Vladius

I liked that one that used the people getting shot at in Star Trek Insurrection. Kind of silly but it worked.

A lot of issues could be fixed by just deleting Attack of the Clones and putting the relevant Emergency Powers parts and Sidious meeting with Dooku parts in either the end of episode 1 or the start of 3. Have shots of the clones on Kamino play while Palpatine talks about the army. Maybe include Dooku meeting with the Separatist leaders. Other than the question of establishing how Anakin knows the Lars family you can mostly let the audience fill in the blanks themselves.

Oh Anakin probably went and saw his mom and freed her from slavery, but she died tragically and something bad happened with sand people. Oh Anakin and Padme ended up together, that’s nice. Oh the Trade Federation went and started a larger war and Palpatine made a clone army to fight them, and Jar Jar became a senator and supported him. Oh Palpatine got a new apprentice after Maul.

No wondering why the Jedi didn’t let Anakin see his mom, nothing about “forbidden love” or a ban on attachment (or sending Anakin to the romance planet, alone, with his crush,) no whiny teenager Anakin, no nonsense about the Jedi losing their touch with the Force or having a magic brain cloud remove their common sense. No elected queens. Obi Wan and Anakin have a friendly mentor-student/peer relationship.

People are going to say that the audience would get too confused but plenty of stories do this kind of time jump and it works, it tends to only increase audience interest as they piece together what changed.

EddieDean said:

Vladius said:

I’ve said this before but people use way too many all caps words in their crawls. If you look at the movies they only do one or two.

In chronological order each count is 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 2, 6. So you’re right, and Rise of Skywalker (and the whole sequel trilogy) is an outlier. But I don’t personally think it’s a big issue - I think all caps is an easy tool to direct people’s attention to the core concepts.

It comes across as distracting and almost like self parody (in my opinion.)

I’ve said this before but people use way too many all caps words in their crawls. If you look at the movies they only do one or two.

CaptainFaraday said:

My only criticism to an otherwise good idea is that I like how the audience gets to gradually realise the Republic is starting to fail across the prequels. It’s not obvious at first, as the different stakeholders attempt to keep up appearances to hold onto their positions (the Jedi’s ability to use the Force has diminished, the Senate has become a bureaucracy, everyone except Sidious is one step behind everything that’s happening across all three films), and in the end that’s their undoing as Sidious sweeps in at the last minute and knocks the final pretence of function out of a system that was already dysfunctional. (That’s drawing across AOTC and ROTS as well, but it starts in TPM.)

The problem with this is that it’s all conveyed through dialogue and there’s no visual element. Palpatine tells us that the senate isn’t what it once was and it’s all squabbling bureaucrats now. Count Dooku says it’s corrupt and Qui Gon knew all about it, and in the deleted scene he says that the Republic doesn’t work and it’s time to start over. Mace Windu tells us that their ability to use the Force is diminished and Yoda says the dark side clouds everything and it’s impossible to see the future.

But do we see this change? We don’t ever see the Republic or senate functioning correctly or incorrectly, so there’s nothing to judge it by. The senate scenes in TPM come across as slow, procedural and not a lot happening, but that’s not unusual for politics in real life. If anything following procedures is what a Republic is supposed to do. There isn’t so much as a shot of a senator taking a bribe or meeting with the Trade Federation. Ships can move pretty much instantaneously in Star Wars, so when they talk about actually checking out the blockade it’s not unreasonable to think that that’s a good idea. Also wouldn’t all the places that trade with Naboo also speak up about it since it affects them? You can explain all of this away with corruption but we have to SEE it happen. It’s a movie. Even if it were a book it would be bad to tell instead of show.

We also don’t see the Jedi using the Force to the degree that we would notice if anything was different. If anything they start using it more after that. There’s no scenes of Yoda or whoever else making prophecies about the future before it gets switched off. They just end up looking dumb for not using common sense instead of the victims of supernatural effects. Yoda says “only the Dark Lord of the Sith knows our weakness” and then this is never elaborated on or brought up again, we just have to take their word for it that there is a weakness and it’s getting used.

RogueLeader said:

I recall Brian Blessed (who voiced Boss Nass) gave an interview where he said “I tried to make sure my noises didn’t interfere with dialogue”. He basically said that he thought that Jar Jar sometimes made noises on the line, and he has a lot of plot, so the audience would go, “What’s he saying? What did he say?” Anyway, I’m not saying Brian Blessed should be the authority on this, but I think it is a fair point.

