RogueLeader

Outbound, thanks! And that is an interesting idea! You, or someone who picks up that book, could maybe report back and see if it has a format that an edit like that could use as an outline.

Anakin Starkiller said:

It’s one of those things that creates more questions than answers but in a good way.

Exactly! It is hard to explain, but that’s basically what I was thinking too.

One idea I had a while back for generating mystery was labeling every film as part of the 34th saga in the opening crawl. Makes you feel like you’re seeing but a fraction of this wide universe, and makes you wonder what other grand tales there are to tell in it.

That is an interesting idea! It makes me think how an early draft of Star Wars referred to it as Saga I, the Star Wars. You basically could add that to the opening crawl like: Star Wars. the 34th Saga. Episode IV.

I think it is cool and makes sense! Although I think in its current form, so much has been cut and it feels too brief. I think seeing so Obi-Wan looking out the window and then seeing him in the air speeder are too close together.

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Place a Sith Holocron next to Snoke on the left armrest of his throne.

You could add it to the entirely of TLJ, or at the very least his first scene with Kylo Ren. It’s a small detail that doesn’t necessarily spell out anything, but it could add an extra clue regarding Snoke.

Snoke could’ve been a dark side acolyte or enthusiast who used the knowledge of that holocron to gain his power. He could’ve been an already powerful dark sider who used the holocron to unlock new secrets. He might want to restore the Sith Order, or is just using it for his own personal gain. Or, it was left by Palpatine to manipulate others as a part of his contingency.

Still keeps him mysterious, but at the very least it gives us an onscreen source of his power for those who feel like there wasn’t enough. The desire for such an addition might change if we learn more about him in IX, but if we don’t I think it would be a pretty simple idea to implement.

While it would take more work, if you added it to all the throne room scenes, you would also get a nice bit of dualistic imagery when the Sith holocron rests on one side of Snoke, and a Jedi lightsaber rests on the other.

I’m really liking this one!
That addition of ‘in the New Republic’ flows really nicely in my opinion. I don’t know if ‘noble’ is necessary, or if ‘legendary’ was better, or if it should just be ‘last of the Jedi Knights’. Not saying you should do anything, it does work, but maybe play with some other adjectives too?

The second paragraph isn’t bad. I’m wondering if you could use a different world than ‘suffering’, or just say ‘hundreds of worlds’. Suffering is just a little vague. Why are they suffering? Are they suffering under the Republic? Under the First Order, which has forced them to join their cause?

Some experimenting with paragraph 2:

In his absence, an evil warlord has unified the supporters of the fallen Empire into the FIRST ORDER, while secretly constructing the deadliest weapon the galaxy has ever seen.

also

In his absence, hundreds of worlds have allied with the remnants of the Empire to form the FIRST ORDER, which has constructed the deadliest weapon the galaxy has ever seen.

I‘m liking the third too! Maybe consider replacing ‘dire’ with ‘hidden’ since that angle sorta got lost in this version? I like how you used ‘the Senate’ in this iteration too. Not saying I think this would be better, but you could use ‘fearsome’ rather than ‘fearful’, and I also think you could cut ‘now’ from ‘now spreading’. Do you still feel the reinserted deleted scene works within the new context? I think it does.

Also, did the ANH crawl fly away to the horizon that fast towards the end? It feels fast but maybe it is just me. Anyway, as far as content I think this is one of my favorite so far.

Off topic but I wanted to mention something else on my mind.

One of your ideas I love about your edit is having Poe fail at blowing up Starkiller base like he does in theatrical version.

Yes, Poe also fails to blow up Starkiller base before it destroys the Republic in Restructured, but the trench run stills ends in the same result as it does in A New Hope. But with your most recent version, I could see how a hypothetical audience could be surprised with what happens.

