Jar Jar Bricks

Right, that’s what I’m trying to get at but for some reason it was hard for me to articulate. I think making the line a more generalized statement about himself like this serves the scene better than to say that the only reason he was on Ahch-To at all was because of fear. That’s exactly what Rian was trying to avoid since it makes Luke into a coward.

EDIT: Especially in combination with the new flashback voiceover where it’s revealed Leia’s greatest fear is hatred and giving in to that, this should work well. Each character has their greatest fear discussed Leia - hatred Luke - failure Rey - herself.

Oh, dang. As I was about to test the first line I realized that we also have the opportunity to fix “it was fear that kept me here” since a lot of people think that is an incorrect assessment of Luke’s character from TLJ wherein he seems to genuinely believe the galaxy would be better off without the Jedi. We have a lot of other changes in this edit to harmonize a bit better with TLJ.

How do we feel about something like: “Failure was my greatest fear”? Because that still allows for fear to play a role in Luke’s stay on Ahch-To without it being the primary factor. In other words, even with failure as his greatest fear, he can still believe that the Jedi are doomed to fail in TLJ, thus why he wants them to end.

I’ve gone ahead and generated a bunch of lines and selected the best three for the following compilation:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r5CNyHhP6QBsg1zUK9eJEm9X6du9UYi5/view?usp=sharing

This is the same dialogue as we originally came up with since it doesn’t seem like anybody has any issues with it. I can provide the three lines individually to Hal if we are okay with these takes or I can create alternatives for some (or all) of them. Here is how they get separated:

1. But Leia feared the hatred that consume our father…
2. Choosing instead to follow our mother’s path…
3. Despite losing everything, and everyone, Leia always chose compassion over hatred.

EDIT: Oh, and here is a new version of “Leia sensed it as she trained you”. I think what was missing was that sort of gruffness he has when he says “Because you’re a Palpatine.”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qZ78eOdnarLFW2k0_QMknTQcctbgPgCN/view?usp=sharing

After looking at that scene, it doesn’t look like “She still trained me” can be removed. So either we have to deal with the slight repetition there or there’s some other line I can’t think of.

Correct. But what I gave Hal actually includes that line as you have it. The problem is that he’s speaking so slow that there isn’t enough time to fit it all comfortably. He’d have to start talking sooner than he does in the original film. I think I just need to generate it all again with a slightly faster pace.

But if we were to make adjustments to the writing, now would be the time to discuss them before I generate anything.

I don’t believe that’s any different than what I previously submitted? Which is fine, it just sounds like he needs to speak a bit faster which would allow all of that to fit.

hinventon said:

The AI voices sound pretty good, although I feel like Luke talks a tad bit slower than he should during the flashback.

This is also something I noticed. I think we might need to rewrite some of the dialogue in this scene. With a faster delivery, there won’t be enough content for the space.

EDIT: Yeah, I just realized that he doesn’t even mention the fact that Leia stopped being a Jedi since the Padme reference is removed. That’s definitely a requirement for this scene.

Something like: “But Leia feared the hatred that consumed our father, and surrendered her saber to me. Despite losing everything, and everyone, Leia always chose compassion over hatred.”

Hal 9000 said:

The delivery of “Leia sensed it as she trained you” could be better, and possibly the wording. Rey responds with, “She still trained me,” which sounds a little redundant.

I hate to lose the reference to Padme, but I think it flows better (and lets us get away with the alteration a little more cleanly) without it. 😕

Without the reference to training, it’s hard to gauge when she actually senses this, though. If there is some alternative phrasing I’m not aware of, I’d love to hear it.

I kinda agree on the Padme part. Mostly because it allows us to be a little more creative with how we want to write the voiceover. Although shifting from discussing their father to discussing their mother does work in a mirroring sort of way.

I sent you the audio for that other line, Hal.

EDIT: I agree with Snooker that “Final lesson” doesn’t quite work now. Furthermore, we could always remove Rey saying “She still trained me!”. So Luke would instead be responding to only her saying “She never told me.” Which I think is actually slightly more compelling. The idea that Leia never wanted to tell her about it because it didn’t really matter compared to who she is on the inside. Rather than focusing on the fact that she continues training her (which we already know to be the case). So it would go as follows:

Luke: “Because you’re a Palpatine? Leia sensed it as she trained you.”

Rey: “She never told me.”

Luke: “Because she saw your spirit. Your heart. Rey, some things are stronger than blood…”

Yup I think that’s the placement most people were considering for edits. I can see how your colors might match a bit, but it’s hard to tell without comparing them side-by-side

Would you mind sending me a link to a downloadable version of that scene? It’ll be nice to have it around in case somebody ever creates a purely extended version of AotC. Especially if they decide not to include this scene from Kenobi for some reason. I’d make sure you got credit for your work on this.

Absolutely wonderful stuff! All that’s missing is the color re-grade. I think somebody on this thread already managed that pretty nicely.

Wouldn’t the second Death Star also have a magnetic field, then? And obviously this voice modulation effect doesn’t appear in ROTJ.

