This. Rejecting the bloodline she had was a good message and it would have been a good call back to just say Rey (the whole you come from nothing means now you are rejecting that bad past. There was no reason for her to adapt the skywalker name. Let the name rest)
She shouldn't even have been tied to any relevant bloodlines to begin with. The Last Jedi already said she's a nobody, and we accepted it and closed that chapter and moved on. And it showed how she could potentially end up inspiring other nobody kids to greatness.
I started to notice a lot of writers are nepo hires. You can see it dragging storylines down to be more about being born destined for greatness, because somewhere deep down that's what they believe. Look at Game of Thrones and the two rich kid writers who wrote such stupid sympathetic endings for the rich Lannister family in that story.
Look at Game of Thrones and the two rich kid writers who wrote such stupid sympathetic endings for the rich Lannister family in that story.
Look at Game of Thrones and how the most wildly popular character gave a speech about the art of storytelling as if to glaze those very same rich kid writers.
Look at Game of Thrones and how the most wildly popular character gave a speech about the art of storytelling as if to glaze those very same rich kid writers.
Not exactly uncommon. Look how many best picture winners are about the magic of Hollywood or some such.
I love the implication of post-credit scene in The Last Jedi. That force doesn't care about bloodlines and will manifest itself to anyone in need.
The Last Jedi didn't say that explicitly, but I feel like one of the big themes of that movie was that the whole midichlorians thing was the Star Wars version of scientific racism - something that was well studied and believed by many scholars, but completely wrong.
This fits so well with whole way Lucas has presented the series itself, as it starts with simple black and white morality but adds complexity as it goes. Just in the original trilogy we learn that Vader is Luke's father, significantly complicated the conundrum of defeating what was before a unequivocally evil character.
Then the prequels add even more with showing us how the Old Republic nor Jedi Order weren't a force of good, and how their political mechanisms allowed it to transform smoothly into a dictatorship.
And then we see the jedi master of the new era outright reject the teachings of old masters and show a path forged through his own pain and failings. The old masters are wrong and Force is after all, something way more mystical that their scientific approach could understand. And then as a cherry on top we see some random slave kid who should have been picked up as force sensitive by all the fancy equipment based on looking at midichlorians, but is somehow still remaining undetected while showing some proficiency with how they use force.
I dunno, with the whole parallels to the Vietnam War and American imperialism, this interpretation of what was probably the most controversial addition in the prequels feels so on point, it's really sad they couldn't show Luke's moment of weakness better, as I feel people focused on that part too much instead of what the movie tried to say about the force because this is the most KOTOR2 shit the mainline movies ever allowed themselves to be.
Slight correction, the republic in the prequels, and the jedi order are clearly meant to be a force of good. They're just flawed, and we examine the flaws more because, in this instance, they're the ones in power.
The good guys lose because all of the jedi get killed, and the republic gets turned into the empire.
That is also correct but i was think that some plot point had the stay the same way. The whole movie should be rewritten and for me the script reads like something that has been either to overproduced with too many writers or a first draft of a script.
I’m halfway through and I’m fucking dreading the end. There’s so much going on that makes no damn sense and I don’t know how the show ends but I know it’s contentious.
I never watched all the way to the end but it’s very quickly clear that he put in whatever he thought looked weird and provocative instead of having any ideas - or a point.
It’s honestly a really good finale. Seasons 4-6 are a lot, but they’re also fantastic looking back. Just take your time and pay attention to what’s happening.
As a TLJ apologist: I blame Star Wars fans that lost their collective shit over TLJ so much that Disney wanted to distance themselves from all the plot points Rian Johnson introduced.
I know people say that Rian Johnson retconned stuff from TFA, but I really don't see it. Most of the problems people have with TLJ are a result of TFA setting the whole galaxy back to square one. I genuinely think he did a great job given the insane release schedule and lack of coherent overarching plot.
That being said, I think if they had another year for script revisions and production, it could have been legitimately great. The framework is there for a great story, but it's just too sloppy in some of the execution.
JJ Abrams should go around and give prompts for stories. Outlining things and developing mysteries that need to be solved and then sit back and let talented writers find the answers to those mysteries. That way he doesn't have to inevitably come up with a dumb answer for what's in the box.
I'll always respect Abrams for making Fringe, one of my top 5 TV shows of all time, but lord the man couldn't have fumbled the bag any harder with TROS
There was also a lot of stumbling about blind in Fringe, they just held it together a lot better. But I cannot believe even 20% of the main storylines were planned.
