ST Behind the Scenes of the Sequel Trilogy

Thanks!

 

Ah, that’s a really good point! I do remember reading something about how Maz was supposed to be a puppet early on in the film’s development, but they opted to make her a CGI character instead. It could be a preferential thing on JJ’s end, which I didn’t think about.

 

'A thousand generations live in you now. But this is your fight'
The Prime Jedi.

Was he a descendant of Lucas' 'holy man called Skywalker'?

The part with Darklighter and the sith pirates sounds more like Kylo and the KOR; but, still, maybe that's how the sith started: FS criminals. Palpatine says he's all the sith, and also 'it is in our blood, your blood. It's your birthright to rule here', implying that it was his birthright too.
That mizzlewump leak (2013, VII's 2nd draft, supposedly) talked about the sith being founded by an ancestor of Palpatine called Ruin; and there's some hints about Palpatine's ancestry in the Plagueis novels, published a year before and supervised by Lucas.

 

I have always thought that the image of the Prime Jedi looked suspiciously female.

 

https://boards.theforce.net/threads...-and-symbolism.50054022/page-11#post-56714227

ROTJ novel. Here, the funeral pyre and the bonfire and Vader and Anakin are connected. That didn't happen in the film.

Maybe that's the idea behind Vader's helmet and the smoke. 'Smoke rose from the vents in the mask, almost like a black spirit, finally freed'.
But we saw Anakin FG in ROTJ. So that TROS smoke was the helmet resonating with Ben/Kylo's black spirit - Anakin's spirit resonating with Ben's through a shared and not forgotten 'speck of humanity'.

In TROS, smoke appears just at the end of the vision early in the film, when Ben sees Han on the bridge. There was a bonfire portal waiting for him, and his own spirit would be a part of the fire. Ben Solo's funeral pyre has been a part of his arc since the beginning.

Spoiler

Luke was the OT son, and Leia saw the death of her son at the end of her journey - and maybe so did Anakin.

We don't see Ben's FG. Anakin's 'I will stop people from dying' comes to mind; and maybe Leia sacrificed herself for Ben in that way so that her son could live, purified from his sins.

Speculation, of course, but maybe those jedi had a plan for him. FG Leia wears his Rogue One/ANH costume, and that meant a piece of info inside someone.

Spoiler

 

I have to admit, whenever I see those FGs now I think of a disgruntled twitter reviewer who called them Mary and Joseph of Alabama.

 

TFA/ST Making Of book announcement?

 

No way. Rinzler admitted in a recent interview that he’s persona non grata at Lucasfilm because of his blog posts.

 

Here's the Rinzler video. Nothing too revelatory. He says he was never given an official reason for why the Making of TFA book was canceled, but he speculates that it was a control issue on Disney's part. This is to say that when the book had spelled out the chronology of the making of the film, it would look like the production had a lot of problems. He had interviewed Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and others.

The only interesting thing he brought up was that he got a rare opportunity to interview Marcia Lucas for a book about Howard Kazanjian's career. He says she had seen all the new films and "had interesting things to say," which will be included in that book.

 

Spoiler: Bombs,etc.

https://swfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Bombing_of_the_Jedi_Temple_(Third_Galactic_Civil_War)

Spoiler: kill switch

The temple explodes, with fire+smoke before that (Ben's 'w-what?')
https://i.redd.it/3thekhjnlwa41.png
As for 'a Sith masquerading as a former Jedi seeking redemption, who carried with her a lightsaber containing a small plasma bomb into the Jedi Temple', these two hooded persons are maybe masquerading as each other.



I mean, Ben was 'seduced' by Snoke. His force education, we could say. He was seduced with knowledge, with 'power'. After ROTJ, that wouldn't have worked with Luke. But -'perhaps she will'- he could be seduced with, or through, his own goodness. You do that by seducing him with someone else. This was him after 'perhaps she will'

and this was him after his 'briefest moment' in TLJ

And this was him talking about himself:

Kylo's strength or discipline was pierced by 'eyes' too.

This is tied by speculation, of course; but that's what writing a story is like, 'what if' scenarios. In any case, Palpatine wuld have been behind all this, and sith story in these films (bomb in the jedi temple, for example) has so far resurfaced (recanonized or used as a starting point) thorugh him. Exegol, Kylo's saber from Malachor, the Knights of Ren. 'The return of the sith', he says. Also, there's the idea of Darth Talon the jedi seducer, as I posted elsewhere, from Jan/Feb 2013.
Also, that same year (before/after Luke's temple was destroyed, not 2013), another bomb:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Napkin_Bombing

 

Doesn't look like a concept art to me.

