Gothamknight

Vladius said:
I was happy with Rey being no one, . . . I have to agree with Gothamknight, the Palpatine thing was better than constantly asserting that she has no history and no reason to exist.

In my reedit I’m going with “Rey Nobody” - except that she’s going to be an orphan taken in by Luke (and Mara Jade??) and trained by him before any of the events of TFA. At the end I’ll keep the “Rey Skywalker” conclusion because she views herself as having virtually been adopted by Luke, and thus part of his family.

ChainsawAsh said:
Um…was the Dyad thing not the explanation [for Rey’s untrained Force-prowess]?

That didn’t seem to me to be the case. The dyad phenomenon got Palpatine’s attention because of the way he thought he could use Ben and Rey. It didn’t come across to me as explaining why Rey had the command of the Force that she did.

Also, the idea that a “nobody” can have such innate talent with the Force was kind of the whole point/message, wasn’t it? Bloodlines don’t matter, anyone can be the most important person in the galaxy?

“Innate talent” =/= command. Rey wasn’t merely “talented”; her actions indicated honing, which any talent requires to achieve its maximum potential. Yet the trilogy depicted no training for her ahead of time. This was a plot hole and indicative of Kathleen Kennedy’s hyper-feminism.

snooker said:

Why is Kylo ‘talking’ to Darth’s mask if in the scene before he was informed that he never spoke to him? Is it just like, triggering a flashback in Kylo in the same way that the Skywalker Saber started one with Rey?

I’m going to insert part of the Vader-vs-Kylo fan film here. Kylo keeps having visions of Vader that are driving him to prove himself.

Octorox said:
What I think a lot of fans don’t want to accept (and to be honest, I don’t think Abrams and Terrio wanted to accept this either) is that the OT characters are not the main characters of these new movies.

I think we could’ve accepted that just fine - except that the new characters weren’t well developed, or, well - fun.

RogueLeader said:

After learning Palpatine was still alive and manipulating things like he had before, I felt it was a mistake for them to not double down on Rey Nobody.

With respect, I honestly can’t understand why so many people think it’s perfectly okay to have “Rey Nobody.”

TFA established, and TLJ continued, the notion that this “nobody” is vastly overpowered with the Force compared to anyone else, without any training. That needed an explanation. Either she had to have been parented by a very important “somebody” - or else there needed to be another layer of Force lore, something to the effect that every once in a while the Force, for whatever reasons the writers could invent, manifests in a unique way in a given individual. Rey could be the first such individual the galaxy had seen in eons.

But no, both TFA and TLJ simply assumed Rey’s Force-prowess, with zero explanation - and then TROS offered us the Palpatine explanation, which was dumb. But it would’ve been way dumber if TROS had simply gone with the “Rey Nobody” angle.

Seriously, I don’t get why this isn’t patently obvious.

idir_hh said:

This is the Fan-film you are looking for https://youtu.be/owrmLeX20CY

That film is outstanding. I intend to use it either in place of, or as a complement to, Force-Han appealing to Ben to leave the Dark Side behind. I’ll likely insert it at the point where Rey skewers Ben and he’s on the cusp of death. He blacks out and has a vision, which would be a segment of the short film.

The film’s concept of Kylo killing Vader would be my reedit’s version of Ben conquering the dark side. (Earlier in my 3-in-1 mashup, I’d have the scene where Kylo’s trying to wrench secrets from Rey’s mind, and she tells him he’s afraid he’ll never live up to Darth Vader.) When Ben comes to, either Rey’s gone and he’s managed to survive, or else he comes to just as she’s reviving him.

I could also splice in shots of Leia meditating/unconscious, implying that she’s sending Ben the vision.

NeverarGreat said:
But no, it’s a somewhat awkward shot of the twin suns for the third time, and a reused piece of music from TFA.

Hmm, what if “Broom Boy” was removed from TLJ and made the last scene of TROS . . . ?

(For me this might be easier, since I’m planning a 3-film mashup anyhow.)

Vladius said:
I would love that.

Thank you! It’s just that the more I reflect on this entire trilogy, the more flaws I’m seeing in each of the three. I don’t think it would require that much working-around to stitch the best material of each instalment together, along with a half-explanatory crawl, to produce a solid 3-hour story.

StarkillerAG said:
I wouldn’t be too discouraged by that video. I’ve seen it already, it’s entertaining but it’s basically 5,000 nitpicks. I think this movie can still be salvageable, regardless of any potential plot holes.

You may be right. I’ve watched the first half, though, and I fully agree with much of the criticism. At the very least it demonstrates that a lot of dumb choices went into this “story.” I suspect that removing said dumb choices would leave us with pretty much a 1-hour TV special.

