It’s cool right now to hate on Finn, but without him, the movie would be rather…rudderless. * ducks *
Looks like the Empire got to it.
They arrived just before you did.
Are you sorry?
He should be. And I’m sorry too.
I’ll give it a go later and see if it’s possible 😃
Looks like the Empire got to it.
Especially if that’s the case, it wouldn’t do anything to merit any of the chipper attitude at the end. All it’d do is offset the ‘revenge’ motive for the trench run, and even then it wouldn’t since the fighters would be unaware.
Maybe the dialogue between Hux and Snoke could be considering their next target, just enough to imply that it’s important this thing be destroyed.
Although, having the base about to fire again would address the apparent “problem” (only for those very aware of the theatrical version in which one star equals one shot) of SKB exploding into a star after it had discharged.
I think that if the audience is aware of the threat to the Resistance with the Snoke dialogue and the inclusion of ‘Prepare to fire’, the revenge aspect of their attack is pretty much mitigated. If the audience understands that the base can fire several times from a single charge, we could infer that the pilots at least suspect that possibility as well.
So after watching this again, I’m wondering if the ending would have been better had Fin died. Probably not a popular opinion, but it would have been a powerful event for his character, and I’m struggling to think of what kind of unique role he could play in the rest of the trilogy. His arc seems kind of complete already.
Not a crazy proposition. This thought has crossed my mind many times since I first saw it.
It really depends on Rey’s arc. He could be used by Kylo just as Luke was lured by his friends in Empire, or the opposite could happen, though that has already been done.
Or rather, since Finn began the humanization of the Stormtrooper, he could attempt to rescue others from the First Order en masse through the use of Resistance propaganda. That would be my vote.
I’m sure the master tape will turn up in the basement of Skywalker Ranch someday. It’s probably in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Wampa. 😉
Well obviously, that’s their display department. It’s sitting right next to the discarded bits of the original Star Wars O-neg and a paint sample from the Death Star walls.
These rearranging ideas all sound kind of fun on paper but I don’t think I’ve seen anything that works in practice.
I’m still of the belief that the way to save the trench run is simply to make it seem like the weapon is going to fire again, this time at the Resistance base.
Yeah, for every 5 ideas only one works out it seems.
But your idea might work. Although we can’t use any of the Resistance base scenes, it may be possible to cut together the unused Hux/Snoke dialogue. Since it would be extremely difficult to use the Resistance base dialogue on the subject, the implication would be that the fighters are just fulfilling their original objective, unaware that the station is able to fire again.
A video about the music
Very interesting!
Are these clips available anywhere?
Her: It doesn’t feel like rock.
Him: There’s an awful lot of moisture in here.
Her: I don’t know, I have a bad feeling about this.
From Force for Change’s website:
"Following the release of Star Wars: A New Hope in the late 1970’s, fans began to embrace Star Wars stories of struggle, hope and inspiration on a more personal level. Philanthropy was very important to George Lucas — he used early screenings to raise money for charities around the world with a particular emphasis on children’s healthcare and education. Over the course of the last three decades, Star Wars fans have kept this philanthropic spirit alive by volunteering their time to countless charities across the world and raising millions of dollars in donations.
With new Star Wars stories on the horizon, Star Wars: Force for Change aims to support the immense passion and goodwill of our fans and promote change through inspiration, stories and meaningful partnerships."
1: "You’ll want to be a part of this Force"
2: "40 years in the making"
3: Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill (Star Wars Sequel tie-in)
My prediction is that it will be something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfNiC9iKM0Q
No, no problem. Why?
^Very good. I retract my vote 😃
…
A new attempt at a climactic resolution, with bare bones audio as usual:
https://vimeo.com/212513029
Password: Split Wing
With the moving of the Starkiller ignition, first time viewers may be wondering where the X-wings are as the base prepares to fire. In the original version the absence of the X-wings was justified because they arrive later and save the day, but in V1 they are MIA, and in fact they have allowed themselves to be drawn far away from the Oscillator.
Here I attempted to give them one last bombing run before the station fires. Some VFX of missiles could go a long way towards selling this part, and the placement in the Oscillator scene could change. I merely put it there because it was almost exactly 2 minutes from ignition.
After the unsuccessful bombing run, I think it would make sense to have the sound of bombs impacting the Oscillator as Kylo and Han converse. After the ignition the X-wings presumably retreat (Perhaps they think the Starkiller is a one-trick pony), which is where we find them when Chewie blows the charges. Poe decides to go back and finish their job.
