Hal 9000

The blue lightning has an overall heavy blue cast even without the blue lightning so I think it fits okay as a vision or even misleading implication that it’s the huge blast we see put right after it.

And for the opening vision I had just snipped out the first bit about her parents so that it is just her “vision about the throne of the Sith and who was on it.”

Heh. I guess it goes without saying!

And I try to stick loosely to official versions of shots without having a good reason to deviate, because otherwise where do you draw the line?

I’d love to use Adywan’s version of that X-Wing shot, make no mistake.

And I’m open to ideas about Mos Eisley, although I like what’s in my current version. It’ll depend on what Dat_SW_Guy presents to work with, too.

Yeah, it at least leaves room to wonder about such things because the sabers are two different colors at all. Good read on it.

The primary reason is to help clarify the saber in the third act when two blue sabers are exchanged and tossed all around against a heavy blue backdrop.

Especially with the inclusion of Leia capping off the sequence of ghostly voices, the purple color makes it clear whose saber Rey wields.

Carrie had indeed expressed a preference for that color when asked, when Leia’s lightsaber was merely a hypothetical.

Also, from a saga-only perspective at least, this saber was introduced and dispatched with in this film. Given the history as shown, it would seem there’d be minimal squinting required to have this change cohere well enough with future media.

I thought maybe this would be a fan edit done with a tiny time budget. Something like, “I prepared the source but only did 30 minutes of NLE work before exporting.”

Well, I think the yellow makes more sense for a Rey Nobody version than in the regular version, and that’s enough to override resistance to the idea for me.

Dramatically more important than this, however, Ridley exported a variant of the opening crawl that is the same as what’s already in Ascendant except that it uses the same font as TLJ for the film’s title. Because… this version does more, better or worse, to cohere with TLJ.

Here’s how it looks.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tp_qxpg2zyKNFoF2bwbIH4AZzccM9TmI/view?usp=drivesdk

It was skenera that done that, two years ago today.

Settled. It’ll be yellow for the Rey Nobody version.

Me too! It makes the yellow color for her saber at the end mean something.

I’m not sure whose permission I’m waiting on.

Just saying, guys… it’s not too late for yellow lightning for Rey. It would help separate her from Palpatine, and I already have the completed footage.

Eh, eh?

That sounds interesting, would like to see it. Some variation of that line would work well with the later “your new family… dies.”

Well it looks fucking amazing.

Did Ridley do the crawl? Because if not…

I disagree, Octorox, I think the line is Luke ribbing his past self in a way entirely appropriate to the journey he completes by the end of TLJ.

Lawdog, I think that line might be a little weird, as it seems to draw a contrast. “Luke’s father was there and… your family is… here too?”

All right, the day has come. Thanks for Spence, I have most of the pieces necessary to start working on the Rey Nobody variant version of Ascendant.

In Spence’s telling of the story, Rey’s parents remain drunken bastards who are irrelevant to the story. Ochi is just a Jedi hunter who happens to have the clue to Exegol, with no other meaningful ties to Rey. (His ship looks similar to the one in TFA, but this is never addressed.) Kylo reveals to Rey that her vision that disturbed her about taking the throne will indeed come to pass, implying that Palpatine knows this. Palpatine evidently told him this, keeping to himself that this is exactly what he wants to happen, which he reveals to Rey later. (Maybe for this version it’d be better to revert the reveal about essence transfer to the third act to Rey, otherwise Kylo ought to have suspected it.) Rey decides to pursue Palpatine to kill him, seemingly giving into this prophecy.

Where I plan to deviate from Spence is to avoid having Palpatine spell out for Kylo in the opening scene about essence transfer, so that the logic can be Palpatine getting Kylo to hype Rey up about coming to kill him. I’m hoping to, after the hangar reveal scene, have Rey resolve to want to kill Kylo Ren rather than Palpatine.

It doesn’t really seem possible to have Rey’s parents be noble or hide her without the Palpatine connection. Raises too many unanswered questions, and is halfway toward the destruction of TLJ’s established facts that a ‘Rey Nobody’ edit values.

This sounds excellent, and I’d love a link to see it. When I put out an alternate version of LOE with Padme surviving, I conceded to demand, but this would be much closer to what’d be needed to make that work. If I hadn’t already put that out, I imagine I’d just direct people to this.

EDIT: Have you considered an alternate audio track that omits most of the added music?

And congratulations on releasing this (and a V2). I know it’s brewed well, and you have years of keen insight into what is needed.

EddieDean said:

…and I’ve lost all this morning’s work, its backup, and the post I’d written about it.

CRY

I can’t promise a timeframe but I’ll plan to make progress along that front as I find the time to do so.

Oh, sure, I was just wondering if that means that all the proverbial bits and pieces are in place, as I had sat out the Rey Nobody discussion for the most part while agreeing to incorporate them into a variant version of Ascendant.

Essentially at this point for my end of things, whenever RogueLeader tells me, “Here you go, Hal, here’s what to implement,” I will proceed and get it done! 😉

I mean, if Spence’s new edit does put together all the Rey Nobody pieces, does the community deem all the pieces to be extant and ready to go? If so, I can plan to push out the variant of Ascendant for it.

RL?

Yeah, ESB doesn’t really do it for me either. Better than 2011, but it feels sort of greenish. ANH doesn’t look too bad, nor does ROTJ.

I’d be into that for TROS, but not for ROTJ. It’s gotta be old man Shaw, for me. He’s the one who got redeemed.

Peeks sheepishly through the door

Hey, guys, uhmm… Just wanted to check in to see if we…

backs away a half-step

…uh, have what we need for Rey Nobody? Since Spence finished his edit?

Again, it’s not that it doesn’t make sense, just that it’s cleaner not to open the implication if it wasn’t picked up on later whereas it feels like it was meant to.

I do see your point, and I don’t think there’s an argument to win or lose here.