Somehow Rey Returned

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There was a pathway where Osment, then Heath Ledger, could have both played Anakin. The scripts weren't the best in the PT, but I believe both actors could have elevated the material more than Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen.
To the latter’s credit, they gave the exact performances Lucas asked them to give. I’ve seen Christensen do incredibly good work, and seen him sigh at some of the Star Wars scenes. “Why did they go with that take?” and stories of “George kept saying “Faster! More Intense!”

I don’t care if you’re Peter O’Toole or Orson Welles, I doubt ANY actor could have pulled off lines like “are you an angel?”, “let‘s try spinning! That’s a good trick!”, and “now this is podracing!”

Poor kid was dealt a bad hand.
You don't, unless you first use that "Many Worlds" plot device that people have been mentioning. I normally hate multiverses, but in this case it could actually do some good for a change
The one time a multiverse is asked for is the one franchise that doesn’t do it.
 
Okay, legit question.

Yes, we know the ST disappointed many.

So, that said, if you’re in Disney‘s shoes, how do you move forward with Rey from there?
Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. It's the only way....

E.g. for me it's an act of insanity to go anywhere near the ST, and I cringed when Mandalorian was going there. Especially when there's no need. Not everything has to be explained in detail, like the trackers bounty hunters use. We all know the disaster of midichlorians.

The ST exists, no show should go within 5 years of it. It's enough that Imperials are still roaming around, sulking, plotting, which makes sense that not all of them were stamped out, any more than I think all the Jedi got wiped out.

It's a big galaxy. Do something else.
 
Okay, legit question.

Yes, we know the ST disappointed many.

So, that said, if you’re in Disney‘s shoes, how do you move forward with Rey from there?
I'd do nothing with Rey. I'd avoid the ST era altogether. Best they could do is set it long enough after TROS that Rey has died of old age or of some other reason, and her apprentice is the master of a new Jedi academy.
Have the villains be something new with no links to the FO or Empire.
 
So maybe she's naturally stronger in the force than Kylo, and was able to use it to get the upper hand at the end. Kylo was not a truth Sith after all, and was clearly emotionally unbalanced with some anger issues, so probably isn't the best person to judge anything against.
How do u explain the lightsaber?
 
Okay, legit question.

Yes, we know the ST disappointed many.

So, that said, if you’re in Disney‘s shoes, how do you move forward with Rey from there?
Make her relatable but I’d make her kinda a lost jedi trying to find other jedi and struggling to go train and keep them together
 
Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. It's the only way....


It's difficult, but not quite totally impossible.

Go "hard R" This washes out the "Mary Sue" problem. Get a charismatic villain that has lead a movie before on their own ( someone like Joaquin Phoenix, where they are the real lead of the film and not Ridley) Have a couple of *** scenes.

Star Wars under the current regime fails at making "family friendly" that works. I know Robert Rodriguez gets lots of crap here sometimes, but the Spy Kid series is really a blueprint on how to make live action "family friendly" stuff work. The two core mandates under Kennedy are incongruent. You can't make family friendly and woke at the same time. You can't make Rey a victim and empowered at the same time. That's total insanity.

It's the tragic irony of the sequel trilogy. When Kathleen Kennedy is shouting to the mountain tops that "The Force Is Female", she's talking about women in the universe and world building having real agency and real choices. Having a choice doesn't mean you get ALL possible variations of those choices all at once. But that's the contradiction that the writing can't get around. Rey can't be representative of a victim of the galactic "patriarchy" and also being uniquely and perpetually empowered, while both are happening at the exact same time.

It's a violation of basic fundamental storytelling.

Why does being a "strong woman" in the Star Wars universe require going hand in hand with diminishing or insulting the male characters? Why can't both be strong in different ways? I.E. complementary strengths instead of outright competition? It's like Kennedy has lost the basic understanding of how "teamwork" operates.

If you want to appeal to an already weary audience, that something is different, you have to give them a presentation of something contrarian to their held expectations of previous mediocrity. That's going hard R.

You can't make good Star Wars without taking the risk of offending someone. The modern audience has become more sophisticated compared to when the original trilogy came out.
 
I have to disagree about it diminishing Vader, however. I know Anakin was totally different to what people were expecting/wanting, but he had to be a normal, relatable (yes, even whiny) kid for his transformation to have weight. I concede it was still a leap too far for many folk.
I dunno, Prime; do you really believe we had to see him grow up on screen in order for us to feel the weight of his tragedy? We didn't need to see a character like Michael Corleone as a kid squealing "Yippee!" - or as a teen courting Kay by letting her know about his displeasure with sand for getting in his butt crack - in order to believe that he was a good, decent, and normal man before selling his soul for revenge, greed, and power.

In two movies, Coppola accomplished with Michael what his buddy George had six movies to do with Anakin/Vader. Two movies (two of the greatest ever). One movie did all that was needed to portray Michael as an upstanding man who Kay had fallen in love with despite her disdain for the family business. The other movie gave us a profound view of that man transforming all the way to the point of having his own brother killed.

We had already seen Anakin die to save his son and prove that he was indeed the "good friend" and honorable man that Kenobi described him as in ANH. I don't agree with the argument that we wouldn't be able to feel the tragedy of his turn if we didn't see him grow up. And as for needing him to be whiny, I think that's nonsense, tbh.

It's fine for Luke to be a whiny 20-year-old because we don't need to believe that Luke ends up occupying a Vader suit and giving off a natural and effortless commanding/lordly persona. If you only showed me clips of OT Vader with no context and then showed me clips of OT Luke and told me he grows up to be that character, I'd laugh at that too. It just wouldn't work in terms of intuitive congruency. The man in the Vader suit is calculated, cerebral, and in total control. For me, PT Anakin just simply does not work as a believable candidate to transition into that OT Vader.

