You’re not wrong. It just depends on how much we want to clearly set the stage in the crawl versus letting the audience figure these things out in the movie itself.
Perfect. I see nothing wrong with it. We can get the added context of some Senators being wary of action from the deleted scene with Leia.
😃
I think that “Resistance militia” just sounds a little clumsy. I’d prefer either term by itself, and the common use of “the Resistence” in the movie means that it’s the term we have to keep.
Yup
I think it might defeat the purpose of what we are trying to accomplish here. We want it to be clear that there are some in the Republic helping the Resistance secretly, but there are also still those in it who don’t support taking any action against the First Order with their fleet. Which is actually a reasonable approach seeing as how they aren’t infringing on Republic space. It’s like the isolationist argument during the world wars.
Hey, at least we’re still in agreement concerning the first two paragraphs 😉
You’re also right that it may be best to just clearly define the RESISTANCE as an organization and forgo the whole militia thing. I’d make the following minor changes to your final paragraph so the formatting is all neat:
With the Senate in endless
debate, leaders of the New
Republic have armed a brave
RESISTANCE in secret, whose
pilots have been tasked with
locating the last Jedi and
restoring a light of hope to
the darkening stars…
EDIT: “Locating” works better than “finding” only because the movie is dealing with a map location, not with pilots trying to land at his exact location. I also wanted to share something ChatGPT said about that comma before “and” - “a comma before the ‘and’ is not necessary. The sentence is correctly punctuated as is. In lists of three or more items, you’d typically use a comma before the “and” (known as the Oxford comma), but since there are only two tasks mentioned (“locating the last Jedi” and “restoring a light of hope to the darkening stars”), no comma is needed before “and.” The sentence flows well and clearly conveys its message.”
Here’s what I’m thinking all put together:
It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, destined
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
all star systems beyond
the fragile New Republic.Desperate to unite these
far planets in RESISTANCE,
leaders of the New Republic
have secretly organized a
brave militia, tasked with
finding the last Jedi and
restoring a light of hope
to the darkening stars…
It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.
There is nothing here that contradicts canon. For the audience and galaxy at large, all we know is that Luke was striving to bring back the Jedi right before he vanished. We aren’t supposed to know anything beyond that. If you want to be nitpicky about it, just insert the word “while” before striving in your mind while reading.
EDIT: I suppose “destined” would be a suitable replacement for “striving”. But I don’t think it’s worth changing if Nev is satisfied with how it was originally.
Ultimately, DZ is right, we should be focusing our efforts on this last paragraph which is particularly troublesome.
Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
leaders in the New Republic
have secretly armed a brave
militia, tasked with finding
the last Jedi and restoring
the light of hope to the
darkening stars…
We miss out on the reference to pilots (and therefore Poe) but at least it’s much more streamlined.
I agree that helps make it clearer that only some people in the New Republic support the Resistance while others have their doubts.
It’s also now 88 words total - the same number as the original TFA crawl. But that last paragraph is a pretty lengthy sentence.
I like DZ’s clarification way more. I also think intrepid is a strange word to describe the Resistance (sorry). Not only will most people not know what it means, Google says it’s most often used in a humorous or rhetorical way.
By the way, with AI lines becoming much more feasible and easy to do (by taking character audio from the film itself), feel free to send me a list of everything you want to try for this version. I’ll definitely replace the Illum system line by Poe.
Perfect! I see nothing wrong with it.
Oh wow, that is super clever (and yet obvious) to literally just put “to claim” instead of putting in the past tense. D’oh. I feel kinda dumb now.
I like yours the best, DZ!
I think we were extremely close to the right one a few days ago. The following is mostly the same as Nev’s last post just with those minor adjustments I suggested:
EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS
It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.
Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, agents of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
and claimed supremacy
over every world beyond
the fragile New Republic.
Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fearless militia loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….
Anthony, to your point about Luke clearly not embodying that hope anymore, that’s something you can easily say with hindsight. After seeing TFA people had a million reasons why Luke might have vanished. And besides, even if he doesn’t represent that hope at the beginning of TLJ, the whole point of that film is to see him get there. So in my opinion it’s integral to firmly set that expectation of him, have it shattered, and then restored in the conclusion of TLJ.
I just remember how awkward the spar between Ahsoka and Sabine was originally. This is a massive improvement there. Everything else looks pretty clean, too.
You can subtly hear the “Find me” in the background when he picks up the Wayfinder.
If I recall correctly, there currently isn’t any version of Ascendant available on his Drive.
I can’t double check though because the link I normally use to access his edits has been removed from Reddit.
At this point your best bet would be to wait for v4 to release. V3 never made it to the Drive so it was only ever released through torrents.
Was RL able to provide you with what you needed for v4, Hal?
Wait, there was a droid head involved there? I didn’t even notice.
