Vladius

Gimpy said:

Daxtreme, the problem with Luke’s entire arc in the film is that he already learned the lessons of failure in the OT. The way TLJ plays out is as though Empire and Jedi never actually happened, and Luke never learned the lessons that he in fact did learn in the earlier movies, so he never actually teaches Rey anything in a believable way.

He tries to whack Ben “because dark side” (total BS)

He then wallows in self pity and she learns from that? She leaves Luke after she gets fed up with him and he with her. That’s not a lesson. Luke doesn’t even teach her the lesson of failure, she has to beat a confession of wrongdoing out of him with a stick and lightsaber.

1 “Lesson” is how the force exists beyond light and dark and pervades everything (we already know this, so does Rey from Maz in TFA.)

2nd “Lesson” is that neither side has a monopoly on the force, and the Jedi in their arrogance allowed the Sith to rise from their own ranks. (Luke repeats the same mistakes his own masters made with Anakin due to merely “sensing the darkness” in Ben. That is a betrayal of the character’s whole arc in the last trilogy.

3rd Lesson was cut from the film.

Rotoscoping a saber where Luke’s staff is would be done to re purpose those shots for a kind of Luke V the Knights of Ren shot in a force back, or maybe a Luke V Ben shot where Rey is seeing things from Ben’s perspective. You could put audio over this of “let the past die” and “this is not going to go the way you think!”

Mark Hamill had his own backstory for why Luke exiled himself, namely losing a child. I think if Luke was training Ben and his other students during a time of his own personal crisis,

(something beyond his control and just natural) this would make for a better rationale for Luke to fail them all, and also for Ben to turn. (a rationale was never given beyond “because Snoke, and Because dark side.”

Imagine if it could be implied that Luke suffered a loss and therefore loses faith, while Ben is committed to the Jedi code of no attachments, but being twisted by Snoke. (let the past die = be free of attachments, which is a Jedi ideal,) but Luke sees the rigid interpretation of that ideal as THE problem of the Jedi that needs to end.

The blame going to Luke for Ben’s turn falls flat because the Luke of the OT wouldn’t make those mistakes. “always in motion is the future.” What lesson did Luke learn after getting his hand chopped off if not “don’t jump to conclusions based on a force vision?”

It would be more intriguing if Luke was in fact the “great Luke Skywalker” of Legend, but a basic aspect of life (like losing a child) is what brings him down despite his being a full Jedi and having that discipline, and even despite being able to integrate a family life.

The way that TLJ presently frames things, Luke never learned from any of his experiences, and stayed a frightened boy who was mistakenly ascribed legendary status.

Well said. Mark Hamill’s performance was great, and all the imagery of Luke as a bitter recluse was really cool, but it never struck me as true to his character. People are so infatuated with the idea of prequel Jedi sucking that they forget we’re supposed to like the Jedi.

adywan said:

Vladius said:

I realize this might be an unpopular opinion here, but aside from the portrayal of Luke (which some people feel is just a matter of interpretation,) the non-Rey female characters were easily the worst parts of the film.
They have the most cringe-inducing dialogue:…“if you need to see the sun shining to know it’s there, you’ll never last through the night,” …

A line not even spoken in the film. If you are going to use quotes to prove a point about bad dialogue, at least get the quote right. That’s not even close.

You’re being needlessly pedantic and it absolutely is close.

I realize this might be an unpopular opinion here, but aside from the portrayal of Luke (which some people feel is just a matter of interpretation,) the non-Rey female characters were easily the worst parts of the film.
They have the most cringe-inducing dialogue: “I want to put my fist through this whole lousy beautiful town,” “if you need to see the sun shining to know it’s there, you’ll never last through the night,” and the clincher, “This is how we win. Not destroying what we hate. Saving what we love.” They also make accompanying nonsensical decisions, which I do not need to elaborate upon.

