The Ending: Beautiful, but problematic

You're watching a non-Lucas attempt to pull a Lucas.
It's not easy. Not by any stretch.

No one has actually done it.
Everyone's gotten close in different ways, and only really Howard got really close.

But mostly, you're looking at Abrams give his interpretation of Lucas.
Part of what Lucas always had was this concept of anthropomorphic symbolisms of good and evil, and self-referenced private conversations with the audience (we call them "Star Wars poetry" in one form).

Here Abrams is attempting an interesting idea. In ending the Skywalker saga he's looking to immortalize them into the mythos of Star Wars in like fashion as the Jedi are anthropomorphic mythological iconography for good - for example.

We already saw this before in TFA. The Rebels became this mythology of the Resistance, for example.

However, here, he's going one step further and really trying to go for that ontological allegory angle that Lucas was a master at blending into the architecture, landscape, and characters.

As such, Abrams is positioning Skywalker as "good" and Palpatine as "bad" as labels - not just archetypes.
What Rey does, under this rendering, with the whole name thing is serve as the neutral point where we metaphorically start in life, struggle to choose, and then chose Good over Evil.
She chose to be good, and in this way of speaking, chose to be Skywalker.

The two are synonymous in this and the action of donning the name is an overt statement of taking the position the name holds in moral alignment.

It's not as graceful as Lucas would have pulled off, but then again, ... master.

This kind of story telling is HAAAARD.
I've been writing my own swing at this way of story telling, Lucas' mastery of allegory, since the end of August and it is HARD AS F***!

It's hair-pulling difficult to write characters simply enough to function as metaphors and yet complex enough to function as a narrative story, and then on top of that have them do things and make choices that iconify an allegorical point and not have that get entirely lost or jumbled up in the mix.

If you get a half-way intelligible story that even a decent chunk of people enjoy....hell, I'd say you won. Go have a drink!

Just give it a whirl sometime for curiosity. Just a little story. A few pages long. Just a couple of characters. And try to have everything represent something other than what it literally is, and every character represent some metaphor of one side of our personalities, and every interaction between characters express some ontological or existential metaphorical message about our inner dialogues of the disparate aspects of our selves through life all at once.

If you do that...then imagine trying to do that in a full length film, and then try to imagine cramming it into a time constraint, and then imagine trying to follow a serial story with sub-acts in each act - let alone sequential sub-acts, and then imagine trying to follow that through in the 9th film to end it all.

It's absolutely bonkers.
No one should have ever set out to do this. Lucas is a certifiable mad man and genius of his craft.

So it is what it is.
It's not as graceful as what Lucas would do, but the whole name thing is just an attempt to do what Lucas did with symbolism and metaphor.
That's pretty much all there is to it.

That said, it is still for Rey. REY is choosing to commit to good. Permanently. She's leaving doubt behind at that moment.
She has branded herself Skywalker. She might as well have scarred herself to remind herself every day of her choice, or recited a mantra of names sworn to kill, etc....countless other such examples in stories where one psychologically or physically brands oneself to burn a devotion into the mind.

So it's both at once, like I was saying before that Lucas was doing in his films.
Again...not graceful, no - because man...that "Rey who?" line is just grating on the ears in how blatant it is in setting up the layup. It's like giving someone a trampoline to do a slam dunk. Yeah, the move was cool looking, but I'm having a hard time ignoring that I saw you leap off of a trampoline.

That's really the only big problem I ran into with it.
Star Wars doesn't really have a language for talking about last names outside of the cults of the Sith and Jedi stuff.
No one's really going around asking for them, and both times (well, every time, but both notable times) it's been forced to happen in the new films ... it's been awkward.

But that's film in general - it's hard to set up things like full name exposition because the vast majority of the time that's not part of the story in a film.
No one really cares that Luke is "a Skywalker" most of the time. It's cared that Vader is his Father and Leia is his Sister. Not what the last name is or isn't.

And when Luke first tells us his name in ANH, even there it's clunky. He just blurts it out like a run-by-fruiting as if saying his full name really means anything more to Leia than if he had just said his first name.

It's not like we're in a Bond film and the whole film everyone's running around remarking on the fact that, "It's Bond!".

So names are a right pickle to begin with in Star Wars, and we only care about them ever in the first place because of their meaning to us as metaphorical legacies.
Solo, Skywalker, Palpatine (sorry Leia, your thunder got stolen when you were shoved into being a blood-Skywalker...).

There's simply no in-story need for anyone to force any character to say their last name.
No one's standing there, "Poe who?", "Rose what?", "For the prisoner records, Chewie _____?" etc...

So it's just weird to have someone say their own last name specifically.
It would be like Luke saying, "I am a Skywalker. Like my Father before me."

We'd all kind of shift in our seats a little because it's not nearly as graceful as, "I am a Jedi. Like my Father before me."
Yeah, Palps says "Skywalker" like he's got a limited time offer on using it instead of saying, "Luke", but again - that's the only subset time where last names mean anything of overt point in Star Wars - during these morality struggle moments.

