NeverarGreat

At least the surface level is full of fun banter and whiz bang action, which is more can be said for AOTC.

Thinking about the opening to TLJ, perhaps we could go crazy and break convention:

After the ‘a long time ago’, open on the blackness of space. A light appears in the stars, glowing red and getting larger. A beam of energy streaks across the frame, and descends on the world of Hosnian Prime. Sella and others look up in horror as the beam incinerates the planet. Cut to black.

STAR WARS

Catastrophe! On the eve of a declaration of war, the New Republic has been devastated by a mysterious weapon from beyond the stars.

Determined to complete their victory, the First Order has tracked the shattered remnants of the Republic fleet to the planet D’Qar, determined to capture General Leia Organa and the location of the last Jedi.

With not a moment to spare, Leia orders an immediate evacuation, desperate to preserve the last spark of hope for a return of galactic peace…

Also: Make it clear in the crawl for TLJ that the First Order is intent on capturing Leia instead of destroying her so that she can be compelled to tell them Luke’s location. This will require cutting some of Hux’s lines, but I think it would still track with the rest of the movie. Kylo intentionally avoids firing on Leia when he senses her on the bridge, and Snoke only decides to wipe out the Resistance after he has the location of the island from Rey.

This allows for the TROS scene of the planet destroying to stay in TROS as a visual reminder of what the mysterious weapon must have been. I also like that only the Emperor is able to actually destroy planets.

The plan of Palpatine comes into clearer view now. In TFA the goal is to corrupt Luke’s Jedi order with Snoke and kill Luke, and also corrupt the Senate. In this way he would win without ever firing a shot. However since Luke disappears and the Resistance is formed to find him, he is forced to send the First Order out looking. Hux actually throws a spanner in the works with his failed Starkiller idea, which turns the Senate to seriously declaring war on the First Order, and requires him to destroy the Senate and fleet altogether. Then with Luke’s death he feels able to openly declare his supremacy, not counting on Luke’s effect on the galaxy and the existence of Rey.

Valheru_84 said:

NeverarGreat said:

I liked it.

NeverarGreat said:
…

The crawl lands like a passenger airline on an L.A. expressway and crashes into the first scene, killing everyone. I don’t know if Kylo was fighting the Knights of Ren or helping them kill some other people and I don’t think it matters. What matters is that while rooting around in the garbage behind Rian’s apartment JJ also managed to rescue the pieces of Kylo’s mask and welded them back together with his own blood. An alien tells R2 via SATA cable that Sheeve is back and has to outrun some TIE fighters, but makes them so mad that they forget they can’t go into Hyperspace for a minute, but they can’t catch the Falcon because it has gone so fast that it is on fire.

Meanwhile Rey is in the jungle with too much Force power and little by little is going insane.

Everyone decides to get out of the jungle and go to the desert to find a magical D4 or a dagger or something that leads to Sheeve. Rey gets a nice necklace from an alien and then has it immediately stolen by Kylo despite him not being there, and who is apparently jealous that someone else is giving her jewelry. They find the Horcrux after conquering Devil’s Snare and befriending the Basilisk, but it is stolen by some bad Quiddich players who also make off with its bearer, Chewbacca. Rey shoots spells at them and blows them up and is sad about killing Chewie, whom she doesn’t sense in the transport during any of this despite that being something she can do effortlessly.

Kylo flies straight at Rey with an entire spaceship and loses. This is the most normal part of the scene.

Anyway, C-3PO needs to nuke his hard drive to read some Black Speech and to do that they need a hacker, so they go to a planet where the First Order is harvesting babies to meet Poe’s old buddy Mask Lady and her puppet friend. Mask Lady has a medallion that makes the First Order act extra stupid for one scene and gives it to Poe, who immediately spends it, and this makes Hux stupid for the rest of his dumb life. It also allows our heroes to rescue Chewie, who was only dead inside, and also steal the dagger from the prop department before they could finish it.

The Falcon crashes onto Endor because it has no landing gear and is too tired at this point to hover.

Rey goes to the complex of Extremely Expensive and Devastating Distractions (E2-D2) and is distracted by an evil version of herself into rolling a 1 on her magic D4, causing it to be picked up by Kylo who then fights her. She rolls another 1, and is defeated. Leia must spend her last action on an E2-D2, and when Kylo rolls to save he is defeated as well. Rey has a free action which she uses to heal Kylo, then takes the D4 and Kylo’s second spaceship to Luke’s island, where it bursts into flames. It is unclear whether this is simply how Kylo’s spaceships are designed to land.

