ST Matt Smith (Man of Mystery) in Episode IX.

And there was I yesterday watching the 10th regeneration and thinking "I want 11 to be in Star Wars".
Would my wants only finally meet up with the lottery numbers ...

 

Matt Smith: English, brunette.

Clearly Rey’s mother.

Also Kylo in a fez. Mark my words.

 

With this size of a cast, it's easy to imagine there being a significant time jump within the film itself, perhaps after Act 1's opening conflict and exposition, we skip ahead another year or two with the Resistance ramped up and Kylo super evil, for the rush to the finale.

In this way, JJ kind of gets to make two movies, and gets to do with Act 1 some of the stuff he would have liked to see happen in Episode 8 but we didn't get.

I'm guessing:

Act 1 - Longer than usual and pretty epic but with a cliffhanger (this is where we get very brief Leia like her voice over a comlink or a short hologram message)
- TIME JUMP -
Act 2 - Re-establish characters/galaxy after the jump, some quieter character moments with Kylo and Rey here, and rising action and complications with conflict. (this is probably where we get Force Ghost Luke, any possible flashbacks, and the most Leia, 1-2 full scenes)
Act 3 - The final battle, huge, epic, biggest ever in SW. Focus is on Rey and Kylo with some Finn and Poe.
Act 4 - Significant denouement with an ending montage showing the main characters fates/futures, including FG Luke looking on, Lando dropping Chewie off on Kashyyk, Rey instructing young Jedi, etc, and - hopefully - Leia being named Chancellor of the Republic and a return look at Coruscant (a montage similar to Lord of the Rings but not THAT long lol).

Even if I'm way off base, this is likely to be the longest SW movie ever.

 

With Matt Smith rumoured to be acting in another movie about cults - as Charles Manson in "Charlie Says" - such a role (something to do with the Acolytes of the Beyond) may be ideal in either preparing him for the Charles Manson role; or if he has already done this project, he could bring that "sense" (for the search of a better word) of being in an evil cult to this Star Wars role. I know this is only speculation here, but I too think it would be quite "world and story building" to start painting a picture of this group on the big screen and if the directors of the Manson film saw something in his acting to suggest he would be good as Charles Manson, maybe those same traits could be harnessed to create another really interesting off-shoot direction for the greater Star Wars story.

 

It's a shame Matt Smith wasn't cast in Rogue One if only so we could've heard him call Two Tubes, Two Chubes.

 

I can't help thinking that Smith's and Monaghan's characters are connected.

 

Like human centipede?

 

JJ has always said he had the whole backstory for the Knights of Ren planned out. What if earlier into the production of TFA he had imagined a longer flashback period to the temple and was planning on casting Matt Smith, Dominic Monaghan, and some others in that flashback to the temple knight with them later becoming the Knights of Ren but he scrapped the idea, decided to cast only Kylo Ren and chose Adam Driver, and now that he wants to go back to the Knights of Ren he's putting that gang back together?

 

Awesome news, he was brilliant as the Doctor

The article makes it sounds like it won't just be a minor role, though in this case I'd say key refers more to how important the role might be to the story, not so much in how big it is. It's also kind of funny to have both him and Richard E. Grant in this, seeing how they were facing off against each other in Doctor Who.

 

Well there really is next to no time at all in IX to be doing anything but getting to the point. Far too much time has been lost over 2 movies now that if the same approach is taken then it's going to need to be at least 3 hours long (which I don't see happening).

From the start they'll just have to get on with it. Introduction of character then action, introduction of character then action. The KOR must be in the movie so they have to appear, be instantly established then start their portion of the story with MS and DM as the "faces" of the group with the rest staying under mask or being Rey Park types.

I'd hope so but since he didn't actually use them in TFA and whatever plans he had for them in his version of VIII was never going to happen (where they effectively were replaced) then this is another complication to introduce them out of nowhere. As they are ultimately support characters it probably won't be a problem. In a way they are akin to Grievous who was only introduced and played a part in ROTS. The one thing of course is that there are 6 of them and they were supposed to be of some importance individually being 6 of Luke's students.

So they are a complete reminder of Luke's terrible Jedi Master who had 7 of 13 padawan's turn to the Dark side.

So why don't they use Lightsabers? Were they Luke's students in JJ's backstory?

 

Every single one of these castings become MAJOR characters in these threads.

My guess? A small, but still "key" role.

See:
Dex
Cliegg Lars
Lor San Tekka
Bib Fortuna
Mon Mothma
Master Codebreaker

 

Possibly. I guess my main issue with that interpretation would be that these guys were seemingly heavily devoted to the dark side right from the start, including Sith worship....I'm not sure I believe that Luke could ever have conceived of such individuals as worthy apprentices.

 

There is a detail from "TLJ novel".

Snoke mentions how Luke was at first wise by not training new Jedi. But than Luke made a mistake when he decided to do it anyway.
Snoke mentions it was Luke's mistake which destroyed him, he was lured into this, mainly because of appeal to train and "save" Ben Solo from the dark side.

It appears, to me, that Snoke have designed this all, and have lured Luke into this,by influence on Ben which made Ben radicalised and unstable, but its possible also by infiltration of Luke's academy by Acolytes .
Lukes project was doomed from the start.

The fact that 6 or so Luke's pupils have turned against their friends and slaughtered them in single clash emediately after Ben's mutity points that they were already under influence of dark side.

 

The issue with the KoR all being Luke's former students taken after the temple raid is that when Luke reads Kylo's mind and sees a dark future there's no mention of Luke realizing other students would fall to the dark side, too (a key piece of info for sure if we are to go along with the extreme measures of almost killing Ben to prevent that), or some mass betrayal of him by half his students. That flashback was all about Luke sensing darkness in Ben Solo and no one else....so....

I don't know what to make of Luke saying that Ben left with some of his students. How many is some? Do we assume the others were killed? Surely some students remained on "Team Luke" and were horrified by a frantic Ben roving through the temple and tried defending themselves accordingly....How many students did Luke have? Coming from the Kenobi/Yoda school of training, it's ard to imagine he had more than 5-6 at one time, but maybe? If all 7 of the KoR are former Luke Students, that seems to indicate Luke had at least twice that before Ben's fall. Was Luke training 14-15 students at one time? That seems unlikely to me but whatever...

 

Ben was Lukes' prime student and naturally Luke was invested with him the most. Jet Luke needed intimate close inquiry of Ben's mind during his sleep to see how deeply he was already on the Dark side.
To me it is clear that Luke's mutinied students became Knights of Ren.They must have been already turned to dark side just like Ben because I don't see how would Jedi padawans turn so easily instanteniously and kill their friends.
It is also logical to me to conclude that Dark side (Snoke) has cluded everything, not for the first time in Star Wars.

It is said that Kylo Ren created Knights of Ren, so they were the nucleus of Knights of Ren.

We do not know to this date when Ben mutinied against Luke, at what age, data are contradictory.

 

Nowhere does it say Kylo created the Knights of Ren.

Per the canon, the KoR predate Ben Solo even becoming the Master of the KoR.

 

I also remember hearing that the KoR predate Kylo but what's the source of that info?

 

Well, there was this, from a 2015 interview with JJ:

“He is a character who came to the name Kylo Ren when he joined a group called the Knights of Ren.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro....ode-7-who-are-the-knights-of-ren-5341563/amp/

 

Right, I thought it might've been from an interview. I guess that could mean that the students Ben left with were secret agents of Snoke's? Otherwise what happened to the students Ben left with? Why make a point of saying that Ben didn't kill all the students but rather left with some of them if you weren't going to give us more info about those students later on? Unless in Ep. IX Luke will say, "Ben slaughtered half the students and left with the others...because it was rush hour and he needed a carpool for the HOV lane".

 

I Know the wide consesus is as you pointed out.

Still there are serrious inconsistencies which bothers me.

In Bloodline novel, which is set 6 years before TFA it appears that this is timeline when Ben turned against Luke , so by this Kylo would be 23-24 years old when he turned completly to dark side. That would make Luke be on Ahch-to just up to 6 years.
But in the TLJ novel, the scenes in which Kylo mutinies against Snoke begin like this:
sorry for poor photo...TLJ novelisation,page 147.


"Ben Solo-no longer a boy but not yet a man-...…"

This implies Ben was still a teenager the night he mutinied against Luke.That puts Ben mutiny at least decade before..

I dont know is this been debated enywhere else ...is there consensus what this all means, is it bad writing orr I am missing something?

 

Man, that really makes Luke's failure utterly awful. All or most of his students turn to the dark side now? Not just Kylo???

Han said in TFA, "ONE STUDENT" turned on Luke and ruined everything. I don't know.

IMO more students than just Ben turning to the dark side lessens Ben's betrayal of Jedi path. It's now like "well, everyone's doing it."

I think it's far better if Ben turned dark, killed the other handful of students, maybe had to kidnap a few and bring them to Snoke (who then just killed them), and later Kylo recruits and helps train his own unit called The Knights of Ren, just like Snoke has his Praetorian Guard.

KoR being former Jedi is a huge can of worms IMHO, one that, if true, should have been opened much earlier in the ST.

 

I assumed Kylo went dark around 23 because in Bloodline Leia didn't think he'd went dark. But Leia also was out of contact with Luke and Ben, and it didn't specify how long that had been going on for.

I also know that the words "boy," "man," "kid," "child" aren't being used in clearly defined ways. Snoke calls Kylo a "child" in TLJ and Luke refers to him as "kid." Luke also says he saw the eyes of a frightened boy that night. In ESB Luke is referred to as a boy himself even though he's probably 20 or older. Rey is a girl in TFA and TLJ - that's what people refer to her as. These words are used in subjective ways and are not clear indicators of actual age.

I agree things are unclear regarding KOR and also see them as something that can be easily altered in the originally intended backstory.

 

it means people older than him didn't see a 22-23 year old Ben Solo as quite a man yet. It's that emerging adulthood stage of life. He wasn't yet a jedi, he hadn't yet assumed full adult agency (his mother sent him to luke.) He had no adult responsibilities.

Just like older adults view college students as not quite adults.

Not bad writing, just the perspective of someone who doesn't see his nephew fully stepping into manhood yet.

 

I am not native English speaker, but is it usual do describe 24 years old as no more a boy, but not yet a man? In my country every male at around 20 is definitely a man, legaly at 18."No more a boy, not yet a man, for me that's teenager.

3 times in novel consitently this words.

The plot is even thicker. Author of Bloodline novel Claudia Gray said that she got an imput when writing "Napkin incident"chapter in Bloodline.
It was asassination atempt (bombing) of Republic senate 6 years before TFA, in which Leia received a mysterious mesage written on a napking by a calligraphy saying"RUN"
So Leia has run a way in time before explosion of the Senate.
It was not explained who wrote this.

But we know it was by an imput of Rian Johnson.

And look what we found in The Last Jedi film: that night when Luke and Ben clashed, on Ben's nightstand there is a ...calligraphy set..



But Ben obviously warned her mother before he mutinied definitely….because this set was destroyed in house collapse.

or whatahel..?