Holdo is a much more potent Mary Sue than Rey ever was. She has all the traits: comes out of nowhere, secretly Leia’s best friend all along, good at everything, unfairly disliked, outlandish hair color, gets an amazing self-sacrificial death scene performing an anime maneuver that heretofore did not exist.

So while this guy making a “no women” edit is a useful punching bag/lightning rod for almost literally everyone, that doesn’t make TLJ a feminist masterwork and it certainly doesn’t make the criticisms of the women in the movie invalid. Honestly I would end up making a lot of the same cuts/edits that he does.
It’s the same issue with 2016 Ghostbusters. “Checkmate, sexists! We put women in YOUR franchise!” Great! Were they funny? No. Actually, the black woman was a borderline offensive caricature. Was the movie good? Again, no. If anything, it sets the cause of women back by putting them in a terrible movie.

darthrush said:

HerekittykittyX said:

Is there a way to edit it instead of commander holdo its Leia Doing the lightspeed scene.

Perhaps. It is much easier to edit Luke being the one to do it. You just repurpose the shots of him contacting Leia through the force and instead you intercut those shots with the ship turning and the First Order freaking out.

Leia on the other hand, I don’t know.

That would be so sick. Luke decides to help earlier or senses Leia in danger or something and wipes out the First Order fleet. I would use the part with him straining in meditation from the projection scene, but that does create a continuity issue with his projection and actual death. Maybe do Crait at the beginning like some are suggesting, then have Luke sacrifice himself destroying the fleet. This also explains why no one has done a hyperspace ram before; part of it involves the Force.

Probably the thing I hate most about the movie is its smug contempt for the audience. "What did you think, I was going to face down the whole First Order myself with a laser sword?"
Yes please! Why is that idea so offensive, to have Luke Skywalker be the hero we know and love?
Yoda flipping around with a lightsaber is one thing, because the whole point of his character is that he’s physically limited but wise and strong in the Force. Luke, on the other hand, is a classical hero that performs mighty feats. It makes sense that an older Luke would be more advanced with the Force and use misdirection rather than straight violence, but at the point of the movie where he decides to help the Resistance, it would be so much more satisfying for him to do some actual honest-to-goodness damage.

For what it’s worth, my “headcanon” or speculation about why Luke exiled himself at the end of TFA -
Due to secrets learned through his studies and travels, Luke has become godlike in his own power, and is afraid to use it directly in vulgar destruction for fear of falling to the dark side. He is concerned that his sorrow/anger for Ben and his hatred of Snoke would overcome him and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from just taking control of everything. He retires to Ach-To to detach himself from the physical world and remove the temptation. The death of Han only makes things worse and adds a further complication.
Rey convinces him to help because of his love for Leia, his friends, and the galaxy. (If you want to do the moral of “focus on what you love, not what you hate,” I think this is a much better way to do it.) Like at the end of Return of the Jedi but at a more cosmic scale, he finds peace within himself and no longer acts in anger.

Overall I fundamentally disagree with the ideas behind the movie, especially the cynical prequel apologist (“mind blowing fan theory”) approach to the Jedi and Luke. In general the movie seems determined to ruin any sense of heroism or audience satisfaction. Any time a male character attempts to do something they are denied and punished.

HOWEVER there are a lot of great things about it that I like, especially anything with Rey and/or Kylo Ren. Mark Hamill’s performance is really good. That throne room fight is one of the best fights in Star Wars, period. I love the porgs and some of the other humor, and I like the idea of Canto Bight if it had less Lucas in it.

For the Luke/Rey/Ren half:
*I like ImperialFighter’s ideas. Luke is not a murderer or a liar, and generally he would be THE character to be optimistic about someone struggling with the dark side. It does make more sense for Kylo Ren to result from a misunderstanding. Luke might not try to kill him, but he could hover uncomfortably close like a helicopter parent to try to keep him on the right path.
*Hopefully there are some deleted scenes. The lack of a third lesson drives me nuts.
*I don’t like Yoda’s appearance or presentation at all. At the very least it should be tweaked so that he’s not stuck in the early ESB cackling trickster persona.
*Fix Snoke’s dialogue as it’s comically on-the-nose. Some of it also plagiarizes directly from ROTJ (and the Bible!)

