SparkySywer

The OT is Star Wars - If it wasn’t solid, Star Wars wouldn’t have taken off.

Rodney-2187 said:

If the last new Star wars we ever saw was back in 1983, the franchise wouldn’t be as popular as it is today. The originals may have maintained a reputation of being groundbreaking for their time, and a cultural touchstone, but so many young people have an attachment to Star Wars that has very little to do with the originals. They most likely only saw those movies out of curiosity about how it all started.

As it is now, all parts of Star Wars reinforce each other. Each generation has their own take on it. I’d say it’s more correct that the prequels, as well as other new content, is what will keeps people aware of Star Wars. I don’t see an end in sight, and that’s comforting.

I think it’s really the exact opposite way around: People more often get introduced to Star Wars because of the older content (usually the OT), and check out newer stuff later.

I find it a lot harder to start completely from scratch with a sequel trilogy compared to with a prequel trilogy. Even harder to build it into a coherent story. This is more of a “Plot points, aspects, and ideas I’d think about were I making a sequel to the Star Wars trilogy”.

-When a sequel trilogy takes place has a huge impact on its story. If it kicks up a few days after RotJ, it’ll obviously be very different from if it kicks up 3 decades after RotJ, or if it takes place long after the OT trio are dead. I’ll put it 10-30 years after RotJ for the sake of this though, mostly because it just gives the ST more room to breathe.

-Feel free to ditch the trilogy format if necessary. If the plot makes more sense with only an Episode 7 and 8, go with it. If the plot needs 4 or 5 movies to tell, go with it.

-I don’t like ripping off the sequel or prequel trilogy we got, but Kylo Ren’s character is great and the meta-story is kind of something you could only really ever do in a sequel to the Star Wars trilogy. Too big an opportunity to pass up. I’d keep the villain being something like that: Starting the trilogy as being someone who idolizes Vader and wants to become him. If depicted sympathetically, he can grow out of it like Kylo does, but if not, maybe he doesn’t. I’d rather that he do, though, because that’s not a schtick that stays interesting past like, one movie. Maybe two.

-I don’t like the NJO Legends stories and I don’t like sequel rewrites that are similar to it. I don’t like the idea of Luke being at the head of a formal institution, and that being how the Jedi are brought back to the galaxy. Maybe Luke has an Academy, sort of like Plato’s academy. Maybe Luke’s first students have a sort of disciple-like relationship with him. After scouring the galaxy on as much information about the history of the Jedi, he takes on a small handful of apprentices to be the next generation of Jedi.

-Luke will also be willing to teach literally anyone about literally anything - Despite Leia, Lando, and Han being unable or unwilling to make the huge commitment to become a Jedi, they’ll have learned a lot about being more Jedi-like from Luke. They’ll be more spiritual in this trilogy. This is what I imagine from Yoda telling him to pass on what he’s learned. Taking on apprentices sure, but also spreading Jedi wisdom to the whole galaxy. All of it.

-The conflict should have roots in Episodes 1-6. An idea I like is if the Rebellion in the OT was made up of two factions: One being the wealthy, influential Senators, businessmen, etc, who just so happened to not be in Palpatine’s in-group, and the second being the common people, especially from the Outer Rim, who suffered hard under the Republic and the Empire. Once the Empire falls, the common enemy these two groups have, they’ll turn against each other.

If this sequel trilogy has to coexist with Lucas’s prequel trilogy, it could also retroactively add some depth to Palpatine’s rise to power: The flaws of the Republic made the Empire inevitable, and this ST could get into those flaws. The Rebellion was NOT an Alliance to Restore the Republic, at least not to the second group.

Making the other group more and more like the Empire also adds depth to Palpatine and the Empire.

-The main characters of the OT should fade into the background over the course of the sequels, passing the torch onto the younger main characters. At least one of these characters should be a child of the OT trio, with at least one Skywalker. But they shouldn’t dominate the story in the way that they sort of do in Legends. I think the Skywalker grandchild should turn to the dark side, being the heir to the Skywalker legacy should do that to you. Maybe there are two of Anakin’s grandchildren, though, and one could be light and one dark. But keeping the conflict entirely in the family isn’t something I’d be a fan of.

Honestly, dealing with the Skywalker grandkids is probably the hardest part, because on the one hand, a Skywalker grandkid being irrelevant to the story would be really weird and jarring, on the other, having too many Skywalker grandkids in the story would be really overpowering (If you thought the canon movies being turned into the Skywalker saga was dumb, imaging an ST with four Skywalker grandkid protagonists), and on your third hand, you have two Skywalkers who’ll potentially have kids.

