Burbin

Damn, nice catch on the Babu Frik conundrum, this idea so far had been pretty non-intrusive with the rest of the film.

At the very least, even if the 3PO dub doesn’t pan out, I still think it’d be a worthy edition to remove Rey’s lines when picking up the dagger and replace the ‘screams’ with sith whispers. Her reactions seem tailor-made to bring attention to these whispers that later become very important.

You seem to know your stuff better than me CaptainFaraday, so I’ll take your word and say that’s it!

I think the way I’d look at it is that the dagger would talk to those it chooses for their “darkened heart”, hence why it whispers to Rey on the cave, but you’d have to channel you inner darkness (“Embrace your anger, let your hate take part”) for it to actually guide you to the Wayfinder.

We’re basically reworking what the movie has (Rey reacting to something when she picks up the dagger). So on Pasaana she would pick up the dagger and hear some strange whispers no one else hears, she doesn’t know what it means and neither do we. Then on Kijimi both we and her would be like “oh the blade whispers, and only to those it chooses”, and also “oh the blade reveals the location of the Wayfinder!”. Then on Kylo’s quarters she hears them again, and I agree this time they should be louder when she picks it up, this time she’s trying to listen.

I don’t know which approach will work best here, it must be clear that Rey learned the location of the Wayfinder, so the simpler solution would be to show it: a shot of the Wayfinder floating inside the Death Star, a shot of the wreckage, the sound of waves. I said previously this could be used as an opportunity to expand things further, but I’m afraid the message could get muddled if we move to Kylo or Dark Rey, though I agree it’d be worth playing around with it. Whichever is the case I agree it would be good to have whispers say “Endor” and “Death Star” to further explain how she knows where to go.

CaptainFaraday said:

Well, the Wayfinder is mentioned by name in the final line. Originally, the third line described Kef Bir (“Beneath the depths of misty fells”), but we decided to change it because the dagger is supposed to point the way to the Wayfinder regardless of where it is, so having a description of its current physical location inscribed on the blade would contradict that.

Oh yeah, I was agreeing with your inclusion of the word ‘Wayfinder’, since others were suggesting it shouldn’t be a part of it.

Here’s my shot at what the inscription could be:

This blade only whispers to a darkened heart
It will guide to the place where the Wayfinder dwells
Reveal your hatred, reveal your might
To those that it chooses, only this blade tells

The phrase “only this blade tells” refers to the whispers in the third person (instead of “only we tell”), so maybe the rest of the inscription should too. For the second line I think the dagger’s new role should be abundantly clear, for both Rey’s new vision guiding her to Endor, and her following the whispers on the DSII wreckage. The third line implies an active roll: you must tap into the dark side to “activate” the dagger, so again, Rey’s descent to the dark would be more clear. And I like the idea of the dagger already “choosing” and “calling out” to Rey from the moment she picks it up, meaning it can sense there’s already enough darkness within her. She’s already been tapping into her dark side since the opening (and the previous movies), and we even see her cast lightning moments after finding the dagger.

I also tried to make it sound a bit more ominous and evil, and it also sounds like a twisted version of TFA, when a different blade whispers to Rey, and Maz tells her to embrace the light, that it would guide her. It might subtly help make that parallel I mentioned earlier more apparent.

CaptainFaraday said:

Here’s what RogueLeader and I have got for Sith-3PO’s translation of the dagger:

We whisper to a darkened heart
Unveil the way with secret art
For faithful Sith whose hatred swells
Wayfinder, only this blade tells

I think the first line is a perfect opening line, anyone paying attention would immediatley connect it to the whispers Rey heard in the cave. However maybe it could be “we only whisper to a darkened heart” to really drive that point home.

I also think the inscription should say ‘Wayfinder’ somewhere, it not only makes things simpler to follow, but it also would warrant 3PO’s reaction to finding the blade, he knows for sure “it’s the clue Master Luke was looking for”, a clue to find the Wayfinder. Though now it doesn’t say exactly where it is, it shouldn’t be too cryptic.

