SparkySywer

Luke and Anakin’s journeys should have paralleled a lot closer than they do in the PT we got. More than just a few visual references. Their arcs should be more or less the same, up until Luke sees he’s going down the same path as Vader and rejects it in RotJ.

Both Anakin and Luke would start their path becoming Jedi for the wrong reasons: Seeking out adventure, and becoming more powerful to help fight in a cause. They’ll both get their asses kicked by the villain of the story, but Anakin doesn’t get the revelation of the path his father went down. Anakin will start to seek out the dark side, which will leave him better equipped to fight in a war than the Jedi’s pacifist teachings. He’d defeat the enemy in a reversal of the RotJ throne room. Without his “I am a Jedi, like my father before me” moment, he kills the villain and ends up at Palpatine’s side.

I think TestingOutTheTest is referring to something I said, like, a month ago about TRoS and ESB’s reveals. And it’s a fair enough point for Palpatine’s return in a sense, you can look back at RotS, TFA, and TLJ after the fact and read foreshadowing into them even when it was never there. But foreshadowing alone isn’t really enough.

I wouldn’t even really call the example of Ben’s Hut scene foreshadowing, it’s more that it’s a detail which makes more sense after the twist than it did before. Stuff like that sells a twist. Stuff that either makes more sense, or only makes sense after a twist. Stuff that takes on a new, deeper meaning after the twist. Stuff that you look back on and see the twist in.

Not to use the some of the same examples again, but (avoiding spoilers for movies people haven’t seen…) Oh Dae-Su’s captivity doesn’t make a whole lot of sense… until it does. The time dilation aspect of Planet of the Apes isn’t all that relevant… until it is. Bruce Willis’s wife’s behavior seems like a detour from the main focus of the story… but it’s not. Adam being in Nerv’s basement is a blatant contradiction of the facts we know… because that’s not really what’s going on.

Those are the kinds of clues you need leading up to a twist. Foreshadowing is great and all, especially on rewatch once you know the twist, or to flex if you’re an author who’s sold a convincing twist. But it doesn’t actually sell the twist.

Bad twists fail to sell themselves to an audience when they aren’t really rooted in what’s come before. They’re just random new information which changes nothing (which is ironic). Like in Now You See Me.

They could have had every single screen in TFA and TLJ flash “Palpatine will return in Episode 9” in Aurebesh, I doubt it would help sell the reveal to many people. Because how does Palpatine returning and being Rey’s grandfather really have anything to do with the story of TFA and TLJ?

I guess it answers a few unanswered questions, but while those questions were unanswered, you can extrapolate and infer reasonable answers from the info we’re given. More importantly, though, there’s no reason Palpatine is a better answer. Not in an entertainment sense, that’s subjective. But in the sense that the answers we were led to believe were flawed or contradictory, and Palpatine is a better answer.

Snoke being a Palpatine puppet might be better setup for Palpatine’s return if we were led to believe he had another backstory, but had some reason why it couldn’t be true. Maybe we’re led to believe Snoke is some cultist or something who took power by managing to swing old Imperials and Neo-Imperials to his side by acting like the next Palpatine. Then, separately, we learn that he has some secret knowledge or something that the Republic thought died with Palpatine, and that’s how he’s able to… I don’t know, maybe build Starkiller Base or raise a clone army (fake twist misdirect there) or something related to the conflict or plot of Episode 7. When it turns out Snoke was a puppet all along and Palpatine’s still out there, you look back and think “I should have seen this coming, there’s no way Snoke could have been just some nobody because of that secret knowledge.”

But that’s kind of cheating, retroactively coming up with ideas for 7 knowing how 9 eventually turned out, because that’s not a luxury Lucasfilm had.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Vader being Luke’s father fits because it’s a natural continuation of Luke’s arc in ANH. Not the natural continuation, there’s no such thing, but it logically flows from ANH. Luke spends ANH and most of ESB wanting to be like his father, then learns his father is not at all what he should be striving to become.

