omnimuffin

I’d love to see a workprint too!

I don’t actually recall LGBT stuff being a major part of the marketing campaign. I remember them mentioning it and news sites taking that and running with it, but I really don’t recall a great deal of focus on it from them.

Anakin Starkiller said:

omnimuffin said:

I wonder if they cut it out of concern that making all three major (non-Mace Windu) black characters in the series related was… questionable.

Maybe, but they failed to realize how much more sense it makes for Jannah to be Finn’s sister than for her to be Lando’s daughter. Seriously, what does the latter contribute to the story? We should cut the relation to Lando and make her Finn’s sister, not have both.

I can definitely agree with that on some level.

Movies Remastered said:

It frustrated the hell out of me that they didn’t allow Finn to go full circle and to dress as Stormtrooper when they storm Kylos ship. I think they would’ve actually echoed ANH and actually worked with the storyline much better than everyone just walking around without triggering any alarm etc.

I didn’t know about the other Finn storyline. They would’ve been awful!

Ah, yes, what this movie needed, more hollow callbacks to the OT!

I wonder if they cut it out of concern that making all three major (non-Mace Windu) black characters in the series related was… questionable.

Ed Slushie said:

omnimuffin said:

Ed Slushie said:
It might be brief, but this would hopefully make it feel like Finn’s arc had real significance beyond reacting to Poe and Rey.

…Doesn’t Finn’s recruitment of and connection to Company 77 straight up save the galaxy? Without them, they wouldn’t have been able to disable the Steadfast, and the fleet would have been able to make it clear of the planet’s atmosphere.

That’s a good point, and I certainly wouldn’t remove that part. But would you rather have a scene of Finn reacting to Rey’s death and resurrection, or a scene of him making a compassionate decision based on his past experiences?

Fair enough.

Ed Slushie said:
It might be brief, but this would hopefully make it feel like Finn’s arc had real significance beyond reacting to Poe and Rey.

…Doesn’t Finn’s recruitment of and connection to Company 77 straight up save the galaxy? Without them, they wouldn’t have been able to disable the Steadfast, and the fleet would have been able to make it clear of the planet’s atmosphere.

The logic of the scene has always bothered me. Lando is the choice to go with Luke to track down a Sith assassin? And when Luke gives up to go train the next generation of Jedi, Lando just stays there? For ~30 years? Not continuing to track down the assassin, nor continuing his search for his daughter… just decides to chill the the desert, and wait 30 of the 42 years for the festival?

The randomness of him showing up after his best friend’s widow dies is less than him living in the desert for 30 years, but that’s just me.

I feel compelled to point out that in earlier cuts, the reason Lando was the person who went with Luke is because the First Order (or, rather, what they’d later find out was the First Order) had taken Lando’s daughter; Pasana is where the trail went cold, and so that’s where he stayed, trying to find more leads and find peace for the next ten or so years, and joining the local community. This is retained in the novelization and visual dictionary.

As always, I’ll maintain that most of the problems in this movie have to do with JJ Abrams extremely attention-deficit editing style.

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

You can’t read the full draft yet, but you can read a plot summary here:

https://makingstarwars.net/2020/01/i-read-colin-trevorrow-and-derek-connollys-final-star-wars-episode-ix-script/

I don’t think it’s much of an improvement. Mustafar, Coruscant, and Mortis are replaced with generic planets, and there’s a female Knight of Ren who only exists to give Rey and Kylo someone to team up against once Kylo turns good.

What’s wrong with a female knight of Ren?

Did you even read what I said? I don’t have a problem with the idea in theory, it’s just that she only exists to give Rey and Kylo someone to team up against.

I did, your wording was not clear at all, that’s why I asked. Also, I don’t think we can say she “only” exists for that purpose, since we don’t have the script.

Anakin Starkiller said:

DominicCobb said:

omnimuffin said:

I don’t have any problem with the concept; all of the Knights wear thick enough clothing that you wouldn’t be able to tell any more than you could tell Enfys Nest was a woman. My problem is that Sollony ain’t one of the Knights of Ren we see in the flashback or in any of the supporting material. She comes out of nowhere.

