RogueLeader

Yeah, despite my own gripes with the score, I go back and listen to it a lot this past year, even more than the other scores. I catch my self going back to The Spark and The Last Jedi a lot. Luke emerging from the base and then later when it is revealed he is still on Ach-To are such great moments. I like listening to Ach-To Island, The Supremacy and New Alliance a lot too.

I was a little surprised there wasn’t a Ben/Rey theme. A theme could still show up in the last film, but I imagine it will be some kind of play on Rey and Kylo’s theme, maybe.

Yeah I get that. I’m hoping that since IX will probably be mostly focused on all the new characters, Williams be more focused on their newer themes, now that Luke and Leia will probably have limited screen time.

Yeah, a common complain I’ve heard is that Williams uses the Force theme a little too much in TLJ.
Honestly though, I wonder if we would feel differently about the ST scores if they were performed by the London Symphony Orchestra rather than a freelance orchestra. Like is is just orchestra size, the way they mix the music, or is it just Williams? I mean, no one can really help it if he can’t travel for health reasons, but it would have been nice to have had the LSO do all nine films.

Sure, sure, I can totally understand if you’re seeing a relation between something in the movies with your own experiences, I totally won’t argue you with that. Also sorry you’ve had to deal with that in the past.

The way I’ve seen Kylo and Rey’s relationship is that Kylo actually does care for Rey, he has compassion for her, but I think he still cares about himself and what he wants more. And if he hurt her in VIII, it wasn’t because he wanted to hurt her. I’ll admit in my own experiences, I have been the one to hurt people I cared about in the past because I was thinking about myself more than about them. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but my choices made it happen regardless.

Anyway, I don’t know how it will be resolved in IX, but I think keeping an open mind and just letting JJ take us along for this last ride might be the best way to enjoy the experience. And definitely after the movie comes out, we’ll have to have another conversation about what happens!

Huh, I didn’t notice it in your first version, but that little “Force” sound you added when Han grabs the saber really helps sell it.

You can kinda still hear the background music in one of Leia’s lines, and it’d be nice if that “too much Vader” line could fade out more.

A few other things, it looks kinda weird to me how he opens his mouth. I guess it is meant to be like he is about to say something, but I might cut that a little shorter, because it feels slightly jarring to me. Maybe don’t have his mouth open so wide? Not really sure.

Also, I can think there should be a lot more space between the “Vader” line and Kylo stabbing him. I’m guessing it is meant to be like Kylo’s instant reaction, but I kind of think it would be nice to keep a little bit of that tension the original had, where we are just sitting there waiting for the worst to happen. So maybe a less of a gap between Han’s two lines. Let them be a little closer together. I also think you shouldn’t use that shot of their hands tightening on the saber until after the light disappears and Kylo starts doubting Han. Because from what I understand, what he first hears about Leia is positive, but then when he hears Han’s words, it is negative, so maybe after he hears Han’s first lines (or both) then you can cut to that shot. Just my two cents though. The way you have done the room darkening looks really good too by the way!

A documentary would be interesting. At the moment though, I kind of picture a book that tries to collect as many sources as possible and try to put them in a relevant order, either when the information was spoken/written chronologically, and then relevant by subject. Kind of picture multiple quotes and quotations put in an order as if it was telling a story about a certain subject, with minimal interruptions by the editors of the book in order to avoid as much subjective framing as possible.

Then, at the end of each section or chapter, each editor could write their own summary of the information where they interpret it as they see it. But, let each editor share their own interpretation in order to keep primary sources, like interviews, tweets, book passages, somewhat separate from the editors’ subjective influence. That way reader’s can come to their own conclusions rather than the whole book being framed in a pro or anti-Disney/Lucasfilm light.

Sure, journalists are expected to be somewhat unbiased, but even professional journalists can be biased. Almost every article or news headline has been framed in some shape or form. And for something like this hypothetical Star Wars book, if it was being written/edited by amateurs, then showing some extra effort to keep the objective and subjective separate might lend a little credibility to the whole thing, rather than it being perceived as a project with ulterior motive to paint the new movies in a certain light.

These are cold, hard, objective opinions, Dom.

Lesser, this is a response to your comment!

