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In defense of Rey Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, and why I do not think it undermines her arc in The Last Jedi. — Page 2

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yotsuya said:

Trevorrow’s script did nothing to ever answer that question. JJ returned and found an answer that fit beautifully with both existing films. When you look at the details of the stories, nothing in TROS conflicts or contradicts or rewrites anything in TLJ.

Totally disagree about the latter, but, and not that that’s flawless, DOTF absolutely does answer that question, although it retcons TLJ, as does TROS. Also, TLJ answers that question.

reylo?

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@KumoNin Yes, both DotF and TRoS retcon (and UNDERMINE THE MEANING OF) TLJ’s reveal of Rey’s parents being bad people who threw their daughter away like garbage and thought she was completely worthless.

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TFA and TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku. Kylo implies they sold her for drinking money. But Kylo did no know the truth. We are given no information on why Rey’s parents left her, only guesses before JJ Abrams gives us the facts. Facts often rewrite what we think, but they were true all along. So there is no contradiction about their motives, only rumor vs. truth. We gat that in TLJ with what Luke did to spark Ben’s turn to the dark side. The truth about Rey’s parents just takes longer to reveal. Why? Because that is a key piece of who Rey is and everything blocking her from moving forward in all three stories. But in TROS we get an answer that lets Rey truly move on from it.

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 (Edited)

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

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act on instinct said:

SparkySywer said:

Either way, if he was manipulating her here, why not go with the Palpatine manipulation right off the bat? Pull the same stuff he says in TRoS instead of waiting a year?

Kylo didn’t know by then, Palpatine told him on Exegol. If anything the question becomes why did Palpatine do the waiting.

So then he isn’t lying to manipulate her.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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SparkySywer said:

act on instinct said:

SparkySywer said:

Either way, if he was manipulating her here, why not go with the Palpatine manipulation right off the bat? Pull the same stuff he says in TRoS instead of waiting a year?

Kylo didn’t know by then, Palpatine told him on Exegol. If anything the question becomes why did Palpatine do the waiting.

So then he isn’t lying to manipulate her.

He was using what he knew to manipulate her. Common dark side tactic. An outright lie can be seen through with the force, but something that is true or believed to be true can be a powerful weapon when it is properly twisted.

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TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

Then in TROS Kylo starts off with telling her he never lied to her (very true, but he did throw out some guesses), that her parents were no one because they chose to be. He makes her remember (as she holds the dagger that killed them and had already heard the echo of her scream for them to come back). That they sold her to protect her.

In both instances Kylo’s goal is the same, to turn Rey. He is using Rey’s situation to his advantage. The TLJ scene does not reveal much truth. If you take Kylo as being 100% forthright you are totally misreading his character. In TROS he learns more and figures out how to twist it to his advantage. He is building doubt in Rey’s mind. And it works. He so convinces her that she is destined for evil that she runs off to Acto-to. Luke is able to break what Kylo did by showing her that he and Leia already knew and that it doesn’t matter. She is not destined to be evil just because of her grandfather anymore than Luke was destined to be evil because of his father.

The idea that anyone can be a Jedi remains intact in TLJ. Nothing in TROS changes that. Sure we find out that Rey is someone, but we also find out that her parents were not. So whatever abilities she inherited from her grandfather skipped a generation. Who your parents are does not dictate who you have to be. Anyone can be a Jedi. Anyone can be a Sith. If anything we see in TROS that because Rey is a Palatine does not mean she must be a Sith, a similar and yet opposite message from TLJ and very complimentary. They both further the narrative that we each make our own destiny. Nothing is pre-ordained by our parentage.

It really resets the Skywalker saga. I’ve noticed that there is this idea out there that you have to have force sensitivity in your family to be a Jedi. In TPM and Clone Wars that is firmly established to NOT be the case. None of these great Jedi we see had children to pass on their powers. Each one was effectively the last of their line. Then along comes Anakin and breaks the rules, marries Padme, and they have twins and both twins are strong with the force. While I think Lucas reconned it (Leia was originally 16 and Luke 19) to make them siblings, what you see of Leia in ANH shows someone strong willed. Even Vader can’t get out of her what she did with the Death Star plans. But Rey is not a Skywalker. She is not from a Jedi family. Yet she becomes a Jedi… she takes on the Skywalker name, claiming the Skywalker parentage. She does not become a Sith, which is her parentage. So TROS reframes anyone can become a Jedi into even a Sith descendant can become a Jedi. So the TROS story only enhances the anyone can become a Jedi theme from TLJ. Why? Because JJ didn’t set out to recton or change anything in TLJ, but to carry the story forward in a new way.

