Johannus

The biggest issue with the Kylo v Rey, Leia death, and Han scenes for me are how widely open to interpretation they are.

When I first saw the film I wondered if Leia was meant to be distracting Kylo so Rey could stab him. Bit odd and doesn’t really pay off.

Just on this site people interpret it as Leia projecting good into Ben. Leia projecting Han to talk to Kylo. Leia reaching out to Kylo and then accidentally getting stabbed by Rey so Rey is directly responsible for killing Leia.

Now honestly, I don’t know which was intended or which could’ve been best, but that’s such a huge scope for interpretation that it kinda suggests the film doesn’t actually tell us anything here because we’re all seeing different things. Personally I’d rather have a scene which doubles down on one idea, whichever idea it is, and portrays it as clearly as possible.

At the moment we’re told by Maz that Leia knows what she has to do, but even after watching her do it none of us have a clue what it was or if it worked.

Regarding the earlier mention of a possible change in title, I’d like to suggest ‘A New Order’.

I’m not sure why but I dislike over using “… of the …” for the titles.

A New Order could refer to Rey being a new jedi with a different view, to her starting a new jedi order, or to Palpatine’s plan for a new order to replace the First Order.

Delpheas said:

So a few radical technical/resource questions.

First, I was wondering about the possibility of completely redubbing the clones in Ep 2 & 3 with Dee Bradley Baker from The Clone Wars? He recorded so much dialogue for that series there had to be enough to convincingly cobble together dialogue that either resemble or match the little dialogue the Clones actually have in the films.

Second, pitching all of Hayden’s episode 3 lines lower so that his voice sounds closer to Matt Lanter’s Anakin.

Three, redubbing Maul in episode 1 with Sam Witwer.

I’m not asking anyone to do these things for me, just some opinions on technical feasibility.

Cheers!

I believe the audio tracks are separate on the clone wars dvds - or cleaner than we’re used to with the other movies. So in theory obtaining the audio shouldn’t be too hard. There might be times you had to make a line work with something similar rather than getting an exact match but I like all 3 ideas here.

I like the “just Rey” idea and the recent clips look great.

My biggest gripe with the scene though is Rey having BB8 and the Falcon.

This is the last scene of the saga, for all we know she stays there and that’s everything she has taken with her. BB8 is Poe’s droid and that ship belongs to Chewie now, nobody should take that from him after all his friends died.

Rey has a newly aquired vintage X Wing she could be flying there, and if Rey wants a droid I’d suggest R2D2 (and C3PO in the interests of not separating the duo) who really isnt connected heavily to any of the surviving characters.

If someone could even just remove BB8 and nothing more I think it’d be a big improvement as I did find this genuinely distracting in this scene.

jonh said:

Chase Adams said:

jonh said:

Yeahh!! change the direction of the eyes, as you suggested 😃

I just noticed this, but in the part with the four jedi standing behind Rey, is that ROTJ footage reused of Obi-Wan? Maybe that could be too recognisable for some people since it’s such a familar shot.

https://vimeo.com/414208171
password:white
this better?

Jonh - All of the ‘tests’ you have shared are just such good quality and the fact you try so many versions is very impressive.

Could I offer some suggestions:

Firstly, if the scene is roughly: Rey with saber, force ghosts appear behind her, then some close ups, then Rey wins. Would it be possible, after the more recognisable ghosts appear, we see that behind them more ghosts arrive, with Qui Gon almost leading them?

I would say the second wave of ghosts would be the others whose voices we heard moments before. And my reasoning is that we’ve just heard them so why not (it would be cool). Also if it’s a more distant shot the footage doesn’t need to be amazing quality so that might make it easier - think glowing silhouettes for the most distant ones. It would add a few more seconds to the scene, which in a film where so many edits want to cut so much, every addition is helpful. And from a story point of view, it shows that in a galaxy full of dead jedi, they’re all coming back to support Rey, not just the best friends.

Secondly, I’d second the idea someone suggested about changing the lightning to show the actual force ghost intervention. Normally I’d think this too heavy handed, but the idea of the shield or glow affect shows that it can work. Also this idea is trying to add a little sense to a scene which didn’t make much sense but really needed to. Would it be possible to make the lightning which Palpatine fires at first slightly greener, and then when Rey (and the ghosts) push it back have it be whiter? Not a full colour change but just a subtle shift in each direction from the starting colour to add another subtle suggestion the ghosts are responsible for the success too and it isn’t just Palpatine clumsily burning his own face off again.

