NeverarGreat

I don’t know about pacifistic, since that may just confuse matters. The still do have a Starfleet after all. I think it’s a tossup right now between fledgling and fragile, since both are technically correct and paint it in a state of weakness.

The militia idea is a good one, though.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of darkness.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, warriors of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress to
conquer isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
fledgling New Republic.

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fearless militia loyal to
the New Republic has
sent its most daring pilot
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

Nice thoughts everyone! It gave me a lot to think about, which led to more writing, and you know how it goes.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of darkness.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to reforge the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, warriors of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress to
conquer isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
fragile New Republic.

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a rebel task force loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search
of the last Jedi, sworn to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars…

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of darkness.
Luke Skywalker, sworn to
rekindle the light of the
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, warriors of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress to
conquer isolated worlds
beyond the reach of the
fragile New Republic.

Amidst this oppression, a
brave RESISTANCE loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, guardian of
the mystical force that can
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

“Luke Skywalker has vanished” is not my favorite choice for a first line for two reasons.

The first is because it really doesn’t fit on one line without squishing the letters together. Take a look at the theatrical version and note how many lines, not just this one, are really crushed down to fit, and I’d prefer to avoid these issues if possible.

The second reason is that while it works for a returning audience, to someone who didn’t grow up with the OT and is completely new to the world, this line doesn’t communicate much of anything. You’d need a big paragraph explaining that he is a Jedi, why this is important, and what the term ‘Jedi’ actually means. Granted we try to do this anyway, but I think it’s more straightforward to lead with the state of the galaxy and then explain why it’s like this, which is what the ANH crawl did so well, and one reason why it didn’t bother to introduce terms like ‘Jedi’ until later in the film.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone. I do read them all, even if I don’t respond for…weeks? Yikes. Ah well. There just isn’t any news to report.

PsyGemini, I did read your comments and thank you for them! Some issues are things that I can’t change about the original, but you bring up good points, and I may take out the other ‘forgive me’ line to bring it back to V1.

It seems there’s some weirdness with ‘Starfleet’ in the crawl. I’m fine with that wording because it’s how it appears in the ESB crawl, but it does give power and presence to an aspect of the New Republic we never see, so it doesn’t need to be there.

Here’s another crawl, per tradition:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of darkness.
Luke Skywalker, sworn to
rekindle the light of the
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, warriors of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress to
subjugate distant worlds
beyond the reach of the
fragile New Republic.

To counter this threat, a
brave RESISTANCE loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, hero of the
legendary force that can
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

“For those who remember…for those who will never forget…and for a whole new generation to experience Hal9000 for the very first time…”

The point’s not that it isn’t scientifically accurate, but that it feels off to me, even before consciously thinking about why.

Note how even in the original shot, the explosion follows the ship’s movement against the stars.

Looking at other ship explosions in the trilogy, it looks like whenever a ship is partially destroyed it maintains momentum, but if it is totally destroyed the debris cloud quickly slows down relative to other objects as it would in atmosphere. However, the explosion often does travel quite a bit in the ship’s original direction, and it’s often quite a brief flash of light, at least in Empire and Jedi.

All this to say that a sustained TIE explosion that remains mostly in place relative to the shot feels off to me, based both on physics and the style of the OT.

There’s something that feels a bit odd about the new shot here, which I was only just able to put into words. The explosion appears stationary relative to the Death Star, which isn’t what would happen in a vacuum. In space, a body in motion would remain in motion, since there’s no air resistance to slow it down. This applies to the explosion just as much as the TIE fighter.

So in terms of realism, the first shot makes more sense, or at the very least doesn’t draw attention to the weird physics.

I agree that there’s too much written to completely separate Luke and Leia, but they don’t have to be literally related by blood to be spiritual siblings. To take a page from TROS, they could be a Dyad in the Force, and it could even go back to the Sith’s ‘Rule of Two’.

In the Original Trilogy, the only proof that we have of Luke’s sister is from the ghost of Obi-wan, who has already lied to Luke about his dad and has just told him that his own words are only true from “a certain point of view.” No changes to Obi-wan’s dialogue are really necessary, he could just be lying about the sister thing because it’s easier to explain to Luke why Leia would be suddenly gaining strength in the Force than to try and bring up Force Dyads or the Rule of Two.

