KumoNin

I am probably in the minority and this may not be doable with the source material, but to me, in the first two movies Rey is a character with a “default” star wars background character… background. Parents either poor as shit, or dead for trivial reasons (disease/gang violence/whatever), or abandoned/sold her (or… all of the above). Such is the star wars world (except on more sophisticated worlds like naboo or alderaan where you might have more “normal” parents). And her specialness comes not from her origin, but from… the force awakening inside her for some reason and her having a good heart or whatever.

As such, a “reveal” post-TLJ about her actual origin - any reveal - diminishes that in my view. If her background is in some way special, and Kylo Ren or whoever reveals that to her, that gives her character motivation basically for free.

If she is a Palpatine, she has an innate reason to fight against her legacy, to basically cleanse her name in some way, so as to show herself not to be what her ancestry would suggest her to be (although that is also undermined by her parents being good and loving already). If Palpatine killed her parents it becomes a simple revenge story, in the end she takes her revenge against him and all is good (even though apparently that’s what he wants anyway at the start, but at some point that just changes…? and he wants her dead?). If she herself killed her parents it’s again sort of a self-redemption story and she has newfound purpose with the reveal. If the reveal is that there is no reveal - no “free” character motivation - then she has to find her place in the story herself and has to wrestle her inner demons that she has anyway - dark origin or not.

Yes, I got that too!! I think there was a variation of Yoda’s theme, which, played slowly on synths, sounds remarkably like the the main Blade Runner theme. Liked the score a lot in this episode, very unlike anything Star Wars, as you say

Yes, I would actually say that, in answer to your title question, you are wrong.

ray_afraid said:

Star Wars has shoe-horned & ham-fisted every sci-fi trope into some story, somewhere, sometime.

Now this may be true, but scifi, as I consider it, is much more about themes - particularly those pretty well summarised in the wikipedia article. And while even some of that may on occasion have become tropey, the best scifi has lots of thematic substance, I feel. I consider Star Trek TNG to be a near-perfect representation of the type of mix of:

discussing current political/religious/cultural affairs via a “future” setting,
discussing human emotions,
discussing AI, augmented reality, etc. (“scifi” topics) in a culturally relevant, often moralistic sense,

and some other things that I love scifi for.

Star Wars has politics, sure, but mostly it is not scifi at all, but space fantasy. I mean really, is it closer to Blade Runner or to Flash Gordon? I think the answer is clear.

Oo that works quite well, although I’m not sure the Grievous walking to the window shot needs to be cut, and how about splitting it between the lightsaber retracting shot and the R2 hologram shot instead of earlier? I tried it and it seems quite fine

sade1212 said:

Ben & Rey - The Power of One (11:47) by tstudios

I feel this edit does a good job of tying together the arc of these two characters across the three movies in a coherent way, especially with how it recontextualises certain dialogue. It also entirely omits Rey Palpatine, demonstrating how unnecessary that retcon was to creating a compelling story.

Fantastic reylo video, for all those reasons 😃

Might there be any way at all to indicate passage of time with some additional shot inbetween?

DominicCobb said:

Rey v. TIE

God I love that. I’m also all for DotF, it’s worth considering different mixes, but I think even the one in TPM can do quite nicely

CarterStarkiller said:

2. Has someone thought of rescoring Yoda’s theme out of the victory celebration? While I love John Williams’ score this was the one cue that really confused me.

That’s a good idea, if I remember correctly, it also had a weird use of Luke and Leia’s theme

The final line of the film […]

Agreed

That’s a really good take on reimplementing that, wow. Although, this being an expanded edition, I wanna say it would be more appropriate to cut as little as possible, thus trying to get the latter order if it can work out. Plus Grievous’ initial introduction moment I think is better as is, it’s much more of an “introduction” shot, complete with his theme

Kind of a weird, possibly pointless note considering what you’ve set out as your goals, but considering you’re changing the lore anyway, I think leaving Kylo’s ultimate fate ambiguous, i.e. cutting away before he dies is kinda a good idea (thus avoiding repetitive “redeemed bad guy dies instantly after doing good thing” trope, and also not requiring fx to add him to Tatooine or anything like that). And a question: are you planning to keep the way Rey defeats Palpatine the same as in the movie: by blocking force lightning with 2 lightsabers? (it’s super dumb)

Thoughts, anyone? I understand it may be out of this edit’s scope, but on the other hand to me these elements are nearly as ew as rey palpatine and “Rey Skywalker”, speaking of which, is that final line staying? Changing that goes together with preserving “Rey the nobody”, does it not?

idir_hh said:

This video basically sums up my reactions to that.
https://youtu.be/GRoL5eLJ-Mg

Yep, fantastic video, he also points out that Rian Johnson, love him or hate him, has never publicly spoken a single bad word about JJ’s movies, making this even sadder.

Wow, your work on this is amazing. I especially love that the Anakin/Palpatine scene can be complete.

DominicCobb said:

Here’s my opening, showing my new crawl and my version of an idea that’s been tossed around here a bit (using the TLJ deleted star destroyer bridge shots):
https://vimeo.com/403066614

Oh god, the crawl alone is making me think maybe this movie is salvageable. Love seeing an edit in progress which focuses purely on keeping “Rey is nobody” as well.

Anthony Daniels talking about every 3PO costume
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fCqhpV2SG4

SparkySywer said:

The skyline in the Phantom Menace was changed in some shots in '01

Where could one see a comparison?

