yotsuya

TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

I’ll give you a few comparison examples or something like these, to hammer my Rey pointer in.

Example 1.

You’ve probably seen Finding Nemo. Coral is killed by the barracuda and this heavily affects Marlin, he becomes overprotective of his son Nemo to make sure he doesn’t end up in danger, to avoid facing the same trauma went through when losing Coral.

Imagine if the third movie came out and blatantly revealed to us that (surprise!) Coral never actually died in the first place. This would undermine the entire first movie, including Marlin’s character arc - especially since it was the thing that made his arc necessary in the first place.

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but bringing back Coral DOESN’T undermine Finding Nemo, because we NEVER saw the barracuda eat Coral!”, then I don’t know what to say.

Yeah, it doesn’t change the initial trauma or reaction to it. People have been writing that sort of story as long as stories have been told.

Example 2.

Imagine if Return of the Jedi revealed that Darth Vader was lying to Luke about his father’s identity in Empire. That would undermine the point of “I am your father…”, since it was there for this reason: “How is Luke going to deal with the revelation of Darth Vader being his father?”

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but Darth Vader lying DOESN’T undermine Empire, because we had no reason to believe he was telling the truth!”, then I don’t know what to say.

That is exactly what I am saying. Perhaps you have forgotten the three years of endless debate on whether or not he was telling the truth.

See my point?

Also, as the other user stated, Rey is the one who admits her parents were nobody, not Kylo. He gets her into admitting the truth she has hidden away, then Rey herself admits they were nobody. He’s just elaborating or adding onto what it meant.

And there was absolutely no indication that “Rey’s parents were nobody” or anything else I said about that was otherwise in The Last Jedi itself.

If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories.

Star Wars is a fictional universe. It doesn’t have to follow reality. (You might see it as ironic since it came from me, who detailed on how Rey has a core belief of self-worthlessness, but then, again, Star Wars picks up on some things from reality and doesn’t at times.)

In TLJ we have Kylo badgering Rey, telling her she remembers and she admits they were nobody (that is as far as Rey went, but Kylo went on to describe a scenario that we have no verification of). When we pick of the conversation in TROS, Kylo says that Rey’s parents were nobody because they wanted to be. They sold her to protect her. The only part of the TLJ conversation that was negated were the lies Kylo told (or perhaps they were what Rey had suspected or what Unkar Plutt had told her) that went beyond nobody. Nobody was confirmed in TROS.

But you really don’t get deeper story telling if you get stuck on what seems true in one chapter cannot be countered later. That sort of reversal is a major part of story telling. Characters actions revolve around what they believe to be true. When they learn it is not true, they adjust accordingly. We already have that with Ben telling Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father. Luke’s actions up until that reveal in TESB are based on that, but his actions after that are based on the new information. And we already know that he believes Vader, but he confirms it with Yoda. And yet we have that same thing play out with Rey’s parentage and it is shocking and horrible and it reconns everything that came before. Nonsense. It is just a tool of story telling. One that has happened in real life so often that we know how the human brain reacts to such things.

Face it, TROS doesn’t contradict a word of TLJ that comes from a trusted source. Not a word. It only contradicts what Kylo was saying to convince Rey to join him (which didn’t even work).

I’m saying Rey’s parents being bad people was the truth (from a storytelling perspective) or else her arc in TLJ of moving past her awful, shitty parents would be f%$kin’ pointless - which is what happens in TRoS anyways.

But her parents are not good or bad, they are just gone. Kylo fills in that they are bad, but nothing in TLJ requires that or confirms it. They left her. that is a pretty bad thing for parents to do. TROS just adds the lone exception - unless they do it to save your life. But the reason in TROS doesn’t matter at all to Rey’s journey because it is the abandonment itself that Rey has to come to terms with. That is why TROS does nothing to Rey’s previous journey. Her journey in TFA and TLJ is all about her parents leaving her and her imagining they were coming back, coming to terms with the reality that they were never coming back and that her place in the story was the chance encounter of running into BB-8 and Finn on Jakku. But even TLJ gives hints that there could be more to it. Snoke figured it would be Luke to come and fight Kylo, but the force produced someone new, a scavenger girl. Her journey in TROS is coming to terms, not with her parents and being abandoned, but an evil grandfather who either wants to killer her or possess her and the powers she may have inherited from him.

imperialscum said:

yotsuya said:

Battleships were far from limited. They had a proven track record of being able to sink other ships and could bombard the shore at a fair distance. The Aircraft Carrier proved it was better able to sink other ships, but nothing beat a battleship pounding the shore. The last Battleships were retired in the 1990’s, after doing shore bombardment in every conflict up through Desert Storm. But it became more cost effective and accurate to use missiles so they were finally retired. The same way satellite photographs forced the retirement of the SR-71.

I would say that battleships were extremely limited for what they were designed for. Actually, they had a very poor track record. Since the emergence of HMS Dreadnought (which is where a modern battleship starts) in 1906 and until WW2, there was basically just a single noteworthy battleship engagement, i.e., Battle of Jutland in 1916. And in that engagement, torpedo boats basically already showed how useless battleships can be in their primary role. WW2 then finally sealed their fate as one of the most useless and expensive weapons ever.

