Synopsis:

An edit of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that condenses the film into a 1-hour, score-only version with subtitles. Utilizing both music from the FYC, official, and a couple rips from the film mix, this uses selective elements of music to create a very intentional and less self-referential musical narrative. Emphasizing the score's original themes like "The Rise of Skywalker" and "Anthem of Evil" to give it more of its unique identity.

Intentions:

To create a version of the film that primarily uses score to convey the broad story of the original film, while also slimming down and trimming out certain elements.

Change List:

With the original film, some elements of score felt a bit cheap with how it used familiar themes at times (though musically speaking, they are still fantastic) and I wanted to have a better sense of intention with the selections of motifs. Additionally, there was a lot of music that was released but not actually used in the film so it was really exciting to place it into contexts that felt appropriate. This required lots of music editing including creating tails for cue, adding additional instruments to ensure smooth transitions, and general mixing to get it in the right place. The required cutdown to one hours meant I got to remove extraneous elements and slightly adjust narrative details without compromising the general structure of the story. As the result it paces faster but also feels neater as there are less distractions in the story overall. With the use of subtitles, here are some broad changes: -Palpatine's inclusion personally bothered me, so what I opted to do was just vaguely reference him as a nameless Sith Lord. The title crawl is adjusted to account for this. -Palpatine's intentions are made a little more vague to make his plan seem less scatterbrained. Purely an adjustment with phrasing so that way he seems less like he's contradicting himself with whether to kill Rey or need her. So most instances refer to him "looking for her" as opposed to "wanting her dead." -3PO's memory wipe is gone as he immediately translates the message on the blade. A detour only occurs because Chewy needs to be rescued which effectively removes the death fake out. -Kijimi portion is removed altogether, with an immediate transition to the group rescuing Chewy. This additionally removes Zorri Bliss and Babu Frik as there is no purpose for them with the changes. -Hux as a whole is removed from the film, as there was not enough score to accommodate this portion and also seems like another needless detour. -Taking a page out of Hal9000's Ascendant Rey Nobody cut, made Rey unrelated to Palpatine and rather had her struggle with her hatred for the Sith lord killing her parents. The revelation is that the Sith Lord was looking for her because he saw the future where she would take the throne. -Jannah is still in the film, but plays less of a part overall and meant to play more of a role as a help to the Resistance. This does effectively remove the tie to Finn she has, but seeing as him and Poe are not given much anyway, I opted to cut it. -Removed Leia's training to instead quickly exposit that she saw someone would continue her journey. Therefore having Rey make the realization that it's her saber. -D-0 is removed from the film altogether and just had Finn exposit that information was sent to plan an attack. -Lando's entrance is less ceremonious to deemphasize the ridiculousness of the backup army. -Removed Ben and Rey's kiss. -Rey and Palpatine's dialogue edited to remove the "I am all the Sith" and "I am all the Jedi" lines. -Rey does not encounter anyone in the desert and instead only sees Luke and Leia before walking toward the sunset. Removing the "Rey Skywalker" line to make that element of the film less literal.

Additional Notes:

-Much of the dialogue is condensed/adjusted to account for the new pace of this cut, which means it may not always lip-sync. However, most of it pulled directly from the film with some sillier stuff removed. -Some music is specifically removed to seem less like an unearned reference and more as a proper narrative beat. This includes the use of Palpatine's theme altogether (with the exception of the end) and Luke lifting the X-Wing, which has been replaced with the film's theme to further the element of togetherness that it signifies.

Other Sources:

The Rise of Skywalker (Official Score) by John Williams The Rise of Skywalker (For Your Consideration) Score by John Williams The Rise of Skywalker - Ascendent by HAL9000 Rip of Rey's Meditation and Training by Frank Lehman (via YouTube)

Special Thanks:

Thanks to the prior listed sources!