Jar Jar Bricks

Here’s what I’m thinking so far:

“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.

“You are hard to get rid of.”

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. I know the rest of your story, Rey…"

“You’re lying.”

“You were right… your parents were no one. That’s what made them such ideal candidates.”

“Don’t!”

“Your mother wasn’t the only one selected to birth a child like you…”

“I don’t want this!”

“You endangered your parents.”

“No!”

“Remember them… see them…”

(Same flashback as in original film… perhaps a few flashes of Lor San Tekka?)

“They paid for your protection… in more than one way…”

“Stop talking.”

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

“Palpatine sent assassins to track down children like you. He found your parents. But they wouldn’t say where you were. So he gave the order.”

(Vision of Rey’s parents getting killed.)

“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead? I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”

“Because he grew to fear what his followers had spawned. Those children had his power. You… are his clone.”

“Snoke was the only genetic strand-cast Palpatine spared. You’re his loose end. What he doesn’t know, is Snoke unwittingly sparked a dyad in the Force between us, Rey. Two that are one. We’ll kill him. Together."

(Removes his helmet)

“You know what you need to do. You know.”

“I know.”

I actually really like that. Even more than what we got, actually. It would line up with all future projects wherein Rey is referred to as a Palpatine, while at the same time her “parents” really are nobodies. It matches with her TLJ vision in the cave, too. She doesn’t really have any parents; she’s just Rey.

It also lines up with the books better than the movie does. In canon, Rey’s dad is a strandcast, a genetically modified clone of Palpatine. But that just makes it confusing to refer to her as Palpy’s granddaughter because, biologically speaking, she’s actually his daughter. But with this idea, instead of her dad being the strandcast, SHE is the strandcast. I suppose you wouldn’t mind using that word to make it clear she’s not a 100% clone, but rather a 95-99% clone? It would make my nerd brain happy.

I was playing Starfield when it first came out a few months ago and there’s a storyline similar to this. There’s a girl named Hadrian who is actually a clone of her “father”, a facist military leader called Vae Victus. She is the only living “clone” of his after the rest died off. She thinks he was killed, but it turns out he was secretly kept alive by his followers. Sound familiar?

EDIT: Omg, we could also finally confirm that Snoke is a strandcast in the movie, as well. Maybe he was one of the only other surrogate children of Palpatine that survived? And Rey was super lucky to not be born all deformed like that.

Hmmm. I see what you’re trying to do there - giving more reason for the ending scene. But the revelation isn’t particularly shocking for Rey to hear, which is how she reacts in the hangar scene. Plus, most people wouldn’t believe her so it really wouldn’t spead around enough to reach Palps. And even if it did reach him, why would he actually believe that it was true despite so much evidence to the contrary (Luke is committed to being a Jedi, Han and Leia only have one son).

EDIT: I’m also not sure why pushing her in the desert was supposed to hint all this to her. Clearly that line is referencing some sort of innate darkness about her.

Yeah, I get that. Luke revealing that Leia knew Rey’s secret the whole time was the thing keeping me from thinking this edit was perfect.

I’ll set aside my disdain for it momentarily. The thing about lightspeed skipping is that if you keep it the way canon explains it for future Star Wars projects post TROS, they’ll have to explain every single time somebody makes a jump to escape from an enemy why the ship isn’t tracked immediately. Hell, maybe this is why Kylo knows they’re going to Endor and not because of the dagger. It’s like opening up a giant can of worms that TLJ actually explained and put proper weight to until this happened.

I am satisfied with the line from the second version. It replicates the way that Carrie whispers the best at the end of the line. I’ve done hundreds of generations and haven’t gotten a similar result anywhere else.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HJVzot6mTzlUYWbOqXKVzwsRvxk0UqrW?usp=sharing

Personally, if I had to pick between keeping this line or adding in the “come home” later on and using Sherlock’s v2 version of this scene (to prevent AI line overabundance), I’d probably prefer the latter. But it’s up to you.