To be relegated to shore bombardment role is like going from a king to a bagger. Not to mention it is a role that can be (and also was) done just as effectively by much cheaper cruisers, since shore bombardment is basically a suppressive fire rather than anything that would actually cause any physically damage to well dug in defenders.

Anyway, I think we went completely off topic now. 😃

Some things might seem off topic, but often circle back in a strangely logical way.

I think the Bizmark/Hood engagement was pretty significant. And our greatest ships have a history of shore bombardment that has been quite effective and necessary. Have you read the Marine song lyrics lately? You know those shores of Tripoli? USS Constitution and her sister ships bombarded the shore and were instrumental in the success of that engagement. The Star Spangled Banner was written about a ship bombardment of the shore. The area where the Battleships shone was the size and range of their guns, unmatched by anything prior to missiles except aircraft. So shore bombardment was not something they were reduced to, it was part of their purpose from the beginning. The bigger the gun the further out and the larger the shell. And a good team could get pretty accurate at the right distance.

But you are right that does stray from the Death Star. It didn’t need to be very accurate since it could destroy an entire planet. And even its version of shore bombardment, which we saw twice in Rogue One, didn’t need to be that accurate. Except it was. Direct hit on Jedda City and direct hit on the communications tower on Scarif. And in ROTJ, direct hits on several rebel ships. So again, we find the parallels and see that even for such an all powerful weapon, it can be toned down for lesser uses. Still, the rebels destroyed the first one and the second one because they can destroy planets. While under construction is an ideal time as it is more vulnerable. And in Palpatine’s arrogance, he has them finish the weapon, but not the shields. If that would have even stopped a ship from flying inside it. Why worry about finding a tiny exhaust port when you can just fly in and destroy it directly. Palpatine counted on his legion on the forest moon to keep his only protection safe. Oopsie.

imperialscum said:

SparkySywer said:

imperialscum said:

SparkySywer said:

imperialscum said:

SparkySywer said:

Servii said:

I personally think most of the issues people point to are fairly surface-level stuff that doesn’t really damage the movie as a whole. A second Death Star makes sense in-universe.

Return of the Jedi is a great movie, but I kind of think this is a stretch. The last one didn’t work, why would a second one with essentially no changes work this time? Palpatine gets a surprise attack on the Rebels I guess, but he still dies, they still lose the Sanctuary Moon, and the loss on Endor doomed the Empire.

Just because your expensive military hardware is destroyed in a battle, you do not simply stop making that hardware. When a country lost a capital warship during the World War I or World War II, they did not just say “oh that did not work, let’s stop building new ones” or “oh that did not work, let’s just stick to building small torpedo boats instead”.

If capital warships were incredibly expensive and had a well known, easily exploitable weak point that leads to total, irreparable destruction, they probably might have said that.

Except that the weak point you refer to was not well known (it took Alliance a great effort to find out about it), and it was not easily exploitable (without a pilot with rare force abilities it was impossible to do it, as clearly shown in the film).

By Return of the Jedi, it was well known, and it’s clearly easily exploitable because they easily exploit it the second time.

And besides, who says they did not fix it for the DS2?

The indie arthouse kino filme known as “Return of the Jedi”

The only reason why ships could fly inside it was because it was only 1/4 finished by the time of ROTJ.

In other words, not fixed. Edit: Or, as Yotsuya says, you could view it as them replacing one easily exploitable weakness with another that’s even worse. But if you take Rogue One’s word for it (maybe you do maybe you don’t), they literally did jack to fix the problem.

No matter which way you slice it: The core of the Death Star was too easy to put bombs inside of. Fair mistake, people harp on ANH too much for it. You have to exhaust heat somehow, and it literally took magic powers to take down the First Death Star. But they made it a thousand times easier for the Second. No excuse.

This is an extremely silly argument. It is basically like saying that a car model does not have wheels and doors, while looking at an unfinished example at the beginning of production line in a factory. Of course, unfinished DS2 had weaknesses, but it was not designed to be unfinished…

Now going to my analogy, unlike DS in Star Wars, real-life incredibly expensive capital warships (i.e., battleships) did actually have several well known, easily exploitable weak points, i.e., against attacks from relatively inexpensive aircraft or torpedo boats. Yet they were still building them for decades after those weak points were evident.

I’m no military tactician, but I imagine it’s because they aren’t actually easily exploitable. At least, I hope not. Because if they are actually sending capital warships with weaknesses so easily exploitable they get murked before they manage to even do anything (like the DS2 did), military waste is a much, much bigger issue than I thought it was.

In general military is huge waste of money purely from economy point of view. Most weapons that are built are never even used once. But in rare cases when you need them, they might save your country. Same with the battleship type of warships. Even though they were proven completely useless, they could have somehow turned out critical in some unforeseen situation, therefore countries could not gable with its safety. In the end, hindsight is 20/20.

