# How would you change the new Star Wars trilogy



## Morrus (Dec 26, 2019)

I’m hesitant to post this thread, but let’s give it a try.

1) No soapbox rants about how any of them are the worst films ever or rants about “Mary Sue” or any of that crap. If you’re not interested in this exercise, go find a thread you are interested in.

2) You can’t make massive sweeping changes, remove or make entire films etc. Imagine you have “special edition” powers - you can change or add a few lines, add or remove a few scenes, but you can’t make or unmake an entire film.

3) Keep it constructive. Talk about what you’d like to do not about what you hate.


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## dragoner (Dec 26, 2019)

Less violence, more interpersonal interactions (more story); however, I suppose that would be shifting it all away from being action films.


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## Morrus (Dec 26, 2019)

1. I would remove shots of Starkiller blowing up planets, to turn TFA into a simple rescue mission. The base can be collecting energy from the sun for something, but not to blow up planets.

2. Remove Canto Blight. Add some scenes about a spy on the fleeing ships, turning that movie into a tight chase scene while they uncover the spy. That’s also why they keep the plan secret - Holdo suspects Poe.

3. Insert the Emperor’s message/threat right at the beginning of the trilogy and have Snoke mention his master from time to time.

4. Have Rey, not Kylo die at the end.

5. Get rid of the big Star Destroyer fleet at the end of IX. Have the Emperor’s threat be less physical and more ‘insidious’.

6. Change that “Traitor!“ duel with Finn in TFS to be with Phasma. Have her appear in tRoS. Make her less the comedy villain and more the indestructible villain who seems to come back from everything.

7. Make Rey a clone of Palpatine, not granddaughter. Snoke was a failed clone; she's a successful one. This means that she really does have no family. Remove the memories of her family leaving. In the end, when she takes the name Skywalker, she's finally gaining a family name.


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## Raunalyn (Dec 26, 2019)

I guess the main thing I would do is look at the final film in the trilogy. The other two films weren't bad; TFA was nostalgic if flawed, and certainly not a terrible movie. TLJ was actually the better of the three movies despite its flaws (that damned casino scene...completely unnecessary). It at least wanted to take risks.

In my opinion, small changes to the narrative could have made the third movie so much more enjoyable. The whole Palpatine being revealed as the main villain off-screen...that was pretty jarring, and frankly a little insulting. Despite that, having a brief scene with him pointing to various circumstances in the previous two films and showing how he has manipulated the whole group of them would have added so much (think about the scene on the Death Star in RotJ with him taunting Luke about how he was the one that let the rebels find the plans for the new Death Star). Rey as a Palpatine didn't bother me...it was actually pretty subtle, but they kind of let on that this was the direction they were going in TFA (Rey's fighting style is just like Palpatine's from RotS...that had to have been deliberate). I would have changed the whole opening sequence of the movie and saved the Palpatine reveal for later in the movie.


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## Nebulous (Dec 26, 2019)

If the director's cut of The Last Jedi had a completely new post credit cameo of Palpatine coming to Snoke like he did to Vader.  A Marvel kind of cliffhanger bonus ending.  Wouldn't make up for all the crap before that, but at least it would set the precedent for RofS instead of throwing it in from left field.  And explain somehow in more detail how he survived the death star explosion.  They skirted around that too much.


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## pukunui (Dec 26, 2019)

I would foreshadow Palpatine’s return as well. The way they handled it here reminds me of how Spectre made it so Blofeld was behind all of the previous Daniel Craig Bond villains, despite there having been no evidence of his presence at all.


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## Derren (Dec 26, 2019)

Kylo doesn't turn and becomes the new BBEG and either survives or dies together with Rey to end both family lines.


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## dragoner (Dec 26, 2019)

How about spinning it that Rey and Kylo get together to rule, and due to her greater power, throws Kylo aside as a weak little man to become the sole Empress: Blood for the Blood Queen.


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## Morrus (Dec 26, 2019)

dragoner said:


> How about spinning it that Rey and Kylo get together to rule, and due to her greater power, throws Kylo aside as a weak little man to become the sole Empress: Blood for the Blood Queen.



That’s a new movie on the end.


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## dragoner (Dec 26, 2019)

Morrus said:


> That’s a new movie on the end.




So no Rey in a red gown and black lipstick, and with a wave of her hand, legions lay waste to entire worlds? Shame.


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## Morrus (Dec 26, 2019)

dragoner said:


> So no Rey in a red gown and black lipstick



You might be over sharing....


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## dragoner (Dec 26, 2019)

Morrus said:


> You might be over sharing....




... or seen too many D&D tweets.


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## Vael (Dec 26, 2019)

I am assuming that I can't bring Carrie Fisher back ... as much as I'd like to and that we'll still be surprised by her sudden passing.

Film by Film:

*The Force Awakens:* Make the Republic more of a factor to better explain the political dynamics and to give Leia more presence. Have her arguing with a Republic big-wig about whether or not the First Order is a threat. Have Starkiller base take out the Republic Fleet that was conducting training maneuvers in the Hosnian System, not the Republic government. And rather than have the Resistance base being the target of Starkiller Base in the final battle, have them target Coruscant and the Republic Government. This change is to give more room between TFA and TLJ and to make the universe feel different, so TFA doesn't seem like such a ANH reboot.

*The Last Jedi:* No major changes. I don't want to get rid of Canto Blight, but I do think it needs some editing. I'd plant some more seeds about Finn possibly being Force sensitive here ... maybe have him trigger a switch unintentionally during their escape. I'd also have to, again, make the broader situation clearer, describe the Republic as "in chaos". Insert a line or two from Snoke that obliquely references Palpatine. Oh, and since the Resistance base was still hidden due to not knowing it's location in TFA, have it been discovered due to a First Order spy. That makes the Holdo and Poe conflict a little different because of paranoia in the Resistance's ranks. I'd introduce an officer that is siding with Poe turns out to be the spy.

*The Rise of Skywalker:* This is the movie that I want to redo the most. Rey is not a secret Palpatine. Cut the fetch quests. Don't introduce Palpatine in the crawl. Instead, start with a new scene, where we have the Republic Government debating how to take the fight back the First Order, only for them to be all blown up by a terrorist claiming to be working for Palpatine. This is probably where I'd kill Leia, obviously she was supposed to have been a more major player, but having her about to rally the Republic gives her a sudden, but more interesting death. Rather than have Kylo get to Palpatine in the opening scene, I'd make it a race, as both Rey and Kylo are trying to find the Emperor's hiding place.

I dunno ... I think TFA and TLJ can skate through pretty intact, I just want to remodel tRoS to feel less disjointed. Make Palpatine's survival not a part of the crawl, make it a mystery. Even whether or not he's alive, sure the terrorist said he was working for Palpatine, but maybe he was lying.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 26, 2019)

Maybe have Been survive and they rule together and reform the final order.

 Light side constitutional monarchy. Failing that Rey dues Ben lives. Anything that's not a rehash if redemption death a'la Vader. 

 Change Reys background something a bit more different than Luke's. Tie her to existing characters in some way. Maybe her and Ben trained together under Luke. She just met some dude who kills people so that plot is silly.

 Get the First Order ships over as dangerous. Have those new Star Destroyers wreck face.


More severe change make TLJ part 3 and but Canto Bight. Stick Starkiller base in part 3, kill Luke part 3. Probably reorder the events in RoS and TLJ.

 Possibly recast Leia as well so you could use her in RoS as intended.


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## Morrus (Dec 26, 2019)

Vael said:


> I am assuming that I can't bring Carrie Fisher back ... as much as I'd like to and that we'll still be surprised by her sudden passing.



No, you have access to an editing suite and select minor reshoots. You can’t raise the dead or break the laws of physics. Unless you think George Lucas is the Second Coming, I suppose!


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## billd91 (Dec 26, 2019)

In all three movies - vague up all references to time and treat space like you should and not involve blowing up planets from other systems or be able to see them being blown up from other systems.

The Force Awakens - I'm OK with StarKiller Base being a planet killer like the Death Star - but in this case using experimental Dark Side/Sith tech to power its own ability to move through hyperspace, suck off the power of suns, and channel that into mind boggling destructive power. The rest of the movie can pretty much proceed as normal.

The Last Jedi - Imply time has passed from destruction of StarKiller and trying to intercept the evacuation. We've established that dive-bombing and torpedo-bombing is the main methods so stick to those and assault the dreadnought with Y-wings or similar fighter-bombers. Pull a Battlestar Galactica and have the Imperial fleet constantly and nearly immediately appearing to harass the fleeing rebels to indicate the tracking is going on. Revise Canto Blight to not include ridiculously cute racing animals but humans/aliens and other people being exploited in dangerous work. Show Admiral Holdo ripping out failsafes and manually messing with the hyperdrive to enable her desperate kamikaze maneuver.

The Rise of Skywalker - Have the Emperor crippled but with his mind still active, his body and plans attended by several twisted mockeries like Snoke. Have the Star Destroyer fleet be a Dark Side ghost fleet of some sort, controlled by Palpatine - no planet killing but destructive of life because of its Dark Side nature. Rey doesn't have to be a Palpatine - particularly if the Emperor is confident that "Nobody can stop my plans! The Great Skywalker clan is under my control! The Kenobis and Windus destroyed! All the great Jedi families, gone!"
Ben still dies - he has to put an end to the Skywalker saga. And for cripe's sake, if you're gonna introduce a potential love interest in the 2nd movie, actually use it in the third!


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## Bawylie (Dec 26, 2019)

Lots of good ideas here. Nice. 

7: get the OT cast reunited in one scene by the end of the film. Finding Luke can be the goal, but they either bring him to the resistance or show up on the Island. Either way, reunite these cats. The harder we hit the nostalgia notes here, the more liberty we have going forward. (Han lives, until next film). 

8: Luke still tosses his lightsaber when offered. But like in episode 6. Explains the Jedi way to turn from violence and hate. He didn’t try to smoke Kylo over a bad dream. He simply failed to reach Kylo the way he reached Vader and Kylo turned because Snoke was grooming him. Rey still trains and touches the dark side. Sees her mirror images, etc. 

Cut Canto Bight. I like Morrus’ suggestion upthread about spycraft. Kylo kills both Leia (in his tie fighter - cut space-flying leia) and Han (scene from 7) to complete Snoke’s training. Killing Snoke at the end makes him a Sith. Maybe Palpatine’s voice urges Kylo to find P on the promise of unlimited power. Luke dies in a standoff against the first order, as already shot to give the New Trilogy team and resistance a chance to escape. 

9: Kylo and Rey race to find Palpatine. Kylo, to take unlimited power, Rey to stop him from a final turn to evil. Palpatine is dead - his body mechanically and artificially kept functioning but immobile. It’s just a vessel for his malevolent will. “Strike me down and you shall become more powerful than any can imagine!” He’s been waiting for a perfect vessel - Kylo - to possess, subverting the Sith tradition of betrayal and finding a way to cheat death (his saga-long ambition). 

New Trilogy team attempts to find Palpatine also. They go to Camino and Mustafar. See that P was experimenting with clones and force sensitive infants to attempt to creat a host. Rey might even be a potential one. Maybe bioengineered and implanted but her parents hid her on her desert planet and got aced by P’s agents. 

Rey believes she’s in a lose-lose scenario. Strike down P and get possessed by P. Strike down Kylo and get possessed by P. She quits and goes to Luke’s island. At that point Luke’s ghost shows up and we get some “is P really my father?” And Luke responds that no, Rey is Luke’s father. She’s the reincarnation of the chosen one. The will of the force. Here to bring balance. That’s why she’s so good with the force in the first place, why she found Anakin’s saber, why she saw infinite versions of herself. She’s reincarnated, and not for the first time. But she needs to find a way to win without murder. 

So they go have a showdown. Kylo gets Palpatine’s powers and goes ape with it. There’s a lightsaber battle Rey loses it but tosses her lightsaber aside; exorcises Palpatine and she and Kylo use the force to return P’s Sith spirit to the force. Kylo can die redeemed or he can live while Rey disappears. Either way. 

OT cast and Kylo’s force ghosts appear at the end.


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## Mallus (Dec 27, 2019)

I’ll keep it simple: stick to the original plan. Use three different directors to do their own personal takes on Star Wars.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

Mallus said:


> I’ll keep it simple: stick to the original plan. Use three different directors to do their own personal takes on Star Wars.




 Good idea for stand alones not so much for a trilogy.


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## doctorbadwolf (Dec 27, 2019)

Man. I can’t imagine removing Canto Bite and still even liking the movie. 

But I would try to rework it into something that draws in the whole of the main cast, instead of just two characters. 

I’d also make the connection between Rey and Kylo Ren much more platonic, and develop Rey and Fin instead. I know everyone loves Fin and Poe, but if it’s my power, I’m making my ship canon lol. 

Poe would have chemistry and flirt with one of the two young bad guys, maybe leading to a subplot of redemption or temptation that isn’t related to the force. 

Put in the removed scene where Phasma murders her own troops to keep the secret of her TFA cowardice safe. 

Have Han be smuggling for the Resistance, and remove the crap where he looks incompetent. 

That’s about it.


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## Mallus (Dec 27, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> Good idea for stand alones not so much for a trilogy.



Counterpoint: the original trilogy had three different directors.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

Mallus said:


> Counterpoint: the original trilogy had three different directors.




 But only one person doing the plot. George had advice though.


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## Morrus (Dec 27, 2019)

Mallus said:


> I’ll keep it simple: stick to the original plan. Use three different directors to do their own personal takes on Star Wars.



That’s not the premise of this thread. You get to mildly edit, not remake.


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## DWChancellor (Dec 27, 2019)

Hmm.  That "keep it simple" part is really tough.  Mostly re-edit to remove the character bloat?  Subtract a few (pick one: Finn subplots, Poe-subplots) and you improve both the later movies.


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## RangerWickett (Dec 27, 2019)

My goal is that by the end of the trilogy, Ben gets to be a swaggering son of Solo, and Rey gets to be a heroic inspiration to a new generation of Force users.

This might be a wild change, but redeem Kylo Ren at the end of episode VIII.



Spoiler: A bunch of backstory tweaks



*The First Order* - After RotJ, they started as an imperial remnant that withdrew to the Uncharted Region and allied with Snoke, a Dark Side user from the planet Ren, who was head of a cult that served Palpatine. The First Order is not a 'new empire,' though. Rather, they have a base of operations, and then recruit people from around the galaxy with offers of power, and are methodically overthrowing planets by trying to foil efforts of the New Republic to keep the peace, and in turn claim that only the First Order can restore the security that the empire provided. In a way, they're a bit like the Islamic State.

Also, they've been gradually kidnapping and brainwashing children to be their soldiers, and those who are found to be force sensitive are trained to be the Knights of Ren.

*Ben's Backstory* - Luke tried to train some new Jedi, Snoke manipulates Ben Solo, and the Knights of Ren came and destroyed the temple. (Ben should've been a young teen at this point - this would've been maybe 15 years before TFA).

Ben knows that when he leaves, Luke will come follow, and that Snoke intends to kill Luke. So Ben hacks Luke's X-Wing to take him to some random planet and strand him there. Snoke sees this as a mark of weakness, and wants to find and kill Skywalker, but Ben honestly doesn't know where he sent Luke. He just let the Force be his guide.

Ben joins the Knights of Ren, and adopts the name Kylo Ren. He's the strongest Force-sensitive in the group, and travels to Endor to recover his grandfather's khyber crystal from his funeral pyre. There he had a vision (which we'll only learn of later), seeing the Force spirit of Anakin Skywalker. Anakin warned him that Snoke is but a minion of the Sith, and that he can sense the spirit of the emperor still persists. It is gathering power to be reborn. Snoke never reveals where his master is, so Ben decides to embrace the Dark Side, to earn Snoke's trust, and then to _finish what Anakin started_: the defeat of the Sith.

*Rey's Backstory* - Her parents were no one _famous_, true. However, they're not scum. The First Order came to Jakku about fifteen years ago. Rey's dad had been a Rebel pilot, and his mother a Rebel spy, who after the Empire fell, Luke realized were both Force sensitive and offered to teach them. But they declined, wanting instead to return home and raise a family. After Luke was exiled, the First Order tracked them down. Afraid for their daughter, and with few options in an emergency, they sold her Unkar Plutt, moments before they were captured and carried away.

*Han and Leia Backstory* - Their relationship fell apart after Ben disappeared. They hadn't heard about him for years after he joined Snoke, and while 'Kylo Ren' has become infamous, they only just realize that it's him during TFA.

Leia has been trying to warn the New Republic about the First Order. At the start of TFA, there's not any coordinated Resistance yet.

Han and Chewie aren't smugglers; they're on a mission to stop this ship of monsters from being taken to some villain or other, but they detoured when they detected the Falcon.

Finn and Poe and Rose don't need any changes.



*Changes to TFA*
Short version - A bunch of small tweaks to set up Kylo's double agent role.



Spoiler



Poe's on Jakku because Lor San Tekka was once a member of Palpatine's cult, and he has a map to the First Order's remote base. Nobody's looking for Luke. Poe doesn't get the map, Kylo does.

Instead of Starkiller Base being a doomsday weapon, Starkiller Gate is some ancient technology, that lets the First Order fleet bypass the treacherous space around the Uncharted Regions. The Gate consumes a star as a fuel source for each time it opens a portal. The Gate is so old that it actually has its own biosphere.

As in the real Ep 7, Poe's captured and tortured, Finn breaks him out, the ship crashes, Finn meets up with Rey, they steal the Falcon to escape, link up with Han and Chewie, get to Maz's tavern, Rey has a weird vision.

Kylo senses this weird vision. This will be our first moment of the two of them seeing each other through the Force link. It's very brief.

The First Order's fleet comes into orbit above a world; let's call it Hosnian. General Hux gives his fascist speech. He warns that the gate will consume their star if they do not immediately join the First Order. They must either die in darkness or join the darkness. (Give Hux a bodyguard from among the Knights of Ren, just to give them a bit more presence. And when Hux gives orders to Kylo Ren, it can be clearer that Kylo is not the leader of the group.)

As in the real Ep 7, Kylo Ren attacks Maz's tavern, captures Rey. Han and Leia reunite.

Finn is committed to rescuing Rey, but Leia says it's unwise. People were wary of the First Order, but there's no organized Resistance, and no chance to win a fight against them on such short notice. She's clearly had her spirits crushed. Han then says that this Rey girl was taken by a Knight of Ren. And the knight had a light saber. Leia and Han both realize this must be their son.

In the Kylo-Rey interrogation, he offers to teach her, and have her join the Knights of Ren. They have a battle of wills, and she sees in his mind an island, and the coordinates he punched into a nav computer. This is how Rey is able to find Luke.

Han, Chewie, and Finn head to Starkiller Gate. Finn worked on it, and knows that while it's open, it's vulnerable. Meanwhile Leia calls in a few old allies to defend the Hosnian system. (I'd love to involve Poe here some more, but that's too heavy of a rewrite.)

As in the real Ep 7, the sun is consumed, hope fades, Kylo kills his father, and then Finn and Rey each fight Kylo.

The good guys blow up enough stuff that the gate becomes destabilized, so most of the First Order flees back across to the Uncharted Regions. We can give Poe something fun by having him see what's on the other side, which worries him. Finn is injured, and Rey goes to find Luke.



*Changes to TLJ*
Short version - Leia dies when her ship is attacked, and so after killing Snoke, Ben is actually persuaded by Rey to renounce the Dark Side. He reveals that this whole time he'd been trying to get closer to Snoke, because there was some dark secret he wasn't ever willing to share.



Spoiler



We have a small time skip. Rey takes some time to find Luke, and the First Order takes some time to regroup.

The core difference here is that Kylo Ren meets with Snoke, who is proud that Kylo killed Han. He offers a chance to come learn the true purpose of the First Order, but first Kylo must prove himself by killing Leia as well. His conflict is that he needs to get closer to Snoke to decapitate the First Order, but it's tearing him apart. We come to gradually learn this through his Force connection conversations with Rey.

We don't have the First Order obliterate the Resistance, though. Instead, they lure Leia's fleet into an ambush, which is where Rose's sister dies, then pursue with overwhelming force. Leia and company jump to hyperspace and drop out next to an asteroid belt, which hides the planet Crait, where they hope to hide out until allies arrive. Kylo hesitates when he could kill Leia, but the other ships fire and she dies.

Meanwhile Rey gets her training from Luke, and is tempted to the Dark Side but hesitates. When she decides to leave to confront Kylo Ren, he stays behind. That's the last we see of him in this movie.

The rest of the fleet goes to ground on Crait, but they detect that the First Order has sent a ship to Canto Bight. That planet is a major arms dealer, and Akbar realizes the FO will be able to get a weapon that can crack their base's defenses. He sends Finn, Poe, and Rose to Canto Bight too.

There they run into Phasma, who's buying that big doom laser they use at the end. They rescue some kids, who are going to be press ganged into the First Order, but doing so gets them caught.

The climax timing is that simultaneously the doom laser is aimed at the Resistance base, and the Finn/Poe/Rose trio are about to be executed. Kylo turns on Snoke, and when Snoke dies, an alarm goes off at the execution, causing a distraction that lets the heroes make a run for it. Ben teams up with Rey to fight the guards, and maybe we let Akbar do a suicide attack since there's no Laura Dern character here, though that's got some cultural associations maybe it's best to avoid.

Ben flees with Rey, and together they link up and escape.

In the aftermath, Hux and his forces withdraw back to the Uncharted Region, where he is escorted by several Knights of Ren to the Sith Temple. He reports the misfortune of the fleet being damaged, and Snoke being slain, but not all news is misfortune. There is a new crop, fresh from Canto Bight. They shove forward that force-sensitive stable kid.

End with Palpatine, shrouded in shadows, saying, "Good, good."



*Changes to TRoS*
Short version - We explicitly have the characters contacting spirits from the past, which is why they're traveling all over, instead of just following clue A to clue B to clue C.



Spoiler



Erm, heavy rewrite? Putting Ben Solo on the side of the good guys is a big change.

Rather than a series of locations with different plot coupons, I'd have the journey be to gather allies: deserter storm troopers, heart-of-gold smugglers, some fan service, etc. Along the way, Ben and Rey commune with the spirits of lost Jedi. We can hit all the same locations, just rejigger the whys.

If we have to keep the fleet of Star Destroyers, at least remove their Death Star beams, and make it clear that the First Order has some worlds here they conquered that are building them. Maybe just have fewer of them, but have them staffed by conscripts, so Finn can have a hero moment rallying them to rise up and resist.

Eh, I'm not sure how to make this work, and I've been typing for, like, three hours.

It is a shame if we don't have some lightsaber on lightsaber action. Maybe Palpatine does possess Rey?

Have Luke do his magical transmission thing to trick and defeat Palpatine, maybe?


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## Zaukrie (Dec 27, 2019)

My goal at the end is that anyone believes they can become a force user and make the galaxy a better place.

Luke and Kylo create new orders (knights of Ren, and whatever Luke calls his), so that there is no more Sith/Jedi. But, of course, they are similar things.....but not the same.

Jedi can now marry (the lutherans of good force users, I guess). There is "always there are two" or whatever with the dark side anymore.

I like a lot of the other suggestions above, but my goal would be launch a lot of new stories about new people/non-humans that are force users.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

Zaukrie said:


> My goal at the end is that anyone believes they can become a force user and make the galaxy a better place.
> 
> Luke and Kylo create new orders (knights of Ren, and whatever Luke calls his), so that there is no more Sith/Jedi. But, of course, they are similar things.....but not the same.
> 
> ...




 They've always had lots of different force traditions. They can always recreate the Jedi and Sith as needed it's impossible to wipe them out now.


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## Zaukrie (Dec 27, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> They've always had lots of different force traditions. They can always recreate the Jedi and Sith as needed it's impossible to wipe them out now.




Not in the movies. I am talking about the movies.......Give me new stories. Please.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

Zaukrie said:


> Not in the movies. I am talking about the movies.......Give me new stories. Please.




True. Witches of Dathomir made the cartoons.


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## Eltab (Dec 27, 2019)

I want to go back to Disney's "Session Zero" and re-write the history between RotJ and TFA.  The heros' efforts succeed, but not to the extent they dreamed of.

