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Star Wars: The Last Skywalker Awakens (a sequel trilogy 3-in-1 megacut)

Going to be making a series of posts discussing my work in this edit to try drum up some interest while it's in review. First up:

The Battle of Crait

This sequence acts as the beginning of the end of our story's second act, as opposed to the third act of a feature. As such, I pared back significantly the discussion and set up around the Rebel base and the First Order's assault. Like many family adventure films, the Star Wars sequels tend to repeat exposition several times in order to make sure the audience gets what's going on, however, Johnson's direction and shot choice throughout these scenes do quite a lot of heavy lifting in conveying the geography and stakes of what's happening. A few key lines also mop up any confusion: instead of a long exchange about the canon's "Death Star tech", Rose (in this an unnamed Resistance fighter like many others) simply says "That is a big gun." Fairly straightforward.

Instead of Finn being saved by "Rose", his attempted martyrdom ties in to the rest of this chapter's themes: the cost and repercussions of failure (borrowed with permission from Poppasketti's TLJ: Rekindled over at originaltrilogy.com.)

As well as these changes, I intercut the Falcon's fight against the TIE fighters with the Resistance speeders approaching the FO for a more fast-paced edit.

Have a watch for yourself:

 
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Attack on the Jakku Village

The opening scenes from TFA have been slimmed down to provide a more fast-paced and mysterious opening of our story. Firstly, we stay with the First Order stormtroopers and their perspective as they attack the Church of the Force's village on Jakku. Two shots from the very first TFA teaser trailer were used to heighten this subjectivity, one of their guns being raised and readied, and one from inside the ship as it opens and the stormtroopers flood out.

Mirroring
A New Hope, the first we see of our hero Poe is when he gives his droid something for safe keeping. We've skipped past his and Lor San Tekka's opening exposition about beginning to "make things right", as we've all the information we need from the opening crawl. We find out about the map and who Poe got it from as Kylo does.

With permission from and thanks to originaltrilogy.com's NeverarGreat, the shot where Kylo's lightsaber could already be seen ignited just out of frame before striking down San Tekka has been cropped and fixed.

Additionally, instead of leaving the first comedic beat between Poe and Kylo silent, we hear the sound of his force mind-reading powers at work as we do throughout the rest of the trilogy. This not only leaves Poe's characterization in this scene intact, but the beat is played as less of a joke and helps to convey Kylo Ren's absolute power and make him more menacing to the audience.

 
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Escape from Jakku

Today's post focusses on Finn's journey through the desert after rescuing Poe, Finn and Rey meeting for the first time, and the pair's subsequent escape from Jakku.

First off, some creative editing was used to remove the extended sequence of the TIE fighter exploding in the desert. I felt that at this point of the film, the audience needs some breathing room and a break from the constant explosions of the past few minutes, especially before the Falcon takes flight. Also, leaving Poe's fate more ambiguous telegraphs his return later in the film a bit less.

Instead, Finn now awakens in the desert clutching Poe's jacket and is left to wander alone until he comes across Niima Outpost. The audio was almost entirely recreated from scratch for this small scene.


Not much else has been done to Finn and Rey's first meeting, other than the removal of Finn's repeated whispering insistence of "I am with the Resistance". Once is enough, and it helps undersell his deception to both Rey and the audience.



Now, to the meat of it: the 16:9 IMAX version of the Falcon's escape from Jakku. This was painstakingly recreated by and used with permission from adywan and DylanValenti at originaltrilogy.com. An HDTV source was used where the rest of the film had been cropped down to 16:9, except for this sequence, where extra frame information was used from the IMAX source. This low-quality source was then upscaled using information from the Bluray to create a seamless HD version. You can see the amount of extra information in the frame here:

SW:TFA screenshot (from Disney+)
Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-1-23-23-PM-2.png


SW:TLSA screenshot
Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-1-21-45-PM-2.png


After the aspect ratio changes, there is only one significant change I've made: removing the extended crane shot and music cue at the Falcon's reveal. I always felt that was a gratuitous moment of fan service, and anyone watching who does not have prior knowledge of this ship's significance, the same as our protagonists at this stage, would be rightly confused. Playing this moment flatly serves two functions: as a quiet easter egg for the audience that is aready familiar with Star Wars, as well as a greater pay off when the theme comes in full as Rey 'goes low'. Sometimes withholding things from the audience can be a good thing...

See this beat here:






Finally, as the last shot of the 16:9 source is different to the shot where the Falcon enters hyperspace (borrowed with thanks from Hal9000's The Force Awakens Restructured) I created a bespoke transition back to a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, blending the two shots as the Falcon soars across the frame:


This whole sequence is one of my favourite in the sequel trilogy and was a delight to be able to restore as much of the wonderful work that went into it as possible. Thanks for reading!
 
