Maybe just change the end credits music to this so we know that each character had a change of heart about the other, duet style.
That might work!
Exactly. Before the final episode I was imagining numerous scenarios where they would fight but get separated, or where one would think the other was dead, or even where both of them are knocked unconscious like in TLJ and Obi-wan is rescued by his friends before Vader wakes up…
Anything.
The only right answer.
I was curious about Vlad’s interpretation of if Obi-Wan (and by extension Yoda) were wanting or expecting Luke to kill Vader, so I tried to see if I could find Lucas saying anything about it. I did manage to find this quote from Lucas in the Making of Return of the Jedi book.
“The mission isn’t for Luke to go out and kill his father and get rid of him. The issue is, if he confronts his father again, he may, in defending himself, have to kill him, because his father will try to kill him. This is the state of affairs that Yoda should refer to.”
I think that lines up with what Vladius is saying.
I don’t think that Luke’s mission in ROTJ was explicitly to kill Vader and Palpatine, only that Luke should be prepared to do so should the need arise. Luke himself points this out and Obi-wan confirms it.
ROTS on the other hand is explicitly an assassination mission for Yoda and Obi-wan, one which Obi-wan believes he has completed by the end of the film.
I think that is where the confusion comes in. Some people say that Jedi aren’t killers or assassins and point to one trilogy to confirm it, while others say that the Jedi can absolutely be assassins and point to another trilogy to confirm it. Kenobi falls directly between the two trilogies and so there’s no stable baseline for Jedi behavior to fall back on, and so people have to justify Obi-wan not completing the explicit orders of his master by saying that it’s not the Jedi way to kill a guy in a lightsaber duel who has forced you into a pit and who’s now standing there astonished by the power of your second wind.
Vader even retains his saber at the end of the fight, so the comparison to Maul is almost one to one.
Anyway, I stand by my point that a Jedi executing a fallen foe would be completely out of character with the compassion and chivalry that is their code.
Yeah, it’s real chivalrous to get people’s kids to commit murder because you’re just too “compassionate” to carry through with it. Mace Windu was about to split Palpatine in two while he was mutilated on the floor yelling “No don’t!”. Obi-Wan cut Maul in half like a savage…and shot Greivous soo many times he exploded. There’s no “code” in leaving Vader alive in the show, it’s just irresponsible writing.
Yes, of course they kill their opponents in combat (Maul and Greivous). You’ll also remember that Mace had gone to arrest Palpatine - not execute him - before the situation suddenly went nuclear.
How does that change anything I stated? Obi-Wan and Vader were opposing combatants. Mace was trying to arrest with the intent to kill if necessary, you just can’t claim Jedi won’t finish off opponents because of their “chivalrous code”. There’s not even any evidence for it.
The whole saga is based around Anakin executing a fallen opponent and turning to the Dark Side, and Luke sparing a fallen opponent and becoming a true Jedi.
Even in this particular TV show we have this rather memorable line;
“Do you know the key to hunting a Jedi, friend? It is patience. Jedi cannot help what they are. Their compassion leaves a trail.”
Again, both of Luke’s mentors wanted Luke to conquer Vader and the Emperor. Luke’s salvation lay not in obeying his Jedi teachers but in rejecting them. These are the same teachers who say that the Jedi never use the Force for attack, which means that the Jedi way is less about the actions of the Jedi and more about their mental state. If a Jedi is calm and at peace, they will know the correct action, which must include killing an enemy if need be.
If there’s a peaceful way to deal with a vanquished enemy, the Jedi should take it. That is why Anakin killing Dooku was wrong - Dooku could have been captured by Anakin and Obi-wan to stand trial for his crimes. This is also why Mace trying to kill Palpatine was justified - Palpatine would never face justice for his evil.
This is also why it is even more justified that Obi-wan kill Vader. Vader, for all intents and purposes, is the law and Obi-wan is a fugitive. Obi-wan can’t take Vader into custody, can’t hold him to account in a higher court. The only justice within this evil Empire is to resist and rebel, taking matters into one’s own hands, and since Obi-wan doesn’t finish off this evil monster he thus allows for Vader to commit further evil.
