NeverarGreat

Concept: Go from BB-8 to interior, with Plutt and alien voices tormenting Rey, then pan over open book/scraps of parchment depicting her notes and pictures. Some contain crude depictions of Plutt and various nasty altercations with scribbled angry writing, but on a separate page is an image of an island, made with a great deal of care. The sounds shift to that of the ocean.

Actually, the paper could be bits of old Imperial propaganda posters or something that she found in the wrecks.

The music is an unused cue originally intended for Hux’s Starkiller speech. I’m planning to use it in the scene where Phasma triggers the alarm, and along with where it is briefly used in the new Maz Castle sequence, it will essentially be the theme for the First Order.

JEDIT: I will try to make the dream scene work without music, but those are good choices if that plan would fail.

RogueLeader said:

Gotta agree with Dom. I think after TFA, a lot of us felt that Kylo, after killing Han, would be transformed into a fully-realized villain. But TLJ just hammered down the fact that killing Han did not have the effect he was hoping for. Kylo is broken, just like his new mask illustrates. I personally think the Kintsugi-vibe with the red lacquer looks badass. Kylo is exactly where he thought he wanted to be this whole time, but he is not happy. He’s just doubling down on his mistakes like a sunken cost fallacy.

I just think that if they really wanted to bring home the idea that TLJ picked up directly where TFA left off, they could have had Kylo meet Snoke without the mask, simply because it had been lost, and then he would have the opportunity in Ep 9 to make that more badass mask for himself and double down on his mistakes some more. It felt like a natural way to keep the mask off for a movie while still keeping his need for it.

With Finn, his character arc has gone like this:
TFA: Wants to save himself —> wants to save Rey
TLJ: Wants to save Rey —> wants to save the Resistance
IX?: Wants to save the Resistance —> wants to save the Resistance AND the soldiers of the First Order (save the good guys and the “bad guys”)

I feel like that’s a bit overly literal and a bit cynical of his character, since he clearly wants to save Rey from the moment he meets her. I hope that 9 goes the route you suggest, but everyone was hoping for this in 8 and instead we got the ‘Needs to learn to help the good guys’ thing which many people felt was unnecessary or a given.

Regarding Rey, in TFA, she was under the delusion that her parents would come back for her. In TLJ, she understood that they weren’t coming back, but she now was wondering why they weren’t coming back? Why did they abandon her? Did something happen to them? That, to me, is why she wanted to see her parents, and why it hurt so much to accept they didn’t actually care about her. Like Dom said, I think she had this fixed idea of who she was supposed to be in TFA, but she realized that wasn’t who she was meant to be. In TLJ, she is lost and trying to figure that out, and asking questions about her identity, like what is it that is awakening in her, and why her parents left her, are apart of that self-actualization.

I feel like people take Hux’s abuse so personally! It is really interesting. I felt that Hux actually had an iverse arc to that of Poe. Poe gets slapped, thrown across a room, and shot. Hux gets smacked to the floor, choked, and thrown against a wall. Hux is young and a little overconfident in his abilities, but by the end of TLJ you can see that he might be aware of his mistakes, like Poe, when he tries to stop Kylo Ren from taking Luke’s bait, and that might translate to him growing into a more competent enemy in IX. I mean, just look at the face he gives Kylo Ren at the end. I can’t really say too much about him, but if in IX Hux is eager to betray Kylo, then TLJ really helped set that resentment up.

Haha, Snoke being “half the character he used to be”! That is true literally, but to me Snoke was who he always was meant to be. Him being a red herring, a stepping stone for Kylo’s growth, is the best way they could have used him. The son of Han Solo and Princess Leia being the new Emperor of the Galaxy is such a great set up, and also being the head of a war against his own mother.

I honestly think some, not all of course, but some of people’s disappointments honestly come from expectation, as much as we don’t want to admit it. 10 years from now, when kids watch these movies back to back an don’t have to speculate for a year and a half who Snoke is, or what Luke is doing on that island, they won’t digest these films the same way a lot of people are now. I think it is the same reason why people seem to be coming around to the prequels now, in my opinion.

Just because we think a character’s arc is supposed to go a certain way doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be open minded about the direction they are deciding to take these characters, don’t you think? We can try to understand them and what the filmmakers are trying to say.

