NeverarGreat

Well remember that version 2 will have the subplot about the fleet being assembled to aid the Resistance, but the Hosnian system is destroyed before it launches. If I ever manage to do a TLJ edit, the Raddus fleet will be retconned into being the remnants of the Republic fleet which has suffered horrible loss in their defense of the galaxy, in an attempt to give the illusion of time passing between the two films:

EPISODE VIII
THE LAST JEDI

The Republic is doomed.
Without the Jedi Knights,
nothing can stand against
the ascendant First Order.

Using secrets delivered
by a sinister informant,
an armada of fearsome
warships commanded by
Supreme Leader Snoke has
ravaged the unsuspecting
New Republic Starfleet
and hunted its survivors
across the stars.

Attempting to escape this
deadly armada, the last of
the tattered fleet has fled
to General Leia Organa
and her Resistance base,
seeking a final spark of
hope amidst the galaxy’s
most desperate hour…

I just stumbled upon this and was blown away. It uses this AI to create remarkably clear dialogue, and based on the spot-on pronunciation of the made-up words in that sample as well as some words which were clearly misread, this example was made by speaking the words to the AI and having the AI tune the voice to a specific character. If this is true, then it is a vast improvement over the FakeYou AI which failed to make the cut in my edit.

So what do you think? I’m thinking about a few choice discussions in the OT and how they could be transformed with a few edits from this AI.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Finally got around to watching this classic, and you can almost imagine Gene Roddenberry and a young George Lucas sitting in the theater furiously taking notes.

I’ve been once or twice. This was in my late teens, early twenties when my parents were convinced I was depressed and they put me on antidepressants (which didn’t seem to do anything) and insisted I go see a professional. I don’t recall much about it because it was mostly just introductions and general questions. I think they wanted to know about my worldview and I ended up getting philosophical, which sent the conversation on a tangent about metaphysics and at that point my time was up. I didn’t really get anything from it so I didn’t go back. Regardless, I didn’t think there was any deep trauma in my childhood or teenage past for therapy to help.

Fast forward a decade and what my parents thought was depression I suspect was more along the lines of Adult Onset ADHD which led to a series of depressive episodes, which would explain a lot. Maybe if I’d continued with therapy the therapist could have recognized the underlying cause of my distress being due to very selective ability to concentrate on tasks and they could have done more to help, but I don’t think there was ever any hint that anyone considered this.

In terms of physical therapy, I did have a minor hip injury in college and went to therapy for it quite a few times. That seemed quite effective from what I could tell and I haven’t had issues with it since.

hinventon said:

It probably wouldn’t fit anywhere in the crawl, but I wish there was a way to elaborate on why there’s no Republic fleet to counter the FO. What makes the most sense to me is that the Republic demilitarized after ROTJ fearing they would become another Empire, and are funding the Resistance in secret to fight them, but that’s not explained very well in the actual film.

Can’t wait for a V2 whenever you start it back up, this edit’s my favorite!

I wish I could include that as well, but the space just isn’t there. I’ve certainly tried! And thank you for the encouragement; this project will be completed, hopefully on a Death Star II schedule and not Death Star I 😉

VVPizza said:

This feels like the best crawl so far-- dense with info without feeling forced. Introducing the Republic early does helpthe second paragraph flow better.

I feel like while “Rejoicing in Skywalker’s downfall” does set the right sinister tone for the First Order, it might point too heavily toward later revelations about Luke’s arc following RotJ, where the rest of the movie teases out the mystery. “Skywalker’s abscence” might be a suitable more-neutral phrase. Then again, the First Order having apparent knowledge of said downfall establishes a mystery of its own which gets resolved later, so the trade-off may be worth it.

I would also suggest changing “the return of the Jedi” to “the Jedi Master’s return” or something similar-- with “the last Jedi” already present in the next paragraph, two title drops in one crawl feels a bit too “winking” to me. It would also reaffirm his goal of restoring the Jedi Order, and his prospective role as a mentor to Rey later on.

In a non-crawl-related note, I’ve gotten an idea in my head lately about Rey’s Dark Side connection in the duel which I can’t shake. I’ve been imagining the blue-red flickering on her and Kylo’s faces resolving to primarily red as she taps into that power-- paralleling the color symbolism when Kylo chooses the Dark in the previous scene.

Interesting idea about the light changing! Something more subtle may be appropriate, since I wouldn’t want to suggest that Rey’s saber goes red.

Those are some fair points on the crawl as well. I did try ‘absence’ instead of ‘downfall’, but downfall just sounds more dire and clear that this is a bad thing for the good guys. There are also a lot of ‘s’ sounds on that line. Maybe generalizing the downfall to the plural Jedi would make more sense.

