But again, in regards to saving her friends, none of this has any relevance to the themes of the film. This is when those themes are supposed to come to their conclusion; but instead of talking about Rey’s anger, or her heritage, or anything like that, J.J. and Chris are just like, “Meh, you better kill him Rey, or else all of your friends are gonna die,” as they flap their hands about. How has the film built towards this at all? What is the film trying to say by forcing this (external) conflict on Rey? How is this final dilemma (of the entire Star Wars saga) in any way satisfying?
How is it satisfying?
It’s not.
The writers wrote themselves into a very simple conflict with Palpy returning: Have Rey kill him or have her not. Based on the themes and her actions over the prior two films, there’s absolutely no drama with killing Palpy since she actively tried to kill Snoke and he called her a True Jedi for doing so, with absolutely no subtext as to any darkness associated with this action. The only drama would then come from her not killing Palpy, but there’s no reason for her to choose this so the final film had to manufacture a reason for her to not kill the most evil guy in the galaxy by making him her caring grandfather. This might almost work since it plays into the thematic line of her constantly wanting a place in the story, but the writers then decided that Rey should actually want to kill Palpy in anger due to the spirit transfer plot device, and so wrote Palpatine back into being Mr Evil by ordering the hit on her parents.
Now Rey’s back to the uninteresting place of wanting to kill Mr Evil, with practically no continuation of the theme of Rey’s belonging. The spirit transfer plot device and resulting revenge subplot effectively kills the theme of the films. Bringing Rey’s friends into this contrived mess of a conclusion merely serves as a distraction.
God, my brain hurts lol.
Like, yeah, there shouldn’t be any chance of her joining the Dark Side (and there effectively isn’t, no matter what we do), but with some of our changes here, we’re playing up the idea that Rey is already tapping into the Dark Side more and more during the course of the film. So my point is, I think we should try to carry that theme into the finale, and make Rey’s final choice be whether or not she will give in to her anger and succumb to the allure of the Dark Side. Rather than the scripted, “Have Rey kill Palpatine because it will inexplicably save her friends!”
In other words, make the climax of the film be an internal character struggle with a foundation on previous established themes, rather than an external blackmail…thing.