ST Daisy Ridley (Rey) in the ST

The most overlooked notion in the Rey discussion and how it relates back to Ben Solo is that she felt she was the one in control. When the final guard is dead she doesn’t tell him “We did it. We can be together now.” That’s not on her mind. She TELLS HIM to call off the attack and that they can make it if they hurry. She believed she’d charmed him and shown enough compassion to bring him back to the Light.

She thought the entire time that she was the one that had out-thought him heading into the throne room. She even brazenly tells him “When the moment comes you’ll turn.” She knows pain and the feeling of being alone and feels that Ben hasn’t been around someone like her before and connected to, or listened to him as she is.

She places her faith largely in the vision, after previous ones came true, and the mind bridge but also she believes the common ground she’s found with Ben Solo is bringing him back to the Light side. She’s romanticized the Vader redemption story and simplified it to a matter of compassion. She even says it aloud passionately to Luke on-screen earlier so she believes in it and thinks she’s making progress.

She’d charmed and guilted Finn to stay and (in her mind) likely thought Luke taught her the 3 lessons because of her efforts. Ben Solo obviously represented a whole new challenge but she doesn’t easily give up and believes she is making in roads the way a psychologist might. With Ben Solo she hasn’t seen him act violently since they started talking and she’s gotten him to open up and show compassion toward her in her mind.

This is what people refer to when they say part of her disappointment at the end isn’t only in watching someone have an opportunity to come back and refuse it but also the realization that she wasn’t as in control of the situation as she previously thought.

 

I totally agree that Rey perceives herself as being in control.

 

I feel like the movie showed that he wasn't manipulating her. I feel like a lot of us said that before the novel confirmed it. Ren wasn't faking it. He wasn't even particularly nice to Rey minus the "you're not alone" bit, nor did he ask her to come to him. In the beginning he seemed to be trying to push her away with all his 'I am a monster" talk the same way Luke was at that time. They both seemed to warm up to her the more time they spent w/ her. Snoke probably wanted to kill her because he would have made her the supreme leader in a couple days had he let live and allowed her enough time to wear down his defenses.The only way Snoke's plan would work is if Kylo is genuinely conflicted.

She has faith in everybody, it's sweet. Rey is telling Snoke that he underestimates Luke Skywalker like he didn't just refuse to help his sister and let her go face Snoke and Kylo alone while he burns books and waits to die.

I don't think that would have worked either. I think that's why they showed his conflict in the movie w/ his mom. The novel explores it further by saying he would have stopped the missiles if he wasn't surprised*. So when she says she senses conflict in him, I know its there too. I had to take Luke's word for it when he said it about Vader, I am glad they gave us clearer proof of his conflict in TLJ.

* for another thread, but I think Snoke saying he manipulated him might have been what made him more entrenched in his position to burn it all down. I think that was a straw that broke the camel's back sorta situation. I think in death Snoke turned Kylo into the person he always wanted him to be. He was so proud of his young apprentice in his last few moments of life.

 

Same, I did not have the feeling that Kylo was trying to manipulate her during their force Skype sessions. Only at the throne room scene did I think that he was using her parents as her weak point to convince her to join him.

 

I felt he was trying to manipulate her in wanting her to agree with him about Luke and to be won over by his worldview of killing the past. He tells her it's weakness that she can't stop needing her parents and that this is driving her to see them in these "unworthy" people like Han and Luke. He wants her to kill that need for belonging by allowing those that represent it to die--e.g. Finn, Luke, the Resistance. He is trying to get her on his side and in a way, under his dominion--the dominion of the dark side.

She's trying to do the same of course, it's just that what she's trying to do isn't evil.

And "you are nothing but not to me" is manipulation even if Kylo wasn't thinking of it that way. That manipulation is actually coming from broken Ben (filtered through Kylo) who desperately doesn't want to be alone and sees her as a kindred.

The tug of war in which each is trying to get the other on their side is out in the open though. It's this battle of wills and ideologies between them and they are both aware of it.

 

I didn't interpret it as an attempt at manipulation. I think he really wanted Rey to know the truth about Luke.

It is also true that Kylo wanted to train her in TFA, I think he was really frustrated by her attachment to her parents and wanted to help Rey, in a very wrong way, to overcome them once and for all, I'm not sure that I can call it manipulation, since I never had the perception that he wanted to achieve something more besides helping her and making her understand his point of view (which for him is the right one). Anyway, your interpretation makes sense and maybe you're right, I've only seen the movie once and I do not remember every scene very well.

Agree.

 

But that's what Luke says about his father. And it's not just their word. The force allows people to see other's ultimate redemption.

