NeverarGreat

DZ-330 said:

New changes are good to better match with TLJ, please leave in V2 for SKB.

I remember Dom arguing that placing a Snoke scene after the Oscillator sabotage would throw off the pacing of the end of the movie. At the time I thought the benefit to the story would outweigh this negative, but having viewed Restructured V2 quite a few times this year I have come around to Dom’s way of thinking on this. It really stops the movie in its tracks to manufacture a threat which we know won’t materialize, when the focus should be on the fallout from Han’s death on our other main characters.

DZ-330 said:

Rey thinking Luke Skywalker was a myth could stay in, later in the movie Han confirms to her that the Jedi were real and that resolves that part of Rey’s beliefs and allows her to realize that Luke actually was a real person and not just a story. Rey believes in “The Legend of Luke” and everything she’s heard until she meets him in TLJ and has her expectations subverted, fitting with that movie’s theme.

Yeah, Rey does say ‘The Jedi were real!’, so that might feel weird if that other line is gone.

DZ-330 said:

Hal 9000 said:

If it’s possible, I would like to find a different shot to place immediately prior to the Hosnian system being destroyed, instead of cutting to Leia. If we can avoid cutting to Leia, it can be left slightly ambiguous about whether she is reacting via the Force to the planetary destruction only or if Han’s death is part of it. This one may need to stay as is, since it was hard enough to find enough shots to include!

Maybe use the shots of Kylo on the shuttle but somehow replace him with someone else or crop the footage to cut him out.

Not sure what you mean by this. Would this be another shot of Imperial officers watching the base fire?

One shot you could use is from TLJ, where the fleet is escaping from the Resistance base. Just paint out the ships and do a zoom into the planet before all the shots of the Resistance officers.

Another shot from that same scene in TLJ is when the Dreadnought prepares to fire on the fleet. There’s a shot of a technician with a helmet similar to the ones on the Death Star, which would be a fitting callback here.

Also Hal, really nice job on Finn and Poe’s escape!

Yep, there would need to be some new dialogue in there. I found a youtube video once where someone incorporated more of Snoke’s dialogue from a novel into the scene where he talks to Kylo about the Knights of Ren. It’s fairly well done, in that I was unsure if this was actually a deleted scene for a moment. So it could be an interesting tack to give Snoke lines like ‘As long as Skywalker lives, the Empire cannot return.’

Another idea is to take Kylo’s statement ‘I will finish what you started’ and apply it to the idea of Imperial succession. If Snoke said something like ‘In his final moments, your grandfather gained an Empire. How the Skywalkers squandered this inheritance. But under Kylo Ren, the Empire can truly return.’

Now we’re talking!

Not at all, very much enjoy spirited discussion as it can hone ideas far better than just thinking about them in isolation. 😃

So about the whole succession and bloodlines thing, I was watching this video and he coincidentally talks about this very point here. The idea that the story is moving on from special lineages is good, and to make these lineages important to the story at the outset of TFA might provide more of a dramatic contrast when Rey (and later broom boy) appears. The lineage angle is stifling to the universe, like a set of dusty old rules dragging down a dynamic game. So what a breath of fresh air Rey would be, and highlighting her differences with Luke would make her fundamentally different than the previous protagonists of the story. That’s sort of what I’m trying to go for here.

Of course I like the idea of FO supporters in the Republic (I think there are one or two of my crawls specifically for this angle) but if I can find another way to hint at this in the movie proper I can spend the real estate of the crawl with something more complicated like the lineage idea. I think that complication here isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and moviemakers tend to underestimate the audience’s intelligence anyway, so more risks can be a good thing.

Concerning Luke and his threat to the FO, you accurately say that it seemed to be only Snoke and Kylo who really feared him, and directed the entire apparatus of the FO to pursue his demise. But the reason given in TFA is that he could train a new generation of Jedi. TLJ drops this angle in favor of the more general ‘hope’ message since it’s revealed that Luke has no intention of training more Jedi. Snoke even has a bit of a laugh about this after reading Rey’s mind. In retrospect it makes Snoke look rather foolish, jumping at shadows.

But as for the larger point, the succession angle paints a rather interesting picture of the galaxy - sure, soldiers and officers in the First Order proper would always despise Luke and what he did to the Empire, but there are so many more people who grew up under Imperial rule who might view the New Republic as the illegitimate government, whom they nevertheless support because the heir to the Empire serves the Republic. Now every day that Luke remains alive is another day that he lends credibility to this charade of governance. More importantly, if he were to die while not overthrown, the next in line would be his sister, who actually knows how to wield political power and is potentially as powerful in the Force as Luke. And this makes his sacrifice in TLJ much more interesting, since Leia is now the most important person in the galaxy apart from her son. Furthermore, as long as she exists Kylo can’t rightfully call himself ‘Emperor’, and the First Order still lacks the legitimacy of the Empire returned. That is what I find so fascinating about the idea, that this calculus can be taking place in the background even as the story shifts away from these trappings.

