ST J.J. Abrams (Director Of TFA & TROS) Discussion Thread—Now Finally Discussing: JJ Abrams

According to the visual dictionaries, yes, she's force sensitive.

Kanata's connection to the Force acquainted her with members of the Jedi Order and protected her from danger,[12] but following Darth Sidious' rise to power, the formation of the Galactic Empire, and the execution of all Jedi,[16] Kanata kept her abilities a secret.[12]

 

I remember when TFA came out people were theorizing that Maz might train Finn while Luke trained Rey. I think that would have been a very interesting direction, with parallel storylines of Rey getting Jedi training, Finn getting force training from a non Jedi, and Kylo getting dark side training.

 

Here’s something else, that I never thought about until now - Han knows Finn has Luke’s saber and never mentions it to Leia? Never tells Finn whose saber it was? It’s true, the more you think about TFA, the worse it gets.

 

I just watched The Rise of Skywalker for the second time and I think it is overall a better film than The Force Awakens.

I find some of it a bit disorienting. Much of the dialogue feels a bit forced or clichéd. Much of it is rather predictable. However it has many strong moments that fans i think miss amidst maybe the issues listed above, or their focus gets thrown off from some of those aspects. Maybe this makes sense to some; don't sit too close and its easier to follow the action.

Reys character is much better in this film than TfA.

Ridleys performance is better.

Palpatine works if you can accept it.

Ian's performance sells it.

Ben Solo works alright. Driver sells it.

I think JJ planned Rey to be a Palpatine from the start or had this idea in his head.

It isnt as fast moving as people think. It has its moments, and more than most probably remember. I must not have been the only one finding some of the action sort of an inconsequential distraction, but i think for those that absolutely hated it I suggest giving it another chance. It was a similar experience with TFA for me.

Just some quick thoughts after just having watched it.

**oh The lightsabres are great in the sequels.

***the score is........meh. okay in spots, but I never dug the Resistance theme.

 

Who knows what he tells them off screen? And what difference would it make?

 

Something you said in the Kylo Ren thread made me also think that Palpatine arc was always in JJ plans and that it was not late addition to story. Last night I saw TFA and Maz':
"The only fight. Against the dark side. Through the ages, I've seen evil take many forms. The Sith. The Empire. Today, it is the First Order. Their shadow's spreading across the galaxy." hinting the that it is the same evil just in different forms...Palpatine was the sith lord and the emperor and also FO is just another of his new evils. That has the exact same MO and internal structure like the Empire had.
Palps being the main evil all along would explain why Snoke was never explicitly explained, no?

 

JJ absolutely planned Rey to be a Palaptine ,but as is always the case with JJ, he thought that mystery box was more important. And then didn't want to come back to finish what he started. It's unfortunate that they pressed him into returning to TROS instead of finding another director or pressing Rian to finish it. JJ was more likely to make a follow-up to his own movie rather than follow-up to TLJ which is what happened and why TROS is a mess. It feels like 2 movies crammed up in one - a movie that tries to undo TLJ and a movie that tries to wrap up everything.

But back to Rey Palp, hints are everywhere. Now that we know for sure that Rey was not related to Skywalkers as of 2014 the latest, rumors that she was a Palaptine (TFA production), JJ's May 2016 quote that "rey's parents are not in TFA", Jett Lucas's Anastasia tweet (Tsar = Emperor, geddit?) and finally this:

Simon Pegg: "I know what JJ kind of intended or at least was being chucked around. I think that’s kind of been undone slightly by the last one. There was some talk of a relevant lineage for her.”

point at Rey Palp. of course, thanks to mystery box, it now looks like JJ caved in to TLJ backlash over Rey Nobody but I believe that he indeed wanted Rey Palp. Which, IMO, should have been revealed in TFA already.

 

How could they not know who Rey was during TFA? That kind of sums up the lack of an overall vision if that is indeed true.

 

I think that there was a level of flexibility. It was set in stone that she wasn't a Skywalker so any other legacy or no legacy at all was up for grabs. Even though it's a pretty big difference between Rey Palp (and how that relates to the Skywalker history) and Rey Nobody. But since Rey Palp wasn't mentioned in TFA, Rian likely persuaded them that Rey Nobody was the way to go. Makes sense in a way because Rey's parentage mystery dragged the character down, literally diverted attention from her to whichever legacy character fans wanted to be her parent(s). So as a Nobody, she would develop as Rey. Or something.

 

edit

 

The "parentage mystery" was all in our heads, though. TFA never implied that there was a mystery in universe.