The New Republic is the largest and most powerful of the Imperial successor states; it also is surrounded by rivals and does not have the spare resources to go meddle in the Outback over rumors of a rising warlord or something.
Luke is running a Force training school; his students include a few outstanding successes (one of whom takes over when he exiles himself) and a few dramatic failures (including Kylo) and lots of basic competent people who become building blocks of their local communities.  At the beginning of the new trilogy, Luke is taking time alone with the Force to get himself re-centered.  Artoo knows how to find him, and is not in hibernation.
Han and Leia are able to keep their relationship alive.  Leia is a diplomat and founds the Resistance because the Republic cannot / will not intervene; Han is both learning 'the lay of the land' for her and tracking their son from a distance.
Lando is the CEO of a self-made conglomerate industrial company.  Sometimes he hears rumors that his old friends would find interesting.  He hears 'buzz' about that XL mobile shipyard / factory.
Now the new heroes have some inspiring predecessors with modest resources, who can help them deal with the new crisis, but not step in take over and do all the heavy lifting for them.  The villains have a few distractions to hold their attention while the new heroes get their act together.


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## Celebrim (Dec 27, 2019)

1) Show Leia as a Jedi with a lightsaber in TFA, and make it clear that the First Order considers both Skywalkers equally threatening.  Give us some sort of motivation within the movie (and not just in the pre-movie scroll) why everyone wants to find Luke given that they have Leia as a perfectly viable alternative.  Give Leia some sort of clear motive for wanting to find Luke, even if it turns out that she has ulterior motives later and isn't being fully truthful.  In fact, give everyone some sort of clear motivation and have them behave according to their stated motivations in a logical manner, and it wouldn't be that bad of a movie.
2) Remove the entire scenario of the poison gas on the Falcon that goes nowhere, and the entire scenario of Han's smuggling the monsters and the Space Yakuza catching up to him that goes nowhere. Use that wasted screen time to develop the main plot and bring your main characters together.
3) Remove the entire Maz Kanata sequence which likewise doesn't develop the plot. Fill in with something relevant to the plot, like maybe Han visiting the ruins of the Jedi Academy on some mission for the Republic, and Rey finding the light saber there (where the audience wouldn't need a strong explanation why and you wouldn't need to lampshade it away).
4) Remove the 'Star Killer Base' (Death Star III) from TFA and really everything that rehashes the first Star Wars plot. Have the attack by the first order however you want to do it (massive missile bombardment? Self-replicating drone weapons? just anything original) be specifically an attack on Leia for which the damage to the New Republic fleet is only desirable collateral damage and have the conclusion directly tie into the evacuation/chase of the second movie so that isn't going to come out of nowhere.
5) Fix some massive plot holes in the first movie by having it revealed in TLJ that Rey was as a child a student in Luke's Jedi academy, and that she has been repressing memories of the time there. This explains how Rey was able to master the force so quickly, better explains Luke's reluctance to teach her, and makes use of all that foreshadowing that was abandoned by TLJ. It also much sets up better Rey's interactions with Kylo Ren if it is revealed by flashback that they were once friends.
6) Do not beclown your villains or use them as comic relief.
7) Stage a real space battle that makes use of all 3 dimensions and which is visually compelling. Make clear that many Rebel ships fled in many different directions, but that mysteriously the whole First Order fleet tracked only Leia's ship and its escorts. Make the chase longer with multiple frantic jumps and some feeling of energy and tension to it, similar to what BSG did with the classic '33'.
8) Reshoot the Leia blasted into space scene in a way that is more dynamic and less disbelief suspending. Make it obvious that she is trying to use the force to build a bubble of air and debris around herself using force abilities the viewer could extrapolate from what they know. In other words, make her look cool, but not inexplicable invulnerable.
8) Remove Holdo and replace her part with Admiral Ackbar.
9) Explain the breakdown in trust among the New Republic crew that Ackbar believes, quite reasonably, that the reason that they are being tracked is that a traitor (likely Finn) has placed a tracking device on Leia's ship. This, and not Poe's prior mutiny (which would be removed as a subplot entirely), is the source of the internal tension and conflict between the heroes.
10) Remove Canto Blight. Spend that time developing the relationship between Luke and Rey and/or making the chase tense and exciting.
11) Don't make Finn into a Jar Jar Binks that is through his ineptness responsible for the deaths of so many people that he's practically a villain. Or at least, don't do that if you expect the viewer to be sympathetic to him.
12) Have Luke defeat and thwart Yoda rather than Yoda defeat and thwart Luke. Show that Luke has now exceeded Yoda in power and wisdom, and allow him to make pointed, meaningful, and correct attacks on the failures of the Jedi as guardians of the galaxy (and for that matter on the Sith). Have him suggest that he has ultimately found a better way, a way taught to him Owen and Beru, his sister, and his friends, and which is the way that he defeated Vader.
13) Come up with some better reason why Luke's original academy failed, one that explains Snoke, the Knights of Ren, and all the rest and which is tied to the themes built up by the six prior movies and not something inexplicable and vague about his nephew that makes Luke - the same Luke that saw good in Vader - murderous.  Maybe for example Luke was too trusting and too willing to see good in people.


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## Vael (Dec 27, 2019)

I've seen a lot of calls to kill the Canto Blight sequence. And while it's not my favourite part, it is pretty integral to both Finn and Rose's character growth and thematically. It expands the universe in interesting ways, because it shows a part of galactic society that we have not seen before, the wealthy that manage to enrich themselves regardless of what is happening in the galaxy. So I am curious, what replaces it? What are Finn and Rose doing in TLJ?


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

They basically just repeat Finn's Arc from TFA. 

 Rose is fairly pointless as a character. Build on what Finn already did in TFA and have Rose in whatever replaces Canto Bight.

 TLJ script for written at roughly the same time as TFA. It's why Finn goes from coward to hero twice. 

 And learns to pilot off camera as well apparently.


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## Vael (Dec 27, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> They basically just repeat Finn's Arc from TFA.
> 
> Rose is fairly pointless as a character. Build on what Finn already did in TFA and have Rose in whatever replaces Canto Bight.
> 
> ...




"Coward to Hero" is a poor and reductive summary. It's also inaccurate. His refusal to kill and breaking out Poe at the beginning of TFA are not exactly actions of a coward. He is, however, a character without connections, without faith. He has renounced the First Order, who has dominated his life. So he desperately wants to get away from them. The first connections he forges are with Poe, who he thinks is dead, and Rey. And those lead him to be willing to fight to save Rey, but he hasn't made a larger declaration by the end of TFA. He's not Resistance yet.

So, at the beginning of TLJ, he wakes up in the same spot. Rey is alone, and possibly in danger, so he wants to save her again. He has no faith in the Resistance, though. Again, not a coward, just a man without hope, without a cause outside of "save my friend". But enter Rose Tico. She mentors Finn, shows him the broader universe, why the Resistance is important. Because just getting by makes you either DJ, or one of those wealthy weapon dealers that frequents the casino. He sees them through Rose's eyes and is repelled. That's why he can proudly tell Phasma that he's "rebel scum".

Rose is the moral center of the movie. She joined the Resistance and is just a maintenance worker, but she understands why and what the Resistance is fighting for, and teaches Finn that.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

Vael said:


> "Coward to Hero" is a poor and reductive summary. It's also inaccurate. His refusal to kill and breaking out Poe at the beginning of TFA are not exactly actions of a coward. He is, however, a character without connections, without faith. He has renounced the First Order, who has dominated his life. So he desperately wants to get away from them. The first connections he forges are with Poe, who he thinks is dead, and Rey. And those lead him to be willing to fight to save Rey, but he hasn't made a larger declaration by the end of TFA. He's not Resistance yet.
> 
> So, at the beginning of TLJ, he wakes up in the same spot. Rey is alone, and possibly in danger, so he wants to save her again. He has no faith in the Resistance, though. Again, not a coward, just a man without hope, without a cause outside of "save my friend". But enter Rose Tico. She mentors Finn, shows him the broader universe, why the Resistance is important. Because just getting by makes you either DJ, or one of those wealthy weapon dealers that frequents the casino. He sees them through Rose's eyes and is repelled. That's why he can proudly tell Phasma that he's "rebel scum".
> 
> Rose is the moral center of the movie. She joined the Resistance and is just a maintenance worker, but she understands why and what the Resistance is fighting for, and teaches Finn that.




 So Finn pulling out a lightsaber on Max's planet and facing down Kylo and getting severely wounded means he is a coward 2.0 in TLJ?

 Finn had already done the wants to run and hide thing. He became a hero in TFA.

 Roses Arc as such isn't only pointless it undermines Finn's character as established in the previous movie. 

 See the growth of say Han, Luke and Leia in the OT. Each movie they have grown, Finn goes backwards. 

 Rose doesn't need to explain why they fight. It was already established in the previous movie.

 TLJ screwed Finn, RoS screwed Rose.


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## Mallus (Dec 27, 2019)

OK. Let me try again. Minor edits go!

*TFA* - this is an unambitious film that works splendidly despite it's modest derivative aim. So only minor changes.
1. Include scenes on the Republic capital on Hosnian Prime (some where actually shot, I believe).
2. Have the destruction of said capital being _broadcast_ to the galaxy, not visible to the naked eye. The FO shoots its on the day of a big public ceremony christening the new New Republic fleet. God that was easy.
3. Show the Kyber crystal core of Starkiller Planet. That would be cool.
4. Have the plan be to the shatter said crystal core. The ground team's job would be to disable the weapons array along the 3000 mile long tunnel leading to the core.
5. Either Finn and Rey or Finn and Poe kiss at the end (I'm a sucker for love stories!).

*TLJ* - overall, this is a very well constructed movie, but if had to tweak it.
1. Reframe the slow-speed space chase so it more explicitly mirrors the Falcon's escape from Hoth in ESB. The FO has an Interdictor (sp?) class destroyer. It's _preventing_ the Resistance fleet from jumping to hyperspace. Sublight chase ensues.
2. Change Finn's story so it's unambiguous he's not running away. He tries to steal an X-wing, maybe?
3. Replace Canto Bight with someplace more visually interesting. Finn, Rose, and Poe take one of the only hyperdrive shuttles (mirror scene in ESB where the Falcon pretends to be trash) to Nar Shadaa to rescue a trapped Maz, who can then break them onto the Interdictor ship so they can sabotage it.
4. Keep the same themes as Canto Bight, but lose the space horses and FX-heavy scenes. Replace with caper-movie wretched hive of scum and villainy banter. Bonus points: introduce Poe's shady background here.
5. DJ is a criminal on Nar Shadaa. Helps them get Maz and get out. Arrested later by FO and rats them out.
6. Holdo's plan is the same. Sublight crawl to Crait. When 'true fans' bitch, point out this is the same as the Falcon traveling to Bespin.
7. Finn, Rose, and Maz break onto FO ship after dropping Poe off onto the Raddus to mutiny, badly.
8. Last act the same. Because it's nearly perfect!

*RoS* - not the movie I would have made, so I can't think of much.
1. Slow the first 30 or so minutes down. I swear JJ filmed it at 24 scenes per second.
2. Actually follow a group of the heroes rallying the galaxy, instead of fetch-questing. It's amazing how well the Not Fleet, People scene worked given how barely it was set up.
3. Give Rose more scenes. Also, Finn-Rose-Rey-Poe love triangle (maybe).


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## doctorbadwolf (Dec 27, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> So Finn pulling out a lightsaber on Max's planet and facing down Kylo and getting severely wounded means he is a coward 2.0 in TLJ?
> 
> Finn had already done the wants to run and hide thing. He became a hero in TFA.
> 
> ...



Han was ready to ditch the rebels again in the beginning of Empire.


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## Imaculata (Dec 27, 2019)

*What I would do in general:*

I would write a comprehensive draft of all 3 movies in the trilogy, before starting any filming. I would make sure that any plothooks that are left dangling in the first movie, have an answer to them that are set up and revealed in the last 2 movies and are set in stone.

I would also make sure the overal vision of the trilogy as a whole is consistent across all 3 movies. The best way to achieve this would probably be to have the same director for all 3 movies, or to at least have the same writers on all 3 movies and have the director(s) stick to that.

I would not let JJ Abrams write anything. He is a great director but a terrible writer. I would also not hire the same writer as Batman V Superman. Get competent writers.

I would make sure the second movie properly sets up the events of the third movie. If any new villains need do be introduced, the 2nd movie is the moment to do so.

I would not have the main plot revolve around another galactic super weapon. I would do something new.

I would make sure that actors that have great chemistry together, also have lots of scenes together throughout the trilogy.

I would keep the plot of Rey and Kylo switching sides and keeping them both in the moral gray. Their romance is fine. But I would also give Poe and Finn more to do in the plot. Their character arcs should come to a satisfying conclusion.

I would probably keep Snoke as the main villain throughout all 3 movies.

If any fans happen to guess the plot of the upcoming movies, I will NOT panic and change the plot because they guessed it correctly.

*The Force Awakens:*

I would take out the Starkiller Base plot and give Luke at least some lines. Everything else is just fine.

*The Last Jedi:*

I would rewrite the Canto Bight plot, so that Finn is actually trying to call for help on the casino planet, by trying to reach an important dish/antenna. This would allow rebel reinforcements from nearby planets to come to their aid. Instead of the slowest chase in history, I would have the First Order create a blockade that stops the rebels from escaping the system. The rebels hide away on Krait, unable to leave without being shot to pieces. The First Order then invades both Krait and Canto Bight, and a big fight on both planets follows with lots of walkers. I would take out Holdo entirely as a character, and not have this weird plot for Poe where he disobeys a direct command because they withhold their plan from him. More should be revealed about who Snoke is, and I would not have him die in this movie. I do like Kylo Ren's heel turn, but I would also have Rey turn away from the light side of the force. I would also involve the Knights of Ren and maybe have a big fight where Kylo and Rey fight side by side against the Knights of Ren; Sort of a combination between the fight we got in The Last Jedi, and the fight we got in Rise of Skywalker. It just fits better here. I would have Leia die in this movie, instead of Luke.

Also, no hyperspeed tracking nonsense.

*The Rise of Skywalker:*

No involvement of the emperor what so ever. But a new threat should be tackled and snoke should die at the end. I would also change Rey's parentage and maybe give Luke a big fight. No giant fleet of Star Destroyers conjured out of nowhere.


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## Vael (Dec 27, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> So Finn pulling out a lightsaber on Max's planet and facing down Kylo and getting severely wounded means he is a coward 2.0 in TLJ?




I don't consider Finn a coward, those are your words. I think it takes a fair amount of courage to rescue Poe in TFA, one of his first acts. I don't even think his actions at the beginning of TLJ when Rose catches him are an act of cowardice. 

But what both Finn and Poe do suffer from in TLJ, is myopia. Finn only sees Rey, he thinks only about saving Rey. Poe sees an enemy ship in front of him, and he thinks taking it out will save lives. Neither are wrong, but what Leia, Rose and Holdo are trying to teach Finn and Poe is that they need to look up and see the bigger picture. Poe's story is learning to be more strategic than tactical. Finn is learning a similar lesson, but about the systems that allow the First Order to flourish in the first place and why the Resistance is important.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 27, 2019)

Oh, just "Special Edition" version. That is going to be difficult. I'll probably alter way too much to be realistically feasible.

*Over all the Trilogy*
I guess I'd want to do some "reshoots" to suggest Palpatine's return earlier. 
Maybe have Ben and Rey both have a nightmare that involves Palpatine's "death". 
Ben says something about "completing what his grandfather started" - show a hint that he has seen a vision or a force spirit of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker that reached him sometime after he turned against Luke and joined the First Order, realizing that it was actually Snoke/Palpatine manipulations that lead to it.

The scene where Luke is contempating to murder Ben - turn it into a nightmare they had, something both believed to be a force vision, but was actually Palpatine or Snoke's manipulation - it never really happened, but both were certain it would, and thus they were driven apart. Maybe Ben and Luke's vision is actually a mix of the vision fight on Hoth and the fight on the second Death Star, where Luke is attacking Vader in anger, before he realizes what the Emperor is trying to do.

I wish "The Force Awakens" meant something more. Maybe we can tie it in with Rey, with that broom-swinging kid, with Finn, and the Stormtroopers on Endor. Something to suggest that the Force is doing something new, becoming present in more people than before, maybe even becoming present in people that were not always sensitive to the force. A way to find the force even if you were not born into it, truly "democratizing" it.

*The Last Jedi*
The Canto scene might stay, but change a few details:
1) The not-Yoda-Woman-Whose-Name-I-Forgot is not in the middle of some action spectacle, but they are listened to by a spy droid or agent of the First Order (either on her end, on their end, or some in-between thing)
2) They don't get into trouble for wrong parking. First Order loyalists actually intervene, but the local law enforcement is a little underpowered to deal with them.

The Space Chase: 
1) I would put in a scene where Poe points out that destroying that Dreadnought might have saved their asses. Holdo or Leia can still have a meaningful counter, like that it delayed their escape and might have allowed the enemy to locat ethem.
2) There isn't a novel hyperspace tracker device on the First Order ships. Options:
a) There is a novel Spy Droid aboard that sends hyperspace tracking information without them being able to detect the transmission. Once they realize this, Holdo secretly formulates her plan on how to use the connection of the droid and BB8/R2D2/C3PO (whatever Droid is at hand, I forgot) to set up her light speed crash, disabling some safeties on the other ship that would normally make such a thing impossible.
b) Ben/Snoke are tracking Leia with a new force technique.


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## Raunalyn (Dec 27, 2019)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> I wish "The Force Awakens" meant something more. Maybe we can tie it in with Rey, with that broom-swinging kid, with Finn, and the Stormtroopers on Endor.




That scene at the end of TLJ was a missed opportunity, IMHO. The way I interpreted it, especially considering it was right after Luke died and faded, was that Luke had become one with the force, and his sacrifice opened the force to a new generation of force users. He "awakened" it within them.


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## Ryujin (Dec 27, 2019)

The one thing that I would do, is remove Luke's "crisis of faith" moment over Kylo Ren. That was wholly unnecessary and well outside the character's established personality.


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## Anoth (Dec 27, 2019)

I would get rid of Rey’s character and the destruction of the Jedi. And have the movies focus on Luke versus kylo ren. And get rid of that nonsense of Luke trying to kill kylo in his sleep. A movie doesn’t have to be about a  old hero dying so a new generation can grow up. Make Luke a tough old guy and teacher as well as master swordsman and force wielder.


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## Morrus (Dec 27, 2019)

Anoth said:


> I would get rid of Rey’s character and the destruction of the Jedi. And have the movies focus on Luke versus kylo ren. And get rid of that nonsense of Luke trying to kill kylo in his sleep. A movie doesn’t have to be about a  old hero dying so a new generation can grow up. Make Luke a tough old guy and teacher as well as master swordsman and force wielder.



That's not an edit. That's an entirely different movie.


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## Anoth (Dec 27, 2019)

Morrus said:


> That's not an edit. That's an entirely different movie.



I hope everyone has a good time at the movies. But that’s what I wanted. Lol. I’m old darn it. I don’t have to die so some young kid can grow up. Lol. I can still kickass. But seriously. Hope everyone enjoys the movie and has a good time.


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## lowkey13 (Dec 27, 2019)

*Deleted by user*


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

Fundamental problem of the trilogy is the second movie burns the first one down followed by the third movie burning the second one down.


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## Anoth (Dec 27, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> Fundamental problem of the trilogy is the second movie burns the first one down followed by the third movie burning the second one down.




i Still hope they make more movies. Maybe a couple hundred years in the future and they can forget the skywalkers. I still love the skywalkers, but let’s move on with a new storyline. Oh heck, just make knights of the old republic and darth Revan into a trilogy.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 27, 2019)

Anoth said:


> i Still hope they make more movies. Maybe a couple hundred years in the future and they can forget the skywalkers. I still love the skywalkers, but let’s move on with a new storyline. Oh heck, just make knights of the old republic and darth Revan into a trilogy.




 Revan just got added back into canon in the RoS visual dictionary.

 You don't need Skywalkers for good Star wars.


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## Anoth (Dec 27, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> Revan just got added back into canon in the RoS visual dictionary.
> 
> You don't need Skywalkers for good Star wars.



I been wanting to see the night sisters of dathomir made into a badass villain. a major villain. Such a cool theme.


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## Celebrim (Dec 27, 2019)

lowkey13 said:


> So how would I edit them? Eh ...
> 
> The three best things in the trilogy are, in order (and IMO) Ren, Rey, and the overall themes in the TLJ. I don't think that there are particular, or easy, cuts that can be made.




While we disagree over the quality of the movies, I think we agree over the essential facts. From the standpoint of direction and cinematography, they are competently made movies - much more so than the prequels, which brought out Lucas's weakness as a director, especially when trying to deal with the newness of making a movie mostly in CGI (which now has been around enough that the good directors have a good handle on it). And secondly, I agree with you over the essential strength of Ren, Rey, their relationships (to each other and to those around them) and that at least some of the themes introduced in TLJ were well worth exploring - even as much as I disagree over how well they were explored or in which direction they were taken.

And I agree with you that there isn't an easy edit to make it all right. I just got back from watching 'Knives Out', and the writing was so tight with barely a wasted line and not a wasted scene in the whole script and everything neatly constructed and working toward it's goals. Everyone in the fam loved it - the ones surprised by the twists loved it, and the ones like me that love working out ahead of time why each scene and each line is in the movie loved it. And it gracefully shifted through a whole range of emotions. Good solid movie. 

I think that there is a good movie or trilogy with these characters in this setting and with at least one of the many ultimately abandoned themes held in focus, but to get there probably involves redoing 50% or more of the movies to get there.

I'm not going to pay to see RoS so I didn't really suggest how to fix it.  But I like the idea earlier someone introduced of tying up a plot hole in the prequels of making Rey the force incarnating itself to try to understand humanity (and thus Luke and Leia's grandfather), just because it deepens the prequels and ties back to them, while adding something original to the ending and neatly explaining the Dark Side vision of Rey being self incarnating.


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## Imaculata (Dec 28, 2019)

Zardnaar said:


> Fundamental problem of the trilogy is the second movie burns the first one down followed by the third movie burning the second one down.




This. Exactly this.



Anoth said:


> I been wanting to see the night sisters of dathomir made into a badass villain. a major villain. Such a cool theme.




Fortunately they do play a central role in the Jedi Fallen Order game.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Dec 28, 2019)

Vael said:


> I've seen a lot of calls to kill the Canto Blight sequence. And while it's not my favourite part, it is pretty integral to both Finn and Rose's character growth and thematically. It expands the universe in interesting ways, because it shows a part of galactic society that we have not seen before, the wealthy that manage to enrich themselves regardless of what is happening in the galaxy. So I am curious, what replaces it? What are Finn and Rose doing in TLJ?



I think a lot of the character arc can be accomplished without Canto Bight. Have Finn & Rose go searching for a spy in the Resistance who is enabling the First Order to track their fleet (no need for some special technology solution). Rose can show Finn the reason people are willing to fight rather than run as they interact with other members of the Resistance.

Edits to the series:

TFA:

Max Van Sydow character needs some backstory/connection to the plot
Delete the Rathtars and pirates going after Han; it's just Han finding the Falcon; FO arrives and they escape in the MF.
Starkiller Base is just a base on a planet. Delete killing stars, or nuking the Republic; they go in to rescue Rey.
Rey escapes Kylo without beating him in the duel (the crack appears sooner to separate them). I want her growth in power and ability to be a little slower over the trilogy.

TLJ:

No cell phone joke at the beginning
Delete Canto Bight; make it a spy search in the fleet as above
Either Leia dies in the bridge attack, or holds on with the Force; no Mary Poppins scene.
Need some lines from the First Order about why they are herding the fleet rather than jumping ahead of them and destroying them.
Soften some of Luke's initial rejection (drop the "toss the saber" scene); play up fear of the Dark Side instead -- he rejects the universe because no matter what he does the dark side will rise. Spread out Rey's training more. Give the third lesson.
Rey holds her own for a while but loses the fight with Kylo in the throne room and runs; she learns to show patience in the final scene with the rocks (continue to show growth in force ability through the trilogy).

RoS

Have them find out it's Palpatine through the story, not in the opening crawl.
Slow the opening pace; delete a MacGuffin and scene or two. Pace should increase as the movie goes along. Don't need the dagger; just hints to the Sith artifact; when they find the last one at the Death Star wreckage they learn it's Palpatine pulling the strings.
No fleet of Star Destroyers, no planet killers, just a small FO fleet-- but the Resistance is trying to decapitate the First Order by taking out Palpatine so they attack. They're still outnumbered, and need to be rescued by people who respond to a call for aid.
Rey's still a nobody by birth, but powerful in the force -- Palps wants her because of her inherent ability and either she or Kylo will be a good vessel for him. He sensed her through the force.
Rey reaches her peak ability in the final scenes with Palps.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 29, 2019)

> Rey's still a nobody by birth, but powerful in the force -- Palps wants her because of her inherent ability and either she or Kylo will be a good vessel for him. He sensed her through the force.



