Cool, I look forward to the Maz scene. And yeah, I’m also more on the side of “trim” rather than “cut”, if that makes sense.
Looks pretty seamless my man. Are you going to have her be bubbly, then realize what he is doing, or does she already realize what he is doing in this version?
I’m sure someone has mentioned this already, but I saw some people online talking about a continuity error in the Rey/Kylo Ren vs Preatorian guard battle. At 1:47:14, the beginning of the shot where the dagger guard gets Rey in a locked position, the guard has both daggers still, but suddenly, within the same shot, the the left dagger disappears as soon as it passes from view behind Rey’s back. It’s just gone.
You can see it at 2:27 in this clip. https://youtu.be/7rowkMpohoY?t=143
My assumption is that during the editing process, one of the editors pointed out how the guard could have just stabbed Rey in the back with the other dagger while he/she had her stuck. When they did the choreography and when they were shooting, they probably overlooked it because they had gone through it so many times and those kind of things just become less obvious after repetition. So they did the least amount of work, which was rotoscope it out as soon as it leaves direct view.
I can sympathize with the editors and the vfx people, but now that I’ve seen it I can’t unsee it. I’m just really surprised they didn’t even at least remove it from the whole shot. I mean, there’s no way to explain it disappearing within the film. If they had taken it out of the whole shot, you could at least say that maybe Rey had cut through one of the daggers or something in between shots.
I’m just curious if anyone felt this would be a worthy fix, to rotoscope it out of the first half of the shot. It lasts about a second, so 23ish frames? In the previous shot with Rey and the dagger guard, you see them fighting in the distance behind Kylo Ren, and it would be cool if one could even make it look like Rey cut through one of them (maybe a flash and see it falling, for example) at that moment. In that shot she strikes both the left-hand dagger and the right-hand dagger, and if you had her cut through the left dagger, it also would be about 23 frames or less of work.
I do feel those are solid points, but I think there is still some disconnect. I think those are logical reasons why they could trust R2 and not wipe his memory, it is all only assumption, really. We have to assume this stuff rather than the story telling or showing us that. So to me, I feel like R2 should either be in on it or he isn’t.
Let me suggest four options, in this case:
Option #1) Have R2’s memory also be wiped in the end of ROTS. He can’t say anything because he doesn’t remember anything.
Option #2) Have R2 be in the room with Obi-Wan, Yoda and Bail when they discuss their plans for Luke and Leia. He doesn’t say anything because he is aware of the plan and knows not to say anything.
Option #3) Remove R2 from Padme’s birth scene. In this case he at least would not know Leia and Luke are brother and sister. He doesn’t even initially know Padme had children. He probably doesn’t know Anakin is Vader so this is arguably the biggest secret R2 keeps.
Option #4) Leave it as is. Maybe he either thinks there is nothing worth saying or he thinks it’s not his place to say anything.
I don’t want to change things just to change things, but if we can make changes that help create a more consistent, self-contained story, then I would like to do that. Another way I like to see is that I would like to make it where you can watch all nine movies and not be left with too many questions, like who was Sifo-Dyas, why didn’t R2 ever mention what he knew, how does Leia remember her mother, etc.
If anyone is in favor of a certain option I would love to hear it!
Regarding Obi-Wan, another line I forgot to mention was, “He [Owen] didn’t agree with your father’s ideals, thought he should have stayed and not gotten involved.” I don’t really think this is a big deal, it is either a part of Obi-Wan’s lie or he could be again quoting Owen’s own assumptions based on the brief time he knew Anakin.
Two more things, another edit I would be interested to see people’s takes on is Luke & Leia’s conversation about their mother(s) in ROTJ. I know some editor’s on here have already tackled it, other’s haven’t, but I think it would be cool to see people’s interpretations on how it should be altered. If Padme dies in 3, I think most people agree that something should be done with that scene.
Finally, I’ve created a small wav file of JEJ saying “your mother”. I attempted to alter the audio to sound like Vader, but I wasn’t sold on it. I’m also worried about him saying it too quickly, but may it could be slowed down? If someone would like to have a go at it, feel free to.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XsiK4YZI8ae5oUK52R7L8wBxp7ecDQQX
That could work too! Are you going to try this with your edit, darth?
