RogueLeader

I think just leaving it at that would still leave a lot of questions without answers.

jonh said:

How can I upload an image here?

I usually upload an image to imgur.com, then use this format:
Exclamation mark. Open bracket. Image name. Close bracket. Open parenthesis. Image URL. Close parenthesis.

About your tests. They look really nice! I don’t think this is a big issue, but I wonder if in this case it might be more fitting to use the Yoda from TLJ, since that is how we saw him in the previous movie, rather than how he looked in the OT.

Also, are you motion tracking the ghosts with the movement of the shot? It’s hard to tell but they feel a little floaty.

Yeah, Pearce, just go for it! I think you definitely could provide an interesting perspective when it come to editing this film. I would like to see you discuss what big picture ideas you might have, or rough test clips for more specific changes you have in mind.

Cool cool. It does sound better. So he is saying, “And your padawan, she has moved troops to Mandalore.” Right?

Or, cut to black and fade back in on Rey.

Yo! Mandalore sounds really natural. I think you’re set with that part.

I actually think “your padawan” fits less now, in comparison. Was that the best version of “padawan” you could find?
I’m guessing you may have already tried to have him say “Ahsoka”? I wonder if it would fit better, because of course we know who Ahsoka is, but it might feel weird for Obi-Wan to refer to Ahsoka as his padawan, because a hypothetical non-Clone Wars watcher might be like “wait, Anakin has a padawan?”
Plus, is she still technically his padawan? But people wouldn’t necessarily question it if he just said “Ahsoka”.

Don’t get me wrong, though, I think “your padawan” would still be more than great. Great work. Totally worth the effort so far, I think!

That is a good point! I actually think the “You have no one here” would be a good line to have. Think it is worth playing with.

Also, I went back and rewatched your previews for Ach-To and the Pasana stand-off and I wanted to reiterate how great of a job I think you’re doing so far. Even for previews, those tests are super professional. Obviously, some of your motivation is to remove certain things (like Rey Palpatine), but I think your method of trying to create a little more breathing room throughout the whole film is really going to pay off. If the Phantom Editor was still around, I think these are the kind of fundamental changes he would want to make, beyond correcting narrative errors, as we all want to naturally do.

I love your note about the final Resistance mission briefing, about how you’re adding “a full second” of footage from the trailers. It’s funny how a full second seems rather inconsequential, but I think a multitude of these tiny changes will really pay off in the context of the full picture.

Yeah, I’d like to see how that looks sometime too.

• Would be nice if Palpatine could say “Luke was saved by his father. (You have no one here) (or something).”

I had almost this exact same idea, but I had trouble finding appropriate dialogue. Another idea I had was that you could reuse the line, “Weak. Like your parents” and have him say, “Weak. Like your Master” or “Weak. Like Skywalker.” Rey wouldn’t say anything. Then, it would cut back to Palpatine as the “sunroof” opens up and reveals the battle. It could draw a parallel between her and Luke, and how Palpatine used their weakness (and strength), their friends, against them in both instances.

EDIT: Palpatine does say “no one” during the Resistance being destroyed montage. If the dialogue is isolated well enough, you might be able to make “You have no one here.”

Hmm… I think it is partially hard to match because of the room ambience… What if he said something like “Death Watch”?

You could take Death from “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be the death of me?” from AOTC, and Watch from “I’ll take the boy and watch over him” from the end of ROTS. It still might not fit though.

I like “I’m no one”, but do you think you can get the mouth movements to work?

I think the Sundari idea is the best option. It probably would be easier to piece together than Mandalore. And you could be flexible about the pronunciation, so it could be like, “son-dar-ee” or “soon-da-ree”. That might give you more sound options to choose from. People in Star Wars don’t always pronounce things the same.

I think it is Rey’s dramatic pause kind of adds to the cheesiness of the moment. “And I… I’m all the the Jedi.”

I also think simply, “I am a Jedi” would be better than saying she’s all the Jedi.

I think, for me, another good option would be to just cut those last two lines. Palpatine’s final words could be, “A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me!”
And then Rey uses his own power against him, without making some cliché declaration.

