Jar Jar Bricks

KumoNin said:

And also for what it’s worth, I disagree with several key changes that Hal has been insistent upon, and I understand his reasoning nonetheless. So while of course it ultimately comes down to him, I have mostly seen great arguments in favour of sherlock’s suggestions, and, after all, it’s just an alternative version to a greatly flawed movie

I think that’s mostly why I disagree with Sherlock a lot. I don’t see this movie as “greatly flawed”, but rather frustratingly close to being just right. Unfortunately for myself it would seem most agree with Sherlock’s mindset as well.

This difference in thinking is definitely causing a bit of an issue here. V1 was very subtle in its changes. It was made with the intention to improve upon what was already there.

But with v2 people want more and more excised from the film from what I’ve seen. I disagree with that, and I’d like to hear how Hal feels about the direction of this project in that regard.

sherlockpotter said:

I just don’t see evidence of it in this story.

Correct. You don’t, but I do.

But really, I suggested removing and/or changing…one line of dialogue? I’d hardly call that “a radical path,” or “removing tons of different portions of the film.” It’s a change that would benefit the direction that we’ve already been taking the movie, so it’s not like I’m trying to rock the boat here with some wacky new angle that I think we should all adopt. I’m arguing for thematic clarity, as themes are important parts of storytelling. And I figure, yeah, I could remove that line; but maybe other people would want it changed too. I didn’t realize that removing this one line was crossing a line, after 100+ other changes have already been made.

I was referring to what has been suggested by you before. This was simply the culmination of what I’ve previously witnessed.

And to be honest, I still have no idea what theme you’re referring to. The “dark side” isn’t a very clear theme. Whereas dealing with fear has been present throughout the entire saga, and makes sense imo given Rey’s actions.

In the end, this is Hal’s decision. I’ll just have to keep my copy of v1 handy and try to merge the two versions if stuff like this starts getting through. I didn’t want to have to do that (since it will be imperfect), but looks like I might have to.

I brought it up to prove that it’s a fair interpretation. I’m not saying your interpretation isn’t fair, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say that about mine. We’re never going to agree on this. That’s fine. Film/storytelling is art, and everybody can interpret their own side of things out of it.

I guess all I’m trying to do here is stop us from proceeding down a radical path in this edit. Hal’s edits usually don’t stray too much from the originals in regard to changes. I’ve gotta be honest, but you lean a lot on the side of removing tons of different portions of the film. I don’t like that because I’m super bad at video editing, so putting excised content back into the movie is pretty hard and never turns out right. Whereas in your case, you’re clearly capable of doing these changes to your own personal edits and such. So I guess it’s hard for me to understand why you so vehemently advocate for these things.

I’m definitely not saying that everything needs to revolve around my needs, but what I am saying is that there is a line that we shouldn’t cross with a basic edit like this, and I feel like this would be crossing that. This change supports your personal interpretation of Rey’s arc, while making it impossible for others to be had.

sherlockpotter said:

The thing is, none of that is done to protect her friends, as you claim. On Pasaana, why didn’t she tell them, “We have to leave, now! Kylo is coming!” She just…wandered 100 feet away, as if that would hide them from Kylo? On Endor, she had no clue that Kylo would show up; “they didn’t have time to wait” because the film gave them an arbitrary 16 hour deadline until Doomsday. And on Ahch-To, she doesn’t mention her friends even once. She just said “I saw myself on the Sith Throne. I’m scared of my own powers. I’m going to hide here so that I can’t fall prey to the Dark Side.” She goes to Exegol to face Palpatine, not to protect her friends. (If she’s trying to keep them out of harm’s way, why does she provide them directions to get to the battle?) If you want to make an argument that she’s trying to protect her friends, you can; but there’s no evidence in the film that supports that beyond speculation and wild (re)interpretation.

It’s not really wild reinterpretation when the entire (unaltered, I might add) novelization supports the interpretation I’m suggesting. At pretty much every turn in the novelization Rae Carson is suggesting that Rey is distancing herself from her friends to keep them safe. And for myself, that makes the most sense.

She confronted Kylo on Pasaana so her friends can escape, and she knew Kylo was in possession of the dagger so he can track them to Endor. As for Ahch-To, she is afraid of falling prey to the dark side because of what it means about her. I need you to understand the difference. If she turns to the dark side, she imagines that she would be abandoned by her newfound family where she found belonging, and possibly hurt them as well. She is distancing herself from them all because she thinks that’s what they ought to do with her anyways. To quote TestingTheTest, it’s her “toxic, core belief.” Being abandoned (whether intentionally or not) at a young age can kinda mess you up that way.

