During ‘Revenge of the Sith,’ there can be the following conversation.
PADME:
Obi-Wan, tell me what’s going on.OBI-WAN:
Palpatine is the Phantom Menace we’ve been looking for. He caused the Attack of the Clones on the Jedi to bring about the Revenge of the Sith.PADME:
That means he’s been behind these Star Wars the whole time…
This is incredible.
Dub all characters in the PT with a New Zealand accent, to better match with Jango and the clones.
The old lady’s camel will take off the pantomime horse costume to reveal Ben Solo and Leia’s Force Ghosts.
I think there needs to be a shot between Rey and BB-8 leaving frame, and the shot of the Falcon flying. There’s too much action that happens offscreen too rapidly (boarding the Falcon, the Falcon taking off), and I think that’s what makes it feel rushed.
What’s your version of that moment, in your rewrite?
I’ve tried to make the Force more of a New Agey Zen thing throughout, like it is in ANH. At the beginning, while she’s meditating, she is trying to empty herself of everything but the Force.
Rey: There is nothing in me but the Force. There is nothing in me but the Force.
So it sets up the climax:
Palpatine: A scavenger girl is no match for me! You are nothing!
Rey: I am nothing.
(lightsaber thunks into hand)
Rey: But the Force.
I’m not married to the idea, and I think it’s perhaps a little hokey or forced, no pun intended. I’d rather something that tied better to her character arc. If something better comes along I’ll change it.
You mean “all the Sith/Jedi”?
I think by that point in the theater my throat hurt from laughing. I remember really finding it so silly when Palpatine reacted to a second lightsaber being held up, as though to go from 100% confidence to, “Oh, shit, TWO lightsabers kill me.” I’m pretty sure, because we’d been riffing through the whole thing, I leaned over to my brother and said in an Emperor voice, “Oh, no, not TWO lightsabers.”
The “all the Sith” line itself didn’t feel out of place given that the movie alluded to spirit transfer and consciousness merging. I was wondering if that meant Palpatine was Darth Bane in a sense.
The “all the Jedi” line just felt like the obvious response. It was predictable, and didn’t really pack a punch. I was wondering how the Jedi were speaking given ROTS establishing that Yoda felt Qui-Gon had discovered this for the first time.
I also felt the victory moment fell totally flat, saying, “There’s no WAY you can tell me that he’s dead for good this time. NOTHING is different, and certainly not more decisive, than how he died in ROTJ.” It’d be like an episode of Doctor Who making a series-ending-before-hiatus climax about the Master dying; forgetabbowddit!
Jonh’s version of the scene is sublime. It annexes new meaning by having those four specific ghosts show up while the others remain voices, to almost let the ROTS thing make sense. And that closeup of hands being lifted beautifully removes the silliness of having a second saber appear to turn the tide. AND, it now makes sense that Palpatine would be plausibly dead for good, due to the dead themselves tackling him to make sure he makes it to the wood chipper this time.
Pretty much exactly my own take on it too. I’d completely checked out of the movie long before that point in the theatre, and my wife and I were both snickering and rushing to make the same joke about Disney owning Avengers Endgame so they’re safe from being sued.
If the line can possibly be dubbed or deepfaked to something different, I’ll do it in a theoretical personal edit. (I’ve already changed it in the novelisation edit, but that change wouldn’t work in the film version.)
Jonh’s Force Ghosts turn the whole scene into something entirely different. I never expected to feel genuinely emotional at that scene, but when I saw his version, I did.
Replace the second Death Star’s throne room chasm with a wood chipper. Insert a shot of Vader using the Force to flip a switch to “on” as he makes his way toward it carrying Palpatine.
Repurpose the Praetorian Guard falling into the fan as Palpatine being thrown in, using colour grading.
Apologies if it’s already been talked to death, but what’s your personal take on the Rey-Sheev-one-liner exchange, Hal? I know you left it unaltered for V1, and changing it for V2 might be straying too far from the project’s aims, but I mean, like, your opinion of it in the theatrical cut.
- I think it’d be a good idea to make a list of potential deepfake SOURCES. Other movies, games, audiobooks, interviews, etc. That would be a valuable resource for project makers to come visit the thread.
