From NeverarGreat, needing:
Recolored Leia deleted scene (needs it from Ridley first)
From Sir Ridley, needing:
Retimed sequences - Starkiller firing, Starkiller destruction
Tweaked audio - music brought down around Maz/Han and Snoke lines
3PO leg removal shot, sans widescreen matte
And “weapon fully recharged in 30 seconds” line - waiting on two specific people
This movie deliberately challenges what I want out of Star Wars. If that’s it’s goal, it is incredibly successful. I don’t like what it did with “my stories,” and that was what the movie was trying to do. It successfully makes me feel conflicted about it, which is good and bad. Which is good.
The dice died. Hehe, get it?
I had a whole post written, but deleted it because I’m sure someone would click on this thread, mistaking it for the TLJ SPOILER FREE thread, and be in for a sour surprise. I’ll sit on that original post for now.
I’m hoping for year’s end.
I tend to have multiple perspectives about something at once, sometimes to the detriment of taking action.
With TFA, I had a perspective that loved the sheer STAR WARS tone and atmosphere which I felt it came close to nailing. The way the movie was made, written, shot and all else demonstrated a close effort toward that end.
My other perspective was that it was aping STAR WARS without much substance.
Ultimately, these two perspectives aren’t far off, are they? I can easily reconcile them and give the movie a strong like.
With this movie, though, the two perspectives are a bit farther apart.
TLJ is a bold departure from STAR WARS, and TFA for that matter, in terms of filmmaking, story, and atmosphere. It adds story meat and we explore the mythology that undergirds the franchise. Things are turned on their heads and we get an unpredictable story that is very much not a retread, unless only retreading things in order to trick you with a subversion.
The other side of my reactions is to say that the movie seems to wantonly shake up the lore and characters in ways deeply incongruent with the message of the saga as Lucas completed it. Rey tries to take after Luke’s loving beckon to his father’s inner goodness and brings about his redemption in a bold, powerful move that I have always admired. I do not mind that Rey fails in her effort. What I do mind is that Luke and Leia forsake this idea. For shame. The Last Jedi is, if anything, too unconventional and different from what came before.
I agree with Mark Hamill in this rough reworking of his quote: “I fundamentally disagree with what you’ve done with Luke’s character. But my job is to like it.”
This movie is harder for me to embrace than TFA, for certain. And that conflict, even just by being there, is discouraging. I appreciate that it had substance with which to interact and have emotional reactions to (even like this), but I dislike the strong incongruity with the story of what came before.
Luke was about to murder a yet-innocent child because he sensed the potential bad things he might do. He had his gun drawn and cocked. That’s profoundly different from the man who confronted Vader on the second Death Star.
Leia giving up hope with her son, essentially saying, “Yeah, go ahead and kill him,” is profoundly different from Leia in the very last movie.
This themeatic element from ROTJ, which I find myself advocating for and is my greatest takeaway from the Star Wars story writ large, was punched in the stomach and kicked in the head repeatedly until suffering traumatic brain injury and entering a coma.
Will it wake up? Find out in Episode IX: Epilogue.
If it can be implied through editing or maybe changing a few mentions of her to different names, remove Maz and imply Poe sent them after the codebreaker. (Might be slightly incongruous when he asks if they got the codebreaker and doesn’t seem to know who it is.)
Get rid of Maz.
Get rid of ”Droids” style clowning around by BB8 on the casino world as well as using an AT-ST.
Bring the humor down just a notch through careful selection, avoiding jokes one’s mother would notice being gone when viewing again a year later. (Yeah… let’s go with that as a rough barometer.)
Possibly remove Yoda burning down a church and Rey having the Jedi texts later on. (No need for a surprise reveal; there’s already plenty of those and it was unnecessarily confusing to even me after two viewings! Rey can be safely assumed to go and refer to those texts sometime later.)
The last scene usually has no dialogue, but that’s not the case here. If one wanted to remove the Oliver Twist ending, the previous scene wouldn’t be any worse for it. (I probably wouldn’t do that though, myself.)
“Big-ass door”? I did not appreciate the degree to which the real-world/Marvelish/GOTG permeated language and quips. Removing just the handful of those that go over the top would be helpful.
Guys, I left TFA’s second viewing concluding that no fan edit was necessary, and only ended up doing one because a beautifully elegant idea emerged that was too good to leave unrealized. In the case of TLJ, I find myself wanting to grapple with this movie but finding not a lot to do. I’ll be following this thread diligently.
EDIT: Oh, and if we could remove maybe just one of the seventy-four death fake-outs, that’d be great.
Also, I saw the movie twice and I did not see the Jedi texts anywhere in the movie after Yoda burns down a church. If it weren’t for you all insisting they made it onto the Falcon, I’d be convinced they were destroyed. I suppose one could remove the entire Yoda scene, and even the texts from later in the movie, to assume Rey later retrieved them after the film ends. (Not a problem since we know she knows where to find them and haven’t implied they’re gone.)
I like the content of the Yoda scene, but that was a “look what I bought at Target” level of horrible Yoda. CPY has nothing on this one. If that’s the best they could have done I think they ought to have made it CG.
(It almost looks like when they’re done, the real Yoda would appear, and take a puppet off his own hand.)
After two viewings, this movie at least seems integrated. It’d be tough to do much plot restructuring, though perhaps some reordering and pruning could help.
I guess it’s a good sign that everything I consider whether it could be cut ends up being thematically relevant or necessary to the plot. (Example: After Finn says to Rose that rampaging through the Casino was worth it, I’d be inclined to trim away, “…to make them hurt.” But, it ties into his and Rose’s story toward the end.
Doesn’t matter to me at all. Of course, I put Padme on livable bedrest.