Luke demands that Rey leave and throws his gross, waterlogged spaceship at her.

Rey finally faces Sheeve, champing at the bit to finally kill this monster. Sheeve gleefully cackles that he wants Rey to kill him so that his consciousness may flow into her and he will be immortal, and then checks himself with a ‘shit, did I really say that out loud’ expression. This ruins his whole plan.

Meanwhile, Rose, Finn and Jannah.

Meanwhile there are many Star Destroyers and, in keeping with their namesake, each one is capable of destroying an entire planet.

Meanwhile, the Falcon visits approximately 1,138 planets on its newly installed Recruitment Drive.

Kylo reminds everyone that he is still in the movie but he has foolishly thrown away his lightsaber after hallucinating an image of his dead father. Luckily, Rey has an extra one from where Luke was throwing things at her, and distracts the editor long enough to phase between locations and give it to him. They both face Sheeve, who drains them of their will to live and then gets to work on their life force. He throws Kylo down a big pit, knowing that this will surely kill him.

There is a cavalry charge on top of a spaceship. This is the most normal part of the scene.

Meanwhile, Klaud.

I forget how Sheeve dies. I blame Klaud. Maybe Klaud did it. Maybe he did all of this. I don’t know anymore.

Rey dies. Kylo emerges from the pit and brings Rey back to life at the cost of his own. Rey, upon awakening and seeking Kylo dead, brings Kylo back to life at the cost of her own. This continues for some time. They kiss. One of them dies, I don’t care which.

At the end there is a funeral for Snap Wexley and he posthumously gets the medal intended for Chewie. There are cheers and warm embraces, all live in the light of a new day for this, the galaxy reborn. The yoke of the First Order, which has lain heavy across much of the galaxy for a few weeks, has been lifted. The Rule of Palpatine, which lasted for thirty years and eight hours, is ended forever. Bask in this light, galaxy of peace.

Rey gets a yellow lightsaber. The camera falls to the ground, where it continues recording for several seconds.

One of these quotes is sarcastic as hell, from my understanding of the movie though I’m not sure which one it is…

Both statements are quite true. I liked it despite how it was a cavalcade of nonsense. I think ChainsawAsh and I liked it for similar reasons, actually. There is no serious defense of it. It’s just something that can’t be taken too seriously.

Here’s how I might restructure the villain’s plan for the trilogy:

TFA

The crawl establishes that the First Order is intent on killing the last of the Jedi. This is the most important thing for them, though it is unclear why.

The Starkiller is multi-purpose. The interior has been hollowed out through mining to supply the ores necessary for the First Order/Palpatine’s fleet. After this it has been retrofitted as an experimental weapon by ambitious First Order leadership spearheaded by Hux. The fact that it was first used as a forge could be a mystery in TFA or only hinted at, but explained later on.

After Kor Sella is sent to the Senate the base begins charging, and everything from Restructured happens as planned except that the base is destroyed before it can fire like in the original. The Republic is not destroyed.

There are hints as to the true size of the hidden fleet and their provenance, perhaps placed into one of Rey’s visions or in Kylo’s interrogation of Poe.

TLJ

The crawl establishes that Kor Sella’s mission to the Senate has been a success and the Republic is in the process of relocating its fleet to D’Qar to bolster the Resistance forces.

However a Star Destroyer appears before the fleet is fully assembled and wipes out the planet (This uses footage from TROS and TFA). Only a few ships escape to join the Resistance, and these, we later learn, were tracked.

Cut to the island where Rey tries to convince Luke to join the fight. She doesn’t know that the Republic is gone, so doesn’t tell him that the First Order is on the verge of victory. Since Luke isn’t connected to the Force he can’t feel such a loss anyway.

Cut back to the Resistance base and Hux’s forces arrive to cut off their retreat. Cut the jokey attitude of the Resistance characters to match the grave knowledge that the Republic has been destroyed.

The film carries on much as before except that the final scene shows Kylo Ren finding Palpatine and his fleet instead of showing the Broom Boy scene.

TROS (or THE FINAL ORDER)

The crawl states that the First Order is moving quickly to gain control of the galaxy.

The first scene is Palpatine’s message to the galaxy. The full threat of his fleet is revealed.

Our heroes rush to find the Sith artifacts required to locate the Sith planet, etc.