Lando specifically says that Ochi “was carrying a clue that could lead to a Wayfinder”, so I think the dagger should be tied to the Wayfinder. As long as it doesn’t mention Endor and there’s no thingy that lines up with the DSII wreckage it could still be seen as an old Sith artifact. Both the dagger and the Wayfinders could be ancient, or at least far older than 30 some years. Lando says only two were made, but doesn’t say when, perhaps they’ve been carried down through Sith generations, wich would tie to the rule of two and the fact Vader had one and Sidious the other.

sherlockpotter said:

I wanted to try extending the Rey/Finn moment, to give us more time to play with. By doing so, I thought we could also highlight even more how far away from her friends Rey is getting right now.

V1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/184g4AqJx73cGdEvEOuSMQo7mc1vIJczA/view?usp=sharing
V2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WyXHZZhkVrbW1iEaZi9tS9lGe1nPnLuw/view?usp=sharing

I really like what you did with the whispers in V2, I think it would work if they’re the same whispers she hears when she picks up the dagger on Kylo’s ship, so it would be more like she’s thinking about it, like they’re stuck in her head. It makes sense since she would’ve been talking to Finn about the vision she just had there. It also makes more sense to switch the scenes around because in this version Rey would’ve had to tell them to head to the Endor system so it makes more sense to open with this conversation.

The only nitpick i’d have is we stay on that shot if Rey for a bit too long, maybe Finn’s line could start at the tail end of the Falcon shot, and the whispers could be trimmed down a bit, here’s a quick mockup of how that could look like:

https://vimeo.com/532427690

Also with this new sequence there would need to be a “jumping out of lightspeed” sound effect when they reach Endor, which shouldn’t be too hard to add since the camera already holds for a bit before the Falcon appears.

As a couple of extra points:

But now in this version Luke not only gives her a pep-talk, he gives her a new, fully functioning lightsaber, a new chance to fully embrace the Jedi. So now on Exegol the struggle is clear, recover the light or embrace the dark, and notice how she doesn’t use the new saber until she finally chooses to firmly stand against the dark as a Jedi. It’s almost like this is how it was always meant to be.

I just remembered it was decided to remove Luke’s line: “you will take both sabers to Exegol [because your pal Ben’s gonna need one]”. So now it could be interpreted as Luke giving Leia’s lightsaber to Rey as a replacement for the old, broken one. Rey doesn’t feel worthy of wielding this new saber, so she decides to take both sabers to Exegol, but continues using the old one. It isn’t until she fully rejects the dark that she finally reaches for and proudly wields Leia’s saber, and now the fact there’s an extra saber for Ben is just a nice bit of poetic luck.

Also if we carry this idea of focusing on the whispers throughout the film, it could give a new context to the implementation of Duel of the Fates, as now it could be seen as if the evil whispers have turned into a full blown choir as Rey has allowed herself to be consumed by her darkness until now… until now she has become the very thing she swore to destroy.

“Is the dark side stronger?”
“No! no, no… quicker, easier, more seductive."

With what the movie does, the changes that have been done so far, and things being proposed this is what I’m thinking:

As Jarbear said, we’ve been seeing Rey being drawn to the dark side in TLJ, and you could argue even in TFA. She’s been using it as a shortcut to achieve her goals. Now cut to TRoS, where we finally see her trying to slow down and train as a Jedi, but it’s not working, she calls to the Jedi but no one answers, during the training course we see that her Jedi fighting technques are failing her, we see her get more and more angry, lose control, and take that shortcut again to finally hit the ball. Her use of the dark side here ends up triggering a vision (unlike the theatrical where everything, even Rey getting mad, is implied to be a by-product of her connection to Kylo). So here we see first hand that there is darkness inside her, and we have a vision of her turning dark.

Now on Pasaana, she finds a Sith dagger, and as soon as she picks it up, it calls to her through whispers in her head, she gets a worried look (we cut the mom scream and the line “horrible things have happened with this”). The lightsaber once called to her, and we took it as a sign she was destined to become a Jedi, but we now see the opposite. The lightsaber is now silent and broken because of her choices in TLJ, perhaps she broke her chance to become a Jedi, maybe now her destiny is to become a Sith, just like we saw in the vision.

