Jar Jar Bricks

Yup, you were probably using the wrong method of making the AI lines. You can thank RL again for discovering the proper way.

In my opinion, the flaw with the idea of “cycles” is that there should really be another sequel trilogy if that is the case, and on and on into infinity. I don’t think anybody genuinely wants that. TROS ends with the return of the Jedi for a second time, with no discernable difference from the first go around. Which to me suggests that the uniting tissue between each trilogy ought to be the Jedi and Sith trying to control the will of the Force. And finally coming to terms with the fact that the Force cannot be controlled, and it is up to the galaxy to let it and its avatars do only what it wants. Otherwise, everything is thrown out of balance. In the case of the sequel trilogy, the only reason things repeated themselves is because Palpatine was supposed to die in ROTJ, but he cheated the will of the Force in a way even it couldn’t forsee, causing all the events from the OT to essentially play out again. Except this time he actually stays dead thanks to the intervention of the Force ghosts.

I disagree 100%. In fact, if you showed this to somebody who had no idea what an AI line even is, like a mother, they should be none the wiser unless they happen to be an audio engineer. I am almost certain you pointed them out to her as they happened, which obviously isn’t fair. My dad couldn’t even tell Tarkin was CGI in Rogue One until I told him after the movie. And for me, somebody who is very attuned to these things, when I watch this edit on a TV speaker instead of headphones, the lines blend in perfectly. There are indeed a couple of lines in v4 of this edit that are outdated (using an older method of voice synthesis which isn’t realistic) so that could be part of your issue. The new method sounds 99% like the person. To the point where I’m not sure why Hal applied certain transitional audio effects to them, as I think this made them stand out slightly more with headphones. The voice clones already try to replicate the EQ and background noise of what you give it.

I think that pruning and trimming is actually the laziest possible approach you can take in fan editing. It requires no creativity and little thought process. It’s a “hurr-durr, I don’t like this moment, so I want it gone.” Granted, it is certainly a necessary evil in a lot of cases to achieve a larger goal. If AI lines aren’t for you, that’s fine, but don’t try to turn this into a universal fact, because it certainly isn’t. Especially in a sandbox as barebones as the one TROS gives us, your ideology just doesn’t work. Not unless you condense everything into a duology. But that’s a whole different project than this one’s stated goals.

I’m only “aggro” about it because, for me, that’s the only thing others can do to me that will wake me up from a stupor and obsession with any particular idea I have. Which is usually helpful so I can consider things from different perspectives. If people don’t say anything in an upfront way, then I’m likely going to miss something, and whatever I’m working on isn’t going to be as good as it should be.

Granted, I do appreciate it much more when criticisms come with their own recommendations. The reason I don’t have any recommendations for you is because, from my perspective at least, I’m already pursuing all these ideas in a much more attainable way in my own thread.

Darth Raditz said:

Granted, these lines tend to be AI-generated anyway, but ideally, I’d want to use a Leia soundalike. Usually, I’m fine with AI for fanedits since they’re non-profit anyway, but I just grow more & more uncomfortable with it every day.

Then why keep bringing up ideas that would require AI line replacements to nearly every other aspect of the film in order to make any sense? I think the mark of a good alternative take for TROS is that you only really have to change what Kylo tells Rey in the dyad duel and hangar scene, specifically. If you have to start fundamentally changing all the conversations outside of that one to accommodate your idea, that just means you’re fighting a losing battle to change the crux of this movie.

Ultimately, this movie IS about being confronted with an uncomfortable statement concerning your heritage/origin, and then trying to reconcile that with the idea that your origin shouldn’t matter, because your choices and relationships with others matter more in life. And in Kylo’s case, it’s moreso about domination and power leading to ruin regardless of trying to disassociate them from the Sith or his own destiny, and that choosing love is the ultimate form of empowerment.

I do think this new Luke voiceover line can work in my own edit, however. It would bring Luke’s whole lesson full circle when combined with him telling Ben on Exegol: “Choose love, Ben. Choose power.” And that, of course, would be a culmination to their previous conversation:

“The dark side has failed you, Ben. Like it failed my father.”

“Anakin was weak”

“His love for his family saved him. I wish it could save you, too.”

“I only did what I had to do.”

“You chose hate.”

“I chose power.”

Here’s how I could see the Luke and Leia flashback line going:

“She was quick to learn in our training. But Leia feared giving in to hatred like our father, and chose to follow our mother’s path, instead. Throughout her life, Leia lost everything, and everyone. But in the end, she still chose love.”