That premise [i.e., map to Exogol at the beginning of the TFA segment] could potentially work, but you’d have to either remove or change a lot of dialogue.

I’ll have to think more about it, of course, but at the moment it seems doable without that extra work. Some plot points would hang on the opening crawl. The TFA crawl explicitly mentions “a clue to Luke’s whereabouts”; wouldn’t take much tweaking to alter that to “a map [or “clue”] to a Sith world.” Thus in the opening Poe scene itself, when he and the old-timer refer to a “map,” I’d simply cut mentions of “Skywalker,” and from the crawl it would be obvious that the map referred to is for Exogol.

I would have the same opening scene as in TFA - except that Poe isn’t captured. I’d cut the scene just as BB-8 is being taken up into the X-wing. I’d also cut Rey on Jakku, the entire defector-stormtrooper subplot (which went sadly undeveloped), and Maaz Kenata’s fortress. Not sure what I’d put in between, but it wouldn’t be long before the Resistance is going into battle against Starkiller Base.

I’m going with the “Rey Nobody” angle - but she isn’t a wunderkind. Instead she’s an orphan who, as the movie opens, is already deep into Jedi training with Luke. The mashup would center around the Rey-Ben dynamic.

Vladius said:

I appreciate what they did but I think that they and others miss the point of the scene, it’s not supposed to be an elaborate acrobatic fight sequence.

It’s hardly “acrobatic”; nothing at all like the over-the-top stuff we got in the prequels.

“Sc38 Reimagined” shows us precisely what we should expect from (a) two experienced Force-users, the younger almost seeming to toy with the older; and (b) two warriors who used to be friends but had a violent falling-out. In context, this reimagining gives us the fully appropriate levels of both skill and emotional intensity.

They’re doing Kendo, which is what actual samurai fights would have looked like; two hands on the sword, more footwork than leaping, running, or wild swinging.

This sentence isn’t entirely accurate. Some use of Kendo is appropriate, given that to some degree (more so in TESB) Lucas actually referenced Kendo for some of the choreography. But again - quite appropriately - this pattern isn’t consistent, because Vader at this point is significantly more powerful and doesn’t actually need to use all of his training. We see more rage from him - exactly as we should expect, given their history - while from Kenobi we see more in the way of defensive skill. He’s calling on everything he’s got just to survive.

This in fact compliments the original dialogue from Vader: “Now I am the master. . . . Your powers are weak, old man.” Vader’s rage and insults are an appropriate counterpoint to Kenobi’s worn-out skills and desperation.

Moreover, your above-quoted statement appears at odds with the next sentence:

The scene looks completely ridiculous in context, like dropping a cracked out MTV clip into a rerun of a show from the 70s.

This is nonsensical. Juxtaposed with your prior sentence, you seem to imply that you want more “leaping, running, [and] wild swinging.”

Does it entirely fit with the stylings of a '70s science-fantasy film? I’ll grant that it doesn’t quite. “Sc38” may not have entirely worked if we could travel back in time and plop it into Episode IV when there wasn’t any canonical context for viewers back then. But this is more than offset for viewers today who have the rear-view awareness of the context of the full Saga. “Sc38” perfectly fits the story.

I think it would be nice to include some of the shots but not others, especially the over the top force pushes, the punching, the throwing of crates and barrels, and so on.

All of that fits the context of the story (as well as stuff we see elsewhere strewn around the corridors of the Death Star).

At the very least all of the original dialogue and music should be preserved.

I have to think this isn’t intended as a replacement for any of that, and it’s relatively easy to splice it into the original.

G-Rock said:

When will we see a fan edit of episode 4 that includes the SC 38 reimagined fight scene from FXitinPost?

Just about finished one myself, but I’m sure I ain’t the only one! That fan film is sublime.

I like some of these - but how do you then explain Rey’s unprecedented Force-prowess sans training…?

StarkillerAG said:

Some ideas I have for editing this movie:

-Rewrite the opening crawl to remove overt mentions of Palpatine, making his return feel less abrupt.

-Cut Snoke clones in a lobster tank. It makes no sense.

-Cut lightspeed skipping. It breaks the rules of hyperspace travel, and it feels contrived.

-Trim Rey and Poe’s argument to remove mention of lightspeed skipping.

-If there is any deleted material that could pad out the first act, I’d really like to add it.

-Cut the little alien asking Rey’s name, for continuity with later changes.

-Cut “They fly now.” It’s really dumb.

-Cut the heroes encountering a big snake, and Rey healing it.

-Cut all uses of Force healing throughout the movie. It creates a huge plot hole if you can use the Force to resurrect people.