EDIT: And obviously Rey opened up the way for her friends to Exegol because she can’t take down an entire fleet. That’s just dumb.

A rough draft of this project is now available. I haven’t read through the entire thing myself yet, so there are bound to be some issues here and there. However, I wanted to get this out there for anyone that is interested.

Not sure if I’m allowed to leave a link to the entire thing on here, so for now let’s just do this by PM.

sherlockpotter said:

In other words, make the climax of the film be an internal character struggle with a foundation on previous established themes, rather than an external blackmail…thing.

How is the “dark side” a theme? Confronting fear is a theme. “Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi.”

Rey has found her belonging in her friends in the Resistance. She is scared of herself, that she won’t be good enough, and that she will hurt those friends either physically or emotionally. So it makes perfect sense that Palps would use that against her to try and turn her to the dark side. And as I said previously, it is one of the overall themes of the saga itself. Doing stupid stuff to save those closest to you. Obviously the correct thing to do would be to let go of that fear, and not give in to it. In Rey’s case, to deny Palpatine and force him to attack, which would justify her attacking back.

sherlockpotter said:

Jar Jar Bricks said:

sherlockpotter said:

But she’s never scared of losing her friends. She even abandons them at like three different occasions in the movie without a second thought. I don’t buy it.

Bruh. What? She abandons them precisely because she doesn’t want to put them in danger.

1. She doesn’t want them to come along on her adventure because “It’s too dangerous”
2. She doesn’t want Finn following her into the desert when she confronts Kylo for the same reason
3. Yet again on Endor, does the same thing.

She is afraid of herself because she is worried about hurting her friends.

Crap, I forgot about Endor. That’s another one!

1. Walking away as they’re entering Ochi’s ship for no reason. (She just had a feeling.)
2. Leaving the Chewie Rescue Op to get the Dagger (because she had a feeling).
3. Leaving them on the shore of Endor and taking the skimmer at high-tide (because she was impatient)
4. Running away to Ahch-To (because, as she explicitly explains to Luke, she was scared of herself taking the Sith Throne, not because she wanted to protect her friends)

All of these are because she wants to put herself in danger instead of her friends. She also didn’t “just have a feeling” on Pasaana, she sensed Kylo approaching. Impatience on Endor? Nah, she knew Kylo was on the move and it was only a matter of time before he caught up to them. She did it to get the hell out of there before he did to protect them.

Running away to Ahch-To would make even more sense with your proposed change of her blasting Finn with lighting. She is afraid of herself because she could hurt her friends. She could have already killed Chewie previously if it weren’t for luck, and now has just proven that she could easily kill her friends in person.

sherlockpotter said:

And even if the film was about “letting others have some control,” do we really want that other person to be Emperor “Darth Sidious” Sheev Palpatine, the conglomeration of all Sith past and present, and Lord of all Evil?? Just as long as he doesn’t invade Poland, amiright?

When did I ever say that was the right choice? When she confronts her fear, the right thing to do would be to deny his request, because in the end the galaxy is capable of saving the day without her. Her friends should be the ones in control of themselves.

sherlockpotter said:

But she’s never scared of losing her friends. She even abandons them at like three different occasions in the movie without a second thought. I don’t buy it.

Bruh. What? She abandons them precisely because she doesn’t want to put them in danger.

1. She doesn’t want them to come along on her adventure because “It’s too dangerous”
2. She doesn’t want Finn following her into the desert when she confronts Kylo for the same reason
3. Yet again on Endor, does the same thing.

She is afraid of herself because she is worried about hurting her friends.

sherlockpotter said:

But again, in regards to saving her friends, none of this has any relevance to the themes of the film. This is when those themes are supposed to come to their conclusion; but instead of talking about Rey’s anger, or her heritage, or anything like that, J.J. and Chris are just like, “Meh, you better kill him Rey, or else all of your friends are gonna die.”

I would say one of the themes of the film is confronting fear. In this moment, Rey is presented with two options: kill Palpatine to possibly save her friends, or deny him and risk losing her friends. I would say that thematically it does make sense. It’s about the fear of loss, and learning to let others have some control, because the civilian fleet does show up to save the day without Rey’s help.