For my 2 cents, I would have moved the "Skywalker" line off from this scene and over to the scene when Rey's facing Palps because having Rey push on the final resistance against her own lineage by saying, "Because...I am...a Skywalker" or some such would have been far more graceful and relevant than some random character in the middle of nowhere on Tatooine who, for no needed reason other than to give Rey a reason to say her last name, needs to ask Rey what her last name is.

But again...hindsight 20/20. This crap is hard to write. Really hard to write, and you don't see the obvious until you step away from it and look at the whole thing and suddenly think, "godd***it - obviously!"

I almost had that happen...I digitally delivered my screenplay to the producer's desk as done and luckily they were out for a day because I ended up realizing I had made a massive flub of a train wreck choice that I just didn't notice because I was looking too narrowly while writing and hadn't been removed enough to see the larger picture so I was able to retract it back from their desk before they read it, and get to work on fixing it.

But in fixing that one scene, I have to effectively tear apart and rework the entire story - otherwise all of the metaphors go out of alignment and make almost no sense without everything getting fixed everywhere else to match the changes in that one scene.

It's luck that I was able to pull it back.

You usually don't get that luck. You stamp it. Send it out the door, and then realize there was a better way to do something and slap your forehead and try to just move on.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It was the desire for family. Which she found in the form of friends and promptly left behind to declare that she now belongs to a group of people that were nice to her on occasions at best and jerks to her at their worst.

But she WAS a someone. She was Rey Palpatine. Had she been Rey Nobody and then been Rey Skywalker...well...I'd still have the same complaints, because taking the Skywalker name was a terrible decision. Rey Organa would have been more resonant to Rey's relationship to Leia as well as a nice homage to Leia's own relationship to the Organa family.

Heh, I won't deny that.

I see what you're saying, but I still fundamentally disagree with the choices. Abrams' desire to make to position Skywalker as a "good" name not only strips it of any real interest going forward because now we know "anyone named Skywalker has to become good by the end!" but it also gives the impression that someone with a certain name has their destiny filled out for them.* The last part isn't really new to Star Wars or media at all - we can find it in The Lion King with Scar or go even farther back to the Bible, which is filled with names that show a person's destiny. But for a franchise, that's not always a good thing. And with the name Skywalker being codified as Big Good after TROS, Star Wars is going to have a devil of a time trying to break away from that in future movies.

Being a Skywalker or a Solo doesn't absolve one from falling to the Dark Side, so declaring it as the Big Good of the story really only means that the Big Good can be corrupted, just like everyone else. Anakin, Ben, almost Luke at times, they were all tempted and fell. Having a bloodline in the Light didn't save Luke from temptation. Having a bloodline in the light didn't save Ben from being corrupted. Having a bloodline in the Dark won't do the same to Rey in future stories. It might be a declaration, but it doesn't really declare anything new or meaningful to me.

Meh, being a Skywalker meant more in the E.U. than in the movies, as did Solo, so I understand the attachment to it, but I disagree with the message. The message was never "I am eternally good!" given how colossally they've messed things up. It meant more of "I have the inherent power to shape this galaxy," and people would be trying to hedge which side the Skywalker/Solo fell on. Cade Skywalker was a pretty decent example of this. His ancestors always tried to coax him to the light, his stalwart allies, his past, and the legacy said ancestors left behind kept trying to seduce him to the dark.

But I see your point and more or less agree.

That would have been a change I totally would have welcomed.

Heh, welcome to writing a story...we've all been there...

That's what irks me though. I see someone do something that I feel like could have done better. Something that in revising the story, felt like was done better. And I'm a nobody on the internet, just someone who is aspiring to become a writer. It's just...grating. But that's life. The best thing I can do is learn from TROS. I can look at what it did well - and the movie DID do stuff well - and try to learn from that while also looking at where it failed.

EDIT: *This isn't solely Rey's problem. Kylo's redemption and demise also reinforce the "redemption equals death" trope that Star Wars loves to use.

 

No argument here. At least in the sense that TROS did a less than stellar job at weaving all those threads together. Being a Skywalker. Being a Jedi. Being a Resistance hero. They weren’t stitched together in a way to show they all made up the same tapestry that was Rey’s found family.

She was never ‘Rey Palpatine’. It’s a potentiality that frightened her, sure. But that’s an identity she never acknowledged and outright rejected. It was a negative inversion to her motivation. The old ‘be careful what you wish for’. She wanted belonging. A family. She’s granted that wish, but ends up with the darkest possible version of it.

SNOKE: Skywalker lives. The seed of the Jedi Order lives. And as long as it does, hope lives in the galaxy.

Skywalker = Jedi = hope. Hope is the enemy of despair. Despair is what the darkside wants. It’s ultimately what all our protagonists are fighting against. By claiming the name Skywalker, Rey is claiming herself as ‘a new hope’ for the galaxy . . . so to speak. ‘Organa’, however apt to her relationship with Leia, doesn’t mean the same thing. It doesn’t communicate that broader intent.