The defeat of the First and Final Orders shows a montage of planets rejoicing, prefaced with Broom Boy relating Luke’s inspirational visage which reignited hope in the galaxy. This is bookended by him walking outside and seeing a First Order Star Destroyer broken and burning in the night sky above.

Rey visits the homestead. End Credits.

Broom Kid said:

Star Wars was never a “niche” genre. It’s not a genre unto itself (despite various people’s attempts to make it as such) either. And if you see a similarity between superheroes and fantasy-based mythologies, it’s because they both draw from the same ideas. Jedi are, more or less, superheroes.

In 1977, what Lucas was doing with Star Wars was visually unlike anything ever tried within the sci-fi/fantasy genres, and it was also considered to be FAST. Very, very fast. It seems slow now, but in 1977 the editing and pacing of that movie was considered breakneck. You’re arguing it has to look and feel like it did in 1977 and that’s death. It’s got to speak to the kids who are watching the movies in the time period they’re coming out, so they can grab onto it without having to read a bunch of wikipedia entries or watch a bunch of YouTube videos to find a hook or an “in” for the movies.

Parts of Star Wars were fast for the time, but the first half of the film was fairly normal in pacing for the time, and even a bit slow at times in order to take the time to draw the audience into that world. You are acting as though filmmaking is fundamentally different forty or fifty years on, whereas there are movies being made right now which are paced and edited like Star Wars or to be even slower. Sure, most are faster, but take something like The Adventures of Robin Hood. That movie is a briskly paced breeze and came out decades before Star Wars. Immersing the audience in a world takes time, and to judge by popular consensus the new movie simply doesn’t allow for that in its breakneck pace.

If it shares the same visual language with other movies they like, and then uses that shared language to introduce new ideas on top of that, then it works! Part of the reason The Force Awakens made as much money as it did is BECAUSE it moved like an Abrams film while looking like a Star Wars movie, for lack of a better term. All the iconography people recognized for 40 years was being lit, shot, framed, and edited in a way they’d never seen it before, and that was EXCITING. It wasn’t JUST nostalgia at play. The filmmaking DID matter.

Everyone is different and has different tastes. For me it was a big turn-off to see the Abrams style and boilerplate blockbuster CGI effects applied to the Star Wars universe. Even the prequels had a more iconic aesthetic in their CGI than the sequel trilogy. Filmmaking does matter. Rogue One managed to get a ‘model’ look to most of their ships because Gareth Edwards worked hard with the art department to make the film feel of a piece with the universe and pushed the CGI in a new direction from what is usually seen, and people loved it. As for the rest of the elements at play in TFA, the choices are very much geared towards an action movie aesthetic and this can be hard to reconcile with the (at best) adventure genre of Star Wars.

There’s no real reason to handcuff directors and cinematographers who have more -and better- tools, to styles developed 40 years ago. Or even 30 years ago. It just doesn’t make sense. Star Wars can’t be hermetically sealed off like that, it’s going to suffocate that way. And it’s not like other films and filmmakers are going to sit around and decline using those tools to tell their own stories. People are going to go to the theaters not to hear new stories, because most stories have almost NOTHING new to them. But they will go to see new ways of telling them. Star Wars needs to be part of that. If that means whip pans, crazy camera moves, speed ramping… so be it. So long as the tool is right for the story element being executed, to quote a certain Chancellor: DEW IT.

Nobody is suggesting that Star Wars be handcuffed to an old way of filmmaking. George Lucas was pushing the boundaries of the technical craft all the way through the OT and the PT. Star Wars has always existed on the frontier of technology, in fact one of the reasons the ST feels so stale is because it stopped being innovative and started blending into the industry standard for effects. You can still innovate on effects while remaining true to the feeling of a classic tale.

Maybe Spielberg from 20 years ago could do it. I don’t know. With so many attempts, surely someone will figure out the precise formula that works. Since nobody has it all, it will probably be a team effort from writers like Filoni working on the worldbuilding and more film-centric writers being allowed to hone a script/storyboard until it becomes decent in a sort of Pixar development process. After going through an art director with a strong sense of simple, powerful design most directors would be able to make a decent film, but for a great one you’d need a director who could balance swashbuckling action with high romance and a dash of monster movie camp, among other things. These are after all fantasy fairy tales.

The original movies were all great because they were collaborative efforts from people at the top of their game and on the forefront of the craft of moviemaking. Disney needs to replicate that in some form.

