RogueLeader

So that whole new line is all the officer? I was kind of confused at first because the way 3PO raises his hand makes it seem like he got an idea or is trying to get someone’s attention. Did anyone interpret his movement that way? It seems like I’m the original deleted scene the movement means nothing, so I guess it’s okay.

As far as the actual line for the officer (bold is what should match his mouth movements):

“And General, if the advance team is… destroyed… nobody will be able to help us.”
OR
…nobody can get past that shield.”

I was kind of confused at first by what the purpose of this line was. But I kind of see it as the officer saying that whether or not we get help, none of it will matter if the advance team can lower the shield.

I also wanted to suggest a pacing for the first line based off the officer’s mouth movements:

“General, the Senate has just voted. They’re mobilizing the fleet. Launching within an hour.”

You could make that last sentence longer if there is more time, but I tried to truncate it just in case. It also kind of flows with the officer being in a rush to pass the info to Leia.

EDIT: Rewatching it, I’m kind of worried people will be confused why Leia is being pessimistic despite finally getting what she wanted. I think if the officer said “within an hour” rather than “within the hour”, it might help make it clearer that it’s gonna take too much time. Nitpicky, but I don’t know if the fleet launching in an hour or less justifies Leia being so confident in their doom. I mean, how much faster can they be, Leia? “Within an hour” makes it seem like it’s gonna take them a whole hour to launch.

Cool to see you back, Acbagel! Glad you took some time away from it all too. I think most editors here can totally understand that.

Have you made a thread on the non-Star Wars edit forums about your game of thrones edits? Would be curious to hear about that too!

Whoa, what? Up to what point were you doing VFX in premiere?

Thanks for the shoutout Spence even though you definitely deserve most of the credit for this Rey Nobody edit!

Kind of crazy to think how long this has been in the making.

Tying into the idea of clarifying the actual war that is going on in the ST, I thought of an idea that would require some effects but could clarify the First Order’s scale and strategy.

During the Starkiller Base establishing shot before Hux’s speech, it would be interesting to add in the First Order’s invasion fleet to its orbit (I’m picturing just a distant armada of Star Destroyers above the planet). After Hux completes his speech, we cut back to that establishing shot and see this fleet jump to hyperspace.

Later in the film after Hosnian Prime is destroyed, we could have a montage of establishing shots of notable planets where we see one or multiple Destroyers arriving at each world. You wouldn’t have to necessarily depict any battles, but this could visualize the idea that the First Order basically blitzkriegs major systems as it simultaneously destroys the Senate. If it disrupted the flow of TFA’s climax, this montage could potentially be included at the beginning of TLJ instead.

Have to agree with some others that I’m not as excited about the show as I thought I would be after seeing the trailers. The show has a great crew, so I’m sure it will be a solid production, but it seems to be going in a direction that I wasn’t expecting. I also am personally not really impressed with the look of the show so far.

I think Star Wars has always ridden this line between sci-fi pulp action and space opera mythology, and the newer streaming projects lean more towards the former. I’m sure I’ll still watch it and have fun with it as a fan, but I have a feeling I’ll be disappointed if I set my expectations too high.

I think that is a fair amount! If he was too messed up it would probably paint Leia in a worse light for not caring enough to fix him. I do like the imagery of R2’s disrepair symbolizing the disrepair in the relationships between our heroes at this point in the story.

Even if Holdo wasn’t name dropped, perhaps we could see a few ships manage to escape the Hosnian destruction by jumping to hyperspace at the last moment. I’m pretty sure someone did this in their edit. They added a Holdo close up but that wouldn’t be necessary.

And yeah, I think the idea tracks in your mock up, but I’ve seen it so much I may be biased. Though Rey wouldn’t necessarily have any idea the map might be in R2, so she would just be fixing R2 without realizing what is in him. So I can see that being an advantage of adding 3PO to that scene. Still think it would be worth a mock up even if you waited to mess with any effects.

I like that. In this case establishing a time frame for the fleet to arrive helps add to the stakes of the situation.

Nitpicks, but I would also try different wordings of the last sentence.

“They’ll launch within the hour.”
“They’re launching within the hour.”
“They expect to launch within the hour.”

