ST The Rey Parentage Thread (with new poll; see notes on page 2447)

But does it really matter who actually abandoned Rey? Rey believes she's waiting for her family. She tells BB-8 as much. Waiting for them is what kept her on Jakku for fourteen years.

If Maz had said, "whomever abandoned you is never coming back," I would agree wholeheartedly. We don't know who abandoned her. However, we do know who she believed she was waiting for, her family.

Maz actually said, "whomever you're waiting for is never coming back." So the people Rey is waiting for takes precedent. Whoever actually abandoned her is irrelevant in the context of Maz's speech. Maz doesn't know who Rey is waiting for. She doesn't know who abandoned her either. All Maz sees is that living in the past and clinging to false hope is limiting for Rey.

See my point?

 

Acknowledging that "tone" can be extremely difficult to read view the written word, I think the so called snark that's lightly sprinkled in those tweets might be rooting from here.

If the extraordinarily myopic view, and sense of entitlement, seen around here is being reflected in the tweets he receives daily are at all then yes, that would explain his tone.

It doesn't even mean that Rey is not Luke's. She very well could be, he very well could know, and he might still be frustrated and fed up with having to wade through hundreds of texts screaming that Rey MUST be Luke's or else...

 

Boy, I bet you hated Lucas after seeing ROTJ because he didn't kill Luke and Leia's mother onscreen......must've killed the movie for you.

 

If you think that most kids haven't seen the earlier films, you're wrong. I teach first graders, and almost all of them definitely know all about the OT characters and films. Most of them saw those way before they saw TFA. It's not like these films aren't available, you know. Many families own copies of them. I don't think that Disney is just making this trilogy for the kids; they're making them for everyone. Why would they want to alienate adults who have an income and hold the purse strings and can buy the toys both for their kids AND for themselves? If they just had kids interested, they wouldn't have made billions of dollars on the film alone. Do they want to grab new fans? Of course they do, but I doubt that they want to lose older, more loyal fans either. The more interest they can generate across all generations, the more income for them.

 

I think at this point it does not make any sense when Rey Skywalker fans and Rey Random fans respond to each other anmyore. It gets too hostile, especially from the Random group. So just let our posts as they are and every group discuss what they believe or want to happen. This makes no sense to have this fight for 1 1/2 years. None will change the mind of the other group anymore.

 

Even if younguns haven't seen the OT, the way TFA was plotted makes you care about Luke Skywalker. Clearly he's an incredibly important semi-mythical figure who experienced a tragedy and disappeared, and finding him is crucial. In some ways, not knowing exactly who he is is almost more powerful. What drove both the evil First Order and the Resistance to so desperately want to find him? What is he capable of?

Abrams created a great and intriguing question with TFA, which resonates with younger and older audiences. Johnson now has to deliver with an answer.

 

I just keep rewatching that last scene and the look that she has on her face. And yeah, that works SO well if she's seeing daddy for the first time, or at least the first time in a long time.

 

Well, in my case I also have a 10 year old kid and he had a different reaction while seeing TFA. When Kylo takes off his mask for the first time in front of Rey, showing he is a young man, my son deduced they will fall in love each other...and I can tell you my son is not for "cousins-incest". So, there are also part of "young audience" that took a different pov about how ST could go to. Right ?

 

And if you think I said that, then you're wrong. Isn't this a fun game?

JJ and Disney still have to make this trilogy with new audiences in mind. Do you not understand that? Again, TFA is full of exposition relating back to the OT. There's a reason for that. Heck, think about all the superhero movies that have been coming out over the past several years. Every initial film for each of the heroes has been an origin film. Care to guess why? I'll wait......

And again, in my personal experience, over 3/4 of my fifth graders hadn't seen the OT or PT, though they had some passing knowledge of the main characters....especially Darth Vader.

How self-serving of you.

 

very true

 

But that only works if she knows Luke is her dad.

 

No. It also works if she feels/suspects that there is a familial connection to Luke even though she doesn't know what it is.

 

Agreed.

 

Really? She feels happy to meet the daddy who left her on Jakku for most of her life?

 

I don't know about Thrawn082 but I personally just assumed during RotJ that their mother just died of some disease off-screen and it never really mattered. Leia had memories of her mother there. It was never played as some sort of mystery so there wasn't any reason to care. It wasn't until I saw the OT after seeing all of the prequels that I cared about the mother...because I had a connection to that character. You have to remember that a lot of people's exposure to Star Wars isn't OT and then PT. There is a whole generation, of which I am part, that really experienced the Saga in the Episodic order so that has colored our entire view of what the Saga is about and who and what we cared about.

As to your point a few pages back, no I really didn't feel all that devastated when Alderaan was blown up or the Hosnian System. Of course it was horrible and a tragedy, but there was no one on those planets that we had even developed an emotional connection towards so the tragedy isn't as horrendous; we haven't lost anyone we cared about. It would have been a different story if it had been Naboo, or really any planet that we had actually visited and experienced in the Saga.