For the other half, I have ideas for tweaking it but they would be extremely difficult to execute. It would be easier to cut most of it.
I absolutely despise everything to do with Holdo. Ideally any function she serves would be replaced with Leia. Leia would tell Poe the plan and he would dislike it for some legitimate reason (“they’ll still detect the transports!”) and mutiny directly against her. Leia puts down the mutiny with her cool Force powers (no ridiculous space flight, the bridge never gets hit.) However Poe manages to let Finn and Rose get away to Canto Bight. Trim Lucas shenanigans, newsboys, and several pieces of Rose dialogue. DJ stays a relative good guy and doesn’t betray anyone, but he does ditch them after they finish the mission. I also dislike it when a villain has no reason to keep captured heroes alive other than “to make them suffer,” so I’d prefer Phasma’s introduction to be coming out of the smoke. Cut Finn’s faux-action movie one liners. Poe, Finn, and Rose’s plan works but is costly in some way or temporary, giving just enough time for the fleet to jump to Crait. In order to salvage the whole thing, Leia sacrifices herself with the hyperspace ram. Gives more guilt and pathos to Poe, wondering if he made the right decision.
The Luke/Leia scene is nice though, so again, probably just cut all of the stuff in the middle.

I would like Finn to succeed at his sacrifice as well, or at the very least leave out Rose’s idiotic actions and nonsensical platitude, but none of that is really doable. So maybe don’t have Finn or Rose in the ships in the first place, or have them break off when Poe tells them to.

Also cut the kids at the end. (LOOOOK SKYWALKUH, JEEDAI MASTUH)

TV’s Frink said:

Vladius said:

Qui Gon is Anakin’s father

It’s been done.

That part is actually a good idea. The bad idea was my feverish extension of it.

Hypothetical edits where prequels were made in perpetuity:
Qui Gon is Anakin’s father, a new trilogy is made about Qui Gon, then Qui Gon’s father, on to infinity.

I would really prefer you not use the Maul fan film footage. It looks really out of place (particularly with the next scene being about stealth,) and I don’t think it makes sense visually - it looks like he’s training on his ship in mid flight, but the ship couldn’t be that big because its scale is established when he lands. It’s also unclear what he’s pushing buttons on the display for - is it involved with tracking the Jedi, or this weird pseudo-flashback training scene?

Maul is really cool (relatively) when he’s introduced in the original film because he’s (relatively) so mysterious, so showing him flipping all over the place with a fully lit lightsaber blocking dozens of shots in front of a glowing blue display seems like way too much, too early, and doesn’t really add to his character. The flipping and lightsaber skills are already established in the original film. The problem with his characterization was never that there aren’t enough scenes of him using a lightsaber, it’s that those are almost his only scenes. Not to mention the actor has a different head and facial structure from Ray Park, though that’s a minor point.

With that said I’m really excited about this edit and I think it’s more ambitious than most. The few times I’ve tried my hand at cutting the prequels, I usually ended up at the same structure you have: two films, mostly killing AOTC because it sucks, and splicing its good parts into the other two. I love your ideas and your dedication.

The Episode 3 Mustafar duel is one of the best sequences in the prequels and is already competently made when edited, as several people have already done. If there’s anything left to be done, I agree that removing even more of Anakin’s dialogue would be nice.
I think resources could be better spent elsewhere.

Bingowings said:

Yoda isn’t interested in Luke confronting Vader as a military target.
He wan’ts Luke to confront his fear and conquer it. His fear is he will become Vader and he almost does by following Ben’s line of thinking. Instead (going by the sequels) he becomes Ben which is a bit of a shame.

Again, what does that mean? If he’s just confronting his fear of becoming Vader then that does not require any actual confrontation with Vader himself.

I am a huge fan of your Hobbit edit and I’m glad you took on this project.
With that said, I’m concerned that in its current form, it turns Rogue One into the caricature everyone thinks it is - emotionless empty Star Wars-themed action sequences. I understand that the point of the edit is to narrow the focus onto the battle, but the battle was not the best part of the movie in a vacuum. The character deaths and other surrounding scenes lose all emotional weight without at least part of the rest of the movie. I’m not sure it’s doable with your concept and it’s not very Star Wars-y, but I think small flashbacks introducing the main characters could help. Perhaps a fast “Greatest Hits” of the first 2/3 of the movie or something similar to your Dol Guldur edits.
The dialogue and music lifted from other movies stands out like a sore thumb. I could tell exactly where each piece came from, and a lot of them were really on-the-nose, like the Battle of Hoth music during the AT-AT’s appearance, and the Executor crashing for the Star Destroyers colliding.
Personally I loved Giachino’s score and I feel it’s unfairly maligned, but I know others don’t share that opinion. At the very least though, I recommend you use music from more obscure sources as others have suggested.

On the positive side, the editing is all well done. The transitions between scenes and the audio are all seamless. I really enjoyed what you did with Jyn’s inspirational speeches. You made her seem like a leader among the rebels, moreso than in the actual movie, by subtraction.

Alderaan said:

Mavimao said:

Perhaps that last line reflects Luke’s idea that the Force has done more harm than good and perhaps wishes it would die off.

Just a thought.

This would go against everything the OT stands for.

Thank you.

flametitan said:
The Light Side isn’t about repressing emotions. Seriously, if I had to pin down the worst thing about the Prequels, it wouldn’t be the dialogue, or the idiot balls tossed around, or Jar-Jar. It would be how poorly it represented what it was trying to convey. The Jedi Order of the Clone Wars was a corrupt, dogmatic order of zealots so afraid of the Dark Side that couldn’t even embrace the compassion the Light tried to offer them. You don’t need to repress your emotions to avoid going down the Dark Path. You just needed to trust the Force.

Thank you so much for these posts. You’re fighting the good fight. This is what I constantly try to get across to people - prequel Jedi are not OT Jedi, and that is the main failing of the prequels. Even when people hate the prequels, their perceptions are still colored and biased against the simple good versus evil narrative that Star Wars is supposed to be.

What kind of confrontation could Luke have that would not result in him fighting Vader? Was he just supposed to incapacitate him? Was he supposed to talk to him and then carry on with the rebels?

Luke tells Obi Wan "I can’t kill my own father."
Obi Wan says "Then the Emperor has already won."
The killing part was Luke’s idea. Obi Wan is responding to his hesitancy to confront Vader, not whether or not he should kill him. He has to be willing to kill him if need arises, because that’s what a confrontation means (especially with lightsabers.)

Yoda and Ben are in agreement that Luke should confront (being ready to kill) Vader and the Emperor.
They tell Luke not to go in ESB because he’s not ready yet. I see this obnoxious train of thought where people think that they were wrong to do this, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The situation in Cloud City is explicitly a trap for Luke, he doesn’t have any effect on the rescue of his friends at all, he gets his hand cut off, and almost dies. (Of course it’s much better and more interesting for this to happen from a story perspective.)

Then in ROTJ he’s ready and so they encourage him to go. The emphasis is on his readiness and ability to reject the dark side, not a violence or nonviolence issue. Luke doesn’t toss aside his lightsaber because he’s a pacifist (see - the rest of the movie before that) but because he realizes he is playing into the Emperor’s game by becoming angry and vengeful in his violence. He doesn’t mope around about Vader tossing the Emperor either, or his friends blowing up stormtroopers and TIE fighters. The question is motivation, not militancy.

Rey is not a Mary Sue, though this is not the place for that discussion.
What I will say is that if you think Rey is a Mary Sue, the “wrong fuses” part is one of the areas in the movie where she screws something up, so probably don’t cut it. I also love the rathtars which I know puts me in the minority.