How do we know that? We don’t have the script.

You’re both wrong. Sollony could be any one of the knights we’ve already seen, and we do have a script (though maybe not the exact draft you’re looking for). It was leaked and confirmed as real by Trevorrow himself, remember?

Nothing I said is wrong. We’re talking about a script that we don’t have access to (the one with Sollony).

omnimuffin said:

DominicCobb said:

omnimuffin said:

I don’t have any problem with the concept; all of the Knights wear thick enough clothing that you wouldn’t be able to tell any more than you could tell Enfys Nest was a woman. My problem is that Sollony ain’t one of the Knights of Ren we see in the flashback or in any of the supporting material. She comes out of nowhere.

How do we know that? We don’t have the script.

Because she appears in the original draft, which we do have.

She does not.

You’re right. For some reason, I’d mixed her up with the darksaber-wielding Knight of Ren in the original script.

DominicCobb said:

omnimuffin said:

I don’t have any problem with the concept; all of the Knights wear thick enough clothing that you wouldn’t be able to tell any more than you could tell Enfys Nest was a woman. My problem is that Sollony ain’t one of the Knights of Ren we see in the flashback or in any of the supporting material. She comes out of nowhere.

How do we know that? We don’t have the script.

Because she appears in the original draft, which we do have.

I don’t have any problem with the concept; all of the Knights wear thick enough clothing that you wouldn’t be able to tell any more than you could tell Enfys Nest was a woman. My problem is that Sollony ain’t one of the Knights of Ren we see in the flashback or in any of the supporting material. She comes out of nowhere.

Your work is amazing, man, and you’ve provided a tremendous contribution to this community and teh entire Star Wars fandom. Thanks for everything you’ve done.

Yes, however, we aren’t told WHY it happened. And Han solo’s 3rd hand report can have inaccuracies, easily.

He’s talking about his son and his best friend. I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about.

For example, here’s a take why did “the boy” do it. Note that in the movie they never SPECIFICALLY say it was Kylo. Sure, we know it’s him and they drop many hints, but it wasn’t set in stone yet. Star Wars changes huge plot point directions all the time.

I mean, it was very much firmly established at the time. All of the supporting material made it abundantly clear it was Kylo. It’s said in no uncertain terms in the TFA visual dictionary.

Anyway, this discussion isn’t productive and we’re distracting from the purpose of the topic.

idir_hh said:

jonh said:

poor palpatine! 40 years waiting to resurrect and die again hahahah

Yeah, this really should have been a two-parter. Part I ends with Palpatine rejuvinated with the Sith Fleet unleashed and Part II spans a galaxy wide WAR.

2/3 year time jump. The Capital Has been taken by the Sith.
Rey and now Jedi Knight Ben Solo Rebuild the Jedi Order. Finn, Poe and Rose go behind enemy-lines, Storm-Trooper Revolution, Retaking The Capital, All that Jazz.
Ending on a Climactic Duel between the Jedi and the Sith at the former Jedi Temple (now Sith- Eternal Base).
Throw in a young Palpatine clone and you’re set for a duel that will end all duels.

See, that WOULD actually have been pretty dope. Probably my favourite hypothetical rewrite so far.

While that’s true, let’s not pretend JJ or Rian cared about that concept either. In fact, no one actually cared about it other than Lucas, since Lucas’ idea of the balance is no Sith. Pretty much everyone who wrote things past ROTJ ignored this, EU or Disney, since no Sith villains make for a less exciting franchise.

Sure, but at least none of the ST movies we got ended with “it turns out the Dark Side IS good after all, and that Gray Jedi, something that deeply go against everything about how the force has been depicted thus far in any canonical media and how it was set down by George, are totally right as a concept, even though using the dark side is genuinely inherently corrosive to the user’s soul and unavoidably corrupts their moral core when people are under its unfluence.”

