NeverarGreat

Looking at the full quality file, I think the issue is actually that the edges of the model fall off into darkness which doesn’t look right when placed in front of a bright explosion. It would probably be a good idea to use a 3d model so you could get some light bleed from the explosion on the ship model as it passes in front of it. Another option would be to put some blur on the physical model as it passes the explosion and/or more aggressively matte out the edges during those frames.

The compositing of the larger X-wing looks a bit odd, though. I don’t think it should be lighter than the explosion.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

Yeah, but then you have to explain how the heck a single Final Order ship was able to leave Exegol without the rest of them.

Isn’t Sheev’s ‘plan’ to guide them out with the stationary beacon on Exegol? I assume that would work for one ship just as well as a whole fleet, and the only reason why the whole fleet didn’t deploy earlier was because some of the ships weren’t quite ready yet.

I think the Kijimi scene could be kept in if it were altered to just show the city being destroyed. When I considered that option a few months ago, it seemed possible with the shiny new dialogue tools at our disposal.

Showing a Dreadnought Cannon in action would also emphasize the capabilities of this weapon for viewers who don’t make the connection to TLJ or who missed Poe’s line earlier in the edit. Even if that change is clear, illustrating it here makes it more ‘real’.

I couldn’t get even halfway through that trailer.

Blech.

I actually really like Yoda’s death scene. There are aspects of it that are rather goofy, but Hamill’s performance sells every moment with that puppet, and it puts me in such a wistful and melancholy state of mind.

An aspect of Dune: Part 2 that felt very lacking to me was Sietch Tabr. What was shown was nice, but it felt like we barely got to see how the Fremen lived within the Sietch.

That’s why I liked Part 1 more, if just slightly: that’s where much of the worldbuilding happens.

“Somehow, Darth Maul’s legs returned.”

I just had a thought about the Poe/Holdo subplot in TLJ, which is this: Poe should have had Holdo’s objective, and Holdo should have had Poe’s.

Consider: Poe at the beginning of TLJ is painted as a brash, risk-taking daredevil who doesn’t flinch at throwing away ships and pilots if it allows him to destroy the enemy. As a foil to this, Holdo is painted as a commander who would rather run and regroup with her forces in order to live and fight another day.

And yet, when it comes to Poe’s mission, he decides on a course of action which would allow the Resistance to flee from the First Order in order to live another day, whereas Holdo’s course of action is predicated on sacrificing their one and only capital ship and regrouping on a fortress planet where they may be forced into making a final stand, and this is without the later plot development that requires Holdo to destroy their capital ship in a Hyperspace maneuver.

So as a little thought experiment, let’s just imagine a movie where Holdo has Poe’s mission and Poe has Holdo’s mission:

Holdo, as leader of the Resistance following Leia’s incapacitation, consults with her officers and crew and decides that the best course forward is to send a team to infiltrate the Supremacy and deactivate the Hyperspace tracker. To do this, she needs a codebreaker capable of bypassing the Supremacy’s shields, and so she herself volunteers to go to Canto Bight and find such a codebreaker (Perhaps she even knows such a hacker personally, since she has lived with such people in the New Republic for years). She orders radio blackout to protect against First Order interception, and leaves the Raddus with a handpicked few.

Poe mistrusts Holdo’s intentions, and believes that there may not even be a Hyperspace tracker. He suspects that Holdo is in fact a First Order spy, and her leading the mission to Canto Bight is her way of escaping a doomed ship. He speaks with Finn and Rose about an alternative plan if Holdo turns out to be a traitor, and together they discover that they may be able to evacuate the ship with cloaked escape vessels and ram the Raddus in to the Supremacy, destroying it.

Meanwhile, Holdo’s plan on Canto Bight is a success, and her team successfully infiltrates the Supremacy.

While this is happening, things on the Raddus have reached a breaking point. With no radio updates, Poe believes that Holdo has abandoned them and puts his plan into action. They load the crew into escape vessels and breaks the radio silence to tell Holdo that they are going to implement his plan.

On the Supremacy, Poe’s message is intercepted and because of this Holdo’s team is found and killed. Holdo is taken prisoner, and the First Order learns that the Raddus crew is being launched toward Crait, and they begin to light up the space around the Raddus with lasers, destroying some of the cloaked ships by chance. Poe, Finn, and Rose are the last ones on the Raddus when they realize that Holdo’s plan would have succeeded, and now they must rescue Holdo as well. Finn and Poe decide to go to the Supremacy on a rescue mission, and Rose stays behind to ram the ship into the Supremacy upon the completion of this mission.