Battleships were far from limited. They had a proven track record of being able to sink other ships and could bombard the shore at a fair distance. The Aircraft Carrier proved it was better able to sink other ships, but nothing beat a battleship pounding the shore. The last Battleships were retired in the 1990’s, after doing shore bombardment in every conflict up through Desert Storm. But it became more cost effective and accurate to use missiles so they were finally retired. The same way satellite photographs forced the retirement of the SR-71.

To understand TLJ, you have to look at how the movie ends. How it ties up the story. Most of the supposed ethos or philosophy of the film stems from things in the middle that that movie itself upends by the end of the film. It takes Abrams mess from TFA and sets up the finale. I’ve had conversations about how TLJ was about let the past die, when the finale clearly says the opposite. TLJ exists as the middle of a trilogy. Johnson wisely kept the point of his story self contained to that film only and he explored some very tight character arcs that he completed. Finn finds a reason to live and fight for the Resistance, Poe learns how to be a leader instead of a hotshot, and Rey takes up the mantle of Jedi and hero and part of the story. The “anyone can be a Jedi” applies more to the young broom boy. But Abrams transferred it to Finn in TROS, though he somewhat failed to make it very clear. Rey’s parents remain nobody. We never learn their names. We learn one of them is the child of Palpatine. But the remain obscure nobodies. In the credits they are Rey’s Mother and Rey’s Father.

So I believe this conversation stems from a misunderstanding of TLJ. Abrams has stated he set out finish the story Johnson had continued. And if you understand how movies are made, Abrams started with Trevorrow’s script and then changed things up. He found something larger to give the story more power and risk and I think it completes the trilogy beautifully. I think the only flawed film is TFA which sets things up rather badly and didn’t give Johnson a lot of room for where things had to go. And he did get Abrams to change a few things so that TLJ would work better. And Abrams was a producer on TLJ. Don’t forget that. So he didn’t come in to put back his story. He didn’t really have one. And bringing back Palpatine was genius. It so echoes the origins of Star Wars and ties things back all the way to Episode I. And unlike ROTJ that ended with Luke being tortured and Anakin’s redemption and throwing Palpatine down that shaft (to die off screen leaving the possibility that he was not completely gone that was explored before), Rey faces down Palpatine and and defeats him in a very Jedi way - by not attacking him, but by defending herself against him and turning his lighting back on him. Luke is touted as this great Jedi in ROTJ and yet he was not the one to deal with Palpatine. He sacrificed himself rather than fight, which gave Anakin a path back, but didn’t really deal with Palpatine except as a side effect. Of all the film endings, TROS is one of the two most satisfying because it is very final. Rey destroys Palpatine and all his followers. There is no one to bring him back this time.

And I think this idea that TROS rewrites TLJ also comes from how some felt about TLJ and not from any actual part of the story.

JakeRyan17 said:

Yeah, that doesn’t work still. Her parents being nobody was about her not feeling like a part of this big and important conflict. Her grandfather being the biggest and most important part of this almost-century of conflict does contradict that. It contradicts her emotional arc of having to create self-worth, rather than her importance being externally from who her parents and grandparents were.

Her feelings of worthlessness don’t come across at all in Rise of Skywalker. It’s a feeling that she must be evil because Palpatine is evil. And overcoming that is literally what Luke already went through with Vader. It’s reductive to Rey as a character on a storytelling level, repositioning her again as a proxy for Luke rather than an autonomous character, and it’s also reductive to her arc that she already went through in Last Jedi to learn that she is her own person regardless of who her family was.

It’s just bad writing. Like it all you want, maybe it helps you with the accusations that she was a “Mary Sue” or whatever. It doesn’t make up for the fact that it was bad writing that hurt the character and story. Maybe that can and will be fixed, but it hasn’t been yet.

A grandfather who wants her dead. And then a grandfather who wants her to attack him so he can take over her body. Just all sorts of good feelings there. No, the story is really about Rey’s self worth. She starts with depending on her family coming back for her. When she is shown that is never going to happen, she transfers that to the OT heroes. But Han dies and Luke won’t leave Ach-to. Kylo tries to convince her that she has no place in the story. But Leia makes a place for her. When we start TROS, Leia becomes her teacher. And she still thinks she is unworthy. She finds out she is a Palpatine and she feels even less worthy. She is now the enemy. She tries to hide, but Luke sets her straight. Then when she calls on the Jedi in her greatest need, they are there. They support her. The show she is worthy. Not because of whose family she came from, but because of who she is as her own person. She defeats Palpatine because she casts aside preconceived notions, which she and the audience have had since the story started, and comes into herself. She is Rey. She takes the name Skywalker to show that she rejects her Palpatine lineage. So every piece of her story builds on what has come before and TROS doesn’t retcon anything. In the end she has found herself and her purpose. And it was not based on who her parents or grandparents were.

Who did those force ghosts in the TROS scene? That was truly excellent and would be a great thing to add to an edit.

TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

I’ll give you a few comparison examples or something like these, to hammer my Rey pointer in.

Example 1.

You’ve probably seen Finding Nemo. Coral is killed by the barracuda and this heavily affects Marlin, he becomes overprotective of his son Nemo to make sure he doesn’t end up in danger, to avoid facing the same trauma went through when losing Coral.

