It would be nice if that changed though. Yes, I used the "C" word. But, I like them being nobodies. 
Episode IX Speculation and Discussion
- Thread starter INACTIVESamusAranX
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Not that I’m a huge fan of Rey, but I think she’s probably the strongest sequels character, and that means she’s strong enough to stand by herself. She’s a plucky loner who was left alone since childhood and found that she was gifted with the force. I like that.
I just think the idea that she has to be related to another major character suggests her own character isn’t strong enough by itself. I don’t need a ‘oh, she’s the granddaughter of Qui Gon’ to complete her character, especially since they already did the connection between Kylo and Han/Leia. At this point, it feels kinda stale.
I don’t really see what other characters being connected has to do with anything. Also, only the skywalkers were actually related.
And Anakin built C-3PO. And Padme, then Anakin, owned R2.
Star Wars is full of small little connections binding all the main characters together in a very small universe some times.
Well... Anakin building C-3PO isn’t the most respected Star Wars decision. This doesn’t seem like a reason why Rey must be connected to previous main characters.
It does reinforce that whole JJ playing to the fans thing...
Star Wars works on the mythic/legend model, fantasy...Luke was never justa farm boy, he wasn’t even just the son of another Jedi Knight in the end either. It’s big and full of Destiny and Lineage with the Capital Letters. Everyone else can be from humble beginnings (including Kenobi himself) but this is the Skywalker Saga...and they are almost out of Skywalkers. Rey simply hasn’t had enough of a journey to really balance that...as others have said, we have known the new characters two weeks and two movies, they have barely bonded...there’s no narrative weight to Rey if she comes literally out of nowhere (not to mention all the time wasted building her Destiny and Lineage, if it turns out it’s more of a fate and no lineage) in the current set up. I like the new characters, but they are no where near as developed as they should be or others were. Even the prequels did more. JJ tried it starting out, but Johnson dumped it in favour of stuff happening without much rhyme or reason unfortunately.
Think how much you knew about Luke Han and Leia by the end of empire. Think how much you knew about Vader.
Now think how much we knew about Obi Wan, Padme and Anakin by the end of Clones.
Think how much we got from just sentences here and there when characters talked to each other.
Now think about the new guys...fun though they are, we know nothing, they have done almost nothing but react and run, (Rey is a bit better off.) and no world building has been done tbh...it’s all dependent on what we know from the other films, and so much of it is still begging to make proper sense in the films themselves. JJ has a lot to fix in IX for it to make sense on screen the way the others did. They have odd juggling acts going on between the legacy cast and the new cast, and then they through odd diversions in...Laura Dern, much as I am always glad to see Ellie Satler on screen - xD- and her character was almost totally extraneous. You could have given almost everything she did to Leia, have her escape and Force Space walk after the kamikaze run, and given the time to developing the other characters.
The only nice new thing in TLJ was Rose, and she should have been introduced in TFA if it had been possible. No one really knows what to do with any of the characters apart from Rey and the old cast. And the old cast is easy it seems...remove their achievements then kill them off. I strongly suspect JJ did not actually like TLJ. I may not be a fan of his, but I think he has a better sense of SW than most.
What point? Abrams can go either way and I’m fine as long as it’s entertaining.
Was Luke not strong enough? Anakin? Those are our leads in the other trilogies that make up the saga, and they are dependent on their familial relationships to really work in the story. We know who Anakin becomes etc because of how the prequels were made after the OT, it’s constantly informing the character, Luke becomes more heroic and more tragic and stronger because of his relation to Anakin/Vader from the moment Obi Wan fudges the truth to him in his hut.
It’s the same with Rey. It’s the story of the Skywalker family...Kylo Ren doesn’t have the name, and Rey has inherited his mother, his father, his father’s ship, his father’s best friend, and his grandfathers lightsaber (also his uncles) and his uncle. Sure..he kinda gave those up, but we don’t know why, not really, and Rey has the whole set with no really logical reason...she knew Han and Chewie for a day or so, Leia for five minutes...how does she inherit the mantles of the heroes? I am happy for her to do so, in so far as I like her, but there really needs to be a reason in context of the story other than coincidence and everyone feeling sorry for her. We knew why Anakin was important (backwards and forwards) we learnt why Luke was important pretty quickly (even if that was only...from a certain point of view) and that’s what makes it a saga. If Rey is nobody, and with the relative lack of development for Kylo/Ben as well, then it really doesn’t make any decent narrative sense (especially as it seems likely these characters won’t be going forwards into the next non-skywalker trilogy/saga) and that’s a problem.
Another problem is Threepio...why is he even there? I mean beyond ‘oh he follows Leia around’ what actual purpose has he served apart from filling out the OT cast? It doesnt fill me with much hope for Lando I can tell you. (And much as I liked Solo, the problem with it and the way Han and Lando have been handled in he new trilogy has just made Han look like a dick who stole a ship for a while....that friendship we saw in the OT has been forgotten. He should have been with Han in TFA or they should have had scenes dealing with Han passing, including Lando there, in TLJ...but it was all a rush job.)
