RogueLeader

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. There are a few seconds of Poe “asleep”, then he sits up when Kylo Ren says, “I didn’t know we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board.”

I was thinking that you could put a shot of exhausted-Poe in between the shot of Hux and when Finn enters, with possibly a wipe between Hux and Poe to emphasize time having passed.

I am not sure about the reordering of the rest of the scenes, like moving Hux and Kylo bickering up, but I don’t see an issue with it either necessarily. I would like to see a workprint eventually just to see how it flows.

But actually I like your explanation of why you want to reorder it that way. It makes me think of the reason why the editors of Star Wars cut out Luke’s early scenes, since jumping to Luke felt too disjointed, and having Luke be introduced as the plot came to him felt more natural.

I think you should try it out and see how it feels. And I like the idea of having the wipe go with door opening up!

How would you transition from Finn putting his helmet back on to Poe’s interrogation?

I like the way you think about editing. There’s always this dilemma of editing according to logic/continuity and editing according to emotion/narrative. In this case I think it feels right, at least on paper, and also makes sense logically.

Also, had another little idea for you.
When Kylo Ren gets shot by Chewbacca, I thought an effective little addition would be to add some sound fx to the impact.
The Battlefront games have a lot of nice impact sounds when your character gets shot, and maybe adding that sound, making to where you really feel it in the bass, could help make understand how much it probably hurt Kylo.
Also, when Kylo kneels in pain, you could add a slight sizzling sound from plasma burn.

This is just an idea I had but I thought it might sound interesting to you too.

I think there is some truth to that statement, but I think the term does have some merit, regarding well-written characters from a uniquely female perspective. Just a lot of writers think a strong female character is a “strong” character that is female, but like you said Anakin, is a well written character. But I do think it does take some effort for male writers to write some female characters, understanding that perspective, depending on the story.

Yeah guys, sorry for initially going on a little rant, didn’t mean to start an argument.

huh, that would be cool, a little Scarif like, but I don’t think it is practical.

The autumn Takodana is cool! Love the red leaves. Although it would need to be sporadic, here and there, because of Rey’s line, “I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy.” Which is why I suggested making D’Qar autumn, but yeah, it would be more noticeable with Takodana since she actually goes into the forest. And I guess that line doesn’t matter if you cut it, but I really like that line personally.

Good points Mocata & Valtrez! Definitely feels like some arguments cherrypick to fit their opinion. I know this can go both ways though.

Regarding Rey “downloading” lightsaber skills to defeat Kylo, I see what you’re saying but I look at it like this: A big part of the Force is that by “letting go”, you let the Force partially guide your actions. This is how the Force is described in the OT. So when Rey closed her eyes, she let go of her doubts and her fears, and let the Force flow through her and guide her actions. I think it carries a strong message of believing in yourself to overcome the challenges you face.

I think by that point in the battle, Kylo was afraid, injured and unbalanced, only going off his learned skills, which is no match to the power and reflexes the Force can give you, which Rey had at that moment.

Also with the Jakku chase, the First Order had orders to capture the droid, so they might have been trying to disable the ship rather than simply destroy it, which might’ve made their job a little harder.

Voss Caltrez said:

I haven’t come across anyone saying someone is wrong for liking the new movies.
With that said, people in general have been criticized for liking things for the longest time.
Star Wars is part of nerd culture and things like sci-fi and comic books have always had a stigma attached to them. Even romance novels have a stigma attached to them.
Then you have Marvel vs. DC where fans young and old argue about which side is better, and how the other film universe sucks.

I don’t mean people saying “It is wrong for you to like the new movies.” But I think people trying to say these movies are objectively bad is a form of gatekeeping.

Haha, that is true! I guess that is a weird part of nerd/geek cultures, although I know it isn’t exclusive to us, either.

And George Lucas was the one who spearheaded the Special Editions and the Prequels. People back then wanted George’s head on a pike, but now people long to have George back and suddenly appreciate his “genius”.

So were the fans wrong then to criticize him enough to make George want to sell the franchise and not make his own sequel trilogy? Fans are quick to talk about how they miss George, but are so quick to forget who ran him off in the first place. If we were being unfair to George then, how can you tell me with any certainty that people aren’t being unfair to Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm now?

