RogueLeader

I know what you’re talking about, Snoke goes into more detail about Vader’s failure, and sets up Kylo’s motivation for wanting to kill his father. The narrator’s impression is pretty good! Too bad there isn’t a lot of Snoke footage to work with.

Speaking of unused Snoke lines, there seem to be a lot of them. I wonder how much of what was in the novel was actually filmed by Serkis. A particular thing I always enjoyed was in the first teaser, with Snoke saying, “There has been an awakening. Have you felt it? The darkside, and the light.”

I hated how the latter half of that line got cut, but one could reincorporate that by cutting Kylo saying a boring “Yes” in response, and have him answer that question by saying, “The dark side…” then Snoke responds, “and the light…” You could take the “dark side” line from “I’ll show you the dark side” and “and the light” from the original teaser. It just felt so mysterious, but also giving us a little more detail beyond there being an ambiguous awakening in the Force.

That would be a good way to summarize Snoke’s whole monologue and fit it into your concept, if you could cut it in a way that didn’t feel choppy.

EDIT: General Reposti!

Yeah, they’re both good to me. You guys should collab

I watched that video yesterday too! I really like his perspective. I’ll talk about the lineage stuff at the end.

I think simply referring to “First Order spies” in the crawl would be the simplest thing to do, and also be a nice parallel to the mention of “Rebel spies” in the crawl of the original Star Wars, too.

I don’t think that idea and the idea of him representing “hope” are two separate things. I don’t really think TLJ drops the training a new generation of Jedi angle either. Yes, Luke doesn’t want to train more Jedi, but Snoke nor Kylo know that, but can you really blame them for thinking that? That’s what we thought would happen before seeing the movie too.

Snoke: The seed of the Jedi Order lives.

This is clearly still on Snoke’s mind. He’s still afraid that that “seed” will grow. I can imagine that after Ben destroyed Luke’s temple and most of his students, instead of being happy, Snoke was probably mad at Ben for not finishing the job and killing Luke (that’s sort of the nature of abusive relationships, the victim always does something wrong in the eyes of the abuser). This probably haunts Snoke for the next six years, that Luke could return and have more Jedi with him, and this is also why Kylo Ren is so desperate to find Luke in TFA.

So when Snoke finds out that all of his worries have been for nothing, and that Luke wants the Jedi Order to die, he is euphoric. You can’t really blame him for being afraid of the Jedi’s return, especially after an untrained girl had just defeated his apprentice and went to go find Skywalker. But the truth turned out better than he could have imagined. And this new found excitement is probably what made him so blind to Kylo’s true intentions. Everything was going right, the New Republic is in disarray, the Resistance is in its death throws, Luke, the last Jedi and his greatest enemy, is just waiting to die, and the galaxy will be his in a matter of weeks. I definitely think his over-confidence was warranted, and the surprise of finding out Luke wanted to die likely is the reason Kylo was able to get away with his trick. I think the whole thing works really well.

I do think this whole idea would draw even more comparisons to Luke being a King Arthur figure, with the galaxy being Camelot, Anakin’s saber being Excalibur, and Kylo Ren being Mordred, who is sometime Arthur’s son and sometimes his nephew depending on the version.

Maybe a change that could help this idea would be to try have people to only refer to Leia as Princess, if possible. I think that would be challenging though.

Sort of like the first conversation between Poe and Lor San Tekka. Poe calls her general, but Tekka says something like, “General? To me, she’s royalty.” Poe then says something like, “Well she certainly is that.”
This could work in your idea’s favor, but the way this conversation goes makes it seem like most people don’t necessarily view Leia as royalty anymore beyond being a ceremonial thing. Maybe you could cut out Poe’s line? I don’t really see where other changes could be made to imply this idea besides the opening crawl, though, which could just make it feel disconnected to the rest of the film. Ironically, I think “Heir to the Empire” could work well as an alternative title for this film with that idea in mind. I just don’t know how feasible the idea is if you wanted it to be a major theme.

Very cool! I feel like realistically it would be really hard to rotoscope around the actors in a not super-obvious way. I wonder if you alternatively put those pyramid like structure in the background of the existing city. It does look really cool though.