DrVibble said:

To create true balance, the Force would make a Chosen Two, someone in the Light who struggles with the Dark, and someone in the Dark who struggles with the Light.

Yeah, this is exactly what I was getting at. There is everything in the trilogy itself already to make this a compelling idea, the problem is that Ahch-To focuses so hard on being a Palpatine. And also, like you pointed out, Rey solos Palpatine and Ben dies. I suppose you could still argue that since they are one in the same that Ben helps out somehow, and especially that he’ll help out in the future. Think about it, Rey would continue to struggle with the dark no matter what. But Ben put his life-Force into Rey, so the Chosen One is no longer two people that are one but truly one person. Rey has life-Force within her created by both the light and dark sides of the Force itself. Conveying that in the moment would be hard, though. Plus, Ben’s ghost might have to go bye-bye to illustrate such a concept, which is kinda sacrilegious in my books lol.

Yeah, perhaps I shouldn’t have responded to Strange’s idea to begin with since Hal already gave them a firm “no”. My only purpose in responding how I did was to convey how, from my perspective at least, this idea is impossible logistically given what this film has for Rey’s arc. So Hal’s “no” answer is understandable even beyond the fact that this edit has cemented itself already. At a fundamental level, Rey’s arc in this movie is about her discovering an unsettling fact about herself and struggling with the dark side and her sense of self-worth because of it. There’s no way to undo that unless you delete massive swathes of this movie. But then you’d be better off merging TLJ and TROS into one, which isn’t the goal of Ascendant.

With Rey Nobody, this dark secret is that she’s fated to kill Palps and take the Sith throne. That works, but misses out on the idea of not being defined by a crappy relative, which is what I like about the OT. Plus, Rey Palpatine makes Kylo and Rey rhyme in a way congruent with the concept of the dyad - Kylo looks up to his grandfather, and Rey wants nothing to do with hers. I toyed with the idea of Rey being created by Palpatine’s influence over the midichlorians, but that overcomplicates everything since Anakin would be dragged into that discussion and everybody in the saga would be related to each other in a really strange way.

Honestly, the only alternative Rey background story that I think could work decently is that there is a prophesied Sith chosen one created by the dark side itself as Anakin was by the light. But the final movie in a saga is a weird place to introduce such an idea.

EDIT: But that’s not anything I’m suggesting! Ascendant v5 is good where it’s at.

Within the context of this story, having Rey actually be a part of the Skywalker bloodline would be handing her the conclusion of her character’s journey on a silver platter far too soon. As much as Rey Palpatine sucks in a lot of ways, you do have to admit that the concept of the Skywalker twins readily accepting the offspring of their arch-enemy as their own is quite emotional. It’s the only thing I can think of that feels Star Warsy without retreading old ground or overcomplicating things - and believe me, I’ve given a lot of thought to this!

Hal, I’m still a little confused on where exactly Kylo’s line about the dagger is supposed to go. Is it replacing: “Remember them. See them!”? If you could indicate what would be replaced, then I could see about generating some options as for what he could say.

Previous attempts at that idea made it so Leia is giving her life-Force to be channeled through Rey into Kylo. This would explain how Rey is able to heal a fatal wound without dying like Ben. But you’ve taken another approach, actually, making it abundantly clear that Leia is summoning Han from the netherworld of the Force and the effort of that is what kills her. I think that’s a really cool idea, as well. The only (slight) problem with the idea is Ben’s line of “You’re just a memory” since in this case Ben isn’t hallucinating and his dad really is there with him because of Leia’s sacrifice.

After finally having some time to test it myself, I do agree that pacing-wise the movie works much better without that scene. It’s too short without all of the awful Kijimi stuff so it just feels disjointed. So the only option would be something like you suggested, Hal - an AI line which goes something like “Why pick me as general? I gotta tell you, I don’t really know how to do this…”

Not that you likely care, but the reason why they went with the whole “ciphers” thing is to give Luke a reason for being unable to read the entirety of the Jedi texts himself. He DOES in fact read as much of them as possible, as he is able to. He jots down the decoded text for reference, and these are his “notes”. The deleted caretaker village sequence, which is canon, confirms that he read at least some of it. This is why Yoda jokes about them not being page-turners, because it was an extremely complicated process to decode them. And why Luke doesn’t give him an excuse like “I tried to read them” because we already know how Yoda would have responded to that.

EDIT: As for why the ancient Jedi coded their texts in the first place? Maybe they were just overly protective of their secrets. Or maybe the Sith were at large at that time (no rule of two) and they needed to protect them.

Yeah, it would start with the shot of Poe looking concerned (just after he stops talking) and Rose saying in the background: “Listen, it’s on every channel.” Then Merry translates the message to everybody - “The Resistance is dead. The Sith flame will burn. All worlds, surrender or die. The Final Order begins.” Seeing as how the previous scene ends with a transmission between Palps and Pryde, it makes sense that this would be the next step he takes.

