Reminder that in the theatrical version of TROS, the Snoke tank was much more yellow than the green one in Bad Batch, and there’s also a red tank in the background of TROS theatrical.
So even in canon there’s a rainbow of tank colors and it doesn’t matter. The one chosen for Palpatine should be purely aesthetic, and red is good for sith vibes.
Did a little more smoothing out on “I” and “am a.” Is it any better?
That’s great! Sounds like it could be a final cut to me.
Also forgot Bad Batch came out yesterday. Sounds like I should check that out.
I tried to address the “and” in my edit.
Ah, I thought I was still hearing a full “And I,” but listening again I guess I’m hearing more of a “nI” now. Is it possible to cut the start of her audio a bit closer to the I, or is it basically as cut as it can be for now without alternate sources for the “I” sound? Or is the “n” at the start needed as a sort of grunt to match her lips in the moment?
Or maybe it’s just my ears playing tricks on me at this point. I’m sure we’ve all rewatched TROS more times than a person ever should.
Now I’m picturing Rey putting 500 sabers behind her back, Ben pulling them out one after the other like a magician pulling a string of handkerchiefs, as Palpatine and the Knights of Ren watch patiently.
Or maybe “1000 lightsabers to Exogol” is metaphysical. When the force ghosts appear in jonh’s edit of the final battle, have all of them ignite ghostly lightsabers. Then use edited Attack of the Clones footage to have ghostly Jedi appear and light up their lightsabers throughout the grand stands of Palpatine’s arena.
If memory serves, Sade did put together a version that ended with the “You are nothing” line; but exactly as Burbin said, we felt that the pacing and flow of the dialogue was best with this version.
To be fair, Sade also said in that same conversation that “I am a Jedi” wouldn’t feel climactic and that it probably couldn’t work believably. And the main criticism people had of his mock-up of “nothing” was that it didn’t work well in the specific shot he moved the line, which I agree with and am not necessarily proposing, and that there was too much dead air at the beginning of the scene without its original placement (which might be fixable, but maybe not).
And I also agree with Burbin that it’s kind of fun, looking at the whole trilogy, to say “You’re just a scavenger.” “Not anymore, bitch. Now I’m a Jedi!”
If he were actually saying “you’re just a scavenger” I’d agree, but the way he says it is “a scavenger girl is no match for the power in me.” That statement is more of a declaration rather than directly addressing Rey in conversation, and Rey’s response doesn’t address him directly either (as “Not anymore, bitch” would, lol). I just think that if I saw that ordering in the theater, I would think they accidentally cut a sentence out of the middle of the conversation.
As for her saying “No…,” I think following up “scavenger” or “nothing” with Rey saying “And…” doesn’t really make sense, because it means she’s not actually rejecting either of those things. If the final Palpatine line isn’t “sith,” something needs to be done about “And…,” whether it’s “No…” or something else.
I don’t think “scavenger” being the last line works as well as a back-and-forth, though.
If Palpatine’s last line is “I am all the Sith” and Rey says “and I am all the Jedi,” then she’s following up his boast with her own (corny as it may be), and if his last line is “You are nothing” and she says “no, I am a Jedi,” then she’s refuting him and asserting herself. But if Palpatine says “a scavenger girl is not match for me” and Rey’s direct response is “and I am a Jedi,” it sounds odd, almost like they’re having two different conversations.
That’s why I think trying to get “nothing” in as the last line would be worth more investigation, because it also has that personal touch for Rey, arguably moreso. She’s always known she’s a scavenger (and she doesn’t get emotional when Poe brings it up in the same movie), but being called “nothing” by a dark sider specifically touches on her emotional low-point from the last movie and her core insecurity.
The original reason it was shot down was because there was no place to put the moved “you are nothing” line, but I think there is, if we tweak the order a little more. Forgive the following nonsense play-by-play description as I’m not in a place to try editing right now.
In the original movie, the order of the three lines is “Nothing, Scavenger, Sith.” In the original order, before Sith, where the shot is entirely on Palps, there is a good 4 seconds of no dialog where the camera goes front-Rey, close-up of lightsaber, side-Rey. In our current “Nothing, Sith, Scavenger” edited order, we use that 4 seconds for the first part of Scavenger, but I think we could put Nothing there instead. So if we made the dialog order “Scavenger, Sith, Nothing,” then Scavenger basically has its original placement back and Nothing has a new spot to safely go before the music build-up.