Definitely try that! It’s a great idea. Plus, you won’t be spelling out to the audience early on that R2 has the other half of the map (which 3PO’s exposition kind of did).

Oh man, Eddie having a voice cameo makes this edit even better!! Love it.

I wonder if you could go with a line like this:

“General, the Senate has responded. They’re mobilizing the fleet. Will they reach us in time?”

I kind of like this line because it gets the same idea across, but it might help paint this picture of the fleet gathering over Hosnian Prime, getting ready to send it to Starkiller Base, but it reminds the audience that both the Senate and a huge chunk of the navy is destroyed. We could see some ships jump to hyperspace before the planet is destroyed perhaps.

And Octorox, I think that idea can still get across because we see that the New Republic being slow to action causes their destruction. Yes, they finally came to the right decision, but only after too much debate.

Also Nev, I’m assuming you’ll play around with covering Leia’s mouth movement before her trimmed line, “They haven’t got a chance.” Is that correct?

I like a lot of your ideas! I also like the idea of Ben Solo surviving in the end. It’s personally an edit I would like to see made after Rey Nobody is accomplished.

This all came back to my mind recently because the Templin Institute on YouTube posted a new video reimagining the First Order-New Republic War. They kept things closer to the films than I thought they would. Definitely some deviations, but the big story beats are still there. The major difference is the details they chose to add. Some interesting takeaways:

• The Resistance is one of many “volunteer forces” that work for the New Republic.
• Starkiller Base is still a new Death Star, but with the caveat that it can only fire once. I’m not sure how you could get this idea across in the film. Maybe new dialogue from a Resistance officer or pilot during the briefing or the attack.
• A huge chunk of the New Republic fleet was at Hosnian Prime to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Endor (not sure if this could get across in an edit at all).
• The entirety of the New Republic military wasn’t destroyed in the attack. But the days/weeks following, the remnants were scattered and struggling to fight off the FO’s coordinated offensive.
• Leia becomes the de facto leader of an emergency New Republic government.
• The battle of Crait and the duel between Luke and Kylo Ren is broadcast to the galaxy as a propaganda tactic that blows up in the First Order’s face.
• During the TLJ-TROS interim (which is 5 years), the New Republic/Resistance makes efforts to gain allies and rebuild/reorganize a new New Republic fleet. So the final battle isn’t “just people” per se, but a makeshift armada under the leadership of the New Republic.

I feel like if one were to try to work with this approach, the crawls would do a lot of the legwork, but perhaps off screen radio communication with the Resistance “allies” or the TROS civilian fleet could be replaced with dialogue that more clearly depicts those entities as New Republic.

So the scattered New Republic fleet is simply too busy to help the Resistance in TLJ rather than being too afraid to help. And then in TROS, cut dialogue that implies the Resistance is still all alone, and use the crawl to help explain that efforts to rebuild the New Republic have been underway.

EDIT: Here’s a link to the video https://youtu.be/0Ai--LPeKQQ

This is definitely a stretch on my part, but I also think there is some potential masculine/feminine symbolism with the blue and purple (pinkish) colors of the sabers. You get a lot of masculine and feminine symbolism with the Rey/Kylo dynamic, for example. And although it isn’t really expanded upon, I think root problem of the Jedi ties into this idea of an imbalance of feminine/masculine constructs (rationality vs emotion, detachment vs compassion, etc.). And with Rey holding both sabers in the climax, it suggests a integration of both.

It’s very vague, of course. Just like how some have suggest Luke’s green color symbolizes life and the rebirth of the Jedi.

Obviously the idea feels stuck in gender stereotypes, but you see this idea of the spiritual masculine and feminine in a lot of different philosophies. For example, you see it in Taoism with the concept of yin and yang. Everyone (regardless of gender) has both aspects in them, but the two aspects tend to be associated with either gender because of traditional gender norms.

But even in ROTJ we see that Luke isn’t the traditional masculine hero. He does defeat Vader through physical violence, but then chooses to show compassion and love his father. And that plays into this idea of balancing the masculine and feminine imo. But again, that’s just my head canon for it I guess you could say.

Mine. Do it. It’s an alternate edition anyway. I don’t think the color of lightning is gonna take anyone out of the movie. And at least it is a change motivated by the Rey Nobody idea.

