Jar Jar Bricks

It actually makes a lot of sense. Jakku is a planet right next to the Unknown Regions, so it would be the first world Rey’s father went to after leaving Exegol. Then he meets a woman that he falls in love with, who happens to be a filthy junk trader, so he follows the same work.

I’m starting to wonder if I could potentially dedicate a whole flashback chapter to Rey’s parents. I’m already rewriting some other portions of the novel to benefit Kylo’s character, so why not go a step further with Rey?

TestingOutTheTest said:

Also, I feel part of your idea would imply Rey’s mother loved her, which I feel does undermine her TLJ arc but not as much as the idea of both parents caring for her in the actual TRoS.

That’s a very good point. That way Rey can still be angry at Palpatine for killing her parents, but at the same time she realizes that they willingly dumped her for their own selfish reasons. Although, that did save her life in the end.

It also gives Rey’s dad an actual character arc.

I would say that they would throw her away because she had force sensitivity. Let’s just say that Rey’s father, who grew up on Exegol, had enough with the Force because he saw all the terrible things it could do. So the reason he leaves is to get away from all of that and lead a normal life. He meets a woman, and they decide to start a family.

Then he has a child who starts using Force powers. He’s freaking out because he thought he left that life behind him. His worst fears are confirmed when a Sith assassin from Exegol starts tracking them all down. He just wants to go back to a normal life, so he convinces his wife to sell their child.

Now, as for the reason they die to Ochi, I had a sudden idea. What if Ochi lets it slip that they are returning to Exegol and are never going to be able to leave it again, and he will only let them live if they reveal her location. In that scenario, I do believe he would rather die than give up her location, both to spite Palpatine and ensure he never had to travel to that hellish world ever again.

It’s literally not mentioned in canon how Kylo tracked them to Endor. So you’re probably right Sherlock haha.

Dang it Babu.

Yes, she does stop caring about her parents, but only because she is looking for parental figures in other people who she knows to be extremely good. Han, Luke, Leia, etc. If she can demonstrate they are proud of her, then she essentially proves her biological parents wrong.

Anyways, clearly selling your child into slavery is not the best way to protect them. So maybe if you asked Rey’s parents, they would claim that they did what they did to protect her. But in all actuality, they just didn’t want to have to deal with the danger she brings to their lives any more, and wanted to make a few bucks in the process.

EDIT: Ah yes, the house of cards again that is TROS. Just remembered that they lay down their lives to protect her location. So I’m thinking that if I were to do something like above, I would have to modify their encounter with Ochi.

It’s definitely a tough situation that I haven’t fully considered, yet. A major part of Rey’s character arc is that she feels like she needs to prove herself to people after her parents abandoned her. But if it’s suddenly revealed that they were good people with purely good intentions, it definitely undermines that.

I’ll have to give it more thought, but I’m starting to wonder if it might be possible to suggest that while what Rey’s parents did protected her, it was fueled mostly by selfish motivations. Again, I’ll have to think about that more, and it’s definitely not my final word on the topic.

There are plenty of lost opportunities in this film, jarbear. LMAO.

This is how I described essence transfer in chapter 1:

"…willing your spirit on death to transfer into the killer. It only worked if the killer was harnessing the dark side and the victim was defenseless. In such a case, the killer’s spirit would be forcibly removed, and the victim, now the offender, would enter into a new host body. "

Now, the reason I HAD to make it this way is because otherwise Palpatine would have no reason at the beginning of the novel to NOT let Kylo kill him. If essence transfer were described in the way that you have it, then Palpatine could possess Kylo at the beginning without any risk whatsoever. He would go and fight Rey, and even if she killed him, he would simply possess her instead.

In that chapter, I placed particular emphasis on Kylo figuring out why Palpatine didn’t simply possess him at first. Under the description provided above, it makes sense. If Kylo’s body, with Palpatine’s spirit possessing it, engaged in a battle against Rey and died abruptly for some reason, Palpatine would both be unable to possess Rey or return to a clone body. So Kylo figures out that the reason he hasn’t possessed him yet is because Palps wants him to do the dirty work of killing her. He also figures that it’s possible he wants them to fight so he can figure out which one of them is more powerful, and therefore a more worthy vessel for him.

EDIT: Should also mention that I discuss how he is in a clone body (a more advanced form of essence transfer with dormant clones). But that isn’t relevant to this conversation.

I love that 3PO line though haha.

I think Sherlock understands the circumstance correctly though, jarbear. He didn’t send the message to them specifically. It’s actually a message that he sent to the Endor system for anyone to be able to pick up on the off chance that somebody could help them out. Of course, I can see why that would potentially endanger the very people he’s trying to help.

I don’t really care about it all that much, personally.

Somebody said this movie was a house of cards before. Couldn’t be more true haha.

