Once again, very exciting project, nice work! I take it you’re leaning towards it being Luke’s notes, then? That’s the impression I got from the clip
Heyo, same here, I’d love to see it!
Uuuh Holdo’s plan is not to make a last stand on Crait, they were supposed to hide there unnoticed because of the cloaked (I believe) transports, while Hux is busy destroying their capital ships. This is foiled because of Poe’s plan going wrong (DJ overhearing about the cloaked ships). Also, in the nicest way possible, I don’t get the obsession with human sacrifices, especially those of younger characters. In the movie, Holdo realises that their best sure shot for survival, considering they can’t just jump to lightspeed, is to let the FO destroy the ships while saving almost all the people. Poe and gang come up with an all or nothing plan with too many points where everything can go terribly wrong, which we see unfold and ultimately screw up the Resistance command plan
edit: I’m all for thought experiments though!
I think you are absolutely spot on. Just imagine if LF 1) hadn’t knee jerked at the reaction to TLJ and instead doubled down on worldbuilding and expanding that era, building also on the success of their new characters, 2) hadn’t taken the wrong lesson from the success of Mando s1 and instead done more carefully low-key character projects similar to what made it so popular, 3) expanded the NR era with books and comics, as originally planned, allowing for OT characters to play a more natural role, even if the conclusion of their stories is predetermined.
Ghosts is absolutely how it feels, the least they could do if this is how they’re doing it, is recast Luke and Leia, it wouldn’t be perfect, but they wouldn’t be in limbo
Agreed with your reasoning once again. Luke’s delivery on this does sound a little flat though, or maybe it’s the timing - it’s difficult to quickly digest the connection between Leia’s choice as he tells it, and the next part about how she lost everything
I like “what’s troubling you”, because, and it does not become less true as the years go by, in tros, Leia is little more than a prop spliced in from another movie, sadly, and it always felt to me in scenes that Rey shares with her that Daisy is not playing off of anybody. A little additional line from Leia oddly enough gives her a bit more character imo, and less “here’s Carrie saying out of context lines and other characters filling in the context”. Even if it’s a basic universal line like that
JEDIT: I’ve read JJs reply after writing that, and yes, that’s precisely what I think as well 😄
I agree with this notion, JJ. And excellent idea to refocus the flashback to that also. I’m one of those people who are generally not convinced at all by AI lines, but at this point I don’t think standard tricks can fix this movie. I’d rather watch the original than a slightly mended TROS with a couple extra lines and some scenes shifted around.
However if it is possible to strengthen and underline the themes they tried to convey to this extent… why not go for it, I think it’s a worthy project. (When some wizards can pull off a Ben lives edit, oh boy.) One note… the DOTF line feels like a little bit of a non-sequitor in the third clip to me
I personally do like that AI produced conversation between Luke and Kylo. It definetly helps tie TLJ together with this film as that thread of “see you around kid” is never followed up on. It would be some nice connective tissue and is pretty quick and seem to be possibly seamless with some minor touch up. Just my two cents; the AI voice stuff has really come along way in just a year or so…it is impressive in my opinion.
Isn’t it voice-acted? The lines are verbatim from Duel of the Fates and I seem to recall someone adapting that scene
Nev you really outcooked yourself with that one, I think I’m in love with this idea
I suppose when I wrote that, my thought was, the context already makes it clear she’s saying it to Ben, original line usage notwithstanding, and people in this film constantly say each other’s name (and nothing else), and you have her address him by name here quite clearly before that, and so it just seemed redundant! I’ll even say this - in your version, without the final ‘Ben’, it almost makes it seem that maybe she is saying that final line to both of them in a way (because she finishes saying it on a shot of Rey’s face, mostly).
I should add, I wasn’t sure whether you were keeping the line as she says it to Rey earlier, I assumed you were deleting it. Anyway, the ben is not a deal breaker 😄
And yes, the shot always felt too dramatic to me. This is more directed at TROS itself, on the one hand they tried to be very sensitive about Leia’s death, and yet that shot with its movement and movie-esque arm going limp plays sort of like drumroll… ta-daa! if you know what I mean. Anyway, lots of love!