Anyway, great work and I look forward to seeing your next videos, whatever they might be.

Hypothetically, what would people want in terms of additional Mustafar shots?

An establishing shot such as Kylo’s ship landing on the planet or something like that to slow the pace a touch before the existing montage scene?

Everyone was pretty miffed when we found out the Oracle scene wasn’t coming out, but what would the ideal content from that scene have been?

Presumably the Oracle wouldn’t have done anything crucial to the story as the scene was ultimately cut.

What made me think this is I saw a sculpture someone made recently of the Oracle from the artwork and it was such a good quality sculpt it made me think really, the scene would’ve probably been a couple of distant shots of the Oracle, and a couple of close ups. It didn’t look like it would’ve moved around loads, so I’m tempted to try to sculpt one myself, but just wanted to bounce ideas about what people hoped for from that scene.

If it was just a kylo has a chat with the Oracle who points at the wayfinder, then it’d be useful to have a model with one moveable limb, so didn’t want to sculpt it as a test just to then wish I’d done something different if it could’ve potentially be useful for someone’s edit.

Hal 9000 said:

Schemedrick PM’d me an interesting idea about how to restructure Leia reaching out to Ben, in text format. It’s essentially this:

Rey and Kylo are fighting on the DSII.
Leia is shown in silhouette, calling out to Ben.
Ben appears distracted (using shot from right before Han appears).
Leia lays down, holding Han’d medal.
Kylo hears Han address him; “Hey, kid.”
Their conversation plays out, removing direct mention of Leia being gone, right up until Han says “I know.”
Back into reality, Kylo drops his saber. Rey impales him, heals him, and leaves.

It’s a very interesting approach, highlighting the imagery of death and rebirth. In this ordering, Kylo makes his resolution first and is then baptized by Rey in a way. And it’s directly tied in with Leia, making that feel clearer.
I’m not sure it makes good story sense, though, for Ben to be reborn and Rey to immediately flee into self-exile. But it’s something to think about.

This is similar to what I tried to describe in my earlier post. Whilst I think Leia projecting a memory of Han at Kylo is definitely clunky it at least shows what she is doing which ultimately causes her death.

Reading the posts on the few threads here, there were several different opinions on how this played out within the first week or so. Even if the scene is less than ideal, I do think it strengthens the film as a whole to at least make it clear what Leia does which causes her death other than simply ‘reaching out to Ben’.

Hal 9000 said:

I sure hope so, too. It’s hard for me to consider moving the Han scene only because I don’t have a good map of the movie in my head or in front of me. But, I do recall really liking the fade of Chewie’s mourning into Ben’s scene.

That part plays out as:

• Rey fights her evil self, then Kylo shows up to break the wayfinder.
• Resistance base where Leia walks off and Maz says she knows what to do.
• Rey and Kylo fight (with Finn showing up and being kept at a distance).
• Leia lies down to die, “Ben”.
• Kylo drops his saber and Rey stabs him.
• Leia’s hand drops.
• Rey senses Leia’s death.
• R2 is sad at Leia’s death.
• Rey heals Kylo and runs away to steal his ship.
• everyone at the base is sad that Leia died.
• the heroes return on the Falcon and Chewie has his breakdown moment.
• Kylo and Han have their chat, then he throws his saber away.
• Palpatine FaceTimes General Pryde.
• Star Destroyer blows up planet.
• Poe gets told about that and they all worry about planet killer weapons.
• Poe has a chat with dead Leia and Lando.
• D-O has a chat with Finn.
• Poe promotes Finn and they chat.
• Rey throwing kindling onto the burning ship.

Just in case it is useful with planning.

Personally I want to see if Han and Kylo’s chat can be inserted right after Leia says “Ben”, to suggest she is force projecting the memory at Ben to really push him to remember his light side. There’s a good shot of Ben pausing and turning, but until it is released it’s hard to know how doable it’d be. Ideally I’d then end that chat before the lightsaber throw, and use that part between scenes after Rey stole his ship to suggest he’d been thinking for a while (possibly even have him seeing flashbacks of stabbing Han) and then he decides to throw the saber. Just my own head edit.

For the final showdown between Rey and Palpatine I kinda wanted more than the flashy overpowered lightning explosion we got.

