NeverarGreat

Impressive work! This would make a fine addition to any TFA edit.

Honestly, neither version of the lines changes their underlying inanity. shrug

Toby Maulguire?

But she’s already in Episode 1.

After becoming a Skywalker in TROS she uses her teleporting abilities to move through time, changing her name to Shmi and completing the circle of the entire saga.

Looks good to me 😃

Looks pretty good. I have a couple nitpicks, like the door behind her is a little blurry and Rey looks to be a bit less contrasted than her surroundings. Other than that though, I wouldn’t have thought twice about seeing that in the finished movie.

axlanian said:

Movies Remastered said:

Have Ben live, Leia’s vision of his death changes, they get married, Reylos unite! Everyone wins.

Have Ben live, but slip away into exile to go be a wandering Robin Hood-type who tries to redeem himself by helping the downtrodden across the galaxy because there’s no way he would be accepted with Rey’s Resistance buddies after what he’s done

This is the obvious answer. Shame there’s no way to implement it.

Yeah, I changed my avatar. Really it was just changing something for the sake of changing it and remarking about it like it made any difference whatsoever.

So I chose an image at random.

Movies Remastered said:

I’m trying to remember, was Anakin’s crystal broken in half at the end of TLJ, or was it just cracked with a split body?

“Nothing that a little off-screen duct tape won’t fix” -JJ, probably.

Another thing which places Star Wars firmly in the fantasy/surrealist camp is that the OT never showed a scientist or engineer, or at least never showed one at work. The closest we get to a truly STEM profession is mechanic or technician. The story is focused on soldiers, pilots, generals, captains, emperors, farmers, smugglers, bounty hunters, crime lords, peasants (droids), monks, masters, and all manner of human and alien civilians. It’s very much a medieval view of a world dressed in the illusion of technological sophistication.

That would be interesting to know. I mainly base my conjectures on the McQuarrie artwork that shows monolithic stones:

JEDIT: I found the part in The Making of Star Wars which discusses it on page 45:

McQuarrie: “We (Lucas and McQuarrie) had quite a thorough idea of what it was like. To me it was really one of these seven wonders of the galaxy, a pile of giant disks that were so dense that you almost had the feeling that there was less gravity inside this thing. It wasn’t fully a real place.”

There’s more on page 263 when it comes to translating it to the McQuarrie art to the matte painting:

“I had done squares, almost Mayan-like. I put it together, showed it to George…and he sat there in dead silence, which means he doesn’t like something. Then he said, ‘Would it be possible to make it look more like Ralph’s?’ So I went back and repainted it to make it look exactly like Ralph’s painting.”

I assume by ‘squares’, he means that he had broken up the solid stone disks into smaller stone pieces as more of an architectural structure rather than a monumental one.

Burbin said:

How about adding Rey walking in so that she doesn’t suddenly appear in the next shot?
https://vimeo.com/499368266

That would be nice. I remember trying to combine the shots but it would have required more masking expertise than I had. As it is, there is a bit of her walking in the background I was able to mask in, but if anyone can improve on it you’re welcome to try. 😃

It really bugs me that the temple has that much livable space on the interior, even with the Rebel additions. The design of the structure seems quite clearly to be little more than massive disks of solid stone with voids between each one supported by the sloping stone pillars. It always struck me that it was like the pyramids in this way, a structure meant as a symbol of power and awe rather than a useable base. I imagined the Rebellion made do with the space between the stone disks, with only the ceremonial room on top as part of the original livable structure. Also, the massive Rebel complex seems at odds with the small rough and ready force we see in the films.

IlFanEditore said:

Movies Remastered said:

I feel TLJ took the biggest risks but did the most damage in the process. I lived the fact they highlighted capitalism, slavery, a broken Luke and the final scene with Leia but it did miss the mark on many things. Daisy Ridley dialogue was awesome and they disrespected Ackbar. Unforgivable imo.

I never cared that much about Ackbar. He was a meme character.
The only disputable aspect about TLJ (in my very personal opinion) was Canto Bight and Finn’s treatment. Finn, to me, worked as a side character, a character used to enhance other charismatic characters. Except for his betrayal as stormtrooper, in TFA he didn’t do that much; he was always with others. First with Poe, then with Rey, then with Han, then again with Rey. In TLJ they tried to give him more ground by putting another even less charismatic character on his path. Still, I didn’t hate it, I just liked it less than other parts. But everything else, to me, was just great.