Maybe tying back to the "Awakening of the Force" and "Balancing the Force" - Palpatine realized that if the force would be brought back into balance by eradicating the Sith, the Force would "awaken", causing more people than ever before to become force sensitive. The undead state he managed to sustain for so long tricked the force into this awakening eventually, with Rey being the first, but not the last (Finn or the broom boy being later "awakened"), and now that this is going, he believes he can usurp this awakening process to become even more powerful.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 29, 2019)

Well apparently the other beings on Exegol are the Sith Eternal. They are not subject to the rule of 2.


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## Son of the Serpent (Dec 29, 2019)

This is going to sound like a joke but its not.  Just think about it long enough and after enough drugs it starts to sound like a reasonable idea.

Redo the recent trilogy as failed heroic plots but otherwise almost entirely the same with what at the beginning (in the first movie) looks like a simultaneous minor secondary plot switched to occasionally.  Sprinkle in very subtle cues that its actually not.  Subtle enough almost no one will catch on.  Have this plot take more and more screen time until the second half of the 3rd movie in which it is solidly taking more than 50 percent of screen time.

Due to yoda dying on dagobah and palpatine dying at endor a major shift in the force was primed and you have been watching rey and kylo as they fail to not set it off.

The force, due to the hubris of humans, has decided that they will no longer be the primary mantle of the force and that it will now fall to the ewoks and another race on dagobah to take up this burden.

Secretly the secondary plot youve been seeing is actually primary.  And set in the far FAR future.  The events which looked tied in real time were clever psychological manipulation on the audience and actually ties to othwr things.

The force awakens was about the force awakening within these two new mantle holding races.

The last jedi is actually about the death of the ewok that befriended luke.

The rise of skywalker has to be renamed.

However palpatine actually works better in my trilogy because being the hyper intelligent supervillain that he is, being the ice cold calculator with the patience of a stone that he is, he would wait a couple hundred years if his empire had fallen (or been too heavily restructured) and then likely come back.

Matter of fact.  Just call it rise of palpatine.  The dagobahan's can find his holochron or the book of sith or whatever/both and he can hide a ritual in there that fools them into resurrecting him.

In the end the bad guy won against the previous generation by fully liching out and hibernating in a book for a few centuries.

Yay.


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## Ryujin (Dec 29, 2019)

Except, in the end, evil cannot win. That's not Star Wars.


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## Morrus (Dec 29, 2019)

Ryujin said:


> Except, in the end, evil cannot win. That's not Star Wars.



Evil wins plenty of times in the films. Revenge of the Sith and Empire Strikes Back spring to mind. This is the first time we've reached the official "end" of the saga, though, so there's no Star Wars precedent for who wins at the end.


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## Maxperson (Dec 29, 2019)

1. I would make the force less deadly to use.  Luke, Leia, Kylo and Rey all keeled over dead after using it.  

2. Both Kylo and Rey would survive at the end to found the new Jedi order.  

3. Snoke would be harder to kill and we would learn more about him before it happens.

4. Kylo would make a very real attempt to kill his father, but fail.  A living Han Solo would bring him back in the third movie.

5. I would completely get rid of the planet killer abilities of the Emperor's fleet.  It was a deadly enough threat without giving thousands of ships the power of the Death Star.


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## Ryujin (Dec 30, 2019)

Morrus said:


> Evil wins plenty of times in the films. Revenge of the Sith and Empire Strikes Back spring to mind. This is the first time we've reached the official "end" of the saga, though, so there's no Star Wars precedent for who wins at the end.




We've "reached the end" three times and evil hasn't won.


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## RangerWickett (Dec 30, 2019)

Y'know, I think Snoke's personality would have been a delight if he'd just been Darth Plagueis, and came back from the dead instead of Palpatine.

Say that Palpatine was his apprentice, locked him away, and after Palps died, Plagueis got free and was just delighted about his apprentice's failure. He decided to ditch the Sith rule-of-two thing, which is why there were a whole bunch of Knights of Ren.

I liked his scoffing swagger, his condescension, and his more refined flamboyance than "dark robes and cackling" Palpatine. Just bring the dude back from the dead, give him some evil plot that involves force ghosts somehow, and let the little kid from the end of The Last Jedi matter somehow.


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## Son of the Serpent (Dec 30, 2019)

Ryujin said:


> Except, in the end, evil cannot win. That's not Star Wars.



I didnt really mean evil won.  I meant palpatine got away with not dying permanently (and that is very star wars)


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## Mage of Spellford (Dec 30, 2019)

After going to see RoS for the 2nd time I liked it even more. Overall kudos to JJ for closing out the trilogy with a film that felt like Star Wars. 

That being said here is my re-imagined sequel trilogy
: 
TFA:
You could have the same ending scene with Rey meeting Luke on the Island. At the very end I would add a scene where Snoke enters the Sith Temple and bows before Palpatine just as Vader did. I would then have the Emperor say something like Kylo's journey to the dark side is complete and you are no longer needed and then kill Snoke by force choking him to death. 

TLJ- have Luke be the hermit initially like in the movie. Different motivation though:  An unknown dark force is rising and corrupting the jedi. Luke was unable to prevent the fall of Kylo and he has been having visions of his own fall to the darkside. He has quarantined himself to protect the galaxy.

Rey convinces him to train her perhaps by telling him about her TFA encounter and how she can sense there is still good in Kylo-- just as Luke saved Vader. Luke agrees reluctantly to train her so she can save Kylo where he could not.  During the training have the back and forth between Rey and Kylo where he is subtly trying to get her to come to the dark side and she is challenging him and trying to pull him to the light. Kylo may be pretending or not we are unsure of his allegiance but each meeting ends with Rey having increasingly vivid visions with darkside Rey - culminating in her becoming a dark empress. 

Meanwhile have increasingly desperate measures and heroics where the fleet just barely gets away again and again only to have the first order show up. Poe and Finn's arc is figuring out there must be a spy and ferreting out and capturing the spy.  Which they do only to discover that the FO has orders not to destroy the resistance fleet yet. (I like this idea of a spy)

Eventually Kylo lures her away from Luke (against his advice) by revealing that the alliance is heading into a trap and he offers to help her save her friends. It should gradually become apparent that the FO fleet is herding the resistance into a specific location presumably to be destroyed. But The whole thing is a ruse to lure Rey into a trap. 

Kylo it is revealed is still working for Snoke (who is alive again?) and betrays Rey bringing her to Snoke. Snoke will reveal her heritage to an anguished Rey who will be crushed by the news. Kylo will then surprise Rey by killing Snoke. He will offer his hand and make his pitch and the two of them will fight off Snoke's guards and flee together. Messed up by the revelation of her heritage she will leave with him.

The resistance having eliminated the spy will learn that the FO has a single ship, a sith destroyer that can track them through hyperspace. Have a mission with a one-in-a-million shot at destroying the Sith ship in a ship flown by Poe with Finn as gunner. Have force ghost Luke's voice provide the impetus for Finn 'to trust his feelings' and succeed at destroying the Sith ship. The battered Resistance fleet is just able to just barely take off to safety into hyperspace. Luke dies the same way he did in TLJ. 

Have the Poe and the Resistance start to mourn the loss of Rey but have Finn say something like, no she's out there, I feel it and we have to find her.

Once again the film ends with a scene in the Sith Temple. A still wet from creche Snoke will be reporting to Palpatine, he will apologize pleading that there was no way he could have predicted the 'boys' betrayal. How could he have known. Palpatine will slay Snoke again and this time he will say something like the time for masks is over and destroy dozens of Snoke clones in their creches. 

TROS - 
No need for a fleet of planet killer star destroyers. Make it clear that the first order now holds dominance over the galaxy. 

Have a few adventures where Finn and Poe are searching for Rey but they are always a few steps behind her. More scenes that show the FO's strength but show that they have just stopped short of total dominance .

Have some scenes that show dissension amongst the FO military leadership. Their goal to be the ultimate power in the universe has been met and the resistance is now insignificant. But emphasize they have no clear leadership or goal.

Kylo and Rey discover the location of the puppet master that has been pulling all of the strings from the shadows. Kylo will will reiterate that it is her destiny to rule beside him and they both have seen the visions. The two will go to Endor to find a mguffin like Luke's map that will lead them to the puppet master. 

Now have a scene where the Emperor's image appears on the bridge of every FO ship. Have the FO officers essentially fall to their knees before the image. Have the Emperor tell the FO he is back and to prepare for his Final Orders. Show that the FO is galvanized by the return of their emperor.

Have the final battle between Palpatine and Kylo and Rey take place in the Sith temple. He again uses their life force to heal himself. Have Rey and Kylo turned into husks just like the emperor was in the prequels. With them defeated he turns his back on them. Have the return of the Emperor revealed to the entire galaxy, --his plan to cow and inspire fear among all the people heralding the rise of the new Empire.

Have the galvanized FO find the Resistance stronghold and begin their attack (just like Empire) and have the resistance on the edge of defeat.

Have the broken Kylo have the scene with Han that brings him back to the light or just have him look at her broken body and have a change of heart. Have Ben crawl over and give his life force to revitalize Rey. 

 Show that unlike what Palpatine expected his reappearance has instead united the galaxy in a way not seen before. This is the straw that broke the camel's back and the people will not allow a new empire. Instead they rise up. Have the gargantuan fleet of ships from the myriad worlds show up and save the resistance.

Have the revitalized Rey rise up and bolstered by all of the Jedi spirits together with the positive and determined energy of the the rising force of the people fight Palpatine like in RoS.

During Rey's final battle have scenes of People rising up and defeating the FO perhaps more and more FO child soldiers throw down their weapons and join the fight against the rising Empire. A wave of resistance.

Have her destroy Palpatine and the Sith. 

A celebration where people across the galaxy are patting each other on the back and congratulating each other. A community that spans the universe at least for a moment in common cause.

Then have Rey bury Ben on Tattoine. Then the Skywalker thing. I kind of liked that.

MK

I know that this recycles some ideas from the original trilogy but see it as a homage.


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## Imaculata (Dec 30, 2019)

I see a lot of people running with the idea of Palpatine being the main villain, but why? Making the emperor come back was an idea born out of desperation, after Rian Johnson killed off Snoke a film too soon. Just make Snoke the main villain throughout the whole trilogy, and ignore the patching that JJ had to do in The Rise of Skywalker.


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## Zardnaar (Dec 30, 2019)

Smoke being tied to Darth Plagueious would have been thing.

 Luke's and Vaders thing still works but the Emperor's master is the big bad.


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## Blackrat (Dec 30, 2019)

Add Jar Jar through cgi and make him either a hero or villain through clever dialogue that fits in the existing scenes...

Seriously, I seem to be the only SW fan who actually liked Jar Jar


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## Vael (Dec 30, 2019)

Imaculata said:


> I see a lot of people running with the idea of Palpatine being the main villain, but why? Making the emperor come back was an idea born out of desperation, after Rian Johnson killed off Snoke a film too soon. Just make Snoke the main villain throughout the whole trilogy, and ignore the patching that JJ had to do in The Rise of Skywalker.




The task, at least as the OP set out, was to minimize the changes, which most people have ignored. Palpatine is in Rise, while I would change his impact and make it less, "it was him behind everything all along!", if I'm following the guidelines, I can't just delete him. If I were starting Episode IX from scratch, I probably would.

I disagree that Snoke was killed too early though. The through line of TFA and TLJ is the ascent of Kylo Ren into darkness, having him kill Snoke was an important step for his character.

I guess it becomes a matter of how Ben Solo/Kylo Ren's arc is to end. If he is to be redeemed, maybe Palpatine is needed? I don't think other Sith have the resonance.


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## Imaculata (Dec 30, 2019)

Vael said:


> I guess it becomes a matter of how Ben Solo/Kylo Ren's arc is to end. If he is to be redeemed, maybe Palpatine is needed? I don't think other Sith have the resonance.




I think it matters little for his redemption arc if he faces Palpatine or Snoke at the end. And it would seem from The Force Awakens that JJ definitely meant for Snoke to be the main villain of the trilogy.

I think there are ways for Kylo Ren to make that same ascent/descent into darkness, without Snoke being killed in the second movie.


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## ART! (Dec 30, 2019)

Fewer desert planets. I get the appeal of the starkness, desolation, and the light, but a) it all risks getting confused with Tattooine, and b) there's so many other biomes (or whatever the right term is). Why not a grasslands planet, or a Mongolian plateau planet, or a Scottish highlands planet, or etcetera.

Let's get Luke, Han, and Leia back together, even for just a cool little moment. 

More references to stuff Luke, Han, and Leia did after ROTJ. It could just be passing references. Just a sense that they had some cool adventures together after ROTJ.

Give Han a beard, too.


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## Ryujin (Dec 30, 2019)

Came pretty close to shooting a Scottish Highlands planet when they shot Luke's hideaway in Ireland.


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## MoonSong (Dec 30, 2019)

Ok, going by the thread premise in the OP, and limiting stuff to just ED powers, I'd make these changes:

TFA
It is mostly fine, just some minor edits:

Cut the pirates. The whole scene is pointless.
Remove the "Don't force me to use clones!" line
Make Maz say something along the lines "A traveler from Bespin V was here a few years back...". That's it, don't make a mystery where there's no answer to be had.
Switch "Hosnian prime" for "Coruscant". If it looks like a Corruscant, fills the place in the story of a Coruscant and quacks like a Coruscant then let it be Coruscant damn it! Just a line in passing saying "this is another planet" after the fact just cheapens the whole thing.
CGI Phasma into the "Traitor scene"
I wouldn't change the third act.

TLJ

Change the narration so it is Snoke's presence Luke is responding to rather than wanting to murder Kylo.
Cut short the Canto Bight scene. Remove Rose's rant and just cut the whole thing after DJ opens the cell door. Next time we see these people, they are on the ship already.
Cut some of Luke's antics
Remove the kiss, it is too soon.


RoS

Remove the narration with CGI Leia and Kylo's demise foreshadowing, repaint the second lightsaber so it is Luke's second lightsaber.
Don't have Kylo die, end the movie on that kiss.
(If possible replace Palpatine with a CGI Snoke)


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## Eltab (Dec 31, 2019)

Morrus said:


> This is the first time we've reached the official "end" of the saga, though



-cough cough- Return of the Jedi -cough cough-


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## doctorbadwolf (Dec 31, 2019)

The more I see people wanting to cut the Canto Bite sequence or shorten it or whatever, the more I want it to stay. 

I would have it be where Rey comes back into the main story, though, or some other way make it involve more than two main characters.

And I’d have some of the kids be free and be in the resistance in RoS. And ditch the fetch quests in favor of more Rose screen time.


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## Celebrim (Dec 31, 2019)

Eltab said:


> -cough cough- Return of the Jedi -cough cough-




By RotJ, Lucas had already said he had planned 9 films.   Most fans expected the prequel trilogy to come out 3-5 years after RotJ.  Every year, there would be some rumor that production had started.  That's why people were so excited for the prequel that they literally started camping out waiting for tickets, and why people of my generation through such a big party around that.  We'd been waiting that long.


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## Imaculata (Dec 31, 2019)

doctorbadwolf said:


> The more I see people wanting to cut the Canto Bite sequence or shorten it or whatever, the more I want it to stay.




I agree. The biggest problem with the Canto Bite scene, is that it doesn't lead anywhere. But I see this mostly as an issue with the narrative, not the location. If the location had served more of a purpose, it would have been fine. Rather than Finn and Rose looking for a person to get them onto the starship, I would have kept them both on the planet, looking for something on the planet that will help their friends (such as a communications array to call for rebel reinforcements). Have the First Order send troops to the planet to flush them out, leading to a big action scene on the casino planet.



doctorbadwolf said:


> I would have it be where Rey comes back into the main story, though, or some other way make it involve more than two main characters.




Yeah, they really needed to have Rey more involved and have the plot on Canto Bite tie more closely to what's going on with the rebels. Rather than having the slowest chase in history, I would have the rebels seek shelter on Krait earlier, so there is time to have a big battle there. I felt the movie set up a big battle, only to rob the audience of one.



doctorbadwolf said:


> And ditch the fetch quests in favor of more Rose screen time.




The getting a thing, to get another thing, to get to that other thing, was really poor screen writing. I would ditch it as well. I got the feeling that JJ didn't like Rose very much as a character and didn't know what to do with her. It feels very strange how The Last Jedi builds up a Rose/Finn relationship, only for Rise of Skywalker to completely ditch that idea. I would have liked to see a pay off between her and Finn. Maybe when Finn was a stormtrooper, he was directly involved in something horrible regarding Rose's family. It would explain why Finn wants to keep some distance from her, and perhaps their plot ultimately revolves around whether Rose is able to forgive him for what he did. Maybe Phasma shouldn't have been killed off so early, so she can reveal this to Rose.


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## GreyLord (Dec 31, 2019)

Hmm, if I had the ability to go and change some things...I'd do away with some of the more controversial decisions of the second film.

First, no killing Luke...period...at least in that film.  He stays alive.

Second, Luke is there akin more along with what JJ Abrahms seemed to have wanted Luke to have been doing in the 3rd film.  Luke HAD been searching for the Jedi Temple and the Wayfinders.  He had gotten stuck there or something. 

He would have trained Rey more (so longer training montage...etc) and the chase of TLJ is NOT a mere 18 hours.  It would be at least fuel enough for a week or two. 

TLJ would have taken place at least a couple months (let's give it 3-6 months) after the end of The Force awakens.

Rey would not have been a Palpatine.  She would have been either Luke's daughter or the daughter of Kylo Ren.

Luke would have probably died in the third movie in some way, possibly be the one who dies at the Death Star Lightsaber fight instead by letting Kylo Ren strike him down as Leia talks to him...OR...even better...have Rey be the one who strikes him down as she is confused by the Dark side with Kylo watching who then turns as he has lost his chance for vengeance.  He hears his mother, gets turned by his father's memory, and turns to the Light, while Rey, having killed Luke goes off to Ach-Too and we see it just as we see the scene currently between her and Jedi ghost Luke (for the most part at least).

At the end of the movie, no health resurrection.  Rey doesn't come back to life by a Kiss.  It could be that Anakin stands there between her and Palpatine as a ghost and absorbs the lightning helping her reflect it back, and Kylo makes a sacrifice to save her, but no Force Resurrections.  Palpatine himself is a Force Sith Spirit held by a Sith Holocron or something in that spot rather than a zombie attempting to come back.

And that's bout it.  I think that covers most more controversial portions by small changes in the movie itself.

Since these are only small changes, I think that's about it.  I think we could have kept the Palpatine thing.


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## wicked cool (Dec 31, 2019)

I would remove the princess Leia May Poppins moment(replace it with something better such as a force shield. 

I would have had more classic creature races-Just like the mandalorian did. The Han millennium bad guys scene would have been great

Maz should have had a bigger role and a better explanation of her role

Knights of Ren-another wasted opportunity- a flashback or 2 of them and the knights should have killed a major character or damaged one. 

If your going to introduce new force powers then maybe one of Lukes books or a plot point indicates that these powers exist.  



the story should have been written ahead of time. Tying this to roleplaying-Map out the entre adventure and read the adventure at least once.


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## Mallus (Dec 31, 2019)

People seem to mind every ship in the Final Order fleet being equipped with a Death Star beam, but the bad guys engaging in a textbook example of the Lensman Arms Race is faithful to SW’s pulp space opera roots so I’m good with it.


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## shawnhcorey (Dec 31, 2019)

Morrus said:


> 2) You can’t make massive sweeping changes, remove or make entire films etc.




Well, that leaves my ideas out. I would make the movies about Finn. He is the most interesting character in the sequels.


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## Vael (Dec 31, 2019)

shawnhcorey said:


> Well, that leaves my ideas out. I would make the movies about Finn. He is the most interesting character in the sequels.




I like Rey and Poe too much to sideline them like that, but I do think Finn, or the nature of Finn was underutilized in Rise. The fact that the First Order's Stormtroopers are conscripted children is mentionned, but not used. And they proved Finn wasn't the only one to break free. So why not, instead of making Finn's charge just to try and gain control of one Star Destroyer's guns, what about, first, not being coy that Finn is Force Sensittive, and second ... have him pull a reverse Order 66?


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## Ath-kethin (Dec 31, 2019)

Mallus said:


> I’ll keep it simple: stick to the original plan. Use three different directors to do their own personal takes on Star Wars.



I really have to wonder how much of the 

"holy naughty word!" 

" . . . Haha just kidding!" 

sections of TRoS came from Abrams trying to beat down Trevmorrow's script.


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## sabrinathecat (Dec 31, 2019)

Ezra Bridger reaches out from the time tunnel, grabs Luke right before he was about to die, smacks him on the back of the head, tells him to wake up, and boots him out right before Darth Emo went bad to sort things out so that the whole so-called Sequel Trilogy can be relegated to "Legend" status. Someone with an actual understanding of Star Wars is put in charge. West End Games' rules are adopted as cannon for not just books, but ALL Star Wars.
Alternatively, Ezra Bridger reaches out from the time tunnel, grabs George Lucas by the throat, smacks him repeatedly across the face, and sends him back to before he sold to Disney. Instead, Lucas appoints a successor like Filoni to safeguard his legacy.


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## Ryujin (Dec 31, 2019)

Yeah, having WEG Star Wars as canon would be nice.

And if you're doing a trilogy having a single guiding view, whether it comes from writer(s) or a showrunner, is key.


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## Imaculata (Jan 1, 2020)

wicked cool said:


> Maz should have had a bigger role and a better explanation of her role




This is a good point. In my opinion she should have had a bigger role in the second and third movie.



wicked cool said:


> Knights of Ren-another wasted opportunity- a flashback or 2 of them and the knights should have killed a major character or damaged one.




I would have loved to see Rey and Luke team up against the Knights of Ren. Maybe Luke could come in at just the right moment to protect Rey. I would have loved to see a Jedi Knight elderly Luke kick butt, perhaps killing one of the knights in the process.



wicked cool said:


> the story should have been written ahead of time. Tying this to roleplaying-Map out the entire adventure and read the adventure at least once.




Yup, that still amazes me. Disney has their hands on a multi-million dollar property and they don't plan out the whole story. But I suspect JJ may be to blame for this as well. It really feels like one of the later seasons of Lost.


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## Wolf72 (Jan 4, 2020)

Just watched it tonight ... I'll take it, I like Star Wars, grew up on it (5 when IV came out).  Will watch it again

Loved the characters (Finn and Rey are my favorites), but felt like it was a movie devoted to speed freaks who couldn't sit still, let alone read a book for more than .3 seconds.  AHA: I felt like I was watching the (2nd?) Jason Bourne movie where all the fighting was lightning fast and it was easier to see bodies falling than hits landing.

What would I change?  slow down the frames per second.  I could (can) watch the original trilogy from now until the cows come home ... the new ones? I feel like someone thought that lighting every single firework off in rapid succession would look cooler.

Another change: actually give Wedge more than one screen shot, possibly some organizational influence.

+: more force ghosts and voices. (obi wan (alec or ewan); mace, others)
+: Purple Light Saber!!!!   ok, her yellow one at the end: cool
+: actual space battle? ... wait, that goes with my frames per second

WEG rules for universe style? as much as they hearken back to the original trilogy.

Also was a fan of episode I-III's lightsaber battles (mostly, Anakin vs Doku not so much)


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## R_J_K75 (Jan 4, 2020)

Id have the Jedi/Sith, First/Last Order and the Resistance including every character in the franchise obliterated so it leaves it fresh and wide open for new stories.  The sequel trilogy was a dumpster fire.


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## RangerWickett (Jan 6, 2020)

Okay, new idea.

*Make the Titles Meaningful*
If I were going to do a _major_ rewrite of the trilogy, but still keep the same characters and the best plot beats, we go like this.

The Force Awakens
Multiple people develop Force sensitivity.



Spoiler



Lor San Tekka is father of Mara Jade, Luke's wife who died when the Knights of Ren attacked. Ben didn't 'turn to the Dark Side,' but rather was kidnapped, because the First Order wants to collect Force sensitive children to serve Snoke. Snoke of Ren is ruler of a part of the galaxy that willingly allied with the Empire, and after the Emperor's death welcomed the imperial remnant. It's not strong enough on its own to conquer the New Republic. After the temple was attacked, Luke vanished, Ben was missing, and Leia was only able to get some snippets of info from a damaged R2-D2.