This is exactly why I don’t like Jar Jar. His antics and his voice would be tolerable if you could actually understand what he was saying. Every relevant thing that he says is covered up with babble for no reason.

fidodido said:

sade1212 said:

I also entirely disagree with the […]

Thank you, sade!
I must confess, I haven’t watched Rebels (or any other animated series). But that sounds interesting, thanks for the tip!
Let me try to explain myself: Of course, the idea that Balance is some sort of “greyness” is just an exaggerated, artificial metaphor that can only appear in a fairy tale (which is what Star Wars is to me). Of course, there is no such thing as good and bad either—there are only the subjective definitions of what is good or bad, right or wrong for the person interpreting a situation, action, or object (this is what sociology calls the “interpretative paradigm”).

This is debatable in the real world, but it’s certainly not the position that Star Wars actually takes. Good and evil are objectively real in Star Wars, or at the very least evil is. For Force users at least, it exercises a supernatural influence over behavior and causes physical corruption.
“Grayness” is less of a fairy tale viewpoint and more the moral relativism that you’re talking about. It’s what people try to add to Star Wars when they don’t like the idea of objective morality, because they feel it’s more realistic. I will agree with you that it’s exaggerated, artificial, and incoherent, but that’s all the more reason not to pursue it.

I strongly disagree with everything you’re saying but it wouldn’t be right for me to get into it here.

It could be funny to just have him drop a seismic charge in it as he’s flying by. That seems like the whole reason they came up with the scene and they just came up with a convoluted reason for it to happen.

I really enjoyed this. It feels a lot classier to watch. It’s great without a lot of the overtly wacky elements or overwrought appendices stuff and just feels like the bedtime story it’s supposed to be. Some kind of transition of going up to Azog would be nice, as well as some more mourning of Fili and Kili or avenging them by killing Bolg, but I understand that is 100% not your fault and comes down to a lack of footage. If I had my druthers I would redesign all the CG orcs and probably redesign most of the dwarves too.
The big deviation from the book that I see, and I completely understand that you had to do this too, is that Bilbo never says “the eagles are coming” as they fly over.

Other than that it’s perfect. I would feel comfortable watching this with family and friends.

The flashbacks should be presented straight in chronological order and a little bit faster, then episode 4 should be the first episode. Other than getting out of the sarlacc and the tusken stuff, absolutely nothing happens in episodes 1-3. Episode 4 actually gives Boba a motivation, shows a meeting with the crime bosses, and gives an antagonist. The episode seems to understand this about itself because it even introduces the wookiee like he’s a brand new character we’ve never seen before.

I disagree with 1 but agree with 2 and 3. I noticed that as well and those were some of the only things I didn’t like. I also thought that Paul should have said the “fear is the mind-killer” speech like he does in the trailer, but they only have Jessica say it and they make it seem like it’s something that you do out of weakness, and not a representation of training and strength.
I’m not sure where you would put it, maybe when they’re flying in the sandstorm or maybe during the march into the desert with the Fremen at the end.

I would like to see it as well.

IlFanEditore said:

Except Luke wasn’t “changed for the worse”, IMHO.
I really don’t understand what people watched (and then I’ll promise I’ll shut up. And always remember “De gustibus non disputandum est”).

1. Luke’s strenght was never his infallibility. Luke wasn’t Superman. Luke wasn’t a perfect hero. Never. He always made mistakes. While Leia was fighting in the Alliance, he was “playing” on Tatooine and he wanted to become a Rebel just because he wanted adventures. In Empire he makes a huge mistake that brings to him losing a hand and almost dying. In Return he almost falls to the Dark Side as soon as Vader taunts him. That’s why in my opinion TLJ’s Luke is in line with OT. What he did with Ben was a mistake, and the movie itself recognizes it as a mistake. Objection: “But he tried to redeem Vader. Why didn’t he do the same with Ben?” —> Well, of course because in this case he was responsible.
2. Everyone loved The Mandalorian scene because “that’s the real Luke Skywalker”. Excuse me? In Empire, Yoda says that a Jedi uses the Force “for knowledge and defence”. That’s precisely what he does in TLJ, he projects not to kill but to protect the Resistance. THAT his the concretization of Luke’s arc. His scene in The Mandalorian actually builds on TLJ’s Luke. It mirrors Rogue One’s Vader scene, and Luke (unlike Ahsoka) doesn’t have any doubts about training Grogu. Luke is hot headed, ready to do everything to rebuild the Order. What I’m saying is that there’s only ONE Luke. A flawed hero who makes mistakes (in OT, in The Mandalorian, in TLJ) but always manages to learn from those mistakes. Yet almost everyone is like “I loved him in the Mandalorian because he’s a true jedi there (even though he acts almost like a Sith). But I hate TLJ because that’s not Luke (even though he makes a mistakes, learns from it and brings his arc to a conclusion by using the Force to protect others)”.