However, Holdo tells Poe to escape and lead the Resistance in her absence, and detonates a hidden explosive on her person, killing herself and Captain Phasma in the process. Rose, in her grief, then makes the decision to sacrifice herself to destroy the Supremacy.

Finn and Poe, now escaping with the rest of the survivors to Crait, must weather this storm of their making, and lead a speeder mission to take out the big gun. Finn has decided to follow Rose’s lead and sacrifice himself to save the Resistance, but Poe wants Finn to survive, believing that someone will show up and allow them to be rescued, but Finn has lost all hope. Poe, however, has regained his faith because of Holdo and uses Holdo’s own words about living to fight another day. He rams Finn, and they both crash.

Anyway, all this to say that in this version, Poe makes clear mistakes and has an arc of recognizing his risky and destructive decisions and atoning for them through the foil of Holdo.

NeverarGreat said:

I notice that the original frame has a lot of dirt and scratches, but apart from that the underlying film grain is quite fine. In the cleaned version, there seems to be a noticeable grain that has been added. Is that an inherent part of the cleaning, or has that been added later, such as to help mask film damage?

I added the heavy grain to help hide the missing details and temporal smoothing, and so that it would blend better with 4K77 No DNR if anyone chose to integrate these sequences.

Gotcha.

I notice that the original frame has a lot of dirt and scratches, but apart from that the underlying film grain is quite fine. In the cleaned version, there seems to be a noticeable grain that has been added. Is that an inherent part of the cleaning, or has that been added later, such as to help mask film damage?

Williarob said:

Here’s my quick attempt at restoring the Tosche Station scenes:

https://vimeo.com/912082416?share=copy

That looks amazing!

Yeah, this is a great idea, though it’s honestly too good for Disney at the moment. If this was any other Star Wars project, I’d laugh and say there’s no way in the galaxy they’d think of doing this, but with Andor there may just be hope.

There’s a lot to like about this direction.

I wonder, however, if we can incorporate much of this idea simply by keeping Kylo’s offer vague. In the original speech he says they will kill Palpatine, but if it was left open ended, then he could be offering to run away with her and say to hell with Palpatine and the Jedi.

Since my current idea has the Sith dagger be something forged and planted by Palpatine purely to corrupt Rey, here’s what the dialogue could look like with that in mind:

“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.
“You are hard to get rid of.”
“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. Darkness is in your nature. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“You said your parents were nobody. But the dagger you found tells another story.”
“Don’t!”
“It revealed your parent’s fate. Are you still afraid to see it?”
“I don’t want this!”
“Search your memories!”
“No!”
“Remember them. See them!”
(Rey sees her parents protecting her, and their death)
“They paid for your protection…in more than one way.”
“Stop talking.”
“Rey…they were protecting you from Palpatine”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“I didn’t believe Palpatine either, when he told me who you were. He has lied to me for years…inside my head…in the voices of Vader…Snoke. But the dagger proved he was right…about who you really are.”
“No!”
(Vader’s mask falls to the ground)
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.”
…
“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“Because he saw what you would become. You don’t just have power. You have his power. You’re his granddaughter.”

“You know what you will find on Exegol, Rey. Darkness…or death. I made that same choice, once. But now we’re connected, by a power the Emperor cannot comprehend. Join me, and we can forge a new destiny…together.”

“You know what you need to do. You know.”
“I do.”

…

Now we get some of that recognition from Kylo that he’s been lied to, and that’s why he has no interest in following Palpatine or anyone else. The only reason that he believes Palpatine is because of the dagger, and in my concept this will be proven to be planted evidence.

This version even keeps the concept of Rey having the choice between the Dark Side or death on Exegol.

That’s a really interesting angle, RL! I like it.

So how would such an idea be implemented? I imagine that it would be a change to Kylo’s Quarters duel and the hangar scene, and then some of Kylo’s dialogue would need to be removed on the Death Star so that his action of destroying the Wayfinder is purely so that Rey will abandon her quest to find Exegol and run away with him instead.

Although, if Kylo’s purpose now is to have Rey run away with him, what is the motivation behind their duel? In the original film the reason is also a little unclear, but perhaps Kylo is giving in to the inevitability of his role as a new Vader, and Rey wants to defeat him because he’s still evil and now has the only way to get to Exegol. With Kylo’s new motivation, he wants only for her to run away with him, so why fight?

