- Post
- #1495167
- Topic
- Your ideal Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1495167/action/topic#1495167
- Time
Thanks for the comments, RogueLeader! I was not enamored of Trevorrow’s script as a whole – I found the climax nonsensical, for one thing – though there were certainly elements (Rey’s impulse to build, Finn’s stormtrooper rebellion) in which the core ideas exceeded what Abrams did.
Diagnosing the thrust of Rey’s arc is one thing, of course, and dramatizing it in a way that would be coherent in a single film and digestible to mass audiences is quite another. It would require the judicious introduction of some new characters, though every SW film does this to some degree. I do think a time jump of several years would have been apropos, and that the story ought to have built to a confrontation between Rey’s fledgling pupils and the Knights of Ren. If her triumph would be to transcend Luke’s failure, then her community would need to survive where his crumbled, and for that it would need to undergo some sort of crucible. This is just me spitballing, but it seems to me that Rey would be called on to resist to the end and finally demonstrate some great selfless or sacrificial act (not necessarily mortal) for her students, and that this would strengthen their resolve to work together rather than fracture. The big reveal would be that the Knights of Ren are not the “ultimate Dark Side badasses” that they initially seem to be beneath all the black armor – but that they are, in fact, bullied and traumatized children (albeit very powerful children) not unlike Rey’s own pupils. Lacking Ren’s twisted obsession with the past, and never having witnessed the true power of the Light Side, they would either break and scatter or turn on him following Rey’s great moment. Ren would be reduced to impotent fury. During the climax, he might not be killed after all, but expend so much power that he burns himself out and becomes dead to the Force. He would be taken into custody, a broken man, withdrawn into the torment of his own mind … perhaps with Rey holding out hope that she will be able to reach him someday. And in the meantime, she will gather her followers – perhaps now including several of the Knights of Ren – and her new community will be rebuilt stronger than ever. Again, just spitballing … but that’s the overall shape of the core story I’d have wanted to see. (Poe and Finn would have had their own parallel arcs, of course, with Poe growing into the leader of the Resistance movement while Finn and Rose fanned the flames from within the First Order.)