It’s possible, I haven’t edited these sequences either. I think the only way we’ll know is by getting into an edit.
Hmm, maybe it would be best to cut those flashback shots after all. It’s not like they are essential for conveying information, they’re really just reinforcing what we are already told in the scene.
Yes, the fact that they are a Dyad allows him to regain his power, but he already says it without needing that term:
“The life Force of your bond…a Dyad in the Force…a power like life itself.”
it could easily be rewritten as:
“The life Force of your bond…a power like life itself.”
In fact, reviewing that shot, it looks like Palpatine’s mouth doesn’t move correctly to form the words ‘a Dyad in the Force’. It looks like there was something a bit shorter there before, but the Dyad line was added later. Something like:
“The life Force of your bond…incredible…a power like life itself.”
Then just cut the ‘unseen for generations’ line, since it’s said offscreen. I genuinely think that cutting those two instances would streamline the whole plot.
I like it! Well, I’m still not sold on the Dyad, since there are already a lot of terms being thrown around here like ‘genetic strand-cast’ that may confuse a general viewer. I think it’s enough for Kylo to say something to the effect that Rey was originally meant to take the Sith throne before Palpatine’s spirit returned in the rotting clone body, so she’s fulfilling her destiny by killing him.
And Snoke being one of the first experiments is also a good idea! Maybe he was being tinkered on by Palpatine before he died as a backup plan, and when the Empire fell Snoke took over the First Order while the Sith cult began work on bringing back the Emperor with the surrogate clones.
Maybe the biggest benefit of this whole idea is that it circles back around to address the most inexplicable aspect of the film…“Somehow, Palpatine returned.” Now Rey’s backstory serves as a direct answer to the question of just what sort of Sith science was involved in bringing Palpatine back to life, connecting TROS with the rest of the trilogy.
Scavenging the Sith blade is similar to an idea I suggested some posts back, but the issue is that the plot now rests on this blade which was created just for this film. It doesn’t feel particularly earned as a revelation.
Making that list of plot and theme issues, here are the major ones as I see it:
1: Rey needs some inner darkness, whether that be from early life experience or from an ‘evil’ bloodline.
2: Rey needs a reason to have been left on Jakku, living next to several plot-important ships/places.
3: Rey needs a reason that choosing the Skywalker family name is important to her.
4: There should be a reason that Palpatine in particular is a fitting nemesis for Rey.
5: There should be a reason why a Jedi Hunter would wish to find Rey as a child.
Considering all of these, maybe the best idea would be to return to a pseudo ‘Rey Palpatine’ backstory. The big problem with this is that it directly conflicts with the idea that Rey’s parents were ‘nobody’, and it also creates a massive plot convenience if Rey just happens to wind up on the planet where the plot of TFA begins.
Here’s a concept:
After the Civil War, the Sith cult attempts to resurrect their fallen Emperor. They have his genetic material, so they use his DNA to grow almost identical clones of the Emperor within surrogate mothers across the galaxy.
While this experiment is ongoing, the cultists manage to revive the spirit of their Emperor within the body of a rotting clone, and their revived Emperor gives the order to have these experiments destroyed, lest they grow up to threaten him.
However, Rey’s parents have come to love this child and want her to be raised far from the influence of the Sith. They discover that churches dedicated to Luke Skywalker and the Jedi are arising on planets across the galaxy, with one allegedly located on Jakku. They make it to Jakku but Palpatine’s Jedi hunter meets them there.
Rey’s parents sell Rey to Unkar Plutt in the hopes that he will take Rey to this hidden enclave, and then they face Ochi and are killed defying the will of the Emperor.
…
In this concept, the dark revelation is that Rey is not just related to Palpatine, but in a very real sense she is Palpatine, or at least a female version of him. This sidesteps the issue that we’ve already had the plot about the offspring of an evil guy choosing not to be evil. Furthermore, anyone who knows the lore concerning cloned Force sensitives will know that madness is a common fate, so this is another problem potentially confronting Rey.
Rey’s parents here remain nobodies, and since there could have been thousands or millions of surrogate mother experiments, Rey isn’t terribly special as a person either. More critically, it isn’t a huge coincidence that Rey happens to live near the Church of the Force on Jakku, since that was the destination of her parents.
Lastly, we can keep almost everything concerning the ‘Rey Palpatine’ cut in place, including the flashbacks to her parents.
Yeah, it’s not super well developed. Moving to fill one thematic or plot related issue just exposes two more.