Shopping Maul said:

The irony is that if Lucas had allowed the ‘noble death’ of Han Solo, he would’ve had the answer to the ‘why does Luke snap’ conundrum. Vader/Palpatine could have been offering to halt the battle if Luke were to agree to turn (an actual temptation as opposed to simply making Luke mad) before Luke suddenly senses Han’s death through the Force. Luke kicks Vader’s butt and no-one has to be anyone’s shoehorned sister!

I had never thought of that. That definitely could’ve worked, and that might be a good idea for a fan edit that tries to kill Han and not make Leia Luke’s sister.

I definitely agree that it is kind of obvious that making Leia Luke’s sister was a noticeable last minute decision. But to play devil’s advocate, I do think making that change was a good decision in the long run. Family is obviously a central theme in the Star Wars films, and making Luke almost turn to save his sister’s soul does make that theme even stronger. Plus, it parallels Anakin’s own fall in the prequels, giving in to the darkside to save family, to save someone he loved.

And I do think you can make a fair argument about how Vader knew Luke was his son but never knew Leia was his daughter even though they had a few face-to-face interactions. But we never are really told how Vader found out Luke was his son. In the Special Edition of ESB, the Emperor tells Vader that Luke is his son, and he apparently had know idea before that. So he didn’t just sense it and figure it out. He could tell he was strong in the Force, but that doesn’t mean that he could since that he was his son.

For what it is worth, the new canon comics apparently explain this by having Vader piece different information together: Seeing that the rebel who destroyed the Death Star wielded his own lightsaber, learning that his name was “Skywalker”, and tracking down the mortician who was responsible for Padme’s burial and discovering that he was told to make her look pregnant, meaning that she had successfully given birth before she died.

Now yeah, “we shouldn’t have to read books to know this about the movies”, I agree, but I really don’t think the movies imply that Vader just “sensed” their biological relationship. I had always just assumed Vader somehow put two-and-two together in-between ANH and ESB. While I don’t think every little detail needs to be explained in the movies, I do agree that maybe it could’ve been set up better though, since this is a frequently raised up question. I guess it was just the best they could do with coming up with that decision so late in the game, but I do think it was the best choice in the long run.

I also am glad they decided not to kill off Han in ROTJ, because I think dying at the hand of his own son is a much more interesting way for him to go than any kind of sacrificial death he could have had in ROTJ, especially after the entire first act of the film was all about rescuing him. But that is just my opinion!
On the other hand, it could possibly have worked if Han’s sacrifice had been set up as crucial to the success of the Rebel’s mission, then it may have helped add importance to that first act, if that makes sense. It’s interesting to speculate on, for sure!

Definitely not saying it is a bad idea. It is interesting, and I could even see Snoke legitimizing his claim by using Ben Solo. Sort of how Generals in the past used child emperor’s as vessels for their own influence, Snoke uses Ben in a similar way, possibly helping unite Imperial remnant factions together under this idea that he is grooming the heir to Darth Vader for eventual rule, even though I bet Snoke was planning to use Kylo Ren as long as possible.

And the new canon hints that Luke and Snoke knew each other in the past. I could even imagine a scenario where Snoke tried to persuade Luke to take his claim as heir to the Empire, with Snoke as his advisor, but Luke obviously refused. It makes me think of Joruus C’boath or the storyline from Dark Empire. When Luke refused, he went for his back up plan, the young Ben Solo.

But, I think the story can be told in a much simpler way. I get where you’re coming from about how could one feel sympathy for a government that already is a lost cause, but I think a government that is under the influence by the corrupt is still a government worth saving. I feel like FO sympathizers in the Senate were a vocal minority, but probably used dog-whistle politics to influence other well-meaning Centrist politicians to be on their side, without even realizing what was going on. I don’t think it was a 50/50 situation. In the Bloodline novel, it mentions that there were about 30 known senators who liked to collect old Imperial artifacts, which is probably a small fraction of the entire Centrist political party. I don’t think it is a stretch to assume the number of FO sympathizers would be a similar size, likely smaller, as well. And with a small number, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if those spies/sympathizers got a heads up before Hosnian Prime was destroyed. And with that number being relatively small, would it be much of a surprise if they didn’t care to warn them either?

