EddieDean

I think that entirely works, except for Rey’s death. I’d be sorry to lose some of the good Resistance scenes from TLJ but you’re right that they’re not vital to the core of what you’re trying to do here. I’d keep Rey alive though, mainly because it’s one of the few things that’s likely to remain important in the supporting Star Wars media for at least a few years - though that may not be a priority for you.

I agree with you, Rogueleader. I’ve always been in the camp of ‘all Star Wars is better than any particular Star Wars’, and that the tweaks that we make should preserve as much of the whole unifying story as possible. I would absolutely prefer to have an acceptable TROS with Palpatine than cut the movie entirely, I just think that that movie leaves so, so much to be desired that I think it’s worth exploring the option - at least in a Radical thread. Certainly I think the biggest necessary question (and the one with the biggest set of follow-up questions) is whether or not to retain Palpatine.

If we keep TROS and Palpatine, then our next questions are how to make that movie (and the sequels) cohesive, and you’re right that even dipping into the ending of ROTJ is sensible.

I think the biggest technical challenge in terms of improving TROS is having Finn’s arc worth something.

Yeah. It’s such a shame that Finn’s story went nowhere too. That storyline had so much potential.

Yeah. You had at least two other established ways of creating powerful force sensitives, as well as the standard ‘anyone can be force sensitive’ idea, which don’t raise the questions of ‘did Palps fuck?’ and ‘why isn’t his son more important to the story?’

I’ve thought about the sequel trilogy becoming more of an epilogue, but IMO it doesn’t justify itself well enough. The original characters in the sequel trilogy are (rightly) used to progress the new characters’ stories, and taken as a continuation of the original trilogy I don’t it serves to do what an epilogue should - to wrap up loose ends, to give closure. The only original trilogy character with new development is Luke, but his story in the absence of the main plot doesn’t really serve as a capper. Taken as an epilogue I think it would also undo some of the closure of the end of Return of the Jedi - a second Empire! Death Star 3! Another evil darkside guy! - it’s too samey so it undoes a lot of the progress made by the end of that film.

The best parts of the sequels were the new characters and their stories together - especially Rey and Kylo. The original trilogy characters’ stories in relation to our new mains were valid and valuable. The new threats - while almost exclusively old threats BUT MORE POWERFUL - at least gave our new characters good storylines in their own right, which goes most of the way towards justifying their existence (your mileage may vary).

In short, I think that the sequels have to be able to justify their own existence, otherwise why bother? I think the problem that we’re all mulling over on these forums lately is that TROS largely doesn’t justify existing, and it retroactively weakens the argument of the prior films by failing to deliver.

It’s an option. But if you remove Palpatine entirely you lose the majority of TROS. There’re probably some that can be used elsewhere, but you’re more looking at butchering TROS and putting elements of it into a changed TLJ, than retaining a three movie structure. You potentially could drop the entire Canto Bight plot if you needed to make space for new content. The challenge then is in finding a solid conclusion to the duology, making TLJ’s ending serve as the series ending - which as in my original post on this idea, I reckon you can only really satisfy with a Rey/Kylo confrontation.

My headcanon is certainly that Palpatine either ‘used the force to create life’ as he did with Vader, or cloned out Reys and Snokes and spare Palpatines. In both cases, the plan was always to have his soul inhabit the strongest, and his resurrection was his soul inhabiting a Palp backup.

Yeah, don’t worry about it at all buddy - you owe us nothing at all, we’re just grateful for what you’ve given. Take it easy - you’re under no obligation to us whatsoever. Keep a healthy balance.

I always assumed pre-TROS that the reason that the First Order was named the First Order would be revealed as it being literally the FIRST ORDER Palpatine gave (possibly secretly or at least not publicly). That is, his first command upon ascendance to the Senate was the provision of a secret army, much as Order 66 was a secret order of his designed to trigger the destruction of the Jedi at the appropriate time. This makes him much more of a game player, with real foresight and planning, creating backups for his various schemes. Around that time Palpatine would have had access to active shipyards, plus cloning tech (which would more easily explain his return). It wouldn’t, then, be a stretch to assume that he was behind both the active First Order fleet in the first two sequel films, and his even more secret Death-Star-enabled fleet.