In a way, I think it turns Poe’s trench run from pretty simplistic plot/imagery repetition into intentional parallelism that is meant to subvert audience expectation in a clever way. Anyone who has seen Star Wars knows what the trench run means. I think it is one of the weakest points in the theatrical film, because I imagine a lot of fans were like, “Really? Seems like a pretty on-the-nose rehash.” But in your version, when Ackbar says it didn’t work, I could imagine audiences raising their eyebrows and thinking, “Oh, it didn’t work?”

In retrospect it makes the Resistance being able to come up with a plan to destroy it within minutes actually work. At that point the audience is like, “Okay, I know where this is gonna go.” But, their impromptu plan didn’t work as planned. Yes, they still succeeded at destroying Starkiller, but only at the cost of the thing they were trying to save.

I know subverting expectations has become a somewhat controversial phrase, but I think this is actually what we want in this case. Not only does it surprise audiences, but it also surprises the characters within the story. Poe and the Resistance know the story of Luke and how he destroyed the Death Star in the nick of time. They’re emulating the Rebellion just as much as the First Order is emulating the Empire. They think they’ll be able to pull of the same thing, and we do too, but it is interesting when we, and they, turn out to be wrong. It also helps prepare the audience for The Last Jedi, which does a lot of the same thing. Poe’s semi-failure can also add to what compels Poe to do what he thinks is necessary at all costs, like he’s trying to compensate for that failure at the end of TFA.

I know you know all this, just wanted to reiterate my support of it! Obviously the BIGGEST critique of TFA is its similarities to ANH. This is what you’ll hear from even casual fans. While fan edits can try to eliminate the parallels, I think if an editor can come up with ideas like this that turn those parallels on their head, it can actually transform TFA’s weaknesses into its strengths.

The obvious connection here is Osmosis Jones.

It sounds like he meant that from a visual standpoint in particular.

EDIT: Also wanted to say that I’m really enjoying how we’re having an interesting discussion about this even though we have different opinions!

I do think it is interesting from a marketing perspective. Are artistic integrity and marketability fundamentally separate things? Can a franchise flick be substantive, but also be a vehicle for merchandising?

I think a number of factors are at play, but I wonder if the secrecy surrounding the production of these films have made them more difficult for companies like Hasbro to make toys that are consistent with the final product (here’s looking at you, Constable Zuvio).

I will be interested to see if we get any Mandalorian toys during this year’s Force Friday. It seems like a perfect opportunity to make cool toys of bounty hunters and grimy stormtroopers. If we don’t see much toys, it’ll make me wonder if there is some failure to take opportunities to merchandise the content that is available.

This is another reason why I think an Old Republic setting for future movies would be great. That time period is ripe for the imagination, full of Sith, Jedi and other mysteries. Exotic aliens and ships. Tons of opportunities for toys, if they make them.

I do think your first paragraph is too short, the others a little too long maybe. Starkiller’s AG’s whole crawl is too brief, I think.

Just as reference, here are the Original Trilogy crawl word counts:

Paragraph 1: 24, 32, 29

Paragraph 2: 30, 27, 27

Paragraph 3: 29, 22, 22

Total: 83, 81, 78

I’m just gonna throw out another idea that tries to fit within this format.

Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the mysterious FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, their greatest threat, has been destroyed.

During their exile, the First Order constructed a weapon more deadly than the dreaded Death Stars, capable of destroying any star system from across the galaxy.

Held hostage by this hidden weapon, the New Republic mobilizes a covert Resistance to locate their long-lost hero before their new enemy finds him first…

I wanted to try to keep the exposition regarding Starkiller, but also maintain the focus on finding Luke. Illustrating that the First Order is focused on finding Luke before anything else might help justify why the First Order hasn’t already attacked the Republic.

ChainsawAsh said:

…with a devastating weapon able to destroy any star system while hidden in the depths of space.

I’m not enamored with “while hidden in” for some reason either, but I’m not sure what I’d replace it with.

Maybe something like:

…with a hidden superweapon, capable of destroying any star system from across the galaxy.

