I agree, it might not be Palpatine in physical form… but we haven’t yet seen the Sith equivalent of a Force Ghost have we?
A Sith Wraith perhaps? (SW has never been shy pinching bits and bobs from other mythology and that would be rather Sauron like).
Speculation…
Shmi “There was no father. I carried him, I gave birth, I raised him. I can’t explain what happened.”
Palpatine using abilities “some consider to be unnatural” conjured this child of the force within Shmi (a random slave of no importance). Palpatine is secretly Anakin Skywalker’s father (and acts like it throughout the PT).
Palpatine - having survived his fall down the Death Star chasm (much like Luke survived the Cloud City chasm - it rhymes!) used those same abilities to create Rey, again within a random junker of no importance. Palpatine is Rey father, she’s of the same line.
Seems at least possible?
The larger problem with the deleted scene is that it pre-empts and diminishes the already perfect introduction to the Falcon. The music swells Ben and Luke enter the Falcon hangar, then the music drops for Luke to deliver his classic “What a piece of junk!”.
Plus, I don’t think the deleted Jabba scene gives us anything we didn’t already have as viewers. It doesn’t show us a new environment, the extra plot about Han’s debt is extraneous and covered more efficiently in other scenes, the CGI execution is very poor, and Han’s dialogue “you’re a wonderful human being” doesn’t make sense with the eventual non-human rendition of Jabba.
I think the scene is an interesting extra curio but the film is better without it.
The Phantom Menace is comfortably the best imho, and actually has a lot of great stuff in it (and a few not so great things too!).
Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith both fall a distant second - really there isn’t much to separate the two. They have the feel of being shot ‘back to back’ in The Hobbit tradition. Actually the final Tatooine shot in ROTS when Obi hands over the twins was captured during AOTCs production. Sadly, that one brief moment is the only location shot in the whole of ROTS - the entire film was made within the greenscreen environs of the Sydney studio and ILMs computers - and that safe, sterile, deadness permeates it.
Hal, you made a valiant effort with the films and when I watched your edit I objectively think you have improved them. However there is only so much that can be done, and I think Adywan made a very wise choice to drop what would have been many years toil trying to polish them further with his planned PT Revisited.
Introducing Blue Squadron: our ROTJ:R B-Wing pilots.
A great collection of faces…
Guy in the top left looks a lot like Rimmer from Red Dwarf. Please place an H on his forehead and make him contemptuously declare “Oh smeg…” as his B Wing explodes around him.
Red Dwarf Of The Jedi Revisited - the crossover! Make it so.
Home release bonus materials - including some interesting sounding Deleted Scenes details… https://www.starwars.com/news/solo-in-home
The new home release is packed with bonus content that takes fans behind the scenes to experience compelling discussions with the star-studded cast and screenwriters Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan, a revealing feature on Chewie and his enduring friendship with Han, and several never-before-seen deleted and extended scenes. The full list includes*:
Solo: The Director & Cast Roundtable — Sit down with director Ron Howard and the stars for an intimate and entertaining discussion of the film’s making.
Team Chewie — See what it takes to bring your favorite Wookiee to life in this lighthearted look behind the scenes.
Kasdan on Kasdan — Iconic Star Wars screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and son Jonathan share what it was like to write the movie’s script together.
Remaking the Millennium Falcon –Track the transformation of the most famous ship in the galaxy, from Lando’s swank and impeccable pride and joy to Han’s stripped-down hot-rod freighter with “special modifications.”
Escape from Corellia — Get behind the wheel for the making of this high-octane chase through the streets of Corellia.
The Train Heist — Explore the challenges and thrills of creating this action-packed sequence, including its remote location and spectacular effects.
Becoming a Droid: L3-37 — Meet the newest droid—and the talented actor who helps bring her to life.
Scoundrels, Droids, Creatures and Cards: Welcome to Fort Ypso –Take an in-depth tour of the rough-and-tumble bar where strangers mix and gamblers risk all in the legendary card game, Sabaac.
Into the Maelstrom: The Kessel Run –Join Han and Chewie at the controls of the Millennium Falcon to see how this legendary moment in Star Wars history unfolds.
The Millennium Falcon: From Page to Park — In an exclusive bonus feature available as a digital code with the Target release, you can get a look at the history of the most famous ship in the galaxy, its origin and development, and how it will translate in one of the most anticipated expansions in Disneyland’s history.
And Deleted Scenes:
Proxima’s Den
Corellian Foot Chase
Han Solo: Imperial Cadet
The Battle of Mimban: Extended
Han Versus Chewie: Extended
Snowball Fight!
Meet Dryden: Extended
Coaxium Double-Cross
Digital bonus offerings may vary by retailer. Click here for more information.