Imagine if the third movie came out and blatantly revealed to us that (surprise!) Coral never actually died in the first place. This would undermine the entire first movie, including Marlin’s character arc - especially since it was the thing that made his arc necessary in the first place.

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but bringing back Coral DOESN’T undermine Finding Nemo, because we NEVER saw the barracuda eat Coral!”, then I don’t know what to say.

Yeah, it doesn’t change the initial trauma or reaction to it. People have been writing that sort of story as long as stories have been told.

Example 2.

Imagine if Return of the Jedi revealed that Darth Vader was lying to Luke about his father’s identity in Empire. That would undermine the point of “I am your father…”, since it was there for this reason: “How is Luke going to deal with the revelation of Darth Vader being his father?”

If you can say with a straight face that, “Oh, but Darth Vader lying DOESN’T undermine Empire, because we had no reason to believe he was telling the truth!”, then I don’t know what to say.

That is exactly what I am saying. Perhaps you have forgotten the three years of endless debate on whether or not he was telling the truth.

See my point?

Also, as the other user stated, Rey is the one who admits her parents were nobody, not Kylo. He gets her into admitting the truth she has hidden away, then Rey herself admits they were nobody. He’s just elaborating or adding onto what it meant.

And there was absolutely no indication that “Rey’s parents were nobody” or anything else I said about that was otherwise in The Last Jedi itself.

If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories.

Star Wars is a fictional universe. It doesn’t have to follow reality. (You might see it as ironic since it came from me, who detailed on how Rey has a core belief of self-worthlessness, but then, again, Star Wars picks up on some things from reality and doesn’t at times.)

In TLJ we have Kylo badgering Rey, telling her she remembers and she admits they were nobody (that is as far as Rey went, but Kylo went on to describe a scenario that we have no verification of). When we pick of the conversation in TROS, Kylo says that Rey’s parents were nobody because they wanted to be. They sold her to protect her. The only part of the TLJ conversation that was negated were the lies Kylo told (or perhaps they were what Rey had suspected or what Unkar Plutt had told her) that went beyond nobody. Nobody was confirmed in TROS.

But you really don’t get deeper story telling if you get stuck on what seems true in one chapter cannot be countered later. That sort of reversal is a major part of story telling. Characters actions revolve around what they believe to be true. When they learn it is not true, they adjust accordingly. We already have that with Ben telling Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered his father. Luke’s actions up until that reveal in TESB are based on that, but his actions after that are based on the new information. And we already know that he believes Vader, but he confirms it with Yoda. And yet we have that same thing play out with Rey’s parentage and it is shocking and horrible and it reconns everything that came before. Nonsense. It is just a tool of story telling. One that has happened in real life so often that we know how the human brain reacts to such things.

Face it, TROS doesn’t contradict a word of TLJ that comes from a trusted source. Not a word. It only contradicts what Kylo was saying to convince Rey to join him (which didn’t even work).

You don’t scrap the idea, you fix the problem. The navy’s of the world did not scrap battleships after WWII becuase the Arizona and HMS Hood were so easily destroyed (both with a single shot), but because the Aircraft Carrier out performed it and proved to be a much more formidable weapon. And still the US used Battleships for another 60 years. You don’t get rid of technology because there is a flaw, you fix the flaw and try again. So the first Death Star was destroyed by one pilot in an X-wing with a lucky shot to a vulnerable point. What does any sane super power do? Build another without that flaw. Except that the Emperor got cocky and allowed to the location to be revealed and once they got the shield down, they didn’t need a lucky shot, but skilled pilots. So flaw fixed only for another, bigger flaw to show up.

TestingOutTheTest said:

WARNING: There is a link to /r/saltierthancrait. If you despise that sub, I don’t recommend reading it.

TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku.

That’s the point. When Rey admits her parents were nobody, it meant they had no good, actual reason to abandon her, it meant they did this all for nothing, that they didn’t care about nor love Rey, they didn’t give a shit about her. It meant that, to her parents, she is worthless. Even if you cut out Kylo Ren’s following lines, it still has the same meaning. I heavily recommend you re-read the section of her TLJ arc in my actual post itself, to understand what I’m saying.

It’s even framed that way in TLJ. Why else is she not affected by the truth by the time we meet her at Crait? Because she’s clearly moved on from her parents and accepted that they did throw her away like garbage, that they did think she was worthless, and now she’s relying on the Resistance for validation.

That is clearly what Rey believes at the time. If you read about kids who have been abandoned, they can have many conflicting feelings, emotions, memories. Rey has been clinging to the idea that they will come back for her. Again, very typical for someone who has been abandoned. Kylo twists her memories (he was in her mind searching for the map so he likely picked up a lot more that he later found useful). He amplifies that feeling that although she hopes her parents will come back, she doesn’t know of a good reason why they left her in the first place. He is trying to pursuade her to join him and he is the one saying her parents were junk traders, nobodies, that Rey had no place in the story, that they sold her off for drinking money and are dead in a poppers grave in the Jakku desert. Rey said they were nobodies, but Kylo filled in the rest. Probably all things she had though at some point, but none of it true.