Bottomline, it’s espionage, and I think the hint of that is very compelling to the imagination and what stories could be explored in that kind of setting. I also think it is a greater parallel to the current political climate in the US, which Lucas was all about, and were themes within the other trilogies as well. Nixon/Vietnam with the OT and Bush/War on Terror with the PT. So the New Republic’s situation was not like the PT, it wasn’t on the verge of total fascism, but the eyes of the enemy had made it vulnerable, and Leia had to do something about it. Plus, the New Republic has ruled with relative peace for 30 years, longer than the Empire, so I don’t think it was a total failure from the start.

I get what you’re saying about Luke, and I know this discussion has already been had hundreds of times before on the internet. This what RJ had to say about Luke’s motivations for going to the island, from the “Balance of the Force” featurette.

RJ: So the thing that would make sense to me is if he’s actually come to realize that the galaxy thinks it wants the Jedi back, but the Jedi have done nothing but add to the problems of the universe. And the most selfless act he can do is do what he couldn’t do in the Empire Strikes Back and ignore the calls of help from his friends and lock himself off. And suddenly it turns to this kind of burden that he has to hold. He would love to jump back in and help everybody, but he’s realized that if he brings the Jedi back into this, that the Sith are just gonna rise back up again and the whole thing is gonna start again and it’s just gonna be more misery. The Jedi have to die so the light can rise from a new source that will maybe work better.

So he believed that if he just trained Rey and killed Snoke and Kylo Ren, that eventually all of this would repeat itself and another Jedi would fall and the wars would start all over again (basically what happens in the old EU). The idea of history repeating itself, and Luke wanting to break the cycle and wanting it to start all over is a lot more central to the themes of the saga, in my opinion. And it’s also more character driven, since it is tied to Luke’s own guilt. He made a mistake and no longer believes in himself. He realized he couldn’t kill his own nephew, and even now he still can’t bring himself to do it. He’s lost that optimism, but he gets it back in the end when he realizes that the next generation needs to learn from the mistakes of the past, not just start from scratch, and he has to have faith the next generation will grow beyond their past failures. I just think these ideas are more relatable and compelling than struggling with the idea of succession, specifically.

I also don’t think the First Order cares about Luke or sees him as a major threat, but specifically their leaders, Snoke and Kylo Ren. I think they’re both afraid of Luke. Not only because Luke is so powerful, and he probably is the only one powerful enough to destroy both Kylo Ren and Snoke if he had the chance, but more importantly he could still bring the Jedi Order back. As long as he was alive, he was a threat. I think the main reason Snoke even cared about Starkiller Base was because he thought he could use it to destroy Luke once and for all from across the galaxy. Hux practically had to persuade Snoke to use it on the Republic capital, which you would think would be their obvious first target. But in Snoke’s eyes, it wasn’t. In TLJ, Snoke even says that they were just going to obliterate his island from orbit. This guy was afraid of even being close to Luke.

And it is not really the New Republic government that cares about Luke, it is Leia that believes Luke is important, because she knows the common citizen believes in the legend of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi, and that he can be a symbol of hope the galaxy rallies behind to face this rising tyranny. Luke was the Jedi responsible for defeating the Sith Lords that destroyed the Jedi Order in the first place, so to many, they probably think he is the greatest Jedi ever.

Some quotes to back this train of thought up.

TFA
Smoke: The droid will soon be delivered to the Resistance, leading them to the last Jedi. If Skywalker returns… the new Jedi will rise.

TLJ
Snoke: Skywalker lives! The seed of the Jedi Order lives. As long as it does, hope lives in the galaxy.

Leia: The galaxy has lost all its hope. [moments later, Luke enters and the radio chatter begins.]

It basically boils down to Luke, and by extension the Jedi, being the hope the galaxy needs to fight evil. This is a core theme of Star Wars— hope.

Despite all of that, I do sort of think the royalty idea is sort of there already. The Republic feared Leia after finding out her father was Darth Vader, basically making her the heir to his legacy. Clearly both Luke and Leia would deny that, but that does make Ben Solo a potential heir in the eyes of Imperial fanatics. It would definitely help explain why the First Order would accept Ben Solo as their leader, despite his age and limited past affiliation with the First Order. But I don’t think Hux cares too much about the old ways. It kind of makes me wish Ben would go by “Emperor” in IX, but that’s unlikely.