Looking back on v4 there is one AI line that I’m not particularly satisfied with yet, and that’s the “He’s too dangerous” one. I’d love it if you could also see if one of these other two takes works better:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HJVzot6mTzlUYWbOqXKVzwsRvxk0UqrW?usp=sharing

I do like how the first one sounds kinda like she’s coming up with a random reason on the spot, which should be a subtle hint for the change we’re making where Leia knew her heritage all along. It’s also the more emotional of the two. But the second one definitely matches her previous line the best.

EDIT: Alternatively, we could set this scene back to the way Sherlock did it in v2 to minimize how many AI lines we use off screen. Honestly I wouldn’t complain about that at this point; it’s really tricky to match her voice here.

It’s a vision. Even if you’re seeing things from the past it’s possible that’s not exactly how they appeared. For obvious reasons, Rey doesn’t know how she appeared in that moment so anything to make her believe that she’s always been Sith-like is worth including imo.

Where to even begin with lightspeed skipping? Lol.

Well, the reason why it was removed from this edit - Han’s line from ANH about imprecise calculations - isn’t even really the strongest argument for it’s removal. Rather there are several other critical issues:

1. It’s made clear that Poe knows how to do this from his days of running spice. But why would he ever need to do this when lightspeed tracking was only invented a year before this? The only reason would be if you had a physical tracker on your ship that you were trying to remove while skipping around, but that’s such a niche scenario.
2. Lightspeed tracking required the largest ship the galaxy has ever known in order to work. You’re telling me that the tech has been miniaturized to fit on a single TIE fighter in less than a year’s time? Nah fam.
3. Okay, let’s say that the TIEs are broadcasting their feed live back to a larger Star Destroyer with a tracker in it. I think this is the canon explanation. Even then, that information would have to be transmitted in real time from (quite possibly) across the galaxy in order to be useful. I just don’t buy that this is possible.

Burbin did the eyes for her flashbacks so for consistency’s sake he might have to do it again - if willing to. I agree that the best two places would be during the Sith lightning and stabbing Kylo. I don’t think the other moment would work well mostly because she is acting so scared in that moment, not angry.

Since you seem like you want to steer clear of Nev’s restructure to Leia’s death for this edit, I was wondering if you might be interested in taking a second look at Leia saying “Come home” to Ben? I recently got a pretty good take of it which is more loving instead of longing. I also applied an echo to so I’ll provide both for you to listen to:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HJVzot6mTzlUYWbOqXKVzwsRvxk0UqrW?usp=sharing

VVPizza said:

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about for a little while-- I love what you’ve done with reconstructing the cut dice sequence, but I missed the short, low-key quote of the main “Star Wars” theme that I thought capped off that moment perfectly.

I was trying to come up with a way to keep the best of both worlds with the score there, and I landed on a snippet of “Torn Apart” that I think strikes the right tone for the scene, and transitions naturally into that melody at the end. This also pairs nicely with the later scene of Kylo in the Falcon-- the fuller version played there starts with the same warmer tone but then develops into darker territory, reinforcing their connection and their painful separation. Together with the bridge scene, I think it could work as a sort of “Han and Son” motif.

I’ve made a mock-up here, please let me know what you think: https://streamable.com/dgithd

I love this. The sequels aren’t John William’s best Star Wars scores but this melody is actually really good.

I like the ideas. Granted, it does give Kylo less of a reason to reforge his mask which Ascendant fixes pretty well. Then again, I never had much of an issue with that to begin with. I’d be curious to see what else you can come up with here.

Anakin Starkiller said:

I think the idea of revolving the whole plot around the Dyad makes way too much sense. Suddenly Palpatine has a clear plan that doesn’t involve Rey killing him and his spirit passing into her, Kylo has something to reveal to Rey in the hangar that isn’t her being a Palpatine, and presenting the Dyad as inherently part of the Dark Side (even if that turns out to be untrue) sets up a decent dilemma on whether or not Rey should kill Palpy to take his throne if it means turning to the Dark Side.

True, but with what footage we have available we’d still have to use Rey getting close to killing Palpatine for his essence transfer. Maybe in the hologram scene Palpatine could say that he’s sensed Kylo Ren’s death, which would explain why he’s suddenly okay with the essence transfer plan instead of hoping Ben follows Rey to Exegol. And then when Ben suddenly shows up he’s like: “Oh, I thought you were supposed to be dead. Too bad your coming together is gonna be your undoing.”