Now more people are becoming Force sensitive, Leia senses it, and she hopes to find her brother to help. Meanwhile the First Order has just taken over as the official government of a few New Republic worlds, using propaganda and lies to turn the population hostile to the central Republic government.

The plot is very similar to TFA. Key thing is that Poe overhears Lor San Tekka accuse Kylo Ren of betraying his master and his fellow students, and then sees Kylo with a light saber, so when Poe meets up with Leia later, that info makes her and Han realize that Kylo is probably their son.

(Phasma, by the way, will be one of the Knights of Ren - Force sensitive, though she doesn't use a lightsaber. In fact, I'd like her to be Snoke's favorite, with Kylo lower-ranked.)

Han takes Finn and Chewie to rescue Rey and try to retrieve Ben. Leia rallies some New Republic fleet, with Poe as just one of the pilots, to go attack a First Order base (not a doomsday weapon, just a planet). Instead of the place blowing up, the duel between Rey and Kylo ends when she beats him, but resists the urge to kill him, then runs off to save an injured Finn.

We end much the same. Leia stays to lead the New Republic and prepare it to stand against the First Order. Rey heads off to find Luke.



The Last Jedi
Rey persuades Ben to redeem himself, and Luke to return to the fight.



Spoiler



*Why Luke Has Been Gone So Long.* Over the course of the movie we learn that Luke and his wife Mara Jade were training new Jedi when the Knights of Ren attacked and abducted Ben. They killed Mara, and in desperation Luke took her to Ahch-To, which was an ancient nexus of both the Light Side and the Dark. In denial of her death, he sought to call upon the Dark Side to resurrect her. He was moments from doing it when the Force ghost of his father appeared to him and pleaded for him to resist the power of the Dark Side, because even once restored, she would need to be kept alive by more rage and death. Luke ends up screaming and abandoning the ritual, releasing the Dark Side energy he'd called upon in a burst of telekinesis and lightning that obliterates his X-Wing and strands him there. Moreover, it strips him of his connection to the Force entirely. He has no powers.

*Surprise Attack on Leia.* The start of the movie has Leia arriving at a New Republic military base, planning to give a speech for morale. Finn is Leia's body man, the two of them clearly having bonded over the past few weeks over Han. Poe is getting a promotion and command of a squadron. Then the First Order suddenly attacks. (To be clear, there isn't a ragtag Resistance; this is just a small detachment of the overall New Republic military.) The whole place evacuates, Poe goes to fend off the attack, along with a bunch of ships, and the opening attack goes very similar, including the death of Paige Tico (Rose's sister).

The good guys load up, and after they blow up the Dreadnought, they try to flee by jumping to light speed. But Leia's ship ends up going in a completely different course. They realize their ship's navigation system has been sliced, and when they drop out of hyperspace, they're caught in an interdiction field created by First Order ships, so they can't jump again to light speed. They flee at sublight speeds, and Kylo leads a fighter attack, but hesitates at the last second, and Poe drives him off. Leia's ship manages to slip into a lightning-filled nebula to avoid detection, but they can't activate the ship's hyperdrive. They call for help, but it's unclear whether the signal got out. There might not be anyone who can rescue them.

*Rey and Luke.* Cut to Rey, finding Luke. Insert a line that she's been flying all across Ahch-To for weeks, trying to hail him, and it was only by chance that they spotted the wreck of his X-Wing. She assumes he crashed, but says he can come with her now. He refuses, and she stays around to try to persuade him and get the truth out of him. She starts having glimpses of Kylo Ren, and we intercut Rey's 'three lessons' on Ahch-To with Leia trying to find a way to survive.

*Overcoming the Interdiction.* They do have a shuttle that could manage to slip through the interdiction and fly for help. Leia's main ship will go in one direction to lure off the First Order fleet. She sends Finn, Poe, and Rose to Canto Bight, a planet that engineers the specs of First Order ships, so they might be able to find a way to bypass the interdiction. (The First Order star destroyers have powerful long range weapons, so their defense is to use interdiction to force any enemy vessels to drop out of hyperspace far enough away that they'll be obliterated before they can approach. Finn, Poe, and Rose will need to take out the interdiction field so New Republic allies can get in and save the day.)

Over the course of the movie we discover that Rose is actually a First Order sympathizer and spy for them, and she revealed that Leia would be here and gave the First Order a remote connection to the ship's hyperdrive. But she didn't realize her sister would die in the attack, and now she's having second thoughts. On Canto Bight she's clearly scornful of the excesses of the rich, which she blames on the Republic; but then she sees that the First Order abducts some of the children there, and she has a crisis of conscience about the complexity of the conflict.

Phasma tracks the trio to Canto Bight and captures Finn and Poe. Rose reveals she was a spy all along.

*Kylo, Rey, and Luke.* Snoke has linked Kylo to Rey to try to locate where Luke Skywalker is, because he wants to use him for nefarious purposes.

Kylo and Rey slowly grow closer during the movie, and the whole time we think Kylo is trying to recruit Rey to the Dark Side. She gets the message from Leia's ship that they're trapped, and the warning that anyone who tries to approach would be shot down before they could get close enough to attack. Rey tries to use this to motivate Luke to act, but he is convinced if they go, they'll all die, and he refuses. Rey gets enraged at him, accusing him of abandoning those he cares about the way her parents abandoned her, which is when Luke shares the full story about Mara's death. He's broken, and feels he doesn't have anything to live for.

Rey leaves anyway, and goes to distract Snoke, thinking perhaps that can help her friends escape.

*Tied on a String.* As Rey goes to Snoke (whose guards are Knights of Ren), Finn and Poe are brought back to Snoke's ship to be executed (mostly Finn, because he's a deserter). Finn gets a brief speech entreating the storm troopers not to be loyal to the First Order. During this, though, Rose slips away and sends a transmission to Leia's ship.

She managed to get schematics for Snoke's flagship, and using the same connection she set up earlier on Leia's hyperdrive, now Leia can control Snoke's hyperdrive. And his hyperdrive is slaved to the rest of the fleet.

Snoke gives his villainous monologue, which can include him taunting Rey for being a nothing child whose parents abandoned her. But he says he has plucked the location of Luke Skywalker from Rey's mind, and when they capture him, they shall offer him and Rey and a hundred other Force sensitive children as a sacrifice to restore to life his master: Darth Sidious.

Things play out similar to in the movie. The execution is about to happen, Leia plugs in coordinates, Snoke taunts Kylo to 'kill his enemy,' and just then Leia triggers the hyperdrive on all the First Order ships: aimed into the lightning-filled nebula. They fly for only a moment, before the impact with the nebula causes terrible damage. In the moment Snoke is distracted, Kylo betrays and kills him, and then Rey and Kylo fight off the guards.

The explosions also interrupt the execution, and Finn and Poe flee, aided by a rebellion in the ranks of the storm troopers. Phasma and Finn battle, and she's got the upper hand, but then the New Republic fleet arrives. While Phasma is momentarily distracted, Finn uses the Force somehow to escape, and so Phasma orders a retreat.

Up in the throne room, the battle is over, and Kylo asks her to join him. She thinks he wants to be just as evil as Snoke, but he explains that no, he has been working from within this whole time to earn the trust of Snoke, to find where Sidious is. He says that if Rey is with him, he might be able to wrest control of the Knights of Ren, and destroy the First Order from within. Rey says that she understands now why he killed Han, but she can see it's torn him apart. She begs him to come back to the light.

And he does. We redeem Kylo Ren in part 2 of the trilogy. Leia and her son reunite, and Rose's betrayal is forgiven. Finn introduces Poe to Rey, and is super stoked that he can use the Force.

Then Leia, Rey, and Ben returning to Luke on Ahch-To, and him being offered a chance of redemption too. He still doesn't have his Force powers, but he can help those who do to be free from the Dark Side.

We can get a montage around the galaxy of good stuff being tempered by bad news. Some storm troopers rebel and flee, but see a city being razed. Leia returns to Coruscant to cheers, but then oversees a commemoration of those lost so far. The First Order occupies Canto Bight but a slave kid demonstrates he can use the Force.

Our final scene, though, is Phasma and other Knights of Ren arriving on Exogol, and bowing to the crackling red Force ghost of Darth Sidious.



The Rise of Skywalker
The Force ghost of Darth Sidious directs the First Order to use the newly-completed Starkiller to annihilate the New Republic, and use the horrific death toll to resurrect himself. 

I don't have a whole plot ready, because TRoS as-is kinda sucks, so we'd be remaking it whole cloth. But I'd be excited to have a team of Finn, Poe, Rey, and Ben all being heroes together. (Rose can be about as prominent as Lando was in RotJ.)

Maybe differentiate our three Force users. Rey and Ben are able to do long-distance communication and eventually teleporting stuff between them, plus the typical Jedi powers. Rey can understand machines and fix them with the Force, and is mobile. Ben can do violent stuff really well, including block blasters. Finn is less trained but can hide with the Force and learns to heal.

We'd have enough of a time skip to establish that Luke becomes like a father figure to Rey. We can keep the whole 'call upon the spirits of the dead to defeat Sidious' thing, but have their manifestation triggered by a sacrifice of Luke. He should be involved in the confrontation with Sidious, and he lets himself be struck down, like Obi-Wan.

And then he becomes more powerful than you can possibly imagine. 

After having lost his connection to the Force, he returns to it, and causes the Force ghosts of every Jedi we've ever known to empower our new generation of heroes. They destroy Sidious and shatter the Sith temple, destroy the Starkiller, and save the day. 

Rey doesn't adopt the Skywalker name, because this is the end of that saga. In fact, let us end on an _ending_ scroll, saying that there were centuries of peace, and balance in the Force. This guarantees no more movies with these characters.

(I also kinda want Phasma to be Lando's daughter, kidnapped by the First Order. But okay, that's rambling.)


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## Celebrim (Jan 6, 2020)

RangerWickett said:


> If I were going to do a _major_ rewrite of the trilogy...




If you are going to do a sequel to any completed story arc, then it has to address some unresolved conflict from the original story.  That is to say, the story has to be about something.   One problem that a lot of Star Wars fan fiction has faced is that typically, no one seems really sure what that new conflict should be, so they tend to just keep repeating the beats and conflicts of the original trilogy.

Unsurprisingly, this doesn't inspire quite like the original trilogy.  At best, what you end up with is the post Endor extended universe, which was basically just a big Soap Opera unfolding in the foreground of a bunch of variants of the original story line.   The really interesting stuff tended to be done in the past of the Republic, because it actually invested itself in unresolved conflicts.

I think your plot outline sounds better than what Disney did do, but then I think 90% of fan fiction is better than what Disney did as well, including the very middling Extended Universe with Luke, Mara Jade, and all the rest.

There are several unresolved conflicts from the original movies, but I think the most interesting one to explore is whether the Jedi are actually good. The original trilogy hinted at this conflict weakly in two ways, first in the fact that the Jedi relied in deceit in their relationship with Luke. Neither Obi Wan nor Yoda was ever honest with him. And further, both Obi Wan and Yoda saw Luke primarily as a tool or a weapon, and councilled him to basically revolve all the problems of the story with a combination of indifference and violence - a path Luke continually rejects, and in both cases was unequivocally right to do so.

In the single most interesting scene of The Last Jedi, and maybe the whole of the wasted trilogy, Luke openly questions the goodness of the Jedi and the need to continue their legacy. But instead of exploring that, Disney cops out and has Yoda defeat Luke in a battle of wits, deceive Luke once again, and ultimately prompt Luke to commit suicide. And it manages to do all of that, without even once suggesting it's self-aware of exactly what it has done or what it means, something that from all indication is born out by the silence of RoS on this subject.

This issue, combined with Luke's willingness to place a great deal of trust in people and see good in them, provides a much more believable and interesting basis for why everything went wrong and why, than the rather lame one in the sequel trilogy.


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## ccs (Jan 6, 2020)

*I've now seen Skywalker on NY Eve.  Friends insisted I come with them.  They bought my tkt, I paid for the popcorn.  None of _my_ $ went towards rewarding Disney for this poo.  


I'm sorry, but this trilogy is so far gone that with only minor editorial powers - adding/deleting a few scenes, altering a bit of dialog, changing a special effect & such - I couldn't much improve it.

1st up:  I'd work out better sub-titles for all three.
2nd:  I'd write up better opening crawls.  These three sucked.

TFA:  If I could manage it?  Kylo Ren would never remove his helmet.  
Maybe, maybe, I'd consider having him unmasked when he & Han confront one another - and that's only if I couldn't get rid of Kylo being Han & Leia's son.
The destructive beam from the Star Killer base would not be visible planetside unless you were the target or an immediate neighbor.  I'd still show the audience this, but it'd be on a giant radar like tracking screen.
Other than this?  Without major change power I don't know how to make TFA not be a knockoff of SW: A New Hope.

TLJ: The one change that I would definitely make?
When Leia gets blown into space in TLJ?  That'd be the end of her.   Yes, it'd cause me to re-do a # of scenes that come after that.  I'd get rid of them if possible or cgi an alien resistance member in her place & delete/rerecord her dialog for stuff I wanted to keep.  
But I wouldn't have to get tricky with extra bits of footage & scraps of dialog two years later.

TRoS: Well, as I got rid of Leia in TLJ, obviously I'd need to alter scenes she's in.  And she won't be around to "save" Kylo.
There would be no dumb ass Sith dagger with a fold out DS fragment shaped clue.
There would be no cavalry charge across the deck of a Star Destroyer.  This scene would have to be re-done with resistance commandos in appropriate gear for the near space environment they're in.
Rey would NOT be revealed to be related to Palpatine.  Or Luke.



Now if I could go back further & make a few slight edits?  To Episodes I - VI?
TPM
1) The planet Anikin is discovered on would not be Tatooine.  I'd spend alot of time & $ CGIing over the desert bits/altering the architecture & redubbing a different name wherever it's spoken (or appears on a screen).
2) I would CGI in an older teen in place of kid anikin & re-dub his lines.
3) The word midichlorian would never be uttered.
TRotS
1) Vader would not scream "Nooo!" upon being rebuilt at the end.  In fact, him lying nearly complete would be the final shot.
2) Padme would still die in childbirth.  You'd either never hear what the names of her children are, or at most you'd hear Lukes name.
A New Hope
*Han shoots Greedo 1st.
ESB
 I'd add info in some way, even if only as text across the bottom of the screen, to clearly show you that considerable time passes between fleeing Hoth & reaching Bespin.  So that it doesn't appear that Luke became like 70% trained in a mere couple of days/weeks. 
RoTJ
I would edit out revealing Leia as being Lukes sister.  Luke would still learn he has a sister though, just not who it is.
Vader would NOT be redeemed & appear as Anikins force ghost at the party.
The end conversation between Luke, Han & Leia would reveal that Luke won't be in their way _because he's setting out to search for his sister_.  Hmm, sounds like the hook for more SW stories to me


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## Imaculata (Jan 6, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> If you are going to do a sequel to any completed story arc, then it has to address some unresolved conflict from the original story.  That is to say, the story has to be about something.   One problem that a lot of Star Wars fan fiction has faced is that typically, no one seems really sure what that new conflict should be, so they tend to just keep repeating the beats and conflicts of the original trilogy.




That is the problem with Star Wars as a property. It has a pretty small universe and there's not much you can do with it. Stray too much from Stormtroopers, Tie Fighters, X-wings, Jedi, and it no longer resembles the Star Wars that people know and love. So you either end up recycling old beats (The Force Awakens), or trying to regurgitate things that were briefly mentioned in throw away lines from the original trilogy (Solo, and all the prequels), or just make it one giant fan service movie (Rogue One). But there is nothing original and/or new.


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## Ryujin (Jan 6, 2020)

ccs said:


> A New Hope
> *Han shoots Greedo 1st.




On that particular point, here's a page from the original novelization of the film. I don't know why I never though of cracking open my own copy to check this out, years ago. Credit to friend Seth M Davis.


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## Dausuul (Jan 6, 2020)

*Can I assume we are okay with Rise of Skywalker spoilers here?*

My primary goal would be to smooth out the transitions between the three films. It feels like Abrams had an idea for how the trilogy should go, and Johnson had an idea for how the trilogy should go, and they were... uh... not on the same page.

One example is the handling of the archvillains. In "The Force Awakens," Supreme Leader Snoke is a big mystery villain, seen only in hologram and only briefly. One would expect "The Last Jedi" to elaborate on where he came from and what his deal was; instead, he cackled and gloated for a bit, and then he got whacked by Kylo Ren, and that was that. "Rise of Skywalker" then had the job of a) explaining where Snoke came from, and b) introducing Palpatine as the Real Final Boss, and c) doing all this super fast at the start of the movie so it could get on with the plot. This was not a good situation to be in.

So, I would insert a few scenes into "Last Jedi" indicating that Snoke is a puppet, created by some shadowy entity behind the scenes to serve as a figurehead for the First Order and to seduce Ben Solo to the Dark Side. And I would close the movie on Palpatine's laughter. That would set up "Rise" much better.

Then there are the romantic subplots. I'm pretty okay with how the Rey/Ren one turned out: There was obvious chemistry there, but it was just as obvious that the movies could not possibly end with Rey and Ren riding off into the sunset together--Kylo Ren killing his father was a point of no return for the character. So, Ren turns away from the Dark Side, gets one kiss with Rey, and falls over dead. Rey then goes and adopts herself into the Skywalker family to retroactively continue the tradition of Skywalkers kissing each other, and all is right with the world.

Unfortunately, Finn's romances did not get resolved nearly as well. In "Force Awakens," he is clearly crushing on Rey. Then in "Last Jedi," there is the start of something with Rose. This gets unceremoniously dropped in "Rise" and he is back to crushing on Rey, which... goes nowhere. This one is definitely on "Rise of Skywalker" to fix. Finn just needs a few scenes where he is going back and forth between his crush on Rey and his feelings for Rose, finally settles on Rose (I'm not really seeing the Rey/Finn pairing, Finn/Rose works much better), and they get a hug and kiss at the end.

And the little kid using the Force at the end of "Last Jedi"--that kid needs to show up in "Rise" somewhere, somehow, doing something. Or he needs to not be there in "Jedi." Pick one, don't care which.

There are a bunch of these little hiccups between movies (Rey's parentage is another), all of which could be relatively easily smoothed out to greatly improve the trilogy as a whole.

I also have some issues with "Last Jedi" specifically, but those only impact "Last Jedi" and don't interfere with the larger arc of the trilogy, so they are less important to address. Let's just say we would spend a lot less time in the casino if I were the boss of Star Wars.


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## Celebrim (Jan 6, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> But there is nothing original and/or new.




Yet, pretty much the entire community likes 'The Mandalorian'.

The Star Wars universe is vast with complex stores that have been told over thousands of years featuring hundreds of cultures. I suspect you don't really know "the star wars universe people know and love". There was probably more material to start from than was in the Marvel universe.


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## Son of the Serpent (Jan 6, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Yet, pretty much the entire community likes 'The Mandalorian'.
> 
> The Star Wars universe is vast with complex stores that have been told over thousands of years featuring hundreds of cultures. I suspect you don't really know "the star wars universe people know and love". There was probably more material to start from than was in the Marvel universe.



Hard call but i think i have to say i agree this statement is actually true.


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## Ryujin (Jan 6, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Yet, pretty much the entire community likes 'The Mandalorian'.




That's not much of a surprise to me. Back in the WEG Star Wars days I was the only one, in both my high school's games club and my personal gaming group, who wanted to play a Force User. Everyone else wanted to be some variation of a Scruffy Nerf Herder, or a Bounty Hunter.


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## BookBarbarian (Jan 6, 2020)

These might not be minor, but they'd could reuse a lot of existing footage. Seed Palpatine's return in TFA. Hint at Leia's Jedi training too. I like using Phasma for the traitor fight too.

I'd move the tracking down the Jedi hunter plot from TRoS to TLJ and have it replace the Canto Bight/Chase subplot it belongs more in a middle movie than an end movie IMHO. 

So while Rey has tracked down Luke, our heroes Finn, Poe, Chewie, and now Rose are trying to track down Palpatine, before Kylo Ren can. Kylo has been tasked by Snoke to find Snoke's old apprentice (yes Snoke is Plagueis). There will be more tension as our mundane heroes are left to their own abilities to avoid sure death at the hands of Kylo. Finn meets the other ex stormtroopers on Endor and realizes he is not alone. Enter the Finn, Rose, Jannah love triangle.

Cut Luke almost killing Ben. Make the Knights of Ren the other students of Luke that were corrupted by Snoke. Luke can still be bitter old Luke, but he's more worried about his failings as a teacher, and the failings of the Jedi as a whole because of the corruption of so many students, not being an almost murderer. Luke ultimately realizes the rigidity of the Jedi led to their downfall and that Teaching children to deal with strong emotion and attachment is a far better idea than rejecting it. Kylo's connection to Rey stays much the same but occurs while he is hunting for Palpatine. 

The climax occurs as Snoke and Kylo reach Palpatine's signal at the same time as Finn and crew, along with the Resistance fleet and Leia. The signal is coming from the Sith Wayfinder on the planet Crait. We see Kylo seize it but now he takes it to Snoke's command ship. Finn and Crew now board Snoke's ship to steal it rather than disable a tracker, as Poe leads an external assault of the ship which may or may not have space bombers. Still things look dire and Rey has to race to save her friends. Finn, poe, Leia and everybody is force to retreat to the surface. The Snoke throne room and most of what follows is much the same (except we'll see more of Phasma later).

TRoS still has Supreme Leader Kylo hunting down Palpatine and Rey and crew now hunting for another wayfinder on Kamiji. Kamiji Plot is largely unchanged but no it's here where Rey has her duel with Kylo and he destroys the Wayfinger, she wounds and heals him and steals his ship and heads back to lonely Luke island frustrated at her failures. I'd keep the Leia reaching out to Ben here to as I thought it was poignant.

With the Hunt for the Wayfinder plot cut short our heroes are now shown recruiting around the Galaxy for help against the secret fleet. Poe gathers old resistance fighters that have been scattered, and picks up unlikely recruits form his old smuggling contacts. When the reinforcements reach Exogal and we see it's not enough to stop the secret fleet, Finn, Jannah, and Rose hijack First Order communications to communicate with all the Stormtroopers and convince most of them to turn against their kidnappers. Phasma (looking very cool and slightly Vader-ish after TLJ) is about to kill our heroes when her own vanguard puts her down and takes their helmets off. Across enough of the First Order Fleet stormtroopers are rising up and overwhelming their officers and taking over ships. Poe and crew  (with Lando and Wedge) knock out the signal ship and ground the fleet. NOw TRoS can feel a lot less frantic.

The Palpatine, Rey, and Ben finale can stay much the same, but cut the Reylo kiss. Keep whether their relationship was strictly platonic or unfulfilled romance a mystery for fans to debate for years to come.


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## ART! (Jan 6, 2020)

I feel like the first act of TROS throws too much at you, so I'd tidy that up a bit, editing-wise, or at the script stage.

That First Order & Resistance chase in TLJ lacks dynamics, so I'd have it take place in...not an asteroid belt, but something suspiciously like that, but with a surprise twist (_every _asteroid has a space worm, and they're hungry for starships!)


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## Celebrim (Jan 6, 2020)

Ryujin said:


> That's not much of a surprise to me. Back in the WEG Star Wars days I was the only one, in both my high school's games club and my personal gaming group, who wanted to play a Force User. Everyone else wanted to be some variation of a Scruffy Nerf Herder, or a Bounty Hunter.




Sure, but mostly you just have tight writing and solid character introductions. So you are making both the hard core fans and the casual fans happy.

I'm probably one of the Star Wars fans that are most 'meh' regarding the Mandalorian, because ultimately I think it's just a cartoon script treatment for one season that has been given a large live action budget and there are signs that they have no idea where the story is going to go from here. 

But even I like it, and it's better written than the sequel trilogy.

One thing that I think shows how true that is, is that it's producing real merchandise buzz. The real measure of the sequels failure isn't the box office. The real measure of their failure is the relative lack of merchandise appeal. The reason Disney wanted the franchise is that they were a toy making machine. But the original characters are for the most part still the most marketable merchandise even to the younger generation they were targeting - because nothing really matches the coolness of Darth Vader and they know it. Even the prequels did a better job producing merchandise - Padme is frankly cooler as a toy than Rey is, and Rey is about the only bit of the sequels that is successful as a toy.  This despite the obvious effort to create characters purely for the merchandise (or maybe because of it).

But "Baby Yoda" is gold.   In fact, pretty much the whole series is merchandising gold.