Interesting idea Snooker! Would be interesting to see a test of this even if you just put text where the line should be.
Excellent idea ! Someone was working on an edit that implements Dooku in TPM, observing Qui-Gon funerals from a distant spot and looking angry about the situation. If you add him during the previous Jedi Council scenes (with the possibility to get a close up on him and a montage to make Qui-Gon and him nodding at each other, somehow) it would just be perfect. Had the PT got a “master plan”, Lucas would have thought about it himself 😉
I think it was Sheepish, right? I know he made a version where Dooku was at his funeral (from a distance) and walked away. I just really don’t care for Yaddle, so even if we just saw Dooku and no focus was put on him (save for maybe a close up) I wouldn’t mind. Maybe a good moment for a close up would be when Qui-Gon says that they encounter a Sith Lord, or after Windu says something about finding the indenting of their attacker. I kind of think it would be nice if he could have one line, since it would just be weird to cut to a close up of a random Jedi, but I think an inquisitive or surprised look from him after Qui-Gon first mentions the Sith wouldn’t be too out of place. The only bad thing is you would have to add him to every Council scene, which could be a real pain.
The deception plot with Obi-Wan is fine with me, I think if we trim the odd bit or inconsistency, like not knowing R2 and the “point of view” bit then it should be okay. Manipulating Luke to kill his father is a bit extreme, but the stakes are high, and I think Yoda and Obi-Wan would’ve told Luke eventually, if he hadn’t run off in ep5 before his training was complete.
I agree that they would’ve told him the truth eventually. I like to think that the main reason they couldn’t tell Luke is because if he knew, he couldn’t “hide” that knowledge in his mind, and Vader or the Emperor would immediately sense it if they ever encountered him. ROTJ proves that with Leia. Luke is a Jedi, and he still couldn’t hide the truth from Vader that he had a twin sister.
I personally think both R2 and 3PO should be given memory wipes at the end of ROTS. To me, it just raises a lot of questions, and changing it solves a lot of them since we don’t have to ask, “Well why didn’t R2 tell Luke this or that?” Though you could argue R2 doesn’t know Anakin is Vader, he probably doesn’t, and he might have initially thought Luke was Owen and Beru’s kid. ROTS doesn’t really tell us if R2 knew where they were taking Padme’s other child.
Actually now that I think of it, R2 was there when she gave birth to the twins, and she named them. So R2 would have known their names, so he should have known who Luke was as soon as he met him. I mean, they had C3PO’s memory wiped because of what he knew, so why wouldn’t they do the same to R2?
Logically, I don’t know why Bail really wouldn’t wipe both their memories just to be safe. Did he just trust R2 with that information, he’s not as talkative as 3PO? Anyone could just take him apart and download his memories.
And even R2 didn’t know Anakin was Vader, wouldn’t R2 know that Obi-Wan didn’t have another pupil besides Anakin? And he knew who Yoda was, so why didn’t he just tell Luke THAT was Yoda?
See? It just raises a lot of questions. Sure, you could explain it off and say R2 just felt it wasn’t his place as a droid to reveal this information to Luke, but R2’s actions make a lot more sense if you assume R2 doesn’t know anything, and it would also explain why Obi-Wan wouldn’t say anything to R2 or 3PO, because what’s the point? They don’t remember him.
I think the big reason they didn’t have R2’s memories wiped because there’s this idea that all of these movies are stories that R2 has told to a Keeper of the Journal of the Whills, so R2 has to remember everything. But there are ways to restore deleted information on a computer, right? They could’ve just explained R2 getting his memories back somehow after the end of the OT or something. I would’ve been okay with that. I know I’m overthinking this, and this stuff really doesn’t bother me. I’m just trying to logic my way through these kind of questions and determine how they should be handled. Yeah, the new canon can hand wave these things, but the point of the edits we make is to try and make edits to the saga that improve continuity, and these kind of issues just make the continuity more convoluted.
I also think people would rather keep changes to the OT, or at least Star Wars and Empire, to a minimum. So I think we can help lessen those changes by focusing on fixing these continuity issues by making changes to the prequels and Return of the Jedi.
