NeverarGreat

Apropos of nothing, but:

STAR WARS EPISODE IX

THRONE OF THE SITH

Consider:

Kylo tracks down a Sith Wayfinder on Mustafar, Darth Vader’s lair.

Rey has frightening visions during training, visions of herself on a dark throne.

The second Wayfinder is located in the Emperor’s throne room on the Death Star.

Both Snoke and Palpatine reborn originated on Exegol, brought to life through ‘Secrets only the Sith knew’.

Palpatine performs his most powerful acts in the vicinity of the throne on Exegol, and his most powerful act while sitting upon the throne.

Conclusion: The Throne in Exegol is the Sith’s source of power and the secret to their resurrection. The Wayfarers are a way of extending that power to the lairs of the two Sith that exist in the galaxy at any one time.

Suggested Edits:

• Give more emphasis to Rey’s vision of the Exegol throne.

• When Rey calls upon the Jedi for the final time, after the Jedi give their generic support, Yoda’s voice gives her a specific instruction: “A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense. Knowledge…and defense.”

• When Rey turns over after hearing these voices, her hand strikes the ground as if touching this place for the first time. Just like when she touched Anakin’s lightsaber, she sees visions in her mind. She sees the Exegol throne, the Wayfarers, the Death Star throne, and, from somewhere, the image of Vader’s castle and his throne (perhaps taken from the Kenobi show). The answer comes to her mind: “The Throne.” The voice of Luke responds. “Yes, Rey. You have everything you need.”

• When Rey stands and confronts Palpatine, she is able to use the first saber to block his Force lightning, but when she uses the second saber, it is to direct some of the lightning in another direction. It flies over Palpatine’s head and strikes the throne, impacting it with tremendous force. The stone seat erupts with power and is destroyed, along with Palpatine and the entire fortress around them.

Benefits:

• It gives a reason for the Macguffin-heavy scavenger hunt over the course of the film, setting up these places of power to emphasize that they are important for understanding this revelation.

• It is more reasonable for Rey to use two sabers at the end, to protect herself as well as direct lightning elsewhere.

• It suggests that the Exegol throne is a powerful Sith artifact capable of returning Sith to life, and it also suggests that Snoke was another ancient Sith spirit brought back to life by this artifact.

• It reveals the difference between Jedi and Sith, and shows that Rey is a Jedi by her actions of thinking things through and protecting herself rather than using power to defeat her enemy. Furthermore, it is a symbolic rejection of the power that Palpatine represents.

• Finally, it explains why this defeat of the Sith is more final than any prior defeat, giving this story far more closure.

So what do you think?

Fair enough. It’s certainly a better idea than anything in the actual movie 😉

That’s a fair point, but what good will control do if you’re a Sith and you’ve made an enemy out of everyone you cared about?

That’s what I keep coming back to. The audience knows that Rey will never join the Dark Side, just as they knew that Luke wouldn’t join the Dark Side in ROTJ. The Rise of Skywalker apes that ROTJ scene to such an extent that it inherits all of that scene’s problems, without any of the iconic aspects.

Hal 9000 said:

This is all straying pretty far from the story as we have it, and I’d rather keep Ascendant pretty close to what we have and not introduce sweeping changes to Palpatine’s plan. I’m not convinced introducing the idea that he wanted to have them fight in order to claim the victor enhances anything here.

Fair enough. Though I think you mean Palpatine’s Plans. He’s got like a good half dozen. 😉

The thing is, Rey has never wanted power, which is the issue with this entire ending. There’s nothing that Palpatine can give her that she genuinely wants, other than a sense of belonging and family, so with the revelation about him as her grandfather, she has just as much reason to want him alive as she does to kill him.

Rey doesn’t want power, she doesn’t want to rule the galaxy.

She wants to be a Jedi and gain a family, so unless Palpatine’s plan can give her that he has no angle.

So hang on a sec, here’s an idea: What if Palpatine reveals the reason that Rey can’t connect with the Jedi of the past is because he personally is blocking that connection?

“Do you know why the Jedi reject you? Because of me.”

“Kill me, and the spirit of the Jedi shall pass into you.”

We know he’s lying about that of course, but at least he’s offering her something she would genuinely want. And when she is finally able to call the Jedi to her in her final moment, it is the culmination of Rey rejecting Palpatine’s lie.

“I never wanted you dead…I wanted you strong…Empress Palpatine.”

Honestly, just cut out the dialogue about him possessing her as a Sith spirit, which genuinely screws up his plan and makes no sense to tell her from a tactical perspective.

