Jar Jar Bricks

losthead said:

NeverarGreat said:

I was just thinking about this movie again for some reason and had some ideas.

One of the biggest issues with the structure of the film IMO is that Rey goes to Palpatine after getting a pep-talk with Luke. Before this meeting, Rey feels like she’s on a dark path, but after this there’s no chance that she will take Palpatine up on any offer. Now, I’d already considered just deleting the Luke ghost meeting since it’s so worthless and actively deflates the stakes, but that would have resulted in too many continuity problems. So what if instead of Rey going to meet Luke, it is Kylo?

Imagine: After Kylo has his talk with Han and throws away his lightsaber, he takes an advanced TIE Interceptor from the Death Star wreckage to Luke’s island, where he intends to stay and atone for his sins in isolation. He burns his ship and stands there before it. Just use Rey standing in front of the burning ship and replace it with an image of Kylo from behind. Then we can have Luke’s voice appear to him, saying ‘Ben.’ Then Ben can say ‘She’s gone.’

Cut to Poe beside Leia’s bed wondering how she was able to win, and Lando telling him that they had each other.

The music of that scene segues into a scene in Luke’s hut, where Ben pulls the rock out of the wall and reveals Leia’s saber. Luke tells him about his mother and how she believed that someone would complete her journey. Ben, off screen, says how he’s not worthy to wield it, and that he doesn’t have what it takes. Luke replies that he has everything he needs.

We next combine the scenes of D-O and of R2 getting a strange message from an old X-wing. Finn and Poe assume that this is Rey leading them to Exegol, but in fact it’s Ben in the X-wing.

Cut any shot of Rey in the X-wing, replacing them with shots of Kylo’s TIE fighter from the first scenes of the film when necessary. Rey arrives believing herself unworthy of the mission, ready only to take her revenge on Palpatine.

Palpatine says that Rey wants to kill him, and asks her ‘As a Jedi?’ She says yes, and he says 'No…your hatred…your anger…you want to kill me." And then in his mind, he continues “…That is what I want.” This unspoken thought echoes in Ben’s head as he races into the temple. Palpatine says to Rey “Kill me…” Then to Ben: “…and my spirit will pass into her. As all the Sith live in me…” then to Rey: “You will be Empress…” and then Ben hears in his head “…we will be one.”

Then later, to Rey, he says: “She will strike me down…” Then to Ben “…and pledge herself as a Sith.”

Palpatine is doing this gloating as a way of telling Ben that he has won, thinking that there is nothing Ben can do to stop him. But he doesn’t reckon with Ben and Rey’s connection in the Force.

In the scene where Ben fights the Knights of Ren, we see in one shot that he has Leia’s lightsaber on his belt but he doesn’t use it. He refuses to use Leia’s weapon, still believing that he is unworthy of it. Then he connects with Rey and together they agree to swap sabers. Rey drops Luke’s saber behind her back and Ben pulls it across space like in the film, then we see Leia’s saber already in Rey’s hand as she fights off the guards.

Then when Rey leaves Exegol at the end of the film, she’s in Luke’s X-wing for the first time.

Anyway, that’s quite a bit of work, but considering what we’re able to accomplish these days with editing, I don’t think it’s an impossible task by any means.

Apologies for the resurrection, I’ve been catching up on this thread so I wanted to add onto this.

This is a really cool idea for a scene. I just love the visual of Ben standing in front of the burning TIE fighter on Ach-To, and getting to speak with Luke. I’d really like to attempt this, I think it would be feasible with enough work.

One thing, though. How would Ben know where Ach-To is? He never discovered it in TLJ.

Technically, he did. Rey tells Snoke “everything”, it just happens offscreen. So assumably she tells him how to get there, because Snoke says that he will go there and destroy the whole island.

I mean, perhaps there was an issue with certain members here getting flooded by PMs from robots, but it seems like this has started happening more frequently ever since a 1 week wait period was placed on new accounts before they can PM. Giving my two cents, I would humbly suggest that go away. Or at the very least be reduced to a single 24 hour period.