That’s what I was thinking, just mix and match sounds to get something better.

hinventon said:

Maybe Rey’s “I am a Jedi” to make the am clearer?

That’s definitely one I’d like to hear improved.

Outer Wilds and its DLC, Echoes of the Eye.

It’s gotta be one of my favorite games. For anyone who likes puzzles and exploration, it’s a must.

Indeed! The powerful artifact that corrupts the bearer is also very LOTR, and very fantasy in general.

I think that if we clearly make the dagger bait planted by Palpatine, this would allow us to have the dagger show Rey visions of her past as well as her future that aren’t necessarily true. Thus, we could reincorporate the flashbacks to Rey’s parents:

“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.
“You are hard to get rid of.”
“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. The Dark Side is your destiny. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“The dagger offered you visions…visions of your past…and your future.”
“Don’t!”
“You said your parents were nobody. But you lied to me.”
“I don’t want this!”
“The dagger showed me the truth.”
“No!”
“Now see the rest of your story!”
(Rey sees her parents protecting her, and their death)
“They paid for your protection…in more than one way.”
“Stop talking.”
“Rey…they were protecting you from Him.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“The spirit of Vader spoke to me as well…when I was training under Luke. It’s the same future…the same choice…that has now been revealed to you. Ascend the Throne of the Sith…or die.”
(Rey sees the two visions together, Rey on the throne and then dead on Exegol)
“No!”
(Vader’s mask falls to the ground)
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.”
…
“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“Because he saw what you would become. You don’t just have power. You have his power. You’re his granddaughter.”

“My mother was the daughter of Vader. Your father was the son of the Emperor. What the Emperor doesn’t know, is that we are connected by the Force, Rey. Two…that are one.”
“We’ll kill him…together.”

“You know what you need to do. You know.”
“I do.”

…

With this, we can basically keep the hangar exposition the same.

So the concept for the visions in this edit would be:

• Rey has a vision of her death when she is training with Leia.
• The vision of Rey on the Sith Throne, as well as flashes of her past, happens in her struggle with the transport.
• The flashbacks to Rey’s past are put together as one in Kylo’s Quarters.
• The true vision of Rey’s death and the false vision of her on the throne are combined as Rey smashes the pedestal of Vader’s mask.

If we have Finn’s dialogue confirming that Ochi never owned a dagger, it would probably be enough of a negation of the flashbacks that they would be clearly seen as fabrications by Palpatine imparted into the dagger. This is strengthened by Kylo’s connecting Rey’s visions with those given to him by the ‘spirit of Vader’, which has already been revealed to be Palpatine in disguise.

JEDIT: I’m not sure which sequence of events would be more natural in Kylo’s quarters. If we put the flashbacks together early in the sequence like I have it here, that means that Kylo’s discussion about his own visions is pushed back and then he’s talking about Rey’s past and why the Emperor wanted her dead, and this creates a weird segue.

On the other hand, we could have a sequence similar to the one a few posts back where the ‘Dark Side or death’ visions happen first, and then the flashbacks to Rey’s parents happen later, making a natural segue into why the Emperor wanted Rey dead. But then the Vader mask isn’t brought in at the precise time of Kylo’s revelation.

I guess it depends on which bit of exposition is more important, Rey’s past and parentage, or the Dark Side or Death visions. Thoughts?

I just thought of another connection. If we wanted to show the origin of the dagger, there’s a shot of the ape-creature re-forging Kylo’s mask on an anvil which could be repurposed with a dagger-shaped lump of metal replacing the helmet pieces. This, and a brief shot of the Knights of Ren standing over the dagger like in the mask reforging scene, could appear to Rey during one of her visions.

I’ve been thinking further about the weird bits of this film that are underbaked or that don’t make sense, and I think there’s a way to solve some of these issues, and it is this:

Perhaps the Sith dagger is the key.

Consider: When Luke searched the Pasanna desert years ago, he found nothing. If there was a powerful Sith artifact in the vicinity, one would assume that Luke would have sensed it. Therefore, it was not there when Luke was searching for it. By the way, it would be fairly simple to remove Lando’s lines about a clue that led to a Wayfinder (and 3PO’s later reference), and simply imply that they thought that Ochi would have the Wayfinder on his person.

Regardless, the dagger may have been planted later at the site. So who put it there? Palpatine. He placed the dagger on Pasanna though his secret agents: the Knights of Ren. They found the bones of Ochi before the story of the film, and in planting the dagger by the bones they had to fight their way past the giant snake, injuring it.