It’s a bad idea because at this point in the story Stormtroopers are accurate and brutal soldiers who could easily dispatch two aging farmers.
It’s only later that they became a punchline.
Guess now we know why Leia’s lightsaber resembles Obi-Wan’s and she named her son Ben 😃
Hey that’s a good connection!
RL, I was reminded of the GOT scene on Tatooine, it felt like I was listening to a Radio Drama because there was literally nothing visible on screen.
Also, another thing that baffled me was why Obi-wan thought his plan to divert Vader’s attention would work, and also why it did.
Like, Obi-wan knew that Vader had a personal shuttle with which to pursue him in alone, and also had the Grand Inquisitor with which to continue pursuit of the refugees. Yet Vader just diverts the entire Star Destroyer to follow Obi-wan and then just leaves it behind and says that he will now follow Obi-wan alone in his ship. Baffling.
Not really baffling. We see Vader do the exact same thing in TESB. He orders his whole fleet to pursue the Falcon into the asteroid field. And at that moment it is faster to have the Star Destroyer go after Kenobi rather than get in a shuttle or Tie fighter. Kenobi knows what motivated Anakin and Vader is even more obsessive. Until corrected by the Emperor.
The difference is that in ESB the Falcon is the only Rebel ship that hasn’t escaped into Hyperspace. Vader really only has one choice:
1: Find the Falcon at all costs and use it as bait for Luke.
2: Try to follow Luke’s X-wing despite not knowing where it went.
Obviously he will go for option 1.
In Kenobi Vader had at least five choices:
1: Send fighters to immediately disable the transport and/or close the distance in a shuttle and board the transport himself. Obi-wan’s plan fails before it begins.
2: Ignore Kenobi and continue pursuit of the transport. Obi-wan’s plan fails.
3: Send the Grand Inquisitor in the shuttle with some fighters to continue pursuit of the transport while Vader and his Destroyer follows Kenobi. Obi-wan’s plan fails.
4: Follow Kenobi in his shuttle with some fighters and allow the Destroyer to pursue the transport. Obi-wan’s plan fails.
5: Send everything against Kenobi and ignore the other high value targets on the transport, including Leia. Obi-wan’s plan succeeds.
Only a child without object permanence would choose option 5, especially since if they were really so obsessive and blinded by rage they would choose option 1 and win.
And this is only one of several instances where the show tries to show Vader as both an impulsive, unthinking rage monster hellbent on capturing Kenobi and also a character who is so disinterested in finishing the job that he sits back and lets Kenobi escape at least four times in six episodes.
I’m more than willing to engage with these stories on their own terms and have individual villains make sub-optimal decisions based on their established character traits, but if these traits become Flanderized to the point that two of the galaxy’s most powerful villains can’t capture a crippled freighter, don’t blame me for pointing out that their Star Destroyer has become a clown car.
Guess now we know why Leia’s lightsaber resembles Obi-Wan’s and she named her son Ben 😃
Hey that’s a good connection!
RL, I was reminded of the GOT scene on Tatooine, it felt like I was listening to a Radio Drama because there was literally nothing visible on screen.
Also, another thing that baffled me was why Obi-wan thought his plan to divert Vader’s attention would work, and also why it did.
Like, Obi-wan knew that Vader had a personal shuttle with which to pursue him in alone, and also had the Grand Inquisitor with which to continue pursuit of the refugees. Yet Vader just diverts the entire Star Destroyer to follow Obi-wan and then just leaves it behind and says that he will now follow Obi-wan alone in his ship. Baffling.
Final thoughts:
The show was a bit of an uneven mess, if a mostly enjoyable one. I thought there was hope for the Inquisitors in Part 5, but that hope was premature. I’m not even sure what happened with Reva at the end, since the scenes were so unnecessarily dark. Does nobody realize that Tatooine has two suns and three moons? Moonlight in a desert can be downright luminous. Anyway, I thought Reva only wanted to kill Vader. Now she wants to kill a kid. I don’t know why. Does she know it’s Anakin’s kid, and this is retribution? How would she know that, or think that Vader knows? Is it because this kid is important to Obi-wan? Is she going back to her Inquisitor ways? I am genuinely confused as to how and why she did any of this. So as for the Inquisitors, it turns out that they could have been cut entirely, which would be to it’s improvement by avoiding the school shooting imagery in what is otherwise a Saturday morning kid’s show.