I’m sorry for this. I’ll delete it if it’s too much, lol.

The point in Return of the Jedi is that he overcame the temptation to the dark side. It’s the end of his arc, in the last movie. The intent wasn’t to have the audience think that confronting the Emperor and Vader was completely meaningless and that Luke would eventually fall to the dark side anyway. That would be dumb.

And, even though he made a lot of mistakes, his most consistent character traits are his care for his friends and his belief that others can be redeemed. Even if he did inevitably fail at something big like with Ben he wouldn’t try to kill Ben in his sleep or give up entirely and abandon everyone to destruction. You CAN tell a story like that even though it’s unsatisfying and depressing, but you have to do a lot more work than just having one moment completely reverse his character and his entire arc and explaining it as “he got really spooked.”

thebluefrog said:

TheAlaskanSandman said:

Id enjoy seeing an R rated Star Wars. Itd be a pain with all the blood simulation but i think id be pretty cool. As a kid i always liked the blood in ANH and wondered why they did away with it in the other movies. Corridor crew did some small quick vids but they were more on the ridiculous side. I later understood that the wounds were being cauterized but still. I miss the bombastic squids used in the 80’s like in Robocop haha

You know, I actually had an idea for an R-rated Star Wars, complete with sex and nudity. It’d be doable with some actors’ other works and deepfaking.

However, we have to be honest, the SW community is extremely immature and conservative about sexual material, so it would be negatively received (in public) and get a lot of spiteful attempts to stop it.

Too bad, there’s enough source material out there to make it work…maybe I should take another crack at it.

You realize that pornography and liberal sexuality is not the same thing as maturity, right? And that you’re basically taking the same stance as an adolescent?

oojason said:

I thought I was on a reddit thread for The Last Jedi for a while there - not in an OT.com thread - supposedly for an TLJ Edit…
 

hey buddy, you missed the large section of posts bashing Rise of Skywalker

ChainsawAsh said:

Gothamknight said:

Kathleen Kennedy’s hyper-feminism.

Oh. You’re one of those. Gross.

And you’re one of THOSE. Even worse.

(Moderation seems really biased around here.)

I was happy with Rey being no one, in the context of Finn also being that way. TFA makes it seem like Rey and Finn both get to learn abilities and use lightsabers fairly quickly, and like they’re going to be equal protagonists.
After that I have to agree with Gothamknight, the Palpatine thing was better than constantly asserting that she has no history and no reason to exist.

Gothamknight said:

The following video absolutely eviscerates ‘Rise of Skywalker’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0528-TlRODI&t=3617s

Makes me wonder if it’s worth even trying to reedit it.

On the other hand, I was already planning a mashup of TFA and TLJ. Would a mashup of all three be doable? I’m wondering if the map at the beginning of TFA could actually be a map to Exegol: both the First Order and the Resistance could be tracking rumors of a Sith world beyond the Outer Rim, and for obvious reasons trying to be the first to get there.

If that premise can work, then maybe such a mashup is doable. Any other suggestions???

I would love that.

Gimpy said:

I was thinking that it would be an interesting idea to splice the Canto Bight footage/plot into a larger Star killer base narrative. Maybe the exterior shots of the base could be re colored on 1/2 of the matte to make a new matte where we have 1 planet with a diverse biome snow/tropical.

Rather than Star killer merely being just another super weapon, it would act as a hub of the Imperial Remnant’s power and population. Willing participants and loyalists participate in a Fascist regime because it benefits them, or maybe certain galactic inhabitants feel safer. The reason the Republic does not act is because of a potential M.A.D. situation.