When Rey picks up the dagger, we just reinstate the dialogue about the dagger doing terrible things.

The reason this dagger is so important is that it is a powerful corrupting influence created by Palpatine himself. We’ve established that Rey could have two visions. Her first, during her training, shows only her abandonment and her potential death on Exegol. Her second vision happens when she is pushed in the desert by Kylo Ren, at the moment she unleashes a torrent of Force lightning on the transport. In this vision, she is on the Sith Throne. Notably, this happens only after she first comes in contact with the Sith dagger.

Right after Rey finds the dagger, the Knights of Ren converse with themselves:

“Alert our master…the artifact has been found.”

When they see Chewie running away, they remark:

“He has the dagger.”
“It was intended for the girl.”

When they are on Kijimi, they could say:

“Our master wants the girl alive. Kill the rest.”

Finally, when they confront Ben at the end, they proclaim:

“Our master always knew you would betray him.”

This acts as the reveal for the Knights of Ren subplot, showing that they have been working for Palpatine, not Kylo Ren, all along. Implying that they were the ones who planted the dagger also gives them something to do, which is far better than the exactly nothing they do in the film.

Finn’s dialogue could be changed to indicate that the dagger is an anomaly:

“This droid has a ton of information about Exegol.”
“Wait, coneface?”
“I am D-O”
“Sorry, D-O”
“D-O went everywhere with Ochi of Bestoon.”
“But Ochi never owned a dagger.”

The Goonies moment makes sense in this cut, since the dagger would have been a recent construction by Palpatine to lead Rey to him, and so it could have been specially constructed to work with the wreckage of the Death Star in its current state of decay. What was once a plot hole is now evidence for the theory.

If Palpatine is able to control people through artifacts like this, it makes sense why Rey finds herself in Ren’s quarters with the mask of Vader: Palpatine has been using it to control him for years. This could also be the origin of the vision where Kylo sees himself turning to darkness, just as Rey sees her first dark vision after she touches the dagger. When she destroys Vader’s mask, that point of control by Palpatine is broken, allowing him to begin to break free from Palpatine’s control.

Finally, the McGuffin heavy plot is now primarily driven by a dagger placed for Rey by Palpatine, which means that it was his intention to send her on this journey and give the artifact a chance to work its power on Rey. The most powerful visions of darkness come when Rey still has the dagger on her person, and notably they drop away when she drops the dagger (and her bag) in the Death Star throne room. At that point, she slowly emerges from the corrupting influence of Palpatine.

This also explains why Anakin’s saber was set up to be such a powerful artifact: it was to establish that this sort of connection is possible, though since Anakin used the saber mostly before he fell, Palpatine’s influence over the saber would be minimal, necessitating the planting of the dagger.

I don’t know if we should be outright denying the story at this point. After all, if we cast too much doubt on Palpatine’s story, we rob it of its power right when it should be paying dividends. Ideally, we would need more thematic reason for the existence of this ruse in the film, more than just a machination of Palpatine. So how about tying it into Leia’s journey?

“What are you most afraid of?”
“Myself.”
“Because you’re a Palpatine? Leia struggled with that same fear.”
“She didn’t tell me…she still trained me.”
“Because she saw your spirit…your heart.”

…

“She was quick to learn in our training. But she feared our family’s darkness within her. She surrendered her saber to me and said that someday it would be picked up again…by someone who would face that darkness, and overcome it.”

…

This way Luke isn’t denying the story, but rather recontextualizing it in a way that makes Leia’s story more impactful. After all, Leia says to Rey ‘Never be afraid of who you are.’ This fear of identity is a part of Leia’s character in the film, and if it’s not for Rey’s benefit, then it should reveal the sort of fear that Leia may still struggle with.

If we make this the reason Leia surrendered her saber, it also gives us a strong hint that Leia believed that her son would have been the one to take up her saber and overcome her family’s dark past. And indeed Ben eventually does triumph in the end, but she couldn’t have realized that Rey would be the one to take up the sword, a girl from nowhere that became the daughter she never had.

And so, Rey can now complete Leia’s incomplete Jedi path in a very literal way that wouldn’t be possible without Rey Palpatine, justifying its existence in the story.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I’d say this is a mischaracterization of things, at least at this point in the other thread. The other idea more or less amounts to Rey Chosen One.

I agree, that was inexact language on my part.