Because that’s where Treverrow’s script goes. You can have a little corruption, as a treat.

thebluefrog said:

idir_hh said:

since no Sith villains make for a less exciting franchise.

At the the announcement of the Lucasfilm buy-out I had my hopes up for a villian akin to the Yizhon Vohng, an outer galaxy threat. An enemy that threatened the force itself.

Seriously. When I saw TFA, I had figured Luke had been forced into exile to focus on a much larger threat. The tragedy would’ve been he KNEW the First Order was rising and killing his friends, but was forced to see the bigger picture.

This is confusing to me, because TFA straight up tells us exactly why Luke went into exile. When asked, Han says:

He was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice turned against him, destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible… He walked away from everything.

This seems pretty clear to me.

OobeDooby said:

I wonder if we can expand on Palpatine in Episode 9 ? Make it 100 % clear that Palpatine IS A CLONE. NO RITUAL BULLSHIT PALPTINE JUST WANTS REVENGE ON LUKE. Maybe we can have Palpatine reveal to Rey that it was Palpatine that put fake dreams into Luke about Ben going evil ? Reveal that Palpatine not only was pulling the strings on Ben but also EVERYONE ELSE

The canon stuff establishes that Palpatine had already been whispering in Ben’s ear since he was a boy (the movies at the very least imply this, with Leia’s mentions about Snoke corrupting him from the beginning, etc). They weren’t ‘fake dreams’. Luke genuinely did look into Ben’s mind and see how far he’d already fallen, swiftly followed by a very real vision of the future he would (and did) bring. His reaction was what pushed Ben over the edge, but Ben genuinely already was extremely troubled, and removing that factor from him cheapens him as a character, IMO.

majoras_wrath said:

omnimuffin said:

idir_hh said:

And while they’re at it they should bring back Trevorrow and Derek Connolly to write and direct.
They deserve a chance.

I really hope not. Treverrow’s script may have had some cool Resistance stuff and some very pretty concept art, but even ignoring how totally and completely it butchers the concept of balance in the force, it’s got serious issues.

Plus, all of Trevorrow’s movies are utterly joyless. How do you make Jurassic Park boring? Like Life Finds a Way, Trevorrow found a way.

I agree that his script has serious issues, but I mean, to be fair, we’ve only seen the first draft. Had he stayed on board, it certainly would have been revised more.

Supposedly, the only major change in later drafts is that Leia dies earlier and that Snoke but Worse Tor Valum is replaced by a holocron, though obviously that’s hard to confirm without the scripts.

Also, Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed is a pretty joyful film. He has potential as a filmmaker.

Is it? I’ll have to check it out.

idir_hh said:

And while they’re at it they should bring back Trevorrow and Derek Connolly to write and direct.
They deserve a chance.

I really hope not. Treverrow’s script may have had some cool Resistance stuff and some very pretty concept art, but even ignoring how totally and completely it butchers the concept of balance in the force, it’s got serious issues.

90% of the dialogue is terrible, eight people steal and operate the Eclipse (the second largest Star Destroyer ever built, after the Supremacy), Bossk has an eight second cameo for no reason, Hux is suddenly obsessed with Jedi memorabilia and we’re made to watch him try and fail to use the force (because what this series needed was for Hux to be more of a joke), Palpatine’s master turns out to have been a) not the person we’ve been told repeatedly it is in no uncertain terms and b) somebody whose existence makes Palpatine a terrible sith, because his master is still alive, there are STILL Death Star Destroyers (the script features FO Star Destroyers, most notably the Finalizer, being fitted with Death Star tech and destroying planets), Kylo Ren somehow kills Rey’s parents and was a Knight of Ren when he was fifteen, and that’s just stuff I remember from the script off the top of my head.

Plus, all of Trevorrow’s movies are utterly joyless. How do you make Jurassic Park boring? Like Life Finds a Way, Trevorrow found a way.

JakeRyan17 said:

omnimuffin said:

thebluefrog said:

axlanian said:

idir_hh said:

Maybe the galaxy thinks he is dead but I think the ideal would be to have him in self exile. A batman like figure that appears and disappears out of nowhere, helping out around the galaxy as a form of penance. A symbol.