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yotsuya said:

SparkySywer said:

act on instinct said:

SparkySywer said:

Either way, if he was manipulating her here, why not go with the Palpatine manipulation right off the bat? Pull the same stuff he says in TRoS instead of waiting a year?

Kylo didn’t know by then, Palpatine told him on Exegol. If anything the question becomes why did Palpatine do the waiting.

So then he isn’t lying to manipulate her.

He was using what he knew to manipulate her. Common dark side tactic. An outright lie can be seen through with the force, but something that is true or believed to be true can be a powerful weapon when it is properly twisted.

If it’s not a lie, why bring it up? The whole argument was that Kylo was not being honest, so Rey being a Nobody doesn’t make sense.

yotsuya said:

The way TLJ is written, the whole “your parents were nobody” was all Kylo trying to turn her. So it being the unvarnished truth doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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 (Edited)

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

I’ll give you a few comparison examples or something like these, to hammer my Rey pointer in.

Example 1.

You’ve probably seen Finding Nemo. Coral is killed by the barracuda and this heavily affects Marlin, he becomes overprotective of his son Nemo to make sure he doesn’t end up in danger, to avoid facing the same trauma went through when losing Coral.

Imagine if the third movie came out and blatantly revealed to us that (surprise!) Coral never actually died in the first place. This would undermine the entire first movie, including Marlin’s character arc - especially since it was the thing that made his arc necessary in the first place.

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but bringing back Coral DOESN’T undermine Finding Nemo, because we NEVER saw the barracuda eat Coral!”, then I don’t know what to say.

Example 2.

Imagine if Return of the Jedi revealed that Darth Vader was lying to Luke about his father’s identity in Empire. That would undermine the point of “I am your father…”, since it was there for this reason: “How is Luke going to deal with the revelation of Darth Vader being his father?”

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but Darth Vader lying DOESN’T undermine Empire, because we had no reason to believe he was telling the truth!”, then I don’t know what to say.

See my point?

Also, as the other user stated, Rey is the one who admits her parents were nobody, not Kylo. He gets her into admitting the truth she has hidden away, then Rey herself admits they were nobody. He’s just elaborating or adding onto what it meant.

And there was absolutely no indication that “Rey’s parents were nobody” or anything else I said about that was otherwise in The Last Jedi itself.

If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories.

Star Wars is a fictional universe. It doesn’t have to follow reality. (You might see it as ironic since it came from me, who detailed on how Rey has a core belief of self-worthlessness, but then, again, Star Wars picks up on some things from reality and doesn’t at times.)

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 (Edited)

TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

I’ll give you a few comparison examples or something like these, to hammer my Rey pointer in.

Example 1.

You’ve probably seen Finding Nemo. Coral is killed by the barracuda and this heavily affects Marlin, he becomes overprotective of his son Nemo to make sure he doesn’t end up in danger, to avoid facing the same trauma went through when losing Coral.

Imagine if the third movie came out and blatantly revealed to us that (surprise!) Coral never actually died in the first place. This would undermine the entire first movie, including Marlin’s character arc - especially since it was the thing that made his arc necessary in the first place.

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but bringing back Coral DOESN’T undermine Finding Nemo, because we NEVER saw the barracuda eat Coral!”, then I don’t know what to say.

Yeah, it doesn’t change the initial trauma or reaction to it. People have been writing that sort of story as long as stories have been told.

Example 2.

Imagine if Return of the Jedi revealed that Darth Vader was lying to Luke about his father’s identity in Empire. That would undermine the point of “I am your father…”, since it was there for this reason: “How is Luke going to deal with the revelation of Darth Vader being his father?”

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but Darth Vader lying DOESN’T undermine Empire, because we had no reason to believe he was telling the truth!”, then I don’t know what to say.

That is exactly what I am saying. Perhaps you have forgotten the three years of endless debate on whether or not he was telling the truth.

See my point?

Also, as the other user stated, Rey is the one who admits her parents were nobody, not Kylo. He gets her into admitting the truth she has hidden away, then Rey herself admits they were nobody. He’s just elaborating or adding onto what it meant.