I can’t think of a single director who would be a great fit for Star Wars. It’s clear after five films that nobody so far has the special sauce.

JJ has an eye for likeable characters and has a clear love for the universe, but is incapable of crafting a story around it.

Gareth Edwards makes gorgeous compositions and understands the importance of worldbuilding, but can’t seem to make an interesting character to save his life.

Lord/Miller/Howard made a passable popcorn movie but nothing that captured the spirit of the Star Wars universe.

Rian has an excellent grasp of theme and plot and cinematography, but seems so interested in crafting a postmodernist message that the overall story and characters suffer as a result.

All of these directors have brought something sorely lacking in the others, and none of them have it all.

The more I think about Palpatine’s survival, the more I like it. Here’s why:

• The act of Anakin which turns him back to the light does not result in a murder. The lasting legacy of his action is that of saving Luke, not in destroying the Emperor.

• Related to the first point, Anakin’s destiny is never to fulfill a prophecy. The balance that he achieves is an inward one, rather than outward.

• Anakin’s overthrow of Palpatine results in him being horribly mutilated beyond what happened in Episode 3, and requires him to be hooked up to machines for thirty years in a twisted act of cosmic justice.

• This turns ROTJ into a dark cliffhanger with the addition of something as simple as the Emperor’s laugh at the end of the credits.

• As I’ve said before, the explanation of Sheeve’s plan for immortality makes sense of the nonsensical Sith lore and goes a long way towards explaining his silly actions in the throne room scene from ROTJ.

Hal 9000 said:

I think JJ (not necessarily just the man but the collective of all the “filmmakers” and suits involved) felt inadequate and so self-sabotaged the story.

Sometimes you don’t have it in you to do something good, so you opt to do something intentionally dumb, hoping charm will pull it off.

I offer the following Christmas cookie as evidence:

atleastyoutried.gif

I was thinking the night before seeing TROS about a more radical version of this edit where I cut out the opening scene entirely and maybe a few other little scenes in an attempt to have a more gradual, atmospheric opening. It’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since making the mockup of the false starfield open but the first scene feels very important for a lot of characters. It is the introduction of Poe, Tekka, Kylo, and Finn. However, most of these character introductions are problematic in this scene and create slightly or mostly false impressions of future character arcs:

Poe - He’s fairly one-note throughout the film, so cutting his scene here doesn’t feel too destructive except that it removes even more of his character minutes.

Tekka - He dies in this scene and isn’t mentioned afterwards, so cutting this character doesn’t really hurt the film.

Finn - This is important stuff for him, but I’d argue that beginning his journey with shock at the death of a comrade paints a picture of a trooper now driven by conscience and compassion and refusing to take any life, especially those of his brothers and sisters in arms. This is proven false again and again throughout the film so taking out this moment might do more good than bad. I think the moment of him refusing to fire on the civilians is necessary to keep, but I have an idea about that.

Kylo - This edit paints Kylo in a more conflicted light. As such his cutting down of an unarmed civilian and ordering the murder of the whole village makes him far too villainous, especially considering later events in the saga. Other than Tekka’s murder, Kylo doesn’t kill anyone onscreen until Han so it’s more plausible that he will turn.

Removing this scene allows the edit to open on Rey and her life. BB-8 is a total mystery to the audience when Rey finds him, and only in the following interrogation do we learn of his importance. Cut from Rey and BB-8 walking home to the house at night, where BB-8 looks into the sky and bring in the opening shot of the film of the destroyer eclipsing the moon, sans transports. The interrogation could be expanded to include some voiceover from Tekka establishing the map and its importance. Cutting back to BB-8 at the house after the interrogation wouldn’t feel so out of place if it merely bookends the interrogation, then we move into the rescue and our first image of Finn.

As for Finn’s moment on the firing line, it could be placed after Finn’s big confession in Rey’s Force vision after the image of Luke and R2. Using the footage from the trailer without the added rain, move from that orange and firey scene to the burning village and Finn refusing to fire on the villagers. This would segue more cleanly into Rey’s past in the desert.

idir_hh said:

Is there any way of reinstating Hux’s speach?

^If you are referring to Hux’s rally about the death of the Republic, it’s still there, just after Han and Leia have their talk.

That’s actually not a bad idea.

That’s very cool, but isn’t it kind of nullified with Maz’s line ‘It will take the rest of Leia’s power to do such and such’?

