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Fired Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow confirms leaked script, concept art for Episode IX.

Posted: 2020-01-26 10:13pm
by The Romulan Republic
https://screenrant.com/star-wars-9-coli ... confirmed/
Colin Trevorrow confirms the Star Wars 9 original script leaks. While J.J. Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker has its fair share of supporters, its mixed reception led to an increased interest in what the movie could have been when Trevorrow was still onboard as director. Earlier this month, details about his script (which was called Duel of the Fates) made their way online, painting a very different picture when compared to Rise of Skywalker. The general feeling is Duel of the Fates was a more proper Last Jedi sequel, and some believe it would have been a better movie than Rise of Skywalker.

Reading about what Trevorrow had in mind was fascinating enough, but more recently fans got an opportunity to see what his Duel of the Fates could have looked like with concept art of scenes such as Kylo Ren battling his Darth Vader hallucination, Rey wielding a double-bladed lightsaber, and the epic Battle of Coruscant. At the time, it was unknown if the images were actually from Duel of the Fates development, but now Trevorrow has gone ahead and confirmed that indeed they are.

Responding to a fan's question on Twitter, Trevorrow said the artwork making the rounds online is from his Star Wars 9. Though, he did clarify that R2-D2 didn't die during the Battle of Coruscant; the fan-favorite astromech was only severely damaged. Take a look at his post in the space below:

Yes, this is from Duel of the Fates. But Iā€™d never kill R2...he just took a bad hit. Happens to all of us. https://t.co/ekGMRUdV2g

ā€” Colin Trevorrow (@colintrevorrow) January 24, 2020
It's refreshing to see Trevorrow be open and transparent about Star Wars 9 (he even uses the Duel of the Fates title here), giving the leaks definite legitimacy. The director's been quick to debunk reports and speculation regarding his version of the film before (see: his denial leaked Rise of Skywalker concept art was from Duel of the Fates), so audiences know he's a trustworthy source on this subject. Trevorrow publicly discussing Duel of the Fates evokes Zack Snyder continuing to share images of Justice League's Snyder Cut. Obviously, Star Wars 9 and Justice League isn't entirely an apples-to-apples comparison, but there are some notable parallels between the two projects. And in both instances, viewers are left wondering if the scrapped version would have been better than what was officially released.

Trevorrow's probably limited in what he can talk about regarding Duel of the Fates, so it'll be interesting to see if anything else comes out at a later date. While the director does come out as a winner in all of this, it frankly wouldn't do him (or anyone else associated with Star Wars 9) much good to keep harping on the past. And missing out on Duel of the Fates didn't set Trevorrow's career back much, as he quickly picked up the Jurassic World 3 gig afterwards. He'll be focusing on that for the foreseeable future, but Star Wars fans would love to learn more about what happened on Duel of the Fates.
So, thoughts on this? Right off the bat, I'm going to say that "Duel of the Fates" is a much better title than "Rise of Skywalker".

This article gives some more details on the Episode-IX-that-might-have-been:

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-9-rise ... jj-abrams/
Former director Colin Trevorrow's treatment for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has made its way online, and it sounds so much better than the one audiences got from J.J. Abrams. Originally hired to finish the sequel trilogy, Trevorrow was in the process of working on the film's script when it was announced in September 2017 that he exited the project due to creative differences with Lucasfilm. Not long after that when it was revealed that Abrams was returning to take on the mantle after he kicked off the ongoing story via Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015.

It would be an understatement to say that The Rise of Skywalker's filmmakers had their work cut out for them. Not only did the film need to be a satisfying culmination of the Skywalker saga, but it also had to work around the untimely death of Carrie Fisher, whose General Leia Organa was supposed to be a major focus of the movie. Plus, it needed to wrap up the sequel trilogy's story revolving around Rey, Kylo Ren, Finn, and Poe Dameron.

Fast forward to 2019, Abrams' Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was met with divisive response from the public for a string of different reasons. And with the leak of Trevorrow's unused script for Star Wars: Episode IX, comparing it to what's officially canon, is inevitable. Based on what's been revealed thus far, it also sounds like a better story than what we got on the big screen.

A version of Trevorrow's script leaked online (and has been confirmed by various outlets), giving fans a sense of what his plans were for Star Wars 9 before his departure from the project. The most recent version of the treatment was finished just after Fisher's death in December 2016, explaining why there's not much about Leia in the story. Titled "Duel of the Fates," the script has several key differences from The Rise of Skywalker, including giving Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) a proper arc. She joins Finn (John Boyega), C-3PO, and R2-D2 for an adventure of heir own - going to Coruscant in the hopes of recruiting more allies to the Resistance.

