Since TLJ can serve as an end to the series, Episode 9 will be our remaining heroes traveling back in time through a wormhole to just before Episode 1, opening the door for an entirely new prequel trilogy directed by Rian Johnson.
Anakin was a dear friend of mine
I wouldn’t be surprised at anything that extended the deadline for JJ completing the story.
It’s Too Hot in the Desert and All My Friends Speak Binary, or Luke and the Loadlifters
Rage Against the Imperial Machine
DEATH STAR: Galaxy of Fear
Jedi and the Holograms
Vader, Moff Ben Tarkin Biggs: Organa Leia Han Artoo Wan Kenobi Antilles Darth Beru Owen to Alderaans.
Just got to watch this - or rather, watch a selection of scenes.
It’s great! Just as I remember from the DVD.
These are the questions I’ve been fighting with as well all day.
In regards to the two options of the FO’s pulled punches, I prefer the ‘Kylo’s Mission’ angle, since it doesn’t present the First Order as incompetent. In the end, I expect that there will remain some of Hux’s incompetence, but it’s far better for the audience to wonder ‘What is the crazy space wizard’s plan?’ rather than ‘Why is Hux still in charge of anything?’.
I think Poe’s character arc would still work even with much of the first scenes truncated or eliminated.
The Hyperspace Tracking plot is the most intractable problem right now. With the current idea of cutting so many scenes in the beginning of the movie, Leia and Finn discussing the impossibility of the tracking would be cut in favor of having Finn know about this technology and revealing its existence to Rose. The issue which immediately arises is that he should have brought this to Leia’s/Holdo’s attention immediately upon learning that they were running from the First Order. Instead he brings this to Poe’s attention, but Poe decides against telling Holdo.
One tantalizing idea is that the ‘cloaked’ binary beacon is not so cloaked as the Resistance thinks. Combined with the idea of Rey being the one who gave the beacon to Finn on the sly, the scenes could easily be reworked to make it seem like Finn is trying to get the beacon off the ship to protect it from further tracking. Of course this falls apart when they make their plan to disable the tracker, since all they need to do is get the beacon off the ship to solve the problem.
Yes, links are allowed (in PM form only). Count me down for one who thinks a 2:30 runtime can work for this trilogy, though the ideal edit remains elusive. I’d love to see this. 😃
I should probably clarify why I want to cut so much Leia material - simply put, it doesn’t directly relate to our heroes (Rey and Finn), which means that things like Leia using the Force or even Poe’s scenes with Leia are beside the point when the movie is already on the long side.
There’s a very instructional segment in the Lord of the Rings Appendices about this problem, and the solution that they found was to cut anything that wasn’t directly related to Frodo, with very few exceptions. I think this is a good rule of thumb in this case.
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:
Is it weird that I knew this was a Duracell post by the content alone?
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