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## Celebrim (Jan 6, 2020)

ART! said:


> That First Order & Resistance chase in TLJ lacks dynamics...




Let's not ignore just how undynamic the space battle leading up to that scene is. It's the first Star Wars space battle that occurs in 2D space and which doesn't really make use of the Z dimension in the choreography. And it's the first Star Wars space battle since the Falcon escaped from the Death Star and fought the Tie Fighter pickets that had a basically fixed camera angle, and that was only because of the limits of what they could do with the mattes back then. It's almost a case study in how not to make a space battle exciting. 

It's also another example of writer's and directors having studied Star Wars and what inspired it, and yet having no understanding of why it worked and are simply copy pasting. "Well, Lucas was inspired by WWII movie footage and that worked, so what if we did a space battle inspired by WWII high altitude bombing runs!" _beats head against wall_ 

"An office with no walls is dumb. But if Les has an office with no desk - now that's comedy."

I rewatched Rogue One, and the film does have it's flaws, but it's got the best final act since Return of the Jedi and it's space battle is so dynamic and well constructed. Notice the bombing runs in the Y-Wings. Also, notice the Star Destroyer warping into the battle in the line of ships warping out and how it DOES NOT GET WARP SPEED RAMMED AND DESTROYED BUT RATHER SHIPS OBEY CANON BY DROPPING OUT OF HYPERDRIVE.


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## MiraMels (Jan 6, 2020)

Minimal changes until the last movie. My only real disappointment with the trilogy is that I was hype to see a trilogy about Finn, Rey, and Poe, but the Rise of Skywalker retroactively made this a trilogy about Kylo Ren. 

My changes would be: 
Keep Rey as a nobody from nowhere, who is nevertheless still the most powerful living jedi
Keep Palpatine dead. Kylo is the new head of the First Order, let that play out.
Let Finn and Poe live out the character arcs they started in the first two movies. 
Keep the movie about those three, have them fight and defeat the First Order. 
Kill Kylo Ren. He's had multiple shots at redemption that he turned away from. Or if you want to keep a "Kylo Ren redemption" arc in there, have that happen because force ghost Luke keeps showing up to talk to him. But honestly, Kylo doesn't start a redemption arc until TRoS, so its going to be rushed no matter what you do. 
Minor quibble, but like, Anikin Skywalker's lightsaber should also stay dead? It shattered into pieces on a spaceship that then got rammed by another spaceship.


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## Wolf72 (Jan 6, 2020)

Whoa! RangerWickett ... It's been a long time since I saw your name!  B/C I've been out of D&D ... Just saying 'Hey'

anyway: I like more force users (yes to Finn!).  Phasma? not sure, more of a real role would be better than 'Shiny Bad Guy/Girl'.


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## ccs (Jan 6, 2020)

Ryujin said:


> On that particular point, here's a page from the original novelization of the film. I don't know why I never though of cracking open my own copy to check this out, years ago. Credit to friend Seth M Davis.




Yeah, I know how the real story goes.  Saw it in the theater & read that book way back then.  Got the Marvel comics too.

And yes, I'm aware that my tampering with various scenes to adjust the narrative wouldn't be any better than when Lucus did it with this one. 
That's why I need more than just special edition editing powers.


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## ccs (Jan 6, 2020)

MiraMels said:


> Kill Kylo Ren. He's had multiple shots at redemption that he turned away from. Or if you want to keep a "Kylo Ren redemption" arc in there, have that happen because force ghost Luke keeps showing up to talk to him. But honestly, Kylo doesn't start a redemption arc until TRoS, so its going to be rushed no matter what you do.




Pfft.  Kylo had more of a redemption arc than Vader did.  
Vader just chucked Palpatine down a shaft in order to save Luke - whom he'd still have gladly ruled the galaxy beside if he'd survived & swayed.  
But no, "Poof" all of Vader's evil actions just washed away & he gets to party as a good force ghost....


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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Yet, pretty much the entire community likes 'The Mandalorian'.




But that just proves my point doesn't it? What is there in the Mandalorian that is actually new?
The Mandalorian also recycles old ideas from the original trilogy. You've got your Stormtroopers, Tie Fighters, Sand People, Jawa's, Mandalorians (obviously) and Baby Yoda. Heck, they even revisit Tatooine. That is the problem with Star Wars. You can't do something actually new, or it no longer resembles Star Wars. So they will keep recycling the same old ideas till we're all bored of it.



Celebrim said:


> The Star Wars universe is vast with complex stores that have been told over thousands of years featuring hundreds of cultures. I suspect you don't really know "the star wars universe people know and love". There was probably more material to start from than was in the Marvel universe.




Oh, I know it all too well, which is why I disagree. It is not a vast universe. There's a lot of written material for sure. But that is not what I mean when I say it is a small universe. There's not a whole lot you can do with it as a property that is actually new. You have to keep recycling Jedi, Stormtroopers, Tie Fighters, X-wings, etc. And even though I put an "etc" at the end there, I think we all know that the list is really quite small.


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## Celebrim (Jan 7, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> You have to keep recycling Jedi...




You realize that there are like 20 different force using cults other than the Jedi and the Sith, right? 



> Stormtroopers, Tie Fighters, X-wings, etc.




All of that stuff is part of one era, the familiar one known to people in the movies. Yes, the movies kept using Tie Fighters and X-Wings and all that stuff, but notice, when I say "the movies" I mostly mean "Disney". Lucas, for all the faults he had in the writing of the prequels, introduced a ton of new stuff, and no Tie-Fighters or X-Wings to be seen. And while "Clone Wars" was just a cartoon and not ground breaking television, it did do a lot of cool things to make the Clone Troopers more than just faceless fodder.


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## Wolf72 (Jan 7, 2020)

will say I liked the Mandalorian scene where the x-wings took down the space outpost more than the space scenes in the newest movie ... most were scenes of Poe and then blinks of something exploding.  To fast for me.


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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> You realize that there are like 20 different force using cults other than the Jedi and the Sith, right?




None of which the general public are familiar with, and none of which we'll probably ever see in any of the movies.



Celebrim said:


> All of that stuff is part of one era, the familiar one known to people in the movies. Yes, the movies kept using Tie Fighters and X-Wings and all that stuff, but notice, when I say "the movies" I mostly mean "Disney". Lucas, for all the faults he had in the writing of the prequels, introduced a ton of new stuff, and no Tie-Fighters or X-Wings to be seen. And while "Clone Wars" was just a cartoon and not ground breaking television, it did do a lot of cool things to make the Clone Troopers more than just faceless fodder.




Not entirely true, since we did see proto x-wings in Revenge of the Sith, but I get what you're saying. The prequels for all their faults, at least tried to do some new stuff.... and people hated it. But I should also point out that the prequels lean entirely on trying to explain minor plot points from the original trilogy that did not need explaining. Such as Vader's backstory, Luke and Leia and the rise of the empire. Its the same problem. It seems there's not a whole lot of new stuff you can do in the Star Wars universe while still keeping it feeling like Star Wars.



Wolf72 said:


> will say I liked the Mandalorian scene where the x-wings took down the space outpost more than the space scenes in the newest movie ... most were scenes of Poe and then blinks of something exploding.  To fast for me.




The entire end battle of Rise of Skywalker is an incoherent mess. The premise makes no sense what so ever, and the audience feels that, and so it feels like nothing is at stake. A massive fleet of Star Destroyers  (and presumably the huge crew required to operate each one) are conjured out of nothing, and yet for some reason they cannot be deployed without a communication array, even though all they would need to do is fly away from the planet. Also, a huge fleet of rebel ships also appears out of nothing and all ships know how to find the emperor's secret planet simultaneously and they also all arrive at the exact same time. Then on top of that there is a bizarre scene with space horses running across the surface of a Star Destroyer that takes you right out of the film. Then we have the emperor shooting lightning up at the entire rebel fleet, with apparently no real consequences. The battle operates by no rules what so ever and so there is no suspense.

In comparison the scene from the Mandalorian is painfully simple and a thousand times more engaging. Its not high art, because the plot of that particular episode was a bit of a mess, but at least you could follow what was going on.

Heck, even the end battle of Rogue One was better, because at least there was a clear premise... even though none of its cardboard cutouts of characters were likable, and it was followed with a cringe-fest bit of fan service.

Rise of Skywalker feels like a million different ideas by a million different people, all thrown into a giant corporate pit, and it strongly smells of studio meddling. I highly doubt JJ Abrams is happy with the final theatrical cut of the film.


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## Zaukrie (Jan 7, 2020)

Most of the public didn't know much about marvel either. Over many films they introduced new characters and plots. Disney had the knights of ren, something new, and they threw it away. They could have been introducing lots of things in the background of Solo or Rogue One setting up new groups and ideas. But unlike marvel, Star wars has no plans.... How is that possible?


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## Celebrim (Jan 7, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> The prequels for all their faults, at least tried to do some new stuff.... and people hated it.




No, they didn't. They loved it. It wasn't the new stuff that people rejected - it was the old stuff.

Let me back up. You are repeating a very common Hollywood excuse. You first really need to understand that Hollywood is bad at making movies, and they don't really understand why this movie succeeds or this movie fails. So they tell themselves convenient excuses about formulas and marketing and timing and what have you. Hollywood told themselves that the reason the prequels didn't succeed was that they were too different from the formula that made Star Wars successful. But it wasn't a formula that made Star Wars successful, at least not in the sense that they think. What made the original trilogy successful was a combination of things, but they all come down to quality craftsmanship. Quality special effects work. Quality writing. Quality musical score. Quality art direction. But most especially, quality writing that deftly introduced compelling characters, deftly moved forward the plot, and deftly mixed faster scenes of action with slower scenes of character development.

The prequels didn't fail because they were novel. In fact, the novelty of them was the main thing that the fan community accepted, and the main thing that makes them somewhat rewatchable. It's a completely different style of story than the first trilogy, involving a grand political stage with a tragic hero at its center and a love story. And it's got all sorts of great settings, costumes, cultures, and sci-fi gizmos, plus absolute the best fight choreography of any Star Wars movies and a great sound track with Williams doing something really original (for him) and bringing it choral voices. Even people who hate the movies love the novelty of 'Duel of the Fates'. All the new stuff (with the notable exception of the Gunguns and their mascot Jar-Jar) is great.

What people hated was the old stuff, and the reason that they hated it was that it simply was not well done.

People knew coming into the prequels that there were three main story beats that had to happen in the prequels. Anakin had to befriend Obi-Wan and form a great friendship with him. Akakin had to fall in love with the mother of Luke. And then Anakin had to turn to the dark side and betray the Jedi. And the problem the prequels have is that although Lucas knew those were the story beats, he really had no good idea how that had happened. He didn't have the writing chops to make any part of that story engrossing or to make the motivations of the characters believable. That's what kills the prequels.

When you think about what people really hate about the prequels it's the absence of a really believable friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin. We don't have a lot of that great banter that we have between Han and Luke, and we don't get really sold on the fact that the two care for each other. The lines between the two are often awful, and although each man is a good actor they just can't do anything with the material. It's too didactic. It's too forced. It's too obvious. Likewise, there is a plot hoop that has to be jumped through where Padme falls in love with Anakin, but again the dialogue that is supposed to set this up is just awful, and it doesn't convincingly sell the romance. There chemistry in the scenes. There is no believable motivation on Padme's part. It comes off as corny and stupid, and is inadvertently funny when we should be moved. It fails to make the viewer want to, as my daughter would say, "'ship the characters". Likewise, we aren't given a compelling reason for Anakin's fall. It's sudden. It's poorly motivated. There are some ideas that are supposed to be driving Anakin's fall, but Lucas lacks the vision and the writing chops to really explore them well.

So it was actually the 'old' stuff that turned people off to the prequels - not the new stuff.

And what's interesting is that though the writing was weak, there are enough good ideas in the overall plot, that when you hand over these ideas to another team of writers, you get something like "The Clone Wars", which despite it's limited ambitions, and it's format, manages to do a better job of making the friendship between Anakin and Obi-Wan believable, "ship" the two star-crossed lovers, and address the stress and conflict that leads up to Anakin deciding that from his point of view the Jedi are evil. Now, it's not great, but the fan community just ate it up. In fact there are a lot of fans that feel that the characters in "The Clone Wars", like Ahsoka Tano are some of the most compelling characters in all of Star Wars.

Sure, there are always going to be people who dislike when Star Wars deviates from the tone of the original trilogy, although I'd argue that those people tend to overlook how dark the original trilogy was because they are just so used to it and still look at it with child-like eyes that they don't really think about it. So you have people who didn't like Rogue One exploring ideas like there is no such thing as a perfectly clean war. But a ton of the fans think Rogue One is at least the equal of the original trilogy precisely because while it stayed true to the setting, it introduced a lot of new things. Plus, one of the greatest 'Star Wars' fandom scenes is the scene in 'Clerks' where the protagonists debate whether the victory at Endor was clean, since the unfinished battle station almost certainly still had civilian contractors working on it. So this is not an idea that the fandom hasn't thought about.



> The battle operates by no rules what so ever and so there is no suspense.




This is incidentally the same sort of thing that happens to the Matrix trilogy. The first movie was a good movie, but it was filled with plot holes. It's one of the few movies I watched in the cinema twice, and after coming out of it the second time I told the group I was with that though it was a great movie, if they didn't patch the foundation of the movie by patching the plot holes, then they wouldn't be able to successfully build anything from it because without a firm set of rules and explanation of "why" eventually everything would be just gibberish.

The sequel trilogy kept writing itself into corners and then writing itself out of it by breaking established rules.  Things kept getting less and less logical, and more and more just pure spectacle with no heart.  That deft mix of pacing between action and slower moments to build character that are the hallmark of the original trilogy (and most of Rogue One, which was better paced on second viewing than I remembered) just isn't in the sequels, with the result that after 7 hours of movie we still haven't had anyone in the new "golden trio" meaningfully interact with each other.


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## MoonSong (Jan 7, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> The entire end battle of Rise of Skywalker is an incoherent mess. The premise makes no sense what so ever, and the audience feels that, and so it feels like nothing is at stake. A massive fleet of Star Destroyers (and presumably the huge crew required to operate each one) are conjured out of nothing, and yet for some reason they cannot be deployed without a communication array, even though all they would need to do is fly away from the planet. Also, a huge fleet of rebel ships also appears out of nothing and all ships know how to find the emperor's secret planet simultaneously and they also all arrive at the exact same time. Then on top of that there is a bizarre scene with space horses running across the surface of a Star Destroyer that takes you right out of the film. Then we have the emperor shooting lightning up at the entire rebel fleet, with apparently no real consequences. The battle operates by no rules what so ever and so there is no suspense.



I felt that part was one of the good parts of the movie... I was nearly crying... Ok, I'm ridiculously easy to please and move to tears, but still...


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## Wolfpack48 (Jan 7, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> No, they didn't. They loved it. It wasn't the new stuff that people rejected - it was the old stuff.
> 
> Let me back up. You are repeating a very common Hollywood excuse. You first really need to understand that Hollywood is bad at making movies, and they don't really understand why this movie succeeds or this movie fails. So they tell themselves convenient excuses about formulas and marketing and timing and what have you. Hollywood told themselves that the reason the prequels didn't succeed was that they were too different from the formula that made Star Wars successful. But it wasn't a formula that made Star Wars successful, at least not in the sense that they think. What made the original trilogy successful was a combination of things, but they all come down to quality craftsmanship. Quality special effects work. Quality writing. Quality musical score. Quality art direction. But most especially, quality writing that deftly introduced compelling characters, deftly moved forward the plot, and deftly mixed faster scenes of action with slower scenes of character development.
> 
> ...




Nailed it. What’s so frustrating about the prequels is that they are a near miss, and with better writing, pacing and character development they’d have been amazing. 

I can’t say that much for the sequels since there is no coherent arc for the 3 movies, and even less pacing and character development.


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## Wolfpack48 (Jan 7, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I’m hesitant to post this thread, but let’s give it a try.
> 
> 1) No soapbox rants about how any of them are the worst films ever or rants about “Mary Sue” or any of that crap. If you’re not interested in this exercise, go find a thread you are interested in.
> 
> ...




I'd slow down the pace and show a better mix of character development and action. Give characters time to breathe and grow.

Eliminate Poe, and develop Finn and Rose.

Let Rey be a 'nobody' but show her growth more. Theme: a nobody can become great. Maybe show her hardship as a child and accidentally learning the force.

Play up Kylo's wrestling between dark and light. Balance out his evil acts throughout and his tempting to the light by Rey

Instead of Empire 2, go with something new. A powerful wizard or warlord that is consolidating power. Think Atilla the Hun but powerfully evil and charismatic with weird new 'magic/force' abilities.Maybe someone discovers a Sith temple and tries to bring back the 'old ways.' The New Republuc firmly established and in good shape but this new thing threatens everything that's been built. The galaxy starts in a good, but not perfect place.


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## Bawylie (Jan 7, 2020)

If you could, would you hop in the time machine and give Disney a mulligan? Show them the final product and say, “this is the mark to beat”?

Or are you good with what we’ve got?


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## Wolfpack48 (Jan 7, 2020)

Bawylie said:


> If you could, would you hop in the time machine and give Disney a mulligan? Show them the final product and say, “this is the mark to beat”?
> 
> Or are you good with what we’ve got?




I'd ask them to back and study the first 2 original movies carefully, paying special attention to pacing and character development more than visuals and action.  Then write screenplays for all 3 movies before filming anything, ensuring they have a cohesive story with characters that we will love. 

No, I'm not good with what we've got.


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## ccs (Jan 7, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> But that just proves my point doesn't it? What is there in the Mandalorian that is actually new?




It doesn't need to be new, just not crap.


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## ccs (Jan 7, 2020)

Bawylie said:


> If you could, would you hop in the time machine and give Disney a mulligan? Show them the final product and say, “this is the mark to beat”?




No.  
If I had a time machine?  Knowing my goal is better SW movies I'd go back far enough, attend & excel in film school, spend the next 15-20 years perfecting my craft - writing/directing/editing/etc - and beat both Abrams & Johnson to the punch in making you Episodes VII - IX.
Who knows, _maybe_ I could squeak into working on I - III.   '96/97 to get in on TPM would be way early in my career at that point, but then I do have the advantage of knowing what'll come & having a clear goal....


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## Son of the Serpent (Jan 7, 2020)

ccs said:


> but then I do have the advantage of knowing what'll come & having a clear goal....



heheh.  nice shade.


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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

ccs said:


> It doesn't need to be new, just not crap.




Yes, obviously. But don't forget the context of my quote. I said that the Star Wars universe was really small. I wasn't saying that future movies and shows need to be new. My point was that due to the limited size of the Star Wars universe, by definition it can't be very new. Whatever future movies and shows may arise, they will always include the familiar.


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## Zardnaar (Jan 7, 2020)

I think they can innovate, they probably won't though.


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## ccs (Jan 7, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> Yes, obviously. But don't forget the context of my quote. I said that the Star Wars universe was really small. I wasn't saying that future movies and shows need to be new. My point was that due to the limited size of the Star wars universe, by definition it can't be very new. Whatever future movies and shows may arise, they will always include the familiar.




True, it's like the Westerns/cowboy genre.  Certain elements _will_ be present.  Or almost always present.  It's just in how you use them.
But I disagree with you that the SW universe is limited in size & scope as far as what kinds of stories could be told.


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## Celebrim (Jan 7, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> I highly doubt JJ Abrams is happy with the final theatrical cut of the film.




JJ Abrams has never directed anything that wasn't a steaming pile of Bantha poo doo, and the only decent screenplay he's ever done was for 'Regarding Henry' - hardly an action adventure movie. Both of the things he got famous for on TV - 'Alias' and 'Lost' - built their success on the X-Files method of hard telegraphing that 'something is out there' even though the writer has no freaking clue what it is and will never be able to deliver on all the foreshadowing. In short, he's a hack.

As soon as he was attached to the project, I knew we were going to have an unappealing illogical mess.


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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> No, they didn't. They loved it. It wasn't the new stuff that people rejected - it was the old stuff.
> 
> Let me back up. You are repeating a very common Hollywood excuse. You first really need to understand that Hollywood is bad at making movies, and they don't really understand why this movie succeeds or this movie fails. So they tell themselves convenient excuses about formulas and marketing and timing and what have you. Hollywood told themselves that the reason the prequels didn't succeed was that they were too different from the formula that made Star Wars successful. But it wasn't a formula that made Star Wars successful, at least not in the sense that they think. What made the original trilogy successful was a combination of things, but they all come down to quality craftsmanship. Quality special effects work. Quality writing. Quality musical score. Quality art direction. But most especially, quality writing that deftly introduced compelling characters, deftly moved forward the plot, and deftly mixed faster scenes of action with slower scenes of character development.
> 
> ...



Not to challenge your opinions (many if which I agree with), but your characterization of the OT as having great writing and plotting utterly fails the sniff test eith Ep4 -- which was entirely saved in edit. The movie originally intended before another hand was brought in to save it in edit was a mess much along the lines of the PT.  Really, Lucas is a mad genius but desperately needs a minder for the details and to often say, "No, George."

To drift back into opinion, the OT is not a masterwork of plotting and the dialog is quite often cornball.  It succeeded because it was opera -- sweeping themes of black and white -- in a confused time and had good soace wizards with laser swords.  It's fantastic pop culture stuff, not a cinematic masterpiece.

But, yes, Hollywood has no idea what makes for a successful movie.  Given the huge finacial incentives involved, I'd say no one does, at least consistantly.


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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

Zardnaar said:


> I think they can innovate, they probably won't though.




Yes, I think the Mandalorian shows that it is possible to do new stuff with Star Wars. But they'll probably never stray far from familiar things.

I wonder what Disney's plans are with Star Wars, now that they made such a mess out of their soft-reboot trilogy, and what does this mean for the future of their Star Wars land? They've built a ton of really expensive stuff around the new trilogy, only to have the movies end on such a disappointing note. Will we keep seeing Rey's and Kylo Ren's in their theme parks? Or will they get rid of all that once they've succesfully re-rebooted the franchise?



Celebrim said:


> JJ Abrams has never directed anything that wasn't a steaming pile of Bantha poo doo




I think that's a bit harsh and unfair. I really enjoyed The Force Awakens for example, so to me he clearly is a skilled director. But I think he should leave the writing to better people. I think the mess that we got with the third movie is the result of studio meddling and Rian Johnson having a completely different vision of Star Wars from JJ Abrams, along with the writer for Batman V Superman (and Justice League). But I'd love to hear JJ Abrams own thoughts on this. Maybe an interview will leak that explains what happened behind the scenes.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

To the OP:

Firstly, I've enjoyed the movies, so there's not a lot structurally I'd change.  That said, while it's my favorite film of the sequels, TLJ is also the weak link as far as the trilogy goes.  This is primarily because it doesn't significantly alter the story overall.  Plucky, short-on-resources heroes against overwhelming war machine is pretty much the start and end of the film, just with fewer resources and more pluck at the end.  It needs a game change moment, like Vader/Luke in ESB or even the introduction of the clones in AotC so that the overall story can progress in a different way. (Vader's revelation in ESB changed the story from defeat the Empire to save Vader and defeat the Empire, for example.)

As such, I'd alter one scene in TLJ and add one at the end (trimming Canto Bight (not deleting, trimming) a tad to get the time).

The scene is the confrontation in front of Snoke.  Instead of a killing strike on Snoke, I'd make it a mortal wound.  Snoke, badly wounded and incapable of defending himself, calls on his guards to protect him while a few of the guard begin to drag him to safety.  This changes the nature of the fight from generic guards of dead guy on heroes where exhaustion of hitpoints is the goal to a fight through guards to prevent Snoke from escaping -- a goal shared by both Rey and Ren but for different reasons.  This also gives the opportunity to reshoot that fight scene, which is pretty weak overall (there's a number of missed beats where the stunt guys have to 'juggle' to cover).  

The end of the scene is all guards dead but Snoke managing to escape.  This leads back into the confrontation between Rey and Ren for the lightsaber as Ren makes the appeal to Rey to join him in hunting down Snoke and taking over the First Order to rule and Rey rejecting that.

Then, at the end of the movie, I'd have a scene where Snoke arrives on Exogal and beseeches Palpatine for help.  Palpatine is entombed in a huge medical contraption that's obviously siphoning power from the very planet itself (dark side force source).  Palpatine reveals that his plan has finally come to fruition with Snoke preparing Ren and that Snoke has no further use.  At which point Palpatine siphons the life out of Snoke which allows him to partially emerge from his tomb as the lich.  End scene on his laughter echoes out into a vast area where ships are being built.