Another day, another idea for the duel and hangar scenes:
“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. I know the rest of your story. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“You were right…your parents were no one. Junk traders from the outer rim.”
“Don’t!”
“Your parents had no power in the Force. And neither did you.”
“I don’t want this!”
“Yet they were killed…”
“No!”
“…by the Emperor’s assassins.”
(Rey sees her abandonment.)
“Come back! Nooo!”
“They took your parents ship…and left their bodies to rot.”
“Stop talking.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“You never found their bodies, so you convinced yourself that they were still alive…and would return someday. But deep down, you always knew the truth. And the truth…the guilt…has eaten away at you your entire life.”
“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor 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 a six year old girl had told everyone she met that she was a Skywalker. A child’s dream…to be a hero like Luke.”
“You blame yourself for your parent’s death, but it was Palpatine who killed them. There’s no need to blame yourself any longer. Just reach out and take your vengeance. We can kill him, Rey…together.”
(Removes his helmet)
“You know what you need to do. You know.”
“I know.”
Fascinating, it really does sound like him!
I’d be interested in hearing the variants you came up with. It’s also gotten me thinking about other lines for that scene. The trouble with it is that if the Falcon isn’t in Hyperspace in the next scene, there’s really no place that it could be that feels right. It can’t be still escaping from the Death Star because the tone of the scene is very much that they have already escaped and can breathe easy, nor can it be that they have already traveled to the Yavin system because they are talking like the escape was only moments or at most minutes ago.
But here’s an idea: What if the Falcon went into Hyperspace immediately after escaping the Death Star, only to quickly drop back out of Hyperspace and calculate a new course to Yavin? That would make sense because in ESB it is established that a ship can be tracked to its destination based on its course entering Hyperspace, so a multi-legged journey would be implied here. It also would explain why Han seems so cocky about his escape and his conviction that the Empire can’t track his ship, since it’s making multiple jumps to get to its destination.
Vader’s line could be:
“They’ve made their first jump through Hyperspace”
or
“They’ve completed their first jump through Hyperspace”.
Now we can have the next scene happen moments after escaping the Death Star while Han waits for the navicomputer to give him new coordinates. In fact, with this concept, Vader’s line doesn’t even need to change, but the change would at least hint that this multi-hop technique is being used.
I like the ideas. Granted, it does give Kylo less of a reason to reforge his mask which Ascendant fixes pretty well. Then again, I never had much of an issue with that to begin with. I’d be curious to see what else you can come up with here.
Sure, Ascendant gives us flashbacks to ‘a creature in a mask’, but I don’t think that is a reason for Kylo to reforge it. If anything, I’d think Kylo would want to connect with Rey without the mask to interfere, so that Rey would view him as more of a person.
I think the most coherent reason for the reforging (other than rule of cool) is simply that he’s ‘serving another master’ but with an ulterior motive, so the helmet would mask his expressions while also visually signifying that he’s taking the role of Vader in Palpatine’s orbit. I don’t think we can get a deeper character reason, so to go from meeting Palpatine to the mask reforging would strengthen that concept.
Here, Nev, here is that scene with 5.1 audio. It’s a first attempt, and so if you have feedback and are interested in making it better, let me know. The sync is not identical to the clip you provided, so you are aware.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zZuEYos__YBJMY8rSfjggjOS-02Hxr3n?usp=share_link
Hmm, it sounds like the central channel is missing.
Other than that, it sounds good 😉
Try the mkv I just added. The mov file is for editing rather than viewing, with six separate mono tracks that together comprise the 5.1.
There are certainly flaws here, so again, if this is something you want to develop further let me know.
There are definitely bits missing here, but I think the biggest issue with this concept is what you said - Han’s voice seems to come out of nowhere. This, however, isn’t the fault of the scene, but the setup earlier in the film.
I’ve been thinking about it a bit, and can see one way to set up Han’s memory organically. We already have one piece. When Kylo speaks to Rey during the festival, she tells him that she can see the cracks in his mask, and that he is haunted by his father. What we really need is a scene that embellishes that, something that would go between that scene and the appearance of Han’s memory exactly one hour later in the film so that we don’t forget that the subplot exists.
I suggest moving two scenes: the one where Kylo communes with Vader’s mask, and the scene where masked Kylo stands in the destroyer hallway and talks to Palpatine. The Vader mask scene could take the place of the hallway talk, happening right after the Falcon is towed into the Star Destroyer. Overlay Palpatine’s voice on the scene so it is clear that Kylo is using the mask as a conduit to speak to Palpatine, and only for this purpose, since he now knows that every other voice was just Palpatine in disguise. Kylo’s voice would have to be changed since he isn’t wearing his mask here, but we’ve already proven that it’s possible and there’s no lip matching required.