Looking forward to seeing your take on those scenes Imhotep!
Jarbear, I like your thought on the “before you were born” line. That’s a good point. I think I agree with you. Though it would be interesting to see how an edit of that line would look just to have it as a resource, if it is seamless.
Personally still on the fence about the “owning a droid” bit, while true (you could just never have him refer to R4 by name to help that), if he knew that was R2, he would know that he didn’t own him. The way he says it now is like, “Did I own this droid? Twenty years was so long ago.” He could acting coy, but what’s the point?
Maybe he is worried if he just denied owning a droid, Luke would just take him back to the homestead. It’s like he’s saying “I don’t think I owned this droid, but let’s go back to my house and double check just in case.”
I think that makes sense. Would also like to see an edit of this line though just to see if it is seamless and to have it just in case.
I do think at least having “I wanted you to have this” could still work. It really is the main one that I feel is a flat out lie, even if his father hypothetically would have wanted him to have it (he doesn’t “would have wanted” either, just wanted, like Anakin at some point said as much). Even the Vader lie could be true, metaphorically I guess. Certain point of view. And Obi-Wan saying, “I wanted you to have this-“ hints at Obi-Wan’s motivation as well. I think it is worth discussing still.
It’ll be interesting to tackle the ROTJ Dagobah sequence with this angle. I like your thoughts on this Imhotep!
Thanks for sharing all of your thoughts Imhotep and Jarbear. I think even if we go back and forth on ideas, it helps us be more sure of why we do or don’t make a change. The discussion is important, and fun!
I would really love any more opinions on Obi-Wan, R2 and these lines as well if anyone has any!
A little off topic, but I also found some audio of James Earl Jones saying “your” and “mother” in the Bible audio books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSGFmVsI6Uk&index=5&list=PL0l0DjlwvRA4Kg2ipRKwfCZY4c7JF3G-a
Instances of “mother”
18:32
18:51
22:08
22:10
22:16
22:22
I think the latter lines around 22 minutes might be better because it is a repitition of the whole “honor your father and mother” bit, so the ‘mother’ might fit better with the ‘your’. The only thing I’m worried about is his tone and pace might not fit with the rest of the line.
I don’t think one would need to recreate ambience and music for the scene, either. Vader has a long pause before he says “Obi-Wan once thought as you do.” So you could just cut ‘Obi-Wan’ and insert ‘your mother’ a little earlier during that pause. If anyone would like to have a go at making JEJ’s voice sound like Vader, and/or inserting it into that scene, I’d love to see it!
I have seen some pretty interesting variants on the Finn’s suicide run sequence, and darthrush’s recent work (which I really like) got me thinking of some other alternatives. I might eventually try one of these but it might be useful to someone on here as well.
My motivation for the alternatives is that I kind of feel that we need to see Rose get injured and carried back to the base, because it might be noticeable to not to see her at all in the last ten~ minutes of the film. So these options retain that.
In darthrush’s version, he has Finn getting shot by an AT-M6 right before he makes it there. It looks very good! This first idea is an addition to that idea. Before we see Finn make his run, one could possibly construct a moment where Rose also gets shot down by an AT-M6. Several other ships get shot down before Poe orders them to retreat, so you could use one of those shots, and a reaction shot of Rose to help sell it.
After Finn gets shot down, he runs back to go find her (and see if she’s dead). He finds her, and this is optional I guess, but I think you could keep the kiss in this moment. They failed their mission, all hope seems loss, and Rose probably thinks they’ll die, so I can understand why she would feel compelled to have one last kiss. And I think it would flow well into the “all hope is lost” speech Leia gives less than a minute later. The only other thing I think would help sell this idea would be to add some kind of reaction from Poe or Finn to Rose getting shot down.
Another option would still retain Rose being the one to knock Finn out of the way. I definitely think shortening his approach to help alleviate the expectation of his death would help, and I know people have or will be attempting this. To help improve Rose’s motivation, though, I think it would be interesting to move the moment she looks at her necklace and touches it to right before she goes back to stop Finn in order to set that up.
