KumoNin

Star Wars is billions-of-dollars-level relevant when it’s a universal story that goes to the heart of the conflicts within people’s souls. It doesn’t have to have the clever writing of Andor, it doesn’t have to be realistic, it doesn’t have to have good “”“plot”“”. Plot, creatures, world-building, clever writing, etc. etc. are good things to have, but what it really has to do is touch people on a spiritual level (on a deep psychological level, if you prefer). And it’s a fairy tale. Disney keeps cancelling projects that do precisely that.

arabian said:

Wholeheartedly agreed 😄

By the way, the sequels especially are very dry for star wars, there is no romance at all except subtextually, which is kind of sad. Except for that kiss which makes subtext into text. For like 5 seconds

I’m definitely against killing Rey too, for the record 😄

Having watched it, I wanna reiterate how mindblowing it is, the extent to which this community has been able to come together for so many ideas and big visual and audio changes.

TROS is a bummer of a movie for two main reasons:

1. The backsliding and retconning of character arcs and story points set up by TLJ. I think you deal with this beautifully with your changes, especially your use of Sith whispers, the reworking of the famous Kylo/Rey scenes, and expanding the “for Skywalker” theme that Ascendant started with your great changes to Kijimi and elsewhere. TROS’s reliance on contrived plot points and macguffins is also pretty wack. This edit does a lot to make it more palatable.

2. The ending. I need to vent about the ending again, because that’s naturally the main thing on my mind, even after watching a fantastic fanedit. So I thank you in advance for your patience 😉

The sequels set up the idea that the failures of the Jedi brought about Vader, and now have brought about Kylo Ren, meaning something needs to change for the cycle to be broken. TLJ states that despite the failures, Luke was wrong for wanting the Jedi to end, and so is Kylo for wanting the past to die. The galaxy needs a legend, and it needs Jedi, but since we know the Jedi of the past were flawed, the new Jedi need to be different, incorporating the lessons of the past failures. They need to transform, they need to change. TROS basically ignores this by making sure Rey is just fulfilling the legacy of all the past Jedi by killing the Sith to death (?).

Not to mention “bring him home” also doesn’t happen. Vader ruins his entire life and body and destroys the whole Jedi order, and, after decades of tyranny, rectifies this by sacrificing himself for his son and the galaxy. But Kylo’s story is different. Bringing home the lost boy is the goal for Ben since TFA. I know he’s like 30, but his arc is painted more like a tantrum-prone teenager who goes down a dark path and eventually realizes the error of his ways, because a girl (his peer) and his parents (!) still relentlessly believe in his goodness. His life is not over once he turns back to the light, it’s just beginning. He’s not Vader, he’s more like Zuko. Buut nope, he dies because that would be too difficult to write (although not in the minds of Driver, Kennedy, Filoni, et al, since they greenlit the Hunt for Ben Solo, but I digress)

There is nothing any fan editor can do to fix this, it can only be resolved by future movies or other types of fan works.

There are also some more unfortunate parallels with the ending of ROTJ, where we see a montage (in the special edition) of different planets celebrating the victory, whereas in TROS we see a montage of destruction. Destruction of the enemy, but still destruction. Where in ROTJ we see Luke mourning his father, and then reuniting with his friends to celebrate victory, in TROS we don’t see Rey mourn Ben, we see her going off to an abandoned desert house to bury the past.

I love your ending where she at least flies off into the sunset with her friends, onwards to new adventures. This is so far the best version of TROS that can be engineered with the material given. Thank you for your excellent work! This was well worth the wait.

honestabe said:

• Did Maul need to have his robotic legs damaged 5000 times? We get the point.

To underline the subtextual point.

https://vridar.org/2020/04/30/thighs-pythagorean-biblical-and-other/

• A few others already mentioned it, but the appearance of ‘Him’ was pointless.

Disagree. He does appear too much in stuff, but this time it makes sense if you’ve been following along with Maul’s arc and the parallels between the two of them being groomed by Palpatine, and what he represents to Maul and what Maul represents to him. Plus the Jedi master being taken out by inquisitors when Maul and Devon handle them just fine would not have felt the same.

Fantastic show imo, could have had more of the titular character, but I understand they needed to bring everyone in the audience more up to speed and get them to sympathize with Maul. I guess they didn’t want a repeat of the audience reaction to the Acolyte, where some of the audience “got” it and some didn’t.

Huge congrats on the release! This was the kind of radical re-edit I thought was impossible after seeing the movie in the theater.

I’ve sent you a dm 😉

Agree with the above! The trailer with the space suburbs reveal threw me off initially lol, but I stuck with it and it was so full of heart! Loved this show. And the lightsaber when it eventually appeared and was ignited felt so otherworldly, which is a rarity since the prequels.

