NeverarGreat

The big thing for me is the spy aspect of RO since it’s played up with several references in ANH, especially in the omniscient crawl. I (and I’m sure others) were hoping for and even expecting a spy thriller set in the Star Wars universe, whereas what we got was more of a disaster/war movie with several large military engagements and several attacks from a weapon that is only fully complete in the next film.

I remember in the lead-up to release people were talking about how the plans would be stolen, going through scenarios such as infiltrating Imperial social functions or even getting close to a high-ranking official with a female spy. Star Wars in my opinion is great when it works in different genres, such as ESB having a more horror aspect, ROTS being operatic tragedy, or AOTC having elements of Rebel Without a Cause mixed with detective noir. RO had the potential to push the envelope again into Spy Thriller territory, and when we got more boilerplate Star Wars with only a minor twist it felt like a missed opportunity.

None of this is to take away from the many great things about RO, by the way, or to say that anyone’s wrong for liking the film as-is. I’m happy with so many of the things we got, but I can’t help but feel like there was a more clear and daring choice.

sherlockpotter said:

https://streamable.com/kpaie8

That’s it! Beautiful.

Also, I apologize if my engagement in the thread has led to anguish and misery for anyone; that was never my intent and I will try in the future to not engage with anyone out of annoyance.

I completely agree with your interpretation of events in both films and how they are incongruous with each other. In fact, I’ve argued for this point several times on these forums.

This isn’t to say that RO is a bad prequel due to this. The materially problematic events only happen at the very end of RO and could be changed via fanedit, leaving the rest of the film basically the same.

The bigger issue here is one of spirit. As you said, Vader is following on the trail of Rebel spies which stole the plans during a battle and lead to Leia and to her alone. She is the only link Vader has to the Rebellion, and this explains why he is so bold and ruthless in pursuing her across the galaxy.

Contrast this to RO, where Vader has captured an entire Rebel capital ship presumably with logs detailing many potential leads. The shadowy web of spies are instead enemy combatants brashly breaking into a military installation on a whim, initially with no greater support in the Rebellion. Where the opening of ANH could imply a victory long-planned by the Rebellion, it is instead a chaotic near-failure at every turn. Sure, it makes for a wild ride, but the word spies implies some level of professional subterfuge that simply doesn’t exist in RO. I would not consider any of the main crew of RO ‘spies’ except for perhaps the defecting pilot Bodhi Rook and even then his spying was coincidental and not premeditated. Perhaps Cassian Andor is more of a professional spy, but we never see this in action.

Furthermore, it is implied that the Rebel spies were operating under cover of a separate, perhaps diversionary, battle instead of a group of rogue combatants dragging the rest of the fleet into a desperate action. Of course there’s some amount of speculation here but if the brief original crawl specifies two distinct groups (spies and combatants in a battle), then I would expect these to actually be functionally distinct in the plot of the prequel.

Finally, to expand on your point that Leia had plausible deniability in the original, I would go further and say that Leia’s presence at the battle, combined with knowledge of a weapon which can destroy planets, heavily implies that the Organas knew full well that they were putting their planet in deadly peril. I cannot put into words how reckless this makes the Organas out to be in the context of ANH, and it takes away from the tragedy of Alderaan’s destruction knowing that their rulers acted knowing their hand could so easily be revealed.

JadedSkywalker said:

The worst part he killed his father over a lie. A trick of a Sith Lord. And somehow Leia and Luke never mentioned Anakin’s redemption and somehow Hayden Anakin never appeared to him as a force ghost to set him straight. Its plenty convenient.

The reason I actually like Anakin the ghost not appearing to Kylo is because the ST is perhaps accidentally in line with the theory that Force Ghosts only appear to those who knew the person in life.

TestingOutTheTest said:

CamSMurph said:

Hal 9000 said:

And while I appreciate the work, I feel the scene as it is in V1 works better in the order it is. Just two bordering establishing shots of the Falcon.

And, if anything, I’d prefer to imply 3PO never regains his memory other than R2 verbally bringing him up to speed. I don’t think invoking prequel memories would be advisable or possible to pull off.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Leaving his memories “permanently” wiped would give his arc at least some impact.