This could give the impression that Rose feels if she could save Finn, then in a way, it would be like she was saving her sister. Saving what she loves. It would be nice if you could have the cannon fire almost as soon as they get knocked out of the way, too, to show that he really would’ve failed, but I’m not sure how possible that is. Personally, I think you could cut all of her lines and just have her be unconscious in this version. Or just keep the “saving what you love” line, and maybe the kiss. If you really wanted to keep those things.
This idea could be used for either as well, but I also think adding some kind of red, dusty particle effect to a lot of those shots could help imply that maybe they were able to make it back the base because they were almost concealed by the red dust in the air.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
You probably already know this, but I’ve found that if you keyframe and shape the mask at the beginning and end of the shot, and then one in the middle, and one in between each of those three points, and so on and so forth, the program automatically gets pretty close to where it needs to be. Then it becomes a matter of going through frame by frame and adjusting it. When I first started rotoscoping I just went frame by frame which was really time consuming, and when I learned this I realized how much time I wasted. Sorry if I’m being redundant but this might be useful to you or someone else on here.
Okay, so I’m about to take a bit of a dive regarding Obi-Wan and the questions of continuity that surround him in A New Hope. I’m going to start by breaking down his lines in question, discuss them and what can be done.
“Come here, my little friend.”
Could be changed to ‘old’ friend, but you would have to replicate the ambience, find an appropriate sounding ‘old’ and fix the music as well. And change his mouth movements. I’m not really capable of such a change myself at the moment.
“I haven’t gone by the name Obi-Wan since, oh, before you were born.”
Nitpicky, but the ‘oh’ sort of implies he hadn’t gone by that name for a period of time before Luke was born, rather than just hours before he was born. Two alternatives to this:
“I haven’t gone by the name Obi-Wan since before you were born.”
or
“I haven’t gone by the name Oi-Wan since you were born.”
The shot cuts to the next one on the word ‘since’, so it might be a relatively easy change if were deemed worthy.
“I never seem to remember owning a droid.”
You could argue Obi-Wan never owned R4, maybe it was Republic property technically or something. But, the line makes it seem like he really doesn’t know R2, because he would know that wasn’t his droid. So, you could just cut the line, and Obi-Wan’s next line would be “Very interesting…” which is much more ambiguous to how much he knows.
“He [Owen] feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade, like your father did.”
From the prequels we know this isn’t the case. But, since Owen didn’t know Anakin when he was taken by the Jedi, and Obi-Wan is a Jedi, Obi-Wan could just be repeating what Owen has said to Obi-Wan in the past and how he sees the situation. Owen and Obi-Wan clearly don’t have a good relationship, he might resent or blame Obi-Wan for taking his mother-in-law’s son away from her, for the fate of Anakin and for Luke being an orphan. And he certainly wouldn’t want Luke to become a Jedi.
And, the first time Owen hears the name ‘Obi-Wan’ is when 3PO tells Anakin and Padme that they have a message from him in AOTC. Anakin and Padme check the message, they leave, and shortly after the Clone Wars begin. I could just picture a situation where after Shmi’s death, Owen could’ve told Anakin that he wasn’t alone, that they were his family now and he was welcome to be a part of it. Instead, he followed Obi-Wan’s message and went on some damn fool idealistic crusade.
So, I think this still can work. But, just to present an alternative, you could possibly cut “like your father did”, just to take away any possible confusion. It might be a difficult cut though because of how quickly he says it.
“Now, let’s see if we can figure out what you are, my little friend, and where you come from.”
We haven’t really mentioned this line but this shows that he obviously doesn’t recognize R2, or he is pretending to not know in front of Luke. But why? You could argue that during Lei’a hologram, he realizes it is R2 when he gives him that look, but Luke says “3PO” when he completely forgot to check on him in the Judland Wastes and that didn’t phase Obi-Wan. Maybe you could argue he doesn’t really know 3PO well.
Honestly from this line alone, which would be hard to cut/alter because of its position, I would find it necessary to go with the forgetful or lying Obi-Wan angle. So, we could try to cut as much interaction between R2 and Obi-Wan in the prequels as Hal tries to do in his edits (can’t really take Clone Wars into account).