However, because of the way the 4 seconds ends, we might need to reorder those 4 seconds too. So instead of the shots being front-Rey, lightsaber, side-Rey, they could be front-Rey, side-Rey, lightsaber, allowing us to then transfer from the lightsaber close-up back to Rey’s face for the dramatic build-up of music and her saying “No…”
So… uh, yeah.
Haha, I thought someone must have suggested it earlier. I do think it’s the best option if it’s doable. I guess it was shot down almost immediately when you first brought it up, but I don’t think the demo did the idea justice, so I’m still curious if it’s really possible.
Different suggestion: could we believably dub Rey to say “No” during one of her mouth movements, cutting out her “and I?” Here’s what I’m thinking for the scene:
Palpatine: “I am all the sith! A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me! You are nothing!”
Rey: “No.” catches lightsaber “I am a Jedi.”
If the whole trilogy is Rey dealing with where she belongs, whether or not she’s a nobody, rejecting her dark heritage, and ultimately embracing her place in the Jedi/Skywalker legacy, this ordering/dubbing of dialog might make for a better finale for her arc. And it further reduces the Avengers Endgame comparison that we were already kinda trying to do.
I like how it’s looking/sounding so far!
Has anyone tried flipping Palpatine’s lines so he says “I am all the Sith, you are nothing, a scavenger girl is no match for the power in me”? Logically it flows slightly better in my opinion, but I don’t know if there’s enough coverage to put it together that way.
This is the big thing for me. “I am all the Sith” should be the last thing Palpatine says, because it flows way better into Rey’s line.
In the cave scene of TROS, when the flashlight gag happens, replace Poe’s flashlight with an actual lightsaber to eliminate the gag. The flashlight remains a lightsaber throughout the tunnel sequence, but it is never commented on.
On Kijimi, when Finn and Poe argue and Finn leaves to find Rey, show Finn taking that same lightsaber from Poe as he gives Poe the binoculars. In the hallway scene where Finn dramatically looks around, have him ignite the saber. The saber remains ignited as he runs toward Rey and calls her name, but when she pushes him back she also force-pulls the saber into her hand.
On Ach-To, cut everything about Leia and her training. When Rey “takes both sabers to Exegol,” it’s the Skywalker saber and the Finn/Poe saber.
Sorry if its been discussed already but the destruction of Kajimi has been removed
But now with talks of adding more of an uprising on the planet, would readding the destruction help?
It would slow the movie down ever so slightly, in a good way & shows us that they are willing to destroy whole planets on the whim of a little uprising.
I like the way they did the destruction practically. And I’m wondering how would it be a positive change to readd it
In theory, in a standalone kind of way, I can totally get where you’re coming from.
In a meta-sense, however, we’ve already had two Death Stars in the original trilogy, a Death Star planet that’s 5x stronger in TFA, and a broken Death Star as a location in TROS, so to then have every Star Destroyer also be a Death Star just absolutely kills any good will the movie has going for it. Audiences were rolling their eyes when Death Star II appeared in 1983, a bunch more were even more exasperated when they brought the idea back in 2015, and by the time I was watching TROS I was just laughing out loud while my friend yelled at the screen in confused frustration, both of us marveling at how stupid and creatively bankrupt the whole series (or at least Abrams) is. Destroying a planet is supposed to leave a huge impact, but it had already lost all impact in TFA (though Hal’s edit made it better) and it certainly didn’t have any left in TROS.
The less planet-destroying lasers, the better.
I’d just like to put out there that I don’t think “no one’s ever really gone” would be a good idea for a line. It had its place in VIII, and I get why they reused it for the IX teaser, but it might come across as too cynically meta if place in IX itself. I mean…
Also, that saber clip looks great Movies Remastered.
Not that it’s worth the effort (which would be immense), but looking at the previous page’s chat of Ben and Snoke, post-trilogy it would make more sense to have Ben and Palpatine in that vision.
Question regarding cutting down ZSJL-
What would be the most effective way to shorten Cyborg’s backstory?