In the Rise, I'd add a few changes -- the way that Hux goes out is a waste.  I'd have him save the trio and then tell them about the zombie ships (crewed by Sith automatons, hence they're lack of initiative) and declare that Ren humiliated him and then replaced him as the leader of the 1st Order -- a slight he will avenge.  Skip the blaster to the leg -- Hux was clearly more cunning than that -- and just have him caught during the escape so he can hurl invective in the face of his replacement before being executed.  This is a better end to this character.


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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> HA HA! No.
> 
> It could have been ... fine, good even, if Rise was good. If it hadn't been JJ doing it. Well, let me explain.
> 
> ...



I agree on TLJ -- it was really good.  But, it didn't really establish a new direction at the end, it just left a bunch of possibilities in the air.  I'd argue that the middle episode in a trilogy's job isn't to expand possibilities as a primary goal, but to introduce a major change in the story that must be sorted in the final episode.  While I adore TLJ -- it did a lot of really smart and interesting things -- it didn't set the stage well for the followup.  As such, JJ had nothing to latch onto to make tRoS and so just did what he does well -- reboot and add excitement.


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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> I think, sometimes, we expect too much. I keep thinking back to Lucas watching TFA and being horribly disappointed, while Iger thinking that ... you know, of course it wasn't going to be new, they had to bring people back in after the prequels.




Lucas said in an interview that Hollywood is afraid to do anything new. When he made the original Star Wars, that was a new idea. Hollywood took a gamble and won. But movie making has changed (in his opinion) and now everything is safe. While I ultimately hated his prequels, I agree with his sentiments.



lowkey13 said:


> ...and yet. JJ Abrams is very good at the bare basics of rebooting a franchise (Star Trek) but terrible past that (Into Darkness) because you can only remix nostalgia so much. At a certain point, you need new ideas. You need fresh blood.




To be honest I didn't like the first Star Trek movie he made either. I thought it was loud, obnoxious and dumb, and it looked like the entire movie had been shot through the reflection of a window.



lowkey13 said:


> And that was Rian Johnson. I could expound upon this at length (and sometime, I will) but TLJ really opened up the possibilities for the franchise in the same way that ESB did. I think people truly forget how shocking that movie was at the time. He set it up, not just for a thrilling (and different) conclusion, but for a universe of possibilities.




There's a big difference though. The original Star Wars was a stand alone movie. The two movies that followed were all written by the same people, with the same vision. Lucas was involved with all three movies. In contrast, The Force Awakens was not intended as a stand alone movie. It had a vision, and Rian Johnson had a totally different vision with The Last Jedi that killed off a lot of the things set up in The Force Awakens. Then JJ Abrams returned for Rise of Skywalker, and obviously didn't agree with Rian's vision, so we get a different take yet again that kills off most of the direction that Last Jedi was going in. Now add in the high likelyhood that Disney also meddled in JJ's vision with the last movie, and we get a big steaming mess. There was no overal vision for the whole trilogy.



lowkey13 said:


> And then, Rise. Which, eh, it's just thinly-connected fan service. If they had to do it over again, maybe they stick to the original plan (three different directors) or have a unified whole, but the JJ-Rian-JJ is the worst possible outcome. The franchise is practically a license to print money, so it wasn't going to fail in the hands of a halfway competent director, but it could have really succeeded ... IT COULDA BEENA CONTENDAH!




I agree that they should have had the same vision throughout all three movies, and not have three completely different ideas on where to go with the story. I don't think it is a matter of director incompetence. I believe it is a matter of studio incompetence.



Ovinomancer said:


> While I adore TLJ -- it did a lot of really smart and interesting things -- it didn't set the stage well for the followup.  As such, JJ had nothing to latch onto to make tRoS and so just did what he does well -- reboot and add excitement.




I'd say that it didn't set the stage for the followup at all. It ignored several plotlines from the previous movie, such as the Knights of Ren. It didn't set up the threat for the next movie, and instead killed off the main villain a movie too soon (Kylo Ren clearly was never meant to be the main threat nor a replacement for Snoke). TLJ does have some interesting ideas (such as Rey and Kylo's force connection), but it presented no satisfying answers to the questions that The Force Awakens raised on purpose and didn't leave anywhere for the third movie to go.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## Celebrim (Jan 7, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Not to challenge your opinions (many if which I agree with), but your characterization of the OT as having great writing and plotting utterly fails the sniff test eith Ep4 -- which was entirely saved in edit. The movie originally intended before another hand was brought in to save it in edit was a mess much along the lines of the PT.  Really, Lucas is a mad genius but desperately needs a minder for the details and to often say, "No, George."




I don't know that it was saved in the edit quite as much as is commonly claimed, but I do agree that Lucas needs to collaborate to make up for some of his short comings. 

As much as I appreciate the sentiment of the people who want a despecialized edition that is true to the original Oscar winning movie, 'Star Wars' (A New Hope) was the one movie that was significantly improved by the special edition in most respects, and that includes better editing. After watching the special edition of 'A New Hope' in the theater, my wife said that for the first time she really understood the movie and didn't just feel like it was mostly random collection of scenes barely connected to each other. There is still not an edit of 'Star Wars' (A New Hope) that I feel best frames the movie, as a lot of what was cut is necessary character building and only survives the process because ultimately we don't view 'Star Wars' as a stand alone movie, but only itself a first act in a longer drama. 

Every movie is finalized and hopefully improved "in the edit". There are always things that you discover don't work as well, scenes you realize don't add a lot, and perhaps more to the point the edit gives you the ability to decide how to tell and in what order different scenes of simultaneous action. 'Star Wars' is not unique in this. 'Star Wars' did not go from being a really bad film to a great film in the edit. The people that push that viewpoint are unsurprisingly film editors, who have a passion for their craft. While the cut did improve 'Star Wars' and reduce some unnecessary bloat, it also IMO left the actual story more disjointed than Lucas's original vision. Some of what was cut comes back in the special edition and the result is IMO a better film. It would be even a better film if the introduction to Biggs was retained, as an additional scene between Luke cleaning the droids and then returning to find that R2 has run away. That is, Luke needs to go to "Toshi Station to pick up some power converters".

Edit or not, "Star Wars" is still a masterpiece of plotting with brilliantly written individual scenes.  Consider the really deft introductions we get to C3P0 and R2D2, and the deft introduction we have to Darth Vader and to some extent Leia.  Very few movies invest you so quickly in characters.   The handling of these character introductions are just ingenious, and comparable to say the brilliant introductions to character in "Guardians of the Galaxy" which similarly needs to muster a diverse cast of characters for an ensemble film in a hurry without killing the pace of the movie.  Some of the dialogue is cornball, sure, but it's also often funny and often fits the 'farm boy' character that is Luke.   

Mostly what the editing does in 'A New Hope' is improve your ability to stay emotionally invested in the story. By improving the continuity of the story arc that you are currently following, it's a little less confusing when you switch to a different one, and the role that the other story line has in relation to the first is clearer. 

What I think you are doing in citing the myth that Star Wars was saved in the edit rather than just incrementally improved, is explaining yet another of the movie making myths that informed the production of the sequel trilogy. By having this myth in mind that this masterpiece was junk that was saved in the edit, it basically kept them from believing that they were making a pile of crap. Flaws in the script and the production were handwaved away as things that they'd just fix in the edit. And while there are things that can be fixed in the edit, the sort of fundamental problems that the sequel trilogy movies have are not those sort of things.


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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> So, I can see your P.O.V. (that it didn't leave a lot of possibilities).



Actually, my point was that it left_ too many _possibilities.

My argument is that the middle volume of a trilogy shouldn't be just opening possibilities, but to make a large change in the status quo so that it can be addressed in the third volume. That it can also open up new avenues is the gravy, not the meat.  TLJ has delicious gravy -- sweet, savory gravy -- but the meat is... barely there.

This left JJ with no hook, so he made one up.  He essentially has to, because while Rian was able to wander around and play with the formula, JJ had to deliver the overall promise of the trilogy, which was to get to an end.

Again, TLJ is my favorite of the sequels because it does so many interesting things, but, as the second volume of a trilogy, it doesn't do the job it should.


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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I don't know that it was saved in the edit quite as much as is commonly claimed, but I do agree that Lucas needs to collaborate to make up for some of his short comings.
> 
> As much as I appreciate the sentiment of the people who want a despecialized edition that is true to the original Oscar winning movie, 'Star Wars' (A New Hope) was the one movie that was significantly improved by the special edition in most respects, and that includes better editing. After watching the special edition of 'A New Hope' in the theater, my wife said that for the first time she really understood the movie and didn't just feel like it was mostly random collection of scenes barely connected to each other. There is still not an edit of 'Star Wars' (A New Hope) that I feel best frames the movie, as a lot of what was cut is necessary character building and only survives the process because ultimately we don't view 'Star Wars' as a stand alone movie, but only itself a first act in a longer drama.
> 
> ...



Um, you're clearly not terribly familiar with the story behind Ep4 and how the saving in edit was on the original theatrical release, not some special edition change later (which I'd argue didn't improve the movie).  Ep4 was a hot mess.  The tight story and scene structure you reference was largely due to edits, not as filmed or imagined.  The film as envisioned was a mess with political commentary.  The edit gave us the tighter story (it's still not super tight and awesomesauce, no idea why you think so) and the focus on the characters that matter.


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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Just a brief comment on this- yes, I know this is going around. The "JJ Cut" will likely go down with the "Snyder Cut" in internet lore.




I hadn't heard about a JJ Cut, but I'm not surprised. The movie feels like the product of people with multiple visions.



lowkey13 said:


> Disney didn't mess it up; Abrams did that all on his lonesome.




In the end, Abrams is not responsible for the failure of this reboot trilogy. Abrams had to follow up a movie with a drastically different vision from The Force Awakens. Disney messed all of this up. Do you really think any director could have salvaged this mess? I mean, what do you do? You've got no villain anymore, because Rian decided to kill him off, so you have to introduce the new threat in the opening crawl. And yeah, they bring back the emperor, which is lame. But that obviously wasn't their original plan, and honestly it was going to be a mess anyway. You could have put Tarantino or Nolan at the head of this film and it still would have been a trainwreck.

Plus there are a lot of baffling scenes in Rise of Skywalker. I would honestly not be surprised if things were cut out that JJ did not want removed, and things were added that have no place being there. I do not know if a JJ cut exists (and it seems pointless to even discuss), but I got the strong impression that the studio made some changes to the film. I could be wrong of course, but that is what it seemed like to me. 

But if such a cut exists, it wouldn't change the fact that the emperor is brought back. You can't undo the fact that TLJ killed Snoke. It might make some of the structure of the movie make more sense, and maybe the final battle was cut very differently. I doubt it would completely sway my opinion of the movie either way.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Except that's not what JJ wanted to do. He wanted to hew to making as much fan service moments as possible, and to include as many homages to Return as he could. Basically, he wanted to pretend that the middle movie never existed, instead of building from it.




I think JJ wanted to follow up on his original vision for The Force Awakens, and close the open plotlines that TLJ ignored, while reconning things that TLJ messed up (Like Rey's parentage). That is why the Knights of Ren were brought back for example. And yes, all of these movies are crammed full of hommages (Rogue One being the worst offender). But honestly, I got the impression that JJ just wanted to make a fun movie that answered things set up by the first movie. Of course you can't do all that in just one movie.



lowkey13 said:


> If any director OTHER than JJ Abrams had been given the task, I think we would have seen a very different movie. But at this point, we all know exactly what we are going to get from him. A predictable re-working of the past, competently done. As I keep saying, watching JJ Abrams is like gorging on cotton candy- it tastes good at the time, it's exactly what you expect, and afterwards you feel kind of ill.




No, it would have been rubbish either way.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> So I liked your comment, even though I disagree with it, because I like the POV.
> 
> That said, it was perfectly possible to stick a different landing. A landing from TLJ. Except that's not what JJ wanted to do. He wanted to hew to making as much fan service moments as possible, and to include as many homages to Return as he could. Basically, he wanted to pretend that the middle movie never existed, instead of building from it.
> 
> If any director OTHER than JJ Abrams had been given the task, I think we would have seen a very different movie. But at this point, we all know exactly what we are going to get from him. A predictable re-working of the past, competently done. As I keep saying, watching JJ Abrams is like gorging on cotton candy- it tastes good at the time, it's exactly what you expect, and afterwards you feel kind of ill.



Well, yes, if someone else had made the movie, it would be different.  That's not really arguable.  However, what in TLJ hooks into the resolution of the story?  Taking your questions above:

1. Rey isn't the daughter of someone special. What does that mean?
Nothing, really, as far as more story goes.  This doesn't provide a hook for more story, it resolves a story unless you do something to it that retcons a part of it.  Rey as nobody is cool as hell, but it's not good for much for further storytelling -- it doesn't hook.

2. How did that kid (and others) start becoming force sensitive?
I'd say that their existence is worth more, but really only if we're going to do a time skip to the point that the kids can be part of the story rather than background.  And, this doesn't offer more story, just more opportunity for story sometime later.  It's another open end that doesn't hook.

3. What about Finn and Rose?
A new romance angle hardly is a basis for a new episode.

4. Did Poe learn a valuable lesson from Holdo? How does that play into the next movie? 
Again, neat character note like Finn and Rose, but not what you hook a new episode on.

All and all, TLJ introduces a lot of interesting character things, but leaves the story largely in the same place it found it -- fewer resources, more pluck, but no change.  ESB left Han captured (clearly a good hook for the next) and fundamentally altered how Luke approached the Empire which leads to the big confrontation at the end of RotJ.  Even AofC does a great job of setting up future conflicts that didn't exist at the start of the movie.  TLJ doesn't do this.  Rey and Ren are still in conflict, just like at the beginning, just with some more wrinkles.  There's no change in the status quo anywhere that demands resolution in the last movie.  JJ faced the task of having to both create the problem to be solved and solving it in one movie.  While I full-throatedly agree that JJ is a bit hacky and his vision was a bit reductionist and par for his course, he wasn't left with a better option.  I'd be much more prone to criticism of tRoS if he'd been left with clear, strong hooks out of TLJ and then botched it.  As it is, he wasn't, so whatever he did was because he had to.  That you disagree with his vision is therefore just tastes rather than a failure in filmmaking.


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## Celebrim (Jan 7, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Um, you're clearly not terribly familiar with the story behind Ep4 and how the saving in edit was on the original theatrical release, not some special edition change later (which I'd argue didn't improve the movie).  Ep4 was a hot mess.




Which of the edits would you like to talk about?

I mean we're talking about a cut line here or there, three or four scenes moved forward of other scenes, slight changes in the ordering of dialogue, some interspersed scenes to clarify the action, and biggest of all Luke's original character introduction is cut. With IMO the exception of cutting the Biggs introduction, because in the final cut we first meet Biggs at the end of the movie, and only then are we asked to invest in the partnership between Luke and Biggs and feel something for his eventual death, this all works well, but the edit didn't save the movie as much as it polished it. 

Personally, I like to focus on the difference between the movie and the Alan Dean Foster novelization which is based on the mid-edit script treatment, but if you like we can focus on the difference between the presumed rough draft (with its place holder effects that I think are a big problem with the reaction to it) and the final draft, or really from any two points you want.


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## Imaculata (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Kylo Ren ... is ... the villain. He killed Han, He killed Luke. He killed Snoke. He leads the First Order. There is a lot of stuff you can do with that.




He wasn't supposed to be the main villain, clearly. Having him being in the gray (The Force Awakens already set up his struggle between dark and light) is a vastly more interesting angle than just him being the villain.



lowkey13 said:


> They wouldn't be caught dead doing this; besides, everyone knows that Tarantino is going to do Star Trek.




Which is a gamble I didn't expect them to make, but I think everyone is eager to see what he'll do with it.



lowkey13 said:


> But bringing back the Emperor ... look, it's JJ Abrams. You saw The Force Awakens. Look me in the eye and tell me that he wouldn't bring him back no matter what happened in the other movies? Heck, if he had his druthers, he would have set it up so that the third movie would have featured a second Star Killer base.




I will look you in the eyes right now, and tell you that I honestly think that JJ intended for Snoke to be the main villain throughout all 3 movies. The insertion of the emperor into the plot, was a change made out of desperation. As for a 2nd Star Killer Base, that would be incredibly dumb, so yeah.. that checks out, I could totally see that happening. Heck, we could have still gotten the massive fleet of Star Destroyers anyway, or some really far fetched time travel plot (the default for hack Hollywood writers). But I don't believe the emperor was ever meant to be in the final movie.



Celebrim said:


> Which of the edits would you like to talk about?




He might be referring to this:

How Star Wars was saved in the edit


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## ART! (Jan 7, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Yet, pretty much the entire community likes 'The Mandalorian'.
> 
> The Star Wars universe is vast with complex stores that have been told over thousands of years featuring hundreds of cultures. I suspect you don't really know "the star wars universe people know and love". There was probably more material to start from than was in the Marvel universe.




_The Mandalorian_ has a simplicity to it that's very..."cozy" isn't quite the right word, but you don't have to worry about being overwhelmed or getting lost when watching it. It's connected to continuity, but it doesn't expect you to know much. It's very down-to-earth.

JJ's SW movies care almost too much about forward momentum, to the point that something Very Important is _always_ happening. To some degree that's just the nature of movies vs tv series - for whatever reason, film-makers/studios think the movies "have to be" about something big, huge, earth-shattering, galaxy-threatening, and lose sight of the personal stories or even just the personal needs of people who want to enjoy themselves without being overwhelmed.

If you count novels, comics, and video games, you're right about the scope of the SW universe, but of course most people know nothing about all that.



Imaculata said:


> But that just proves my point doesn't it? What is there in the Mandalorian that is actually new?
> The Mandalorian also recycles old ideas from the original trilogy. You've got your Stormtroopers, Tie Fighters, Sand People, Jawa's, Mandalorians (obviously) and Baby Yoda. Heck, they even revisit Tatooine. That is the problem with Star Wars. You can't do something actually new, or it no longer resembles Star Wars. So they will keep recycling the same old ideas till we're all bored of it.




This kind of begs the question: is there something inherently appealing about the OT's approach to things, setting aside nostalgia and familiarity? Has SW been around so long that rusty ships, the sound of TIE fighters, beasts of burden on desert planets, et al have a warm familiarity to enough people to keep a franchise going? Is there something _inherently_ attractive about enough of these SW tropes to keep a franchise based on those going?



Celebrim said:


> You realize that there are like 20 different force using cults other than the Jedi and the Sith, right?




I think it's safe to say the vast majority of people ever likely to sit down and watch a Star Wars thing (let alone read a book or comic) are not aware of this.



Bawylie said:


> If you could, would you hop in the time machine and give Disney a mulligan? Show them the final product and say, “this is the mark to beat”?
> 
> Or are you good with what we’ve got?




Clearly, we could come up with what-ifs until the sun dies, so no, I'm good with what we've got. If I had a time machine and a magic wand, I'd probably have Leia not be Luke's sister, and after ROTJ Luke would go searching for his sister, but I'm not assuming that would yield better results.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> But those two, combined, are a major hook in the final episode. Before, we've mainly seen the force as the province of bloodlines (either Skywalkers or midiclorians); this is where Kylo Ren, for example, gets his power.
> 
> Now, we are seeing something genuinely new. And that's the basis for the finale. And for the future. What happened with the force? Does force-ghost Luke explain this to Rey? Do we see her begin to train new Jedis at the end? And so on?



Huh? We saw lots of Jedi in the prequels with zero mention of bloodlines.  I don't see where you get this.

And, sure, as I noted a future generation is neat, but it diesn't address at all the current issues and requires a time jump to explore -- something an action trilogy can ill afford.

The rest is just flavor, as I noted, and nothing on which to base a final volume of a trilogy.  Sure, it would have been nice to have seen it explored, but the fact that you had to bith create a final confrontation and solve it leaves little room for such exploration. Although, no argument that JJ would be a poor chouce for such exploration even if Rain had handed him a solid hook.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## Ovinomancer (Jan 7, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> So, this is explicit in the original trilogy. Luke is the son of Darth Vader. Leia is Luke's sister (the other hope). Remember, "The Force is strong with my family."
> 
> In the new prequels, you get the whole, "midichlorians." What we know about them is the following:
> 1. Unevenly distributed. That's what makes some people more powerful with the force.
> ...



I think I wasn't clear.  My statement wasn't that there wasn't any bloodlines, but that there exist many force sensitives not attached to a bloodline.  All of the Jedi in the PT, for instance, or, even more ckearly, Luke's other students that either were killed by Kylo or joined him as the Knights of Ren.  It seems odd these others would be bloodline dependent, especially after the Emperorer's highly effective Purge.

So, having more potential Force users is interesting, but not new.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 7, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> To the OP:
> 
> Firstly, I've enjoyed the movies, so there's not a lot structurally I'd change.  That said, while it's my favorite film of the sequels, TLJ is also the weak link as far as the trilogy goes.  This is primarily because it doesn't significantly alter the story overall.  Plucky, short-on-resources heroes against overwhelming war machine is pretty much the start and end of the film, just with fewer resources and more pluck at the end.  It needs a game change moment, like Vader/Luke in ESB or even the introduction of the clones in AotC so that the overall story can progress in a different way. (Vader's revelation in ESB changed the story from defeat the Empire to save Vader and defeat the Empire, for example.)
> 
> ...



This seems really a pretty clever little twist. It still wouldn't be my favorite possible Star Wars continuation, but it seems something that could really be done with a few reshoots and post. You really pointed out the one more objective flaw of TLJ (stuff like "Jake Sykwalker" and what else is always also personal preference) - the situation at the end of TLJ is the same at the beginning, just with some little number tweaks. 
By the way, ESB didn't just bring the whole Vader is Luke's father thing in - it also put in a very concrete "next step" for the characters - we need to find a way to save Han. "We need to free X" sounds like a good thing.

But I think Rise needs more changes, too, then, because Kylo Ren's role as in a "flux" state as not the leader he presumable wanted to become, and a potential subordinate to Palpatine really needs more fleshing out. But maybe that just can't be done in the alloted run time, and still tell the rest of the story.

I think Rise could actually benefit from keeping Rey the "nobody" Kylo claims she is. It is the variable that Palpatine did not plan for - The Force Awakened, and it created Rey (and maybe Finn). Rey will avert Ren's total corruption to the Dark Side and Palpatine's will, and Finn might turn the Storm Troopers around - a Reverse Order 66, maybe his latent force abilities allow him to disrupt their mental conditioning, just as he overcame his own. (So, both Rey and Finn end up as being force avatars for freedom.)


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 7, 2020)

Kylo Ren does not really work as the main villain. Not because he doesn't do horrible things like killing Han. But Vader killed Obi Wan and helped blow up a planet, too. Still he was the guy that was supposedly redeemed at the end of Episode VI. 

Kylo Ren doesn't work so great as villain because he is constantly described as conflicted, and we actually see some of it, his weird ambition. In The Last Jedi, we even learn what situation put him over to the Dark Side and Snoke - Luke almost killed him. He has far too much back story and complexity to be the villain in a Star Wars movie. He lacks the clear ambition and lust for power, he is searching for something, and he doesn't even quite know yet what it is. 
He isn't a Thanos that knows exactly what he wants to do, or a Palpatine that has already forseen his victory and knows what he needs to do to accomplish it.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 7, 2020)

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## dragoner (Jan 8, 2020)

dragoner said:


> How about spinning it that Rey and Kylo get together to rule, and due to her greater power, throws Kylo aside as a weak little man to become the sole Empress: Blood for the Blood Queen.
> 
> Rey in a red gown and black lipstick, and with a wave of her hand, legions lay waste to entire worlds...




I mentioned this to my 15 year old niece after we saw Rise of Skywalker, and she thought it would have made the series more interesting.


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## Imaculata (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Again, bringing back the Emperor is the worst idea, because it retroactively vitiates Vader's sacrifice.




It doesn't undo what Vader did. That emperor is still dead. Rise of Skywalker says that the real emperor has had many clones over the years, all of which apparently have his same powers and are just as bad. It's a dumb plot, but I don't think that makes Vader's sacrifice have any less meaning.


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## Ovinomancer (Jan 8, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> It doesn't undo what Vader did. That emperor is still dead. Rise of Skywalker says that the real emperor has had many clones over the years, all of which apparently have his same powers and are just as bad. It's a dumb plot, but I don't think that makes Vader's sacrifice have any less meaning.



