NeverarGreat

UPDATE: I have no plans to edit TROS for the foreseeable future. Take the ideas below as thought experiments only. In light of this, my TLJ edit would serve as the completion of the Starlight Project.

Opening Crawl Just For Fun:

https://vimeo.com/564435856

Password: fanedit

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I have debated for months about even bothering to complete this trilogy since most of TROS is irredeemably bad. Unfortunately, The Last Jedi for all its merit still doesn’t feel like a satisfying end for these characters, so Starlight would either be an incomplete story or have an embarrassingly perfunctory final chapter.

In light of this, I’m considering a more unconventional edit of TLJ and TROS:

EPISODE IIIV - THE LAST JEDI

Since the Force Awakens will end with the Falcon leaving for Luke’s island, the extra scene of Rey and the Jedi Steps will be one of the first scenes in The Last Jedi, and the story of TLJ from here mostly follows the film with some added deleted scenes. A Sith Wayfinder could be added to Snoke’s throne as a visual connection between Snoke and the upcoming Sith fleet. The death of Snoke shows his eyes glow red and his spirit leave Snoke’s body.

The climactic scene of the film is Holdo’s Sacrifice. Rose and Finn go where they belong, and when Kylo awakens on the Supremacy his eyes smoulder red. The scene is followed by Yoda and Luke and then the Broom Boy scene. As the boy pulls the broom to him and begins sweeping, a voice crackles into a distant speaker. It is Poe, saying ‘We are not alone. What our mothers and fathers have fought for we will not let die. Today we make our last stand…for the galaxy!’ Many ships jump into hyperspace here, not just one.

EPISODE IX - THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

The Rise of Skywalker begins with a pan down to Crait and the arrival of Finn and Rose and BB-8. The Broom Boy scene at the end of the previous film acts as a misdirection, as there is no response to the Resistance’s call for help. Luke’s arrival and confrontation with Kylo will be edited so that Kylo seems more conflicted about his identity. To do this I would remove his final raging run against Luke; in this version Luke will hand Kylo an ultimatum and Kylo will accept this without undue screaming. The voice of Palpatine again comes to Kylo when he finds the illusory dice.

After the Falcon leaps into hyperspace, Kylo consults the mask of Vader and Palpatine’s voice again speaks, telling him that he’s been every voice inside his head. Palpatine tells Kylo to bring him the girl and he can have the Sith fleet. He sees a vision of Rey on the throne, a vision shared with Rey as she meditates on the new Resistance base. Mustafar minute, Kylo on Exegol, and the Iceberg/Lightspeed skipping are gone. The Falcon lands and they hear that somehow Palpatine has returned and there’s a Sith fleet on Exegol. Rey learns of the wayfinder and they go to the desert planet to find it and the dagger. Cut Rey Palpatine and Rey’s parentage. She merely finds the dagger without healing the snake and she Force lightnings Chewie. Kylo is now so consumed by the Sith spirit that he rebuilds his mask.

They get to the Death Star and they fight. Rey kills Kylo. This shock kills Leia as well. Rey flees in Kylo’s TIE fighter to Luke’s island, fearful of the sudden voices of the Sith in her head. Her eyes begin to shine red. Kylo, now a ghost, meets the spirit of Han and is redeemed in death. On the island, Luke says that Rey needs to face her fear and go to Exegol. She does so, leading the Resistance to the Sith Fleet.

Rey goes to the Sith throne. Around her are the Sith cultists and Palpatine’s disembodied voice fills her head. He tells her all sorts of lies, such as that she is a Palpatine, that she belongs on the throne, basic Sith stuff. The roof opens up and she sees her friends being struck down over the planet, Palpatine’s voice telling her to take the throne and save them. She assents. A sudden shock strikes her to the ground and Palpatine’s laughter fills the throne room. As she lies on the ground a ghostly form appears and coalesces into the body of the Emperor. ‘Look what you have made’ he says to her prostrate form. The cultists chant as he sits on the throne and unleashes lightning on the fleet. Rey beseeches the ghosts and they appear to her, Ben included. Between them all she rises and defeats the ghost of Palpatine. Above her the Resistance is victorious, and she flies away in the X-wing.