As I’ve given this idea more thought, I’ve come to realize that I do appreciate detaching Rey receiving Leia’s lightsaber and overcoming her darkness as something she prophesied would happen to Luke. I think things are already confusing enough in this movie with one vision that is supposedly fated to happen, introducing yet another one - a seemingly contradictory one to the initial vision, at that - seems no bueno. Plus, this ties beautifully with Rey’s later line to Palpatine: “All you want is for me to hate, but I won’t.”

Yeah, I feel like yours would work best from a thematic point of view. Especially for a classic Rey Palpatine edit. Luke’s basically telling her, “Leia lost everything, she had every reason to turn to the dark side, or run away and hide like both of us tried to, but she chose to keep on fighting for what she loved instead.”

But there are people who appreciate the fan-servicey bit of mentioning Padme. Plus, what I was shooting for with my own was the implication that Leia literally struggled with the exact same darkness as Rey, as in my hypothetical edit Palpatine may have done that to both the Skywalker bloodline and Rey’s own.

That is indeed some pretty powerful dialogue, RL. The only trouble is that the line there has to explain whether Leia stopped her Jedi training or not, and it’s kinda ambiguous at the moment. Having enough space is also a concern.

The way I currently have it in my thread is (roughly) as follows: “But Leia feared the darkness in our father, choosing instead to follow our mother’s path. She surrendered her saber to me, and said it would be picked up again, by someone with the spirit to overcome that darkness.”

I’m not sure how that could be altered any more seeing as how there are time limitations. Although I do like the idea that it was a decision of possibly choosing hate or guaranteed love. I think that implication is already present, but maybe it’s not clear enough.

Since this movie doesn’t have deleted scenes, are you planning on slotting this intro in with the rest of the movie as an edit? Or would you prefer to make some other changes in a hypothetical edit?

I mean, you’d just be making another hard retcon of TLJ then. Kylo says in that movie that the effort for Rey to talk to him like that would kill her. So the implication is that, no matter your strength in the Force at the moment, communicating across the galaxy will kill you. Unless you have a bond like the dyad. Or unless you instigate it between two people like Snoke does. I suppose you could make the argument that Luke could instigate it, but at that point the Force Skype memes literally write themselves. They’d all be on a Microsoft Teams call together LMAO.

Ultimately, this idea doesn’t work because it requires footage of Leia speaking on the other line to be completely seamless. The first Star Wars movie establishes that Force ghosts do not have to take a corporeal form in order to speak to people. Thus, it feels natural that Luke would do such a thing with Kylo. But with Leia, since she’s still alive, it would feel super awkward to not see what she’s up to as the conversation is unfolding. Imagine removing all visuals of Kylo speaking whenever he speaks with Rey in TLJ. It just doesn’t work.

I only have Episode 3. I’ll send you a PM. There is a fan edit request thread on here BTW so you don’t have to make an entirely new post like this.

I think the idea behind that person’s comment was in the near future where AI video generation and augmentation is possible. Admittedly, I agree that it’s a bit early to be discussing these kinds of things. Give it another 10 years, at least lol.

Oh, cool! I didn’t know that. Vader definitely won’t be a problem then.

If he does replace the other character’s voices, though, I really hope he doesn’t use some random person’s voice. Ryan Golden is like a one in a billion kind of person. I seriously doubt there is a twin of Ewan out there.

If you could send RL the center channel of whenever those characters are speaking in the scenes you want to replace, I can do that for you.

No offense, but that ruins the entire point of Leia reaching out to Kylo before he hurts Rey. It has to be the first time she does such a thing so it’s shocking enough for Ben to stop him in his tracks. Plus, her doing such a thing would require “all the strength she has left”, meaning she’d be dead before Endor. The reason it has to be Luke is that he isn’t confined to the rules of Force projection anymore since he’s a ghost.

Plus, Luke never “taunts” him with that dialogue, he’s literally just speaking facts. Reminding him that his grandfather chose love in the end over hatred - which had only ever taken and pushed others from him. In my mind, it’s essential that all 3 of the legacy characters show genuine compassion and care in order to redeem Kylo in this movie. Luke would demonstrate it first after Chewie “dies”. Then Leia shows it by reaching out to him one last time before she dies. And finally Ben is able to see his father again and admit that he was sorry and loved him all along.

I don’t think PJ usually comes on here. If he doesn’t end up using AI voices in his edit for whatever reason, I’m sure we can come together to replace the spliced lines on this thread.

Ah, that explains it. It does look way more artsy than the shots they ended up using in the film for some reason. I think it would slot in perfectly in place of the Kylo shot readying himself as Vader approaches him that I had to remove for continuity.

