sherlockpotter

Burbin said:

sherlockpotter said:

Burbin said:

sherlockpotter said:

I’ve removed Rey’s line. Personally I’m not bothered by this one so much either way (I guess I’ve finally found my breaking point for “stupid, but not movie-breakingly stupid”), but I present this so that others can weigh in:

https://streamable.com/g624m1

Removing Rey’s line actually gives a bigger focus to the whispers, perhaps they could be amped up, In fact… maybe the whole concept of Rey hearing her mum’s scream when near the dagger could be axed from the two scenes it appears in, in favor of focusing on her hearing sith whispers instead.

The second time we hear the ‘scream’ is in Kylo’s quarters, where she looks worriedly at the dagger. We could cut before she says “no” and replace the screams of lil’ Rey and momma Rey with more, perhaps louder whispers. This would offer a better setup for the change on the Death Star II and the “only this blade tells”, if we focus on the dagger constantly reaching out and talking to Rey. The idea of the dark side reaching out to Rey, culminating in her following that voice in the DSII would be a really nice way to convey her descent to the dark, and it would be a better/smarter parallel to TFA instead of a lame repeat of hearing someone screaming “no!”.

I’m not a fan of trimming 3PO though, how would he know the dagger is the clue Luke was looking for if he doesn’t know what it says?

He recognized the language as “the runic language of the Sith”; so, on a quest to find a Sith artifact, he would probably infer that a dagger covered in Sith-iness is relevant. Sith Wayfinder…Sith Runes…slap a blue paw print on that sucker, and you’ve got yourself a clue.

I don’t know, to me it seems like unnecessary obfuscation of something that’s perfectly fine and clear originally, without gaining much from changing it. Imagine going to Kijimi and erasing 3PO’s memory only for the translation to be some unrelated thing like “This is Ochi’s dagger, do not steal. Long live the Sith”.
_

“It’s the clue that Master Luke was looking for!”

“How do you know that? Hey 3PO, I said how do you know that? How do you know that’s the clue Luke was looking for if you can’t translate it? Did you read the script? Hey what’s that in the sand next to those bones? Is that the script?”

Damn it, my weakness! RLM references! 😉 lol.

Well, here’s the tricky thing actually, with the new angle we’re taking with the Dagger, it doesn’t really say the “Location of the Wayfinder” anyway. Personally, I still think Sith Runes are enough of a giveaway to accept that the Dagger is important - I think that it makes better storytelling sense than “I’m programmed to translate it, sir; but I’ll never tell you what it means! Tee hee hee!”

Like, in National Treasure (the closest example I can think of to this scavenger hunt), we assume that the Declaration is important, when we don’t yet know the specifics of what’s on the map. We just know that it’s somewhat related to the end goal, and there are some strange codes on the back, so it’s the best lead we have. No one complains, “Ah, but maybe Ben Franklin just wrote his grocery list on the back in a mysterious cypher! Plot hole!”

But I really want RogueLeader to weigh in on what 3PO should be able to “interpret” from the Dagger upon discovery. This whole idea is his baby, after all.

EDIT: Besides, Rey senses something fishy about the Dagger, so clearly it means more than Ochi’s special knife. How many artifacts, carved with ancient Sith Runes, imbuded with pure Essence of Dark Side, discovered near a confirmed Sith Cultist, are we reasonably going to find?

If we remove 3PO’s ability to translate it, it’s something that, sure, could be nit picked if you really want to. If we allow 3PO to translate it, then it’s something that objectively makes no sense. (Just don’t program him with the Sith dictionary if you don’t want him translating it!)

Good point about the old film quality. I don’t know - I haven’t seen any of the modern releases in years. Maybe it’s been restored enough to match at this point?

I don’t think the goal of the Wayfinders though was that only Sith Lords could use them. Kylo plugs an aux cord into his, and it shows a little Garmin map with directions where to go, no Force required. So, like, I don’t think Exegol is intended to be an entire planet that’s exclusive to Sith Bloodlines. I think we should keep it simple: Dagger shows Rey to go to Endor, not because she’s a Chosen One, just because she’s willing to embrace the Dark Side.

EDIT: How about: “The path to Exegol will be revealed to those who embrace the Darkness”? Sounds kind of vague and cryptic.