This is really cool, Dre! Where are you getting these datasets from to make your graphs?

I’m wondering about how much actual marketing and advertisement plays into this. Because it’s not like they just release the movies and then wait for the masses to buy toys. Do we know how much they’re spending on marketing for the MCU compared to Star Wars?

Hey Steve, I think the opening crawl is meant to be more flowery than literal. Unknown Regions would be cool to use, I’ve tried making it work before, but it doesn’t really roll off the tongue well in the crawl.

Also, I think calling Luke a Jedi Master might leave the impression that there may be other Jedi, but he’s the only Jedi Master. Also, I think Masters are still technically Jedi Knights.

Nev, that line would fit in well where you now have “You’re nothing without the First Order.” Maybe we can see if we can get a clean sound byte if that line when the episode comes out, I’ve heard that might not be Gwendoline though.

Would you keep the scene where Leia speaks to her envoy about getting help from the Republic?

I feel like the dialogue would still work. Now the Republic thinks she is insane for wanting them to take action with this metaphorical gun to their head.

If they did know about Starkiller and the threat of the First Order, it might raise the question as to why they still had both their Senate and their fleet in one location, or why they did not build up their military defenses in response. At least the Republic thinking they were safe explains why they lacked many defenses. To be fair those questions can probably explain away similarly to how questions for the theatrical film are explained away.

Also, I wonder if Starkiller should get so much focus in the crawl even though it doesn’t become important until the second half of the movie. (I could see how a hypothetical first-time audience could immediately be turned off by the movie drawing parallels with ANH from the very start.) Though once that plot gets rolling it will fit nicely with what we do see. The first thing Leia asks Finn about is the weapon, clearly being a major priority for her. Hux’s speech would also fit with this idea, with Hux using the Republic’s tie to the Resistance as justification for their attack, as if it were a break in their armistice.

If Starkiller’s existence is common knowledge, it might could help explain how the Resistance comes up with a plan to destroy it so quickly. This is something they’ve already been researching, and they just needed Finn’s insight to hammer down the details. In the theatrical, although the Resistance might have already speculated on the weapon’s existence, it is not made very clear in the film itself that they knew about it until after it blew up Hosnian Prime. Although, what would be the explanation for why the First Order chooses to hold the Republic hostage rather than destroy them as soon as it was complete?

I do think this is a good angle though that could be explored further! I don’t think having the Republic being held hostage by Starkiller is an approach we have really considered before. You’ve been having a lot of good ideas lately so I would say explore this path. If we gotta have Starkiller, maybe the best approach is to lean into it more!

Cool! Maybe a comparison with Clone Wars since it is coming back, and Resistance and Rebels are the only other Star Wars shows I can think of. There’s been pretty much no marketing for it so I doubt it will be more than a blip, but I think the cool think about these charts will be to see how they fluctuate overtime.

I know it is a different medium, but I think it would be interesting to see something similar for The Mandalorian, since it is coming out in October.

Jar Jar joins the Resistance confirmed!

I’ve seen some pretty good discussion regarding this news online, and how that 135 minutes of score translates to runtime. Definitely ranging from 2hr15 to 3hr, but it is really hard to say when taking final edit into account. But I recall there being rumors about the script being rather long as well.

What Don said about the themes is really exciting though. I’m not sure how pronounced they’ll be translated exactly in the film. I could imagine we only get hints of different themes, and then full blown versions during the credits. I remember the Revenge of the Sith credits being really amazing since Williams figures it would be his last hurrah. With this REALLY being his last hurrah, I definitely will sit through the credits and try to enjoy it (though my mind will probably be reeling at that point!)

Edits that add fan film footage aren’t really my cup of tea, but for some reason your thread sparked my imagination so I thought I would share some ideas with you. I definitely think it will be impossible to blend fan film footage seamlessly with the original, but I think if you, and anyone who watches this, can accept that, then we can have a lot of fun with it at the very least.