I just watched the scene and caught something so many have missed. Here Kylo is saying let the old die while at the same time he is doing exactly what we have seen every Sith do, try to turn their opponent and make them their apprentice/partner. I find it historical that here is his saying he wants to break with the past while repeating the past. The irony is beautiful.

Then in TROS Kylo starts off with telling her he never lied to her (very true, but he did throw out some guesses), that her parents were no one because they chose to be. He makes her remember (as she holds the dagger that killed them and had already heard the echo of her scream for them to come back). That they sold her to protect her.

In both instances Kylo’s goal is the same, to turn Rey. He is using Rey’s situation to his advantage. The TLJ scene does not reveal much truth. If you take Kylo as being 100% forthright you are totally misreading his character. In TROS he learns more and figures out how to twist it to his advantage. He is building doubt in Rey’s mind. And it works. He so convinces her that she is destined for evil that she runs off to Acto-to. Luke is able to break what Kylo did by showing her that he and Leia already knew and that it doesn’t matter. She is not destined to be evil just because of her grandfather anymore than Luke was destined to be evil because of his father.

The idea that anyone can be a Jedi remains intact in TLJ. Nothing in TROS changes that. Sure we find out that Rey is someone, but we also find out that her parents were not. So whatever abilities she inherited from her grandfather skipped a generation. Who your parents are does not dictate who you have to be. Anyone can be a Jedi. Anyone can be a Sith. If anything we see in TROS that because Rey is a Palatine does not mean she must be a Sith, a similar and yet opposite message from TLJ and very complimentary. They both further the narrative that we each make our own destiny. Nothing is pre-ordained by our parentage.

It really resets the Skywalker saga. I’ve noticed that there is this idea out there that you have to have force sensitivity in your family to be a Jedi. In TPM and Clone Wars that is firmly established to NOT be the case. None of these great Jedi we see had children to pass on their powers. Each one was effectively the last of their line. Then along comes Anakin and breaks the rules, marries Padme, and they have twins and both twins are strong with the force. While I think Lucas reconned it (Leia was originally 16 and Luke 19) to make them siblings, what you see of Leia in ANH shows someone strong willed. Even Vader can’t get out of her what she did with the Death Star plans. But Rey is not a Skywalker. She is not from a Jedi family. Yet she becomes a Jedi… she takes on the Skywalker name, claiming the Skywalker parentage. She does not become a Sith, which is her parentage. So TROS reframes anyone can become a Jedi into even a Sith descendant can become a Jedi. So the TROS story only enhances the anyone can become a Jedi theme from TLJ. Why? Because JJ didn’t set out to recton or change anything in TLJ, but to carry the story forward in a new way.

SparkySywer said:

act on instinct said:

SparkySywer said:

Either way, if he was manipulating her here, why not go with the Palpatine manipulation right off the bat? Pull the same stuff he says in TRoS instead of waiting a year?

Kylo didn’t know by then, Palpatine told him on Exegol. If anything the question becomes why did Palpatine do the waiting.

So then he isn’t lying to manipulate her.

He was using what he knew to manipulate her. Common dark side tactic. An outright lie can be seen through with the force, but something that is true or believed to be true can be a powerful weapon when it is properly twisted.

TFA and TLJ give no motive why Rey’s parents left her on Jakku. Kylo implies they sold her for drinking money. But Kylo did no know the truth. We are given no information on why Rey’s parents left her, only guesses before JJ Abrams gives us the facts. Facts often rewrite what we think, but they were true all along. So there is no contradiction about their motives, only rumor vs. truth. We gat that in TLJ with what Luke did to spark Ben’s turn to the dark side. The truth about Rey’s parents just takes longer to reveal. Why? Because that is a key piece of who Rey is and everything blocking her from moving forward in all three stories. But in TROS we get an answer that lets Rey truly move on from it.

SparkySywer said:

The way the scene’s shot and the way Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley give their performances, it makes it clear that he’s just getting her to admit what she already knew was true. He may (may) be manipulating her, but he’s not manipulating the truth.

Either way, if he was manipulating her here, why not go with the Palpatine manipulation right off the bat? Pull the same stuff he says in TRoS instead of waiting a year? What happens when Rey finds out she’s not a nobody? Because that’s definitely going to eventually happen.

The ways of Palpatine are mysterious. He both wants to kill Rey and use Rey. This was also true of Luke in the OT.

Yes, Kylo makes Rey admit what she remembers about her parents. She did not know her parents had any connection to anything because they were on the run. JJ had some reason in mind why they didn’t come back for her. Trevorrow’s script did nothing to ever answer that question. JJ returned and found an answer that fit beautifully with both existing films. Palpatine had her parents killed because they were not willing to be used. And as long as Rey was opposing him, he wants her dead. But if she is willing, he can use her. He tells Kylo of her parentage and Kylo tells her. It was unknown before and Kylo uses that knowledge to mess with her yet again. He did it in TLJ with her being a nobody and he did it with her being a previously unknown Palpatine in TROS. The only change to the story of Rey’s past is that she remembered that her parents were running from something. This echoes back to Maz saying that Rey knew her parents were never coming back. When you look at the details of the stories, nothing in TROS conflicts or contradicts or rewrites anything in TLJ.

