Why Palpatine returning makes sense.

Interesting point, and a fair one to boot!
But we also see that not being the entire case with the Nightsisters, who existed as Darkside users without fighting each other for power. We might have been able to see a sense of dark community within the Knights of Ren. Maybe it was the bond of mutual assured destruction, maybe it was a way that to gain the power, you must share it with others is a weird sort of thing. There are ways around the Rule of Two. The Inquisitors were practically created to be a loophole.

And then something can go unbalance the Force, or we can have villains who don't use the Force at all. Or we can have a good versus good that ends in evil coming out. There are ways around that aspect of the prophecy while still letting the Sith stay gone. ...or, you know, bring back Palpatine but don't call him a Sith (then again, being Sith is his identity, so that might not work). Shows like Rebels worked hard to get around the requirement for the Sith and Jedi existing at a time when they shouldn't. I wanted to see the ST put forth that same effort.
Or make one part literal (the Sith) and the other part an ongoing the "evil." Or make it that Anakin hadn't completed the full prophecy yet so someone else has to. And while not all of the above ideas are good, they can still work; if I a lowly fan can come up with ideas that can work without bringing the Sith back, why can't professional writers?*

...fair point. But then with Darth Maul they DID something with him, that stayed in line with the parameters of the story, and took him out before it would have interrupted the flow of canon too much (...until Solo). Boba Fett is a weird case. I honestly don't care about him living or dying. In both cases their overall affect on the plot, prophecy, and progression of the story was minimal, because the creators work hard to keep it in line with what was said before. That's why Ezra and Kanan can't be around when Luke is becoming a Jedi. The Inquisitors were created to get around the Rule of Two. Palpatine was anything but. And granted, it hasn't been said Boba Fett is alive

And I do care for those sort of artistic intents, because it gives me parameters to judge, critique, and feel. It doesn't mean I always agree with the intent; it doesn't mean I want to always honor the intent. It doesn't mean those who created it aren't allowed to go back on it. But it does mean if I'm handed the baton, I'm going to do my storming best to further the story without destroying what was before. Because that's what great creators can do, and that's what I want to live up to. There IS a way to push the story forward while honoring what the story said previously. Look at what it meant then and see how it applies to now, while keeping the spirit of the intent.

What did the story need? A compelling villain. And it HAD one in Kylo Ren. Or it could have had one, but JJ didn't want to take that route. And as much as I disagree as a fan, that was his prerogative. But he also had a backup in the Knights of Ren. What I DO have a problem with is destroying a key component of the prequels - more that has to do with the mythic side of things than the moral to be sure - in order to bring back what amounts to a throwaway villain.

Neither am I, but I can respect what he meant for the story to do if I was the one to write the next chapter(s). Not how he wants his story to go, but what the story that is already out did.

Or a lot of the MCU!

Yet the one thing I've never heard him backpedal on is the prophecy of the Chosen One.

I still think it's one of the best decisions for TCW Lucas did, even if it doesn't make sense. But it worked retroactively because Maul became a great antagonist. Palpatin in TROS...wasn't. He was just there. The final boss "because thou must." The beauty of Palpatine in the PT and slightly in the OT is that we the audience SAW his machinations. We saw behind the curtain and saw what that meant. In the ST, we really didn't. Not for Palpatine assuming this was all planned.



*This is by no means a dig on the writers, but a general frustration. I should also point out that these cracks are FAR easier to see in hindsight (since it's 20/20) than in the moment. Making an Episode IX from scratch post-TLJ was a herculean task, and I don't envy it. But I also had faith that JJ and Terrio could do it well. And to me they didn't.

 

Subjective view only, to many of us, the Palpatine "thread" ended in Episode 6, (rather nicely in fact, ROTJ is a superb film). Hashing him back into the franchise with a shoe horn at the very last minute during a hasty rewrite of episode 9 was NOT a "very strong writing choice".

Again, these views are subjective but taking 6 films to build, raise and then destroy a villain, only to a "surprise he's still alive" three films later, is a gimmick that taints comic books, let alone a 300 million dollar budget film.

Is Palpatine even dead? Can he ever really die? And where does the brand go after Episode 9? Nowhere, their only real option it seems is to "back fill" all kinds of gaps in the lore.

Again, subjective points of view only and open for debate, but I do take exception that bringing back old characters after their arcs completed, in some ways retconning several installments in the story from before, is not "strong writing".

And we know for a fact, this script was written very hastily and the choice to bring Palpy back came very late and sudden in that process. Again, for me, this suggests that perhaps this was not a "strong writing choice", but rather a desperate choice, catered more towards fan-service and shock value than real creative merit.

Personal opinion only of course, your mileage may vary.

