Synopsis:

From IMDB: The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once again.

Intentions:

Star Wars is, as a lot of people know, is what began fan editing. The Phantom Edit, at least reading about, I’m pretty sure was my gateway into editing as well. But throughout my editing “career” I never really did anything with the mainline Star Wars movies. I did do an edit of The Clone Wars theatrical movie to turn it back into three of the four episodes it was constructed from. Normally this is the part of the post where I would tell you to go check it out, but I don’t think it’s available anywhere right now. Just as well. It wasn’t that good. I had sort of an unofficial personal policy that I wouldn’t do a Star Wars edit. After all, anything that could be done with those films has mostly already been done, and in most cases, better than I could have done it. And then Rise of Skywalker came out. I won’t say I hated it, though I definitely didn’t love it (but I also adore The Last Jedi so take that as you will). A lot of it felt like Disney and Abrams hitting ctrl+z on a lot of things the previous film did.

Change List:

- New title and crawl: Star Wars: Episode IX: From The Ashes. The first couple lines of the crawl describe the new status quo, namely that the Resistance is growing again and that Leia Organa has died. Also added a detail about which planet Kylo Ren is on at the beginning of the film. It bears no real relevance to the sequence or the film as a whole, but it is a nice little nod for fans. - Re-arranged some of Palpatine’s dialogue as Kylo is exploring the temple. He still says he “made” Snoke, but the shots of the Snoke parts in the vats are gone, and it’s meant to be taken more figuratively. - During the escape after getting the message from Boolio, Finn doesn’t question Poe about lightspeed skipping. Poe is a hotshot pilot (and now general) who is essentially a fugitive at this point in time. Of course Poe knows how to do that. - During the chase on Pasanaa, the characters no longer remark about stormtroopers being able to fly. Jetpacks and aerial troopers have been a part of the world for thousands of (in universe) years. This should not be new to anyone. - A few slight trims and shot re-arrangements to the TIE Whisper coming at Rey in the desert, mostly to aid in the flow of the sequence. - Chewie’s survival is kept secret a bit longer, cutting the sequence on the star destroyer immediately after Pasanaa. The audience doesn’t know he’s alive until Rey and company know. I don’t like fake-out deaths, and while I couldn’t completely get rid of this, this felt like a good compromise. - Made some trims and re-arrangements to Zorii and Poe’s conversation on Kijimi to aid the flow. - Cut Poe yelling “I knew it!” when Hux reveals himself as the mole. Sir, you did not know that as far as we know. - Heavily edited the hangar sequence when Kylo confronts Rey. Her “lineage” is no longer discussed, and it is left at Palpatine wants her dead because of how powerful she will become. The inconsistency of Palpatine saying the entire movie that he wants her dead only to pull a 180 in the finale is one thing I wasn’t able to get rid of. Head canon says that he told Kylo that knowing that he wouldn’t actually kill Rey, although Palpatine apparently has no knowledge of the Force Dyad until the finale. - Because Leia was cut, the ending of the fight on the Death Star II wreckage is a bit different: Rey now Force Pulls (with a sound effect sourced from Jedi Academy) Kylo’s lightsaber to stab him. - The scene where Pryde is ordered to destroy a “world they know” and the actual destruction of Kijimi has been split up and plays out around Ben being visited by the memory of his father. - Luke no longer talks about how he was wrong for going into hiding and mentions of Leia knowing about Rey’s “lineage.” - Cuts and trims have been made to the final battle above and on the ground of Exegol to aid the flow of the sequence. Something I could have cut but decided to keep was Ben saying “ow” when he jumps and lands on the chain to descend into the temple. I laugh every time. - Zorii and Babu Frik no longer appear during the Battle of Exegol. They died on Kijimi. Lando's "there are more of us" is still a callback to what she said to Poe earlier, but it's a sentiment share by many. - Ben and Rey no longer kiss. Clearly they are happy to see each other, and maaaaaaybe their look hints at more, but he dies before anything else can happen. - Rey no longer says she’s “Rey Skywalker” when asked who she is in the final scene. She simply says nothing when asked “Rey who?” and instead looks at the ghosts of Luke and Leia before looking at the binary sunset (maybe she should be wearing Rey Bans? Yeah, I didn’t think the joke was the good either). - Added a dedication to Peter Mayhew during the end credits. He had passed away not long before Rise of Skywalker was released theatrically, and IMO there was no reason not to honor him.

Additional Notes:

This is a “Rey Nobody” edit where, you guessed it, Rey stays a nobody throughout the film. She doesn’t adopt the Skywalker surname. She is not Palpatine’s granddaughter (I understand how the relationship works in canon, but still: yuck). I really liked how The Last Jedi was beginning to build the idea that anybody could be a hero, you didn’t need special blood or anything of that sort to be, well, special. Then this film came out and “well ahcktually”-d the idea. I won’t mention every instance where this was cut (as I more or less don’t remember where every single cut was) but rest assured all discussion of this has been removed. The other major change that I made to the film as a whole was to remove Leia. It’s very sad that Carrie Fisher died when and how she did, but the fact remained that when she did the filmmakers had two choices: write her character out or recast. They chose using deleted footage from The Force Awakens as a middle ground. It didn’t work for me, and excising the character was fairly easy. She’s only mentioned a few times after she would have died in the film and the flashback with Luke on the last night of her Jedi training.