NeverarGreat

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.

EDIT:

NeverarGreat said:

Finally, it is absolutely a storytelling beat to tie her abilities visually to Palpatine’s abilities as they have been seen so far in the film.

The only thing is, Ascendant removed Palpy’s hands flickering when he raises the fleet. So it would be less a direct reference to Palps, and more a generic allusion to the Dark Side.

Huh. Was the reasoning to lessen the implication that Palps was raising an entire fleet through Force magic?

That’s my read too, Sherlock. Rey is totally caught up in her anger, reacting blindly. It’s too much to throw actual lightning around, but a few stray bits on her hand would be totally in character for her at this point in the story and lead organically from her destruction of the transport. There’s actually a lot of emphasis on her hand in this scene, as she shakes it as if it’s paining her, grabbing Kylo’s saber with it to deal the injurious blow, and using it to heal him when she finally realizes how close she was to the darkness. The scene even ends with dialogue about her taking Ben’s hand! It’s actually stranger that there’s no reference to Force lightning in this scene, given how important it was earlier.

Finally, it is absolutely a storytelling beat to tie her abilities visually to Palpatine’s abilities as they have been seen so far in the film.

Agreed. Rey using lightning right there would have been the breaking point for her, and would have required her to dispatch Kylo almost in the same moment.

However, it might be cool to see some lightning flicker along her fingers as she pushes Finn away, mirroring the effect with Palpatine’s hands from the beginning of the film.

Probably didn’t want to bother coloring just the saber red.

Using the combined power of his Knights, Kylo binds Luke to a summoning circle and returns him to corporeality and then stabs him through the heart so that he dies for good this time.

Yep, what I meant was that I could come up with some designs but I don’t have the film to know where the designs would go, so someone else would need to provide those shots.

The Echo Base evacuation shot is a bit heavy on the grain, but that’s exacerbated by the oddly low contrast of the shot which makes the grain much more apparent.

CaptainFaraday said:

I’m not going to have the time any more to do the graffiti for the Kijimi composites, sadly. So if anyone else wants to take the reigns on that, feel free.

I could try my hand at incorporating it if Hal or someone provided the video for where they would want the graffiti.

PM sent!

Oh definitely.

Thinking about it, there really isn’t anyone in charge of the galaxy at all in the Sequel trilogy, or at least nobody we know about from the films. The Senate is destroyed halfway through the first one without ever learning who led that body, and Snoke is killed a day or two later in TLJ without completing his conquest of the galaxy. Kylo is the de-facto leader after that, but he never really appears to lead the galaxy and is apparently looking for the real power behind Snoke this whole time. Then Palpatine emerges and becomes the de-facto leader of the galaxy using the shadow power structure of Pryde et al who really control the First Order. Then Palpatine dies a few hours after that along with Pryde, Kylo, and Leia. With the original leadership of the galaxy dead and the leaders of the Resistance and First/Final Orders dead, I guess the galaxy exists in a state of anarchy until the next warlord comes along with a salvaged planet-killing Star Destroyer.