Hal 9000

From Reddit. Jeez, what a convoluted mess, little of it being meaningfully implied at all by the film itself:

“Palpatine’s plan for Rey and Kylo as explained by TROS novel

Since TROS didn’t explain why Palpatine goes from “kill the girl” to “strike me down” halfway through the film, the novelization was forced to come up with some pretty convoluted explanations. Let’s take a look.

Immediately after his first death, Palpatine’s spirit enters a Clone body on Exegol (which he rediscovered during the Imperial era), but quickly realized it’s an imperfect vessel as it starts to decay. The Sith Eternal, a several thousand year old cult, creates other clones which fail until one thrives, albeit non-Force sensitive and non-identical. Realizing that he is doomed, he calls this clone his son and believes that his grandchild would inherit his force sensitivity and be able to hold his spirit. (Side Note: His Son is created in 4 ABY and Rey is born in 15 ABY, so accelerated aging is probably used on the clones).

However, his Son and Daughter in law ultimately realize his plan and hide Rey on Jakku when she is 6. Palpatine’s assassin, Ochi, can’t find her after killing her parents (genius move) and ultimately dies on his other mission, recovering the Endor wayfinder to conceal the location of Exegol. Palpatine believes Rey is dead and accepts that his going to die and decides to groom a successor to the Empire and Sith. He chooses another Skywalker and starts communicating with Ben. He also commissions the creation of Snoke to rule the First Order for him and to seduce Ben, who proves himself a worthy Sith by doing what all Sith do- kill their master. Palpatine offers Kylo his forces once they are completed making Kylo Emperor and Darth Lord of the Sith.

Even though Palpatine learned Rey is alive and he could rule through her, he decides to kill her and give Kylo everything. Once Kylo redeems himself, Palpatine contacts Pryde and has the First Order merge with his forces and decides to fall back to his original plan and possess Rey. However, she kills him and unlike in ROTJ, he wasn’t prepared to essence transfer (an art form he learned from Darth Plagueis) and dies for the last time.

There’s many problems with this. The obvious being cloning force sensitives, non-identical clones, clones not receiving midichlorians but their offspring does instead, and Ochi being a dumbass. But it’s also weird that Sidious would just be content with dying after going through all that trouble and not only that but he’s still okay with it even after learning Rey is alive. And he could sense Kylo’s redemption from across the galaxy, but he couldn’t sense his own granddaughter.”

I think the most important thing is establishing D-O has the poop on Exegol. And something that has enough of a kick to be a compelling transition to Ach-To.

I edited my last post FYI so just want to make sure you see it.

I mean, maybe, but it seems cleaner to streamline it and just assume that Snoke equals Palpatine in regard to this point. If removing two lines can help it make intuitive sense, it might be worth it.

EDIT: The slight punch that ends Finn and Poe’s conversation is the ‘reveal’ that Palpatine wanted Rey alive. We already know everything else that conversation conveys.

What a mess. It will probably feel a little flat to cut away before that final like because as an audience member you’d say, “Uh yeah, I already knew Ochi was tracking Rey.” Without the final line, bringing her to the Emperor essentially is to say that he wanted to kill or at least get her.

I still feel like I’m missing something about the plot of this movie. Kylo tells Rey Palpatine wanted to kill her as a child and we see him ordering her to be killed in the present day. Not to mention his cloned proxy trying to kill her in the last movie, hand waving aside.

Then, suddenly Finn reveals that he actually wanted her brought to him alive, both as a child and in the present. Sure enough, he says as much and seems to hinge his plans on it when she does arrive.

“Kill her. Or, bring her to me. Y’know what, why don’t you just kill me?”

I think it’d be more consistent across the ST to go the other route and imply that Palpatine did want her dead throughout her life until Ben Solo is redeemed at which point he goes ahead and tries to corrupt her.

I think removing two lines would help make this clearer: Finn’s line after mining from D-O, “He wanted her alive,” and Palpatine’s, “I never wanted you dead, I wanted you here.”

And, sherlockpotter, I think that could’ve easily been a good way to go if they’d had that approach when filming or possibly when editing, but I’m afraid it feels to muddled to go with.

I guess we do our part of mythmaking with our heterodox apocryphal altered versions of the stories.

No, sorry. There’s no way I can store and host all the past versions.

Not that I can recall.

Yes, well said; I was thinking of saying the same.

Hmm, I still think it’d be better for this project to leave it as it is. You make good points though. Her father being noble doesn’t undercut Rey’s anxiety because she has immediate experience of her own darkness to dovetail with her lineage, not just knowing about her lineage alone.

Anakin speaks to Finn as the latter prepares to ram his skimmer into the battering ram at the Battle of Crait.

I don’t feel good about undercutting her parents’ “nobility” unless we’re going all the way with it.

