NeverarGreat

WXM said:

I’ll put this last one from my looking around, one that puzzles me most. I don’t know if these are real mountains or purely effects, but regardless it’s strange how the 4k frame is without as much detail…

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=5240&d2=15006&s1=48928&s2=156526&x=665&y=172&i=16&a=2&go=1&l=1

I don’t suppose anyone knows if those are real mountains — is real footage that would’ve been scanned at 4k as claimed — or just pure effects/CG?

That’s a composite effects shot, like most of the shots in these movies.

Looking through all of the screencaps, every effects shot has a degraining and sharpening filter. There are only a few shots here which aren’t effects shots, and for every one of these there is a definite improvement to the image in color and detail. It’s just a shame that the composites, which predominate the films, are degraded in quality with flattened highlights and edge enhancement which makes each element look like a paper cutout.

I’ll definitely be giving these official 4K versions a miss.

Ed Slushie said:

As much as I still love and appreciate SW77/ A New Hope, I’ve found it to be one of the least… watchable of all the Star Wars movies. So much of it has aged horribly. The space battles feature ugly composite shots that get repeated over and over again, Han is so blatantly sexist that he uses the term “female advice” as an insult, the lightsabers look incredibly fake (and not even in a consistent or stylized way), and worst of all: some of the extras have mullets.

Which version are you watching? I ask because I’ve found that the lightsaber effects have gotten worse each time they’ve been recomposited (probably due to degradation of the elements), whereas 4K77 still has the original compositing and it looks great.

You know, after writing the 50-odd page rough draft of my TROS rewrite earlier this year and starting the second draft, I happened to sit down and watch Avatar, and actually got a bit irked that they had already done Kylo Ren’s character arc.

Speaking of Rey vs Kylo, my thinking has changed dramatically over these past months. In the begining (and in my rough draft), Kylo and Rey move towards each other in characterization, with Rey becoming a bit darker and Kylo turning back toward the light. There was also the implication of romantic feeling between them carried over from TLJ. However, this whole thing still felt rather wrong. Kylo is still a much darker and more troubled character than Rey even at her worst, and any romance would be founded on the toxic beginnings of TFA and TLJ. It’s not that such a relationship couldn’t work, but it felt like a bad message.

My current thinking is that Kylo’s redemption, if it occurs, must not involve Rey; the characters simply aren’t meant for each other. Rey could still interact and fight with Kylo, but he is not the antagonist to her character like Vader was to Luke. In my current thinking, Rey learns that her focus on Kylo as her antagonist is warping her reality whereas her true focus should be on finding other people like her who have been awakened by the Force to resist the First Order, and using the lessons and failures of the past to build a new Jedi Order.

I don’t find it obvious at all that Yoda is speaking of his failure in a grand, centuries-long sense. Sure, he could be, but it’s equally possible that he’s referring merely to his failure to kill Palpatine, which was the interpretation I had watching the film.

Ultimately, interpretations are formed based on the filmmaking, and there’s little to suggest Yoda’s thought process here. Minutes before this he was self-assuredly walking into the Senate saying how Palpatine’s rule was about to end and his faith in Vader and the Dark Side was misplaced. These words may be bluster, but at the same time they don’t reveal a deep conflict within Yoda. He seems to only question himself once he loses the fight, at which point he has decided to run off into exile before the speeder has even left the air parking lot. Maybe if we saw him gazing out at the still-burning Jedi Temple, the virtual camera lingering on the sadness in his eyes as he comes to a conclusion, it would be clearer that he views his failure as something more than losing a single fight. But that’s not in the film, and I don’t see why I should do Lucas’s job for him.

RogueLeader said:

It is starting to feel like Filoni and Favreau are just playing with Star Wars action figures, rather than writing interesting characters.

Perfectly said.

https://imgur.com/gallery/Lwzyu0w

I dunno, it feels to me like Rey should have been the one to convince Luke to come back. It would be like the ghost of Obi-wan going to Yoda’s hut for a pep talk before helping Luke destroy the Death Star.

If Luke had gone through with burning down the tree, believing that the Texts were still inside, then breaking down in tears alone after realizing what he’d done, that for me would have been far more powerful and kept Rey as the central figure in Luke’s return.

Ed Slushie said:

Has it occurred to anyone else that, if Grogu really was raised in the Jedi Temple, there’s a decent chance that he actually is the son of Yoda and Yaddle?

That was my first thought, which is indisputably canon for me now.

ATMachine said:

You are transparent. I see many things. I see basements within basements.

“Why would he want the Skywalker’s…son…killed?”

I definitely got Princess Mononoke vibes as well, and it was a good, evocative location.

Agree with RL in that the show is starting to feel disjointed in its desire to set up so many bigger players.

One issue that I have had with Filoni’s work in the past is that the main characters of his shows almost never feel like they are in danger, even when up against superior forces. I hoped that this problem would have been fixed by live action, but it seems to be getting worse. For example, twice in S2E4 the Empire’s ships had target lock on our protagonists yet they never managed to hit them, and in the latest episode there was not tension whatsoever that Mando and Ahsoka would clean house with this random town. I don’t know why Ahsoka hadn’t already dealt with them, honestly. Her final fight with the Magistrate could have ended in two seconds with her two lightsabers, and Mando’s fight with the enforcer could have ended sooner since he has blasterproof Beskar.