 

I feel like we've reached peak meta

 

Using fan theory videos, of which there are some made for literally every possible outcome of Rey's lineage, is not convincing.
Associating lines of vagueness, that could apply to any number of things, isn't convincing.
I appreciate your effort here and if that is enough for you, that's fine. To me, it's much less shallow than all this and based on their history, I really don't think JJ or Terrio put this level of thinking into it. So for that, I sincerely commend you.

And we are just going to have to agree to disagree. It sounds like Star Wars is apparently forever stuck in a loop. I might tap out again soon.

 

@Use the Falchion

I'm going to skip past the creator conversation because we simply don't agree there, and, more importantly, it doesn't really matter because that tangent has blended into the other, which is the real issue at hand: The Prophecy.

To you, TROS undoes the prophecy and ruins your view of Star Wars.
I'm sorry that's how you are experiencing it, because that means it's not enjoyable, and I like everyone to be able to enjoy Star Wars.

The Prophecy is up for interpretation in-world, and out of world, both.

First, let me address the in-world part.
Now this I will discuss in terms of opinion of interpretation because that's all that it can be.

Even in the PT, there were character's arguing about the accuracy and efficacy of the prophecy, so already there's elbow room in-world just with that.
But I'll not rest on that.

When the PT came out, you had basically two camps that split over the view of the prophecy.

1. The prophecy was wrong/the Jedi were wrong about Anakin.
2. The prophecy was right, because it was "from a certain point of view" that Anakin was the "Chosen One" because he birthed Luke and Luke ultimately fulfilled the prophecy.

The two camps don't really agree.

My personal take on this is...I don't care. It's a prophecy. Prophecies in fairy tales are horribly flawed and often come with a hidden backhand that the good guys don't see coming.

Some even exist for no reason than to coax characters to do things they otherwise wouldn't have done.

Now, if I force myself to put on my "give a dang" lenses, then I don't see the prophecy as being invalidated by TROS.
Or rather, if I did, then I would think it was invalidated right away as soon as there was an announcement of another Skywalker saga trilogy.
That there's any film means there's going to be an unbalance or disruption in the Force, and if there's an unbalance or disruption in the Force, then the prophecy is out the window if I take the position that anything that brings back an unbalance or disruption in the Force undoes the prophecy.

Personally, if I held that Palaptine being back undid the prophecy, I would have already viewed the prophecy as undone by Snoke.

The typical response to this is that it doesn't because Snoke wasn't Sith, but seriously? The Force is a subscribed nominalist?
Ockham would be delighted!

So there's no real thing as the dark side which ultimately matters, and instead the only thing that actually matters is a form of religious democide?

I find this incredibly pedantic and beyond esoteric in argument.
I wasn't aware that the Force spoke any specific language and only accepted cadicy based on the appropriate filing of Sith application in triplicate.

I'm being a bit coy there, sorry. It's just such a wonky concept to think of some cosmic magical force caring about "balance", but actually not caring about effective balance at all - only nominal balance.

Hmm. Mk.
If that is true, then I think the Force is laughable, even as a fairy tale. I wouldn't be able to take anything in Star Wars seriously as meaning anything allegorically again, because that's just so silly of an idea for the Force to be pedantic about names instead of effect.


Now, let me back up and pretend that I don't think any of that.
I still don't see a problem for two different reasons.

Firstly: When is it said that the prophecy's results are eternal?
Secondly: Palpatine couldn't have defied the prophecy once he went to the great beyond and grew even more knowledge?

Now...If we hold that Anakin begot Luke and therefore fulfilled the prophecy of bringing balance to the Force, then when Anakin says to Rey, "Bring balance to the Force as I did.", then we're recognizing that the prophecy is still entirely intact, but that there's another event because of both of the reasons above.


That, to me, doesn't ruin the prophecy. It's recognized as having happened in TROS by Anakin, and we're clearly accepting that Palps has found a way to usurp that end for the Sith.


Then there's yet another version of this.
IF we're able to think: "Well, Anakin did fulfill the prophecy even though he personally turned to the dark side and became a Sith, because he begot Luke and Luke finished the job.", then why can't we go one step further and say that about Rey?
Without Anakin, Luke wouldn't have done what he did, and without either of these two, Rey wouldn't have done what she did, so...Anakin still saves the day according the logic originally used apologetically to explain how the prophecy was still valid when the PT came out and derailed the prophecy previously established in the OT.

And that brings us to the second tangent of out-of-world discussion.

Lucas totally changed his position on the prophecy over time.
In the OT, Luke was the chosen one. He saved every one of us. Done.

Then the PT came out, and my good lord this here Anakin kid's got midichlorian counts of the richter scale so he's clearly the chosen one!
But wait, what about Luke?! Wait...what? How can they both be the Chosen One?

Hey Wookipedia, what do you have on this?
"Kenobi, who considered his fallen apprentice lost to the dark side, came to believe that Luke would fulfill the prophecy of the Chosen One."