I like the crawls above - tried taking the best elements of all of them, but with respectful nods to the way JJ likes his stories to unfold:

The dead speak! The villainous COUNT DOOKU has returned, to herald the return of his dark master, EMPEROR PALPATINE. Dooku is killed by Admiral Pryde, but not before revealing a secret Sith technique to create a new galactic navy where each ship gets its own Death Star laser!

Luke Skywalker’s message of hope has reached the far corners of the galaxy, and the civilians of countless worlds are almost committed - they need just one more famous hero to come and get them before they rise up to join the resistance against the evil FIRST ORDER and also the new and bigger FINAL ORDER.

Meanwhile, Rey has read in the Jedi texts that her force bond with Kylo Ren is a FORCE DYAD, which is one of the reasons she’s very powerful. But could there be another, darker source of her power? Watch the movie to find out! Also Finn will be there.

I think we can keep the current version of the blue smoke and still call it subtle. After all, the guy’s just been bisected by a blue lightsaber, it’s not a stretch to read it as just a little blue light on the smoke from the hot wound even if you noticed it. Definitely vote to stay.

Sparky, RogueLeader, I really like the idea you’re throwing around here. TROS really does little other than try to justify itself, whereas TLJ does feel far more conclusive. I agree that the only real ‘meat’ of TROS which also concludes a key part of the story is Rey vs Kylo around the old Death Star wreckage, and Kylo’s Han dream.

I think you have either two options - a ~15 min epilogue ‘movie’ with a crawl which would explain stuff, or appending it to TLJ, which I think is better. I don’t think a duology is problematic even if a trilogy was the norm. I know it’s a little clumsy, but you could insert a ‘four months later’ title card if you had to.

As much as I like it, if you were going to excise anything for time you could probably cut out the entirety of Finn’s storyline. That’d keep TLJ a lot more focused on the pursuit, Snoke, and Rey’s training by Luke.

The only thing I’d add in to a TLJ+TROS ‘final’ movie would be to cut in the flashback of Luke training Leia over the scene where she’s floating in space just before the Poppins flight, and then end with Rey training under Leia from the beginning of TROS.

RogueLeader said:

EddieDean said:

If Rey’s a clone of anyone she should be either a clone of Palpatine or Vader, since they’re the lineages that Palpatine is known to value. Probably Palpatine himself, since Kylo is already a Vader child under his thrall.

I get this idea but I don’t think this fits the definition of a clone. A clone is genetically identical to the original. If it isn’t, then it isn’t a clone, it is something else.

In the real world, clones can come out either gender. It’s not carried by your genetics. Though that said, in the Star Wars movies, we do have a precedent where two hundred thousand clones have ‘inherited’ the gender of the ‘father’, with a million more well on the way.

If Rey’s a clone of anyone she should be either a clone of Palpatine or Vader, since they’re the lineages that Palpatine is known to value. Probably Palpatine himself, since Kylo is already a Vader child under his thrall.

I think that with your suggestion there, you’re fixing one complication by introducing something far more complicated. I see what you’re trying to do, but I think it’d confuse an audience more. Besides, Rey taking the Skywalker name at all is something I think is popular for removal here, as is the kiss (let alone implied offscreen sex) with Kylo.

I’d definitely vote for a V3 which includes all of the above changes.

darkshadowspike said:

Hal 9000 said:
‘Heir To The Jedi’ Duology
I digress. As I said, I think a TFA-TLJ duology is greater in total than a TFA-TLJ-TROS trilogy. The only thing that would make that feel weird is the trilogy structure the audience expects. As an absolute minimum, all one would need to do is either do away with the opening crawls (and finding another way to set the story and political landscape up for TFA), or replace their “Episode” labels with something like “DUOLOGY TITLE - Part I - THE FORCE AWAKENS.”

