Hal 9000

If Hayden is going to feature in TLJ as the ghost of Anakin Skywalker, how would we feel if they portrayed him as an aged man, perhaps not quite as old looking as Shaw was, but much moreso than Hayden in 2005? Made him look not like the Jedi he was when he turned to the dark side, but the wizened figure he may have become if he had continued on as a Jedi.

I would prefer the prequels be referenced occasionally, though not in a way that would dredge up any of their continuity issues with the original trilogy. For example, no references to Qui-Gon as Obi-Wan’s master, since in the OT it was Yoda who trained him. Featuring Bail Organa as played by Jimmy Smitts is perfectly fine, being a character referenced in the OT and nothing about his prequel portrayal strains this. I’d rather not reference Threepio being built by Anakin.
Y’know, reference and include the prequels to whatever degree is appropriate, but I’d avoid anything that wouldn’t read well if one hadn’t seen them.

No, I’m glad you did! It’s now a distinct avenue we could choose to use. In the MC role I’ve come to hold on the project, I’m happy to let Ridley call this one. 😃

NeverarGreat said:

The firing scene has several problems, including the fact that the planet shouldn’t be in sunlight at the time. So there are at least 3 shots that need fixing at some point.

Rewatching the scene in V1, the only shot that looks like it could use some work would be the one with the trees. But it’s only daylight for less than a second before the red beam envelopes everything. Are you perhaps thinking the planet shouldn’t have as much light shining on it when we see it from space?

Nice! I’ll let Sir Ridley decide how to handle the sequence, but it seems like a distinctly viable way to go, so thank you for making it available.

Yeah, I’m glad you brought the idea up and we were able to give it a try today, but ultimately feel that the structure as in V1 would be best to retain.
Although, if you’re able to ditch the star destroyer from its shot in the firing scene, I agree it’d be nice to keep.

Yes. It’s thematically linked more than logically. The same point could be made about Luke in ROTJ; presumably, the team would have destroyed the Death Star regardless of Luke’s success or failure onboard.

Unrelated: I don’t think Threepio’s like has a place in the briefing scene. “Without the Republic fleet, we’re doomed.”

I share your hesitancy about Vader appearing to show him a vision of the future, though it would be ambiguous at best; was Vader trying to warn or dissuade him from being involved in firing the weapon?

Here’s a mockup of how the ideas expressed above might look when all baked together. I went with the former list of events, rather than breaking up Rey’s “force nap,” which I felt was very jarring. Honestly, it’s the approach that sounded better of the two! These are great ideas on paper, but I am uncertain if it will be totally doable using the finished film footage we have available.

https://vimeo.com/212386279
Password: fanedit

The cut from Fin and Rey turning to flee the oscillator to them climbing around in the snow is abrupt now.
The shot of the technician lady is abrupt, since her line cannot be salvaged; she speaks too fast to have it sound right to cut her off.
If the cutaway to Hux saying, “Prepare to fire” is a little jarring with the music, it could easily just be put right back where it originally was; it still fits perfectly there given this proposed order.

All in all, it’s a solid idea, but might not be able to be implemented well. And there’s a debate to be had about whether it is favorable to closely associate Han’s death with the Hosnian system’s destruction, and thereby Kylo Ren’s resolution towards the dark side and implied regret or incongruence. (In ROTJ, Luke took a bold risk by putting faith in his father, who redeemed himself and thereby allowed the day to be saved by taking out the Emperor and letting Luke go on to revive the Jedi. In TFA:R v1, Han took a bold risk by putting faith in his son, who resolved himself to the dark side and thereby ensured the day would not be saved because they were too busy with Kylo to detonate the explosives.)

That’s a very not bad idea! It’s not completely seamless, but it might be worth it for the gains. It’s so hard to gauge it since we’re already so familiar with the source and aren’t the hypothetical first-time audience.