One thing worth considering about the rapid-fire visions in TROS is that they include footage from random parts of the previous movies, thus necessitating such a film style. What we have here is entirely new footage that is already arranged in a narrative format, so I really don’t think the same technique is necessary.

One other alternative might be to blend the Kylo and Rey fight from TFA in so that we don’t need to have Vader state that’s what’s on his mind, and make it immediately clear why they are located in the place that they are.

So the vision could start with flashes of the TFA fight, and then Kylo would find himself alone in the forest. The stuff with Vader happens, interspersed with the occasional clash from TFA. When Kylo lands the hit on Vader, we also see Rey slashing Kylo’s face. This would explain why he’s unbalanced enough to be thrown back by Vader into the air.

There are a couple problems with this, admittedly. If he’s reliving those moments in the forest, just with Vader in the place of Rey, he wouldn’t have the mask on. Yet, at the same time, we do want his mask on since that is what he reforges after this scene. It might also be confusing to audience to be constantly switching between 3 different realities - the past, present, and visionary.

I really don’t want this vision to be so rapid fire that you can’t even make out what is going on properly. Yeah, that might line up better with the original TROS, but there is definitely merit in making this more akin to Rey confronting her evil clone on the Death Star and also Luke’s own thing with Vader on Dagobah. There should be a mini story present there imo, with a beginning, middle, and end. And that includes allowing some build-up rather than jumping straight into things. I think the epileptic nature of TROS is something we should be actively avoiding in this case, not contributing further to.

Thanks for sharing that though. Apparently there is a shot with both Kylo and the mask in frame, which I had no idea existed because I haven’t watched original TROS in ages.

I think a good middle ground here would be to intersperse those shots of Kylo and the mask throughout the vision better. Currently, it’s only at the part where he’s hoisted up in the air. This might add to the “snappy” nature that you seem interested in.

It was actually “You underestimate my odds” which is a combination of Anakin/Vader and Han Solo. The reason it’s gone is because its corresponding shot doesn’t work anymore. Kylo doesn’t have his hood on, so I tried only using the part where the camera is panned down far enough to ignore that, but then I noticed that he’s got both of his hands on his lightsaber. His new first attack against Vader isn’t an overhead strike, it’s a single-handed swipe from his left.

So, TL;DR, it’s another continuity issue. I can check the fan film to see if there’s another shot of Kylo I can use, but I don’t believe there was one. The substitute here is Vader saying “You are no Sith” to Kylo performing 2 banned ligthsaber moves, and then Kylo says “I know” like Han. Kylo already emulates his father’s finger point thing later on, so it’s clear his dad is top of mind. As he says in TLJ, he never hated him, he only killed him because he thought he HAD to choose power because of fate. This movie clarifies that through the vision of the throne. Plus, Luke says “He would bring… the end of all I loved because of what he would become”.

What sound effects are missing? I’d like to secure the sound of Vader groaning in pain from ESB when Kylo slashes him, but that’s the only one I can think of at the moment.

Those aren’t actually the same shot, they do have subtle differences, but I know what you’re saying. I can’t get rid of the second distant shot because of lightsaber continuity reasons, they’re going in to clash and then suddenly they’d be far apart from each other.

I can, however, get rid of the first distant shot. It would just mean that the camera would change angles on Vader slightly in the same shot. I dunno if this breaks a film-making rule or whatever, but it looks good to me:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Y36nv7KvjDdv74InyqntxTBy2H4y5DF/view?usp=sharing

Please be aware this is actually the source video, so it doesn’t have things like the AI lines. It’s also a more chunky file. I just wanted to show you what I’m talking about.

Exactly, lol. Except in the case of Ascendant it would be an unwelcome one since that edit is doing the approach that Palpatine always saw her as a threat until the last minute.

Whereas this edit is taking the almost exact opposite approach. He’s (kinda) telling the truth on Exegol that he never wanted her specifically dead. And then you have the original TROS where it’s completely bananas and the inner machinations of Palpatine’s mind are an enigma.

EddieDean and I were brainstorming in the other thread, and we came up with a really fantastic idea that could improve the genetic Rey Palpatine storyline. The essence of it is that, due to her parents hiding her, Palpatine never knew about Rey until the time of the sequels themselves. He only ever sent Ochi to look for her father. This fixes the problem of why her parents were on board Ochi’s ship, because he had just taken them without knowing they had a child. It also answers why the Emperor didn’t send any more of his followers to look for Rey on Jakku or the galaxy in general, because he didn’t even know she existed until she was already a Jedi, thus why he “always” wanted her dead.