Hal 9000 said:

Excellent point! We might have to retain the location aspect but could still imply the dagger can mystically guide you.

That’s the way it is in v1. Just sayin’.

Since I wrote about Kylo’s character for this novelization in the main topic thread, I figured I should write out my goals for Rey since it was brought up.

The passage that I’m basing Rey’s character on in this novelization is the following passage from chapter 2:

“There it was. Her greatest fear. That these people she’d come to care so much for would be disappointed in her, maybe even hurt by her. And then they would disown her, just like her parents. She’d been alone for so long. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing any of them.”

Basically, she gets super frustrated when she messes up on even the slightest of things. This is because she thinks the only way other people will accept her is if she satisfies them in all ways. But obviously nobody is perfect. Fixing Luke’s lightsaber she fails at, contacting the past Jedi she fails at, and she has a hard time taking out a simple training remote. Rey sees all of these failures as diminishing to her value. But as TLJ points out, failure is actually a good thing since you can learn from it.

The dark side is “the quick and easy” path to mastering things. That’s why Rey is so drawn to it. But it comes at the cost of immense shame for Rey. So it’s a sort of lose-lose situation for Rey, where she wants to be perfect asap so people are proud of her, but also doesn’t want to use the dark to get there.

Obviously in the end she is taught that a person’s value is determined by their heart and spirit, not what other people think. And the calm and courage that Leia was trying to teach her simply had to do with that general message - you shouldn’t apologize to anyone for who you are. You have to find comfort and pride, not fear, in who you are.

I agree with the self-worthlessness part. Much of that was already present in the novelization from what I can tell. I tried to hone in on it even more.

But the idea that Rey believes she is doomed is a completely different idea. You are suggesting that Rey is nihilistic.

If she is, then the question becomes this: why does she accept the lightsaber back from Leia before she heads out? And why does she feel like she can prevent Palpatine from taking over in the first place? It’s because she doesn’t want to believe the visions yet. Sure, they’re making her doubt herself and making her feel unworthy, but she hasn’t considered it as an inevitability.

Only when she travels to Ahch-To would I describe her as nihilistic. But of course, Luke points her in the right direction in that dark moment.

I also feel that Faraday is right. These sort of things are going to be different for everybody.

It sucks he even had to change that because all the creators of TROS seemed to care about was how massive those statues were, not what they were actual statues of.

Believe it or not, even in the expanded edition of the novelization they don’t acknowledge that the statues are of various Sith of the past. It only refers to them as “lords”, but not what they are actual lords of.

I can see how they all move in unison. It’s very subtle. I do wonder if they could each play a separate animation. But beyond that, I don’t think they look 2D.

You could check out what the thread dedicated to that came up with, Creation. I know there were a ton of lines and options that Hal didn’t end up going with.

I’m interested in that as well, so I may search at some point as well.

I definitely prefer this over the Rogue One shot. Looks great!

Excited to see the TIEs put in as well.

Holy shit that description of Jannah… like, what? That might be excusable in a children’s book, but this is a book for adults. Nah. Good thing you caught that haha.

I would also remove that ham fisted comparison to Fathiers (mostly because I would also remove that detour from TLJ).

It’s interesting how you combined the whispers with the physical element of the dagger. I like it.

Cinefy said:

What length do I need to make the Vader’s castle shot?

Personally, I would aim for whatever length of time it would take for TIES to fly across the screen. Not sure exactly how long that would take, but the current clip might be a good example.

What he shared looks like a pre-render to me. I’m pretty sure it will look better with the fog and light light levels adjusted. Maybe the sky could even see an upgrade.

Oh I wasn’t aware that particular statue appeared elsewhere! My bad.

I was under the impression that you can’t see the statues’ faces when he reaches the bottom. But it has been a while since I watched the movie.

Here it is for everyone to see again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLmAaf8SRwA

To address both of your points:

• Yes, that sentence must have slipped through my proofreading. Maybe I should start reading out loud haha. “But she heard nothing except rustling trees in the wind and chirping birds” sounds better, right?

• I only did that because I wanted to make sure the reader realized it, but yeah you’re definitely right that it works better without explaining it. Besides, with that paragraph removed, the lightsaber description doesn’t interrupt the flow of the action as much.

Thanks for the help! I appreciate your comments, too.

Movies Remastered said:

Did the Darth Nihilus statue work get finished?

That’s one thing I think we all kinda forgot about. Was it Chase that did the work there? I thought his first version worked fine enough, but he said he was going to make an improved one so we just kinda dropped it ever since.

Insert this audio into ROTS to really sell Anakin’s turn to the dark side:
https://youtu.be/p8PVIWqQ0ys

Damn thats some impressive work there. Excited to see your final product.