A good-guy Anakin should still be able to make you pee yourself a little when he gets angry. He needs to be someone we can take seriously. There are plenty of people in this world who give off that vibe and are still good, kind, and decent individuals who are easy to sympathize with. But turning evil doesn't magically imbue someone with those qualities; you either have it or you don't.
 
How do u explain the lightsaber?
I'm not taking sides, but I do find it annoying that people think Rey should have been completely clueless with respect to wielding a lightsaber when it was already established that she could handle herself just fine with her staff. Growing up a scavenger & having to defend herself (& probably fight off others vying for the same spare parts), she obviously would have developed some combat skills. That said, in her TFA battle with injured Kylo it was still apparent that (a) she had no actual technique to speak of and (b) he could have dispatched her easily upon having her trapped, leaning perilously over a gaping crevasse, if not for telling her she needed a teacher and then pausing interminably so she had ample time to turn herself over to the Force. Now I do think they overdid it from that point on; the Force controlling her actions should have been just enough to let her fight back adequately to facilitate an escape - she shouldn't have defeated Kylo like she did, regardless of his injuries or emotional state.
 
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I'm not taking sides, but I do find it annoying that people think Rey should have been completely clueless with respect to wielding a lightsaber when it was already established that she could handle herself just fine with her staff. Growing up a scavenger & having to defend herself (& probably fight off others vying for the same spare parts), she obviously would have developed some combat skills.
Yeah, I thought they established that quite well, actually. My problem (and it's a nitpick but a problem nonetheless) is that handling a staff is quite different from handling a sword or épée -- I've had some small amount of training with both types of weapons.

I'll give them this -- she did a lot of thrusting with the lightsaber and it makes sense to attack this way given her weapon of choice prior was a staff, with both range and thrusting capability. Some fans compared her style to Palpatine's but I was thinking along more practical lines.
 
I'm not taking sides, but I do find it annoying that people think Rey should have been completely clueless with respect to wielding a lightsaber when it was already established that she could handle herself just fine with her staff. Growing up a scavenger & having to defend herself (& probably fight off others vying for the same spare parts), she obviously would have developed some combat skills. That said, in her TFA battle with injured Kylo it was still apparent that (a) she had no actual technique to speak of and (b) he could have dispatched her easily upon having her trapped, leaning perilously over a gaping crevasse, if not for telling her she needed a teacher and then pausing interminably so she had ample time to turn herself over to the Force. Now I do think they overdid it from that point on; the Force controlling her actions should have been just enough to let her fight back adequately to facilitate an escape - she shouldn't have defeated Kylo like she did, regardless of his injuries or emotional state.
Well i understand she could carry a weapon but I don’t like is that she could beat a main villain who had more practice than her with ease. That makes her and the villian look awful. Not only did she beat him she scarred him. A better question I should have asked is how does she beat an advanced lightsaber fighter in her first ever lightsaber fight.
 
Well i understand she could carry a weapon but I don’t like is that she could beat a main villain who had more practice than her with ease. That makes her and the villian look awful. Not only did she beat him she scarred him. A better question I should have asked is how does she beat an advanced lightsaber fighter in her first ever lightsaber fight.
Now that's a good point and I have another real world experience as an example.

I was an amateur fighter. Not exceptional in any way -- won some, lost some -- but experienced enough. After I retired from fighting due to age I took up fencing out of curiosity.

I had held swords before, even had 'duels' with other people who had little or no formal training that came down to athleticism (timing, reflexes and all that jazz) -- so I was already fit with decent timing, eyes and athleticism, relatively calm under attack.

First time I picked up a foil and faced my formally trained and experienced instructor, he showed me how quickly I would die.

Very, very quickly.

So on the one hand I want to hand wave Rey's duel away as her being an experienced fighter using the unfamiliar lightsaber as a staff (for thrusting) against a badly wounded opponent.

But now you have me remembering how utterly useless I was against a trained, competitive fencer that knew what he was doing in spite of years of combat sports. :unsure:
 
Now that's a good point and I have another real world experience as an example.

I was an amateur fighter. Not exceptional in any way -- won some, lost some -- but experienced enough. After I retired from fighting due to age I took up fencing out of curiosity.

I had held swords before, even had 'duels' with other people who had little or no formal training that came down to athleticism (timing, reflexes and all that jazz) -- so I was already fit with decent timing, eyes and athleticism, relatively calm under attack.

First time I picked up a foil and faced my formally trained and experienced instructor, he showed me how quickly I would die.

Very, very quickly.

So on the one hand I want to hand wave Rey's duel away as her being an experienced fighter using the unfamiliar lightsaber as a staff (for thrusting) against a badly wounded opponent.

But now you have me remembering how utterly useless I was against a trained, competitive fencer that knew what he was doing in spite of years of combat sports. :unsure:
Lol that’s true. I’m just looking at from a heroes journey standpoint. As a writer myself it’s always important to create a relatable and compelling character who goes through certain situations and struggles. The greatest characters ever written have lost or struggled greatly before they won. Spider-Man for example is popular because he fights and sometimes loses. Batman is popular because he’s a man against impossible odds.
I think the only overpowered character people love is Superman but he even has a weakness.
 
But again I really wanted a woman jedi protagonist. I thought it was a brilliant idea. A step in a new direction. I just don’t like how Hollywood seems to be that a woman can’t struggle in order to be successful she has to always be better and greater. That’s not good writing. So yea they need to change course if they go this direction again
 
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