I think there might be a few more ways that can help make the difference feel a little less jarring.
You’re already looking into ways to regrade the fan film footage to feel more “filmy”. I’d definitely say keep doing research on that.

I’ve never tried this before myself, but another way you might be able to make the CG space battles blend more with the original footage is to cut frames out of the CG footage. I think sometimes the new footage looks too smooth in comparison, so maybe experimenting with that could find something that works well. The ships in some of the new footage move a lot faster than in the theatrical film, so slightly slowing some of those shots down might help make it feel more consistent.

There is a bit of deleted material you could use to help extend the runtime of the film, if you’re basically wanting to make a Return of the Jedi: Extended Edition with as many deleted scenes and new scenes as possible, with overall pacing being less of an issue.
You can probably notice that a lot of the deleted scenes are extremely grainy. Having old grainy footage AND new footage next to each other will likely be very jarring, so maybe you could add a ‘grindhouse’ grain to the entire film, which would be easier than trying to clean all of that footage up.

And I know you said you are going to remove many of the silly moments to your edit, but I would definitely would suggest being a little picky regarding what you remove, since you’re going for a long runtime. So if any of the Ewok antics are somewhat passable for you, I would consider keeping it in. I would definitely keep Wicket and Leia’s first scene together considering that is worth a few minutes of runtime. I know you plan on using Ady’s ROTJ and Tydirium fan film footage, but it could be years before either of those will be complete, so if you want to release this anytime soon, I would suggest making a version of this edit without those in mind. Because of that, I think there is a lot from the Ewoks that I think you could still use during the battle.

Some notes regarding the test clip you showed:

That shot of the inside of the Falcon flying around the Star Destroyer is not high quality enough to use in this edit at all, I would suggest cutting it.

I’d also suggest not using that music you’ve inserted the latter half of the clip. I honestly would only use music from the original trilogy, and MAYBE the Shadows of the Empire soundtrack or Gordy Haab’s Battlefront soundtracks if you were just desperate.

I would also use less, or none, of the X-Wing interior shots with the fan film actors. I feel like it doesn’t match the way the pilots in the OT were filmed. I did like seeing the Rodian pilot that is in the original cut of that fan film.

If you should be picky about anything, it should be less with ROTJ itself and more of the fan films, in my opinion. Because, if I understand you right, your thesis statement for this edit is “To create a greater sense of scale to Return of the Jedi to make it a more epic finale to the original trilogy.” While we want to add more to this last film, I know you still want it to feel like Return of the Jedi. Obviously deleted scenes fit rather well already, but more would need to be done to the fan films in order to accomplish that. Obviously regrading them is a good first step, but I also would add film grain, use ONLY OT music (and maybe Shadows of the Empire/Battlefront), cut shots that don’t fit the ROTJ cinematography when you can, and TOTALLY rebuild the audio from the ground up using OT sound effects.

So with that in mind, here are some ideas I have for you.

This is definitely a radical idea, but I think this could help add to the runtime and add to the sense of scale.

Originally, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, was going to start with a opening montage of battles happening across the galaxy. We see a fragment of this with the Order 66 montage. From what I understand, we would’ve originally seen most of these planets in that opening montage, then later return to them for the Order 66 sequence.

Maybe you could implement this idea into ROTJ for your added runtime, as well as to add a sense of scale to the Galactic Civil War. I was thinking you could build this idea off of the Special Edition ending of the film. In that ending, we see a montage of Bespin, Naboo, Tatooine, and Coruscant all celebrating the death of the Emperor. So maybe we could see these planets being attacked/liberated by the Rebellion at the beginning of the film in a 3-5 minute montage.

You could use footage from Destroyer to show Bespin being liberated, and some footage from Battlefront 2 for Naboo. It might be hard to seamlessly blend game footage with other footage, but you can try.

