StarkillerAG

Didn’t TLJ imply that Luke’s sacrifice would inspire rebellion across the galaxy? Wasn’t that what the end scene was all about?

Instead we got Luke sacrificing himself for no reason, no one in the galaxy caring about the First Order for a whole year, and then Lando somehow convinces the entire galaxy to fight the First Order in the span of 30 minutes.

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

How important is it really to this story? The First Order is trying to take over the galaxy, the Resistance is trying to stop it. Is a lot more information than that really important to the stories of these new characters? The logistics of the New Republic are no more important to Rey’s story than they are to the Mandalorian’s.

When one of the main characters of the story is the ruler of the galaxy, you should expect to have at least some explanation of how the system works. It’s fine to not explain anything for a small-scale TV show like The Mandalorian, but the sequels have events that happen on a galactic scale, so the movies should at least give us some broad idea as to the political situation.

I mean, Snoke is neither a main character nor the ruler of the galaxy, so I’m not sure that’s the most salient point.

I was referring to Kylo.

pleasehello said:

Almost everything you mentioned has a 1:1 counterpart in the sequel trilogy.

Which shouldn’t be taken as a compliment towards the sequels.
Copying a much better story does not make your story good.

DominicCobb said:

How important is it really to this story? The First Order is trying to take over the galaxy, the Resistance is trying to stop it. Is a lot more information than that really important to the stories of these new characters? The logistics of the New Republic are no more important to Rey’s story than they are to the Mandalorian’s.

When one of the main characters of the story is the ruler of the galaxy, you should expect to have at least some explanation of how the system works. It’s fine to not explain anything for a small-scale TV show like The Mandalorian, but the sequels have events that happen on a galactic scale, so the movies should at least give us some broad idea as to the political situation.

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

It’s a such a small aspect of the film, I don’t really care that it’s confusing.

What do you mean, “small aspect?” The First Order vs Resistance conflict was the main story of the sequels, and it wasn’t handled well at all. If you want to reset the galactic situation to Brave Rebels vs Evil Empire, at least give a satisfying explanation.

That’s just the backdrop for the story, not the story itself.

The backdrop for the story is necessary to tell the story. If the backdrop makes no sense, the whole story falls apart.

DominicCobb said:

It’s a such a small aspect of the film, I don’t really care that it’s confusing.

What do you mean, “small aspect?” The First Order vs Resistance conflict was the main story of the sequels, and it wasn’t handled well at all. If you want to reset the galactic situation to Brave Rebels vs Evil Empire, at least give a satisfying explanation.

The politics in the PT were not only boring, they often didn’t make sense and they didn’t add much to the story.

Have you watched the prequels recently? I don’t think the politics in those movies were as bad as you make it seem. There were only one or two Senate scenes per movie, and the political situation wasn’t confusing at all. I actually liked how we saw the downfall of the corrupt Republic and the seeds of Palpatine’s manipulation. The political scenes were some of the highlights of the prequels in my opinion.

That’s because it is Palpatine’s ROTJ scream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhDtFnpNOfE&t=117s

pleasehello said:

StarkillerAG said:

pleasehello said:

Wexter said:

The weird thing about the new trilogy is that the state of the larger galaxy is just absolutely incomprehensible. While the prequels clearly show the might and fall of the Old Republic, the OT depicts the Rebel Alliance defeating Palpatine’s Empire. The obvious next step would probably be showing the struggles of the New Republic or something along those lines.

Instead we got what seems to be two fringe groups of fanatics and has-beens fighting it out in the Outer Rim while the larger galaxy doesn’t really care about any of that until like the last ten minutes of the story.

You kind of just described the OT. We never really see the effect of the Empire on the galaxy at large. Only how it relates to the rebellion and our main characters. The only reason we know of the Empire’s reach is because it’s called “the Empire”. I agree it’s less clear what the scope of the First Order’s power is, but only because their name is more ambiguous.

The OT doesn’t need as much explanation though, because the story is relatively simple. An evil empire rules the entire galaxy, and a brave group of rebels has to stop them. With the sequels, you need more backstory to explain where this mysterious First Order came from, how much influence it has, and why the Resistance is a separate group from the Republic, none of which is explained by the movies. You need to read the EU to find out the basic plot of the sequels, which isn’t a good approach to storytelling.

I know this has been said ad nauseum, but I’ll take the confusing galactic status of the ST over the political minutia of the prequels any day of the week. It’s still too bad a middle road wasn’t taken.

I actually preferred the boring politics of the prequels, because at least that made sense. JJ was so afraid of reminding people of the prequels that he removed the few exposition scenes of the movie in post, creating an overly confusing mess.

pleasehello said:

Wexter said:

The weird thing about the new trilogy is that the state of the larger galaxy is just absolutely incomprehensible. While the prequels clearly show the might and fall of the Old Republic, the OT depicts the Rebel Alliance defeating Palpatine’s Empire. The obvious next step would probably be showing the struggles of the New Republic or something along those lines.

