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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

ST Rey Skywalker/Daisy Ridley Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Sequel Trilogy' started by Pro Scoundrel , Jan 3, 2020.

  1. godisawesome

    godisawesome Skywalker Saga Undersheriff star 6 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 14, 2010
    And that just seems so blind and bizarre; I mean, even if he was just conceptualizing his story based off a rough outline of the story, he’d still blatantly have Finn making his choice to come back a la Han in ANH, and Rey taking up the saber only after already being tortured, violated, and losing friends to Kylo.

    With Poe, it honestly comes off more like he might have seen the earliest, doomed to die version of the character, and just plugged in a story he had in his mind with an interchangeable character.

    With Finn, it feels like he was paranoid about his tie to Rey, and with Rey, it feels like he was utterly and completely unable to process someone having negative feelings towards Kylo, *and* just didn’t care about her as a character.
     
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  2. dagenspear

    dagenspear Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2015
    Did he really say that? Wow. That's... odd, to me, if so.
     
  3. JoJoPenelli

    JoJoPenelli Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2000
    Yes, he literally said that.

    Some degree of the hatred directed his way was fueled by his at-times clumsy PR and compulsion to fight on SM with fans.

    But you’re right - it’s odd. It sounds more like something KK/TPTB would say was a directive given to him than something a director would admit to. It’s something you would want if aiming for a YA romance story, which is certainly not something RJ ever stated TLJ was but which key elements of the story resemble.

    For all RJ claiming he had 95% control, he also stated that he ran every word of the script by the SG. Exact opposite of JJ (what a coincidence! What a lucky hire by KK!). That is definitionally not “95%” actual control.

    I don’t believe everything RJ claims because of stuff like this. Not because I think he’s a liar but because I think he can be rather sloppy at PR. Ironically this has in part lead me to think he deserves less blame for TLJ than many others who hate the movie.
     
  4. dagenspear

    dagenspear Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2015
    I've talked to my brother recently, about, to me, TLJ, with what I think is a generous mindset that RJ may have been given some things to hit by LFL, but he did this weird thing where he rebelled against it, by having things be odd.

    "People like the OT. This has to be like the OT. Have it be like TESB."

    RJ: Does all of that, but then cuts everything off at the knees by having the conflict be basically resolved with ROTJ being at the end, Kylo as the villain, and basically trying to avoid the last movie from being like ROTJ.

    "People like Kylo and reylo. Make them a focus."

    RJ: Does this weird thing where they're a focus, with, I think, romantic subtext, but Rey and he still oppose eachother at the end and he becomes, I guess, the big bad.

    etc.
     
  5. JoJoPenelli

    JoJoPenelli Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2000
    The fact that he ran everything by the SG (who are not prose writers and were kicked out of the room by JJ and Kasden for good reason) suggests to me more of a process tightly controlled by TPTB than one in which RJ went rogue. He either *had* to run everything by LFL or desperately wanted their approval due to insecurity or whatnot.

    What RJ did inject in TLJ was a big dose of ambiguity and refusal to commit to anything aside from Snoke’s and Luke’s deaths. I may have been incredibly deluded post-TLJ by my interpretation of TLJ - which happened to be *extremely* incorrect - was still firmly based and coherent, as much as *any* TLJ theory could be firmly based or coherent. Because of that ambiguity.

    Note how RJ never really said what the story of TLJ was.

    Neither did JJ re TFA or TROS.

    Neither has anyone re the entire ST.

    Odd, isn’t it.
     
  6. dagenspear

    dagenspear Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2015
    I do think that there's either no original consistent throughline, or about no consistent throughline. Either it's nothing, or it's a retread, or it's built on mainly a theme concept, which I think is lame, and I don't like themes dictating character and/or story directions, as a whole, to me, like that.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2021
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  7. JoJoPenelli

    JoJoPenelli Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2000
    RJ is a themes dude.

    Works great for certain kinds of films, not for others.

    I have little trust in KK’s judgment in hiring directors (at least, trust that she won’t change her mind later) but it seems like she hired the kind of director she wanted. And I think she got the kind of female protagonist she wanted.
     
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  8. godisawesome

    godisawesome Skywalker Saga Undersheriff star 6 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 14, 2010
    It’s actually a little fascinating to see how going for an audience surrogate character (and to a degree well beyond how Luke worked in that role at times) can end up running at cross purposes with a functional character arc or a more universal audience POV:

    Kennedy likely approved strongly of TLJ echoing the POV she thought would most align with the audiences regarding what she thought Kylo would be, rather than what he was or how he would actually be seen.

    But the POV she and Johnson expected wound up coming at the cost of a believable characterization for Rey, while still requiring a shallower or biased view of Kylo that inherently lessened Rey and the central conflicts capacity for drama.
     