For Coruscant, I had a bit of a different idea. First, you could have an establishing shot of Coruscant city or specifically the Jedi Temple (which is now the Emperor’s Palace by the time of OT) from one of the prequels, then use footage from Rebellion to imply that they’re sneaking in to attack it. You could reuse the shot of the bomb at 1:05, then cut to something like this, one of the temple towers blowing up,then some of kind of Imperial reaction shot, then cut back to an exterior of the smoking Jedi Temple from Revenge of the Sith (perhaps the establishing shot used when Yoda and Obi-Wan sneak back into the temple). If that temple explosion test is too low quality, you could just have the shot of the bomb, then hard cut to a close-up explosion, then to Imperials running around or reacting to the explosion with klaxons blaring.

I wouldn’t worry about Tatooine since we visit the planet earlier in the film and they free Tatooine from the biggest crime lord on the planet!

You also could use some footage from Battlefront 2 to show Sullust being liberated, since the Vader mentions the Rebel fleet amassing near Sullust in the film. Maybe you could insert a shot of a volcanic-looking planet in the Rebel fleet establishing shot, or you could see a glimpse of it outside the hangar as they’re getting ready to leave. The Battlefront 2 campaign also has cool shots of the attack on Fondor shipyards that could be use for the montage, either implied as Coruscant or just a random shipyard. Not sure if they would fit though.

After this 3-5 minute montage (I would find one good music track to use for this montage to help you edit it together), I would cut to the first scene of the film with Vader going to the Death Star. And since we saw a montage of the Empire losing battles and being attacked, it might add to why the Empire wants to build another Death Star. The growing rebellion and the necessity of the Death Star could be touched on in a new opening crawl as well.

An additional idea could be to recontextuallze portions of Odyssey as them intercepting the information that they’ll use for the Battle of Endor. In the fan film, when he goes to the Imperial console, you could replace the visual information on the screen with something more relevant to film, like an image of Endor and the half-complete Death Star. Maybe this could be a short action sequence as a midpoint of the movie, right before the Rebel briefing. If you do this, you might want to remove any mention of Bothans from the briefing since we never see any.

For the Battle of Endor itself, I think what you’re trying to do now, by adding more to the space Battle, is good. You also could use footage from fan films like Scout and Bucketheads to add more to the ground battle as well. Again, this will take a lot of cutting and tweaking to make this not feel extremely jarring with the original footage.

There is also some deleted footage that could used for the battle, like the Mon Calamari or Sullustan Pilots, the shots of General Madine, or the Rebels on the Millennium Falcon. Maybe Madine can be killed by the Death Star destroying his ship.

Keep in mind that there are quite a bit of deleted scenes you can use throughout the film, too. If you want to beef up runtime I would use as much as possible. You could transition from the first scene of the film to Vader calling Luke as he builds his lightsaber. Reinsert the entire Moff Jerrjerrod subplot (also, audio of the Emperor giving him the command to destroy Endor does exist), and maybe use snippets from the sandstorm without the dialogue.

If you’re using the young Hayden Force ghost, perhaps you could do a flashback in the style of TLJ (with the sound effect that pulls you into the flashback) when Obi-Wan tells Luke the truth about his father. That way a hypothetical first-time viewer would get the context of what his father looked like before he turned, so they know that young man at the end of the film is the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. You could space out Obi-Wan’s dialogue a little to add extra time for the flashback and a few extra seconds to the overall runtime (you could also give the Prequel footage a filmic look during this sequence and try to use shots with little CGI). This could be done even if you don’t keep the young Force ghost, but just an idea.

This is all I can think of so far. Again, I think the big things to remember is to be forgiving when it comes to cutting footage from ROTJ, but be merciless when it comes to what you keep from the fan films. I would HIGHLY recommend rebuilding the audio for these fan films from scratch, and completely reinsert brand new sound effects and music that feel more appropriate to Return of the Jedi. This might also be necessary for snippets of the actual film in order to blend new and original footage together better.