Again, something TROS falls short on reinforcing. What does that name signify to Rey and to everyone else? We get a bit of context in the previous movies, but not in the one that should have brought that concept home. The one that has it in the title!

 

OK, firstly - I don't care one bit about E.U., and I'm not saying that to talk anything down - it's more a communication point.
E.U. utterly bored me, and it not being film radically disinterested me further from it. Keep in mind, I love Star Wars because of my love of film, not because I love Star Wars as a fantasy idea - so fantasy tangents off in the "world of Star Wars" drops my interest rather quickly.

With that out of the way...

I don't think there was any interest in preserving future growth for the Skywalker name. This was the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga. Wrap it up, put a bow on it, fin.
That was the massively loud broadcast message from Disney, Lucasfilm, and everyone working on the ST.
"This is it." Done.

So yes, being a Skywalker from here on out is equal to "you're going to be good by the end regardless" just as much as any heroic name is.
That was the point of it all as far as I understood them to be moving along even at the onset.

Just as surely as Palpatine is bad, Skywalker is good. Done. Fin.
There has been no interest expressed in further stomping over the Skywalker turf to any degree by anything Disney has discussed in their future projects.

It's all completely left field of the Skywalker Saga with the only purpose of Skywalker at this point being to serve as a cameo giddy fest.

So I don't really see what the problem is. Were you expecting the Skywalker lineage to be explored further? I wasn't. It seemed to me that Disney wanted to be rid of carrying that baggage and was doing the ST to unload it and call it a day so they could move on.

So...yeah, I think you read this perfectly right that it's setting the sword over the mantle place to idolize for evermore, but I don't see that as a bad thing considering we're at the end of the story.

Now other stories will refer to their relationship to this story. For that, you want a solid position on where you left everything without ambiguity about meanings.
Otherwise you're referring to things that are in question, which obfuscates your current story that's referring to it.

It's just a final statement. A finalized position on a story that is done.
It's not supposed to be a new message. It's a finalization of the message.

Those attributes which Skywalker stood for are good, and for this his name is to be known as good, and Rey is expressing that tangent of thought in adopting the name.

It's not about a continuation going forward and what it sets up going forward for the Skywalker story. There is no further Skywalker story.

Yeah, I really don't think the concept was bad. I think the delivery package was.
Meh. It's not that big of a blow. Star Wars has loads of sub-optimal package deliveries.
Leia as Luke's Sister was a really bland landing outside of "the information in and of itself" - it didn't do a da** thing for Leia going forward.
And Anakin taking out the Sandpeople was just...strange. Super important moral tectonic shift and ... we cut away from it with barely a few seconds of moderate visual comprehension of what's going on.

I'm not saying these are on equal footing, but it's the same kind of ilk in broad strokes.
There's very rough deliveries in Star Wars in spades. This just chalks up as another one.

I think that, regardless of anything (and I know people think DoF was somehow better, but no...it has scores of its own faults in spades), the final film of this saga was always going to be screwed into being clunky even if Lucas did it (most likely, from what I've seen, it would be clunky because it wouldn't close the story, but just kick the can further down the road...again).

This is just one of those clunky points, and of all of the things to be clunky with...meh...this isn't that bad.
Personally, for me, the Lando and Han reunion back in ROTJ takes the cake as the thing that was the most clunky in all of Star Wars. Talk about ramming something in just to make it so, sheesh.
I would probably think of perhaps AOTC's love romp, but to be honest, I hardly cared about the story as a whole (because I already knew where Anakin goes, the story as a whole was far less interesting to me on the onset).

That's how I watch everything.
I'm highly critical - massively. I drive my wife nuts. I've ruined things for her at times. She can't see some films the same way anymore, and now days I try to just keep it to myself because I don't like ruining things for folks and my ramblings of picking things apart rarely ruins a film for me ... that's just how my mind works with everything - it tears it apart and looks at it all.

The films I really love are the films that have an incredibly great thing about them that captures me, but something about it that's just slightly off, because the chances of me getting an idea off of a perfect film (Scott Pilgrim) is zero.
However, if it's rough around the edges, BOOM. I'll watch that thing far more and think about it a ton more because there's this life to it. It's not a cinderblock of an object - it's more of a living, breathing thing that feels alive because I'm constantly tinkering with it in my mind.

That's just me, though.

Anywho...yeah. Steal from everything.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree here, because that's something I fundamentally disagree with. It's a part of her, and I believe denying that those parts of us exist (as people, cultures, fandoms, etc) creates more strife than harmony. Only by accepting our flaws and darkness can we overcome it. (Although to be fair I'd rather us move past TROS and never mention it again. )

Interesting interpretation! I always saw it as Snoke referring to Luke. It's like how everyone who knows Tony Stark is Iron Man but isn't really a friend calls him "Stark." It's the connotation of familiarity without intimacy. Luke was the beacon of hope because he was a Jedi, not because he was a Skywalker. Sure, there will be people who go by their last name, but Tony and Luke aren't them. It's also a relatively common thing when it comes to famous people who you know a lot about - how many times do we refer to presidents past or otherwise with their last name instead of their full name? And don't forget authors - Tolkien, Sanderson, Martin, Rothfuss, Le Guin, Rowling, Lewis, etc. And since Luke is pretty storming famous in-universe, it's not surprising he follows the trend.