“She will strike me down…as a Sith.”

RogueLeader said:

I’m sensing a pattern with me spending a lot of energy on blink and you’ll miss it shots.

If I need to make edits I can but here is the high res clip for now.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VorirravXQCUNYadlzaa-K9y9ZpMhRhc/view?usp=drive_link

Marvelous work! I salute you.

JEDIT: If I had a nitpick, I’d say that the dark figure is slightly too low on the page, leading to the horizontal energy link being slightly skewed downward. The only reason I mention it is because the viewer’s eye may not be drawn to the bottom of the screen quickly enough to absorb the image in this brief shot, so anything that could help bring the image higher in the frame would be helpful.

Note in my mockup the dark figure is quite a bit larger, due to the perspective:

Of course, the perspective is probably a bit too extreme here, and I like how your version is less distorted.

DZ-330 said:

RogueLeader said:

I honestly shut Star Wars edits mostly out of my mind when this stuff first started popping up because the possibilities were just too overwhelming.

For the sake of sanity… I think it would be wise for faneditors with pre-existing edits to ONLY revisit ideas that were like 98% completed towards what they wanted it to be, to help give it that extra 2% to complete their vision. And for any new edits, to only rely on AI voices to help implement a greater change elsewhere.

Otherwise, it’ll just be a crapshow where half a movie will be AI dialogue and it will lose the DNA that made it unique.

Fully agreed.

Of course, TROS has always been a special case.

I noticed that as well. But the second scene doesn’t really give a good look at the top part of the page, only the bottom part which is dominated by the Wayfinder illustration. I also noticed that the little page of shapes is not really folded in the second scene and looks rather different, which is a continuity issue.

Basically, I’m happy imagining that this is a similar page or a partial copy of another, which would happen in an old tome cobbled together over the centuries.

JEDIT: what Jar Jar said 😃

Done 😃

DZ-330 said:

NeverarGreat said:

A mockup of the Force Healing illustration:

That looks incredible! I do wonder if there can be some “>” arrows added on the line to better illustrate the person with his hand on the other is actually sending energy over, not draining it.

Done!

A mockup of the Force Healing illustration:

What does everyone think?

One issue: I don’t actually have access to After Effects right now, which is what I’d use to do the tracking and finish the shot. I could potentially get access again, but if someone else wants to take a stab at tracking the image, that would be fantastic.

JEDIT: Here’s the folder with the transparent PNG files.
https://mega.nz/folder/jN921R5I#OVrlHlcrwrG198mE2PvsgQ

Good ideas!

I do think that her learning the ability from the Jedi Texts makes sense, and gives the texts more relevance to the story. However, I think it’s more powerful if an ability comes from a character rather than an object, since it is able to say so much more about that character, and Leia needs all of the help she can get here.

But yes, a merging of the ideas gives us the best of both worlds.

If someone provides a high-quality image of the page in the texts, I can try my hand at drawing a replacement.

I don’t think that Leia knowing this necessarily means that it’s ‘commonly known’, since she could have discovered it on her own over her lifetime.

Alternately, Rey could say “Leia would have done the same”, which leaves vague where Rey got that power but makes clear that Leia’s guidance has given Rey the mindset that she should seek self-sacrifical avenues before killing her opponents outright.

Also, we’d only have to change the mouth movements for one word rather than an entire line.

Since we’ve just been talking about how Leia was such a good potential Jedi and how she wanted to use nonviolence, would it make sense that Leia had discovered this Force Healing power and taught it to Rey?

Rey: It’s in pain. I can sense it.
(Rey hands her saber to Finn)
Rey: It doesn’t want to hurt us.
(Rey heals the snake)
BB-8: Questioning beep?
Rey: I just transferred a bit of life. Force energy from me to him.
BB-8: Beep?
Rey: Leia taught me that.

This makes her healing Ben with this power a lot more meaningful since it comes right from his mother, and may imply that Leia is giving the last of her life energy to aid Rey in healing Ben.

Yeah, somehow mentioning Leia’s mother is probably the best way to allude to how she wishes to serve the galaxy.

Yes, but we don’t get that reveal of Leia defeating Luke until after that line. Granted the saber colors, but they could have switched for the scene or people could simply not immediately match the sabers with their owners, as I didn’t when first casually watching the scene.

The point is that the narration should emphasize what’s being shown, not create potential confusion.

“It was the last night of her training. She had the makings of a great Jedi…but Leia believed that she must serve the galaxy without a sword, like her mother once did. She surrendered her saber to me and said that one day it would be picked up again…by someone who would finish her journey.”

