EddieDean

These are so, so good. I think you’re absolutely nailing this. In the second clip I’d delay Too Good Too Bad by about 30 seconds - you have it start as soon as they get in the car, then go quiet later, but it’s probably better off kicking off when the car action scene escalates, so that it can play out fully from there.

Yeah, Cowboy Bebop is absolutely worth checking out - especially if you “don’t like anime” (I don’t). It’s an incredible, mature, fun, realistic space opera. And its music is incredible. You could absolutely enjoy a Bebopified Solo movie without knowing the show, because so much of the style is captured by the music and it genuinely would suit Solo, but the show is magnificent whether you like anime or not.

As a counterpoint to the idea that Leia’s vision showed her son would die, remember, a major motivator for her in TFA was the idea they’d “lost” their son. So just like ‘Vader killed Anakin’, we can interpret that ‘Kylo killed Ben’, and that was why they called him lost. His fall was worse than his death, so I think the vision (which, yes, included his death) doesn’t need to be a prophecy which was ultimately fulfilled, because her main fear there, just like Luke’s major regret, was his fall to the darkside. His redemption is what she’s after.

specialk2121 said:

Hal 9000 said:

It’s weird to feel a little sad to see how… close to being sort of complete the cutlist is.

I’ll be real with you, it’s gonna be hard when this thing is finished.

If only there was a way to do a big watch party premiere when it’s done. To send the HAL9000 saga out with a bang!

We could get everyone on Discord and sync up a play of it!

These are really great! I wasn’t sure about this idea at all, but seeing it, it really works! I don’t even really think you need another voice. Other than making what you already have a little clearer, I wouldn’t suggest anything else at all!

Preferences:

Pasaana:

• “Solo’s Wookiee” (implies they have fairly good tabs on our resistance heroes and Ben’s wider life)
• “I get his teeth” (or, “I get his hide”)

Kijimi:

• “The girl. I feel her presence. Find her.” (“The girl” seems to be how the bad guys refer to Rey, as Kylo did in TFA when he was on the hunt for her. Find her keeps the intention ambiguous, so editors won’t need to work around this as they would with ‘Palpatine wants…’, etc)

Exegol Entrance:
I’d advise only using two - three feels a bit too full.

• “Still chasing the girl, Ben?” (emphasises his turn, his feelings for Rey, and uses his old name, which they must surely consider an insult)
• “Traitorous scum. To think we followed you.” (Best reference back to “master of the Knights of Ren”, makes it personal)

Exegol Pause:

• “You’ll join your father soon” (‘Join’ better than ‘see’ because they might not believe in ghosts, but this one’s strongest as it twists the knife, and reminds us we’ve lost Han)

Exegol Saber:

• “What?! How?!” (We recognise it as Luke’s so we don’t need the reminder, nor do we need them to account for ‘fairness’ - this plot element and new power should be a suprise, so their language here should just reflect that)

So what about shifting Mustafar to the ending of TLJ? He failed to convince Rey of his ideology and had her slam the mental door on him, he failed to defeat Luke Skywalker, he defeated Snoke. He’s in the right mindset to seek greater power. So we have the ‘find me’ radio scene, then we end on a quick montage of him travelling to Mustafar, slaughtering through the natives, and finding an object which is clearly a map. Mysterious! Angry Kylo leaves us in a nice dark place.

Then, with TROS, we open with him finally having followed the wayfinder.

Yeah. It’s a bit flimsy, but that’s how the films have done it. Vader turned at the end and lobbed Palpatine down the shaft, and that plus a little chat with Luke were all we really needed to accept he’s now so good he gets to become a ghost.

Kylo wouldn’t be much different. He joined the fight versus Palpatine, healed Rey, got a kiss, then died. That’s roughly equivalent, for these purposes, and that’s why folks support it.

This is why I’m leaning way more to survival and exile. Firstly, the whole heal > kiss > die scene was just super clumsy either way. Secondly, that it just mirrors Vader’s too closely, and I’d rather see something different. But mainly, because I think it’s more potent to see someone initially full of rage and confusion choose a life of penitence and peace.

Hal 9000 said:

I agree 100%. I just wanted to play devil’s advocate about the bad guys and their former one-sidedness in fairness to the original point.

Yup, totally legitimate point. I enjoyed it being more explicit in the old EU, where it was used to good effect. It showed that Thrawn was considered valuable beyond the Imperials’ prejudice (like, uh, Ben Carson?), and in the Legacy comics it showed a more desperate Imperial remnant needing to turn to aliens to bolster their ranks. In both examples, potent and cool.

RogueLeader said:

Nice post. Wasn’t expecting to for things to get deep.

