NeverarGreat

DuracellEnergizer said:

Alright, I can run with clone madness being inherent in Force-sensitive clones. Vader’s persisting handicaps remain unresolved, though (or is Palpatine just that huge a dick?)

Isn’t it obvious?

Vader’s replacement parts would have to be Midi-compatible, and thus would individually go insane. Have you ever had a psychotic pair of lungs or a pyromaniac left leg?

https://imgur.com/gallery/4Yth7Ep

Making Jakku Tatooine would at least go some way towards explaining some of the more coincidental aspects of the ST, such as why a group of Jedi adherents looking for Luke are camped out there. People on Tatooine would have a greater than average interest in the Falcon as well, so a Junk dealer like Plutt would probably want to buy it just to put it out front and attract more business with a famous ship. Also, Rey’s Palpatine parent might have been drawn to Tatooine because of its closeness to the two people who overthrew the Emperor and be drawn to it through the Force.

Finally, Rey’s final scene would have special significance to her since it’s a return to her beginning as well.

Of course I don’t think any of this is feasible due to the amount of times Jakku is name-dropped in the ST.

I also think the radio is a bit odd. Maybe if we got an indication that this radio broadcast was something only Kylo could hear, it would tie into the ‘voices in your head’ line from TROS. But really, in order to not reuse shots and make the scene feel like it’s cohesive, I think it will have to be just about Kylo/Rey or just about Kylo/Palps. The Kylo/Rey scene, as much as it is good on its own, has a finality about it as if Rey is shutting the door on any relationship they could have had, which feels weird based on TROS. So maybe cutting the Kylo/Rey bit would do more good than harm.

Or maybe it would shift between blue and white or blue and yellow to reflect the unstable crystal and Rey’s pull to the Dark Side.

jarbear said:

Need the lightsaber toss though, not only is it necessary to show why Ben does not have a lightsaber when he visits Palp Tower … but it’s symbolic as heck.

It will also be important in Episode XIII when Kylan Gebo finds and uses this saber to become the master of the Knighted Confederacy of Ren.

Resurrection is one of the few things about this movie that makes it feel like a thematic conclusion to the Saga to me, so I’ll fight to keep Rey’s death.

Sure, but why not have it that her parents never came back? This genuinely feels like a mistake on Rian’s part, whereas almost all of his other departures from expectation were motivated by an important thematic reason. But regardless, we’re kinda getting off topic.

Kylo’s line ‘They’re dead in a pauper’s grave on Jakku’ makes me think that nobody making TLJ or TROS bothered to rewatch Rey’s vision from TFA.

Or maybe, if we must end the film on Tatooine, at least have the Force Ghosts on Tatooine in the Palpatine confrontation and then have her visit the homestead and bury the sabers after she has some personal connection to this place. In either case, Rey should respond to the old woman with ‘just Rey’.

If we’re sharing pie-in-the-sky ideas, I have one for the end of the film:

Palpatine drains the life essence from Rey and attacks the fleet with lightning. Rey’s consciousness rises through the sky and into the stars, and suddenly she is in a void. She hears the voice of Anakin calling to her, and the image of Tatooine - the slave quarters of Anakin’s youth. The scene shifts, to Naboo, to the Jedi temple on Coruscant, to the island, and at each location a new Jedi speaks. Finally she is back at Tatooine by the homestead. She sees the ghosts of all the Jedi appearing around her, and then comes back to the present. She defeats Palpatine, saying ‘I am all the Jedi’. She falls into unconsciousness again, and the homestead resolves around her one final time. She buries the sabers of Luke and Leia in the sand, signifying an end to the violence of the past. Ben cradles the deceased Rey back on Exegol and revives her. On Tatooine, Rey sees one final ghost join the throng - Ben. The scene disappears and she is back in the world of the living.

The film ends with the reunion at the Resistance base.

Your teaser is most impressive, you must be very proud.

Okay that was good.

I just saw this film again and one thing stood out to me this time - at least three times in the first half of the film a character says something along the lines of ‘if we fail, it was all for nothing’. It gets rather tiresome, and the final time this happens is with C-3PO before he is mind wiped. I think a far stronger version of the scene would be to simply mute his dialogue, so he would walk away from the group in silence. Poe would ask what he was doing, and only then would he reveal his decision.

Agree with your Kylo assessment. If he was beyond saving in TLJ then he would not have been goaded by Luke into fighting, he would simply have ignored him and ended the Resistance. The fact that he is so desperate to kill the past is because it keeps reminding him of his guilt. All that TLJ established in this regard is that Luke and Rey were done with trying to redeem him, placing the onus on him to make the change.

Broom Kid said:

NeverarGreat said:

Broom Kid, I’ve seen you bring this up several times before, to the point where I legitimately wonder why you are on a site which proudly proclaims its intensely-focused sub-fandom cred if you believe that such a thing is unhealthy.