-Cut Rey seemingly killing Chewie. He turns out to be alive a few minutes later, so it feels pointless.

-Remove fakeout deaths throughout the movie. Actions must have consequences.

-Trim the scenes immediately afterward to remove mention of Chewie’s apparent death.

-Trim Zorii as much as possible, removing all romantic implications with Poe.

-Trim the Force bond lightsaber duel to remove Kylo saying that Rey’s parents weren’t actually drunkards.

-Remove Rey Palpatine completely, preserving TLJ’s plot twist.

-Cut Rey aligning the dagger with the Death Star wreckage. It feels contrived, especially when the dagger was created 20 years ago.

-Cut Rey healing Kylo on the Death Star, for reasons stated above.

-Cut the Final Order destroying Kijimi, along with the idea that every ship has a mini Death Star.

-Cut R2 restoring 3PO’s memory. Actions must have consequences.

-Cut Palpatine saying he never wanted Rey dead. It doesn’t mesh with the rest of the movie.

-Cut Zorii showing up in the final battle. Even without Kijimi being destroyed it feels contrived.

-Cut Ben climbing out of the pit and healing Rey, for reasons stated above.

-Trim the victory celebration to remove Maz giving Chewie a medal, Lando acting creepy to Jannah, and Poe’s interaction with Zorii.

-Cut Rey returning to Tatooine, ending the movie with the group hug. It’s a far better ending, and it doesn’t reuse the end music from TFA.

Those are just the ideas I have right now. If I have any more I’ll post them.

RogueLeader said:

I wasn’t super crazy about them bringing back Kylo Ren’s helmet in this film (although I really dig the cracked look), it actually might end up being a godsend for us to play with Kylo’s dialogue and chracter motivation for the first two acts of the film.

Fair point about taking advantage of it for new dialogue. But I actually wanted him to wear the helmet constantly until he turned back to the Light Side, for the simple reason that a helmeted/masked villain comes across as more threatening than an open-faced one. As a bad guy he was simply cooler with the helmet on. (Shrug)

I guess part of my motivation to pursue this idea [you have a good idea there, by the way] is that some people felt Kylo’s turn to the light felt rather sudden.

I didn’t think so, cuz it seemed obvious to me from both TFA and TLJ that his heart wasn’t fully in it.

To enhance Kylo/Ben’s inner struggle, however, I intend to make ample use of this superb fan film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owrmLeX20CY&t=43s

Bonus thought: I found an Adam Driver line from This is Where I Leave You where he says to Tina Fey’s character, “You’re the voice in my head.”

Great find. May I use it “in your honor”???

While the movie in general felt rather rushed, I feel like the opening scene was even more rushed than the rest of the film. . . . I didn’t even know that planet was Mustafar until I read about it later.

LOL! I didn’t know it was Mustafar before reading this thread!

What if we created an opening scene that mirrors the opening of The Phantom Menace? Instead of the Trade Federation invading Naboo, the First Order invades Mustafar.

This is excellent. I’m wondering if there’s some space-battle footage that could be used briefly from a Battlefront II cinematic.

I’m also considering a prologue in which Palpatine transfers his consciousness from Death Star II to a clone on Kamino - but then Kamino is attacked by the Alliance (using Battlefront II clips) and the clone facility is left damaged. The Knights of Ren are subsequently needed to bring a Sith artifact to Kamino to revive Palpy. This would explain why he’s not entirely restored physically in TROS.

Darth Lucas said:

DominicCobb said:

Honestly that still would have sucked shit. I’m not sure in what way it would have been better.

No confusion as to when Palpatine procreated and with whom? The previous two movies setting up that Rey is “nobody”. Her “cave vision” seeing a bunch if duplicates of herself would actually make sense instead of being imagery for imagery sake?

I admit it’s not the most spectacular idea, but it at least makes more sense than what we got.

Contrary to the opinion of those who liked the “nobody” idea from TLJ, Rey had to have forebears (either parents or further back) who were “somebodies” in order to explain her Force prowess. It’s really as simple as that. Either you provide a believable explanation as to why she’s so powerful, or else the fact that she’s so powerful (sans training) is absurd.

This just occurred to me: what if Rey were the descendant of Darth Plagueis, who wanted to use her to get vengeance on Palpatine . . . ?

thebluefrog said:

Yeah, basically, the only way Palpatine’s plan has any logic is if getting Rey and/or Kylo there helps his cause.

The problem is that Kylo already voluntarily went there at the start, demonstrating Palpatine doesn’t actually NEED Kylo.

