How does Rey know her parents are on Ochi’s ship?

I love TROS, but the Ochi/Dagger stuff doesn't really make all that much sense to me (the movie really finds it's feet for me once they get to Kijimi).

I think the honest (and obvious) answer is, the ship in the flashback scene was initial intended to just be Rey's Parent's ship...and the character of Ochi was thought up much later on. I think it's sort of skimmed over in the final film because they realised it was a weaker part of the film, put the bare minimum in the final cut and gave more screen time to the better parts of the movie (which is fair enough!).

I'm sure a novel, comic or tweet from Pablo Hidalgo will explain it at some point though

 

In Nacho Libre, Hector seeks out Nacho, who is "living in the wilderness", to tell him that he gets to fight Ramses.
He finds him easily enough becase Nacho is a moron living right next to "the village".

Two things are wrong here:
1) What village? Is this a village just down the hill from the church? Every trip out of the church has been to a small city, and this doesn't look like that, so where are they exactly, and furthermore, how did Hector know to go there? The villagers seem to know Nacho, but how?

2) Hector, at the end of the scene, whips out Nacho's mask. Where and how did Hector find it? The last we saw of it was not on a road, but somewhere that looks similar to where Nacho is "living in the wilderness", and was thrown off to the side in a failed attempt to throw it at a bird.
All we saw of Hector was that he drove down the road on the moped and ran into Nacho, who invited him up. When did he stop off to search for the mask? Considering he seemed to know where Nacho was and didn't have to stop and search for him, how did he know it was missing? If the mask was indeed just off to the side of where Nacho now lived, and Hector didn't find it somewhere else, when exactly did he lean down and pick it up off the hillside between being on the road and talking to Nacho since we were shown the entire sequence of his arrival and conversation with Nacho?

The answer is: it happened off screen in someway that matches up to what we see on screen. How? Not answered. It happens a lot in films. A lot.
Most of the time you just look right past it because you don't think about the film a few dozen times a day on repeat.

A huge chunk of what makes a film work is the same reason a magic trick works: you're distracted.

For example: Where the f#### did the ambulence come from in Die Hard? If you never thought about that, or Nacho's mask...bingo.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

When something doesn’t make sense in Star Wars, the simplest go-to answer is usually ‘The Force did it’.

If you want something plausible, here’s some crap I just made up: Rey’s vision isn’t accurate. We know that because she has a premonition of facing a masked Kylo in the forest on Starkiller. That didn’t happen. Well, not the way it was original presented. So, those sequences aren’t entirely exact and can’t be taken literally. Maybe that moment of her screaming after that ship happened totally different or maybe it didn’t happen at all. That’s what I got.

Since we’re on the delightful topic of Ochi of Bestoon, here’s another fun little query: how does a speeder, a vehicle that’s doesn’t make contact with the ground, get swallowed up by quicksand? Did he unfortunately park right on that sinking field? Maybe he stopped to polish his evil hood ornament and d@mn all the risks!!

 

WESTLEY​

I mean, what are the three
terrors of the Fire Swamp? One,
the flame spurts. No problem.
There's a popping sound preceding
each, we can avoid that. Two, the
Lightning Sand. But you were
clever enough to discover what
that looks like, so in the future
we can avoid that too.

BUTTERCUP​

Westley, what about the R.O.U.S.'s?

WESTLEY​

Rodents of Unusual Size? I don't
think they exist...​

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Only because it was done in other movies, doesn't justify it in TROS. It's still bad and confusing. I would even say it's bad in those movies you mentioned as examples.

It's not the case for the scene in TROS though. We KNOW Rey wasn't present in that very scene, so it couldn't happen off screen. This is what the OP was referring to. How can Rey see this scene by the help of a flashback if she wasn't even there?


This scene would have worked much better, if it had been the ship of Rey's parents and Ochi actually had been like an assassin - sneaking on another's ship.

 

Moreover having this flashback scene was totally redundant. It should have been cut from the movie. It didn't tell us nothing new in regard of Rey's character or her motivation.

 

You know my thoughts on flashbacks in general.

I still think your creation of the flashover is genius.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

For me, the whole Ochi thing is to TROS as the Canto Bight side plot is to TLJ. I basically have to dial the old grey matter way back during those scenes so I can get on to the rest of the movie.