And there was absolutely no indication that “Rey’s parents were nobody” or anything else I said about that was otherwise in The Last Jedi itself.

If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories.

Star Wars is a fictional universe. It doesn’t have to follow reality. (You might see it as ironic since it came from me, who detailed on how Rey has a core belief of self-worthlessness, but then, again, Star Wars picks up on some things from reality and doesn’t at times.)

In TLJ we have Kylo badgering Rey, telling her she remembers and she admits they were nobody (that is as far as Rey went, but Kylo went on to describe a scenario that we have no verification of). When we pick of the conversation in TROS, Kylo says that Rey’s parents were nobody because they wanted to be. They sold her to protect her. The only part of the TLJ conversation that was negated were the lies Kylo told (or perhaps they were what Rey had suspected or what Unkar Plutt had told her) that went beyond nobody. Nobody was confirmed in TROS.

But you really don’t get deeper story telling if you get stuck on what seems true in one chapter cannot be countered later. That sort of reversal is a major part of story telling. Characters actions revolve around what they believe to be true. When they learn it is not true, they adjust accordingly. We already have that with Ben telling Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father. Luke’s actions up until that reveal in TESB are based on that, but his actions after that are based on the new information. And we already know that he believes Vader, but he confirms it with Yoda. And yet we have that same thing play out with Rey’s parentage and it is shocking and horrible and it reconns everything that came before. Nonsense. It is just a tool of story telling. One that has happened in real life so often that we know how the human brain reacts to such things.

Face it, TROS doesn’t contradict a word of TLJ that comes from a trusted source. Not a word. It only contradicts what Kylo was saying to convince Rey to join him (which didn’t even work).

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TestingOutTheTest said:

@SparkySywer You didn’t finish the second section on your comment.

There is no second section, the second quote is just the thing I was referring to. I was unclear

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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 (Edited)

This is a really long way of saying “it’s not really about what the person who wrote the story says it was about!”

To me, it doesn’t work. Like you mention, a lot of what is going on in Rey’s head and in fans’ minds and speculation during TFA and TLJ was that Rey’s importance came from her family. Theory after theory was about that, when all that was really in TFA was an abandoned child, who then gets told she can find belonging in her future rather than her past.

Rey continues trying to tie it to her past though, interpreting Maz to have meant that Luke was the key to her belonging, to her family, and to her past. She goes on a similar spirit journey that Luke did, and it similarly tells her the truth she least wants to hear: that she needs to depend on herself rather than externalising it for someone else.

She wants to, similar to fans, attach her belonging to someone else’s responsibility. That her parents are people somehow meaningful to why she’s involved in all of this, that her new abilities mean she’s destined for greatness. Instead, she’s given full autonomy and independence. She’s not a lost princess, she wasn’t even wanted… but that means she can stop living in the past and fight for what’s important to her, rather than everyone else.

Making her Palpatine’s granddaughter undoes all of this, and ends up repeating the story arc of finding out despairing news. It also is a carbon copy of Luke’s arc, taking more of her autonomy and individuality away. Rather than being a product of herself, she is a product of Palpatine. Rather than having strength in the Force because of who she is, she has powers because her grandfather had powers.

Her now-loving parents are still absent, but are heroic martyrs now to give confidence to Rey, rather than her having to build confidence in herself. Her powerful grandfather brings fear, but not as much fear as being adrift.

Narratively, she went from having to create importance from within, to having external importance thrust upon her. It’s bad writing, but it’s canon now.

So, while I applaud the headcanon trying to make it make sense, sometimes we’ve got to accept that mistakes were made.

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So you, Jake, finally read my actual defense itself.

The self-worth stuff is not really headcanon, it’s actually inferable from the movies. Yes, it relies on inference, like almost everything else in this trilogy.

It isn’t that Rey wants to be important in the grand scheme of things and in the galaxy and make a difference for the sake of it, blah blah blah, yadda yadda. It’s that Rey wants to feel worth something to other people, she wants people to give her validation and appreciation so it’d essentially, emotionally push away her feelings of self-worthless so she can feel happy - but it doesn’t address the core belief itself, only its effects.

And she wants to feel worth something to her parents, as well - after all, they were the ones who abandoned her. Parents are supposed to care for you, love you, take care of you, not consider you to be worthless.

Also, Rey doesn’t technically want to be great, because she feels unworthy/undeserving - her feelings of unworthiness are a symptom/piece of evidence for her core belief of self-worthlessness. She rejects the Skywalker lightsaber that literally called out to her when Maz offers it to her because she doesn’t feel worthy of it. She keeps relying on other people (i.e. Luke, Ben) to be the Hero when she doesn’t want to do it herself.

Even when she does become the Hero it doesn’t imply she’s found her own importance, it’s that she has no other choice but to be that Hero, and even in The Rise of Skywalker she doesn’t feel worthy or deserving of being that Hero (“I will earn your brother’s saber…”) because she thinks she’ll turn to the dark side and no one’ll give her validation and other people will consider her to be worthless. The same happens in The Force Awakens - just because she’s using the Skywalker lightsaber in her fight with Kylo Ren on Starkiller doesn’t mean she finally felt worthy of using that saber, just meant that she has no other choice but to use it.

The truth Rey comes to terms with in The Last Jedi is not that she has to rely on herself, but that her parents really did throw her away like garbage and consider her to be worthless. She finally moves on from her shitty parents, and now relies on other people aside from Luke, Han, Kylo Ren and her actual parents for validation. She says “They were nobody” in the sense that because they weren’t important, it meant they had no actual reason to abandon Rey - something I address in the defense itself.

I do agree with you that the “Rey Palpatine” stuff is similar to Luke’s arc, but it’s simply a natural way of reinforcing her core belief of self-worthlessness - in the same way, Jakku being a desert planet is a way of visualizing the hell Rey’s gone through during her time on Jakku, and Starkiller Base is a way of saying that the First Order’s an improvement over the old Empire (hell, even the laser splits into five beams whereas the Death Star’s beam didn’t in A New Hope when it destroys Alderaan).

This is a really long way of saying “it’s not really about what the person who wrote the story says it was about!”

We all interpret and view art differently (not that film quality is subjective). Lucas said that the saga was about Anakin when he was still in charge, but now with Disney in charge it’s about the whole Skywalker family.

Lucas’ POV: The prequels are the fall of Anakin, and the originals are his redemption.

Disney’s saga… and its unintentional meaning: The prequels are the Skywalkers’ origin story, the originals are their rise, and the sequels are how their legacy would live on once the actual Skywalker bloodline dies off.

Stories unintentionally convey unintentional meaning all the time, if you know what I mean. It doesn’t really matter as to what the creators themselves say, because inferences and what is shown and told to us in the film itself conveys otherwise.

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Cool. Still doesn’t work for me, but guess what: like you said someone else came in behind that creator and we have to adjust what it is. That doesn’t mean the original intention is gone or meaningless, and nothing Disney has done has taken away the prequel trilogy being about Anakin’s downfall, or the original trilogy being about his redemption.

Rise of Skywalker did contradict what was happening in Last Jedi, and that’s fine. I think it’s a weaker story and those changes are weaker than what we had before, but the changes happened. Pretending that intention changed is ridiculous, almost as ridiculous as saying we should ignore a writer’s or director’s intention all together.

It was a retcon, happens a lot. Each Director or showrunner has full power to do what they want so long as they’re in charge of the story. Abrams couldn’t be overruled by Johnson or even the Story Group, just as Filoni and Rau can’t be overruled by novelists, comic writers and artists, or the Story Group. That doesn’t mean the original intention disappears, it means that we have to reconcile it, or hope that newer stories reconcile it.

Your defences of this change still don’t work for me, as they make Rey’s character far shallower and less of an autonomous character in my opinion. To me, it takes away her agency. You disagree, and that’s fine. Someone asked me to come out in my 2¢, and I have. It was a terrible choice to make that change in her character, but it is canon and I hope that new stories help rectify those mistakes and bring back some of the depth she had that was robbed from us.

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Rey still has depth as a character. Her having a core belief of self-worthlessness makes her so relatable to those who have that as well, and when she does overcome it as she kills Palpatine it shows that those suffering from this core belief can overcome this as well. It’s inspiring.

I never really said that Disney took away Lucas’ original meaning of the PT & OT, I just said that it unintentionally recontextualized that or added new meaning to that.

Ride of Skywalker did contradict what was happening in Last Jedi

If you’re referring to the general heritage, I described in the defense that just because Rey’s PARENTS were nobody doesn’t mean her other ancestors were.

