ST The Even More Magniloquent New Rumor Intellectual Thread of Seriousness for Sophisticated Discourse

LOL, have to say I find it's impossible not to smile when seeing Riker/Frakes smile. He has a contagious smile.

 

Even just going on that gif...yeap!

 

I understand the contrast and thematic reasons for Rey Unrelated and the evidence put forth is compelling, but there are still a number of loose ends that still niggle at my confidence in that interpretation. I lean Rey Skywalker but keeping possibilities open to any direction the story goes. A few things:
Why make her paternity a secret? We don't need everything but simply providing a surname would be fine. Hell, if she were related they could have introduced Rey's surname. Let's say Lars. Rey Lars and she finds out she's a Skywalker. Or Rey Lars and we find out she's Lars whose parents were killed by the Knights of Ren and tied to Luke's backstory and unrelated. We knew Luke's name. Names are important in STAR WARS. Why is Rey different? We know why Finn is different. I can only suppose that the writers want their audience to appreciate Rey for Rey's sake and not because she's Rey Skywalker, Solo or Kenobi, etc. Rey is her own person. That's established.
2. Kylo mentions Rey's projection of father figure on to Han Solo. She wishes for a father like Han. Han is Rey's wish fulfillment, but Han is Kylo's disappointment. Good contrast. The next line in this interrogation/mind reading scene is the island, which is Luke. She dreams of this island. Why? Well we know it's the goal. Luke is the goal of the film. We also know that the relationship between Rey and Luke is at the heart of The Last Jedi. I.e. Will Luke be Rey's fulfillment as a father figure? We know at first the answer is no. Then I suspect the answer in some form, related or otherwise, will be yes.
3. Rey's backstory is closely related to Luke's issues in VIII. They're not circumstantial, which is the unrelated argument, I'm betting the issues will be central and conclusive because it's Disney, "Disney defines family entertainment", it's not generally subversive and Rey Skywalker packs the largest punch, especially if Rey were unaware that she were a Skywalker from the beginning and throughout much of her journey. We love Rey for who she is on her own merit and we love Rey for who she is in relation to the classic characters. Merit vs privilege sits beautifully beside the family legacy and I can't see, at this point in the story, a negation of one by the other.


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Yeah, that's the thing about Blastaar's post that had me baffled as well. It can get confusing when people use words to mean other things than that which they actually mean...

Or a Splinter of it, at least...

 

On top of all this... What is the point in everyone being so coy about it if she is random?? That will just annoy people! All the "You'll just have to wait and see wink wink" and "I thought it was obvious if you watched ep 7" etc etc

 

from news from Jakku.

 

I would hold my breath on a Han Solo force ghost. We might see scenes from flashbacks in The Last Jedi, but ford has pretty much wiped his hands clean of Star Wars. I dont think a big check will make a difference.

 

Ok, yeah. I see what you're saying. Additionally, and in retrospect I was being pretty pedantic in my reasoning.

 

I thought you raised a valid question. Can someone with the Force really ever be considered someone who chose to be special? (We have canon Force users who choose not to be heroes [warriors] but instead choose pacifism).

I think the answer is yes, unless it's another tale of the Force choosing to make someone special and forcing them into that destiny, like it or not.

 

Yes, that's how I saw it. It's tricky when strength in the force seems to be inherited. But I think the emphasis re importance in the articles was not such much Force power, but circumstance - i.e. the difference between someone who is born with everything, to legendary heroes -yet throws it all away vs someone who has nothing (or has it all taken away?) choosing to make the right choices regardless. If we're saying that your parents don't matter and you still have to make the right choices yourself, I do think there is an argument for the mirror of someone like Kylo not having the same parents as him. It feels like it weakens it a little. But then the thematic driver may not have been the key priority, in which case I could see them feeling the theme could still work with two Skywalkers/ Solos. With anything creative, things are rarely black and white and it all depends what TPTB wanted to explore.

 

I think it depends how opposite one thinks Rey and Kylo really are...

 

I lost you on the bolded part. Can you rephrase for me?