This is an adventure you won’t want to miss.
Home release bonus materials - including some interesting sounding Deleted Scenes details… https://www.starwars.com/news/solo-in-home
The new home release is packed with bonus content that takes fans behind the scenes to experience compelling discussions with the star-studded cast and screenwriters Jonathan Kasdan and Lawrence Kasdan, a revealing feature on Chewie and his enduring friendship with Han, and several never-before-seen deleted and extended scenes. The full list includes*:
Solo: The Director & Cast Roundtable — Sit down with director Ron Howard and the stars for an intimate and entertaining discussion of the film’s making.
Team Chewie — See what it takes to bring your favorite Wookiee to life in this lighthearted look behind the scenes.
Kasdan on Kasdan — Iconic Star Wars screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and son Jonathan share what it was like to write the movie’s script together.
Remaking the Millennium Falcon –Track the transformation of the most famous ship in the galaxy, from Lando’s swank and impeccable pride and joy to Han’s stripped-down hot-rod freighter with “special modifications.”
Escape from Corellia — Get behind the wheel for the making of this high-octane chase through the streets of Corellia.
The Train Heist — Explore the challenges and thrills of creating this action-packed sequence, including its remote location and spectacular effects.
Becoming a Droid: L3-37 — Meet the newest droid—and the talented actor who helps bring her to life.
Scoundrels, Droids, Creatures and Cards: Welcome to Fort Ypso –Take an in-depth tour of the rough-and-tumble bar where strangers mix and gamblers risk all in the legendary card game, Sabaac.
Into the Maelstrom: The Kessel Run –Join Han and Chewie at the controls of the Millennium Falcon to see how this legendary moment in Star Wars history unfolds.
The Millennium Falcon: From Page to Park — In an exclusive bonus feature available as a digital code with the Target release, you can get a look at the history of the most famous ship in the galaxy, its origin and development, and how it will translate in one of the most anticipated expansions in Disneyland’s history.
And Deleted Scenes:
Proxima’s Den
Corellian Foot Chase
Han Solo: Imperial Cadet
The Battle of Mimban: Extended
Han Versus Chewie: Extended
Snowball Fight!
Meet Dryden: Extended
Coaxium Double-Cross
Tangential to the comment above… I just watched the deleted scenes and making of documentary on THE LAST JEDI blu ray.
The number of stunning practical creatures created for the Canto Bight sequence is incredible, and it seems only around half of these marvellous creations are actually shown in the finished movie.
And yet… the on-screen Canto Bight sequence does heavily feature a CGI leprechaun character putting the coins into BB-8. It’s shockingly fake, and never remotely convinces as belonging to the tangible environment we see around it.
So what was a problem in 2004 - whether George admitted it or not - remains a problem even in 2018.
Ady, was trying to add a pic but here is a link… some new images of the extremely detailed Bandai B-Wing model in Tamiya magazine.
In Chris Taylor’s book “How Star Wars conquered the universe” he says this about Lucas’ very earliest attempt to formalise the story in 1973:
Lucas saw an ancient order of galactic guardians called Whills. We wouldn’t get to see them; they would be chroniclers in the background. The whole movie would be drawn from a book we never see, a book he could keep fleshing out for years if this little space thing worked. “Journal Of The Whills,” he wrote “Part 1. This is the story of Mace Windy, a revered Jedi-bendu of Ophuchi…”
Actually, that seems kind of interesting. I would love to see those stories, hopefully one day in some other form.
Well, you know Disney do already own a similar property… look out for this in Summer 2025… HONEY, I SHRUNK THE JEDI.
Lucas wanted to double down on Midichlorians?!
That’s like betting all your chips on a 12 in Blackjack.
Nice idea, I think the tunnel surround would make more sense and would serve to keep the eye focused where it should be on the centre of the image.
Yes, I felt the Stormtroopers in Rogue One were intimidating. In fact they ‘hit the targets’ so thoroughly that our band of goodies got wiped out. They definitely seemed more deadly than the ‘best’ troops on Endor.
Chirrut was on another level of force-sensitive badassery, and I didn’t have any issue with him ‘incapacitating’ (I don’t know if he actually killed them) a small squad of Stormtroopers. It’s a trope that we’ve seen in a thousand samurai and martial arts movies. The marshalling of ‘Chi’ that enables Chirrut to take down the heavily armed adversaries.
Then again, I grew up watching Roger Moore 007 take out 6 foot heavies with a gentle karate chop to the shoulder blades so maybe I’m not the best person to judge!
So now that Solo is out, is there anything from it that may influence this edit?
Both Solo and Rogue One did a decent job at making OT Stormtroopers seem intimidating and a credible threat.