That's part of why I like it though. Rey's journey is partially about finding her place in the world, yes, but it's mostly about finding her family. Not those who birthed or sired her, but those who choose to love and accept her. That's a very intimate goal, and I believe that deserves an intimate prize. It also does the double duty of honoring Carrie Fisher's character, who, after having her planet, parents (both sets), career in the New Republic (and then the NR itself), husband, brother, and (bio) song all taken away, I think having her all-but-adopted daughter take her name is at least one win she so thoroughly deserves.
My compromise would be to make the Skywalker name a rank with the Jedi. That way, the Skywalkers are still attached to the Jedi name in a way that honors their goal, Rey gets to keep her personal name, and it doesn't inhibit future characters from taking the name.
Rey's family journey never felt like it needed to be a proud declaration to the world, but the quiet acceptance from those who care. Rey becomes the daughter of the one child who was never tempted by the Dark Side - the adopted daughter of one who was adopted herself. It just fits for me in a way that Rey Skywalker never will.

But alas, that's not how JJ operates (looking at your Into Darkness!).

 

Which is my second favorite Star Trek film ever and Wrath of Khan can go burn in hell.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

And Lucas said the same thing about the OT. And the PT. And that's surely how Disney operates? Isn't it?

That isn't how Disney or any major company operates. Disney wants money, and they want to make money. What makes money? The Skywalker name and nostalgia. That's why JJ was chosen. His entire M.O. is based around nostalgia. That's why TFA practically sold itself on nostalgia? Do you remember how much focus was put on practical effects, harkening back to how the OT was filmed vs the CGI of the PT?* Do you remember how they brought back Han and Luke and Leia, so we could all go on this giant nostalgia trip?

EDIT: We can't forget how many comics, spin-offs movies, and shows have taken place or are taking place within the OT. And those that take place in the ST certainly feel like they take place in the OT, because Disney and Lucasfilm know that feeling of the OT is what they're after. Only five years after their first movie and roughly seven years after being bought by Disney has Lucasfilm created something that didn't feel like the OT.


Rey taking the Skywalker name is as much an ending of the Skywalkers as Obi-Wan giving Luke to the Lars was. It's the passing of a baton, and Lucasfilm and Disney know it. Had TROS been universally loved, you can bet your butt they'd be planning sequels and spin-offs and ways to incorporate Rey's character going forward. Because she's a Skywalker now and that sells. If the Skywalker name didn't matter, Rey could have easily chosen a different name. Why not Solo? She already thought of Han like a father according to TFA? Why not Organa, signifying her relationship with Leia? Why not stick with Palpatine and explore the themes of "I make my own fate and it won't be defined by my family?" No, Skywalker was a cold, calculated choice.

My dad would like to have a few words with you (if he ever found out)!!

I don't have a problem with Into Darkness as a whole (Cumberbatch kills the role, but he's usually the star of what he's in), but it does fit with JJ's M.O. The whole reveal about Khan and how built up it is doesn't work for anyone but the characters in-universe. They use this meta-information to good use, granted, but it's not a reveal for them, but for us. Or why else would Khan be used? Why not create an original villain for an original timeline? That's the point of it. JJ works with nostalgia, and he usually does so well.

 

Yeah, and everything Disney has done positionally - especially when you look at their fiscal report discussions - is centered around closing the book on the Skywalker Saga and moving on.

Look at the projects gearing up right now. Skywalker is not the focus of any of it.
It's all about exploring ways to go way beyond Skywalker and moving on to anything that would give Disney a clear break in IP growth because right now, yeah, sure Skywalker's an big IP, but it's time-locked and in terms of merchandise, it's not that pliable.
You have all this baggage isolating what you can and can't do because of folks (for example, just take your umbrages) have these extremely touchy relationships with the IP.

No one has much of any touchy relationship with Mando before that kicked off, and no one has anything much of an invested boundary in a Rangers show, et. al.
They can get their nostalgia kick still with tons of other characters other than furthering the adventures of the name of Skywalker - and they plan to. Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, et. al.

They aren't gearing up anything, nor have they positioned anything, for the "grandchildren of Skywalker".

Lucas saying he was done with Star Wars was temperamental every time because he was speaking as an independent filmmaker having to do it all on his own and after every go at it he was just completely drained.

Disney's saying that the Skywalker Saga is done with because they want to invest in other more future-growth lucrative assets than one that has limited elbow room for future expansion.

Disney didn't buy Star Wars so they could tread endlessly over Skywalker in film after film after film, etc....
They bought it so they could tread endlessly over the universe's catalog of IPs and add to it endlessly.

