Simon Pegg Says J.J. Abrams May Have Had Something Else in Mind for Reys Parentage

I really don't understand this fixation with Rey's parents. She's going to honor her parents who abandoned her? This is what you want for IX? Why?

She's already done better than Kylo. She has more of a reason to kill the past than the grandson of a Jedi and Queen/Senator.

Thanks for replying, but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

Because Rey must show that she is able to be morally and spiritualy better than Kylo ,starting from her roots.

Kylo destroyed his hero parents Han and Leia which loved him. Rey must do the opposite, visit and honor bones of her parents who were presumably a nobody and monsters.

How is that everyone can understand concept of Rey forgiving to Kylo ,but not to her own parents?
Isn't Kylo a monster who made far more atrocities?
And,waren't Rey's parents more close to her despite presumably a monsters to?

Story wise- it is a question of moral superiority of a superhero...acceptance,facing facts,forgiveness.

Only such Rey could actually be ready to forgive Ben to ,and save the galaxy.

Only such Rey will be hero of all of us,regardless who her parents were.

 

The issue of Rey's parents being "nobodies" was really the most sensible way to go in my opinion. Having her related to a legacy character would have seemed contrived and even predictable. Of course, everyone's first instinct is to speculate she is maybe the daughter of Han or Luke. That was my first instinct too, I think that's a kneejerk reaction. But it makes little sense in the context of the story: whoever her parents were, they were awful people that abandoned her to a desert wasteland as a slave and never came back to her. And making her a "long lost descendent" of Palpatine or Kenobi is even more forced: what is the point? What effect does this have on her character, other than explaining why she can use the Force, and why does she need a powerful Force family to be strong in the Force when we are willing to accept the above example of Kenobi and Palpatine as themselves being strong in the Force simply because? Why can't she instead just be Rey of Jakku, orphan from nowhere? I think part of the point of her character is that heroes can come from anywhere and that anyone can use the Force. In my opinion it flat-out diminishes her character if there is a reveal that she is now related to someone of a certain lineage, because now that it's a revelation it defines her significance as being an extension of that character instead of it being on her own merits.

But more to the point, there is also no "shock value", no "twist", in her being what endless fans have already speculated on: Kenobi's grand-daughter, Snoke's clone, the reincarnation of Anakin, Luke's daughter, Han's daughter, Palpatine's daughter, on and on endlessly. If the point of a twist is to surprise us, what avenue could they possibly have taken? What didn't we think of? Fan speculation got so absurd people were positing Mace Windu as Snoke. Every possibility was entertained. It would all be so boring if it went like that.

That's how I take it all anyway, and I'm just keying off what the film TFA tells us. It therefore was not surprising to me when TLJ gave us what it gave us, it was the only direction I could really see the story logically going, but that's just me.

But regarding "who knew what and when" with regards to the evolving backstory, I personally don't see any contradictions with the information given between Ridley, Abrams, Johnson and Pegg, and that's because the storyline of TFA was changing up until they were filming it. You really have to understand the behind-the-scenes history of the films for it to make sense, because it seems like between a single year of late 2013 and late 2014 TFA and TLJ were both laid down so close together that they practically overlapped, and the storyline came together very late in the process from what I can tell. This is why I believe all the differing accounts of the story being changed or unchanged are true simultaneously, because they reflect different stages of the development process.

If you read the Art of Force Awakens, it seems like the character of Ben Solo-Kylo Ren was a very, very late development. The story had been developed through all of 2013, but in all that time the character of Kylo Ren is just called The Jedi Killer, an as-yet-developed villain that fetishizes Vader, has a mask, uses the dark side, etc. As others have pointed out, the development of TFA was fairly rushed considering it was laying the ground-work for an whole trilogy with a lot going on in it. Lawrence Kasdan was added in late 2013, and it was around here that I believe The Jedi Killer first began changing into Ben Solo, as it is mentioned in the Art of book that his origin is being explored at this point and that he fell in with a group of pirates as a young man--but even in January of 2014 the art still calls him Jedi Killer, although that's probably just for the art department's consistency. And it's the last time the book reports that name being used. So probably the idea of Jedi Killer joining pirates as a youngster gave them the idea of re-developing him as the son of a pirate, Han Solo, and then him being trained by Luke, betraying Luke, and Luke going into hiding. I'm doing a lot of reading between the lines here, but that's the impression the book gives. So all of that is being developed after the film had been worked on for a year and a half already, only 6 months before shooting. As someone else pointed out, TFA was a bit rushed in development simply because the story changed so much, starting with throwing out George Lucas and Michael Arndt leaving, and so they had half the time to develop a new story almost from scratch. I don't think they touched upon the following two films very much because they were so up against the wall trying to get Episode VII done.