I’d be hesitant to have any specific “chosen one” element, since we’ll also want it to work in the Rey Nobody version. Also, RogueLeader, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the intention to do away with the whole “On the southern shores” bit, and just have the location revealed to Rey alone? In which case, the only possible place to include the vision would be when she picks up the Dagger on Kylo’s ship, because after that they’ll have to already know to go to Endor. Maybe there’s a line from her first lesson in TLJ that could be used as she’s approaching the Dagger? Something like, “Feel the Darkness…”

Also, regarding the vision, perhaps we could work in some shot from Return of the Jedi, to help break things up? Like, “This is Palps putting the Wayfinder on the Death Star” kind of thing, and this is what it looks like now [quick shot of current Endor wreckage]. Maybe even a shot of the planet/moon itself?

For dialogue, maybe the transcription on the Dagger could say something like, “The Wayfinder will be revealed only to those who embrace the power of the Darkness.” I don’t think it has to be super long or flashy - it’s carved on a knife, after all.

EDIT:

jarbear said:

One of the keys to the new translation has to really imply that the dagger will guide the “chosen” one. SO even with Orchi, who had possession of the dagger and logically could read it, it doesn’t guide him to anything. It wouldn’t “talk to him” in anyway. So something that points out it works only with the “chosen one” is good to have. So it’s not about it leading to the wayfinder specifically, just guides her towards the throne, which in this case, the Wayfinder is needed to navigate to Exegol.

Why can’t it just be used as a guide for anyone who follows the ways of the Sith? Like, Ochi could have been on Exegol at some point. He could have been guided there by the Dagger. Why have it only work for Sith Royalty? I don’t follow.

Hell, maybe all of those Sith Cultists and ship crew got there by following similar Sith artifacts; but Luke wasn’t able to track any of them down because, as TLJ shows, he would never truly embrace the Dark Side.

jarbear said:

I like the idea of the Sith eyes, but only have it when she does the Hissy thing. I feel like having it the whole time is a bit too much.

Also … the idea if the “real” Rey gets a super subtle yellow eye whenever she “kind of” commits to anything dark side would be interesting.

Also there is some work about the dagger? Changing a bit of C3P0’s dialogue? I am so down on that if it can be accomplished. Oh my goodness. What’s the plan on it?

Whenever Rey does Dark Side stuff? So…the lightning moment. And some of the vision stuff.

…

Great job establishing an internal conflict, Chris Terrio!

We’re trying to implement some of RogueLeader’s new ideas, which were detailed here: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-The-Rise-Of-Skywalker-Redux-Ideas-thread/id/71460/page/161#1421215

Basically, rather than having a literal map with literal coordinates, Rey will have to submit herself to the Dark Side to a degree. Then, the Dagger will present her with a vision of wherever the Wayfinder happens to be located (i.e. presently, Endor). So, it’s not really a “prophecy”; but just trying to work in more elements of Rey’s darkness, and also making the Dagger-map feel less stupid. (I still don’t know who carved the damn thing. Was it Ochi? He always did want to be an artist.)

sade1212 said:

Might be neat if evil vampire Rey had the Sith eyes.

Edit: Something like this mockup; or maybe subtler. Or even more vampiric.

Then again, making vision Rey even more obviously evil just sort of reinforces the general idea that Rey isn’t actually tempted towards the dark side at all. It’d have been more compelling, in my opinion, if there was something in that “cave” that actually appealed to her in some way. Alas.

Edit 2:
EBSynth test. Unfortunately it squishes the pupils around so I’d have to do those manually, I think. Still, plausible if desired.

Hmm, personally, I think this might be a little much. BUT! I think it would work if her eyes only change for that brief moment when she goes all Bilbo/Gollum/shark on herself. Kind of like how Anakin’s eyes only turn when he’s being super-duper evil, but are normal the rest of the time (e.g. when he’s choking chatting with Padmé). I agree with your second-thought that it strips the nuance from her temptation; she’s just very obviously an evil monster now.

Plus, if it’s only a brief flash when she “submits” to the dagger, and only a brief flash later on, that would reinforce the two points, and help to ground them a little more, I think. Adds a bit of weight, like, “Oh sh-t, she’s actually falling to the Dark Side!” (Rather than, “I guess she’s already fallen.”)