The final Vader fight was bizarre. I thought it would end with Obi-wan buried under a pile or rubble and Vader believing that he was dead, thus allowing him to return to a life of anonymity. Alas, it turns into an overpowered slugfest where Obi-wan again fails to kill an unapologetic monster who he believes is beyond saving. It’s just bizarre.
Maybe Qui-gon could have helped Obi-wan in his final fight with Vader, perhaps teaching him a technique to evade Vader and make him believe he was dead. Ah well, at least Qui-gon is in the final scene. Though, I half expected him to stick out his thumb and ask Obi-wan for a ride.
At least we have the Kenobi/Leia story, which I appreciated from beginning to end.
Overall, the show hits the mark about as often as a Stormtrooper, but it takes enough shots that it gets the job done.
Admiral Ackbar is an example of a “Glup Shitto” despite the extensive EU fiction around the character.
I don’t think that designation can apply to a character who was introduced by name in the OT.
But Luke would still have to react to something, and ROTJ is a story of forgiveness.
The answer is simple. Replace Anakin’s Force Ghost with that of the Emperor.
Turning Anakin into “School Shooter in Space” just pushes him too far into irredeemable, IMHO. I’d say the same thing about the kid bit in Kenobi as well (it felt gratuitous).
This is why the PT and OT are fundamentally incompatible, for me. There’s no universe in which I as an audience member would buy Anakin’s redemption if I knew he slaughtered children.
Twice.
If the editing was up to me, I would make the Sand People scene in AOTC a dream sequence that he later relates to Padme, and have the Temple massacre happen when Anakin is already on Mustafar.
I imagine that George pushed Anakin’s actions to such an extreme because of arguments which happened during ROTJ. I think this was from the Rinzler book, but other members of the team didn’t like the character of Luke essentially excusing his father’s genocide. George’s rebuttal was that this was a fairy tale with religious themes where anyone can be forgiven no matter what, and intentionally went about creating an irredeemable monster in the prequels to prove his point.
I think George gets it wrong, however. Of course in a Christian sense a person can be forgiven for any act, but that is between the sinner and God. Mere mortals aren’t expected to forgive atrocities, and not only is Luke mortal but he is the audience surrogate. For Luke to forgive his father is, in the context of the entire saga, for the audience to forgive the slaughter of children.
It wasn’t always like this. For twenty years, Luke in the OT was fighting for the ‘good man’ who was Anakin Skywalker.
“He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed.”
“There is still good in him.”
“He’s more machine now, than man…twisted and evil.”
Anakin in the OT was good up to the time when Luke was born, with his evil coinciding with the replacement of much of his body with metal. Anakin in the PT was a monster before the war. He was never a good man.
Hehe
Yes, those would be good additions I think.
On another note, I was watching the final scene of the film and wondered if anyone had tried removing the old woman and Rey’s dialogue to make it an entirely dialogue-free scene in line with other Star Wars endings. Rey would just stand up after burying the lightsabers, drawn to perhaps a sound effect or whisper, and see the ghosts in the distance.
One weird thing I noticed, not sure if I mis-observed it, but when Obi-wan sets down the hologram of Bail does it look to anyone else like they filmed Bail from below? Because the camera is angled down at the hologram, the effect to me was very strange.
With Episode 5, I’m happy that the Inquisitors have some sort of interest now.
But I’m sad that this conflicts with the fanedit idea that Anakin wasn’t part of the Temple Massacre. I guess if somebody does this in a ROTS edit they will have to accept the conflict with Kenobi.
Yes, it’s almost entirely dependent on finding the right actor. I’m debating about making them a known but previously unseen character from Star Wars lore, like Plagueis. This would give him an immediate alien appearance which would visually confirm the lie of Rey being his offspring as well as continuing the ST trend of including some aliens in with the otherwise human villains.