I’m also unsure what exactly is an AI line and what isn’t. So good work all around!
I like that approach, but now there is a conflict between “claimed” and “soldiers”. Are you saying that soldiers have physically conquered every single world beyond the New Republic? Clearly this isn’t the case since they have no outposts on Jakku. Or do you mean that they have claimed the right to them, and not necessarily have been there? In that case, the soldiers wouldn’t have made that claim, and it would need to be replaced with “agents”.
Also, I still prefer the original final paragraph:
Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fearless militia loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….
I would still argue against the “risen from an imperial fortress” bit. This makes it looks like they were just hidden in a single location patiently waiting the right time to strike, and that’s… not exactly true, since it’s pretty established by now that they’ve been around for a good while. Doesn’t ep IX even states that they “took most of the kids a long time ago” in Kijimi?
Hmmm, you might have a decent point here. Canon says Luke has been missing for 6 years. And in order for children snatched from worlds to be able to be the stormtroopers we see we are talking an average of 10 years.
So, basically, it’s clear that the First Order has been conquering places for about 10-15 years, long before Luke vanished. Now, perhaps most of those were in the Unknown Regions? So people weren’t aware of that going on. And what we talk about in the crawl is them entering into the known galaxy? It makes sense but requires outside context.
EDIT: Here’s how that might look. And yes, Illum is in the Unknown Regions.
Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the Unknown
Regions of the galaxy to
conquer isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
New Republic Starfleet.
Random other thought: I prefer to refer to the Resistance as just being loyal to the New Republic rather than being directly aided by them. If they’re being aided by them then that means there’s no real reason for their negotiations in the Senate to be taking that long later in the film. It’s best to leave the opportunity for some Senators to be reluctant to fight. As Leia says in the deleted scene, most of them think she’s crazy.
Try this:
EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENSBalance has been broken.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, forces of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress to
conquer isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
fledgling New Republic.Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fearless militia loyal to
the New Republic has
sent its most daring pilot
to find the last Jedi and
rekindle the light of hope
to the darkening stars….
The new first line, while disconnected from the final paragraph’s poetic language, effectively establishes why this new trilogy even exists in the first place. There was balance, for a time, but it’s been broken. Thus why the Force needs to awaken itself - it was never meant to go this way. Unnatural effects of tue dark side have prolonged this fight. The word “reforge” now works much better here to describe the Jedi Order as it matches the imagery of something being broken and needing to be put back together.
I think it’s nearly perfect - except I’m going to continue to insist on replacing “warriors” with something else! Lol
I ran it through ChatGPT three times at this point asking for any suggestions and all three times it flagged that word as needing replacement. That could just be random chance, but who knows. And if you’re wondering, it seems to want to replace it with the word “forces”.
Now onto the nitpicking. I’d replace “restore” with “rekindle” only because it paints more vivid imagery. “Restore” probably fits better in place of “reforge” in the first paragraph.
As for saying “darkness” on the first line, I think it’s good to catch people’s attention, but I worry about its accuracy. I’d describe the state of the galaxy more like it’s at a crossroads or twilight. You even state at the bottom that it’s in the process of growing darker. This is why “despair” worked well, albeit it’s less flashy. I’ll think about this one some more to see if there is an alternative.
I’d be careful calling them rebels, it’s best to limit as many similarities to the original trilogy as possible for this film in particular.
Is there any real reason why we couldn’t just call them a militia? Given how important the people coming together is throughout this entire trilogy, it seems fitting. So it would be as follows:
Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
an underground militia has
sent daring pilots in search
of the last Jedi, sworn to
rekindle the light of hope
to the darkening stars. . . .
EDIT: It may also be lucrative to replace “fragile” with “pacifistic” when describing the New Republic. This way it’s more or a surprise when Hux says that the Republic secretly supports them.
Yeah, I came to realize your point a few hours ago after giving it more thought.
It’s probably the solution that portrays the New Republic in the best light. They don’t have enough resources to go to the Outer Rim, so they secretly authorize a militia to keep a tragedy from happening out there.
That being said, it does seem like Filoni and Disney are really pushing for the angle that there are people in the New Republic who want to deny any escalation of Imperial power. Kinda like how the Ministry of Magic constantly denies that Voldemort has returned in Harry Potter. Many people would prefer to live in a comfortable delusion rather than accept a harsh reality. Granted, they may just be pushing this for Thrawn in particular. Perhaps after the Senators were proven wrong with Thrawn it makes more sense for them to take the threat of the FO more seriously.
TL;DR - I retract my previous comment as the second paragraph of the crawl effectively establishes the need for the Resistance.
Out of curiosity, would it be possible to edit the Hera trial scene to be referring to the Corellia incident? That could allow us to cut Hera and Jacen out of Seatos, but still provide a conclusion for the New Republic arc in the show.
C-3PO could easily be dubbed over with AI.