SparkySywer said:

yotsuya said:

The way TLJ is written, the whole “your parents were nobody” was all Kylo trying to turn her. So it being the unvarnished truth doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Rey’s the one who says it though, not Kylo.

But Kylo gets her to say it. He is goading her. He may have seen more in her memories, but in good dark side fashion, he uses only what will work for him.

I was able to treat myself to something special on 5/4. A local theater had a special showing of A New Hope. Social distancing protocols in place. I was curious what version they were going to show. It turned out to be the 2011 version. Except it wasn’t. As I watched I could instantly tell which verison and it had the usual major flaws, except the overall magenta tone that I am so used to and mad at with the DVD, HD, and Blu-ray was not there. Leia was not pink, the rebel soldiers were not lobsters, so of the overall color glitches were gone. In their place were shots that felt like one of us had done an overall color correction to fix it. I was quite surprised at that.

The theater had a special reason for showing ANH. It opened as a silent movie theater/vaudville house in 1920. When Star Wars came out it was their longest running movie their history. Then the theater closed for 20 years. Now it is a multi function event center. One thing about its age, it reminded me, not of any theater I had seen Star Wars in before, but a similar and far more ornate Fox theater I saw such movies as The Wilderness Family, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Roger, and The Black Hole in. The sound was so familiar. The uncurtained walls led to echoes. The sound system was modern with a modern 2k projector, but it was a nostalgic experience. C-3PO sounded like I might have seen it back then, but the base was modern and deep and shook the building. So much like that version of the film. Mostly like I saw it the first 10 time, but with SE bits. It did look good for the most part, but could look better. I would so have preferred it was the original or the new D+ version. But it was a great way to celebrate the day. And a great 13th theatrical viewing.

NeverarGreat said:

There is no version of the story in which Rey’s parents being the progeny of Palpatine are ‘nobody’. At the very least they have a claim to the remnants of the Empire, regardless of what Force power they do or do not have. Rey being the grandchild of Palpatine absolutely gives her a place in the story; it is literally a noble birth.

Rey throughout the trilogy is desperately searching for someone to validate her abilities and place in the story, and TLJ does the thematically necessary step of ripping that away from her. TROS gives it back on a silver platter.

Except that we very plainly see them on the run and making no claim on any of that. They literally are living as nobodies. They leave Rey (none to soon as they are murdered shortly after) on Jakku with Unkar Plutt. Rey is literally raised as a nobody and she has no idea her parents were anyone special. Palpatine’s reach was far, even after his death, and he killed his own child. The movie implies child, but clone has been suggested. But his child might not be much older than Luke and Leia. But in any case, Rey knew none of that. That is how Kylo got her to admit they were nobody. Before he turns around and in the next attempt tells her she is a Palpatine. It works very well for a progression to try to destabilize Rey and it appears to work.

It was obviuosly done for TROS and was not planned before that (or Trevorrow’s script would have something about it), but it works as a story progression.

The way TLJ is written, the whole “your parents were nobody” was all Kylo trying to turn her. So it being the unvarnished truth doesn’t make a lot of sense. The way TROS was written, Kylo carries on from where he thought he had pulled her down with the added information that Palpatine was her grandfather. We really have no idea now much that Kylo told her was true until Luke confirms that she is indeed a Palpatine and He and Leia both knew. It can echo some of Luke’s initial hesitation to teach her in TLJ. Really, most of the problems with the ST are not what is in the ST, but how people ran with things in each of the films. Fans latched onto Rey Nobody. Sure, Rey was okay with that. But the key piece was that parents were nobody special remained. Her parents had abandoned any connection to the name Palpatine and were living on the lamb so she was raised as just a person who wasn’t likely to have a place in an epic tale, but the force called to her. Her parents evidently had no force skills so they literally were nothing special. Any inherited ability skipped a generation. So her turning out to be a Palpatine completely fits with what we saw in TLJ. It doesn’t rewrite anything, except for fans who latched on to that and took it as absolute truth. Those who fall to the dark side use pieces of the truth to try to turn or influence other. A half truth is better than a lie. We saw Dooku, Vader, and Palpatine all do it. Kylo doing it is in line with that.

An intriguing read. Some I fear may be far deeper than what they intended for the character, but this really highlights that Rey is constantly struggling. She spends most of the ST trying to get someone else to be the hero. It isn’t until she speaks to Luke’s ghost that she lets go of most of her issues. I disagree that when she faces Palpatine that she ever intends to join him. I think that in a good it of story telling she is almost defeated there, but rallies and uses both sabers to defeat Palpatine. I think it was a brilliant bit of movie making.

In my opinion the only reason ROTJ ranks three is that it was not as innovative as ANH and didn’t delve as deep into the characters as TESB. It is the finale of the trilogy. So it has a job to do and I think it nailed it. The first part of the story is wrapping up the threads of TESB. Then we get to the new part of the story and the Death Star II and the Emperor. It is a race to destroy the Death Star before the plan falls apart. And the Ewoks turn out to be cute in appearance but vicious fighters. And the greatest danger to the Rebels is another Death Star. We saw what the first one could do and they are building another, undeterred (and likely omitting the flaw that allowed the first one to be destroyed) and a bit arrogant. Lucas’s story is spot on and perfectly in line. If there is any flaw, it would be with the directing and editing.