Then on Kijimi the inscription in the dagger is translated, and it is revealed that the dagger calls out to those with great darkness within them or something like that, something that cements that the reason she heard those whispers is that the dagger sensed her inner darkness. Then she hears those whispers once more on Kylo’s ship, and she ends up following them. When she finds the dagger she again looks worriedly as it starts whispering to her again, only now she understands what that means (so you could even keep her saying “no” as in “no, I’m not evil, stop talking to me”). Then, if that idea pans out, she would have a vision here. You could sprinkle some more evil Rey foreshadowing in it as it’s very relevant.

“If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will”

So now by the time we get to Endor, everything is setup in it’s place for the edit that’s already in V1. Now it’s clear that following those whispers means Rey is descending deeper and deeper into the dark side, culminating in her meeting her “true self” inside the Wayfinder room. Now Kylo’s words ring far more true to the audience: “Look at yourself. You wanted to prove to my mother that you were a Jedi… but you’ve proven something else.”

Rey chooses to literally “follow” the dark path, which consumes her to the point she ends up stabbing Kylo with no hesitation. It truly feels like she can’t escape her destiny of becoming a Sith, so she exiles herself on Ach-to. But now in this version Luke not only gives her a pep-talk, he gives her a new, fully functioning lightsaber, a new chance to fully embrace the Jedi. So now on Exegol the struggle is clear, recover the light or embrace the dark, and notice how she doesn’t use the new saber until she finally chooses to firmly stand against the dark as a Jedi. It’s almost like this is how it was always meant to be.

sherlockpotter said:

But my question to you would be: what are the odds that our heroes are looking for a clue that will lead them to a Sith Artifact; and then they find a Sith Cultist, who has a mythical blade carved in ancient, unintelligible runes, and Rey can sense oodles of Dark Side energy coming from it.

The question is, what are the odds that this isn’t what they’re looking for? Balance of probability, and all of that. “Darn it, Rey, you were supposed to grab the other mythical Dark Side weapon that the Sith Cultist was hoarding in the cave that was emanating Dark Side energy! Doh!”

Like, seriously, how many Sith Artifacts do you think Ochi brought with him into this cave? They’re not exactly growing on trees, ya know? You said it yourself, 3PO is all about statistics. Statistically, how many magical Sith Artifacts are they expected to find?

EDIT: Okay, okay, okay, what if we could make 3PO say, “This must be the clue Master Luke was after”? Would that alleviate your concerns?

They’re not particularly looking for a Sith artifact, or a passage in ancient Sith runes, so the odds that it isn’t what they’re looking for are pretty high. Maybe Rey would think it’s important, specially if it calls to her, but unless the odds are 100% 3PO’s reaction to it would be off, and even if his lines could be altered seamlessly he would still be too cheerful over some meaningless runes. I think the best course would be to just let 3PO read the thing.

sherlockpotter said:

Well, here’s the tricky thing actually, with the new angle we’re taking with the Dagger, it doesn’t really say the “Location of the Wayfinder” anyway. Personally, I still think Sith Runes are enough of a giveaway to accept that the Dagger is important.

Besides, Rey senses something fishy about the Dagger, so clearly it means more than Ochi’s special knife. How many artifacts, carved with ancient Sith Runes, imbuded with pure Essence of Dark Side, discovered near a confirmed Sith Cultist, are we reasonably going to find?

I guess my question to you would be what are the odds that this one random artifact filled with scribbles happens to be the one thing holding the key to finding that particular thing they’re looking for? And why would 3PO, who is all about the odds, be so excited and sure that it is the one thing they needed if he doesn’t know what it says? Even if we remove the location of the Wayfinder from the inscription, 3PO’s reaction to seeing it wouldn’t make sense unless he knows for sure it IS the clue they were looking for.