WOW , that is an extreme measure! i loathe TROS (is reductive , uninspiring and dumb) and love TLJ, but i don’t think that TLJ would work as an finale, is too open ended, with questions as:

• “What happened to kylo? he just stayed bad and died offscreen?”
• "knights of ren that we saw in TFA whats up with them " (they did nothing in tros, but at least they were there) - “how would kylo act as the supreme leader” (we see a little of that tros, not much but a little)
• “What did rey do with those books?”
• “is hux going to betray kylo at some momment?”
• “what is going to happen between kylo and rey, with the new status quo”

If you want you can make massive alterations to TROS (no rey palpatine, no palpatine, no jannah or zori, sith troopers being under kylo’s command), but i don’t think that dropping TROS altogether is viable.

although i would prefer for an improved TROS over that, enjoying a fan edit so different to the actual movie , gives me the sensation of enjoying something that is not real, the sensation of indulging in a headcanon.

The cleanest achievable option to answer some of your questions, darkshadowspike, might be to make the new ‘Final Order’ fleet something created and manned by Sith cultists managed by the Knights of Ren, at Kylo’s command - which could be covered in the crawl. That gives him something to do as Supreme Leader, some significance to the Knights (while explaining their absence), and avoids the need for Palpatine.

I really support this approach, in that TROS was an absolute nosedive. However, it does feel to me like we need some kind of traditional climax at the end for as many characters and themes as possible, rather than implying it with narration over broad imagery, if possible.

RogueLeader said:

I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think the idea of draining life and healing it ties in well with the themes of selfishness and selflessness, which are central to the Saga. I think what is unique to the Dyad, though, is the ability of resurrection.

In the prequels, Anakin had a vision that Padmé would die. To him, that meant her dying was inevitable, and he needed a power beyond just healing.

And just because others have not used this ability in the films beforehand doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Perhaps it was a technique lost and was rediscovered by Rey in the ancient texts. Or, the waning and waxing of the Force’s strength over generations has an effect on people’s ability to perform it.

And regardless if you cut the power out of IX, it won’t change the fact that Baby Yoda uses the power in the Mandalorian. And maybe he can do it because it is a child, and children have been shown to have an innate connection to the Force, just like the Dyad is shown to have in IX.

That’s all fair. I have a problem with the Dyad though - to me it feels like a cheap way to introduce two characters who are extra powerful, which I don’t think is fair game in Star Wars.

And while you’re right that we may just not have seen it during this time period, either we have an awful lot of media where it doesn’t happen onscreen (including where it’s particularly useful), or it’s lost and then remembered, albeit clumsily and relying on errata or assumption.

Definitely a good point on Baby Yoda though - I didn’t have a problem with that although it’s the same issue, I assume because of just how well the Mandalorian show managed to ultimately pull off a lot of similar things to TROS (including ample fanservice which didn’t phase me either). So there is some hypocrisy here. You could justify that as BY using a darkside power ignorantly, but the counterargument to that is that it relies on assumption, which I’ve already shot down.

I’m aware I’m not putting together a compelling argument here - there’s just so much of TROS which absolutely rankles me and combines to this ultimate feeling of it not just being bad but actively doing damage to SW. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in, having loved-tolerated so much of SW in spite of its imperfections for so long.

+1 DJL. I’m a fan of (aggressively) removing or recontextualising anything which retroactively does damage to the rest of the saga, which I think lightside healing does. ROTS established that the power to create life is unnatural/darkside, and by extension I’d always assume healing is - especially since we don’t see it used by any Jedi.

I like the Sequel Trilogy, a lot, but I think that it has a lot of elements which harm the wider saga, or raise tricky questions. Compare that to Rogue One, which, whether you like it or not, it fits perfectly. It doesn’t break a thing.

Ooft, here’s an idea for an ending. On the back of Outbound’s flipped movies idea, with Luke only dying near the end of the third movie, how about this:

• Kylo has his memory intervention and throws his lightsaber into the sea. End for him.
• We cut to a truncated version of the Rey/Leia training - this is happening as an epilogue. Leia sends Rey off to train, and we get that training montage cut to match the following (cut from her training with Luke and a couple of other sources) “Who am I? No-one. Someone. Light. Darkness. Life. Death. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence… Balance. Energy. I am the force.”
• Cut to credits.

[I’m not trying to imply she’s the living force, with that, so much as accepting that she’s accepting that the force is balance, and flows through her. “I am one with the force, the force is with me”]

Outbound, I absolutely love that! That’s exactly why I posted what I did, in hopes someone could take those thoughts further. I wonder if some other reorderings might work with that too.