So the creation of Kylo Ren seems pretty late in the game from what I can tell, and his backstory is still vague, it's not told in great detail in the film because this was probably done on purpose due to it being mostly all there was to it. As others have pointed out, it's classic Abrams: the Mystery Box, as he likes to put it.

He is great at setting up these vague Mystery Boxes, but not good at building a solid through-line, and that's a creative problem he has had for his whole career starting with Lost. And in the process of creating the story to Episode VII, he probably kicked around a lot of ideas that eventually sort of evaporated into the ether. Like most of us, maybe Abrams kicked around the idea of Rey being the daughter of Luke or Han/Leia--in fact I would be surprised if he didn't, because he no doubt was wanting to find a way to continue to make the next generation of Skywalker as a framework for the saga's narrative; maybe that idea was hijacked by making Ben the fallen son of Han/Leia, which seems to have occurred somewhat late in the game, and which then allowed for Rey to be "from nowhere" now that there was a Skywalker openly in the picture.

If this occurred as late in the screenwriting process as it seems to have it would be a reason why Pegg remembers "lots of ideas" being kicked around for Rey's background as he was giving feedback on the story development, especially as Lawrence Kasdan only entered the picture in late 2013--and as soon as he comes onboard we start seeing the Jedi Killer character get re-developed, which probably would have freed Rey from needing a place in the Skywalker lineage.

No writer would make the story without having some idea of where it was going, and I think this is why you hear about Abrams' "outline" for Episode VIII and IX, and I'm assuming they were more like a collection of notes and thoughts rather than an actual constructed outline. They were probably for himself mainly, because he knew someone else would be writing the next one and he wasn't hired to provide an outline for VIII--unlike Rian Johnson, who was at first hired to provide the outline for IX. I think because TFA went to camera so near to when the entire storyline became set in stone LFL was most concerned about getting that film in good shape, knowing that the future storyline could be worked on while TFA was in production, so Abrams deliberately never committed to spelling out where the storyline would go. You can imagine how insane the last couple months leading up to the start of photography must have been, even just the fact that you will be uprooting your life and moving across the world for 6 months, and this hectic period seems to be where the backstories to Rey and Ben seem to have been finalized. It's also the period where Rian Johnson stepped in, but nevermind that for now.

But I think by that point, Abrams and Kasdan--remember, he's part of this too--had ruled out Rey being the "long lost" daughter of a Legacy character, but they didn't make it impossible to pursue that angle in the sequels. But for one, again, Rey is sold to a slaver by her family: her family is terrible people that maliciously abandoned her. The only out I thought to this is that as a child she was kidnapped by someone--enemies of her parents, galactic pirates, whomever--and the twist is that it's not her parents onboard the ship in the flashback, that's a red herring, she is just yelling at them to come back because that was her ride there. That's really the only way I could see it being spun if they went that route.

But if you look at the film, I get the impression that Abrams and Kasdan focused on her character arc as being her getting over the fact that her parents abandoned her and didn't want her, that she is at first wondering who she is and what her place is, and that finding that within her is what her arc is, that where she comes from doesn't define her, but instead where she is going will:

Rey to BB-8: "I know all about waiting. For my family. They'll be back. One day."

FA trailer:
Maz: "Who are you?"
Rey: "I'm no one"

Maz to Rey: "Dear Child. I see your eyes. You already know the truth. Whomever you’re waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back. But… there’s someone who still could...The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead."

The last exchange I think is one of the key pieces to her character. Her family is never coming back. It's not Luke, or Han, or whomever. Maz is saying let go of your family, because if you open your eyes you have a new family right in front of you.

And that's really all that the script says about her background. She was seemingly abandoned by her family, they aren't coming back, but she can find a new belonging with her new companions and the journey she is about to go on. So, it really does seem like Abrams and Kasdan were pointing towards the "Mystery Box" of her parents as being one giant red herring, I think the script for TFA makes that fairly clear if you actually break down the script. But it's vague enough to be taken anywhere, potentially, and I think that's on purpose: that Abrams and Kasdan didn't feel as though they "owned" the entire trilogy's storyline, but that their job was to create a terrific set-up, which again is classic Abrams.

So this is where Rian Johnson comes in. He was hired as they were about to go to camera for TFA, which I guess would be early May 2014. His first notebooks for the storyline/script/notes for Episode VIII are dated as June 2014, one month into shooting TFA. He's in San Francisco, while Abrams and crew are on the other side of the world. He first reads the script for TFA and then watches as the first dailies start coming in from the shoot.

