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Post #1154149

Author
NeverarGreat
Parent topic
The Last Jedi: Official Review and Opinions Thread ** SPOILERS **
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1154149/action/topic#1154149
Date created
4-Jan-2018, 7:03 PM

DominicCobb said:

Mrebo said:

DominicCobb said:

TV’s Frink said:

DominicCobb said:

TFA didn’t make a big deal about Rey’s parents, Rey did and people on the internet did.

WYSHS

True. Point being though that only Rey cares and this doesn’t change in TLJ. Anytime she brings up Jakku in TFA people think she’s crazy for still caring. Maz outright tells her to forget about her parents.

Making Rey’s parents an issue was a creative choice in the film. Rey’s pining for her parents was the chip on which the story salsa was conveyed, but she is not independent from the film. TLJ made a point not only that her parents didn’t care about her (which was sort of obvious) but that they were nobody. And why would we have thought they were somebody? Because the film set up that intrigue - deliberately exploiting expectations of people on the internet, to be sure. A film attempting to stand apart from the OT shouldn’t do that.

This point for me is more what Luke would call a “a cheap trick” but it’s there. Can’t pretend it’s solely the fault of fans or that dastardly rogue Rey.

No. No one in TFA asks who Rey’s parents are, not even her. In fact, there’s no reason to believe in TFA that she doesn’t know who they are. They are mentioned a few times, but the question mark is all audience. They are only important for Rey’s character. And in that regard, they are important, sure. Rey is waiting for them. This aspect informs her arc in both films. But there is nothing in TFA that suggests that her parents must be, themselves important, beyond their relationship to Rey. Nothing at all.

If you thought they might be somebody, it’s only because Rey thought so too and hoped so. Which makes her learning that they’re nobody devastating in the same way that Luke learning that his father didn’t die and is no longer a Jedi did in ESB. And that’s a good thing.

Both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi treat Rey’s parentage like a secret. If it wasn’t a secret, then we would have learned who they were in TFA or in the Dark Side cave in TLJ. The fact that it was saved for a dramatic reveal by the villain in a similar fashion to ESB proves at least that Rian Johnson thought it was enough of a secret to go through the motions.

Since Rey is supposedly the viewer avatar for these films, I can only assume that Rey either doesn’t know her parentage or has suppressed that information because it’s too painful, and over the course of two films she gradually comes to the understanding that they really were nobodies. If she had seen the shadowy figures of her parents during the TFA Force vision (and her subconscious aversion to knowing the truth), it would have gone a long way towards communicating that this is her primary weakness.