I like your Jar Jar/Ewok examples Shopping Maul, but I also don’t think it is fair to equate issues of gender with “anti-comedy” or “anti-wildlife”.

I understand fans wanting Rey to be more flawed/vulnerable. While I don’t think Rey is badly written, I do think the male writers might’ve been a little afraid to emphasize Rey as a flawed individual more than they did. Maybe Kennedy or Hart were able to give some input on her character? I don’t know.

I mean, I think it was there. For example, the TFA deleted scene where Unkar Plutt confronts Rey in Maz’s Castle. She tries to attack Unkar, forgets the gun’s safety, and is pretty defenseless until she is rescued by Chewie.

But I think things like Rey’s combat and piloting skills are set up based off what we are shown and told in the first act of TFA, having to survive on her own and her telling us she is a pilot.

I think Kylo Ren’s loss at the end of TFA is set up fairly well, showing Kylo Ren being heavily injured and him not wanting to kill Rey.

I felt Rey barely scathed through the Praetorian guard fight, barely managing to kill two guards, while Kylo killed four and at one point took on three at once. Rey’s super sweaty at the end of that fight, haha!

I do get some things, like Rey lifting all of those rocks at the end of TLJ, but I also think our sense of how the Force works has been warped overtime, and they way a lot of people see the Force, even myself, hasn’t been an accurate interpretation.

I don’t think Thor is a bad person, and I don’t think he is sexist. I know a lot of people do, but I don’t equate every person who criticizes Rey is sexist. I think that can go both ways though, where a defender might try to point out a person’s unintentional biases, and that person reacting because they think they’re being called sexist.

But I do think his videos are clickbait, even if he isn’t the worst offender when it comes to this type of content. To me the thumbnail is the standard controversial attention grabber.
Which this kind of stuff, to me, perpetuates the discussion devolving from a fair debate into vitriol.

It just feels like none of these YouTuber’s feel responsible for the atmospheres they generate.

Also, I do think Dom makes a good point. I think the divide has put a lot of people into stubborn positions. With a lot of Reylo’s, they are so adamant on their theories on the Saga’s conclusion that I could imagine the love/hate positions flipping if Rey killed Kylo in the end or something like that. Because at this point they are set on what they think Star Wars should be, much like how a lot of predominantly male fans have been since this trilogy started.

Again, not saying either position is right or wrong, just wish discussions had a little bit more nuance. I think it is fair to say Rey isn’t a perfectly written character while also still being able to enjoy her character and her story so far.

Huh, the idea of making Snoke’s hologram room a desecrated Jedi site is a cool idea, and would be a logical place to include Jedi architecture. I’ll have to go back and watch that scene to see what exactly could be added to give the audience that idea.

EDIT: If you check the link that I shared in my previous post, you can see Ilum and the temple interior.

Interestingly, if you were to make Snoke’s hologram chamber into the temple entrance room, it kind of fits actually. If Snoke’s positioned where Yoda is in the clip, then you actually could insert to Jedi statues on either side of his hologram (apparently Jedi statues is becoming a theme).

Snoke’s room is pretty dark though. It would make sense for those two place to be the same place, but I feel like you wouldn’t be able to see much detail, plus it is possible the Empire/First Order would’ve demolished everything by this point and built over it.

I wonder if recoloring the sand would be challenging due to similarities with warner skin tone colors and Rey’s tan costume, for example. Maybe recoloring the sky to a pink or yellow could be more doable? Some of the swamp Jakku concept art had a really nice pink sky.

It might be more trouble than it is worth, but maybe it would be easier to do if you just tried to insert elements in static shots only?

Exactly. A “we can do it better” attitude is a good description.

Apparently Star Trek fans have a lot more trouble with the big wigs, with the “Axanar” Star Trek fan film having to go to court with CBS over it. And now they only can do one 15-30 minute short if I understood correctly, when they were planning a longer project before the drama started.

Maybe a lot of these type of fans who spread the negativity don’t do it intentionally, but they’re clearly feeding that flame.