How about this:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

The Republic is in crisis.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore its legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Rejoicing in the Jedi’s
downfall, sinister agents
under the command of
the evil FIRST ORDER
have emerged from a
hidden Imperial base to
declare that all who seek
Luke Skywalker’s return
shall be destroyed.

In an act of RESISTANCE,
a daring band of rebels
armed by the Republic
has sent their best pilot
to Jakku, desperate to
find the last Jedi and
vanquish the shadow now
rising across the stars…

Z6PO said:

Marooned Biker Scout said:

more cheese in Star Wars!

Don’t forget the crackers!

https://youtu.be/2emv5A7OlVM?t=145

^ I do love that dusky lilac hue, it just looks right to me.

Now I’m imagining that when Anakin and Obi-wan were fighting together in the Clone Wars, Obi-wan would continually pull magic tricks to bamboozle Anakin and remind him he still had much to learn. Perhaps this is why Vader is adamant that he is the master now, only to have Obi-wan pull one last trick.

While the Force cult and Sith discussion are interesting, it’s not really explored in the film.

Here’s where my thoughts lie at the moment:

The Republic is in crisis.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore its legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Rejoicing in Skywalker’s
downfall, sinister agents
bearing the mark of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
emerged from a hidden
Imperial base to declare
that anyone who seeks
the return of the Jedi
shall be destroyed.

In an act of RESISTANCE,
a daring band of rebels
armed by the Republic
has sent their greatest
pilot to Jakku, desperate
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

There are quite a few little changes and tweaks here.

Most notable is that the ‘New Republic’ has been changed back to simply the ‘Republic’. This is due to several reasons, mostly length of the title on the line, and this also helps to prevent the audience dwelling on the title of an organization which doesn’t really have much presence in the film. It also is a valid way to describe the government and is described this way in the film itself. Also, introducing it in the first line allows for a more clear understanding that the Jedi Order is essential for replicating this timeless Republic, which Luke was trying to do. Finally, I can now have the Republic introduced before paragraph two, and this frees up that paragraph to flow better as it is now fully about the First Order.

I’m pretty happy with where the crawl is now, and I’m really beginning to feel a bit like David in the Wrath of Khan: “I don’t think there’s another piece of information we could squeeze into the memory banks.”

You know, something that’s always bugged me about ANH and its Special Edition is that in the final shot of the ships headed back to Yavin after the Death Star’s destruction, the Falcon model enters frame from the left but then moves into the center of the frame without substantially changing orientation. https://youtu.be/tYZuOSZj2wg?t=483

The Falcon model clearly starts turning left as it enters frame, as expected, but then it stops turning and just continues almost straight forward with its nose pointed well to the right of Yavin and its engines firing to the left. It’s a really bizarre movement that I would have thought Lucas would have changed in the SE like he did in so many other weird model shots.

Of course, I imagine it would be difficult for Ady to fix this issue since it would require rigging and filming a whole new model (practically or digitally) to put in that shot.

greenturnedblue said:

George Lucas: “A director, and nobody else, should be allowed to make changes to their film.”
Also George Lucas: came out with no less than five different edits of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which he did not direct

That is a very good point.

timdiggerm said:

This could almost fit into the small details thread, but I don’t think it’s particularly obscure.

I wonder why they (Kershner?) decided it was so important to make sure Lando demonstrated proper safety protocols by wearing a safety harness & clipping in when getting onto the Falcon’s roof and grabbing Luke under Cloud City. It’s also such a shame any shots of Lando actually on the roof of the Falcon grabbing Luke were cut.

I like to imagine that Lando, as a facility administrator, had many prior difficulties with laborers not following proper safety protocol. I imagine that he would have demonstrated himself on several occasions how to follow Space OSHA requirements when doing maintenance on the underside weather vanes, so when it came time to rescue Luke he would be a massive hypocrite if he didn’t follow his own regulations.

Interesting take, DZ, though it has some of the issues that plagued my prior crawls, such as ‘Imperial agents’ not really being accurate since they are from the First Order and the problems with stating that the Republic was responsible for the Resistance.

EddieDean said:

Hmmm. My only concern with this is that it turns the First Order into active belligerents, since threatening ‘destruction’ for seeking the Jedi is essentially a soft declaration of war on their part. I think that’s an issue, because the fragile peace between the First Order and New Republic is one of the main reasons why the New Republic doesn’t officially throw its support behind the Resistance. I still think there’s big value in emphasising the fragile peace, and less-but-still-some value to emphasising the First Order as a particularly extremist faction.