Couple reasons. Three, actually:

1. I’m not any different than anyone else who struggles with breaking (or at least modulating) unhealthy habits, or who is trying to find a way to maintain a balance that works. Plus I like Star Wars.

2. This place DOES have its share of toxic behaviors and bad posters engaging in mostly unhealthy behavior, but it’s also small and self-contained enough (and willing to self-police in a manner that many communities don’t indulge, or in some cases actively shun) that compared to other communities, it’s relatively “safe,” if you will. Plus it’s one of the few places in which “community” isn’t a pretentious euphemism, but an accurate descriptor.

3. All things in moderation, etc.

I want to leave in 2019 the idea that a fandom is toxic purely because it is a fandom. People are allowed to have strong positive feelings for works of art, and they are allowed to come together to express those feelings. I don’t think that is a bad thing.

It doesn’t HAVE to be, no, and I agree that it’s not always. But I’ve seen about 20 years of experience that it almost always becomes that way, and the last 10 of that 20 has been an ongoing example in how bad it becomes once mainstreamed.

Being a fan of something is fine. Sharing why you like things with others who might share your interests is also fine. But millions of people manage to do this all the time without being part of a fandom. Liking popular culture isn’t special, and that self-awareness goes a long way towards avoiding the mentally unhealthy pitfalls fandom is constantly introducing while its members act like those pitfalls are actually swimming pools. Letting entertainment supplement your life experiences is good! That’s what it’s supposed to do! Letting your enjoyment of an entertainment REPLACE large parts of your personality? That’s fandom. One of those results often discards moderation and perspective, and promotes obsession, entitlement, possessiveness, and fixation, and that’s where it can get unhealthy if you’re not paying attention to yourself and what you’re doing with your time.

Good things can come out of fandoms, have done before, will do again, and are truly remarkable at times. But the presence of a good thing in a bad situation doesn’t transform the situation’s inherent badness. Good students graduate from terrible schools every year. Fandom is like a school that is nothing but electives. That might be fun for a semester or two, but if you’re not careful you wake up a decade later like Wooderson cruising high school parking lots trying to get high with some 5th year seniors because they won’t realize you’ve been making the same jokes and telling the same war stories for the last 10 years.

Again - way off topic. But you asked me directly, so I thought I should at least answer. For what it’s worth, I appreciate that you addressed me directly, and did so with patience and kindness (which we could all do with a lot more of) so for my part, I’m going to try and help fulfill your request to leave conversations about fandom toxicity behind in 2019, so when I do visit here and see fit to pitch in my two cents, I’ll keep that particular penny in my pocket. Or leave it in the tray at the 7-11 before I even come through the door.

Happy New Year!

Thank you for your answer. I’m not saying we should not have discussions about toxicity, but it just seemed weird to me that you so often cast fandom as an absolute bad. I’m glad to hear that this impression was a mistake on my part.

RL, she had seen all the films before (and the OT many times), but she hadn’t rewatched any of it in years or had much interest in SW material really until Mando.

Dom, it’s true that possessiveness is part of the issue, and I’d imagine anyone doing a fanedit could easily be cast as being on the wrong side of that issue. Guilty as charged I suppose. However I’d argue that even in fanediting there can be a difference between ‘deleting stuff I don’t like’ and enhancing/adding to what already exists. I try to do the latter, but it is often splitting hairs.

I’ve taking a break from editing after the workprint was released, and am shifting to some new creative endeavors at least until TROS arrives on video. But I’m sure to stick around here in the meantime regardless. Happy new years everyone!

Broom Kid said:

Fandom in general is pretty mentally unhealthy. It only makes sense that smaller, more intensely-focused sub-fandoms would be seen as being even more “yikes.” The mainstreaming of fandom is maybe one of the worst things to have been facilitated by the internet in the 21st century, not just in how it helped normalize toxicity in discourse, but in how entertainment discussions have become both distraction from, and proxy FOR, ACTUALLY import and and meaningful things happening in the real world.

The more we get distracted, the more we convince ourselves the distractions are more meaningful than they actually are - the more meaning we undeservedly project onto entertainments, the more warped and shrunk our perspectives become, the more toxic and reactionary we are - until the baseline we occupy every time we log on is frequently scared, angry, helpless, and disillusioned, at all times, of most things; things which we can’t control and never could because we don’t actually make movies or tv shows, we just watch them - which only causes us to further pursue pop culture distractions as a form of “escapism.”

It’s a pretty dumb, ugly, vicious circle that’s been mainstreamed and normalized to a fairly disturbing degree. Its partially why our cultural memory is maybe two-weeks long at best.