 

This part from The Director And The Jedi always makes me chuckle.

 

so kylo was the only male student of luke's?

 

AOTC script:

TLJ novel:

The thing is,

Luke's probe looks like the non violent, jedi version of it, akin to hypnosis.

In the Kylo Ren comic, Snoke's voice -that is, Palpatine's- says to Ben after the temple's destroyed: 'we both thought it might happen'.

'Master Yoda, do you think it will really come to war?'

Luke went looking for 'neutral' darkness that night, or rather natural darkness, the kind of impersonal darkness emanating from the cave; he was not looking for evil, I think, nor approached Ben in a personal way - more like, detachedly, like a therapist. Ben was not talking and Luke could not 'reach' him. And Luke was not looking for something specific -like the map in TFA.

Then he looked inside...Palpatine thought 'it' might happen. It did.

The failure at the cave: 'Only what you take with you'. In the comics, Snoke and Kylo are seen training in Dagobah.

So maybe Palpatine made sure Luke had something in his mind that night, and that something would summon another thing that he had made sure to inhabit Ben's mind: and those two things would be put together through the darkness-piercing probe. And Luke would be caught off balance as a result.
He withdraws his hand much like Kylo would do, years later. TFA script:

Playing both sides against each other, as he did in AOTC. Luke=republic; Ben=separatists.

The key word is 'afraid'. There's a woman (and a man) screaming inside Ben's head, together with a lightsaber: and Luke reacts, for a 'fleeting moment', as he had reacted once ('perhaps she will') Fear, 'afraid', had made him attack his father. And since Palpatine felt Vader's feelings in ROTJ, I guess he remembered it ('sister!')

 

Also, 12 children. The PT jedi council had 12 members. The jedi voices are 11, and then Leia appears at the end.

There's a religious parallel for this, and it's Jacob ('the prime jedi'), who in the Bible 'wrestles' with a 'man' and prevails; this 'man' has been called god, an angel or satan - in SW terms, this could be his own shadow. He had 12 sons. Hence the 12 tribes of Israel.

And there's Luke: a dozen students. But: they were 13. 12+Ben.

And then the parallel would come from the New Testament, that is the apostles/disciples.

The unlucky 13. Judas. This was not Ben.

Jesus knew about the betrayal, also. Luke did not. Who 'slaughtered' the students?

Judas means Rome. The empire. An emperor.
'Then his apprentice killed him in his sleep'. 'My personal representative in the jedi council'. Who said that?

Judas had red hair, and so did Mara Jade...and so did Mary Magdalene, the ex-sinful woman, the 'beloved disciple' and, according to some, Jesus' lover/wife.

Ex-sinful? 'His compassion for you will be his undoing'

 

So at least storyboard people were pushing for double-bladed saber.

 

Rey swimming was a thing from the beginning:

Now, they chose sand: Jakku. She's been there since she was 5-6. Already in TLJ she knew how to swim:

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/17...ins-that-leia-scene-everyone-is-talking-about

Those screams+water.

So, maybe they chose 'sand' and not 'water' because of Kylo. He had to appear in her life before 'swimming' did - or after a force connection was implied between them. This would have made pre-Jakku Rey and Kylo (Ben, in fact) and 'swimming' a part of the same backstory.

As for Kylo, there was 'water' too. That would be another Ordinary People connection, I think:
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/ordinary-people/symbols/water

Spoiler

Also:

Spoiler

'She's gone'

 

What's that about? There are 3 lightsabers in one of them ('E')

This Vyle has posted also a couple of Oracle pieces. Come to think about the Oracle, there's some similarity between this

and this

A spidery hand, given the Oracle-like vision when Kylo touches the helmet, and a sleeping baby head, given the infant imagery at the end.
https://www.indiewire.com/2019/12/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-chris-terrio-spoilers-1202198680/

'Infant' comes from from the Latin word infans, meaning "unable to speak" or "speechless", and that's Ben in Exegol. We don't see his FG.

His own spidery hand on his own baby head. I think Han's memory was retrieved during the vision part and then someone (Luke, perhaps) clothed himself as 'Han'.

There's a spielbergian precedent in A.I. That kind of precedent is never too far away from JJ's tastes, and in fact:

Spoiler: Retrieved memories, supermechas, bad robots,etc

Also, this blue fairy backlight:


The boy and the mother

Spoiler

go to sleep together at the end, in that film.

And, at the end, leia wears his ANH dress:

These words go with that dress:

and: