ST The New Rumor Intellectual Thread of Seriousness for Sophisticated Discourse

Max is the new one aboard I am excited about as well. He still seems marginalized by some but thankfully others are stoked too.

 

I can't get behind this. Looking at it from a practical POV, they need Rey to be a sympathetic character. Han, Leia, and Luke are all beloved, established heroes. If Rey actively runs away from them as if she thought they were abusive -- and goes out of her way to stay away from them -- causing Han, Leia, and Luke many years of incredible heartache, that makes Rey decidedly less sympathetic. Even more so if Rey's "death" is what causes H/L to separate, or what causes Luke to exile himself (because he feels responsible for the death of his sister's baby girl).

It's pretty much the same reason I have trouble with the Maz-took-Rey scenario. Yeah, it mirrors how Luke and Leia were hidden away -- but Luke and Leia effectively WERE orphans. Their mother was dead and their father was a monster. But Rey has two parents who love her very much, and who are are both good, sympathetic characters, beloved by the audience. Rey's "death" will cause many years of intense pain, and I cannot imagine Han (and Leia too, for that matter) not being absolutely FURIOUS with Maz when they discover the truth.

I also think it doesn't make sense, if we're to believe Maz took Rey to protect her from Kylo, that Maz wouldn't try to solve the problem by dealing with Kylo ASAP. In doing so, she would save the lives of all of Kylo's future victims, not to mention saving H/L the heartache of losing their daughter, and saving Rey from the heartache of living a very lonely life on Jakku.

Remember, we see a poignant moment early on where Rey is longing for a mother. I just don't think Rey chose this life at all, or that it was chosen for her by anybody we're supposed to find sympathetic. I think Rey will end up on Jakku either as the result of deliberate action by a bad guy (probably Kylo), or else a combo of the massacre and some terrible accident (e.g. stowing away and getting taken to Jakku).

Now, on your point about Rey being angry and untrusting when we first meet her, I am with you completely. I posted a little about this some time ago, and to save myself some typing, I'll repost the relevant part here:


I think even after Rey and Han discover their relationship, Rey will be standoffish. I think her attitude towards Han is going to be: I don't believe you love me because you didn't come after me when I was taken. IMO, a big part of Han's emotional arc will be proving to his daughter that he really does love her after all. So it makes sense that Rey would be "touched" when Han and the gang come back to save her and this would be an important emotional beat. Rey starts to realize maybe her father does love her. Then Han literally sacrifices his life to save Rey -- as far as proof of love goes, it doesn't get any more powerful than that. This would gives Han's death real meaning, and bring an emotional close to both his character arc and Rey's longing to feel loved by her family.

 

Next to the ending on Skellig Michael, it's the scene I am most looking forward to.

 

@Leias_Left_Bun
Great Post.

 

I want some Y-Wings--durable sonsa*****es that have really been in the ****, all beat to hell, littered with carbon scoring, held together with duct tape, I dunno some could still be in service since the battle of Jakku. And I want them loaded with photon torps, and piloted by grizzled war vets and co-piloted by their beloved, spotless astromech droids. And many of those droids may have been passed down from one generation of pilot to the next. They're a part of the family; like beloved dogs that don't die. Sometimes, a droid will be nothing more than an invaluable, personal connection to past relatives. They become family heirlooms of the highest order. But, I digress...

 

Cue A Chorus of Disapproval

 

Agreed. And if you see him being kind to others in the village. If you seem him showing courage, defiance and fear when he stands up to Kylo, maybe even righteousness, you can certainly ring an emotional response out of a scene. Look at Indy's friend at the start of TOD. Look at the little girl that bites it right at the start of the Untouchables. Or the Kintner kid in Jaws. We don't know those characters at all. Are they truly wrenching in a "supporting character we've come to know dies" way? They're not trying to be. Yes they are establishing something bad about the villain, but there's nothing wrong with that so long and it doesn't mean you can't provoke a reaction from the audience. If we see that the Vicar means something to others. If we see that he's a good man. By the end of the opening sequence we'll hate Kylo for all the right reasons (and I think it's designed to be up close and personal too).

 

I agree with most of that except 'hate for all right reasons' regarding a person.

 

I meant dramatically as an effective fictional villain as opposed my goodness I can't stand this terrible villain.