Nothing about TRoS really flows forward from TLJ. Rey ends TLJ moving on from placing so much importance on her family to her and the movie placing tons and tons of importance on her family in TRoS. TLJ ends setting up Kylo Ren as the Supreme Leader who’s going to be in conflict with Hux, but to say Kylo Ren is playing second fiddle in TRoS, that alone is a pretty charitable interpretation when he’s even being upstaged by Pryde. The conflict with Hux is there, but it’s inconsequential and I wholeheartedly believe it’s only there to dodge criticism. If it weren’t for “I want Kylo Ren to lose” becoming a meme, I think people would forget Hux was even in this movie.

Every loose thread from TLJ is dropped and ignored in TRoS for an entirely new story, and like I said, the reason a lot of people don’t buy Palpatine’s role in TRoS is because it’s not a twist, it’s a premise for an entirely new story which tries to sell itself as the completion of an old one.

What do you guys think? Do I make sense or have I gone too deep into schizo territory?

jedi_bendu said:

RogueLeader said:

This quote fro Temeura seems to indicate we’ll at least see what he was up to between ROTJ and Mando, if we don’t go back even further.

I’m sure we’ll see Boba escaping the Sarlacc pit, which makes me wonder - which version of it are they going to use? The one which is basically a hole or the one with a beak? (Not that anyone on here needs the special edition changes explained to them)

Very likely that they will. The very episode he was confirmed in used Special Edition footage of the Death Star explosion with the Praxis rings.

The Monkey Welder demonstrates the dualistic nature of the Rise of Skywalker.

Based that they wrote in a monkey, cringe that they had him weld Kylo Ren’s mask together. The writing of this movie is a Hegelian Dialectic of which the Monkey Welder is the synthesis.

He reached 420 posts then stopped

CaptainFaraday said:

My two cents: Canto Bight is thematically all about how remaining neutral in a conflict is as bad as siding with the oppressors. DJ represents the temptation that Finn has to leave the Resistance like he left the First Order, which Finn ultimately rejects. So I think having them arrested for being part of the Resistance waters down the idea that Canto Bight is neutral, representing the amoral selfishness of selling to both sides with no regard to ideology.

You can take OP’s idea that way. They’re just going with the flow of galactic politics, the First Order is in charge now so we obey them. Just like how a lot of Germans didn’t really question the Nazis because they were just the guys in charge.

I don’t know how I missed this, but this is a pretty interesting project.

act on instinct said:

Anakin Starkiller said:

but as is it would mess with the pace and tension release too much

You mean provide a welcome break from the snail’s pace of the Tatooine section?

Maybe for everyone who is used to Star Wars that’s how Tatooine feels, as a kid I loved the mystery of the barren planet with the droids before meeting Luke. And yes if there was an exciting chase through a tight winding cavern in the beginning of the movie it would cause diminishing returns by the end of the movie, the sequence the entire story is building up to.

100% agree. The theatrical version of ANH has damn-near perfect editing, and I think messing with the pacing like that would be for the worse. But it might be a pretty interesting addition to something like an extended version. A bunch of scenes added for someone who’s already fallen in love with the movie.

Mocata said:

Lucasfilm and Disney have to know how many people are at the very least interested

Yeah this shows them. The wider fandom barely cares at all and the general audience cares even less.

The wider fandom aren’t activists, but they do care. They’re not hardliners like us and don’t campaign for the OOT’s release or contribute to restoration projects, but they would probably be interested in it were an official release to happen, and I’d bet most Star Wars fans at least prefer the unaltered movies. Although it’s probably a lot more even for the general fandom than people like us.

Considering how genuinely common it’s become fans to either have Harmy’s Despecialized Edition or unaltered VHSs, though, I do absolutely believe that most of the fandom would be interested in an official unaltered release. Especially because there’s a lot of people who would like to see the unaltered movies but are put off by downloading a movie over the internet, or the roundabout way you have to get it if you aren’t going on a public torrent tracker.

