The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released) — Page 394

sherlockpotter said:

• Rey’s line about “I will earn your brother’s saber…someday.” There’s never been any indication that she felt unworthy using the lightsaber in the previous two movies, and she doesn’t end up “earning” the saber at all; it’s just handed back to her five minutes later. Also, Rey ends up using an entirely different saber in the finale? And she gives Luke’s to Kylo? (The only rationalization I can think of is that it’s subtextually foreshadowing “Ben will earn your brother’s saber”? But that’s unbelievably messy, even by this film’s lofty standards.) I dunno, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s another “Rey, I never told you- Blurgbruglbgrub” - They set something up, and then they forgot to pay it off. Maybe Rey could simply say “Here,” as if she’s just “hanging up” her weapon after practice? Or reverse the footage - Leia gives the saber back to Rey as a show of encouragement? (Implied that Rey gave it to her after the training course out of frustration.)

Perhaps she feels bad about being partially responsible for destroying it, and is simply trying to earn the right to wield it again. I agree, it is a little bit of a confusing line, but I personally feel anything that makes Rey a little less all-powerful is a good thing.

• Trimming around Hux’s “I’M THE SPY!!” “*WhAaAaAaAT???” ThisIsCreation had a really solid idea for this on the Redux thread. It’s like “You were a spice runner??” to me - out of place humor that breaks what should be a tense moment. (I know I lost that argument, I’m not trying to restart it.)

I think simply removing Hux’s line, “I’m the spy”, removes most of the forced goofiness and redundancy there. It’s fine for Poe and Finn to be bickering between each other, because they do that all the time (even before death I suppose). But it doesn’t make much sense for Hux himself to be willingly going along with their goofiness as well.

• “Leia sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path.” So she decided not to pursue being a Jedi, which resulted in…the death of her son, her own death, and the rise of the First Order and the destruction of the New Republic at the hands of her son? Way to go, idiot, you played yourself! If Luke just says “She sensed ‘death’ at the end of her Jedi path,” it’s at least vague enough that we can assume the alternative future would have been even worse.

I might be the only one who actually loves this explanation. It totally reminds me of Anakin, who saw the death of his wife in visions. So he turned to the dark side in order to try to save her… which resulted in her death. It’s the exact same concept, only this time Leia thought not being a Jedi would save her son… which resulted in his death anyways because she had to use her Jedi powers eventually.

I think Rey feeling unworthy of Luke’s saber plays well into her feeling like she’s not able to live up to Luke’s legend and being the last Jedi, which is a good character arc, especially with the added puppet scene.

Movies Remastered said:

hinventon said:

I think Rey feeling unworthy of Luke’s saber plays well into her feeling like she’s not able to live up to Luke’s legend and being the last Jedi, which is a good character arc, especially with the added puppet scene.

This would be great if there were some form of payoff but Leia gives it straight back in the next scene so it kinda makes it pointless.

The payoff is the climax of the movie, where she becomes “all the Jedi”. Suggestions of her feelings of unworthiness are also still present elsewhere in the movie because she leaves herself stranded on Ahch-To.

On the topic of Luke’s line on Leia: “Always in motion is the future”

It was unwise for Leia to give up her training because she sensed the death of her son if she were a Jedi, sure. It was also unwise for Anakin to become a Sith because he sensed the death of his wife. But since these two characters are related, it makes perfect sense IMO that they would make a similar mistake to save a loved one and fail in the process.

Hal 9000 said:

I’m not saying its great, just that I don’t feel removing it makes things any better.

Oh it’s definitely not a great explanation in terms of this movie being standalone. But in context of the larger saga? It’s absolutely better than nothing. Much better, in fact.

sherlockpotter said:

While we’re on the topic of additional lines that might warrant some tweaking, I have a few contenders:

• Rey’s line about “I will earn your brother’s saber…someday.” There’s never been any indication that she felt unworthy using the lightsaber in the previous two movies, and she doesn’t end up “earning” the saber at all; it’s just handed back to her five minutes later. Also, Rey ends up using an entirely different saber in the finale? And she gives Luke’s to Kylo? (The only rationalization I can think of is that it’s subtextually foreshadowing “Ben will earn your brother’s saber”? But that’s unbelievably messy, even by this film’s lofty standards.) I dunno, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s another “Rey, I never told you- Blurgbruglbgrub” - They set something up, and then they forgot to pay it off. Maybe Rey could simply say “Here,” as if she’s just “hanging up” her weapon after practice? Or reverse the footage - Leia gives the saber back to Rey as a show of encouragement? (Implied that Rey gave it to her after the training course out of frustration.)