I want to start off with what you said about Leia. I agree with you partially on that, but I actually think that Leia is having to deal with her unresolved atonement with her father through her son. Luke was not responsible for his Father being evil, so regardless of that, Leia is still having to deal with the complicated feelings of finding a way to forgive someone you love that has hurt you. And yeah, Leia might not feel as guilty as Luke does, but Leia does feel guilty for her son. In TFA, she blames it partially on Snoke and herself for sending Ben away in the first place. So she still feels a guilt of a mother who feels like she has failed at raising her son, and I think through this she is going to understand how to atone with her father as well.

When it comes to Reylo, and the idea of redemption in general, I think one has to keep in mind that the Saga is giving us themes through the lens of a fairy tale, so the drastic actions these characters take, like murder and torture, these are just analogous to the average, common mistakes and bad decisions we make in our everyday lives. But when these characters can be forgiven for things that seem really bad to us, it can make finding forgiveness for others for making more normal mistakes seems a lot easier in comparison.

So for example, Darth Vader can be seen as being metaphorical for the absent father, or even just a man who was not always the perfect father to his son. And Luke’s journey is about a boy whose idealized perception of his dad is shattered when he starts growing up and realizes his father is a flawed human being, just like everyone else. So, Luke’s story is a coming-of-age story, partially about a son forgiving his father for his mistakes and learning to love him despite that.

So we need to look at Kylo Ren in a similar way. Kylo is like a rebellious teenaged boy who has made a lot of stupid decisions that teenagers commonly make. He’s like the Biblical prodigal son. But 7 and 8 have also tried to show us that Kylo partially feels that his actions are justified because he thinks he has been abandoned and mistreated. He feels alone, and so does Rey. Yes, Rey and Kylo have fought and hurt each other, but that doesn’t negate the possibility of ever understanding each other. Have you never seen kids who have gotten into fist fights who end up being friends afterward?

And yeah, Rey is not going to fall in love with him after one fireside conversation, but since the interrogation in TFA, they have begun to see each others thoughts and feelings. This is exacerbated by the Force bond, and it appears that the moment they touched hands, it was like they were seeing all of themselves. It was like a Vulcan mind-meld, where they could, for the briefest moment, understand each other completely. Like two becoming one. To me, that is super powerful stuff, to imagine being flooded with the emotions of my enemy, momentarily empathizing with them in the purest way possible.

After that point, I think you could argue they can potentially know each more than even two lovers might.

But, I see where you’re coming from. Some people are concerned that Reylo reinforces the trope where the Girl who thinks “I Can Fix Him”, or the All Girls Want Bad Boys, Beauty and the Beast/Stockholme Syndrome trope.
Now, how this plays out depends on IX, but TLJ actually rejects this trope. For a point, Rey does think that if she does go to Kylo, that he will in fact turn back to the light. But, she turns out to be wrong. Rey being there was not enough to bring Kylo back to the good side. So, she leaves and, both literally and metaphorically, shuts the door on him. To a lot of people, this felt like Rey deciding that if Kylo/Ben is going to change, he has to be the one to initiate that change. Not her. She tried. And now, as Rian puts it in the commentary, they’re enemies, but complicated enemies.

And yeah, how they execute the last third of Kylo and Rey’s arcs in IX is going to determine its overall success, but I think it is naive for people to think that is just impossible for them to pull off a satisfying redemption, or even a satisfying relationship for the two of them. I think that just because you can’t imagine a scenario where it can work, doesn’t mean you should already accept that it can’t be done at all. They may have figured something out! It might be like what you’re imagining, or it might not! I think all that JJ and Chris wish is that people engage themselves with their story with an open mind and a willingness to be surprised.

I think it is just good to keep in mind that this Saga is about Hope, Redemption and Forgiveness, and while we shouldn’t compare a fairy tale 1:1 with reality, we should try to see how these themes can be applied to our own lives in order to benefit the relationships we have with others. I think that’s what they’re all about, in my opinion.

Also wanted to say I appreciate your civility, man! You didn’t come off as rude at all. I hope I don’t sound condescending either. If I do, I totally don’t mean to. This is just me trying to get out my own thoughts on it to share with you!

Sometimes I just laugh at the thought that we now live in a world where Star Wars fans are hungry for more George Lucas-made Star Wars movies. I’m not saying I wouldn’t want that, but after all the hate Lucas got after the prequels, there was a very vocal group of fans who thought Lucas had betrayed his own vision and felt he didn’t deserve to make them anymore, because he apparently didn’t understand who his fanbase was and what they wanted. Now, fans clamor for Lucas as if that era of vitriol in the fandom never happened. I personally think it is misguided to simply “give the fans what they want”, because I think fan consensus is a very fickle thing, as history has clearly shown.