 

Another terrible aspect of TLJ that really holds back Rey's character was the bizarre decision to only give her scenes with two (3 if you count Snoke) main characters throughout the whole film, which incidentally, is the longest SW ever. Compare that with Luke in ESB who had scenes with Han, Leia, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Vader, various rebels, and R2 if you want to count him. In TLJ, Rey has scenes with Luke, Kylo, Snoke and that's pretty much it. I don't think the greeting with Poe counts because all they do is say hi and Chewie is not a fully developed character imo, at least not as presented in the ST. Snoke counts but barely because he's barely a character too. The way I see it, she's basically only interacting with two characters the whole movie.

Luke on the other hand has scenes with Rey, Yoda, Leia and Kylo, so in that sense the film is more about him than Rey. Isn't this supposed to be her trilogy?

It also stands in Stark relief to TFA where she had scenes with many more characters. I think this is part of the reason she feels like an unusually underdeveloped protagonist.

 

I never enjoyed arithmetic but I've nevertheless managed to enjoy Star Wars for nearly forty years without getting my calculator out and totaling how many characters speak with each other in order to validate my appreciation of the worth or success of any particular movie.

A less facetious response would be to tell you that such meaningless statistical analysis has never defined how terrible a film is. That's like defining how good a painting of familiar biblical scene is by how many apostles the big guy is speaking to in it.

Or Maybe RJ could have written it so that Ach To wasn't so secluded. It was actually just around the corner from the resistance base so Rey was able to flit back and forth and keep the quota of people that she speaks to, for whatever reason, up that way.

 

Lol, what a pointless (or perhaps facetious?) analogy. Rey was sidelined in TLJ and it hampered her development. That she doesn't have scenes with many characters is just one bit of evidence, and it's indisputable.

Why yes, yes he could. He could have also written a part where she goes to Never Never Land and meets Peter Pan. See, sarcasm is so easy! And so worthless. RJ could have written TLJ any way he damned pleased. The movie we got was not inevitable.

 

I think the point is that whether she was sidelined or not, her not interacting with characters is not really a determing factor upon whether or not she is underdeveloped. You could fully develop a character in isolation of most other characters.

 

No such rule exists regarding how many main characters each main character must have dialogue scenes with. So facetiousness in the face if such a demonstrably spurious complaint was absolutely justified.

Ach To was intended to be the most unfindable place in the galaxy where Luke is hiding and where we anticipate that Rey will receive her training in secret (what you call being "sidelined") and most of the movie concerns her struggles with Luke, and with Ben, and then with Kylo and Snoke. But you seemingly wanted RJ to retcon the nature of Ach To so that Rey had more characters to have dialogue scenes with, or not have Rey with Luke on that secluded island for more than ten minutes if at all.

Nothing is inevitable. But retconning where we've been brought up to just to satisfy some totally gratuitous, and false, satistical motive is about the worst kind of "writing" you could possibly come up with.

Her development in TLJ was all about how she handled her relationships with Luke and with Ben and by the end of the film, she is back among the friends she bonded with in the first film when she was propelled onto this adventure.

Luke's interaction with the main characters throughout ESB, ROTJ is almost exclusively about leaving them to do his Jedi thing, or being compelled to be with them in their hour of need. That defines Rey since the ending of TFA also. Not statistics.

 

Well, if there's one thing TFA showed me, is that when Rey is around, none of the other good guy characters shine anywhere close to her. (Luke has this same problem post RotJ).

I guess the writers wanted to give the other characters room to breathe.

 

The entirety of TLJ is not Rey on Ach To. She's there from the start because that's where TFA left her. And then she travels with Chewie first to Snoke, and then to Crait where she helps save the resistance fighters and then helps rescue them from the caves. Pretty major and important things besides just Ahch To.

There is no obligation, necessity or imperative for them to precisely rehash any film structurally and geographically. There is no formula. No prerequisites for the length of time respective relationships need to be developed over or with whom.

Nevertheless, there are certainly no glaring omissions that prevent a relevant and favorable comparison.

None of Luke's development in Empire Strikes back was centred around anyone other than Yoda, Ben and Vader, whom he mostly interacted with. Only his concern for his absent friends features in his development on Dagobah. Rey Being found by Han in the snow wasn't a development (just meant that he didn't die and so was allowed to develop beyond that scene).

At the last minute, his force connection with Leia is discovered. Mainly for plot reasons which develop Leia considerably more than Luke . The force connection interaction between Vader and Luke is the significant development though.

Rey discovers that her force connection with Ben is an ambiguous gift. Returning to her actual friends in their hour of need transcended force connections. It is the belonging she needs.

I don't know how you can conclude that the story of TLJ tells us that Rey knew nobody from TFA besides Kylo. She repeatedly stated the urgent need of the resistance and her friends (whom Luke doesn't know so making a big deal about who she's friends with would be a bit strange) in order to induce Luke to help and/or return.