Disney/LFL must know that at least it’s a large untapped market. At this point I bet the reason it hasn’t been released is because Lucas still has final cut privileges, or they have some sort of agreement with him. I wish they’d just come out and say that though instead of keeping quiet about it. Maybe they’re just trying to have their cake and eat it too by releasing the 4K versions and then the unaltered versions. But that’s beyond wishful thinking.

Hal 9000 said:

I don’t even think this is a bad idea, but add pop-up video style infographics giving in-universe trivia about various characters and events seen onscreen.

Early leaked HD copies of TLJ that made it onto piracy sites in January 2018 had this (but in Chinese).

SandMTV said:

Darth_Zounds said:

Six months?

I thought it was more like six days…

Well, it’s actually 9 days.

If you count out the sunrises/sunsets on Coruscant, it’s 7 days. But Rebels says that Luke and Leia were born 2 days after Order 66, despite RotS showing them being born 1 day after Order 66, so it must be 8 days. But there’s no reason you can’t just stuff in a 9th day so this was just an opportunity to flex knowledge of a movie I don’t even like.

That said, Lucasfilm and Disney have to know how many people are at the very least interested in a restoration of the unaltered movies. This petition having so few signatures in the wider scheme of things looks to me like it was because not that much effort was put into it by the organizers, and I’d think Lucasfilm and Disney are well attuned enough to the fandom that they wouldn’t take the few signatures in this petition as evidence the fandom isn’t interested, but maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Eyepainter said:

Replace all action sequences with footage of 6-year-old boys playing with their action figures.

Not to beat the “That’s actually a good edit idea” joke corpse into pink mist, but that’s unironically not a bad edit idea. It would be kinda cute.

I’m still holding out hope that someday, somehow, something will lead to an official release of the unaltered movies, but petitions don’t work. I signed it anyway because it can’t hurt, but I don’t expect anything to come out of it.

GlanePito said:

The other question is why do we never see any more than a Sith master and his apprentice? Are there really only one, two , maybe three people practicing the ways of the Sith at one time? Where are the rest of the Sith at?

I kind of see it like monarchy. There’s legally only ever one King or Queen, but obviously history does not play out that cleanly. Civil wars have often been fought over whose is the true royal lineage.

It’s the same with the Sith. There’s supposed to be only ever two at once, in a continuous lineage. But there can be multiple claimants saying they’re the two true Sith and the other guys are pretenders. This happens in the Clone Wars cartoon, with Maul & Savage and Palpatine & Dooku. Palpatine claims that Dooku is the apprentice, while Maul claims that he is still the apprentice and that Savage will become the Sith Apprentice when he kills Palpatine and becomes the Sith Master.

Please the people who want Gina Carano rehired by rehiring her for the one pre-Wampa scene

Anakin Starkiller said:

Then recast her, you cowards!

Hey Mando! I look different? Oh, yeah, I get plastic surgery every once in a while. I have a bit of an addiction. I also took voice changing pills. Anyway, how’s the little green dude?

Don’t edit the movies at all. That’s probably the worst edit idea. If you don’t even edit the movie, you’ve completely failed at fanediting.

TestingOutTheTest said:

Ben Solo memorized the way to Exegol.

In the theatrical movie, that is what happens. Cinefy is proposing we fans edit the movie so that something different happens. Fans doing editing is what’s known as fan editing, or fanediting.

2h18? Dang, I would’ve thought there was more Naboo than 4 minutes.

I’m opposed to fanedits which set up Palpatine in TFA and TLJ mostly because I don’t like what’s done with Palpatine and his return in TRoS and don’t want to taint TFA and TLJ with it. But if you want to have Palpatine return, you kind of have to.