After the celebration, she buries the sabers on Tatooine as her friends play games on the Falcon, and then the Falcon flies into the sunrise.

poppasketti said:

I updated the shuttle shot to add a little bit of damage/wear! I agree with smpearce that it would help sell the model a little more:

Shuttle Tie Replacement
pw: fanedit

I would even advocate for more extreme damage such as a hole in one of the wings and/or burn damage. Really sell the idea that it’s been through a Death Star explosion!

act on instinct said:

The more I dwell on it the less I blame this movie for its shortcomings, I feel like I can’t lay all the criticism on IX’s shoulders given the tight spot it was in. Had there been a through line things would be different, but especially in hindsight I got issues with the whole trilogy and TROS inherited some of that baggage, forcing it to be worse than it would have been with a cleaner structure underneath to support it.

This movie could have been about Max Rebo getting the band back together for one final performance of Jedi Rocks and it would have been better than TROS.

I don’t buy for a second the argument that the movie was dealt a shit hand from which to build from. Palpatine’s terrible return was the fault of TROS. Rey Palpatine was the fault of TROS. The lack of a final character arc for Finn, the total waste of Hux, the corner they painted the story into in the final battle, the joke of a final scene was all the fault of TROS.

There was a universe of squandered possibility here, and the filmmakers deserve no credit for this complete abdication of vision.

The problem isn’t that the TIE is still operational, it’s that there’s never been evidence that the old models had Hyperdrives and plenty of evidence that they did not. Besides, the shuttle is more specifically tied to Vader’s fate in ROTJ.

I don’t think the ship needs to be any bigger. After all, any size difference could be due to landing slightly farther away.

I dunno, four commas in that final paragraph is rough.

Dooku was every voice inside Maul’s head.

Lovely work, even if still a bit floaty.

Hal 9000 said:

Oh my God.

I just had a terrible thought.

Palpatine in TROS is about Trump. Evil came back up from nowhere but don’t worry because “there are more of us.”

That’s honestly the first thing I thought of when that line came up, but that would imply that the writers are familiar with the concept of allegory.

^I mean, he would still find it, it just wouldn’t be immediately identifiable as the wayfinder.

kewlfish said:

NeverarGreat said:

That’s a good point about Rey’s point of view. Thinking about it, it’s not impossible to combine that idea with the Mustafar vision idea. How about:

Kylo kills the cultists and comes to a stop. Before him is the stone container inserted via VFX (cut the shot of him turning). He opens the box and places his hand on the square item inside. Use shot of him turning and then his environment dissolves into the interior of the cultist’s base on Exegol. After the Exegol scene it returns to the shot of Kylo standing over the box, this time with it open and the Wayfinder still upside-down inside.

This allows for the audience to put the pieces together as Rey does.

I like this idea but would you still use the Kylo traveling to Exegol sequence?

No, this would start with him already inside the building.

That’s a good point about Rey’s point of view. Thinking about it, it’s not impossible to combine that idea with the Mustafar vision idea. How about:

Kylo kills the cultists and comes to a stop. Before him is the stone container inserted via VFX (cut the shot of him turning). He opens the box and places his hand on the square item inside. Use shot of him turning and then his environment dissolves into the interior of the cultist’s base on Exegol. After the Exegol scene it returns to the shot of Kylo standing over the box, this time with it open and the Wayfinder still upside-down inside.

This allows for the audience to put the pieces together as Rey does.

idir_hh said:

I agree with Nev. The fundamental issue that underlines this film is that the treasure is found before the heroes even go on the treasure hunt, effectively killing all mystery and tension in the film. The reveal of the fleet rising from beneath the surface should have been saved for later on in the film, as well as Kylo finding Palpatine. In my view there needs to be a restructure of the film where palpatine’s broadcast initiates a race to Exogol between The First Order and the Resistance, with Kylo getting there first.

