RogueLeader

Yeah, personal video/editing technology has improved a lot, even just in the past ten years. With enough patience and ingenuity, I think we could be capable of a lot.

I think a big thing is just deciding what exactly we want to accomplish.

For example, one goal we might have is to make the prequels look and feel more like the originals. So how do we do that? We need to define what gives the originals that look and feeling, and then lay out what we can do to the prequels to replicate that. Retrofying the prequels is one idea, and we’ve seen that is doable in certain ways through a variety of past mock-ups.

Some might say reshooting certain scenes might be called for. I would first want us to try and articulate why we feel it would improve the film, or bring them or in line with the OT.

For example, one recent idea I had was shooting new shots for Anakin Mustafar massacre to make him kill more Jedi on screen instead of just killing the Separatists. Like Zerome mentioned, trying to match the quality and cinematography would be important to try and make it seamless. I would personally think trying to copy the exacts same shots that we’re replacing would be the best way to do that. Don’t make the cinematography ‘too flashy’ compared to the rest of the movie.

I would love to see how Ady can make his new footage be seamless with the rest of ROTJ:Revisited. I think that would be a great example to learn from for future editors as well.

I think once we clearly define what we think that OT-style is, and how the PT is lacking that, it will be easier for us to approach what we can work on to help bridge that gap. FX, music, color, film grain, there are a lot of different things that might contribute to that.

NeverarGreat said:

It’s true that most of that idea has been lost, but it could still be up to interpretation as to whether or not Rey would have escaped the cell block if Kylo hadn’t been distracted by the Falcon’s arrival. I didn’t intend to imply that Rey could sense the Falcon here, but that is certainly one interpretation. Maybe if there was some dialogue from the Trooper’s intercom to that effect…

Oh yeah, maybe that’s where I got that idea from. I think you previously suggested that one could add some com chatter that basically says the same thing the other stormtrooper says to Kylo.

That’s pretty cool! That’s a nice new transition you’ve made, and it sounds good. I also like the quick cut to Kylo Ren’s face and the intense strings, during Rey’s second attempt.

In this version, you do lose that idea you had though about Han and Finn’s arrival distracting Kylo and buying Rey enough time to escape. Although I’m guessing you’re still trying to imply their arrival somehow encouraged Rey to try again, right?

EDIT: Also, nice touch with maintain special continuity by having the room Kylo exits be the observation room through use of the glowing light effect in there. Pretty clever!

Yes, the choreography alone might not be able to stand on its own, but music removal tests like these could be useful for rescoring. I felt this could be particularly useful for editors who remove the Yoda/Sidious duel, to maybe make the music transitions more seamless.

I also wanted to share a thought I had in response to Snooker’s 2001 Easter egg as well as some of Angel’s mock-ups. That is the kind of stuff that is really exciting to see. For Snooker, paja or others, if you share more mock ups, I’d love for you to make high quality versions of them, if you’re willing. It’d be great for people to save them for future projects. Snooker’s “Theed in Flames” is one that comes to mind that I would love to use eventually. It reminds me of a lot of Bingowings’ early mock-ups.

Something I’m interested in are things that make the prequels feel a little more retro and in-line with the OT’s aesthetic. Some of those Angel mock-ups remind me of that, and Snooker’s 2001 shot does that as well. Would love to see more stuff like that.

EDIT: I wrote this before I saw your most recent post Snooker! Ironic we both were thinking about that. I don’t mind the prequels aesthetic being a bit different, with the argument of it being the golden age of the Republic at all, but I think more details were changed that helped bridge that gap, it would help the prequels feel more related to the OT, if that makes sense. Something I would love to see in particular would be a total overhaul of holograms, display screens, etc. that made it more reminiscent to the OT’s retro displays.

Hey guys, a reddit user named u/poseplastic shared with me a version of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s duel with no music and brand new sound effects. I think he did a pretty good job with the lightsaber sounds in particular! Thought this might interest some people working on ROTS edits that cut around the Yoda/Sidious duel.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d2bTMCVOkS1iLFG4WOgHwNpICCvL_SVu/view?usp=drivesdk

When you realize you’re stuck in the friend zone.

Regardless of what ends up happening in IX, I do know we’ll be having interesting conversations regarding his death or redemption! I’m sure a lot of it is going to boil down to its execution, whether people will be satisfied with the conclusion of his arc or not.