If you were to keep all or most of Obi-Wan’s ‘white’ lies, it seems to clear to me that Obi-Wan was trying to blatantly manipulate Luke to fulfill his apparent destiny, since Rebels implies that Obi-Wan believes Luke is the chosen one. It makes sense why he would, Obi-Wan probably believes the fate of the galaxy rests in Luke’s hands, but it doesn’t change the fact that he was manipulating a boy. In some uncomfortable ways it parallels the Anakin/Sidious and Snoke/Ben relationships, but for the light. For the greater good, which also makes me see parallels with the relationship between Dumbledore and Harry Potter. Dumbledore knew Harry’s destiny, yet he still put him on that path in order to fulfill the prophecy and stop the threat of Voldemort. You can understand the motivation of the mentor (Obi-Wan/Dumbledore), but their actions are questionable at best, and makes it a little stranger that Leia would feel compelled to name her son after him. Then again, Harry did name his son after Dumbledore.
If we were to stick with this interpretation of his character, I definitely think we need to lean into that angle however we can. We should do things from ROTJ like cut “From a certain point of view.” or at least the “many truth we cling to depend on our own point of view” line. Obi-Wan lied to Luke, and he shouldn’t dance around it. I also feel like we shouldn’t see the Force ghosts at the end of the film, because Luke chose his own path, and he doesn’t need their ghosts to give him these looks of approval. When he goes to see Yoda, he should be a little angry, distant at least, but not apologetic like he is in the film. But that’s just my opinion. Going with this angle also would set up why has lost faith in the Jedi in the Last Jedi and wants it to end, and calls out Obi-Wan for training Darth Vader.
The thing is, you could keep this angle regardless, because no matter what he still has to lie about Darth Vader, but lying about all of the little details to make Luke feel like he should follow his father’s path and become a Jedi (in order to eventually kill his own father) seem a little extreme, and very manipulative.
If anyone has any ideas for that line, I’d like to hear them. A solution for it could probably allow us to retain option 1, written below. So, here are my thoughts of possible routes.
Try to have Obi-Wan remember R2, at least, and remove his white lies.
Limit Obi-Wan and the droids interactions in prequels whenever possible, stick with the forgetful Obi-Wan angle, but cut the white lies.
Make it clear that Obi-Wan is lying to Luke in order to push him into a path of destiny, and don’t let Luke brush it under the rug after he finds out.
But honestly, I don’t really know what the purpose of lying to Luke about not knowing the droids would be, so I think it either should be he barely interacted with them in the past, or he does remember them.
At the moment, I’m actually starting to be in favor of the manipulation angle and keeping a lot of his lies/misdirections. It would make sense for the story, but I think we would need to drive that home in ROTJ. Regardless, I would like to keep “I wanted you to have this” since I’ve already made it, and I think it would still work for the manipulative Obi-Wan angle as well.
But please share your thoughts on this, and how changes for your ideas could be implemented.
That’s very cool! I have had two ideas on Dooku within the films. I always felt it would be interesting to have him be on the Jedi Council (preferably replace him with Yaddle), even if he doesn’t say anything.
Another idea was to still have him be a Sith Lord, but have him still use a blue or green lightsaber. The idea being that by posing as a rogue Jedi, he is hurting the Jedi’s reputation, and Palpatine could even argue that the Jedi were the one’s who set up the war in order to take control of the Republic. But that’s basically what already happened because I don’t think the public recognized him as a Sith Lord. I don’t even know if the public knows who the Sith are, so lightsaber color would be kind of arbitrary, and it would also make it unwatchable with the Clone Wars unless you edited them as well.
And thanks for the feedback guys, I’m glad you like it.
I don’t know if you have done any already, but I think it would be cool for you to try this with something in a video clip, even if it just was one or two seconds.
I really enjoy your mockups paja. Out of curiosity, how much time does it usually take you to do one of these? Or, just one thing, like the droid, for example?
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1V1zv_Wvd6PpdX1OCk34zAqReXdH8uOVV
Second attempt.
BTW I posted a bunch of restored cues (with early edits of the footage) from ROTS if you want to go through that to see if there is anything you like (for example, maybe “Goodbye Old Friend”).
This is really cool fishmanlee! I appreciate the work you put in to collecting these.