Right now in the story, the strongest part of the contrast between Kylo and Rey seems to be when we see her struggles living on Jakku with no family. Kylo is the weak part of this contrast at the moment simply because we have no flashback to what his family life was like. A great contrasting scene would be something like Han and Leia giving Ben all the advantages you could imagine, and then we shift to Rey trying to survive. So fans like us are forced to imagine the implications of Ben being raised in a family of heroes, Han, Leia, Chewie, Luke, and even R2, yet still somehow spurning all they would teach him and the money and resources he would likely have.

What would be nice is if TLJ shows us the grandeur that Kylo has access to as Snoke's pet apprentice. This would help a bit, but without access to flashback to his youth, we're never going to really see the major difference between Rey and Kylo's youth. The contrast has to play out other ways because of SW's aesthetic of starting in the middle with little if any flashbacks.

 

Ah, sorry I forgot a clause! It weakens that a little if they are both from the same place originally i.e. Siblings.

 

We're in a weird situation where if Rey was Rey Solo or Skywalker, those parents didn't actually raise her. Instead, Rey is put into a much more difficult situation than Ben and yet she still chose to be better than him. So we couldn't say that bloodline actually made them good or bad, or parenting. Their individual reactions to their environments and experiences somehow made them distinct from each other.

So I'm not sure if I agree that coming from the same place weakens anything.

 

We've made it pretty clear that LEGO leaks are not allowed on this forum. Enjoy your timeout.

 

The way Rey is set up in TFA (without parents) allows them to explore the comparative with Kylo. We're already invested in Rey minus the parent reveal. In fact its a big reason to love her, she's gone without such love from parents. Now that she figures out who she is, her identity, does it fundamentally change her nature or our love for her? No on the former, but it may have a huge affect on her understanding and worldview. Absolutely no on the ladder. We know and love her all the more. The contrast and fairy tale can exist fine side by side. Or, I guess, family doesn't matter. Or it's just bad for you as in Kylo's case. Heck, even Brezzi still thinks she's a Kenobi.


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If she's Luke's daughter, I believe she was kidnapped and presumed killed. So he would have raised her until age five. Canonically, she has some sort of memory block.

If she is a Skywalker, then the point is that her bloodline didn't make her good or bad, just as Kylo's didn't make him good or bad. They started out with the same potential; what they became is die to their choices, not their destinies.

 

Yes, I'm more thinking aloud than declaring any definitive position. I'm just wondering if it's a case of having your cake and eating it (which may be a good thing for some).

 

It is not absent in the movie. The novelization description does not contradict the movie because with the exception of the malevolent voice words she hears urging her to Kill Kylo we saw in the movie that she was indeed influenced by the Dark Side when fighting him i particular at the moment that immediately follows her closing her eyes and proceeding to beat him. The dark side prowl and the snarl show it. It's called visual storytelling. Thus what is shown in the movie does not contract what we read in the novelization. The novelization supplies additional detail - such as the malevolent voice urging her to kill the already fallen and weaponless Kylo. The splitting ground between them prevents her from doing it which saves her from falling to the Dark Side, for the moment.





In the SW films context these visual cues are of themselves indicative to gauge when a character is on the "bad side" and is using the dark side. I don't think those visual similarities are somehow clues to parentage and I'm not saying that. I'm just showing that visual clues such as facial expression (snarl and bared teeth), the way one moves (the dark side prowl) are indeed indicative of someone giving in to the Dark Side and suggest the use of the dark side, using anger, hatred and rage to connect to the Dark Side of the Force to give the user power.

 

I don't have any strong arguments against this and you may well be right - the only thing I would add is to point 1 - even if she is a Skywalker of Solo, they might have given her a surname (an incorrect one obviously) and a little more backstory to hide where they were going better. But maybe they didn't want hide it. I have heard that JJ didn't 100% know for sure who she was, which, if true, would tie in with his open-ended approach - leaving it for the next guy in to decide for certain. I think it's possible the possibilities were more important to him than the certainties (I'm not suggesting he hadn't thought a lot about who she was - just that when they started filming it may not have been decided upon. I certainly don't believe it was ever in the shooting scripts).

 

All great points. Disney likes those family relations.

