I just don’t know how possible it is to remove Rey’s parents from the movie? If its possible i would do it, but Ochi’s ship design is very explicitly from Force Awakens so it might be odd to have the same ship without the backstory?
It would be difficult for a number of reasons, that, but also quite a bit of dialogue is had talking about the fact that Palpatine had her parents killed, from Kylo but then later from Rey to Finn. In my mind, leaving it in is the much cleaner solution. Palpatine sensed her power early and wanted her dead, and ended up killing her parents looking for her. This fuels Rey’s anger and spurns her to search for Palpatine and kill him (as she states in the film). Removing that entirely would create a lot of problems.
The first Rey and Palpatine scene will already be a nightmare ‘My granddaughter…’ ‘Empress Palpatine’ etc.
Arguably, you could keep “Empress Palpatine,” because Palpatine will be taking over her body, right? Might actually make an interesting parallel to the last scene, here Palpatine is goading her to adopt his name, essentially.
I do agree it would be more difficult, but I do think removing that aspect would be worth exploring. I think Rey’s parents not caring about her makes her character more interesting, but if someone threatened her parents’ lives to know her location, if they didn’t care then they would’ve just told him. So it turns out her parents did care about her, and even died for her, which just makes her story a lot less interesting imo.
I don’t disagree at all. Just feel like it’s a house of cards, and taking out Rey Palpatine could already be enough to knock it all down. The solution I have at least keeps some of the structural integrity of the film as is (even if it reduces some of the meaning as a compromise). There is apparently a deleted scene where Ben tells Rey not to give into her hate and cut down Palpatine that would work well with the ‘Rey wants revenge’ angle as well.
I think I’d mostly be okay with the reveal that Rey’s parents had hidden her on Jakku to protect her from Palpatine with the explanation of “Palpatine had sensed Rey’s potential with the Force” rather than “Rey is literally Palpatine’s granddaughter” It would still be a retcon but not as severe of a retcon…