Yeah, sorry. Didn’t want to, and I know it’s no fun, but I do kind of feel responsible for standing up for this kind of thing. Privilege isn’t a zero sum game, it’s not a limited resource we need to fight over, and I hate that people have to go through their lives with others wanting them to have less. Nobody loses out when we treat others as valid (except those who seek to deny others their validity; punch your local nazis, folks).

Seriously though, is having Leia die with Padme’s necklace in her hands a good idea?

Chase Adams said:

Great post, but since when do Imperials have unnatural hair colours? 😐

Not hair colours specifically, but the Ralph McQuarrie art book (and I’m sure other sources) discuss how Lucas, right from the beginning, directed the artists in this way. The intention was that Imperials would use an unnatural colour scheme - black, white, grey, red - whereas rebels would use natural colours - browns, forest green, sky blue. There are exceptions but those guidelines were definitely given and broadly applied. So objecting to Holdo’s hair colour on that basis would be valid (though I think caring about that is a waste of a perfectly good care).

I for one can definitely imagine an Imperial (even in senior uniform) with pink hair looking pretty appropriate.

snooker said:

Fantastic post!!

I got you, you valid human being ❤️

Goddamn, I hate getting preachy, it’s not fun for anyone. But I know that being a woman or other non straight white cis male, and trying to just enjoy fun things, and having to see oppressive trash like this so frequently must be way more fucking invalidating and frustrating. Just fuck off and let us enjoy thinking about magic laser knights and pew pew spaceships together.

Hal, your argument’s made in perfectly good faith, so please take this the same. The fact that Imperial/FO troops have historically been primarily male and implicitly (or explicitly only in the EU) prejudiced organisations is valid. Just as a valid opposition to Holdo having purple hair, is that there was an observed soft rule in early SW design that Imperials would use unnatural colours and rebels would use natural ones.

But there’s still a couple of issues. Firstly but least importantly, that it’s not a hard rule that Disney are breaking by having female roles like this, because it hasn’t been made explicit in core media that these organisations have these prejudices. And it’s not like even with an established rule, that a writer couldn’t introduce the change with a throwaway line. (Especially in Star Wars… If Palpatine can “somehow” return, the First Order can “somehow” have included more women in its ranks.)

But mostly, it’s that adherence to canon or implicit soft rules isn’t the motivation of that poster and other similar posters. I’ll need to make generalised assumptions about people now, but it feels very safe to say that quotes like “Kathleen Kennedy mandated…” or “whammen whammen whammen” or “admiral gender studies” indicate that such posters are formally or informally a part of the broader movement which seeks to continue to suppress accurate and equal female representation. Or, to put it more succinctly, it’s not about Star Wars at all, it’s about women.

And this is where we get subjective, but the world needs better female representation. It needs women growing up to believe they are valid, and strong, and deserving of all the opportunities and privileges and securities men have. It needs men to accept, support, and celebrate that. I’m not going to justify that statement because nobody wants a feminist rant right now, but my point here is that, while your argument about canon is valid, the real-world gain of representation is far greater than the minor impact on inexplicit soft canon. So I think that needs to be the determining factor here - it’s certainly why I personally didn’t consider the option for my poll. End of main response.

As an aside, I wish I could credit Disney for this, but again, motivation is key. I believe that Kathleen Kennedy / other writers / Disney are moving towards being progressive, but I believe they’re capitalist first. KK/OW/D may have minor progressive leanings (I believe KK takes genuine pride in representation of diversity), but I believe that the real reason that Disney and other large companies are shifting progressive is because that’s the way the markets are shifting right now. It’s only relatively recently that entertainment media, especially movies, have realised that women can be just as passionate and engaged (and marketable) fans as men, once the representation is there. For example, I love that Forces of Destiny has a strong female focus, because that representation is still the greater good, but I know that behind the scenes for Disney it’s an investment in growing their market share.

I believe this is why there is broad backlash from typical anti-progressive communities too - for those for whom a progressive world is seen as a threat, they see this change in representation and they want to create a backlash, because backlash can hit these companies in their bottom line - they’re speaking in capitalism, because that’s what these companies respond to. This is also why I think it’s likely that Disney would never lean too hard into explicitly showing “the baddies” as particularly prejudiced - because being told “racism is what baddies do”, or “sexism is what baddies do”, or similar, is still something that risks a money-damaging public backlash from the kind of people who oppose this culture shift.

raphdude said:

Interesting poll! I’m sorry I missed out on it. Just curious, are you considering an option of undoing some of the female first order trooper voices/screams and making them male? I have a feeling Kathleen Kennedy sat there in the editing room and said, “Make that one a whammen, whammen, whammen here, put a whammen there, whammen soldier, whammen soldier, wabbit season, wabbit season!” Whoops!