Did we watch different movies?  I recall no such statements.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## Eltab (Jan 8, 2020)

Rather than resurrect Emperor Palpatine or use a clone, I would use a 'droid AI that has been extensively programmed to copy how he thinks.  Make appearances like Ep 1 where you only see Sidious as a cloaked figure in a hologram.  Palpatine looked into the future extensively and could give the droid AI the records of all that, and an action plan to implement.
Why should Artoo be the only droid that is practically human?  
In addition, Artoo can enable the Heroes' victory by scrambling the AI or shutting down vital equipment it controls (such as the hologram), trapping it unable to interact with the rest of the world.  R2-D2 was able to reprogram the Falcon's sabotaged hyperdrive, this would be variation on a theme.


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## Ovinomancer (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> That's the whole issue of heritable, but not hereditary. It's a bunch of mumbo jumbo, but it's why (for example) they made up some BS about the jedi not marrying in some thing or the other - no dynasties (not just no attachments).
> 
> So you can say that the force is like diarrhea; it runs in the genes.
> 
> Personally, I want my force to be less gross.



I... what?  Where the heck did you go, here.

You said force users are tied to bloodlines so it's a new thing that there are new force sensitives shown in TLJ.

I said, no there were plenty of Jedi before that were tied to bloodlines.

You took that to mean that I said there were no bloodlines, and held up the Skywalkers as proof of bloodlines existing, and also that the Force is heritable (something I didn't mention).

I said maybe I wasn't clear, but I was talking about the non-Skywalker Jedi, including the mentioned other students of Luke after RotJ alongside Ben Solo that Ben Solo killed or recruited to be Knights of Ren.

You've responded with further discussion of heritability of the Force and said that you'd rather that it not be all inherited.

This is a very weird discussion.  Are you taking the piss?




> Well, the universe of the movies does seem awfully small when everyone important has to be related to a Skywalker or (now) a Palpatine. Not my cup of tea. YMMV.



Obi-Wan wasn't related to a Palpatine or Skywalker.

Mace Windu wasn't related to a Palpatine or Skywalker.

Yoda wasn't related to a Palpatine or Skywalker.

Count Dooku wasn't related to a Palpatine or Skywalker.

Qui-Gon Jin wasn't related to a Palpatine or Skywalker.

That's just the movies.  Get into the other canon space and you have Ezra, Kanan, Ashoka Tano, and a huge host of other force users not related to a Palpatine or Skywalker.


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## Imaculata (Jan 8, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Did we watch different movies?  I recall no such statements.




It is hinted at by the emperor himself (though perhaps not clearly explained). This means that both the emperor from RotJ and senator Palpatine would have been clones. But considering how busy the movie is, I'm not surprised many people missed it. At that point I think the majority of the audience is tuned out or only paying half attention.



lowkey13 said:


> The inclusion of the Emperor is unnecessary and manages to wreck the real trilogy.




Unnecessary? Absolutely. But the 'real trilogy' was already wrecked by the prequels, in which Anakin is an unlikable a-hole who murders children... unless you simply ignore those movies happened, in which case the original trilogy remains a timeless classic.

Bladerunner is also still a classic movie, despite the recent sequel now deciding that Deckard was a replicant all along, only because it was a popular fan theory (there's nothing in the original movie to indicate that this was the case).

John Carpenter's the Thing is also still an awesome movie, despite the awful CGI-filled prequel that we got a few years ago (which also introduced a lot of plot holes).

Those things don't affect me that much.


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## Wolfpack48 (Jan 8, 2020)

Eltab said:


> Rather than resurrect Emperor Palpatine or use a clone, I would use a 'droid AI that has been extensively programmed to copy how he thinks.  Make appearances like Ep 1 where you only see Sidious as a cloaked figure in a hologram.  Palpatine looked into the future extensively and could give the droid AI the records of all that, and an action plan to implement.
> Why should Artoo be the only droid that is practically human?
> In addition, Artoo can enable the Heroes' victory by scrambling the AI or shutting down vital equipment it controls (such as the hologram), trapping it unable to interact with the rest of the world.  R2-D2 was able to reprogram the Falcon's sabotaged hyperdrive, this would be variation on a theme.




A droid or AI villain might have been interesting. Leftover Empire tech that develops a mind of its own?


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## dragoner (Jan 8, 2020)

Wolfpack48 said:


> A droid or AI villain might have been interesting. Leftover Empire tech that develops a mind of its own?



Droid Apocalypse, that would be a thing.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## Ovinomancer (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Same point I’ve been making. If you do not understand it, further explanation will not help.
> 
> if you do not agree despite understanding, then that’s fine. You can argue about what constitutes new enough in the context of the last scene of TLJ with someone else.



I.. I'm... I'm the one just disagreeing with you?  It's not the lists of examples from the movies I provided that address your point directly?

Yeah, I have to go with taking the piss, as you're not a obtuse person.  Good one?


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## Ovinomancer (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Sometimes I wonder if I am sufficiently clear? I mean, is "You can argue ... with come else" unclear?
> 
> I mean, let me understand this … cuz I … maybe its me, maybe I’m a little messed up maybe. Is it because people think I'm funny?
> 
> ...



Oh, sorry, you had a conditional in there for what you appear to have intended as a plain statement, which is why it was unclear.  I didn't disagree despite understanding, so I responded.  Instead, I didn't understand how you could continue to assert a factually incorrect interpretation.  I will take you intended message, now that you've sufficiently clarified it.

As for funny... I'd have to say like a clown, yes.


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## Zardnaar (Jan 8, 2020)

Kylo can't be the main villain because they didn't develop him and they wrote Rey to be super Jedi Knight with no training.

You don't see Vader losing or whining in the 2st two movies.

A main problem the trilogy had was undermining the other characters to make Rey look good.

So you had to bring back Palpatine or have Kylo as a weak villain.

If they had put things in a different order, is Rey smacking down Kylo in part 3 not part 1, Snoke dying part 3.

Rey didn't need to be related to anyone but she needed a relationship but they didn't do much there. Reylo doesn't really work when you think about it.

 Rey could have been Luke's star pupil where she met Ben. She would have had a preestablished relationship with Kylo, already a Jedi Knight,  Luke doesn't come across as a failure etc.


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## Imaculata (Jan 8, 2020)

Zardnaar said:


> Kylo can't be the main villain because they didn't develop him and they wrote Rey to be super Jedi Knight with no training.




I think they developed Kylo enough, though it is mostly Driver's acting that is doing the heavy lifting. Him being beaten by Rey in the first movie I never had a problem with. In the following movies they kept incrementing her powers futher however, which is where they crossed a line.



Zardnaar said:


> You don't see Vader losing or whining in the 2st two movies.




Kylo Ren doesn't need to be a Vader clone. In fact, he shouldn't be. His conflicted nature and weakness is what makes him interesting as a character to me. His loss against Rey is the first step to changing him from an antagonist to a possible ally.



Zardnaar said:


> So you had to bring back Palpatine or have Kylo as a weak villain.




Kylo Ren's conflict was already set up in the first movie. I don't think he was meant to remain the main villain throughout the whole trilogy. But they shouldn't have killed off Snoke quite so early.



Zardnaar said:


> If they had put things in a different order, is Rey smacking down Kylo in part 3 not part 1, Snoke dying part 3.




They could have gone that way. But I thought that the idea that Rey was stronger with the force than Kylo was an interesting angle. I feel they could have explored the idea of her being some sort of anomaly within the force. A flux or divergence, instead of a direct child of a character we already know. I also like the idea that Rey is drawn to the dark side, where Kylo is drawn to the light side. There's an interesting dynamic there, which they kind of explored in The Last Jedi. If only they would have had a better pay off. But I guess that requires good writers.



Zardnaar said:


> Rey didn't need to be related to anyone but she needed a relationship but they didn't do much there. Reylo doesn't really work when you think about it.




Indeed she didn't need to be related to anyone. But when I think about it, their relationship is the most interesting angle to explore for their characters. They are both force sensitive and both being drawn to the other's side. It makes sense to explore a relationship that is somewhere in the gray. But I think The Last Jedi really missed a great opportunity to have both abandon their respective sides, instead of Kylo immediately returning to evil after their big team up battle.



Zardnaar said:


> Rey could have been Luke's star pupil where she met Ben. She would have had a preestablished relationship with Kylo, already a Jedi Knight,  Luke doesn't come across as a failure etc.




I'm not sure how I feel about Luke being a failure. On one hand I feel that all characters need new trials and tribulations. You can't have Luke being happy and successful, and you need a reason why he is living on a secluded island. But on the other, I feel The Last Jedi inserted things that didn't seem to fit his character.


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## Janx (Jan 8, 2020)

After much thought, I figured it out.  Here's the small thing I would change.  I would use AI to remove or mask any and all content talking about "what's wrong with Star Wars" so the rest of us can just watch the darn films.

More than half of the problem is people pointing out a supposed problem that the rest of us wouldn't notice.


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## GreyLord (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Just a brief comment on this- yes, I know this is going around. The "JJ Cut" will likely go down with the "Snyder Cut" in internet lore.
> 
> Except that there's much less reason to believe in the JJ Cut. It's bunkum. To borrow a pithy phrase I read elsewhere:
> 
> ...




From what I'm hearing, I think there is a JJ Cut.  This is also why Matt Smith didn't show up as he would have (Son of Mortis storyline from JJ, vs. the Kennedy mandated Palpatine storyline).

Various leakers that seemed to be accurate on their predictions of the this movie also seem to be indicating that this is a REAL thing.  

Whether we would actually ever get to see it...on the otherhand...that could be a never.

OR, if Disney really wants to get more money, release it (if they are able to have enough to actually make a cut that satisfies JJ).  I would guess they could garner at least another 100 million if they did that, if not more.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## ART! (Jan 8, 2020)

Let Rey, Finn, and Poe interact enough in VII to create a dynamic there, regardless of what paths they take in the VIII, so that when they come back together in IX it feels like a reunion. Some fans would complain that they're just copying Luke, Han, and Leia, but so what.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## ART! (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Great idea, but I don't know that Abrams would want to borrow from A New Hope.
> 
> /ducks



"borrow"?


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## doctorbadwolf (Jan 8, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> It is hinted at by the emperor himself (though perhaps not clearly explained). This means that both the emperor from RotJ and senator Palpatine would have been clones. But considering how busy the movie is, I'm not surprised many people missed it. At that point I think the majority of the audience is tuned out or only paying half attention.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The new Bladerunner is really, really, good.


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## Gradine (Jan 8, 2020)

I wouldn't change a thing about the movies themselves, imperfect as each of them are, but there's sure quite a few things about the _discourse _I'd take my magic wand to if I could.


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## dragoner (Jan 8, 2020)

Do we ever see Palpatine's spouse?


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## Imaculata (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> I'm going to quote Ridley Scott on this one, when asked if Deckard is a replicant:
> 
> "If you don't get it, you're a moron."
> 
> Ridley Scott is cantankerous about this movie for obvious reasons. I don't think people are morons for either thinking there is ambiguity, or even preferring that there be ambiguity, ESPECIALLY given the issues with the original theatrical release. But I also think that the quote encapsulates the director's feelings regarding the issue- Deckard is a replicant, and it was always meant to be clear, even if it wasn't spelled out in dialogue.




Yeah, Ridley Scott is saying that now. But only after people started floating their fan theory. I don't think Ridley Scott gave it any thought when he made the movie. People see what they want to see.



lowkey13 said:


> (If nothing else, the inclusion of the unicorn dream cuts off any possible alternate meanings).




You mean that scene that he recycled out of the fantasy movie Legend? I find it a bit hard to believe that a piece of footage that wasn't even shot specifically for Bladerunner, was some how an indication that Ridley Scott meant for Deckard to be a replicant all along.

But I don't want to derail this Star Wars thread into a Bladerunner discussion. My point was that even if you don't like a sequel or prequel to your favorite movie, that changes nothing about the movie that you like.


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## dragoner (Jan 8, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Not that I know of.




Imagine husband/father coming home one day after that fight with Windu: "Rough day at the office?" /shudder


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## lowkey13 (Jan 8, 2020)

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## generic (Jan 8, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Do we ever see Palpatine's spouse?



My headcanon is that Rey is a clone, created by Palpatine, but my guess is that the Senator sired some illegitimate children while he was in office.


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## dragoner (Jan 8, 2020)

Aebir-Toril said:


> My headcanon is that Rey is a clone, created by Palpatine ...



This is the safest route, for imagining things.


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## generic (Jan 9, 2020)

dragoner said:


> This is the safest route, for imagining things.



Probably, I mean, she could be Han Solo's grandmother from another great-granddaddy, in a universe of anarcho-communist Illithids, but sometimes, it's best not to let my imagination dash away completely.


----------



## Imaculata (Jan 9, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> You sure about that? At this point, I'd rather have my teeth extracted than deal with some of the Star Wars comments.




I share some of your sentiments. But I don't want to go against the original intention of the thread. I do however think you bring up some really good points. I'll leave it at that.



lowkey13 said:


> Yes .... ish. I mostly agree. Unfortunately, however, you cannot "unsee" some things. The knowledge of what you have seen, that experience, may color your experience when you go back to that which you enjoyed.




Well, I feel the Star Wars prequels did Darth Vader a huge disservice, but I still enjoy the original trilogy all the same.



lowkey13 said:


> But what about Ghostbusters 2? As much as I'd like to excise that from my brain, I always think about it when I see the ending of Ghostbusters (and not in a good way).  Or Highlander 2, a movie that so ruined the original that they had to ignore it moving forward.




I might be in the minority here, but I enjoyed Ghostbusters 2 just fine. It's certainly not as good as the original, but it has better effects and the same great humor that made me love the first movie. Highlander 2 was abysmal, but I can still enjoy Highlander 1 just fine.

A movie I really hated was Prometheus, the prequel to Alien. But as mind blowingly dumb as Prometheus was, I still love the movie Alien. I simply don't consider Prometheus and Covenant part of the original canon. I also ignore Alien 3 and 4, even though they are direct sequels. Raiders of the Lost Ark is still a fantastic movie, and my enjoyment of it is not lessened by the existence of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And so on.


----------



## dragoner (Jan 9, 2020)

Aebir-Toril said:


> Probably, I mean, she could be Han Solo's grandmother from another great-granddaddy, in a universe of anarcho-communist Illithids, but sometimes, it's best not to let my imagination dash away completely.




Contrarily, I often do think that's best, it's definitely where the best ideas for challenges to throw at players come from. So see, maybe Rey is where Han gets his big hands from, sort of like Blister in the Sun by Violent Femmes.


----------



## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jan 12, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> Again, bringing back the Emperor is the worst idea, because it retroactively vitiates Vader's sacrifice.



No argument here.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 12, 2020)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> No argument here.



Did Vader sacrifuce himself to kill the Emperor, or to save his son?  Was Luke unsaved because Palpatine lived?

Maybe I don't understand Anakin's sacrifice.


----------



## GreyLord (Jan 12, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Did Vader sacrifuce himself to kill the Emperor, or to save his son?  Was Luke unsaved because Palpatine lived?
> 
> Maybe I don't understand Anakin's sacrifice.




Maybe...not sure you do or don't.

According to some (not everyone, but a lot of people out there)...

Anakin's soul was redeemed to a degree and he was turned back to the light by saving his son.

However, the sacrifice to kill the Emperor was the fulfillment of the prophecy that Vader would restore balance to the force.  The Emperor and the dark side was a disruption of balance (the natural order of things being that the force was in balance already...and it was the dark side that brought imbalance).  Thus, by killing the Emperor and turning himself from the Darkside, as well as leaving no more Sith, he balanced the force and fulfilled the prophecy to bring balance to the force.

That was the entire point of the first six films.  In that light, the Disney Trilogy could be seen as invalidating George Lucas's entire storyline by bringing Palpatine back.


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## Imaculata (Jan 13, 2020)

GreyLord said:


> However, the sacrifice to kill the Emperor was the fulfillment of the prophecy that Vader would restore balance to the force.




That was introduced in the prequels. It was never about that in the original trilogy. It was all about Vader's move back to the light side of the force and saving Luke.


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## GreyLord (Jan 13, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> That was introduced in the prequels. It was never about that in the original trilogy. It was all about Vader's move back to the light side of the force and saving Luke.




Once again, depends on what you consider the storyline or not.

If you consider the creator's intent, the prequels would be part of the entire story.

Of course, if you discount the prequels and ONLY look at the Original Trilogy, it still is more than that.

Luke wasn't supposed to simply change his father to the Light side...that was Luke's belief that he could change his father, but that wasn't the intent of the original trilogy.

In the original trilogy it was a fairy tale of the good guys (rebellion) vs. the bad guys (evil empire).

In this, the entire intent was to defeat the empire, and like all nice fairy tales, that means you beat the big bad guy and everything else falls after you defeat him.  Thus, Luke wasn't supposed to just defeat his father, but defeat the emperor too.  In fact, defeating the emperor and the empire was the entire focus of that trilogy if you don't include the prequels.

If you just only look at the first movie, it was at least destroying the big bad evil super weapon that Darth Vader was on...not even turning Vader to the Light.  It was still defeating the Empire (at least in the destruction of the Death Star) after saving the princess from it.

Vader turning but not defeating the emperor or the empire (thus having the rebellion defeated or destroyed) kind of leaves that as a hollow unfulfilling trilogy.


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## Galandris (Jan 13, 2020)

What I got from the OT was that the consensus among Jedi was that sentiments were bad, and once you turned to the dark side there was no coming back, so Vader was no longer Luke's father. But, they were proved wrong by hot-headed Luke who showed them that sentiments were GOOD since it prompted Vader to return to the Light side not only because it would save his son from death but also because it would save his daughter from BEING TURNED into a Sith (since Palpatine decided to off Luke once he learnt about Leia) and that redemption was possible. 

The PT added the idea of balance in the force and Anakin being prophecized to remove the Sith, so it added to the story.

The ST added to the idea of being redeemed to the Light Side by sentiments, but neglected to take into account the development of the PT. It's like they built something to be a trilogy expanding on the OT (in a weird, 6-part film going 4-9) and not on a 9-part work.


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## Ovinomancer (Jan 13, 2020)

GreyLord said:


> Once again, depends on what you consider the storyline or not.
> 
> If you consider the creator's intent, the prequels would be part of the entire story.
> 
> ...



Only if Anakin was actually the prophesied chosen one.  Might have been Rey, or Ben Solo.  The actual prophecy wasn't revealed, just that one existed and it said mumble, mumble balance to the Force, oh and here's Anakin!


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## billd91 (Jan 13, 2020)

GreyLord said:


> If you consider the creator's intent, the prequels would be part of the entire story.




Pfft. Pure George Lucas revisionism there.


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## Imaculata (Jan 13, 2020)

GreyLord said:


> If you consider the creator's intent, the prequels would be part of the entire story.




I only consider the creators' (plural) original intent, not George Lucas' later revisionist intent. Whatever garbage George added to the mythology with his prequels later is irrelevant.

Everything you need to understand Vader's redemption is in Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi. His conflict, his turn and his redemption at the end by showing up as a force ghost (thus completing his step to the light side of the force).


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## ART! (Jan 13, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Do we ever see Palpatine's spouse?





Aebir-Toril said:


> My headcanon is that Rey is a clone, created by Palpatine, but my guess is that the Senator sired some illegitimate children while he was in office.




Or he just made kids using the Force, like he did Anakin - or so the theory goes. That's what I'm going with.


----------



## Anoth (Jan 13, 2020)

Well. It’s up to baby Yoda now to bring balance to the force and save the franchise. It will take another 50 years within the setting to do it. I just hope we still like him once he starts to talk. And if we don’t want to kill him once he becomes his races equivalent to a teenager.


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## GreyLord (Jan 13, 2020)

billd91 said:


> Pfft. Pure George Lucas revisionism there.




It may be.  I can see the idea that it very well could be.  There is some strong evidence out there that Lucas changed quite a number of things, added things, and mixed it up completely from when he first started and throughout the process.  He also has interviews where he would say one thing in one, and awhile later contradict himself by saying something the exact opposite.



Imaculata said:


> I only consider the creators' (plural) original intent, not George Lucas' later revisionist intent. Whatever garbage George added to the mythology with his prequels later is irrelevant.
> 
> Everything you need to understand Vader's redemption is in Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi. His conflict, his turn and his redemption at the end by showing up as a force ghost (thus completing his step to the light side of the force).




As I said first, many...but not all have the idea I posted first.

Ironically, the post you responded to (the second post on the topic) was NOT really about the prequels, only posting it as beginning option.  A Majority of the rest of it was explaining how Vader's redemption isn't actually the central theme of the Original trilogy without the prequels being tossed into the mix.  In fact, it's a secondary theme that is not even introduced in the first movie.

As, I also pointed out, your idea is actually NOT what the trilogy is about either, or the main theme that was presented from the first one onwards.  It is a secondary theme that is presented (or...is that revisionist as well???) in the Empire Strikes Back. (edit: though even that is a tenuous stretch as we are merely introduced to the idea that He is Luke's Father...the real idea of trying to redeem him doesn't even really appear until the THIRD movie).

The initial theme is the good guys fighting the bad guys and winning...or the Rebellion against the Big Bad Empire.

The goal  was that the Rebellion would triumph over the Empire.  Only Luke really cared about the personal storyline of Vader, the rest of the cast and the story was more about the struggles of the good guys overall against the forces of the Empire.

With that, Vader had to be defeated at some point of the Trilogy (being the main Villain introduced at the beginning of it) and the Emperor most likely as well.  Whether it is by Vader turning, being killed, or however, is irrelevant to the overall picture.  It is only that he and his forces of evil are defeated by the good guys in the fairy tale land that Star Wars takes place in.


----------



## Anoth (Jan 13, 2020)

It was a desperate ploy because they needed a badass villain at the last minute after screwing up the last 2 movies. Bringing the emperor back was not part of some grand plan with story build up it was just like hey Superman is here now and lex luthor is behind it. Or like a scooby doo episode where they unmask the villain at the end of the episode.


----------



## ART! (Jan 13, 2020)

More R2-D2.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 13, 2020)

ART! said:


> More R2-D2.



THIS was the great failing of the sequels.  Well spotted.


----------



## Zardnaar (Jan 13, 2020)

ART! said:


> More R2-D2.




 King of All droids although HK 47 is competitive.


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## Imaculata (Jan 13, 2020)

GreyLord said:


> A Majority of the rest of it was explaining how Vader's redemption isn't actually the central theme of the Original trilogy without the prequels being tossed into the mix.  In fact, it's a secondary theme that is not even introduced in the first movie.




But it is introduced in the second and third movie, which is why it IS a central theme of the trilogy. The first movie was a stand alone story which revolved merely about destroying the Deathstar and Luke starting on the path of becoming a Jedi. It wasn't until that movie was a big success, that they started working out a larger plot. But considering two thirds of the trilogy focuses on the relationship between Luke and Vader, that makes it a pretty central theme for me.



GreyLord said:


> As, I also pointed out, your idea is actually NOT what the trilogy is about either, or the main theme that was presented from the first one onwards.  It is a secondary theme that is presented (or...is that revisionist as well???) in the Empire Strikes Back. (edit: though even that is a tenuous stretch as we are merely introduced to the idea that He is Luke's Father...the real idea of trying to redeem him doesn't even really appear until the THIRD movie).




I am going to strongly disagree with you there. Once they started on Empire Strikes Back, they knew they were making a trilogy. So the seeds for Return of the Jedi's conflict were firmly planted in Empire. True, Empire mostly contains Vader's revelation at the end. But to ignore everything leading up to that as not a part of the bigger picture seems like a big mistake to me.



GreyLord said:


> With that, Vader had to be defeated at some point of the Trilogy (being the main Villain introduced at the beginning of it) and the Emperor most likely as well.  Whether it is by Vader turning, being killed, or however, is irrelevant to the overall picture.  It is only that he and his forces of evil are defeated by the good guys in the fairy tale land that Star Wars takes place in.




If you're going to try and summarize the main plot of the original trilogy in that way, you can't just swipe the main story of the central character aside as if it is irrelevant. We see most of the story of Star Wars through Luke. Return of the Jedi would not end on the final shot of the force ghosts if it was irrelevant. In the end, we're following Luke's journey from humble farm boy to Jedi knight. Vader's redemption is a central part of that.


----------



## GreyLord (Jan 13, 2020)

Imaculata said:


> But it is introduced in the second and third movie, which is why it IS a central theme of the trilogy. The first movie was a stand alone story which revolved merely about destroying the Deathstar and Luke starting on the path of becoming a Jedi. It wasn't until that movie was a big success, that they started working out a larger plot. But considering two thirds of the trilogy focuses on the relationship between Luke and Vader, that makes it a pretty central theme for me.