Here is a longer video about trying to match the filmic look using digital footage. The latter half of the video focuses on the post-production side of things, and he uses Davinci Resolve, which is a free editing and color grading program that you could use too. This might be useful when it comes to trying to match the ROTJ-look. And since you’re using deleted scenes, I would look into using a grindhouse overlay for the sake of having a little more consistency.

If you’re serious about this, don’t wait for Adywan’s ROTJ:R or Tydirium, because it’ll probably be years before either are released. I would just to jump right into it!

Yeah I think they’re fair points of discussion, but I think a lot of people who dislike the new movies try to use numerical data as evidence to prove that they’re objectively bad and justify their own opinion. So it hard to determine what discussion is sincere or what is in bad faith.

That’s a fair point!

Yeah, sorry! I think with that scenario you would have to change their motivation for going. Like how we discussed in another thread maybe they could get the second half of the map instead, and either succeed, or even fail, like you suggested before.

The outer circle represents the shield, so Scenario B shows that he wasn’t trying to fly directly at the planet surface, but exit hyperspace in between the planet surface and the shield by approaching it at the planet’s edge/curve or whatever.

While still crazy lucky, you can see how that approach is a little less crazy than Scenario A. But, I guess that doesn’t fix your issue with the “fractional refresh rate” being a loophole that the story introduced when it was convenient. Your new idea alleviates that, but you’ll need a few new VFX, and it raises the question of why the X-Wings don’t pass through the shields the same way the Falcon does.

I do think there are a few ways to approach the situation.

There is that option, which plays into the Starkiller’s weakness angle.

One alternative would be to just remove the shield plot altogether. With this option you cut out the stuff about the “shields have a fractional refresh rate” but keep “if we get any higher they’ll see us” to make avoiding their radar their clear motivation for coming in so close.

You could also try to find ways to make the current angle work more. I can’t find a good picture of it, but I was thinking you could use an insert shot from Solo of that monitor in the Falcon cockpit that they use to make sure the ship is at the right angle to make the hyperspace jump out of the maw.
And then you could make an animation that shows a diagram like Scenario B.

You might could remove the “If we get any higher they’ll see us!” in that scenario to make the motivation clear that maybe cutting it that close to the planet surface wasn’t exactly the plan.

I definitely don’t feel that your criticisms are coming from a bad place, Dre. My replies yesterday were definitely not towards you directly. Even though we disagree about some stuff I do enjoy talking to you about it!

I know there are a lot of critics who are good-intentioned and trolls can make conversation rather difficult. I do think the topics can be rather complicated at times and hard to navigate, especially when the conversation turns to our inherent perceptions of gender.

I’ve been reading briefly about Children of Blood and Bone, and it is a YA fantasy novel inspired by African mythology and Yoruba. Apparently the author was motivated to write the story after feeling a sense of hopelessness because of the police shootings of Black Americans. So those emotions and themes are carried through in this novel.

I’m not sure how much it was Kathleen Kennedy’s decision to pick up this story to adapt, but I do feel like she does care about getting progressive ideas across in this new era of Lucasfilm. Clearly we’ve been hearing people cry SJW regarding the Sequel Trilogy, so imagine we might be hearing more complaints from that group of people as this film moves forward.

I do think that Kennedy’s selection, if it was her decision, is an indication that moving forward Lucasfilm does have an interest in telling stories that carries a progressive message for contemporary audiences.

I also think they could make a crime/mystery show or movie in the vein of Dick Tracy, to really round out the 30s matineé inspired stories.

I don’t! But I feel like someone might complain about it. But you don’t see little people with starring roles in many films or tv shows nowadays, with Peter Dinklage being the major exception. I think it would be a cool way to get more representation. I definitely think Warwick could serve as a producer on the show. With him starting in the industry so young, him having a big role like this to bring in a new generation of dwarf actors would be pretty amazing I think! But I’m sure he has thought about it a lot.

If it was a Disney+ show, I think they could still just call it Willow!