I’m kind of preaching to the choir here, and also preaching to the wall behind the choir, but the reason the Luke’s father twist works, and similar twists like Bruce Willis being dead the whole time, is not because they come out of nowhere like TestingOutTheTest says. It’s because they don’t come out of nowhere. Because you could have seen them coming, and honestly, I think part of the enjoyment comes from knowing that you should have seen it coming.

A good twist works when there’s lots of clues, or ideas that reinforce the twist before the twist actually happens. Nothing too blatant to spoil it, but enough that when it’s revealed you look back and think “Oh, shit, that’s why XYZ was doing ABC!” That’s why Bruce Willis never talks to anybody. That’s why Obi-Wan and Yoda act kinda goofy when talking about Luke’s dad. That’s why Dae-Su was being held prisoner. Although many movie twists are less straightforward than that.

Even when previous media was made without the twist in mind, good twists can be based in the facts of the previous media. You can just say “Oh they were lying” when a twist retcons something someone said, but it’s incredibly easy to read the Vader twist into Alec Guinness’s acting in the Ben’s Hut scene.

This is all the long way to say that twists only work in the story if they’re well rooted in the entire story.

The Palpatine twist comes out of nowhere, and it completely redirects the plot. None of the plot of TRoS is really a continuation of TLJ at all, save for a few almost irrelevant references that feel pasted in just to specifically deflect this criticism (Hux being a spy is the best example). Fanedits that retroactively put Palpatine back into TFA and TLJ make it less jarring by at least putting some connections to TRoS in them.

Lucasfilm themselves couldn’t do that because the idea of Palpatine even being there wasn’t decided until 10 months before TRoS was completed, let alone while TFA or TLJ were even being worked on. But they should have at least rooted Palpatine’s return better in TFA or TLJ. Or if they figured they couldn’t (and this is probably the case because these people are pretty experienced film makers), the concept probably should have been put in the “Cool idea, doesn’t work” bin.

If Palpatine wasn’t in the trailers and we first heard of him in the opening crawl, it may have been more shocking. But shock isn’t a very long-lasting emotion for a movie to portray. It would just worsen the problem. You’d get an admittedly cool moment of shock for one second, and then it would feel a lot more out of nowhere without the 8-month leadup knowing Palpatine was going to be in this movie.

Maybe this is a weird thing to say after wasting 524 words about how Palpatine’s return functions as a twist, but Palpatine’s return really isn’t a twist, I feel like it’s more of a premise. That’s why it feels like TRoS is an Episode 10 without an Episode 9. It feels like this is another story with Rey and Finn and the crew after their main story has been finished. Except their main story hasn’t been finished and never will be.

Hell, I wonder if a fanedit could make it an actual Episode 10, and just say that Episode 9 doesn’t exist. Like how for a while Episodes 1-3 didn’t exist. They skipped 9. It’s like the story ends in medias res, which, sure, is ridiculously unsatisfying and not as cool as starting a story in medias res, but whatever. Maybe it would sell TLJ better as a soft ending.

Anakin Starkiller said:

He finds the wreckage of the Second Death Star, and finds Palpatine desperately clinging to life with dark side magic, and maybe a little help from life support maintained by freak show cultists.

I do really like your idea Sparky, but not quite enough for me to look past Palpatine’s importance to the Saga. If it were any other Sith lord, this would be a perfect end, but not him. He’s our big bad.

That’s kind of why I like the idea. He’s our big bad, and look what he’s been reduced to. Don’t do dark side, kids.

To praise TRoS for a moment, that’s actually why I also really like his character design in TRoS. He’s a corpse who’s spent more time hanging from a life support system than ruling the galaxy. He’s spent about the same amount of time hanging around as he spent in power, there are 35 years between TPM and RotJ, and 31 years between RotJ and TRoS.