And that's really all he had to work off of. The script was written based on that, and personally I think it proceeds pretty naturally and logically, but that's another debate. According to Johnson he did have a talk with Abrams but without story points being mandated. Part of this is that Abrams knew that wasn't part of his deal, but also I think it is because Johnson was picking up what Abrams put down. When Johnson tells Abrams that Ben is going to tell Rey her parents were nobody, and that that is hardest truth for her to face, it seems Abrams didn't say anything otherwise, and I think it's because it wasn't seen as a betrayal of the storyline but along the lines of what Abrams was hinting at in the screenplay for TFA itself. So, at that point Abrams would have then told Daisy Ridley of this plan: as Ridley herself says, she was told on the set of TFA, when Johnson was writing TLJ, who her parents were and that this didn't undergo any change when she finally got the script to TLJ.

I think Abrams, Kasdan and Johnson also knew that a lot of fans would first jump to the conclusion that she must be the daughter of Han or Luke or someone, and as Rey is the audience surrogate that even get's played upon by Kylo Ren himself:

"Your parents threw you away like garbage... but you can't stop needing them. It's your greatest weakness. Looking for them everywhere, in Han Solo, and now in Skywalker."

That, to me at least, is why it makes sense that she's not related to a legacy character of any kind, because the mystery box surrounding her origins was never about that, it was instead an obstacle for her to overcome as part of her character development, a personal weakness to grapple with. I think TFA makes that clear enough that the direction taken by TLJ was not at all of a stretch ("Let the past die" line also echoes this sentiment). TLJ even doubles-down on the theme of heroes coming from any background with the Broom-Boy/Stable-Boy.

But don't forget, up until this point TFA has not come out in theaters yet. TLJ was filming in Ireland in September of 2015. The principle photography was delayed until February of 2015 for a last re-write, which may have been in response to the release of TFA--maybe enlarging Poe's role even more, for example. But the total onslaught of fan speculation on things like Rey's parents only really hit the fan once filming on TLJ had begun, the script was done, and I think the expectation of her origins being this big "twist" was entirely taken out of hand by fans. The "I am your father" twist was shocking and memorable because it was the hardest thing for Luke to hear, and so too for Rey the hardest twist for her is hearing her parents were not only insignificant, but awful people--something Rey has already known but been in denial since that first scene with BB-8 in TFA: "They're coming back. One day." (Eventually. Yup. Totally just waiting for the right time.)

Anyway, what am I saying after all this? The backstory of Rey's parents, and the backstory of TFA in general, went through a lot of ideas, and it seems like a lot of it was only locked in at the last second, with the writing of TLJ overlapping the shooting of the film. This is why when Simon Pegg was critiquing Abrams' evolving storyline he remembers other ideas being suggested for the backstory of Rey, why Daisy Ridley says what she was told on the set of TFA was the same as what we got in TLJ, and why Rian Johnson wasn't asked to change the backstory he nailed down.

It's also why I think--and really hope--Abrams isn't going to buckle and try to retcon TLJ, although we'll see. As I said, I think the answer we got for Rey's parents was along the lines of what Abrams and Kasdan were hinting at, but I also know that the fan backlash must have him re-considering what he is going to do. Personally, I think we will eventually get a twist on the twist, that being that there is more to their story and why they did what they did, but they are not "important" characters or related to Legacy characters, but I'm also not sure if this will just be relegated to the novels and such.

I think what has been lost in the shuffle of "who knew what and when" is the fact that Johnson was hired to write the outline to Episode IX initially as well. TFA was so rushed in the end that they just decided to get the script to that done and make it really exciting and then have new writers take the baton once they were in production. Even though there are rumors of Abrams having an "outline" for 8 and 9, I think these are over-stated, and in any case weren't part of his hiring. So when they brought on Johnson they didn't want to repeat all that so they hired him to outline how the story would end in 9--which he has confirmed he never ended up doing. Why was this? And I wonder how this affected Colin Trevarrow and how that has now affected Abrams, compounded with the death of Fisher. The writing of Episode 8 is the most straight forward of all the three films, Rian Johnson just read the script to Force Awakens and then wrote what happens next, but Episode 9 has so many writers coming and going but no "out" like TFA had of "let the next guy finish it."

Anyway, wow I've gone on. Long-story short, I think Simon Pegg is referring to a period from before the final draft was written, when Rey having a lineage of significance was entertained, and this was possibly changed when Jedi Killer/Kylo Ren became Ben Solo and fulfilled that story point, which is why the final draft (IMO) has the Mystery Box of her parents as a red herring.