  9. Talos of Atmora

    Talos of Atmora Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 3, 2016
    Gee, it's almost like audiences are more receptive to a character with motivations that organically stem from their own background and personal experiences in a clearly dramatic film, what a radical concept...

    It's less that it's at cross purposes and more that attempting the same kind of audience surrogacy with a main character is completely misguided. People praise that about Luke but the reason why is often not the good one. The good reason being that Luke is an audience insert for a story and setting that is just being revealed for the first time ever. So it's a lot more natural. With Rey, given her own circumstances at this point in Star Wars' existence as a story, attempting to do the whole youthful wide-eyed optimist routine between herself and what Finn's character actually is kind of farcical. It doesn't help me relate to the characters in any sense.

    When you break it down, there are a lot of foundation for a darker, more intimate story in this saga but none of the three films really treat that with the gravitas that it deserves. What I've talked about is a byproduct of that very issue.
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2021
  10. godisawesome

    godisawesome Skywalker Saga Undersheriff star 6 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 14, 2010
    I would also argue that Luke’s “wide-eyed audience surrogate” aspect starts fading away into a more distinct and individual character arc as the story progresses; by ROTJ he’s clearly “his own man.”

    We’ve disagreed about how much any attempt at establishing a more “character” than “archetype” portrayal exists in TFA, but TLJ is a bit weirder in that it’s applying some degree of “audience surrogate” interchangeability to everyone - even Kylo and Luke. I think one reason some people love Luke in TLJ in a way that others can’t understand is because some people find themselves “plugging in” to his story emotional intent separate from its storytelling and previous characterization context, while Johnson has been pretty explicit in interviews he thought of Kylo as a parable on adolescence.

    TLJ seems designed to have an audience do their best to ignore things that would interfere with “audiences surrogacy” - it’s a story told “at a distance” from the stakes and whatever more distinct characterization anyone has, which is horrible for plot or more “epic” character arcs.
     
  11. sian1965

    sian1965 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2020
    Ironically that was what they were going for with TROS, and it ended up pleasing no one.
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2021
  12. FightoftheForgotten

    FightoftheForgotten Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 19, 2020
    This was something I had a hard time figuring out as a child. I didn't agree with what Luke was doing in ROTJ because it's not what I would have been doing. But I was ten years old and Luke was done making stupid mistakes like the one he made in TESB. I, however... well, I'll let you all know once I stop making stupid mistakes.
     
  13. JoJoPenelli

    JoJoPenelli Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2000
    Good notice for us all to put in our obituaries :p
     
  14. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    I understood, as an eight year old kid during ESB and now as an adult, why Luke would want to believe that his father had once been a good person and would want to pursue that idea to the end.

    Rey‘s behavior, on the other hand, I don’t understand at all, and if I had a daughter I would not want her to understand it either. I also don’t want my sons to try to romantically fix people who mistreat them, and I want them to reserve any romantic overtures for people who treat them well.
     
  15. FightoftheForgotten

    FightoftheForgotten Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 19, 2020
    My issue was more about how Luke reacts to knowing Yoda and Ben lied to him. Luke takes that reveal very well. I always thought he should have been more upset, but I realize now that Luke has grown beyond his years since the end of TESB. Now, do I think a lot of this is off-screen development? Yeah, but I still accept it for what it is. It's not too much of a stretch to think that Luke has grown a lot from his experience in TESB.

    I do have a daughter. Rey's mindset toward Kylo is not healthy at all. I know some young women do try to fix the badboy, but using that as a narrative thrust in TLJ and then doubling down on it in TROS is... it's not something I want my kid seeing in a fun fantasy film.
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2021
  16. godisawesome

    godisawesome Skywalker Saga Undersheriff star 6 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 14, 2010
    While Luke's reaction is muted, there’s still a direct tie between the Luke we saw in ESB to the one who seems to so easily manage his temper and sense of betrayal when given a chance to talk to Obi-Wan again. The only truly missing ingredient from ESB is maturity, really; Hamill plays the character as having been emotionally changed by ESB enough that while he still has the same emotional reaction, it’s simply something he handles, as you said, “very well.”

    Hamill can say that line “Why didn’t you tell me?” in a heartbreaking but restrained manner, or have a tension around Yoda before that, which can communicate the reaction we expected before, but with a layer of discipline and greater understanding to it.

    What TLJ often does is fail to make the connection between ROTJ/TFA feel like a direct tie to the events and characterization of TLJ. Poe doesn’t feel like he emerges from his TFA story at all, Finn seems bereft of both awareness of his background and his actual character arc, and Luke seems to lack several traits (compassion, maturity, bravery) rather than having them overlaid by a new one as intended.