But wait...Vader ended up killing the Emperor, so I guess we can say that Anakin was actually the Chosen One...right?
But...well...if Anakin was the chosen one, but fell to the Sith and failed to take them out and begot Luke which still fulfilled the prophecy, but Luke failed to kill them and instead Anakin ended up killing them, then Luke is actually just as valid as the chosen one as Anakin by the same logic of provoking the change that will restore balance?

Lucas didn't have the whole prophecy thing written out when he wrote ANH. He didn't even have it when he wrote ESB or ROTJ.
At that time he couldn't even fully rest on whether he was going to kill Luke off at the end or not, and ultimately landed on "not" pretty late in the development of ROTJ.

He even openly said that when it came to TPM, he only had the first act, more or less, ironed out and that he decided to leave the rest pretty wide open so that he could just enjoy making a romp of an adventure movie without thinking about all the intricate things he needed to be doing upfront.

Which means he's clearly not certain on that whole long-term plot line of the prophecy at this point either. He's too busy trying to enjoy himself with freeform Star Wars jazz.

...

Ultimately it comes down to this.
Firstly, I do not care about the prophecy. That is not why I care about Star Wars, and I never took the prophecy as anything more than an allegorical representation of expectations that are placed upon us and how we respond to those expectations...it didn't really matter WHAT the results of that prophecy were.
The main allegorical discussion in the saga is whether we are free to break from a cycle of expectations we inherit by simply existing, or whether we are trapped by them regardless of what we do, and the prophecy is the chief symbol of that pressure that everyone is struggling against.

If anything, the prophecy, to me IS the actual villain of the allegory in Star Wars, and I hope people break it or do it wrong, because that's kind of the ultimate goal in the allegorical tale - to break free from destiny and choose freely for yourself what your identity is and what is of value.

Anyway, sorry it bothered you so much that it ruined everything for you in the trilogy.
I loved it and wish you would have enjoyed it because I'd like everyone to enjoy Star Wars.

Cheers,
Jayson

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 31, 2020, Original Post Date: Jan 31, 2020 ---

I wasn't using that video to convince you that by the logic in that video.
I was saying that there was enough foreshadowing involved because...well...firstly, I picked up on it, so I experienced it first hand so it's not an absolute that there was none. It's an experientially subjective fact whether there was enough foreshadowing.

I showed teh video to also show another person who picked up on the foreshadowing and ran with it to a variation of their conclusions about Palpsy.
Something that wouldn't be possible if they didn't pick up any foreshadowing.


And yes...the Skywalker saga IS stuck in a loop.
That's kind of its jam.
People have been calling it a copy of itself since ESB came out and critics of it said that it just copied ANH and hit the reverse button on everything.
Then ROTJ came out and there was yet another Death Star, and the film started on Tatooine (and several other things) and critics again lost their mind.
And on it went with every film being criticized as being a copy of itself.

That's because it's purposefully written to refrain itself, as Lucas says it, "Like music. The themes rephrase, a little bit differently." (I'm paraphrasing from memory, but if you want to - you can hear him wax about that by just watching the PT documentaries).

At one point he even says that the characters frequently say, "The exact same dialogue" as in other films.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yeah, we just really disagree on this.
I fully and completely understand the rhyming nature. That doesn't mean it has to fully rely on the old. It can still progress. To me, TROS did the bare minimum in just about every way.

The whole point of mentioning these other videos is that, if it is foreshadowing it's the biggest chicken blast style of foreshadowing where there's no wrong answer.

 

My two cents is that, Lucasfilm needed a big villain for the sequel trilogy. It was never going to be Kylo Ren because he was initially presented as being whiny and tantrum-prone, and there was not much he could do that would get audiences away from seeking his redemption. The story needed to be about how a real hero turns bad (as in the prequels) or how a bad man gets redeemed, as in the OT. Either way, the character doesn't lend itself to being the villain an audience could love to hate. You either pity the guy for the tragedy of his fall, or you're hoping he'll be redeemed somehow (as in Vader's case).

So they needed a villain. The problem with Snoke, and frankly anyone else, is that it begs the question of where that person has been for the last 50 years. We've already established that Vader and the Emperor worked together between Episodes III and IV to kill just about every force user of every kind. This was either because the force-user was a Jedi and a potential threat to the Emperor's rule, or the force-user was a dark side user and Vader believed it to be a threat to him and his job as Palpatine's apprentice. You'd have to lie pretty low to wait out that time and the film would have to establish where this guy was all that time.