ChainsawAsh said:

Yep, that’s lampshading. And it very much does not work in this instance IMO.

Haha, you’re totally right, forgot that’s what that meant!

I know the whole concept is to maintain suspension of disbelief by being meta about it, I just don’t feel like it fits within this story. Like, it can work in certain stories, but I don’t think lampshading is appropriate every time when it can be done, you know?

I know this is anecdotal, but this reminded me of a dinstinct memory I had from TFA opening night. The line, “This was the Death Star. And THIS is Starkiller Base!” felt so on the nose. Kinda one thing about the movie that makes you roll their eyes, like they’re trying to one-up the Death Star. I figure the writers wanted the audience to know that they were aware of the similarities and wanted to bring that up within the film. Honestly though, I think that just makes it worse. Just let it be its own thing.

I also think the brief pause in dialogue before the hologram pops up helps to make the moment a little more omninous too.

Thanks for being pretty civil, Val, and sharing your own opinion with me.

I like how you also mention the Force having strong points, almost like pools of life or the Force. I’ve used a pool or water metaphor before to describe the Force, and that Jedi go with the flow of the current of the Force, while the Sith try to dam it and redirect that current to serve their own purposes. It’s very similar to how one might describe Taoism, and how the concept of Wei Wu Wei within Taoism is like the idea of “going with the flow”. Although the Taoism doesn’t necessarily have “pools”, but maybe you could argue places full of nature might be more in line with the Tao, and more balanced, than places like cities for example. That could also explain why the Jedi gradually became weaker in a cityscape like Coruscant as well.

I think you could also describe the Force in terms of electricity, and how those pools could be like “hotspots”. A lot of my earlier examples fit with those terms as well.

I still personally believe that the Force is a dynamic system. The fact that Force can even be out of balance in the first place demonstrates this to me. And the fact that Anakin fulfilled his destiny also does seem to lead credence to the idea of destiny. But that’s just me.

I can definitely see how our own opinions can kind of influence our own definitions of the Force, but I would definitely suggest that we should just be open-minded about how the Force works.

I can’t even tell when I try to look. Well done.

That’s really cool, Snooker! And it also works as a cool 2001 homage/Easter egg too. Definitely like it.

This is an excellent question. Oojason or SilverWook might know if something like that has been written up on here before. Some of the links in oojason’s first post might have more information on that.

theforce.net might have a thread about that as well.

It definitely would be interesting to see all the contradictions laid out though. I know WaywardJedi had a good post on reddit that compiled very George Lucas quotes regarding a potential Sequel Trilogy over the years going back and forth on how many there were and how developed (or undeveloped) the stories for them were. I’ll try to see if I can find it.

EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/starwarsspeculation/comments/5qmv0e/george_lucas_quotes_relevant_to_st_buckle_up_its/

As you read this, you can see he jumps around a bit on what he says, but WayardJedi/Colton tries to unravel it all. You might be able to deduce that he had some very loose ideas, but on the other hand you could argue he changed his mind a lot too.

These quotes sort of make me think about how he has talked about how his story treatments for the new films were “thrown away”. But if you follow the development process as it was laid out in the Art of books, yes the final film is drastically different from the supposed ideas from the early treatments, but the “bullet points” of a lot of his ideas were carried over into the films. Story development is a normal part of any pre-production process. The early drafts of the OT films vary differently from the final films.

While some major changes were made for story reasons, like how Michael Ardnt had to delay Luke’s return because how his character sidelined the newer one, other changes were made just for aesthetic reasons (falling back on familiar ships/environments).

Lucas isn’t lying, but I also feel he is exaggerating just a little because they didn’t stick to his treatments to a T. I’m sure Lucas doesn’t care too much, but when he says they “threw away his ideas”, it puts the storytellers in an awkward position of having to deal with fans using his words to denounce their work, work that is directly influenced by Lucas’ original treatments. Maybe Lucas isn’t upset about it and is just trying to make light of it, but to others it comes off as petty, like he resents then for not following his ideas close enough and he is mad that they changed so much.