They could’ve just made Hux lash out more after how he was treated in TLJ. One of the good things in the DOTF script was that it introduced Hux by having him execute the Resistance sympathizer. It reestablishes Hux as someone who had power to hurt people we care about. (It also makes Hux have Force-envy, but…)

But Hux throwing a coup against Kylo felt like such a huge set up. I find it weird JJ and Terrio watched that, saw that final look Hux have Kylo in TLJ, and said, “Well shit, we gotta get rid of Hux now…”

It would probably be a bit of a challenge, but in a more radical edit, I would like to see Pryde and Hux simply working together to try and depose Kylo. So when Pryde gives Hux that look in the meeting room, it’s not because Pryde is suspicious of Hux, but because he’s in on it. So Pryde knows that Hux is leaking information to undermine Kylo’s authority, because they see Kylo as a misguided leader.

You could cut Pryde killing Hux, have Hux communicate with Palpatine’s hologram alongside Pryde or in his stead, and then use footage from TLJ to have Hux observe the battle of Exegol from the Star Destroyer bridge, with Pryde being his second in command.

Snoke clearly found Hux useful, “You wonder why I keep a rabid cur in such a place of power… a cur’s weakness, properly manipulated, can be a sharp tool…” If Snoke was made by Palpatine, then it’s possible that Palpatine would have similar motivations for him.

I think a big motivation for this is that I feel like it isn’t satisfying when we see Pryde blow up at the end, because we’ve barely had any time to feel anything about him. We’ve had three films with Hux, and I think it would be a lot more cathartic to see Hux get blown up by Finn, than to quickly get killed by Pryde and then forget about him.

Pryde, right? When they land Ochi’s ship in the hangar? 😂

Star Wars is for 12-year-olds. It’s a fairy tale. Most kids don’t have genocidal tyrants as parents, but a kid that has a rocky relationship with his dad might relate to the struggles between Luke and Vader. The physical scar of Vader cutting his own son’s hand off is meant to reflect the emotional scars a parent can deliver to their child (perhaps some physical ones as well). I don’t know if I could forgive my dad if he literally cut my hand off, or if he killed my own mother, or tortured my sister, or was a literal serial-killer but seeing Luke forgive his father, and still have faith in his inner good, could help me be able to forgive my own father for things he’s said and done in the past.

It’s the exact same thing with Ben Solo. Ben Solo is the kid that has gone down the wrong path in life. They’ve lost their way. He’s hurt or disappointed the people who love and care about him. Ben Solo represents the idea that even if you’ve done bad things in life or have disappointed your loved ones, you can still come back from that and make amends. This message would be much stronger if Ben Solo actually survived and had to continue his life on a better path. Paying for your actions through self-sacrifice works for a paternal figure like Vader, but the same ending for a coming-of-age character like Ben is, in my opinion, weak and lazy writing. Paying for your actions through death is a rather pessimistic resolution for a character that younger audiences are meant to relate to. I’ve seen so many people get hung up on this idea of Ben Solo being a war-criminal or mass-murderer in-universe, but it seems to me many Star Wars fans forget what purpose Lucas always intended for these stories to serve. They measure Star Wars on the standards of reality rather than allegory.

I think it is too subtle, as well. I had to slow the video down to notice the Force will-o-wisps, as they appear to me. And we’ve never seen force ghosts depicted that way, so an audience might not even pick up what they’re meant to be, exactly.

I know a subtle approach is preferred, but I think it would look cool to actually see the silhouettes of figures standing behind Rey, maybe only seeing faint glimpses of them for a few frames, whenever the lightning flashes. I mean, we can hear Qui-Gon say “We stand behind you, Rey.” Maybe they literally are.

Plus, when Palpatine stops and looks down at Rey, at first it almost looks like he is looking around Rey.

Wow, that’s really good work Dom! I couldn’t even really notice whatever you did to close her mouth in one shot.

idir_hh said:

Frankly I think that if Rey was a well written character nobody would be talking about identity politics.

That’s very optimistic of you.

Fam, George had a female protagonist in his story treatment for 7.

I think Nev handled that pretty well in his Starlight Project. For example, in his version of Rey trying to mind trick the guard, she briefly hears the Force whispers that we hear again later on Ahch-To. I think this helps imply that Rey is receiving some sort of guidance, which you could retroactively establish as the voices of the Jedi. She could hear them calling her to Anakin’s lightsaber (maybe even hearing Anakin’s voice specifically whispering “Rey…”). Then later they give her a little nudge to help her escape Starkiller Base, then guide her again later to the Jedi tree in TLJ. I wouldn’t want to overuse them but I think they could fit in a few places.