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Yeah, that doesn’t work still. Her parents being nobody was about her not feeling like a part of this big and important conflict. Her grandfather being the biggest and most important part of this almost-century of conflict does contradict that. It contradicts her emotional arc of having to create self-worth, rather than her importance being externally from who her parents and grandparents were.

Her feelings of worthlessness don’t come across at all in Rise of Skywalker. It’s a feeling that she must be evil because Palpatine is evil. And overcoming that is literally what Luke already went through with Vader. It’s reductive to Rey as a character on a storytelling level, repositioning her again as a proxy for Luke rather than an autonomous character, and it’s also reductive to her arc that she already went through in Last Jedi to learn that she is her own person regardless of who her family was.

It’s just bad writing. Like it all you want, maybe it helps you with the accusations that she was a “Mary Sue” or whatever. It doesn’t make up for the fact that it was bad writing that hurt the character and story. Maybe that can and will be fixed, but it hasn’t been yet.

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JakeRyan17 said:

Yeah, that doesn’t work still. Her parents being nobody was about her not feeling like a part of this big and important conflict. Her grandfather being the biggest and most important part of this almost-century of conflict does contradict that. It contradicts her emotional arc of having to create self-worth, rather than her importance being externally from who her parents and grandparents were.

Her feelings of worthlessness don’t come across at all in Rise of Skywalker. It’s a feeling that she must be evil because Palpatine is evil. And overcoming that is literally what Luke already went through with Vader. It’s reductive to Rey as a character on a storytelling level, repositioning her again as a proxy for Luke rather than an autonomous character, and it’s also reductive to her arc that she already went through in Last Jedi to learn that she is her own person regardless of who her family was.

It’s just bad writing. Like it all you want, maybe it helps you with the accusations that she was a “Mary Sue” or whatever. It doesn’t make up for the fact that it was bad writing that hurt the character and story. Maybe that can and will be fixed, but it hasn’t been yet.

A grandfather who wants her dead. And then a grandfather who wants her to attack him so he can take over her body. Just all sorts of good feelings there. No, the story is really about Rey’s self worth. She starts with depending on her family coming back for her. When she is shown that is never going to happen, she transfers that to the OT heroes. But Han dies and Luke won’t leave Ach-to. Kylo tries to convince her that she has no place in the story. But Leia makes a place for her. When we start TROS, Leia becomes her teacher. And she still thinks she is unworthy. She finds out she is a Palpatine and she feels even less worthy. She is now the enemy. She tries to hide, but Luke sets her straight. Then when she calls on the Jedi in her greatest need, they are there. They support her. The show she is worthy. Not because of whose family she came from, but because of who she is as her own person. She defeats Palpatine because she casts aside preconceived notions, which she and the audience have had since the story started, and comes into herself. She is Rey. She takes the name Skywalker to show that she rejects her Palpatine lineage. So every piece of her story builds on what has come before and TROS doesn’t retcon anything. In the end she has found herself and her purpose. And it was not based on who her parents or grandparents were.

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 (Edited)

^Rey finding self worth for herself alone, would still serve Rey better than the ol’ friends-and-family-help-me-realize-what-it is-vaguely. You’re Not Alone and being validated by everyone, is not the same as accepting Being Alone and trying to make something out of it. The fact that she even has something tangible to reject to find purpose already takes a lot away from her TLJ arc.

There’s really no justifying this imo - Rey Palpatine is a completely different arc, and if you think otherwise I don’t know if you understood the ethos of TLJ.

Andor: The Rogue One Arc

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JakeRyan17 said:

Yeah, that doesn’t work still. Her parents being nobody was about her not feeling like a part of this big and important conflict. Her grandfather being the biggest and most important part of this almost-century of conflict does contradict that. It contradicts her emotional arc of having to create self-worth, rather than her importance being externally from who her parents and grandparents were.

Her feelings of worthlessness don’t come across at all in Rise of Skywalker. It’s a feeling that she must be evil because Palpatine is evil. And overcoming that is literally what Luke already went through with Vader. It’s reductive to Rey as a character on a storytelling level, repositioning her again as a proxy for Luke rather than an autonomous character, and it’s also reductive to her arc that she already went through in Last Jedi to learn that she is her own person regardless of who her family was.

It’s just bad writing. Like it all you want, maybe it helps you with the accusations that she was a “Mary Sue” or whatever. It doesn’t make up for the fact that it was bad writing that hurt the character and story. Maybe that can and will be fixed, but it hasn’t been yet.