JEDIT: Please don’t think I’m trying to trample on your ideas. I always enjoy reading your ideas and I love the way you think outside the box. I guess I just like to play devil’s advocate for you sometimes!

This is an interesting idea, but I already think Luke has a more compelling reason for being in exile. This concept, which would be hard to explain beyond the opening crawl, makes things overly complicated, in my opinion. I also think most people would scratch their heads at the idea of Luke being the heir to the Empire, since that isn’t really established as being an important thing, the “throne”, I mean.

Personally, I think the reason Luke is in exile in the films works, and doesn’t need to be explained in the opening crawl. Han tells them why he left in the Falcon scene, and not knowing the details from the start helps keep it mysterious.
And I know I keep saying this, but really the simplest way, in my opinion, to explain Leia and the Resistance thing is just to say that First Order spies or sympathizers have infiltrated the New Republic. Because of that, Leia had to form her own militia separate from the Republic, since the sympathizers made the FO not seem like a threat, and to keep spies from knowing what she was trying to do. I mean, it makes since and it is canon, so I think briefly explaining that in the crawl is the least complicated thing to do.

Poppa! You’ve done a great job removing the other skimmer. Good job there.

Gareth, I like your idea of having Rose get shot down as they’re retreating too. I hadn’t really considered that, but it does give you more to work with. The way you currently have it cut, as an alternative, I wonder if you could cut it where we see the AT-AT shoot, Rose looks back, and we see her get shot down? It just seems like there is a lot of time inbetween seeing the AT-AT and her shouting no.

On the other hand, you could argue she needs to say no so Finn knows that she got shot down. I agree with Poppa, that the laser blasts need to be red. The laser flare is a good idea too, but I would make it much shorter, like just a few frames, because this is a fast moving laser bolt, so we see just enough to know what is happening. If you go through action scenes frame by frame, you’ll usually notice that laser muzzle flares are usually only one or two frames, and lasers zip by in a few frames as well. It’s fast, but our eyes still catch it, and moves more realistically. You’re doing good though!

I like those two options Poppa. I agree that the best way for it to work is to just see Finn get out of the skimmer and say Rose and nothing else until he pulls her back in (Not even seeing him get out of his skimmer could add to the hopelessness too, possibly?).
But yeah, since a lot of the “skimmer destruction” shots all look pretty violent, it will help that we wouldn’t see Rose even conscious after that. It’ll make her being injured seem a lot more severe I think.

It would also be good if one could crop a shot to see the cannon laser being fired. Unfortunately you can’t get a good impact shot, but I wonder if one could use a shot of the inside of Kylo’s shuffle maybe, and we hear the muffled explosion and see the light get brighter for a few seconds. Could work well with a close up of Kylo maybe, one could even add a little light flare in his eyes? Not sure, but then we just cut to the shot of the aftermath that is also inside the shuttle. Just spitballing though.

Anyway, it’s cool seeing all the ideas building off one another. Darthrush, poppasketti, gareth. Hopefully we can get the Rose thing to work, but I think it’ll turn out well either way.

This was a great idea Snooker, and it makes for a very beautiful shot. I haven’t watched it in awhile, but is this the establishing shot for the scene where Gunray tells hologram Sidious that they have control of the planet?

That’s really cool snooker! Is that shot only two seconds? That plus hearing some distant sounds of fire and explosions would really round it out well. You should definitely perfect and share this shot if you’d be willing!

If I could suggest one thing, you could possibly slow the slow down the pillars of smoke coming from the fires a little? Since they’re both at a pretty good distant, I think these large pillars of smoke would move a little slower, if you can do that.

Very very cool. Now if only we could see civilians running in the streets or something at the beginning of the film.

I’d personally be pretty hesitant about cutting out a lot of Leia’s scenes, but I appreciate that you pulled the idea from a project such as LOTR. It makes sense, and like I say about a lot of these ideas, you kind of have to see it to see how effective it would be.

