NeverarGreat

I love that TROS sticks out horribly even in this example.

RogueLeader said:

I couldn’t find it so I did it myself real quick (maybe I did this on my own originally…)

https://streamable.com/2v2dd0

“And” being cut might be noticeable to some who are aware of the change, but I honestly believe your hypothetical first time viewer, or people who just haven’t seen the movie since release, wouldn’t even notice this change. I moved “Me” up a few frames earlier, and I think the slight shift helps sell it as well.

I like how Finn assumes it’s Ren with such conviction, only to be left not knowing what to say after Rey says it was her. I think this is the simplest way to handle it.

Seamless.

Totally unbelievable. Anakin was never this self-aware.

The Empire is evil because it destroys peaceful planets. Aside from that, and the whole dictatorship angle, there’s a sizeable school of thought on The Empire Did Nothing Wrong, which is of course absurd but does make some fair points about galactic stability and making the space trains run on time.

The prequels establish that there are only ever two Sith in existence at any time, at least according to the Sith Rule of Two, a master and an apprentice. This doesn’t mean there aren’t other dark Force wielders out there or even other would-be Sith, but there are only two official Sith in recent galactic history at any one time. Of course, this is an invention of the prequels, and the Original Trilogy was quite vague on the nature of the Sith apart from calling Vader one of their order. Presumably there could be unlimited numbers of Sith.

According to the prequels, the Jedi have a three-tiered system of Padawan(Apprentice), Knight, and Master. A Jedi Knight takes on a Padawan to train as a Jedi Knight. When the Padawan reaches knighthood, my understanding is that their teacher can become an official Jedi Master. This system was not apparent during the Original Trilogy, however, and the working canon by Lucas was that a student or apprentice could become a Jedi Knight if they wished to use a lightsaber and be a warrior monk like Obi-wan, or they could devote themselves to teaching and peace and become a Jedi Master like Yoda. It was not a linear succession, and btw it’s my favored explanation of the Jedi.

That needs to be a scene.

It’s not really about the expectation, though cutting to Finn for a split second does feel odd, it’s more about that series of statements.

“I had a vision. Of the throne of the Sith. And who was on it. And me.”

The first two statements make clear that she had a vision about the throne of the Sith, and the third statement clarifies that she saw someone on that throne. The fourth statement however doesn’t make it clear at all that she saw herself on the throne, rather that she had a vision of herself separate from the throne, since the ‘and’ implies that her presence in the vision was not included in the part of the vision revealing the throne.

She could say “I had a vision. Of the throne of the Sith. And who was on it…me.” This would confirm that she was on the throne and not separate from it.

Or she could say “I had a vision. Of the throne of the Sith. And me.” Which merely implies that she is on the throne.

The absent line is felt, unfortunately.

Maybe it could be cut so that Finn says “Ren?”, then mask out Rey’s mouth movement and delete her ‘and’, so that she simply says ‘Me.’ You might not even have to change her mouth movement, though it could help.

CaptainFaraday said:

I think there needs to be a shot between Rey and BB-8 leaving frame, and the shot of the Falcon flying. There’s too much action that happens offscreen too rapidly (boarding the Falcon, the Falcon taking off), and I think that’s what makes it feel rushed.

Have the old woman take off her false face to reveal Ben.

Welcome to the forums!

I agree that those lines are some of the worst in the film. If we’re throwing around complete replacement ideas, maybe something like:

“I am all you can ever hope to be!”

“I…I can be more.”

Something that is vague yet speaks to Rey’s core character arc, whether you interpret it to be one of self-worth, belonging, destiny with the Dark Side, whatever.

Indeed. I think the installation of a leader with true Force powers torpedoes the ultimately mean simplicity of a fanatical Imperial Remnant, so if they took Palps out of the equation and just had Snoke as a leader who is implied to have Force powers but is actually a pretender, it would be pretty spot-on.

The First Order Reimagined

Yeah, the EU around this film feels entirely alien to what I consider ‘Star Wars’.

So…bored…face…sagging…must…start…galactic war…

I completely agree.

sherlockpotter said:

But again, in regards to saving her friends, none of this has any relevance to the themes of the film. This is when those themes are supposed to come to their conclusion; but instead of talking about Rey’s anger, or her heritage, or anything like that, J.J. and Chris are just like, “Meh, you better kill him Rey, or else all of your friends are gonna die,” as they flap their hands about. How has the film built towards this at all? What is the film trying to say by forcing this (external) conflict on Rey? How is this final dilemma (of the entire Star Wars saga) in any way satisfying?