They definitely changed a lot, but it certainly wasn’t thrown away. But I think George made a point of this because TFA became aesthetically retro after he left story development, and he is big on visuals so he wasn’t happy with them relying on the old designs. Lucas’ emphasizes this in his interview with James Cameron, I believe, and interestingly enough this was also Cameron’s big critique of TFA after its release. Maybe they talked about it.

Wayward goes more into it in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/starwarsspeculation/comments/6u44xu/clearing_up_some_misconceptions_about_the_art_of/

You should, Dom! It’s gonna be the last film in the Saga. Try to make plans ahead of time.

And Lee, haha, I know. He was just being annoying. He didn’t spoil any details, but it was just really annoying. Like you might not like it but can you even give us a chance to try and enjoy the movie? It’s all good now though. Just felt he was being immature at the time.

I feel like a lot of people who talked about this movie on YouTube said similar things, that it had interesting ideas but he didn’t go through with them, but I personally felt he did and people were misinterpreting the theme of the movie, a lot of it relating to people thinking “let the past die” was a theme when it wasn’t, and how the theme related to the Jungian idea of acknowledging and assimilating with one’s Shadow. Jared from Wisecrack got really close but totally misunderstood it in the end, in my opinion.

If you want, I could share some videos with you that discuss TLJ that I like. Not trying to change your opinion, but maybe it could help you see why some other people liked it.

Yes, 100%. Rinzler clarified this edit on starwars.com, it’s all in the thread Dom posted.

It’s possible, but George contradicts himself so often in interviews that it is hard to say what he did or didn’t know early on in production. Like he says the films were always meant to outline the rise and fall of Vader, but is clear he didn’t plan for Vader to be Luke’s father until writing ESB. That’s okay, it is just not fair to fans to make them think he had it planned from the beginning when he didn’t.

Originally the Force came from crystals, and of these crystals was the MacGuffin for an early draft. I would say he was figuring out the Force as he went along.

Those beings at the end of the Clone Wars weren’t stated to be Whills, but Force priestesses. They may have been, but it was never clarified, which makes me think they weren’t.

If the Force is meant to be a faith-analogy, then I think the Force can be explored, but should always remain ambiguous and mysterious, even if it is a real thing. Even though it is a real energy field, you still have people who interpret it differently: the Jedi and Sith have to completely different philosophies on the function of the Force, and both would say the other doesn’t understand it. Then you have creatures like the Bendu who see themselves as in “the middle”. You could have people like Kreia, who see the Force as evil and wish to destroy it. Basically, the Force needs to be ambiguous enough for it to be open to interpretation, like how many real world religions interpret our own reality.

I’m glad you like that quote! I would definitely suggest checking out the Tao Te Ching, if you’re into that kind of stuff. It obviously can apply to life, but you can apply to Star Wars and the Force, too.

Regarding the midi-chlorian quote:

The quote from the 70s, as it is in Rinzler’s The Making of Star Wars goes:

”It is said certain creatures are born with a higher awareness of the Force than humans. Their brains are different; they have more midi-chlorians in their cells.”

But, George had Rinzler edit that quote when he wrote his book, so the original quote would’ve been like this.

”It is said that certain creatures are born with a higher awareness of the Force than humans. Their brains are different.”

So no, midi-chlordans was not an original idea.

The Journal of the Whills was originally a framing device for the early drafts of Star Wars, but George didn’t really expound on what the Whills were. His original idea was that R2 at some point in the future would recount these tales to a Whill, who I guess was a physical being that kept a journal. Which, to me, makes me wonder how that would fit with the whole microscopic world George was talking about in the more recent interview with James Cameron.

And don’t worry man, I have a feeling future films or shows will dive deeper into the Force, and maybe even IX will, who knows? There’s so much content ahead, the Force will inevitably be explored more.

You’re good, man! I guess we get a little aggressive sometimes over these opinions, even me. I totally get why people don’t like the new movies. I guess I just want to share why I like the movie because I hope other people can see what I see, and find a way for them to enjoy it as well.

From my own experience, I saw TLJ with a couple of friends my age, and my mom, my dad and my uncle, who have all been Star Wars fans since 77.
Most of my friends, some of whom were big fans during the prequels like me, really didn’t like it. My cousin, who is my age, did, he is a Star Wars fan but never was hardcore about it.