I also had some thoughts on this question that I wanted to share, “Why doesn’t the FO kill the rebels more efficiently?” I think there are two ideas for this, and it could be a combination of both.

Either A, your recent idea, that Snoke wants Kylo to kill Leia himself. I think this could work very well if it is possible to clarify. It’s character motivated, which is a plus. I have already mentioned the things that would need to be addressed, but I think it would be good to actually write out what needs to be done to clarify this idea in the film and how to do that.

and/or B, put more emphasis on Hux’s incompetency. Honestly, I think this is the reason why the FO is incompetent in the film, as-is. The dynamic created between Hux and Cannady, even Peavy to an extent, shows that Hux is not an experienced leader. When Peavy is telling Hux about the range issue, maybe we could hear Peavy say something like, “We could…” before Hux cuts him off, deciding to just bide their time. It helps show the FO could kill them, but Hux is preventing that from happening because of his own arrogance. This also would be a character motivated decision, since Hux kind of has his own leadership journey like Poe does. Although if you take away some of Poe’s scenes, would that character arc be cut as well?

Another idea could be to use console shots within the Star Destroyer to imply their means of tracking ships through hyperspace. Maybe they require a certain amount of time to be close to a ship to be able to scan its computers and know it’s next destination. Or learn a ships “signature” per se, so they can track it’s whereabouts, like tracing a phone call for example. Maybe during the opening battle, we can keep cutting back and forth until this timer is complete. It would help make clear that if Poe hadn’t engaged the dreadnought, they wouldn’t have been able to follow them in the first place. In a way, it would mirror Poe’s booster engine charging as well. The movie never explains how they were able to track them, so this could be one possible method. That is the “string” Hux is talking about.

It does bring into question, though, if Finn is aware of the hyperspace tracking technology, why does he say that it is impossible when Leia realizes they have tracked them? He clearly knows where the tracker is on the Supremacy. Maybe he didn’t realize they just got out of a battle, so in his mind there is no way they would be able to know where they are.

How would you establish Snoke wants him to kill Leia personally? You’d run into the issue of why his wingmen fired on the bridge if he was meant to do it, and also if that they can sense that Leia isn’t dead or not, because they probably would assume she was otherwise.

EDIT: Also, that if Snoke wants him to kill Leia personally, then later is content with all of the rebels, including Leia, die like sitting ducks in the transports. Maybe that killing Rey would suffice? But you’d still need to make that clear, and explain why his wingmen destroyed the bridge if that was Kylo’s task.

Have any ideas?

I don’t think that is irrelevant! This could be a good place to discuss the animation side of things and how it could apply to a show like Rebels.

To address Resistance, yeah, like Snooker said, it apparently is going to be 3D that mimics the style of traditional animation. I’m very skeptical but no harm in trying new things either. And yeah, the Clone Wars Microseries was great. I think obviously the animation side of the franchise is not going to appeal to everyone, but I also think there is a lot to like as well. And I think a lot of younger fans really love it, so even if it’s not what we wanted, there are others fans who really love it.

I do think that Rebels is far from perfect though. While I haven’t really thought of doing it myself anytime soon, I do think someone could possibly do a series of edits for the series. I’m not sure if you could make it a series of tv-to-movie edits like smudger is doing for Clone Wars, you could treat it like a miniseries or just shorter seasons, combining three episodes into one episode maybe.

For me, I wouldn’t want to cut out all of the goofy stuff, but there is a lot that could be cut out.
I also think it would be worth trying to change things, like [SPOILERS] kill of Sabine’s mom and brother with some rotoscope magic or something. And while there are a few filler episodes, a lot of the filler often ends up playing a role later down the road, like the use of the Purgills in the final episode.

It would be interesting to go through and see what could be cut for starters, and see what narrative changes you would like to make, if those changes are actually feasible.

Maybe just try it a little bit bigger. Slightly increase his size and maybe increase the focus rack a little and see how it looks. That’ll either be enough, or you’ll need to tone it down to a happy medium and then it will be set, hopefully.

Thanks oojason!

That’s a good question. Someone more skilled than me would need to have a go at it, though. Because of the music, I think it makes it difficult to cut any bit of the sequence without it being noticeable.

