DominicCobb said:
StarkillerAG said:
DominicCobb said:
StarkillerAG said:
DominicCobb said:
To me, the solution would have been simple.
When Rey goes to Ahch-to, she’s avoiding her fears, but she should have also been having a crisis of faith in the power of the Force (which Luke helps restore by lifting the X-wing).
At the end, to complete her journey, she decides not to avoid her fear, but also not to try to use brute force to overcome it. As Luke should have done in the cave in TESB, she doesn’t use her saber, and puts her trust solely in the force. When Palpatine starts shooting her with lightning, she turns off her saber and lets the lightning strike her - but it doesn’t, her faith is rewarded and it phases through her, Luke on Crait style (but without the need for astral projection). The lightning going through Rey destroys the temple and kills Palpatine.
People would have hated it, but it would’ve been pretty cool and a fitting conclusion.
Eh, feels too much like a deus ex machina for me. I’d prefer for Force powers to have some sense of realism, rather than just being a get-out-of-jail-free card for true believers. Plus, if you can’t get hit by lightning when you trust yourself in the light side, why did Luke get hit by lightning in ROTJ?
Yeah I don’t really care about that, to me it feels like a proper step up from the last film (and would’ve have made her death by exhaustion make a lot more sense). Plus she’s got the thousand generations living inside her or whatever.
Regardless, there are a few ways to accomplish the same idea. Her life-force creates a shield, or the ghosts of the Jedi block the blasts (ROTJ early draft style).
I disagree, I think that the “always make it one step up from what happened before” attitude was what made the movie so unfulfilling in the first place. It doesn’t make narrative or dramatic sense for Rey to just magically not die. The Force ghost idea might be better though, Jonh in the fanedit thread already did something like that.
Did you miss the part where I said she still dies? In my mind it’s the final installment there’s a license to show something we’ve never seen before. And I think I pretty well explained the narrative and dramatic sense for it.
Not that any of this matters of course.
I think it would have been far more interesting, if Rey lost her Force powers, when Kylo Ren became Ben Solo again, since she got the powers to compensate for the rising darkness (she’s not a Palpatine, but still Rey from nowhere, who has no stakes in the story, which is why she was chosen), but she decides to confront Palpatine anyway to divert his attention. Ben Solo goes after her, and convinces Palpatine to let Rey live, by allowing Palpatine’s spirit to possess him. As this happens what remains of Ben tells Rey, that it will only be a matter of time before he is consumed, and she should kill him. She does, and Palpatine’s spirit tries to get back to the clone body, but Rey destroys it before he can enter the clone. Being without a vessel for his spirit, the Force ghosts of the Jedi appear, and destroy Palpatine’s spirit. The Force ghosts tell Rey, that she has brought balance to the Force, and it is time for the Jedi to end. Being the Chosen One was never about lifting rocks, but about courage, compassion, and self-sacrifice. It was never the intention of the Whills for the Force to be so concentrated in an individual in the physical realm, but when the Fallen One, a Whill intent on dominating that realm, possessed the person, that would willingly become the first Sith Lord, and started grooming his next vessel by allowing him access to these powers, the Jedi were created to counter the threat of the Sith. Now that the Fallen One has truly been destroyed as the prophesy predicted, the Jedi are no longer needed. The Force ghosts, which now include Ben Solo ask Rey to pass on what she has learned, thus ending the Skywalker saga.
I think such an ending would give meaning to the films, that preceeded it, and the saga as a whole. Anakin was a false prophet, created by Palpatine as a Troyan horse, but Anakin altered his destiny, by saving his son, and destroying Palpatine’s body, severely weakening him, and forcing him to inhabit a broken degenerating clone body, ending the cycle of the rule of two. It gives more meaning to the rule of two itself, and explains why Palpatine wanted to replace Vader with Luke, because Vader was useless as a vessel after he was barbecued. It gives meaning to Luke’s statements in TLJ, showing that Luke was on the right track, but did not know how the pieces fit, and in a warped way so was Kylo Ren. It gives meaning to the concepts of Force ghosts, who turn out to be the Whills, the next stage of existence. Finally, it gives the saga a true sense of finality.