EddieDean

The kiss is one of them, yep! Straight down the middle.

Results preview: After 64 responses, two questions have exactly a 50/50 split! Try to guess which!

Oh, that’s fantastic news that you’re considering those changes! I wish I could help, but absolutely best of luck to you!

Here’s a good shot of the Hyperdrive room in the finale of The Clone Wars: https://ibb.co/7C86T7F

Knight of Kalee said:

It could have been so much better if Pasaana was Jedha fromt the beginning. At surface level they look exactly the same since they reutilized shooting locations (guess it’s a Disney thing, because I recognized the cliffs of Jedha in Aladdin too).

So this actually reminds me of a few fun facts/stories!

Firstly, it’s not so much that it’s a Disney thing, as that Wadi Rum in Jordan is a popular filming location in general. Jordan is one of the most westernised countries in the middle east, with good infrastructure, and the Wadi Rum desert is quite accessible and with a lot of lovely hotels nearby. So it’s a good natural choice for an alien-looking landscape on Earth.

Now for the stories!

I’ve actually been to Wadi Rum, and Jordan. (Fun fact - the Dead Sea is as amazingly floaty as everyone says, you can’t quite imagine it, but the one thing that’s universal about floating in the Dead Sea but that nobody talks about is that all that salt really stings your butthole.)

The Wadi Rum desert is absolutely as incredible as it looks on film. Absolutely majestic landscape, but I also had one of the most horrifying times of my life there. We were camping out in the desert in some little lean-to shacks, without electricity or plumbing (since it’s illegal to develop on the desert, in order to preserve it). I was, ironically enough given why I’m telling this story, sleeping in a bed with a Mickey Mouse duvet (that’s all they had). But the food had disagreed with me.

So I woke up in the night knowing I needed to make it to the toilet block quickly, but also aware that the cooler night is when the desert bugs are more active. And there’s no electricity. So there’s me, walking across this informal compound by candlelight under the stars, jumping at shadows, desperately trying to hold in the shits. Eventually I make it to the toilet block, get seated, shit my guts out, and then I have to wipe my arse and just put my toilet paper in a basket next to me, because you’re not allowed to flush stuff into the desert.

It gets worse. So there’s me, feeling pretty rotten on a natty toilet by candlelight in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, when I hear a helicopter. Weird. The noise makes me raise my eyes to the top of the doorframe, and I see it’s not a helicopter, it’s a hornet, more than an inch long, and it’s come to check me out. I’ve got my pants round my ankles, and no way am I making any movements. There’s no escaping. But since I’m operating by candlelight, there’s a real chance that my candle will burn out, leaving me to navigate out of this situation by starlight alone. The hornet is helicoptering around the cubicle, which draws my eyes even higher, which makes me notice the most evil looking spider I’ve ever seen was hanging over the cubicle door the whole time. It’s shiny black and about an inch and a half across, with sharp, well-defined legs that end with about half an inch of white spike. It looks designed to look evil.

Suffice to say, if I hadn’t already shit myself that certainly would have done the job. Eventually the hornet left, and I slowly dressed up and got out by the last of my candlelight. I helped myself to a coke, since that was the other option and I didn’t trust the water, so I stayed awake through the rest of the night absolutely harrowed by that experience.

Still, a lovely place and a great holiday and I’d recommend Jordan to anyone.

I’ve also, by chance, been to Luke’s house too. Family did a Tunisia trip around 2012 and one of the tours from our hotel was the Star Wars one. So I got to see the “scum and villainy” view, Mos Eisley exterior set (which still stands), Luke’s house exterior (which is someone’s real house), and Luke’s house interior (which is someone’s real house but different from the exterior), where I got to eat at his dining table under that white and brown patterned ceiling.

55 Responses already! Thank you all so much! I was thinking about posting this elsewhere to be sure to get good coverage but I think I’d much rather have input exclusively from existing members of this community, so such a high number is amazing. There are some REALLY interesting answers here, including a couple of places where I reckon there’s a good steer towards brand new ideas which are probably feasible - I’ll post up analysis sometime this weekend.

Thanks for all the responses folks. 22 so far. Some really interesting stuff! I’ll post up the results probably around Sunday!

Aye, Hal, some have knock-ons, but I figured it’s best to take them in isolation - we can always aggregate themes later.

Yeah, Octo, I tried to stay within I guess ‘feasible+’. Hux being a good example, maybe we go as far as masking him into a few scenes, to preserve him that much longer before Pryde kills him? Seems like a lot of effort for only a little reward, but I figured that’s about the realm of possibility.

A good question, for another time.

Poll is now closed, see results here:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/TROS-Edit-Opinions-Poll-RESULTS-and-ANALYSIS/id/74967

Some fantastic changes here.

I’ve always hated, though, how awful the grasslands around Naboo look. They are just absolutely featureless and they look more CG than the entirely CG creatures moving around them. Every shot of the greenery just takes me right out of the film. TAS, is that something you’ve thought about looking into?