Very valuable idea. I’m happy to maintain the index, but I don’t have the time to actively hunt that all down myself. But anything that’s dropped into this thread, I’ll arrange and present in a sensible way. If it starts to get complex I’ll gladly convert it all into a spreadsheet or some other sensible reference format.
Well, just for starters, I’d say a good useful list of sources would include:
Voice clips:
-Video games. Checking the credits will show who voiced who. Let’s Play videos would be a good source.
-Audiobooks, especially if an actor reads them.
-Cartoons where the actors appear, such as Carrie Fisher or Mark Hamill.
-Youtube/online, such as Disney’s Star Wars Kids, which has actors reprise their roles. This one is good for secondary characters like Rose.
-Interviews. Often an actor will drop into character and do “the voice”, such as James Earl Jones.
-Promos and commercials: Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford did rare commercials back in the 80s. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThGdJ9kfUw4&feature=youtu.beVideo clips:
-Deleted scenes, obviously.
-Making-of documentaries, which often have alternate camera angles.
-Commercials that sometimes use longer footage.
-Video game cutscenes, which can be movie quality.
-Footage from other movies, especially if they do sci-fi.
-Interviews. While they wouldn’t be in costume, their facial expressions could be used for deepfakes. I have an idea that Finn COULD be deepfaked by using footage of Boyega protesting in real life.
-Social media of the actors. Sometimes they put good quality personal vids, which again can be used for deepfake coding.If the community works together, we could create a list just by randomly noticing things online in our daily internet browsing. “Hey, that could be useful to someone!” Then all we need is a thread for people to regularly drop links into easily.
This one seems in kind of poor taste. The rest, though, absolutely! I never even knew about the Star Wars hotline audio.
Next they will have Vader discover his father was a drunk who sold him for drinking money and his mom lied the whole time.
I’ve checked out of the EU surrounding TROS. I don’t care to take it into account.
“What were they thinking!? This is shits for the birds!”
The entire saga, but only when someone says “Star” or “Wars.”
Could this already phenomenal piece of fan fixing be made even better with deepfaking?
I love watching your VFX breakdowns and I’m excited to see the saber building shot when it’s rendered.
I’ve been wondering for a while how difficult it would be to remove the little triangles that sproing up when the saber’s activated? It seems to be only me that dislikes them so intensely, but they annoy the hell of me design-wise.
Add subtitles for the audio description track, so people who are deaf and blind can enjoy the movie.
I love what you’ve done with the Han scene. I’m excited to read your manuscript draft, but I’m gonna wait until after I’ve finished my own first.
Don’t won’t to derail any other discussion people want to have, but I wanted to try and logic through the possession stuff. Ironically it is the logic of my own earlier suggestions, but I want to make sure it all makes sense. Which, even if it doesn’t 100% make sense, I guess it still would be on par with the theatrical film.
In regards to this edit, since Palpatine tells Kylo at the beginning that if he kills him that his spirit will pass into Kylo, why wouldn’t Kylo tell Rey that if she tries to kill Palpatine, that he would possess her? Since Palpatine told him that at the beginning, and Kylo knows Rey wants to kill Palpatine, he could use that info to make her believe that only through the power of their Dyad can they truly defeat him. I don’t think this is necessarily a plot hole, but I think it would help strengthen this idea if there is a strong reason why Kylo wouldn’t try this.
I guess it wouldn’t necessarily make a difference though. Even if he told her, she goes to Exegol thinking she will be able to defeat him another way without Kylo. She only acts like she might go through with it once she realizes “killing” him might be the only way to save her friends. Which I guess brings us back to a similar place as the theatrical film, sort of defeating the purpose of moving the “spirit” line to the beginning in the first place.
Originally, the earlier placement of the spirit line was meant to accomplish 3 things:
- It gave the audience a better idea of how Palpatine survived when he is first introduced. (Clones + spirit transfer)
- It gave Kylo a reason why he simply couldn’t kill Palpatine and take the fleet then and there.
- It made it so Palpatine didn’t villain-splain his plan to Rey later in the film. Plus, it creates dramatic irony for the audience, since we would know what would really happen if Rey kills him.