As a sidenote, the other times I remember feeling the wow factor of the lightsaber was TFA when it came out and to some extent The Acolyte, but that one was more about the incredible fight choreo.

JadedSkywalker said:

I don’t think Star Wars story ran its course unless it’s just the Saga of Darth Vader 1-6. We never got Luke’s story post episode VI on film. I mean I guess you could claim the Saga was complete with Return of the Jedi. from a certain point of view. The Disney trilogy is the end of his journey, and it was only beginning in episode 6.

Star Trek by its episodic nature could go on forever. You can never have enough Kirk and Spock and The USS Enterprise.

And as for Marvel I’ve waited forever for an X-men film. All I wanted out of Marvel was a good X-Men film, and maybe a Fantastic four and then I was fine with being done with it. I’m not a fan of Disney Marvel I’m a fan of the comics.

The only other thing would have been a Raimi Spider-Man 4 with Tobey that was not a realistic thing to want. Sony and Marvel’s partnership and all that being what it is. I don’t at all care for the new Spider-Man movies except for that last one. But the nostalgia and multiverse stuff is getting stale.

Star Trek post Kurtzman is going to be a hard road for whoever takes the reigns. They can continue to do reboots and nostalgia and prequels or they can do something new, move the timeline beyond Picard season 3 and do a show in the 25th century.

Same for Disney Star Wars they have to move beyond the sequel trilogy timeline. They have to own The character of Rey Skywalker and the future of their own intellectual property.

Agreed on post-Kurtzman. The difficulty is also partly that whoever takes the reigns, they’re probably gonna come from working in modern tv, and even if they love 90s trek, they’re gonna be making something inbetween what 90s trek was, which is also largely what 90s tv was (mostly episodic, many episodes in a season, shot with a couple cameras, looks like a tv show, fundamentally optimistic about the future, earnest etc.) and what tv, or certainly the average scifi streaming show is today (serialised, about 10 episodes a season, every scene shot with 10 moving cameras, tries to look “premium” (like a movie), gritty, with jaded, traumatized characters, fundamentally unsure if a better world even makes sense to aspire to, etc.) Not that there aren’t shows and movies today that aren’t like that, so it’s possible to make star trek today, it’s just not possible with current leadership.

The talk of spider-man reminded me of how much I’m looking forward to the third Spider-verse movie. I do hope it eventually releases lol.

Agreed on needing to own the character of Rey and post-tros. It’s still crazy to me (in the best way) that they really actually greenlit a Ben Solo movie post-tros, before getting yoinked by bob iger. If somehow it gets to happen in some form, that would be huge. But that’s a discussion for another thread

Regarding the above^,

I think this movie industry analysis ignores the fact that the mcu storyline concluded in 2019 and no russos or anything can “save” it. It peaked in popularity and then, very naturally, declined. Same is largely true with Star Wars, although they need to let creatives cook instead of canceling so many projects that only safe slop seems to be left, and seems to be true with Star Trek but I think that’s more because the studio simly doesn’t know what to do with the property.

Point is, although studios definitely mishandle IP, it’s important to differentiate between a mishandled IP, and a storyline that has run its course, and a blend of both.

Obviously it’s not disney that plagiarized though, it’s the animation studio. Still, what a blunder

krlozdac said:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XuXxk0NHFzkHJBne8dxIYrDRtK0k3yzM/view?usp=sharing

That’s a pretty cute solution, it’s canon in my head now 😄

Excellent work!!

If I may, I think I do understand the intention behind the shot mirroring that unfortunately caused the continuity error. The sandcrawler is on the left side of the screen, so it makes more sense visually to have threepio looking and waving toward screen left. The new version is therefore a bit jarring.

Love the other changes!

Vladius said:

I’m sure you already know why it sucks but you feel the need to be a contrarian like Mike does. There are plenty of posts here and elsewhere about it.

I’ve not seen one convincing argument for “why it sucks” that cancels out all the ways in which it’s great. And we won’t get into it here. Mike’s reflection on what he found interesting about the show upon reevaluation does not sound the least bit contrarian to me. In fact, it’s entirely consistent with somebody who has both 1) made a career out of cynical criticism of late-stage franchise entries, while refusing to weaponise “woke”, and also 2) has an understanding of storytelling and theme and picks up on these things. I understand that not every show is for everyone and that’s okay, but this take that no one can possibly enjoy a critically acclaimed piece of media unless they’re either dumb or a shill or purposefully contrarian is just wacky.

Vladius said:

because it sucks

What a comprehensive refutation!