Another glaring difference is the handling of Rey's (Daisy Ridley) lineage, who is not a Palpatine in this version of the story. While the story did include Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), his appearance was only through a holocron that Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) discovered, setting off his path through the whole movie. Kylo Ren's story arc panned out very differently as he gets entangled with Tor Valum - a 7,000-year-old ghoul who apparently trained Darth Sidious. In the end, he wasn't redeemed, although he also suffered the same tragic fate. As the brainchild of Trevorrow, Duel of the Fates unsurprisingly also didn't include new Star Wars characters like Zori Bliss (Keri Russell) and the fan-favorite Babu Frik (voiced by Shirley Henderson).
So:

More Rose.

Rose and Finn trying to recruit more people to the Resistance.

Fucking Coruscant.

Rey is not a Palpatine.

Palpatine appears, but only as a hologram, though he's given a key role in Kylo's fall.

No Kylo redemption.

The film actually follows on from TLJ, rather than working systematically to undercut/retcon it.

Sounds good. On the downside, the whole Tor Valum thing seems weird. It sounds like its basically the "Darth Plageius is behind it all" fan theory, except inexplicably replacing Plageius with a brand-new character as Palpatine's mentor.

There's also really no entirely satisfactory answer to the Leia issue, but that's not the fault of the filmmakers, of course.

Re: Fired Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow confirms leaked script, concept art for Episode IX.

Posted: 2020-01-26 10:28pm
by FaxModem1
I like the idea of Finn and Rose instilling an uprising on Coruscant. It sounds like a logical conclusion for Canto Bight, and makes it a plot thread that goes somewhere, instead of, "Yep, slavery and war profiteers exist. That sucks."

Re: Fired Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow confirms leaked script, concept art for Episode IX.

Posted: 2020-01-26 10:34pm
by The Romulan Republic
FaxModem1 wrote: ā†‘2020-01-26 10:28pm I like the idea of Finn and Rose instilling an uprising on Coruscant. It sounds like a logical conclusion for Canto Bight, and makes it a plot thread that goes somewhere, instead of, "Yep, slavery and war profiteers exist. That sucks."
I think the point for Rose and Finn, narratively, and to Canto Bight, was to show the galaxy from the point of view of a random rank and file Rebel (Rose), to show why the cause was worth believing in, and to use that to further Finn's growth from a First Order Stormtrooper, to a frightened fugitive, to someone who cares about Rey and Poe but isn't really attached to the cause, and to finally bring his development to its conclusion, which was to become someone who is actually committed to the cause (the point of his cheesy "rebel scum" line to Phasma). And the logical next step from there is to have Finn and Rose try to spread the message, to have Finn pay it forward and try to recruit more people to believe in the cause the same way he was.

That this would have given Rose a bigger role, rather than marginalizing her, just makes it even better.

Edit: And whatever anyone thinks of TLJ, what would be the stronger approach for its sequel? To spend a film trying to undercut TLJ and excise it as much as possible from the franchise? Or to write a sequel which actually takes the previous film and elevates and strengthens it retroactively?

I always think very highly of films that actually manage to make a previous film stronger in retrospect. Infinity War did this with Captain America: Civil War, by showing the consequences to Cap's rebellion that the prior film skated over. Rogue One did that for A New Hope by showing just how much sacrifice went into getting those plans that save the day in A New Hope.

If the approach to RoS had been "how can we make TLJ work as well as possible", rather than "how can we minimize it/appease its haters", I think that would have been really impressive. And far more professional and respectful of Disney and Abrams to their professional colleagues.

Re: Fired Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow confirms leaked script, concept art for Episode IX.

Posted: 2020-01-28 10:30pm
by Vympel
No, Kylo still got a redemption in the Trevorrow version. It happens at his death. The leaks were elaborated on to make that clear.

Image

Despite TROS being a largely medicore misfire, at least everyone involved knew that any movie that ended with Ben dying unredeemed would be trash without any merit as a Star Wars movie whatsoever.

Re: Fired Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow confirms leaked script, concept art for Episode IX.

Posted: 2020-01-30 11:15pm
by Q99
I think there's good parts and bad parts on this one. Like I don't really like it's handling of the force or Tor Valum- which is basically the role of Palpatine we got but with less connection (and just make it Plageius if it's not going to be Palpatine, he's at least been mentioned in-series as someone seeking immortality!).

I don't know if I'd like this one any better. Maybe a third run picking parts from each would be good....

Re: Fired Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow confirms leaked script, concept art for Episode IX.

Posted: 2020-01-30 11:18pm
by The Romulan Republic
Q99 wrote: ā†‘2020-01-30 11:15pm I think there's good parts and bad parts on this one. Like I don't really like it's handling of the force or Tor Valum- which is basically the role of Palpatine we got but with less connection (and just make it Plageius if it's not going to be Palpatine, he's at least been mentioned in-series as someone seeking immortality!).

I don't know if I'd like this one any better. Maybe a third run picking parts from each would be good....
One of these days I'll have to do a RoS rewrite. Tempted to rewrite the whole ST from scratch, but a) that'd take longer, and b) its more challenging if I have to work starting from an imperfect foundation (TFA is an okay film and I like TLJ very much, but its fair to say they don't mesh all that well with each other).