NeverarGreat

“Luke’s the best bush pilot in the outer rim territories.”

These are all excellent suggestions.

Reading The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, it becomes clear how much the very soul of Star Wars hinged on making the audience believe in the reality of a talking frog. That this worked at all is a miracle, and a lot of it has to do with the talents of Frank Oz.

Why don’t you include the shot of the landing craft entering the atmosphere?

Mocata said:

fmalover said:

JokerRulez said:

Here’s the HUGE gamble Disney is making:

fmalover said:

Right now, the only thing I’m really looking forward to regarding Star Wars is Rian Johnson’s SW Trilogy, after all Johnson has earned my full trust with TLJ. I wish I could say I’m looking forward to The Mandalorian, but I don’t have Disney+.

Can anyone create a whole new SW experience that is still , … well, Star Wars?

There is no guarantee of success. Will mediocrity be enough? It’s the only way the film franchise can continue long-term so they’ll invest hugely in this while exploiting all other avenues to milk the franchise (TV, theme parks, comics, etc.).

Oh, in my opinion Rian Johnson is the wrong guy to do this next piece of work given the divisive reaction to his only entry. Need a uniter rather than someone always looking to subvert expectations.

JokerRulez

I don’t get why TLJ is so divisive.

TFA was such a huge letdown I had no expectations in regards to the following episode, and in fact I fully expected TLJ to be a remake of TESB in the same way TFA is a remake of the first SW. Once a friend confirmed it wasn’t like that I was genuinely excited, went to see the movie, and once the credits started rolling, left the cinema with a sense of euphoria.

I don’t think Johnson was trying to subvert expectations, he was trying to come up with the best story he could write and direct, which he did brilliantly.

But there’s your audience division right there: people that thought TFA was a lame rehash and people that loved TFA because it fed into their self importance as fans. RO did the same thing. Then TLJ came along and did it’s own thing and that part of the fandom lost their minds because it stopped telling them they matter.

I think you’re on to something there. TFA went hard on nostalgia, essentially offering up one beloved Star Wars thing after another for the audience to remember and enjoy. It especially made sure that everything felt the same, even if it didn’t quite make sense due to the passage of time. It essentially said ‘your relationship with this is important and valuable’. Then TLJ comes along and says ‘nope, actually you’re a naive idiot for expecting everything to remain as it was’. And this in theory could be really good, but the story still needs to do the work of winning over an audience primed by TFA to see meaning and power in Luke, Snoke, Ren, the lightsaber, etc, etc.

If the reasons for negating TFA ring hollow, it risks negating the meaning of the story itself. That’s what I think has happened here. For some people, the reasons for Luke’s exile are insufficient, the explanation of Rey’s power fails to convince, the futility of Finn’s sacrifice is shot through with ambiguity, and so the center fails to hold.

fmalover said:

JokerRulez said:

Here’s the HUGE gamble Disney is making:

fmalover said:

Right now, the only thing I’m really looking forward to regarding Star Wars is Rian Johnson’s SW Trilogy, after all Johnson has earned my full trust with TLJ. I wish I could say I’m looking forward to The Mandalorian, but I don’t have Disney+.

Can anyone create a whole new SW experience that is still , … well, Star Wars?

There is no guarantee of success. Will mediocrity be enough? It’s the only way the film franchise can continue long-term so they’ll invest hugely in this while exploiting all other avenues to milk the franchise (TV, theme parks, comics, etc.).

Oh, in my opinion Rian Johnson is the wrong guy to do this next piece of work given the divisive reaction to his only entry. Need a uniter rather than someone always looking to subvert expectations.

JokerRulez

I don’t get why TLJ is so divisive.

TFA was such a huge letdown I had no expectations in regards to the following episode, and in fact I fully expected TLJ to be a remake of TESB in the same way TFA is a remake of the first SW. Once a friend confirmed it wasn’t like that I was genuinely excited, went to see the movie, and once the credits started rolling, left the cinema with a sense of euphoria.