The final X-wing run is the one I like the most, since it cuts the interior of the Oscillator entirely to give a moment of suspense where it isn’t clear if Poe survived.
Don’t do that again.
“It’s the First Order” alone makes sense, and since “they’ve found us” is rather obvious, I would vote for losing that part, especially since the dub isn’t seamless.
The firing scene has several problems, including the fact that the planet shouldn’t be in sunlight at the time. So there are at least 3 shots that need fixing at some point.
Rewatching the scene in V1, the only shot that looks like it could use some work would be the one with the trees. But it’s only daylight for less than a second before the red beam envelopes everything. Are you perhaps thinking the planet shouldn’t have as much light shining on it when we see it from space?
Yeah, I have actually just done that shot:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/206094
The planet originally had the sun shining on it, so it should definitely be darker in the two other shots as well.
The firing scene has several problems, including the fact that the planet shouldn’t be in sunlight at the time. So there are at least 3 shots that need fixing at some point.
Yes. It’s thematically linked more than logically. The same point could be made about Luke in ROTJ; presumably, the team would have destroyed the Death Star regardless of Luke’s success or failure onboard.
Unrelated: I don’t think Threepio’s like has a place in the briefing scene. “Without the Republic fleet, we’re doomed.”
On the Threepio line, I interpreted his meaning to be a more of a general ‘without the Republic Fleet, our paltry dozen X-wings are doomed’.
There’s an important difference in the Starkiller attack, since the bombs allowed the oscillator to be destroyed. Arguably, if they’d done that sooner instead of confronting Kylo, they would have saved the Republic. Luke was ready to ‘fail’ in his quest since the Rebellion’s mission was entirely separate.
But I agree with everyone that V1 should stay. I made some changes to the mockup, but I don’t think they’re sufficient.
https://vimeo.com/212414785
Password: meh
I share your hesitancy about Vader appearing to show him a vision of the future, though it would be ambiguous at best; was Vader trying to warn or dissuade him from being involved in firing the weapon?
Here’s a mockup of how the ideas expressed above might look when all baked together. I went with the former list of events, rather than breaking up Rey’s “force nap,” which I felt was very jarring. Honestly, it’s the approach that sounded better of the two! These are great ideas on paper, but I am uncertain if it will be totally doable using the finished film footage we have available.
https://vimeo.com/212386279
Password: faneditThe cut from Fin and Rey turning to flee the oscillator to them climbing around in the snow is abrupt now.
The shot of the technician lady is abrupt, since her line cannot be salvaged; she speaks too fast to have it sound right to cut her off.
If the cutaway to Hux saying, “Prepare to fire” is a little jarring with the music, it could easily just be put right back where it originally was; it still fits perfectly there given this proposed order.All in all, it’s a solid idea, but might not be able to be implemented well. And there’s a debate to be had about whether it is favorable to closely associate Han’s death with the Hosnian system’s destruction, and thereby Kylo Ren’s resolution towards the dark side and implied regret or incongruence. (In ROTJ, Luke took a bold risk by putting faith in his father, who redeemed himself and thereby allowed the day to be saved by taking out the Emperor and letting Luke go on to revive the Jedi. In TFA:R v1, Han took a bold risk by putting faith in his son, who resolved himself to the dark side and thereby ensured the day would not be saved because they were too busy with Kylo to detonate the explosives.)
Thank you for making the mockup so quickly! It has issues for sure, the biggest of which to me is that the destruction still doesn’t have an effect.
The V1 sequence was always going to be odd in that Kylo wasn’t the one they needed to convince in order to save the Republic - Hux was in another location entirely, so saving Kylo wouldn’t make any difference to their mission. As it is now, it seems like our heroes just lost track of time.
V1 still works better at the moment, but I’ll keep thinking about it 😃
However, if you have Vader show him the vision, you are changing the character of Vader without knowing that is the direction they are taking him in future films. Anakin was redeemed in RotJ. Having him be evil from beyond the grave seems to undo that.
My thinking was that these powerful artifacts can induce Force visions, and it is only Kylo’s supposition that Vader himself provides them. In reality, it could be a machination of Snoke or his own wishes combined with the aura surrounding an artifact that had seen evil.
There is one other benefit to separating Han’s Death from the Hosnian Destruction, and it is that adventure movies just don’t do that. After a devastating setback or sacrifice, our heroes usually win the day, and a new viewer would expect this. With the separation, the viewer can be surprised by the one-two punch rather than lumping the two tragedies into one.
