The Starlight Project Addendum: The Rise of Skywalker (Freeform Brainstorming Session) — Page 10

I like that, but it feels a little vague as to what Rey and Palpatine’s relationship actually is, and why she’s a Palpatine. Perhaps we should develop 3 separate versions of this scene:

1. True Rey Nobody - No parents and no connection to existing characters. Would focus on Rey’s dark visions and her burden of carrying the legacy of the Jedi. Would probably have to change music/trim scene so it seems like less of a reveal.

2. Rey Palpatine - Rey is a clone/force creation of Palpatine. This version keeps her good parents in order to salvage as much footage from the original film as possible.

3. Rey Nobody Palpatine - Rey is a creation of Palpatine, but her parents are not mentioned or relevant to the story. Keeps a big reveal while still maintaining continuity from TLJ.

I’m not sure if I prefer 1 or 3 more. I think 3 works best to preserve continuity and still keep the core of TROS intact, but there is something so charming about Rey truly being a nobody who was chosen by the force when the moment called for it, it’s very Arthurian and a great idea for a character in a trilogy mainly about legacy.

StarkillerAG said:

Personally, I still think the Plagueis life-creation route is the best one to go down. It connects Rey to Palpatine in a way that doesn’t feel contrived, while at the same time completely preserving everything said in the TLJ reveal. If you don’t like the idea of Palpatine creating Anakin, you can even have Rey be a sort of “dark Chosen One”: a Sith counterpart to Anakin, created by Palpatine as his personal revenge for Vader’s betrayal.

This. I intentionally worded it in such a way that it’s unclear if the Force merely reacted the first time around (the current lore explanation) or if he did intentionally make Anakin as well.

And Eddie, besides my previous explanation of how Rey knows she’s always had the Force in her (“Something inside me has always been there, and now it’s awake”) and all children have to be born with the Force according to canon, that also sounds quite convoluted.

I think we had it with the last write-up of the scene give or take some semantics and vocab. Everyone has the force, Rey was just able to accept it and let it flow through her on Starkiller. She accepts the role of the hero by taking up the sword she refused earlier, the same as Luke does in TLJ. I do think I prefer Rey being a sith counterpart to Anakin, but I don’t mind tying in the rest of the saga by making the Skywalkers Palpatine’s creation, too.

Everybody has the Force, but some families are more capable of being attuned to it. Rey is clearly VERY attuned to it, on the same level as the Skywalkers. It’s from George Lucas himself so I refuse to deviate from that.

MTFBWY is a phrase used by non-Force users only because the Force can use those people to accomplish things even without their direct attunement to it or realization of what’s actually happening. But saying that to the average person is never gonna result in them shooting lightning out of their fingertips.

Quite frankly, I don’t care if this is one interpretation of how using the Force works coming out of the theater in '77. It’s 2024. We know how the Force works in people according to the prequels, books, and shows we have. And you didn’t really give a good argument to explain it “always being there” in Rey according to TFA and TLJ.

EDIT: Heck, according to your own edit of Starlight what you’re describing is NOT what happens. The dark side awakens in her, the Force never “chooses” her. It’s what retroactively makes the title of that movie kinda badass. It’s never specified which aspect of the Force it is that awakens.

I agree. The force is in her already, but she rejects it in the beginning of the film. The “awakening” is Rey choosing the force, and taking up the role of the hero.

Off topic edit suggestion: add Anakin’s theme to the reunion scene at the end of the film. Originally, Yoda’s theme and Luke/Leia’s theme plays for seemingly no reason. But with the force ghost climax, it makes sense as the spirits of the Jedi live in Rey. Adding Anakin’s theme would support this and allow for some more prequel music in this movie, tying all the film’s together a little better.

Oh, also, in term’s of Rey’s reason for anger going in to the Palpy fight, I think it’s sufficient enough for her to now be aware of the fact that this man is the reason for Darth Vader’s terror in the galaxy, Ben Solo’s turn to the dark, and, more indirectly, the deaths and struggles of Luke and Leia.

As for why Rey doesn’t appear malnourished and was only abandoned at the age of 6, this matches the idea of having abusive parents. Some days are good, others are awful, and then you reconcile, and the cycle repeats. Eventually, her parents must have reached a breaking point and noped out. They gave raising her a chance, confirmed it was something they always knew they never wanted, and sold her.

TLJ focuses almost entirely on Rey’s parentage. I think preserving that is all that matters. Fun fact: Rey is never actually called “nobody” in that movie. Herself being “nothing” is only mentioned by Kylo once, and it feels almost like a footnote in their conversation after the main reveal. Yes, broom boy is a true nobody who can touch the Force, that’s touching and all, but that doesn’t mean he’s strong enough to topple an entire Empire.