One of my friends who went with us is Japanese, and he really enjoyed it. He likes the Star Wars films, but he is more of a big film buff in general. Not just American classics but all kinds of foreign films and avant garde, obscure pictures. He knows more about films and film theory than most people I know. He really dug into the themes and such, and felt the movie had more to say than most blockbusters. I think he preferred it over TFA.

My parents and my uncle loved it. My uncle actually got really annoyed by some of my friends because he felt they had very surface-level reasons for not liking it, and felt they couldn’t admit they were disappointed that things they were expecting to happen, or wanted to happen, didn’t happen.

My sister and brother-in-law saw it later and loved it, but I’d say they’re casual fans too.

I actually saw TFA with my friends too, and one of them had read a whole leaked synopsis of the movie before he saw it, so the whole ride to the theater (which was like an hour) he was saying how bad it was going to be. Just priming us and shit. None of us really wanted to hear that. He sat behind me and I could hear him every once and awhile chiming it negatively. And as the credits rolled he was just talking crap.

This was the first saga film to come out in 10 years. I was sitting with my dad. Star Wars has always been a good part of our relationship, and I was just wanting to enjoy this experience with him. I was so annoyed by my friend, I turned around and said “Fuck you.”

He immediately shut up, and I felt so bad. I’d never really confronted my friend that way before. We got outside and I apologized and he did too, and for the rest of the trip back we had a civil conversation about the movie, good and bad.

I love my friends but for IX I’m just going to see it with my family.

Anyway, that’s my experience.

Do you mean you would just have that one damaged side blow up? If so, that’s what I was thinking too. And if you went with that idea I mentioned about changing the plan presentation in ANH to suggest it is targeting a single reactor, it could help imply that reactor was on that side of the superstructure, explaining why only that side took most of the damage, but it would still be enough to cripple the laser system itself.

With ESB, I was thinking you change a word in the opening crawl regarding the Death Star to “devastated” rather than “destroyed”. And then in the film itself, when we see Darth Vader on the bridge of the Executor for the first time, we could see the Death Star through the bridge window, maybe less complete than it is in ROTJ, and with little specks of ships flying around it. It is basically a Death Star cameo, but this helps set up its return in ROTJ, and helps makes its return feel more intentional rather than be the result of a lack of originality or something. People will now expect for it to be a threat in the last movie. But that part is optional.

And then with ROTJ, like you said, reword the crawl to either refer to repairing the Death Star or the super laser in particular, at least very least removing any reference to it being a new Death Star. And like I mentioned above, cut a word or two from the rebel briefing. That should cover everything I think.

leetwall31 said:

It’s fine that you like it and have your own opinion about it, but it’s just that you lose our respect a bit, and seem less credible to us about what makes a good movie a good movie.

This feels very narrow-minded to me, that you would lose respect for a person just because they like a certain movie. At least your being honest, I guess.

Awhile back there was a rumor that there is some kind of MacGuffin the characters will be after, and I speculated that it could be the Journal of the Whills, and maybe we would learn something about them or the Force indirectly through that. It would be a nice way to tie that original idea into the last Saga film, while not being too out there for general audiences.

Since this is the last film of the Saga, they probably will touch on the Force a little more in some way, or illustrate what Balance is exactly.

It would be cool to learn more about the Whills and such, but I can understand their hesitation to approach that subject, because audiences, and especially fans, were really critical of the midichlorians as a concept back in the day (and it still is something a lot of people choose to forget). I don’t think people want the Force overly demystified, and honestly neither do I. I think how the Force works should be left up to interpretation to a certain extent, and the more you explain it the less flexible it becomes.

I compare it to Taoism a lot. The first chapter of the Tao Te Ching basically says, “The Tao that can be named is not truly the Tao.” Basically, trying to understand or quantify the Way universe works is essentially a fruitless effort, and you really have to surrender yourself to it in order to be in-step with the Universe, if that makes sense. It’s like faith, and that comes back around to how George originally meant for the Force to be a meta-religion that can stand in for any religious faith or belief system.

It would be cool for them to explore the Whills more in some other form of media, but maybe it was the right call to not overexplain it in the Saga films. For me, I would just like for them to possibly address this apparent cycle of Darkness and light that exists in the universe, and how Force ghost Luke, Rey and potentially Ben Solo will play a part in dealing with it. Which I think is subtle enough for audiences to understand and apply it to real-world issues in their own lives.

