This is the Random Thoughts thread, so…
All these birthday wishes are making me want to wish suspiciouscoffee a Very Merry Un-UnBirthday, which makes me want to wish a Merry UnBirthday to a raven which is apparently somehow not unlike a writing desk.
Ugh, I just watched this today. Definitely the most UnGood Disney animated movie.
Even George Lucas admitted that becoming a parent changed the way he made movies. You’re no longer a rebel fighting the system, but a responsible adult and a role model for your kids. I do not doubt that Hamill’s view of Luke is filtered through this lens. Who wants to be a parent who even for a moment contemplates the murder of a relative? Anyone would rightfully be uncomfortable with such an idea, so sometimes it takes an outsider to admit unsavory elements of a character that have always been there.
If you wanted to be really daring, make the last paragraph of the crawl say that Rey has offered Luke the symbol of the Jedi so that he may return to the fight, then pan down to the planet and Luke chucking the saber. If done well, it would be as interesting as any space battle.
It sounds to me that Hamill was being truthful when he said that he initially had doubts with Rian’s version of Luke, and he’s being truthful here when he says that the movie is nevertheless great.
He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person to lie; he probably just regrets giving cover to angry fanboys.
I’m not super concerned about small things or moments of humor, except perhaps BB-8’s AT-ST antics. My idea for editing this right now is to remove the evacuation of the Resistance base entirely, and make a crawl that implies that the First Order already has the Resistance on the run. Start the movie with Rey on the island, and spend the opening scenes there and with her communications with Kylo. Then bring in Canto Bight as a re-introduction of the Resistance, and only after this do we meet up with Leia and Poe.
I’ll be seeing the movie again tomorrow, so I’ll be looking to see if this is at all feasible.
DOONEY SAVES STAR WARS WITH AWESOME GUITAR SOLO.
SomebodyNeverar had the idea of opening the movie with canto bight. Finn is simply awake. You cut maz Kanata explanation. Cut the drippy Finn scene. Cut scene with rose and him in the escape pod and she zaps him. The last scenes (minus the ring) could set the stage as part of the canto bight sequence either at the front or at the end of it. Truncate this sequence a lot overall. Cut the chase. Cut the beach landing. They find DJ in jail and get on the stolen ship back to the fleet. Then cut to TFA chewie and Rey landing on achto.I like he idea of Finn already being awake. That would imply time has passed. I’ll have to think about this one. The crawl would need to set these scenes up but I’m not sure we have a reason for this to happen without he opening scenes.
I suppose this movie could start with the implications that the Resistance is going to cut off the snakes head so to speak. Finn could be locating a slicer that will allow him to infiltrate the flag ship of the First Order and destroy it from within. That could go wrong and they could trace the Resistance base through the band Finn is wearing leading to the opening scenes. Hmmm, I’ll have to think about this one more. Thanks for spurring on this thought. 😃
My idea was to open with Rey on the island so that the normal version of TFA could be viewed before this, and only after time has passed on the island would the Resistance plot begin on Canto Bight. Of course with DigMod’s TFA edit this ‘time has passed’ idea would be easier.
I hadn’t considered changing the plot to one of assassination, but that would go a long way towards making the finale work: ‘That’s how we’re gonna win. Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.’
This guy’s comment/review is a fair summary of my own thoughts. Here’s his whole review:
Henry Gorman said:
This is a frustrating movie.
It has an impressive and noble ambition: to expose the fundamental hollowness of the Star Wars franchise’s heroes and their conflicts, and then, to give them some kind of substance. The Luke Skywalker who appears here is shockingly caustic and cynical, but the selfishness he displays has long been part of his character. He’s always been pulled into heroism by his hungers for recognition, fame, and family. Even though he’s a hero of the Rebellion, he has no organic connection to it, and never shows much interest in its overarching goals (which have almost always been irrelevant to the movie). If he had gone to the Academy a few years ago, as he had wanted to, he likely would have become a TIE fighter pilot. The younger heroes of The Force Awakens are not so different. Rey, a total social outcast, is fueled by a hunger for any sort of connection and purpose; Finn, the cowardly former stormtrooper whose behavior and background never quite gel, is much the same; Poe Dameron is valorous but, in this film, also a vainglorious death seeker whose choices undermine the cause. The Last Jedi confronts its protagonists with the limits of this selfish type of heroism and forces them to transcend it. It also tries to contextualize their struggle within the broader social and metaphysical realities. For the first time in the main saga, the Force is presented as something other than a vague abstraction, and the Resistance/Rebellion has a clear cause to fight for.