RogueLeader said:

sherlock, could you see about moving Finn’s line about Endor to the part where Finn and Rey are working on the Falcon? If anything, maybe we could hear the beginning of Finn’s like while the camera is still in the cockpit with Poe and Chewie, like we’re doing a J-cut. The whole line doesn’t have to be used. Just whatever fits and still makes sense.

I am honored to have been chosen for this task! lol I didn’t spend too long on mixing, but here’s a rough test:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/184g4AqJx73cGdEvEOuSMQo7mc1vIJczA/view?usp=sharing

A few thoughts I had while working on this:

• The timing is very tight. Ideally, I’d want to let the scene breathe more; but I think that the added benefit of reworking the dagger concept would probably be worth that price.
• There’s not really enough room in Poe’s scene to begin the dialogue there.
• There’s a slight bit of music still when he says “The Endor System?” Hopefully it just sounds like some equipment humming away?
• It occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity for Finn to sort of call her out a little for using the dagger, to emphasize the “light” side of her inner conflict. The angel on her shoulder, as it were. Plus, it feels like it flows naturally into Rey’s “Shut up, boy. We have work to do.” response. (I never noticed how out of place her response feels in the original cut. Because it does feel like she’s responding to a line that’s not there. Thank you for ruining yet another scene in this movie for me.)
• Ideally, I wanted Finn to say something like “Endor? How do you know?” But neither of Finn’s "How do you know…"s felt like they fit tonally. So I tried popping in a line from earlier in the film - “Are you sure?” How do you feel about that?

Also, this may also be taking the idea too far, but what if, right before submitting to the Dagger and seeing Endor, Rey’s eyes change color to help illustrate that she’s going to the Dark? https://i.imgur.com/WAH1poF.png

That may be stupid. It’s way too late at night for me to be working on this.

Burbin said:

sherlockpotter said:

I’ve removed Rey’s line. Personally I’m not bothered by this one so much either way (I guess I’ve finally found my breaking point for “stupid, but not movie-breakingly stupid”), but I present this so that others can weigh in:

https://streamable.com/g624m1

Removing Rey’s line actually gives a bigger focus to the whispers, perhaps they could be amped up, In fact… maybe the whole concept of Rey hearing her mum’s scream when near the dagger could be axed from the two scenes it appears in, in favor of focusing on her hearing sith whispers instead.

The second time we hear the ‘scream’ is in Kylo’s quarters, where she looks worriedly at the dagger. We could cut before she says “no” and replace the screams of lil’ Rey and momma Rey with more, perhaps louder whispers. This would offer a better setup for the change on the Death Star II and the “only this blade tells”, if we focus on the dagger constantly reaching out and talking to Rey. The idea of the dark side reaching out to Rey, culminating in her following that voice in the DSII would be a really nice way to convey her descent to the dark, and it would be a better/smarter parallel to TFA instead of a lame repeat of hearing someone screaming “no!”.

I’m not a fan of trimming 3PO though, how would he know the dagger is the clue Luke was looking for if he doesn’t know what it says?

He recognized the language as “the runic language of the Sith”; so, on a quest to find a Sith artifact, he would probably infer that a dagger covered in Sith-iness is relevant. Sith Wayfinder…Sith Runes…slap a blue paw print on that sucker, and you’ve got yourself a clue.

DominicCobb said:

The Zorii stuff is interesting. I’m all for cutting the spice runner backstory as I’m sure many are, but I wonder if there’s some way we could replace it with something else? Feels like there’d be some obviously missing info about Poe’s connection without that there. Zorii being a part of the Resistance seems like a nice solution but I’m not sure the connection is obvious as to what Poe did to make her mad.

I don’t think any specific connection is needed, honestly. Between what Poe says (“I had some bad luck on Kijimi.”) and Zorii figuratively bitch-slapping him as soon as she sees him, it’s pretty obvious already that they have some backstory, and that it didn’t end well. What that story is, I dunno - maybe Poe had a Resistance mission on Kijimi, and he crossed paths with Zorii - but does it matter so much for this story?

It’s basically the infamous elevator scene from AOTC, but with blasters. It’s two characters referencing [event] that happened [at some point in the past], that bears no immediate relevance to the story at hand. It emphasizes that they have a history together, and you get of sense of their dynamic; the specifics of that history are ultimately just pointless details.