[WARNING: This will probably go into rant territory. You have been warned…]

You missed the point of Rey’s entire arc. In the years after she was abandoned by her parents, she formed this subconscious, irrational core belief that she is inherently worthless; in other words, she has issues regarding self-esteem. She believes this lie that the only way to feel happy, to feel loved is if she gains approval from others as well as if she pleases others which would then result in said others giving her the validation she desires to make herself feel happy; why do you think she freed BB-8 from Teedo? Why do you think she bypassed the compressor on the Falcon? Why do you think she told Luke that she would not fail him in the way Kylo Ren did?

TestingOutTheTest said:

sherlockpotter said:

While we’re on the topic of additional lines that might warrant some tweaking, I have a few contenders:

• Rey’s line about “I will earn your brother’s saber…someday.” There’s never been any indication that she felt unworthy using the lightsaber in the previous two movies, and she doesn’t end up “earning” the saber at all; it’s just handed back to her five minutes later. Also, Rey ends up using an entirely different saber in the finale? And she gives Luke’s to Kylo? (The only rationalization I can think of is that it’s subtextually foreshadowing “Ben will earn your brother’s saber”? But that’s unbelievably messy, even by this film’s lofty standards.) I dunno, it doesn’t make much sense. It’s another “Rey, I never told you- Blurgbruglbgrub” - They set something up, and then they forgot to pay it off. Maybe Rey could simply say “Here,” as if she’s just “hanging up” her weapon after practice? Or reverse the footage - Leia gives the saber back to Rey as a show of encouragement? (Implied that Rey gave it to her after the training course out of frustration.)

[WARNING: This will probably go into rant territory. You have been warned…]

You missed the point of Rey’s entire arc. In the years after she was abandoned by her parents, she formed this subconscious, irrational core belief that she is inherently worthless; in other words, she has issues regarding self-esteem. She believes this lie that the only way to feel happy, to feel loved is if she gains approval from others as well as if she pleases others which would then result in said others giving her the validation she desires to make herself feel happy; why do you think she freed BB-8 from Teedo? Why do you think she bypassed the compressor on the Falcon? Why do you think she told Luke that she would not fail him in the way Kylo Ren did?

This 100%.

Hal, did you ever get around to trying to reinstate Luke’s “Some things are stronger than blood. Your spirit, your heart”? If you didn’t think it would work, I think the message is still there to a certain extent, but I still feel that it’s essential to really drive home Testing’s message here that the value of somebody is determined by their heart, not lineage and the other stuff he mentioned like approval.

Hey Hal, I’ll expand upon stuff regarding Rey’s arc…

A lot of people seem to misinterpret Rey’s arc in TLJ as forming her own path without relying on others, and that it is just about her being Rey Nobody. This is incorrect; her arc is about accepting that the belonging she seeks is not going to be her parents, and how she comes to terms with how her parents believed she was worthless, resulting in how she no longer cares about her parents.

Rey wants to feel loved by her parents, she refuses to accept the truth that they think she is worthless, that nobody is there to care for her.

There is a reason why Rey spent all of her years, waiting for them to come back. She has been lying to herself that she has some grand destiny which is why her parents left her, showing that they love her and care for her, that she is worth something, but however… she wants to know what that destiny exactly is. She has been lying to herself that if she had learned what her destiny was via finding out who her parents were, she would feel loved, since in this hypothetical scenario they abandoned her for an important reason, showing how much they care for her. But they don’t.

When Kylo Ren gaslights her, she finally learns to stop living this lie, to accept the truth that they weren’t significant people who had a reason to leave her, but rather insignificant people who didn’t have an important reason for leaving her behind, that they didn’t care about her nor love her. The truth that they hated her. That she is worthless.

The “place in this story,” itself, never really mattered to Rey. She only intended to use it as a way to justify her parents abandoning her so she’d feel loved. So she’d belong to them, similar to how Woody wants to belong to Andy in the Toy Story films. The reason she says to Luke that she “needs someone to show her, her place in all of this” is that she wants to find her importance only for the sole purpose of using it to justify her parents abandoning her, feeding the lie that they cared about her and believed that she was worth something so that lie would never die off, so she’d feel loved.

But Rey is wrong. This was the point. In TLJ, her arc isn’t about her being Nobody… as I stated, she learns to stop caring about her parents because of how they think she is worthless. They only used “nobody” was a way to drive home the point that Rey’s parents did not have a good reason to abandon her which would imply they did love her, but that they were bad people who abandoned her because they thought she was worthless.

And Rey being Palpatine’s granddaughter alone does not undermine her TLJ arc, but her parents being good people does, because it means that she stopped caring about her parents all for nothing. They should’ve had it so her parents abandon her because she is a Palpatine [furthering her belief that being a Palpatine inherently makes her worthless (which Luke debunks by bringing up Leia)], which would preserve her TLJ arc.