Maybe Leia and Luke have one kid each, and one kid is the villain and the other is a sort of deuteragonist.

-Luke doesn’t die a virgin. Not a fan. I’d also like him to have a daughter, but I’m not committed to it. If he ever had a wife, though, she’s dead by the time of Episode 7. I don’t want to set up a Luke/whoever romance and starting the movie with him just kinda having a wife would be weird. I’m down with him being gay also, but then he doesn’t get a daughter, because I don’t want him to adopt or use weird space tech to get a man pregnant in between movies. If either of those happen, it’s happening on screen, god damn it.

-The main protagonist and POV character is not a Skywalker grandchild. Not interesting. Something I like is if they’re trained by the/a Skywalker grandchild, though.

-I like the idea of Luke being out of the picture in Episode 7, because I agree he’d be way too overpowering if he was right there from the start. He didn’t go missing, though, that’s way too close to ripping off TFA. Maybe the story begins with the/a Skywalker grandkid finding the main character, and toward the middle or end of TFA is when Luke shows up? There should also be conflict between the POV character and Luke over the trilogy, and any good-guy Skywalker grandkid(s). Luke immediately getting along with them and never having any conflict is just boring.

-The main conflict has been going on for a bit before Episode 7. If it’s between those two Rebel groups like I said before, the civil war has been going on for a few months or years already. If there’s a powerful Imperial remnant, they’ve already been the biggest issue in the galaxy for years by now. If it’s something entirely new, that war has been going on for a little while now. A lot of ST rewrites spend half of Episode 7 showing us what the new society they’ve set up (New Republic, New Jedi Order, the works), and the villains don’t really even exist until the middle of the movie. Not interesting.

-The conflict of the entire Star Wars saga ends here. There can more sagas, other sagas, but this saga ends here. And with good finality. We should trust at the end of Episode 9 (or whatever if we ditch the trilogy format) that none of this can happen again. If we’re going with the Republic vs Rebels thing I mentioned, the Rebels win and set up an entirely new system, one without the flaws that the Republic had that led to the Empire, or the suffering of the people even in the Republic. Maybe with its own new flaws, but the flaws that led to the Empire, and the conflicts in Episodes 1-3 and 7+, are gone.

NeverarGreat said:

As I understand it, a movie not having ‘tight’ writing doesn’t mean it has plotholes per say, just that it isn’t as efficient with its scenes/dialogue/plot as another movie.

Yeah, I recognize that and kind of wanted to address it originally, but my comment was already long.

I think a good example of flabby writing would be Anakin/Padme in AOTC, where they have a half-dozen scenes which don’t move their characters forward at all in the eyes of the audience. Another is the Exegol plot from TROS, where our characters go to four or five locations just to find a mcGuffin while barely developing as characters at all. But again, the problem is a lack of character progression per scene, not necessarily how flabby/nonsensical the plot becomes. Tight writing, in this case, does not equal a tight plot. Fury Road has a simplistic, borderline stupid plot, but it packs so much character work into each scene that one would never call the writing flabby.

Nerrel’s video makes a similar argument, and I don’t really agree. At least not in principle. Just because you can cut out portions of the movie to get to the point, doesn’t mean you necessarily should.

Sometimes detours like what we have in TRoS can be used to add something meaningful to the story, or can have some memorable sequence. The problem with these scenes in TRoS isn’t that they could be cut, it’s that what they add isn’t interesting or memorable or important at all. The problem with AotC and RotS’s similar scenes is that they don’t really add anything at all.

I think the fact that TRoS isn’t criticized for dragging, but the exact opposite, having a ridiculously frantic pace, kind of shows this. And that’s also where I agree with Nerrel more, these scenes shouldn’t be cut because they’re unnecessary, but because their screentime can be lent to something else, or even just to let the movie chill tf out.

snooker said:

RogueLeader said:

Later, Hux gives his speech and then we see the fleet jump away into hyperspace.

https://streamable.com/ytkl0t

Scene test!

Now, I really don’t know how to handle the Resistance briefing scene. All I’ve managed to do is change Poe’s line from “Lower the shield, destroy that oscillator, and blow up their big gun” to “…blow up their base”

A suggestion: I think the custom establishing shot needs a little bit more motion. Not sure what specifically, especially because making the Star Destroyers move would be a huge pain in the ass. But maybe a zoom in would be enough.