At this point the only problem with this is two scenes from the end of ROTJ, and I’m perfectly happy ignoring that to support this headcanon 😉

losthead said:

That guy with no name said:

losthead said:

Technically he should look like Vader, armor and all. That’s a hill I will die on.

he’s not Vader anymore, he’s back to being Anakin. the humanity that the emperor hid behind the mask has been revealed.

Yes, but every other character that dies and becomes a ghost, they look exactly as they did upon death. There’s no reason that ghost Anakin wouldn’t have scars, missing limbs, or even be out of his armor, aside from convenience.

One could as easily say that every character who becomes a Jedi Force Ghost is wearing Jedi robes.

There are many interpretations of how Force Ghosts work, but one I quite like is that a Force Ghost appears as the viewer wishes them to appear. Because Luke believed that his father was a Jedi and a good man, his Force Ghost appears without any of Vader’s scars or armor. He is redeemed in Luke’s eyes, with the old and kindly visage that he saw beneath the mask. Of course, Luke is generally seen as a stand-in for the audience, so for an audience who knows Anakin from the prequels, they may expect Hayden in those robes. And so he appears, in some versions of the film.

I personally prefer the Shaw version of the ghost because I think that’s what Luke would wish to see, but I can’t deny others their (wrong) opinions.

GuardianoftheWhills said:

The show has been so boring due to the subpar writing, acting & directing. None of the characters appear to have any inner life. They seem like characters in a video game just waiting for the prompt to say their lines. Chatbots have more depth.

& once again we have another series where heroes & villains make one stupid decision after another in order to get from one lazy plot point to another. There is no dramatic tension & the stakes don’t feel real.

Thrawn doesn’t feel like a threat to the galaxy because he comes across as an idiot. He has always been, to an extent, a stupid person’s idea of a genius - his ability to outwit an enemy based on psychological flaws revealed by a species’ cultural artefacts was laughably ridiculous - but at least Zahn tried to make him seem efficient & ruthless. In Ahsoka he just comes across as a cartoonish incompetent buffoon.

Filoni has shrunk the galaxy - & even his new galaxy seems to amount to nothing more than a barren & misty moor in northern England.

The art psychoanalysis is ridiculous, but at least it’s different enough to be interesting.

I think the reason Thrawn still feels like such a towering threat is because there’s been no competent villain in any Star Wars movie past the OT. The bar is so low here that even a halfway decent Imperial commander would feel like a terrifying mastermind.

This is the first Star Wars show I’ve skipped entirely, simply because it’s a Filoni project. My apprehensions appear justified, which is a shame since Thrawn is one of my favorite EU characters. He didn’t feel right in Rebels, and it seems he’s just as poorly-utilized here. Sigh.

In the Making of the Empire Strikes Back, I found this quote on page 224:

‘“Ben Kenobi’s outfit now seems to have turned into this costume of the Jedi Knights, really,” says Mollo. “Yoda wears a variant of the same thing.
We found this raw silk from India and it was just perfect,” says Kershner. “It hung nicely and it looked homemade. We had a piece left over, so I had a jacket made out of it for myself.”’

So John Mollo, the costume designer on Empire, seems to have been the first to have made it their costume.

https://originaltrilogy.com/announcement/Fan-Edit-Preservation-Forum-Rules-and-FAQ-updated-as-of-June-1st-2020/id/5950

How about this one?

It definitely feels like the Jedi Texts are a patchwork of various authors, of whom Luke is the latest. Certain parts may have survived from the beginning with scraps of ancient papyrus or something, but more likely these are copies of copies of copies, with annotations from a thousand generations of Jedi thrown in for good measure.

Yoda has a bad habit of abruptly dumping his under-performing apprentices on Jedi Knights he doesn’t like. Qui-gon only learned that he was getting Obi-wan as an apprentice when they were both sent to settle the trade dispute on Naboo. Needless to say, Qui-gon took the first opportunity to make Obi-wan a full Jedi and get him off of his hands.

Also, even if we assume that the conception of the twins must have occurred before Anakin turned evil, this doesn’t necessarily invalidate the above timeline. Anakin and his wife could have had the children while she was still unaware of the depth of his dark side, or she could have been injured after the conception and placed in stasis while Anakin desperately sought a method to save her from death (this would be wonderfully poetic considering the events of ESB). Heck, Anakin’s wife could even take a ride on a star cruiser for ten years traveling near the speed of light. The possibilities are endless.