Her line would be “To save her son now, will take all the strength she has left.” I posted a link to it in this thread awhile back.

I’d love to voice my opinion on it but the mkv is like 3 hours long so I’m not sure what’s going on there 😦

EDIT: NVM it’s working. We’re missing the Maz line but overall it works decently. I still think we need to visually see whatever it is Ben sees.

TheDimitrios said:

NeverarGreat said:

It does seem like the dagger would have been made recently by Ochi, doesn’t it? It may be easier to find one moment to state that somewhere rather than change several moments to make the blade seem older.

If the blade was made, say, fifteen years ago, then it would even make sense to keep the goonies moment in.

But why would he create a dagger with a shape resembling the death star wreck?

JJ/Terrio were saying in the documentary that they wanted an object the Sith cultists would pass to one another to guide them to Exegol. The problem is that the dagger doesn’t point them to Exegol, it only points them to the wayfinder - which can only be in one place at once. The stupid concept here is that these cultists are returning the wayfinder to the Death Star wreckage every time they come back and that Rey didn’t enter that room to find it empty - as in all likelihood it ought to be.

NeverarGreat said:

I am of the perhaps unpopular opinion that the goonies moment where she uses the dagger to find Palpatine’s tower actually worked in the original, and its absence is noticeable here. If I did a version of this edit, that moment wouldn’t be removed.

I don’t hate it, but I also am not crazy about it. Which is why I’m fine with what Ascendant does.

Hmmm. Is there a specific part of the movie that makes it clear it’s ancient and wasn’t forged in its entirety by Ochi relatively recently?

But Kylo doesn’t appear to have the item on him, and in the background you can see the ship is a flaming ruin. I genuinely think it goes through the same process twice.

Lmao

Plus it already survived one TIE explosion on Pasaana. Best to keep it consistent.

NeverarGreat said:

Also, it always felt like kind of a cheat that the Wayfinder wasn’t destroyed with Ren’s ship, which this fixes.

To be fair, it was found on Mustafar, and originally belonged to Vader. That thing needed to be extremely heat-resistant by design.

Finn could always be forgiven for saying such a thing, but for the inscription itself, yeah, it just doesn’t work.

You could change the inscription from “where the last war ended” to “where countless fell in battle” or something generic like that. That way it’s possible the journey starts at a different site for everybody depending on the point in time - it just requires a lot of residual death in the area.

Hal 9000 said:

• Any ideas for the short exchange between the stormtroopers and 3PO?

We haven’t picked this back up since the new AI voice method was discovered. I believe we had some lines that we liked but couldn’t get it to sound right.

This is roughly how I envision it was originally written to be like:

“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.

“You are hard to get rid of.”

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. We are more similar than you’d like to admit…"

“You’re lying.”

“I’ve never lied to you… your parents did get rid of you. As mine did to me.”

“Don’t!”

“That much darkness in a child - it’s enough to scare anyone.”

“I don’t want this!”

“We hated our parents for it.”

“No!”

“Luke betrayed me… the same way your friends will for you.”

(Brief vision of Kylo’s TLJ backstory and possibly Rey’s friends being hurt)

“The only person who understands you is me.”

“Stop talking.”

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

“Your parents were found by one of the Emperor’s agents. He wanted to know where you were… but they were too drunk to remember.”

(Cut vision of Rey’s parents getting killed.)

“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you, Rey. I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me? Tell me.”

“He wanted to bring us together, Rey. We are a dyad in the Force. Two, that are one. Unstoppable.”

“You are drawn to the dark, and I to the light. The Sith rule of two was meant to fulfill an ancient prophecy - one that would see the dyad rule the galaxy. We’ll kill him, together, and take the throne.”

(Removes his helmet)

“You know what you need to do. You know.”

“I know.”

I believe the original film focused almost entirely on the dyad. It’s why there are lingering threads of the two of them being on the throne together in the theatrical release despite no such footage existing. Kylo was probably focusing entirely on how they’ve always been the same person through the Force and it’s their destiny to rule together (Sith prophecy - the rule of two manifested into what it was always meant to be), and how Palpatine is willing to give it to them because of how weak he is. But then the whole “your coming together will be your undoing” twist happens.