I see how this could be an issue, but consider that in the theatrical version Leia is convinced that Snoke is behind the destruction of the new Jedi Order, which is a far more blatant act of war than merely a vague threat of destruction if a government does something which it hasn’t officially done.

It also gets into the murky situation, if I were to say ‘There is an uneasy peace between the First Order and the New Republic’ that this would establish the two powers as comparable in strength, or at least having a known strength. With the current wording it could be interpreted that the First Order is a largely unknown power arising from a secret base, which makes the threat more like something that would come from a modern day stateless terrorist organization rather than a country with nuclear weapons. One expects that a terror organization would make these kind of threats and be ‘at war’ with a government while the government wouldn’t be in a position to deal with this diplomatically.

I also just think that having the First Order make a threat against anyone seeking the Jedi’s return is a far better attitude than having them be on a quixotic vendetta against Luke specifically, a person who has already disappeared and isn’t currently a thorn in their side. When Kylo Ren orders the destruction of San Tekka’s disciples, this is directly in line with the established First Order threat because the disciples are part of the Church of the Force, a sanctuary of those who believe in the Jedi. In the theatrical version this scene came across as a gratuitous ‘kick the dog’ moment, while this new decree practically requires such an action. The belligerence of the First Order rises in scale from there, with the attack on the Force-sympathetic Maz’s castle to the destruction of a government secretly supporting Jedi sympathizers. They may not be terribly effective in their villainy, but with this decree they are at least murderously consistent.

It’s funny that you zeroed in on that line to remove, as I had literally copied it into the paragraph because I thought the second paragraph needed to include the New Republic. But you’re right that it was in the wrong place. How about this:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

The galaxy is in crisis.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

With the New Republic
overwhelmed by chaos
and despair, agents of
the evil FIRST ORDER
have risen from a hidden
Imperial base to proclaim
that anyone who seeks
Luke Skywalker’s return
shall be destroyed.

In an act of RESISTANCE,
a rebel force supported
by the Republic military
has sent its most daring
pilot to Jakku, desperate
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

Granted, it does still have the change from ‘New Republic’ to ‘Republic’, but I think it makes sense if I include the ‘military’ modifier since that makes it more clear that the Senate may not actually support the Resistance, only the Starfleet really supports Leia.

JEDIT: I could say “Republic Starfleet” in the crawl instead of “Republic Military”. The benefit would be to imply that we would see them in action, saving the day at the end of the film, only to subvert expectations with their absence. Alternately this may be seen as annoying to introduce something that is only referenced a few times and barely seen. And perhaps I could make more reference to an individual instead of the vague ‘rebel force’:

In an act of RESISTANCE,
a rebel leader supported
by the Republic Starfleet
has sent her most daring
pilot to Jakku, desperate
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

JEDIT 2 Electric Boogaloo: Or I could just do what you said and keep New Republic across both paragraphs, since ‘Starfleet’ isn’t the technical lore term and ‘New Republic Defense Force’ probably wouldn’t even fit on a line.

The galaxy is in crisis.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

With the New Republic
overwhelmed by chaos
and despair, agents of
the evil FIRST ORDER
have risen from a hidden
Imperial base to proclaim
that anyone who seeks
the return of the Jedi
shall be destroyed.

In an act of RESISTANCE,
a rebel leader supported
by the New Republic has
sent her most daring pilot
to Jakku, desperate to
find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

Blueffalump said:

Hi NeverarGreat!

Your changelist reads like a substantial improvement!

Are there any chances of you releasing an additional smaller filesize versions of Starlight? The current one is sadly too large for my modest internet connection/hardware configuration.

Check your pms!

I’m actually pretty dialed in on the number of lines and characters per line, since I use the exact font in my text editor that will be used in the AE render, and the program is set up with proper column width.

So for example, the character count per line is usually no more than 27, including spaces. That means ‘The New Republic is in crisis.’ would be too long, as it takes 30 characters including some capitalized letters. You can of course fudge the margins with spacing like the theatrical version, but one of my self-imposed restraints is to do this as little as possible.

With regards to the number of lines, I’m using 21 lines of text since that’s the number of lines in the crawl for ANH, and it happens to line up well with the music and timing of my bespoke crawl.

Fair enough on it being too wordy, as there has always been a ton of information to convey in this crawl and it’s one of the reasons that I’ve literally done hundreds of versions over several years. It’s simply the case that not all of the information can be conveyed in 88 words. Interestingly, that’s identical to the word count of the theatrical version so the only real change is that the average word length has increased slightly.