However, until the last 45 minutes or so of the film’s two and a half hours, Rian Johnson really struggles to dramatize all of this. He lacks JJ Abrams’s easy knack for creating character relationships out of thin air, which is a major problem in a film which separates its protagonists from their established friends for most of its runtime. He’s similarly clumsy with tone; the film’s opening sequence begins with Spaceballs-like farce, but pivots to Battlestar Galactica-like grim desperation without much consideration for how its comedy and tragedy interact. He also draws on a variety of stylistic influences (the aforementioned Spaceballs and Battlestar Galactica, Kurosawa’s oeuvre, Baz Luhrman’s Great Gatsby, Avatar: The Last Airbender) without constructively synthesizing them into a coherent whole, as Tarantino, Edgar Wright, or even George Lucas would have. The movie’s finale, which brings its main characters together and unifies its aesthetics, is far more effective and engaging (and beautiful! it includes both the most visually striking spaceship destruction and the most visually magnificent land battle in the whole franchise), but it’s undermined by what came before it. It also teases, then chickens out of making a few especially exciting choices.
So, The Last Jedi is more interesting than it is effective. It’s more thematically rich than The Force Awakens, but far less functional from moment to moment. I think it will produce some great fanfiction. I’d love to hear a rebuttal from one of the people who think that it’s the best Star Wars since The Empire Strikes Back.
Someone asked me how I removed the timecode on that one shot of the Leia scene. There are certainly better ways of doing this, but this method works so I thought I’d share it here as well.
SirRidley did most of the timecode removal in this scene, I just fixed the timecode on one shot.
I used Premiere, though After Effects would be ideal, but work with what you’ve got. For the shot in question, I had to do several things to remove the timecode. First, examine the entire shot to make sure that you can fill in any missing details. An obscured face, for example, may be very difficult to recover. For this shot I had to recreate the missing detail on the display, and also recreate the back of the technician’s head:
Next, in Photoshop, I took a still from the end of the shot where the most display detail was visible and used elements from the visible parts of the display to recreate the rest of it. Then I reduced the noise on the image in Photoshop, so that a new grain layer could be applied to the video later. I then imported this image patch into Premiere. If you’re using another software, you can export this patch as a TIFF with transparency for similar results.
Since I was using the last image in the shot, I worked backwards to animate the movement of the still image to match the gate weave and motion of the shot. I made a keyframe every two frames, but for best results I recommend going frame by frame. Another trick when using Photoshop is to import a still image of the untouched timecode and use that when matching the movement of the shot. This will make it much easier to know that you’re matching the elements correctly, since you’re matching the still-image timecode to the moving video timecode. After you’ve got good image registration you can simply replace the image of the timecode with the patch, and you’re good to go.
Next, I had to fix the top of the technician’s head. This was another Photoshop patch, using detail from the visible portion of the head and clone-stamping this detail into a new shape.
Because the head is moving through the shot, I had to animate this still image to match the movement. I also blended into another still image at the end of the shot to simulate the light bleed from the spotlight behind her.
Next, I added grain to the images. Six percent seemed about right for this shot, but if you’re working in a program that doesn’t allow moving grain on still shots, you may need to export your work at this stage and import that video, re-masking the timecode areas so that you can apply grain to a moving video.
For this particular shot I also had to include a braid removal by Sir-Ridley, which is why the right side of the image changes color slightly.
When everything is right, the last step is to color correct the entire shot as one.
And that’s it! This shot took the better part of a day, so you can imagine the work involved for an entire scene. Of course, there are probably better ways to do this in After Effects, but this is the low-tech solution.
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/WK7NNN8X
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Jumanji and its sequel feel like the first two Alien movies in miniature: The first goes for a slower, darker, more scary experience, and the sequel goes action adventure.
It’s also surprisingly funny.
People realize how easy it is to “fly” in space right? You don’t have to to be Superman or Mary Poppins. It’s space. People realize this, right? Right?
This is one area where Star Wars has always done whatever the hell it wants, physics be damned. Constant thrust should equate to constant acceleration, but in the Star Wars galaxy ships fly at a constant speed no matter how much they run the engines. In a fully realistic version of the Leia scene, the increasing acceleration of a cruiser constantly firing its engines would soon overtake the body of a person traveling at a constant speed due to an explosive decompression.
The big difference between TFA and TLJ that I’ve noticed is that JJ is able to make the characters feel believable while they often act out of character, whereas Rian is often unable to make their actions believable even as they act much more in character.
In short, TFA is manipulative yet effective, TLJ is natural yet ineffective.
It fails as a prediction as well. Like I said, if Lucasfilm did want to kill Leia before IX, they would’ve done it in VIII. They could’ve easily had her not float back to the ship from the vaccum of space, and the plot wouldn’t suffer.