I did not, and will not, consider asking about whether women should have the roles they have in this movie, or any other Star Wars movie, or for any other subject about which I might make a poll in my life. Decreasing the prominence of roles which represent the breadth and potential of female existence is not something I think is necessary or valid or, frankly, human. Thank you for your interest in the poll, I’m sorry to have missed your input. I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for help pursuing that idea, and insofar as I can make the request of you, I’d appreciate if you kept such lines of thought out of this thread.

These clips are amazing.

Love the lightsaber discussion on the balcony, though I struggle to comprehend the first line.

Also, the slightly awkward “You’re beautiful because I’m so in love with you” scene could be cut to remove some clumsiness:
Anakin: “You’re so beautiful”
Padme: “So love has blinded you?”
Anakin: [Smiles with the wide, humorous smile and dismissive head shake before he originally says “No, no, it’s because I’m so in love with you”, but instead we just cut to-]
Padme: “It’s probably true.”
Anakin: [Gives the chuckle he gives before he originally says “That’s not exactly what I meant”]

This way it’s a genuine moment from Anakin, followed by a flirtatious but affectionate tease from Padme, which Anakin responds to with effectively “well you got me there!”

Yeah, that is worth thinking about. Nice one!

I’m not planning another poll ☺️

Good point about the Rashomon shots. Yeah, TFA could work, maybe she’s always dreamed of these people, this family.

Here’s another thought, kind of unrelated to the above. I didn’t ask in my poll about the Leia and Luke training flashback. Traditionally Star Wars hasn’t had flashbacks, only visions, yet if anyone deserves it it’s Leia. But I was thinking of a better home for it - how about when she’s in space in TLJ, passed out, just as her fingers start to twitch?

That’s fair, actually. Vader was responsible for masses of death and suffering, and he got to turn into a Jedi ghost at the end, so there’s no reason Kylo shouldn’t be considered ‘fully redeemed’. Still, I don’t think exile takes away from that.

He’d go into Exile because he’s turned from his dark path, and survived, yet he knows the galaxy can’t forgive him for the terrible things he’s done. And what better place for the exile of a penitent man than the planet where his grandfather was enslaved? And what better place for a Ben to go into exile than a Tattooine, like the man he’s named after?

Delpheas said:

Having Palpatine have no plan for Rey would be nice because it would show him falling into the same trap the Jedi are guilty of, letting their arrogance and belief in their own power prevent them from seeing what is on the horizon.

Yeah, exactly. The Jedi didn’t see the darkness before them, and Palpatine never saw the light. He had so many plans and contingencies and forethought, he was just waiting on the death of Luke fucking Skywalker. But he couldn’t predict/perceive that thirty years into the future, a new lightside warrior would rise, backed by the Skywalker legacy. (Possibly this also implies, that he also couldn’t predict force ghosts). This particular combination of Rey backed by his great rivals is his Thermal Exhaust Port, the one thing he didn’t account for as a weakness.

Leia dying on Naboo is a great idea, as it allows her to end where her mother started. Make this movie rhyme with the others as much as possible. It is the last after all.

And any version that is meant to include Padme surviving RotS and dying while Leia is a young child, should absolutely consider giving Leia the pendent.

Yeah at first I was much more into Pasaana as Jedha than Ajan Kloss as Naboo, but I’ve really fallen for this now. It’s not only Padme’s home, but Palpatine’s too. And having Leia die here, in the act of redeeming her son, feels super right. I’d love for her to be buried with the pendant that her father made for her mother when he was just a boy.

Ben in exile is a great idea, and one that could probably be executed, but without dialogue between him and Rey where he says something like "I’m staying here. It is my penance.’ It could be quite a head scratcher.

I imagined this one something like:
“Rey who?”
[Rey looks to her right, to see Kylo standing quietly in the distance, watching. Maybe he nods. We take a beat.]
[Leia and Luke’s ghosts appear, one to either side of Kylo. They’ll watch over him, and all three implicitly support Rey too.]
“Rey Skywalker.”
[Back to her new family on the ship, off to other adventures]

RogueLeader said:

Eddie, since you poured so much time into this, were there certain things you would like to discuss based off the analysis. Honestly we could talk about the Finn/Poe ideas on the main TROS thread.

I’d like people to talk about whatever springs out to them as worthy of discussion, ideally.

For me personally it’s the stuff in bold which I think is new, or particularly interesting. But to pick a couple:

• Kylo in exile on Tattooine
• Leia with Padme’s pendant
• Having Palatine have no plan whatsoever for Rey

NeverarGreat said:

Is there a way that we can see all of the options for the questions? I ask only because many of the questions look identical due to them being cut off.

Not easily. However I’ve combed through every one of them and called out any which add anything substantial or novel that the higher voted items didn’t include. Essentially you could ignore every image and just read my bullets, and you’d still get 99% of the detail of the results.