So cool to see you back and with an updated edit! I have to say that crawl is absolutely perfect.

Despite it being something I thought of early on, I think cutting Palpatine reverting the essence transfer line back to its original place instead of the opening scene is the right way to go.

I haven’t had a chance to watch Spence’s edit in full yet, but from clips I’ve seen his approach has been my favorite so far (being that no new revelations about Rey’s parents are shown). And Spence’s editing skills are excellent, so I feel like a lot of what he has done is executed well.

I really like this crawl! I think one could go back and forth on certain word choices but I think it could work well as-is. The general structure is perfect.

Congratulations Spence! Definitely want to check it out.

And good idea, Nev! Like the example of Excalibur. Maybe we can pick out a decent source that we can use to try and play around with the sound design of that scene.

Thanks for the big post, Omni! I’ve always loved a lot of those images. My VFX skills are also not the best, which is why I’ve been focusing on ideas that can achieved through simple cutting or audio editing.

That info about TN1’s scan of the 97 ROTJ is really useful to know! I’ll have to check that one out.

A very quick and dirty test of a blood-stained Ewok.

And I actually had been working on a test of Leia’s influence freeing them, and it seems like the dialogue is generally on a channel of its own. So I think a more creepy approach to the ambience and music of the scene is totally doable. I was trying to think of what music or sound effects might fit that approach.

Eyepainter said:

This thread is starting to go a little silent, so how about we start talking about the big huge elephant in the room. The ewoks! I have no idea what I would do to fix those guys up beyond taking out some of their goofier moments in the climax (something like all the ewoks trying to pull the rope on the walker, for example). I would love to see what others would do to try and fix those critters!

Today is Easter, and this day always remind me of the Ewoks because my parents gave me both of the Ewok movies as a Easter present when I was little. I didn’t even know they existed at the time, so it was a surprising and bizarre experience to discover there were more “Star Wars” movies. So I felt like today would be a good day to talk a little bit more about the Ewoks.

I know common change made is to trim some of their goofier moments in the climax, like Eyepainter mentioned. I think a few existing edits take the approach of having Ewoks act more as a distraction, and we don’t really see the Ewoks winning against the Empire. I haven’t seen this done in a fully-realized edit yet, but it would be interesting to use some of the shots of Ewoks using blasters from the Battle for Endor movie. I don’t think you could use all of the available shots, unless you flipped and reused some of the stormtrooper firing shots. I know this has already been mentioned in the thread.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this, but I do feel that when you go from ANH to ESB, it feels like the Saga ages up with the audience. I feel like ROTJ should’ve continued that, and in some ways it does, but the way the Ewoks are generally presented goes against that, and feels obviously aimed for children. Reading Rinzler’s book, you could tell a lot of the production staff felt ambivalent about them, even though they did the best they could to fully-realize them to the best of their ability. One exception being McQuarrie, who left the project and seemed to lose motivation when George’s feedback kept pushing them towards basically being teddy bears.

I think a key to make them both cute and “cool” is to lean more into the idea that they eat people, and let that slowly dawn on our heroes in a clearer way. Yes, it does seem like they’re about to cook them when they bring them to their village, but we’re given no indication that they’ve actually ate people before. One idea I had was to give Han and the rest a few more hints that they’re in serious trouble. One example, when Han is tied up and looking around the village, we could cut to the shot of an Ewok using stormtrooper helmets as drums from the finale. We also could edit a shot or two of some Ewoks at the village having blood-stained fur around their mouths. Kind of an assumption but I think it would just take some masking and tracking to recolor some of the fur around their mouths red. Once Han starts piecing everything together, then he could say, “I have a bad feeling about this.” Then 3PO basically confirms this when he tells them they’re to be the main course in a feast.

Instead of Luke saving them by tricking the Ewoks into thinking 3PO has magic, I’d like to see Leia be the one that rescues them. So you would still build up to the Ewoks almost setting the logs on fire, then Leia comes out, and she tells 3PO to tell the Ewoks that they are her friends, and then the Ewoks let them go. I know it is not uncommon to cut the Leia and Wickett scene (and instead leave her fate ambiguous until we see her at the village), I think it would be nice to give Leia more to do in the film and use her political/leadership skills to establish a friendship with the Ewoks. So to me, I think it would be helpful to show Leia’s encounter with Wickett, and see how she builds trust between her and the Ewok. Then, Leia having enough clout with the Ewoks to get them to spare her friends makes more sense. I think it still could work without that scene, though, if someone didn’t want to include it.

