NeverarGreat

I imagine that the individual soldiers on both sides of this battle aren’t briefed on the plan and all of its reasons (themes!). His wingmen were just told to follow Kylo’s lead, and he was locked onto the bridge. Besides, we need Leia unconscious because movie.

It also might be that Snoke is pitting Hux and Kylo against each other like it was implied in TFA, and now that Kylo has failed to take out Leia he’s finally given the task to Hux, with Rey as an acceptable substitute to prove his loyalty if not ‘complete his training’.

That’s my thinking.

Thanks Collipso! I just have so much fun coming up with these ideas, even if some may pass the edge of feasibility.

The biggest issue remaining with the pursuit plot to me is the fact that it seems like the First Order is pulling its punches to an insane degree. There’s no reason why the First Order can’t trap the Resistance fleet with their Star Destroyers, or send enough fighters to overwhelm them. So of course I’ve come up with something that is kind of audacious but might fit:

Establish that Snoke not only wants the Resistance destroyed, but also wants Kylo Ren to personally destroy Leia and complete his training since that was teased at the end of TFA. We see Kylo go against the Raddus practically alone, and Hux seems content to wait until the fleet runs out of fuel, so this theory fits what we see on screen.

Cutting Leia’s scenes are exactly the opposite of what was needed in TFA, but here I think it makes sense. The story right now is too bogged down in what should be a simple pursuit/ticking clock plot, and Leia unfortunately contributes to this overcomplication.

However, there might be a way to start the movie right as the remnants of the Resistance flee the battle. We could establish in the crawl that most of the short range fighters on both sides have been destroyed, with essentially just Poe and Kylo left on the battlefield. As Poe and the last bomber manage to destroy the destroyer, Kylo strafes the cruiser and his escort blows up the bridge. We don’t see Leia get blown into space, since at that moment the fleet jumps to hyperspace.

I imagine this scene would have to be very chaotic, full of closeups and ships being blown up to make it seem more like a pitched battle than an ordered evacuation.

With the battle, I’m not sure about what shot to use for the pan down.

Another thing that needs addressing is the ‘cloaked binary beacon’. In the proposed edit this device is never explained and simply appears in Finn’s keeping after he wakes up. To fix this, the binary beacon could be placed in the deleted scene of the Rey hologram, where it could be seen resting on the bench beside Finn’s head. Notably, in TFA there’s only a brief glimpse of that area of the bench so I could even have it come into frame for just that second. Finn’s line ‘a cloaked binary beacon’ could be repurposed in this scene to make it clear. It’s a fairly simple fix and it highlights the strong friendship between Finn and Rey.

Here’s a weird idea for a restructuring. I’d cut the escape from the base as usual, but then describe a much different battle in the crawl:

The galaxy’s hope is dying.
In a battle against the First
Order’s fleet, the Republic
armada has been shattered.

Unable to prevail against
the flagship of Supreme
Leader Snoke and his dark
apprentice, Commander
Poe Dameron falls back
amid heavy losses, with
Leia Organa herself
among the wounded.

As the remnants of the
Republic fleet flee into
hyperspace, Kylo Ren,
heir to the Imperial
throne, returns from
the battlefield at the
summons of his evil
master…

This implies that a whole lot more has been going on between movies. The Resistance has managed to scramble ships from all corners of the galaxy in a single attack to destroy First Order. The first scene would be a pan down to Snoke’s ship and the scene of Ren being chewed out for being conflicted. Cut to Finn waking up and meeting Poe, then the transition to Rey. She walks to the place on the cliff where Luke was in her vision (if that works in my TFA edit), but he isn’t there. She goes looking for him, and finds him in one of the huts. After the Rey scenes,
the fleet exits hyperspace, have the scene of Holdo taking command and her shutting down Poe’s questions (sans the statements about being followed), the deleted scene of Finn and the Rey hologram, then Finn in the escape pods. It is here that we learn that the First Order can track them through hyperspace. Then Rose, Finn, and Poe formulate a plan to deactivate the tracker and leave for Canto Bight. Right after they leave, the First Order arrives, and Hux bemoans that they can’t destroy them yet. At some point (maybe during Rey’s Forcetime with Kylo) have Kylo flashback to his unwillingness to kill Leia, which is the specific weakness he refers to in the first scene.