EDIT: Also, for something to awaken itself, it has to be dormant or resting to begin with. So Rey HAS to have the potential for those great and powerful things within herself all along. Not everybody can have that, or else everybody would be walking around being OP in the Force. There’s a reason Ben calls Luke their “last hope”. They can’t pluck some random dude off the streets of Tatooine to become a Jedi as strong as Luke. There HAS to be a genetic factor here.

Yes there does because she is clearly just as strong if not stronger than a Skywalker. The Jedi Order had never seen anybody as strong as Anakin before. That screams “unnatural” in both cases, which is exactly what my proposed solution confirms.

We fundamentally disagree on the concept of the Force. That’s okay. But I’m sticking with what George Lucas clarified about it through his last works.

I liked this line from the Ahsoka show “Talent is a factor. But training and focus are what truly define someone’s success.”. I don’t think it has to be “either-or” with the Force. Rey can be unusually attuned to the Force from birth, but that doesn’t preclude anybody from being able to use the Force. I see it kind of like the Ratatouille quote “Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

The sad fact of life is that unless you are naturally good at something, no matter how much effort you put in you likely aren’t going to be as good as those who do have that natural talent. It’s why professional sports players exist. And as we see in these movies, Rey barely has to put any effort in for a payout only precedented by the Skywalkers, so she must fall into the latter category. This can be an important lesson for kids to learn.

I think for a true Rey Nobody edit it makes sense for her power to awaken on Starkiller. But I don’t know if it would work to have that be true and have her connected to the emperor.

Yeah, there could potentially be 3 different versions here:

1. Rey Palpatine with no TLJ retcons (my version)
2. Rey Nobody (keeps the same “spirit” as TLJ)
3. Rey Palpatine / Ascendant

Obviously I’m going to pursue #1 first and foremost.

I agree, but I’d love to see 2 get made eventually. Do we have a clean version of the scene? I’m not sure if it exists since the current Rey nobody edit just cuts out much of the dialogue.

I just watched the hangar part at least and it seems like they were able to remove his previous lines and replace them in a few places pretty cleanly.

Who made this part of the Nobody Ascendant edit, exactly? I was under the impression Hal was just hosting/compiling it all.

I’m not sure, I was under the impression that is was RL or Hal or both of them.

I’m pretty sure it was RL. Maybe the project file still exists. Although, some of the lines are spliced, and what we want is a completely blank slate.

I don’t think that Rey being suddenly chosen by the Force is antithetical to canon, and in fact it goes back to how the Force might usually work in the galaxy according to the '77 film. Anyone can learn to use the Force, and anyone can be suddenly chosen by it to do great deeds, hence the ‘may the Force be with you’ benediction. In fact, it seems unusual for the Force to be passed down through bloodlines, with the Skywalker family being one of the few examples of this. For most people, most Jedi, the reason they have the Force is a mystery, even if it’s usually identified early in their lives. But remember, Midichlorians are only a symbiote with the Force, not the reason for it. A person could suddenly be chosen by the Force later in life and then accumulate Midichlorians that communicate with it. And Midichlorians aside, the Force choosing a person for greatness is a very Aurthurian legend way of the Force working, with Rey being called to the Skywalker’s sword.

Maz tells Rey that the Force has ‘always been there’, but Maz isn’t a Jedi, she’s just very old. There’s no indication that she has the desire or aptitude to be a Jedi, so I think it’s a fair expectation that Maz is just telling Rey that the Force is available to everyone in some capacity, at all times. She could just as easily tell this to Chewie and it would be true. When Rey later says that ‘something inside me has always been there…now it’s awake’, she could just be referring back to Maz’s statement about the Force and not that Rey was always special. In fact, the important part is that awakening, the Force choosing Rey to accomplish some destiny.

I think that’s the point of TLJ, in my opinion. Rey comes from nothing, no special creation or lineage, and it’s only a chance awakening in TFA that brings her into the story. I don’t think that Broom Boy was intended to have some special parentage, he just chose the Force or the Force chose him at the end of the film, just as it can choose anyone no matter how small. In fact, TROS itself continues this thesis when Finn discovers that the Force has awakened in him as well. No special parents with him either, and that’s what makes Rey’s special status so detrimental to all of this.

TROS’s revelation about Rey destroys TLJ’s thesis by saying that Rey always had powerful blood. Neither my Clone Rey idea or JJ’s virgin birth Palpatine creation idea is able to negate the destruction of TLJ’s thesis because both ideas state that Rey was singularly important from the moment of her conception, and always would be. The only way I can see to preserve TLJ is by establishing that Rey’s first moment of importance is her awakening in TFA, and the only way to do that while also talking about her past is if Palpatine foresaw this awakening and sowed the seeds of darkness in Rey before that happened.