And this whole thing was George’s story. So I really can’t fault him for making sure the story came out as he envisioned it. He had a lot of collaboration on the other two films, but the story was his and always needed to follow his vision. I think there was room for collaboration, but when you have the creative genius saying the story needed to go a particular direction, it needs to go that direction. And I think he proved that he was right. The scenes with the Emperor are powerful. The final stage of the battle with Luke and Vader is one of the most powerful sequences in all the 11 films. And far from having nothing to do, Han is responsible for destroying the shield generator and enabling Wedge and Lando to get in and destroy the Death Star. And the way the three different stories are woven together is genius and it flows so well. Sure some of the parts on Endor are a bit slower, but have you seen Star Trek The Motion Picture? ROTJ never drags. Most of it is the “faster and more intense” that Lucas was going for. I would definitely not say that ROTJ was where Star Wars went off the rails. For me that is AOTC. ROTJ very clearly finished the original trilogy and did it well. I have never found a flaw to make me think otherwise.

JadedSkywalker said:

The big script thing Lucas has peddled isn’t true. The original Star Wars sequel was called Star Wars II by Leigh Brackett, and Darth Vader wasn’t Luke’s father.

In fact if you read the story conference for Splinter of the Mind’s eye, everything we’ve been told about the Saga of Darth Vader goes out the window.

The script from 1974 Vader was just some general, and Valorum was the Sith Knight. Luke was an old General.

I’m glad at least the secret history of Star Wars is out there for people to read who were only given a certain point of view.

Have you read all the drafts of Star Wars? That one was one of the earliest. As the drafts went on, the story changed and it got closer to what we see. For the film we got in 1977, he cut out the middle. How do we know this? Because some of that was sketched and drawn. The evolution of the Milliennium Falcon has all the pieces of this. Originally they did not arrive on the Death Star, but on Bespin, which had a different name and was an imperial outpost (or capital) where Leia was being held. The original story had more in this section and then the whole Wookie battle while the death star battle was going on. That part of what Lucas said is certain. The Bespin floating city idea wound up in TESB and the forest battle with primitives (now Ewoks - wok-e to e-wok and 7 foot to 3 foot) ended up in ROTJ. The rest of the story evolved and changed, but Lucas is absolutely correct that he cut out a bunch that he recycled in the other two OT movies.

As to when Vader became Luke’s father, we don’t know. I’m sure it was not in the story treatment that Lucas gave Brackett to write the screenplay. It is very clearly not in what she wrote, but the reveal scene is. We don’t know if Lucas was being secretive or came up with the idea later. We do know that before the novelization was finished that the writer knew, Lucas and Kershner knew it because they told Hamill. James Earl Jones and Ben Burtt had to know (to record Vader’s lines and add the FX. So it was well planned in advance. One later copy of the script that was digitized just has notes for the reveal scene indicating that something was secret about it at that point. Kasdan probably knew as he probably wrote it… unless George wrote that part himself.

So it is in error that Lucas pulled it out of his ass at the last minute. There are plenty of indications that he had it planned for a while before filming. Who knows what he told Alan Dean Foster. Who knows if what he told him is what he was thinking. That is a mystery. A lack of evidence of one thing is not evidence of something else.

Lucas has become a master of rewriting history, but most of the time he takes a shred of truth and embellishes it. I have no doubt that in his mind as he worked out the story of TESB that it came to him at some point and he has projected it back into the older drafts where there is no trace of the evil general being the hero’s father. But there are hints. In one draft the father is a cyborg. So I have no doubt in Lucas’s mind that is the origin of the idea. Plus we only have some of his written drafts. It is by no means a complete picture and does not tell us all his thoughts and early rejected ideas that later came back to him and he incorporated. There are echoes of the fallen father and twins in earlier drafts, but no where close to what we got. Enough to say Lucas isn’t outright lying, but not enough to say he is accurately remembering what he wrote in those early drafts.

Also, he evidently reread some of those old drafts before he wrote the PT as a great many unused things in them made their way into the PT.

daveinthecave said:

Bobafettdied said:

Seems like everyone then decided that A New Hope was next and then Return of the Jedi. Some poor confused folks actually thought that Revenge of the Sith was better than ROTJ. And it seems most of the reasoning behind this was that Jedi has teddy bear Ewoks for kids and toy sales. I hear a lot of “Harrison wanted Han to die and they didn’t do it because of toy sales”, again.

Yea every SW film since 2005 (except for Solo and TROS) was called “the best one since TESB” by someone or other. I think there is such a strong desire, by some, to see an SW film on par with the original trilogy that they try to convince themselves that the latest one is better then ROTJ, since that is generally considered the least amazing of the OT and is, by extension, the lowest bar to reach.

With that said, I do think that ROTS is as good or better but I’m a PT fan so its more of a complement to ROTS then a knock on ROTJ. Both films are among my all time favorites.