What this restructure does is remove the opening battle and all of Leia’s scenes before she is unconscious, cutting down on the runtime significantly, while also putting the issue of Leia between Poe and Holdo from the outset. Poe’s brazen attack from the crawl has led to this tragedy, and and since we don’t see him take out a dreadnought there is no question that he failed to save the fleet. Holdo has more reason to be antagonistic to Poe for this reason, since we know by the end that she cared for Leia a great deal.

By making it so that Finn knows from the outset about the hyperspace tracking, his unconsciousness at the beginning serves a story purpose.

By moving the First Order’s arrival to after Finn leaves for Canto Bight, it removes the issue of why the Resistance didn’t just use this ship to help ferry people off the Raddus during the pursuit.

By removing so much from the pursuit plot, it puts more focus on Finn and Rey’s stories, and less on the part of the plot that makes the least amount of sense.

And finally, this restructure would keep the convention of the OT where we start with an establishing shot of a Star Destroyer.

A parody of TLJ remake using Brick as the template:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWynqXJXuWE

DuracellEnergizer said:

Is it weird that I knew this was a Duracell post by the content alone?

TV’s Frink said:

“Worrying” (maybe too strong a term) about this kind of stuff is also weird.

I’m not too concerned with the time which passes within the movie - ANH took place in less than a week as well. But the bigger issue is the lack of a time jump between movies, which is where you can hide a lot of skill progression.

dahmage said:

Collipso said:

Warbler said:

SilverWook said:

Warbler said:

Collipso said:

i actually don’t think luke’s going to be a force ghost in IX. not sure what he’s going to be though, but it’s basically one of the only things i’m looking forward to at this point.

If he is not a force ghost, what else could he be? He’s dead.

Maybe not. Luke’s mechanical hand should been left behind when he vanished.

This is the first time I have seen anyone try to argue that Luke didn’t actually die.

one can’t be sure. i mean, i think he’s dead, but maybe he isn’t.

he’s definitely mostly dead.

He’s less dead than you can possibly imagine.

DominicCobb said:

TV’s Frink said:

Why does TFA take three days tops?

It doesn’t. It’s at least three days. Not that it matters terribly. And there’s a thread for this:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/How-much-time-does-each-movie-cover/id/50630

Movie time is weird.

We see almost one full day on Jakku, from the middle of the night to sunset. Then the next morning Rey takes BB-8 to town, and they escape. Within what seems like 20 minutes of escaping they are found by Han, and immediately thereafter they go to Maz’s castle, a trip that takes the length of their fussing over the hyperdrive and discussion of the map (which starts a pattern that Hyperdrive trips in this movie don’t take that long, generally). At Maz’s castle, they have time for a meal and then they’re attacked. After they go to the Resistance events happen rapidly, with Leia sending a scout ship to Starkiller before she even looks at the map from BB-8. But then she does and within the ensuing conversation the scout ship returns and they prepare their plan of attack, which again takes no more than a few minutes. Then they’re at Starkiller Base for the duration (a few hours, tops), then it’s back to the Resistance base. Maybe the third day happens after the destruction of the Starkiller, but it can’t happen too long afterwards because the First Order knows their location and would be rushing to prevent them from escaping their base.

So here’s how I see it, with large potential variations because movie:
Jakku - 1.5 days
Han to Maz - 3 to 5 hours
Resistance Base - 3 to 8 hours
Starkiller Base - 4 to 7 hours
Resistance Base - 2 to 16 hours, depending on whether or not night passes between scenes

So the lower bound of that time is two days, with the potential for 3 at the upper bound.

dahmage said:

snooker said:

Someone’s probably already suggested this:

When Obi-Wan is wandering around the Death Star disabling the tractor beam, add a stack of rocks in front of him. It’s so he’s better concealed from the Imperials.

