That version is great, though I can see a version where he is slightly more…sad? Like he’s almost unwilling to tell her.
After Andor season 2 it’s just all bleak and weak.
Actual lol, but also true.
Here’s how Nev’s line would sound in context of the scene (plus the file itself): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sWvJn8utKM3o28BAUsqHhnz3nhWqDWOO?usp=sharing
Sounds good.
I just want to say how astonishing this AI voice tech is. A few years ago changing actor’s lines was an impossible pipe dream, and now we can just transform a film with it.
Leia may not have known Palpatine was alive before the start of the film, but she still could have sensed Rey’s dark lineage. There’s no reason why Palpatine still needed to be alive for Rey to be descended from him.
Yep, I totally intended that connection…
😉
And I think I’ve come around on Poe as undercover cop. Zorri does tell him “He’s not stupid enough to come back here.”
So… there likely will be a V5 at some point. It’d be silly to be hasty about it, though. I imagine waiting until all the Rey Nobody pieces are finished to Dom’s satisfaction and then release a final version of both at once.
Nice! My idea wasn’t silly after all! Or maybe it was, just less so than the original film…
“Because you’re a Palpatine. Leia sensed it during your training.”
Starcrash. I’ve finally watched a sci fi film that is worse than the Star Wars Holiday Special. One of the worst films i have ever seen, worse than At the Earth’s Core even.
This movie has a cult following, and I just don’t get it. Caroline Munro’s hot. Big whoop. T&A alone can’t elevate a bad movie to so-bad-it’s-good.
Maybe it depends on the crowd, but I remember seeing it at a special screening with a few hundred B-movie fans and thought it was hilarious.
Those are good thoughts, RL. I am constantly wondering how to do a Rey Nobody concept with this film without cutting out too much of what is already there, which makes me think that there needs to be some concept of Rey ‘becoming’ Palpatine’s heir through her actions. This speaks to the whole ‘Rey’s future’ angle you brought up, where her past really doesn’t matter. However, so much of this movie is concerned with her past that again, it’s impossible to ignore that there’s some aspect of her past that wasn’t fully revealed.
So how about this:
Rey’s parents didn’t even know she was Force sensitive. This was during the first major round of First Order child abductions, so Rey was taken off world and sold to Unkar Plutt because the alternative was that she would have been taken away with no compensation for the parents. The child abductions had the added benefit that Force sensitive children would be identified by the First Order and sent to the Emperor for training or extermination.
Unkar Plutt was in the business of buying children who would otherwise have been sent to become Stormtroopers, or killed. He would hide them in the desert, giving them the barest food to survive on as he collected a tidy profit from this business. Sometimes the parents would come and retrieve their children, but most of the time they never returned.
Ochi was the punishment sent by the First Order for those who defied them and hid their children away.
…
“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. Victims of the First Order’s atrocities.”
“Don’t!”
“The Order was harvesting children across the galaxy.”
“I don’t want this!”
“But your parents resisted.”
“No!”
“They sold you, to keep you safe.”
(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”
“They paid for your protection…in more than one way.”
“Stop talking.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Rey, what happened to your parents happened to countless people across the galaxy. Palpatine needed everyone to hate and fear what he had done. So his assassins tracked down anyone who resisted his Order…and killed them.”
(Rey sees her parents get killed.)
“So that’s where you are. Have you guessed why the Emperor wanted you dead? I’ll come tell you.”
…
In the hangar, Kylo continues:
“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“Palpatine was defeated by a man who still believed in his father, who believed against all odds that the galaxy could be saved.”
“By destroying the galaxy’s children, he ensured that every orphan knew that he was the source of their hatred and despair. You can overthrow him, Rey, but if you do…you will become his heir and claim his dark throne.”
(Removes his helmet)
“You know what you need to do. You know.”
“I know.”
…
When Rey is reaching out to the Jedi at the end of the film, she is surprised to find that she doesn’t hear them. Rather, she has called to her the ones who can truly help her, her friends. She hears the voice of Finn, of Poe, of Chewie and Maz. She hears Luke and Leia, of course, but she even hears Han’s voice, making her realize that these aren’t ghosts reaching out to her but her own memories, their words the words of encouragement they spoke to her throughout her journey.
This was foreshadowed by Ben being redeemed by his memory of his father.
“You are nothing. A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me. I am all the Sith!”
“And I…I’m a Skywalker.”
…
Rey isn’t special. She’s not an outlier, but rather representative of a galaxy-wide tragedy which makes her struggle universal. Comparing power levels here is pointless because the story has never been about that. Rey cannot defeat hatred through power. “You want me to hate but I won’t.” Something like that.
Another question that arises from this is how does this affect Ochi’s ship? Is this the same ship that carried her parents away from Jakku, and if so then how is it on Pasanna and not wrecked in the Jakku desert?
Just change Pasaana to Jakku. They look the same already so you’d just need to swap out a line or two. They barely ever refer to the planet by name so it should be trivial. It’d also bring the trilogy full circle.
That’s possible, but that would also mean that Luke was searching for clues on the same planet as Rey, one of the most promising Force sensitives in the galaxy, and Lando would have been hanging out on an almost deserted planet for years without ever noticing that his beloved old ship was parked in one of the few spaceports gathering dust. It’s hard to imagine that Luke and Lando would have both overlooked these things.
I’ve been thinking some more about Rey’s backstory, and particularly what we want it to communicate. I think the reason TLJ’s revelation was so interesting was because it established that Rey was truly nobody, which meant that she had literally no connection to Palpatine or Skywalker at all. It removed a lot of the convenience of TFA if Rey was a nobody, though some questions still remained, and it was just a breath of fresh air. So here’s a story that comports with that idea and with the ideas in TROS:
Rey was born on a poor, distant ocean world and lived there with her parents for years. Eventually, when her parents learned that she was Force sensitive, they began searching for a way to have her trained as a Jedi. They had gone to Jakku because they had heard that Unkar Plutt had recently purchased the Millennium Falcon and they hoped that this ship would lead them to Luke via his famous friends. Rey was even learning Wookiee in preparation for this meeting, as a precocious Force sensitive child would.
Meanwhile, Ochi and his Jedi hunters were looking for Force sensitive children on the orders of a Sith cult. Palpatine desired to destroy as many children as possible to prevent a new Jedi Order from arising, and as a side effect he would spare the life of the most promising child and train this child as his heir.
Ochi and his hunters were on Jakku when Rey and her parents landed, already searching for this child. Thinking fast, Rey’s parents sold her to Unkar Plutt to protect her from Ochi and with the hope that someday Luke and his friends would find the Falcon and take Rey to be trained by Luke. To protect Rey’s location from Ochi, her parents left the planet on their ship, but were boarded and killed by Ochi and his hunters before they could escape into Hyperspace. Ochi searched for the child on Jakku and on many other worlds, but could never find her and eventually was killed in the desert of Pasanna.
And here’s how some of that could be communicated:
“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. Scrap merchants from the outer rim.”
“Don’t!”
“But you were strong in the Force, so they went looking for Luke.”
“I don’t want this!”
“They found my father’s ship on Jakku.”
“No!”
“But Palpatine’s assassin was close behind.”
(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”
“They paid for your protection…in more than one way.”
“Stop talking.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Rey, I know what happened to them. Tell me where you are…you don’t know the whole story. It was Palpatine who had your parents taken. He was looking for you. But they wouldn’t say where you were…so he gave the order.”
(Rey sees her parents get killed.)
“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.”
…
In the hangar, Kylo continues:
“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“He wanted to kill every child with the Force, Rey. To stop Luke from rebuilding the Jedi Order. And he almost succeeded.”
“Palpatine had foreseen that a child would survive, one strong with the Dark Side. He told me that this child would become his heir, destroying him and taking the throne of the Sith. We can kill him, Rey…together.”
(Removes his helmet)
“You know what you need to do. You know.”
“I know.”
…
This actually changes fewer lines than my previous attempt, and explains away basically every convenient aspect of Jakku in TFA. It also handily gives some explanation for why Luke was delayed for so long in beginning a new Jedi Order.
It seems a bit backwards to massage the film to mesh with prior EU material since EU material will already bear that out in time as it does. If we say Poe left to join the Republic, even if that helps things that have been published so far surely it’ll come into conflict with future EU material.
Nothing wrong with making the change because you prefer it that way, but current EU seems like an unusual motivation.
Fair enough. There are still about 99 bigger problems in this film anyway 😉
It does seem like Rey and Kylo have a much larger reaction to Leia sensing/resolving what to do than they do when she actually does die. Kylo in particular when he stares off into space after collapsing, dejected; seems like he’s maybe just feeling that way because he himself is about to die.
Indeed, that’s the feeling I get from it as well, like they are just realizing that these are her final moments and then once she dies there’s a moment of silence. I think it works.
Also the music repeats itself once, so I might see if there’s another cue to sub in that works.
Ah, good catch. I hadn’t even noticed that.
Yeah, and to expand on that, when Finn asks Poe how he knows how to hotwire a speeder, to me it makes sense that someone in a paramilitary organization like the Resistance would be able to do that. It only makes sense that Finn is surprised by Poe’s hotwiring if it was previously established that Poe was from the by-the-book New Republic. If Poe’s history was unknown, there would be no reason for Finn to be surprised that a guy in the rough and tumble Resistance had some shady connections.
In short, the writers took the assumed canon of Poe’s backstory as a springboard for subverting that canon for surprise value, but by negating the canon they negated the whole reason for the subversion, like a sort of canon ouroboros.
Very nice!
Also, a small sound tweak suggestion: On Passana after we establish the Knights of Ren in their cool but useless photo shoot, there’s a really atmospheric shot of the desert and the ship in the distance, which gets almost instantly ruined by unnecessary bickering about needing to find ‘a useful droid’. It would probably be easy to cut these lines and pick them back up with Threepio’s line about going back to the Falcon, giving us a few more seconds of sinister mystery to take in Ochi’s ship.
Rey killed her parents is something that I was definitely thinking about using, but in watching Ascendant I was having trouble figuring out how it would work in practice. We would absolutely need some sort of reveal there, a VFX shot of Rey hitting the ship with lightning like she did in the desert, which is no small task.
Another question that arises from this is how does this affect Ochi’s ship? Is this the same ship that carried her parents away from Jakku, and if so then how is it on Pasanna and not wrecked in the Jakku desert?
As far as I can tell in canon, the ship is named the Bestoon Legacy and Rey’s parents used it when hiding Rey on Jakku, at which point Ochi discovered the ship and Rey’s parents and killed them. He then found some festive beads belonging to her parents which led him to believe that Rey was on Pasanna.
So for the plot to make sense in canon, Rey must damage the ship enough to kill her parents but not enough to destroy the ship itself. Then Ochi could find the ship and the festival beads would lead him to Pasanna.
The big problem with all of this remains the fact that the ship Rey sees is the one on Pasanna, and this doesn’t fit neatly into any story about Rey’s past, even the official one.
Nev, if you can send me the elements used other than the film’s soundtrack I’d be happy to recreate it in 5.1. (And send the stereo mock-up.)
Thanks so much Hal, you’re the best!
I’ve put all of the sound effects I used in a folder within the original folder link:
https://mega.nz/folder/aQcRgLrR#YHPDi5zV2VSgLIqTr0SFjg
These are just the first sound effects that I found online to drop into the mockup, so I’m sure there are better sound effects out there.
And looking over the Davinci timeline, I see that the final render isn’t even in stereo but in mono, which makes sense because the program did some weird thing where it split the 5.1 audio strangely into left and right channels and I would have definitely noticed if it was rendering like that. I can try to see if it will output in stereo, but I don’t know how much that will help.
I bet it would work that way as well, but to do that I’d have to rebuild the ambient sound around the entire line instead of just that spot, and, well, my struggle with 5.1 in Resolve is real.
‘quiet 2’ is perfect, at least to my ears! I added that the first half of the line to the timeline and it just worked. Version 10 is uploaded with that line.
https://mega.nz/folder/aQcRgLrR#YHPDi5zV2VSgLIqTr0SFjg
Now for some bad news. I’m not using my normal Premiere workflow for this scene, instead trying to learn how to use the free editor of Davinci Resolve. This means that I haven’t figured out how to work with 5.1 surround sound, so everything is in stereo right now. I’d like to figure out how to produce a proper finished product here, but for that I’d want to use the unedited film. So for now, consider this a glorified mockup.
Of course, if someone else had the inclination to produce the final version of this scene, I could provide all the clips and sound effects along with my sincere thanks. Otherwise, I’ll just plan on figuring out this new software at some point 😉
Sounds good about the Zorri lines, JJ. I’m glad someone else feels like there’s value to be had there 😃
Back to the restructured version of the Leia death scene… I have three different Maz lines to choose from so far. If you don’t particularly like any of them, I can always generate more, it’s not big deal:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12XeFsicStMhkSPQO2x1haMWOkhJaPZRy?usp=sharing
I think Alt 2 is the best one, though it is still a bit too…confident. Maz in this scene is noticeably more subdued, speaking slowly and quietly for R2 alone.
I really like that “Palpatine trained Rey” idea, Nev. It feels like the best of both worlds: the “anyone can save the galaxy” message of Rey Nobody, and the intense internal conflict of Rey Palpatine. If you have Starlight as your default version of TFA, it even explains all the moments of Rey tapping into the dark side throughout that edit: she was subconsciously remembering what Palpatine taught her.
If I had one complaint, though, it’s that an edit that uses that idea would probably have to scrap the whole “Palpatine wants Rey dead” thing entirely. Instead, Palpatine’s plan throughout would be for Kylo to find Rey and return her to him, so she can resume her training. But obviously, Kylo isn’t very fond of not even being Palpatine’s second-in-command, let alone ruling the galaxy. So, he plans to find Rey, pretend that he’s following Palpatine’s instructions by taking her to Exegol, and have her team up with him to kill Palpatine once they arrive.
I think the ‘kill Rey’ angle would work, since now Rey is presumably damaged goods for him and also knows his weakness. When she manages to find her way back to Exegol despite the hit he put out on her, he may reconsider and decide he does want her back, or he is just planning on having her kill his body so that his spirit can possess her like the theatrical film implies.
The biggest issue with this idea for me is that Rey isn’t a nobody, since she was chosen specifically by Palpatine to be his heir. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a version of this story where Rey’s involvement in the plot isn’t highly coincidental. At least here her parents were actually nobodies and she isn’t related to Palpatine by blood. It gives us a neat dynamic where she is attempting to avoid completing the dark path she started down as a child and the light path she has chosen as an adult, but to do this she must actually travel back to the place where she was raised and confront her evil foster parent.
JEDIT: Updated the dialogue to bring Rey’s parents in line with TLJ. They were scrap dealers providing material for Palpatine’s fleet on Exegol when they sold their Force sensitive daughter to him, later regretting their decision and rescuing her, bringing her to Jakku where she would be safe.
The important thing about all this is to establish that it is Rey’s early exposure to the Dark Side that has informed who she is today. We already know from the OT that having an evil relative doesn’t matter, so it doesn’t really matter if Rey is a Palpatine or not. But what does matter is a person’s training and their actions, especially in regard to the Dark Side. And for this story, what matters is that Rey understands that the throne is the secret to the Sith’s power, and this is why Palpatine wants Rey dead. He implies that she is his granddaughter to redirect attention to bloodlines and distract her from the true secret.
In this concept, the Dyad would be deleted from the film. The Sith Throne would essentially replace this deleted subplot, as the throne concept is at least thematically supported by the Wayfinder quest.
It would be nice to incorporate the lightsaber into the story somehow, JJ, but as you said it’s not something that could organically be fixed though adjusting existing dialogue. Perhaps a visual of the lightsaber in a flashback would be the only way.
Most of the changes for this idea could happen with replaced Kylo dialogue during his two conversations on the Star Destroyer, since that is where he talks to Rey about her past. Changes are in bold:
“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. Scrap dealers working on a Sith fleet.”
“Don’t!”
“But you were strong in the Force, so they sold you on Exegol.”
“I don’t want this!”
“You repressed their betrayal”
“No!”
“But then…they stole you back.”
(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”
“They rescued you from Palpatine…and paid the price.”
“Stop talking.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Rey, your parents sold you to the Emperor, to be trained from birth as a Sith. But your parents regretted their decision. They found you, and rescued you. They wanted Luke’s protection…but they never found him.”
(Rey sees her parents get killed, and Vader’s helmet is broken.)
“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.”
…
(In the hangar, the revelations continue)
“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“Because you are the heir to the Emperor, adopted by Palpatine and raised in his shadow. And you know his only weakness. I’ve felt it.”
“You were being trained by the Emperor to rule the galaxy. By the time you were six you were learning the secrets of his power. Darkness is your destiny…just as it is mine. Join me, Rey, and we’ll kill him…together.”
(Removes his helmet)
“You know what you need to do. You know.”
Taking a break from the Death Star Duel, here’s a tangential idea for TROS in general, elaborating on my Throne of the Sith concept.
The issue with the original idea was that while it solved quite a few plot issues, there was no deeper connection tying this to Rey’s story. So how about this:
Rey’s parents were cultists living on Exegol. They pledged themselves to the Sith, and baptized their gifted daughter to the service of Palpatine. However, after their daughter learned more than she should have of the Sith’s secret power her parents escaped Exegol and fled across the galaxy to prevent her from being killed.
Rey’s parents were traveling to Tatooine to find Luke, for they only knew of his homeworld and wished to give their Force sensitive daughter to him for her protection. However, they were waylaid halfway to their destination on the desert world of Jakku and killed.
Palpatine wants the child killed because she may know the secret of the Sith’s power. All Rey knows about Exegol now is that she saw herself on the throne, which she interprets as her desire to rule as the lord of the Sith, something that Palpatine is quick to encourage, going so far as to imply that she is his granddaughter.
When Kylo confronts Rey in his quarters and in the hangar, he says that she may be a Palpatine. However, he isn’t sure that he believes it, since there is no evidence that her parents were strong in the Force. Nevertheless, he believes that she has the darkness of the Sith within her in some form, a darkness which draws her ever toward evil.
When Rey arrives on Exegol and confronts Palpatine, she is eventually defeated and must turn to the Jedi for help. They tell her that the ways of the Jedi are knowledge and defense, and she looks inward and considers why she has visions of the Sith throne. She realizes that it is literally the seat and source of their power, and this is the secret that her parents died for. She redirects Palpatine’s lightning and destroys it, and this brings down the entire edifice and destroys the Sith once and for all.
In the final scene, Rey arrives on the planet that her parents had sought all those years ago, and there she finally claims the Skywalker name.
A lot of thoughts RL, and it seems we’re on a similar wavelength about the Leia scene. I actually helped Sherlock with his version of this scene a while back. My version is quite a bit lighter on the Leia dialogue, and a big difference is that Kylo’s wounding is what brings her into the scene, which I think is important as a way to emphasize that Rey’s actions have led to Leia’s death.
https://mega.nz/folder/aQcRgLrR#YHPDi5zV2VSgLIqTr0SFjg
Here’s the folder link again, I’ve updated it with a V9 of the scene, re-editing the shot progression slightly. I took another look at the music in particular in order to clean it up. Now the silence when Kylo is stabbed leads directly into the Leia theme, and then smoothly into the sad theme when Rey realizes that Leia is going to die. This then leads directly into the Force healing theme and the rest. For all of this I really didn’t need to rebuild audio, which is nice, it all really plays like that in the theatrical version.
I also cut the brief medallion closeup, since it feels genuinely distracting to me. It’s still visible when Leia lies down, but at least now I can focus on the drama of the scene.
It would be good to have both versions, for sure, so we can see what we like more.
As for the Han vision, perhaps we can do something more ‘real’.
Ben definitely looks behind him, as if there is a figure there. Because Leia no longer appears to him, perhaps we can show Han on the metal wreckage, much like how he appeared in TFA. There’s one shot earlier of Finn and Jannah on the wreckage from that perspective, so we could erase them from the shot, slow it down, and give it some more haze to appear new. Then we can track a ghostly image of Han onto the haze, as if he’s emerging from the mist.
That would be much more in line with a vision from TFA or even ESB, and directly tie into Han’s later appearance on the wreckage.