Following up on a brief discussion on the ST planets in the PT thread, I wanted to elaborate more on some thoughts I had about that.

I think it is a generally accepted the planets in the Sequel Trilogy don’t feel as interesting as some of planets from the Prequels. The new planets feel a little too similar to the OT planets with a few exceptions, like Canto Bight, Crait and Ach-To. I don’t think the issue is they aren’t alien enough, it’s just that people want to see new places. From a visual standpoint, some of the concept art for the “Junkyard Planet” and the “Pirate World” felt a lot newer than Jakku being another desert and Takodana just being a pretty normal forest (with D’Qar being another green forest planet in the same movie).

Hopefully will see some more interesting worlds in IX, but I do think it would be worth exploring ways some of the ST planets could stand out more from the Tatooine, Hoth, Endor/Yavin comparisons.

I don’t think these environments can or should be completely changed, but finding feasible ways to add elements to make them stand out more could help.

Let’s look at Jakku. Obviously a lot of Tatooine comparisons are made. So what sets Jakku apart from other planets? The fact that is basically is a ship graveyard. Maybe they were afraid to add too much stuff, but personally I think they should’ve really leaned in on it being a junkyard.

If you think about it, we really only parts of this ship graveyard in three sequences: when Rey is in the Destroyer in her first scene and as she drives away, her AT-AT house, and the Millenium Falcon chase sequence. Not a lot in retrospect.

So the simplest thing to do would be add more crashed ships to emphasize that part of the planet’s “character”. Let’s see more old AT-ATs around Rey’s home, maybe standing up rather than fallen over. One without it’s head, etc etc.

Another great place to add stuff would be Finn’s trek to Niima Outpost. What if as Finn got closer to the Outpost, we would see more and more junk in each shot. This would help show visually that Finn is going in the right direction. Then finally when Finn sees Niima Outpost, the horizon could be filled with small specks of crashes ships, and we could clearly see the remains of a long-forgotten battlefield.

Obviously the difficult part would be integrating these ships into the shots, but I think with some after effects/blender designs, plus motion tracking, would still put it in a realm of possibility.

Some ideas for potential crashed ship varieties:
Star Destroyers
TIE-Fighters
Bombers
Interceptors
A/B/X/Y-Wings
Rebel transports
Blockade runners
Nebulon-B frigates
Mon Calamari Cruisers
AT-ATs
AT-STs

You also could have debris in space still floating in orbit as well.

I think seeing more stuff like this really would’ve given Jakku more character. I’ve also suggested that the large planet/moon we see in the opening shot of TFA could be inserted in the skyline of Jakku somewhere to set it apart from Tatooine more.

Moving on to Takodana.
I was really stumped on what could be done with it. To me, I would say the most interesting thing about Maz’s Castle is that it was the site of a battle between the Jedi and Sith, and according to Wookieepedia, the Castle use to house Jedi and its catacombs contained Jedi tombs. Pretty interesting, but you wouldn’t know any of that just by watching the movie!

So my idea for adding something to give this place more visual history/character would be to insert two giant Jedi statues on opposites sides of the lake. This would only require vfx for three or fours shots: the wide shot as the Falcon approaches the Castle, two shots of Rey looking out over the lake, and possibly one shot during the X-Wing battle. It could sort of be like an homage to the Pillars of Argonath from Fellowship of the Ring, the two giant statues they pass on their journey.

I think this could be a small addition that would make Maz’s Castle much more interesting, and it also might help surprise the audience when they enter the castle and it is actually filled with pirates.

With Starkiller Base, I would say one of the more interesting aspects regarding it is the theory that it might be Ilum, the planet where Jedi would go to get their lightsaber crystals.

Ilum actually appeared in the Clone Wars, but if you compare it how Ilum looks to Starkiller Base, it doesn’t immediately look the same beyond them both being snow planets.

https://youtu.be/m7a2LSWXCeA

So, what if we made Starkiller Base look more like Ilum to help strengthen that idea?

While most movie-only fans wouldn’t get the connection, Ilum is actually visually interesting. Not only does it have crystals jutting out of the ground here and there, but is also has a visible aurora borealis in the sky, something haven’t seen in a Star Wars movie before.