The hallway scene can now go several different places in the film, including back where it was in the theatrical version. Since Palpatine’s dialogue is no longer there, it’s a blank slate to fill with whatever troubled thoughts Kylo would have, so we could put Han’s voice into his head, or even place Kylo’s whole vision here, though it would probably be stronger with just Han’s voice. Here, his line ‘Take off that mask…you don’t need it’ actually makes sense, as he’s, you know, wearing the same mask from TFA. If it does go back where it was in the theatrical version, it would form a nice parallel with Rey’s scene where she vows to kill Palpatine. Just as Rey is falling into the darkness, Kylo is tempted by the light. It is noticeable that the next time we see Kylo, he has no mask and presumably didn’t take it with him. So Han’s voice is already having an effect on him. We are seeing the scene from TFA play out again, this time across several scenes and with real progression for Ben’s character.
This scene switcharoo has another benefit. Now that Vader’s mask scene has moved away from the beginning of the film, Kylo’s scene progression goes directly from meeting Palpatine to reforging his mask. This ties directly into the commands of Palpatine, which are to ‘kill the girl, end the Jedi, and become what your grandfather, Vader, could not.’ Therefore, he is recommitted in this moment to becoming like Vader without the confusion of consulting Vader’s lying mask.
With this reshuffling, we might lose Kylo’s vision, but I would argue that Rey’s vision is strengthened by being the only one in the film, and having a scene where Han speaks to Kylo would serve the purpose of Kylo’s vision and more. The only loss in removing that early vision is that now there is no indication that Kylo is haunted before Rey brings it up during the festival, and unfortunately there is no early scene of Kylo which would really work to establish this. Unless…
Imagine altering the final paragraph of the crawl to say: "Haunted by the ghosts of his past, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren rages in search of a hidden power that could ensure his victory…
Pan down to Mustafar, where we see Ren carving his way through his enemies. With each one that falls, we hear the sounds of his past coming back to haunt him. The voices of Luke on that fateful night, of Rey in the forest, of Snoke on his throne, which changes to the laughter of Palpatine. He sees the Wayfinder. With this, Mustafar Minute actually pulls its weight.
So to recap, Kylo now has a whole arc established in minute 1 and developed at 3, 23, 65, 80, and 83 minutes into the film.
It’s just that when I watched Ascendant for the first time a few weeks ago the goonies moment with the dagger wasn’t there and I just assumed that I hadn’t been paying attention and missed it. So I definitely think that if a newcomer watched that having seen the original film they may be confused about its absence as well.
It does seem like the dagger would have been made recently by Ochi, doesn’t it? It may be easier to find one moment to state that somewhere rather than change several moments to make the blade seem older.
If the blade was made, say, fifteen years ago, then it would even make sense to keep the goonies moment in.
JEDIT: Maybe we can change the dialoge from this:
“There’s writing on it.”
“Perhaps I can translate.”
“The location of the wayfinder has been inscribed upon this dagger. It’s the clue master Luke was looking for.”
“And? Where’s the wayfinder?”
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you.”
to something like this:
“There’s writing on it.”
“Perhaps I can translate.”
“Why, this blade was forged sixteen years ago…by Ochi of Bestoon. And look! Inscriptions concerning a Sith Wayfinder.”
“And? Where’s the wayfinder?”
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you.”
Here, Nev, here is that scene with 5.1 audio. It’s a first attempt, and so if you have feedback and are interested in making it better, let me know. The sync is not identical to the clip you provided, so you are aware.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zZuEYos__YBJMY8rSfjggjOS-02Hxr3n?usp=share_link
Hmm, it sounds like the central channel is missing.
Other than that, it sounds good 😉
Awesome, I’ll check it out!
But Kylo doesn’t appear to have the item on him, and in the background you can see the ship is a flaming ruin. I genuinely think it goes through the same process twice.
Checking the scene again, it appears that there’s a fire behind the pod, but that where Kylo was sitting appears to be intact and isn’t on fire during the scene. Which makes sense, because otherwise Kylo would have problems.
Kylo manages to survive his ship crashing, so it makes sense that the wayfinder would survive as well. When Rey burns his ship later, that’s more of what’s known in the insurance industry as a ‘total loss’.