I think if you change it so that earlier in the film Palpatine asks Kylo to bring Rey to him (under the pretence that Kylo and Rey will take the throne together), but then his plan goes wrong as Kylo turns good, so Rey then shows up alone. Really Palpatine wants to drain them both because he doesn’t have any intention of putting someone else in charge but needs to hear his body.

When Rey arrives she could be there with the intention of attacking him but he says about taking over her body if he is struck down in anger as his way of buying time for Ben to show up.

The main issue would be if Palpatine wants Ben there why would the Knights of Ren attack Ben in the first place?

I just think it makes Palpatine more threatening, more prepared, and would avoid him swapping back and forth and spending so long talking about family.

So having rewatched both clips I can hear the announcement on the second clip - on first viewing (on my phone) I hadn’t noticed the announcement and had actually thought the audio glitched slightly, but being a test clip thought nothing of it. On my laptop I could hear it fine, but given that you had to point it out to me, I would say it was perhaps a little subtle - also perhaps if there could be a pause in Anakin’s line it could highlight that he has stopped to listen to it, and act as the viewer’s prompt that it is of some relevance so we should notice it too.

In your first clip the line about if Padme is “seeing anyone” bugged me - I don’t object to the idea behind it but the word seeing didn’t sit quite right. Perhaps something like “I heard she is no longer with her partner” could get the same meaning across without sounding quite as casual modern day speech? (This is all very much personal preference though).

Annoyingly I made a mock up of the Vader vision scene a long time ago, and also an incredibly rough version of the Obi Wan and Padme rescuing Anakin scene (where they all rode out of the arena on the Reek) but have lost them both some time back (always back up your work eh) so I cannot offer any visual help. I agree in terms of if you move the end to the start then how do you end the movie. The best I could think was to have a structure roughly like this:

• Open with Obi Wan and Padme rescuing Anakin - use the scene with Padme seated speaking to Dooku. This plays out as per the film but tweaked to avoid reference to rescuing Obi Wan. Once the beasts are brought into the arena they all escape their chains and ride the Reek out of the arena, back to the ship and all fly home (no Windu, other jedi, or clones).
• Increase Dooku’s screen time and have the assassination plot, leading to Obi Wan solving his mystery plot, but that leads him to Dooku’s other super secret hiding planet and there he has an even bigger droid army so best bring the clones in to fight them - this would be as per the film but without the arena beasts part, leading right through to the Dooku showdown (ideally without Yoda). Downside is without some hugely impressive editing Dooku’s choice in planets would appear very singular.
• Between this beginning and ending, I would also choose to save the Anakin side trip to visit his mum after having the force vision I previously described. I’d also like to add the scene with Vader’s name, and more Dooku scenes, and reintegrate deleted scenes such as Obi Wan speaking about Count Dooku.

All in all though I fully accept that this would probably be very choppy and a lot of work to get there so probably wouldn’t be worth it. In the interest of throwing random ideas around though I still like it - I’m just not sure how to make it work as it is such a big change around.

Just some extra food for thought. Can we hear your idea for protecting the Vader reveal you hinted at yet lol?

Hi SSWR, in your last clip, when the ship is arriving on Naboo rather than a “here’s our stop” type of comment, could you have a background voice announcing their arrival - it just seemed very sudden in the clip. I also liked the humour with Anakin, and I think it worked as humour, but it did feel slightly less Star Warsy (a technical term) to me. On the whole though I think your ideas for creating new lines which also fit the lip movements, timing, and feel of the scene, are unrivaled across this site so I’m looking forward to seeing more of your ideas.

Regarding your mentions of out of the box ideas and reusing footage, here are a few ideas i have for my ideal edit (which will probably never happen - also some of these may have come from things I’ve read here through the years so not trying to claim exclusive originality on these).

• Make Dooku a rogue jedi with a white lightsaber (it signifies his leaving the jedi order and lack of affiliation to any side), and increase his lines as much as humanly possible. Christopher Lee has done so much voice work you can probably create any line if you spend long enough looking for the right sources (book readings like Sherlock Holmes for example). Also if you have him as a hooded hologram in scenes or his face covered by a mask, that gives you even more freedom).

• I fully support the prior idea of cutting Yoda as much as possible (ideally completely). I would love to see a seen where Obi Wan talks to Anakin about one of the strongest of the ancient Jedi Masters, Vader, who Anakin wants to become as powerful as, and eventually takes the name Darth Vader as a corruption of this. It would make the choice of new name less random, and also if Vader were shown as a statue somewhere to be a large human male, then come ESB, having Yoda being the most powerful, and non human, and tiny, really adds to this twist.