Wow! The only thing that didn’t quite work for me was Leia’s final “Ben” along with the dramatic shot of her dying. Also, god, the little Reylo part in me sure does want someone with greater skills and commitment than myself to commit to a “Ben lives”, but hey, best of luck to you regardless of where this ends up! Definitely one of the edits to keep an eye on
I believe octoroxx’s edit has what you’re looking for (but it does include the Qui-gon dialogue). I don’t remember how good the image quality was or where to find it, but that’s the one I thought was quite nicely done some time ago!
Honestly my head canon after TLJ was that Luke didn’t really “die” from Force projecting himself, but confronting his greatest failure (Kylo Ren) and forgiving himself caused Luke to achieve enlightenment, and he just became one with the Force as the next step of his ascension.
And that’s sort of how it plays anyway imo
There’s one audio hiccup I noticed right after Rey escapes on Starkiller when Kylo senses Han, I think he says “escape” and the end seems clipped off. Not sure of the exact time stamp but worth looking.
pretty sure that moment is unaltered from the movie
Only watched the first three so far, anthologies are exhausting lol.
The first one!! Man oh man… the artistry and creative license aside (and I live for that s##t), the themes of it felt very very ep IX DOTF to me, and in general very much like the catharsis the sequels never canonically got but needed. I feel even more vindicated now for liking that script, ymmv 😄
Hope to find more golden nuggets among the rest of the shorts!
story schmory
The f-up was that it was used in place of developing themes and characters from TLJ. Here’s hoping they try to remedy that somehow. I wonder if anyone on here knows anything about any of the new writers’/director’s prior work?
TFA is pretty dry and the author takes some liberties in some of the characterisation, some good, some whatever (Finn is too verbose, and Kylo is a bit different, for instance). And there are some extra scenes.
TLJ is wonderful. Deleted scenes (including Luke and Rey sharing a dance), extra scenes that weren’t even filmed but expand on the characters,. Lively style (there’s an xwing battle sequence where BB-8 is the pov character). Explains many things about the state of the galaxy and connects to new canon as well… The movie really lends itself to the kind of inner monologue and character expansion thing that the novelization format offers, and that’s a part if it as well. It’s great, not in the same way as RotS, but still solid.
TROS is not really much better than the film. The author expands on some stuff, adds some scenes, rearranges some stuff, and it’s obvious that the Story Group participated in the novelization, unlike in the film. So while that makes some of the meh parts somewhat good, it also f–ks and muddles other things and obviously reading a bad part of the story is longer than watching it, so that’s why I say it’s overall not much better (“kiss of gratitude”, Luke constantly telling Leia to go finally die,…). But there are nice things in there.
- Removed the lesbian kiss.
?
The things that make this whole project concerning to me are:
The overuse of the deepfake tech; it’s really not as exciting to me as it is for a lot of folks out there. It’s actually downright creepy. Like, this tech really is a godsend for fanedits, but to fill a major role in a movie??? The reason we like these characters in the first place is because real actors acted real human emotions. Just recast if you need to have Luke or whoever in a major role… It was dystopian in RO, Mando S2 and BOBF, it will be that much more so if CG Luke is a main character in this. Even if he’s a cameo, actually.
Thrawn. The other reason we like these characters, and the entire reason anybody is excited to see the blue guy is Zahn’s writing. The way he was written, and, in fact, how perfectly Zahn’s mystery-detective-plans-within-plans writing style lends itself to this type of character, is the reason I and others gasped at the name drop in that Mando S2 episode, it’s the reason live action Pellaeon made some people (ok maybe also me…) giddy. But save for cheap nostalgia of better times past, none of this matters and none of this will stick, unless he is written with those same sensibilities. (I know Zahn is “consulting” Filoni for this project, and I hope that’s enough…)
I had nothing to anticipate, no character’s return (except maybe the moon mother), no cool new lightsabers or anything, in the run-up for Andor. And yet it’s the best show to come out of this franchise precisely because of smart writing and good direction, in every single scene, every single character. The Mandoverse is not the same, but at least Filoni has Lucas’ mythological trope sensibilities, which makes it worth watching despite the cookie cutter dialogue and action (okay, the action is sometimes pretty dope too). This will not translate for Thrawn, but I am still looking forward to this and Thrawn’s return and so on, I very much hope they stick it. I felt these concerns are worth noting down here, and I hope to eat my words when this releases
also, I agree with what has been said above about a large part of the vicious sequel hate being a culture war thing… there is no question about it. What I have suspected, but have no evidence for, and thus hope that it is not true, is that this very culture war aspect has been egged on to some extent by D/LF, maybe as a safeguard against valid critiques. But regardless, there is a fair share of hate that has spread over to this community as well, and it’s regrettable.