Although I think it’s self-explanatory that the storytelling does not at all match up with this. I may think it’s self-explanatory, but for obvious reasons I might have to explain myself anyway: In this movie, Palpatine is actually the villain, who is capable of destroying planets and is hours away from galactic domination. He’s so powerful that he makes the First Order entirely irrelevant overnight. He’s not really weak or pathetic in this movie, which is what I dug in his character design.

Imagine if maybe, Kylo Ren heard Palpatine was still alive on Endor (or Kef Bir if need be) after all these years, something he might find useful. Maybe Palpatine knows of some secret Imperial something, or secret Sith information, or maybe something something the Force meeting up with the most evil guy will help fix Kylo’s imbalance. His reason for seeking out Palpatine doesn’t matter.

He finds the wreckage of the Second Death Star, and finds Palpatine desperately clinging to life with dark side magic, and maybe a little help from life support maintained by freak show cultists. But for what? He’s completely irrelevant to galactic politics, and his dark influence over the Force has entirely waned. To the rest of the galaxy, he may as well have died way back then, it makes no difference. He’s using up so much effort just to not croak on the spot that he can barely even move his mouth to talk to Kylo, and on top of all this, the unnatural state of his continued existence is diminishing his power in the Force, so eventually he will not be able to keep this up.

Maybe Kylo comments on all this, noting how jarring it is to see the guy who once ruled all of existence and struck terror into the hearts of trillions, or more, without even the control of his bowels. After getting whatever he wanted out of Palpatine, something noted to not even be as useful as he originally thought, he cuts him down with his red lightsaber. All that effort just so he could spend over three decades covered in his own filth.

That would be a pretty cool depiction of the dark side, and what happens to those who devote themselves completely to it.

The moment just works better if he is rejecting the dark side. For that reason alone I choose to believe he does.

TestingOutTheTest said:

Also, it doesn’t help when such views are either presented as “fact” and other views are wrong or “they don’t understand.”

People refute criticisms of commonly criticized films all the time. I’m doing the same with TRoS.

Do it in the god damn opinion threads, dude. We have those. This is not the place for that.

Cadavra said:

Apologies if this has been discussed already, but has any consideration been given to removing the implication that Lando and Chewie somehow managed to assemble the largest fleet we’ve ever seen, in a couple hours at most, in what the film strongly suggests is a 180-degree reversal of the dominant mood of the galaxy? Personally, I consider that and the dagger compass (which has already been brilliantly fixed in Ascendant) to be the two most logic- and suspension-of-disbelief-breaking moments in the entire Saga.

I wonder if it could be implied or outright said that the First Order is doing something to keep down the effects of Luke on Crait? I don’t know how to word this lol. But like, maybe this fleet has already been pretty much happening and the First Order has just lost control handling it, or something like that.

MalaStrana#2 said:

jedi_bendu said:

I think it was more a publicity thing they deemed necessary because Carano was controversial.

Yeah: when you don’t think like Disney and all mainstream corporations tell you to, you become controversial. That’s also what Star Wars was about back in the 70s.

When Star Wars becomes the all powerful Empire, fans should stop defending it… (imho, of course)

Well, also when you say transphobic stuff when the lead actor has a trans sister, said lead actor might not want to continue being your coworker.

OutboundFlight said:

Anakin Starkiller said:

It’s not officially cancelled yet, and will maybe still continue, but to me this implies that Rangers was going to heavily feature Cara Dune and that’s now been quietly thrown out of the window. It’s a shame if it really is cancelled - I was hoping the series could replace Cara (if it was ever going to feature her) with a character like Hera Syndulla.

I think it was pretty petty to fire Carano in the first place. This is why I hate Twitter.

I also hope Rangers isn’t canceled from just Carano. There’s so much potential I’d much prefer the show to star original characters and flesh out their original stories. Include a few recognizable characters like the X-Wing Pilot from Mando, but put most of the focus on new faces.

I agree. They clearly had some story plan that I bet could be carried over to another character. Schmara Dune, Cara Dune’s twin sister.