SilverWook said:

It was the massive re-shoots that probably bloated the budget. They essentially made the same movie twice!

Obviously the superior Solo movie was the one shot first.

The royalty idea would need work, and somehow be referenced elsewhere in the film, but I think it provides a novel way to solve a lot of problems at once, some of which I’ve talked about.

The concept of the New Republic being infiltrated by First Order sympathizers has the benefit of EU support, but the Skywalker lineage and in particular the idea of a Skywalker being the heir to the Empire also has this support (One of the EU books is called Bloodlines for a reason). But the biggest reason I don’t like the sympathizers angle is that it makes the Republic a lost cause before the movie begins. How much sympathy can we give a government that is already halfway towards tyranny? Also, it seems rather silly for the First Order to blow up the entire Hosnian System if they were effectively turning the Republic from the inside. Surely they would have lost a lot of their own supporters in the destruction.

As for Luke’s reason for going into exile, I see one explicit reason in TFA ‘He just walked away from it all’, and a continuation of this reason in TLJ ‘It’s time for the Jedi to end/I came to this island to die’.

These don’t feel very compelling for a character who is motivated by optimism. I think it would be much more compelling to give him a constructive reason for going into hiding, and that could have to do with the attitude of the galaxy to the Empire and its line of succession. Granted that little is known of galactic sentiment or politics of this era from the movies (there’s almost nothing about this in the sequels so far save from a line from Snoke calling Kylo ‘heir apparent to Lord Vader’) but this makes it that much more fertile ground for development. I imagine that there could have been several splinter organizations after the fall of the Empire, each attempting to claim ownership. An heir to the Imperial throne would legitimize their claim, and rally many systems to their cause. Remember that it was the death of the Emperor more than anything else that led to the fall of the Empire as it was seen in ROTJ, so the problem for the Empire is not one of ships or soldiers so much as legitimate leadership. The First Order has a leader which has many of the powers of Palpatine, but these abilities didn’t convince everyday citizens and senators to support him during his rise to power - most people were unaware that he was an evil space wizard until too late. It was the legitimacy bestowed by the Old Republic system of government which allowed his rise to power, and so imagining an analogue for the Empire and its succession seems natural.

This brings us back to Luke Skywalker and his importance. I never understood why the First Order was so intent on killing a single Jedi who had already run away and clearly wasn’t a threat. Sure it’s a priority, but the top priority? And why does everyone in the Republic assume that a single Jedi can stop the First Order when ten thousand Jedi weren’t enough to save the Old Republic from a couple of Sith? It cries out for a reason, beyond him being a Jedi or even a legend.

oojason said:

A deleted scene from Solo:-

https://www.facebook.com/USATODAYlife/videos/237078820316829/

^ 'A young Han Solo and Qi’ra are on the run (and getting wet) in this deleted scene from ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story.’

More video may likely appear at https://www.facebook.com/starwarsmovies/ too…

 

You know I love a good young Indiana Jones reference.

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

I also wonder if this alleged “adult in the room” is simply trying to appease anti-Trump republicans so that they are still comfortable voting republican, on the basis that republicans are saving the day in the white house so don’t worry about Trump. The timing would make it seem that way. Until some republican comes out and make their opposition to Trump clear, as McCain did, it’s hard for me to see it as anything but republican self-aggrandizement without actual substance.

Interesting that both the right and left sides of the media are looking a bit askance at this statement.

It’s certainly hard to view the writer as some sort of hero, on either side.

I’ve been trying to come up with a good reason for Luke to be in exile, and realized that it could have to do with the fact that he’s basically the rightful Emperor. Anyone who managed to kill him would be heir by way of conquest in the same way that Vader was Emperor after he killed Palpatine.

The Empire is no more.
To preserve galactic peace,
Luke Skywalker, heir to the
Imperial throne, is in hiding.

Yet under the leadership
of an ambitious warlord,
an Imperial remnant known
as the FIRST ORDER has
regrouped in the unknown
regions of space with a
weapon to return them to
power even without the
royal Skywalker’s blood.

