How would you change the new Star Wars trilogy

[Celebrim]

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.

 

[Imaculata]

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.

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.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

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.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

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.

 

[Zardnaar]

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

 

[Son of the Serpent]

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.

 

[Ryujin]

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

 

[Morrus]

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.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

 

[Ryujin]

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.