JEDIT: Since Palpatine in this film is hanging from a gantry and has withered useless hands, it would make sense for the alien mastermind to be the reanimated corpse of Snoke. He’s a Force-sensitive alien, after all, so who knows if he would have actually died to bisection anyway. Maul apparently didn’t. Since he also lost his hands in the bisection, his gaining his hands back would be a real plot point, as well as his hatred for Rey and Ben. If his face is in shadow for most of the scene, emerging only at the end to morph into that of Palpatine, it would be fairly simple to use doctored footage of Snoke from TLJ and merely have an actor who could do a passable Snoke impression.
On to the scripting. We begin with Han and Ben’s reunion:
Ben: “I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.”
Han: “You do.”
Ben: “Dad.”
Han: “I know.”
Establishing shot of Sith Temple on Exegol, cutting to a conference table within the Evil Lab. A hooded figure with a shadowy, alien visage sits at the table, surrounded by the holographic images of the Knights of Ren.
Knight: “We’ve lost contact with Leader Ren. We think he’s gone rogue.”
Figure: (With a voice which is labored, twisted, alien) “This is the princess’s doing. But it is to our advantage; the First Order is mine once more. And when the girl arrives, we shall use her power to destroy the Resistance.”
Knight: “But if they take out the holographic emitter, most of our fleet will vanish into thin air.”
(The figure generates a schematic on the conference table indicating the emitter which is generating the images of thousands of Star Destroyers among a scattered few real ones)
Figure: “General Pryde’s destroyer is capable of sustaining the illusion. Rest assured, the Resistance will believe that it faces ten thousand devastating warships. Without hope, and with the return of their ‘Emperor’, the galaxy will fall to the Final Order.”
Knights: “Long live the Final Order and the Sith Eternal.”
Knight: “And what of the girl? If she doesn’t take the bait…”
Figure: “She will. I am her grandfather, after all.” (He emerges into the light. An inhuman, grinning face, the face of Snoke reanimated.)
Knights: (sinister amusement)
Figure: “Return home, my brethren. All will go as planned. And if the last of the hated Skywalkers dares to interfere with that plan…(his voice changes)…do what must be done. Do not hesitate, show no mercy.”
The face of Snoke morphs into that of Palpatine beneath the hood.
Esablishing shot of a First Order destroyer.
Palpatine: “The Princess of Alderaan has disrupted my plan. But her foolish act will be in vain. Come to me on Exegol, General Pryde.”
Pryde: “As I served you in the old wars, I serve you now.”
Palpatine: “Send a ship to a world they know. Let it burn. The Final Order begins. She will come. Her friends will follow.”
Pryde: “Yes my lord.”
A Sith Eternal destroyer fires weapons reminiscent of those used on D’qar at Kijimi. The city centers are ravaged, but the planet is not destroyed.
“Kijimi? How?”
“A blast from a Star Destroyer. A ship from the new Sith fleet. Out of the unknowns.”
“The Emperor sent a ship from Exegol.”
“This is how he finishes it.”
“Listen, it’s on every frequency.”
“The Resistance is dead. The Sith flame will burn. All worlds, surrender or die. The Final Order begins.”
I can see how the updates tend to talk past the others, but I think the overall effect still works.
First update establishes the importance of the hangar to catching Rey, and Kylo essentially warns against just waiting for her like the layout would imply. I could change the order of dialogue to make this more clear.
“Sir, the only way out is through hangar 718. She’ll find her way there eventually.”
“The longer it takes to find her, the more dangerous she becomes.”
“Yes sir, I’ll order a full search at once.”
I think the second update works as Kylo displaying an abundance of caution and a lack of faith in his troops to contain her to just one area of the base.
Also recall that the final reference to the hangar in this version is the trooper communicating directly with Phasma, who urges caution and is making her way to the hangar personally.
^ Just make sure that she doesn’t share any screentime with Klaud and imply through an added line that she’s a changeling.
…
I’ve had a bit of a brainstorm about TROS, so big idea incoming:
As I’ve said elsewhere, the only way to save TROS would be to undo Palpatine’s return, the massive Sith Fleet, and Rey Palpatine. I’ve also given some idea as to how that could work by turning Palpatine into an illusion by Sith cultists to lure Rey into their clutches, including the idea that Rey is a Palpatine.