I mean, I hate that some people don’t enjoy these films. Not saying people are wrong for their own opinions. Just sharing my own because I want people to enjoy them like I do! That’s all.

I go back and forth with TLJ. Some days I really appreciate it, others the flaws and missed opportunities are all I can see. Yesterday was the latter, clearly. I think the thing that most bothered me is feeling that Rian believed in the characters less than I did, which is why so many have to spend time in remedial character-building exercises.

DominicCobb said:

Anakin Starkiller said:

TFA has tropes played straight, with objects intact. TLJ deconstructed tropes and the objects representing them (the saber and the helmet. Now IX is reconstructing the tropes and objects. Interesting visual metaphors.

On the subject of Kylo’s mask, TLJ only made explicit a point TFA was already making.

That sort of spelling-out kind of strips the subtlety and even dignity from the characters, don’t you think?

If the mask had been destroyed in TFA like the film implies, it would have meant that Kylo has developed as a character between movies to the point where he is comfortable owning his role in the galaxy. Instead the character is devolved and the mask briefly and awkwardly brought back so that we can laugh at its absurdity.

It’s the same for the rest of the characters, honestly.

Finn’s character is regressed almost back to Maz’s castle, where he has no interest in helping the Resistance and cares only for Rey. A reading of TFA where he’s not at least a little willing to help the Resistance would be really uncharitable. Do I even have to mention Rey, who got over her absent parents in TFA only to have that return as her defining character flaw? Or Hux, the human punching bag? Or Snoke, who is now half the character he used to be? The only character who feels like he isn’t regressed is Poe, who was so lightly sketched in TFA that any character change is positive.

I think that this is why, despite all the great aspects of TLJ, it feels so wrong to so many - it feels like the filmmakers had a dimmer view of the characters and tropes than the audience.

Yes, I definitely like that idea! It wasn’t in the last experiment because of the music accompaniment, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get a good isolated track.

Very good suggestions RL, thank you! As you say, the scene doesn’t really work yet, and maybe it’s better to only have the Kylo imagery and leave the Rey dream as simply sounds and voices overlaid on top of the shots from around Rey’s house. Maybe go back to the original concept of no music, and letting the sound effects tell the whole story. The imagery is provided later with Kylo’s description anyway.

As for the imagery in the interrogation, it might be interesting to try the distortion effect seen in the Anakin visions, since that’s canon for Star Wars. I tend to veer away from flashes and short cuts of action since it often feels distracting to me, but maybe it could work here.

EddieDean said:

That feels very complete in terms of the goal of Starkiller not being a weapon. But with that goal in mind, I still feel like we need to feel the threat of the First Order (ideally, IMO, juxtaposed with Kylo killing Han), and see some largescale destruction they cause such as the earlier idea to have a dreadnought assault, which would necessitate VFX.

I figure that these changes would fit in the context of Restructured, meaning that the Starkiller is a weapon and does destroy the Republic at the climax of the film.

This is still an ambitious set of changes, but much more feasible and I think it would benefit the movie greatly. Particularly interesting in this change is the added tension of two goals, and the disastrous effects of prioritizing the search for Luke. In this new narrative the Resistance has essentially sacrificed the Republic capitol to find Luke and turn Kylo.

There are a lot of cuts to the final scene however, especially to Chewie and Leia mourning which are important after Han’s and the Republic’s death. What if Han and Finn got the map from Phasma but it was lost sometime after? If Han was carrying the plans, they would have fallen with him, but it might read as stupid that he would carry them out onto that bridge. Or Finn could have the map like you suggest, and there would be an insert shot of the plans falling out of his pocket when he is beaten by Kylo, sliced in half and half-buried in the snow. When we get back to the Resistance base and see Chewie and Leia in mourning, there could be a closeup of the map which is sliced in half and burned to uselessness. It would make Finn’s injury a dual defeat and require Rey to step up and find Luke on her own. Have a closeup of the sliced map next to Leia, then 3-PO could tell Leia that ‘Rey may have some much needed good news’. Cut to Rey watching over Finn as she has made up her mind.

The idea of redubbing Phasma is nice, but isn’t the bigger issue the fact that the FO captain continues to be dispatched with relative ease? The new character might even exacerbate the issue, since it shows that Phasma probably didn’t escape Starkiller, further diminishing her power.

Yeah. I’ll probably get rid of that line anyway, since it doesn’t connect with the image of Luke anymore.

Oh yeah, it would have been a breeze actually, after tracking the still image to the moving shot that is.

Interesting note, I was watching TFA promotional material, and in an FXguide TV episode on TFA about 22 minutes in they had a breakdown of assembling the Starkiller shot, and the added smoke was of course the last element to be included:

Would have been good to know back when I was working on that. 😉

Thanks, the dreamy effects will be added at some point along with the animated BB-8 and so forth.

Here is a version without the Hux and Kylo bit, to make it feel less jarring to have two vision scenes so close together - now they hopefully feel connected in a more thematic way.

https://vimeo.com/315971642

Password: fanedit

It might be better to have the final shot of the interrogation with BB-8 and cut to black, having just voices such as Unkar and Teedo and Rey arguing, then fade them out and fade in on the island.

Maybe I could use some of the closups from Luke’s hut to make it more relevant that Rey says ‘Luke’ at the end.

Here’s a version set to the Jedi Steps:

https://vimeo.com/315905664

Password: fanedit

The more I think about it, the more it seems like the Kylo and Hux bit at the end of the interrogation isn’t necessary. It might be more powerful to cut straight from Poe and the images of the map to BB-8 at Rey’s house. Then have some more voiceover of Rey’s troubles, using a more darkened shot of the wall of days. Ideally there would be some sort of dream imagery related to her years on Jakku before transitioning to the peaceful island, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

Earlier I was planning on having several dream sequences with one before the interrogation, but if this scene is going to be so substantial it might just use up all the available material. Which is fine, since I think a weakness of TFA (and TLJ) is scenes which cut too quickly. So at the moment, the plan is just this scene and the lightsaber visions (with some substantial differences). This one will show the peace of the light side of the Force and an escape from her fear, and the lightsaber visions force her to confront her fears and insecurities while also showing her the map to Luke. Then when she’s in the snow forest and taps into the Force, added audio would start with the peace of her dream but shift to the fear and anger exposed by the lightsaber visions, using this Dark Side power to defeat Kylo.

I was originally going to use the footage from Poe’s Interrogation in the Rey Interrogation scene so the audience could see how much the Starkiller means to Kylo in terms of completing Vader’s legacy or whatnot, but placing it early is probably better to establish the Starkiller threat, and if it’s juxtaposed with the island footage, the entire Rey interrogation would probably work better largely as it is, an exploration and connection of information we already know.

RogueLeader said:

Also, that would be a cool idea for your edit! They fail their mission, but if Rey has “seen” where Luke is, it would also help justify why Rey off all people has to find him.

That’s the biggest benefit alongside R2’s convenient awakening, but the reason I thought of that was to fix the deeper issue of Luke’s exile. In TFA there was some confusion as to whether or not Luke wanted to be found or had a backup plan in case people needed him, but in TLJ he seems genuinely surprised that anyone could find him and is pretty clear that he came to the island for good. R2 having the final piece of map to his location makes no sense in this context, especially since we know Luke didn’t take R2 along as his X-wing is at the bottom of the sea.

So now Rey is given a vision of the map, and I’m planning on taking out any reference to the Empire/R2 having the rest. It just makes no sense that in 30+ years nobody in the Republic would stumble across these Imperial maps and R2 would just download them from the Death Star and then forget he had them. I think it’s much more interesting and realistic to have a religious ascetic piece together a bit of star-chartery that’s practically worthless so that their situation is truly hopeless without Rey.

RogueLeader said:

What if you just cut that briefing scene altogether?

I suppose it could work in some ways - we know from Poe’s later dialogue how the sun charging works. But there’s an awful lot that would remain established. We wouldn’t know Han’s objective, the oscillator will not be introduced until the battle itself, and so forth. Some amount of this is handholding, but I think some of it is genuinely needed.

RogueLeader said:

I mean if you did the Star Forge idea, would you have Phasma lower the shields and give them the map? Or just have no planetary shields?

Like I said, I think making Starkiller a Star Forge alone would still be a worthy idea to try and implement. I would at least see if it is possible to have the third act still focus on the McGuffin if possible too though.