Poe’s and Zorii’s relationship is pretty apparent as soon as she draws the blaster on him. What do you effectively lose by cutting the…five(?) “spice-runner” lines?

To be clear, if anyone likes the spice-runner backstory, then that’s great! But if you want to remove it, I don’t think it will cause too much of an issue, conceptually.

Love it, RogueLeader! Some of my thoughts:

RogueLeader said:

Some thoughts on the Kijimi sequence: Kijimi in Revolt, 3PO’s Irreversible Sacrifice, and Poe’s Past.

• Add details to Kijimi to establish that it is revolting.

• While they’re sneaking around, add civilian protest shouts in the distance, maybe something like, “For Skywalker!” Maybe then we could hear blaster shots or an explosion.

That would be awesome, and would tie into the “Luke’s inspirational sacrifice” motif we’re trying to weave into the film.

• When Zori says, “I’m still digging myself out of the whole you put me in when you left to join the Resistance”, cut “-to join the Resistance”, or “-when you left to join the Resistance”. This gives us more ambiguity so people can interpret the situation in different ways. 1) The canon explanation, where Poe left to join the New Republic, which he was a part of before he joined the Resistance. 2) Maybe Poe only worked as a spice runner undercover as a Republic operative, and messed up their operations during his mission.

I’m in favor of cutting the whole “Spice-Runner” thing, myself. bbghost posted a great mockup a while back. The only other thing would be cutting “Babu only works for the crew. That’s not you anymore.”

• When Rey whips out her lightsaber, add offscreen dialogue of Zori’s awestruck crew saying, “Jedi!”, or “The Jedi!” Maybe Zori and her crew just thought she was a “scavenger” at first. But when they realize she’s a Jedi, Zori becomes more willing to work with them. It gives more of a reason as to why she thinks Rey is “okay”, and why she goes from pointing a gun at Poe’s head, to helping him, in 30 seconds flat.

Love this!! Again, this really helps tie back into the “Galaxy being inspired again by the legends of the Jedi” thing.

• Cut 3PO saying, “I just had an idea of something else-“ before Babu turns him off. It kind of takes away a little bit from 3PO making this sacrifice. So maybe 3PO could say something like, “Tell R2 I-“ or “I have a bad feeling about-“

What? Nah, we should definitely undercut the sacrifice with a joke.

I’m kidding. Cut the line.

EDIT: If we still wanted some sort of joke, I’d love for 3PO to embrace his sacrifice. I think a line like “I wonder if they’ll make a statue of me?” before he’s immediately deactivated would strike the right balance of sweet, sentimental, and ironic.

Making the Dagger an Ancient Artifact

• In order to make the dagger distinctly ancient, redub Red-Eyed 3PO to give a new translation of the dagger. Instead of giving the exact coordinates, the new translation instructs the wielder to hold the dagger and embrace the darkness it holds. If they accept this “test”, the dagger will show them the way.
• Cut Finn saying, “The Endor system? Isn’t that where the last war ended?” This will be pushed to later. They don’t have time to react to the translation, because the First Order shows up.
• After Rey senses the dagger on the ship, cut Poe asking why they need it, and Rey saying, “A feeling.” The new translation makes it clear that they need the dagger to find the Wayfinder.
• When Rey picks up the dagger and stares at it, she begins hearing whispers/screams and eventually sees a quick glimpse of the Death Star ruins. Kylo Ren interrupts her right after this moment. (This would tie in well to the whispers guiding her to vault on the Death Star, as Ascendant currently has it.)
• At the beginning of the scene with Rey and Finn fixing the Falcon, add a part of Finn’s earlier line, “The Endor system? Where the last war ended?” (Either sentence, both likely won’t fit). Rey continues “All that matters is finding the Wayfinder. Finding Exegol.” Adding the line here helps clarify that Rey told them about her vision of the Death Star after they regrouped, and now they are heading there.

I’d love to see this in practice, because it sounds really good! Streamlined, effective, thematically relevant; and it seems tailor-made to the proposed angle for Rey Nobody, with Rey’s inner darkness. Would 3PO’s “Sith Translation” have to be re-dubbed completely from scratch, I assume?

Okie doke, just to address line changes that have already been brought up for Ascendant (but yeah, for sure, we can suggest new line changes in the other thread):

RogueLeader said:

I think someone already mentioned it, but I love how Rey says regarding the dagger, “Horrible things have happened with this.” While in her other hand she holds a lightsaber that literally slaughtered everyone in the Jedi Temple and killed a room full of children.