JJ has to make this all make sense when he wraps up. Which will be interesting for him. He’s not used to endings, just set ups. It’s bit him in the arse this time.
And you would be wrong (provided those "nobodies" don't turn out to be Skywalkers from Shmi's paternal line).
As has been stated several times, both JJ and Rian have separately confirmed that they both independently reached the same conclusion about Rey's parentage.
Well, we already knew who Anakin was, and we didn't get any new relations in the prequel trilogy. Not sure I'd cite him as a strong character, but there we go.
As for Luke, sure, it made his character more interesting, but I think Luke was more thematically focused on his father. Mostly though, I just think we've done all this before. Okay, there was a twist where we learned Luke and Vader are related. It was excellent. We also had the Leia thing, but that was mostly just wrapping things up. Just feels stale to say that Rey must be the daughter of someone important.
We'll just have to disagee on that. Coincidence is fine. Anything else feels a little contrived.
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They could be nobodies...but they still need to get good solid weight behind why she is the one picking up the mantle. She didn’t want to leave Jakkar (good solid refusing the call storytelling) and we don’t know why she is doing any of what she is doing. None of the new characters have any real agency in many ways (when they try to, they tend to get smacked...Poe tries to save the day, bad plan...Finn wants to run away, ends up on side quest to kill ten rats and find the key to the next level...though he gets a snog out of it at least.) because there’s no breathing room to show why these guys are ‘the goodies’ or going through what they are.
Anakin..wanted to become a Jedi and free people, once he realised he could, though that motivation changes as his life moved on....Luke...wanted to see the galaxy, fly ships, join the Rebel alliance...though again, that motivation changes a fair bit as his life moved on....even the ancillary leads had a motivation followed by changes as things moved on.
There’s been no time for anyone moving on, so we are left with just the original motivations.
Poe (as we know never intended to be a lead, he was meant to be killed off.) is a pilot in the resistance and wants to fight the first order. (We won’t go into ‘what the heck are they resisting if they aren’t from occupied places’ or ‘why is it the first order?’ Though these are very good questions we still don’t have on screen solid explanations of.) he..nope, that’s it. Wants to do hero shit, does hero shit, looks heroic doing hero shit. Only friendship we see is with the dude he met escaping, and he’s known for a week. Which is...
Finn...raised by the Empire LARP re-enactment society, otherwise known as the First Order. (Was possibly a child soldier, but no one dwells on this for long.) became stormtrooper, realised he was in the baddies and it was a dangerous job...so he ran away, rescuing Poe out of self interest, and basically keeps on trying to run away before not running away largely because that saves his own skin in the moment itself. He appears to have normal desire to help others as such, but sort of becomes a bit of an accidental hero helping along. Motivation is largely getting the heck away from the First Order.
Rey...Rey...is difficult. She doesn’t want to be anything, she kind of just falls into a Destiny after finding BB8. It’s not comparable to Luke beyond the obvious ‘finds droid, goes on adventure’ because she explicitly doesn’t want to leave Jakku. After that it’s very much doing what people tell her to do because it’s her destiny to do so, she gets a couple of decisions later at least, but there is no real....desire. Her only desire was to have her parents back, the closest she gets is the beginning of a relationship with Han. She’s sort of friends with Finn, but he’s mostly unknown because he was lying to her. People seem to just...give her stuff, and sometimes stuff to do. She starts making some decisions in TLJ but we still don’t know why, beyond ‘is a goodie’
It’s a crying shame, because the actors are so fun, and the characters on paper are so fun, and there’s fun in watching them, but you darent think about it for even a second, because then it tarnishes real fast. We are two movies in and still feel like we are setting up the story to start happening. It all looks so cool, but we don’t know why anyone is doing anything beyond copying what went before...the First Order wants to be the new empire, so the poorly named Resistance wants to be the new rebels.
Rey is pushed into wanting to be the new Luke Skywalker, without really choosing or having any desire of her own or reason to do so. (Luke had revenge to motivate him from the beginning, though it’s his rejection of vengeance as a motivation that is important. Anakin started off wanting to become strong and be a protector, but falls into vengeance and fear...it’s the mirror of Luke. Almost like poetry..you know...it rhy- yeah.)
So all we are left with to really balance this out is to get these characters properly linked to the saga. Rey is the only one we can realistically do that with, and that’s good because she was dripping with Hidden Destiny and Mysterious Past, and if that is t done well then all she is is a shell of a character. A Skywalker with the serial numbers filed off for the sake of ‘subverting expectations’ and which would turn the obvious point of these movies into ‘to make some more money’ rather than ‘there’s more story to tell’ because so far the story is ‘everyone lived unhappily ever after and then died’ with no reason at all.
The emperor laugh on the trailer is cheese as heck, the whole things screams ‘come back fanboys (genderneutral term in this case) we didn’t mean it’ but in spite of that...the trailer makes me hope it will at least make sense in the end. Uphill struggle that will be mind you, because too much has been done in the name of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ rather than generated from either the characters or the actual events shown.