True, removing lines like “My parents were strong” would help. I don’t know how possible it would be but making some new Kylo dialogue for the ForceLink fight/hangar scene to “reveal” that her parents left her because she was a Palpatine would be really great, then you’d probably have to remove their death scene. I don’t know how removing any of the parent stuff would work for a Rey Nobody version though.

Only problem with this is… well, the reason Palpatine decided to bang is because he is suffering in a clone body, believing that he would be thriving in the body of a Force-sensitive that is not a clone. His son turns out to be a non-Force-sensitive, and once he conceives Rey, Palpatine goes after her so he would groom her into performing the Sith ritual. When her parents abandon her, Palpatine decides to go after Ben Solo instead, he is the only other person he can groom into performing the Sith ritual.

TestingOutTheTest said:

And Rey being Palpatine’s granddaughter alone does not undermine her TLJ arc, but her parents being good people does, because it means that she stopped caring about her parents all for nothing. They should’ve had it so her parents abandon her because she is a Palpatine [furthering her belief that being a Palpatine inherently makes her worthless (which Luke debunks by bringing up Leia)], which would preserve her TLJ arc.

We’ve had this conversation much earlier in this thread. The conclusion we came to is that the reason why her parents needed to be noble is so that Rey would have a reason to want to kill Palpatine. Otherwise, she should technically be thanking him for disposing of her bad parents. In other words, Palpatine needs Rey to kill him out of anger/vengeance in order for the essence transfer to be successful. Having Rey’s parents be bad people undermines this.

I definitely agree that her parents should have abandoned her because they were afraid of her power, but I’m not sure that there is an adequate way to show this to the audience while still having Palpy’s plan not be so nonsensical.

Then have Palpatine kill Leia… or at least convince Rey that he killed her, or remind her that his actions resulted in atrocities such as Kylo Ren killing her father figure. Something like that.

All of these ideas would be wonderful for Capatain Faraday’s novelization. I’m just uncertain, like I said previously, that we have enough content here to successfully do what we’re talking about in film.

EDIT: Realized another reason why this wouldn’t work. If Rey’s parents had abandoned her, they would have given Palpatine her location without a second of hesitation. This muddies everything up because Ochi’s ship is the same ship that her parents use.

It is possible to replicate one’s voice and put it to text-to-speech using an AI… (for example, here)

See the edit on my previous comment, Testing.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

All of these ideas would be wonderful for Capatain Faraday’s novelization. I’m just uncertain, like I said previously, that we have enough content here to successfully do what we’re talking about in film.

EDIT: Realized another reason why this wouldn’t work. If Rey’s parents had abandoned her, they would have given Palpatine her location without a second of hesitation. This muddies everything up because Ochi’s ship is the same ship that her parents use.

Yeah, but they hate Palpatine and, in this case, Rey. They would want her to suffer on the hell that is Jakku while ensuring Palpatine doesn’t transfer his essence into another Force-sensitive.

I remain unconvinced it would work properly, sorry. Definitely has potential in written form where you can change visual details and lines so easily.

Their hatred for Rey (who is just a child) would not be enough for them to want to die for themselves to ensure she suffers.

I’m sure Hal has more to say on the matter, but I feel this is one of those bad things that TROS does that simply cannot be changed without making things worse.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I remain unconvinced it would work properly, sorry. Definitely has potential in written form where you can change visual details and lines so easily.

Their hatred for Rey (who is just a child) would not be enough for them to want to die for themselves to ensure she suffers.

I’m sure Hal has more to say on the matter, but I feel this is one of those bad things that TROS does that simply cannot be changed without making things worse.

I never said they wanted themselves dead?

TestingOutTheTest said:

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I remain unconvinced it would work properly, sorry. Definitely has potential in written form where you can change visual details and lines so easily.

Their hatred for Rey (who is just a child) would not be enough for them to want to die for themselves to ensure she suffers.

I’m sure Hal has more to say on the matter, but I feel this is one of those bad things that TROS does that simply cannot be changed without making things worse.

I never said they wanted themselves dead?

One of the key elements of this movie’s plot is that Ochi is using the same ship as her parents because he caught them and interrogated them. If that happened under the idea that they had abandoned her, they would have absolutely no qualms with giving up her location. Instead, we find out that her parents are dead and he stole their ship.

Now, I’m not sure if you could remove the death of her parents and create the impression that they’re still out there somewhere, but that still doesn’t really solve the issue with the ship. And the only reason they would still be alive is if they gave up her location.