It’s like she can feel what they’re trying to communicate, but she needs training to be able to hear them clearly, which is what she is trying to do when we meet back up with her in IX. At the end of the film, when she starts saying “Be with me” again, we can hear the Force whispers transition into the distinct voices of the Jedi that have been guiding her all along.

This set up would also create some interesting parallels between Rey and Joan of Arc.

The story of how Jeanne found her sword is perhaps the most intriguing connection to her sword. According to her own words, her voices instructed her as to its whereabouts behind the altar at the church of Saint Catherine.

That okay fits perfectly, good job! Maybe some masking or a little more cropping can be done to hide the BB-8 puppetry a little more, but it looks good. I wonder if the music could continue right into the next track.

That does sound uncomfortable… Maybe you should get one of those standing desk set ups! Or put a pillow under your knees if you haven’t tried that already!

And I also really feel like JJ Abrams and Chris Tetris weren’t even satisfied with it. But in interviews, you can’t say that shit. You have to defend your choices on the film, because if you start criticizing your own movie while it’s in theaters it’s gonna bomb, and you’ll be blacklisted. Look what happened to Josh Trank.

I think they wanted to make a good conclusion, but they ran out of time and had to say, “It’s good enough.”
They also clearly found other elements of the movie more important than the fans do, but at the same time they tried to give the fans what they thought they wanted.

Off topic, but it still blows my mind how hard they tried to make Finn and Poe not gay. They need to give them both potential romantic interests, but people didn’t like Rose so we have to make a new female character for Finn. And look! Poe’s gotta old flame! She offers for him to runaway with her, but then at the end of the movie she turns down her advances. So I guess Finn and Poe can’t be gay, but they don’t want to pair them with anyone at the end either.

After reading what the editor’s thoughts on TLJ were, I bet a ton of people at Bad Robot, including JJ, felt that way about it. Man, Rian REALLY fucked it up for us. What an asshole. Now we have to fucking course correct.

“I didn’t lie to you. Your parents were no one, because they chose to be! Your parents sold you to protect you…”

Chris Terrio: God, we’re so fucking clever.

I also remember a moment where a woman was sitting with Chris Terrio in the BTS talking about the end of the movie, when we see Adam Driver’s performance. I’m pretty sure it is Michelle Rejwan. And she’s says something like, “It’s a tragedy because we don’t get to see him for very long, but you get to see the person he could’ve been” And I really get the feeling that she didn’t want Ben to die. I honestly think Lucasfilm people didn’t want it. But maybe I’m wrong.

Also, you say that Rey hasn’t earned her position as hero in the story, but I don’t see how her being Luke’s daughter would change that.

You could change Kylo’s hangar dialogue to say, “Your Luke’s daughter”. But then when Rey goes to see Luke, you would have engineer a believable conversation between them. Maybe you could repurpose lines? Redub? Others have tried that to poor effect. Maybe Luke didn’t know until after he became one with the Force, and the mother ran away with their daughter after having a vision that their daughter would die at the end of her training.

You could recontextualize Leia’s saber as her mother’s saber, the the training flashback could be Luke and her mom rather than Leia.

I’m sure someone could figure something out, but I don’t think many people are clamoring for it. It definitely seems like the consensus is on Rey Nobody being the strongest option. It would be cool to see someone attempt it though.

I think it just proves how rushed the production was. They choreographed it and shot it, then realized in post it all happens way too fast, so they had to extend the fight in editing using different takes and altered vfx. It definitely doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, but I doubt most people even noticed in the theaters. But it really goes to show how they had to do a lot of work to put this movie together in time…

The guy doing this video is so cringey though. He’s trying so hard to be like every other YouTube movie critic he’s probably seen. I like his points and I get he is trying to keep it entertaining. It would be nice for someone who is a filmmaker or studied film to actually go through the movie more objectively and point out the issues with it, but I guess people want funny, nitpicky Plinkett reviews, and not dry film analyses. His breakdown of the fight is great, but the rest of the video feels like Nostalgia Critic or Cinema Sins.

adywan said:

Trying to get financial help off the government is proving to be very difficult. They have said it is unlikely we would qualify for Universal Credit, but we are still awaiting on the decision.

If it isn’t universal then they shouldn’t call it Universal Credit… Sorry what you guys are going through. Hopefully things will get better sooner rather than later.

Also, I downloaded Ady’s video, so if it gets taken down if someone lets me know I can reupload it somewhere.