One of the lines of evidence pointing to Obi-wan being older than Guinness’s age would be the apparent age of Anakin at his death. He was played by Sebastian Shaw, who was about 78 at the time of filming. Assuming that Anakin is intended to be this old, If ROTJ took place around five years after ANH, that would mean that the birth of the twins occurred when Anakin was 54. This quite old, but not impossible by any means.

Also, if the Force allows people to live beyond their years, Anakin’s apparent old age in ROTJ could undercount his age as much as it could overcount it due to theories that the Dark Side may accelerate the aging process. As such, I tend to think that the actor’s age in ROTJ is a fair estimate.

If we conclude from this evidence that Anakin was middle-aged when the twins were born, this implies that either he killed the Jedi at this time, or that he killed the Jedi when he was younger and the twins were born years after he turned evil: “A young Jedi named Darth Vader…” Of course, ‘young Jedi’ to Obi-wan may mean anyone not pushing eighty. Recall that Yoda lived for 900 years.

With characters such as Han Solo not believing in the Jedi, it makes sense that the Jedi were mostly destroyed before Han was born, which means that Anakin could have begun killing the Jedi a decade before the birth of the twins, which would place the Empire’s start at thirty years before the battle of Yavin.

If this is accurate, then Obi-wan’s statement that Anakin was a young Jedi at the birth of the Empire makes a bit more sense, since he would have been about 44. This is still not ‘young’ as most people would define it, but even the current canon implies that most Jedi are old before they gain mastery of the Force.

The concept that the Empire arose over a ten year period of increasing strife and instability as the Jedi were hunted down and destroyed tracks better with Obi-wan’s statement about the ‘dark times’, and Luke’s astonishment that Obi-wan could have fought in the Clone Wars, since they presumably ended over ten years before Luke was born.

I remember George saying something about C-3PO like ‘he begins as a droid, he ends as a droid…he has a sad droid life in between’ I can’t find the exact quote though.

My impression is that he genuinely doesn’t think that the droids are sentient, and my theory that they gain sentience and true personhood with the passage of time is me giving the movies too much credit.

I won’t change my theory, though.

I know RogueLeader was working on an edit of ROTJ where Vader contacts Fett and orders him to capture Luke on Tatooine.

Yes, a 25GB version is now available via PM.

And another crawl, because it’s apparently tradition whenever I update this thread:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, sworn to
rekindle the light of the
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, warriors of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress to
subjugate distant worlds
beyond the reach of the
New Republic Starfleet.

Desperate to save these
beleaguered worlds, an
armed RESISTANCE loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots on a quest
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

That makes sense, but it may be better to have Lor San Tekka. It could be a voiceover as BB-8 races toward his tent:

“This is where Luke has gone. I wish I had found it sooner…but this will begin to make things right.”

Did some housekeeping on the first post and cleaned up dead links, and added a few more comparisons to the gallery.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

If I may - I’d also be willing to redo the AI dialog that currently exists using Poe’s own dialog as its reference. It will blend in much better that way.

That would be awesome!

Also, did you decide against Leia giving Maz the lightsaber in Rey’s vision and telling her to keep it safe?

Oh yeah, the plan hasn’t changed:

NeverarGreat said:

For V2:

• Incorporate the shot of Luke’s saber into Rey’s vision to explain where it came from
• New dialogue for TR-8R in his fight with Finn
• Revert the reveal of R2 to the original version except that R2 is more dilapidated
• A scene where Leia is informed that the Senate is mobilizing the fleet
• Reincorporated scenes of Kylo searching for Rey on Starkiller Base
• An extended series of scenes where Rey repairs R2 at the Resistance Base
• Hopefully craft a new scene of the Falcon traveling across the galaxy in the journey to Luke

DZ-330 said:

To help clear it up some, would a new AI line for Kylo work?

Kylo Ren:

• “The map to Skywalker. We know you found it. And now you’re going to give it to the First Order.”

• “The map to the first Jedi Temple, and possibly Skywalker. We know you found it. And now you’re going to give it to the First Order.”

Would this be because we don’t know if Luke is there on the island? I don’t really see why that distinction would be important.