Except that there would be an even more massive outcry about how the fans were robbed of a Luke/Leia reunion.
Another nitpicky thing: why was Luke alive? If he wanted to die, honestly, why didn’t he just kill himself? Like, really, it took him a long while to decide that he should do something worthwhile.
“I came here to die” well just jump from the cliff buddy you’ll be dead in 5 sec!! It would have been the easiest way for the Jedi to end and etc. (and this is actually a very serious matter)That question has been on my mind as well, but I was surprised to see no one bring it up until now. He came there to die… and yet he’s busy trying to… survive? Definitely lost on me.
Luke, the complete failure, even getting death wrong.
Yeah, the first version gets closest to my ears.
If it had slightly lower pitch and a bit of reverb, it might be improved.
The voice in the recording is yours truly! To my ear, the accent is quite similar to the original recording, but something I would like to do differently is record from a greater distance from the mic so that I can speak more aggressively and loudly and maybe get that “poshness” that you mentioned. It might also sound more natural when integrated with the rest of the clip.
Also, is the less than stellar quality of the recording coming through or does it sound okay? I’ve only been able to listen to it on my phone since I’m at work.
It sounds very good to me, but the greater distance might indeed make it that much better.
There’s something special about Rey. Since it’s highly unlikely that it’s a case of famous parents, the other obvious explanation is that the Force was awakened in her for some purpose, and I think it’s logical to conclude that it’s for the purpose of finding Luke due to her proximity to the Falcon and so forth.
I don’t think that just anyone can be a Jedi, you have to have a special talent for it. But to some extent, everyone in this universe can be attuned to the Force. The Force controls a person’s actions, but very few manage to get the Force to obey their commands.
Maybe when Luke closed himself off from the Force, it was ‘awakened’ in the person most likely to find him and bring him back. This person is Rey, who in addition to being familiar with the ship belonging to Luke’s oldest friend, is also close to a Church of the Force, the members of which are busy trying to find the First Jedi Temple.
That may just be the Force for you, but it sure would be nice if there was more of a hint in the original movie.
And here is the complete scene:
https://mega.nz/#!fYkB3JqT!vuMKA13Sbr9KLtpdzn0WBOLG_tPBZJJ-x0tkG8IMhok
I took the LUT back out and tweaked the colors again to make it more similar to the rest of the film. I think I’m finally happy with it.
Sheesh.
😃
Eh I get that you’re excited about Rey redefining what means to be a Jedi but isn’t that exactly what Luke did/was expected to do post-RotJ??? I mean, they literally picked his character arc, re skinned it and just gave him anew character arc to fit in with the new Luke. So, in a way, Luke’s also just plot device. Only in a way though.
That’s not entirely true. Yoda wanted Luke to ‘pass on what you have learned’, implying that the Jedi would come back, or return, as they were before the purge. There was no talk of ‘redefining what it means to be a Jedi’. In TLJ, Luke explicitly states that the Jedi should end, and specifically avoids teaching Rey the rules and dogma of the Jedi. She really is free to make her own way.
Here’s “the guy” again with his spoiler review of TLJ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOdobc7jtQo
He asks a good question, that I actually had not considered (and neither did RJ apparently): if admiral Holdo can lightspeed through Snoke’s ship to allow the rebels to escape, and we know they’re going pick them off one by one once the chase begins at the start of the film, why didn’t any of the rebels (or better yet a droid) sacrifice themselves at the beginning of the plot by having one of the cruisers lightspeed through Snokes ship, such that everyone can escape?
That was my first thought upon seeing it:
Sure, I could pick apart the logical gaps in the spaceship pursuit and the Godspeed Maneuver™, but that’s for a future fanedit.
This is actually one of my main complaints about the movie, since it’s such an awesome moment that it really needs to be logically solid to have that same impact over multiple viewings. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with a justification, and the only thing I can think of is that the damage to a ship would be exponentially increased with the size of the vessel. Mere fighters or support ships wouldn’t do that damage, nor even the old Calamari cruisers. And since a capital ship of that size is so valuable, to destroy it in this manner would probably not cross anyone’s mind.
That’s my answer for now.
I just wrote a draft of a short story. If I were to post it, should I post it here in off topic, or in the script writing section even though it’s not a script?
Scriptwriting! That place needs more activity.
Excellent work, that.
After seeing the Last Jedi , I felt compelled to update my gallery with a comic book cover I created depicting a scene from it . This composition sprang to mind as soon as I saw it …https://screamsinthevoid.deviantart.com/
Really good stuff.