I like the dialogue change btw.

I’ve removed Rey’s line. Personally I’m not bothered by this one so much either way (I guess I’ve finally found my breaking point for “stupid, but not movie-breakingly stupid”), but I present this so that others can weigh in:

https://streamable.com/g624m1

Peonthegrate said:

sherlockpotter said:

Getting away from huge, controversial lore changes for a hot minute (God, at least I hope I am. I don’t even know anymore)…

Hal 9000 said:

I like the idea of moving Rey’s death forward, however, aside from the seemingly large task of musical score, I’d hate to break it apart from Finn’s reaction. With what you suggest I imagine chuckling that Finn is sensing he’s once again been put in the friend zone in favor of Kylo Ren. Like he’s saying “Oh no, not this guy again. Get away from her why don’tcha.”

Yeah, so…I kinda took a stab at this.

I’m definitely open to feedback on the audio transitions - that first one especially is pretty tricky. Hal, do you think the cutaways to Finn work in this new context?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jrxdxU_SxgbNxK-uUdLh1qyyg5tKn3-_/view?usp=sharing

Changes:

• Pushing Rey’s death forward to immediately after Palpatine dies, both so that it doesn’t feel like she just drops dead randomly, and also to extend the tension before her resurrection for longer than 30 seconds because I still think tension is important, darn it
• Cutting directly to Rey’s corpse after Finn and Jannah blow up Pryde’s ship
• Reinserted Finn sensing Rey, but moved backwards to when Ben finds her body. My hope is that their reactions compliment one another.
• Removed the kiss. I know Hal said in his commentary track that he’s not particularly interested in this change; but I figured I might as well practice cutting it for my own benefit, since I was rearranging the music in this scene anyway.

Also, I want to know…what music editor saw these shots and was like, “You know what one word describes all of this? Peaceful.” What a fecking wackadoo.

Really really like this. I do think trimming away the lando being all giddy with chewie scene before they save Finn and his daughter would improve it even further though.

I’ve done a version of this as well. I tried to be really clever and hide the cut mid-camera whip; but if that doesn’t work, it’s definitely doable to just cut the exterior shot of Poe’s X-Wing as well, and go right to the Falcon swooping in.

I’ve also touched up a couple of the audio transitions. Hal, does something about it still not sit right by you? And if so, is there any way we can fix that? (Like I said, I just cut the kiss for my own benefit. If you still want them to make out, you do you.)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NJW8hX-_ZMtr-aBP8vn_ntPNmKW99GID/view?usp=sharing

Also, I suggested a while back - and I don’t think anyone responded one way or the other - another possible alternative for “Leia sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path.” What if we cropped it to “Leia sensed her son at the end of her Jedi path”? It’s the same double-meaning kind of thing as “the birth of her son” that was originally pitched, but now the secondary meaning is that, when Leia becomes one with the Force, Ben will be there (in the Force) waiting for her.

We wouldn’t even need to splice any extra voice lines; just do some careful audio trimming.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I said this before, but I really dislike the idea of removing anything else from the movie at this point. Much more interested in additions/changes.

Didn’t Hal say that V2 is going to be the last version with major changes? If so, I think it’s fair to bandy about other ways to make the story flow better, even if that’s at the cost of removing a few more words here and there. (I don’t get why “changes” are good, but “removals” - a type of change - are bad…? Isn’t that all subjective?)

That said, I do agree that we’re missing the forest for the trees, as was said above. We really can’t keep battling for days on end about every tiny minutia. It’s exhausting.

Test run of changing 3PO’s dialogue:

https://streamable.com/snti9d

Personally, I think the dialogue still makes perfect sense this way. And like I said, the whole situation with 3PO and wasting time going to Kijimi feels much less contrived now.

EDIT: Didn’t see that Hal already vetoed this before I made the mockup. Oh well. I’ll add it to my personal changelist.

BrotherOfSasquatch said:

Eh, I kind of like the whole “Sith language isn’t in my databanks” sort of thing with 3P0. It reminds me a lot of LOTR and the Black Speech of Mordor: a language that is so evil that you can’t even put it in the databanks of a protocol droid that’s solely used for translation.