So for the climax requiring Rey’s presence, it would need to be either:

1. Palpatine specifically needs her there for the soul/genetic transfer.

I’m thinking I’ll go with this one. I’ll also eliminate the “Dyad” thing. Ben attempts to rescue her but he dies. That’s the climax of his own redemption story. Rey’s left to kill Palpatine - and she doesn’t revive Ben, either (and no friggin’ “Reylo”!!!) - but she’s able to retrieve Ben’s lightsaber to do help her do it.

I’ll try to streamline Ben/Kylo’s plotline so that his objective (before turning back to the Light Side) is simply to bring Rey to Palpatine.

Honestly, the Palpatine-Rey connection is the weakest part of her story since his plot makes no sense. If he HAD NOT told her that striking him down would result in him possessing her, she probably would have done it in anger and he’d have won. So why did JJ have Palps monologue like that?

Hmm . . . I’m wondering if that explanation from Palpatine could be transferred either to (a) his words to Kylo (either in person or via a message); (b) to the opening crawl; or ( c) dramatized in a prologue involving a Sith cult.

Anakin Starkiller said:

I’d be highly against that. This is the ending. It’s the moment to introduce the idea of using the Dark Side for good. Killing Palpatine is the moment the good guys win, so you don’t want to have moral ambiguity there.

Seems to me the fact that it’s the ending of the Skywalker saga is the very reason not to introduce “using the Dark Side for good.” I’d be okay with that concept in and of itself; it was explored in the New Jedi Order storyline - but there it was developed over the course of several novels. I can’t see that working within a single film.

big_gareth said:

Obviously I understand why they didn’t show Rey using anger/hatred but having seen Rey losing control and using force lightning on the transport earlier in the film, how would people feel to see a Jedi using lightning but in a more controlled manner and for the greater good? Yes it pushes her closer to the darkside but is it a step too far?

I’m considering just nixing the Rey-lightning scene, as well as the fake-Chewie-death bit. I knew immediately what they were going for (cuz I’d gone ahead and read the spoilers before seeing the film), but it didn’t come off well because of how Chewie survived. Another transport? Where? When? We clearly see him get on the very transport Rey brings down. There’s no battle confusion or other ships flying around.

So because that plot twist wasn’t well executed, I’m likely gonna ditch it altogether. They find the blade but Chewie gets captured. On to the next scene.

It might help set up a TROS reedit if one also inserted a few lines from Palpatine as uninvited thoughts in Rey’s head in scenes from TLJ and/or TFA.

It’s occurred to me to make Rey Luke’s daughter right from the get-go.

I like having a prologue in my reedits, so my prologue would be partly a montage of the post-OT transition to the current state of affairs, followed immediately by the Knights of Ren destroying Luke’s Jedi school.

The ensuing crawl would give a succinct verbal explanation to the prior visuals, including mentioning the death of Luke’s wife, the fact that one of the academy survivors is his daughter Rey, and that Kylo Ren is Han and Leia’s son. The crawl would also preface Poe, Rey, Han and Chewie being sent on a mission to Jakku to recruit new Force-users before Ren can get to them. That’s what they’re hunting - not a map to Luke.

So all original scenes involving Rey’s parentage would be deleted. Calling herself “Rey Skywalker” then makes perfect sense, and she’s no longer a Mary Sue because her dad’s been training her this whole time.

And TFA and TLJ would be mashed together. Thematically the sequels would then focus more on Ben’s struggle. He redeems himself by helping Ray defeat Palpatine.

FreezingTNT2 said:

Sidious shouldn’t have been in the movie at all, because it completely ruins Anakin’s redemption and sacrifice in Return of the Jedi.

Ironically, that isn’t what bothers me about it. I’m not sure why most critics keep saying that, because Anakin’s turn-around at the end of ROTJ accomplished two things: (a) he came back to the good side, and (b) he saved his son’s life. Those are huge – regardless of whether or not Palpatine survived.

No, what bothers me about it is that (a) it’s rehash (just like JarJar Abrams did in TFA; not actually sure why he has a career, to be honest). And (b) it’s nonsensical in light of the Second Death Star’s obliteration. I realize it’s space opera, but even so, you have to have a certain level of believability, and this crosses the line.

What would have possibly fixed that problem, however, is if JarJar had shot a flashback scene from Palpatine’s perspective as he’s falling down the Death Star shaft, and either he’s rescued by a ship before the station blows, or he somehow manages to transfer his consciousness into a clone that’s kept at a secret location.

Maybe there could also be a montage involving recovery time and the acquiring of new ships – perhaps using the battle-droid tech from the prequel era. Once he got a few droids up and running it wouldn’t take that long to have a droid-run factory churning out ships and weaponry. He could also have new clone-troopers.

