amobex said:
I’ve got some ideas to hopefully add some clarity to this film.
The first clip is neat; I like that line a lot and iirc it’s not in the final movie - but I’m not really sure what it implies there. Is Palpatine suggesting he knows Kylo wants to ‘come together’ with Rey (uh, not like that) and is threatening him in advance, like a “don’t try allying with her because she’s not who you think she is!” type deal? I’m not really sure; I think it’d work much better in the ending Exegol sequence somewhere to reinforce the idea of the team-up/dyad (though I have no idea how you’d fit it in there).
I only skimmed the second clip and my memory of TROS is not super fresh so forgive me if I missed some changes, but the one I did notice was “You are his granddaughter.” which is much superior to “You are a Palpatine.” IMO because it feels less like a forum speculation thread post and more like something a human being might say, and your execution of it is good to my ears.
Having Palps lay the possession plan out to Pryde is a great idea. After all, if he’s the leader of the First/Final Order, it would be pretty crucial for him to know that ‘Rey’ isn’t bluffing when she claims to be Empress after Palpatine/“All the Sith” possess her. More importantly it gets that information across to the audience nicely while allowing you to cut it from the later scene, which I think you’ve done fairly nicely (it’s pretty key for me that Palpatine doesn’t tell Rey that he’s planning to possess her, lol.).
Having Rey kind of implicitly admit she wants to kill Palptine, only being distracted by Ben’s arrival, is a cool little moment and is infinitely superior to “…that’s what I want!” followed by Palpatine Bond-villain monologuing his secret plan to a confused Rey. However, “The Jedi are dead!” comes out of nowhere, and the audio transition after it feels strange. Ben’s arrival feels too split up also, I think, with the huge chunk of boring ground/space battle in between - but having him over “…your new family dies” warms my Reylo-sympathising heart. The editing of Rey agreeing to kill Palpatine is a little abrupt (though again, it sure beats “I won’t even hate you!!!” or whatever, which is a strange thing to say to someone you’re about to blow up) but I agree with the idea in concept.
While your idea of bringing Ben’s arrival sooner works quite well, I think some more drastic restructuring of that sequence (and trimming down of the blehhhh space/ground battles) are called for to make it really land without seeming like the Knights of Ren just stare at him for ages.
Palpatine’s broadcast over the destruction of Kijimi works well too, I think (though I hate the Death Star rehash too much to ever leave that scene in a personal edit of the movie).
Edit: You could possibly do a version of that Pryde scene where Palpatine conveys something using “[their] coming together will be [their] undoing”, mentioning the Dyad somehow; make it a kind of twist that he does know about it and is deliberately playing them so they both come to him so he can succ them dry - though that does then confuse the ritual scene with Rey somewhat because he’d no longer have any reason to goad her into attacking him. How Palpatine could find out about it is also a missing piece (though of course the theatrical movie never bothers to explain how Kylo knows about it in the first place).