As for the new inscription, maybe it could end with something like “to those it chooses, only this blade tells”, this would reinforce the idea I was talking about earlier of the dagger reaching out to Rey from the moment she picks it up (instead of “I can hear my momma scream!”), and the idea that those same whispers can guide Rey on the DSII as it’s already implemented. And it wouldn’t make it all about Rey, she would simply be “chosen” by the dagger, maybe implying the dagger can sense the darkness growing inside her, but she wouldn’t be a “Chosen One” in any capacity.

sherlockpotter said:

Burbin said:

sherlockpotter said:

I’ve removed Rey’s line. Personally I’m not bothered by this one so much either way (I guess I’ve finally found my breaking point for “stupid, but not movie-breakingly stupid”), but I present this so that others can weigh in:

https://streamable.com/g624m1

Removing Rey’s line actually gives a bigger focus to the whispers, perhaps they could be amped up, In fact… maybe the whole concept of Rey hearing her mum’s scream when near the dagger could be axed from the two scenes it appears in, in favor of focusing on her hearing sith whispers instead.

The second time we hear the ‘scream’ is in Kylo’s quarters, where she looks worriedly at the dagger. We could cut before she says “no” and replace the screams of lil’ Rey and momma Rey with more, perhaps louder whispers. This would offer a better setup for the change on the Death Star II and the “only this blade tells”, if we focus on the dagger constantly reaching out and talking to Rey. The idea of the dark side reaching out to Rey, culminating in her following that voice in the DSII would be a really nice way to convey her descent to the dark, and it would be a better/smarter parallel to TFA instead of a lame repeat of hearing someone screaming “no!”.

I’m not a fan of trimming 3PO though, how would he know the dagger is the clue Luke was looking for if he doesn’t know what it says?

He recognized the language as “the runic language of the Sith”; so, on a quest to find a Sith artifact, he would probably infer that a dagger covered in Sith-iness is relevant. Sith Wayfinder…Sith Runes…slap a blue paw print on that sucker, and you’ve got yourself a clue.

I don’t know, to me it seems like unnecessary obfuscation of something that’s perfectly fine and clear originally, without gaining much from changing it. Imagine going to Kijimi and erasing 3PO’s memory only for the translation to be some unrelated thing like “This is Ochi’s dagger, do not steal. Long live the Sith”.
_

“It’s the clue that Master Luke was looking for!”

“How do you know that? Hey 3PO, I said how do you know that? How do you know that’s the clue Luke was looking for if you can’t translate it? Did you read the script? Hey what’s that in the sand next to those bones? Is that the script?”

sherlockpotter said:

I’ve removed Rey’s line. Personally I’m not bothered by this one so much either way (I guess I’ve finally found my breaking point for “stupid, but not movie-breakingly stupid”), but I present this so that others can weigh in:

https://streamable.com/g624m1

Removing Rey’s line actually gives a bigger focus to the whispers, perhaps they could be amped up, In fact… maybe the whole concept of Rey hearing her mum’s scream when near the dagger could be axed from the two scenes it appears in, in favor of focusing on her hearing sith whispers instead.

The second time we hear the ‘scream’ is in Kylo’s quarters, where she looks worriedly at the dagger. We could cut before she says “no” and replace the screams of lil’ Rey and momma Rey with more, perhaps louder whispers. This would offer a better setup for the change on the Death Star II and the “only this blade tells”, if we focus on the dagger constantly reaching out and talking to Rey. The idea of the dark side reaching out to Rey, culminating in her following that voice in the DSII would be a really nice way to convey her descent to the dark, and it would be a better/smarter parallel to TFA instead of a lame repeat of hearing someone screaming “no!”.

I’m not a fan of trimming 3PO though, how would he know the dagger is the clue Luke was looking for if he doesn’t know what it says?

We also see encoded transmissions being used by the Rebellion in Rogue One, with a major point being the risk of interception by the Empire. Makes sense Leia would want to avoid live communications that could leak to the First Order that Rey & co are on their way to Pasaana. Same with Lando, who seems like the only one who knows about Ochi and the Emperor’s Wayinder.

Here’s the new version of the purple saber switch using the clip Hal sent me:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/6q57njbt7sku8dn/file

I think I see Hal’s intent with the new shot and I think it works. On the opening shot we see the TIEs are a ways off from the planet, so having an ‘establishing shot’, as I refered to it, of the surface allows some inferred time for the TIEs to actually reach the planet, then we can cut back to them. It’s a nice transition from ‘TIEs on space’ to ‘TIEs on the surface’, plus it’s a really pretty and striking shot that would be obscured with TIEs flying around.