Fair points, Burbin. I do agree that there is an implication at the very least that Poe is meant to step up as some sort of leader in TLJ. But it’s unclear if that means he’d actually be THE general. Take a look at the DoTF script. It’s clear that if Carrie Fisher had been alive during the recording of Episode IX that she would have remained in charge of the Resistance. Sure, she might have given Poe some extra duties, but I doubt those would be significantly different than those somebody like D’Acy has. Which is why I’d say there’s still an argument to be made here for the sake of clarity.

For one thing, the scene wouldn’t involve any mention of Kijimi in the way I envision it being cut. It would just be about how Palpatine is threatening the galaxy with a generic threat of destruction if they don’t stand down and Poe is acting general. But then the problem would be how it may be too short of a scene.

What makes you think the AI line wouldn’t work there? Just not enough space?

That’s actually a very fair point about character-centric scenes.

The main reason why I thought it necessary to reinstate is because without it, it’s not entirely clear why Poe is suddenly in charge of the entire Resistance. D’Acy has seniority over him if you were to follow the chain of command. Connix was also technically a better pick over him since she wasn’t a spice smuggler. It ties in with the theme of the movie to have it directly stated that Leia specifically chose Poe to become general. It’s like her insistence on training Rey despite her lineage. Leia is able to look deeper within people to gauge their worth.

Let me put it like this: fundamentally, it toys with your suspension of disbelief to exclude this scene. As the audience, we of course expect Poe to be in charge of the Resistance because he’s our main character. But when you step back and think about it, it makes zero sense for a hotshot pilot to be given control of the last hope of the galaxy. Especially over more qualified candidates who have spent their lives being military tacticians.

But if you don’t think it necessary, that’s fine. Another thing I’ll add to the list on the other thread 😉

Yeah, I’ve made wayyyy to many posts in this thread over the past week so I don’t blame you for missing it. But this is just going to be an Ascendant+ edit now. The only difference in Rey’s backstory will be that Palpatine didn’t know she existed while he was hunting for his escapee “son” (because let’s be honest, why SHOULD he know about a young child - she was presumably born on Jakku). He hunts down Rey’s father, they hide her with Unkar out of desperation to keep her a secret, Palps finds out his son cannot use the Force (as the novelization states) and orders him terminated. But Ochi has a vision of Rey when he kills Rey’s father. So he was on his way back to Exegol to show Palpatine the dagger’s vision before he gets trapped in the sand cave.

This makes Ochi’s actions actually make sense. Previously, he doesn’t think to search around Niima Outpost for Rey before blasting off in his ship with her parents. Or notice the fact that his primary target is screaming on the surface below. But if he doesn’t know that he’s even looking for a young girl, just a grown clone of Palpatine, then all of this makes sense. It also allows Palpatine to claim that he never wanted her dead, because he never takes any direct action against her. Sure, he sent Kylo after her, but he could argue he knew that Rey would kill him and become stronger. Whereas a young child Rey wouldn’t be able to defend herself against a Sith assassin.

I do think it kinda works better if he’s trying to put them at odds with one another rather than join together. Only one can become “all the Sith” by inheriting his spirit. Especially because Rey’s vision can only possibly show Daisy on the throne, not along with Kylo. Even though they refer to such a thing in the original film, no such footage exists.

So it’s probably best to stick with the idea that only the strongest bloodline can take the throne. How exactly Palpatine’s dialogue could convey that in this scene without spoiling Rey’s heritage early is possibly worth considering.

Yup. It’s just easier to head cannon that the atmosphere on Exegol was so complicated to navigate that if a ship gets too large it can’t rise up on its own or it would get disintegrated by lightning. But if there are ton of massive ships rising at once then they take the heat off each other.

Yes, you’re correct. The only reason why I have a problem with the concept is that it would have made more sense to launch like 10+ of them at that time - there are literally hundreds of them there (perhaps in the thousands) and it’s not like all of them were fixed overnight. They could have launched a small batallion and threatened to destroy key worlds like Coruscant if people tried to stop the rest.

Yeah, but then you have to explain how the heck a single Final Order ship was able to leave Exegol without the rest of them.

Hal, I’m not an expert editor, but I’m pretty sure the scene could start with the shot which is on Poe and Rose says something along the lines of: “It’s on every channel!” In the background.

I’ll probably end up doing this:

“He learned of a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku, to the Emperor. The dagger exposed Rey."

This then explains why he’s going back to Exegol even if he already has a direct line of communication with Palpatine to transmit this news through (as evidenced by him getting the order to kill her father).

If it’s just the dagger giving Ochi visions of a girl on Jakku after killing her parents, then the Emperor would need to hold it himself to verify the nature of all of it as fact. But when Ochi never returns, he is left to assume that his granddaughter really does exist, especially after sensing her in TFA/TLJ.

As I stated on the Ascendant thread, this then blends harmoniously with a new Kylo line to Rey along the lines of: “The dagger showed you what happened to your parents, didn’t it?” So the dagger acts as a sort of family tracking agent upon coming in contact with somebody’s biological material. When Rey picks it up, she is shown the final moments of her parents. When Ochi stabs her father, he is shown his daughter.