Hah. Have him force project them in front of himself. There one frame, rocks the next.

I want rocks in front of Luke as he’s watching the Sand People. The POV shot from his macrobinoculars just shows the rocks in front of him.

Just put rocks everywhere.

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

My point is that those saying a Jedi’s powers come from achieving a certain state of mind (with which I agree) have to accept that Rey has achieved at least enough “zen” to become as powerful as any Jedi to come before her, all in about a week.

Probably doesn’t matter to the overall point but do we actually have something in the movie that indicates it’s been such a short period of time?

Kinda, yeah.

There’s the timeline of TFA, which takes two, maybe three days.

Then the First Order, which knows the location of the Resistance base from TFA, goes to the base in force. Since both parties know that their locations have been discovered, they are both under enormous time pressure to act, which means that if it took more than a day or two after the end of TFA for the Resistance base to be evacuated, then there’s something criminally wrong with that outfit.

Then we know from the ticking clock plot of TLJ that time is of the essence. We know that several days go by on the island while Rey is arguing with Luke, but at this time the Resistance is either evacuating the base or being pursued, and the intercutting of Kylo and Rey with their Forcetime sessions establishes that there is close synchronicity between the timelines. We know that there is only enough fuel for the Resistance to make one more hyperspace jump, so they’re already low on fuel when Rey meets Luke. Halfway through Rey’s screentime on the island, it’s established that the fleet has less than a day of fuel left.

The only question is how long the Resistance was being chased between Ackbar getting killed and Finn/Rose leaving Canto Bight. I highly doubt that with their time constraints they would have formulated and enacted the plan in less than a day, and the jail in Canto Bight only holds Finn and Rose until they notice another person in the room.

So yes, about a week all told.

True.

DominicCobb said:

The Resistance fits on the Falcon at the end of the film. Not dire at all.

Actually, now that I think about it some more, this is another reason why the drama of TLJ rings so hollow. It felt like the entire Resistance in TFA was no more than about a hundred and fifty people with a dozen X-wings and a transport to their name. So in the next movie they suddenly have a massive cruiser and a bombing fleet which would have been very helpful in attacking the Starkiller Base, and which expand their numbers only so they can be whittled down again.

In Empire we only followed a small band of Rebels, and that operation seemed more massive than the entire Resistance. The movie used our lack of information about the Rebellion to its advantage, by just showing us a group which was in desperate straits. But in TFA and especially TLJ, we are told explicitly that this is all that’s left, which implies that the pitiful group in TFA was all there was at the beginning, bolstered by a cruiser that Rian thought the story needed.

That’s why it doesn’t seem dire. The extra Resistance fighters come from nowhere and are lost just as pointlessly, and in terms of a galactic Rebellion, what difference is a cruiser full of troops or a light freighter full of them against the First Order? At least the Falcon can escape more easily.

DominicCobb said:

Would be cool to give the Falcon a slightly different look, like red stripes or something.

I really would have liked a lot more battle damage and general wear and tear. Maybe show that the top gunner turret was blown out and had to have metal plating covering it. Would have explained why Finn and Rey were acting like there was only one operational turret in TFA.

DominicCobb said:

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

People seem to think Rey’s journey is done and over with after TLJ, which is just absurd. The idea that Rey’s rejection of Kylo has more in common with Luke’s actions in ROTJ over ESB is just a silly reach for an argument that is on shaky ground. Rey conquered neither Snoke or Kylo (not even close).

No need to go further in depth than that, I’ve said it all before.

Not even close? With Snoke dead and all of Kylo’s training allowing him to almost equal Rey, who recovers from their battle long before him?

Rey was dead if not for Kylo. She had no way out. Even though Kylo claims that the girl killed Snoke, this is not actually true if you watch the whole film.

I’m not sure why recovering faster from a shockwave is indicative of ability, but okay.

Truly things look grim for our hero in the darkest chapter of this trilogy. How can she ever hope to defeat someone whom she always seems to beat and his army of tactical imbeciles led by a man so stupid that he fell for a prank phone call?