• Whilst I agree that flashbacks aren’t Star Warsy, force visions are ok, and there can be some cross over there. My suggestions would be the scene where Anakin rescues his mum. If you reverse parts of the footage and only show slowed down brief snippets then you could make it seem that Anakin’s vision is his mum being tied up rather than untied. If you change the colouring and add a very light sound of Vader’s breathing then it would make for good foreshadowing. Then the scene where Anakin leaves the Tusken tent and slashes at the Tusken, that could have the lightsaber changed to red and the face obscured. The rest of the costume is dark and flowy enough that if his face could be replaced with a Darth Vader style helmet it would suggest he is dreaming about a bad guy who isn’t him.

• Another vocal recasting I would love but I imagine would be way too much work would be replacing all of Anakin’s lines with lines from Orson Welles. Whilst he may not necessarily sound like JEJ he has a paced and distinct way of speaking which I just think would transition perfectly.

• As for the structure of the film, I would open with the shots of Anakin and Padme landing on Geonosis to rescue Obi Wan, but change it to Padme and Obi Wan rescuing Anakin. This would open with an action sequence, and establish these three as the main characters, with Anakin and Padme already being in a relationship. Show it from the get go and it makes it easier for the viewer to believe it as they aren’t having to believe it building up.

Anyway those are just some random ideas for you, but as I said I’ve really enjoyed reading your ideas so far so keep up the good work.

The idea of the blade changing briefly to red reminds me of a discussion on this site ages ago where people were debating whether to have Luke’s eyes turn red briefly as he is defeating Vader in RotJ. The thought was that it would show how close he was to the dark side before stopping himself and his eyes would return to normal.

Some people thought this was a good idea but some people thought the visual would be overkill as the scene shows what’s happening perfectly without this.

Personally I feel it is similar to the idea of “show, don’t tell” - but in this case it would be “don’t lay it on TOO thick”. Where the scene already portrays something I’d say let the visuals enhance it, but the problem with the prequels is many scenes don’t convey things in a particularly elegant way, so some visual assistance could be good, but could also be somewhat overpowering and cause the film to feel dumbed down.

Just some food for thought. I did like the trailer though and am looking forward to seeing more of your work.

I’d also be quite interested to take a look if that’s ok?

Genuinely more excited for this edit with every clip you share. Absolutely brilliant to see such ambitious ideas taking form.

Hal 9000 said:

SuperSecretMuffin said:

…Hayden in the ROTJ unmasking scene?

dodges tomatoes

I’d be curious to see that mocked up. Just curious. I wonder how it’d look to map Hayden’s face over Shaw’s for the ghost scene, too. Better? It’d be hard not for it to be.
Seems like a fun thing to play with.

In the interest of seeing how well it works - I wonder if good enough footage of the older actors from the OT could be found of when they are younger and placed over their PT equivalents?

It’s worth noting that this technique is still very new and the way it works is that once you have collected your data (in this case images of Leia’s face and the frames of the scene they are going to be placed over) the program carries out almost all of the work.

You’d need a good PC and several hours to leave it to run, but if that’s the results after say a day of unsupervised computing then with a bit of after effects work the results could be even better.

If that could be coupled with something like the recent trailer that was released of the remade duel between obi wan and Vader then I think it could have some real potential.

Quite some time ago someone suggested their ideal intro (apologies for not remembering who) which went something along the lines of:

Luke finishing construction of his lightsaber near the dark side cave shown in ESB. Luke then walks into the cave and is again faced with Vader, but this time Luke deactivated his saber and Vader disappears as his lightsaber would connect with Luke.

The idea was to show Luke has grown not only by building his lightsaber but also by learning from his previous failure in the cave.

Now I always liked the idea of something like this being shown after Yoda’s death but before Luke leaves Dagobah but I can see justifications for either way round.

The reason I bring it up is firstly I think it would look really good - Luke building his lightsaber isn’t necessary but it could be a really cool scene that fits perfectly into the OT. But also to make the scene you’d need a body double, a good costume, and some good models/background paintings. And all that is before the actual filming necessities. But if someone went that far for the few shots of building the lightsaber then why not add a few more of Luke standing to enter the cave, deactivating the lightsaber, etc, as the majority of the parts needed would be the same, and most of it could be done without any clear shots of Luke’s face.