An additional possibility would be to have him end up in territory run by the Chiss Ascendancy. He meets Thrawn and recruits him to head up a new fleet – or he uses the Force to seduce the Chiss into following him.

Point being: there are possible ways of explaining how we ended up with another Palpatine episode.

Which leads me to a reedit question: Anybody know of any fan-film (not necessarily Star Wars, either) with scenes of cloning that might fit a Palpatine survival montage???

REY BEING A “NOBODY”: Don’t like this theme whatsoever, and I’m glad Abrams didn’t stick with that (although narratively she could have claimed to be a nobody, due to not wanting any association with Palpatine). She had to be a “somebody” to explain her unusual Force-prowess without training.

Palpatine is the most glaring issue. He shouldn’t be here. He should be long gone. Far better if it’d been Snoke. Palpatine in TROS is making me seriously consider not even bothering trying to reedit this whole trilogy.

RogueLeader said:

Adding onto this, it looks like spoilers from people who have seen preview screenings are starting to show up, so if any of you want to avoid leaks it might be a good idea to take a vacation from online forums until you see the movie!

I honestly don’t care about spoilers for this trilogy. It’s a complete mess. I’ve been reading all the spoilers out of sheer curiosity as to how much further the idiots at Disney can drive this thing into the ground.

I think maybe – just maybe – I’ve hit upon a solution to the Jakku thing…

• prologue depicting some post-OT events, training of new Jedi – including Rey (maybe even using shots of her on Endor from Ep9)
• Crawl with rise-of-First-Order explanation and both sides tracking down Force-users, leading to Jakku; crawl actually names Han, Chewie, Poe and Rey as being sent to Jakku as part of the hunt – but Poe separates and goes to a different part of Jakku
• Poe captured, teams up with Finn
• Rey acquires BB8 and Finn; they board the Falcon
• HAN AND CHEWIE are flying the Falcon, NOT Rey; could insert later TFA footage of Han and Chewie in the cockpit

Might this work???

screams in the void said:

I applaud you for not fighting what you hate about the movie and saving what you love .

Very frequently you can’t do one without simultaneously doing the other. Such is the case with any reedit of TLJ. (And Rose was a truly awful character, by the way.)

Thanks for your feedback, guys. I’m approaching this very loosely at the moment; but like others have said, it’s hard to solidify any plans before seeing Ep9.

I don’t want to cut too much of TFA, but may have to chop a significant chunk of it in order to avoid depicting Rey as being on her own and without training. I’ve been replaying TFA’s plotline in my head, just mentally experimenting with what I could cut if I begin with Rey already on Ahch-To rather than on Jakku.

• Prologue: a montage (using particularly good fan-film and some video-game clips) giving viewers a sense of key developments (continuing fight against the Imperial Remnant; new Jedi-in-training; Jedi students going to the dark side and forming the Knights of Ren)
• The crawl would establish the basic facts of the First Order, Luke’s Jedi school, and the formation of the Knights of Ren
• The crawl would also mention the First Order’s intent to track down Force-users and either eliminate or destroy them

From TFA:

• Poe on Jakku (searching for potential Jedi students, NOT a “map to Luke”)
• Finn’s crisis of conscience; the two of them meet up as in the original, BUT…
• …when they escape the Star Destroyer, they don’t get shot down over Jakku; Poe mentions returning to get BB8, and we cut there; it’s assumed they did rescue the droid

Question: Why/how can I get Han, Chewie, Rey and Finn to Takodana, to meet with Maz Kanata, so as to get Rey her “special moment” with Luke’s lightsaber . . . OR . . . should I skip that entire sequence and simply jump to the Resistance planning session for attacking Starkiller Base???

[Deleted–How does one delete a thread one originated…?]

The following topics have been merged into this one:

Gothamknight said:

The following video absolutely eviscerates ‘Rise of Skywalker’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0528-TlRODI&t=3617s
 

^ Moderator Edit - the title of the video linked to above is ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: An Unbridled Rage’ - from the ‘Mauler’ youtube channel, and runs for around 2 hours in length.

When linking to youtube videos such as this, please include the title, who it is by, and also the length of the video. Thank you.

 

Makes me wonder if it’s worth even trying to reedit it.

On the other hand, I was already planning a mashup of TFA and TLJ. Would a mashup of all three be doable? I’m wondering if the map at the beginning of TFA could actually be a map to Exegol: both the First Order and the Resistance could be tracking rumors of a Sith world beyond the Outer Rim, and for obvious reasons trying to be the first to get there.

If that premise can work, then maybe such a mashup is doable. Any other suggestions???