And the problem with it would be that no matter how it's done, it would seem like retconning a character into existence. There's no backstory, no references in the comic books, nor is there even any precedent in the EU material. And in the absence of all that, you need to establish not only the character's back story but also how truly evil and how much of a threat he is. Otherwise he seems like some sort of "bad guy of the week". Imagine if Tolkien wrote a novel of the Fourth Age, and the villain was some Black Numenorian ruler or evil sorcerer. Sure, maybe he's an evil dude, but you couldn't help thinking that as bad as this guy was, he was no Sauron. Similarly, there's no one who could be quite as powerful, devious, or Machiavellian as old Palpatine. There's a slight chance you could pull it off, but the story needs to be told from Force Awakens onward, not crammed into the last film of a trilogy. Otherwise, it all seems anti-climactic at best.

So you have two options, you either bring back Palpatine, or maybe you introduce Darth Plagueis, since there's already a reference to him in Episode III and it's considered canon that he was Palpatine's master. It's pretty easy to make a case for him cheating death and hiding out somewhere waiting for his former apprentice to make a big mistake. But they chose not to go that route. Palpatine was probably an easier character to re-introduce, though I really believe that should have been done as the last scene of Last Jedi before the credits. That would have been huge, and it would have immediately made that movie much better. I know I would have walked out feeling a lot different than the way I did.

 

I’ve said it before: in my observation, the prophecy was just a narrative framing device George used as a simple demarcation for where his saga started and ended. It starts with discovering the prophesized chosen one and ends with that chosen one fulfilling the prophecy. There’s not much more to it than that. “Restoring balance” is just lofty language that means ‘good guys beat the bad guys’. It’s intentionally left ambiguous, I imagine.

George, at the time he began the prequels, wasn’t planning on making more Star Wars past Ep6. That was THE ending for him. So he created a contrivance that emphasized that finality. Even if he had been allowed to make the ST he wanted, he’d likely have undone that element himself in some way. I don’t hold that against anyone there at LFL.

I totally agree with @Jayson on that point. Any circumstance for these sequels would need the stakes raised high enough to justify themselves. ‘Good versus evil’ are the stakes of Star Wars. A sizeable conflict in those terms would certainly constitute an ‘imbalance’ of some kind. So you either diminish Anakin’s achievement and rustle folks, or you redefine Anakin’s role and rustle other folks. No win scenario. Best to have just ignored it altogether, I say. I’m honestly shocked they bothered bringing it up in TROS at all.

 

Lol @Jayson don't worry, TROS didn't ruin Star Wars for me! There's still a lot to love and enjoy with Star Wars, even in the parts I don't like. But TROS doesn't work on a LOT of levels for me; Palpatine and the Sith returning are simply one of them. Give it time, and I'm sure my views of it will level out so that I can say more neutral/good things about it than bad. But as it stands, this is how I see it.

The prophecy hit close to home because of my own personal faith. I always found it to be true, but not in the way the PT Jedi thought. In my mind, the PT Jedi (especially in TPM) didn't want the prophecy to be true because it means the Sith were still out there. This is seen in Mace's skepticism as well as in Qui-Gon's acceptance of the truth. Then when the Sith were relatively out in the open with Tyrannus and his mysterious master during AOTC and TCW, the Jedi thought it was Anakin's destiny to end the Sith there if he truly was the Chosen One. But we see in ROTS that he fails that.
And the ROTJ happens, and Vader does fulfill the prophecy. He - either through the actions of his children, by his own redemption and love of his children, or some combination - destroys Sidious, "kills Vader" by becoming Anakin again, and the Empire falls. The prophecy is fulfilled, but not in the way the PT Jedi thought it would be. Balance.
Peace is a fragile thing, I understand that. I also understood that if there were going to be stories going forward, there would need to be unrest. But the prophecy never speaks about brining peace to the galaxy, only destroying the Sith and bringing balance to the Force. So maybe there's a group out there who aren't looking to destabilize the Force, or maybe a group has wounded the Force, but there is still "balance." Or we're simply a post-prophecy world. What I didn't want was for the Sith to come back, negating the entire thing, and I definitely did not want Palpatine to return. He was so thoroughly defeated (by his pride, by his successor, by his plans falling apart, by the fact that the Rule of Two was fulfilled, but instead it fulfilled a Jedi prophecy instead from a certain point of view), it meant nothing to me when they brought him back; and meant nothing to me when he was defeated a second time (by the Jedi...again...and by his own blood, which makes it matter more for some reason?).

I believe there were ways to get around the prophecy of the Chosen One entirely - like I said before, make it a reoccurring thing, where every generation or so needs a Chosen One (like Avatar: The Last Airbender or Wheel of Time) to keep balance, and this time it's Rey*; or make it an ideal to strive for - the Sith have been defeated, now what does it mean to bring peace/balance?** Or twist it and say that the reason the prophecy was mistranslated was because that it was a Sith prophecy (their idea of balance is completely different), and that the Jedi was simply taken. So did Anakin fulfill it? Yes, because the Jedi's belief in it over the years made it come true for them (they were looking so hard for something that they eventually saw it). But it also can be filled again. Or maybe we're living in a post-prophecy world.

