NeverarGreat

NeverarGreat said:

Okay, I took the Despecialized ending from here and threw the audio into a MIDI editor and added some orchestra and brass elements to the Force Ghost section. Nothing huge, and it’s pretty rough since I didn’t know anything about MIDI editing before today.

Here’s the result.

I did some more work on embiggening the orchestra at the end of ROTJ, and I’m quite pleased with it.

Now Lando is clapping to a drumbeat that we can hear!

Here is the original music for easy comparison. My changes start with Luke seeing the Force Ghosts.

As far as the crawl goes, I think everyone was pretty happy with it a few days ago, apart from some wording tweaks, so I don’t think big changes are necessary. Just changing ‘striving’ and adding that the Republic has acted in secret are enough:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

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

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
all star systems beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a militia armed in secret
by the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

Master Lawdog said:

Does anyone here have the high quality 1080p clip where Rey daydreams of the island while sitting in the desert with the Rebel helmet on? I can’t find it anywhere.

Check your PMs.

Okay, I know we said we were done here but I’m gonna put down one final alternate:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

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

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
all star systems beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
an intrepid militia armed
by the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

The only real difference is in changing ‘loyal to the New Republic’ to ‘armed by the New Republic’. I keep coming back to this as the better option for a few reasons.

The first and strongest is that establishing that the New Republic has indeed supported the Resistance is essential to Hux’s plan. Without a clear understanding that the Resistance is reliant on the New Republic, Hux’s reasoning for destroying the Republic falls apart. This is probably why the theatrical crawl established the support between the two organizations.

The second reason is that now that the Republic is merely ‘fragile’ and the subjugated star systems are not ‘beyond the reach of the New Republic Starfleet’, it feels almost necessary that the Republic is involved in protecting these systems in any way it can, short of sending its entire fleet.

The third reason for this change is that it leads to a stronger flow for the paragraph by allowing for the Resistance to be understood as an extension of New Republic power, regardless of its independent leadership. Keep in mind that while the deleted scene does give the impression that the Resistance has little support in the Senate, Leia is specifically asking them to take direct action against the First Order, which is a very different demand than merely asking them for a few X-wings to help find Luke. It is also possible that the situation between the Senate and the Resistance has deteriorated since arming the militia.

Anyway, those are my arguments 😃

losthead said:

After each crawl, we still pan down through space, just to land on the next Star Wars logo, and the crawl begins anew

My current document contains over 400 permutations of the TFA crawl, so that would result in a 20 hour movie of nothing but slightly varying crawls, lol.

Anyway, yeah I think the crawl is basically there, since we’re now nitpicking very slight word choices. Funny enough, a few of my recent crawls did have ‘to claim’ but I just didn’t post those for some reason.

I do like ‘the light of hope’ instead of ‘a light of hope’, just think it rolls off the brain a bit easier.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

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

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
all star systems beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a courageous militia loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

I’m okay with saying that the First Order has risen from a single base, since that is all that we see in the film. Granted they have more, but they’re not important for this particular story. I also want to include the base because the Starkiller needs some reference in the crawl so that it doesn’t come out of nowhere later on.

I do get that it is weird that the First Order would only start conquering things after Luke went away and from the one base, so I can change the wording to suggest that they are merely announcing their supremacy in this area, which leaves the actual conquering of the systems beyond the Republic to the imagination. For example, one can imagine that they have been de-facto in control of these territories for decades, only deciding to formally announce their control after Luke disappeared.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

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

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
and claimed supremacy
over every world beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Desperate to save these
beleaguered planets, an
armed RESISTANCE loyal
to the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, seeking to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

I do agree with the word choices y’all suggest, so some of those shall go in.

Thinking about it, ‘fledgling’ works to describe the Resistance quite well, so if that goes in the third paragraph it would feel weird to have ‘fragile’ describe the Republic, since the words are similar. Also, it may be a good idea to actually have the Republic aid the Resistance in some undisclosed way so the First Order has a reason to go after them, and if that is established then it makes sense that the Republic isn’t frail or fragile, just consumed with its own matters. So bringing back the ‘Starfleet’ idea works to avoid any descriptor of the Republic like in the original crawl, and is a nod to the ESB crawl.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

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

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

Desperate to unite these
planets in RESISTANCE,
a fledgling militia aided
by the New Republic has
sent its pilots in search of
the last Jedi, vowing to
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

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.