Honestly, I could possibly see a tv-to-movie edit of the first season being done. I don’t think the humor is really that bad, but maybe could just make a 2-hour movie that just kept the gist of the season. Though I think one benefit of it being covered over an entire season is how you see the First Order slowly taking control of the Colossus. It isn’t something that happens overnight, but they flex their authority overtime see how far they can take it.

Obviously you would want to reword the ESB and ROTJ crawls a little, but you would also need to edit the ROTJ rebel briefing scene.

Mon Mothma refers to it as “the Emperor’s new battle station”. Luckily, it is in a wide shot, so you should be able to just cut out “new”. Also, Mon Mothma and Ackbar refer to it as “this Death Star” a few times, and I would recommend to trim it so it sounds like “the Death Star”, but I guess that might not be 100% necessary.

Also, if you really wanted to, you could possibly change the “Death Star plans presentation” in the ANH Rebel Briefing to make it seem like the plan involves overloading a single reactor within the Death Star rather than the main reactor, since Rogue One seems to indicate that the Death Star has multiple reactors. It could help explain why it didn’t blow up completely, but enough to severely damage it.

EDIT: Maybe the end of the animation could be altered to show that the Death Star internally has a multiple reactors, set up like spikes on a wheel, and instead of the proton torpedo going to the “center axle”, the center of the Death Star, it can go to one of the spokes where the explosion animation can happen. This isn’t necessary but it could be one option to help differentiate the ANH attack to the ROTJ attack.

I don’t think so. Redoing the Death Star blowing up would be the biggest thing, FX-wise. I was thinking in order to keep the explosion still dramatic, at the moment it blows up, there could be a big flash of white light that obscures the moment of explosion, then the white slowly fades out to show big Death Star chunks drifting apart, the pieces vaguely in-like with what we see of the DSII.
Maybe it could be reminiscent to the Supremacy explosion.

And honestly, maybe you could make just enough necessary changes to make it where the Death Star II could be interpreted either as the same Death Star or a new one. The term “Reconstructed” could be interpreted either way if you think about it. “We’re rebuilding the Death Star” could mean they are putting it back together OR they are starting from scratch. That way people can interpret it however they like, with the only big hint to it being the same one would be the DSI pieces being in a similar shape as the DSII.

From what I understand, the issue was building the station itself, but getting the laser to work, which they were so desperate to get Galen Erso to complete the project, because he was the only person that really understood the kyber crystals. So the Death Star could have just been sitting around for a decade or even two until the laser dish and some internal stuff were installed once the science was figured out. Though none of that is very overtly stated in the films.

And like you said, Nev, the second Death Star is actually three times larger than the first (which I personally don’t like, but at least you can’t really tell just from watching the movie), so you’d imagine it would take even longer than the first, but I think the lore spins it as it being easier to build since it is not the first. It seems in general building stuff in the Star Wars universe can be done rather quickly, but production scale is never really shown on-screen.

According to Wookiepedia, the DSII was project was started because of DSI’s destruction, and in Legends it started construction around the time of the Battle of Yavin as well.

Also, I believe the new canon (not sure about Legends) implies that the DS1 was not the first Death Star. Instead, the Death Star we see at the end of ROTS was the first prototype. I guess that is meant to explain the different positioning with the dish. But, if I recall correctly, that prototype ended after the Geonosians revolted during its production. I think this was all covered in the Rogue One tie-in novel Catalyst.

Honestly, I think any idea can be spun to fit into some kind of logical framework. My only major gripe against the single-Death Star idea is that it probably would be easier for the Empire to just build a new Death Star rather than repair a heavily damaged one. Like I’ve said before, it can analogous to a car. If you total a car, it would be easier (and possibly cheaper) to buy a new one rather than to try and restore the total one.
But, having one Death Star just makes that whole plotline a little more streamlined.

Yeah, I thought Kaz was about to have a mental breakdown.

The fact that we see Hux’s speech and immediately followed by Hosnian Prime’s destruction might contradict Restructured, but in my head I would just argue that his speech was placed before the destruction for the broadcast. Speaking of which, how exactly did the First Order record that footage of Hosnian being destroyed? Eh, nitpicky question.