ROTJ’s Ewoks vs Stormtroopers battle remains the series low point in that regard, and to repeat an earlier suggestion to help address this, would be to remove the word “best” from the Emperor’s line “an entire legion of my best troops awaits them”.
Seems a simple edit to make as the dialogue is spoken over a reaction shot of Luke and Vader so no lip sync issues.
And to further illustrate the point, here’s a little youtube clip of that moment…
I’m guessing that the reason Disney used female leads for the first new trilogy and Rogue One is because they knew that the next decade of stand-alone films will revolve around male characters so they wanted to try and preemptively balance it out.
You’d think that somewhere these future plans are mapped out - there is a roadmap. Star Wars has been project managed, and there will be coordination across the many facets of the enterprise, with the timeline including the movies, the theme park, TV, video games, and more. Kathleen Kennedy, Bob Iger and all the top brass are privy to the plan.
However, the anecdotal things you hear from Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams make it sound like ‘anything goes’. The pitch for Rogue One, which sounds like it was made and accepted and put into production in a very quick turnaround. The changing release dates. These things point towards much more fluidity.
So at the time the decision was made to go with female leads, I really don’t know how far the roadmap extended (or if it existed at all), and whether that would have been in their thinking.
DuracellEnergizer, when a man is shown to be wrong it’s a litmus test of character.
To hold up your hands in admission, learn from it and move on, takes strength.
To be evasive and unaccepting, to make a counter attack. The mark of a small and petty man.
DuracellEnergizer, you obviously didn’t look at those websites too thoroughly or maybe you were just being ‘selective’ with what you chose to copy/paste. Under the concise definitions on the sites you linked there are examples of usage of the word apologist - shall we take a look?
“Her question reflected a conventional Republican gripe, namely that the State Department is a cooing dovecote, full of apologists for Abroad.”
“The most serious native challenge to liberalism, made by the slaveholding oligarchy of the Old South, was crushed on the battlefield, and, despite the efforts of an ever-dwindling number of apologists, morally anathematized.”
“Its condemnation of America in general and the war in Iraq in particular meant that it became an apologist for totalitarian regimes.”
“The lives of American and British troops should not have been risked to rescue these apologists for terror.”
“English youth have been so educated time out of mind, and we have hundreds of thousands of apologists and admirers of injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among children.”
And on the Oxford English Dictionary page, the most respected of all dictionary sites, there are 15 given examples of how you would use the word apologist. Every single one has a negative connotation. Every one. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/apologist
Lets take a look!
‘The Soviet Union’s ideology had many adherents and apologists throughout the West.’
‘Obviously there have been, and will be, apologists who want to defend or explain away the embarrassing elements.’
‘Those are my passions and, not infrequently, their proponents and apologists will be my targets.’
‘Religious apologists have tended to argue from authority to justify their beliefs, often quoting from texts such as the Bible.’
‘I’m suggesting simply that they make their presence felt in ways that draw the distinction between themselves and the apologists.’
‘Her alibi, offered by her apologists, is that she was starved of affection - a euphemism for sex.’
‘Nor do the apologists for this failure carry conviction.’
‘Studies in English were produced either by apologists, sensationalists or conspiracy theorists.’
‘The apologists have argued that drugs were not involved in his death.’
‘But it was the nature of the attacks from the political party, its apologists and some journalists that interested me most.’
‘But isn’t an apologist for racism who uses racist arguments a racist?’
‘Only those such as government spokesmen and official apologists for the war would deny this.’
‘My job here is not to be an apologist, but technology can’t always save us from significant changes in human nature.’
‘The only kinds of writers excluded were supporters and apologists of totalitarianism.’
‘There is, of course, no need to imagine people who would make such claims: they were Nazis and their apologists.’
‘I do not intend to get into an argument with an apologist for mass murder such as yourself.’
‘To make a proper argument or ‘apology’ for Christianity, the apologist must speak in the same language as his hearer.’
Case closed gentlemen.
DrDre said:
I think the fact, that there’s going to be at least one Star Wars film every year, is going to change the way people view these films. Before you only had one film every three years at best, and zero for more than a decade at worst. Expectations were understandably enormous, as the next film had to be awesome. In the future there’s going to be a Star Wars movie for everyone, as there will be dozens to choose from.
The 19 month gap between Solo this May and EP IX in December next year will actually seem like quite a long one in contrast!
It will be interesting to see whether the ‘event’ aspect of a Star Wars movie does decline with more releases. The assumption is that it will, but then again media exposure and the general pace of life has accelerated an awful amount in the past decade that maybe even year long waits will seem like a long time.