In fact, the fear of loss leading you to do stupid things is thematically extremely relevant to the saga as a whole. It’s perfect the way it is. It’s why I’ll also always insist on keeping Leia sensing the death of her son.

jarbear said:

Sherlock I completely agree with your assessment in regards to the logic behind it all, but specifically more about the transfer crap for me. Fortunately, I think … it isn’t explained in the movie about “Strike me down with hate and that allows me to transfer” as that is explained outside of the movie (Please correct me if I am wrong). By the movie’s logic, Palpy can transfer … mostly by being struck down by someone (though he somehow transfer from DSII … just don’t think too hard on it.)

Please remind me, but the whole exegol scene with Rey there doesn’t have Palp mention/explaining/talking about the transfer to Rey? If it isn’t mentioned at all at that point, then for Rey’s knowledge and understanding, Palp is saying “You strike me down by this ritual, then you get to have the throne … AKA you kill the boss you take over …” and not “You strike me down by this ritual, I/we/sith will utterly possess you and you get the throne as MeWeSith Lady” then Rey would have a reason to do it … since “I would be the boss, I can call off the destroyers.” That would make sense for her to decide/reason on why to do it, and we the audience are like “oh no, it’s a trap!”

He does mention transfer to Rey. “Your hatred, your anger, you want to kill me. That is what I want. You and I will be one.” So clearly hatred and anger are necessary for the process. Because we moved the rest of that line to Kylo at the beginning, it also makes it so that Rey believes that her spirit would be merged with his. And as I said previously, that is false, but also she might imagine that she would have some autonomy/control.

And axlanian, I only brought that up because in that moment Palpatine is defenseless. To quote Anakin, “It’s not the Jedi way” to kill somebody like that.

sherlockpotter said:

• Tapping into Rey’s personal darkness - she wouldn’t be killing Palps for selfish or evil reasons, she’d be killing him to save her friends, despite the cost to herself. That’s, like, prime Jedi material, right there. At that point, for those reasons, it’s selfish if she doesn’t immediately decapitate him.

Killing him wouldn’t save her friends. They have already been ordered to deploy, and killing the guy in charge wouldn’t change anything. Also, by your logic, Anakin was justified in trying to save his wife from death by killing the Jedi.

The difference here is that Rey has no idea that Palpatine would gain full control over her body. She was never told anything about essence transfer. The only thing Palpy has revealed to her is that “you and I will be one”, which is a lie by Palps. By that logic, Rey might assume that she has some autonomy. Whereas with Kylo, Palp’s tells him “Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you” which is a clearer description of possession.

SilverStormX said:

Do we know what the status is on the Cantina Arm, the one Obi-Wan chops off? With Ponda Baba’s Rogue One appearance it seems the original arm is the official one, which arm will appear in Revisited HD? Either way I like the change of the cauterized wound on the severed arm.

I feel like most Rogue One edits remove that cameo so it needn’t dictate this edit.

jonh said:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mZ7QMDDBjVfKj_IdVa73EVGUkNiO10aA/view?usp=sharing
I think the shoot has improved …
What is your opinion?

Fantastic! The only thing that ever bothered me about the original was how it clearly looked taken straight out of ROTS, but this is a huge improvement.

I think I might actually prefer Sherlock’s sound effects to be honest. The sound you have on there right now sounds a little too Royalty Free for my tastes.

Also, +1 to what Faraday said.

NeverarGreat said:

Dat_SW_Guy said:

Heres a test VFX shot of Rey shooting out Force Lightning instead of the Force Push to signify her instability, the compression makes it look slightly weird but it’s okay: https://streamable.com/cqtffo

I think for the effect to work seamlessly it would need to be more subtle, like tiny tendrils running along her fingers like in the Palpatine scene accompanied by a little sound effect. If the effect gets large enough that Rey would have noticed it visually, it’s gone to far imo.

If she doesn’t notice it then it completely negates the entire point of the proposed change. It’s meant to give her another reason to leave to Ahch-To.

I’m so happy Hal is using those new trooper lines about the Knights. It sounds fantastic!

I’m also surprised how quickly somebody came up with some visual effects for the Rey lightning. I’m gonna agree with jarbear that it might be interesting to see a bit of lightning arcing towards Finn, because how it is right now has the second shot seemingly “forget” about the lightning as if it was a VFX mistake. Otherwise, it looks amazing!