And people could argue about this until their faces turn red, but no one’s opinion is going to change now. It’s just gonna take years to pass to really know how history is going to look back at all these movies.

The only way they will conceivably be remade is when Disney loses the copyright for the franchise, and it is a public domain IP.

But personally, I think the Saga is pretty great as it is. Its perceived imperfections are part of what makes them special, at least to me. Even if it was remade, no one will ever agree what is “proper” or not. Some might like the prequels or sequels remade, but then you would have a group of old timers who would see it as sacrilege to remake the original trilogy. It can never be done more “properly” than as it is now, so it will never satisfy everyone, in my opinion. With that in mind, why not try to appreciate the films for what they are?

Now saying that, I think it would be cool to eventually have comic book adaptions or new novels of the whole saga made in the context of the whole saga, with some slight liberties made to make the episodes more cohesive, possibly. But new movies that are just remakes of the old movies? Everyone who was alive when the OT was released would have to be dead before I can fathom that actually happening, when it is not as sacred anymore.

They might make animated adaptations of the films for very young kids, but they will never remake any movie in the Skywalker Saga.

Well it looks like to me they are pushing the standalone film ideas to the streaming service as multi-episode shows, and for actual movies it will just be multiple-film series, or trilogies, like B&W’s project and Rian’s trilogy apparently are. I personally doubt we will get anymore anthology films on the silver screen in the near future.

I wanted to get some thoughts from people regarding a slightly more radical edit idea for Revenge of the Sith.

VegetableMan brought up this idea, that may have been briefly suggested before, to have Anakin’s mission to Mustafar be to hunt down a group of surviving Jedi rather than the remaining Separatists leaders. There’s a few reasons why I think this could benefit the film, but mainly I think it would be a way for the audience to actually see Darth Vader “help the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights”.

First of all, who would be interested in an edit like this? You don’t have to read anything else, at the very least I would appreciate on hearing your interest in this!

I’m just going to try and quickly outline the necessary changes to make this work, or at least my interpretation:

• Cut General Grievous’ line about sending the Separatists leaders to Mustafar and “your ship awaits”. This way, it just seems like he is having a meeting with the leaders about keeping them safe, and then dismissed them from the meeting. Now, we can assume the leaders just get captured by the Clones a few minutes later. That ends the Separatist plot.

• Cut Sidious telling Anakin to “go to the Mustafar system” and wipe out the Separatist leaders.

• Somewhere between that scene and when Anakin meets Padmé, reuse the scene of Anakin contacting Palpatine from Mustafar through hologram for a new scene where a Republic/Imperial Officer contacts Palpatine to inform him that a group of Jedi have been spotted on Mustafar. Something along those lines. Now the audience knows, and Sidious just relays this info to Anakin offscreen.

• When Anakin sees Padmé after the attack, cut Anakin dialogue to say something like, “The Chancellor has given me a very important mission- on the Mustafar system”. Anakin still needs to tell Padmé he is going to Mustafar, but we need to remove mention of the Separatists. You could even make it “Jedi have gathered on the Mustafar system”, but that might be too much info to give Padmé at this point.

• Biggest thing, cut/replace all shots of the Separatists leaders on Mustafar with new shots of Jedi.

I wanted to quickly touch on what would be needed to do this:

1. You need Jedi costumes and actors, maybe around 5. As well as an Imperial/Republic Officer costume/extra.
2. You would need an Anakin outfit and body double who will be concealed by a hood. Maybe not the whole outfit, but at least a robe, a glove and Anakin’s lightsaber.
3. You would need to shoot various standing, fighting, dead body shots in front of a green screen. I know that I personally have access to a studio location where these can be shot. Alternatively, if each person had their own green screen they could shoot in front of, simple shots possibly could be stitched together usings quick cuts and limited movement. Anakin could be shot last in an attempt to match some of them.
4. New green screen plates would need to be made of the Mustafar “war room”.

While I know the new shoots are at least theoretically possible, I feel like one of the harder things for it would be to make new plates of the war room itself. I think it would be a bit of work to remove the Separatists from a lot of those shots, since a lot of them move quite a bit. I was thinking that maybe later shots of the room when it is empty, and when Anakin/Obi-Wan fight through it, could be used instead to create bits and pieces of empty backgrounds for that sequence. Not only that, but even if you were to make some usable stills, you still have to worry about the motion graphics on the screens as well as the hologram tables.