This is all to say that I definitely get where you’re coming from, but a lot of crawl rewrites I have to discard out of hand due to line length or line number. The 4-9-8 line numbers are set in stone for this project, for good or ill 😉

Is that really a worry though? I don’t imagine many viewers would assume Luke vanished and was found all within the opening crawl, and even if they did the first scene clarifies that the Mcguffin is just a map to Luke.

Good ideas all!

And VVPizza, I have to agree. I find myself constantly coming back to that line as the ending, which makes me think that an earlier formulation of the crawl could work with some adjustment.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

The galaxy is in crisis.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, agents of the
IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER
have risen from a sinister
hidden base to proclaim
across the New Republic
that anyone who seeks
Luke Skywalker’s return
shall be destroyed.

In an act of RESISTANCE,
a band of rebels with the
support of the Republic
has sent its most daring
pilot to Jakku, desperate
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

After so many attempts at figuring out a better way to explain the Republic’s relationship with the Resistance, it feels a bit silly to go back to the exact wording of the theatrical crawl, but I genuinely have no better answer. The Resistance is a paramilitary organization that is not sanctioned or directly controlled by the Republic, so it feels wrong to say that here. It genuinely seems to be the case that the Resistance gets by with only the tacit acceptance of the Republic. At least this way I can keep the pilot and Jakku lines, which I wasn’t able to fit in this prior incarnation of the crawl.

This means that this crawl checks basically all the boxes for me. The only potential issue is that there’s no direct statement of how the First Order arose from the Empire, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the problems of the theatrical crawl was how the First Order could be so powerful after rising from the ‘ashes of the Empire’ in Luke’s absence, but if it is never established that the Empire has been completely destroyed then the First Order can be of any power level that a viewer wants to imagine, based on how completely they believe the Empire was defeated decades ago.

That’s correct. It’s a tough line to walk, and takes up a lot of space in a crawl that needs every line.

Anyway, although the idea of the Resistance infiltrating First Order space to look for Luke is fun, it doesn’t really fit with the film as Eddie said, and it also feels a bit to bold of the timid Republic to do this. In thinking about how to structure this some more, perhaps discussing Luke’s students could serve as a bridge between the first and second paragraphs. This would also track with the events of the movies:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of darkness.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

With his former students
fleeing into the depths of
Imperial space, several in
the New Republic Senate
have secretly authorized
a daring task force to
resist the rising threat
of the evil FIRST ORDER,
heir to the fallen Empire.

Desperate for any clue to
Luke’s whereabouts, this
brave RESISTANCE has
sent its finest pilot to the
distant world of Jakku,
unaware that the shadow
of evil now darkens even
the farthest stars…

I agree that this keeps the film from being a perfect stand-alone, but there is a mitigating factor in that we do see a lightsaber fight so the lightsaber as an object is paid-off. The fact that it belongs to Obi-wan isn’t to troubling to me. Star Wars is a universe of unbounded promise, so giving Luke a weapon that he doesn’t use in a fight only fires the mind to imagine him using it in a future battle against Vader.

Hmm, that’s an interesting suggestion. But the rearranged sentence introduces ambiguity in ‘their domain of evil’, which is somewhat uncoupled from ‘the sinister FIRST ORDER’. One could interpret the domain of evil to be connected to the Resistance, which is obviously not what we want. It also has three commas in a row, whereas my original sentence was intended to break up the two commas across the entire paragraph.

I go back and forth on ‘his’ or ‘the’, since ‘the’ is more straightforward, but ‘his’ gives a more poetic flair and (to me at least) evokes the idea of a darkening fate or destiny.

How about this:

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

The galaxy is in crisis.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Sensing Imperial malice
behind this catastrophe,
several valiant Senators
in the New Republic have
authorized a task force
to search for the last Jedi
within the domain of the
sinister FIRST ORDER,
heir to the fallen Empire.

Sworn to an errand of
secrecy, leaders of this
brave RESISTANCE have
sent their greatest pilot
to the planet of Jakku,
unaware of the shadow
now rising to extinguish
the darkening stars…

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

The New Republic grieves.
Its hero Luke Skywalker,
striving to restore the old
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Fearing a sinister power
behind this catastrophe,
a few desperate Senators
have secretly called upon
an intrepid RESISTANCE
to search for the last Jedi
in the domain of the evil
FIRST ORDER, heir to the
fallen Galactic Empire.

Answering this call, the
ace pilot Poe Dameron
has discovered a clue to
Luke’s location on the
desolate world of Jakku,
unaware of the shadow
now rising to extinguish
his darkening stars…

Giving the clones a chip instantly robs them of any agency they could have had as individuals. Truly one of the worst things to come out of The Clone Wars show.