Like so much of TROS, the Ochi/parents/wayfinder stuff stems from JJ having had to suddenly come up with a whole new story after taking over a movie that was already critically behind schedule. They couldn't use Trevorrow's script after Carrie died because Leia played such a key role in it. (Plus, I have to wonder how KK and the Lucasfilm brass felt about Trevorrow having adapted so much of Lucas' first draft of ROTJ into his script to begin with.)

But I digress (like I do.) Much as I have come to like TROS, the way Ochi was used to wrap up the mystery of Rey's parentage and also to fuel the McGuffin schtick with the wayfinder feels very contrived and tacked-on IMHO. Far moreso than Palpatine does. I think JJ just tried to do too much with it and got far more complex than he needed to.

Had he eliminated the wayfinder gimmick altogether, he could easily have resolved the parentage issue in a more natural way. I agree - that should always have been Rey's parents' ship. Need something there to lead Rey to Exegol? Her dad was Palpatine's son, fer flip's sake! Plenty of justification there to have nav data for Exegol stashed there, or (for the sake of maintaining the broad strokes of the plot) some clue leading to the Death Star wreckage and the ruined throne room - because why wouldn't the Emperor keep his personal nav data close at hand on his own battle station?

But... it is what it is, and at least there's plenty of cool visuals in those scenes for me to focus on while I'm trying to ignore the script wonkiness.

 

What we as an audience saw Rey see in The Force Awakens regarding Unkar, her parents, herself, and Ochi's ship was not really a flashback or a memory per se, but a vision shown to her through the Force, and was never meant to be taken at literal face value.

 

The the scene of TFA is not the topic of this discussion though. It's about how Rey was able to see her parents' death while she wasn't even on the ship. This scene was written without much thinking. Is this bad? Not necessarily, but it could have done way better.

 

^ I think you need to re-read the OP, because the topic is absolutely about how she knew her parents were on Ochi's ship.

You do bring up a good point about how she knew her parents' ultimate fate but my answer is "instinct".

 

Yes, the topic is about Ochi's ship, but the OP is clearly referring to TROS. Just read the first sentence. Lol.

What's even more funny, in TFA it wasn't even Ochi's ship (Yeah, he wasn't invented yet) but the ship of Rey's parents.

Should have stayed that way IMO.

 

The OP talks about loving TRoS, yes, but the actual discussion is about the flashback in TFA.

Also, original intent is meaningless because storytelling is fluid.

 

*looks at the prefix of this thread called "Discussion in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' started by Old Jedi, Saturday at 4:50 PM". - post is about something only TROS showed/revealed*

 

The topic is in the Rise of Skywalker section because it references spoilers from that film, but the actual discussion involves the flashback from TFA.

Discussion, especially about Star Wars, is never binary.

Also, Rey never says that she knew the ship belonged to Ochi; all she says is that she'd seen it before.

 

Yes, she did...

As soon as she sees it, she knows it belongs to him.

 

^ The "Ochi's ship" comment there is acknowledging that they've found what they came to find; The "I've seen that ship before" is a statement of realization.

She is not saying that she knew the ship belonged to Ochi the last time she saw it.

My answer to the OP still stands, though.

 

Pedantic hair-splitting aside, the entire Ochi side plot comes across as a clumsy fan-fic contrivance. It's a needlessly and pointlessly complex way to get from point A to points B and C, it relies heavily on viewers not taking a particularly close and detailed look at it, and as a result it rings hollow for a lot of folks, casual viewers and fans alike.

As we saw in the recent SWNN editorial on the rescue of Han Solo in ROTJ, awkwardly crafted plot devices are hardly new to Star Wars, particularly in the rush to tie everything up at the end of a trilogy. In the case of ROTJ, however, the flaws in the rescue plot tend to be overshadowed by the fact that the Jabba's palace/sail barge scenes are about 45 minutes or so of big dumb fun.

The Ochi subplot, however, is largely expositional in nature, so it doesn't have that same kind of cover. It's like a guy walking down the street on a warm summer day with his toupee perched on his head at a jaunty angle - there's nothing gonna hide the seams on that!

Sure, we can torture logic until it hollers "Uncle!" and come up with some thin justification for it, but that doesn't make the writing any less sloppy or the notes it strikes any less jarring. JJ and Chris were forced to write the TROS screenplay at a mad dash, and this is one place where it really shows.