Just a few other random ideas. At the Ewok village, it could add a little bit to their creepy factor if we gave some of the Ewoks that eyeshine you sometimes see in animals at night. I think you can find some tutorials online about how to recreate what is basically the replicant eye effect. During the battle itself, whenever the Ewoks physically attack stormtroopers, we could alter the sound effects a little bit to make the Ewoks sound more violent. Perhaps some Ewok sounds can be pulled from Battlefront 2. I kind of imagine the sound of a vicious little dog trying to tear a chew toy apart. And maybe have the stormtroopers scream instead of just silently getting beat up. The Ewoks might look like mogwai, but they can act like gremlins. I like the idea of leaning into that. And I think it actually makes their cuteness work better, because the audience automatically makes expectations about them based on their appearance, but once they (and the audience) see their other side, we’re like “Oh shit.” And I generally think it makes them a little more nuanced, interesting, and fun.

Idk if this would be a plus or minus, but I think Hal or someone else suggested adding a 3PO line from the radio drama where he refers to Ewoks by name. That may not be necessary though.

Sort of related to the Ewoks, but I also think the ending of the film would be stronger without Yub Nub or Victory Celebration. Maybe the Luke and Leia track. Anyway, that’s down to each individuals preference probably.

yotsuya said:

I don’t think dreaming that Lucas’s own versions would be any better. And I think it is very fitting for the saga that when you look at credit for each film in chronological order, it goes from Lucas doing this solo (technically he wrote and directed the first 4 movies) to him letting go for the OT and then completely stepping back for the ST.

I really like your take, yotsuya.

In the past I have always imagined Luke and Anakin/Vader as representing George Lucas. Luke in the OT is the young rebel filmmaker, and the Vader/father dynamic is showing the fear he had of becoming like his father. He never wanted to be a businessman like his father was.

Then Anakin’s transformation into Vader mirrors George becoming the businessman and wanting full control of everything (much like Anakin seeks) that we saw in the build up to and during the production of the prequels. You start seeing George nudge toward this “dark side” when making ROTJ, just like Luke edges closer to the dark side, but Lucas nails the ending much like Luke reaffirms his new status as a Jedi. But in a way, George eventually became something he never wanted to be. He wanted to be an indie filmmaker making art house films but instead was in charge of a vfx house and a merchandise juggernaut, among other things. So Vader’s absence in the Sequel Trilogy reflects George’s absence from those projects too. You could even argue Lucas stepping away from his galaxy is much like Luke stepping away from the galaxy in those movies. The new filmmakers who were fans of the stories of old, like Rey, seek him out, wanting to understand there place in shaping a galaxy without Lucas. And we know both Rian and JJ visited with Lucas and he was able to give some guidance and inspire them, but they still may have not agreed with everything he said and they still made their own decisions too.

Idk. I think these metatextual readings are totally unintentional but it makes me appreciate what we got a little more.

Eyepainter said:

You might wanna be careful with turning Luke’s lightsaber blue! The reason the lightsaber was turned to green in the first place was because it blended in with Tattooine, making it hard for the audience to see. You can see the problem in this 16mm teaser trailer:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbkfYDqEQo&t=1m13s

That is true! If you look online for tests people have made, it doesn’t look as bad as you would think, except for a few shots maybe. I think desaturating the sky could potentially help. Obviously I love the green saber and glad they changed it from blue to green, but the point of this edit idea would be more of a “what if”.

https://youtu.be/rO0HmnEWp2E

And thanks for sharing that, paja! I actually did the exact same edit way back when I did my rough ROTJ edit, but your version looks much better than what I did! The great thing about this is that it could be placed in the film where that deleted scene is meant to go, but you could add the shot of the x-wing leaving dagobah from ESB, and then cut to 3PO and R2 approaching the palace. So the film barely changes but explicitly shows Luke has been on dagobah. Or it could worth with all of the dagobah stuff at the beginning of the film, too.

Do you think you could do the whole shot like this paja or is this just a proof of concept?