Just another thought to throw into the mix.

Where you have palatine using his new powers to create the army of the Republic, could you instead have it as “use” the army of the Republic. I’m not sure how it would fit in with your ideas for the following films but I figure it implies the army is already around and everyone knows it, but he is authorising its use and not its creation and would make him seem like a politician who is helping in the crisis and not just out to create his own person army which people should maybe question a little deeper.

I would say choose anyone passable and dig through the footage to see who has the best fit from the material available. Another name that was previously thrown around a while back was Robert Powell, but although I think he would be a fine choice, I just doubt there would be suitable footage. In theory even a few good shots would allow for a younger Tarkin to be added to the background of some scenes just to help add consistency between the trilogies.

Funny you should mention Capaldi as I think the idea of ‘casting’ a younger Tarkin came up somewhere on this site before and someone suggested Christopher Ecclestone. Again an entirely different actor would be needed for the voice though.

Replacing Sidious with Grievous is an interesting idea. I had always liked the idea of trying to imply that Maul became Grievous (though admittedly that brings more problems too) so I’d not considered the idea of suggesting the two work together.

I agree completely. However, even masking off the face area and dropping the lighting to create a blacked out hood and keep the effect looking neat would take an awful lot of work. Whilst I would like to think it could be done another way I’m not even sure of another method which could be applied. Even with an actor like Christopher Lee who has been in so many movies, I’ve still been struggling to find any shots which could be convincingly added to the jedi scenes to make him look like part of the council. I think then trying to find more shots of him to replace Sidious would be impossible (unfortunately). Though if Sidious’s voice were changed then rather than just running the existing voice through a filter, whole new lines could be made without the worry of matching lip movements. Again not a perfect solution because it would look a little cheap, but perhaps one where the benefits could outweight that.

If you were to take out Darth Sidious in episode 1 and 2, you would need to either replace him with someone, or you would need to cut all the related scenes, which would reduce the quality of the movie.(quality is already very very low and many other scenes already need to be cut, you would lose some scenes you can easily salvage if you have a replacement character. If you opt not to replace him and decide to cut him out altogether, you will end up cutting all of the scenes that has Darth Maul in them as a consequence, since most of the time, and in some vital points of the story, they appear together. You would end up with a movie where a sith appears out of nowhere, kills a jedi than just dies. Because most of the backstory scenes has Sidious in them. And after Yoda says there is always two, it would take 2 more movies for the other to appear and it is at the very ending.) Now, you can’t replace him with any other character who is not sith and if you replace him with a new character, whatever character you replace him with has to appear in the other movies for continuity and will need to properly die since that character wont appear in the original trilogy. That would mean editing many scenes along with adding some new scenes, which would be a pain in the ass. (I am probably explaining what I have in mind really poorly, but I hope you understand what I mean)

Rather than try to edit Sidious out of the scenes or to replace him with another character if you simply blacked out the face under the hood and changed the voice then you could imply any character was the bad guy appearing with darth maul.

Imagine if that’s how it had been done and you were watching the movie for the first time (with no prior knowledge of the films) then seeing a character hidden in that way you would naturally try to work out who it was (out of the other characters that you have seen in the movie). Now if you added Dooku as part of the jedi council, then had him appear at Qui Gon’s funeral, and later add a shot of him finding Maul’s body, this would cast a lot of suspicion on his character.

Only then when we get to episode two would we have access to a scene where the Jedi discuss Dooku having left the jedi order, and Dooku explains he was Qui Gon’s master. If we then changed his lightsaber from anything other than red, green, or blue and avoided scenes with him and Sidious together, then across the two films this would add a lot of background to Dooku as well as make him seem like the main suspect for being Sidious so it would appear as if he had been a much bigger part of the movies, without having to try to edit him into all the scenes to directly replace Sidious under the hood.

I’m loving the idea of the Greveious hologram and think your work looks fantastic. The only suggestion I would make is could you add a slight flicker to it. Kinda like the holograms have in the original trilogy just to make it look a little less clean?

Someone once did a clip where Mace Windu was the pilot who destroyed the droid control ship in TPM and the clip worked brilliantly and solved the issue of Anakin being in the battle at all. This would be my preferred idea too as it uses footage of Samuel Jackson from a documentary so would also help to mix things up and have a theme which was never touched upon in the original movie.