I think it’s important to say that Leia was a capable student at least, since she’s shown defeating Luke in the scene. If the dialogue suggests that she was a reluctant student, it would probably show her being less aggressive in her fighting.

JEDIT: Wording.

daveybjones999 said:

Sideburns of BoShek said:

vranir said:

I’ve realized that the biggest issue I have with this show is the lack of reason to fear Thrawn. I know him from the books. Some fans know him a bit from Rebels. But in this show we have been given no information or evidence of his clout beyond his rank. Even from Rebels we know that he has with him one Imperial class Star Destroyer - what difference does that make? I’m sure there were plenty after Endor that had to be dealt with.

I’m loving the prospect of seeing a new region of space in Star Wars, and I want to see Thrawn in live action, but the threat just isn’t something I feel.

I agree, I want to see him in action in the remaining episodes, to see him be this feared, impressive tactician and leader, and not simply be told about it. Unless that is what the “wrap-up film” from Filoni is going to be, and this is just laying the groundwork for that? That will will be underwhelming if it does.

Yeah I do agree that’s an issue. It’s the problem with making Ahsoka a direct sequel to Rebels because if you haven’t seen that show Hera and Sabine are completely new, and while the show does an admirable job of trying to introduce them to new viewers it doesn’t quite work. Also because it’s a sequel to Rebels it doesn’t feel the need to show why Thrawn coming back is such a big deal because it assumes you’ve watched Rebels and therefore know why Thrawn is so intimidating. If you haven’t seen Rebels he’s pretty much the main villain of the later half of that show. I haven’t read his original trilogy, but from what I saw of him in Rebels he was a fantastic villain. He doesn’t get defeated due to anything he does wrong, it’s other characters in the Empire who screw up his well-laid plans.

Thrawn in the novels is essentially unstoppable despite working with fairly limited resources, and is only defeated because he is forced to extrapolate from incomplete and inaccurate information.

Thrawn in Rebels has all the resources of the Empire and he and his underlings still manage to lose regularly to a far weaker rebel group. So it’s not really the same character to me.

regularjoe said:

To expand upon the last comment, Thrawn is really a nothing burger ultimately.
Why?
This show is set between the OT and the ST.
Thrawn is clearly not a problem to the galaxy at large in the ST (not even mentioned once).
So basically Thrawn and his crew come back from some nether reaches and are quickly put down in Season 2 or the movie that ties these all together.

It could work if we see the New Republic being more competent than in the ST, then Thrawn shows up and wrecks it to the point that they’re weakened and willing to look the other way instead of engaging other threats like the First Order.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Hal 9000 said:

As fun as it has been to work on fan edits of the main Star Wars saga, for my own mental health I need to bring it to a soft close. I need to set them down, regard them as finalized, and not take them up again. It’s been meaningful to create and update these projects in the context of this community, and I am grateful for the various forms of help in getting this series of fan edits into the shape they’re in. I feel that these projects deserve the dignity of taking a final form and being complete. I’m not closing the door on future, new projects. But I need to mentally let go of the edits of the saga so far.

I say you should take a bow. Organizing and completing fanedits of all nine films is nothing short of monumental. Hats off to you, Hal.

Yeah, I was worried there for a few days.

Hi everybody!

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

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

In his absence, desolate
worlds beyond the reach
of the New Republic have
fallen under the shadow
of the evil FIRST ORDER,
which has risen from a
dark Imperial fortress to
destroy the Jedi forever.

To counter this threat, a
brave RESISTANCE armed
in secret by the Republic
has sent its daring pilots
across the galaxy, vowing
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

Perfection.

This is not to say that I don’t like the movie. TLJ is the sequel I have the most respect for, since it seems to be trying to say something. But the way it treats the characters and the universe seems almost flippant at times, even toward story elements of its own invention.

Who cares about Anakin’s/Luke’s lightsaber?
Who cares about Snoke?
Who cares about Hux, the First Order, or even the Resistance?
Who cares about the Sacred Jedi Texts?

Whereas prior Star Wars movies would earnestly engage with their own universe and story, this one pulls back and asks: who cares? Instead of pitting good versus evil, or even one side versus another, the story asks whether or not we should even care at all. Even if eventually the answer is yes, we should care, as it seems to be saying in the end, the question still hangs over the entire enterprise and feels like a mutation of something deep in the DNA of this surrealist fantasy. It is the dreamer pinching themselves and wondering why they don’t simply awaken from the dream, which is both the most unique strength of the film and also its greatest weakness.

Just a weird movie, and difficult to describe.