It’s also quite bizarre from a motivation angle, since there are so many ways in which the clones could have turned against the Jedi. For example, Palpatine could reveal that Yoda and the Jedi are inherently mistrustful of the clones and will intend to take over their peacekeeping duties once the war is over, relegating the clones to ignoble retirement or outright termination once their purpose has been fulfilled. Then the impetus of the clones to destroy the Jedi at the end of the war could grow organically from within their ranks, nurtured by the machinations of Palpatine.

I think saving Anakin’s fall for post Episode 3 is a good idea, and is what I’m leaning towards in a rewrite. It’s also interesting to think of ending the trilogy on a high note, and would probably mean shifting the viewpoint backward in time. There’s still the issue of Anakin’s children which put some constraints on the timeline, but it may be solvable.

Doing some quick math, both Anakin and Obi-wan would be in their mid-60s by the time of ANH based on the ages of their actors, which means that they would be in their mid-40s during the birth of the twins.

Obi-wan claims that Vader was a young Jedi when he began hunting down and killing the Jedi, so he must have turned rather early in his life while also allowing for him to have become a good man before that. So how old is the average student before they become a Jedi? It must be that to become a Jedi takes more time than is implied by Luke’s training, significantly more in fact. It is also known that a Jedi begins their training before they are in their twenties, so the training may take two decades or more.

If Anakin began training in his 20s and became a Jedi by the time he was 30, that may still be quite young for a Jedi based on historical trends. This would also indicate that Luke underwent an unusually rapid course of training, and the derision he meets from Jabba and his entourage may be simply due to them understanding that a Jedi would have been old by necessity of lengthy training.

However, this means that since Anakin and Obi-wan were similar in age, Obi-wan would have been remarkably young to be a Jedi as well. Why was this? Well, the common factor here is Yoda, who significantly rushed Luke’s training by all accounts. Perhaps he also rushed Obi-wan’s training, and this is the original flaw that led to the destruction of the Jedi. Yoda may have been visited by a young man filled with a zeal to embark on a worthy crusade and fight in the Clone Wars. In fact, Obi-wan’s training may have mirrored Luke’s training where he realized that his friends were in danger and left the training unfinished, having promised that one day he would return to Dagobah to complete what he started. But in the meantime, he would train acolytes of his own to help him fight this war. Interestingly, there is evidence that Luke remembers Dagobah and Yoda seems to remember Luke, so perhaps Obi-wan did return to Dagobah to complete his training after taking Luke from his mother at the end of the Clone Wars. It fits!

Sorry for the stream of consciousness, but I seem to think best by writing.

Anyway, I’m getting the impression that Anakin and Obi-wan are peers and partners in the Force more than student and teacher, helping each other learn through a trial by fire and war. “I was a Jedi Knight, same as your father”, takes on more meaning now. There’s the tension between that statement and “When I left you I was but the learner, now I am the master”. Perhaps that is because Obi-wan was never officially made a Jedi Knight, merely claiming that he was and making Anakin a Jedi Knight after taking him through his incomplete course of training.

Or perhaps the term Jedi Knight is actually two separate distinctions. To become a Jedi is the more difficult, lengthy, and spiritual journey, and the knight appellation is similar to a Knighthood in the UK. Essentially, Yoda may be a Jedi but not a Knight since he is not in service to the Republic, and Obi-wan may be a Knight but not truly a Jedi since he may not have completed Yoda’s training, at least not before the time of the Empire.

To put all this in some order, here’s how I see a potential timeline:

Episode 1 sees Obi-wan, having returned from Yoda on Dagobah several years ago, fighting in the first Clone War at the age of 25. He claims that he is a Jedi and commands his own squadron. The Jedi are an obscure and fading image of the Republic’s former glory, with few knowing of how they were once peacekeepers in the galaxy. He recruits Anakin (also 25) and together they win the day, ending the first Clone War. At the end of the film Obi-wan is awarded a Knighthood by the Republic, and becomes the youngest Jedi Knight in the Republic’s history.

Episode 2 takes place 5 years later, at the outbreak of the second Clone War. This is a far fiercer conflict and looks to span the entire galaxy. Alderaan asks for help. Obi-wan again asks Anakin to fight, and vows to teach him the ways of the Jedi even if no other Jedi in the galaxy shall train him.

Episode 3 takes place another 5 years later, and they have a chance to end this galactic conflict. Obi-wan now has several students under his wing, and Anakin is rewarded by a Knighthood. The Republic has an unstoppable army and has brought peace to the universe, and the Jedi are ready to go out into the universe and become peacekeepers in it like they once were.

This leaves the story with our heroes at the age of 35, ten years before the birth of the twins. This also leaves a lot of the story to the imaginations of the audience, which is important in Star Wars.