And yet, you are the one that are wanting to ignore the other three movies by George Lucas???

Or, even, ignore the themes of the trilogy as a whole for the OT??

Really...



> I am going to strongly disagree with you there. Once they started on Empire Strikes Back, they knew they were making a trilogy. So the seeds for Return of the Jedi's conflict were firmly planted in Empire. True, Empire mostly contains Vader's revelation at the end. But to ignore everything leading up to that as not a part of the bigger picture seems like a big mistake to me.




We can either look at the Trilogy as it starts out (without the revisionism...in which case this is NOT a theme of the original movie, or even the second movie.  We have a revelation at the end of the Second movie which does NOT say he is going to be redeemed or not...in fact, he's been the villain the entire time up until then)...or we can look at all the stuff that Lucas put in.

The original trilogy didn't have Vader being redeemed as a real theme until the last movie.  At that point, it was still the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys...and Vader is a very bad guy.



> If you're going to try and summarize the main plot of the original trilogy in that way, you can't just swipe the main story of the central character aside as if it is irrelevant. We see most of the story of Star Wars through Luke. Return of the Jedi would not end on the final shot of the force ghosts if it was irrelevant. In the end, we're following Luke's journey from humble farm boy to Jedi knight. Vader's redemption is a central part of that.




What do you mean?

I'm not swiping away the main story.  The main story is the same story line and idea as well as theme that extends from the first to the third movie of the Original Trilogy...not an idea introduced at the end of the Second movie and becomes a part of the ideas of the third.  It is a MAIN theme of the third movie, but not the entire trilogy.

The only way to see Vader being redeemed to Anakin as a main theme is to include the prequels.

Otherwise, it's the story of the Rebels vs. the Empire first and foremost (we don't even meet Luke until a fifth of the way through the first movie).  Secondly, it's about Luke's journey from a boy to a man (first in the first movie of a boy to a hero, and then his becoming more mature from that movie onwards). 

Vader's redemption is NOT central to his becoming a Man or a Jedi per se.  He only had to face Vader.  It BECOMES more of a theme in the third movie, but we see a whole lot of growth up until then.

NOW IF, we include the prequels (which for some reason, you WANT to use them for their themes...but don't want to include them which is...ironic)...you are absolutely correct.

But prior to the prequels...Vader's redemption is not actually  necessary to the story.  If you take out his entire redemption arc but still have him and the Emperor defeated in some manner Luke has still made the journey from Boy to Man...and the Rebellion still wins that fight.

Anyways, I'm not sure why I'm even discussing this.  I started giving an explanation of how some people (and not even necessarily my thoughts or views) would see it as an explanation and instead am being drawn into a conversation I really didn't have an real deep interest in, in the first place.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]


----------



## Imaculata (Jan 14, 2020)

GreyLord said:


> And yet, you are the one that are wanting to ignore the other three movies by George Lucas???
> Or, even, ignore the themes of the trilogy as a whole for the OT??




We all know that most of this was not planned in advance. The whole idea of Anakin bringing balance to the force was introduced in the prequels and pasted on top of the redemption that Vader got in Return of the Jedi. And almost everything in the prequels is terrible, so yeah, I'm ignoring them. They are not part of the original trilogy's intent.

Now there's a discussion that could be had here regarding author intent and death of the author. In other words, how sometimes author intent is rejected by the audience, because it is not in line with the original intent of the author. A good example of this are some of the absurd changes J.K. Rowling made to Harry Potter's Lore. One would think that with her being the original author, she would have the final say on matters of lore regarding her own book series. But the idea of death of the author suggests that the audience can simply reject revisionist ideas by the author and stick to the original work. This certainly applies to George Lucas and his prequels in my opinion. I no longer consider his revisionist ideas canon in regards to the original trilogy. In fact, George Lucas barely knows the lore of his own series and I doubt he understands some of the more complex themes that were introduced in Empire Strikes Back.

As a side note, this is an interesting video on the concept of Death of the Author.



GreyLord said:


> We have a revelation at the end of the Second movie which does NOT say he is going to be redeemed or not...in fact, he's been the villain the entire time up until then)...or we can look at all the stuff that Lucas put in.




I feel differently about it. I think Vader's revelation is part of the redemption plot that further developes in the third movie. The redemption wouldn't even be a thing if it weren't for the family connection between Vader and Luke. As such I definitely see the events in Empire Strikes Back as part of that plot.



GreyLord said:


> The only way to see Vader being redeemed to Anakin as a main theme is to include the prequels.




That is absurd. Vader was redeemed at the end of Return of the Jedi even when the prequels did not exist yet. It forms the conclusion of Luke's journey, and the movie closes on it of all things!



GreyLord said:


> Otherwise, it's the story of the Rebels vs. the Empire first and foremost (we don't even meet Luke until a fifth of the way through the first movie).




Well that depends how you look at it. Sure, the galactic conflict forms the central plot. But some may disagree with you that it is the main focus of the movie, in the sense that maybe it is all about the journey of the characters, and the war is just the backdrop. But that is wide open to viewer interpretation, I'll admit.



GreyLord said:


> Secondly, it's about Luke's journey from a boy to a man (first in the first movie of a boy to a hero, and then his becoming more mature from that movie onwards).




Yes, this certainly is one of Luke's most important character arcs. But his connection to Vader is an important part of that journey. Empire explores this idea with Luke's failure in the cave as Yoda is testing him.



GreyLord said:


> Vader's redemption is NOT central to his becoming a Man or a Jedi per se.  He only had to face Vader.  It BECOMES more of a theme in the third movie, but we see a whole lot of growth up until then.




It is true that Luke grows a lot as a character regardless of his confrontation with Vader. But Vader is a central element in the conclusion of his character arc. His ability to let go of his hate and see the humanity in his father, ultimately leading to Vader's move to the light side. And I feel this is one of the things that the cave scene in Empire sets up. Of course the movie leaves it ambiguous on purpose, so its all up to viewer interpretation.



GreyLord said:


> NOW IF, we include the prequels (which for some reason, you WANT to use them for their themes...but don't want to include them which is...ironic)...you are absolutely correct.




Lets be clear here, I do not want to use the prequels for their themes or for anything. Vader's redemption exists perfectly without them.



GreyLord said:


> But prior to the prequels...Vader's redemption is not actually  necessary to the story.  If you take out his entire redemption arc but still have him and the Emperor defeated in some manner Luke has still made the journey from Boy to Man...and the Rebellion still wins that fight.




See, this is where I disagree the most with you. Luke's journey from boy to man is already complete at the start of Return of the Jedi where we see him as a Jedi with a lot of powers he didn't have before. He is more confident and independent. To me, the galactic conflict is but the backdrop to the journey of the characters.



GreyLord said:


> Anyways, I'm not sure why I'm even discussing this.  I started giving an explanation of how some people (and not even necessarily my thoughts or views) would see it as an explanation and instead am being drawn into a conversation I really didn't have an real deep interest in, in the first place.




Well hey, we don't need to have this particular discussion if you don't want to.


----------



## Eltab (Jan 15, 2020)

Vader's "I am your father" sets Luke on a whole different trajectory.  Prior to that, Luke thought he was going to one-on-one the monster to avenge his fallen parent and slain mentor.  Then he has to come up with a more subtle kind of victory.  I believe that when Luke tells Ben's force ghost "I can't kill my own father" that he had visions of Uncle Owen swimming before his eyes.


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## Longspeak (Jan 15, 2020)

The Force Awakens - I like this movie as-is for the most part. Yes, it's basically a remake of SW, but there was lots to love here. But there's some nitpicks...

More Max Von Sydow. I mean, really, you hire a legend like that and kill him in the first scene?
Edit out Finn's lines about Rey having a "boyfriend, cute boyfriend?" and all the one-sided romance with her.
Edit _*in*_ all of that for Po. Or just amp up the BBF vibe. One of my favorite things about this movie was they way they instantly bonded over their escape.
When Han and Chewie first appear, Han says "We're home, Chewie," and Chewie growls. Edit in Han responding with something like, "No, it always smelled like that."
Edit out the "Who's the girl" nonsense, or edit in something to explain why everyone thinks she's familiar.
Edit the subtitles in the bar scene. The woman who looks so obviously evil is Resistance and the droid is a Bounty Hunter. Just because I hate looking at someone and going "Oh, they're definitely evil."
Lay some hint at Rey's identity, probably with Maz.
Keep it cagey about who Kylo Ren is. Maybe not explain that until the moment Han goes "The face of my _son." _Let the audience learn it when Rey and Finn hear it.
Make StarKiller a little less comic-bookey. A laser that fires across the galaxy and blast multiple planets and it instantly visible from everywhere? What?
Some discussion of who Snoke is and where he comes from. Actually, perhaps a teeny bit more exposition on the whole Republic vs' First Order thing. A bit more than we get in the Opening Crawl.
The Last Jedi - I like this movie a lot, but it has more I'd want to fix.

I LOVE Po's ridiculous "I'm holding for General Hugs?" exchange. It's tone is off, but I like the attitude. "Can-- Can he hear me?"
Po's not a frickin' idiot. Have him acknowledge the cost of that victory. Maybe it was worth it to get so many out alive, but have him acknowledge the sacrifice more.
Have Holdo explain or at least reassure. We've just lost our leader, and the sub isn't telling anyone anything, and it looks like we're on a slow, inevitable death march. Maybe say something.
Eliminate the Rose/Finn hints at romance (because Po/Finn!). OR leave those hints in and then don't wuss out in the next movie, disney! (But really, Po&Finn).
Canto Blight... make it maybe not completely pointless. The entire subplot seems without purpose beyond "look at these evul rich people! Let's wreck it!"
A line or two to explain why we don't _constantly launch remote piloted X-Wings as hyperspace missiles_ at heavy targets. Why didn't we do that in the beginning of the movie?!? Think of the lives we'd have saved! Why didn't the rebels do it to the death star in SW? Or RotJ?
Don't show us Luke's feet on the red salt. Made it a complete giveaway.
NO-ONE answers the resistance's call? Really? NO-ONE??? How about "We've heard back, but help is too far away to get here in time." "Tell them to stay away, then, no point in sacrificing more lives." "They say if we can get to them they can take us to safety..." Something more than just silence from the entire galaxy. I'd even settle for "Damn! The transmitter was damaged and we can't send a signal!"
I overall like Luke's reluctance, and the three versions of the Luke/Ben story. But I don't like how Rey immediately believes Ben to the point of attacking Luke when he won't talk. She watched as Ben murdered his own father. Maybe she senses conflict in him, but maybe don't immediately assume he's being truthful. "Ben has a different version of events Master Skywalker." "Of course," he realizes. "That's what it would have looked like from his view..." and then the third version of the story comes out, with Luke's shameful admission of his moment of doubt.
Luke riding Rey's back while she does something. Pushup, maybe. (I loved that one picture from the shoot where Mark Hamil is Yoda-ing on Daisey Ridley's back.
More discussion of Snoke. Maybe he's a clone of Palpatine, one that... had problems. SOMETHING. This coming from nowhere is annoying.
There's probably more.

And for The Rise of Skywalker, I've only seen it once, but the thing that glared for me right off the back, like many was the sudden, out of left field, mention of Palpatine. That needed to have groundwork laid in the first two movies, and then worked up to in the third.

Where the hell did this Final Order Fleet come from? It's gotta take years to build one of those, and there were thousands.

Either Po/Finn or Finn/Ruby. This deal where disney cowards shoved Ruby in a corner because of Internet Trolls was gross, and I despise the people who made that happen. I thought the romance was poorly scripted and unmotivated, but the reasons for quashing it make me want it back, times ten. Like a whole scene of them macking on each other while on the screen flashes "SCREW YOU INTERNET TROLLS THIS IS HAPPENING! IT'S CANON!"

But... really... Po/Finn.

There's definitely more for all three, especially TRoS. But I need to see TRoS again.


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## Imaculata (Jan 16, 2020)

Longspeak said:


> More Max Von Sydow. I mean, really, you hire a legend like that and kill him in the first scene?




Talk about an underused legend. Yeah, they definitely could have done a lot more with him.



Longspeak said:


> Eliminate the Rose/Finn hints at romance (because Po/Finn!). OR leave those hints in and then don't wuss out in the next movie, disney! (But really, Po&Finn).




I agree that Rose wasn't needed as a love interest. I get that maybe JJ and Disney did not have a romance in mind between Poe and Finn, which is fine. But they could have done so much more with their friendship.



Longspeak said:


> NO-ONE answers the resistance's call? Really? NO-ONE??? How about "We've heard back, but help is too far away to get here in time." "Tell them to stay away, then, no point in sacrificing more lives." "They say if we can get to them they can take us to safety..." Something more than just silence from the entire galaxy. I'd even settle for "Damn! The transmitter was damaged and we can't send a signal!"




This is why I think it would have made so much more sense to have Finn head to Canto Bight to activate a transmitter and call for help. Canto Bight could be occupied by the empire, but an ex Stormtrooper would be able to sneak through.


----------



## Wolf72 (Feb 3, 2020)

Longspeak said:


> The Force Awakens - I like this movie as-is for the most part. Yes, it's basically a remake of SW, but there was lots to love here. But there's some nitpicks...
> 
> (to many to requote!)




I all of those!  I think more character development and less lightspeed skipping would have been better.


----------



## Umbran (Feb 4, 2020)

Longspeak said:


> The Last Jedi - I like this movie a lot, but it has more I'd want to fix.
> 
> Have Holdo explain or at least reassure. We've just lost our leader, and the sub isn't telling anyone anything, and it looks like we're on a slow, inevitable death march. Maybe say something.




This.  Good gods, people, sitting silent on your plans and asking for unwavering, unquestioning loyalty is _stupid_ for a military leader!  Poe was one of her leading subordinates.  There is no reason why she should not have made him aware of the plan.



> A line or two to explain why we don't _constantly launch remote piloted X-Wings as hyperspace missiles_ at heavy targets. Why didn't we do that in the beginning of the movie?!? Think of the lives we'd have saved! Why didn't the rebels do it to the death star in SW? Or RotJ?




Also agreed.  Honestly, why aren't hyperspace missiles a thing?  Why was this a thing about hyperdrive, and not just a _ramming speed!_ thing?



> Don't show us Luke's feet on the red salt. Made it a complete giveaway.




I disagree that this is a problem.  Giving it away is the point!  Giving the audience a way to figure it out just before the big reveal makes the audience feel cool!

I got it based on his beard color, but that's just the three-clue-rule in action.



> More discussion of Snoke. Maybe he's a clone of Palpatine, one that... had problems. SOMETHING. This coming from nowhere is annoying.




Well, that gets answered, eventually.  I don't think he needed an explanation - We went decades without an explanation of the Emperor, and we were fine with that.  Snoke's a guy strong in the Dark Side.  Done.  So I don't care exactly where they put it.

For Rise of Skywalker...

Putting together a huge fleet... where each ship is equivalent to the Death Star, but faster! - and nobody has noticed?  Doesn't make a lot of sense.  I can imagine ways this can be handled*, but it wasn't handled at all.

I think the Ben/Rey kiss at the end was not a great choice.




*F'rinstance - imagine Starkiller Base was really a red herring.  The fleet was made with resources diverted from that project. You probably need a couple lines in TFA, and then a link in Rise, and you're done.


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## billd91 (Feb 4, 2020)

Umbran said:


> This.  Good gods, people, sitting silent on your plans and asking for unwavering, unquestioning loyalty is _stupid_ for a military leader!  Poe was one of her leading subordinates.  There is no reason why she should not have made him aware of the plan.




Except for the fact that's he's a loose cannon who can't be trusted to sit on his hands, you mean? When he, Finn, and Rose figured out how the First Order was tracking them through hyperspace and hatched their plan, did he put it up the chain of command? For all Holdo and Leia knew, there was a leak (if not an outright traitor) and Poe (and any other junior officers) might be the leak and he does enough shady, questionable stuff to indicate his discretion and self-control might not be high quality.
I might agree that telling the crew *something* was under way and not just an inevitably futile run might have been prudent. But details? I can see a reluctance to share the secret plan.


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## Umbran (Feb 4, 2020)

billd91 said:


> Except for the fact that's he's a loose cannon who can't be trusted to sit on his hands, you mean?




Right.  And _not_ telling him what was going on worked _soooooo_ much better! {/sarcasm}


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## Guang (Feb 5, 2020)

A bit off topic, but.....

I've often wished for something like this for the Hobbit movies. Cut out all the silly slapstick and tighten it back up into the nail-biting fun adventure it should have been.


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## Morrus (Feb 5, 2020)

Umbran said:


> This.  Good gods, people, sitting silent on your plans and asking for unwavering, unquestioning loyalty is _stupid_ for a military leader!  Poe was one of her leading subordinates.  There is no reason why she should not have made him aware of the plan.




I can't remember it exactly, but if I were to tell anybody my plans, it probably wouldn't be Commander Insubordinately Disobeys Orders And Just Got Demoted And Might Even Be The Spy. I find her lack of patience with Poe to be pretty understandable.



> Also agreed.  Honestly, why aren't hyperspace missiles a thing?  Why was this a thing about hyperdrive, and not just a _ramming speed!_ thing?




Yeah, I agree that's definitely an issue with most sci-fi -- it basically breaks the genre (as do most laws of physics).  I think you just have to buy into the fact that the chosen aesthetic WW2 planes in space, acting like they're not in space. Star Trek is just as silly, in different ways.


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## Umbran (Feb 5, 2020)

Morrus said:


> Yeah, I agree that's definitely an issue with most sci-fi -- it basically breaks the genre (as do most laws of physics). I think you just have to buy into the fact that the chosen aesthetic WW2 planes in space, acting like they're not in space. Star Trek is just as silly, in different ways.




Oh, that's not what I mean at all.  It has nothing to do with the laws of physics, and everything to do with _internal consistency_.

If using hyperdrive was going to be particularly effective... why have we not seen that tactic ever before?  In all the desperate moments in al the movies, not once.  The hyperdrive has existed for... _thousands of years_ in the Star Wars universe, and Holdo is the first person to think of firing up the hyperdrive to ram something? Really?

Why didn't they just point a bunch of hyperdrive ships (or just rocks with hyperdrives attached) at the Death Star and let fly?  Why all this nonsense about hitting a 2-meter port, when you could whollop the tar out of the thing by slamming hyperdrive-driven masses at it? 

I have no problem with how the ships fly.  I don't have a problem with planet-wrecking weapons.  I have a problem with the supposedly new and shocking technique having been ready at hand through seven other movies and a ton of other content, but not used or discussed.


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## Morrus (Feb 5, 2020)

Umbran said:


> If using hyperdrive was going to be particularly effective... why have we not seen that tactic ever before?  In all the desperate moments in al the movies, not once.  The hyperdrive has existed for... _thousands of years_ in the Star Wars universe, and Holdo is the first person to think of firing up the hyperdrive to ram something? Really?



Well, we know the actual answer to that - Rian Johnson was the first director to think of it. And JJ Abrams retconned it away again as only working one time in a million in the latest film.


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## Umbran (Feb 5, 2020)

Morrus said:


> Well, we know the actual answer to that - Rian Johnson was the first director to think of it.




I am not sure if this is supposed to be some sort of excuse, or something.

Johnson made one of the more common mistakes of blockbusters - reaching for a cool FX shot, but having the in-story excuse for it contradict the already established narrative.



> And JJ Abrams retconned it away again as only working one time in a million in the latest film.




Thus compounding the stupid, and making Holdo's move worse.

They had already determined that you can jump to hyperdrive _through_ a solid object without damaging it - as Solo jumps the Falcon out of a cargo bay, and through planetary shields (which, if they paste ships flying into them, are "solid" for our purposes).

So, that one in a million shot - what happens the other 999,999 times?  Half of them, she jumps too late, and it is just a ram.  The other half... she jumps too early, and _misses her target entirely_? 

If Abrams is to believed, Holdo thought a 50% chance to miss her target and run away into hyperspace leaving her people behind was an acceptable choice.  So, no, I don't consider that an acceptable response to the issue.


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## Morrus (Feb 5, 2020)

Umbran said:


> I am not sure if this is supposed to be some sort of excuse, or something.




It's not. I don't feel the need to make excuses for millionaire filmmakers. I'm just saying that's what happened.

I agree. It's a rubbish reason. But it is the reason.


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## Longspeak (Feb 5, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I can't remember it exactly, but if I were to tell anybody my plans, it probably wouldn't be Commander Insubordinately Disobeys Orders And Just Got Demoted And Might Even Be The Spy. I find her lack of patience with Poe to be pretty understandable.



How about telling _someone_? Sure, Poe kinda had his head up his butt. Or even say, "Hey, I'm a Vice Admiral. I did that cool thing you mentioned earlier. Trust that I have an actual plan, okay?" Or, "Until we know how they're tracking us in Hyperspace, I have to assume someone it a spy and I'm keeping my plans to myself."

And yeah, someone said upthread they could also have told Holdo about their idea. So I guess there's plenty of stupid to go around.

You know... I re-watched _Brick_ the other day. So I know Rian Johnson knows how to make a solid movie. And like I said, I still _liked_ this movie. But it could have been crafted better.


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## Morrus (Feb 5, 2020)

Longspeak said:


> How about telling _someone_? Sure, Poe kinda had his head up his butt. Or even say, "Hey, I'm a Vice Admiral. I did that cool thing you mentioned earlier. Trust that I have an actual plan, okay?" Or, "Until we know how they're tracking us in Hyperspace, I have to assume someone it a spy and I'm keeping my plans to myself."
> 
> And yeah, someone said upthread they could also have told Holdo about their idea. So I guess there's plenty of stupid to go around.
> 
> You know... I re-watched _Brick_ the other day. So I know Rian Johnson knows how to make a solid movie. And like I said, I still _liked_ this movie. But it could have been crafted better.



I think this really just comes down to a single line in the movie. I know that until I saw the backlash against this particular issue, when I left the movie my now impression was very much your "Until we know how they're tracking us in Hyperspace, I have to assume someone it a spy and I'm keeping my plans to myself" version. It wasn't till I washed it again that I realized she didn't say that explicitly; but it was still the impression I had come away with. I also assumed some people did know of her plans; it was just us (the audience) and Poe who didn't.


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## Zardnaar (Feb 7, 2020)

Umbran said:


> I am not sure if this is supposed to be some sort of excuse, or something.
> 
> Johnson made one of the more common mistakes of blockbusters - reaching for a cool FX shot, but having the in-story excuse for it contradict the already established narrative.
> 
> ...




 Well they turned the force into magic and space Jesus raising the dead.

 Hyperspace skips as well. 

 Problem being any future Jedi is either going to be weaker or has to do more stupid stuff in order to compete.


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## GreyLord (Feb 7, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I can't remember it exactly, but if I were to tell anybody my plans, it probably wouldn't be Commander Insubordinately Disobeys Orders And Just Got Demoted And Might Even Be The Spy. I find her lack of patience with Poe to be pretty understandable.




The irony behind this is that if Poe hadn't destroyed the Dreadnaught, the chase would have been over before it began.  There would have been no '18 hours' (which is absolutely ridiculous for the course of a movie, it should have been something like a week or several days, especially with how much time they spent travelling to that gambling planet and the events that occurred there as well as Rey's training where we see what appears to be MORE than 18 hours pass) of 2d space chase...

IT would have been, Dreadnaught appears, Dreadnaught blasts the rest of the fleet to dust very quickly.

Any admiral worth their salt (actually, not just an admiral, any OFFICER period...and admiral who doesn't realize it isn't really an admiral but maybe in imposter or some civilian movie maker who has no idea of tactics, strategy, or military at all...even fictional warfare) would realize that Poe in that act basically saved the entire resistance from extinction.  If he was a spy...he would not have done that.

In addition, if I remember the film (been a while)...

What's worse is that the technician behind the ability to cloak had SO LITTLE FAITH in Holdo...who was supposedly relying heavily on that technician's science...that the technician mutinied right along with everyone else.  She could have at least informed the technician of the plan since the technician already knew the tech to a degree and was crucial to it's secrecy in being successful in the first place.

The Last Jedi overall is more complete than the other trilogies films in that it doesn't leave hanging questions or answers as much or unresolved threads (a complaint some have had with it being the second movie in a trilogy), which means it's a better film overall...but it has some pretty bad stuff for a Star Wars film that in context of Star Wars really don't make a ton of sense to me (once again, the biggest issue currently for me regarding TLJ with it's take on adventure for me was...a 2d chase in space over the course of 18 hours...)


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