DominicCobb said:

Nev, aren’t you using lines from Lego Star Wars in your edit? Did you just pull from what’s available on Youtube?

I am.

But the audio came from fishmanlee, I believe. I recall asking for the TFA soundtrack and he asked if I would like the Lego game audio as well.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/JOHN-WILLIAMS-Star-Wars-Episode-VII-The-Force-Awakens-Complete-Score-Edit-Some-SFX-REVISED-VERSION-AVAILABLE/id/49168

At least, I think that’s what happened. You could ask him and if he doesn’t have them available just shoot me a PM.

One thing that I really like about this movie is that it confirms this lorecrafting that I did in early 2018

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/This-Snoke-Theory-is-Wrong/id/58545

While I didn’t think they’d go the Palpatine angle, they still had the core of the idea for this which makes a lot of sense out of the Sith’s nonsense rule of two.

I’m sure it’s not a particularly popular aspect of the movie with vast swaths of the fanbase, such as those who liked Anakin as the actual chosen one and those who disliked bringing back Palpatine. That probably accounts for most people, actually. But I liked it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsEkLGQthMk

And even though this movie is so wonderful in its shlockiness…

https://youtu.be/fpRTyRdAwxM?t=20

I FORGOT TO MENTION THE SNOKE CLONES IN A VAT!

That was the best part.

I’m going to let this film sit a while before making a definite plans, but as it stands now this movie feels perfect. Even the trash opening is important to set the expectation for what is to come - a madcap rocket of maximum shlock. It’s kind of wonderful in that way, and I’ve been laughing at its beautiful absurdities for hours now.

This high will surely end sooner or later, but for now, I’m going to enjoy this film no edit required.

Perhaps, I never read those though.

Hal 9000 said:

JEDIT: (Regarding NeverArGreat)

Spot on. Thanks for writing it.

You’re welcome. Despite the snark I really did enjoy it. It felt like a fairly good old EU novel, and that was far more than I expected.

I saw this early this morning on two hours of sleep and I haven’t had any more, so I’m definitely in a fit state to talk about this film.

I liked it.

The crawl lands like a passenger airline on an L.A. expressway and crashes into the first scene, killing everyone. I don’t know if Kylo was fighting the Knights of Ren or helping them kill some other people and I don’t think it matters. What matters is that while rooting around in the garbage behind Rian’s apartment JJ also managed to rescue the pieces of Kylo’s mask and welded them back together with his own blood. An alien tells R2 via SATA cable that Sheeve is back and has to outrun some TIE fighters, but makes them so mad that they forget they can’t go into Hyperspace for a minute, but they can’t catch the Falcon because it has gone so fast that it is on fire.

Meanwhile Rey is in the jungle with too much Force power and little by little is going insane.

Everyone decides to get out of the jungle and go to the desert to find a magical D4 or a dagger or something that leads to Sheeve. Rey gets a nice necklace from an alien and then has it immediately stolen by Kylo despite him not being there, and who is apparently jealous that someone else is giving her jewelry. They find the Horcrux after conquering Devil’s Snare and befriending the Basilisk, but it is stolen by some bad Quiddich players who also make off with its bearer, Chewbacca. Rey shoots spells at them and blows them up and is sad about killing Chewie, whom she doesn’t sense in the transport during any of this despite that being something she can do effortlessly.

Kylo flies straight at Rey with an entire spaceship and loses. This is the most normal part of the scene.

Anyway, C-3PO needs to nuke his hard drive to read some Black Speech and to do that they need a hacker, so they go to a planet where the First Order is harvesting babies to meet Poe’s old buddy Mask Lady and her puppet friend. Mask Lady has a medallion that makes the First Order act extra stupid for one scene and gives it to Poe, who immediately spends it, and this makes Hux stupid for the rest of his dumb life. It also allows our heroes to rescue Chewie, who was only dead inside, and also steal the dagger from the prop department before they could finish it.

The Falcon crashes onto Endor because it has no landing gear and is too tired at this point to hover.

Rey goes to the complex of Extremely Expensive and Devastating Distractions (E2-D2) and is distracted by an evil version of herself into rolling a 1 on her magic D4, causing it to be picked up by Kylo who then fights her. She rolls another 1, and is defeated. Leia must spend her last action on an E2-D2, and when Kylo rolls to save he is defeated as well. Rey has a free action which she uses to heal Kylo, then takes the D4 and Kylo’s second spaceship to Luke’s island, where it bursts into flames. It is unclear whether this is simply how Kylo’s spaceships are designed to land.

