EddieDean said:
So, an interesting thing is happening tomorrow.
I’ve got a friend who’s 40 years old, who’s loved Star Wars forever. Big Original Trilogy purist, no love for the Prequels, likes a good few of the Disney shows which successfully capture the magic. Watched a midnight showing of TFA and liked it a lot, watched a midnight showing of TLJ and loved it. But then, the day of TROS, he saw the early reviews saying it was awful and just… didn’t watch it. Still never has.
He knows I’m into fanedits, and has heard the gist (but not the detail) of what TROS:Ascendent is about. He still knows nothing of the plot of TROS other than “Somehow, Palpatine returned”.
So, tomorrow, he’s going to have his very first experience of TROS, as TROS:Ascendent v4.
I’m really interested to see what he thinks of it. Maybe he’ll love it for what it is now. Maybe he’ll find it at least an acceptable end to the saga. Maybe he’ll hate it for all the failings of the original film. Either way, he’ll be going into it having only seen the first two Sequels, so he’ll have an interesting take. I’ll be sure to share it here!
OK, lots to share!
Overall, he found the movie basically passable. He said that if he’d seen it in the cinema, he’d have considered it a pretty much acceptable mixed bag, with some good and some bad. Having discussed many of the edits after watching, he’s certain he would have absolutely hated the original - and he was extremely impressed with all of the changes this edit made, both from a technical standpoint and in how carefully and deliberately we formed those ideas to fix the original’s problems.
He was broadly disappointed that the movie focused so much on ‘closing down’ the universe around the Skywalker films instead of ‘opening up’ the story to lay the foundation for a healthy franchise free of Skywalker moving forward, as he felt TLJ did. He felt very strongly that the movie felt like it was ‘made by committee’, and that it had far too many ideas to give any of them any real time to land or be explored. He felt Carrie Fisher’s absence quite strongly. But there’s nothing that can be done about these points.
His major ‘workable’ objection was that the dialogue is extremely clumsy. (To be clear here, I mean all of the original dialogue - every example of our changed dialogue he really liked.) The way characters speak is so unnatural, and like a junior writer’s first script out of script writing 101. Technically adequate, but hammy, tropey, and without nuance. I actually wonder if we should collectively put some thought to fixing some of this - not the dialogue that fixes major issues, which we’ve put a lot of effort into, but just the basic dialogue that’s there to carry the plot forward or to set up later scenes. He highligted a lot during the first third of the movie, including clumsy foreshadowing (“I don’t have a family name”), and then during the middle third he really disliked a lot of the more Disney-style humour (especially how often the characters are disparaging about droids, and other instances where characters reflect the audience’s out-of-universe opinions rather than more realistic in-universe ones). The last third had a lot of not-really jeopardy, like Finn and Jannah being about to fall off the Star Destroyer before Poe flies the Falcon oh-so-dangerously close enough. It reads like every other modern blockbuster movie script and it has very little depth.
His second major objection was the pacing. It’s a very relentless film, really quite overwhelmingly fast throughout. He really liked how we’d given moments more time to breathe, especially Chewie’s ‘death’, C-3PO’s ‘irreversible’ memory wipe, and Hux’s betrayal. He liked the Mustafar minute. He had nothing negative to say about the mention of ‘lightspeed skipping’ - it didn’t really register as a noteworthy thing to him, which I think is a good sign. (Note: You could maybe drop the dialogue here, or go with something even softer than ‘ramming’ - though didn’t you intend to cut the word ‘ramming’ in for v4? It’s still ‘skipping’ in this version.) But he did dislike how fast that early scene with the Rebels getting the transmission went - “like being on a Star Wars rollercoaster”. There were many other quick cuts and quick scenes too. I wonder if we could improve the pacing any further - my immediate feeling is that more re-establishing shots would go a long way.
He also disliked Rey’s training sequence just being a mashup of all the other Jedi training that we’ve seen before (especially when compared to the TLJ training, which gave us something new with Luke’s deeper explanation of the force as balance). He really disliked the fleet of Star Destroyers being the writer thinking “how can I go bigger than a Death Star?” when they should have been going with a larger mystical threat or more personal stakes (though he liked our changes to where the Star Destroyers came from, and their reduced armaments). He thought Maz Kanata was wasted (though acknowledged that she’s the ‘surrogate’ for a lot of Leia context). He didn’t find Lando talking to Jannah creepy but he did find it a bit baffling (I wonder if the fact he might become surrogate to the orphaned stormtroopers could be made more explicit). He also quite disliked how many references to earlier movies there were. The most acceptable for him was the cute lifting of Luke’s X-wing out of the swamp, but most other examples, like the medal, really pulled him out of it.