Also, the Poe bones thing is… fine. Inconsequential.

Oh yeah, I don’t really care about the Poe thing either way. Definitely not anything worth obsessing over. With the “Sith language isn’t in my databanks” though, doesn’t that make more sense if it’s…you know, not in his databanks? Like, the Black Speech was so evil that they didn’t want 3PO to translate it at all, and it’s only thanks to Babu’s black market enhancements that he’s able to?

Jar Jar Bricks said:

sherlockpotter said:

Would it be possible to trim out 3PO’s line “I have read it…I know exactly where the Wayfinder is,” and focus instead on the “My programming prevents me from translating Sith Speak” aspect? I wonder if that whole thing might feel less contrived if 3PO actually can’t translate the dagger until he gets “patched” by Babu. Why would they program him with an Ancient Sith dictionary, and then tell him not to use it?

“There’s writing on it.”
“Perhaps I can translate it. It’s the clue that Master Luke was looking for!”
“And? Where’s the Wayfinder?”
“I am afraid I cannot tell you.”
“20.3 fazillion languages, you can’t read that?”
“Unfortunately, it is written in the runic language of the Sith.”
“So what?”
“My programming forbids me from translating it.”

The only slight problem I see with this is that 3PO doesn’t actually look at the dagger to read it when they bypass the restriction, which would imply that he already had the text memorized. I suppose you could argue he had the runes memorized and was able to instantly translate them once the process was completed.

I will say that it does seem a bit strange that 3PO’s programming prevents him from translating the dagger directly, but he himself admits that he knows where the wayfinder is located… like what’s stopping him from just telling the trio, “Hey, Endor is a nice place this time of year.” wink wink

Jar Jar…

I’m just kidding, man. No, but seriously, I think it does make sense that a computer would be able to store a “snapshot” of the text, even if it was unable to translate it at the time. Kind of like scanning a document and storing it as a PDF, then running it through an OCR service later on. He even has a line that “The inscription lives only in my memory bank now.”

For me, it would still have that “tantalisingly close to their goal” feeling that Cap points out - that Mr. Translator has finally found a language he can’t read - but just a bit less contrived in how that’s explained.

Would it be possible to trim out 3PO’s line “I have read it…I know exactly where the Wayfinder is,” and focus instead on the “My programming prevents me from translating Sith Speak” aspect? I wonder if that whole thing might feel less contrived if 3PO actually can’t translate the dagger until he gets “patched” by Babu. Why would they program him with an Ancient Sith dictionary, and then tell him not to use it?

“There’s writing on it.”
“Perhaps I can translate it. It’s the clue that Master Luke was looking for!”
“And? Where’s the Wayfinder?”
“I am afraid I cannot tell you.”
“20.3 fazillion languages, you can’t read that?”
“Unfortunately, it is written in the runic language of the Sith.”
“So what?”
“My programming forbids me from translating it.”

Also, super minor gripe in the same scene, what’s up with Poe’s sudden fear of bones that’s never been mentioned before, and is never mentioned again? Golly, I hope this wartime commander never has to see anything as terrifying as bones. Remember last movie, when he saw most of his friends and comrades blow up? At least he didn’t have to bury their remains, amiright? That would have been traumatic.

It feels like they’re setting up an Indiana Jones/Snake confrontation, where Poe will be surrounded by bones; but then they forgot to follow through on that.

DZ-330 said:

Would it make sense to try restructuring the end of Exegol?

• Palpatine lightings the ships
• Rey hears the voices and ghosts arrives
• Poe says this is our last chance we need to hit those cannons now
• Maybe use the quote from the trailer: “Let your death be the final word in the story of Skywalker” as it has more impact with Luke and Anakin being there
• Rey protects herself with the lightsaber
• Cut to Finn and Jannah blowing up the cruiser
• Poe’s happy because the command ship is destroyed
• Rose says Finn didn’t board the ship
• Rey takes down Palpatine and rocks smash everyone, Rey drops the lightsabers
• Cut to Finn getting on the Falcon and the Star Destroyer smashing into the planet
• Rey falls and “dies”
• Finn reacts
• Ben saves Rey

Not saying this is ideal but it does flow better when Rey dies immediately after the duel. It would just suck losing Finn’s reaction

I definitely want Rey to die immediately after the dual. (Did you see my version above? What did you think?) My only concern with this version though is that blowing up the cruiser is effectively the “end” of the Sith Fleet, because “They’re stuck here! They’re toast!”

