That is true. Maybe if you started making it slowly get darker in that scene/few preceding shots before twilight starts? Might be hard to get that regrade to look natural though. But yeah, it isn’t a big deal!
Yeah, that works really well! The music is seamless as far as my ears can tell.
That is true! And in this version of events, we don’t start the film with the Mustafar Minute, so it is okay if it is fast-paced. And if the slow motion and regular speed look weird side-by-side, perhaps the slow motion shots could be sped up to regular speed.
Damn, the deep fake work to reduce Thorin’s injuries is really solid! That alone almost made me kinda wish the whole Eagles sequence was skipped, but that vfx work is really helpful to reduce his injuries!
Speaking of which, another thing I wish the “Out of the Frying Pan” scene had was a simple tree line shot to show the sun setting (and hear the approaching enemy) to help with the nighttime transition. Right now it feels like twilight happens in the blink of an eye, but I know the theatrical film had that issue as well.
Regarding the Stone Giants scene, I wonder if adding Bilbo screaming off-screen as he fell could help with the flow of the scene. Bilbo is pretty silent until his hands begin to slip.
Thanks! Recently I have been thinking about the first act, and how one could lay it out to delay Palpatine’s reveal.
Even though it isn’t as dramatic of a start, I thought it would be interesting if the film started off with Kylo on the bridge of the Star Destroyer, and as he staring into the abyss, he hears a whisper of mechanical breathing. It cuts to him in his chambers, unsealing Vader’s mask and placing his hand on it. He gets a brief vision of Mustafar, Vader’s castle, the chest that contains the Sith wayfinder, and maybe a brief glimpse of Vader/Anakin himself. He also hears the voices of Vader, and maybe Snoke, to better set up Palpatine’s line about being the voices in his head. Palpatine, through the mask, is leading him to the Wayfinder. It ends on a haunting echo of Vader saying “Join me…” which transitions into Rey’s meditation scene, with her chanting, “Be with me.”
Rey speaks with Leia, then goes to train, which is where we then get the Mustafar Minute intercut with Rey’s training. We see that through their bond, Kylo’s rage is fueling Rey’s. She eventually breaks the remote, Kylo picks up the Wayfinder, and then they share a vision of Exegol, the fleet, the battle, and we get a glimpse of Dark Rey.
Rey snaps out of it, and we get the scene where Rey tells Leia she’s just distracted. Then, we finally get to Kylo flying towards Exegol and meeting Palpatine. After that, we get Finn and Poe’s mission, and the film continues as normal.
I might play around with this eventually but I’m not sure if it would work.
EDIT: One thing you couldn’t use in this version, which I really like, is Dom’s mini-flashbacks we see as Kylo touches Vader’s helmet in his version, which compels him to reforge his mask. I sort of would like to see if one could intercut Kylo reforging his helmet with the mini-flashbacks, instead of making them two separate scenes. Alternatively, it could be interesting to give the monkey-creature off screen dialogue where he says the modifications would shield his mind from outside influence (implying he is trying to remain independent from Palpatine), or simply, using the Knights of Ren line, “May our bond never again be broken.”
Has anyone intercut between Rey training and Kylo killing the Mustafar colonists in their edit? I feel like one would run into some issues doing that, like one montage being slow motion and the other not, but I think wit the right pacing/rescoring, it could work pretty well. It’d be a good way to show Rey and Kylo’s connection, plus you could tie Rey’s vision into Kylo picking up the wayfinder. There’s already a shot of Kylo twitching/reacting to holding the Wayfinder in Rey’s vision montage, so it could be applied to that.
The good thing about the Imperial Shuttle is that you can already see one in the wreckage, albeit a little rusty.
That is one thing that would be a nice addition to the shuttle, if we use that one. A little wear and tear on it. But I’m not complaining, it still is a nice change regardless.
Hahaha, yes! Like a Sith Quartet.
One of those other voices could always be given some expository dialogue.
“I am the voice of Darth Bane, the first Sith to go into hiding a millennia ago and plan our revenge. I and all my successors now reside within the vessel of the final Sith Lord. Don’t fuck with us!”
Wait, wrong thread.