    TLJ often feels like it’s written based off a shallow misremembering of the characters.

    And it’s especially apparent with Rey. Her sudden and out-of-nowhere attraction to Kylo comes so far out of left field it has to be divorced from any knowledge of her previous character, while her general portrayal feels very much like someone who’s just applying their apathetic POV of Luke from the OT onto her instead.
     
  17. FightoftheForgotten

    FightoftheForgotten Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 19, 2020
    I can't imagine watching ROTJ and thinking to myself, "Luke's definitely going to try and kill another family member someday. Did you see how he attacked his father?"

    "Didn't you see how she reacted to Kylo in TFA when he took his helmet off? She was obviously swooning."
    -someone, probably-
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2021
  18. JoJoPenelli

    JoJoPenelli Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2000
    - Many people, absolutely -
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2021
  19. FightoftheForgotten

    FightoftheForgotten Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 19, 2020
    What irritates me the most is that (as underwritten as she was) I liked Rey as a character and I still think Daisy Ridley gave fantastic performances in all the ST films. I just feel like RJ fundamentally misunderstood her character.
     
  20. godisawesome

    godisawesome Skywalker Saga Undersheriff star 6 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 14, 2010
    In professional wrestling, there’s occasionally been an occurrence of the “overqualified and overworked jobber;” a wrestler who is chosen to make another wrestler look good, but given an uneven share of the workload. They’re the ones putting all their energy and understanding of the crowd into the match, figuring out what “spots” to pull, what “story” to tell, and generally “carrying” the other performer. Sometimes, this is a sad reflection of management wanting someone who doesn’t have the actual talent to “get over” by making someone else do all the work instead. But other times, perhaps more frustratingly, managements will know that *both* opponents are capable of driving the match... but will still intentionally restrain their preferred wrestler to a more simplistic and less strenuous workload than the other because they think that will tell the story better.

    In TLJ, Daisy Ridley ends up as the “overqualified and overworked jobber” in terms of dramatic value.

    That’s not because Adam Driver couldn’t execute the kind of story Johnson and LFL wanted - if anything, he might actually have been more “qualified” for it than Ridley, given his greater experience and that his skill set specifically resembles the kind of reaction they want the audience to have.

    But Johnson “booked” TLJ so that Ridley would do almost all the work of selling Kylo’s story, and restrained Driver so that Ridley would have to “carry” most of their storyline on her back... but only Driver would really get the praise, and only Kylo would experience the dramatic payoff of it. Kylo is fundamentally a static and “basic” role in TFA and TLJ, but Ridley is given the task of emoting and delivering dialogue in such a way that Johnson’s bias towards Kylo is sold to the audience as much as possible.

    It was probably an offshoot of the desire to have Rey act as an audience surrogate around Kylo; Johnson and LFL were already certain that Kylo was the main attraction, so they simply had Rey act like they thought/hoped the audience would.

    ...It just meant that their *actual* main star got ignored in favor of someone who wasn’t even being required to do much.
     
  21. FightoftheForgotten

    FightoftheForgotten Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 19, 2020
    This is really why someone needed to sit down, when the ST was first being conceived, and figure out exactly how this saga was supposed to be viewed going forward. Luke was an audience insert in the beginning of the OT. Anakin was never an insert though. He wasn't even the protagonist in TPM; Qui-Gon was. Someone needed to decide what kind of story they were going to tell with this trilogy and design the protagonist accordingly.

    And more importantly, decide what the beginning was going to be so the ending could be a fitting end. And by that I mean, someone needed to decide whether these movies are supposed to be viewed 1-9. or OT, PT, and then ST. The beginning of your story sets up your ending and no one wanted to decide whether TPM or ANH was the start. No one asked if they should do another audience insert or if, being six episodes in already, they could get away with pulling a TPM and just having an experienced character walk around, hardly any exposition dumps, and just take people on an adventure.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2021
  22. Fredrik Vallestrand

    Fredrik Vallestrand Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 15, 2018

    Rey looks Great in animation, hope for some animated Rey.
     
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  23. JoJoPenelli

    JoJoPenelli Chosen One star 6

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    Aug 14, 2000
    Well I WISH studios would embrace 2D animation for more than just kiddie cartoons but that ship sailed long ago :( I can’t really connect with TCW-style animation, personally…

    I’d settle for almost any SW story in that lovely Galaxy of Adventures style though! ^:)^
     
  24. Fredrik Vallestrand

    Fredrik Vallestrand Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 15, 2018
    I liked the forces of desteny ones.
     
  25. JoJoPenelli

    JoJoPenelli Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2000
    The tie-in merch dollies were AMAZING and I would just die for a TROS version :_|
     
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