Perhaps that line could be moved back to the end, but the line could be changed to just, “Kill me, and my power will pass into you… You will be Empress, we will be one.”
This would give the line some ambiguity still, something of Palpatine will pass into Rey. Palpatine wants Rey to believe that she will get his power. But the “We will be one” line provides some ambiguity, and makes us (and Rey) wonder how much of Palpatine will still persist if she commits to the act. Also, it removes the “as all the Sith live in me” aspect, which makes things unnecessarily complicated. Let it just be Palpatine.
And for earlier in the film with Kylo, the original lines went like this-
Kylo: You’ll die first.
Palpatine: I have died before. The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
It currently is this-
Palpatine: I have died before. Kill me and my spirit will pass into you, as all the Sith live in me.
Instead, it could go something like this-
Palpatine: Kill me. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
Palpatine sort of did this already, but Palpatine straight up telling Kylo to kill him is more explicitly reverse psychology. Kylo probably wasn’t expecting that response, and those two lines paired together implies that if he kills him, that some unnatural things might happen. This comes off as more of a threat than him simply saying “I have died before”. Although he is still referring to spirit transfer, like my original suggestion, it isn’t explicitly said. This allows Kylo to believe killing him directly would be a bad idea, but still leave him in the dark as to exactly why.
I also think between Palpatine telling him to become what Vader couldn’t, and that he will rule all the galaxy as the new Emperor, it would be interesting if he were to tell Kylo “My spirit is weak”. Although he is lying to Kylo (or maybe he isn’t?), this gives Kylo a reason why Palpatine is just offering his Empire to Kylo (which he should be extremely suspicious about). He’s basically saying he’s dying, and he wants Kylo to be his successor. I also think it would be helpful to mention the word spirit somewhere, so we know his spirit does play a role in this, and this isn’t just a Palpatine clone or a reanimated corpse. Palpatine’s spirit is in that body.
Later in the film he also says “They don’t have long”, so you could even throw in “I don’t have long” somewhere potentially. Perhaps after, “The Final Order will soon be ready.” These two lines might help give the audience the idea that Palpatine is dying in a way that clone bodies can no longer help him.While Kylo should still know something is up, I think it helps if Palpatine at least gives Kylo some semblance of a motivation to make him doubt what exactly Palpatine’s plan is. And since the word “spirit” was mentioned earlier in Kylo’s scene, when Palpatine later says “We will be one” we still may achieve that dramatic irony in knowing that it likely means Palpatine’s spirit will pass into Rey, not just his “powers”.
I think this might be a way to give the audience enough information to understand that Palpatine’s spirit will transfer into the one that kills him, but without neither Kylo nor Rey ever being explicitly told that. So, Kylo can’t warn Rey, because he doesn’t know, and Rey is left to believe she will merely inherit Palpatine’s power.
But if someone can think of a good reason Kylo wouldn’t tell Rey, then I guess we could leave everything as-is.
Would love to get some thoughts.
To convey this idea, I’d personally massage the suggested dialogue slightly into this:
Kylo: You’ll die first.
Palpatine: Then kill me. I have died before. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many unnatural abilities.
The single missing word is common enough that it could surely be sourced from somewhere. I’ll admit that the final line might end up sounding a bit YouTube Pooped, in which case the unaltered version of the line would still work.
I’d say the central theme of the film is fighting alone vs standing together:
A friend of mine once said Star Wars isn’t about one person, it’s about one more person, and I’ve never been able to stop thinking about that.
I have to agree with Nev and say the first two ideas are the most interesting to me. I’m curious on your take on TLJ and what all you would cut to make the message less muddled.
I watched the movie on triple speed a while ago, and went through a transcript at the same time, crossing out dialogue. So I’ve got a script to work from when I finally get to this project haha.
Your idea of a retro Star Wars II edit is pretty interesting as well. The idea of edits that try to maintain the non-digital feel of that era is really interesting to me, and it’s something I’ve been wanting to try with a potential Return of the Jedi edit.
One thing I really want to to is create Lucas’ original idea for the ESB opening crawl - navy blue text across a Hoth snowscape. Thanks to Biomes, there’s finally a long enough shot to do it.