Doesn’t the impact come from the initial trauma/reaction from the audience of seeing 3PO’s memories get wiped?

They’re clearly talking about the entire arc, not a single moment.

TestingOutTheTest said:

sherlockpotter said:

Why does Rey care about Leia’s “blessing”?

(I think) The point is that Rey doesn’t feel worthy. (In my subjective opinion) she’s always felt this way. She even hands back the saber to Leia, earlier in the movie directly after getting the Force visions.

There, that’s all you had to say.

Well this thread is kinda a downer, init?

Rather than repeat what everyone else has so eloquently enunciated about the flawed first two entries being entirely buried under the avalanche of TROS’s inadequacies, I think I’ll turn an optimistic eye toward…THE FUTURE BUM BUM BUM.

Y’all remember how the Prequels were the worst things ever which totally destroyed all interest in Star Wars until the kids who grew up with them got terminally online with their nostalgia and were backed up by the competent character resuscitation known as the Clone Wars?

The same thing’s gonna happen to the Sequels.

Give it eight to ten years and I all-but guarantee that the most glaring character deficiencies and plot holes of that entire time period will be enthusiastically backfilled by the creative team at Lucasfilm with the Thrawn streaming show and Resistance Rebooted Part IV or whatever they come up with to bridge the month between TLJ and TROS. We’ll all be looking back at TROS as that critical flop that nevertheless paved the way for the brilliant arc in Season 3 of Ahsoka where she confronts the Sith Eternal while Rey is simultaneously confronting the specter of Palpatine reborn.

The machine never ends, and even the most disastrous films are merely fodder for future stories where fan dissatisfaction is harnessed and transmogrified into jubilation when the narrative justice denied the films is retroactively rendered in cinematic CGI upon the small screen.

I guess that’s optimism, anyway.

sherlockpotter said:

Yeah, I always thought the original version sounded fine, but I can also understand the argument about changing the inflection of the sentence.

With that said, what do we think of this? https://streamable.com/omqjmh

The inflection feels right now, there’s just a slight ‘garbled’ quality at the beginning of the word if that makes sense.

“Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.”

“The Force?”

“A good story…for another time.”

The Dark Side is a pathway to many abilities

sherlockpotter said:

Since we’re still waiting on the last VFX shots anyway, I’ll probably try to smooth out that fade into “end” a bit more. But now I know to focus my efforts on Version B. Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I’m glad to know it’s so close!

If you’re still working on it, my thought on it is that the sound is a bit muffled compared to the rest of the line. I only say this because it may be a bit unclear to a first-time viewer.

It’s still a bit noticeable to me having experienced the evolution of the line, but if I heard that in the theater I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Thumbs up!

sherlockpotter said:

I amended my comment to specify anyone who is able to should get the vaccine - yours sounds like a legitimate health concern, and I respect that - but for the most part this is science, not “different opinions.” It shouldn’t be controversial to say that vaccines are important.

True. The science suggests that for greater than 99% of the population, the risks of the vaccine are far lower than the risk of getting Covid.

Not that I want to turn this into a Covid thread; just me offering moral support to a friend.

More true. Let’s keep this on topic.

Maybe it would work better to just have this:

“Who are you?”

“I’m a Skywalker.”

fin.

It still feels a bit odd to jump from an interior to an exterior right back to the interior.

In The Director and the Jedi, there are some unused closeups of the droids and Chewie from that wideshot. Perhaps one of those shots could be used to pad out the timing. The shots are at 1:28:16 in the documentary.

That’s on my to-do list.

https://i.imgur.com/jd7sxcj.mp4

It’s funny but it’s also rather true that the Rebel Alliance in the OT could be classified as a terror cell full of religious extremists whilst the Empire is basically secular.

Oh it’s this again, is it.

TestingOutTheTest said:

NeverarGreat said:

The difference is that those aren’t soft reboots that force the world and story to retread the same tired ground for the sake of nostalgia, and in fact those examples derive much of their impact from the accomplishments of the prior movies.

Except nothing they did ended up mattering in the slightest, either.