If this were to be implemented, this is the first restructure that came to mind:

1. Open on Mustafar fight and Kylo’s finding the wayfinder. As he touches it he is transported via vision to Exegol where Palpatine reveals the Sith fleet and all the rest. In this context the Sith fleet literally rising out of the ground could be dramatic flair on the part of Palpatine and not strictly what is happening. The vision ends and Kylo is back on Mustafar surrounded by dead cultists.

2. That’s it.

This turns Mustafar Minute into Mustafar/Exegol Vision and justifies its place in the film. It also establishes that the Wayfinders can facilitate vivid illusions as shown with Rey and Evil Rey.

Whether or not Kylo finds Exegol immediately or two minutes into the movie, the fact remains that this supposedly legendary and remote world is now ‘found’ almost immediately from the start. The anticipation in TROS is deflated before it can even be built.

This film is a lot like The Last Crusade. It’s a race against time where two ancient markers lead to a remote location where a man who has cheated death tempts our heroes with incredible power…except that in the case of TROS every beat that works in The Last Crusade fails to work here.

It would be as if Donovan found the first marker (which is complete and renders the other obsolete) and fought through to the Knight who promised him eternal life if he would only bring Dr Jones to him because they are related or some shit. Then Donovan spends the rest of the film trying to find Indiana Jones as Indiana hunts down the other fully intact marker. Indy is motivated, not by archaeology or adventure, but by a revelation that the Knight killed his father. Oh yes, his dad is dead in this version. So once he finds the second marker Donovan destroys it, but Indiana uses Donovan’s marker to get to the Knight himself. Then Donovan has a change of heart and follows Indiana to the Temple, where their life force is sucked out of them by the Knight and he electrocutes a fleet of Resistance ships with his power. Then Donovan throws Indy a second whip as he crumbles into dust and these whips (and the spirits of all previous archaeologists) take down the Knight.

Basically, the introduction of ‘Rey Palpatine’ not only ruins the previous two films, it ruins the potentially quite workable Last Crusade plot structure of this one.

DarthYcey said:

https://vimeo.com/419974604
fanedit

That’s really nice.

I wish there was a way to have the Han memory happen before the fight in some capacity, as if the fight is really about Ben working through his guilt. His dropping the saber at the end would then be the point of his turn. What if he turns and sees the image of Han, then he drops his saber and the scene continues. Then afterwards he has the Han memory scene.

Just some thoughts.

Galaxy Quest has aged like wine.

Spaceballs has aged like milk.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

That’s absolutely perfect.

#2 would work with some additional stabilization.

It looks like all three of them are just the Blu-rays run through a sharpening/upscaling process. ROTS really suffers from sharpening artifacts while AOTC looks better for the process.

I’ve taken a look at the 2011 blu-ray, Despecialized 20.1, 2.5 and 2.7, Team Blu77, Puggo Grande, SSE 1.6, and 4K77. In the Blu-ray, there is a green tint to Chewie’s nose which might have been a stylistic choice but the image is so dim that it’s not very noticeable. With the increased brightness in the 2.1 and 2.5 versions of Despecialized (which already had a strong green tint in many scenes), this green became much worse. The tint was finally reduced for for 2.7, but it only took the tint back down to something resembling the original 2011 color cast.

Here’s a comparison of all the relevant versions:

Blu-ray

2.1

2.7

Team Blu

SSE 1.6

4K77 1.0

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/99B91NNU

And here’s the Puggo Grande version for fun, note the lack of a green cast for this one:

So for most of the versions of this film, there is a noticeable green tint to this shot. However, most versions don’t turn his nose bright green and look more like a stylistic choice for the grading.

^What the Sith is happening there?

It doesn’t strike me as odd, the suns would be orbiting each other in order to make a variety of configurations over time.

I see. In that case I think the Solo reveal might just work!

I say go for the ending, there’s really only one way to see if it works 😉

Mustafar Minute could be prefaced with Kylo consulting Vader’s mask, which tells him where to locate the wayfinder. This would need some repurposed Vader audio, but I feel like that would be easier than fabricating a bunch of new shots.

As a bonus, if the Vader audio seems ‘off’ it could be foreshadowing of Palp’s reveal of being behind it all.