Hal 9000

Because I had the chance I decided to watch TFA this afternoon, the first time since seeing TROS. I didn’t notice anything that really seemed to stick out. Rey’s parents were kind and she misses them. Snoke brought up the First Order to reforge the Empire. Kylo Ren encounters his equal in the light. Rey taps into some of her darkness.

Makes sense! I’ll do TLJ someday soon as well. Not expecting it to be as smooth.

Hmm, without having seen the scene I imagine it’d be better to have it more or less consistent. No other saber has matched the user’s mood in such a way.

Thanks; done.

Thanks for the feedback, and I’m glad it coheres.

I didn’t remove anything about hyperspace tracking, so perhaps you just missed it.

If you ditch the compass in favor of Sith whispers or mystical guidance, you could use it to point to the Wayfinder regardless of where it might be. But you’d have to maybe have a sticky note on the handle he put the location onto.

The dagger really don’t make no sense.

We did consider it, and then Sir Ridley did it. It’s already taken care of.

No, that’s just my interpretation thinking through Rey’s journey.

And the only thing pre-TROS that implies to me that Kylo had heard Vader’s voice is the word “again.” He asks Vader to “show me again the power of the darkness.” It still doesn’t need to mean a literal voice. But TROS just seems to want to make everything painfully literal.

Hesgesmfg, wonderful post! Not much else to say about it but I appreciate the thought and articulating what I often try to go for.

I think it’s best to leave both the TLJ “It was I who bridged your minds” and TROS “I have been every voice” lines alone.

Trying to ignore the non-film material and chatter, here’s what I imagine piecing together from perhaps multiple viewings: Rey is essentially a neo-chosen one, gifted by the Force in a time of need. Destiny brings her to Kylo Ren, and the two find themselves at a stalemate. Snoke comments that they are equals on either side of the luminous divide. They each spiral around each other, attempting to draw the other into their place. Snoke takes credit for this, though he’s clearly playing with powers greater than himself as their connection persists past his own death. Palptine appears and tempts Ren with the idea of he and Rey forming the alliance he tried for once before. Rey senses and fears the same. Kylo presents her heritage as a trap, which Luke reverses as he did before on Crait. Rey and Ben join, each briefly fulfilling their desires before the latter fades away, the Force investing itself now fully in Rey.

Rey is no one. She can’t stop needing her parents, believing they’ll return one day. She comes to discard this belief, turning her attention to Luke as a surrogate. He fails her while she learns to rise above questions of the past. With a broken blade she wonders how to build herself up after the necessary deconstruction that has taken place. Now, she fears her own darkness that now has no container and wonders if the lack of defense mechanisms may let out something terrible. Kylo facilitates a demonstration to confirm this, sacrificing Chewbacca. Rey is forced to revisit buried memories of her parents, finding that they loved her after all but were taken from her. She also learns that she is the progeny of a hitherto not immediately relevant bad guy, reinforcing her fears. She goes too far once more and exiles herself in order not to test herself and risk unleashing darkness which had frightened even Luke. She resolves to venture into the darkness to bring it illumination and take the risk. She finds Palpatine’s offer tempting in order not to lose those whom she has come to love, and joins with Ben to defeat him. She falters and passes after giving up herself to fight the darkness, though Ben’s redemption provides a surplus which he uses to restore her. He has now healed her in return, and she proceeds to bring the elixir of balance to the galaxy.

Weakest point to me is the Palpatine lineage, as this seems only to muddy the water and give the audience a big dumb thing to follow along with, short-circuiting nuance. But don’t worry because there absolutely will be two versions of the project, one for both heritage possibilities for Rey.

I hate to respond with something that may sound terse, because this is some good and insightful discussion on the finer points.

If I still had TLJ in front of me I imagine I may remove the line about Snoke bridging their minds, but I’ll just keep it in mind in case anything else ever compels me to revisit it again.

But I probably will leave the relevant TROS lines alone.

Hmmm. I count four stormtroopers and only one Wilhelm.