I am on the edge of my seat.

If you watch the films, she actually only beat him once, believe it or not, when he was severely injured. I could have sworn this has been explained before on this site but I could be wrong.

I’m not investigating the reason for her victories, only that they seem to happen. And she did win in TLJ. Just think it through. If two people who are battling alone get knocked unconscious, the first one to recover has the power of life or death over the other. Rey has won. That she doesn’t kill Kylo doesn’t change the fact that she was completely capable of doing so.

Hero doesn’t kill unconscious villain. Big powerful victory there.

Glad that you acknowledge it.

I suppose you could probably claim most cinematic villains are imbeciles. If any Star Wars villains were smart, the heroes would get nowhere. And yet somehow non-pedantic viewers have been able to enjoy a film in which the bad guys squander every chance to quash a rebellion. And they’ve now made 9 additional films in that franchise! Crazy, I know.

Ha, you’re not going to trap me into pedantically stating that movies are usually designed to make the villains seem overwhelmingly powerful and the hero’s situation dire. You’re definitely not going to make me say that it’s important to show that the villains are an existential threat to our heroes on every level, because that’s just an obvious statement about movies that everyone knows.

The Resistance fits on the Falcon at the end of the film. Not dire at all.

They have everything that they need, apparently. They’ll be fine.
At least, that’s what I got from it.

We’ve got a winner!

DominicCobb said:

NeverarGreat said:

DominicCobb said:

People seem to think Rey’s journey is done and over with after TLJ, which is just absurd. The idea that Rey’s rejection of Kylo has more in common with Luke’s actions in ROTJ over ESB is just a silly reach for an argument that is on shaky ground. Rey conquered neither Snoke or Kylo (not even close).

No need to go further in depth than that, I’ve said it all before.

Not even close? With Snoke dead and all of Kylo’s training allowing him to almost equal Rey, who recovers from their battle long before him?

Rey was dead if not for Kylo. She had no way out. Even though Kylo claims that the girl killed Snoke, this is not actually true if you watch the whole film.

I’m not sure why recovering faster from a shockwave is indicative of ability, but okay.

Truly things look grim for our hero in the darkest chapter of this trilogy. How can she ever hope to defeat someone whom she always seems to beat and his army of tactical imbeciles led by a man so stupid that he fell for a prank phone call?

I am on the edge of my seat.

If you watch the films, she actually only beat him once, believe it or not, when he was severely injured. I could have sworn this has been explained before on this site but I could be wrong.

I’m not investigating the reason for her victories, only that they seem to happen. And she did win in TLJ. Just think it through. If two people who are battling alone get knocked unconscious, the first one to recover has the power of life or death over the other. Rey has won. That she doesn’t kill Kylo doesn’t change the fact that she was completely capable of doing so.

I suppose you could probably claim most cinematic villains are imbeciles. If any Star Wars villains were smart, the heroes would get nowhere. And yet somehow non-pedantic viewers have been able to enjoy a film in which the bad guys squander every chance to quash a rebellion. And they’ve now made 9 additional films in that franchise! Crazy, I know.

Ha, you’re not going to trap me into pedantically stating that movies are usually designed to make the villains seem overwhelmingly powerful and the hero’s situation dire. You’re definitely not going to make me say that it’s important to show that the villains are an existential threat to our heroes on every level, because that’s just an obvious statement about movies that everyone knows.

DominicCobb said:

People seem to think Rey’s journey is done and over with after TLJ, which is just absurd. The idea that Rey’s rejection of Kylo has more in common with Luke’s actions in ROTJ over ESB is just a silly reach for an argument that is on shaky ground. Rey conquered neither Snoke or Kylo (not even close).

No need to go further in depth than that, I’ve said it all before.

Not even close? With Snoke dead and all of Kylo’s training allowing him to almost equal Rey, who recovers from their battle long before him?

Truly things look grim for our hero in the darkest chapter of this trilogy. How can she ever hope to defeat someone whom she always seems to beat and his army of tactical imbeciles led by a man so stupid that he fell for a prank phone call?