You can find crystal models on blender that could be used to place across the planet’s surface in certain shots. You also could added visible aurorae in space shots of the planet, and maybe in certain shots of the characters on the surface as well where appropriate. I think this would help make Starkiller more visually interesting.

Not only that, but if we emphasize the ideas of Takodana and Starkiller being sacred Jedi sites, then the First Order destroying them to serve their goals would go along with the idea that they want to destroy Luke and the last remnants of the Jedi religion.

That only really leaves D’Qar which I don’t think you can do much with honestly. The most interesting thing about it is its ring, but most scenes on D’Qar are overcast, so you couldn’t really add the ring to any of those shots even if you wanted to. The only thing I’ve thought of would be to change the greenery to a different color, maybe to something more autumn-like, such as yellow or orange, since we’ve never really seen a fall-season in a Star Wars movie. Not sure how difficult that would be though. On the other hand it might be the most feasible idea out of all of these!

Anyway, these are just “radical” some ideas I wanted to share. It seems like visually this one thing Lucas wasn’t too crazy about regarding TFA, and I can understand that. I think a good balance could be found though.

These ideas would require some work but I don’t think they are unrealistic either, and I think they would be effective changes as well. Would like to get some more thoughts on this.

Nev, also wanted to ask you about this scene rearrangement. It makes a lot of sense, actually, especially when going back and looking at the original order.

Wanted to suggest a few options though.
One issue with this restructure is that you would lose the nice hard cut going from Finn in a mask to Rey in hers. It’s a really great moment that would be a bit of a shame to lose.

Another option would be to put Poe’s ineterrogation and Finn’s rescue one after the other. A hard cut might be too sudden, but possibly a wipe, or coming up with some kind of buffer shot could help with that. Maybe if you removed Poe waking up in the interrogation room and moved it to right before Finn enters, it would give the two scenes a few seconds of breathing room. Just an idea though.

I think this is a good point.

I actually did a research paper on the Hero’s Journey and Rey’s story arc in The Force Awakens back in college, and I discovered another analytical device called the Heroine’s Journey. It basically posits that there are two major journey’s a protagonist can experience. While most (male) protagonists face more physical trials, female protagonists in stories often face more internal challenges.

I can’t for the life of me remember the title, but I was recommended a book series about a girl who is a member of a royal family. Her father and brother, the king and the heir, are killed away from home, and she is swept into the burden of ruling the kingdom before she is ready. So instead of her journey being about going on some big adventure to strange places, hers is more about learning how to take care of and protect her kingdom, while growing into her own identity.

It does make me think of Rey a lot, as in Rey’s journey is really focused on her identity and that sense of belonging.
I think for a lot of female fans, this resonates with them, and they care more about that than how much Force training she has or something like that.

But to me, her combat skills or force abilities aren’t real issues imo. Though I do think some edits, like one of yours where Rey takes longer to figure out the mind trick, can help alleviate some of those issues I think people have.

I don’t think these two different journeys are necessarily exclusive to the genders, but the hero and heroine’s journeys represent more masculine/feminine, in the Jungian sense, explorations of the self. They just generally fall into the categories of male and female protagonists.

Who?!

joefavs said:

This. When your relationship with Star Wars consists largely of railing against Star Wars, you’re doing Star Wars wrong.

^^Agreed, joe!

Which is sort of my gripe with stuff like Star Wars Theory and his fan film. I love fan films, and Lucasfilm has been doing Fan Films awards for over a decade. It’s definitely supposed to be a thing of love for the franchise. But what ST Theory has done feels like it is coming from a place of hate for Lucasfilm. A big thing of his, and other YouTubers like Geeks and Gamers, is that they constantly criticize the new movies and Lucasfilm, and basically ST Theory makes this as a way of saying “The new movies suck, THE FANS can do it better.” And naturally a ton of comments are like, “This is SO MUCH BETTER than The Last Jedi.”

And of course people still criticize Lucasfilm and think it is crazy that he can’t make any money of a fan film. Of course he can’t, but now they are the villains when people have been making fan films just for the love of the franchise for decades with no complaints.