Overall, I would have been fine with recontextualization, not what amounts to me as retconning. Or heck, I would have even taken a refusal to use the Chosen One prophecy at all!

But that's just another point where we're probably going to have to agree to disagree.




*which could spin into future or past stories about Chosen One's who didn't feel comfortable wiping out Dark Side populations simply because they were told "it's your destiny."
**which then could play with the idea of "what if the Chosen One's peace to the galaxy meant a dictatorship, under the rule of the Chosen One (like what Anakain was going to attempt in ROTS)?"

@JCC Welcome to the Cantina! I guess my problem is that the Knights of Ren were a currently introduced and hyped up team that could have filled in the villain slot maybe not perfectly, but well enough (especially if they were going to turn on Kylo). But instead they were horrendously underused.

 

To be frankly honest...to me, Star Wars as a whole is "no wrong answer".

There's a LOT of different Star Wars' in everyone's heads.

Also. Abrams has always favored ambiguity and telling only the bare essentials of what you have to, so...guess I just expect that because it's his style.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

@Use the Falchion

See, I see Star Wars very differently than how you do.
Firstly, I don't see the prophecy as invalid.
The Sith were wiped out.
That doesn't mean no one ever can be a Sith.
It really wouldn't take a Jedi all that much work to recreate the Sith if they wanted to go rogue.

It's not like they can't find information, and relics still exist scattered about the galaxy, certainly.
It's not like every structure, text, artifact, or book went up in smoke when Palps died, and it's not like Anakin is the only single person in all history capable of flipping from Jedi to Sith. It doesn't even take someone else to corrupt a Jedi. Minds are good at that on their own - especially a lone Jedi. Power corrupts.

But there's something far more valuable than this prophecy for me.
What Star Wars is about allegorically.
Lucas and Kasdan have both spoken of it.

"Sins of the Father" is one way it gets expressed.
The bigger picture expressed is an ontological question.

Are we free to choose our path, or are we stuck with the one predefined for us?
Can we break a predefined inheritance, or in trying do we merely swing the pendulum the other way for a while, and those who come after us will swing it back again because of what WE did?

Are we truly breaking free of the endless cycle that repeats itself, or are we just reacting to what is being given to us through our rejection, and therefore simply provoking yet another rejection after us?

Are we not pushing our values upon those who come after us in our hopes of not being defined by the values given to us?

Are we breaking the cycle, or are we perpetuating it?

Anakin is predefined. So is Luke.
Neither escape it. They are trapped by it.
It's everywhere either of them turns - never free of their predefinition.
Anakin swings left. Luke swings right.
Neither break the pendulum.

Everything repeated.

And then, anew, everything repeated again because the pendulum wasn't broken.

Luke created Anakin again in Ben by trying to push his way onto Ben, and through his fear and attempt to stop it from happening, he only guaranteed its occurance and Ben rejected Luke's ways and embraced his Grandfather's ways which Luke had rejected.

This is where, for me, Palpatine is essential.
Palpatine was in the first incarnation of the cycle.
He was in the second incarnation.
He rose in one, fell in the other.

The representative of embracing the anger of rejecting your predefinition.

Rey and Ben break the pendulum.
They snap it in half.

Ben is predefined regardless of what he does - if he is good, Luke. If he turns bad, Anakin. If he turns back to good to save someone, Anakin.

But this time he dies, but the one he saves isn't his own. It's his family's enemy name he saves in his death.
There are no more of his cycle. They are gone. Cycle ended.

Rey breaks the cycle as well because she is predefined by Palpatine - evil incarnate, straight to the dark. Unable to resist. That is what Luke feared at first, and it's what Rey believed at first once learning of her inheritance. She immediately let it predefine her.

But she has been following Luke's narrative beats through TFA and TLJ, just as Ben had been following Anakin's.

But unlike Ben, she was following a path that did not belong to her by inheritance. She is not a Skywalker by birth, and is not predefined as one.

She is firstly aimless and unable to define herself, placing all of her self-identity upon being predefined by an inheritance. She envy's Ben for his.

Then in TLJ she learns how to define herself. To not rely upon a predefintion to know herself.

Because of that experience, when she faces her true dark inheritance and predefinition, she is able to reject it by using it.

Her Grandfather claims all of the Sith, while Rey rejects his ways by summoning every Jedi.

When she rejects it with a lightsaber X, Palpatine pushes even harder - like Luke with Ben; attempting to force his will, his way upon the next.
And like everyone who does so in the saga, it destroys him by consuming him.

Luke was consumed and destroyed spiritually by his attempt. Palpatine was consumed and destroyed physically.

