Ooh, much has been discussed in the past few days, so I’ll go at it in order.
…
The new Leia dialogue makes, both in terms of making the movie more about her and adding to Rey’s character arc. The only thing I’m sad about is now there’s no reference to Padme and Leia opting to follow in her mother’s footsteps, or the implication that Luke eventually learned about. It’s a change I can live with, character progression over lore/fanservice, but you can still have the subtext there:
“She was quick to learn in our training. But she feared our father’s darkness within her. She surrendered her saber to me and said that someday it would be picked up again…by someone who would face that darkness, and overcome it.”
…
The idea of the dagger being a creation of Palpatine used to manipulate Rey is a great one, and that way you don’t have to have Luke immediately cast doubt on the Rey Palpatine story. My only issue is that the Knights of Ren are now explicitly loyal to Palpatine with no real autonomy of their own. I don’t read the EU, but I’m sure that that’d rub some hardcore fans the wrong way, and I typically prefer edits that are as canon compliant as possible (as much as a Rey Nopatine edit can comply to canon, at least).
Maybe after Rey finds the dagger, the Knights say:
“The found the dagger…alert the corpse.”
On Kijimi:
“The ghost wants the girl alive. Kill the rest.”
And when facing Ben on Exegol:
“We should’ve known you’d betray the plan.”
…
As far as “Dark Side or Death” vs. “parents” visions, if we’re going with the idea of Rey Palpatine being a lie and Rey’s true arc being having the courage to die to defeat Palpatine as the main core, the Dark Side of Death visions should be the first thing Rey sees, with memories of her parents coming second because they’re not important to who Rey is and are likely fabrications anyway.
Also, Nev, if you were theoretically doing this edit, would you change the planet Rey buries the Skywalker lightsabers to Jakku? Jakku means more to Rey than Tatooine meant to either Luke or Leia, and I’d like to see you “graveyard planet” take on Jakku again. Then again, Tatooine probably means more to Anakin than either of his kids, so maybe Anakin’s ghost should just bee added with Luke & Leia?