I personally think this would be the biggest challenge. If I had to guess, you’re talking about plates for an estimated screentime of about 30-seconds to 1 minute, based off cutting to how this movie currently is. Maybe you could make it shorter. That isn’t including shots of their dead bodies, but that would be a matter of throwing Jedi bodies on top of theirs, and erasing whatever is left.

The only alternative I could think of would be if a model of the room could be remade using something like Unreal Engine (or we just had Anakin turn off the lights before the fight starts!)

I would like to know how reasonable these ideas are, and what direction you think we should approach it at. This is especially geared toward people who are kinda vfx savvy.

And again, would love to hear who all would be interested in seeing something like this. I do think this could be possible, but for all the necessary planning, it would be nice to know how others felt about it. Because if people don’t think it is a good idea, it probably won’t be worth the trouble.

Yeah, Rian’s doc was pretty transparent when it came to Rian and Mark’s disagreements. JJ’s doc does feel a lot more censored in that way.

Another thing I would worry about in a fan-made “exposé”, would be the writer’s own bias. Even now, a lot of interviews and information are being used by certain detractors as being evidence of “Disney/Lucasfilm’s SJW agenda”. So I could easily see a hypothetical book being used as way to frame “Disney” Star Wars in the most negative way possible.

Maybe I am a bit too harsh on the “George” revisionism claim regarding Rinzler, but apparently that modified “midichlorian” quote is around page 398 of the Making of Star Wars book.

Yeah, actually I think what you said is exactly on point. Rinzler mentions in that interview that he had actually finished the manuscript, and that there really wasn’t anything “juicy” in it per se. He said he felt if it was ever released, fans would probably be disappointed. But he thinks the reason it was cancelled was because Lucasfilm didn’t want to bring back up certain things from production, things that the public already knows, like Lucas saying they didn’t use his treatments, Brad Bird being in talks to direct early on, Harrison Ford’s injury (which Rinzler describes as “Harrison almost dying”). Like you said, it might be a long time before we get any official Behind the Scenes book outside of the Art of books, I would say at the earliest 10 years from now, if not longer.

That’s why I think it would be really interesting for a fan-made book were to be made that would compile as much known information regarding the development as possible. Sources like books, interviews, blogs, behind the scenes videos, etc. But something in the vein of Secret History might be the only “making of” book we might get for a very long time.

I know Lucas’ own revisionism has been discussed ad nauseam here on this site, and it definitely deserves the debate because despite it feeling like most Star Wars fans know Lucas is a little guilty of this, I also believe that Lucas has sort of “won” in some regard to that. It’s hard to explain, but if you were to develop some kind of test that was able to determine how “aware” someone was of Lucas’ revisionism, I believe most fans would score lower than you might think.

And for me, I guess that leads to the question of how it affects the fanbase’s everyday perception of the franchise, overall? I don’t know if this exactly fits, but one think I have noticed is how on a lot of sites it feels like the discussion regarding the prequels has really changed in the past ten years. I am a Prequel kid myself, but I seem to recall a lot of talk about George ruining the franchise, but nowadays you often hear defenses of the Prequels as George’s “vision”, and how it was all planned out by him (fans nowadays seem to have an obsession with the idea “overarching” plans), but if you read The Secret History of Star Wars, it paints a very different picture. Usually George Lucas and his vision become weapons to use against the Sequel Trilogy.

While I am a fan of the new movies, I actually think Disney/Lucasfilm have a closet full of skeletons very similar to George’s. While George is guilty of his own revisionism, we really don’t have the same level of “behind the scenes” looks at the new films like we did under George. It’s that transparency that has partially allowed fans to discover that revisionism in the first place.

But since the Disney acquisition, there have been a lot of questions about what the development process has been like for the new films. What were George’s treatments like that he gave to Kathleen Kennedy? How much was kept/thrown away from those as Episode VII was evolving? To what extent does the new trilogy have an overall plan, and what does that mean exactly?

Some info has been gleamed from interviews, but oftentimes those interviews can appear contradictory. Ironically, one of the best sources of behind the scenes information for the new trilogy that we have gotten so far are from the Art of series of books, since story development has often gone hand-in-hand with the Art Department for Star Wars films. Fortunately, you can find some great posts on sites like Reddit and theforce.net that gather various sources, but even with collected sources, you’ll often see heated debates regarding the sequel trilogy regarding the validity of this information.