Luke attoned and realized his mistake.
Palpatine did not.

And Rey walked away and chose to identify as Skywalker. Not "Just Rey", and not Palpatine.
But Skywalker.

She openly rejected her predefinition by walking another's path entirely, and embracing her inherited predefinition as a way to draw strength to embrace a different path than her inheritance.

She is 'Not like my Grandfather before me' by the combination of what both Palpatine and Skywalker has given her. The strength of power to do so, and the strength of will to do so.

If you take Palpatine out of this, then everything falls apart regarding the principle allegory of stuck cycles of inherited predefinition.

Then the prophecy becomes fruitless because all it does is trap Anakin and Luke into predefined destiny's.

With Rey, Ben, and Palpatine, the prophecy traps Anakin and Luke, and while they bring balance righting wrongs, Rey and Ben bring Nirvana from Samsara. An end to the restlessness of reincarnated inheritances of predefinition.

And it only works with Palpatine because Palpatine was the Skywalker's raging rejection.
To break the cycle, to snap the pendulum, the Skywalker's raging rejection needs to be incarnate again so that the Skywalker's raging rejection can reject itself - Palpatine can reject Palpatine. Rejection of rejection.

This sets the Force Of Others free from destiny and places it at the feet of choice.

Embrace who you are. Choose who you are. Choose who and what you value, not because of who you are.
Choose who and what you value because that defines who you are.

The Force of Others is not what builds you.
The Force of Others is what you build.

Take Palps out, and this whole allegory is meaningless dribble that never pays off.
It just hangs there unfinished as Luke and Anakin left it - only able to be trapped by your predefined inheritance through your rejection. Never a message of karmic freedom of self-defined will.

This means everything to me as Star Wars.
This is what it's about.
Everything else is good, but this is what everything revolves around and bends itself backwards to support.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Yeah, we see things completely differently. Which is fine! Even if I don't agree with your posts, I do love reading them!

And then for me in TLJ, Ben broke the cycle. He didn't care about any cycle, Sith, Jedi, the past, or pendulum. In a dark way, he surpassed Anakin by now ruling the Empire. In a dark way, he surpassed Vader by killing his master. That was exciting for me. Ben had decided to seize his own destiny, not one born out of abuse or a mythic cycle, but one defying it all.

Again, to me Ben broke the cycle. Rey's job is not to fix the cycle, but to start a new one, with the lessons of the past. Palpatine wasn't important to Rey or Ben, he was a relic of a bygone era. Palpatine's legacy was the First Order, if anything, and Ben took it upon himself to rule, not because it was his birthright, but because he wanted to break from the past and forge a new future.

But Rey is still a loved one for Ben, so the point is moot. If family is choice, like you're saying, the Ben chose her. And then he dies, like Anakin. I don't think his path was predefined; I think he could have lived in isolation, much like his namesake and master, but for a different reason (or a mirrored reason, which is just as interesting when done right). I believe Ben could have lived to atone, forging his own path with the echoes of those before him. He could have died a villain, unlike any Skywalker before him. There are ways to echo the cycle while still breaking it.

And yet the movie goes out of its way to say that Rey's parents weren't like her grandfather (if only to justify Kylo's "I wasn't lying I just wasn't telling the entire truth*"). So she doesn't have to be like him. She has choices: be evil, like your grandfather, be nobody for nobility, like your parents (which it turn would have been a great thing to bring up to Luke, about how after hearing/remembering her parents' story she now understands more of why he did what he did**), or she can forge her own path.

True-ish, that would have been the goal, had TROS not completely regressed and immediately put her in a predefined role, only for her to relearn this lesson again in TROS.

You're right I guess. I didn't see it as a rejection of his ways in the sense of "I am not you," but more as a response to his declaration.

I agree with this 100%. But that's what I don't get about Rey's name (another problem I have with this movie, but it's not for this thread). But Palpatine doesn't have to be present for this to have meaning. This theme would have worked just as well with Rey Nobody as well as Rey Palpatine.




*Which may have worked better if Kylo wasn't trying defend the previous statement. Maybe "It wasn't the full story. I was working with what you know. Let's combine it with what I now know to get a complete picture." Or maybe "Yeah sorry I was wrong, but I now know the whole truth!"
**To me reads that JJ didn't understand why Luke went to the island...where JJ placed him...Luke, like Obi-Wan and Yoda, was in hiding. But instead of training or watching over younger Jedi, Luke was trying to destroy the Jedi order because he saw the cycle it created. He was trying to break the cycle. Echoes of the past, but now with a different motive.

 

That's not actually true.

The entire world deals in absolutes... especially when it comes to religious organizations.

 

The funniest aspect of that quote is that it is, itself, an absolute.

 

Yes, that has been pointed out by several people.