Seems like the perfect song premise for the The Rise of Skywalker: The Musical
It’s almost like before his “death” his identity was pretty contained to the man “Sheev Palpatine”, but after his “death”, the collective consciousness speaks through the shell of Palpatine.
This was how I assumed things to be on my first viewing in the theatre; that it was Palpatine’s actual corpse being reanimated by some kind of amalgamated essence of evil. Dooku and Bane have canon voices that could be imitated (as do Vader and Maul though they arguably weren’t Sith when they died). I like this idea a lot since it adds a greater finality to the conflict rather than being just Palpatine again.
Techincally Dooku wouldn’t be one of the voices. Since he never killed Palpatine, the spirit never passed into him. Someone could impersonate Hamill’s depiction of Darth Bane in The Clone Wars, though. One voice could techincally be Plagueis, but we never heard his voice in canon.
It doesn’t have to be voices we know. The implication would be that they are the voices of past Sith, from Bane to Palpatine. They could literally be anyone’s actual voice though.
I think the way you have it, it looks like they’re exiting hyperspace sideways, with the vanishing point of the star streaks are out to the left side of the Falcon, rather than in front of it or behind it. If you flipped it to where the vanishing point was on the opposite side, it might look like the star streaks are stretching in the same direction that the Falcon is going, even though it is actually backwards. But it will look correct to the audience, though.
I think the big difference is that right now, the direction the star streaks are pointing, and the direction the Falcon is pointing, are perpendicular to each other. It makes it look off. Whereas if you flipped it, the direction the star streaks are pointing and the direction the Falcon is pointing will be parallel.
This is hard to explain. It’s just what my brain is noticing when I first looked at it. I might be wrong though.
I wonder if it would work better if you flipped the hyperspace matte so the star streaks as they’re slowing down are pointing in the opposite direction. The angle is sort of noticeable as-is.
snooker made a few tests with the Theed palace waaay in the background of one shot, and also a shot of an elder head in the background of another shot, but I don’t think anything was ever really finalized with that.
A random thought that I know I’ve brought up before, but I wonder if anyone had ideas to emphasize that Palpatine in TROS is literally all the Sith, and not just Palpatine. He mentions that all of the Sith live in him once and says he is all the Sith, but it is never really brought up besides that, despite it having huge implications. I feel like if that revelation was emphasized more, it could intensify the threat of his return, and make his return more inevitable. It’s almost like before his “death” his identity was pretty contained to the man “Sheev Palpatine”, but after his “death”, the collective consciousness speaks through the shell of Palpatine.
I think back on ROTS, when Mace is killed and the mask of Palpatine is “shed” and the true face of Sidious is revealed. When Sidious gives Anakin the name Darth Vader, Sidious has this guttural, inhuman sound to his voice that I always found unnerving. To me, this could be recontextualized as the Sith spirit showing itself for a brief moment. Or perhaps Palpatine was always that “spirit”, his wrinkled face is his true face, and Palpatine was merely a mask throughout the prequels.
I just think having Palpatine’s voice being layered with multiple voices, sort of like the Avatar State in Avatar: The Last Airbender could add to that side of this character. You wouldn’t have to use this effect the entire movie, but maybe when Palpatine says the line, “as all of the Sith live in me”, and after he transforms into “Sidious” at the climax of the film.
It would also deemphasize the dumb “House Skywalker vs House Palpatine” dynamic they tried to force in this film. The antagonist of the film isn’t really Palpatine. It’s too bad they basically refer to him only as Palpatine throughout the film. Not Sidious, not the Sith, etc.
I must have missed where joshuabri mentioned plans to recolor Mustafar to make it a part of Exegol. Is that mentioned in the original post?
I do think audiences will wonder what the point of Rey going after the second Wayfinder was if the Resistance was able to find Exegol without it, but I do think there is some beneficial irony in that.
I think it would be helpful to try to reframe Rey’s obsession with Wayfinder to become more of a selfish quest by the time she leaves everyone behind to go after it. She says she needs to find it to stop the fleet and save her friends, but I like the idea that dark side auras of the Sith dagger, the Wayfinders, and the Death Star might be seducing her. She is beginning to want power, and needing it so save her friends is her excuse.