JEDIT: An alternate of the alternate: After the Starkiller fires but before the beam reaches the Hosnian system, the Oscillator immediately blows up, but everything is suffused in the red glow of the beam. Kylo and Rey’s fight is bathed in red light until she is forced to the edge of the cliff and contacts the Force, at which point the Hosnian system is destroyed. At that moment, there is a massive disturbance in the Force that Rey senses, and this drives her to aggressively defeat Kylo. In this scenario, no Leia reaction is needed since Rey can sense the disturbance herself.
So they’re taking part of her performance from TLJ and putting it into IX? That’s a relief, since at least it sounds like there’s a plan.
^Kylo says that ‘we have the rest - recovered from the archives of the Empire but we need the final piece.’ That would imply that they don’t have that piece.
Getting back to the larger edit, I was thinking about how to solve the issue of the Starkiller’s absence from the first half of the film and how exactly it functions. One solution could be to have Kylo receive a vision about the weapon when he’s asking Vader to show him the power of the Dark Side, to ‘finish what you started’. Right after he says that, it could cut to the shot of the Starkiller beam lancing past the Star Destroyer, then the next two shots in the sequence of Kylo on the Star Destroyer. Perhaps end it with the final section of the planet explosion. Then there is the shot of Vader’s helmet.
This somewhat explains the Starkiller’s function earlier than even the original film, and creates an expectation in the audience of a catastrophic event that plays out in a similar, but not identical, fashion in the end, since always in motion is the future 😉. It also mirrors Rey’s vision and further links the two characters thematically. Finally, it allows us to use every single Starkiller firing shot, which are quite lovely in my opinion.
I was also considering an alteration to the Hosnian Destruction (Sorry, it’s a compulsion). Anyway, there might be a more simple fix for the destruction than the one currently in the edit. Han’s death can stay as it is in the original, complete with Leia reaction, except that the brief cutaway scene directly after where they explain that the Oscillator has been damaged but not destroyed can be moved to after Poe wrecks the Oscillator from within (the 2 minute warning would be cut). Similarly, Hux’s brief cutaway where they say that it will be charged in 30 seconds would be moved to after Poe says ‘There’s a brand new hole in that Oscillator’, so that 30 seconds elapse during the trench run and interior attack.
So here’s a possible sequence:
Han’s Death and Leia’s Reaction
Forest Fight Part 1
Atmospheric Dogfight
Hux’s 30 Second Countdown - ‘Prepare to fire’
Trench Run and Bombing
Damaged but Not Destroyed - panicked look of two technicians, one of which says ‘Admiral, the weapon…’, and doomed look from final technician as the panel behind him flashes red)
Hosnian Destruction - perhaps with the added shot of the laser going past the Star Destroyer, sans Star Destroyer, to make the destruction sequence less abrupt
Leia - The shot (flipped and color adjusted darker) where she is leaning against the viewscreen at the end of the film, right before 3PO arrives with good news. She could be listening to the static of a Hosnian transmission cut short. Only the end of this shot needs be used in the later scene, to reduce the similarity.
Destruction of Oscillator - presumably from stress on the weapon system.
Forest Fight Part 2
In this sequence, the trench run still has a purpose outside of revenge, and we conclude the X-wing sequence before the Starkiller fires, allowing for our undivided attention afterwards to be on Kylo and Rey. The connection between the Republic and Leia is also emphasized, since she gets a reaction shot to both Han’s and the Republic’s destruction.
The only video of Snap talking in this scene is before the Starkiller is projected, so I wouldn’t know how to incorporate that. And I actually slowed Snap’s dialogue down a bit, but it still seems fast.
I’ll see what I can do to improve it. The issue, like you say, is that we have an idea of how the scene should play, and we’re conditioned to accept the lack of any mention of the Republic even though it should be addressed during this scene.
JEDIT:
Here is an updated scene with further slowed Snap speech and only the single reaction shot:https://mega.nz/#!yctFSDhS!dqhRxznCFMjVburVoXxlrZ8qu7XnEELPCU7uonr9zfU
Voice Only:
https://mega.nz/#!3AdDnaJK!wCRH1IBlsX3EUIyn0Plvyz4IiIi4aAy9ixAFTpOjwac
The only issue is the mix which is not seemless. And that we don’t get to see the guy talking (but I don’t really mind it I must say). The idea is good.
I don’t know what else I can do to the audio, so if anyone else wants to try, by all means 😃