 

No worries, I was just chucking that out there and thinking on the hoof of a possible worst case scenario. It goes without saying that we all need to fall in love with the character of Rey and be sympathetic to her situation. However, it is possible that we see this tough character at first who has a rather brusque manner about her and then we quickly learn that she is lonely and sad. Audience members who have no clue about any possible connections she may have with the OT3 still need to like her. I do suspect 'Rey's theme' musically will be reminiscent at least of the others, perhaps Luke (seeing as she's the 'Luke' of this trilogy), which would provide an audial clue at least.

I didn't know about the moment where Rey longs for a mother. Where did you hear that may I ask? That actually makes me feel instant empathy for her.

As I see it, there are several possible ways this could go, some more likely than others, and I'm completely open to whether Maz is involved in Rey's 'removal' from the academy or not. However, I do like to explore possible scenarios if Maz was indeed involved. It has been suggested that Maz takes the 'object' from the academy, the object being Rey, but referring to Rey as the object seems pretty odd to me. I'm not sure it's needed for any possible Maz involvement, hence this object could just be some inanimate thing of importance.

Now, to address some of your other points: I'm really not sold at all on the idea that Han and Leia are separated. I don't even think there's much evidence to support it. All that 'awkward reunion' stuff could be interpreted completely differently to me; they could simply spend a lot of time apart due to work/war/missing kids turning up, that sort of thing say. Yes it's possible they're separated, but it ain't necessarily so.

When young people feel rejected or estranged from a parent or parents, they often create substitute mother or father figures in their lives. Sometimes real people they know, and sometimes public figures they look up to say. Let's just suppose that Rey regards the Vicar as something of a substitute father figure. She may feel some connection with him even if she tends to keep him at arm's length due to underlying issues of trust. Suddenly Dad pops up in her life again, and he's like a stranger to her at first. She feels little or no connection initially, but the Vicar is now dead, she's fled Jakku and her whole life has been turned upside down yet again. She's smart enough to acknowledge that this man is helping her, but still needs to learn to place any trust in him nonetheless. Then she finds out who he is... and the emotional conflict threatens to overwhelm her for reasons we've explored.

Now of course I have no clue whether she's been actively avoiding her real parents or not. Most likely, she doesn't know where they are, though I'd like more information before I draw any conclusions to whether she wants to seek out her real parents or not. I'd say she may well be perfectly capable, and appears to know her way around the Falcon if that's her flying it in the trailers as has been postulated. So perhaps it's true that the Falcon is just sitting there on Jakku and perhaps Rey has been working on it and has test flown it before. But I digress...

I think even if it were true that she's avoiding looking for her real parents, the story will be angled in such a way, that you'll understand her motives to a degree even if you don't necessarily agree with them. I think regardless of how she feels about them all told, the story will move along at such a pace that we'll forgive her any emotional flaws as she develops as a character (whiny Tatooine Luke anyone?). Her story will see her grow enormously as a hero of the trilogy regardless of where she starts of in people's sympathies. Although we won't get this extreme with Rey, I think John's performance as Moses in ATB shows how a completely unsympathetic character who's about to mug someone at the beginning of the movie ends up being the hero of the movie at the end. It's perfectly doable, although as I say, she won't be a bad person, just a mixed-up one.

Regarding Maz: if she is indeed involved in Rey's removal from the academy, it actually wouldn't surprise me at all if it panned out the way I suggested. If, as I suspect, she is an Order 66 survivor, then she's probably pretty old school. In the past, kids were taken from their parents as infants and raised by the Jedi with no contact at all with them. Even now, that sounds completely horrible to me and yet it was the Jedi way. Maz may well have sought to protect Rey with little or no regard for how Han and Leia felt, horrible though that sounds. We know that she's a pirate or smuggler or something in this movie and she seems like a bit of a shady character, even though that may be a front. However, I'm getting an impression of someone who has a rather 'distinct' moral code, which may leave little room for sentiment or attachments. Some have likened her to the EU character Vergere, which may not be too far from what we get for all I know. There's Jedi thinking in there, but other stuff too. Actually, I hope she is someone that causes emotional conflict in the audience; I think it could make her all the more fascinating.

As for dealing with Kylo, she's probably outnumbered at the massacre and getting Rey to safety is probably her number one priority. That's assuming of course that Kylo is part of the attack. It's still possible that he is also a padawan who is taken by the baddies or goes willingly. Either way, I doubt there's much Maz can do about it as she is the only one left to fight the baddies. I suspect Luke was lured away or is off planet on a mission, leaving Maz in charge.