If you think about it, though, Rey did help the Resistance find Exegol. Her most important action was actually healing the serpant on Pasaana. This selfless action inspired BB-8 to give some of his own energy to power D-O up, and it was D-O that knew the route to Exegol all along. So, Rey’s obession with finding the Wayfinder is misguided by this point.
I mentioned this at one point, but perhaps you could reutilize the scene where Pryde speaks with Palpatine’s hologram, and instead have Kylo call Pryde, and he tells Pryde to wait until he returns. So Rey simply drawing Kylo away from the fleet is giving the Resistance time to stop the fleet before they leave Exegol.
I think if the TIE Advanced was used, it would be cool to squeeze in a shot of one or two of them somewhere amongst the wreckage of the Death Star.
Did you see the new concept art of Kylo cutting throw Tie wreckage in the duel with Rey. It looked epic!
I did not! Did one of the concept artists share it on Twitter or something?
I think if the TIE Advanced was used, it would be cool to squeeze in a shot of one or two of them somewhere amongst the wreckage of the Death Star.
This is really cool, Faraday. I’ll be interested to see how you rewrite the scenes for the Rey Nobody changes. Will you just totally excise those conversations, or replace them with a different revelation that shocks Rey?
I’m also curious if you’ll address things like Finn having to tell Rey something but never telling her. I suppose you could make his force-sensitivity more explicit and maybe actually have him tell her by the end of the movie. I like the idea of changing it to where he wanted to tell Poe something, and there is a hint of feelings between them. I suppose cutting it would be the easiest thing!
I also feel like you have an opportunity to better define Poe and Finn’s character arcs, as well. For example, I think it would be cool to see Poe’s call-to-action be broadcasted throughout the galaxy (sort of like the scene we got in Trevorrow’s DotF script), giving Poe a stronger leader moment. Or, after getting shot in the arm, he decides to give orders from a command ship, like the Tantive IV, rather than pilot another X-Wing. That could potentially be an easier change than creating a new call-to-action montage.
Regarding Finn, maybe he could more explicitly recruit Jannah and the other ex-Stormtroopers during their conversation on the Falcon. It would be interesting if you could describe as still wearing bits and pieces of stormtrooper armor, but I guess that might make it less of a surprise to Finn when Jannah tells him who they are.
It’d be great if Rose could get more scenes, but I suppose that would veer into fan fiction territory.
I’m also curious if you’ll add details of things that have been added in fan edits, like the Force ghosts manifesting themselves at the final battle, or the Skywalker saber being crackly after Rey repairs it.
Anyway, will look forward to your updates! This would be fun to see done to all nine novelizations.
Looks/Sounds great, DigMod!
You’re doin the Lord’s work.
I know! You used to make YouTube Poops, didn’t you?
I need to go back and compile all of the best of the worst ideas from here.
Hire Gilbert Gottfried via the website Cameo to record one line of dialogue for a Rise of Skywalker edit.
Palpatine: “I have been every voice (Snoke) you have ever heard (Gilbert Gottfried) INSIDE YOUR HEAD!”
This is the kind of suggestion that makes me want to make YouTube Poop versions of the Sequel Trilogy.
I really like it!
Lol, can’t unsee that now.
All of this discussion is making me want to jump back on the Rogue One bandwagon!
I’m curious if we’ll revisit Rogue One again after Andor comes out, too.
I did do that, actually! Rogue One was one of my first edits, and I wasn’t editing in 5.1, so it was a pain to try to get the cut in music to flow naturally. I think my first rough cut it was worse, but you can still notice it a little bit (at least I can). So I didn’t patch in music, I just cut the dialogue out and tried to have the cut in the music be less noticeable.
I was going to mention that I did it, but I felt like it was really rough so I didn’t bring it up! It was a funny feeling pulling up that video and thinking, “Did I do this?” Hahaha.
That’s a really good point! With it being the opening of the film, a really solid facelift can set the tone for the fan edit.
I think it’s cool to see how much effort the community has put in to make the Mustafar Minute work, but at the same time, I hate how much effort has had to be put into it. I feel like half of the Ascendant thread is about the Mustafar Minute.