And I don’t think the castle having no trees is an issue since it’s shown to be on a cliff in the background: the ‘establishing’ shot establishes lava and trees, then we se lava on the castle shot, and then we se trees on the flyover shot.

Hal 9000 said:

Here’s the ‘Burbin’ version to consider, too: https://vimeo.com/529837651

I don’t think flipping the shot works, whether it is for this version or the three shot version. The focal point of that shot is the lava flow so it’s disorienting to flip around to the right since the previous shot has our attention on the left side of the frame, with TIEs flying onward, the contour of the planet and SD (with the flow of the lava on the left it almost mirrors the contour of the planet in the previous shot so it fits really well), and whether we cut to the TIEs flying over the castle or the forest, the focal point would switch back to the left again. Don’t know if I’m making sense…

And besides for this version it makes more sense for the lava to be on the left and the forest to the right, since the TIEs in the next shot move ‘right’ into the forest. Otherwise, unsurprisingly, I think I like the ‘Burbin’ version the best, and I agree with Testing as to why I’m not a fan of the castle shot, it stands out too much for it to work as the second or third shot in the whole movie.

I think we’d probably want the audience to focus on the fact that there is a forest growing on Mustafar, so it might not be necessary to add TIEs to the establishing shot, we could just have the noise from the TIEs slowly creep in to lead to the flyover shot.

Even though I helped dim the castle lights, I’ve never been a fan of that castle shot, I agree that it’s slightly off in execution, but I’m also not a fan of it in principle. Because the castle is not really relevant to the sequence so I don’t think it should be highlighted front and center, MR’s castle in the background shot alone works far better imo just as a small cameo.

So I think the best sequence might be to only have the other two shots: TIEs flying towards red lava planet > Establishing shot of the planets surface, revealing a forest growing amidst the lava > The TIEs, now descended to the surface, fly over the forest > cut to Kylo on the surface of said forest.

I disagree, I think it’s a bad finale for both the sequels and the saga, and it pretty much condemns TLJ to be seen as an odd momentary derailment instead of the step forwards it should’ve been. But we’re getting into subjective territory again.

To put it simply, TRoS is a soft reboot of TLJ, it walked back on everything TLJ did, it regressed the state of the characters and story to the way it was at the end of TFA and pushed them back into the old mold. I think the main divide comes from people who are frustrated at TRoS and want to minimize that walk back from TLJ as much as possible, and people who liked that TRoS went back to doing the same old stuff and don’t want to see it trimmed too much to gel better with the previous movie. The stance I can’t reconcile with is acting like TRoS is a perfectly fine continuation of TLJ and that it all makes perfect sense if you really think about it.

TestingOutTheTest said:

Burbin said:

My point was TLJ left things open ended, you only see that as set up for Ben being redeemed because that’s what happened in the end, but it could’ve gone any other way. Just think of this interaction between Luke and Leia:

“I came to face him, Leia. And I can’t save him.”
“I held out hope for so long, but I know my son is gone.”
“No one’s ever really gone.”

On one hand, this clearly reads as Kylo being past the point of redemption, as even Leia has given up on him, on the other, Luke only says he can’t save him, and comforts Leia by telling her no one’s ever really gone, though that leads into Han, so it could be read in a multitude of ways, that’s what made TLJ great.

If Kylo was past the point of redemption, then Luke wouldn’t have told Leia, “No one’s ever really gone.”

He then gives her Han’s dice, you know, Han, who is dead. So what did he really mean by that? That her son is gone but not forgotten? Like I said it could be read in a multitude of ways, they could’ve had Kylo NOT be redeemed in ep IX and this conversation would still make sense. You would be here telling us how dumb we are for thinking he might be redeemed.

I wouldn’t be opposed to Kylo chosing to turn after losing everything and finally seeing the error of his choices, as Sherlock suggested, but the point of TLJ was that Kylo chose not to turn good even after the ‘big bad’ in the throne was dead, instead he chose to become the Ruler of the First Order, he chose to become the ‘big bad’ and sit on the throne himself. Things could go in any direction after this.