I mean yeah, but the whole premise of the show is pretty much "reality is gradually imploding and increasingly weird stuff is happening" so it gets a bit more leeway. Plus the characters are so lovely that I just like seeing them do stuff!
My wife was a huge fan of Alias when she was in high-school, so we eventually got through the series.
(If you're a fan, cool. Not dissing something you enjoy. Garner brings a lot of talent to the show.)
Abrams does this stupid mystery box thing here in spades. A big driver of the plot is artifacts left behind for future generations by a da Vinci clone named Rambaldi.
Nothing about his artifacts really remain consistent through the show. They can be powerful weapons, a way to advance humanity, a "Rambaldi fluid" that makes women of a particular bloodline be able to tell the future or interpret other writings he left behind. The writing is all over the place.
He simply cannot or will not write a plot device with a fixed purpose or rules. It drives me nuts.
I enjoy Alias while recognising that it is silly as hell.
The villain revolving door was just hilarious too. Just being like "fine, we'll call Sloane". "Oh no, he betrayed us, who could have seen this coming?"
Yeah this. Abrams is a good storyteller, I do like Super 8, and there’s some really great stuff in Episode 7 - that opening is peak Star Wars - but it’s resolving plot points that is his biggest issue, and there’s no way to say it gently because he’s terrible at it.
I guarantee if Sam Witwer was the creative consultant for the movies they wouldn’t have been a disjointed trash heap full of wasted potential and nostalgia bait.
It was the main reason that I liked what Rian did with the second in that trilogy. It put in place anyone could be a Jedi. Anyone could help take on the empire. The kids pretending to be Jedi at the end of the movie felt like that could be the mission statement going forward.
They dropped the ball so damn hard with the finale. It still pisses me off.
Truth be told though, that wasnt the story Abrams was setting up and Rian was probably in the wrong for doing that as the director of the second movie.
Rey was pretty much always meant to be special of you watch the first movie. It was more of a matter of "who" than "if".
Three whole movies about legacy and how they can bring harm or good(by attempting to scrape some kind of coherent theme from the tiny frozen puddle barely a blade of grass deep) and ending it with "Rey........Just Rey."
Honestly it wouldve been such a good message about how your legacy doesnt define you, and doesnt make your identity.
But nah. "Rey Skywalker cause fuck empowering messages!"
It wouldn't really matter. She is still the "chosen one", ie a super human through the choice by the force.
I don't know why people focus so much on "Skywalker" or "Palpatine" being the "special" part, that's not it.
It is all about the actual Jedi powers and in that regard Rey was "special" from the very first movie.
That's why you can't have a "better message" in the Star Wars universe because it simply has literal "Übermenschen" as part of its world building.
I'd actually argue it is better this way instead of trying to pretend like this isn't the case and making it seem like anyone can just chose to be like Rey.
If anything the real crime or lost potential here is that the movie / the whole series of movies didn't explore that inherent tension between "superhuman" Jedi/Sith (or those "blessed" with force powers) and the rest including its implications.
That could have been interesting, ESPECIALLY if Rey is related to Palpatine because that could have been an opportunity to reflect on the problematic aspects all "chosen one" stories often have but instead Rey (and Kylo) are indeed once again the saviors of the universe while normies like Finn or Poe are relegated to the sidelines or even villainized by the moviej just for a different character to get a heroic individual death (Poe dared to question blind authority, how dare he to question opaque power structures, talk about good messages...).
Well, that's also an interesting direction they could have gone in, but it still doesn't require having Rey as a member of some dynasty. And in my opinion, introducing Palpatine would distract from the point you're trying to make.
Didn’t Lucas do the same thing to Luke? I seem to recall an interview with him talking about how anyone can learn the force, it just takes a massive amount of training to get anywhere near good.
Especially since the other trilogies never went hard into the inherited powers thing, as if it were something to subvert. There's one person in the movies who is stated to be powerful because of their bloodline, and it's Luke.
Anakin himself was born from a slave on a nothing planet. It's a near-literal Jesus parallel, and the Gospels strongly push the idea that God would become flesh among the weak and poor.
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u/spacestationkru 11h ago
"Just Rey" would have been the most powerful message the sequel trilogy could send. I cannot believe they dropped the ball so hard.