Instead we got what seems to be two fringe groups of fanatics and has-beens fighting it out in the Outer Rim while the larger galaxy doesn’t really care about any of that until like the last ten minutes of the story.

You kind of just described the OT. We never really see the effect of the Empire on the galaxy at large. Only how it relates to the rebellion and our main characters. The only reason we know of the Empire’s reach is because it’s called “the Empire”. I agree it’s less clear what the scope of the First Order’s power is, but only because their name is more ambiguous.

The OT doesn’t need as much explanation though, because the story is relatively simple. An evil empire rules the entire galaxy, and a brave group of rebels has to stop them. With the sequels, you need more backstory to explain where this mysterious First Order came from, how much influence it has, and why the Resistance is a separate group from the Republic, none of which is explained by the movies. You need to read the EU to find out the basic plot of the sequels, which isn’t a good approach to storytelling.

They released bits and pieces of the human Jabba scene on the VHS extras for the 1997 version, to show the work they did to that scene. Some people have recreated the original scene by spicing in the VHS clips with the Blu-ray CGI Jabba version.

RogueLeader said:

/s

Looks like I got whooshed.

The human Jabba scene was never in any version of the movie. The scene was cut for time, and some of the dialogue was moved to the Greedo scene so Han’s actions would still make sense. When Lucas reinserted the deleted scene in the 1997 version, he used a CGI model of Jabba that didn’t look very good. The scene was updated in the 2004 DVD release, using the CGI Jabba model from The Phantom Menace. The version of the Jabba scene with a human actor has never been released officially, although some people have recreated it using VHS footage.

I wouldn’t call it a new argument. I’ve seen the “Would Finn’s sacrifice work” debate 5,000 times before.

yotsuya said:

The weapon is about to cut through a door several feet thick so Finn’s craft is likely to just vaporize if he flys down the barrel. No weapons and no ship to make impact (and a flimsy one to start with that wouldn’t have taken out an AT-AT). So Finn was making a useless sacrifice because he was desperate to do something.

Yeah, but that’s all fan theory and retroactive justification. The movie didn’t make that clear enough, which accidentally gave people the impression that Rose doomed the Resistance, which wasn’t Rian’s intent with that scene. That’s my main problem with TLJ. Rian had a good vision for the movie, but a lot of his ideas weren’t executed well.

SparkySywer said:

Finn wouldn’t have saved his friends by running into the cannon, wasn’t that the whole point?

I’m not sure. It wasn’t made clear in the movie, which was probably not a good idea.

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

What does everyone think about the idea of removing Palpatine completely? I posted some suggestions for it a few comments ago. Is it feasible or not?

Honestly I can’t imagine how that would work. Not that it couldn’t, but I can’t see it myself. So much of the film revolves around him it’d be very hard to do.

I posted a planned plot outline for a Palpatine-free version on the previous page. You might want to look at that.

First of all, to shift the story like you want, you need dialogue that doesn’t exist.

I was planning to use the opening crawl to change the story, like with many edits of TPM.

Secondly, without Palpatine, there’s no real climax. You didn’t explain how you’d handle Rey and Ben on Exegol, I think what you’re implying is they aren’t there at all. But you can’t rest everything on the ground and space battle, there’s really no meat to either, and they’re basically just a backdrop for what really matters, Rey and Ben vs. Palpatine.

I disagree. I feel like the “people’s fleet” moment is a great climax to the theme of the trilogy, which is that anyone can be a hero. The climax shouldn’t be Palpatine and Skywalker vs Palpatine.

I don’t know how you could erase Rey from the climax of the film and not have it feel like there was a lot missing. Maybe if you wanted to do a really short epilogue movie it could work, I don’t know. It’s an interesting idea but there isn’t a lot to work with.

Yeah, it would be short. But maybe it should be a short epilogue, since TLJ wrapped up most of the trilogy’s plot threads.

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

What does everyone think about the idea of removing Palpatine completely? I posted some suggestions for it a few comments ago. Is it feasible or not?

Honestly I can’t imagine how that would work. Not that it couldn’t, but I can’t see it myself. So much of the film revolves around him it’d be very hard to do.

I posted a planned plot outline for a Palpatine-free version on the previous page. You might want to look at that.

What does everyone think about the idea of removing Palpatine completely? I posted some suggestions for it a few comments ago. Is it feasible or not?

Copyright blocked. You might want to post it on Vimeo.

Hal 9000 said:

If someone does end up pursuing a fan edit that removed the whole ‘Rey Palpatine’ thing, they’d have a good opportunity to make the final scene free of dialogue, ala the other 8 films.

