Shakespeare Meets Star Wars

I get the sense we are going full-blown Shakespearean here with Kylo and Rey, Leia and Han.


Everything seems to be lining up this way to my eye - see the obvious Hamlet concept art with Vader's helmet, mistaken identities, love and tragedy. All political backdropping is omitted since the true nature of the story is centered on relationships and family.


Lets roundtable the plot to see what the most powerful means to ends may be; just like Kennedy's team did when they first started to develop the screenplay.


I will start it off . . .


Leia, with the galaxy’s weight on her shoulders and her rocky on-again off-again flings with a scoundrel we all know well, decides to marry an aristocratic King from another system for political reasons and forges an alliance that benefits the fledgling Republic/Rebellion/Resistance. They have twins.


The twins as we know them are Kylo and Rey, but twins from only Leia - not Han - thus creating a timeless tension between all four of our main characters. The twins are force sensitive due to their mother’s lineage and are sent to Luke’s new jedi academy at an early age. The academy is attacked by the Knights of Ren, who in their attempt to balance the force, wish to keep the Jedi at bay. "Kylo" Skywalker is taken to be used and trained by the Knights of Ren, while his sister, "Rey" Skywalker is rescued by Maz Kanata and hidden away at the advice of Luke.


“Kylo” Ren rises in power within the Knights of Ren and aids his father’s influence in help growing the First Order – a splinter group formed off of the Resistance and run by internal radicals and a Supreme Leader. The marriage between “Kylo’s” father and Leia disintegrates as she slowly becomes aware of his intentions. They begin to spy on one another’s activities fully aware that there will have to be a confrontation at some point. However, the father grows ill and the far more radical son, with duplicitous intentions of both galactic control and leader of the Knights of Ren, progressively assumes a more active control within the First Order.


Han Solo is a broken man. He has returned to his smuggler ways and has left the baggage of her worshipfulness and the Resistance behind him.


Luke has moved behind the curtain, so to speak, and is mindful of the dangers that are apparent in this new age.


The rest we know to some extent. Leia reconciles with Han. Kylo then murders Han, the man his mother loved and ruined his family. Kylo is ushered under the true evil’s tutelage, Supreme Leader Snoke and Luke, unaware of the return of the Sith, focuses his efforts on eradicating the evil he knows – the Knights of Ren.


Feel free to add, edit, elaborate, or ridicule any of the above. Much of this makes sense to me and would be quite powerful. You have broken love and reconciliation. You have forgiveness and hateful retribution. You have misguided reflection and veiled intentions.


There is a voyage of each character and a return to who they were when we first met them. There is rebirth, there is overcoming of the internal, and as alluded to in the EW article, a rags to riches journey. There is comedy and there is tragedy.


Shakespeare meets Star Wars.

 

Thanks for the catch. I edited accordingly. I was thinking of several connections. Too many to really outline in my limited time since I am at my job.

The Macbeth reference I am thinking of is when Macbeth is wrestling with his conscience on killing the King (Solo? Millions of civillians) and he is prodded into action being told it is the right thing to do. Seems to fit into what we know of Kylo's motivations.

Of course Han and Leia are straight outta Much Ado About Nothing.

George loved to insert great literary devices. Unfortunately, to a fault at times. . . . Frankenvader. ugh! Almost turned the ending of III to a comedy for me.