 

Great first post, @Sargon and you're absolutely right.

People need to understand that stories are always changing during the production. Yes, it's most likely that Rey (or Kira) was onced considered to be a Skywalker, Solo or somebody else, but eventually they decided to make the villain the offspring of a legacy character. So there was no need to have Rey Skywalker/Solo etc.

 

Or actually they never changed original path,jet used mastery and creativity of Rian Johnson to make subversive dark movie and stirr the story well enough to be able to deliver a blast in ep IX.

 

♪ "# Rey, Rey, go away. You're no Jedi anyway."

 

Exactly!

For all we know perhaps one day JJ woke up with the idea of canonising Jaina Solo, next day he thought perhaps giving Luke a daughter would be a better idea and talked about it during lunch with Simon. Then later during the preproduction stages he changed his mind.

 

And that's all Simon really said but of course "internet gonna internet"

 

I mean, Luke Starkiller anybody?

 

Simon Pegg is deceiving you with MISINFORMATION if he's in IX.

Non disclosure agreements when broken would be very damaging to his career and wallet.

 

I'm pretty sure Rey seeing her reflection in the mirror and Rey basically confirming what Kylo says to her is enough of a confirmation. She doesn't fight it. She's a nobody. J.J. doesn't need to release a statement. Fans simply need to get over it already.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 9, 2018, Original Post Date: Apr 9, 2018 ---

I agree. I have no idea what he's talking about either.

 

For real, I'm amazed this click bait already has 6 pages on these forums.

Take Kylo's advice: let it die.

 

yeah...about that

https://thecantina.starwarsnewsnet.com/index.php?threads/rey-our-love-forever.54550/

 

Ha! Yeah, three. The list grew as I was thinking about.

1) Her accent was tinkered with deliberately during filming to get it where they wanted. I don't see them doing this without a vision of where she came from. If it didnt matter where she came from you would treat this more flippantly than they did.

2) Legacy would be important to who she becomes at the very least. Whether she be labeled Rey of Jakku, or Rey XYZ, etc. it matters moving forward, even if it doesn't matter looking backwards. Kylo wants her to kill her past just as he did. Why would he want this? I suspect it is because her past matters, whether it matters in the past or whether it is for the future (or potentially both) is the real question to me.

3) Sure it has to do with her mourning her parents leaving per se. But the weight of its relevancy is shouldered by this particular memory being placed into the movie. They could choose not to show it. They elected to put it in, per her memory pre Kylo interventionism. This tells me this is what happened. The parents didnt die on Jakku. They left Jakku.

There is more to her story and I suspect that it will unfold in the next episode. I don't trust Kylo. Not only is he broken, he is openly manipulative towards his own gains.

 

That thread only makes sense with a joint and a line. And even then that’s a stretch...

 

The accent argument makes no sense when you start applying real-world logic to it. She's like 5 years old in the flashback, she's clearly been on Jakku ever since, you would lose whatever accent you had within a few years at that point, that's how accents work. Children pick up and lose accents very rapidly, and if you've only been speaking for like 3 years as it is the argument means nothing, especially since she was orphaned and so didn't have her native accent spoken in her household. If anything it is evidence that it is some kind of Jakku accent. It doesn't really make much sense anyway, it's just a movie, she sounds like that because Daisy Ridley does, Max Von Sydow has a vaguely European-tinged accent because he's Swedish, John Boyega began filming with his own accent as well, but they changed it right away because it sounded odd for a stormtrooper. That's the real reason the accents were worked, it was just with regarded to what sounded right within the aesthetic context of making a movie, not for character backgrounds.

 

One of the most compeeling videos on this subject ever released to my knowledge.

And I am sure that J.J Abrams and the story group are well aware of this indesputable logic .

 

I have quoted Kylo Ren a lot this weekend:

"NO. YOU'RE STILL HOLDING ON. LET GO!"

 

Simon Pegg, a JJ Abrams/Bad Robot BFF who co-wrote the last Star Trek movie, was involved in the process of making The Force Awakens as well. He's also pals with Daisy Ridley - who said Johnson threw out Abrams's early ideas for Episode VIII. His involvement was beyond being Unkar Plutt.

http://collider.com/star-wars-the-force-awakens-simon-pegg/

https://dorksideoftheforce.com/2018/04/02/pegg-wrote-plot-twist-force-awakens/

Pegg was probably also annoyed at the direction of the recent Star Wars if the Horowitz interview was anything to go by.

(this was from September 2017)

The Luke Skywalker character also meant a lot to Pegg.