Luke demands that Rey leave and throws his gross, waterlogged spaceship at her.

Rey finally faces Sheeve, champing at the bit to finally kill this monster. Sheeve gleefully cackles that he wants Rey to kill him so that his consciousness may flow into her and he will be immortal, and then checks himself with a ‘shit, did I really say that out loud’ expression. This ruins his whole plan.

Meanwhile, Rose, Finn and Jannah.

Meanwhile there are many Star Destroyers and, in keeping with their namesake, each one is capable of destroying an entire planet.

Meanwhile, the Falcon visits approximately 1,138 planets on its newly installed Recruitment Drive.

Kylo reminds everyone that he is still in the movie but he has foolishly thrown away his lightsaber after hallucinating an image of his dead father. Luckily, Rey has an extra one from where Luke was throwing things at her, and distracts the editor long enough to phase between locations and give it to him. They both face Sheeve, who drains them of their will to live and then gets to work on their life force. He throws Kylo down a big pit, knowing that this will surely kill him.

There is a cavalry charge on top of a spaceship. This is the most normal part of the scene.

Meanwhile, Klaud.

I forget how Sheeve dies. I blame Klaud. Maybe Klaud did it. Maybe he did all of this. I don’t know anymore.

Rey dies. Kylo emerges from the pit and brings Rey back to life at the cost of his own. Rey, upon awakening and seeking Kylo dead, brings Kylo back to life at the cost of her own. This continues for some time. They kiss. One of them dies, I don’t care which.

At the end there is a funeral for Snap Wexley and he posthumously gets the medal intended for Chewie. There are cheers and warm embraces, all live in the light of a new day for this, the galaxy reborn. The yoke of the First Order, which has lain heavy across much of the galaxy for a few weeks, has been lifted. The Rule of Palpatine, which lasted for thirty years and eight hours, is ended forever. Bask in this light, galaxy of peace.

Rey gets a yellow lightsaber. The camera falls to the ground, where it continues recording for several seconds.

Thank you for making this topic. I also take issue with much of JJ’s style, to the point that many scenes in TFA (and I’m sure in TROS which I see tomorrow) don’t feel like they share any of the previously established cinematographic language of Star Wars.

Take for example the opening scene of TFA. We begin with the classic pan down on a moon or two which are quickly eclipsed by a Star Destroyer belching landing craft. This is a strong visual in keeping with the established style of Star Wars, but almost immediately we get a flashing, shaky series of shots depicting the new Stormtroopers. Compare this introduction with the introduction of the Stormtroopers in ANH; There are similar flashes but happen due to explosions and laser blasts, and there are several cuts but they are all focused on the back and forth between the Troopers and Rebels. So we see that this shot intends to mimic the action of the original without the underlying substance.

Moving on to the shot of BB-8, and here we begin to see how dynamic JJ’s camera is in comparison to those of the other Star Wars canon. The camera spins around the droid and zooms in on its head so that it takes up most of the frame, and then pans up as the droid scoots away. This could have been several static shots in ANH.

Inside the hut of Lor San Tekka, the camera begins in closeup on the map and continues in medium/closeup shots throughout. The color of this is saturated, with bright blue lights of unknown purpose shining through holes in the structure.

Over the rest of the scene, this language is repeated. Dynamic moving cameras of characters running or fighting, shaky cam, vivid splotches of moving color, closeups.

So what is the effect of these techniques? Again, compare this to ANH. Even in the Tantive the camera was often locked down to static shots, and the momentum often came from the quickness of the cuts and the movement of the actors themselves. There were occasional tracking or dolly shots focused on characters walking down hallways, but the action largely took place in single locations with tripod camerawork. One effect of this was that the viewer’s eye was not drawn to a subject by the camera itself but by the subject’s own action. Thus a viewer could choose to look instead at the set or the details of costuming without hindrance. This was a more documentary style, more agnostic about the purpose of a scene.

In contrast, JJ’s cinematography leaves no doubt as to the intention of a scene. Visual stimulus is maximized in an attempt to generate excitement through the style of the director instead of the details of the world or the performance of the actors or the story of the film. And this is why I feel that this style is fundamentally at odds with Star Wars - this universe is about immersion in a detailed world to the point that one hopefully forgets about the existence of the camera and absorbs the story and world on its own terms. In ANH the camera becomes a window into the world, whereas JJ’s camera is merely a camera.