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I am very impressed. This is a very intelligent way to attract interest to your edit while you wait for approval. Unapproved faneditors would be wise to consider the same type of approach.
 
Kylo's Vision

Here I've made a relatively straightforward change, one which aims to make the connection between Palpatine/Kylo/Vader much sooner and more explicitly than in the theatrical trilogy. As he prays to Vader's helmet, he is granted a brief vision of the Sith Eternal temple on Exegol. Something, it's implied, that he's done many times before.

This moment acts as both a true reveal of Kylo Ren's parentage (in this edit, Snoke's rather blunt line "in the hands of your father, Han solo" has been cut), as well as a hint that Kylo senses something larger at work beyond his grandfather's spirit, a great and dark power he believes he is being led toward. It helps to establish Palpatine's long-game manipulation and to heighten the drama of this moment with the re-arranged music and dialogue.

In terms of the technical aspects, cutting up the dialogue and replacing the music was straightforward enough. Then came the bespoke sound design, as well as slowing down the final shot of Vader's helmet to fit better with the new musical cue. Vader's breathing sound has now been lightly mixed with Palpatine's beastly scream from Revenge of the Sith for added effect.


 
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Rey Meets Luke

The ending of TFA has been edited seamlessly with Rey's first scene in TLJ, the two now comprising a single continuous scene that sees us into this story's second act.

To begin, I went through and give the Ach-To scenes from TFA a subtle color retiming to match better with the footage from TLJ (which itself has been heavily retimed, more on that in another post). Exposure and saturation have been brought down as well as the soft blue hues of my TLJ retiming brought forward:



SW:TFA

Screen-Shot-2022-03-01-at-11-36-21-AM.png


SW:TLSA
Screen-Shot-2022-03-01-at-11-35-42-AM.png


As Rey finally confronts Luke after her journey up the island, she pulls his lightsaber from her satchel and extends it to him in a silent plea. Here, the music from both scenes fades into one another and the 'Ach-To theme' carries us through the emotional beat. Underneath this, I've placed a pitch-tuned sample of Luke's lightsaber that acts as the both as a bass pedal-note for the music, and a non-diegetic echo, possibly from Luke's memories. Wind, saber-rattling and cloth foley have all been recreated from scratch for this sequence.

As the strings start up again over a plodding celeste, we see Luke's internal struggle at being confronted by his dark past. This cuts straight to a wide shot of Rey approaching him from TLJ, then back to Rey as she hands him the saber.

I have re-done the timing on the music synchronization of the following beat where Luke tosses the saber behind him, the crescendo landing on Rey's shocked reaction rather than the act itself. This was done not so much to soften the comedic timing of the beat, but to ensure that it leads better into the following wipe transition back to the Resistance fleet. We leave the scene with unanswered questions, not a "what" as at the end of TFA, but a "why".

 
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Battle on the Death Star II (re-scored)

(Full disclosure, since the beginning of 2020 I have been virtually housebound the entire time thanks to the pandemic and this project has been an enormous mental respite for me. Now that it's "done" I'm finding it difficult to fill that anhedonic void, so this series of retrospective posts is also serving as a stopgap until I find something else to work on in a similarly obsessive fashion. Thanks for bearing with me.)

This whole scene has had several changes made, some subtle, others more fundamental. The most immediately noticeable is the use of the cue 'A Jedi's Fury' from Return of the Jedi laid under Rey and Kylo's fight. What was remarkable when I first hit upon this as I was auditioning different cues that might work for this scene, is that it required barely any manipulation to sync with a lot of the big moments.

I've slightly trimmed Finn's desperate pleas and cropped one reaction shot of him and Jannah as Kylo leaps after Rey to keep the focus on the action and the tension between the two main characters, and a very small amount of trimming and fading on the actual track, but other than that everything lined up almost perfectly with what was in the theatrical.


The use of 'A Jedi's Fury' here echoes battle fought by Rey and Kylo's forebears on the same machine years ago, and the choirs and low bassy drums mix perfectly with the swelling and crashing of the waves. The arrangement of Palpatine's theme also now takes on a new context given the revelation about Rey's lineage as she gives in to her rage. I've used some light EQ to bring up the higher frequencies in the music as these older tracks are usually quite top-light and I was having trouble distinguishing some of the notes over the hissing of the waves.