I prefer to think that Obi-Wan meant, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes [in terms of allegiance].”

In other words, only a Sith could say, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy.” But anyone can say “Kamino is the only planet that makes this kind of weapon” or “You’re my only hope.”

 

If I remember right, it was George Lucas taking a deliberate stab at George W. Bush’s statement “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” It’s inherently dangerous to oversimplify a topic that demands nuance - reducing the argument to ‘us versus them’ and forcing an eternally grey subject into strict terms of black and white. It’s the sign of a mindset that’s no longer interested in resolving conflict, just beating an enemy.

Kenobi’s statement is really more addressed to himself though. It’s not so much a rebuttal, but an admission. He’s coming to the realization of what his friend has become. Anakin has embraced the Sith mentality and has turned into someone else. OB’s only saying out loud what he’s thinking.

Still though, it’s a pretty funny line. It’s like saying “I’m way more modest than you!” I don’t know. It tickles me.

 

Ditto.

(I know you've read me talk of some of this stuff elsewhere, but I'll say things anyway because it's relevant for context - there's a lot I'll write I know you don't need to have pointed out again.)

Actually, he didn't break the cycle here.
TLJ was ESB/AOTC, and TPM/ROTJ combined and chiastically responding.

The PT inverted everything that happened in the OT thematically.
The ST reverses instead of inverts.

The throne room is primarily reversing ROTJ's throne room.
In ROTJ, Luke denies the opportunity to rule with the emperor, which leads to his Father being emboldened to over-throw the emperor, ending the empire.

Here, Ben kills his master, like his grandfather, but takes up the ruling position instead of destroying the empire.

Thematically, this doesn't break the chiastic pattern at all, and the "break" is when the chiastic pattern does something that is against the "rules" and doesn't follow the previous pattern.

Ben making the opposite decision as his grandfather in the same situation isn't breaking the chiastic pattern - it's following it. That's actually the very definition of chiasm.

Rey doesn't have to fix the cycle. That's not what I meant. The cycle can't be fixed.
The point of Ben and Rey is to break the cycle.

This was clear from the first film because we have a chiastic breaking right at the beginning in that the antagonist and protagonist are of the same generation.
In previous trilogies it's always been one old generation and one younger generation.
Obi-Wan and Anakin. Luke and Vader.
Good was old. Bad was young. Good was young. Bad was old.
Now both good and bad are young. That right there is a reversal of the pattern. It's not actually a full breaking of the pattern, but it's a big lit siren pointing that we're heading for it - we're heading for a big collision between these two - Anakin's pattern and Luke's pattern.

Those two patterns never met before. They happened in turn, one after the other.
Now the patterns are running simultaneous and heading for a straight collision with each other.

In this series, Rey doesn't start anything. Maybe she does go off and do something, but not in this story. She doesn't do anything new chiastically until the very end, and what she does new are things which break the pattern and cut it off.
There's no narrative time where she starts a new story and sets up a new pattern.

But again, I want to be clear that both Ben and Rey break the cycle - I'm not saying only Rey breaks the cycle.

No. I'm not saying family is who you choose. That's not the pattern in Star Wars up to this point.
Friends are who you choose - not family.

Family are whom you are assigned and defined by in Star Wars' chiastic narrative pattern.
The difference here is that Vader died for his Son because he loved him.
In the PT, Anakin loved Padme and it caused his downfall, and he contributed to her death in his attempt to save her.

This time around, Ben died saving Rey because he loved her - as Anakin loved Padme, and Vader loved his Son.
But unlike the past, he dies to save his family's ancestral enemy.

That is a reversal of the previous. Before, the loved that was attempted to be saved was not the enemy.
Anakin became the enemy in his attempt to save Padme, and in the OT he saved his Son instead of choosing to remain his enemy.

This time around, Ben chooses to love his enemy, giving his life to save hers.

Correct, but we don't ever see their story. The chiatic narrative only concerns over what we see unfold narratively - not conceptually happened as a footnote of history in some narrative we never saw.

The chiastic relative there is Luke being told that his Father was a great warrior who fell to the dark side (or was killed by Vader - from a certain point of view).

The difference is that we've reversed this by saying that parents from a bad line rose to the light, instead of falling to the dark.

But that doesn't mean her parents broke the chiastic cycle. They just followed it from our narrative position.

She is absolutely, however, by the chiastic narrative's premise, predefined by Palpatine.
It's literally everywhere in TROS as a major thrust upon her to deal with - Leia even reminds her to stay centered upon embracing who she is. But Rey freaks out, anyway and has to come to terms with it.

The break she causes chiastically is that she is not a Skywalker, but she's been following Luke's chiastic narrative path - which is against the rules of the chiastic pattern style - and uses that path to reject her lineage's inheritance.