I think a major difference is obviously that now that Lucas is gone, you can really look back at his tenure in a historical sense, but the Sequel Trilogy development is still an ongoing thing. Eventually I hope that they will release a book that gives us more information about the making of process. Interestingly enough, J.W. Rinzler was still with Lucasfilm when the acquisition happened up until TFA was released, and was actually documenting it for another eventual book, but it seemed like Lucasfilm wasn’t ready for that, since they halted the development. Rinzler was even going to start a blog on his own called “The Rise and Fall of Star Wars”, but it appeared he may have been asked to not continue that.

On one hand, I sorted of don’t blame Lucasfilm for not wanting to reveal too much of the behind the scenes information before the Sequel Trilogy is complete, to avoid spoiling anything for subsequent films. On the other hand, I will be a little disappointed if we never get anything like that. And even if we did, it kind of makes you wonder how much will be “redacted”, per se. While Rinzler himself seems a little salty about the changing of the guard, we also know we was himself responsible for helping George’s revisionism. Eventually, I would like to see a spiritual sequel to The Secret History of Star Wars that covers the development of the Sequel Trilogy following the Disney acquisition, written by a third party, such as unaffiliated fans.

EDIT: I actually found an interview Star Wars News Net did with Rinzler at the end of January. They ask him a question regarding the TFA book around the 58 min mark. I have that timestamp in this link https://youtu.be/B9p6naiDwzQ?t=3469

Rinzler himself makes a note on that quote in this article about midichlorians.

[Please note: While we were preparing the text for The Making of Star Wars, Lucas added a note to this passage about midi-chlorians, bringing his original words in line with his later thoughts and the events of the prequel trilogy.]

https://www.starwars.com/news/so-what-the-heck-are-midi-chlorians

So, the original quote was apparently from an archive recording of an interview he had with Carol Titelman in 1977, who was the author of the first Art of Star Wars book, but she also was apparently a member of his staff who was asking him a series of questions that could be used to guide future Star Wars novel/EU material writers.

The quote, 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, based off what Rinzler said in that article, it probably was:

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

This info is taken from this Q&A site.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/7510/when-did-george-lucas-make-up-the-stuff-about-the-sith-and-midichlorians/7527#7527

Snooker is taking a hiatus? I must have missed that post.

Breaking Ben

EDIT: There’s a band called Breaking Benjamin, isn’t there? Hahaha.

The Mandalorian vs Bossk
or
Kenobi vs Krayt Dragon

How was it, watching the movies on an IMAX dome?

SilverWook said:

There was also a glimpse of a version of the Mace/Palpatine duel where Anakin is present from the beginning.

Oh yeah, I remember reading about this. This was a change I agree with, though. I think it works a lot better with Anakin coming in at the last moment.

DominicCobb said:

The fact that the scene was, in fact, filmed. I think it’s maybe one of the top SW cut scenes that should have been in the movie (well, depending on how it looks when played out).

Agreed. Honestly I’m sort of surprised they didn’t even put it on the DVD. It’s seems like it would’ve been a sweet little interaction between Natalie and Ewan, and honestly we don’t get many scenes with the two of them. Maybe the fact that Obi-Wan mentions that he knows even that early on in the film about their relationship would’ve hurt the tension Anakin felt about keeping it a secret from the Jedi. Not sure. Still weird they would choose not to put it on the DVD.

Honestly if they release a Skywalker Saga Collection after IX is released, a great selling point would be if they added some never-before-seen material for all the films, because we know more material exists.

Hey, that’s a bargain!

I bet some, if not all, of the webisodes can be found on YouTube, too. It’s just a matter of watching through them all. I also believe you can spot a few other deleted moments in BTS footage as well. I found a few gifs of Obi-Wan arriving to Padme’s apartment after the purge starts, 3PO mentions the Jedi Rebellion. The latter half of that scene is still in the film, when Obi-Wan tries to get Padme to tell her where Anakin is.

Haha, is that reaction to the actual footage of the scene, or the fact that it is on tumblr?

I was initially curious about the same thing, but it was.

You can find photos online from the scene, but apparently there is some behind-camera video of the scene from some BTS material. Not sure which video these clips come from though. http://rubbish78.tumblr.com/post/125555608140/deleted-scene-between-padme-amidala-and-obi-wan