Basically, you have two battles happening, right? Take out the fleet, and take out Palpy. I think it would feel weird to solve one crisis, and then immediately get back to “Oh shoot, the other one is still going on.” You kids know me, I’m all about that tension, and I don’t know how the tension would work broken apart like this. I’d definitely be down to watch a mockup though. Maybe it would work in practice.

And I like the idea of the extra Skywalker line, if there’s a clean rip of it. Makes sense that Palps has a personal vendetta against the family at this point. (Although, was “story of Rebellion” removed for Ascendant? The other line may not be necessary then. I could go either way.)

ThisIsCreation said:

Here is a message I sent to hal and he told me to share it here for you guys to listen to it:

"Yeah this probably sounds dumb, i don’t have the 5.1 of the clip i just ripped it off youtube and layered my voice over it for you to check. I know the puppet act is being done, and this probably isn’t what you’re looking for audio wise but i thought id send it your way anyway if you get the chance to watch it, i just tried to come up with something to fit the scene audio wise since i know luke’s going to be in it, so i spoke gibberish with a hint of luke being mentioned…

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1effeAo8jlQrQwB-5cYFxYBM-zS-_SehS?usp=sharing

This is excellent! I wonder if it might be timed a little bit differently though, so that Rey looks over when she hears the name “Skywalker”?

As seems to be my MO, I’ve done a quick mockup. I also made the word “Skywalker” louder than the rest of the speech, to emphasize it more for the audience; and I tested cutting around the children’s laughter, as well as panning the audio into the left channel where applicable (as was done in the original audio mix).

https://streamable.com/mdf0qj

We could also probably find some stock audio of children laughing and overdub the part completely, if this doesn’t work.

That said, I did love how you sounded more excited right before they started giggling. Oh, and props for the “dubdub” joke. 😉

Hal 9000 said:

Oh and I admit, sherlock, that mockup’s got a few things going for it. I like having Rey collapse after the showdown and losing the “crush enemies with ROCKS! Yeah, THE LIGHT SIDE OF THE FORCE BITCHES!” moment.

However, I still just don’t think it works overall in the big picture. I’m sorry, I swear I don’t have it out for you or anything!

Haha, you’re fine, Hal. Is there something in particular about it that doesn’t work? Maybe it could be ironed out?

Getting away from huge, controversial lore changes for a hot minute (God, at least I hope I am. I don’t even know anymore)…

Hal 9000 said:

I like the idea of moving Rey’s death forward, however, aside from the seemingly large task of musical score, I’d hate to break it apart from Finn’s reaction. With what you suggest I imagine chuckling that Finn is sensing he’s once again been put in the friend zone in favor of Kylo Ren. Like he’s saying “Oh no, not this guy again. Get away from her why don’tcha.”

Yeah, so…I kinda took a stab at this.

I’m definitely open to feedback on the audio transitions - that first one especially is pretty tricky. Hal, do you think the cutaways to Finn work in this new context?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jrxdxU_SxgbNxK-uUdLh1qyyg5tKn3-_/view?usp=sharing

Changes:

• Pushing Rey’s death forward to immediately after Palpatine dies, both so that it doesn’t feel like she just drops dead randomly, and also to extend the tension before her resurrection for longer than 30 seconds because I still think tension is important, darn it
• Cutting directly to Rey’s corpse after Finn and Jannah blow up Pryde’s ship
• Reinserted Finn sensing Rey, but moved backwards to when Ben finds her body. My hope is that their reactions compliment one another.
• Removed the kiss. I know Hal said in his commentary track that he’s not particularly interested in this change; but I figured I might as well practice cutting it for my own benefit, since I was rearranging the music in this scene anyway.

Also, I want to know…what music editor saw these shots and was like, “You know what one word describes all of this? Peaceful.” What a fecking wackadoo.

It just feels like we have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to make the line make sense. Lando was on a different planet! But then he was able to travel there immediately! But then he decides to hang back at his hideout and not help them anymore! And Leia knew about Lando, but she was only able to send him a recorded message! Live communications don’t work in this case because reasons! And Lando couldn’t send his own message just because! And Leia didn’t tell Rey that she was reaching out to Lando just because!