No. That reinforced Kylo’s desire to be evil, but even then he’s left broken. This is just like in TFA, he kills Han to clear away these goody-goody feelings but it doesn’t work, it makes him even more regretful. Just because he decided to rule the First Order doesn’t mean his goody-goody feelings are gone - in fact, TLJ showed him being conflicted at the end.

Leaving him unredeemed undermines the point of his arc.

Yes Kylo is broken, divided, conflicted… the point in TLJ is that just because somebody is broken, divided and conflicted it doesn’t mean they HAVE to turn. Kylo is given the choice, and he chooses to remain evil. He could’ve kept holding to that choice all the way to the end. Leaving him unredeemed would undermine nothing.

Again, you only see it like this because that’s how it played out in the end, letting go of her parents and dealing with feelings worthlessness were key parts of her character arc, but so was finding her place in this story and wanting to be someone important.

Most importantly, she’s the protagonist, she works as a surrogate for the audience. And as such, in a metanarrative sense, she needed to let go of her parents because we needed to let go of her parents, she wanted to find her place in this story because we wanted to find her place in this story, we wanted her to be someone important, we wanted some big revelation, and so did she. Her parents being no one wasn’t just the hardest answer for Rey, it was the hardest answer for the audience. An audience who spent years specutaling where she came from, who she would be related to, where she would fit in. Like Kylo says, the fact that her parents were no one meant she had no [set] place in this story. She had no connection to anyone, she was free to choose whomever she wanted to be. Making her the grandaughter of Palpatine undoes this, now she is shoved back into the mold, the hero is the offspring of the villain, that was the easy and obvious answer, and what we’ve all seen before.

No.

People only speculated as to who she’s related to because they hoped it would explain her “powers” and wanted a payoff for what they thought was a set-up for “her parents being important”. TFA and the entire saga already explained her abilities, and TFA never set up her parents being important - in fact, Maz literally says they aren’t important.

Yes.

You just explained why her being a nobody was the right choice, so you can’t say under the same breath that TRoS making her a Palpatine was a stroke of genius. And you’ve also just laid out to Sherlock that Rey DOES care about her importance, and her place in the story:

Rey wants to learn “her place” as a way of justifying as to why her parents left her. The point of TLJ is that she refuses to accept that her parents threw her away like garbage - she literally lashes out at Kylo, denying his taunt that “[her] parents threw [her] away like garbage.” She waited all those years on Jakku, having been lying to herself that there had to be some good reason as to why her parents left her, that she is of some importance, at least to them, showing that they truly loved her and cared for her, that she is worth something. It is for this reason she convinces BB-8 in TFA that her family would be back for her… someday.

However… Rey wants to find out what her “place” exactly is. For the past decade and a half of her life, she had been lying to herself that she would realize what her importance was upon finding out who her parents were, and that if she does find out what her importance was then she would feel loved, since in this hypothetical scenario her parents did abandon her for an important reason, showing how much they care for her.

The “place in all this,” itself, never really mattered to Rey. She was only going to use it as a way to justify her parents abandoning her… so she would belong to them, feeling loved. The reason she says to Luke, “I need someone to show me my place in all this,” is, well… you see, she wants to find her importance merely to use it as a way of justifying her parents abandoning her, feeding the lie that they truly cared about her and believed that she was worth something so that lie would never die off, so, for the rest of her life, she would feel loved — henceforth pushing away her feelings of self-worthlessness.

So you can’t go contradicting yourself by saying that wasn’t a part of her arc. Of course Rey doesn’t want to be related to Obi-wan or Palpatine, that’s purely the fan speculation side of it, but she did want some big revelation about her parents that would justify being left to rot on Jakku.

TestingOutTheTest said:

Burbin said:

TLJ freed this new story and allowed it to become it’s own (much like Kylo in the film), it revealed that there was no set place for these characters to fit in (much like Rey in the film), no set story ‘destined’ to play out. It opened the door for the final chapter to be something new, different and original. TRoS closed that door shut, shoving everything back into the original mold: Rey goes on to be trained as a Jedi, there is some big revelation about her backstory, Kylo turns to the light, and together they defeat Snoke Palpatine, which marks the end of the First and Final Order, and the return of the Jedi and the New New Republic. The Empire is defeated by taking down the ‘big bad’ on the throne again.