So no, just because her parents are dead doesn't mean we would have any real attachment to them. Because we don't know who they actually are as people.

 

But it doesn't have to be about your attachment to her parents....it's about her attachment to her parents, and how that affects her.

And the OT survived just fine for almost 30 years without the audience knowing what happened to Luke's mom.

(And judging by the reception to the PT, it really didn't make things better in that regard, either...)

 

When I was a kid, I thought "The Blue Guy" (Obi-wan) was Luke's father. And Chewbacca was a mutant dog.

 

Well I loved the prequels and I know a lot of people who grew up watching them did as well. I thought it did a fine job showing us Padme and making us care about her. But this isn't a thread about OT v PT v ST so lets just agree to disagree and drop that particular point.

The larger point being made is that they made her parentage out to be a huge mystery and it will need to pay off for not only Rey but the audience as well. And them being two random people, unrelated to anyone we've seen or developed feelings for, and already dead, is a very hollow way to answer that particular mystery.

That is very different from Luke and Leia's mother, who was only mentioned once and confirmed to be dead by Leia. There was never any mystery there for the audience to latch onto whereas with Rey, it was a central theme in TFA.

 

Yes (although I don't think that even if Luke is Rey's father, that she knew he was her father in that moment). She is the inverse of Kylo in this regard. She forgives her parents or whoever for what she assumes is their mistake of leaving her on Jakku. Not for one second in TFA did she come across as angry at her family for her lot in life. Quite the contrary, she spent her life desperately hoping to see them again, choosing to stay in a life of virtual slavery just on that hope. OTOH, she watched Kylo whine in Han's face and then murder Han after Han offered him love and forgiveness. Rey is the light. I thought that theme was pretty apparent in the movie.

 

Seems to me Maz told her to stop worrying about her family, and focus on her future. (Finn and Han didn't want her to go back, either.)

That's not to say it wasn't a major motivation in her actions to begin with, but she did end up moving on with her life, rather than just going back to Jakku to wait.

 

Rey not worrying or wondering about her family would kill a major plot point before it ever got started. Rey's identity is bound to who she is. She was waiting for her family and it was a focus yet they haven't even begun to explore it. No way they are just going to let that drop. Everyone here knows that. Her quest, her journey, her change of character and internal struggles will center around her family. It may lead her down a dark path. Whatever the case may be, Maz's words do not indicate that Rey will just leave her family, whoever they may be, behind.

We all have families. We may quarrel with some members and we likely love other members. You don't just forget them forever though. Nor will Rey. Rey moved forward instead of returning to Jakuu. However, it's probably the moving forward that will move her closer to finding out the truth whereas going back to Jakuu wouldn't. That's what I took from Maz's speech. It was Rey who identified Luke as the "one who will return".

While we know what Rey wants, I really don't think they did a terrific job in TFA at showing her desperation. But I think that's due to (1) time constraints in moving the story forward in TFA and (2) because they are going to be getting deeper into Rey's desires and fears in Episode 8 as ALL second acts often do.

And FTR, there was never a theme for Luke and Leia to seek their family. However, it DID become a theme in ROTJ for Luke to redeem his father and see the good in him. It was a goal of his and he accomplished that. But by the time we met them, neither Luke nor Leia were tied up in their curiosity about their family other than that Luke wished he got to know his dad. Rey, on the other hand, exists for the hope that her family would return, aka, she would be reunited with her family. It would be very sad storytelling if she dropped that search and hope. THAT would be depressing.

 

Yeah, as someone who has no strong investment in any outcome besides a phenomenal story, it really seems the majority of the truly emotional, overwrought posts are coming from Luke fans.

Many of which, on this board at least, don't seem to give that much of a damn about Rey. Just the lack of Luke, his legacy, and bitterness over the Legends no longer being canon. I see people on the Random group, which you are classifying as everyone outside of camp Skywalker, which makes no sense, being more open to speculating about several options. It's mostly Luke fans who seem to be upset at the prospect of even speculating about non-Luke origins.

 

mainly after immediately when we point out good reasons why Rey Skywalker is very possible, we hear 'you don't see it right', 'you miss the facts' , 'you miss Pablo's tweets or 'interpret them wrong', you are only living your head canon', 'why don't you see she is a Kenobi'.

Maybe you get it why some of us react emotional.

 

From the script:

Why would he give a tortured/kind look to some random girl? And he already knows who she is and what she's doing there. That's exactly how I'd describe a father who hasn't seen his daughter in over 15 years.

 

Interesting. Even as a kid I cared about their mother. I imagined she'd met some tragic ending and, if the PT was ever told, she'd be a major character. I cared about Luke and Leia, ergo I cared about their parents too.

My heart sank during the viewing because I thought it was Corusant.