Finn in TFA was definitely a main character along with Rey. In fact, he could easily have been the main character if he turned out to be Force sensitive from the outset. It was TLJ and TROS that sidelined him the most and elevated Rey to unquestioned Main Character status, IMO.

While that’s certainly true, I’m pretty sure it’s intentional. I think whether it works for you or not comes down to if you ultimately think Rian was being smart or pretentious.

I’d argue that TLJ is more pretentious than smart in this area.

Consider Lando. In less than twenty minutes of screentime he goes from possibly adversarial to seemingly friendly then traitorous to his friends to repentant and allied with our heroes. It’s a constant rollercoaster of emotion, but it is actually just a more dramatic version of the pattern that exists for each ally in the OT. Lando. Obi-wan. Yoda. The Ewoks. Each of these allies is introduced with a moment of uncertainty, whereupon their friendliness is revealed. After establishing themselves as friends they then inevitably come into conflict with our heroes and then this conflict is resolved with one or both parties learning and growing from the experience.

The TLJ allies, by contrast, don’t have nearly the same movement along this axis. Their movement is merely from antagonist to ally, and even this little movement is sometimes abrupt at the end. Perhaps Rian wanted to get right to the drama of each partnership, but in doing so he ignored the greater reason for the partnership - the fact that these characters are ostensibly on the same side. Without this baseline the drama is all we see, and it risks portraying these characters as dysfunctional.

I keep coming back to the example of Lando. If he could become a three-dimensional character as a secondary addition halfway through a movie, there’s no reason TLJ couldn’t write similarly compelling characters given an entire 2.5 hour runtime.

So, the internet is filled with hot takes on what is wrong with TLJ, but recently I’ve been thinking about it and realized that there’s a big unifying issue that I haven’t heard brought up before: The new allies in TLJ are introduced as antagonists.

Basically, Luke, Rose, and Holdo all end up helping our three heroes by the end of the film and are characterized in purely heroic ways, yet their introductions portray them as pure antagonists to our heroes.

Luke immediately throws away the lightsaber and shuts himself in his hut, refusing to help Rey or the Resistance.
Rose, despite her initial fangirl attitude, actively thwarts Finn’s escape attempt in the process and then accuses him of being a traitor.
Holdo immediately gives Poe a dressing-down and refuses to let him in on her plans, to the point that he believes that she is an enemy.

Compare this to ESB, where Yoda is introduced as an eccentric neutral character who may or may not help Luke, whereupon he quickly reveals himself as a true ally, who becomes antagonistic only to help train Luke and they part as friends in ROTJ. Lando is similarly portrayed as being of questionable loyalty until he quickly reaffirms his friendship with Han and his desire to help. Granted he has been compromised by the Empire but his intentions are always good and these win out in the end.

The reason for establishing the affability of allies quickly is simple - first impressions matter. It will take only a scene or two for the audience to decide whether or not they like a character, and the easiest way to do this is to have said character help our heroes. Wait too long and even a character with good motives will become annoying or downright antagonistic to the heroes, and by proxy to the audience.

This is where TLJ fails. The average viewer will see the irritation these supposed allies cause our heroes and will be irritated in turn. If left to fester for scene after scene, this will turn into full-blown anger and then whiplash when the antagonistic character is revealed to be ‘good’. This is especially true with Holdo, where the film goes from characterizing her as an antagonist to Poe to having her perform a full-blown heroic sacrifice in the space of a few minutes.

This problem of antagonistic allies could have been fixed fairly easily at the script stage without changing the film too much.

For example, Luke could have pretended to help Rey and even given her an introductory lesson. Then at the end of the lesson he could have said “…and this is why it is time for the Jedi to end.” The audience would be in shock; they have just seen Luke as presumably his old heroic self, allowing themselves to get on board with his character, only to have the rug pulled out from under them in an interesting way. Luke is an ally to Rey since he has already given her instruction, but now he is antagonizing her in order to force her into conflict and growth, just as Yoda did with Luke.

Rose could have met with Finn as he packed to escape the cruiser, someone who wanted to help the great Finn in this presumably secret mission for the Resistance. He tells her that he has to find Rey, as she is in trouble and is the last hope of the Resistance, flashing the binary beacon at Rose. So she helps him, but as they make their way to the escape pod she takes a minute to reflect and asks him how they will find this ship again. Finn says that he and Rey will use the Force, but in a callback to TFA Rose calls his bluff and stuns him. So at this point the viewer has come to consider Rose as a part of the Finn/Rose teamup, and we feel guilt that Finn has misled her instead of annoyance that she is getting in the way of our favorite former Stormtrooper.