Similarly, the ‘power station’ or whatever it is that’s the setting of the final fight just looks too unbelievably fake. The very last episode of The Clone Wars featured a ship’s ‘hyperdrive core’ which had very similar geometry but without the artificial feeling laser pylons, have you considered any changes to this?

I think the notion of the Dyad is pretty guff. I’d rather that Rey’s and Kylo’s bond was emotional, slightly aided by Snoke force-connecting them. It just feels pretty nonsense to have a new bit of force lore introduced in this one which seems to be 'you’re powerful and Palpatine can eat you.

I’d rather that the new force-thing which happens in this movie is simply that Palpatine can rip the force from force users. It makes him way more monstrous, just like the original lightning did in ROTJ.

Rey is a naturally powerful and well-honed (if not long-trained) Jedi, with a little dark leaning, a close relationship with another powerful force user, and near the end, the support of a bunch of ghosts. That’s good enough for me to justify her power, I don’t think we need a whole other thing, especially one so clumsy as the Dyad.

On the Just Rey vs Rey Skywalker front, one of the issues I have with Rey Skywalker is that I can’t help but read it as a metaphor for Disney buying Star Wars then tacking on their trilogy that wasn’t strictly necessary and saying “this counts as Star Wars”. That’s not to say I’m not glad we’re getting more Star Wars - I am - but it feels like a corporate mandate rather than something that was necessary to the story.

That totally may just be me, but Rey saying “I’m a Skywalker too” without necessarily earning it just maps directly to Disney saying “These movies are more examples of those Star Wars movies you love” in my mind - which doesn’t land well after TROS flubbing so hard.

Whereas ‘Just Rey’ maps better to the metaphor of “I have the support of what came before, but I’m something new and bold and I’m going to go in my own direction.”

Kraus, what’s your opinion on Holdo?

I really like the edited ending with the ghosts of Ben and Anakin in it. I think Anakin belongs, because of his redemption at the end of ROTJ, and his presence in the Rey vs Palpatine fight edit which seems to be gaining a lot of traction.

If we want to have the sequels be part of our canon, which really we should, since we don’t have an alternative, then we have to be comfortable with the idea that Rey is not, by birth, a Skywalker, and that a lot of the OT’s conclusive ending is undone in order to justify the new Disney trilogy. And one way to become more comfortable with that is to refactor Anakin’s story and Luke’s story as including the concepts of support for future generations of force wielding protectors, as steps on a longer journey. That doesn’t belittle their achievements at all. Having the support of the prior generations as force ghosts at key moments helps reinforce that - and I think Anakin really belongs, thematically as a capper to the prequels and from a story perspective as one of the great successes of Luke’s.

Here’s a controversial take though - a lot of people have talked about how it’s a bit odd that Rey returns to Tattooine, which Luke hated, where Anakin’s mother was enslaved, where Leia was enslaved. It’s a capper to a 40-year journey for the audience to see that twin sunrise, but it doesn’t make sense for Rey, who has no emotional connection to it. What if, instead, we change Tattooine to Jedha, using some mattes and masking? We know from Rogue One that it was significant to the Jedi Order, and taken by the Empire. What better place to honour the past and begin a different future (away from ivory-tower Coruscant) than a proper holy site?

+1!

Isn’t it canon or common fanon that Obi-Wan’s using that line as effectively a coded message saying “Don’t reveal that you know me”?

In terms of colours for Exegol, I’m firmly in the camp of:

• A greyscale planet, with no tint, to imply absolute lifelessness
• Non-green fluid for the clones (either red for the nice contrast, or we make as much as possible of this tech look Kaminoan), to clash with the later green
• Green mists around the throne, as it’s a nice alien colour we’ve not had in a finale for a while, both evil and not just sith-red, and also as a bonus hints at the Nightsister connection for those that care.

Hal 9000 said:

Not that I’d want to actually put it into a ‘desert island’ version of ROTJ, but I’d be interested in seeing a DSII explosion that could even potentially allow for its wreckage as seen in TROS.

Yeah, and the fleet retreating idea. Now that things follow the OT, it’s OK that we add a little connective tissue.

Hal 9000 said:

I guess Luke was acting rashly, against his masters’ insistence. Whereas Rey is like a new Force messiah. Just different situations.

I think Rey glowing is more appropriate than a shield that doesn’t deflect anything.

Good enough for me!

I’d certainly swing towards the DS2 being a half-repaired DS1. I’d have the original DS1’s destruction modified to create chunks which could feasibly be repaired into something approaching the DS2, then explain an attempt to repair it in ROTJ’s crawl.

This is all very wonderful, but how do we justify this (and indeed the ‘interference’ of the ghosts in the original version of TROS) against Obi-Wan’s quote from ROTJ: “If you choose to face Vader, you will do it alone. I cannot interfere.”?

Bingowings said:

Palestine turns the crystal sacred to the Jedi into super weapon. Luke restores it.

Damn Disney always having to push a political agenda! 😉

Have you considered picking up where Smudger left off? At least a couple of his moviefied serials were about as good as anyone could get them, I reckon.

Could I get a link please, ChainsawAsh?