Thanks, and that’s a very interesting idea. In the name of keeping TFA as close to itself as possible while merely implementing low-level restructuring, I think the solution already being worked toward is more appropriate for this project. I’m enjoying the approach of changing as little as possible to have the best overall effect. That said, I’d love to see what you’ve cooked up, especially the Finn line.

^Yes, true. The 3PO line will be in V2, in order to have the new R2 hard drive thing make sense. All in all, I’m happier redeeming and using it than cutting it. 😃

Here are NeverarGreat’s two R2 scenes with proper audio and fully formatted. The only thing missing is a few sound effects for BB8 (head turns and rolling away). Anyone have any isolated FX already I could use?

https://vimeo.com/211322567

https://vimeo.com/211322617

Password: fanedit

Cool. If we’re super lucky, the audio from the following scene can have dialogue cleanly removed so I can have seamless music and ambience during the extended bits. I’ll find out when I sit down to work on this next!

NeverarGreat said:

Here are the completed R2 scenes, in terms of visual effects:

Absolutely wonderful idea and execution. I’ll await final audio!

Don’t be silly. 😛

Given the restructuring of the film this project implements, the only way to remove Snoke’s identification of Kylo’s parentage would be to remove the first Snoke scene entirely. We wouldn’t meet him until a smash cut to after the interrogation scene. Even if it weren’t outside the scope of the project, it’d be a little tough to pull off at the same time as the other stuff.
But the nice thing is that this edit will be available to any and all whom would like to take or modify it further. That’s part of why I’d like to A) make it solid and seamless, and B) stick to the original focus.

Personally, I’m not interested in anything like that. It’s really about the SKB restructure in all its elegance, with a few subtle things in the same subtle vein.

That’s some really great work. I’m very open to the idea, slightly stretching the goal of the project though it might.

Sounds like a great philosophy of Vader; I really do look forward to what you end up producing along these lines.
Since you asked, my idea with LOE for Anakin was that he becomes involved in growing tensions between his loyalties to the Jedi Order, Palpatine, and Padme. He’s tossed around for a while, then Palpatine springs this nightmare on him as a manipulation. From that point on, he leans toward Palpatine and has to make the final decision when pressed during the ‘assassination attempt.’ All along, he never appears paranoid (a byproduct of changing his storyline in reshoots IMHO) until we see him talk with Padme on Mustafar, after he has steeped himself in the darkness. It’s really not that different from what ROTS was going for with Anakin, just restructured to have it make more sense, arguably reaching closer to what the pre-reshoot version might have been. In my version, as in the original, Anakin still carries that ‘slave’ mindset, seeming to crave someone being a master over him. Your version will be quite different, in subtle ways.

Sherman said:

Do the covers I made for v1 need any updating for v2?

That’d be good, to include the final list of changes, and include credit for those who will have contributed since V1. Once that stuff has been compiled, I’ll request it; thanks!

Sir Ridley said:

Progress! Here’s the latest version of the Maz’s castle sequence. Thoughts?

https://youtu.be/TqZeT7FN0c0

Very nice! Unless anyone else points something out, I don’t see anything wrong with it!

Thanks for the feedback! Some of those ideas had been considered, agonized over, and decided upon in favor of what you see in the final version. I sometimes err on the side of keeping something the same as the original when it comes to a plot point, the major exception being Padme’s fate at the end of the trilogy.
The subtitles are all baked into the final versions of the edits, so feel free to translate them to Spanish if you’d like. I won’t be re-releasing them just to include that, but I’m sure there’d be a few people who would like to have them.

Lossless .mov’s would be stellar.

Anything lossless should be fine to output; ProRes is what it’ll be turned into for use.
And if you are able to place Ren’s face on additional shots from that Snoke sequence, that’d be even better!

I don’t know if not seeing the sun being drained as the x-wings approach is an error necessarily, but either way it’s not a problem introduced by our meddling, so I’m unconcerned by it.

PM me these things, people, please.