And like this video Darth Muffy shared with us. It has like 1 Million views. I guess critical clickbait gets the $$. But monetized criticism has, in my opinion, generated negativity in entertainment in general.

I don’t know. At least growing up I was oblivious to the prequel bashing. I was able to enjoy the movies outside that bubble for the most part. I hope kids nowadays aren’t having that problem, like being told they’re wrong for liking these new movies. But I feel like a sizable audience for these kind of videos are preteens/young adults, so they are growing up in a warzone of arguments. It sucks that a lot of my memories of these past few years with the new movies have been filled with negativity like this. Even going to see TFA and TLJ in theaters with friends, some of them just complained the whole time. They couldn’t even let anyone else enjoy it. I’m definitely just going to go see IX with my father, since we’re both happy with these new movies.

Sorry for the rant. Just get tired of this stuff man. I know this has little to do with the point of your post, Muffy. I think Rey could’ve been written a little better, but I just think the whole Mary Sue argument is a tool haters use to justify their disdain for these new movies.

Man, I really don’t like Thor Skywalker. All of his stuff is very clickbaity. He speaks with this same tone in all of his videos, as if each sentence is some deep point he is making. It’s really manipulative, and makes people feel like they agree with what he’s saying without even thinking about it. But I guess that describes most clickbaity Star Wars YouTubers.

EDIT: And personally it seems a lot of female fans like Rey, and it gets kind of tiring hearing the perspective of male fans (or the one or two female YouTubers who have a large male audience). That’s personally why I like the Reylo community a lot. At least they actually have fun watching these movies, and their conversations are generally positive.

Totally agree! What I love about fan edits is that we can create new ways to enjoy all of the movies. It definitely wouldn’t be as fun if we were forced into a box like that. But I think it is fair if some editors want to use the canon as a guideline for their projects, an equally as fair if another editor wants to make radical, fun changes to their projects, as well. Cool to see what people come up with.

No worries, I actually don’t read them either. I just like the idea that hypothetically someone could watch a fan edit and it still would work in the context of the rest of the canon, since I would imagine the Venn Diagram of people who watch Star Wars edits and people who consume other Star Wars material overlaps to some degree.

But obviously I don’t think all Star Wars edits should have to be bound by canon. That would be boring.

Although to be fair I think the only thing Padme’s survival really contradicts is in the comics, when Vader tracks down Padme’s mortician who reveals that he was told to make Padme look she was still pregnant when she died. And still, it isn’t a blatant contradiction.

DominicCobb said:

Well, first off, there’s more than two. Second, if you want to start inserting PT stuff elsewhere, you should start with the OT, where timeline-wise it’s more relevant.

This is true, which is why I like the battle droid in the sandcrawler in Ady’s edits. If you built off of this, it would make sense to see one or two Clone Wars-era ships in the Rebel fleet in ESB and ROTJ. I wouldn’t mind a little easter egg like that (did Ady mention putting the Ghost in the Battle of Endor?). I think something like the Republic cruiser from TPM would fit in with the Rebel fleet. Maybe even a Separatist cruiser.

Totally unrelated, but back when TFA came out I was a little surprised how normal Bala-Tik, leader of the Guavaian Death Gang, looked compared to his cyborg henchmen. Not a big deal, but I kinda thought it would be cool if Bala-Tik had one glowing red eye, as if he had an implant or something. But not an in-your-face, Cyborg, kind of effect. I was thinking something kind of subtle, like the “light splitting” effect used in Bladerunner for the Replicants, except that instead of the glow being a faint yellow, it could also be more of a faint red. And the intensity could change depending on his position, simulating how the effect works practically. So for example, when he walks up to the camera in his very last shot, as his face approaches the window, we could see the red (or yellow) eye effect become more noticeable, as if he was stepping in the right position for the light to bounce off his eye into the camera properly. Don’t know how difficult this kind of visual effect would be, though.

This is not really a big deal whatsoever, but something I wanted to share with y’all.

I like it when edits don’t necessarily contradict secondary/tertiary material like the books, tv shows, etc., and while the Starkiller Restructure is a big change, I don’t think it is a big contradiction to the rest of canon, beyond the TFA novelizations.