As for Han and Leia being furious with her, for all we know they are! If Han is furious at Maz when he discovers what she did, he may well not have had time to do much about it as they then come under attack from the First Order. Staying alive then becomes the main priority. Later, that 'awkward reunion' with Leia could be in part Han breaking the news to Leia that Maz was behind Rey's disappearance. Seems reasonable to me that Leia would be pretty angry with Maz too at this point. Having found Rey and then lost her again would add fuel to the situation and there would be a lot of anger and tension. However, I suspect that Maz's vision will give Han new insight into how Rey would be dead if it wasn't for Maz. He may not like what she did, but he knows that she's the only reason his daughter is still alive.

One possibility I guess is that when Luke finally gets around to rebuilding his New Jedi Order starting with Rey, that he tries things differently this time, perhaps as a direct result of what went wrong the first time. The Grapevine has it that we will see the Jedi realised in a very different way from the prequels. One which I always understood them to be prior to those movies (Jedi having relationships for example), at least I hope so...

Anyway, as I say, I'm easy with it going either way! Maz or no Maz.


Sorry for the long post!

 

Didn't the Han/ Leia/ separation rumours start before the call sheet info?

 

Eh I really dont think will have all that much time for people to be pissed at Maz at least not in this movie. Rey basically gets grabbed after the Exposition Flashback. Seems easier to just find someway to pin this on Kylo.

 

Yes, but I don't recall thinking much of it at the time. It's a difficult one to debunk without a lot more info; we may not even know for sure what's going on there until much closer to the movie's release.

It just seems like an added complication to me, which may well be true, but I'm not seeing much evidence to support it personally.

 

I'm pretty sure it started up around the time that Luke was missing. I'm not sure people would be so believing (in general) of the separation angle based on the word awkward in the call sheets.

 

Indeed not, but I was surprised by how many folks on here took it as evidence to support the original rumour at the time. In fact I'm pretty sure it got so much mileage because MSW said something to that effect. That's still a headscratcher to me.

Either way, I'm still not buying it at this stage.

 

While I can see what you mean about the complication angle, it potentially gives them a bit more meat to work with and I can totally see Kasdan going with a kind of spiky, awkward reunion. We'll see I guess.

 

Wasn't it reumoured at one point that MVS was playing someone from the the OT or the PT? He may well reveal or say something to Kylo about the Jedi and Sith that further enrages him.

Hopefully a reunion along the lines of Indy and Marion in Raiders and not like Indy and Marion in KOTCS which was handled all wrong IMO.

 

I don't think the Vicar needs to be an established character. He could be completely new. Maybe he escaped Order 66 as a padawan, and has spent his entire life in hiding on Jakku ( hey, hiding on a desert planet worked for Obi-Wan ), and Luke finds him in the aftermath of the Battle of Jakku. I think that Luke will have been searching for a connection with the past of the Jedi order, and maybe he finds it in the Vicar. This could actually be the reason that ( we think ) the Jedi academy was based on Jakku.

 

Maybe there was some kind of temple / outpost on Jakku like there is on Lothal and that's what they were fighting over.

 

I would not say that anyone on here has marginalised him or his character, it's just that he does not appear to be in the movie very long.

 

Wouldn't that be a bit too Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull like though? Which isn't to say it couldn't work, but I'd like to see a more original dynamic (even if it meant that they were, realtively, happily married).

 

Yeah, that's definitely a risk. Obviously it would play out differently. Maybe more tense, Bogart and Bacall.Regreftul. Wounded. But yeah, you'd want to steer clear of the aw gee shucks approach.

 

To be fair, with all the things packed into this film, creating marriage difficulties/separation issues for Han and Leia just seems like an element we could easily do without. There's too much going on already. Having them still together is much easier and requires no explanation. Plus it's been done soooo many times before.

I am prepared for them to be separated but don't think the film needs it.

 

Well, apparently what TFA tells us from second one is nothing really worked out. I guess that includes Han and Leia´s relationship.

 

In teaser 2, when Kylo sticks his arm out, in what appears to be a force grab or force push, is that most likely when MVS confronts him? I assume the kylo execution scene is him killing MVS but i couldn't tell if the other part is before or after the killing