NeverarGreat

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….

Sure, Force descendants don’t always happen, but I am saying that they never happen, or at least there is absolutely no causal mechanism (and certainly no Midichlorians to be passed down). For me, the Force is either present mysteriously in a person, perhaps for them to fulfill some feat or destiny, or they have dedicated their lives to cultivating it in themselves and/or have an unshakeable faith in the Force which gives them their power.

It often happens that a person can temporarily gain ability in the Force to do something usually beyond their abilities, and this is where ‘May the Force be with you’ comes from in common parlance. In these cases, the Force doesn’t necessarily persist in that person once their destiny has been fulfilled.

Sounds good DZ! Definitely an improvement.

Hal, the reason I don’t care for the theatrical crawl’s wording concerning the First Order is that it makes the Order seem like it comes out of nowhere. “In his absence, the First Order has risen from the ashes of the fallen Empire” literally means that the Empire was in ashes for decades until Luke vanished, and then suddenly the First Order came into being from that. Even if we’re not supposed to believe that’s how the events played out, that’s how it’s presented.

That’s why I much prefer the current wording, since it implies that the First Order had already existed, at least on that Imperial base, for an unknown amount of time before their ambitious power grab.

Mrebo said:

EddieDean said:

I’ve been thinking about Attack of the Clones a bit lately. Spence’s recent tightening was really good, but every time I watch or think about this movie I always find the early car chase sequence really off-putting. After the droids in the factory, I find that scene the most egregious.

So why not remove it altogether? Since we already have an attempt on Padmè’s life with her ship being bombed, that gives us enough of a reason for Anakin to be assigned her protector, and I’m sure there’s a way to use voicework to tie the bombing to Obi-Wan’s hunt for Kamino.

I feel like that trimming could really improve the pace, and combined with the usual tightening, the addition of the Anakin/Kenobi training scene early, and the addition of the usual deleted scenes with Padmè’s family, you’d end up with something more focused and interesting.

I could do without the animal fight in the arena but I think that’d be my ideal structure.

The inefficiency of the storytelling is one good reason to remove. A question is whether sufficient impetus for Padme to leave is still there without the second attempt.

I agree with your assessment the scene as it exists is too much. Yet as others say, it has the merit of showing positive character interactions I wish were more prominent.

My idea is to start the film with the chase. From crawl (explaining that the Jedi are in pursuit of an assassin targeting senators who oppose the creation of an army), pan to shot of Coruscant, cut to point where Obi and Anakin are both in the speeder on through to where they lose Zam and she removes her veil.

Then Padme’s ship comes down through the clouds, no explosion, it’s morning after the chase and we go to the two heroes in the elevator (just another day in the life of a Jedi).

Snooker made a brilliant scene edit where Anakin deflects blaster shots from the assassin droid and then Anakin jumps out of the window. My crazy notion inspired by that is while Obi and Anakin are chatting in Padme’s apartment at night, Zam’s speeder slows past the window behind them. Sensing danger they run to the bedroom and Anakin deflects blaster shots (implicitly from Zam) and jumps out…onto the speeder, thus picking up that part of the chase on through to Zam’s death.

I’ve had the same thought, that Anakin should jump out of the window onto Zam’s speeder. It really illustrates their characters to have Anakin be headstrong while Obi-wan takes his time to find a speeder, and it also provides a fun reveal when we see Obi-wan catch Anakin’s lightsaber from out of nowhere, showing that Obi-wan really has Anakin’s back even in his boneheaded moments.

The Force isn’t passed down through blood relations.

Rather, it is faith alone that allows a person to gain power in the Force. Allowing Luke to assume that Force ability is passed down from his powerful Jedi father is merely a sneaky method that Obi-wan uses to jump-start Luke’s abilities. Notice that there is no obvious sign of Force sensitivity in Luke other than being a good pilot until the events of ANH.

Similarly, when it appears that Luke will be killed in a foolish quest to save his friends, Yoda implies to Obi-wan that they hedge their bets with a new Skywalker, one invented from whole cloth. Yoda tells Luke that there is another Skywalker, and Obi-wan feeds the lie by suggesting that it is a twin sister, and Luke fills in the rest with his own now certain belief. It is Luke’s belief that Leia is related to him, already knowing that she was adopted, which will allow her to gain certainty in Force abilities that were nonexistent until the blood relationship was invented.

I went through the timeline and fixed all of those issues that I could find for V1.1. There may be a few small places where they remain, as there are simply so many audio edits, but I haven’t heard any complaints about that so far 😉

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