Alright, so I decided to try and tackle the “Space Leia” scene.

Now, I know a lot of people do not like this moment and that is totally fine. Some editors have done pretty seamless jobs of removing it for those who want it out. I personally like the moment and want it to stay, so this is my attempt to try and slightly improve the scene with two VERY small changes.

Some of you have probably seen me rattle this off a number of times while discussing this scene, but I think there are three major reasons why this scene throws people off. I think in theory, most people wouldn’t have had a problem with this moment, but I think there may have been some minor issues with the execution that made it feel drastically off to a lot of people.

First, I think the initial wide shot of Leia “flying” towards the ship looks, off. I don’t know if I can really explain it, but I have heard others describe it as cartoony or too CGI. I can’t really do much about the way it looks, but I think there is another issue that might be either contributing to, or even the reason for this feeling.

Which is my second point, the sound. This will probably seem super minor, but I think a part of what throws people off is the sound design during this moment. We don’t realize it but sound can have a pretty big effect on us. If you go back and watch the initial shot of her flying, you’ll notice that when Leia/the camera passes by debris, you hear slight “whooshing” sounds as it happens.

While it is not as prominent, the sound effect is in the same vein as the famous “Superman flyby” sound effect, or the whooshing effect. I could be wrong, but I think this contributes to the cartoony vibe some might get from this scene. Interestingly enough, one of the first terms used to refer to this scene after the film’s release was “Super Leia”. I think her almost “Superman” pose probably added to that term as well. I think, on some level, the sound makes the moment feel silly for many when it should be an extremely powerful one.

So, with this in mind, I removed the sound effects from that shot, leaving only John Williams’ score to carry the moment. It may not be super noticeable, but I think it could affect the way someone reacts to this scene.

Finally, I think it would have helped if there was a little more context as to what exactly Leia was doing here. It seemed like a lot of people thought she was using the Force to literally fly back toward the ship, when in reality she is using the Force to pull herself back to it. It actually isn’t too different from Luke’s first physical use of the Force, pulling the lightsaber out of the snow. I think if this was made clearer it also could have helped the scene.

Although there isn’t a lot to work with, I added the sound of metal creaks and stress groans to the shot where she finally makes it back to the door, to help imply that she is pulling on it with the Force, and those sounds stop once she touches it.

While it is not perfect and people who don’t like the scene still won’t like it probably, I like to think if these changes had been there when the film was released, less people would’ve been thrown off by it initially. Any notes would be greatly appreciated.

https://vimeo.com/282817952
Password: fanedit

Really? I don’t hate it, just sounds off to me. I guess it might grow on me overtime.

Just for fun, I wanted to see what it would look like.
https://vimeo.com/282795822
Password: fanedit

EDIT: I should probably put this in the Sequel Redux thread… haha.

Yeah man, I think this works really well!

True, true! It totally has that, and has the “good/bad blue/red” vibe going for it as well.

I actually had an idea like this but flipping it around by making Phasma’s blaster shoot green lasers and give it the same sound as Padmé’s TPM blaster. Such a cool sound and you never hear it again. Phasma and the other First Order weapons have such a dull “pew pew” sound in my opinion. And since Phasma’s armor is made from the chrome hull of one of Palpatine’s Nubian ships, I thought it’d make some since that she might use a Nubian blaster too.

Cool. I kinda liked the green lasers though. Why did you change them?

Man, that looks pretty good! Some touching up and resizing could help as others suggested, but I think this proves it can definitely work.

And jarbear, I went back watched that deleted scene a few times and I’m still not really seeing what you mean by rough effects. There isn’t a lot in the background, just a dark wall and a console, but I’m not seeing what makes it look rough. Sorry, it must be going over my head.

Yeah, that is an issue and would’ve been hard to get away with on the big screen. Like I’ve suggested, maybe getting a 4K version of that shot and cropping it so one of the skimmers fly off screen early on would make it so brief that it would be hard to notice that it wasn’t just the other half of Finn’s ship.

Yeah, maybe the at least the idea of her crashing could work if a better reaction from Finn could be found somehow. And you could still cut him getting to her, and the next time we see them he’s dragging her back into the base. This would at least preserve her being injured for the last ten minutes of the film.