The Rey story is compartmentalized enough for these people to just ignore it and any news about it if they don’t vibe with it in the slightest, and I wish that were their judgement as well.
I think if D/LF didn’t see market potential for a continuation, they absolutely would not be doing it. And even if all three movies were loved by critics, but had flopped in the box office, they would not be doing it (maybe they’d commission a few books or comics instead). That is the way of corporate strategy. So this is a good sign. They see that this trilogy has fans who will show up, even if many of those fans were burned by TROS.
With all that said, I am concerned, as I am one of those people who hated that Ben died at the end. It’s a tragedy without catharsis. There were many death-fakeouts in the film, but this one I surely wouldn’t mind being somehow undone lol (beyond this forum and reddit, you’ll find many people who agree, actually) You set up this whole dyad thing, two that are one, “come home, Ben”, and then just kill him. So I’m concerned that they will just ignore him in this new story. If it’s an excellent story otherwise, perhaps that can be acceptable (a la TLJ after the reset that was TFA, but that’s not entirely analogous). The second thing I hated was Rey Palpatine, but they might well ignore that, for the better.
We shall see, for now I’m just glad that it looks like the story no longer ends with a big lump of nothing. The years of sequel draught will be over, finally.
I’m not up to date on Rebels, could the bearded lightsaber guy be… Cbaoth?? Or do we already know him from new canon
What some see as “barely anything” happening, others may see as Bo and Din going through mythological character journeys along their way to reuniting and restoring Mandalore both literally and spiritually, and rediscovering what that means… (it is a bit slow though, but, well, it’s also not like they have to resolve a dozen threads by the end anyway)
So, all this stuff that people have said prepared me for an awful waste of time, but I actually enjoyed this one a lot!
This season has been hit and miss, the development is generally slow as shit, and Star Wars is too memberberry saturated, I agree, but this week’s corny, questionably acted story was… fun? They got to solve a fun little mystery, some universe building was universe builded, and the “reunite mandalore” plot was advanced in an organic way.
Reminded me of the cartoon Filoni shows, except I couldn’t sit through those usually. I guess maybe I’m just happy with this because in the other new show I’m watching (Picard… but probably not watching anymore) everyone is miserable, grieving, crying, dying, and living in a dystopian nightmare world (that series is supposed to take place in a utopian future btw)
Funny story, I once had a whole video essay scripted with precisely this premise (slightly less extreme conclusions, but yea) - it’s a neat thing to think about, pretty cool!
To contribute to the headcanon thread, I’m currently in a phase where I’m sort of whatever on the whole star wars thing,
I still think the movie trilogies are the most important, and, basically, that each of the three stand separately and possibly benefit from some “supplementary material” which strengthens their stories.
For the OT, it’s pretty much fine as it is, I prefer something like the semi-specialized or 4Kxx. For the PT (HDTV DVD versions), I think it benefits from the 03-04 Clone Wars and possibly the new canon 4-issue Obi-Wan and Anakin comic.
For the ST, it kinda needs the most supplementary material unfortunately (I think chiefly due to a less than adequate setup and a downright inadequate conclusion), so there’s the Rise of Kylo Ren 4-issue comic, I also remember kinda liking the Bloodline novel, Resistance Reborn and the Before the Awakening short stories, and some of the other comic one-offs are pretty good (although most of all this literature stuff is just that - a supplement that provides a little more context), and also since this continuity doesn’t have the Heir to the Empire trilogy, I think Aftermath does okay.
Movies-wise, I like TFA as-is, then ebumms’ extended TLJ and ideally I’d like to bin TROS, but if it has to stay, for me, some minor storylines and concepts from DOTF I consider canon and also a post-TROS fanfic (yes, yes, but it fits quite faithfully I think) called The Final Steps is essential (unless the author botches the ending, lol, it’s still a WIP).
Oh and something I never mentioned, Andor - that series, more than being a supplement, for me is canon all the way.
There were also some legends stories I’ve enjoyed but this is the point at which I’m not really concerned with did it happen or no, I just enjoy the stories (honorary mention to DOTJ comics)