My edit will attempt to have Rey find Luke without a physical map - she will have a vision of it when she touches the lightsaber. So if it is somehow possible to remove the shield idea, Phasma could become a stronger villain by denying Han and Finn everything they want and sounding the alarm.

Rewatching the Resistance briefing scene, every other line mentions either a shield or a weapon of some kind, so for that scene to work Starkiller would need to have at least one of those capabilities.

I think you’ve outdone yourself - this is quite the wall of text 😉

But as to the details, the idea looks feasible enough, though an order of magnitude more difficult than Restructured.

Now to the concept - I quite like the idea of the singleminded focus on the map to Luke, but in taking out all of the Starkiller’s weapon capabilities might diminish that audaciousness people have come to expect from Star Wars, whether it be literal robot armies, millions of clones, turning a Republic into an Empire overnight, A planet destroying superwewapon, ships with literal cities on them, and the batshit insanity of building the same planet destroying superweapon again. Without the Starkiller weapon, it’s a rather standard treasure hunt plot.

The Star Forge idea retains some of this audacity, though many of the logistical problems remain - there are a lot of instances where the Starkiller is referred to as a weapon. The Star Forge idea would require a lot of re-dubbing and some fancy effects work to place destroyers in their proper locations - though this idea would make sense of several weird aspects of TFA such as Snoke’s indifference to the Starkiller’s destruction and to Poe’s astonishment at the shiny new Destroyer.

JEDIT: Now that I think about changing the ‘shield’ dialogue to ‘map’, it’s seeming less and less feasible. Han definitely says ‘shield’ several times during scenes where it’s difficult to impossible to cut away.

I made a version without the Maz voice but got some feedback before I posted it that the montage felt a bit empty. But I see what you mean, the voice feels a bit like it’s not totally personal to Rey. I agree that it should be immersive and peaceful, but also dreamlike and indistinct.

RL, I feel what you mean in that it’s too long to not give something substantial away but too short to effectively separate the two scenes on each side. I’ve considered using bits from the end of TFA and Luke, but I really like the idea that Luke is a bit of a red herring for Rey and that the Jedi Texts are what the Force is ‘intending’ that she acquire before some accident befalls the tree. I really want this scene to be substantial and to act as the definitive awakening that Snoke refers to later, maybe triggered by Rey’s proximity to Kylo and his dark visions. The main reason I didn’t use any of the TFA island footage however is that it is too clear and un-dreamlike, with Rey walking around in an entirely new outfit. I think the misty Jedi Tree really works, if there was more footage like that it would be great.

An early idea for the scene was for it to be entirely without music, just having the sounds of the ocean and island. But that proved to be really difficult since it’s an almost entirely emotional scene and without music feels like limbo. Maybe with a longer scene I could fit the first part of the Jedi Steps.

JEDIT: I think a good way to include Luke while still keeping the focus on the Jedi Tree is simply to use more of the tree scene from TLJ. It could start with the ocean, and maybe put some mist in front of the island at night. Continue the mist shot of the Jedi Tree, and venture inside to see the texts. Rey could make an appearance in her poncho since it could conceivably be covering her TFA costume, and end the scene with the shadowy figure of Luke in the doorway asking who she is. This would solidly link the tree to TFA and keep Luke as the red herring.

Thank you both, Snooker I’m sure you know from experience how time consuming this is 😉

Time to put these elements in a video:

https://vimeo.com/315562483

Password: fanedit

The images aren’t animated yet of course, but I’d welcome critique on the overall concept. The formerly unused music cue from TFA ends a bit abruptly, so I’ll attempt to lengthen the cue in Audacity.

Indeed, excellent work!

The only other angle I could find of the AT-AT interior was this:

So I removed Rey:

And drew the curtains over the door:

Editing a blanketed form onto the hammock shouldn’t be too hard, especially since it’s out of focus.

I just realized that since we only just got this trilogy’s ‘big three’ in the same room at the end of TLJ, Ep9 will finally allow them to go on an adventure together. That fact alone could justify this movie, to say nothing of the Reylo business which I’m sure will be a strong focus.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen TLJ and TFA on opposite sides of a ranking before. I assume it comes down to director, but apart from that are there any reasons for the divide?