It's essentially Marvel 2.0 because unlike Marvel, Disney effectively gets full-share say in what happens with the Star Wars IP universe.

But really, they've been very clear they were closing the Skywalker Saga with the ST and moving on to other IP interests after that...and unlike Lucas, they have.
In large volume.
They didn't say that and then reveal just recently that they have a Skywalker series coming out.

Yeah, well, I've hated Wrath of Khan since day one because it absolutely bastardized Khan.
It took Hannibal Lecter and turned him into Jack Torrance.

Khan of Space Seed is nowhere close to the personality we see in Wrath of Khan, and the POINT of Khan in Space Seed was completely flushed down the toilet in Wrath of Khan.
Was it a good Die Hard in Space?
Sure.

But so what?
They completely pulverized the genius creation that was Space Seed and why Khan was created - which was to be a lethal and REFINED gentleman who represented the Thomas More Utilitarian values absolutely so to be juxtaposed against Locke’s Individualism as represented in Kirk.

Khan would never go after a personal vendetta of revenge because he lost family. Ever.
He would go after systems - not a person.
The only person he would go after would be someone who was speaking for Utilitarianism with a corrupt mouth that wasn't actually applying Utilitarianism purely because he believed and abided by it so absolutely that it was effectively his religion - practically by genetic design.

The point of Khan in ID isn't just an M. Night party trick - it's to serve the three-part philosophical conversation through metaphor (just like Space Seed) between Thomas More Utilitarianism (Khan), Locke’s Individualism (Kirk), and Machiavellianism (Marcus), and in so doing by that one expansion of Marcus, grew the conversation of Space Seed from one about the merits and shortfalls of both Utilitarianism and Individualism to one about the consequences of Individualism being defended by a Utilitarian design by a Machiavellian apology.

Put more simply:
Space Seed is, "Are the many served better by the freedoms of the individual or are the freedoms of the individual better served by the needs of the many?"
Into Darkness is, "Does the want to preserve the freedoms of the individual by means of serving the idea of the needs of the many pervert both ambitions into favoring the desires of the authority?"

In other words: Space Seed was the 1960's views and questions regarding Communism paired off against Democracy, while Into Darkness was the 2000's question about...well...effectively the Patriot Act as a response to terrorism.

It is absolutely one of the most beautiful Star Trek films only surpassed by the original motion picture.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Hmm, a fundamentalist, huh?

Yeah, I don’t know, man. If I were to suddenly find out I was somehow a direct descendant of Adolf Hitler, I’m not sure how keen I’d be about exploring that ‘part of me’. What good would come from finding out I happen to share some chromosomes with a monster I never met?

What “flaw” though? Her grandpa is evil. That’s not any flaw of hers. That’s not her fault. There’s darkness in her, yes. There’s darkness in all of us. Kylo wanted her to think her fate had already been decided because of who her granddad happened to be. Just like he wanted to convince himself his fall was inevitable because of who his was. He was wrong. That was the point. We decide our fate. Not our genes.

Rey’s darkness is represented in physical form as Sidious. Just like Anakin’s darkness was represented as him. When she defeats him, she defeats her darkness. That’s her overcoming it. That’s the allegory. That’s the fairytale resolution.

For 30 years, there was only one Jedi in the galaxy and his name was known by everybody. If someone was talking about a ‘Skywalker’, they were talking about a Jedi and, most likely, vice versa. Logically, that name would become synonymous with ‘Jedi’, wouldn’t it? There’s power in a name. There’s expectations with a name. And Rey is aligning herself with that. Skywalker = Jedi. Jedi = hope.

What they seemed to be going for by awkwardly revealing Leia had been a secret Jedi along, was to show she’d effectively gone into the family business after all. It was a weak bid to move her closer to being a Skywalker. To try to marry those concepts together. Rey forging a paternal bond with her makes her a surrogate Skywalker in a way. But yeah, the time to build that bridge was two movies prior. Too little too late. The effort falls flat and strikes false.

And to me, it’s the fulfillment of the first line of the trilogy. “This will begin to make things right. I've travelled too far and seen too much to ignore the despair in the galaxy. Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force.”

The Force is out of balance.
The Force is out of balance because the galaxy is in despair.
The galaxy is in despair because there are no Jedi.
There are no Jedi because “Luke Skywalker has vanished”.
Finding him will “begin to make things right”.

How? “If Skywalker returns...the new Jedi will rise.” Rey is now that Skywalker. Rey is now that Jedi. Rey will restore hope to the galaxy. Rey will bring balance to the Force.

Meh, checks out for me anyhow.

 

Honestly, wow. So thought out and interesting. I actually really like this...