Servii said:

A New Hope has tighter writing than Empire Strikes Back.

I kind of hate that movies are judged based on how tight/holey their plots are.

Like I’m not about to argue that plot holes (and whatever you want to call your criticism of the space slug sequence) are secretly a good thing or even that they’re neutral, I don’t agree with the people who do actually say that. A haphazard plot can really take you out of a movie and can often demonstrate larger problems within a movie.

That said though, I feel like more and more in movie discourse people focus a lot on the tightness of the plot at the expense of, like, everything else. People judge movies like a high school teacher grades a paper, movies start at 100 points and then points get knocked off whenever there’s a ““problem””. And it’s just such a shallow way to look at movies.

Not necessarily accusing Servii of doing this, and this isn’t even just an anti-confrontational disclaimer or anything. Clearly this is not what they believe. But I kinda thought it was a good jumping off point.

Mocata said:

Rebel trooper battle scene and Owen and Beru BBQ is old 1970s George, not modern family man George.

That can’t possibly be true… George Lucas told us he’s a visionary who planned out all six movies he was involved with all the way back in 1973.

It’s more about the purpose of the edit. Hedgesmfg’s edit is more oriented toward rewatches, to really sell the transition. Your idea is more as if it was played absolutely straight.

It’s not against the rules if we only check one step down

Anakin Starkiller said:

I’ve been saying this literally since before Dreadnoughts were even a thing. The fact that they are makes it all the more approachable. The fact is the destruction of the Senate is important. What isn’t is the destruction of an entire star system.

Especially because in-universe, planet destroying superweapons clearly do not friending work. Why the bad guys would try it a second time, let alone a third time, let alone a fourth time, is beyond me.

snooker said:

Not spamming this
thread with quotes of images

I’ve been toying around with removing the superweapon aspect of Force Awakens altogether. Hopefully I can get something working : )

I’m excited. An edit like this is something TFA needs.

How do you plan on getting Han, Finn, and Chewie on Starkiller/Ilum? There’s the “I’m just here to save Rey” thing, but they also still have a mission.

I kinda unironically wish there was a “My baby girl” reference in the later ST movies

Might fit in this thread though if Palpatine said it in TRoS to Rey

Why not, right?

I’ve kinda said since 2016 that you could combine Cassian and Jyn into one character and the movie would be a lot better for it, but I also sort of think you could combine Baze (gun guy for OutboundFlight) too.

Jyn is only really there for the plot, because her father built the Death Star. Cassian is more of an active protagonist than her, but Baze is the only character with a real arc.

You could probably combine Saw Gerrera and Chirrut (force guy for OutboundFlight) too, making the story more focused. The daughter of an Imperial scientist is taken in by a religious guy who’s an early rebel after her parents are killed. They part ways as she grows into adult, and she loses faith in the Force as she wanders through the Empire. They reunite after the Rebellion gains intel on the Death Star and her father goes missing. Over the course of the movie, she regains her faith in the Force and leads the charge on Scarif.

Spuffure said:

I FUCKING HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE HAVE TO WHINGE ABOUT MODERN POP MUSIC AND SAY MUSIC WAS BETTER IN THE OLD DAYS

1968:

2012:

Things you can post here:

-Jokes or funny stories that you kinda had to have been there for

-Jokes that are really funny when spoken out loud or with a performance, but don’t really work over text

-Jokes that relied on being topical, but you didn’t think of the joke until it wasn’t topical anymore

-Probably more stuff I don’t know

This thread is specifically for stuff that was removed from the context it was funny in. If you post something whose context never really existed in the first place, we’ll all be able to tell and you’ll look like a big idiot.

Technically everything that’s died is non-living

The Star Wars fandom should put a gag rule on the phrase “Subverting expectations”. It’s just something Rian said behind the scenes once, and then the marketing team plastered that one sound bite all over the sizzle reel and a bunch of other promotional material. It really wasn’t Rian’s governing principle dominating the production of the movie.

jedi_bendu said:

Stardust1138 said:

I’ll add another unpopular opinion.

Despite how I feel about The Rise of Skywalker I think the more I come to the conclusion if Rey had stayed “Rey Random” then declared herself a Skywalker I might be a bit more forgiving and able to accept the film more.

Honestly, I’d prefer she accepted herself as “just Rey” - that’s powerful - although finding an ‘adoptive family’ of sorts after discovering that your biological parents abandoned you is a good message to send too.

