Jjs0531

This is my edit of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that condenses the film into a 1-hour, score-only version with subtitles. The film’s music hasn’t been released in full unlike all of the other SW scores. So this allowed me to get creative with spots where the corresponding music was not available and instead edit very appropriate cues in. Some benefits of this are that it allows for more musical focus overall as it uses more of the original themes for the film instead of constantly relying on cues from the other films. Most prominent from the soundtrack here include “The Rise of Skywalker” and “Anthem of Evil.”
The original film felt a bit cheap with how it used familiar themes at times (though musically speaking, they are still fantastic) and I wanted to have a better sense of intention with the selections of motifs. Additionally, there was a lot of music that was released but not actually used in the film so it was really exciting to place it into contexts that felt appropriate. The sources of which are from the FYC Soundtrack and the official release.

The required cutdown meant I got to remove extraneous elements and slightly adjust narrative details without compromising the general structure of the story. With the use of subtitles, here are some changes:
-Kijimi, Chewy’s “death”, and 3PO’s memory wipe are all gone with just more emphasis on Rey’s internal struggle.
-Taking a page out of Hal9000’s Ascendant Rey Nobody cut, made Rey unrelated to Palpatine and rather had her struggle with her hatred and a fear of becoming a Sith.
-Personally always disliked Palatine’s inclusion but obviously could not remove him. So what I opted to do was just vaguely reference him as a nameless Sith Lord. Doesn’t necessarily contradict nor change anything, but thought it helped with it not being acknowledged.
-General silly stuff and extra characters removed such as Babu Frik, D-O, Hux, and Zori Bliss. Just to help keep things tighter and music wasn’t really available to accommodate those plot elements.
-Some dialogue is condensed/adjusted to account for the new pace of this cut, which means it may not always lip-sync. However, most of it pulled directly from the film with some sillier stuff removed.

This general tighter focus also makes the tone seem more even and things more dire, which I think helps. Additionally, these changes make it slightly more consistent with the other two movies (which was more of an inadvertent benefit). The film itself being so weirdly edited, as if it was a trailer house version of Star Wars, it lends itself well to this condensed format. Considering how passionate about the SW soundtracks I am, this seemed like a really fun and unique angle for a fan edit that I don’t think I’ve really seen anywhere. Here’s a link to a small trailer below and If you are interested, I’ll send a link. Thanks!

https://youtu.be/-ZoQ2z7BQxg

Oh I’m glad you enjoyed it! And yeah, I totally get that, but I made that choice as it served the narrative better even if the location is different. It’s supposed to be on Exegol, and I guess I opted to go on the logic of “well, they’re both blue so that’s good enough.” I wouldn’t have done that if this was feature length, but since this takes so many editing liberties anyways, I figured it would be fine.

I appreciate the kind words on it, I hope otherwise everything felt fairly clean and seamless. I worked very much on adding music transitions, redoing sound entirely, and mixing all that for a cohesive package.

Curious to hear any thoughts either here or on the private topics! Thank you!

Sent it!

Sure thing! It’s sent!

Sure thing! It’s sent!

Hi! I have thought about this too and gave it an honest try as an experiment. ROS is a film that I think is problematic beyond just Palpatine (although, that’s still a big issue.) The editing is bizarre, its narrative pinballing, undoing its own bolder decisions, etc. Because of that, I don’t think any edit that addresses any of these issues can be feature length. So I opted to try a 24 minute summary style thing that removes Palpatine, and just makes the through line the rise of Kylo’s empire after the Exegol discovery. It’s a bit weird structurally, requires a little suspension of disbelief, and is definitely REALLY simplified. But seeing as the editing style is definitely not film-like and neither is the length, that probably won’t be an issue. Consider it more like a companion piece that’s also the finale to the trilogy. Not sure if it’s good, but it was interesting experiment I thought I might share for those of the anti-Palpatine sentiment. If you’re interested, here’s a link to my post on the forum for more details that might be pertinent to know before watching: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-The-Rise-of-Skywalker-Edit-Renamed-The-New-Order/id/88070#1443477

Sure! I’m envious of you, I wish I enjoyed that movie. But I’m really happy that you liked it, that’s awesome. 😃
Yeah, just know that this edit is light and acts as unrelated adventures while a threat rises. I think I already said that, but I’d like to emphasize so you know where it’s going!

Apologies, I’m new here. Just took down the link!

I did an edit of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker for fun that massively overhauled the film to be more narratively consistent with the other sequel trilogy stories. Unlike a lot of edits however, this is not feature length as my goals with this would simply cut too much and lack a sense of pacing to be coherent or watchable. Due to this, my edit subscribes to the 24-minute pseudo-summary format with a film-like structure. It’s very fast-paced as a result and also uses some montage-style editing; a choice that was very deliberate and necessary for certain character interactions.

Story wise, this is structurally similar to the original film but changes the details and certain aspects of characters. This also meant that it’s slimmer too as I was able to remove the fluff and narrative pinballing from ROS. However, the most massive difference of all: the absence of Palpatine altogether.

Also know that structurally, this is more an anthology of adventures with sprinkles of character moments and a conclusion. More like a companion piece to the other films than anything, so know that if you wonder why Rey, Finn, and Poe are just having random adventures. That’s an unfortunate byproduct of the Sith Wayfinder removal, but I didn’t want to jerk around pointlessly as much as the original film. Really the main throughliine is the rise of the Sith Empire, so that’s what I opted for instead of a Macguffin. Just wanted to set the expectation.

I’m not going to say that this is ENORMOUSLY better than the film, but I found it watchable which is helped by the very short runtime. This is not a middle finger to Disney or anything, I was just humoring an idea in my head and it was more done for fun. I even tried to keep certain respect to the original film by working within it’s parameters by only using footage and music from the original film (with a couple brief exceptions). Music was very deliberate in this edit, as it narrowed down character and situational motifs and tried to use them when appropriate (unlike the theatrical film, but that’s a whole other thing). Even if it’s not liked, I tried to make sure this project was very technically polished with proper music transitions, edits, convincing sound design, etc. So hopefully it comes off as professional as possible. Anyways, I’d love to hear what you guys think, although since it’s finished I won’t be able to make any changes. I will send a link to those interested!

Hi, I actually tried an edit with this same concept but reformatted it to a 22-minute summary style. I didn’t think a feature length edit without Palpatine would be possible! So I’m intrigued. May I have a link for the edit?