Previously, rejection of your inherited lineage, or predefined destiny, just caused strife, and liberation was through accepting your place in it.
"I am a Jedi, like my Father before me.", juxtaposed against Anakin riling against his predefined role of being a great Jedi, attempting to throw it away for love and family - which brought him nothing but suffering and sucked him exactly deeper into what he had expressed want to distance himself from.

This is a really common misconception. TROS doesn't undo TLJ at all.
Johnson, Abrams, and Terrio have all spoken that TROS wasn't written to undo anything, but instead builds upon TLJ and is only actually possible because of TLJ.

And this is true.
In TLJ, Rey learns to stand on her own and be self-defined. Upon learning of her true lineage and inheritance in TROS, she is shocked and at first she is shaken - thrown off balance. Pretty reasonable. I don't care how monastic someone gets with finding their inner self, finding out you're grandfather was Hitler would definitely shake you hard and cause you to fall off balance. But all that monastic training of finding your inner self would eventually help you recover your balance and remember that you are not chained to this definition - you are your own person.

This is exactly what Rey goes through and comes to the conclusion of. She falters. That doesn't mean TLJ was undone. That means she's an emotional character who has stuff to deal with, and only because of what she went through and learned in TLJ does she have the experience to surpass her predefinition as a Palpatine and stick with her own self-definition.

Had she gone from TFA straight to TROS, she would be absolutely stuck defined as Palpatine because in TFA she was obsessed with being defined by her lineage. She desperately wanted to know who her parents were because only then, in her mind, would she have worth and a place in the universe.
If THAT Rey had found out she was a Palpatine, she wouldn't have just had a falter and shock - she would have been absolutely sucked into the belief that she wouldn't be able to do anything to not be evil and would have resigned herself to Palpatine's will.

Only because of TLJ does Rey stand a chance in TROS.

The concept of "ways" in Star Wars' chiasm is to do things "like the other" that your chiastic inheritance comes from in the narrative.

For example, Finn "Big Time" follows Han's chiastic narrative, but he doesn't do much in Han's ways. He usually does just the opposite of Han's ways.

In Star Wars' chiastic narrative, usually everyone rejects their chiastic inheritance's "way" - or, said more simply, they reject their predecessor's ways (it's just that it's not right to say "predecessor" because it's more correct to say their chiastic partner).

In this case, Rey doesn't reject the way of Palpatine, but accepts it, and interestingly, chiastically, this actually enables the rejection, but what she is rejecting is Palpatine's invitation to reject her Skywalker path - her fake line - and accept him, her true path.

Which makes her rejection of Palpatine a rejection to rejection.
And that works really well since Palpatine is the icon of the rage of rejection which fuels your downfall with the lure of control.

No, it really wouldn't - not chiastically at all.

The chiastic pattern never allows anyone previously to self-define.
They either rise or fall, and all do come into their own (that is, grow up), but they do not self-define and choose who they are and what they value not because of who they are.

They choose specifically because of who they are.

They are chiastically stuck in their role.
The Force of Others, before, was the thing that built who you are and what you value.
With the chiastica break, and only because of TLJ coupling with TROS, the chiastic narrative thrust ends with Rey and Ben building the Force of Others by their choice.
It was the other way around before. You met who you needed along the way. You didn't choose them. Your rivals were your rivals. Your family was your family.
Attempts to change this tore you apart.

However, Ben and Rey chose each other - rivals. And together they forged their own Force of Others between the two of them.

And I want to bring that back up.
Rey isn't the sole breaker of the chiastic form. Ben breaks it as well.
It took both.
Ben's final actions, though still responding to his granfather's narrative, unravelled it and threw it off the rails more and more - climaxing in his death, which was the magnum opus of him breaking his chiastic narrative inheritance because he ended the Skywalkers.

Not Palpatine. No one took the line of Skywalkers from them. Ben gave it to his rival, whom he loved.
Which, by the way, refrains a lesser theme of TLJ. "Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love."

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Many people have pointed out this parallel, but it’s worth noting that GL semi-denied it:

“When I wrote it [Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith], Iraq didn't exist… We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam… The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable…”

My understanding is that GL claims it is a general political statement but not a reference to any one real situation.

 

I always assumed it was just another small hint that the Jedi order and dogma had been corrupted.

One of the last of the Jedi, hypocritically accusing a Sith of the very same thing he was doing (even if, as @SegNerd points out, this may be a bit too literal of an interpretation of it).

 

Rey already knew who she was and who her parents were from the very first moment we meet her, but she was so traumatized from them abandoning her that she'd psychologically cconvinced herself otherwise.

The reason that the revelations about her connection to Palpatine work - and why they don't contradict either TFA or TLJ - is that they hinge entirely on the very exchange in TLJ that people think demonstrates the exact opposite.