Do you mean the part where she’s looking up into the stars and the screen is just kinda black? Yeah, it would actually work really well to just have the pathways start fading in there.

I happen to agree with you, RL. I think that since Rey no longer says that she’s “all the Jedi” we don’t need to include everybody in that sequence. I also didn’t really like having the Clone Wars version of Ahsoka in there since we have a live action version of her at both a young and old age where she doesn’t sound like that.

There are enough voices to work with - Anakin, Yoda, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan (both young and old versions), Luke, and Leia. The only trouble is that I already know Yoda was not an easy one to voice clone, but I’ve never personally given him a try. We could put Rosario Dawson Ahsoka in there since she’s already been in contact with Luke before but we just don’t know what her fate is.

Unless somebody wants to sift through all Star Wars media to find relevant lines from Jedi that could be traveling from the past into the present via the WBW.

The novelization implies that the World Between Worlds was somehow involved in the fact that Jedi who hadn’t technically learned how to transcend where able to speak in the finale. A lazy answer, if you ask me, but technically it works.

I believe the novelization also points out that it is actually Leia who encouraged Rey to reach out to past Jedi, since it was something Luke taught her. The Jedi texts weren’t involved because this was an ability discovered by Qui-Gon, and not the Jedi themselves. You point this out with the progression you listed. Yes, Luke could have written about it in the texts but at that point it muddies things since the impression is that the Wayfinders were in the original texts and Luke merely expanded upon or translated what was already written there.

In other words, having a written record of this ability might make things too complicated to follow.

I believe they are one in the same, no?

The first thing that comes to mind is in TROS - we need to see Kylo being called further into the forest on Mustafar, away from the battlefield, and encountering the obelisk that holds the Wayfinder.

EddieDean said:

I don’t know if that’s quite cinema quality, but it’s far better than I was expecting it to be!

Agreed. I think you’ve got a really good idea here, but we might need to wait another year or so in order for the technology to be seamless.

Most people do agree that the reasoning behind why they’re called the “Resistance” could have been better explained seeing as how the New Republic is supposed to be the dominant power at this time. I think your version probably does the most we can in as few words as possible. The politics behind it (half the Senate not taking the threat seriously or wanting to avoid war) we can probably leave to other content to explain. It’s pretty clear Dave Filoni was headed in that direction with Ahsoka’s first season.

We’re simply making it so that they’re known as the “Resistance” because they operate solely outside of New Republic borders, and their big secret is that they’re funded by the Senate.

The guy also made a video on his channel to speed up the Episode IV duel, kinda like Adywan. Although I’m not sure who does that specific duel better.

I’m kinda weird in that I’d want to see the duel I linked above in a purely extended version of ROTS, with no other changes besides that duel and deleted scenes. I may reach out to this guy and see if he is willing to share the source files. Although something tells me he mixed the audio in stereo since he was always intending to upload it to YouTube, so it might be a no-go for most edits.

I’m not sure where else to post this. Has anybody seen this excellent video of the Palpatine/Mace duel?

https://youtu.be/YC8VRvDNw1k?si=K24jw4HL_yBILYNS

I think the only rough spot is around 2:33 with their spinning moves, but I can’t believe how much better the duel flows by just being sped up a bit. The CGI backflip doesn’t really feel out of place anymore.

If I recall correctly, Hal usually doesn’t mind his threads serving as idea boards, either.

Broom Kid said:

• Removed the “this is a first for me” in the prison. Now he just doesn’t say anything. FWIW I guess Gilroy has commented on this, and he said “Oh, yeah, Cassian’s just lying to them, he just met these guys, why would he tell them anything about his personal life?” Which I guess makes sense. I’m not 100% that this works, but it’s fast enough and Chirrut is sort of self-satisfied enough that I think it slides by

I think we should use an AI line here, personally. I liked GAT’s idea of “It’s all the same to me.”

That’s super impressive! It looks fantastic.

Bingowings said:

What if… Instead of destroying the Endor shield generator the Rebels redirected the shield to protect the moon from debris. Everyone looking up and seeing the station exploding could be a briefly tense moment as they wait to see if the recalibrated shield works. The big celebration could be seeing the debris bounce off the shield knowing the people below were safe.