I’d definitely cut down the weird vision sequence where his dad voice-overs his powers in excruciating-yet-vague detail. Don’t need to see the dumb bear and bull fighting as a metaphor, for example. Also don’t think we need “the challenge will be not doing these things” because that lesson never once matters in the movie and is eerily reminiscent of Pa Kent’s infamously horrible teachings in Man of Steel.
Physical releases are finally here…
😉
lmao
All these ideas are great but we seem to be going around in circles because there’s no one to actually execute the ideas being suggested?
I mean, that’s what most of this thread has been for the last several months, waiting for the old stuff like crackling sabers and fixed haircuts.
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/9000th-Post/id/86444
I’m so glad I was here to witness this occassion.
I’m suddenly remembering the scene in RotJ where a character speaking an alien language recounts the story of the previous movie to a cute group of childlike aliens.
This new puppet show is just making ST even more of an OT remake/knockoff lol. I think JJ would be proud we’re advancing his vision for the story.
Tiny nitpick, but do we need the alien to say “Skywalker” three times, or even twice? The second time it says Skywalker, it sounded to me a bit like it’s just reusing the same audio as the first time he says it, maybe it’s just because he pauses after the word both times. Maybe I’m being silly, but I’m just thinking of what the alien actor’s “translated script” could have been and wondering how the same word is used so often in just one or two sentences. Maybe replace one with “Jedi?”
On that note, I also wonder if the voice actor (I forget who exactly, my apologies) couldn’t ham it up just a little bit with their cadence and tone to better match what’s happening on screen in the final cut. Maybe a quick dramatic pause before Luke deflects the blast, then a little flair and excitement in their voice when it happens. Like, in a way the kids could be laughing at how he’s telling the story, and not just at the visual of the puppets.
I think it would be odd for a mere captain to be at the board meeting, seated right across from an allegiant general. And I think Hux has plenty of motivation from 7 and 8 to hate Kylo (not that he even liked him in the first place).
I think it’s best to leave “all of the sith” in. Rey’s reacting to that makes more sense than her reacting to any of his other lines, and it’s in-character for Palpatine’s last line to be over-the-top and full of confidence.
Hal wants to release a Rey Nobody version of Ascendant, but all the work on the specifics of Rey Nobody is being done in a different thread for the benefit of all editors: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/REY-NOBODY-The-Official-Fan-Editing-Thread/id/76772
Any discussion or scene edits of Rey Nobody should go there. This thread is still about Ascendant 2.0 and will be until it is released, which could be a while.
I’m sure someone out there has an edit of the opening that goes from the title crawl to Kylo in his ship, but there’s not a Hal-made Ascendant version. That idea was discussed and rejected long ago.
I think Leia appearing as a ghost in the Palpatine fight would hurt the payoff on Tatooine where Rey sees Leia, without adding enough to the Palpatine fight to compensate. Rey hearing Leia’s “always,” which Hal has already incorporated from the trailer, is satisfying enough without being distracting.
Maybe it’s just me, but when the ghosts appear against Palpatine, I see it as a kind of catharsis where these Jedi that have spent decades against The Sith are finally getting their due; Sidious is literally facing his ghosts. For Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Luke, that works and is satisfying enough, but for Leia? I’ve never had the impression from the movies that Leia and Palpatine had any real connection. Of course she was one of the major political and military opponents against the Empire as a whole, but she never had a big Jedi vs Sith connection, or a connection with Vader the way Luke did. Of course TROS finally introduces some more Jedi stuff for Leia, but in a fairly limited way, and if anything it felt more like the focus for Leia was on supporting Rey and saving Ben than battling Palpatine.
That many Jedi just makes it too comically busy, like I’d literally laugh if I saw that in the theater (as I did at many other things in TROS that this edit has tried to downplay). Qui-Gon died over a decade before the Emperor revealed himself and Windu doesn’t really have an emotional connection with the audience besides prequel nostalgia. Obi, Yoda, Luke, and Anakin are the ones that matter, and the only ones movie-watchers have already seen as ghosts.
Just have a regular, corporeal version of Ashoka walk in from stage right.
If Filoni had his way. Ahsoka is the Forrest Gump of Star Wars.
Alright I believe that the Vader’s castle stuff is all we’re going to use out of all this, then. I can’t think of anywhere else in the movie where the rest of these things could go. Unless I’m not thinking hard enough.
Ach-To shot could be used if Hal didn’t want to use the existing one anymore, but it may not be worth the effort.