It looks like, though, that we will be seeing a hologram of the Hosnian destruction in the Resistance tv show down the road, and we will see Hux give his speech right before it.
https://youtu.be/m7Pls-vYWwM?t=57

Again, not a big deal. It’s a tv show aimed at younger audiences. Although you could hand-wave it and just say that the First Order just replayed Hux’s speech before showing the Hosnian destruction. That works for me. Though I’m sure other things will pop up that could contradict it.

I’m sure it is not a big deal to you, Hal, especially since you had Padme live at the end of ROTS! Just thought I would mention. I personally think the change is worth it, and any contradictions in other material can just be rationalized or ignored.

I think my very first post on this site was suggesting this exact idea. I do think it would be cool to see in an eventual OT edit, I think this idea is sort of beyond what Ady is wanting to do with Revisited. I think he is making some changes to the “canon” I guess you could say, like adding new pilots, changing the Tydirium’s shuttle class, and changing the way Boba Fett dies (although I kinda think this is a significant change), but I think the single Death Star idea might be too big of a change.

I also think he has said that he won’t be altering the opening crawl.

He also mentioned changing the way the Executor is destroyed, which is pretty significant too, but I think that change is generally accepted.

Maybe JJ went out of his way to ignore them in 7, but I would disagree in saying that Lucasfilm or RJ in general went out of their way to ignore them.

In my opinion, I think that TLJ especially continues thematic elements introduced in the Prequels, like the flaws of the Jedi Order and the issue of what balance in the Force actually means. Kylo Ren begging Rey to join him in bringing “a new order to the galaxy” seems to clearly parallel Anakin offering the same with Padmé in ROTS.

Sure, there aren’t many surface-level references, but the OT doesn’t really have many either. And yes, it would’ve been impossible for the OT to reference the prequels visually when they were made before them, but if the OT doesn’t even have many retroactive prequel references, then why should we expect any at all even farther along in time during the ST?

I do agree though that it would’ve been nice for the Creature Shop to have thrown us a bone with at least a few more classic or prequel aliens in the new movies. I guess the idea is that they want an excuse to create their own aliens, plus they wanted to really push the idea that the galaxy’s demographics are incomprehensibly more diverse than we’ve previously assumed. I don’t think it would’ve hurt to have seen a one or two recognizable aliens from the other movies beyond returning alien characters, though.

Despite the other things I’ve said too, I do think it would be cool if they did throw out some more prequel connections though. Like for IX, I wouldn’t be surprised if they returned to a prequel planet, like Mustafar, Naboo or Tatooine. With the rough state the Resistance is in, I wouldn’t mind seeing outdated Clone Wars-era ships, and I think it wouldn’t feel too shoe-horned giving the situation. And yeah, it would be cool to see more prequel (and OT) aliens joining the fight.

So if we don’t get that stuff in IX, I could see that kind of stuff being included in a fan edit for that film. I think not seeing any prequel ships so far isn’t a big deal I wouldn’t really expect it.

Maybe you could change Hosnian Prime into Coruscant, though. You could take an image of Coruscant and put it on top of Hosnian Prime in the wide shot as the laser approaches and starts blowing up other planets/moons in that system. I would suggest taking out the other satellites since we don’t see other planets/moons near Coruscant in the Prequels (do we?). You would just need to make sure you cut out the one time it is referred to as “the Hosnian system” by Poe, though.

If Starkiller is Ilum, technically it would be a prequel reference since it was in the Clone Wars. You could try to make it clearer by adding more crystals jutting from the ground or hanging out of rock ceilings or cliffs, or Jedi ruins half buried in snow in certain shots.

You could possibly add OT/PT aliens to Maz’s Castle, Canto Bight, the Resistance or as an X-Wing pilot, but I think doing so would be challenging and more trouble than it’s worth, because you would be talking about needing to do passable CG work or practical shooting to integrate into the film.

Gotcha! Lookin’ good though. Ridley, I know I have mentioned this before but I think it’d be cool for you to do a BTS video of you doing some fx work sometime.