Mike’s take on the Acolyte is incredibly based (for a cynical old alcoholic /j)

KumoNin said:

Creme de la creme of live action and animation, respectively, for me:

• Andor
• Acolyte
  and
• Clone Wars (the original one, especially the later, longer episodes)
• Visions (I’ve seen maybe half of it, but what I’ve seen was very creative)

and as for the rest,

• most of the animated ones I haven’t seen enough of, for TCW I can say it’s pretty okay, sometimes great, sometimes frustrating
• same verdict on live action Filoniverse, except maybe more okay and less great or bad

Still haven’t watched the rest of Visions, but I would update this to put Skeleton Crew in the top part. It’s really good, but I often forget that it exists and was good. Still stand by my views on Acolyte and Andor.

Well articulated again regarding Rogue One!

The first half flows pretty smoothly off of Andor. Down to little ways how characters react to certain names and things. I never really liked the ending of the film. Every scene in RO with Vader in it is pointless and/or introduces plot/character problems and tone problems most of all. RO is a movie that tries to present a more grounded Star Wars, but occasionally (and sometimes in very important moments, such as the ending) just throws it all aside for cringe fanservice schlock. Which feels more offensive in light of the rest of that movie’s tone, and vastly more so in light of Andor.

So mostly RO feels even more weird for me now. But other aspects of it I appreciate more.

Finale was great! I’m still kind of bugged by

what they ended up doing with the character of Bix (i.e. pretty much nothing except making her this unachievable dream for Cass), but yay Vel, yay Kleya, good that they showed Perrin, even though they probably shouldn’t have cut the scenes with him from the previous arc. Yikes what a poetically cruel ending for Dedra,

and agreed Vladius vis-a-vis Rogue One (even though it’s still not the best movie imo lol - but this for sure enriches it).

The time-jumping did rob us of a lot of on-screen character development and I still like season 1 more, but man what a show huh?

This seems to be an unpopular opinion among the American monomyth enjoyers, but

I don’t think Luthen and Kleya “have” to die. I don’t think characters that we don’t see in the OT have to die. I don’t think that characters who have done questionable things for the rebellion don’t get to experience and participate in rebuilding the new, better world, and heal together with the more pure of heart characters. Luthen has been cut out of the chain of command, and there’s no reason he can’t have continued to be a spy on Coruscant or something through the war. The rebel life he leads is one of the riskiest of all the people in the rebellion, but it would definitely be a nice subversion of the cowboy trope for the guy who’s sacrificing everything for “a sunrise he knows he will never see” to actually be one of the few OGs that do get to see that sunrise in the end.

As for Dedra, I think she finds out what they’re really doing with those rocks, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but probably the obvious thing would be for her to eventually be posted on the Death Star, right?

Anyway, I agree with all the praises of the show’s nuanced writing and music and stuff, obviously. There is room for different genres in Star Wars, but I do miss this level of subtlety in other shows (namely whenever Filoni does a politics-related plot or whenever anyone but Zahn writes Thrawn…)

Why couldn’t it have been Chewie’s idea? He is Han’s bestie, maybe he volunteered, even against Leia’s protests

I had no problem seeing what was going on

I think a scan of TPM does exist, but I remember the crawl and alien subtitles being in a different language. For me, the HDTV versions (dvd cuts but high quality) are close enough to the theatrical. TPM probably has the largest differences between that and theatrical, but with the hdtv you do still get puppet Yoda as well as the film not having been over-DNRd like the bluray.

So yea, not sure how “pure” you’re looking the versions to be, but schorman’s HDTV gets my endorsement

You know, as far as the number of cuts, I’d say yea, it does work better imho! I think I get the idea behind the backing out shot, but yea rapid cuts in talky scenes just doesn’t seem to be the MO of this movie 🤔

Really it’s the rapid intercutting plus the shots of the Knight from a different scene. You are right that the hallway scene would be a strange placement, considering the scenes before and after, where it would have made more logical sense to relay that information.

It’s a conundrum. Your original take on this, without new shots, really flows the smoothest but there was the problem of the off-screen voice which sounds too much like a Kylo impression. If JJ had shot your version, it would probably have been done either in one shot or, at most, with one insert of the knight at some point during his line.

I’ve looked back at your goal with this scene which is to characterize the knights as impulsive thugs, dangerous if imprudent. So, probably best to keep it within the conference room, but ideally I think you’d want just one shot of the knight? The problem is how to get an appropriate shot… Also, and again I don’t have a good suggestion, but “knights” implies some sort of more medieval designation than “captain” if only to distinguish from the military/navy captains seated at the table, but that’s an almost insignificant thing.

Do you think that the knight’s line could instead be integrated into the hallway walking sequence? I understand that without alteration of the line it might be confusing to hear that specific line before the severed head reveal, but the way it cuts back and forth, it is confusing the way it is imo

I’d love to reply to every single bit of that, I’ll just say different strokes 😄

An interesting tidbit from recent interviews with Leslye and Manny is that there was an idea to have them kiss at the end (and they shot it, even!), but it didn’t feel earned and the actors suggested the hand hold we see in the final version. Genuinely perfect wrap-up of their arcs for this season