Broom Kid, I’ve seen you bring this up several times before, to the point where I legitimately wonder why you are on a site which proudly proclaims its intensely-focused sub-fandom cred if you believe that such a thing is unhealthy.

While I agree with you that many people use the internet to hyperfocus on their negativity with regards to movies and shows, these online spaces are also filled with people who have genuine appreciation for these properties. These are people who saw Star Wars with their friends and family and through enjoyment of these films formed stronger bonds of friendship because of them. These are people who took some of their ideas and philosophy to heart and used them as empowering messages in dark times in their lives.

Most of toxicity in fandoms arises when the art in question becomes so vast and varied in quality that gatekeeping and no-true-fan-ing becomes the norm. It arises when schisms erupt and battle-lines are drawn, when versions of art are suppressed and its creators gaslight its fans for decades, when creators declare levels of cannonicity and declare decades of creative work null and void, and the creative reins are handed to those who replace those works with other works of dubious quality. In this way the toxicity of the Star Wars fandom has long been cultivated and encouraged. Yet despite all of this there is a tremendous amount of goodwill for Star Wars even now. I believe that site has in some small way helped in keeping the suppressed art alive and reversed some of the toxicity the creators have cultivated around the fans. I believe that this preservation and the fandom which created it is good, and more than that it is right. All acts of appreciation for art are good, and even criticism when tempered with praise.

I want to leave in 2019 the idea that a fandom is toxic purely because it is a fandom. If you find yourself becoming a more angry, worried person because of a fandom then absolutely it is unhealthy and you must find a way to regain that former appreciation or find a way to leave peaceably. But I love Star Wars, the Original Trilogy. I appreciate the bold intent behind the Prequels and the vast imagination of the EU. I find wonderful vivid characters and excellent production quality in the Sequel Trilogy, and adore the Mandalorian with my girlfriend, who now also has a new appreciation for this world. People are allowed to have strong positive feelings for works of art, and they are allowed to come together to express those feelings. I don’t think that is a bad thing.

One thing I haven’t seen brought up yet is how the Rey-Palpatine lineage now makes TFA absolutely, hilariously coincidental.

The map to Luke is discovered on Jakku by an old friend of Luke’s, and the first person BB-8 carrying the map runs into is the granddaughter of Palpatine, who is in speeder distance of the Millennium Falcon and happens to use this to escape the planet and they happen to be picked up within five minutes by Han Solo and brought to a place that has Luke’s old lightsaber in the basement. All of these things, save the connection between Han and the Falcon, are complete coincidences.

Palps as the anchor for the saga makes more sense than Anakin, since he has been pulling the strings the whole time.

DominicCobb said:

Dr. Krogshöj said:

I watched TROS again today and I am confident Rey Palpatine cannot be taken out convincingly. Any thought of some foreshadowing of her origin during hee Takodana force vision?

I’m quite certain it can.

Fight. Fight. Fight!

Here’s another ‘Inspired by’ change: https://youtu.be/BD5mLw0A8vI?t=876

He says that Rose should have been in charge of gathering reinforcements for the final battle. So would this be possible? As far as I can remember she is just hanging out at the Resistance base the entire movie, but could it be possible to insert some dialogue to indicate that she is busy calling up leaders of the core worlds and have them Rendzevous in some place? Then Lando could lead these gathered forces to the final fight.

Wexter said:

NeverarGreat said:

I love how it felt like an EU novel. They may not have been the greatest books, but I had a blast reading them in the 90’s and I had a blast watching this now.

Say what you will about 90s EU novels, they were mostly competently structured stories that strived to expand on what was set up in the OT. I definitely didn’t get that same feeling from TROS, but to each their own.

There was good EU and not-so-good EU, and this definitely felt like the latter. But even at its worst, the EU had an energy which I felt like this captured.

I like the angle you’re on right now RL, though it does seem outside the scope of a typical edit. The best part of this idea is that it has roots in all three ST movies from Finn’s background to the Broom Boy plot to Jannah and the child harvesting in TROS. Heck, it even goes back to one of the biggest unexplored plot threads of TPM - the child slavery that helped create Anakin and arguably the rest of the tragedies in the Saga.

I love how it felt like an EU novel. They may not have been the greatest books, but I had a blast reading them in the 90’s and I had a blast watching this now.

I also really love the fact that we finally got an extended adventure with the Poe/Finn/Rey crew, something that none of the other films ever did.

ray_afraid said:

theMaestro said:

By that logic, the Hayden ghost is also a plot hole, since a long-haired Anakin with an intact right arm and those specific robes also never existed.

lol This.
Also, I guess Obi-Wan’s ghost should still be chopped in half.
Ridiculous.

You must admit that the scene after Yoda’s death would be infinitely better if Obi-wan sat on the log by placing his hands on his hips and pushing his upper body off of his lower body and setting it on the log, with his legs walking offscreen on their own.