The other major change, which might be hard to convey in a still image, is the Skywalker saber crackling and spitting in a similar fashion to Kylo Ren's.

saber.png


This was borrowed from VFX work done painstakingly by OT.com member Luka Frik for Hal's TRoS: Ascendant. In that version, the saber crackles consistently throughout the film and is implied to be a result of Rey's repair job on the hilt after it was split. In my edit, however, this only occurs after Rey's confrontation with her shadow-self inside the Emperor's vault. The crackling reflects her own inner turmoil at this point in the story, and the saber is then "healed" as it passes through the force and into a redeemed Ben Solo's hands, continuing the saber's function as a mirror for their own journeys.

All of the crackling lightsaber sound effects were sourced, hand-placed and mixed by me throughout this scene (and the brief appearance of the crackling blade on Exegol before the above fight) which was a really interesting challenge. Much of it involved following the existing saber noises, as well as studying how the sound designers approached Kylo's saber crackle noises.

Overall I think the music and the distorted Skywalker saber serve to heighten this climactic lightsaber fight, one that's become a favorite of mine in the series.

 
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Holy crap that’s seamless…!
 

Pasaana Showdown (re-scored)


Another scene from TRoS re-scored. My initial instinct was to leave some room here for the sound effects and the scene to speak without music, as there are many such scenes throughout Star Wars (Qui-Gon and Maul's fight until Qui-Gon's death, Vader and Luke's duel in the carbonite freezing room). Unfortunately, it just never felt like enough is being said by the scene on its own. So I began auditioning snippets from cues that might be appropriate, until I hit upon this statement of Rey's theme in 'The Ways of the Force' from Kylo and Rey's fight in TFA, which felt like another nice mirroring (the sequels re-use music a LOT).

Originally I had used parts from 'The Cave' from TLJ underscoring the build up to "the jump", but I felt that some space was necessary to leave a bit of ambiguity in the scene (what's he trying to do? what's she going to do about it?).

Shots from the first teaser were used to extend this scene a bit (theatrically there is only one shot of Rey holding the saber from behind, when she iginites it). Like many others' edits of this scene, I have also cut Kylo's TIE pod exploding dramatically.

The last little bit I added was a lightsaber retraction sound as Rey stands up (lightsaber sounds are missing/very low all over TRoS which I always found distracting).


 
Holdo's Sacrifice

Surprisingly, despite my initial apprehensions about it, this was one of the more simple edits to implement of the whole thing. Because of the rapidly intercut nature of this moment in the theatrical, Finn and Rose's parts were easy to excise, and as the music follows the cuts fairly closely, it sync's up nicely. The duality of this scene trimmed down to just Holdo and Rey/Kylo resonates with what's happening in the latter scene quite nicely.

The only real tricky part was recreating the audio from the shot of the escaping Resistance ships floating toward Crait, up until we're back on the Supremacy throne room. I reconstructed the music and the ship VFX (repurposed here and implied to be Snoke's escape ship with Rey aboard, instead of Finn and Rose's shuttle) from scratch, and added a low scream from Rey as she and Kylo are blown back from the saber near the scene's climax as her silent scream always bothered me a bit int he theatrical.

 
Journey to Exegol

Bridging the gap between TLJ and TRoS is a sudden cut from the Falcon entering hyperspace to a shot of Vader's helmet, unearthed and prayed to one more by Kylo Ren. It's implied through editing that this is relatively contemporaneous with the ending of TLJ, as our heroes reconvene with their new found family, the villain rages alone.

Building off of several edited-in hints at Palpatine's presence throughout the story to this point, this sequence acts as a final call to Kylo from Palpatine, a "bringing in from the cold" as spy films would have it. Praying to Vader's helmet once more, Ren is led to Mustafar in search of Vader's wayfinder, visiting the leftover anger at his defeat on Crait upon the Sith worshippers around Vader's castle. VFX shots of the TIEs flying over Mustafar's black tree forest, and of Vader's castle in the background as Kylo lifts the wayfinder (by poppasketti and Movies Remastered, respectively) help to reinforce this sense of place.

All sounds up until we see Kylo Ren on Mustafar were rebuilt, and several musical cues from TRoS were used to make this scene: 'Prologue', 'Prisoner' and 'Journey to Exegol'.

 
This edit is very near completion. Five reviewers (four esteemed and award winning editors, along with myself) have settled on the suggested changes that will make this a definitive epic Star Wars Sequel Trilogy edit.

Just a few corrections from bbghost and @Wraith working his generous magic on the end credits. Special thanks to all who have been involved with bbghost and myself in perfecting this edit.

@Wraith
@spence
@INIGHTMARES
@DigModiFicaTion

And early reviewer

@TinyBreadMouse

Those who were going to review it and dissappeared.

@InfoDroid
@ranger613

It's been a journey.
 
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