NeverarGreat

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of darkness.
Luke Skywalker, last of
the legendary Jedi Knights,
has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, agents of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to sow chaos and fear
throughout the vulnerable
New Republic.

Racing against time, a
brave RESISTANCE sworn
to secrecy 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…

This may be the best option there is for explaining the relationship between the Senate and the Resistance. Here, the Senate is demanding that the actions of the Resistance be undertaken in secret, but it doesn’t specifically say whether or not the Senate officially condones these actions. Presumably it does but wishes to give the impression of being an impartial party, which tracks with Hux’s statement about it ‘secretly supporting’ the Resistance. At the same time, there’s no mention of actual assistance by the New Republic.

I am also trying to imply here that the Resistance search for Luke is more widespread than just Poe’s mission, though that is the one which leads to results. It makes the galaxy seem bigger.

I think it’s quite intentional that Palpatine creates the illusion, or phantom, of menace to Anakin and the Senate, then positions himself as the only one who can protect them with some vague promise of power or security. Both parties take the bait and end up hopelessly corrupted. It’s a brilliant bit of parallel storytelling.

Or it would be if it was handled with any sort of competence. Execution is everything, and instead of working like a Shakespearean Tragedy it lands like a wet farce.

I felt this one was about on par with 2 and 4, which are entries which I don’t have any particular desire to see again. For me, nothing comes close to 1 and 3 in terms of enjoyment.

If the studio really wanted to continue this franchise after DoD, may I suggest making low-budget movies featuring a long-lost niece or granddaughter in the Jones family.

Call it…the indy Anna Jones series.

In my opinion, there has never been a truly satisfactory name for users of the Dark Side.

Darth was originally Vader’s first name, and giving every darksider a “Darth (Evil Adjective)” name is dumb.

Sith is slightly better, but even though it was conceived for the Original Trilogy, it has generally been associated with the prequels and their baggage concerning the “rule of two” which makes it practically worthless for general practitioners of the Dark Side. Sith has ironically become a very limiting term for a group of practitioners who reject limitations almost as a rule.

Finally, even calling someone a ‘darksider’ or a ‘Dark Side user’ uses the Jedi’s doctrinal dichotomy between light and dark sides of the Force, whereas many so-called ‘darksiders’ would probably view themselves as agnostic in their use of the Force, only recognizing it for the power it provides. This is why it bugs me that the Emperor describes his power as coming from the Dark Side, since it feels like bowing to the Jedi terminology.

If it were up to me, I’d just call non-Jedi practitioners of the Force ‘Force Users’ or ‘Force Wizards’. It should be a neutral term which doesn’t stoop to the Jedi dichotomy. There would probably also be truly committed darksiders in the galaxy, just as there are Satanists in opposition to popular religious sects, whose choice of name is often performative and intended to provoke. But these darksiders would probably be a minority, as are Satanists among the vast array of religiously unaffiliated people who nevertheless have some religious or spiritual beliefs. Some of these Force users may use the Dark Side exclusively and yet not be affiliated with the Sith doctrine, some may use the Light Side exclusively yet not be called Jedi, and others may not differentiate between the two sides at all.

Only the Falcon desert chase scene was filmed and shown in Open Matte, and then only in certain screenings and later a few broadcasts.

Rewrite ANH’s crawl to be like TFA’s:

Obi-wan Kenobi has vanished. In his absence, the evil GALACTIC EMPIRE has risen from the ashes of the Old Republic and will not rest until Alderaan, the last planet of the Republic, has been destroyed.

Without the support of the Senate, Senator Bail Organa leads a brave REBELLION. He is desperate to find the Jedi Obi-wan Kenobi and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy.

Bail has sent his most daring Senator on a secret mission to Tatooine, where her long-lost brother knows the secret to Kenobi’s whereabouts…

G&G-Fan said:

The scene in which Palpatine and Anakin meet in TPM, and the scene with Anakin and Palpatine in his office in AOTC, were both reshoots.

We almost got a version of the trilogy where Darth Vader and the Emperor do not have a scene together until the third movie.

What a mess.

Not introducing the Chancellor/Emperor until the third film or even the OT makes a lot of conceptual sense.

ANH takes pains to set our point of view on the lowly droids before gradually working up to more powerful and politically important characters, and this is how stories often work, especially with sequels. In order to keep the audience invested it’s a good idea to leave room in the universe for powerful entities which can be slowly introduced and incorporated into the story to instill a sense of escalating stakes.