As cheesy as it sounds, this is kind of what I would have wanted. Rey and Ben wouldn’t be hooking up in secret or anything, he’d just become a wandering fighter for justice, trying to right some of his wrongs. Potentially with his mother’s lightsaber.

Obviously there’s no way to make that happen in an edit, but it’s what seems like a feasible story decision to me. He DEFINITELY could not join up with the Resistance and be like “It’s cool, I’m a good guy now!”

Should be noted that Driver specifically said that Kylo-Ben’s story would not end the same way as Anakin’s.

I suspect, back when writing TFA, JJ and KK MIGHT have considered Kylo living at the end. Unfortunately, the overwhelming pressures of Disney needing the usual stereotypical bad vs good storyline ending meant that they didn’t want to take the risk and, yep, bad guy dies, good guy lives.

At the Lucasfilm purchase, someone at Disney (Maybe Iger?) likely wanted a completely blank franchise to start over with. In the planning stages, however, they were convinced they shouldn’t risk rebooting everything, so they did the safer nostalgia-based soft-remake. Hence all the interquels as well.

Suppose if you were to remove the existence of the OT completely. As in, this is a completely new SW universe.

Under Disney, it would’ve ended exactly the same as it did. Good guy lives, bad guy dies.

I personally would’ve found it brave if they’d let Kylo live. It may be possible to do an edit where he goes into exile, like Jon Snow did. If anything, Kylo should’ve been the one to vanish into the Tattooine desert while Rey goes off with her friends.

I feel like you’re drastically overestimating the creative influence Disney applies to its subsidiaries.

TROS is how it is because JJ Abrams is JJ Abrams, and this time he didn’t have Lawrence Kasdan to balance him out.

Kasdan didn’t really balance him out in TFA either…

He balanced him out better than Terrio did, haha.

thebluefrog said:

axlanian said:

idir_hh said:

Maybe the galaxy thinks he is dead but I think the ideal would be to have him in self exile. A batman like figure that appears and disappears out of nowhere, helping out around the galaxy as a form of penance. A symbol.

As cheesy as it sounds, this is kind of what I would have wanted. Rey and Ben wouldn’t be hooking up in secret or anything, he’d just become a wandering fighter for justice, trying to right some of his wrongs. Potentially with his mother’s lightsaber.

Obviously there’s no way to make that happen in an edit, but it’s what seems like a feasible story decision to me. He DEFINITELY could not join up with the Resistance and be like “It’s cool, I’m a good guy now!”

Should be noted that Driver specifically said that Kylo-Ben’s story would not end the same way as Anakin’s.

I suspect, back when writing TFA, JJ and KK MIGHT have considered Kylo living at the end. Unfortunately, the overwhelming pressures of Disney needing the usual stereotypical bad vs good storyline ending meant that they didn’t want to take the risk and, yep, bad guy dies, good guy lives.

At the Lucasfilm purchase, someone at Disney (Maybe Iger?) likely wanted a completely blank franchise to start over with. In the planning stages, however, they were convinced they shouldn’t risk rebooting everything, so they did the safer nostalgia-based soft-remake. Hence all the interquels as well.

Suppose if you were to remove the existence of the OT completely. As in, this is a completely new SW universe.

Under Disney, it would’ve ended exactly the same as it did. Good guy lives, bad guy dies.

I personally would’ve found it brave if they’d let Kylo live. It may be possible to do an edit where he goes into exile, like Jon Snow did. If anything, Kylo should’ve been the one to vanish into the Tattooine desert while Rey goes off with her friends.

I feel like you’re drastically overestimating the creative influence Disney applies to its subsidiaries.

TROS is how it is because JJ Abrams is JJ Abrams, and this time he didn’t have Lawrence Kasdan to balance him out.

Putting the hidden secret Sith cult power base on the very publicly known ancient homeworld of the Sith doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense.

