Jar Jar Bricks

I’ve got no real complaints 😃

Would it be possible to nix just “Luke” from the final paragraph? It seems a little unnecessary since only one character in this film has the name Skywalker. And we gave his full name earlier.

Unable to end this crisis
without the heroic Jedi,
the Senate has secretly
authorized the pilots of
a brave RESISTANCE to
find Skywalker and kindle
the light of hope to the
darkening stars….

I agree with both of your thoughts. Since the New Republic doesn’t serve much of a purpose in this movie it’s best to leave their reference as brief as possible here.

It just looks like you messed up on your verb tenses. Here’s an example of how you can fix that:

Amidst this rising threat,
only a daring militia
stands in RESISTANCE,
its brave pilots deployed
across the galaxy to find
the last Jedi and restore
the light of hope to the
darkening stars….

NeverarGreat said:

Across this dark expanse,
only one valiant militia
stands in RESISTANCE,
its daring pilots secretly
entrusted by the Republic
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

This is cool but I’d make the following modifications:

Across this dark expanse,
only a valiant militia
stands in RESISTANCE,
its daring pilots secretly
equipped by the Republic
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

Well there aren’t many commas in the second paragraph and those in the first are using them in the same manner/way that the final paragraph would be. So, if nothing else, it would make the sentence structure more rhythmic and almost poetic.

I would change “of the New Republic” to “in the New Republic”. There’s a very subtle difference there. Using “of” seems to imply that they are the main leaders there, whereas “in” could be any of the leaders regardless of status.

jmarso1 said:

The one thing I wasn’t sure I liked was the use of the Star Forge and other KOTOR references, but I will admit that Keanu as Darth Revan is definitely the way to go, if you’re going to go that way.

Yup, this is pretty much exactly what made me drop all this.

The thing about the episodic Star Wars movies is that they never rely on characters or events that originate only from books, games, or certain shows. They need to be able to stand on their own. The closest we’ve ever got to this not being the case was Ahsoka’s voice in TROS. Notice how you don’t need to know who she is in order to understand what’s going on. A cheeky reference here or there is fine. But, if anything, it’s always these mainline movies that trample over the “lesser” canon.

Woah… that is… surprisingly accurate. Seems more like something that would be said today not all the way back in 1997.

A while back I made this thread about it:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/What-If-Star-Wars-The-Force-Awakens-Was-Awesome-Script-Conversion-Project/id/106592

I’ve since mostly abandoned the project because I didn’t like the direction they took in IX but it was fun nonetheless.

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.

😃

vranir said:

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.