All of this is conjecture.

Like I said, if you want to keep it still, that’s fine. It’s five words of ADR, it’s really not worth all of this. We’ve taken a simple critique about tension building and turned it into a three page discussion on implied lore. Does headcannon really matter this much?

Hal 9000 said:

NeverarGreat said:

It gives me a certain sense of power realizing that I could probably propose changing just about any single line in this movie and watch the ensuing battle as people slowly realize all over again that thinking about the line for more than a minute shatters the illusion of the film’s world.

ZORII: Night raids are going to start soon. I’ll keep lookout.

Thinking about removing this, seems superfluous or something…

“Soon, raids are going to lookout. Keep night start. Maclunky”

Jar Jar Bricks said:

jarbear said:

But regardless, I don’t care much about his “I got a call about you guys” … but the one that sticks out is Rey’s kinda strange “Tell that to her yourself” … kinda implying they don’t talk but we know they just did? Kinda seemed unnecessary.

Leia sent him a transmission, jarbear. It was not a Skype call, if you will. It was a prerecorded message. So he didn’t talk to her.

Um…that’s not how communications work in Star Wars though?

I’m not trying to prolong this debate - if it’s decided, it’s decided - but there’s been exactly two instances of a prerecorded message in any of these films: Leia’s to Obi-Wan (because she was about to be captured), and Luke’s to Jabba (because he was doing that to plant R2 at the palace). Pretty much every other time we’ve seen communications - Vader to his troops, Palps to Vader, Palps to Naboo, Obi-Wan to Anakin, Snoke to Kylo… - it’s all been real time messages.

So…after Rey left, I guess Leia recorded a message to Lando (“Help Rey, Lando; you’re her only hope.”), stored it in a droid, sent the droid off to [wherever] to find Lando, just to tell him that he needs to hurry his butt off to Pasaana in person, because he needs to tell Rey everything he discovered about Ochi? Why not just send him a real time message? Faster, easier, more reliable…and I still don’t get why Lando wouldn’t just send his own holo-communication to Rey after that if he wasn’t on-planet.

Or, because Leia knew that Lando had information about Pasaana, it stands to reason that Lando told her about it. (“Leia! I discovered a Sith Assassin who hunted folks out on Pasaana!” “Really, what’s his deal?” “Lol why would I tell you that?”) So why not just give Rey that information directly? Why involve Lando at all?

Whereas, if Lando finds them himself, it makes more sense that he would give them information that Leia didn’t know about. Hal, if your only hang up is Finn’s line, I think it would still work in context: “Are you with the Resistance? How did you find us [oh Resistance operative]?”

And I agree with Jarbear - the implication from Lando’s “Give her my love” is definitely that he and Leia haven’t spoken in a while. It loses a lot of the emotional weight if Lando says “Oh yeah, I just heard from her like half an hour ago lol.” (And if he’s not staying on Pasaana, can’t he just visit her? If not call her?) Plus, it’s kind of a meta line, because it’s saying that he misses Leia just as much as we miss real-life Carrie Fisher. Or else,…he just heard from her.

But again, if people don’t care about any of that, I won’t push it.

NeverarGreat said:

It gives me a certain sense of power realizing that I could probably propose changing just about any single line in this movie and watch the ensuing battle as people slowly realize all over again that thinking about the line for more than a minute shatters the illusion of the film’s world.

Do it, Nev. Let’s see what you come up with lol.

I don’t feel bad at all. Trust me, this teensy little ADR line doesn’t even crack my top 100 issues with the movie. If the film wasn’t being recut anyway, I wouldn’t even have worried about it. If it doesn’t bother the rest of the team, then that’s what we go with.

Also CaptainFaraday is my new best friend.

The line is so vague though…half the people here took it to mean that Leia contacted him because he was already on Pasaana, and the other half took it to mean that Leia told him to travel across the galaxy to give some exposition about Ochi, and then bugger off to do God knows what instead of helping the gang. If you remove the line, you can still believe whatever you like. Just like you do already. (And the canon answer is that he has been on Pasaana this whole time anyway. I don’t care about canon so much *cough* spice-runner *cough*, but I know that Hal does.)

And seriously, the movie is definitely trying to make Lando’s identity a dramatic reveal, right? Am I crazy? Let’s help them with that.