The sound of Luke working on 3PO is there, just really faint I think. Maybe I can try to slightly shift the ambient track and increase the audio gain a little and see if it sounds any better. If anyone can find a decent creaking sound effect please share it, I think that might help sell it.
Yep, that’s the plan. I’ll probably upload useful FX shots I make separately so they can easily be inserted into other edits.
Seamless! Personally I don’t mind that Obi-Wan would lie about that, he’s hiding the truth about his father anyway. But if that’s too controversial then this edit would work well as a replacement.
Thanks Ridley! And I think this line and one or two others, in the context of the prequels, makes Obi-Wan ride a thin line between lying to protect Luke and lying to manipulate him. You could argue that he is just making a few little white lies to motivate Luke to become a Jedi and join the fight, but I feel like that this wasn’t intended to be the way it was interpreted, and I think it goes against Obi-Wan’s characterization. I don’t think Obi-Wan would make up stuff to persuade Luke. And one of the points of the project I think is to generate connectivity between the films, and this change removes an apparent contradiction. But I do agree with you that in reality it doesn’t bother me that much. It doesn’t make the original unwatchable obviously, haha.
The Obi-wan line replacement works better than I would’ve thought. That’s a change I’ve wanted to make for a long time, and it’s cool to see it work. In my mind, the original line is a lie too far with ROTS in line. All that needs done is filling SFX in that gap where the audio cuts out, and it’s probably perfect.
That gap you mention, in that spot I overlay some room ambience I got from a break in the conversation after Obi-Wan says “and he was a good friend”. I increased the audio gain slightly in hopes that it would match up pretty well. So there is ambient there, but maybe it isn’t perfect since we don’t hear a creeking ‘chest opening up sound’ or something like that.
I also think he idea of other rebels cells sort of lower the stakes. The battle suddenly isn’t all or nothing because we know there are more rebels out there.
I feel like it would be sort of convenient for the SSD to crash right into the the repair facility of all places. I like the idea of it burning up as it falls through the atmosphere though.
Sorry if this post feels to the point, I lost my initial write up for this post.
I really like this idea because while it removes the repetition of the Death Star-trope, it also provides a solid in-movie explanation for how the First Order got their resources and grew so much without the Republic noticing, and it’s a nice inversion of the Death Star as well (weapon of destruction, machine of creation). I still think it would be a challenge to pull off seamlessly, but it would be really effective if you could.
I hope you don’t mind, but I would like to suggest to you an alternative approach to this as well.
I think by having the Republic already be destroyed in the crawl, you’re back to Rebels vs Empire before the movie even really begins. And if the base ends up being a laser in the end, I also feel it sort of goes against the effort of setting it up as something else in the first place.
So I think Starkiller should either stay as just a superweapon, or…
Let it just be a star forge. Just not both.
You could retain the same basic structure as TFA: Restructured, so you can use as much of those assets as possible, but instead of a super laser destroying the Republic, the First Order fleet does.
So how can this realistically be set up?
I really like your idea of seeing the base spit out Star Destroyers. If you can make at least one shot like that, that alone would visibly demonstrate its function. You also could establish the fleet it has created by having dozens of Star Destroyers in orbit around Starkiller in any establishing shots of it.
Later in the film, after Hux gives his big speech, we see the fleet jump into hyperspace. This would also explain why Starkiller Base felt pretty light on security when Finn, Han and Black Squadron show up.
Then, around or when Han dies, you cut to the First Order fleet arriving at Hosnian Prime. You could retool some footage from TLJ, specifically with the Dreadnought, to show that one or multiple Dreadnoughts are bombarding the surface of the capital (or at least wherever the Senate is located on the planet).
And this way you could still use the shot of Kor Sella on the surface reacting, since both the Starkiller laser and the Dreadnought lasers are red.
It would require you to possibly rotoscope the First Order ships for use in different shots, or paint out the D’Qar asteroid field and replace D’Qar with Coruscant, maybe, since there really isn’t a good image of Hosnian Prime I don’t believe. But you could focus on the Dreadnought action rather than the main fleet destroying the Republic fleet to make it a little easier, maybe an initial wide shot or two comparing them could just imply they’re heavily outnumbered, and we can assume the worst.
This would also require a new sound mix for this montage and the set up shots for the star forge itself, maybe.
The one other thing that I was worried about was the moment Kylo kills Han. The sun disappears, so would that mean the base is now useless, making their attack now pointless? I don’t think so. In that initial scene with the base ejecting a new Star Destroyer, maybe you could also establish that the base doesn’t drain the sun constantly, but in cycles. Maybe during a cycle, so much light gets absorbed that it makes the sun appear like its gone. So after the new Star Destroyer gets spit out, you could reverse the shot of the sun beginning to drain and make it flicker/shimmer back to full brightness.
Then, sometime in the third act, the base could start draining the sun again, which will eventually make the sun appear to fade away during Kylo’s moment. And when the base blows up, you could either assume the primary sun is off camera, or, have it be in the distance while Starkiller collapses and you could have a nice little twin suns shot when it explodes.
The hardest part is making the First Order invasion work. But with the footage from TLJ, I think it is possible.
And if you can set up the function of the base visually, I don’t even think you need to mention it in the opening crawl, which is a good thing since you can avoid the danger of it being overloaded with information.
Earlier in the same thread, Anakin Starkiller helped give me an idea for yet another attempt at a section of the opening crawl, specifically the second paragraph:
“Convinced that First Order spies have infiltrated the New Republic, General Leia Organa forms a covert Resistance…”
Certain words could be swapped:
Convinced/Fearing/Believing
spies/sympathizers
infiltrated/influenced
This would give a little more context as why it needed to be a small resistance fighting the First Order rather than just the New Republic, and it would also make the New Republic seem less incompetent or ignorant, but rather, compromised. I just feel like this explains the political situation in a pretty concise way. I know we’ve tried to make this opening crawl work SO MANY TIMES. Rian Johnson said when he was doing TLJ, the first thing he worked on and the last thing he worked on was the opening crawl, and I completely understand why. It took him 2+ years to make that work!
I know this is pretty crazy, and I know a lot of people didn’t like Starkiller Base, but I think this might be one of the more possible routes to take without sacrificing too much of the narrative’s structure. So I would say either try something like this or just stick with Starkiller being a super laser.
Not sure how much help I’ll be in keeping my suggestions limited hahah D: so it’s good that others are on point to do that. RogueLeader, your reference of the Phantom Editor makes an excellent point. It’s super important to keep in mind what’s possible in editing, and to work within the films that we have for a project like this. I do think that certain ideas, like changing PT lightsaber colours, fall under the TFA Restructured principle of “improving the function of something within the story”. Improving narrative function goes a bit beyond resolving inconsistencies, but if it’s a simple and effective change then I’m fine with that.
Haha, don’t say that! I know how you feel though. I am just trying to channel that raw creative power into more tangible ideas. We all have different perspectives and opinions on these films, so all it takes is one suggestion to help spark an amazing idea! So I want everyone to share their ideas on here. And I think your point about how some changes that may seem radical to some still could fit within what this edit is trying to do. I’ll have to have a more in depth debate about lightsaber colors. I’ll be on your side of that debate too!
As Jar Jar has been brought up a bit, one way to add some nuance to the Gungans (without removing Jar Jar as I agree that this can’t be done, it would break the plot of both ep1 and ep2) could be to dub them with a fake alien language with subtitles when two Gunguns are talking to each other, like in the swamp scene or the final battle of ep1. This would imply that their poor use of English/Basic is because it’s a second language for them.
I like this idea! This is what I’m talking about. And it would make sense for them to have a native language since they’re apparently so isolated. This would at least give some in-universe reason why they talk like that. I would interested in what the logistics of something like this would be. I am still pretty amateur when it comes to sound mixing.
I agree with a lot of your ideas. With the purple saber thing, I think even one other purple saber in just one shot would at least establish that, while rare, it isn’t unique. Just a little change at least but worth further discussion. I also agree with having Anakin not appear as a force ghost. I think while he did redeem himself, he does needs some kind of atonement for all the bad he did, so immediately gaining immortality doesn’t seem right to me. And maybe he figured out how to become one with the force later like Qui-Gon did. So I wouldn’t necessarily mind the removal of the force ghosts at the end either, personally.
