SPECULATION The Official Rey's Parents in Ep. IX Thread

Yeah I know what the official line is, but it can easily be argued JJ is just being a team player. You are not going to hear the producers of the saga publicly admit how disjointed the whole thing is. The official story doesn't even make any sense, when you consider the fact that Ridley claims JJ told her on the set of E7 who her parents were, but then you hear reports that Johnson had free reign to do whatever he wanted to do. Those statements are irreconcilable.

It's really a matter of people believing whatever they want to believe. As far as actual, on-the-record quotes go, the following is the one that makes the most sense to me:

“I know what JJ kind of intended or at least was being chucked around. I think that’s kind of been undone slightly by the last one. There was some talk of a relevant lineage for her.” - Simon Pegg

I just don't buy the idea that Dr. "Wildly Subvert Expectations" independently came up with the exact same conclusion as Capt. "Make the stories so similar that people say E7 is practically a remake".

No, the way to make people hate TLJ less is to undo all the damage it did. I expect E9 to line up far better with E7 than E8 - which is as it should be.

 

This should be sufficient reason not to do this:

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 30, 2018, Original Post Date: Sep 30, 2018 ---

It’s not as if one was “subverting” everything and the other was “remaking” everything... why should we always have to polirise the work of these two directors? It was clear by watching TFA special that JJ and Kasdan wanted someone to rediscover the story of Luke Skywalker in the Galaxy far away. It makes sense for this someone to have no no connection to this story. We have a lowly scavenger and a lowly stormtrooper thrown into an epic story which at first sight is not their own. It makes sense.

 

This struck me as pretty odd the first time I heard it. Not suspiciously so, but in a more ill-conceived fashion. The thing is: no one in either movie ever suggested Rey’s parents were in any way significant beyond simply being her parents. She wasn’t established to have harbored any ideas of them being ‘somebodies’. So that “admission” wouldn’t have been any sort of admission at all for the character. It was a reveal for us, not her. It’s not something she’d be reluctant to acknowledge. Of course they were “nobody”. What reason did she have to think otherwise?

The reality Rey didn’t want to face in TFA had nothing to do with lineage, it was that her family had abandoned her and would never be coming back. That’s the fear that Kylo confirms with his spiel in TLJ and attempts to take advantage of. Rey’s initial statement is a total non sequitur to that end. Her parents being “nobody” has nothing to do with the crux of the matter - they sold her off because she was worth more as a thing than a daughter. Thus, she feels worthless and is desperate for validation. Personally, I think this is more a show of clumsy writing than any kind of subterfuge.

 

Luke is dead and it's better that way. What would you prefer more:
1) a Luke who is tied to a location?
2) a Luke who can appear everywhere and to everyone?
I'm going for option 2.

Star Wars was always easy. People need to remember that.

 

Lazy writing is tying them back to a pre-established character so Rey doesn't have to be a character and can stand fully as "_______'s kid"
That's lazy.

Making her literally no-one in a fantasy world where everyone has been preconditioned by years of bad-to-okay stories to expect some sort of connection or royal lineage is the antithesis of lazy. It's bold. It's different. Luke was special by birth. Anakin was special by birth. Rey isn't special by anything.

How is that lazy?
Bucking a 40 year repeated trope is lazy?

Lazy is writing Snoke to be Plagius
Lazy is writing her to be Luke's kid.

Nothing about her being the child of dead drunkards is easy. What could be a harder truth to learn than your parents where drunks who didn't value you more than they did booze?

 

Considering this is the end of the Skywalker saga, I would expect Luke to die before the saga is complete. In TLJ, Luke pulled off a crazy force power to save his sister and the remnants of the Resistance by buying them time to escape. In the process, he sacrificed himself and became one with the force. A very noble death. It seems off to me that they would bring him back just to kill him off again in IX. He can function very nicely in IX as a force ghost and JJ can use as much of him as he would like.

 

She's not really in the spotlight more than he is. She's just the "good guy" but the story is Kylo Ren's story from start to finish if you really watch it. The first thing you learn about ANYONE in this movie is about Kylo Ren's past from LST. It's his story. Everything else revolves around him and his prospects at salvation. The emotional climax of TFA is Ren killing Han. The emotional climax of TLJ is Ren facing off with Luke. The entire emotional strain of this trilogy is Kylo Ren and how it effects the other characters.

Because that's not as difficult to hear as a child as "your parents didn't love you." Seriously. Imagine hearing those words and knowing they're true despite being in denial about it for years. Your parents didn't love you. That's a punch in the gut and a half. That is the worst sort of thing a young person can hear.
It's not about giving her a reason to care about the Resistance. It's about giving her autonomy over her decisions. She chooses the Resistance because it's the right thing to do. She CHOOSES the light because it's the right thing to do and it isn't some inherited sense of "I must avenge my father!" type stuff we've seen for FORTY years on loop.

So you think, "Dead drunkard parents sold her off for drinking money to indentured servitude" is something a little kid comes up and lazy but "Luke Skywalker's daughter" is not?



addendum: If you don't like it, that's fine. But I think it's entirely intellectually false to call it lazy so that's where my issue lies. Not with whether or not you like it. I tried to keep that the focus of my posts and not the issue of actually liking or disliking the choices in the film.