While I’ve enjoyed this thread immensely I have to agree with this. That said, as a huge fan of TROS, I like the ‘Rey as proxy Luke’ thing because it kind of goes where I wish the story had in ROTJ. Rey’s revulsion at her heritage, as well as the shocking manifestation of her inherited power during the Chewie incident, is much more convincing/interesting to me than Luke’s out-of-the-blue “there’s still good in him, I can’t kill my own father” routine. But this is purely because I view TROS in isolation as a defacto ROTJ reboot. In terms of being a coherent continuation of the previous film I think it’s a pretty blatant reversal. But the ‘Rey as nobody’ thing, compelling as it was in theory, didn’t cohere with TFA either. The whole ST is a hot mess really. It’s a shame…

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To understand TLJ, you have to look at how the movie ends. How it ties up the story. Most of the supposed ethos or philosophy of the film stems from things in the middle that that movie itself upends by the end of the film. It takes Abrams mess from TFA and sets up the finale. I’ve had conversations about how TLJ was about let the past die, when the finale clearly says the opposite. TLJ exists as the middle of a trilogy. Johnson wisely kept the point of his story self contained to that film only and he explored some very tight character arcs that he completed. Finn finds a reason to live and fight for the Resistance, Poe learns how to be a leader instead of a hotshot, and Rey takes up the mantle of Jedi and hero and part of the story. The “anyone can be a Jedi” applies more to the young broom boy. But Abrams transferred it to Finn in TROS, though he somewhat failed to make it very clear. Rey’s parents remain nobody. We never learn their names. We learn one of them is the child of Palpatine. But the remain obscure nobodies. In the credits they are Rey’s Mother and Rey’s Father.

So I believe this conversation stems from a misunderstanding of TLJ. Abrams has stated he set out finish the story Johnson had continued. And if you understand how movies are made, Abrams started with Trevorrow’s script and then changed things up. He found something larger to give the story more power and risk and I think it completes the trilogy beautifully. I think the only flawed film is TFA which sets things up rather badly and didn’t give Johnson a lot of room for where things had to go. And he did get Abrams to change a few things so that TLJ would work better. And Abrams was a producer on TLJ. Don’t forget that. So he didn’t come in to put back his story. He didn’t really have one. And bringing back Palpatine was genius. It so echoes the origins of Star Wars and ties things back all the way to Episode I. And unlike ROTJ that ended with Luke being tortured and Anakin’s redemption and throwing Palpatine down that shaft (to die off screen leaving the possibility that he was not completely gone that was explored before), Rey faces down Palpatine and and defeats him in a very Jedi way - by not attacking him, but by defending herself against him and turning his lighting back on him. Luke is touted as this great Jedi in ROTJ and yet he was not the one to deal with Palpatine. He sacrificed himself rather than fight, which gave Anakin a path back, but didn’t really deal with Palpatine except as a side effect. Of all the film endings, TROS is one of the two most satisfying because it is very final. Rey destroys Palpatine and all his followers. There is no one to bring him back this time.

And I think this idea that TROS rewrites TLJ also comes from how some felt about TLJ and not from any actual part of the story.

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JakeRyan17 said:

Yeah, that doesn’t work still. Her parents being nobody was about her not feeling like a part of this big and important conflict. Her grandfather being the biggest and most important part of this almost-century of conflict does contradict that. It contradicts her emotional arc of having to create self-worth, rather than her importance being externally from who her parents and grandparents were.

Her feelings of worthlessness don’t come across at all in Rise of Skywalker. It’s a feeling that she must be evil because Palpatine is evil. And overcoming that is literally what Luke already went through with Vader. It’s reductive to Rey as a character on a storytelling level, repositioning her again as a proxy for Luke rather than an autonomous character, and it’s also reductive to her arc that she already went through in Last Jedi to learn that she is her own person regardless of who her family was.

It’s just bad writing. Like it all you want, maybe it helps you with the accusations that she was a “Mary Sue” or whatever. It doesn’t make up for the fact that it was bad writing that hurt the character and story. Maybe that can and will be fixed, but it hasn’t been yet.

I put up a link to my post of Rey’s self-worth arc earlier.