I am on the edge of my seat.

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Jay said:

Mocata said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Rey isn’t a Jedi yet.

Which begs the question what does Rey miss, that would prevent her from being called a Jedi? She has pretty much all the skills. She defeated Kylo Ren, resisted Snoke, and rejected Kylo Ren’s offer. What else is left for her to do, outside of defeating Kylo Ren again?

Being a Jedi is about more than just having all the skillz (which there’s no indication she has anyway). She defeated Kylo in a moment of weakness for him (and the next time she tried to face him she never even got to ignite her saber). She did not resist Snoke. And rejecting a single offer towards the dark side doesn’t mean that you’ll never face temptation again. Luke rejected Vader’s offer in ESB, don’t forget.

Sure, but let’s also not forget, that Luke did not have the level of control Rey has at the end of TESB. Luke still struggled to lift a few rocks, and got handed his *** by Vader. Rey came out victorious by comparison, and even got to rescue the rebels in the end.

That doesn’t make her a Jedi.

Right.

Being a Jedi was never about having level 90 flip ability and knowing how to dismember a dude in a few seconds. Power levels and midichlorians are PT nonsense. “My powers have doubled since we last met” says Anakin. WHAT. What does that even mean. The whole trilogy is gibberish. Now take ROTJ and what does Luke really do to become a Jedi Knight? He fights yet again, and he actually only beats Vader in combat when anger and rage fuel his body. Just like Vader said in ESB. But becoming a Jedi has nothing to do with sweet moves and fighting abilities. Luke goes beyond that and throws down the saber. It’s a spiritual state of mind, like a touch of Zen. People argue over and over about ridiculous things like how can Rey do this or that. Who even cares. It’s irrelevant.

After Rey’s childhood, there’s nothing zen about her. I can’t buy the notion that a week’s worth of stress focused her mind and turned the coal into a diamond. Show me a monk who achieves enlightenment in a week.

Whether you define the scope of what it means to be a Jedi as flipping around and floating rocks or a spiritual, zen-like state of mind, neither should be possible to the extent Rey is capable within a few days.

But again, Rey’s not a Jedi yet. That’s the whole point being made. Whether or not she’s got the high level powers already, she hasn’t yet reached that zen point that Luke does at the end of ROTJ.

Yes, but like I said before, those high power levels were previously only attainable in two ways, the quick and easy path, where you lose your soul, or reaching a zen point. There’s a reason Luke shouldn’t have faced Vader in TESB. He wasn’t at the zen point yet, and so he also didn’t have the high power level to defeat him. Only a fully trained Jedi with the Force as his ally will conquer Vader and his Emperor. Luke’s arc culminates in ROTJ with him reaching those high power levels, facing Vader and the Emperor, whilst believing Vader can be turned, ultimately leading to Luke rejecting the dark side, and he thus declares himself a Jedi. Rey’s arc culminates in TLJ with her reaching those high power levels, facing Kylo and the Snoke, whilst believing Kylo can be turned, ultimately leading to Rey rejecting the dark side, and she isn’t a Jedi apparently. The confrontation in Snoke’s throne room delibirately echos ROTJ with characters expressing the same sentiments, and in some cases the same dialogue. Whilst Rey may have failed to redeem Ben Solo, she otherwise passed the same test, that Luke did in ROTJ, that made him worthy of calling himself a Jedi. The irony here is that the same arguments, that were used to argue against Rey’s high power levels, which are rejected by TLJ fans, are now being used to argue she cannot be a Jedi, because that’s apparently a bridge too far. Well I say, if she can reach those high power levels in days, pass the test of facing up to evil, and reject the apple from the tree, telling the devil to stuff it, she can call herself a Jedi.