Finally, Holdo is made the acting leader of the Resistance. She appreciates Poe’s contribution and asks him how their location was discovered. Poe vows to figure that out, and convenes with Finn and Rose to discuss the problem. In the meantime Holdo learns of Poe’s hasty demotion by Leia as her last act and becomes more cold toward Poe since he failed to mention this demotion, and when he comes to her ranting about ‘impossible’ First Order tech and a harebrained scheme to leave the ship to find a master code breaker, she suspects that Poe could be the spy. Their spiraling mistrust leads to Poe going rogue and initiating the scheme without Holdo’s permission. This structure allows for at least a scene of Poe and Holdo working together before the troubles appear, and since both think they are in the right the audience expects that the misunderstanding will resolve, which it does when Leia awakens.
…

Well, this turned out longer than I expected. The short of it is that Rian was so enamored with subverting expectations that he forgot to make the allies of the film likeable from the outset.

RogueLeader said:

So maybe you could have him say “I had a dream/nightmare” offscreen before he goes on his I Killed Them All rant?

Basically.

Ed Slushie said:

One idea that I’ve been thinking about for a while is keeping in Anakin’s “I killed them all” speech, but changing it so that instead of killing the sand people, he just wanted to kill the sand people - but still felt really bad about it because he’s always been taught that anger leads to the dark side.

That’s honestly the best potential edit to AOTC. I’ve suggested before that the actual footage of the murder can be repurposed as a dream that he’s recounting for Padme, which makes him feel like he’s already straying from the Jedi path while still keeping him an ostensibly good person.

“…so he can take control of it.”

I agree with you there, but you’d have to delete his line about not caring if the Resistance won, then. There’s no universe in which Hux doesn’t want the First Order to win.

Honestly Hal, the fact that you haven’t built a 1/5 scale model of Vader’s castle yet is kinda embarrassing rn. And you call yourself a faneditor. /s.

TestingOutTheTest said:

There is an issue I feel needs to be addressed… it’s established in the actual film that the Falcon cannot jump to lightspeed because of the compressor (until Rey turns it off during the Rathar sequence so Han can jump to lightspeed), yet you had the Falcon jump to lightspeed after the chase on Jakku.

I always read turning off the compressor as an extra step before each jump, so Rey would have known to turn it off when escaping Jakku but Han was unaware after the Rathtars.

You also removed Rey saving Finn from the Rathar; the whole point of that scene was to show Rey now caring for Finn despite initially disliking him.

Pretty sure that the entire Falcon chase across Jakku and subsequent excited summarizing established that Rey had come to appreciate Finn’s contribution.

Sounds good to me. Besides, it’s a small enough thing that anyone who wants to can cut it themselves with little effort. 😃

Seems like telekinesis is a higher-level power than mind trick to me, or at the very least they’re comparable. So I don’t see how that would make her escape any more believable.

DZ-330 said:

Could Finn’s “you gotta boyfriend? a cute boyfriend?” be removed? A Rey/Finn romance is never established in the ST and it feels out of place. Plus it always felt kinda odd for Finn to be concerned about that during that moment.

My version cuts out the ‘cute boyfriend’ addendum but leaves the first mention, which I think works well. Taking out the whole boyfriend line doesn’t really work, since the scene becomes too abrupt without it.

So I emailed the StarWarsAficionado author and he got back to me with some pages from his ROTJ issue.

(This is the issue in question, I believe https://www.jedinews.com/misc/articles/star-wars-aficionado-issue-14/)

He says that the information about the Lightman comes from a conversation with Antony Daniels at a Star Wars Celebration as well as the Peter Diamond interview.

In response to Hoop’s original question about where the scene was supposed to be, the author says that the scene was intended for Threepio’s initial foray into the palace, where he would be led down the hallway toward the throne room. This sequence was ultimately cut and replaced with a lengthy shot of the droids following Bib into the darkness, watched by the Gammorean guard in the foreground.

The other shot of the Lightman emerging from the Rancor passage would presumably be one of the random background appearances, as well as the shot of him behind Han and Luke in the recently discovered image.