Hal 9000

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.

The idea that those books would still exist at all is fantastical, and I don’t see how the Caretakers would’ve helped with that.

It’s Star Wars, a world where nothing ever changes unless the camera is currently on it.

By that point they knew what Jabba would become in ROTJ and made a sensible retcon by keeping the scene in ANH but making it an emissary. I dig it, and it’s part of my headcanon over and against the SE.

Eh, I don’t really see it as much of a statement or alteration of Kylo’s character to go one way or the other on that bit of dialogue. I’m not sure I’ve got much more to say about it, other than that it’s not something I feel super passionate about even though it’s appealing to smooth over the ST’s rocky terrain when possible and unintrusive.

Oh, I’m not saying it can’t easily make sense that way, just that I sure imagine RJ’s thoughts while writing it were to allow for the “Knights of Ren” Kylo is master of thanks to a line from TFA.

I imagine if TLJ were aware of the eventual canon depiction of the events, it would say, “Ah, well I guess the reason for this turns out differently so forget it.”

PM sent

That’s just it, evidently those lost students have nothing to do with the Knights of Ren according to canon, although I think that was RJ’s intentions with that dialogue. I imagine he’d have had the scene go about as we have it in V5 were the Knights of Ren not introduced as a concept in TFA.

The comic book that shows what happened right after the slaughter appears to retcon this and tuck the inconsistencies away.

My initial thought was that either the scene goes back in or the Caretakers go out. That’s their reason for being and without it they’re an afterthought that has the effects outlined above.

The scene itself is good, but it has unfinished VFX. And I do agree it’s powerful to have Luke and Rey’s last interaction pre-fallout to be one where you think things are just about to improve and Luke will turn things around.

If you’re just changing the ghost, you should be able to export a new video streaming mux it right in.

theprion said:

Hal 9000 said:

That’s because I didn’t redo ANH when I did the others because I’m still planning a revision for it. It could easily be a good while yet before its ready, though.

How about the Smaller 1080p encodes, are they coming for the Prequel Trilogy as well? The quality/size ratio is perfect, so it would be neat.

Eh… the 720p size is more appropriate for the PT edits due to a fair amount of DVD footage used. However, I could go ahead and encode the same smaller 1080p form factor if it’s wanted.

Can’t do that, because I’d like a ‘planetary celebration’ with Shaw, and don’t want another version or two to track and worry about when it’s a change I have no interest in. Again, all the resources are there to make that tweak for whomever would like to.

Rey mentions to Luke that the FO will control “all the major systems within weeks.” That’s what I had in mind, anyway.

Icecream2448 said:

Am I crazy or am I seeing a lighter toned space shot switch to the darker space shot after the crawl in V5 ends. I think I can see like a faint flicker as it switches from fanedit to actual movie?

Not that I can see when I look, but who knows. It’ll never match perfectly but I can’t tell anything. Sometimes the films do seem that way when the camera starts panning, as immediately background stars can be more visible.

PM sent!

I don’t plan to add Hayden to ROTJ, though, as it’s not something I’d like to see. As opposed to tweaking a background detail or something like that for continuity, I feel it sends the wrong message. To me it says Anakin had to revert to before his brush with evil rather than be transformed into the man as he should have been at the age he was when he redeemed himself in ROTJ.

However, since I make ProRes video and lossless audio exports of my edits available, it should be relatively simple as an exercise if you’d like to do it yourself.

That’s because I didn’t redo ANH when I did the others because I’m still planning a revision for it. It could easily be a good while yet before its ready, though.

I guess I’ll have to find a way to watch the TROS portion of it. Or maybe the whole thing; it’s not like it doesn’t sound like it’d have references and gags I’d get.

EDIT: Scratch that; gameplay walkthrough is ten hours. I’ll just hear the interesting bits relevant to fan editing projects!

Yep, and I guess I just forgot to mention it here, go figure.

V5 changes: New crawl to better get across the impression that the First Order isn’t a huge brute force but are making surgical strikes to take over the galaxy’s existing governmental structure, and a few other tiny things like adding a shot or two back into the scene with Chewie and the porgs and using poppasketti’s hood for Rey’s reflection in the mirror.