And yes, in a perfect world Rey’s parents wouldn’t matter, but if we delete the flashbacks and that motivation for destroying Palpatine, well, that would just further diminish Rey’s motivation. We have to consider the practical impact of deleting more of this already eviscerated film.

I think the issue with Rey’s parents being good is less about their goodness and more about the way they are handled in TROS. It doesn’t make sense for her parents to sell her to Plutt to keep her safe, since no good parent would willingly do that. They almost surely could have chosen a better person than Plutt to keep her safe, so it just doesn’t fly that they would really have Rey’s wellbeing in mind.

However, there’s actually an issue with TLJ’s version of Rey’s past that ties in here. If Rey’s parents were trash who sold her the first chance they got, then they wouldn’t have sold her when she was six. They would have sold her as a newborn, as most people who aren’t able to raise a child would do. Even if they kept her until she was six, she probably would have been malnourished and sickly, not like she looked in the flashback. So this is a problem with TLJ, and this is actually evidence that her parents did care for her, at least a little. That is why I think there’s value in keeping the flashbacks, but just making it so that her parents were forced to give up their child. It is the best fit for the facts at hand.

Very, very well said, Nev. Your ideas and creativity truly convince me that a “Rey Spiritual Palpatine” take that honors TLJ is possible. It’s certainly what I’m going to keep advocating for, at least. With fanedits, I’m all for being as canon complient to the franchise as possible (it’s why I don’t generally gravitate Prequel Edits that drastically change Dooku’s motivations) but there’s got to a point where you musn’t be afraid to address acknowledge a the more problematic aspects of something you love (i.e., Indiana Jones is more or less a grave robber). Star Wars needs more nobodies who become somebodies, not an endless cycle of bluebloods.

Well, the trouble is that I think my part is truest to the saga as a whole. Which, as the final chapter in a 9-part saga, I think that should take priority. We can focus on the previously unknowns once this saga is over.

Let me try to explain my thought process that led to my original idea right here:

1. The Skywalker bloodline is freakishly powerful, to the point where the only reason eyebrows weren’t raised in the Jedi Order is because of a prophecy. Nobody has ever, or will ever, be as strong as those in this bloodline.
2. This prophecy turned out to be a whole load of shit, really. Yeah, Vader finally threw Palpatine down the reactor shaft after 20 years, but this “lasting balance” only lasted for about 20 years because Ben Solo turns to the dark side and 10 years later Palpatine announces his return. Huh?
3. At this point, the prophecy is more than likely to have been “misread” as Yoda states in Episode 3.
4. There’s a new girl in town who is freakishly powerful, able to defeat Kylo Ren, who hails from a bloodline that had the strongest Jedi ever on it.
5. The only way that makes sense is if she has the same raw Force potential as a Skywalker. The only way that is possible is if she were conceived the same way as a Skywalker.
6. How was Anakin conceived? Some canon lore might state that the light side of the Force did it, but then how come he has such strong dark tendencies? How come his descendants all struggle so much with the dark?
7. Watching the movies alone, it appears that Palpatine greatly hinted at himself being responsible (the opera show they’re watching is a visual hint, and he gives Anakin that “look” as he describes the process of creating life).
8. Alright, let’s roll with that. Good news is that Rey can now follow the same origins as Anakin since they both hail from nobodies. Rey’s unexplained powers are finally given a reason, as well as her taking on the name of Skywalker. Rey’s parents can be the dark inverse of Shmi.

Here’s my thought process on why this other idea doesn’t work:

1. Let’s say Rey is a nobody that isn’t as powerful as the Skywalkers, because no up and coming Jedi should realistically be. Palpatine cannot put his “darkness” into a baby Rey to give her more power and bring her up to parity, because her body simply wouldn’t be able to accept that much power. I also find it strange he would do such a thing. That isn’t in his character to willingly give his own power to others, that’s a Jedi trait.
2. Okay, so Rey needs to be conceived with all of the power that she will ever be able to harness in life. In order for this to be possible, she must either be genetically related to Palpatine, or a creation of the Force akin to the Skywalkers. We know that no other Jedi has ever been as powerful as the Skywalkers, and we’re trying to avoid a direct Palpatine attachment here.
3. Yes, anybody can tap into the Force. But to have a complete nobody be more powerful than the Skywalkers flies in the face of their entire saga. I don’t care about “Well, she’s that powerful because that’s just what the Force wanted/intended” because it’s a lazy answer and clearly the Force never gave a damn about the Skywalkers at this point because things wouldn’t have gotten this bad for them otherwise (read my initial points on my idea). It feels like they get a complete and utter shaft in this way. And in their own saga, no less.