All that being said, the idea we have on the other thread can never be Rey Nobody in essence, because Rey, despite being made by nobody (the Force itself) and raised as a nobody by nobodies, is still somebody of extreme importance in the grand scheme of things. But I think removing the direct lineage to Palpatine makes things more palatable, and for those who preferred a direct link to him for whatever reason, they can still imagine that Palpatine did maybe have a hand in how the Force designed them, despite the conclusion of everything pointing to the contrary (ya know, the part where Palpatine finally admits she’s nothing but a scavenger girl).

This is why I think that your idea, despite how well it works in many ways, is ultimately incompatible with ‘Rey Nobody’, since in that version she is basically another Anakin, the most important person in the galaxy. The story would be a retread of the ‘Chosen One’ angle that we’ve already gotten.

The great thing about TLJ’s reveal about Rey was that we finally had the fate of the galaxy potentially being decided by someone who wasn’t the literal chosen one or the son of the chosen one. Rey may have been strong with the Force, may have even been a powerful Jedi if she were born in the Old Republic, but here she is one of maybe hundreds of thousands in the galaxy who have the Force but have never had the opportunity to develop their ability. Rey has become emblematic of the state of the galaxy in TLJ, and that’s a remarkable and refreshing development, which I think is why it’s worth saving.

Any further issues with her power level aren’t too concerning to me, since in Starlight it’s now established that her quick rise to power was fueled by the Dark Side, and she’s clearly pulling on both sides of the Force throughout the trilogy to allow her to achieve feats long before they would be able to happen if she were on only the Jedi path. And in the final confrontation, she’s only reflecting Palpatine’s power back onto himself, and even then she dies because of it, so she doesn’t need to match him in power to defeat him.

Darth Raditz said:

It’s just that I get hung up on this plot beat specifically, what’s supposed to come across. Is the idea that if D-O never went to Jakku, then Ochi never went to Jakku? Just feels like a slight stretch, imo, unless you have en earlier line of D-O saying “I went everywhere master went.”

Yeah, I’m not happy with this scene either.

StarkillerAG said:

I agree with what everyone else is saying about your latest idea, Nev. The whole “dark side or death” conflict is a stroke of genius, but the rewritten Ochi exposition is more confusing than anything (mainly because it feels like a complete non-sequitur to D-O having “a ton of information about Exegol”). Maybe we could just cut out the “D-O has the information they need” plot point entirely, and imply that the info about the nav tower came from Hux’s message at the beginning of the movie? It would remove one additional twist from this needlessly convoluted plot, at least.

Either way, I think if we’re gonna go with the whole “Rey Palpatine is a lie” idea, the revelation that it’s a lie should be delivered by Palpatine himself, in a classically villainous “I lied!” fashion. The final anime beam clash does seem like a pretty nice place to put it: it’s the resolution of the plot stakes, so it should ideally be the resolution of the emotional stakes as well.

I’d like to cut as little from the film as possible, but I agree that maybe it would be smoother if we cut the bit with Finn bringing up Ochi’s mission, since it’s not something that Poe even needs to hear. Presumably the point of the scene is that D-O has information about Exegol, and that’s why Finn is in a rush to tell Poe about it.

So maybe we can do a bit of scene shuffling to make it work. So after Ben’s redemption, we have the Pryde scene:

“The final order begins…she will come, her friends will follow.”

Then we cut to Rey on the island, since that scene is a good segue into Rey and her choice.

After the island scene, maybe we can cut to Poe and Lando. It may be a bit strange to cut right from the triumphant X-wing from the water right to Leia’s shrouded body, but we’ve already seen her and at least it’s going from one Leia-focused scene to another.

From there we go to Finn and D-O’s scene like we already have, then cut after Finn says ‘This droid has a ton of information about Exegol’.

Cut to C-3PO and R2-D2’s reunion, since it continues the droid focus, and then after ‘picking up a signal…from where?’, we get the D-O plugged in scene. Since we’re cutting Finn knowing about the Rey Palpatine lie, we can keep this scene as it was in the theatrical version.

The only change that we would need to make now is the added Palpatine dialogue to make it clear that his story was always a lie. Because now Ochi’s mission is unconfirmed, the audience is free to recognize that Rey’s vision of his ship in TFA was different than in TROS and confirm for themselves that the story was a lie.

…

And I think that’s…it? Like, it’s kind of crazy how little this idea needs to change the original film, apart from the Kylo quarters dialogue. In fact, the entire hangar scene could be the theatrical version if necessary, though I would prefer to avoid the Dyad reference because it would be a third named reveal in just a few minutes, which I think is too much. But yeah. Kind of crazy how feasible this may be for how much value it could provide.