 

It was “easy” in the sense that it cut straight to the chase - they were bad people that didn’t care about her. Simple as that. Kylo only knows what Rey knows - what she believes she knows anyway. They sold her off like property. Whatever the reason behind that choice is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Buying back that revelation at this point is what would be “cheap”. It undoes the development for no greater benefit.

Rey, like Finn, is a good person. Independent of the sway of ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’. She didn’t somehow inherit a genetic predisposition for decency. She wasn’t raised with instilled morality. She had every reason to be a scumbag and chose not to. Moral of the story: anyone can be a hero. You don’t need magic blood.

 

Kylo took interest because there's now someone else in his way. He was just looking for a droid. Now that droid has paired up with a girl. WHAT GIRL!?! Why does she have what I want? Is she a Resistance spy? Do they have it? Could she discover what it holds? Is it my sister?!? It's a shitty JJ mystery box that is an inconsequential piece of dialogue that is shrouded in unnecessary mystery because JJ. There's nothing to that line other than what viewers choose to assign to it.

Han shows guilt. Remorse. He's trying to be a good father figure because he feels like he failed at being one to Ben. See how easily it can be interpreted a different way? Again, these are innocuous things that JJ puts unnecessary dramatic tension on because that's what he does. He literally made everything and anything a possibility because he gave 0 answers. He punted all of that to Rian Johnson. I like the TFA but in honest reflection, it's fluff. It's great fluff. Upper echelon fluff. But it lacks so much substance and commits to virtually nothing narratively. That's why TLJ feels so sudden or jarring at times. It actually makes claims and takes stances. Han sees a young girl in need of direction. That's the only actual narrative on their relationship we are given before Kylo outright tells her he's a bad father and she's using him as a surrogate dad.

Actually Rey is the one who first says they are no one.
REN: "Do you want to know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known? You've just hidden it away. You know the truth. Say it. Say it."
REY: "They were nobody."
REN: "They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money, they're dead in a paupers grave in the Jakku desert."

Ren doesn't tell her anything about her parents. Remember, they have a strong bond thanks to the bridging of the minds from TFA and then again in TLJ.

Luke asks who the first person he likely sees since going into exile is. That seems fair. He's probably quite inquisitive to the whole situation since he's been on his own.

She's very powerful like....a vessel chosen by the force because she is truly good and that is needed to balance the darkness of Kylo Ren. Granddaughter of a pre-established character removing any significance she might have on her own. That role is played by Kylo Ren. He's the legacy character whose actions and motivations are driven by a sense of duty to heritage.

Kylo doesn't care about the broom boy because: he doesn't know he exists, believes he's wiped out any potential force threats already and genuinely believes that legacy and heritage are how one becomes important.

REN: "You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You're nothing. But not to me."

Another way of reading this is: the only significant people are those with lineage. You need me (legacy) to be important. Only a known name can make you worthwhile.

Rey is Luke without the Maury-Vader "You ARE the father" moment. There's no bait and switch. There's no shock and awe. It's just gut punch hard facts. She is from no one important.

 

It will be interesting to see if Kylo survives. If he does then there is a chance they may resume this saga in the future (I don’t think it will be anytime soon). I think the goal going forward is to create new stories with new characters. That is what Rian’s New trilogy is going to do as well as the series of films from Benioff and Weiss. These can then be referred to the (fill in the blanks) sagas. We will get new stories and characters to come to love in the SW universe. I think it is a smart decision given the backlash of people and how they perceive the legacy characters being treated. If the story doesn’t go the way some want it to go they seem to get upset. New characters and stories will limit this some. It be interesting to see how Lucasfilm moves forward in the future.

 

The fact that Rey's parents are nobody isn't a problem.

The problem is that you spend 2 hours of the plot on this issue and the answer wasn't worth the wait because it could also have been "Dan and Chrissie". As long as you don't know who the answer is referring to, it's 2 hours waisted.

If I make up a story with a bunch of dude going after a ring and you see them coming back 2 hours after saying they were no ring or if Luke went back to Bespin City after spending half of the movie searching for a dude on Dagobah, I'm not sure people would have say it was a good story if he didn't find him.

And why in Hell, Rey is asking herself who her parents are the very first time she left Jakku while the answer had 90+% to be tied with Jakku ? ( And it is !!! )

Why did she never ask Plutt about this and waited to be on the other end of the galaxy to ask herself that question ?

 

Well, it's JJ, so maybe not. He'll just allude to something that SEEMS like a reveal

 

This is what I'm mostly curious about for 9.
How does JJ close the trilogy. He isn't exactly know for, well, finishing things

 

When does she ever ask “who” her parents are? The story was pretty explicit with this until that dopey “nobody” statement of hers. Their identities aren’t the mystery for Rey, it’s their whereabouts. When are they coming back? That’s what she cared about. Well, they’re not. She already knows this, but doesn’t want to admit it. That’s the premise. What TLJ does is clarify that they didn’t have some noble intentions in abandoning her. They were out right creeps and she has to accept that.