To refine the idea further, I think the entire theme of the film should be deception. The Sith cultists have deceived the First Order into believing that Palpatine has returned and that he has a massive fleet at his command. They have done this to gain power over Kylo Ren and to control the First Order through him. They also seek to destroy the Resistance by luring them to a briar patch of a planet from which there is no escape, then unleashing a force weapon on their fleet to crash their ships into Exegol. Almost the entire fleet is illusory, as well as the rumored planet-destroying weapons on their ships. Really the cultists only have a few old style Star Destroyers, with the rest being holographic images. This would require quite a bit of work in the final act, but it’s not impossible.
The real trick would be to construct a scene explaining how the illusion works. This should be partway through the film, and ideally between acts 2 and 3 where the planet is destroyed in the theatrical version. Instead of that scene, we get a scene where the Knights of Ren are revealed to be Sith Cultists who are in on the scheme and have been playing Kylo Ren and the First Order all along. Perhaps the Knights are appearing via hologram to a scarred and twisted cultist who is describing the plan to them from Exegol. He shows how the holographic emitter which is broadcasting the illusion of the fleet is disguised as a beacon ostensibly leading the Sith fleet off Exegol. He explains that the Resistance will target the beacon/holographic emitter, but he has arranged it so that Pryde will divert their attention with a signal of his own. The cultist then explains that once Rey and the Resistance have arrived, the plan will be set in motion.
He says that the Sith Cultists have given almost all of their power in the Force to create a being as strong as Snoke, and after Snoke’s death the power that he has been able to draw from the cultists is only enough to fuel an illusion. He believes that his web of lies about Rey’s parentage shall draw her to him, then claims that with Rey before him he will take her power to destroy the Resistance, and their deaths shall be at her hands. A knight asks about Kylo Ren, saying that he has feelings for the girl. The cultist tells the Knights that if Kylo interferes, to kill him. He pulls a hood over his head and his visage changes into that of Palpatine.
This would require someone filming a scene of themselves as this cultist, but as it’s practically a monologue it would be fairly straightforward. There would only need to be some short questions from the Knights, perhaps subtitled or voiced by others since the knights don’t speak in the film. Since they have masks, there would be no issues with lipsync and since they appear via hologram the images of the Knights wouldn’t need to be too detailed.
During the final confrontation of Rey and this false Palpatine, there could be a moment when she calls upon the Jedi and they allow her to see through the illusion and show her the true face of her enemy, who is astonished at her powers of knowledge and defense. Luke’s statement about facing fear is recontextualized into being about a more purely Jedi test than an existential threat.
Since the fleet beacon/emitter is not destroyed until the very end of the battle, the illusory ships wouldn’t need to disappear. The fleets could still do battle with each other just as they do, but after the massive Republic fleet arrives there could be chatter that many of the destroyers are not actually there, and in fact whole parts of the illusion are beginning to flicker and turn into blue light. The core of the battle stays the same, just with a lot less meaningless ships on the periphery.
A benefit of this idea is that it could lean into Rey Palpatine since it is revealed to be a lie later anyway.
So that’s the idea. What do you think?
Thanks RL! It is good to take breaks.
I like it a lot - like RL said, the dialogue sounds natural; and I enjoy the subtle reference to the Falcon from the stormtroopers - but (nitpicking) it feels a little awkward to base it all around the one hangar. “Sir, she’s 100% heading for this hangar, no doubt about it!” “Sir, she, uh…she wasn’t there. So most of us left.” “OH WAIT CRAP SHE’S THERE NOW MOVE MOVE MOVE!!!”
Maybe make it more vague - “Sir, the prison level is on lockdown. All troops are on alert; she won’t escape.” “Sir, Captain Phasma has ordered a full sweep of the base. She can’t hide forever.” “Sensors triggered in Hangar 718. We’re searching the area.”