I have honestly never seen TFA on the bottom of a ranking like that, or for that matter below the first two prequels.

JKMaxx said:

I got a chance to sit down and watch the whole edit last night, and I thought it was a treat! I can’t offer technical feedback in the way ziggyonice did, but I will offer some of the thoughts I had while watching.

From the jump I loved the Jakku regrade, it does a lot to showcase the idea of Jakku as a kind of purgatory. Just the simple brighter colors make it look much more hot and miserable, so when Rey keeps insisting she has to go back there’s even more of a feeling of “Why would you ever want to?” to it. In addition with the scenes of her scavenging and fighting and tinkering, it really hammers home that this is really all she’s been doing all day long for most of her life.

So glad you like the grade. I was worried that it might be too bright (and in some cases I’m still planning on toning down the highlights due to clipping issues) but overall I’m pleased.

I particularly enjoyed the darker undertones to Rey as well, and the whispers/voices that accompany her Force feats definitely shine. She’s obviously a person with issues and, as Snoke and Kylo said, a lot of latent ability, and especially having just watched the rest of the saga and Clone Wars, Rebels and so on, it’s clear cut that she is on a dangerous path. She has no formal training yet already taps so deeply into these emotions and into her buried feelings of being left behind in order to get ahead. I think this leads quite well into Luke’s horror in TLJ when he accuses her of going straight to the dark. I’ll be seeing TROS this evening, but I’m hoping that it will continue the themes of Rey being far closer than she knows to falling. I personally never really clicked with the complaints of Rey being a Mary Sue, but I do think were someone who does to watch this edit they might feel that there’s better reason for her to do the things she does.

Yeah, my intention to give her more reason for her power was actually secondary. The primary reason I wanted much of her power to flow from a dark place was because it gives her a much stronger internal struggle, as if she’s well-composed on the outside and outwardly quite competent but at the cost of burying her lifelong traumas beneath the surface. All this existed in the original of course, but the Dark Side angle helps to throw it into sharper relief.

I absolutely loved the Leia and Han voiceovers when Han touches Kylo’s saber, especially after coming off of the psychometry in Jedi: Fallen Order and seeing Kylo dig around in Poe and Rey’s minds, and with the SFX used. It plays out so naturally and matches up so well with the expressions on Kylo’s face that it feels like a part of the original scene. Bravo on that! I do agree that Leia seems to react pretty late.

That’s quite a relief to hear, it was one of the changes I was most worried about. The Leia reaction unfortunately must stay where it is unless I restructured that section back to the way it was which would leave a hole between the Oscillator X-wing damage and the end of the lightsaber fight.

I remember reading somewhere in this thread that you intended to place in some kind of voice that names Hosnian Prime when Starkiller Base is preparing to fire, and I definitely think that would help since we as viewers have no reason to know that isn’t Coruscant unless we’ve read some EU material. Likewise, the transition from Takodana to D’Qar is not immediately apparant, in my opinion. I don’t believe it’s ever stated that they’ve gone to a different planet, and I remember when I first watched TFA I thought that it was a different place on the same planet as Maz’s castle. Some kind of throwaway line to contextualize that, maybe just a simple “Welcome to planet D’Qar” or something, might go a long way on that matter, more so than a wipe transition and suddenly we’re somewhere completely different that also is green and pretty.

I wonder if regrading Takodana to sunset will help with that transition. In Restructured I had to cut a lot of the establishing shot of D’Qar for music purposes, so that certainly doesn’t help.

As for naming the Hosnian system, the only time it is mentioned is by Poe in the original, which was of course cut. I’ve included a faint version of that line in the final scenes of the film (has anyone picked up on that yet?) but I agree that it needs to happen before it is destroyed. There’s just no way I can see of doing it short of recording new dialogue.

In all, I feel absolutely that your hard work has paid off in spades, and that you’ve already made the definitive fan edit of The Force Awakens for hardcore fans and to show to newbies alike. I believe that your future plans such as new alien subtitles, voiceover for TR-8R, Phasma triggering the silent alarm and so on will only serve to make it even better. Once more, bravo!

Thank you very much!

dgraham414 said:

Only have been able to watch half of it but I must say the change in color when Kylo first takes off his mask is amazing and helps that scene so much!

Excellent. I’m sure someone will still say it’s too dark and I’ve gone and crushed the black levels (it’s all true) but I think the benefit to a more shadowed and frightening Kylo is worth it.