Sherlock, just so you know, I liked the idea so much myself that I actually slid it into my novelization. I feel like there needs to be a little bit more there than Rey fatally wounding Kylo for her to consider abandoning everything and going to Exegol. If she does the same thing that she does with Chewie except with Finn, it would be a really convincing reason for her to believe that she thinks she needs to abandon the fight before she completely loses control of herself.

Also, and I mentioned this before, but it gives Finn’s presence a purpose there. Before, he’s just there to scream “Rey!” If this were implemented, he would be the catalyst that causes her outburst.

CaptainFaraday said:

Here’s an idea: Alternate Ascension. Someone should take all the ideas that were considered but ultimately decided against for Ascendant - even ones you don’t necessarily agree with - and put all of those into an edit. A mirror image of Ascendant, if you will. There’s certainly no shortage of ideas to implement.

That’s basically what poppasketti did with TLJ Rekindled. And arguable his edit ended up more popular than Hal’s.

EddieDean said:

Just thinking about the VFX here, if it’s possible/wanted to go with more of a blast, something more like Snoke’s quick little floor zap that he uses on Kylo might be better or more appropriate than a traditional channel of lightning.

That was actually the original idea as well. It wouldn’t hurt to rip the original sound effects from TLJ imo, but Sherlock didn’t like that for some reason. Either that or just do the hand crackle.

Cinefy said:

Hal 9000 said:

Yeah, I see no reason to add a hand. lol

And I hate to be a wet blanket, but Rey using lightning on Finn doesn’t strike me as feeling right for that moment. It could’ve been scripted that way, but with what we have to work with Finn still flies backward and Rey doesn’t blink about any of it.

Yeah I’m not a big fan of Rey using force lighting on Finn, feel like it would probably look weird especially since ILM force lighting is hard to replicate unless you do it in Nuke

At this point we aren’t talking about her electrocuting him, but rather her fingers would crackle with lightning. It would give the impression that she is using the dark side to push him back.

And yeah, I don’t see why people are degrading this idea so much. In the original film, there is literally NO purpose to Finn going after her. At least this way it would let the audience know that she’s losing it.

And as for her reaction to what she does, she’s taking out her regrets and frustrations by swinging her lightsaber on Kylo. At least that’s what the original novelization said.

CaptainFaraday said:

Fiendish Droid Leader said:

If you’re listing samples in the main post, you might as well link to these:
Young Ian McDiarmid on Rey’s Dad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjT1DhfTIoo
Palpatine clones on Exegol: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1340464/action/topic#1340464

I can’t tell any difference from the original on the Rey’s Dad one, I’m afraid! Still, a good find that someone has at least attempted it.

I don’t believe they did a very good job on that one. The machine needed more source material of his face. Then again, not sure where you could get that for a young Ian McDiarmid.

sherlockpotter said:

The problem is though, that the possession concept itself is shit. If killing Palpy allows him to possess you, the writers have created a no-win scenario. At that point, the only option for resolving anything is to gloss over the idea entirely. Rey decides that she’ll let Palpy take her over (because that will somehow allow her to control the fleet, even though Palpatine will be the one in control?), but then she senses Ben, and is like “Well shoot, what am I doing? This is a terrible idea!” But then as soon as Ben joins her, they’re about to kill him together anyway. And then Rey ends up killing Palpatine, but he doesn’t possess anyone. He just dies.

You have to kill him with the dark side in order to be possessed. And thankfully the Force ghosts we added in serve a purpose beyond fan service: they hold Palpatine’s spirit in place so it’s finally destroyed.

There are ways for it all to make sense, but unfortunately the writers didn’t take the time to think about them. I could explain more of what they are, but whatever.

It’s a blatant contradiction no matter which way you spin it, Sherlock.

"Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you "

Later…

“We’ll kill him together and take the throne.”

To be clear, I still want Kylo to know about essence transfer from the get-go. But obviously that second line was written with the idea that Kylo himself doesn’t know about it.

KumoNin said:

Another thing I noticed: Kylo says “we’ll kill him and take the throne” to Rey (hangar), but doesn’t he already know, in this version, that killing him means spirit transfer?

I agree 100% with modifying this line. In my novelization I replaced it with “We’ll defeat him and take the fleet” but obviously that is a lot harder to do. I could check out what lines I’ve got, though.

Also, Testing, I have no idea what the point of your suggestion is.