The reason I removed the official line (the last suggestion) was because Rey had just escaped the cell and presumably wouldn’t have managed to get to the hangar at that point. I do think it’s important to reference a hangar since the Kylo update 2 implies prior discussion, the question is how best to do that.
“Sir, the only way out of the cell block is through hangar 718. We’re searching the area.”
“The longer it takes to find her, the more dangerous she becomes.”
For the falcon jumping around at the end idea is there any footage from the Galaxy’s Edge promos that could work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyMC9A4-ZXI
This was the only promo I could find with Falcon footage, but I don’t know why the Falcon would fly into a canyon like that in this sequence.
I lack the power to create new Kylo lines, which is the problem.
I’ve taken a week off and come back to the problem fresh, and have quite a few ideas on how to play these scenes. However, the biggest issue is that I’ve been trying to force some exposition about the Falcon into scenes where it doesn’t belong. A lighter touch may be all that’s needed here.
So this is what I’m thinking for the progression of scenes:
-Kylo returns to the empty cell
-Kylo is updated part 1
“Sir, the prison level is on lockdown, and the only exit is through hangar 718. She can’t hide forever.”
“The longer it takes to find her, the more dangerous she becomes.”
-Rey moves through the halls
-Falcon crash
-Senate update
-Kylo update part 2 (unchanged from theatrical)
“Sir, she was not found in hangar 718, but all troops are on alert.”
“Put every hangar on lockdown, she’s going to try and steal a ship to escape…
…Han Solo.”
-Base infiltration
-Hux update
-Finn’s idea
-Rey enters hangar 718
(Trooper chatter) “Did you hear the report from Precinct 94…that they found a damaged freighter?”
“Yeah, I heard it crashed. Real piece of junk.”
…
“Sensors triggered in hangar 718. We’re searching the area.”
This progression allows for the two line replacements to be solely Stormtrooper lines, meaning no issues with lipsync. The first line replacement establishes the geography of the coming scenes and retains the tension that even though Rey has escaped her cell she is still trapped in the prison level. It generates the expectation that Rey will inevitably come across a hangar, and since this layout is probably known to Finn it is reasonable to expect that he will make his way toward that same hangar, both to find Phasma and to get Rey. Finally, by putting the Falcon exposition so late in the progression, it more naturally leads our expectation to a scene of the First Order investigating the Falcon.
I could imagine that the shot would work to replace the shot of Kylo looking at the Starkiller charging. The officer would appear and say ‘Sir, we’re ready for prisoner transport.’ Then cut to Rey trying to escape. That would probably give the scene more tension, though I would lose the shot from the film.
I love that you’re bringing the long Falcon journey idea back!
I think it would be cool to have some different shots of the Falcon flying through space with just some cross fades, helping to imply the passage of time. I always pictured a shot of the Falcon passing by or above an exotic-colored gas giant, and passing through a nebula (sort of like one of your test shots). Maybe the nebula could be moving slightly in the background, with some nebula haze moving across camera in the foreground.
I do feel one problem is trying to have the Falcon maintain the right-to-left movement across the frame. I feel like it would be simpler if you could find a decent Falcon model that could be used to make a few new cool shots of it in space. Poppa and snooker both seem to have access to a decent Falcon model, and if we kept it small in the shot, you could potentially get away with the dish being incorrect, if it isn’t the proper one.
For environments, I imagine that using shots from other shows would probably be the best bet since I’d only have to replace the Razor Crest with the Falcon, for example. Of course I could use NASA photography like my test shot, but it may not fit with the moving camera shots and style of TFA.
I’d love to have some different shots of the Falcon flying through space. I actually reached out to someone on Youtube who had done some similar shots, but they haven’t responded. If Poppa or Snooker wanted to help, that would be fantastic.
One thing that made the duel look cheap to me was the lightsabers, especially Obi-wan’s saber. The look of the lightsaber has changed over the years, with every show and movie having their own slightly different effect, but this is the first time that it looked like a glowing prop. In a few shots at the beginning of the fight, Obi-wan’s saber has practically no flicker and very little glow other than from the glow stick itself, so to me it just looked like he was holding a plastic tube. It’s very strange, since a proper saber glow is something that even the most humble faneditor makes sure to get right.