 

...except that's not what they're doing in their entirety. Sure, the books have gone that direction, but everything else? Timelocked to the OT - and by proxy to the Skywalkers as a result. Because that's where the money is. You want to know some of the fan favorite scenes of Rebels and The Mandalorian? The scenes that involve OT characters. (And Ahsoka in the case of Rebels.) We have five soon-to-be D+ shows, and where are all but two set? Around the OT...and even Kenobi is dubious on that front.
And we can't forget the comics! Barring the comic-adaptations of movies, we have about 40-odd comics. The crossover events are treated as separate comic runs. Adding them in would probably decrease the amount down to about 37 or 38. Of those:

23 of those feature a Skywalker of sorts (including Rey), while 2 are exclusively on Han.

Roughly 24 of those take place in the OT.

Currently Lucasfilm has four ongoing comics at the moment: The High Republic comic, Doctor Aphra, Star Wars, and Vader. Three of those are during the OT, and two of those three feature a Skywalker as the main character.

It doesn't sound like Lucasfilm has tread a lot of new ground if you ask me.

EDIT: I forgot to cite my source. I used this source, as its by series and not by issue like the wiki. Please correct me if it's out of date or contains errors I didn't account for.

Comic Series – Star Wars Timeline (starwarscanontimeline.com)

Except Rey took on the name. She is now, effectively, a grandchild of Anakin Skywalker.

And then he'd come back to it.

Except when Disney wants money and revitalization, they always go back to what has worked in the past. Disney remakes old fairytales into classic animated movies and then remakes those into live action versions. That's their M.O. - to sell what people know and love in new versions.
This is exactly what they did with Star Wars when they announced the ST, and that's exactly what they'll do in a decade or so when they need something new to revitalize the franchise.

I remember the dissonance between Space Seed Khan and Wrath of Khan Khan as well, much to my dad's ire. But since I prefer Space Whales: The Movie anyways, I don't let it bother me. Although how you feel about Khan is how I feel about what TROS did to Finn...

I mean, it's not like Rey had a giant choice. But again, that was JJ's choice to make Rey related to Palpatine. RJ had her as a nobody. JJ could have let that stay and then made her a Skywalker. Or left her as a Nobody and moved on.

I was talking about the collective "us" here, not Rey. Sorry I didn't make that clearer. But I also agree with your point about Palpatine's evil not being a flaw of Rey's. That's why her breakdown at the end didn't work, or her confrontation with Palpatine, or any of it really. But if Darkness and whatnot is something to be inherited (which Star Wars seems fond of alluding to), then Rey will have to watch out, the same way someone who historically has alcoholics in their family has to be around around alcohol, or the same way someone with a history of Diabetes has to be around sugar.

But we explicitly know that's not true with The Mandalorian. And we know it's not true in-universe either. Luke the man was the legend. Associated with the Jedi, yes, but not equated to them.

Okay, I see what you're laying down. It still falls flat though, not because of the synchronization of the Skywalker and the Jedi. I don't mind that part, and already said they should have made Skywalker a Jedi rank. I dislike how it's Rey taking on the Skywalker name and then linking it to the Jedi.

Regardless, for now @Jayson and @eeprom I'm retiring from this thread for the foreseeable future. Please feel free to respond to this post, as I will read your responses, but don't expect me to reply. It's less about not having something to say - I almost always have something to say - but about the fact that threads focused on TROS bring out a confrontational side in me, and I'd rather not feed that side too much if I don't have to. Besides, we'll probably end up going in circles at this rate...or completely digress into Star Trek talk. One of the two. SET PHASERS TO STU-

 

@Use the Falchion

Regarding Disney
In summary, you're basically saying the same thing I said, but saying that it equates to something different.
Keep in mind that what I was outlining was that Disney was finalizing the expansion of what the Skywalker name meant, and then using it to center other content around by the absolution of that definition.

That doesn't mean there can't be, or won't be, anymore OT content - that's not what I was saying and if that's what it seemed like I was getting at, I apologize for the confusion.
That's why I was trying to bring up that they have shown that they have other OT characters for the nostalgia kick such as Ahsoka and Obi et. al.

Solo is a great example of that. It's a whole film dedicated to an OT character that does nothing to expand the meaning of the Skywalker name's meaning.
And Mando's use of Luke really goes the extra mile in the point because Luke is a cardboard cutout of a character when he shows up there. He's effectively superman Luke. *blows triumphant trumpet* LUKE!

There's nothing in the works for any foreseeable future that's a retread of the Skywalker story, nor is there anything involving the expansion of any of the characters of the ST set forward in show or film.

There's no Rey trilogy on any near or moderately distant horizon.

The only character so far that has an expansion on camera coming out from the ST era of production is a character from R1 set back in the OT era and has nothing to do with the Skywalker name meaning.

And that's what I would leave in mind here: I'm not saying there won't be OT retread. Lord knows there will be, just as surely as I'm certain that eventually in the far future there will be a remake of the OT itself. Because...Disney. As you say.

But there won't be any further definition brought about to the Skywalker name. That is done. They have exactly zero interest shown anywhere in elaborating further on the philosophical meanings of it and instead are using it to define other things.