One thing that would be nice to drive home more effectively is that the ‘Final Order’ fleet is a set of modified Empire-era Star Destroyers that were stashed. In the boardroom scene, an officer says that the Sith cult “conjured” them. And of course the underbelly cannons are highlighted as a vulnerable weakness but never seem to justify their existence in this cut. I will still take this over the original, but it remains imperfect.

I’ll watch the whole movie and see. But I expect not.

Okay that makes sense, but it takes some ‘fridge logic’ work to arrive at.

I’m not sure it’d be worthwhile to try to tone down the noble attitude of Rey’s parents because it’ll still be implicit.

I also would not want to remove “As a Jedi?” because it colors the following sentiment: she cannot end the Sith as a Jedi because of her aggression.

I don’t plan to remove the blue smoke from poppasketti in any event, no.

Another thing is that Palpatine wanting Rey dead at the start of TROS is consistent with Snoke/Palpatine sincerely ordering her execution. His change of mind is still baffling in any event.

Brewzter said:

DZ-330 said:

List of space/ships shots that could hopefully be made by someone with WAY more skills than me:

• Space shot of Ochi’s ship approaching Kimji
• Shot of Ren’s TIE approaching Endor
• Shot of Rey in Ren’s TIE leaving Endor
• Shot of Rey in Ren’s TIE approaching Anch-To
• Rey taking Luke’s X-Wing and leaving Anch-To in space
• A tease of Vader’s TIE leaving Endor
• The Falcon in space approaching Tatooine

I like all of these except for the TIE approaching Endor, I think it’s important to preserve the “surprise” when Kylo stops the Wayfinder on the throne room floor and it’s revealed that he’s there that way.

Or Ben rummaging around, and staring indecisively at both Vader’s TIE and an Imperial Shuttle.

I rewatched TFA and TLJ over the last two days, the first time watching either since TROS came out. This was my first ‘full hindsight’ viewing, assessing how the story washes over me after I know how it all turns out.

I found TFA relatively free of tension with TROS. Rey maintains hope of her parents returning for her, though comes to admit that she is lying to herself and turns her attention to Luke. She awakens the Force within her, including aggression and darkness at the end. Snoke is a shadowy figure who we know is working behind the scenes for Palpatine, likely the way Dooku does. TROS:A alleviates this weirdness by not requiring the audience to see Snoke as a totally artificial being who would be technically very young.

TLJ was surprisingly smooth also, with Snoke again being the weirdest part. It does not seem at all hinted at that he is a cloned vessel, so I prefer to think of him as a Dooku-esque recruit with a history all his own that we don’t see. Ben cannot bring himself to kill Leia, who goes on to represent the last vestige of light that comes to redeem him. Rey and Luke fear her inner darkness. Rey’s parents do feel like a weird point here, as Rey seems to admit to herself that her parents really did ‘throw her away like garbage’ and ‘sold her off for drinking money.’ Her initial memories of them and their noble promises give way to letting them go and no longer concerning herself with the good-for-nothings. Then, in TROS she has these repressed ‘bad hope’ memories and longings reignited by being forced to again view them as noble and good. I guess. Luke saves the day, making the difference between no one coming to help on Crait when the Resistance calls for help and everyone coming in TROS.

It seems healthy for Rey to move on from her attachment to her parents, with TFA and TLJ agreeing. For TROS to essentially say, “Oh, no, you’re wrong, they were actually good people” seems like a regression. Rey had already grown past them, y’know?

I guess I’ll have to watch TROS next in order to take the whole ST story in within a short timeframe and see what else sticks out to me. Also, I watched my fan edits so there honestly may be other things that didn’t stick out because they’ve been addressed and I didn’t think about them.

How would a reboot even go? If you were going to start over, you may as well smooth over the incredibly rocky continuity to the point that the plot would be quite different. And if you’re going to boil it down to its archetypal elements, why not just tell a new story using them?

For sure, any of that sort of thing would be welcome, as long as it fits in nicely.

Also, there will not be any trailer music used. I like the trailer music, but not in the movie itself.

“I warned my apprentice that as he grew stronger his equal in the light would rise. Skywalker, I assumed, wrongly.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong.

Also, do you think maybe Palpatine was written to want Rey dead in order to harmonize or lampshade the weirdness of his proxy (Snoke) seeming to pretty sincerely?

CaptainFaraday said:

Hal 9000 said:

I guess that POS finally just had something really break.

Technically, there’s nothing stopping me from having Poe say this after they crash…

“And then Poe yelled, ‘GOD FUCKING DAMNIT PIECE OF BULLSHIT,’ as he kicked the Falcon’s console, fracturing his ankle.”

From then on, he stays aboard the Falcon and uses a wheelchair at the base before boarding his X-Wing.

I guess that POS finally just had something really break.

Wow, yep, wrong thread.

Just had a disturbing thought: Do you think Maz Kanata was dying during TROS? She sure seemed rigid, like rigor mortis was setting in.

Well said, that’s right: what works best for the moment, though it’s understood that the saber is more or less the same “really.”