I’m going to save all of your ideas/suggestions. Thanks for sharing them.
Anakin Starkiller said:
I think a good rule of thumb is “Is it in Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga?”
Haha, I like this guideline!
The biggest continuity error between TFA and TLJ is the placement of Kylo’s scar. In TFA it’s across his nose, and in TLJ it’s in a totally different spot. It would take some serious FX work for a small error, but the scar is only present in a few shots in TFA. I’d be intersted in seeing how this is tackled.
Sir Ridley has mentioned that he was planning on making his scar look more like it does in TFA. So if he does, we will lovingly steal from him if he’s willing.
This conversation has been pretty interesting here and I’d love to dive into it, but I am going to change direction a little. I decided to go ahead and get started on an edit or two. The first one I’ve gone with is, “Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough”. It’s not perfect, but hopefully it’ll get the ball rolling.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1po2s1wzISp5bTV4K3UeN0znrlFQEmGe0
Something I need to figure out is what to do about sources. I’ve used DEED for this edit, which I think would keep it universal for others to use. But I still have some learning to do regarding lossless versions, proper sound mixing, etc. I know most people use MegaVideo to share footage, so I appreciate any input on the logistics of this.
I figured for now I can host a google drive folder where we can put our edits. The full edits won’t be shared in this thread though obviously, just the clips.
If anyone would like to try and tackle any other issues please feel free to share it. I think it’d be great to start with the simpler consistency issues first. Later I’ll share my own thoughts on the item list as well.
I think some of you guys would enjoy reading The Secret History of Star Wars by Kaminski. He gives a pretty unbiased, investigative look at the creation of both the original and prequel trilogies. I couldn’t stop reading it once I started.
I think one could interpret Rey’s journey to Ach-To as taking longer than it is presented in the film. While it seems like minutes, it could have been anywhere from 24 hours to a few days, even. So instead of the time jump being between films, it could be seen as in between the last scene of TFA and the rest of TFA. This is one reason why I like Neverar’s idea of a “travel montage” for Rey’s journey to Luke.
This question of time is another reason why I think it would be worth attempting to remove any mention of how many hours of fuel the Resistance has left.
Wow! This is nice Snooker, and I agree with you Paja. This would be an interesting technique to implement throughout those films if the digital zoom was pretty subtle like this is. But, I think digital zoom is used occasionally in the films so it wouldn’t really feel out of place.
They both sound very seamless to me, and I like the new target lock sound. Helps differentiate it from the TIE.
For the Finn Run, have you tried reinserting the rest of that track after he gets hit, or do you like how it just cuts off when he gets shot down? I am not saying I don’t, it kinda works! Just thought it would be interesting to compare it with that alternative.
Enter Mr. Plinkett, “Ohhhhh…”
I do agree with you Outbound, I think the Death Star II, Jar Jar, the Ewoks, Starkiler Base were bad ideas. I wish they wouldn’t have gone with them in the first place.
While I do think it is theoretically possible to make Starkiller Base just a base (I would like to see it done), or replace the Death Star II with something else, like a Super Star Destroyer (Snooker is doing it and I’m excited for the finished product), I think the farther we stray away from what we’re given in the films, the more subjective the changes become, which will make it harder to come to a consensus on those changes.
So for a lot of these issues I try to look at it this way. “How can we make it work better within the story?”
Instead of removing an element entirely, what can we add, trim, change, shift to help improve the positioning of those elements.
I like this quote from the Phantom Editor discussing Jar Jar:
“Removing [Jar Jar] entirely from the story just wouldn’t work and I’ll defend that, it wouldn’t. Would I have chosen to tell this story differently without him? Yeah, but that’s not the case. The case is, it’s George Lucas’ film, it’s his story… Being an editor, you want to take what’s there and try and make it the best [version] possible, and I guess that’s what I was trying to do.”
I think that’s what makes TFA: Restructured work. They could have made Starkiller Base not a giant laser, but instead of removing it completely they said, “Okay, there’s another Death Star. Removing it would be extremely difficult, so instead, could we improve its function within the story?” I think this is the approach that should be taken.