Replace every scene available with Galaxy of Adventures. Those that haven’t been animated remain live-action.
A friend of mine made a ROTS edit that added in all available content that takes place around and during it, including the seige of Coruscant from the Tartakovsky Clone Wars. After a few minutes I didn’t even think about the footage and animation mismatch; it was weird in how not weird it was.
Indeed. The Lesson One scene alone almost suffocates under its own dialogue. Cut out the weed gag and Luke’s dithering about vanity and the scene might be pretty great.
I won’t derail my own thread any further (lol) but that’s the example that always leaps to mind for me too. Luke says the key phrase we should remember for later - “The legacy of the Jedi is failure!” - but it gets lost because he goes on to list hypocrisy and hubris, which are completely irrelevant thematically. The fact that it comes full circle in his conversation with Yoda - arguably the key message of the whole movie! - is lost because of too wordy a sentence.
Those first two ideas are both interesting. I talked elsewhere of combining ESB and ROTJ into one film by taking most of ESB and welding the finale of ROTJ onto the end, accomplished by having Luke be taken prisoner by Vader in Cloud city, being healed in an Imperial facility via bacta tank scene, and being taken to the new Death Star. I’d be interested in hearing your ideas though!
I remember reading that in the OT Redux thread; I’ve got some notes for what I’d do myself, and I picked and chose some bits and pieces from a bunch of different suggestions there for combining ESB and ROTJ. I’d also love to implement the “Luke and Vader swap lightsabers” idea, but I don’t think anyone ever actually made the footage for it beyond that one proof-of-concept gif.
A clarified TLJ is also a good idea. You hit the nail on the head with how the film overexplains everything.
Thank you! It’s my biggest criticism of it. I like Hal’s edit and it’s my current go-to to watch, but he largely leaves individual conversations intact - which is consistent with the edit’s intent, but which I really want to hack down considerably.
Here’s a bit of a “feeler” post, to get people’s opinions: I’m currently taking maybe a month away from all my hobbies etc. as I settle into a new job, but when I come back, I’m going to finish this novel edit. After that’s done, however, I’ve got a few other ideas for fanediting projects. I like to always have my next idea percolating on the backburner, so, I’m curious which of these ideas people would be more interested to see:
Hello, thank you all for your suggestions. Firstly, The shot of Finn recieving the blast wasnt created there. However, I just whipped up a quick “proof-of-concept” of Finn a actually getting hit with the lightning, albeit it looks alot more deadly, overkill and less “subtle”.
The sound effect was from YouTube and I just did a right-left pan to sonically flow with the visuals a bit more. I completely cut out the wide shot of him flying back and left the last shot unfinished (since I’m too lazy to edit it now, but I’ll finish this shot sometime tommorrow) but also since I’m not so sure as to how to structure the shot.I don’t really know how to make it subtler, so any help is appreciated! https://streamable.com/gyj6k2
SIDENOTE: I edited the shot with 16-bit colorspace, but the one being uploaded to streamable seems to have completely clipped the highlights and shadows so I don’t know what’s up with that.
My suggestion would be to only have one very thin tendril actually reach him, and only after it’s already become disconnected from Rey’s hand, and have it peter out after a few frames. Meanwhile, the whole rest of the lightning just crackles and dissipates into the air in front of Rey and doesn’t come close to him.
Heres a test VFX shot of Rey shooting out Force Lightning instead of the Force Push to signify her instability, the compression makes it look slightly weird but it’s okay: https://streamable.com/cqtffo
It looks great! Absolutely believable that it’s from the theatrical cut.
While I agree with Hal that less is more with the lightning, I wonder if a tiny tendril could reach Finn? More like it’s conducted to him than it’s what’s throwing him backwards. Currently the lightning completely vanishes on the cut, and since it’s cutting on action, I think there needs to be even a minuscule amount of lightning in the second shot for continuity of movement.
I like the delivery on “Here?!” It sounds fearful, like their infamous reputation precedes them. Sort of maintains the purpose of the original line calling them ghouls, but now it is more subtextual, and clearer to understand what’s actually being said.
I completely agree. Fantastic line read.