It implies that at no point during their lifetimes did Luke Skywalker or Kylo Ren visit Korriban, which is silly at best.

Movies Remastered said:

majoras_wrath said:

omnimuffin said:

I mean, the vision came true. That’s the whole point. At the end of her Jedi path, her son died.

Very good point. Anakin had a vision of Padme dying which made him turn to the Dark Side, and the vision still came true.

Very good points but I feel that Leia training Rey actually contributes to Ben’s death. It doesn’t make sense to me plus Rey saying she’s a Skywalker doesn’t make sense. By the end of TROS she has stolen the Falcon, Stolen BB8, and taken the Skywalker name. All that left me with a bad taste.

She hasn’t stolen any of those things.

jarbear said:

Vision or not, Ben cannot survive.

Like Darth Vader, these two were only “redeemed” by one person. The whole galaxy would not forgive these Space Hitlers. It is a simpler ending to have them die, then to have them live. Ben would have to stay in hiding for the rest of his life from THE ENTIRE GALEXY and Rey would have to hook up with him in secret since she would be aiding and abetting A MASS MURDERER.

The more I think of the “Reylo” thing it makes me roll my eyes harder and harder.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on that topic.

This all being said, I’d absolutely read or watch a story wherein Ben is put on trial. I think that you could get an extremely interesting legal drama out of that. Character witnesses and testimony as an excuse to flash back to Ben’s childhood and to during his time during the First Order. Impassioned speeches about the importance of redemption, of justice, etc. You could have interludes on other planets in the galaxy, dealing with the cleanup of the galaxy-wide uprising.

Optimally, Disney Expanded Universe-wise, the most fun prosecutor would be Ransolm Casterfo, as a former member of the New Republic Senate, a student of Imperial History, as somebody whose life was personally effected by Darth Vader, as somebody who was framed by the First Order and later imprisoned by them, and as a close personal friend of Leia’s; you could get a lot of good angst with him wrestling with the conflicting ideas of justice applying to all equally and prosecuting his lost friend’s son.

Anyway, I think that might have been neat, lol.

I mean, the vision came true. That’s the whole point. At the end of her Jedi path, her son died.

Anakin Starkiller said:

idir_hh said:

Would have been sick to have Palpatine hiding in the sith shrine deep below the temple instead of Exogol, right under the noses of the New Republic and The First Order. Imagine the surprise of the destroyers emerging from deep below the surface of the industrial regions of the capital. A true power play.

Judging from this concept art this may have been the case in an early draft.
https://mobile.twitter.com/CultureCrave/status/1218324295765512192/photo/1

Okay, now I’m convinced the final sequence should be on Coruscant. My problem with it in DotF was that Rey and Kylo were halfway across the Galaxy from the big battle, but utilizing the Sith shrine beneath the Jedi Temple would be a brilliant way to remedy that. The Sith Citadel could be left as is, but the other 2/3 of the battle would require some FX work. Basically, you’d need to swap out the background. Finn’s mounted assault could be on the street, with defected stormtroopers, while Poe leads the battle in the skies. My one issue is I don’t see the fleet being hidden below Coruscant. Anyway, luckily, the ground isn’t visible in most shots, so it could just be said to be happening in the upper atmosphere. The space horses are visibly in the sky, however. Maybe they could stay there instead of on the streets?

This seems like it would involve an INSANE amount of VFX work.

Knight of Kalee said:

Yeah that’s been considered. I don’t remember exactly who did it or where’s the link to it, but there is a rough version of a rearranged Exegol opening, where “The dark side of the Force is a pathway…” is replaced with “more than a clone…”, (it also includes repurposed Palpatine dialogue to establish both the concept of the Force Dyad and his plan). The audio itself still needs some polishing but is a good attempt, and anything is better than leave the means of Sidious’s resurrection unaddressed.

I’ve posted a much more cleaned up version of the dialogue here a few times, but nobody’s given it a shot.

Unrelated:

Is there an HD version of this anywhere? Some of these shots seem useable with some background replacement work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax9jCm1Iz3Y