I’ve never gone that far. My comments have always been best since ROTJ. And for me I haven’t really rated Rogue One, TLJ, and TROS in relation to each other. Solo didn’t feel quite as epic, but was so much fun. TFA had some issues in my opinion. I really love all 11 movies and among them I rate the OT at the top (with TESB at the top among them) and AOTC and TFA at the bottom (but still so far above Battlefield Earth that all 11 almost seem equal).

When I first saw TESB SE in the theater, I did think it was better. As I analyze it now, I’m not so sure. I think Ian as Emperor is better, but the extra dialog they added needs to be cut. And the original Wampa scene was better. And the flaws in the windows added to Bespin have begun to annoy me. If I was making my cut, I would use the SE and restore the original wampa scene, a lot of the original Bespin shots (including the Falcon shots), a cut down Emperor scene, but I’d leave the rest. I actually like the Vader’s new line at the end and thought that new edit to the end built even more tension. I’d either cut, swap, or do something so the ROTJ commander isn’t there. Maybe some subtle editing with Admiral Piet.

I think The Force Awakens needs a major edit and then I think the ST would be great.

My ideal ST had to have an ending that I felt was a nice wrap-up to the entire saga. I feel we got that so I’m good.

But if you want to know what I would think we be an ideal next trilogy… one, we leave the Skywalkers alone. Two, go into the past - further than the new High Republic setting. Three, Jedi being Jedi (like Qui-gon Jinn) and lots of new worlds and alternate views of old worlds. Four, going back far enough to tell one of the Jedi vs. Sith conflicts would be awesome. Five, Star Wars isn’t just Jedi so we need smugglers, princesses, bounty hunters, senators, and aliens galore. Six, it would be nice to reused existing aliens along side new ones. One of my issues with the ST is too few classic aliens.

I think of the three trilogies the only one that wasn’t done by winging it was the PT. The end was know before we saw the TPM crawl. Vader turns, the Empire rises, Luke and Leia where hid after they were born. The only story point that in any way changed was when Padme died, and even that may have been set.

But the OT was done on the fly. George had a general story from the long script that he followed in TESB and ROTJ, but the deeper story was done on the fly. We don’t know when he decided to make Vader Luke’s father. I think it was very early in TESB story development, he just never put it down. It was not in any version of the script until the script was published later. Only 6 people knew before the paperback came out in April 1980. The final confrontation in ROTJ changed a lot as the drafts progressed.

The ST was done much the same. TFA was an intro. TLJ was all about character development. TROS not only had to be the finale to the trilogy but to the saga. Trevorrow had a creature who taught Palpatine… but wasn’t that supposed to be Darth Plagueis? Changing that to be Palpatine himself and unleasing a fleet of Star Destroyers carrying an updated and more compact planet killer was genius. It gave the movie an epic villain and an epic conflict. It gave Kylo competition and conflict. It was exactly the ingredient the final story of the saga needed. Some have complained that Palpatine came back and some have complained about bringing back planet killers yet again, but for anyone who has watched any version of Flash Gordon, you know that Ming never dies and always comes back and he always has worse weapons every time he comes back. Star Wars is supposed to be a more serious take on the camp of Flash Gordon. So I think Palpatine made the ending perfect. It ties all 9 movies together into a whole.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if the inspiration was Max Von Sydow. Abrams might have turned to Flash Gordon for inspiration and heard the movie end with Max’s evil laugh as Ming… after the heroes had won and Ming was dead.

The prequels are a study in subtle story telling. It is never made truly clear what Palpatine is doing. But if you watch the PT enough you can see that he is playing both sides and he has many avenues to get what he wants. He lays the plans for the demise of the Jedi around the time of TPM. He plans to corrupt Anakin and make him his apprentice. The only real hint is when Jango says he was recruited by a man named Tyranus. The question is if Syfo Dias was really the Jedi who ordered the clones of if it was Count Dooku playing the part.

There is a lot that is not explicitly stated and we are left to guess.

Lucas shared his thoughts with Dave Filoni and he shared them in the behind the scenes of the Mandalorian. Those make sense.

Qui-gon was the Master Anakin needed. As the three Jedi duel on Naboo, Anakin’s fate is being decided.

The Jedi don’t see that they are failing Anakin. They tell Anakin to just not have feelings. He has feelings and they never teach him how to deal with them to avoid the dark side. Their whole attitude toward the dark side is to just avoid it. The whole fear leads to anger leads to hate leads to suffering starts with just avoiding those feelings. Anakin is a mass of feelings and needs to deal with them and the Jedi have no idea. Qui-gon would have taught him how to deal with his feelings. He was the only true Jedi in the PT and with his death the course to Empire and the fall of the Anakin and the Jedi was sealed.

So I think the corruption of the Jedi is very much PT canon and has nothing to do with Clone Wars. I could see it before Filoni started Clone Wars.

And I did not read the novelizations or most of the EU. So what I saw had to be just what is in the three PT movies.

How had I never heard of those before. Wild. Thought I think I actually watched Raiders of the Lost Ark on the RCA version of the disc. Very cool.