Perhaps that's the difference?
Perhaps to you it's problematic to have anything in the Skywalker's property line and have Skywalker locked in as good, but where I was coming from was that that was exactly what it was locked into place for.
It's essentially a May Pole. They're done defining the May Pole. They've moved on to having streamers wrapping around that May Pole and getting defined by their relationship to that May Pole.

To me, that's not really a big deal. It seems it's possibly problematic to you, though. Which has got to suck because holy love of Pete and all the saints who surround him they're going full nerd straight into that by all indications.

I guess I'm a bit lucky here because I care so little about that. Of course, I don't plan to watch much of it at all.
I like things because of their form not because of their content. What determines if I'm going to pick up a show or not is whether it's a form I enjoy or not - not really what it's about.

And in regards to form, I more or less got what I wanted in the ST to a level that was good enough (considering I never thought I was going to get anything remotely close to that again - though, really, I'd be thrilled with Lucas' take as well - either one is great by me).

I have zero expectation that the form of what Star Wars was will survive going forward. It'll radically shift into something else (maybe I will like it, but I'm not banking on that).

I think the closest I come to feeling how you feel about it, as you noted, is with Star Trek, but not just the whole WoK, but really everything since TNG on.
We've entirely lost our philosophical tele-play in exchange for the single-camera character drama in the Star Trek universe.
I would feel the same ambivalence about this as I do about Star Wars if I got at least one more go at it properly in a series, but that doesn't seem anywhere close to likely...which is probably why I'm really enjoying Dr. Who right now (thankfully I was never able to get into it before now so I get to binge with delight now).

And on that note...

Regarding Khan
I love Voyage Home. It's one of the better OS films and really shows how well Nimoy understands ST's bone marrow (and illustrates how much of an influence he had on it back during the OS, really).
WoK only really bothered me because it was so absolutely in violation of everything Roddenberry designed Star Trek for.
Pretty much everything that WoK is, is the exact thing he was hellbent on making Star Trek a bastion against.
He knew full well that those tropes worked well, just as easily as Lucas full well knew that Kasdan wasn't wrong and that killing someone off in ROTJ would work.

He just fought against that adamantly because Star Trek was about the pursuit of the betterment of humanity - not about the vengeance of our primary Id, and about the pursuit of engaging the curiosity and academia of our mind - not placating to our base emotions.

As a kid, I just felt it was horribly confusing. As I grew up I learned why, and so when I found the letter from Roddenberry to the production of WoK basically chewing their backside up for everything being not what Star Trek is about, or what Khan would do (which they promptly ignored), it made total sense why it never felt right.

Superman might as well have just been mainlining cocaine and shooting M-16's at mobs to take them all down for killing his family while he was gone in Vietnam with no course correction in sight.

And I probably wouldn't care that much about WoK if it weren't for the fact that it forever bent Star Trek onto a heading from that point onward of becoming what it is today instead of the philosophical tele-play it once was. Again, something I'm truly impressed at with Dr. Who - that they've been able to stick to their form for all of these years with such dedication to that form as a point of pride!

Ah well, c'est la vie.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I think I get where Abrams/Terrio’s heads were at with this. They shifted Rey’s innate defining fear from ‘abandonment’ (not trusting others) to ‘contamination’ (not trusting herself around others). She’d already been able to forge meaningful bonds with others who’d proven their devotion. So they progressed her dread further by having those bonds threatened - not by any outside danger, but by Rey herself. Like Luke’s motivation for buggering off in TLJ. The stronger she gets in the Force, the stronger the darkness inside her gets, the greater the peril facing her friends. That’s some good inner conflict. Now, she has an inborn hinderance keeping her from easily realizing her potential and seeking solace in others, while coupling her closer to Luke’s own dilemma. Obstacles! Challenges! Motifs! Hooray!

Trouble is: what the hell does that have to do with the revived big bad of the piece? How does that place her in any more direct opposition than anyone else? He’s just some boogeyman who “died” before she was born. He has core linkage to Kylo, but that can’t be her key motivator. The greater struggle needs to be subjective. Thus, they simplified the arithmetic. The growing darkness inside, that Rey fears, becomes more than an abstract notion. It has a name and a direct relation. Granted, that’s probably the laziest solution. “How do we get these two pieces to relate? I know, we’ll make them actual relatives. Tada!” But it gets the job done and presents way more of a personal crisis for the character to conquer. It’s not my favorite. But I’m not mad at it.

Yeah, it’s some classic Campbell ‘dark night’ stuff. It’s basically compulsory at this point. She buys the bill of goods that Kylo was selling: “The dark side is in our nature”, and runs away. She hits her lowest point and then ‘revelation’ from Luke: ”Some things are stronger than blood.” The fear she had of being a part of Palpatine was the only thing that had any real power. The only one standing in her way was herself. You know this tune.

We all have to watch out though. That’s the message I get anyhow. To varying degrees, we all have to struggle with our individual dark sides. The only power it has is the power we give it. We’re not all kids of the proverbial devil, but Star Wars is a heightened reality. It’s dealing in exaggerated metaphor. The struggles are magnified to absurdist levels like the features on a caricature.