Not much would need to be changed in order for this to work:

"It was Palpatine who had your parents taken. He was looking for your father. But he learned he had no potential in the Force. So he gave the order.”

This would help IMMENSELY in making it so that her father really is a nobody, despite his genetic relation. This is the canon answer, by the way, that her father couldn’t use the Force. It’s just an extremely relevant piece of information that’s omitted. And then Rey’s own statement would need to be whittled down later on:

Kylo: “I know why Palpatine discovered you.”

Rey: “Tell me.”

Kylo: “Because he saw what you would become. You don’t just have power. You have his power. You’re his granddaughter.”

By the way, I could substantially improve all of Kylo’s lines in these scenes due to my new voice model. Mostly the “become a dyad” one and “You were right”. The previous model was based on his Lego TFA voice lines.

EDIT: Ah, darn, Finn’s lines with Poe and D-O later would contradict this idea. So some thought would need to be given to that. But if we could figure this all out, it would be an elegant solution to make genetic Rey Palpatine more tolerable, to me at least.

I’ve come to the same conclusion, Starkiller. It’s just an idea that’s been in my head for a bit, and definitely more suited for Ascendant.

EddieDean said:

Here’s an even more extreme angle that follows from the previous - what if Rey’s dad was captured by Ochi and taken to Palpatine, who tortured him into obedience and deep into the dark side, and raised him as a subservient Sith - giving him the name Snoke. Then, Rey REALLY has a reason to want to kill Palpatine - for vengeance for her father. I’m not suggesting you use this idea, or even that it’s good - more that it’s an angle I’ve not yet seen considered.

Rey’s father does indeed have blue eyes and a similar head shape. But he’s definitely not 8 feet tall, or whatever lol.

But your other post is a marvelous idea, Eddie. Although it obviously would be for Ascendant, and not this edit. Perhaps Palpatine’s “son” escaped when he was a youngster, and has been on the run all that time. Then we have Kylo state that once he was captured Ochi discovered he was incapable of using the Force, so Palps ordered him killed. And he never knew about Rey before she’d already chosen the path of a Jedi, so he wanted her killed, too.

I think, for the purposes of this edit, I can only hope and pray that the Starlight project updates the VFX of the ship that leaves Rey behind. So, yeah, this specific discussion might be more suited for Hal’s thread.

Here’s how that Kylo dialogue would work for Ascendant:

“It was Palpatine who had your parents taken. He was looking for your father. But he found out he was useless with the Force. So he gave the order.”

This would then tie in with “Weak, like your parents”

I want to bring up one last potential idea for this edit that is supplementary in nature to the main course, which is the dyad duel and hangar scene changes.

This edit is intended to be paired with TLJ: Rekindled, which includes Kylo’s line that her parents are dead and buried on Jakku. In original TROS, there are several problems with this idea:

1. Rey’s parents’ ship is seen leaving Jakku.
2. That ship just so happens to be (almost) identical to Ochi’s ship, so how did that end up with her parents to begin with?
3. If Rey’s parents were buried on Jakku by Ochi, then he likely would have encountered the only little girl in Niima Outpost.

I think the only way all of these pieces fit together is if Ochi was the one purposely taking her parents away from her. Now, obviously, this would also mean that Ochi intended to leave Rey behind as well, and not deliver her to Palpatine as he was originally instructed to.

I think a second reveal about Rey’s origin could easily slot itself into Poe and Finn’s discussion about D-O. We’d simply repurpose the footage of the ship taking off from TFA and her parent’s subsequent deaths after Finn’s line: “To bring a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku, to the Emperor.” Over the flashback, we’d have a Finn voiceover, just like Luke does in the next scene.

“But Palpatine wanted her parents to sell her, instead. He ensured she was left alone and afraid on a harsh world, to push her to the dark side. And eventually to himself.”

Obviously both references to Rey recognizing Ochi’s ship would be reinstated. Now, the biggest problem with this idea is that we’re entering the territory of more hard retcons, which I’d say we’ve thus far avoided with only soft retcons. Specifically, the fact that she was sold for “drinking money”. Maybe the drinks were for Ochi? lol And there is also an argument to be made that Palpatine himself could do a more effective job of turning Rey to the dark side than trauma and Jakku ever could.

I’d still like to hear some other thoughts on this, though. I’m like 90% sure I’m including the Vader duel and Luke and Kylo conversation at this point, and this idea I’m a little under 50% in support of.