I don’t think Johnson was trying to subvert expectations, he was trying to come up with the best story he could write and direct, which he did brilliantly.

I think TLJ is divisive precisely because it seemed to be crafted to cater to those who found no interest in TFA. Everything set up in the Force Awakens, from the map to Luke to Hux and Snoke, to the Knights of Ren and Rey’s history, are all either ignored or confirmed as narrative dead-ends to be used at face value and then discarded. It is not that this makes TLJ bad. On the contrary, taken in isolation it works well. But TFA was the start of a very different story, and to follow it with this is like forcing the pieces of two different puzzles together. It doesn’t matter if Rian’s oil painting is better than the crayon imitation of Star Wars from JJ, when put together it still results in a royal mess.

This is all I’ve been able to find, most from years later:

https://starwarsblog.starwars.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/10/EpicCollections.jpg
http://chinese-starwars.com/jediarchive/expanduniverse/donald/donald/24_captain_pellaeon.jpg
http://www.battlegrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/expandeduniverse.jpg

It did remind me of this commercial, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOV2dGdFbGk

I’ll take ‘Animated action scenes from the films’ for 500 dollars.

OutboundFlight said:

4throck said:

Sure!
But for the sake of discussion, on radical edits it’s better to have your characters near each other.
That way, you are free to have them appear with no need for extra explanation or FX sequences. So you can move scenes around easier.

True… Rey and Poe never meet face to face until the 2/3 mark.

Which is why it’s so silly for Poe to be the major character that he has become.

One of the biggest wasted opportunities in TLJ is the complete lack of Kylo/Finn conflict, which would efficiently draw focus back to the main characters of Kylo, Finn, and Rey.

Hal 9000 said:

“And then I threw the Senate at him. The whole Senate! True story.”

That conversation is canon for me.

4throck said:

Move the action to the OT’s planets:
Jakku » Tatooine
Takodana » Endor
Starkiller Base » Hoth

Makes the universe smaller 😉

This isn’t the worst edit ideas thread.

There’s apparently a new design in the works for an official lightsaber:

https://wdwnt.com/2018/11/disney-files-patent-for-retractable-internally-illuminated-lightsaber/

With diagrams!

I actually think that the brief scene of Rey and the doctor would work in such an ending, despite its weirdness.

In thinking about the end of the movie and Rey’s character, I keep coming back to the idea that she uses the Dark Side as much as the light, if not more. After all, using the Dark Side is the quickest way to gain power, and Rey gains it more quickly than anyone we’ve ever seen in the Star Wars universe. Maybe using some more Yoda dialogue in the vision scene, where he talks about how the Dark Side is easier and more seductive. If it were possible to make clear that Rey is using the Dark Side, it turns her greatest strength into a liability. Now instead of her being simply a stronger version of Luke, she is precariously balanced on the edge of a metaphysical cliff.

https://vimeo.com/301907627
Password: fanedit

Imagine then if Kylo were more sympathetic…say that he wants to lead the First Order, but hates the Dark Side. He knows that the only way to rise to power is to play Snoke’s games, but to do so means sacrificing his own father. I would say that most of this message is already in the film, it’s just muddled by the idea that Kylo genuinely supports Snoke and the evil of the Dark Side instead of playing the long game in a quest to finish what Vader started and become the leader of a unified galaxy.

Several months at least. Figured someone would quote one of the images eventually.

Valheru_84 said:

NeverarGreat said:

This is so awesome LOL! I also like your notes about the “The Burj Khalifa” inserted into what I assume is the link description ;P

As the first to reveal the secret of my image posts, congratulations!

A random observation, but when C-3PO falls off of the Sail Barge in this version you can see part of the camera housing or something on the left which doesn’t appear in the Blu-ray. Is this in the VHS versions?