@NeverarGreat
I agree with everything, but I think it would be better not to show the Wayfinder in the XWing. That could be very easily misread as her using it, even when not hooked up.
Because why should she bring it if it is of no use?
Perhaps Rey doesn’t know how the Wayfinder actually works, and may assume that merely having the artifact near her will impart an ability to find Exegol. And this may be correct, for her.
I like the idea that the Wayfinder isn’t necessary for Rey to find the source of darkness in the film, while it is necessary for Ben. And I don’t think it matters if the audience even picks up on it, because it is supposed to be a subtle difference. If a viewer wants to believe that she used the Wayfinder to find Exegol, they can still believe that. However, a more discerning viewer may realize the difference and appreciate the added depth.
Also, it always felt like kind of a cheat that the Wayfinder wasn’t destroyed with Ren’s ship, which this fixes.
To be fair, it was found on Mustafar, and originally belonged to Vader. That thing needed to be extremely heat-resistant by design.
Actually Mustafar has many non-volcanic areas; suggesting that everything needs to be heat-resistant is kind of a hurtful stereotype peddled by Calamarians and other people who don’t understand Mustafarian culture.
The idea that Rey doesn’t need the dagger to find the Wayfinder could have wider implications in the story.
She destroys Ren’s ship on the island, including his Wayfinder. When Luke says ‘You have everything you need’, he could be referring to the force that will lead her toward evil, but that she must harness this force to lead our heroes to Exegol.
We could see her removing the Wayfinder from Ren’s ship, but alter it to show that it is clearly burned and nonfunctional. Perhaps remove her line about ‘two were made’ to make it ambiguous what she’s thinking in that moment. Then later when she is flying to Exegol, the shot of the Wayfinder on her dashboard could be altered to show that it isn’t glowing and isn’t hooked up to anything. Really, this needs only to be a visual change in two or three shots to indicate that Rey isn’t using the Wayfinder like Ren did in the beginning of the film, but that she’s relying on her dark nature to find Exegol, even if she doesn’t realize that she’s doing it.
Not only would this subvert the McGuffin-heavy plot, but it would bring everything back to the level of pure character and be a dark echo of A New Hope, with Rey using the Dark Side to fly Luke’s X-wing and save the day.
Also, it always felt like kind of a cheat that the Wayfinder wasn’t destroyed with Ren’s ship, which this fixes.
Wow, a lot of great thoughts since last night everyone!
I agree that Rey’s backstory shouldn’t be important compared with what is within her now. We’re circling solutions on how to deal with the dagger on the Death Star, so maybe it’s as simple as it calling out to people who are already in tune with the Dark Side.
Rey leaves her friends to go after the dagger on Ren’s destroyer, and gets into the fight with Ren. He tells her that she doesn’t need the dagger to find the Emperor’s wayfinder, since there’s no force that can keep Rey away from the Dark Side. He suspects that Rey is even now trying to return to the dagger, though it is now useless to her and she has merely imperiled her friends to find it. When she destroys the Vader mask, his suspicions are confirmed.
I think this, along with dialogue exploring Rey’s hatred of her parents leaving and her subsequent self-deception, would be sufficient to bring the scenes in line with TLJ’s anti-revelations.
We could still have Ren tell her that her parents were killed by the Emperor’s assassin, but he says that they were killed because he had foreseen what Rey would become and wanted to leave a calling card for her to find - the dagger. However, this didn’t go entirely to plan and she ended up being drawn to a very different weapon with a dark history, which led her to Luke instead of to Palpatine.
That’s a good reconstruction, JJ! It makes a lot of sense to me. Unfortunately the Dyad may as well not be in the final film.
Anyway, I’m still struggling with Rey’s backstory. The unsolvable issue here is that Rey can’t truly be a nobody and also connected to the Sith, as she appears to be based on the dagger and Ochi and the ship.
Here’s just a wild idea, throwing it out there just to say it: What if we combine ‘Rey killed her parents’ with ‘Rey’s a nobody with no Force power’? The idea would center around the Sith dagger, the only unequivocal connection between Palpatine and Rey’s past.
Rey’s parents travel to Jakku, destitute and needing money. They agree to sell Rey to Unkar Plutt and immediately spend this money on booze. That night they party and pass out drunk. Rey, meanwhile, is wandering forlornly around the desolate settlement and has been drawn to something in a junk pile: a mysterious dagger. It calls out to her, and she grabs it from the pile. She approaches her parent’s ship with the dagger in hand, waking up the next morning with her hands covered in blood. She is found by a scavenger named Ochi, who takes the dagger from her and takes her back to Unkar Plutt. Ochi relinquishes her, but pockets the dagger. As Rey is being washed up, she hears the sound of her parent’s ship taking off, and she races outside to see it streaking up into the sky. She calls out to her parents to wait for her, but the ship disappears into the sky.