 

Didn't they though? Rey's story played like a riff on Luke's story. And Rey keeps asking who she is.

 

No Rey didn't ask who she was. The mystery was why parents left her and weren't coming back, not who they were. However, the fact that she had no last name, that the movie was a blatant ANH reboot, and that fans expected the same beats like OT, resulted in obsession with Rey's parentage especially daddy.

So while I agree that the movie does not treat her parentage as textual mystery, it's aware of the subtext enough to keep it there for the sake of hype.

 

But...I'm watching TLJ today and noticed hints of her being of dark legacy in it as well , lol...
when Luke was teaching her her first Force lesson, after the short realization intro on what the Force really is about (a tension/link between light and darkness within every living creature including herself) she went straight to the dark...like she did at the end of TFA when she turnsover the fight over Kylo after he mentions the Force...both times she did tap into the force alright...the dark side of it...the fear the anger and the agression....if that isnt sinisterly hinting on her dark legacy then i don't know what is... so maybe they didn't go with rey nobody but it was just a planned diversion?

also a side note...did you guys ever notice that all the guests in canto bight wear only black and/or white attire...considering the affiliations there (arms traffickers) i found that funny..

 

I think that her going straight to the dark was more like that everyone had darkness in them that should be confronted and hers came from repressing the fact that her parents were trash that sold her. Once she faced the truth (Throne Room), she beat her own darkness.

 

Well, Rey certainly has a dark streak that surfaces virtually every time she's in a pickle. Whatever the creators' original intentions, her being a Palpatine fits.

 

For me I found the constant misdirection frustrating. Yes surprises can be fun but they kept leading us one way, then zig zagging. JJ did it with Lost, which I like for the most part.

 

was just about to say that...she constantly uses anger!

when it came to defending my ST headcanons that mostly came true JJ's behaviour made me more assertive in defending my views and that translated into real life as well, which had surprising (positive) effects in so many things....
so...happy beeps

 

The underlying problem there is that Abrams decided that mysteries and surprises are fundamental building blocks of Star Wars, even though GL would probably be the first to tell him that they're not. ANH didn't have those, the father Vader reveal came about just because he decided inbetween movies to merge two characters - and Leia became Luke's sister because he decided to wrap up the story earlier than originally planned and needed to address "No, there is another".

A natural consequence of this, of course, was that the surprise element became part of the Star Wars experience for the audience, but it was never a driving force in the creative process.

 

It was also in pretty much every article from TFA to TLJ when suddenly, it was all in our heads that Rey's parentage meant anything.

Exactly. But because JJ loves his mystery boxes and thinks that's what makes interesting movies, here we are. It works great in a TV show (well, okay, it's supposed to but one of the wonderful ironies is remembering the Lost producers saying they were going to be nothing like The X-Files, they had a plan! How'd that work for ya?)

 

The problem is that even JJ’s signature - the mystery box - is not executed very well. I like mystery and wonder and all that jazz. But I like it best when it hints at a deeper history and a deeper meaning outside the frame, in a way that sparks the imagination and leaves me wanting to see more. JJ’s mystery boxes don’t do that. They just come across as mystery gimmicks. Obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation. It feels artificial, and so it doesn’t leave me with wonder and awe. It just leaves me with the feeling of having watched a half-baked story in a half-baked world. The magic trick he’s selling is thin.

 

The fact that her parents were not shown on screen and that we needed a flashback for it really says that its an important moment that should be speculated on. so yeah i don't believe for one moment it wasn't meant to be a mystery.

 

I think that ties in with your expectations being met or not as well. When you get out of the story what you wanted you don't mind that much the path to it?

What I love about JJ movies (and I count in TLJ here as well since he was producing it) is that almost every time I see it i find something new...either because my perspective changed or I was more open minded to stuff...I know that today when I watch TROS i focus on the positive not just how it disappointed me. I chuckled when i noticed the first time how Ben mirrors Han in some moves...didn't notice that the first few times watching it...Like I didn't notice Canto Bightians only wear black and white the first 20 times I watched TLJ....anyway...things like that that make me chuckle make me love his SW stuff...

 

Yeah, inability to commit to a

this is a great point. considering they were Palpacloneson and PalpaMom, JJ could have shown them thus squashing speculation that she was a Skywalker/Solo (except those who would insist those were fake parents) while not revealing daddy's true origin. But by hiding their appearance, he likely knew it would fuel Reylated speculation which it did.

 

I never said it wasn't. I said that it wasn't one in universe, until TLJ.