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NFBisms said:

^Rey finding self worth for herself alone, would still serve Rey better than the ol’ friends-and-family-help-me-realize-what-it is-vaguely. You’re Not Alone and being validated by everyone, is not the same as accepting Being Alone and trying to make something out of it. The fact that she even has something tangible to reject to find purpose already takes a lot away from her TLJ arc.

If you’re referring to the scene with the Jedi of the past, they’re not giving Rey validation. They’re encouraging her to stand against Palpatine, regardless of how weak she is in comparison to him. They’re giving her motivation.

“You’re not alone” refers to one of the symptoms of her core belief of self-worthlessness, that being feelings of loneliness. And she turned to the Jedi of the past for help because she felt alone and unable to stand up to Palpatine after he sucked up her life force and threw Ben into the pit.

There’s really no justifying this imo - Rey Palpatine is a completely different arc, and if you think otherwise I don’t know if you understood the ethos of TLJ.

How is it a different arc from her self-worth arc? And I already explained in the post as to why it doesn’t undermine her TLJ arc as well as why said arc is misunderstood by even the most loyal TLJ fans who dislike TRoS.

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yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

I’ll give you a few comparison examples or something like these, to hammer my Rey pointer in.

Example 1.

You’ve probably seen Finding Nemo. Coral is killed by the barracuda and this heavily affects Marlin, he becomes overprotective of his son Nemo to make sure he doesn’t end up in danger, to avoid facing the same trauma went through when losing Coral.

Imagine if the third movie came out and blatantly revealed to us that (surprise!) Coral never actually died in the first place. This would undermine the entire first movie, including Marlin’s character arc - especially since it was the thing that made his arc necessary in the first place.

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but bringing back Coral DOESN’T undermine Finding Nemo, because we NEVER saw the barracuda eat Coral!”, then I don’t know what to say.

Yeah, it doesn’t change the initial trauma or reaction to it. People have been writing that sort of story as long as stories have been told.

Example 2.

Imagine if Return of the Jedi revealed that Darth Vader was lying to Luke about his father’s identity in Empire. That would undermine the point of “I am your father…”, since it was there for this reason: “How is Luke going to deal with the revelation of Darth Vader being his father?”

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but Darth Vader lying DOESN’T undermine Empire, because we had no reason to believe he was telling the truth!”, then I don’t know what to say.

That is exactly what I am saying. Perhaps you have forgotten the three years of endless debate on whether or not he was telling the truth.

See my point?

Also, as the other user stated, Rey is the one who admits her parents were nobody, not Kylo. He gets her into admitting the truth she has hidden away, then Rey herself admits they were nobody. He’s just elaborating or adding onto what it meant.

And there was absolutely no indication that “Rey’s parents were nobody” or anything else I said about that was otherwise in The Last Jedi itself.

If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories.

Star Wars is a fictional universe. It doesn’t have to follow reality. (You might see it as ironic since it came from me, who detailed on how Rey has a core belief of self-worthlessness, but then, again, Star Wars picks up on some things from reality and doesn’t at times.)

In TLJ we have Kylo badgering Rey, telling her she remembers and she admits they were nobody (that is as far as Rey went, but Kylo went on to describe a scenario that we have no verification of). When we pick of the conversation in TROS, Kylo says that Rey’s parents were nobody because they wanted to be. They sold her to protect her. The only part of the TLJ conversation that was negated were the lies Kylo told (or perhaps they were what Rey had suspected or what Unkar Plutt had told her) that went beyond nobody. Nobody was confirmed in TROS.

But you really don’t get deeper story telling if you get stuck on what seems true in one chapter cannot be countered later. That sort of reversal is a major part of story telling. Characters actions revolve around what they believe to be true. When they learn it is not true, they adjust accordingly. We already have that with Ben telling Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father. Luke’s actions up until that reveal in TESB are based on that, but his actions after that are based on the new information. And we already know that he believes Vader, but he confirms it with Yoda. And yet we have that same thing play out with Rey’s parentage and it is shocking and horrible and it reconns everything that came before. Nonsense. It is just a tool of story telling. One that has happened in real life so often that we know how the human brain reacts to such things.

Face it, TROS doesn’t contradict a word of TLJ that comes from a trusted source. Not a word. It only contradicts what Kylo was saying to convince Rey to join him (which didn’t even work).

I’m saying Rey’s parents being bad people was the truth (from a storytelling perspective) or else her arc in TLJ of moving past her awful, shitty parents would be f%$kin’ pointless - which is what happens in TRoS anyways.

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TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

I’ll give you a few comparison examples or something like these, to hammer my Rey pointer in.

Example 1.

You’ve probably seen Finding Nemo. Coral is killed by the barracuda and this heavily affects Marlin, he becomes overprotective of his son Nemo to make sure he doesn’t end up in danger, to avoid facing the same trauma went through when losing Coral.

Imagine if the third movie came out and blatantly revealed to us that (surprise!) Coral never actually died in the first place. This would undermine the entire first movie, including Marlin’s character arc - especially since it was the thing that made his arc necessary in the first place.

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but bringing back Coral DOESN’T undermine Finding Nemo, because we NEVER saw the barracuda eat Coral!”, then I don’t know what to say.

Yeah, it doesn’t change the initial trauma or reaction to it. People have been writing that sort of story as long as stories have been told.

Example 2.

Imagine if Return of the Jedi revealed that Darth Vader was lying to Luke about his father’s identity in Empire. That would undermine the point of “I am your father…”, since it was there for this reason: “How is Luke going to deal with the revelation of Darth Vader being his father?”

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but Darth Vader lying DOESN’T undermine Empire, because we had no reason to believe he was telling the truth!”, then I don’t know what to say.

That is exactly what I am saying. Perhaps you have forgotten the three years of endless debate on whether or not he was telling the truth.

See my point?

Also, as the other user stated, Rey is the one who admits her parents were nobody, not Kylo. He gets her into admitting the truth she has hidden away, then Rey herself admits they were nobody. He’s just elaborating or adding onto what it meant.

And there was absolutely no indication that “Rey’s parents were nobody” or anything else I said about that was otherwise in The Last Jedi itself.

If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories.

Star Wars is a fictional universe. It doesn’t have to follow reality. (You might see it as ironic since it came from me, who detailed on how Rey has a core belief of self-worthlessness, but then, again, Star Wars picks up on some things from reality and doesn’t at times.)

In TLJ we have Kylo badgering Rey, telling her she remembers and she admits they were nobody (that is as far as Rey went, but Kylo went on to describe a scenario that we have no verification of). When we pick of the conversation in TROS, Kylo says that Rey’s parents were nobody because they wanted to be. They sold her to protect her. The only part of the TLJ conversation that was negated were the lies Kylo told (or perhaps they were what Rey had suspected or what Unkar Plutt had told her) that went beyond nobody. Nobody was confirmed in TROS.

But you really don’t get deeper story telling if you get stuck on what seems true in one chapter cannot be countered later. That sort of reversal is a major part of story telling. Characters actions revolve around what they believe to be true. When they learn it is not true, they adjust accordingly. We already have that with Ben telling Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father. Luke’s actions up until that reveal in TESB are based on that, but his actions after that are based on the new information. And we already know that he believes Vader, but he confirms it with Yoda. And yet we have that same thing play out with Rey’s parentage and it is shocking and horrible and it reconns everything that came before. Nonsense. It is just a tool of story telling. One that has happened in real life so often that we know how the human brain reacts to such things.

Face it, TROS doesn’t contradict a word of TLJ that comes from a trusted source. Not a word. It only contradicts what Kylo was saying to convince Rey to join him (which didn’t even work).

I’m saying Rey’s parents being bad people was the truth (from a storytelling perspective) or else her arc in TLJ of moving past her awful, shitty parents would be f%$kin’ pointless - which is what happens in TRoS anyways.

But her parents are not good or bad, they are just gone. Kylo fills in that they are bad, but nothing in TLJ requires that or confirms it. They left her. that is a pretty bad thing for parents to do. TROS just adds the lone exception - unless they do it to save your life. But the reason in TROS doesn’t matter at all to Rey’s journey because it is the abandonment itself that Rey has to come to terms with. That is why TROS does nothing to Rey’s previous journey. Her journey in TFA and TLJ is all about her parents leaving her and her imagining they were coming back, coming to terms with the reality that they were never coming back and that her place in the story was the chance encounter of running into BB-8 and Finn on Jakku. But even TLJ gives hints that there could be more to it. Snoke figured it would be Luke to come and fight Kylo, but the force produced someone new, a scavenger girl. Her journey in TROS is coming to terms, not with her parents and being abandoned, but an evil grandfather who either wants to killer her or possess her and the powers she may have inherited from him.