But Dre, she hasn’t built her own lightsaber yet, or gotten her Jedi papers processed at the space DMV. There’s still a correspondence course in galactic governance, some communications classes…

yotsuya said:

And let’s not forget that the Jedi Academy is a school. They come as children and the Jedi have to teach them literally everything. Reading, writing, math, science, history, as well as the Jedi powers, Jedi code, law, diplomacy, lightsaber combat, hand to hand combat, leadership, tactics, technology, piloting, driving, etc. Being a Jedi in the Old Republic is so much more than lifting rocks. But when you start ticking things off, a lot of that can be learned elsewhere. In the PT we never see Jedi powers taught. We see some younglings practicing with a lightsaber (an indication of how elementary what Luke is learning in ANH is) and we see two padawan accompanying their masters on missions. By that stage they have learned all their classroom lessions and are doing their apprenticeship in the field. In the OT we see one lesson with Obi-wan for deflecting blaster bolts and then lessons with Yoda levitating rocks (perfecting what Luke had done earlier in the Wampa cave without any instruction). That is all we know. Anything else is guess work. Rey went to Luke expecting training to manage and perfect her use of what she had learned from Kylo Ren, but Luke only gave her the basics. So she took the texts and left. Oh, from kind of a throw away line, evidently Ben Solo was the same type of natural she is.

So I really don’t understand this insistance that this violates the previous 6 films. I also don’t understand how it is Rian Johnson’s fault when the character was created this by JJ Abrams. Rian gave her a nice arc about facing her parentage and being rejected by Luke and accepted by Kylo, but she can’t join Kylo. He did not give her a bunch of new force powers on top of what she already had.

What Luke and the baby Jedi are learning is how to trust your extrasensory perception/prediction abilities. This is what allows Anakin to succeed at Podracing, and presumably what makes Luke such a gifted pilot as well. That is the one ability which is established as present at a young age. This is why I can see why Rey would be so good at piloting the Falcon - it’s an ability that requires you only sense the Force, and allow it to guide your actions with regards to self-preservation. This is also why I don’t think it’s crazy that Leia was able to do what she did in TLJ.

But telekinesis and mind control? These are things which we have only seen Force users do after years of effort. And I do think that the Wampa cave was meant to show that Luke taught himself some Jedi tricks in the years between movies, probably with some ghost Obi-wan help.

I don’t think anyone’s saying that Rian is primarily at fault for these issues. He merely continued in JJ’s trajectory, which makes me think that there’s some sort of explanation coming in 9, though the individual movies should stand on their own.

That all looks very good!

One thing I’d suggest is removing the shot of the planet, since it probably wouldn’t be in view as they were flying away from the Supremacy, and there would also be a lot of fire and debris still to clear.

Either that or show the single shot of the ship leaving the exploding hangar, then have the entire deleted scene without a cut back to the ship still exiting the debris. You could instead just show the end of the shot where it slowly zooms in on the throne room section.

Hal 9000 said:

This thing might not be as ‘out there’ as I assumed. I believe I have the resources I would need for ESB and ROTJ, or I would only need minimal help. No promises, as I am very busy, but I’m going to let this incubate.

JEDIT: The biggest problem will be source material. NeverarGreat’s color correction of ANH is fantastic, but I don’t see anything comparable for ESB and ROTJ. I would need a suitable primary source for the 2004/2011 version to begin with, in the same vein of NeverarGreat’s ANH.

Neverar, are you planning to give the other two the same treatment? DrDre has a thread about matching ESB to the SE grade which looked pretty good, too. For ESB and ROTJ, matching the OOT or 1997 SE would be perfectly fine. (ANH’s 1997 SE transfer had some color issues, and your technicolor grade for it leaves nothing to be desired.)

I don’t see doing the other two any time soon if at all, unfortunately. Maybe when Poita’s unfaded scan of Empire is released and we see how crummy the Blu-ray is in comparison, but otherwise I’m hoping to focus on the Starlight fanedit(s).

Except that TFA makes a big point of saying how Finn doesn’t know how to drive, and in ANH Han is skeptical that either Luke or Obi-wan could fly his spaceship. So maybe piloting is like flying a plane and takes some training, moreso than a car.

I’m calling it now - the Big Three will all be Force Ghosts by the end (yes, even Han somehow) and they’ll all appear to Rey as a mirror to Luke’s scene in ROTJ.

Collipso said:

several people.