Nothing Thor, Heimdall, Loki or Hulk did in Ragnarok mattered, Thanos was just gonna kill the other Asgardians.

Except for the half he didn’t kill who formed New Asgard on Earth…

Getting the Avengers to team up didn’t matter either, they just broke up in Civil War.

Except when the Avengers saved the entire universe…

Everything that happened in Future Past didn’t matter, either, all the other X-Men are dead and the Earth is basically an apocalypse now.

Ecept that Days of Future Past specifically averted an apocalypse and there’s no apocalypse in Logan despite your bizarre assertion that there is one. I genuinely wonder if you are hallucinating a different movie.

At least the OT’s accomplishments delayed Palpatine and the Empire, and gave our newest generation of heroes enough time and lessons and training and preparation and whatnot to stop them forever. The specific destruction of the NR was necessary to make the FO threat seem real and set up TLJ and to show that the Republic was inherently flawed and that the galaxy’s citizens and people needed to cooperate with each other. The specific destruction of the Jedi is there to make Luke feel guilty for failing Ben.

I’m not gonna bother rebutting each point because digging a hole in a river would be a better use of my time, suffice to say that nothing you say even comes close to even addressing the fact that the films are soft reboots that force the world and story to retread the same tired ground for the sake of nostalgia.

So why are you even bringing up this page 1 statement on page 5? That’s a rhetorical question, btw. I think we all know why.

Despite the flak that original scene gets, in my opinion it just requires some more precision and snap to the choreography. I imagine these two combatants know each other’s moves backward and forward, so there would be a minimum of flair as they re-acquainted themselves with these strategies. Vader would attack, Obi-wan would deftly deflect and retreat, rinse and repeat.

Judging Endgame by the standards of movies like 1917 or Citizen Kane seems silly. They’re so different in terms of audience and intent that they might as well be different mediums.

In my opinion, Endgame was a triumph of blockbuster comicbook storytelling that is unlikely to ever be equaled in film, but that doesn’t mean it is great in the same way that Casablanca or 12 Angry Men are great, nor should it try to be.

Anakin Starkiller said:

Concerning that last point, the fact that Kylo rebuilds his mask, Rey rebuilds her lightsaber, and Luke catches it…so many people read it as a middle finger to TLJ without really understanding how it actually builds upon it. TFA is the thesis where things are presented, TLJ is the antithesis where they are violently broken down, and TRoS is the synthesis where they are put back together. It’s about characters being broken down and rebuilt stronger, like how a sword must be soften by the fire before being hardened.

Oh I get it, the rebuilding of the mask/saber/whatever isn’t at issue. My TROS rewrite even has a remade saber. The issue here is how badly it was handled in TROS. Rey’s saber is rebuilt offscreen with barely a hint of the damage it sustained and no mention of that damage in the film. Kylo’s mask, far from being reforged as a symbol of Kylo’s status as a new leader of the First Order, is instead a symbol of his regression back into a mere henchmen for a greater power.

TROS makes a mockery of the Dialectic tradition of Star Wars.

PM Sent!

Also FYI, the latest workprint is from June 22, v107. I probably won’t make another until the final release.

Thank you GMatias for your assistance!

Just a quick mockup of the dice shot in motion to see the broad strokes of what needs doing:

https://vimeo.com/590342667

Password: fanedit

For me Han is feeling a bit constrained by the large panel covering his chest, I’m considering moving that down in relation to the rest of the cockpit to give him some more room in shot. Also, I could move the entire frame down somewhat.

All of these attempts feel almost but not quite there. I think that it has to do with how he says the word ‘end’ as if it’s the final word of the sentence. The word needs a bit more attack and depth here in the middle of the sentence.

JackNapier said:

jarbear said:

NeverarGreat said:

“UNLIMITED POWAH” (Lightning curves around entire city blocks and smacks the temple and it gets blowed up)

A single stream of lightning gets bounced back from a lightsaber at the temple and nuts Palps.

Palps jacks off in order to force lightning the temple.

You made me read this with MY OWN TWO EYES THAT MY PARENTS GAVE ME