of season 1).

act on instinct said:

DominicCobb said:

SilverWook said:

I thought Jabba was well developed for a slimy piece of worm ridden filth. 😉

I agree, he was as developed as his role required.

And this is not what I feel from Maz

I’m not sure I understand why, and I definitely don’t agree, but fair enough if you feel that way.

SilverWook said:

I thought Jabba was well developed for a slimy piece of worm ridden filth. 😉

I agree, he was as developed as his role required.