About the sound effect for the Destroyer… by the time we cut back to Finn it seems like people are already reacting to the spectacle. If we are to add a sound it’s have to be immediately prior to or during the cut to that shot.
Yoda burned down a church.
I don’t get why Luke wanted to destroy the books, then got defensive about them with Yoda.
Perhaps a rank order will be the best preliminary judgement I can pronounce on it:
ESB
ANH
ROTJ
TFA
TLJ
ROTS
TPM
AOTC
I found it easier to list it after TFA than above it, though I’m not sure to what degree familiarity influences that.
I guess that makes sense. I can’t really tell right now. He does appear to 3PO as well, but doesn’t leave footprints.
^ I think that line was supposed to sound clunky, the way Luke would hear it.
One tiny thing I’d like to see fixed by one of us is when Luke sits down on a crate (on Crait) to talk to Leia. The crate he sits down on moves in response, when it ought to remain totally stationary. It’s the same as if when Obi-Wan sat on a log on Dagobah the log creaked and bent.
(And yes, I just got out of a second viewing in one day. And yes, I’m mentally exhausted.)
TFA was placed just below ROTJ for me, and I’m unsure whether to place TLJ just above or just below it, until I see it again. It’s a very different movie, which itself is a strength, the way each OT film felt unique. But it makes it harder to compare them.
It’s far less conventionally Star Wars than TFA was, for better or worse. It was bold and gave me something to wrestle with in ways TFA didn’t.
I think my biggest criticism of it at this very early juncture is that it felt a bit too John McClain. (“Need a lift?” Yeeeehaaaaw”)
My best praise is that it contributed mythological meat to the ongoing saga.
Some unconnected thoughts upon first viewing:
They put Luke’s X-wing underwater so they didn’t have to show it covered in bird shit.
Nice ‘Raiders of the Lost Arc’ moment with the Imperial laundry room.
Yoda looks the worst I’ve ever seen him.
Interesting that the only prequel-specific reference was to the name Darth Sidious. Regards to L8wrtr.
Someone earlier in the thread said they’d like to change Luke’s saber to green at the end. It seems likely that Luke had long since discarded his green saber. Plus, him using Anakin’s saber is a very good hint that he’s not actually there, because we already saw broken in two. (Assuming it will be reforged in 3,000 years’ time.)
I was so certain Leia was going to die in space. Then I was so sure she would simply remain unconscious; the characters were already grappling with how to continue in her absence. I know the story and plot were finished prior to Carrie Fischer’s sudden death, but it still surprised me. Not sure how Ep9 will address this at all.
I found myself in tears, but was a little surprised at when that occurred. For me, it was when Luke and Leia were onscreen together and John Williams’ “Luke and Leia” kicked in.
I’m happy with Rey’s parentage. Good. Less so about Snoke; I’d really have liked to hear who this guy is. Rey as a rando is good, Snoke as a rando is bad.
Why have ‘caretakers’ on Luke’s island? To me, that slightly undermines his solitude. I didn’t mind the porgs so much. Sort of made me want to go to Chik Fil A afterward.
Maz felt totally unnecessary. And WTF is she doing as Finn and company are talking with her?
I think it was a misstep to introduce Rose at all. Just keep Finn around and have him do something without going off on a side adventure.
Can’t put my finger on it, but it seems like having so many characters or things going on made it feel like an overstuffed blockbuster movie. Maybe like all these Marvel movies I don’t care about.
I found Luke perplexing toward the end, and not necessarily in a negative sense. I wonder why Luke died. I also wonder why he suddenly has such conviction that Rey will become a Jedi and that the Jedi will continue. I thought Yoda joined him in agreeing it was time for the Jedi to end.
The novelization doesn’t come out until March?!
It’s far too early for me to be certain about such a thing, but no ideas are forthcoming immediately after my first viewing.
EDIT: Certainly not overarching “restructuring” type changes.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Pinky?”
Yeah, I don’t see why we’d need to lift anything from TLJ itself. Just use a similar sound and keep what we’ve got already.
We’ll see how it goes. It’s not my fault they haven’t implemented 4D effects for the fight scenes yet.
Staring at a dark screen. In about 35 minutes there’ll be car commercials, then trailers, then in about 1 hour it’ll start. Should have brought headphones or something.
Well, perhaps you’re right. ‘Rey Ackbar’ doesn’t really sound all that convincing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ARdZPEwsQ
^ Tom Hanks finds the new Harry Potter book.
I’ve been spoiled, not by my own choice. I was reading an article that had nothing to do with Star Wars, and someone in the comments section blurted out a major spoiler.
I’m gone from this forum until I see TLJ tomorrow morning, and perhaps not immediately after since I have a cramped day after that point.
(I’m glad a mod already censored some of your posts, guys.)
Anyway, the added Snoke scene reestablishes that they’re about to fire on the Resistance as in the original and I thought it was a huge boost to V2, removing the ‘petty revenge’ aspect and preserving the original film a little bit moreso. I can’t imagine something in TLJ that would retroactively make this movie not need to have that established. (Maybe the crawl mentions that they know the Resistance base’s location or something, but that doesn’t get at the core reason for the scene: they now need to take out SKB for the same reason as in the theatrical, which for my money is a huge help to the flow and plot of this version.)
See you in a day or two, but talk amongst yourselves. But let’s not be too rash about that scene; think carefully about all that it is for.
EDIT: Also, remember that no matter what, SKB explodes into a star. Having it explicitly being made ready to fire again very soon definitively answers the question about how it works: one sun, multiple targets. The Snoke scene is an elegant solution to all of these concerns, within TFA itself, especially compared to the theatrical. If TLJ states they found the Resistance base, that’s only about 20% of the Snoke scene’s benefit. Even then, it doesn’t hurt to let this edit give us the same information as the theatrical.