The dagger, it turns out, is a Sith artifact that points the way to Exegol, but only for those who are in tune with its dark power. Ochi gradually fell to its power, but nobody had ever used the dagger more readily than Rey. By this act she proved herself worthy of joining the cult of the Sith Eternal.
I am of the perhaps unpopular opinion that the goonies moment where she uses the dagger to find Palpatine’s tower actually worked in the original, and its absence is noticeable here. If I did a version of this edit, that moment wouldn’t be removed.
I like it!
If that’s true, then it seems at some point that they decided that the Dyad direction wasn’t working out, and its inclusion in the final film feels practically vestigial, with only two mentions in the entire runtime.
My vote is to perform a full appendectomy. By rewriting the hangar dialogue, we’re already halfway there.
Besides, TLJ already established everything we need to know about Rey and Kylo’s mind link, and even showed how physical matter could pass between them across worlds. There really doesn’t need to be a term for a beSnoke Force power established and explained in the prior movie, since this movie has quite enough new elements such as a rotting clone Palpy and Force healing.
What I’ve come to feel, rewriting this scene, is that Kylo’s theatrical lines don’t really match up with Rey’s lines, so I think he was definitely telling her something else in an earlier version of this film, something far more personal and less expository. All of her emotional lashing out and ‘I don’t want this’ doesn’t make sense when he’s talking about some Sith or Jedi prophecy or saying that her parents were loving people who protected her from Palpatine.
So that’s why I’m heavily leaning on the idea that whatever Kylo tells her must be something highly personal to her that she fundamentally doesn’t want to believe, and he has to say this right from the start of the scene, because she almost instantly responds with a tearful ‘You’re lying’. Kylo’s lines about Rey needing to see who she was make sense, but Kylo then following that with ‘I know the rest of your story’ doesn’t seem to warrant such an extreme response from Rey. It’s like he made a direct statement about her that cuts to the core of her being.
Just wanted to assure Nev that I was able to work a bit on the 5.1 for his Leia death scene, and while I am not done yet I will still return to it as I am able.
Cool! There’s no rush on any of this.
Also, I showed the mockup to my girlfriend to get her official report, and she liked it, so that’s iron clad proof it’s good 😉
In particular, she actually appreciated that there was no shot showing Kylo seeing the figure of Han emerging from the mist, because that would be too ‘on the nose’.
However, she was a bit perplexed by Leia’s line of ‘Together, Rey’. It took a minute for her to realize that she was asking Rey to help heal Ben. So perhaps we can run a few more variations of that line to make it more clear what is happening.
I think we’re pretty much on the same wavelength at this point, and it’s actually a solution that works with the film quite well, minus the explicit ‘Rey Palpatine’ stuff. I would actually also cut any mention of a Dyad, since it is barely in the movie and Force draining can just be a secret power of Palpatine like Force lightning was in ROTJ. In this version, we don’t really need a lot of exposition about Rey’s past, since it can be essentially the same as TLJ. The only added bit would be to explain Ochi and the dagger, and since it’s definitely a Sith dagger, that means that Rey’s past has to have an element of the Sith interacting with it.
“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. I know the rest of your story. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“You were right…your parents were no one. Worthless scrap dealers from nowhere.”
“Don’t!”
“You remember more than you say. You knew they were never coming back.”
“I don’t want this!”
“You hated them for it.”
“No!”
“But you couldn’t live with your hate.”
(Cut Rey’s vision of her parents…since they are nobodies.)
“You lied to yourself…but that only made your hate stronger.”
“Stop talking.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Rey, I know how your parents died. They were drunk, on the far side of Jakku, when they were found by an agent of the Emperor. He wanted to know where you were…but your parents couldn’t even remember.”
(Cut vision of Rey’s parents getting killed.)
“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you, Rey. I’ll come tell you.”
…
“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“He never wanted to kill you, Rey…he saw what you would become…a powerful host for his corrupted soul.”
“Palpatine told me to kill you, but I know the truth. You are his true prize. There is darkness in you Rey, far more than there is in me. So don’t play his game. We can kill him, Rey…together.”
(Removes his helmet)
“You know what you need to do. You know.”
“I know.”