The James Bond model of releasing a movie roughly every couple of years has still yielded high BO returns and buzz. The Marvel Universe model has successfully sustained an even faster release schedule.
I know some people see one SW film they don’t like and then say “that’s it - Im boycotting and quitting SW fandom, won’t watch any more” but I think time’s have changed and you have to accept that the upcoming films will each have different directors and different approaches. Like Bond and Marvel some will be fantastic and some will be ‘lesser’.
The Empire Strikes Back received mixed reviews initially when it was released. Over time it’s now regarded as one of the better entries of the saga. I think it will be the same with The Last Jedi.
It already is regarded as one of the better entries in the saga. Metacritic has it as 85% positive from critics…
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/star-wars-episode-viii---the-last-jedi
I think its also a fair point that ‘time’ may allow opinions to shift, particularly as it is a middle film of a yet unfinished trilogy. The weird ‘Mary Sue’ reactionary stuff that Adywan just alluded to will also hopefully become a relic of the past, and let us hope that in ten years from now people will be more accepting of diversity and female leads.
(2) The “it’s just a kids’ fantasy” argument presupposes that we should accept lower storytelling standards for kids’ stories. Which makes zero sense.
(3) Why should Star Wars be viewed as necessarily /or/ only for kids, or considered only from a kid’s point of view? This presupposes that science-fantasy is only a child’s genre, and/or that Star Wars as a franchise can’t or shouldn’t mature in its storytelling. Yet for some reason the TLJ apologists have no problem with its obvious adult themes. The themes themselves are entirely valid; its the execution that was sorely lacking, and in fact unjustifiable.
TLJ Apologists eh?! This “presupposes” (your fave word) that the majority opinion is that it’s a bad film. Given the fantastic review scores and amazing box office results from repeat viewings, this makes zero sense and is in fact unjustifiable. Lol.
Please read the 10 or so posts regarding the word “apologist” and how it’s only a negative term if you don’t understand the meaning of the word.
Lol, I hope this is a joke!
"An apologist is a person who argues in favor of something unpopular. … Apologists tend to be seen in a negative light, as defensive people who make excuses. The word apologist comes from the Greek word apologia, meaning speaking in defense. “an enthusiastic apologist for fascism in the 1920s”
(2) The “it’s just a kids’ fantasy” argument presupposes that we should accept lower storytelling standards for kids’ stories. Which makes zero sense.
(3) Why should Star Wars be viewed as necessarily /or/ only for kids, or considered only from a kid’s point of view? This presupposes that science-fantasy is only a child’s genre, and/or that Star Wars as a franchise can’t or shouldn’t mature in its storytelling. Yet for some reason the TLJ apologists have no problem with its obvious adult themes. The themes themselves are entirely valid; its the execution that was sorely lacking, and in fact unjustifiable.
TLJ Apologists eh?! This “presupposes” (your fave word) that the majority opinion is that it’s a bad film. Given the fantastic review scores and amazing box office results from repeat viewings, this makes zero sense and is in fact unjustifiable. Lol.
Episode IX releases in theaters December 2019, so a blu-ray release in 2020, ad sometime after that will be an inevitable new boxed set that includes the entire saga (late 2020? early 2021? other?). I wonder if it will be 4K and will it contain the unaltered originals?
Disney will probably be clever and only include the unaltered originals in the 4K full saga box set. The only way to own the unaltered originals is to also buy Attack Of The Clones - that is the heavy price you must pay!
I cant even begin to imagine how bad some of the CG in the prequels will look in 4K a couple of years from now. I know Star Wars and ‘Special Editions’ don’t have a great track record, but if Disney came out and announced they were modernising the Prequels CGI up to present day standards for a Special Edition then I wouldn’t object!
Someone writes a long ‘negative’ dissertation.
Didn’t your grandmother tell you “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all”.
There’s some truth to the notion that positivity is more inspiring and engaging than negativity. The context of this being a kids film further adds to the ‘whiny entitled fanboy’ feeling one gets when reading such post.
The guy also flagged so many points of grievance that it becomes impossible to reply to with anything other than ‘get a life’ style comment (just one or two and we could have debated).
Not too long ago, in a theater full of people far, far from fortunate…
Wow, that’s one of the longest posts I’ve read in a while. I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but at the same time my frustration with TLJ, and the ST has taken somewhat of a backseat to just enjoying some of the good stuff.
I’m liking the new, more relaxed DrDre. Honestly, we do all need a reality check sometimes - seeing this 5000 word dissertation about all the grievances this guy has with a kids fantasy movie is a good reminder of that!
I also feel I should apologise for giving you a hard time over your views, I still don’t agree with most of the negativity but I am sorry if I made it too personal.