Imagine setting this up in the crawl. A stalemate between the Republic and the remnant where the imperials argue “super weapons were bad in the hands of Palpatine, not reasonable people who just want safety that the Republic has not been able to provide with years of galactic rule.”

You could also cut in some of the kajimi footage from episode 9 (of troopers walking in the Snow,) into the Canto Bight footage to make an Imperial presence there clear. Even some of Snoke in his gold bathrobe would make more sense if you could imply that he is ruling a willing bunch of people.

If there was anything that was lacking explanation in these new movies it was an explanation of how the 1st order went from being portrayed as a small radical faction (like Nazis in Argentina) in VII to being the new empire. How did they pay for new ships? How did nobody notice a planet sized super weapon where Illum was? These new films require way too much supplemental material.

If you could frame Canto Bight as being just part of the Starkiller installation, now we have a super weapon that plays host to the supporters of imperial rule. The population knows its a super weapon, but since they are given bread and circuses they don’t care.

Very good idea. I’d like it if superweapons were left out altogether and the whole planet wasn’t blown up either, just the base they’re rescuing Rey from.

Anakin Starkiller said:

snooker said:

who cares about the meme fish man. why do people care about the meme fish man?

Holdo was an actual character with an arc.

I agree with you about Ackbar but this is where I draw the line. Holdo is barely a character and does not have an “arc.”

Anakin Starkiller said:

I think Snoke should just be Palpatine’s latest Sith apprentice. Have Palps call Darth Whatever once and voila.

This is a good idea. If you went with the method of garbling Snoke’s dialogue and giving him subtitles you could write a backstory that Palpatine trained him in secret because he was starting to distrust Vader.

StarkillerAG said:

Vladius said:

StarkillerAG said:

Vladius said:

Not that it’s canon anymore but the Legends continuity clearly established it as a definitive light side power and had Jedi that were dedicated healers, but no one complained about it then.

I didn’t know about that. In that case, that’s dumb too.

she studied the ancient Jedi texts which might have included techniques and things that were lost

I doubt anything could get “lost” in the Jedi archives. They had the largest library of Force knowledge in the galaxy, if Force healing was a valid power they would know about it.

Rey was able to manifest powers like force lightning instinctively because of who she was, so it makes sense that she’d have the other side of the coin.

Force lightning is a dark side power, she has it because of Palpatine. I doubt Palpatine could use any light side powers.

That’s exactly what the librarian says in Episode 2, “if an item doesn’t show up in our records, it doesn’t exist.” I thought it was well understood that that was a manifestation of arrogance on the Jedi’s part. The Jedi archives in the prequels were all digital records and the original Jedi texts in the sequels are the only old fashioned books to ever appear in the series. Something could have been lost; Luke had to “go looking” for the first Jedi temple so the books could have been the same way.

The files on Kamino were lost because Dooku deleted them, not because they were accidentally deleted by some clueless librarian. The Jedi Archives on Coruscant contained hundreds of times more info than the Jedi Texts on Ach-To, there’s no way the Jedi wouldn’t know about Force healing.

Hypothetically Palpatine could if he chose to. That’s what I like about Rey having it, it shows that Palpatine could have used his powers for good but decided to be evil.

It’s impossible to use the dark side for good. Lucas’ depiction of the Force was very binary, there’s no in-between. All these post-modern interpretations of the Force have nothing to do with how it was depicted in the Lucas saga.
But we’re getting off-topic here.

Right, Dooku deleted the files, but there’s nothing confirming that the archives are complete, we only have to take them at their word. Dooku deleting the files in the first place shows that their reasoning is flawed.

There’s nothing postmodern about it. I mean that Palpatine had the potential within himself to use force healing or other compassionate abilities as Rey did, but his path down the dark side essentially cut him off from it. Rey is still conflicted and learning about the Force so she instinctively uses force lightning or healing depending on her emotional state.

How is this off topic?

nightstalkerpoet said:

3 in 1 edit.