Abrams, Kasdan, Johnson, and Terrio didn’t write for that TV show and Favreau didn’t write for those movies. So if these two separate projects, set a generation apart, don’t entirely agree with each other on the topic of Luke’s prominence, I don’t see a problem with that.

“Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master” is how Oniho describes him at the end of TLJ. That’s the one and only ‘legendary’ account of him we actually get to hear firsthand.

Makes sense to me. I probably need to sign out of here for a bit again too. It was bunches of fun though

 

The way I read it is:

TFA: Rey longs for family so she can know who she is. (I am unworthy)
TLJ: Rey realized she is defined by what she values, not show she belongs to. (I belong)
TROS: Rey's conviction of that realization is tested by finding out she is of Palpatine, and triumphs over her test and declares what she values by taking the name of Skywalker. (new context of: I am unworthy & I belong)

ACT 1: Hero is uncertain of their place in the world.
ACT 2: Hero realizes their virtue in the world.
ACT 3: Hero faces their great dragon which tests their resolve in their new virtue.

It's a the same old Hero and Dragon story.

For me, it's only muddled and confused if I thought that TLJ was the end, but I didn't because to me that's like thinking the second act of The Matrix when Neo realizes his placement of virtue and definition was the end. It wasn't because it hadn't been tested yet.

For me, Rey being told she was a "nobody" was immediately understood to be a reversal of "I am your Father."
And because "I am your Father" was a truth, I fully expected "nobody" to be a lie.
And just as Luke realized his virtue in the world (all-be-it, entirely off camera!) and then was tested in that resolve in ROTJ, I expected nothing less than that in the ST with Rey.
It was no different for Anakin either, except that his is a tragedy so his is a story of assuredness in his place in the world, followed by a loss of his virtue, which then leaves him vulnerable to the Dragon's great test which he fails to overcome.

And that's what we see in Kylo's arc. His is a "tragedy" from the perspective of the Dark Side, as he is certain of his place in the world, but has no faith in his convictions, loses his virtues and then becomes enraged by it and attempts to double-down on them, and then is ultimately vulnerable to his Dragon's great test which he fails to overcome...and "falls" to the good side.

I think the main thing is that a lot of folks got interested and liked the idea of there being a hero who was earnestly a nobody and didn't relate to anyone.

But that's a story for another time and was never likely going to happen INSIDE the Skywalker Saga...it is, after all, the SKYWALKER Saga.
It's not the Skywalker Saga and that one gal.

Even in Lucas' version it wasn't about someone - it was all about the same old family stomping ground and everyone being related.
That and he was going to slide the "chosen one", it seems, over to Leia and retcon it that she was always "the one". *shrug* Meh.

At any rate.
Yeah, I think folks unexpectedly got way into the idea of Rey being independent and when it didn't go there it irked a lot of folks because it took away an idea they interpreted out of that position metaphorically.

A similar thing happened back in 1980 when Luke was shown to be Vader's son; there were those who were upset with this (Hammill has talked about it, and even thanked the internet for not yet existing) because it took an "anybody" and made them suddenly some kind of magical royalty destined for greatness (not very Americana) rather than just some guy who chose the hard path to greatness in the face of the impossible (very Americana).

But, well...it's the Star Wars Skywalker Saga. The chances of someone being the great hero and being no one of any particular importance or connection to anyone already on record is extremely unlikely.

I do think the ST ultimately suffered from a no-win situation in that a bunch of people came in wanting things before it even kicked off, and then once it did kick off, folks seemed to have almost immediately designed where they wanted it to go because of what they read things to mean and the potential of what things could be in meaning before it even got there...to say nothing of the impossible situation of Pro-EU and Anti-EU wants.

It's a tough spot to be in, but yeah...I don't know.
I always read Rey's arc over the three films as rather (and I really don't mean this in a patronizing way...I don't know how else to say this) obvious.
I spent most of my time avoiding conversations about film conjecture during the ST because I didn't want to allow my mind to think about it. It would ruin the fun.

I mean...I really do hate conjecture. I was pushed to do it once, and I was way too close to the mark.

About the only thing I was really unclear about going into TROS, and excited about, was that it was chiastically free to do whatever it wanted to and I had no ideas as to which way they would go with that, only noting.

The first two ended up being the case.

It's unfortunate that a lot of folks really can't handle Rey's arc. I can see what they see in the Rey Nobody concept, and it's an interesting idea, but it's an interesting idea for another Saga than the one that's a soap opera consumed with the aristocratic struggle of right and wrong. A random street rat isn't going to show up in the third act of that kind of Saga and be just some random street rat who saves the castle of Kronborg from destruction.

That's like the door opening up in the season finale of a Soap Opera and it really actually just being the delivery guy and not some long lost relation no one recognizes and whom the return of jeopardizes someone's clandestine plans.
Yeah, it could happen...but probably not. So when the delivery guy shows up at the door, expect that they're somebody because...soap opera.

Cheers,
Jayson