I would like to say, I like that '97 Coruscant was used. Even if it was because that’s simpler to do, for reasons I prefer it.

Yeah, although I used to have a similar gripe, doesn’t make sense comparing a royal transport ship with a giant warship, a dirty light fighter and a smuggling ship.

Update: from the Age of Resistance collection, I’d say the Snoke and Rey comics (and possibly Hux) also fit in quite satisfyingly into the story. I haven’t read them all, but some of them just feel too “random one-off story” -esque.

After a brief jump into the post-rotj old Expanded Universe and then being lured back to the ST via the Rise of Kylo Ren comic, I have reconsidered what the franchise and the ST means to me. I watched some Rian Johnson movies which were great and I also read the (presumably real) Trevorrow Episode IX script which still did not make me change my mind about… this:

I now think The Last Jedi is a fitting conclusion to the story. With the endless cycle of the power struggle there is just no good (or better) way to end the story that doesn’t feel like a rotj rehash. You could have Kylo and Rey work together in some way and build true balance, but that has its own problems…
I think TLJ satisfyingly picks up on the - meta and otherwise - bits of TFA and expands them and also inadvertently dead-ends the franchise. So I like this movie, although I didn’t when it came out, but anything that comes after it, not really (unless it explores Ren’s backstory like TROKR)

So in bold I have some but not all of the material that I really quite like and that gets me excited about star wars at a time when… who really cares about it anymore?

Anyway, two timelines:

Original Unaltered Trilogy (I prefer grindhouse versions of this but who cares)
The Mandalorian (could be reconciled with old eu but depends on the day)

And then either:
-Thrawn trilogy (that’s as far as I am, but I also started reading Young Jedi Knights because whatever)
-other 90s EU stuff I have yet to read
-also SW radio drama goes here

Or:
-(the (unaltered) prequels (with DVD version for TPM) belong in this continuity)
-along with supplementary material like Bloodline, perhaps a different OT version depending on my mood, perhaps we shall see what else new eu brings, whatever, whatnot)
-The Rise of Kylo Ren (although the 4th one shoehorns in some stuff from TROS, I like this short series overall)
-The Force Awakens (idk which version since on my last rewatch TROS was annoyingly in the back of my mind, recontextualizing what I was watching, so I could not finish it)
-The Last Jedi (ebumms’ extended edition)
-the V O I D (ok, TROS, Trevorrow script, someone’s fantheory on reddit, all quite similar to me, some I like better but none are needed)

No Rey Palpatine, no Rey Skywalker, Palpatine reintroduced earlier in the trilogy, etc., etc… I was skeptical of anyone’s ability to accomplish this, but your ideas sound superb! We will watch your career with great interest!

I suppose you could look at it as getting it out of the way. I would be inclined to agree with that, although he already was “some guy”, so there was no mystery to begin with, not a real one anyway. I agree that he had to have character growth (learning to trust droids), but, as I stated, was a quick 180

timdiggerm said:

Really looking forward to Mando eventually meeting a CGI de-aged Mark Hammil at the end of the series.

I just threw up in my mouth. Anyway, I thought the finale had some contrivances that stick out and have been mentioned… Mando revealing his face to the audience for no reason in a drawn out sequence, and what’s with Mando doing a 180 on droids after the one incident of a droid saving his life? Felt too quick. There is other stuff as well, but overall, with episode 3 and 7 probably being the best ones, I quite enjoyed this.

The tv format seems to lend itself to more interesting stories and more engaging atmosphere that lets it all breathe, that is, provided they can restrain themselves from letting all the fanservice dogs out for the finale sometime. Oh and the soundtrack has been stellar!

This is a very good post, Broom Kid. It is the “fan theory” movie. Back in 2016 and 2017, I was cringing at all the Rey Skywalker, Rey Kenobi, and Rey Palpatine takes. Like, what thematic purpose would that have? Rey wants to be somebody, she’s sure her parents cared about her… Even if not, Luke will give her purpose…

TLJ, for all its flaws, is strong thematically. It looks at these things and says “well what if her parents just abandoned her and she’s no one? and what if Luke is in crisis and isn’t at all the saviour Rey had hoped for? What then? Can Rey still believe in herself despite not having some sort of bloodline legacy? Being a nobody is what she fears, but can she face that fear and prevail?”

There’s an amazing reylo video out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-qi4OhCii4
I think, despite star wars suffering from overanalysis, this is a great take on something that was likely intentional on the part of the writer-director. TLJ mostly answers the important TFA questions via thematic exploration. This new one answers them again, but differently and much the way a run-of-the-mill fan theory would… Interestingly, IX is making me appreciate TLJ more and TFA less and less because I now know what JJ’s takes on those setups are

5
7/8
4
1
6/3
9/2

(all theatrical/as close as possible to theatrical, although I’m partial to 3 and 8 extended versions)

Explanation for 7/8 above 4: 7 is hype af and I’ve very recently flipped on my opinion about 8 via rewatch - I had a good time with it…

Explanation for 1 above 6/3: I like how it’s the most ‘analog’ of the prequels and is so clearly and unapologetically a kids movie… I like the look and feel of it. I wasn’t around when it premiered so no hurtful memories. I like to watch the dvd version because it’s got one less cg character and looks better.

Explanation for 9 at the bottom: not needed, I would presume 😃 I sat through the credits speechless and depressed, lol. Not below 2 because some things like total-creep-Anakin are just inexcusable

This is exciting news! I’ve been only sort of following this project, but definitely congrats!! Massive project.