I feel like you’re implying Kylo Ren was set up to be irredeemable, except we literally end with him broken, kneeling on the floor in the base.

My point was TLJ left things open ended, you only see that as set up for Ben being redeemed because that’s what happened in the end, but it could’ve gone any other way. Just think of this interaction between Luke and Leia:

“I came to face him, Leia. And I can’t save him.”
“I held out hope for so long, but I know my son is gone.”
“No one’s ever really gone.”

On one hand, this clearly reads as Kylo being past the point of redemption, as even Leia has given up on him, on the other, Luke only says he can’t save him, and comforts Leia by telling her no one’s ever really gone, though that leads into Han, so it could be read in a multitude of ways, that’s what made TLJ great.

I wouldn’t be opposed to Kylo chosing to turn after losing everything and finally seeing the error of his choices, as Sherlock suggested, but the point of TLJ was that Kylo chose not to turn good even after the ‘big bad’ in the throne was dead, instead he chose to become the Ruler of the First Order, he chose to become the ‘big bad’ and sit on the throne himself. Things could go in any direction after this.

Then in TRoS they literally just bring out a new ‘big bad’ AND a new throne in order to completely undo Kylo’s growth. Now he is shoved back into the mold, the conflicted villain is turned good and helps take down the true ‘big bad’ in the throne, as we’ve all seen before. Just think about how we never see Kylo sitting on his Supreme Leader throne, because he is not allowed to be that character, the way we see him command officers around has no more gravity than the way he did it in TFA, and he goes back to just doing the bidding of an old disfigured monster again.

I also feel like you’ve missed the point of Rey’s arc in TLJ, it isn’t about finding her place in all this or being important in general, it’s about letting go of her parents altogether, coming to terms that, to them, she is completely worthless — reinforcing her arc of how she eventually overcomes her irrational, toxic core belief that she is worthless and refuses her lie that she is only worth something if others think she is. She only wanted to find out as to what her importance (in a good way) is so she would use it to justify as to why her parents left her on Jakku, feeding her lie that her parents truly did love her, feeling loved, to push away her feelings of self-worthlessness that hold her back and leech off her happiness.

I do feel TRoS undermined Rey’s arc by having her parents be noble people who loved her, but the idea of her being Palpatine’s granddaughter does not; when she stabs Kylo Ren, she becomes convinced that, because of a combination of her heritage and her Force-sensitivity, she is meant to be consumed by the dark side in the way her grandfather was, so she exiles herself, believing that the Resistance is no longer going to give her any validation once she turns to the dark side — Luke proves this wrong by reminding her of Leia training her, regardless of her heritage, showing that the value of others is determined by their heart, not their heritage, and convincing her to face Palpatine and determine the fate of the galaxy, showing that it is not her heritage that determines her future, but it is she, herself, who determines it.

Again, you only see it like this because that’s how it played out in the end, letting go of her parents and dealing with feelings worthlessness were key parts of her character arc, but so was finding her place in this story and wanting to be someone important.

Most importantly, she’s the protagonist, she works as a surrogate for the audience. And as such, in a metanarrative sense, she needed to let go of her parents because we needed to let go of her parents, she wanted to find her place in this story because we wanted to find her place in this story, we wanted her to be someone important, we wanted some big revelation, and so did she. Her parents being no one wasn’t just the hardest answer for Rey, it was the hardest answer for the audience. An audience who spent years specutaling where she came from, who she would be related to, where she would fit in. Like Kylo says, the fact that her parents were no one meant she had no [set] place in this story. She had no connection to anyone, she was free to choose whomever she wanted to be. Making her the grandaughter of Palpatine undoes this, now she is shoved back into the mold, the hero is the offspring of the villain, that was the easy and obvious answer, and what we’ve all seen before.

So, in conclusion, bringing back Palpatine was lazy, dumb, and bad for Kylo’s character, and making Rey a Palpatine was lazy, dumb, and bad for Rey’s character. You can try to rationalize how they “made it work”, but the fact of the matter is it’s a regression for both characters.