Desperate for the return
of their greatest hero,
the New Republic forms
a covert RESISTANCE led
by General Leia Organa,
and has sent their most
daring pilot on a mission
deep into enemy space…

This could also explain (in a non-novel form) why Leia isn’t a part of the Republic, and in fact, why the Republic and the secret Resistance are different - all Skywalkers are heirs to the throne, and as such must remain in hiding.

Finally, it could make for a more compelling reason for Kylo to turn evil. Faced with the choice of remaining in hiding his entire life or leading a galactic Empire, it’s hard to blame him really.

It looks really good! I especially like the skin tones.

The bright blue tones suffer, however. For example, the hologram of the ship from R2 is almost devoid of color.

suspiciouscoffee said:

NeverarGreat said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

Even for the Trumpster fire, this is big.

Eh, not really. They seem to be perfectly okay with what he does, and just not like him personally. Their “whispers” don’t mean shit because they didn’t do anything.

Due to the word ‘Lodestar’ in the op-ed, the speculation is that the author is either Pence or someone who wishes to have us think it is him.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If Trump’s supporters support what he does, wouldn’t they be angered that most of the administration is attempting to thwart what he is doing?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

Even for the Trumpster fire, this is big.

Due to the word ‘Lodestar’ in the op-ed, the speculation is that the author is either Pence or someone who wishes to have us think it is him.

I hope you keep all of these images together somewhere Snooker. It’s really creative stuff.

Reading through some of the older threads, even ones from just a few years ago, reminded me that this used to be a more positive forum. Not that negativity didn’t exist of course, just that people seemed more agreeable.

Cornelius Evazan and Ponda Baba

This wanted duo might have outrun the Galactic police, but Owen will cook their goose with one hand tied behind his back. Evazan’s features look to have already run afoul of the Lars Family Recipe, and Ponda’s paw can’t compare with a liver shot to the breadbasket.

“Take these two over to the garage - I want them cleaned up for dinner.”

I don’t really understand much of what you describe, but it sounds just sciencey enough to be plausible.

Needs more diagrams and equations though.

I’m sure that there are force fields in place so that people don’t just fall out of them with every sharp turn or light bump on a sand dune.

Now that’s an interesting concept. I like how it looks like it was buried in the forest somewhere, it fits the Endor location.

What if you did a version of ANH that looked like it has been sandblasted, and a version of ESB that has been frozen and/or gone moldy in a swamp?

Source

I’m referring more to the OT in this regard, and yes, TFA really started the trend - ‘Who talks first’ and the joke about Daniel Craig dropping his weapon probably counts here - but overall the characters take the situations seriously and it goes a long way to legitimizing even the more absurd moments of the movie.

In comparison, Boyega has pretty much patented a look of baffled skepticism with regards to TLJ’s dumber moments:

When your co-lead looks embarrassed with the BS, you’ve got a problem.

You mention Space Leia, Rose, and Canto Bight as being very earnestly implemented and I agree. Rian seems quite interested in being serious in the parts of the story that he likes, while treating the bits he doesn’t like as punchlines. Just little things like Anakin’s lightsaber, Snoke, Maz, Hux…

Duracell.

Plinkett’s Last Jedi review has inspired me to re-evaluate what makes Star Wars work so well, and it lead me to realize that Star Wars '77 has, in many more ways than a normal movie, the form and function of a dream.

Consider that Star Wars perfectly captured a moment in the American zeitgeist of the hippy counterculture rebelling against the establishment machine, using visual references drawn from sources that lingered in the subconscious of that generation. Metropolis, Flash Gordon, WWII propaganda film - all these things were at least a generation out of date when Star Wars premiered, ensuring that while the references would be felt, they would not draw undue attention to themselves.

Consider also the simple and efficient plot populated with archetypal characters that resonate with people of any time. Any specificity in the film is a reference to an unknown, alien technology or knowledge structure, anchoring the film in a timeless void where everything is approachable and everything is endlessly immersive.

Finally and most importantly, consider that the characters and the director construct the myriad conceits of the movie in complete earnest. Nowhere is there a wink to the audience to let them know that they are in a movie, never is a threat taken lightly. When Leia begins to treat her oppressors with mocking disdain, they are quick to destroy her entire planet.

These things all conspire to immerse the audience in what can only be described as a movie equivalent of a dream.

Now compare this to The Last Jedi, which although it goes some way in grounding itself in the visual references of the past, has no interest in generating or sustaining immersion in the audience. This fact above all else is, I believe, why so many in the audience failed to connect with it - The Last Jedi finally awakened them from the seven film dream.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

My complaint is we never see any of the characters taking a shit in TFA, yet none of them display the symptoms of constipation in TLJ. Rian was totally undermining JJ the whole way.

Then I must have really misinterpreted this scene: