NeverarGreat

‘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 😃

Jar Jar Bricks said:

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.

StarkillerAG said:

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.

I will consider it 😃

As for Maz’s word change, I’m going back and forth on ‘save’ vs ‘heal’. They both have dual meanings, but perhaps ‘save’ has the edge because throughout the trilogy Leia would have been desperate to save her son, not necessarily to heal him. So for Maz to use that word would probably be more broadly applicable to her mindset.

I am imagining that once Rey senses Leia from across the galaxy, she knows that Leia is already committed to sacrificing herself to save Ben. Leia may not be strictly doing the same trick that Luke did, but I think it’s similar enough that Rey would understand that the only thing she can do at this point is honor Leia’s wishes. So I think the first line you provided is stronger here.

I don’t see why TFA couldn’t be used as a source for Maz, since they have the same voice actor.

Fair points.

While we’re discussing that, here’s a version of the scene with your Leia line incorporated:

https://mega.nz/folder/aQcRgLrR#YHPDi5zV2VSgLIqTr0SFjg

The file is Death Star Duel 7.

Here I went ahead and reincorporated all three shots of Leia, medallion and all. I think this makes it quite clear what she’s trying to accomplish, and if the Maz line was changed the scene would be essentially perfect to me.

All potentially good ideas, y’all.

JEDIT: That’s a nice line from Leia! I may stick that in and see how it works 😃

I’ve just personally tried to distance myself from using visions as a way to solve problems in an edit since the vision-heavy early days of Starlight, since to me it now feels somewhat artificial, like the hand of the editor is reaching through the screen to tell the viewer what to think and feel rather than allowing the story to unfold naturally. Often, when it feels like we need a vision to explain something, that may mean that this thing should have been established earlier but it wasn’t. An ounce of prevention and all of that.

So it feels like Han’s voice comes out of nowhere in this fight, and it does. Can we foreshadow this earlier in the film?

Possibly. We have already established that Palpatine is ‘every voice’ inside Ben’s head. Later he communes with Vader’s helmet and Palpatine again speaks to him, urging him to kill Rey.

But since Kylo has already been told that Palpatine is every voice in his head, why would he bother trying to commune with the helmet again? It could be that he desperately wants to hear a voice from his family, only for Palpatine to say something like “Vader cannot help you. From the beginning, your only teacher was me.”

Or even, what if he put his hand on the mask and had no visions, but rather heard only Palpatine’s mocking laughter? That way he reforges the mask out of despair of hearing any other voice in his head, all the way until he is about to kill Rey, then realizes that there is another voice in there, one not bound by the Force or visions. It is merely his memory of his father that gets to him, something that Palpatine can never silence. For this, I think it would make sense for Kylo to have no visions of Han prior to this in the film, but for Palpatine to continue saying that there can be no other voices in Kylo’s head but his own.

Agreed with everyone about the ghostly effect. A Force sound effect would be more appropriate there, just so long as we see it working before Rey starts to help.

Also, Maz saying ‘heal’ would be perfect, don’t know why I didn’t think of it 😉

The Han yell just felt a bit angry for that moment, and actually jarring. Maybe it’s also because I am used to the theatrical version with Leia’s soft ‘Ben’, but replacing that with an angry old man yell feels off.

Finally, I could try removing the medallion from the shot of her laying down, but that shot would have to break up the shots of Rey and Ben, which flow nicely together, and I don’t know if it’s worth intercutting that.

https://mega.nz/file/PI9jmQIL#hUMQZ2eEaX5dzVJh7nhMa8M83T82nm_x4Yojwv-cX_o

Here’s the updated version. I tried the yell from Han, but it felt strange. I did keep the echo of his yell after his first ‘Ben’, which sounds rather interesting.

For the healing effect, I just did a quick and dirty blue glow around his wound with some quiet sound effects. It’s just a proof of concept, I imagine a decent version would have some subtle multicolored glows, maybe with pink and blue, and animated spectral energy. Or maybe it’s not necessary with the line change, who knows.

That’s a good idea, to use the ‘Ben’ yell.

You’re right that there should really be something more to indicate Leia healing her son. I don’t think that any of the three cut shots of her in the cave would help explain the healing, since two of them are her holding a medallion and the other one is just her in silhouette. Maybe a ghostly hand appearing over his wound as it heals? That would require some work, but that and the Maz word replacement are really small potatoes for a change this substantial.

In fact, either the word replacement or the ghost hand would probably be sufficient on its own, though both would be ideal.

Yeah, the Force ghosts appearing in the final confrontation of Ascendant is the one thing that I somewhat dislike. It’s understandable why many people count this as the main selling point of the edit, but for me it feels too much like the end of superhero movie or something.

On a related note, here’s a change that I implemented to the Rey and Kylo Death Star duel, posted to the general thread so as not to derail this one: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1568060

I decided to put this here instead of cluttering the Ascendant thread:

https://mega.nz/file/zZ8ymRhK#bOaY2n6P4k-Z3vXm0WNg1L8TbTUQ_Xr4DGJ3bknJsbg

This is a rough alternate implementation of the Rey and Kylo Death Star duel. The only other thing that is necessary to make this work would be to change one word of Maz’s dialogue so she says “To save her son now…will take all the strength she has left.”

The big change is to have Han call out to Ben instead of Leia, and this leads to his distraction and mortal wounding. At this point, Leia senses his peril through the Force and decides to spend her remaining power to help him survive his wound. Leia and Rey work together to heal Ben, and upon doing this Leia dies. Rey runs away, believing (with good reason) that she led to the death of Leia.

I think there are quite a few benefits to this change:

• Han’s scene is foreshadowed, and it is implied that Ben is incapable of killing Rey due to a manifestation of his guilt, rather than merely being distracted by a convenient visit by Leia.

• Related to this, Leia now has a reason for deciding to act at this moment, since the mortal wounding of her son is a far more notable event than simply ‘Rey and Kylo fight again’.

• This change removes both shots of Leia holding the medallion, which I believe merely detracts from the scene.

• The Force Healing ability is less overpowered now, since it requires the sacrifice of a life to heal a mortal wound, and this also foreshadows Ben’s use of the ability to bring Rey back from the dead.

• For this change, I placed Rey’s statement ‘I did want to take your hand…Ben’s hand’ right before she leaves, which was how it played in the original shoot.

• Most importantly, this change gives Rey an enormous amount of guilt due to Leia’s death being arguably her fault, making it completely understandable that she would want to run away.

So what do you think?

Ghost Obi-wan told Luke about Yoda and Dagobah, so I don’t think it’s a problem that ghosts can reveal new information. Though yes, in a perfect would it should be up to interpretation that the ghosts actually exist.

https://i.imgur.com/BHB5Ef2.mp4

I just got around to watching this edit, and fun fact, this is the first time I’ve seen any version of it. First of all, wonderful work everybody! Most of the changes are seamless, and they really elevate this from a train wreck to something quite watchable. Now to the notes:

My first thought is that I still don’t like what they did with Poe. Before this movie, I thought that Poe had come from the New Republic military, which would give each main character a very different background, with Poe being the heroic Republic pilot, Finn being a dastardly Stormtrooper, and Rey being a scavenger from nowhere. Now the dynamic is far less interesting. So I thought since we’re able to change pretty much any voice now, that Zorri could have different dialogue, indicating that Poe was only posing as a Spice Runner for a while to infiltrate Zorri’s crew:

“Your friend never told you? He worked undercover as a spice runner for a long time.”

“I’m still digging myself out of the hole you put me in when you were called back to the Resistance.”

The bigger issue with Poe’s scenes is that there’s almost an arc but not quite. It would be really nice if we could establish that Poe has some reason to believe that people won’t join the war, perhaps stemming from his inability to recruit Zorri to the Resistance years ago. So the conversation between Poe and Zorri on the rooftop could be changed to indicate this, since Zorri’s mouth is always covered.

Or, we could use this opportunity to shore up the ‘For Skywalker!’ subplot that Ascendant introduces. The first indication of Luke’s inspiration is the festival, and the final result is the massive fleet and the voices, but it feels like there could be one more clue to this result:

“Wanna come with me?”

“I can’t walk out on this war. Not until it’s over. Maybe it is. We sent out a call for help at the battle of Crait. Nobody came. Everyone’s so afraid. They’ve given up.

“And then they saw Luke take on the whole First Order all by himself. Things are changing, Poe. The First Order wants us to believe that we are all alone…but there are more of us.”

…

The next note is about Occhi’s dagger. It still feels forced when Rey abandons her friends on the Star Destroyer to go looking for it, so I got to wondering if we could find a way to tie the dagger into the greater story. Why would Rey go after something like that? Well, that moment feels very similar to the moment in The Force Awakens when she goes to the basement of Maz’s castle. So let’s have the dagger act in a similar way to Luke’s lightsaber. When she first touches the blade in the cave there are sounds of bloodshed and violence but they are distant and confused, never becoming a vision. Reinstate the line ‘Horrible things…have happened with this.’

When she later goes to Ren’s ship and says they need the dagger and Poe asks why, cut her line and have her simply walk away, emphasizing the strangeness of her action. Then, when she’s fighting with Kylo, he can say that the dagger offered her a vision but she refused to see it. For a Rey Palpatine version, this vision would be the one of Occhi killing Rey’s parents and the suggestion that this is because she is a Palpatine.

“You are hard to find. I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. The dagger showed me the rest of your story. You were right…your parents were no one. They chose to be…to keep you safe. If you held the dagger now you would see them.”

Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.

They paid for your protection…in more than one way. 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. (For a Rey Nobody version, the vision would be of Rey destroying her parents in an attempt to keep them on Jakku.)

“You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.”

In the hangar, Kylo can have some dialogue indicating why she keeps abandoning and imperiling her friends:

“You are drawn to the darkness, Rey. You would even abandon your friends to achieve your destiny…just like me.”

• JEDIT: On another dagger note, I didn’t realize before watching the edit that Rey using the dagger at the Death Star was removed. Doesn’t this mean that her going after the dagger on Ren’s ship was entirely pointless? I’m one of the few people who actually thought using the cutout on the dagger was a fairly fun moment, in a Goonies sort of way. Team goofy dagger unite!

…

I still think that Hux as the spy needs work, simply because the Hux from the first two movies would never intentionally want the First Order to lose to the Resistance. However, if he believes that Kylo Ren is such a bad leader that the First Order is doomed, then it makes sense why he would aid the Resistance in taking him down. Unfortunately, there’s not much room to communicate this, but maybe something like this:

“For the First Order to win…I need Kylo Ren to lose.”

…

The effects and grading in the film was very good overall, but I couldn’t help but notice that Luke’s island is too red, compared to the raw clips.

Ascendant:

Render:

…

When Poe and Finn are playing chess with Chewie, it would be nice to have some clanks and crashes as Rey exits the ship, indicating that Chewie was throwing a fit at being called a cheater.

Anyway, that’s about it. Regardless of these notes, this edit is a fantastic achievement.

I interpreted that as an instance of ‘single timeline’ time travel. As in, Ahsoka was never going to be killed by Vader because Ezra was always going to save her in the future. It’s not like this began another causal chain which led to a different Original Trilogy, for example.

Eh, World Between Worlds is dumb in any case.

Henry Kissinger

Baked beans spam spam and spam:

https://originaltrilogy.com/user/kellyjames7957/id/81695

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of sorrow.
Luke Skywalker, sworn
to rebuild the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

Emboldened by the Jedi’s
absence, soldiers of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
countless worlds beyond
the fragile New Republic.

With the Senate falling
into chaos and despair,
its leaders have secretly
commissioned the pilots
of a brave RESISTANCE
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

The first two paragraphs are now basically perfect in my eyes, and the third works well. Though if I were to change something, it would be to make better use of the first two lines of the third paragraph to suggest that the Senate is overwhelmed by chaos, so that it ties in better with Hux’s later lines of the government which ‘acquiesces to disorder’.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, sworn
to rebuild the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

With the Jedi now facing
extinction, agents of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
countless worlds beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Overwhelmed by rising
chaos and oppression,
the Senate has secretly
commissioned the pilots
of a brave RESISTANCE
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….