Contrived just means the will of the force
I get your point, it just needs...something. Rey in particular needs something. And apart from giving her a proper lineage, I can’t think of much else that would work. Apart from Luke not being dead after all and outright adopting her etc, making her a quasi-virgin birth like Anakin. And a scene where she deals with the fact all of this has happened to her, and processing it, and making decisions to see it through...which...we really should have had somewhere in TLJ tbh. It feels like they either cut it or forgot it.
Then JJ really is a hack. Because he leaned hard, very hard, into Reys parents in TFA as being important. And Johnson is too, because he saw all of that, and the bit where she believed so strongly they would come back and didn’t want to leave....and then thought the cool thing was to have her always really know they weren’t coming back because they were assholes. And he didn’t even have her admit this to herself, or have her admit it in a moment of self realisation, instead he had the baddy Who killed his father say it. They made Rey weak an delusional...if it’s true. If Ren is lying, if it’s self doubt rather than self delusion, then Rey can be fixed as a character. Otherwise ‘your father was an asshole’ is really not in the same league as ‘I am your father’ and lying to yourself and people around you is not quite in the same league as obi-was bending the truth to save Luke some pain in his future, misguided Though it was...from a certain point of view.
Personally...it smells like a marketing band aid over differing viewpoints. No way was JJ gonna have that for a character he helped create leading his SW movie. Heck, he gave Kirk a lineage in Trek, and Sydney Bristol (think that’s her name) one in Alias. It doesn’t match his M.O and they could have saved a bomb paying Ewan McGregor for the voiceover work for a scene that means nothing.
Han and Leia. That’s why what Kylo was telling her was true...from a certain point of view.
She is Janina 2.0
No.
So two people - JJ and Rian - are going to have consistently stated that they both independently reached the same conclusion regarding the identities of Rey's parents as some sort of "smokescreen" to hide BtS disagreements?
That's a massive conspiracy theory and is patently silly.
Rian Johnson did not come in and ignore or contradict anything that Abrams set up for him with The Force Awakens. That is the indisputable truth as supported by the actions and statements of both men directly and of other individuals directly associated with both TFA and TLJ.
Yes, but conspiracy theories are far more, don't ya know?
My first quote there is largely a joke. Largely. (Though...she is dumped on a planet the Millenium Falcon accidentally gets lost on, the same planet a key to the location of Luke Skywalker is hidden on, and Han Solo just happens to be in the vicinity too...like Alice I tried to believe three impossible things before breakfast. Maybe they needed another draft or two octant script...)
As to the second, nah, it’s not some conspiracy theory stuff. People say stuff in interviews all the time if it means they can smooth cracks in a perceived fanbase. It happened with Mark Hamills comments around TLJ too. And of course Rian ignores or contradicted stuff, and it’s ok, he was free to do so. Best way to smooth any controversy over Reys parents is to get a statement like that out ‘I JJ Abrams, having set stuff up in my movie, do hereby state, that I came to the exact same conclusion that Rian wrote in his movie, being of sound mind and body’ it’s standard. And before we get into if I am saying JJ or anyone is lying for the good of a movie and a fanbase, (a) usually he is accused of setting stuff up and not thinking about what comes next....now he does all of a sudden? Or to put it another way, I think sometimes he does, and he wasn’t thinking that based on what’s on screen. And (b) Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing Khan. No siree. No genetically augmented supermen here. Nope nope. Definitely not. Uh uh.
It’s part of the game. Actors who hated each other’s guts will talk about how much respect they have for each other as actors, or what a great time they had maki g the film etc. Hollywood totally works that way. Unless it’s Gywmeth Paltrow, when apparently she will forget she was even in a film that had fellow actors in. I think the steam did something. Years later, it all comes out. There’s no way JJ is gonna screw with a huge franchise, the single biggest force in Hollywood, and do an interview where he says ‘well, actually was gonna do something else, and I set iT up and handed my notes over, but that fucking Rian just likes to fuck with people’ is he? Hell no. Especially not when he’s back for the next one after the Trevorow debacle.
No one talked about Marlon Brando and ice buckets while the Island of Doctor Moreau was on release and he was around...but bloody hell did we learn about it afterwards.
Let’s just say...TFA gave a distinct impression that leads me to doubt that all.
Not everything people say is the truth, especially when it comes to money.
Don't believe everything you read/hear.
Kathleen herself said Rian was given free reign on the story.
It's a distinct impression the fan base ran with. That doesn't make it a foregone conclusion just because the fan base believes it so.
And, honestly, at this point in time, I have more confidence in these production teams telling us (most of) the truth than the internet theories bantered about. It seems that the later is based primarily on wishful thinking or expectation of foul play by one or the other of the directors to satisfy the dislike of a particular film.
Not everyone is a liar either. I'd rather not go through my life thinking people are lying to me on a constant basis. Already lived 10 years of that life.