I’m not opposed to Rey becoming a Skywalker (if it was better executed), but Rey starting her own legacy would be a much better ending to the trilogy than joining someone else’s legacy.

It’s alright I guess. It’s not that great, though. The characters are super boring and the premise of the movie itself is problematic. I mean, we start where we do in ANH because the story before ANH isn’t important or interesting. Plus, the Death Star plans on their own aren’t really an interesting story, especially in the format of a big action blockbuster with a big fight at the end.

I watched it three times in the movie theater, but I think only because I loved seeing the OT aesthetic on the big screen and not just on the TV. I can no longer say I watched it since, because I watched it again back in 2019 (my friends wanted to). But other than that, I haven’t.

ThisIsCreation said:

Since ANH, We have had constant “dumb star wars moments” that get remedied in time.

Why was there a weak spot in the death star and no one noticed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agcRwGDKulw

Hal 9000 said:

Yeah but ghosts… don’t necessarily act like human beings who take the world seriously. They are perhaps more like divine figures who intervene according to something else.

The Force doesn’t necessarily think and act the way humans do, and in death the distinction between the part of the Force that is the individual and the Force in its totality is lost.

You can sort of fill the Wayfinder plot hole if Vader just simply didn’t know about Exegol, or at least where it was. That makes Vader even more of an unequal partner to Palpatine, though, and that’s something I’m not a fan of.

You’re not going to be able to purchase 24.000 versions. If you really want that, the best shot you have is the edit the Blu Ray yourself, but I doubt that would turn out well. I have no clue why you’re calling 23.976 crap, though, and I doubt you’re able to tell the difference. The difference is less than a tenth of a percent.

They are, and ideally I’d want it to also be preserved. But that said, if they released box sets of the theatrical versions and the 2019 versions from now on, I wouldn’t feel as strongly about its preservation as I do about the unaltered movies and as I would if the 2019 versions were erased.

I regret jumping into the ST arguments into this thread all the time, because this isn’t the ST arguments thread, this is the random ST fanedit ideas thread. But… I have no self control and have to have the last word.

If Luke being a hermit is a given, the reason Rian gave for why is the best possible reason, especially given the context given to him in TFA. I’ve never, ever seen anyone propose an alternative reason they would’ve preferred, period, let alone a better one. And all the other reasons I can think of (Luke’s trapped there, Luke’s hunting/researching something that’ll help him beat Snoke, etc) don’t lead into anything more creatively interesting than “Good guys and bad guys get in a big fight and the good guys win”. For a sequel to something as big as Star Wars, I want something better than that.

Maybe I’m missing something, but again, nobody ever proposes anything they’d have preferred, let alone something actually better than that.

I’ve never seen Luke’s vision as out of character, though. Luke sees a vision of Ben killing all his friends, Leia, Han, and destroying everything he and his friends spent their whole lives working so hard on. And he realizes he could prevent it all from happening incredibly easily, but he knows it’s wrong to do that. Not just because killing some teenager is super fucked up, but because of what he learned with Vader. Anyone can be redeemed and no person’s future is set in stone.

When Ben destroys his temple, he looks back at his own actions and the actions of the prequel-era Jedi, and comes to the conclusion that the Jedi taking too active of a role in the galaxy was harmful. So he chooses to go into exile, because he believes that’s what’s best for the galaxy.

Seems pretty in-character to me. Even for young Luke, and bear in mind, the ST Luke has spend a good majority of his life after Return of the Jedi.

The idea that Luke in TLJ’s character is “He tried to kill Ben in his sleep and then he abandoned all his friends and the galaxy to sulk and be depressed” is, to put it diplomatically… not entirely accurate.

And don’t really think the decision to put Luke on the island in TFA is that big a deal either. I’m a fan of TFA, and looking for Luke Skywalker was a good hook into a new story and new characters. It’s a little safe, but after the prequels and a change in ownership, faith in Lucasfilm was at an all time low from 2012-2015. TFA undeniably won it back, being the most uncontroversially popular thing that’s been put out since the buyout. Except maybe Mando Season 1.

Maybe I’m missing some better big picture story, but most ST rewrites (which take place at the appropriate time for the actors’ ages) just have the OT trio as entirely static characters, who face off against a boring new villain, and do absolutely nothing interesting on the way to victory.

(Which sucks, because I want to get into ST rewrites but most of them are really awful)