Finally, it was a nice change of pace for S1 to take a slower pace with the plot and fill it out with a bunch of side-quests, but in the middle of S2 I’m getting pretty tired of ‘Mando tries to do _ but problems arise and he ends up doing _ for the episode’. Rinse, repeat half a dozen times. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so often ‘Mando goes to a planet seeking someone and has to fix a problem for them before they can regurgitate a new destination.’

I don’t mean to be too harsh on this show, since it has a lot going for it. But these issues are endemic across Filoni’s shows, and it’s becoming too much to ignore.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Watched it up to the point fat divorcee Spider-Man appeared, then turned it off. Found it absolutely uninteresting; I won’t be finishing it.

I think I’ve seen this one three times, one of the best animated movies of the decade imo.

You’ve done a great work here over the years. Enjoy the completion. You’ve earned it, Hal. 😃

daveinthecave said:

I’ve only had limited experience with the EU but I’d be surprised if there was anything worse then The Crystal Star. I can also vaguely recall a novel where Luke falls in love with a ghost or something.

Children of the Jedi is a gem and you will not speak ill of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPO-i6TOqB0

SandMTV said:

That’s just a crew member.

I’m glad you’re here to tell us these things.

RogueLeader said:

I’m also pretty sure Nev (perhaps someone else, Ridley?) did an edit where the ground didn’t break between Rey and Kylo, and Rey just ran off on her own accord.

Maybe Digmod? I’m not sure who did that effect.

BTW, Pasaana as a desert planet feels really stupid on reflection, since the plot dictates a large, crowded celebration in the middle of nowhere. It would have made a lot more sense to combine Pasaana and Kijimi, since there would be visible cities on the planet and now we would have met some actual civilians before it got blown up and there would have been some interesting twists in evading the First Order while seeking out the droid mechanic and getting the Falcon back.

I wonder if that’s at all feasible, just to make Kijimi a different city in a different latitude of the same planet. The planet could be called Pasaana and the new Star Destroyers would use their not-quite-Death Star laser to destroy the city of Kijimi, implying that they can just destroy the capital cities of each world without the needless Death Star overkill.

AOTC actually tries to have a mystery plot, which is a new and interesting direction for a Star Wars movie. Even if it doesn’t ultimately work, it at least tries. In comparison, TPM and ROTS are much more straightforward.

adywan said:

Z6PO said:

idir_hh said:

If they start veering down the Snoke/Palpatine/Exogol thread. I’m out.

It may very well be the backdrop of the story…

Exactly. Ever since we saw the kamino symbol on the doctor, when Mando delivers the child, it’s been pointing to the child being the important factor in the creation of Snoke and the resurrection of the Emperor.

God that would suck.

Inspired from another thread:

Have Rey rename the Millennium Falcon the Millennial Falcon.

Not that it was hard to predict, but I remember saying that TROS would be a dumpster fire the moment JJ was announced as the director.

If someone does decide to work on this idea, it might be good to go from the end of the film forward so that if Kewlfish returns there is less of a chance of replicated work.

Sorry about the late reply, Zig!

ziggyonice said:

NeverarGreat said:

Here’s a rough version of the new sequence I’m considering for the Hosnian Destruction. It’s closer to Restructured, but unlike that scene there’s actually too many shots to fit into the music duration.

Hey, I know it’s been awhile Nev, but I checked in just to see how the project has been coming along.

It’s going in fits and starts. The latest addition is a change to the end credits music to include Williams’ 2018 Han & Leia Theme, which I think musically evokes the story of Han & Leia’s relationship that we never got to see on-screen, and this transitions to the Kylo theme to give that story its necessary tragic end. It’s not a super necessary change, but I like it.

The clip you shared above back several weeks ago is really well done. I think that flows very nicely and is probably the best take so far at the Hosnian destruction.

Thanks! It’s still a work in progress. I’ve found that the Hosnian destruction is just so weak on its own that it only gains any power from the events surrounding it, so I’m considering how to continue the Oscillator scene around the destruction kind of like the Luke vision was intercut with R2 finding the map. We’ll see. 😃

For the pilot reactions, you might be able to use a shot of Poe from either TLJ or TROS. I know there’s a couple shots of him in TROS final battle that might match the emotional weight of the scene.

That’s a good idea. I assume he has a similar-enough costume for that to work?

hinventon said:

Has anybody heard this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KboCO09N7A4

I don’t know if there’s ever been a studio recording of this version but I love it and it would be a nice song to fill in some of the musical gaps, or even for TFA or TLJ

Lovely!

I’m hesitant to click music links these days because of the danger on hitting yet another Samuel Kim video, but this was a pleasant surprise.

I’m tempted to put this into my TFA edit as is.

To be fair, the problem goes beyond just Snoke. The whole ST (particularly TFA and TROS) seems to be made by people with no sense of object permanence, whose understanding of the previous story began and ended with the base objects present during the runtimes of episodes 4-6. The Emperor and the Death Star were just table-setting in the originals to show the overwhelming power of the dominant government in the universe, so they are here as well despite being the ostensible underdogs. You want thousands of Star Destroyers? The originals had that, so why not? Stormtroopers are soulless cannon fodder too, except that one of our main characters is a Stormtrooper. No problem making Rey related to a powerfully evil Force user, except that her nobody status is her one unique character trait. And on it goes. The ST has a toddler’s understanding of storytelling.

Anyway, if you want to make Snoke compelling you have to strip him of his Force powers. Make him a person who has power through his ability to project the air of a Force user and his emotional manipulation of Kylo Ren, otherwise he’s just another Palpatine.