I especially agree with the idea that if Rey were unrelated from the getgo there is no reason to have hid EVERYTHING about her family. Heck, give her a broken locket that was left by her mom or dad or something tangible she needs to complete. Once you (a) make everything a secret and (b) show strong and clear evidence that she IS connected to the Skywalkers then you at least set fans up to hope she's related. If you make that linger on, you end up with MASSIVE disappointment which, to Disney, is just not Kosher.

But if she IS related and is Luke's daughter (or heck even Leia's) then you can give her her own journey and make her her own person and then satisfy that mystery at the last minute through strong scripting. It's as if the parentage doesn't mean all that much to Rey but to answer the question. Meanwhile, for the whole Star Wars story at large and the way Snoke can be defeated and her connection to Kylo, it means EVERYTHING. But at the end of the day Rey has become who she is without ever knowing she is a Skywalker. She accomplished everything being independent. That's a STRONG story in my opinion.

Meanwhile, you have the whole mother thing that can be explored.

For the Rey Randomers I ask this question (actually two):
(1) If Rey and Kylo are truly two halves of the light and dark, then would it not seem logical that they are connected and somehow achieve a common goal?
(2) And if they DO have a common goal/destiny, how in the world would they ever work together if all Rey sees Kylo as is the evil @#$% who killed Han Solo? If they are not related, then what would compel Rey to ever consider Kylo as part of her destiny?

 

Ive said this a thousand times somhere comes 1001. i suspect Rey's back story is not entirely unrelated to Luke, but at this point I really think she is not RELATED to Luke. The mystery of her parentage for th audience mirrors the mystery for Rey herself. The lack of a surname just empahsizes Rey's feeling of isolation and serves as a reminder that she does not want to feel isolated.

Rey is a contrast to Kylo. Kylo feels entitled by family. And he is angry that his birth right, as he sees it, has not worked out as he has hoped. Rey, otoh, is gifted but for no apparent reason. Her family may not be relevant at all to her strength in the Force. But of course it might be. I've speculated that Rey's power might be the result of something Luke did, and it remains possible that her parents were somebodies in the Church of the Force or in the Guardians of the Whills.

As to why Disney continued to play coy, I think the answer just boils down to marketing. Why would they put the brakes on that kind of hype machine? I think they underestimate how very seriously some fans take things like this, especially the old EU fans who are very angry Luke's family in the EU was erased.

 

@jedijaxThat is a good point about setting up and establishing Rey as a character without the Lineage baggage first. So we like her as Rey then find out she's a Skywalker/ Solo too. Bonus. Mind you this also works with Rey Random. But it's a sound point either way.

I'm not a Rey anything, but I'll have a go at those questions.

1) as with all these things it's not an either or. Yes, it can work very well (either as twins or as Vader's grandkids) but it's not essential for a light v dark split to work, especially if they want to subvert or branch out beyond purely lineage heroes as out leads (which is really what this boils down to - which avenue have TPTB decided they wish to explore). Neither is it essential for them to be related to somehow achieve a common goal (if this is where it's even headed). Light and Dark would be enough.

2) a) the fact that we don't know if they have a common goal yet means this one is harder to answer b) if they do have a common goal/ destiny I would suggest you would handle it like Voldemort and Harry Potter or the Elder and the Skeksis in the Dark Crystal - neither of which involve the linked forces to be on friendly terms of blood relations of each other. Even Gollum and Frodo Baggins become bound together with the fate of Middle Earth - and yet neither is related by blood. There is an empathy borne of their burden - not a friendship in the same sense as Sam and Frodo. Frodo knows Gollum is bad news, but he is also sympathises. Any riff on those examples could work well. And everything I've just described would also work well with Rey Related too.

The problem is, because you are only thinking in terms of blood relation, you're missing the perfectly valid, compelling and fertile story telling possibilities that exist - if one is open to moving beyond the boundaries of lineage.

And yes Strongbow - I'd say it's a 100% lock at this stage that Rey's past is linked to Luke somehow - even if they are not related.

 

This guy has history with both Luke and Kylo. I think there is a strong chance that this is Rey's father.

 

It's not her father. Rey knows her parents dropped her off on Jakku. But it's the Clan Leader of Clan of Toribota, who Rey's parents were part of and located on Jedha.