I really like this but I have some issues:
*The crawl is somewhat busy and asks the audience to remember a lot of concepts.
*There is a fast switch from “rescue the princess” to “retrieve the control code” that I’m not sure can be justified.
*Obi Wan never really “meets” Anakin before training him. I’m not sure how to remedy this but I think it’s a necessary emotional beat for the story.
*The three Padmes will have to be really distinct to avoid confusion (especially with the body double on top of it) and it might be better to consolidate them to two instead of three.
*The Anakin/Padme romance is difficult to fix/portray. Personally I really dislike the Jedi “repressing” Anakin/forbidden love angle of the prequels, but that’s just me.
*The distinction between Duku as a rogue Jedi and Maul as a Sith might be lost on the audience.
*Abaddon and Naboo, and Tatooine and Geonosis, will be hard to distinguish for the audience as well.

Tack said:
Also, side note; I would actually want to remove the sequence with the little girl during the Jehda City siege. In the whole movie that was the only cliché that made me groan a bit. We don’t need that to tell us that Jyn’s a good person at heart. It comes across through the rest of the film just fine.

That’s actually one of the best parts of the movie, for me. Jyn has such limited character development, and that’s part of it.
*It shows the trauma of war.
*It shows part of why Saw’s rebels are considered radicals - they don’t care about collateral damage.
*There’s not actually a lot establishing that Jyn is a good person up to that point.
*Jyn has wide eyes, partially out of surprise and concern, but also because she identifies with the little girl - abandoned (twice) as a child in the middle of a war.
*It’s sadder when the Death Star blows up Jedha City later, because we see some of its civilians as well as its fighters. It also builds the scope and threat of the Death Star - even if you save individual people, shoot stormtroopers, and do important things, it can all be wiped away in an instant.

I disliked a lot of the things people are talking about, but on a second viewing I’m fine with them. The only thing I might cut is Saw’s mind-reading alien, but it works somewhat thematically with his character and the idea of militancy.

What I really want to talk about is the possibility of my ideal saga lineup:
*Fanedit of Episode I that includes elements of Episode II to start the Clone Wars - Naboo is the first battle or instigates the conflict, maybe some other trickery is used to use the Geonosis battle sans Anakin and Obi Wan.
*The rest of Episode II is blast into oblivion where it belongs.
*Alter the crawl of a Fanedit of Episode III (pick your favorite, mine is Dark Force Rising) to make it Episode II.
*Rogue One becomes Episode III with added crawl.

Could I have an invite as well?

Smithers said:

I was actually going to keep their destination as coruscant, the movie starts of with them escaping the blockade, their destination is coruscant because they're bringing the queen there for the election. Throughout the first two acts of the movie you keep hearing about the planned invasion on Naboo so in the third act, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon go to take down Viceroy, then go down to Naboo and battle Maul.

 I definitely prefer this to the constant assertions that people are dying and suffering on Naboo somewhere. The threat of an invasion is much more interesting than an invasion that lasts the whole movie and is toothless.

You know this is all based on Ralph McQuarrie stuff right? You might lose street cred around here...

Just finished this. Definitely the best edit of the prequels I've ever seen. Even when I knew what was coming, the music ratcheted up the suspense. The dialogue is minimal and fast, communicating more with less. I love the Clone Wars montage - I have not seen another single one of these three-in-one movies that actually transitions between episodes 2 and 3 in any satisfactory way, or uses the good parts of the prequels (primarily visuals) to such amazing effect. I also compliment the use of footage from all three films without sticking to the original, rigid chronology.

My only criticism is some of the audio transitions between scenes are jarring, and in many scenes the original musical cues still poke up.

Thank goodness Anakin frees his mom. That was one of the weirdest things to never address in episode 2.

Pure genius.
If there were some way for Jar Jar to turn the tide of the whole battle (space, duel, and palace,) that would be better.
Maybe even include the episode 2 portion where he gives the chancellor emergency powers.