In TFA she acquires friends. In TLJ she pursues the belonging she seeked following Maz's advice and Leia and the Resistance's needs. Gets disabused of the notion of finding that belonging with Luke in the way she thought. Tries to compensate for this by enhancing the stature of her feelings and what the force is showing her - to which she attaches her need for belonging - in relation to Ben. That doesn't prove as successful as she presumed so she returns to her friends (as planned) with a new awareness of her destiny and the belonging that she has already found.

- - - - - - - - -

Can someone please remind me of the lie that Kylo sold her and which Rey bought?

 

Due to the compressed time period I tend to view TFA and TLJ as two parts of one large origin story involving a scavenger from nowhere, who had these mysterious powers awaken within her, and doesn’t know what to do with them or how she got them, and who isn’t receiving much positive guidance who suddenly finds herself in the heart of a Skywalker family drama where she initially believes, following a combination of mysterious Force powers, that it’s her destiny and her role to bring one of these two super powered humans from the infamous Skywalker clan back to Leia. Either brother or son... bringing one back will win the war.

She is not provided the always convenient simplistic revenge plot to propel her. She’s known all involved only a week. She hasn’t been indoctrinated in any one philosophy. She wasn’t raised naturally like most kids. She is struggling with abandonment issues but hasn’t had to face them as often until she’s suddenly trying to convince people to be better and that reminds her of her own past and her own parents who couldn’t or wouldn’t for her or her efforts.

And this all occurs over the course of the first week of her life that that’s ever been off Jakku or seen vegetation or rain. She’s the very definition of a fish out of water and one with more pain and internal issues from her abandonment then she lets on when people first meet her but rise to the surface when she’s thrust into a role where she’s trying to get others to return.

What they’ve really done is extend the typical structural elements of the hero’s journey phases a little longer because characters like Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, despite assertions by some fans that they didn’t get enough time, are in fact given more time and energy and story within this saga than what a writer would likely normally do for these archetypes within her larger journey. They do so obviously because these two were popular heroes of the past and they feel each deserved their own mini arc at the end of their lives.

The Stone moment is her coming out party as a hero. It’s the first moment where she’s put her Force power to use for others. In this moment she’s decided it’s no longer about passing the saber onto one of Skywalkers and hoping one of them will save the day and win the war. It’s not about letting her abandonment issues limit her potential any more or make her vulnerable to manipulation and exploit. She takes what she learned in lesson one where she could sense the pebbles rising around her hands to new heights to save what she loves.

If it weren’t a trilogy this kind of moment of the hero using their powers to save others would have occurred earlier but they get away with it by first giving us the saber pull in the snow. They’re different moments though. One is about her own survival and is instinctual. The other is her choosing to become the hero she was looking for in others and didn’t believe could be her.

 

nice post!
The scene where Rey removed the stones and saved the resistance gave me goosebumps, it was the moment she accepted her role as the hero

 

Its also not as if her time with Luke amounted to very much anyway, they bickered, he taught her to meditate, they bickered again and she left on bad terms. Then Yoda convinced Luke to do something. She lifted some rocks.

 

Yeah her time with Luke amounted to, not much at all. And after all of the buildup, wow was that an incredibly disappointing "dynamic." She learned basically nothing from him, they argued most of the time, and then she left to go be an idiot by trusting Darth Daddy Killer/Friend Maimer.

So the ONLY dynamic that has any weight to it at all with her is her and Kylo, and it was TERRIBLE. Compared to Luke and Anakin (and yes, I WILL compare them because the movie is inviting me to), it's just so much less interesting and she feels so much more detached from everything.

 

If people feel Rey wasn't developed enough, it's not due to not interacting with enough people but due to not developing enough. I've seen movies in which the protagonist only interacts with a few people and develops fine. It's not about numbers.

 

...for them.

 

Imo the biggest problem was that little of what was actually going on with Luke/Rey was visible from a surface read. Superficially, Luke was influenced and motivated by Leia, Artoo, Yoda, and Kylo. Despite the fact that Rey was the main character and right there on Achoo. I susoect the intent was to get fans to wonder wtf was going on. Narrative dark matter.

I like meta as much as the next rabid fan but imo RJ focused on it to the detriment of basic comprehensibility. One thing I’ve always loved about SW has been that one can easily enjoy and understand it on multiple levels. Imo TFA captured this very well. I don’t feel TLJ did.

 

How exactly is Rey different before and after her experience on Achto? Moreover how does she use any knowledge she gained to make any difference in the conflict at hand? She lifted rocks, she could do that before. Usually the main character gains knowlege or has experiences during the story that result in them growing as a person then that knowledge helps them to become a hero. Basically Achto was a Checkovs gun that never went off.

 

I told her that too. She said "what the **** is the kenobis?"


MODified: Gotta **** out the entire word.