The prequels don’t do this, and this is one of the reasons they feel so flat. We are introduced to the most powerful person in the galaxy partway through the first film, which leaves no room for important character escalation. If instead Anakin had to work with Obi-wan to become a Jedi Knight through the first and second films while fighting in the Clone Wars, the meeting and potential war hero decoration of Anakin by the future Emperor in film three would feel like the culmination of the entire story.

“His followers have been building something for years. A fleet of upgraded Star Destroyers from the old war. He calls it the Final Order. Each one has a dreadnought cannon capable of subjugating a planet.”

Channel72 said:

In Secret History of Star Wars, Michael Kaminski hypothesizes that Lucas came up with the idea to make Vader into Luke’s father after Brackett completed the first draft (and sadly died). Kaminski speculates that Lucas’ thought process leading up to this decision was as follows: Lucas read Brackett’s draft and something bothered him about the scenes where Luke’s father appears as a force ghost. Lucas realized that Luke’s father (who was a typical wise old Jedi character) was actually a completely redundant character, because he’s basically the exact same character as Ben Kenobi (who is also a Force Ghost at this point). But once the concept of force ghosts was introduced, it would follow logically that Luke’s father should begin appearing to Luke, since Kenobi always does. So now Lucas was stuck with duplicate “wise old Jedi” characters. If Luke’s father started appearing to Luke, there really would be no reason for Kenobi to have any further role in the story. So eventually, while struggling to find a solution to this problem, Lucas stumbled upon the greatest movie twist in history.

This is fascinating, and makes a lot of sense.

This hypothesis seems believable to me. It’s purely a guess, but it makes sense. But on the other hand, there is some evidence that Lucas actually decided that Vader was Luke’s father even before Leigh Brackett wrote the first draft. Kaminski points out how ridiculous this claim seems, because it means Lucas purposely withheld vital story information from Brackett, even while paying her to write the script (presumably out of paranoia of leaking the twist). And yeah, this does seem kind of ridiculous - but maybe it’s more like Lucas was just indecisive about the idea. Apparently it might actually be true, at least according to JW Rinzler, who claims to have many of Lucas’ handwritten preliminary notes for Empire Strikes Back, seemingly pre-dating Brackett’s draft. One of these note pages has the words “Father changes into Darth Vader”. But unfortunately Rinzler doesn’t provide a photograph of this (but provides many photographs of other notes), and Rinzler also admits that none of these notes are dated so it’s difficult to construct a precise timeline of Lucas’ thought process.

Could the words ‘Father changes into Darth Vader’ be a reference to a Force vision, much like Luke’s Dagobah Cave experience? In the finished film Luke defeats Vader and his face turns into Luke’s face, but perhaps there was a version where Luke’s father appears to him in a dream or vision but then changes into Vader to represent the revenge that Luke feels that he needs to take.

I suggest this alternate explanation merely because if I suddenly had the idea to combine the two characters, I would simply write ‘Father is Darth Vader’, or ‘Father changed to Darth Vader’. It’s very strange to use the present form of the word ‘changes’ since it suggests something which happens within the film, rather than being a revelation of an unchanging fact.

This thread contains much of the discussion into cleaning up the TFA and TLJ deleted scenes.

And for a simple listing of the deleted scenes, this thread would be good to include.

Emre1601 said:

NeverarGreat said:

Marooned Biker Scout said:

According to Deadline, production for season 4 of Mandalorian may be delayed due to the writers’ strike.

Why?

A joke based on the lack of quality writing in season 3?

Correct.

Marooned Biker Scout said:

According to Deadline, production for season 4 of Mandalorian may be delayed due to the writers’ strike.

Why?

RogueLeader said:

Yes, I would love that Nev!

Then I will continue gathering resources for the matte. I have everything in a Mega folder right now, consisting of screengrabs and BTS photos of the Emperor’s throne room which features the screen that I intend to use for the matte. My screengrabs are from 4K83 which means that they are probably not as high-quality as the official 4K release, and there are some BTS photos which are not in high quality.

So I’m again putting out a request for higher quality sources. Ideally there would exist somewhere a full-on high quality image of the screen, but failing that I could stitch something together with 4K film screengrabs if someone were to help replace the ones currently in the folder.

RJ, I’m still happy to try a ROTJ style Vader meditation chamber matte!

Gender-swapped Kynes was great and had a better death than the character in the book.

SparkySywer said:

Palpatine should’ve lived and gone to jail for his crimes or the rebels are no better than the Empire

Underrated comment.

Looks great!