How is it satisfying?

It’s not.

The writers wrote themselves into a very simple conflict with Palpy returning: Have Rey kill him or have her not. Based on the themes and her actions over the prior two films, there’s absolutely no drama with killing Palpy since she actively tried to kill Snoke and he called her a True Jedi for doing so, with absolutely no subtext as to any darkness associated with this action. The only drama would then come from her not killing Palpy, but there’s no reason for her to choose this so the final film had to manufacture a reason for her to not kill the most evil guy in the galaxy by making him her caring grandfather. This might almost work since it plays into the thematic line of her constantly wanting a place in the story, but the writers then decided that Rey should actually want to kill Palpy in anger due to the spirit transfer plot device, and so wrote Palpatine back into being Mr Evil by ordering the hit on her parents.

Now Rey’s back to the uninteresting place of wanting to kill Mr Evil, with practically no continuation of the theme of Rey’s belonging. The spirit transfer plot device and resulting revenge subplot effectively kills the theme of the films. Bringing Rey’s friends into this contrived mess of a conclusion merely serves as a distraction.

But A New Hope takes place after Rogue One…

Nindroid243 said:

Dude these clips are sick! May have a link to view your overall cut?

PM Sent!

CMMAP said:

You only have to push yourself if you want to 😃 Don’t feel obliged to anyone else.

No worries, this was something I always intended to do at some point.

How does the work process look like for the deleted scene:

• PS, load every frame into it and then use the copy stamp to get rid of the time stamp?

My workflow is still essentially what was done for the Leia deleted scene from page 7 of this thread: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Force-Awakens-The-Starlight-Project-WIP-WORKPRINT-V2-RELEASED/id/54912/page/7#1147760

This time I am using After Effects, however, and it’s quite a bit more robust. It’s nice to be able to add grain as a simple effect without re-rendering the whole thing, for example. The tracking of the still image elements remains tricky, with the automated tracker working only about half the time and requiring manual keyframe animation the other half.

Yeah, I’m really pushing to have this done before the 25th, fingers crossed 😉

The Kylo Falcon scene is really tough, I can only do one shot per day if I’m lucky, but I think the hardest shots were probably the first two and maybe the exterior of the Falcon.

Can’t wait to finally have a finished product soon!

Brief update to the outstanding changes:

-Remove timecode from Kylo Falcon scene. (First 3 shots of 9 completed)
-Tweak shot of Rey and Finn looking at Starkiller beam.
-Delete casual Resistance officer from Leia’s mourning.
-Add Sith eyes to Rey after her Force trance.

I’ve also redone the shot of the Falcon going to Hyperspace from Jakku based on a suggestion by Adywan so that it jumps a bit earlier. This gives the shot a better flow and a chance to breathe before jumping into the next scene.

yotsuya said:

Who did those force ghosts in the TROS scene? That was truly excellent and would be a great thing to add to an edit.

Are you referring to the scene with the four ghosts on Exegol? Jonh did that scene, which is a big selling point of Ascendant.

Indeed. The Lesson One scene alone almost suffocates under its own dialogue. Cut out the weed gag and Luke’s dithering about vanity and the scene might be pretty great.

Those first two ideas are both interesting. I talked elsewhere of combining ESB and ROTJ into one film by taking most of ESB and welding the finale of ROTJ onto the end, accomplished by having Luke be taken prisoner by Vader in Cloud city, being healed in an Imperial facility via bacta tank scene, and being taken to the new Death Star. I’d be interested in hearing your ideas though!

A clarified TLJ is also a good idea. You hit the nail on the head with how the film overexplains everything.

Dat_SW_Guy said:

Heres a test VFX shot of Rey shooting out Force Lightning instead of the Force Push to signify her instability, the compression makes it look slightly weird but it’s okay: https://streamable.com/cqtffo

That would work if something reached Finn, but it feels odd that it doesn’t given that it looks so strong.

I think for the effect to work seamlessly it would need to be more subtle, like tiny tendrils running along her fingers like in the Palpatine scene accompanied by a little sound effect. If the effect gets large enough that Rey would have noticed it visually, it’s gone to far imo.

CaptainFaraday said:

Here’s an idea: Alternate Ascension. Someone should take all the ideas that were considered but ultimately decided against for Ascendant - even ones you don’t necessarily agree with - and put all of those into an edit. A mirror image of Ascendant, if you will. There’s certainly no shortage of ideas to implement.

Replace Han with Leia’s Force Ghost and we can call it Alternate Ascension; Free Solo.

I’ll be here all week.