You wouldn't know, but I just posted a re-edit of Disney Star Wars on Bitchute; cleverly named and numbered for this year.
If I have your interest at all, I'd appreciate you watching before reading on.
I set myself apart from Disney in the opening crawl. Since the Force Awakens we have been presented with a rogue state with an eerie resemblance to the Empire and contrived explanations after the fact of why the new Republic would tolerate their presence as the First Order conquers the galaxy practically off screen.
So I thought the answer was obvious and cutting to the chase.
Say it's the original Empire.
We unload a lot of baggage with this except for the fact that our heroes were celebrating at the end of Return of the Jedi. The celebration couldn't have been premature? The EU has the Republic fighting imperial holdouts for years to come.
What if the Empire simply didn't falter?
But why? The Emperor is dead.
Ah, but there in lies a story (and you've been bad if you're still reading without having watched the movie). Don't worry, I'm not about to resurrect Palpatine like JJ.
One of my core principles in approaching this re-edit was that there was a story to be told here, but it was being presented in completely the wrong order.
On the other hand, they clearly weren't thinking of me and so what I wanted to accomplish had to be done with very thin sinew in some places. Part of the reason I am making posts like this at all is because I want to hear from you if the patient lives.
I made a more fundamental change to the story than even the Empire surviving. Rey is now Luke Skywalker's last surviving apprentice from Kylo Ren's massacre. I establish early on that she and Ben had a relationship before he turned to the dark side. Thereby, to my mind, any sign of lingering affections (almost none) is now wishful thinking for what might have been as opposed to creating the Reylos after running Han Solo through.
Now this reveal that they knew each other (flashbacks) created a new tool in my arsenal that I wasn't counting on when I started all this. Because I start out with them sitting around the fire, and most of her flashback scenes with Luke take place at sunset, I decided that the past would be tinged orange.
On the subject of coloring the footage, in a later scene I have Rey and Fin talking and due to the change in plot I needed a new exit from the scene. I settled on a fade to black when the Falcon's lights go out. Good so far, but how do I come back?
Here Fin reveals who he is. My edit avoids the will-he-won't-he-tell-her subplot. He comes out with it, but because I changed the scene I ended up with a montage showing his life in the Empire.
But because I decided there wasn't enough contrast from fading to black to enter this sequence and fading to black to leave again I ended up experimenting with black and white. Let me tell you if you didn't watch, Lightsabers in black and white are cool.
The upshot is black and white became my shorthand for when you are seeing someone's thoughts, but they aren't exactly memories.
I didn't know how important this tool would become.
Maybe if I went back to do it again I'd be tempted to show people's thoughts more often because as the edit stands you won't see anyone's thoughts until the Fin and Rey scene, but then that idea picks up after that. It was a great way to overcome some visual hurdles while changing the context of a conversation.
Now for those of you who remember Fin in his medical bay, I changed that to be how the Empire keeps their Stormtroopers on Star Destroyers and I retained the Force Awakens' assertion that the First Order inducts kids for Stormtroopers. I regard this as an opportunity to depict how completely the Empire would control people's lives if left uncontested.
Through Fin, we now know the Stormtroopers are in stasis between assignments and thus limited on downtime to think about what they're doing. The key moment then is when Fin wakes prematurely, which immediately precedes him being sent down to the village; and serves to explain why everything is so surreal to him (as opposed to the original explanation that it was his first battle).
He promptly runs away from it all and encounters Rey out in the desert as opposed to getting hit with a stick. This is actually one of the weaker parts of the edit. (I tried to composite out the background around the Falcon, but I'm not that good yet.)
This choice also harms Fin and Poe's relationship, which was one of the highlights for me from the Force Awakens, but I don't like Fin getting hit with the staff.
To sum up some of what happens with Rey from here on: she receives guidance from Luke and turns out to be adept at "the Cosmic Force," but lags behind as an apprentice in more physical Force powers, which leaves her vulnerable to Kylo Ren.
For any Kotor fans out there, I think she's a Jedi Sentinel.
Therefore, the crux of my movie is that Rey is a Force-imbued detective (why is the Empire still around?) who as a matter of fact finds multiple opportunities to reject her destiny and has to get back on course throughout the movie; and yet by the end it seems like it couldn't have ended any other way... I hope.
Serious Spoiler For The Edit Ahead
Ok?
Luke is dead. I did this in light of not caring for how they treated the character in Last Jedi and so Rey's character is now mourning his loss, which feeds into her attempting to reject her destiny.
Luke willingly sacrifices himself and I thought this could serve as an interesting story point that Luke could do the most Jedi thing and trust in the Force, but Rey as an immature Jedi feels betrayed by it.
So it's not an exact analogue to how I feel about how Disney treated Luke, but then I wouldn't want it to be. I want a real story here.
That said, I'm ambivalent about choosing to kill Luke and my final ending to the movie. I think it's what I had to do, but I'm not sure if I like it.
In any case I'm rather confident that I put more thought into my movie than Disney ever did with their Star Wars. But the real question is if you watched, did you enjoy it?
By all means let me know.