For example, you could possibly put the DS2 fight as the very end fight. Kylo and Rey kill Paplatine (Rey dies, Kylo heals her - force healing is a DARK power), Kylo and Rey kill Snoke (Kylo’s true master - he’s coming to the light but still wants to rule), Luke shows Kylo the power of the light on Crait, then Kylo flees to the DS2 wreckage (for what? not sure. power?), only for Rey to fight him, Leia to distract him, Rey to nearly kill him, Rey to heal him (having learned it from him, and deciding to use a little of the dark), but then ultimately to leave him. Then Han’s memory makes him throw his blade into the sea - the end of his tale.

We also have the option of making the Snoke’s flagship hyperspace destruction into something Luke does with the force, for those who don’t like the complications that adds to SW physics.

I’d also edit the scene of Snoke clones in Palpatine’s tanks to Palpatine clones.

Also, a massive advantage of your structure like that is that we get the best character development for the side characters in the final chapter. For Poe, across the films his arc becomes: Heroic > Possibly murky past > Heroic to the point of being a bad leader > Good leader. For Finn, it’s: Flees First Order > attached to Rey > joins rebels loosely > properly commits to rebels > ‘saving what we love’.

I really think we should be going strong, not subtle. The Palpatine revelation is not subtle at all, to the extent that it’s jarring. And we have to be creating these edits for the imaginary audience who have never seen these films before and are watching them for the first time in chronological order. Having a nice, obvious, ‘something force-y happened when Snoke died’, makes it very clear to the audience that something’s still up. Similarly, the subtlety only serves people like us, who can now watch those scenes with a little less cringe, mentally nodding satisfied as we encounter the sticking plaster instead of the cut. But for me (and I appreciate this is subjective), we’re creating alternative versions as if they’re the ones that aired in the cinema, for the first-time viewer. We need to be sure these changes are noticed, not just things we can comfortably know are there.

I have them on my local machine, but someone would need to give me the means to host them and instructions.

I was thinking about radical reordering to the trilogy, and toying with the idea of having Palpatine’s return be a ‘sidequest’ of Snoke’s as part of Kylo’s training. Sort of ‘I’ve detected a rival Sith, go deal with them for me’. That way you could keep some of Palpatine without it being an unsatisfying attempt to put a capper on the Skywalker saga, and keep it framed as part of this new, different story. Does anyone have any thoughts about that?

That got me on to thinking about any other kind of radical restructures we might have available to us. And fundamentally, any such option needs to first ask the question: What arcs are sufficient to build a trilogy (or duology or whatever) around? And the problem with the sequel trilogy is, nearly nobody has a satisfying arc. To my mind you have:

REY:
A nobody gets dragged into a destiny, shows force proficiency, becomes Luke Skywalker’s hope for the future of the Jedi, develops a relationship with the conflicted Kylo Ren (who exploits her nothingness to gain her power), grows in power, tracks down and kills a half-reborn Palpatine (who she learns she was related to all along), nearly dies but is saved by Kylo, declares herself Skywalker. It’s our second-strongest arc but Palpatine comes out of nowhere and other than the revelation that she’s related to him, her defeat of him doesn’t contribute to her growth.

KYLO REN:
The legacy of Vader wishes to emulate him, gains power under Snoke, is conflicted by his killing of his father, develops a relationship with the suprisingly powerful Rey, kills Snoke to gain more power, is conflicted by his meeting fails to convince Rey to join him for evil, is conflicted by his relationship with Luke Skywalker, finds and submits to Palpatine, then turns to the light, gets nearly killed by Palpatine, then dies to kill an injured Rey.
It’s our strongest arc but Palpatine comes out of nowhere, and isn’t relevant to his character arc.

Taking the above two alone, the strongest story between them is that they meet each other, develop this awkward relationship, turn on Snoke (for different reasons), attempt to convince each other of their philosophies, then Kylo turns to the light, and they defeat Palpatine. But again, that Palpatine ending just isn’t satisfying. I feel like the Palpatine and Snoke kills should be punctual steps on their journey together, but which utimately end with them in conflict with one another. I’m trying to think of moments which could be used as the punctual final point of their story. There’s the moment when they fight and Rey appears to kill Kylo (before healing him). But that’s about where I can’t take the thought any further.