He was alright with most of the new force powers, and most of the spiritual elements of the force, including Han as a ‘memory’ rather than a true force ghost. But he didn’t like how Rey panicked like the other main characters during the action sequences (especially the speeder chase) when she’s clearly competent and composed often (like in the following facedown against Kylo’s oncoming TIE fighter). He said her inner turmoil and temptation is character depth enough - she should be more outwardly composed in areas where her skill outranks the threat.
He thought it was OK to bring back Palpatine, and especially that our edits made that much more palatable, but he wishes that the prior films had set that up (which many of our edits now thankfully do).
He wasn’t entirely happy with “yeah, your parents were nobodies, but you’re a Palpatine”, because it really is a last-minute retcon of a retcon. He still thinks that, given that this movie went hard on Palpatine, the most appropriate option is Rey Palpatine over Rey Nobody, but while the execution came close, it still didn’t quite land for him. I talked him through the changes being discussed over on the radical sequel ideas thread right now and he thought they’d be a far stronger middle ground that’d patch this issue up much better. He thinks that Rey’s dad being Palpatine’s son is the biggest problam with the logic here.
On to some more positive stuff.
He absolutely loved a load of our changes: (All of these he was suprised were edited in.) The puppet show. The force ghosts at the end. The cracked lightsaber. Leia’s saber being purple. The “ghost in a rotting clone” line. The scene reordering to mitigate pacing issues. The replacement of the dagger’s mechanism with whispers (though he wishes that macguffin quest has fewer steps). The civilian fleet voices.
He liked a lot more that we modified: That Snoke was explained. That Palpatine mostly made sense, and that the motivations of all the main characters seemed sound. Dreadnought cannons instead of Death Star lasers. The inclusion of the Fortnite intel. That Rey and Kylo “became” a Dyad in the force. The Death Star wreckage being on the Endor forest moon (though he was worried this would “become an Ewok movie” for a moment!) Jannah being inspired by Finn. Leia quitting her Jedi training to focus on diplomacy. The removal of the mention of the Holdo maneuver. Moving the holochess scene to later for the family ending (though he wished we didn’t see holochess again). The lines setting up Rey “Skywalker” (though her declaration at the end still felt quite left field for him). He was completely happy with force healing (“yeah, she learned it from the Jedi texts, they had that picture”).
He really liked a good amount of the original content: Having the core three together (though Rose should’ve joined them). The Rey/Kylo stuff (even the kiss!), and the concept of the Dyad. Rey’s temptation. Palpatine being suprised at and consuming the Dyad for its power. C-3PO’s humour post memory wipe, in most instances.
He didn’t have any issue with Poe being a spice runner, and he actually thought Finn’s role was fairly decent - something I felt too while watching. Finn doesn’t drive the plot but he’s involved in a lot of key moments in a meaningful way, and the Jannah sideline lands well. He didn’t scoff at horses on a Star Destroyer. He didn’t know we cut the Kijimi destruction, which I think proves that it wasn’t necessary to sell the threat.
Right, that’s all I can remember! But feel free to ask me about any other elements and I’ll see if he mentioned it. Like I say, he’s an OT/TLJ lover, but also studied film, and loves critically analysing media, so I always consider his opinions worthwhile. I hope you all enjoyed this! Highlights I think we might be able to make more progress in include the regular ‘film school’ dialogue, the pacing and having no breathers, the macguffin fetch quest’s many steps, the jokey humour, and the number of references to other movies or the audience’s point of view.
Random personal thought: What about changing the strength of the First Order going into this movie? What if Luke’s gambit in TLJ worked, the people rose up between movies, and the First Order got beaten down to practically nothing - not a threat to or a presence on the core worlds? That way you’d have them more desperate at the beginning and thus more accepting of Kylo’s pursuit of arcane knowledge and then the deal he makes with Palpatine. Palpatine’s fleet would be that much more attractive to them. You could still imply the Republic has no military left (or perhaps they’re finishing up clearing First Order forces off the core worlds, or are sitting sentinel on those worlds, making them unavailable), meaning the civilian fleet at the end is still necessary. But this way you’d also get to skip the quite weak few scenes at the end where it’s a case of “oh neat, this victory immediately inspired everyone else to throw off the First Order too, by the way”, and focus more on the victory at Exegol and with the main characters, without having to do even more revisiting familiar saga locations.
One other thought from myself: I wonder if the arrival of the civilian fleet could come a little closer to Rey rising up. Ideally, all the highs should come as closely as possible. I know that the fleet needs to arrive, then come under threat, before Rey saves the day, but there’s a bit of whiplash here. I wonder if Palpatine’s lightning destruction can be mainly of the Resistance ships (and her friends), with the civilians arriving to help take down the First Order fleets and turn the military tide as Rey rises?