I don’t think removing Rey Palpatine requires removing Rey Skywalker. I actually think Rey Skywalker would feel better without Rey Palpatine, since it would show that Rey has finally found the family she searched for all these years.

DominicCobb said:

FYI for anyone looking to change things about the Rey Palpatine reveal, the two scenes with Kylo - the Force duel and the hangar reveal - are basically just him exclusively talking under a mask and Rey reacting (“No!” “Stop talking” “Why?” stuff like that). I’m pretty confident this was done on purpose because they knew these were crucial expositional scenes and wanted the latitude to change after the fact. But it also means editors should be able to mess with them pretty easily.

Yeah, that’s why I’m planning on cutting all of Kylo’s masked dialogue during the hangar scene. It should be relatively easy to do by using the “Join Me” track on the official soundtrack.

I was actually thinking of removing Palpatine completely, and having the Death Star Destroyers be built by Kylo. Here’s my planned plot outline:

-Rewrite the opening crawl to establish that Kylo is using a group of Sith cultists on the planet Exegol to build an unstoppable fleet of Star Destroyers, each with the power to destroy an entire planet. The Resistance has found out about this, and has begun searching for a legendary Sith Wayfinder which could lead to Exegol.

-Begin the movie with Rey’s training. Kylo communes with Vader’s helmet, and Rey and Kylo have a shared vision. Rey talks with Leia about how she’s been having trouble concentrating recently.

-After Rey’s training, cut to the heroes embarking for Pasaana. Most of the opening has been cut, since they already know where the Wayfinder is in this version. Lando’s conversation with the heroes tells us all we need to know.

-The events on Pasaana and Kijimi proceed as normal, with minor trims to remove discussion of Palpatine’s return.

-Cut Rey saying she recognizes Ochi’s ship. Rey’s parents are still nobody drunkards in this version.

-Cut the Force Bond lightsaber duel completely, since most of the conversation revolves around how Rey’s parents weren’t actually nobodies.

-Remove all dialog from Rey and Kylo’s meeting in the hangar, until Kylo takes his mask off. Rey isn’t a Palpatine in this version.

-The events on Endor proceed as normal, with minor trims to remove discussion of Palpatine’s return and Rey Palpatine.

-After the heroes learn about Leia’s death, cut to a Star Destroyer destroying Kijimi. The one-two punch of those scenes being together is really powerful.

-The events on the Resistance base and Luke’s island proceed as normal, with minor trims to remove discussion of Palpatine’s return and Rey Palpatine.

-Restructure the final battle to focus on the Resistance, removing all scenes of Rey between her guiding the Resistance to Exegol and her X-Wing escaping the final battle safely.

-Move Kylo’s redemption to after the victory celebration and before Rey’s return to Tatooine. There are now two final scenes for each member of the Force Dyad, and Kylo’s fate is left ambiguous.

That’s my planned plot structure for a potential edit that removes Palpatine. It might not be possible, but it’s the only way this movie could be salvaged in my opinion.

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

I have a problem with people who like the movie getting defensive when someone criticizes it.

I mean, if someone like the movie obviously they’re going to get defensive in regards to criticism. If you like a movie and aren’t willing to defend it, do you even like it?

If you can just accept that some people have a different opinion than you, you’ll be a lot happier in life.

Couldn’t the same be said in reverse? Why get upset about people liking and defending the movie?

I don’t have a problem with people liking the movie, I have a problem with people dismissing legitimate criticism. Every movie has problems, even some of the best movies ever made. People should learn to acknowledge criticism, not deny it.

I mean, nitpicks and plot holes are some of the most lazy and pointless forms of criticism there is, I wouldn’t stress too much about calling them “legitimate.”

More importantly, it’s all subjective. Just because you think you’ve spotted a legitimate flaw with a work does not mean everyone is forced to agree with you that it is a flaw.

Okay, I understand your point of view.

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

I have a problem with people who like the movie getting defensive when someone criticizes it.

I mean, if someone like the movie obviously they’re going to get defensive in regards to criticism. If you like a movie and aren’t willing to defend it, do you even like it?

If you can just accept that some people have a different opinion than you, you’ll be a lot happier in life.

Couldn’t the same be said in reverse? Why get upset about people liking and defending the movie?

I don’t have a problem with people liking the movie, I have a problem with people dismissing legitimate criticism. Every movie has problems, even some of the best movies ever made. People should learn to acknowledge criticism, not deny it.

If you like this movie that’s fine, I’m not trying to take that away from you. But you shouldn’t dismiss the complaints of people who don’t like the movie by saying that they’re nitpicking and biased, or that most people like it, or that the movie actually makes complete sense in a way the critics just don’t understand. I don’t have a problem with people liking this movie, I have a problem with people who like the movie getting defensive when someone criticizes it. If you can just accept that some people have a different opinion than you, you’ll be a lot happier in life.