RogueLeader said:

I feel like the ways both the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy end feels sort of inevitable. Perhaps time has added to this feeling, but Anakin falling to the dark side, and then him being redeemed by his son, feel like these are the only ways these stories could’ve gone.

When it comes to the story of the sequel trilogy and the way they end, I feel like those are harder to pin down. I know George said the sequels were about the “grandchildren” and the torch being passed to them, per se, but I can understand the struggle the writers had when trying to figure this out.

I guess I am curious to hear if people feel like the ending of TROS felt like the right or inevitable ending to them. And if not, what do you think that ending should have been? Could you potentially edit TROS to get closer to that ending you imagined?

To be fair, there was no indication that Vader could be redeemed by the end of Empire, and of course he wasn’t even Luke’s father by the end of Star Wars. Only by looking back at the whole trilogy you could connect the dots of an overall story of a son redeeming his father, but things could’ve gone in many different directions at any point in the trilogy. Obviously in the prequels the ending was inevitable, and they leaned on setting up what would happen afterwards, so by looking at the story from ep I to VI as a whole, it does seem inevitable that Anakin would turn back to the light, as we get to see just how conflicted he was in turning to the dark side.

By leaning so heavly into what came before, the way TFA played out did end up giving a heavy feeling of inevitability, by the end we felt we knew how it would all play out, because we had seen it before. We had another Vader, and this time he’s set up from the very beggining as a very conflicted villain, as having a familial connection to our heroes, and as having an old, disfigured Master who turned him bad, and who’s the real evil behind it all. And we had another humble hero, stuck on a desert planet, but destined for greatness. We even had the sage-like figure who dies by the end, followed by a quest to find an old Master.

And so in our minds we could already see how the rest of the trilogy would play out: Rey would go on to be trained as a Jedi, there would be some big revelation about her backstory, Kylo would turn to the light, and together they would defeat Snoke, which would mark the end of the First Order, and the return of the Jedi and the New New Republic. This is why, looking back, I think TLJ was great despite some of it’s flaws, because it was able to take something old and cast it into something truly new. This is also why it was so divisive, because many (myself included) were just ready to simply continue the direct retelling through to the end, we wanted to see Luke training Rey in the ways of the Force, we wanted to see Kylo turn good, we wanted all the speculation behind Rey and Snoke’s backstory to have a cathartic payoff. It took me years of retrospection to realize how fresh TLJ was to the franchise, because it didn’t actually go against anything TFA set up, as many accused it of, but rather it went agaist our preconcieved notions of how those things should play out, of how this story should work. We were shown things aren’t as simple as the Old Tales (OT, get it?), that maybe the Jedi weren’t infallible (as is shown in the prequels), maybe somebody can’t turn good after doing so much bad, maybe defeating an Empire is not as simple as taking down the ‘big bad’ sitting on the throne, and maybe there isn’t some big legacy revelation that sets everything in place.

TLJ freed this new story and allowed it to become it’s own (much like Kylo in the film), it revealed that there was no set place for these characters to fit in (much like Rey in the film), no set story ‘destined’ to play out. It opened the door for the final chapter to be something new, different and original. TRoS closed that door shut, shoving everything back into the original mold: Rey goes on to be trained as a Jedi, there is some big revelation about her backstory, Kylo turns to the light, and together they defeat Snoke Palpatine, which marks the end of the First and Final Order, and the return of the Jedi and the New New Republic. The Empire is defeated by taking down the ‘big bad’ on the throne again.

So, to answer your question, TRoS is definitely THE most inevitable feeling ending of them all, but after TLJ… it shouldn’t have been.

Yeah, there’s still a hint of blue, but very desaturated, it’s why I said “pretty much grey”. I guess I’ll just say I personally prefer nev’s approach, which personally does read to me as the first lights of an early morning, at least from the second establishing shot onwards. Though perhaps the TIE torching bit could use a slight hint of blue.

DominicCobb said:

The big sticking point for me is the dark grey look of the sky and the frame in general. Dark grey sky reads to me as either overcast or, unfortunately, artificially darkened.

To me a harsh blue hue is usually what gives away day for night instead, compare it to the night scenes in TLJ, the hue there is pretty much grey rather than blue.