This would explain why a moon like Kef Bir would get the majority of the Death Star debris instead of the moon right below it.

The current workaround for this ridiculousness was Ascendant just turning Kef Bir into a different part of Endor. But if I worked at Lucasfilm I would have to make the retcon you mention here to make sense of things in theatrical TROS.

Oh, I didn’t know that about him. I guess I figured everyone around here were obsessed with all the intricate details like Adywan lol

Okay, sounds good!

G&G-Fan said:

He’s voiced that he wants to be done with the Prequels.

And this is precisely why I was pushing for last minute changes he could sneak in there. Imagine in a year or two from now, random newbies to the forum will post on this thread saying “why is this continuity error present in your edit” or “why isn’t this deleted scene that everyone likes in your edit”. My goal was to avoid that headache preemptively, since this is the last time he will be touching them.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful for these alternative versions. Perhaps I should have been clearer about that. I’m sorry, Hal. But I think you’re misunderstanding the motive I had for pushing these things, G&G.

It wouldn’t be a problem aside from the fact that it would cut his robe in two. In real life, the physical lightsaber prop’s blade got all caught in Hayden’s robe. He even notices this and pulls it off the ignited blade in the shot. Who knows why they went ahead and applied the VFX to it anyways. Probably has something to do with the droid factory being a last minute addition to the film and they didn’t have any other shot options.

This being harder to solve is exactly what I was afraid of since I probably can’t fix it myself.

Oh, I don’t think you understood what I meant about the droid factory sequence. I’m not suggesting that you follow Joy’s editing sequence at all, but that you cut away from Anakin’s lightsaber getting caught on his cloak for 2 seconds. It’s a really small trim, shouldn’t take much effort at all.

That’s a really interesting thought process, Thrawn. It’s probably more realistic from a psychological perspective. Anakin blames only himself for losing his mother and vows to do better, and then comes along Palpatine who tells him that the Jedi don’t trust him and have been holding him back all along. It’s much easier to latch onto an outlandish idea like that if it absolves you of any guilt. Anakin coming up with that explanation on his own is harder to believe from an audience perspective since he’d be deluding himself.

I do wonder if this means that Hal should re-delete that portion of Anakin complaining about Obi to Padme earlier on, if we were to go with this approach.

I think it works in theory, but in practice the transition right into Anakin’s face like that is a bit off putting, as well as the brevity of their conversation. I’d have to prefer GAT’s version, if it were spruced up, personally.

If nothing else, I’ll agree that the scene does help in furthering their relationship together since Padme otherwise gives Anakin no sign of empathy or comfort on-screen. It does help us buy into the two of them falling in love.

See, the thing is that Anakin says basically the exact same thing at his mother’s grave; that he wasn’t strong enough to save her but he won’t let it happen again. Watching the edit recently I realized how redundant that scene is, minus the part about fixing things being so much simpler.

Hal - I’ve got a few pieces of feedback before you re-render the 1080p large version to fix those issues. It seems like a couple things slipped through the cracks that weren’t on your changelog:

• Somehow the goofy sentence you trimmed when Jar Jar is accepting his temporary position from Padme got reinstated, along with Anakin complaining about Obi-Wan to Padme. I’m actually fine with the latter part being reinstated, because it means you could potentially cut out the cringey part about Anakin making Padme feel uncomfortable without the scene feeling too short, now.
• Somehow the part where Mace Windu and Yoda in the Senate telegraph to the audience their exact next moves got reinstated, as well. I really enjoyed how their arrival to Geonosis was made into a surprise later on - it really escalated the stakes for the trio in the arena.
• I highly recommend checking out the trim JoyOfEditing made to the droid factory scene to remove Anakin’s lightsaber getting caught on his cloak. This sticks out really badly.
• The audience member I watched it with was really disappointed to not see the extended dismemberment of Jango instated 😉 (he pointed this out without me saying anything at all about it previously)

That was about it! Thanks for making this for us.