I remember watching Episode 1 in 2000 or so and holding it to the quality of the other three movies that existed at the time. I was 13. Then Episode 2 came out and only then did I really start to feel like something felt off about Star Wars. I think it was the one-two punch of nonsense plot and bad CGI, which was noticeably off even at the time (Keep in mind that Gollum appeared on screen in the very same year).

I distinctly remember seeing a review for Episode 2 in the newspaper and reading that it was the weakest Star Wars movie to date, and that cemented the idea that just because it was a Star Wars movie doesn’t mean it would necessarily be good. Before that point I had bought into the idea that Star Wars was a monolithic entity leaping fully formed from George Lucas in 1977 and each movie was in fulfillment of an intricate, mythic tale. Episode 2 shattered that naive belief and made me realize that there likely never was a story for Episodes 1-3, and that George Lucas was just making it up as he went along.

Yeah this is the best version of the scene yet!

I think cutting the false ending is a good move and improves the action, but there’s still a bit of oddness in the original editing which this version makes even more noticeable. Specifically, the shots of Obi-wan being disarmed are too quick, with one being only a couple of frames. It isn’t too bad when these quick cuts are followed by a lull in the action, but going right into Obi-wan disarming Anakin feels like one trick too many.

I see two potential solutions, and both involve making Obi-wan’s disarmament one fluid motion.

The first would be to use only part of the shot where Anakin first strikes Obi-wan’s saber, removing the brief shot of him pulling back for the final swing and cutting the next shot to show the follow-through. This would still be several quick cuts, but it may not be as noticeable.

The second option I see would be to remove the closeup shot of Anakin’s first strike altogether, going right from the wide shot of the action to a the brief shot of Anakin pulling back for the final swing, but reversing this shot so that it appears that Anakin is swinging forward at Obi-wan’s saber. Then you could keep almost all of Obi-wan being disarmed in the wide shot, depending on the continuity between the two shots.

Anyway, those are my two cents. The scene is so close to perfect, and the music really works!

SpenceEdit said:

You all have done some amazing work here! One thing constantly bothers me when trying to put all of these scenes together into one fight: It’s missing a shot. There needs to be a close up shot of Obi-Wan starting to move after Anakin disarms him. Without it, there’s a jarring cut from Anakin’s close up to an extremely wide shot of Obi-Wan already in motion, which feels disjointed and hard for the brain and eye to follow. It also very suddenly breaks the 180 rule, which doesn’t help but can’t really be avoided entirely. It just doesn’t feel right.

I did a little mock up of inserting a shot into that spot, I’m sure there are other options between the show and the PT, but I thought this illustrated my point well enough:

https://streamable.com/iigfu3

I really think that shot is super important to make the scene flow correctly. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can feel that it’s missing.

NeverarGreat said:

The lines ‘Your weapon’s gone…it’s over.’ followed by ‘Your need for victory, Anakin, it blinds you’ feel superfluous to the flow before and after. Obi-wan’s next line ‘You’re a great warrior, Anakin…’ feels like the proper end to the action, and it may be best to just delete the second false ending altogether. I’d suggest cutting from Obi-wan being disarmed straight to the wideshot of Obi-wan spinning out of his crouch to put an end to the fight.

Omni said:

I’ve often wondered if watching the Prequels is a better experience if you’re a non-native English speaker, or if you watch it in a different language, so that the worst tendencies of the dialogue don’t necessarily register as overly childish or obnoxious.

From my experience, having lived years in both the United States and abroad, having attended conventions in multiple countries and all, Prequel reception is way, way more positive if you’re not from an English speaking country. You stop evaluating the lines by the quality you perceive in them, and only focus on what they’re trying to convey to the story, and the lines in the PT are very competent in that regard. So people watching the movie dubbed or subbed get a very different perception of the characters and story, probably the one Lucas wanted everyone to.

I imagine watching the Prequels subbed is like when I watch the sub of an Anime; a viewer can read into the foreign language all of the subtlety and gravitas that they want, whether or not it actually exists for native listeners.

If you look closely at the playthrough, Mando clearly used a code exploit for the ‘Gideon’s Secret Base’ level with his frame perfect glitch through the final shield grid, allowing him to access the final boss area without triggering the Gideon Clone activation script. The fact that there was animation and dialogue for this scenario shows that it must have been planned for by the developers at some point, even if it is hilariously stupid and anticlimactic.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

We went to see this with some friends and had a great time. Just a fun comedic romp, and I couldn’t even be mad at the use of a straight-up Portal gun because that’s honestly what people playing Dungeons and Dragons would do.