TFA: Restructured V1:

TFA: Restructured V2:

TLJ: Legendary:

TROS: Ascendant:

Boy, what a lot of discussion that’s taken place since I popped in last!

I guess it’s probably better to leave this alone as it is, more or less. I do wonder, Burbin, if it would prove doable to change that line as you propose. “We’ve become a dyad in the Force.” It’s a subtle thing, but would help the audience get what is happening in a way that fits in with the other pieces.

I remember wondering how that worked since they are different ages, it couldn’t be something intrinsic. I know Kylo says “become” in his first scene in TFA. Might be worth at least trying.

Snoke sure seemed to be a mere meat puppet in a cursory reading of TROS, IMHO. He’s every voice in Kylo’s head and essentially just Palpatine with a paper mask. And if that’s so, it makes little sense that Snoke seemed acutely aware of Rey and Kylo’s connection and Palpatine seems surprised by their dyad-ness. Unless the dyad thing was just like, “Oh, well I didn’t know it was THAT far.”

All this is why TROS initially made me feel like Doc Brown at the start of Back to the Future III.

While it’s hard to disagree with that sentiment, my fan edits have always involved finessing the details like that to at least allow for plausible headcanon readings. When done well, the “official” answers are not contradicted but a saga-only viewer could infer something more straightforward.

Oh, well lol I guess that was harder to spot since it didn’t affect sync. Oh, well!

And if it were moved it doesn’t really benefit us. I’ll probably leave it alone.

“At last. Snoke trained you well.”

“I killed Snoke. I’ll kill you.”

“My boy, I made Snoke… The First Order was just the beginning. I will give you so much more.”

“You’ll die first.”

“I’ve died before. Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you. As all the Sith live in me.”

If we wanted to remove the line, I imagine it’d be best to simply remove the footage where it takes place. Maintain the pace, just without that line present. The Snoke line remains prior to any shots walking us closer to Palpatine including his clone vat.

Not sure whether to, but if so that’d probably be best.

We’ll all have to meet up in ten years to edit Episode X: A New Destiny.

But yeah, I’ve really enjoyed working on the ST. Just feels good to all come together and really bring things to bear like we have.

Let me describe the philosophy of this project by illustration on a similar point.

The (main version of) this project doesn’t radically alter the plot points, including Rey being a Palpatine, though hopes to make the retconning as congruous as possible with what came before. I appreciate the nuanced improvement we get by replacing Kylo Ren’s line, “I never lied to you” with “You were right.” It has the same retconning effect while demonstrating attention to details that makes it more believable that it was the underlying truth all along.

I’m not sure and will need to think about it (or, more realistically, entertain discussion from you all) to see whether removing that line does something similar. The whole thing is pretty silly, with Palpatine literally doing everything all along and making it so concrete rather than thematic.

Version 3 is out. Some nice changes and additions. Thanks, everyone! I hope DigMod and anyone else has fun going further with Rogue One, but I’m happy with this.

My only feedback from reading over this but not yet having seen it all is the transition between AUJ and DOS. I would suggest that, whatever you do, it play seamlessly without any sort of a break, even if you do add one. It should be able to play fine in a theater without a disc break the way even the LOTR EE films do.

Burbin, that does make good sense and would seem to make for a more serious, less retconny opening sequence.

I wonder if the “every voice” line could be tossed into the Vader mask montage, to still be able to clarify that Anakin wasn’t somehow funneling evil from the post-redemption great beyond.

Presumably.

Vader’s TIE won out over the shuttle 70/30 with 110 votes.

I agree: the video game shot doesn’t work but only because it’s beyond our reach. I appreciate all the R&D to pursue possibilities, even if the result is to choose to forego it from an informed place.

Thanks for all the effort on that establishing shot but it does still look like pre-viz. 😕

And I think the current state of Mustafar is better than that mock-up and I’m happy with merely adding two shots of the TIEs to slow the pacing, with the existing musical track extended backward to cover.