Anakin Starkiller said:

Am I the only who feels like it isn’t really Star Wars without Palpatine pulling the strings? The thing is I can’t think of any way of bringing him back that doesn’t cheapen Vader’s redemption. The best I can think of is Palpatine survives the fall (he IS a Sith Lord, so I think it’s totally plausible), but is seriously injured, meaning Vader’s sacrifice still had an impact, causing Palpatine to remain in the Shadows for 30 years. Still, you can see how it devalues that moment in RotJ. The thing is, with Palpatine gone, everything else feels super post-script. Now that’s fine if you really want to tell a brand new unconnected story, but clearly they don’t. Besides, with both Palpatine and Snoke out of the picture, the trilogy just lacks any threatening villain at all.

If you absolutely must have Palpatine in some form, simply have his spirit (or the combined spirits of all murdered Sith) wander the galaxy after ROTJ before inhabiting Snoke sometime before TFA. Then when Kylo murders Snoke, he ‘inherits’ this Sith essence.

timdiggerm said:

oojason said:

‘Millennium Falcon Ride Details Revealed on Target-Exclusive ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Blu-Ray’…

https://www.slashfilm.com/millennium-falcon-ride-details-solo-a-star-wars-story-blu-ray/
 

And George thought the ESB cockpit was too big

The Falcon was only a light freighter, this one is clearly a Corellian workhorse.

Thanks! It’s definitely a work in progress though.

Moving right to the end of the film, I have had the idea for a while that Rey alone is able to find Luke through the Force. There would be some vision when she touches the lightsaber of the completed map to Luke (along with the other visions), and this is what Kylo senses in her. When they fight over the lightsaber in the snow, it can now support the interpretation that Kylo wants the vision of the map that the saber first imparted to Rey.

Since Rey has this vision, there is no need for R2 to have the rest of the map. I tried making a version without the map scene, with mixed results:

https://vimeo.com/301427587
Password: fanedit

I feel like it might work better if the scene of R2’s reveal happens in place of the one where he wakes up. We would see R2 again, but our hopes would be dashed when 3PO says that he’s in low power mode and probably doesn’t have the rest of the map. Move Chewie’s mourning to after this scene, and then this despondency implies that Rey must act on her vision and find Luke.

Another benefit of this change would be to save R2 waking up for TLJ, where we get a more powerful reunion.

SparkySywer said:

OutboundFlight said:

Completely cutting the Death Star would be interesting.

I was working on a fanedit like a year ago where there was only one Death Star, which wasn’t destroyed in ANH. It’s been bogged down and completely restarted from scratch a couple of times, but I haven’t completely thrown it away, if this is close enough.

I think that’s the best way to go, honestly.

Some more finessing and restructuring in the critical moment where the Starkiller’s shields go down:

https://vimeo.com/301125586
Password: fanedit

There’s new music to match the implied peril, and hopefully make Phasma and the First Order more menacing.

With the day off, I had some fun taking apart the Starkiller Infiltration and putting it back together (somewhat).

https://vimeo.com/300872367
Password: fanedit

I intentionally didn’t spend a great deal of time finessing the scenes or transitions, so it’s a very rough idea. Kylo begins the interrogation the same place as in the Theatrical, but it then transitions to Hux and the Starkiller charging, then the Resistance briefing, and then finally back to the interrogation to imply that it has been going on for quite a while (it definitely needs an establishing shot though). I would like to have some indication in this scene that implies that Rey’s connection to Han is what defeats Kylo, which is what Snoke picks up on later.

Hal 9000 said:

It strikes me is breaking the rules of the universe this story is setting. That seems like something only a force users should be able to do.
See also: Han Solo as a non-badass who relies on bravado and luck to get by.

Alternately, see:
-Anyone is able to gain aptitude in the Force.
-Two of Han Solo’s closest confederates are strong Force users.
-Han has clearly gained an acceptance of, and appreciation for, the Force in the decades since ROTJ.

In this way, his extrasensory blaster shot is a microcosm of Luke’s journey in ANH, and removing it would be as egregious as altering other instances of Han shooting his blaster, if you get my drift.

😉

DuracellEnergizer said:

Star Wars was dead long before Disney assimilated its corpse into their collective.

It’s really not dead, as long as we remember it.