Get rid of Rathtars. Han and Chewie immediately take Rey and Finn to Maz.
First Order shows up, Rey captured quickly.
Han moment, minimal effort to blow up the base.
Rey shows up - instead of handing off the light saber, Chewie immediately throws door off - Luke ask where Han is.
Make Luke only doubt himself, not the Jedi.
Give Rey all 3 trainings - show Luke getting back to himself. Imply he’s training her to go back and save them.
No Canto Bight. Finn is Zapped and out of it for part of the middle.
When Rey and Kylo kill Snoke, immediately trigger the transmission from Palpatine.
Kylo leaves Crait to immediately find the way finder. Add an echoing “Come find me” in the back of some Kylo scenes.
Maybe add a Vader Communing part to the Last Jedi portion.
Right after “They’ve got Chewie”, we move to the sinking sands. No Kylo.
No Knights of Ren except the final battle.
3P0 can’t translate, but Babu Frick is able to get the info. No memory wipe.
Cut Zorri if possible.

I like this a lot. How long would it be?

Gothamknight said:

Vladius said:

I appreciate what they did but I think that they and others miss the point of the scene, it’s not supposed to be an elaborate acrobatic fight sequence.

It’s hardly “acrobatic”; nothing at all like the over-the-top stuff we got in the prequels.

“Sc38 Reimagined” shows us precisely what we should expect from (a) two experienced Force-users, the younger almost seeming to toy with the older; and (b) two warriors who used to be friends but had a violent falling-out. In context, this reimagining gives us the fully appropriate levels of both skill and emotional intensity.

They’re doing Kendo, which is what actual samurai fights would have looked like; two hands on the sword, more footwork than leaping, running, or wild swinging.

This sentence isn’t entirely accurate. Some use of Kendo is appropriate, given that to some degree (more so in TESB) Lucas actually referenced Kendo for some of the choreography. But again - quite appropriately - this pattern isn’t consistent, because Vader at this point is significantly more powerful and doesn’t actually need to use all of his training. We see more rage from him - exactly as we should expect, given their history - while from Kenobi we see more in the way of defensive skill. He’s calling on everything he’s got just to survive.

This in fact compliments the original dialogue from Vader: “Now I am the master. . . . Your powers are weak, old man.” Vader’s rage and insults are an appropriate counterpoint to Kenobi’s worn-out skills and desperation.

Moreover, your above-quoted statement appears at odds with the next sentence:

The scene looks completely ridiculous in context, like dropping a cracked out MTV clip into a rerun of a show from the 70s.

This is nonsensical. Juxtaposed with your prior sentence, you seem to imply that you want more “leaping, running, [and] wild swinging.”

Does it entirely fit with the stylings of a '70s science-fantasy film? I’ll grant that it doesn’t quite. “Sc38” may not have entirely worked if we could travel back in time and plop it into Episode IV when there wasn’t any canonical context for viewers back then. But this is more than offset for viewers today who have the rear-view awareness of the context of the full Saga. “Sc38” perfectly fits the story.

I think it would be nice to include some of the shots but not others, especially the over the top force pushes, the punching, the throwing of crates and barrels, and so on.

All of that fits the context of the story (as well as stuff we see elsewhere strewn around the corridors of the Death Star).

At the very least all of the original dialogue and music should be preserved.

I have to think this isn’t intended as a replacement for any of that, and it’s relatively easy to splice it into the original.

It is absolutely just like the prequels. The twirling, the breakneck pace, the people being slammed into walls, the punching, the use of force push, the operatic choral music. I’ll give you one thing, the use of slow motion is not in any Star Wars movie, prequel or not. (I think Rose’s sister in The Last Jedi is the only possible exception.)

As of the original movie, how do you know what an “experienced force user” is supposed to look like? (moreover how do you know what Vader’s training is, how much of it he’s using, or how powerful he is) These are the only two we’ve even seen yet. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were both consistent with that and it only changed beginning with Phantom Menace.
Even taking into account prequel knowledge, how do you know that Vader is violently angry at Obi Wan? Maybe his emotions are more complex than that; he’s had 20 years to think about it. Maybe deep down he’s reluctant to engage him and he’s doing it out of duty to the Empire. Vader being cold and distant is much more consistent with his characterization in the movie and the next two movies.

You’re missing the point again. The most important line, which I noticed that sc38 deleted, is “You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” Obi Wan isn’t trying to win, he’s trying to delay Vader so that Luke and friends can get to the Falcon. The moment he sees Luke is okay, he lets himself be killed because he knows he’s much more useful as a disembodied voice/force ghost that can give guidance to Luke.

I mean that if you remake that scene in that style, you might as well remake the whole movie because of how incongruous it is.