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It'll probably come down to her being Darth Vader reincarnated.

Hmmm...

We're off to Canto Bight, a Casino City/World.

Could Rey's parents be gamblers that lost her to Unkar Plut? Gives a whole new inflection to his 'that's mine' declaration when they nick off in the Falcon?


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It'd also add some serious angst to her character, giving her more of a key to the dark side?

Doubt Rey has anything to do with Canto Bight. She'll be training with Luke.

From the trailer, looks like her angst will come from Luke's bitterness.

 Manchu wrote:
It'll probably come down to her being Darth Vader reincarnated.

I hope that isn't the case, but I'm somewhat afraid that it is. It'd be a way of making her a Skywalker (which she has to be, because that saber represents the Skywalker clan, not the Kenobis or whomever), but present it as a "twist" that avoids the obvious scenario.

I say just make it the obvious scenario. There's nothing wrong with stories about parents and children.

Let's not forget that lightsaber spent over 18 years in Obi-wans possession. Longer than Anakin's and Luke's combined.
Even though it wasn't Obi-wan's light saber, we shouldn't use that to discount it "calling" to Rey

 Galef wrote:

Rey needs to be Luke's daughter, preferably also Obi-Wan's granddaughter too (see his relationship with Satine from the clone wars, old Ben totally could have had a daughter that grows up to be Luke's wife)


-

If Obi-Wan had a child with Satine, and I think its likely, then more than likely it would be Satine's 'Nephew' Korkie. Firstly he's of the right age, a problem with her and he having a daughter Luke would marry unless he was into much older women. Secondly he has some elements of how he looks in common with Obi. And most importantly, there is no 3rd Kryze child that we see. There is Satine and there is Bo-Katan. Bo-Katan, being the right hand woman of Pre Viszla's Death Watch I doubt would be willing to leave her son in the hands of the apparent minority Pacifist group. Maybe the general populace, ie people like the Protectors just surviving, or she would have taken him with her to the Death Watch. Satine wouldn't have kept him and claimed him to be her illegitimate love child with a Jedi Knight, because well... It would be an illegitimate love child with a Jedi Knight. It would be something that would ruin Obi-Wan's career and stain her position with quite the scandal. But claiming its her nephew? Im sure they could fudge some records.

But, that doesn't discount Rey from being Obi-Wan's Great-granddaughter, the daughter of his illegitimate son. Why is she not on Mandalore or with the Clans? Maybe after the Death of his Aunt he fled, or left at some point between Episode 3 and 4.

All of that is very unlikely, but still.

This is why R 1 was better. Enough with the "who's your daddy!" Jedi crap.

 Frazzled wrote:
This is why R 1 was better. Enough with the "who's your daddy!" Jedi crap.

But who is your daddy and what does he do?

I really hope this film repairs the hack job the first film did with the characters. Rey was terrible in the first film by suddenly being able to do things without proper explanation like prior protagonists (there was a reason for the Skywalkers doing the things they did, even if it was so simple as a line being dropped), and either rebuilding Kylo Ren as a villain or perhaps making them switch. Rey falls to the Dark Side and Ren turns to the light, which IMO would be a good development. Finn also could really use anything at this point. I like Boyega as an actor but he's just not given anything to work with in TFA and hopefully that changes with the ESB writer coming back.

 Manchu wrote:
@Gorgon - solid points, keep in mind we didn't even know Palpatine had anything to do with the Sith until TPM (it didn't seem to be the case in the early Darkhorse comics, such as Dark Empire)

@LoH - well she's about as effective in TFA as Boba Fett is in RotJ

Nah. Boba Fett knew how to get invited to exclusive parties with high profile gangsters. Phasma can't even get into the office Christmas party without everyone rolling their eyes.

At least Boba Fett went down fighting. He didn't squeal like a piggy and then let the heroes throw him down a trash compactor without a fight.

Maybe the Force is going all The Happening or Legion on sapientkind with wave after wave of homicidal force users, each stronger than the last.

 gorgon wrote:
(Yes, let's ignore the EU for the purposes of this discussion. )

Now that you mention it, it's easy to forget how little we knew of even the Jedi after the original trilogy. TESB established things about their philosophy and ways. But it was in the prequels where our knowledge was filled out, and where the Jedi became more cartoonishly earnest, emotionless, and chaste. I *think* the prequels tried to suggest that the Jedi had lost their way somewhat, but it was undermined by portraying Anakin as a impetulant, whiny brat rather than a regular guy chafing against oppressive, silly rules for legit reasons.

The Sith were almost a completely blank slate. Sure, Vader and Palpatine were bad guys, and the Dark Side was presented as something negative, but I don't think it meant that all the Sith were necessarily mustache-twirling villains.

Perhaps this film is about resetting our understanding, and using some narrative jiu-jitsu to show that the silly stuff we saw about the Jedi and Sith in the prequels represented two organizations that had become extremist and forgetful of important truths. Luke would be the perfect person to navigate this. In fact, it seems almost obvious once you think about it.

Regarding the underlined, someone (I don't remember who) put it this way in a previous Star Wars thread we had: The problem with the idea of balance in the Force is that, while the Sith are Evil, the Jedi are not actually Good. The Jedi were more about maintaining balance in the Force. It's hard to maintain balance on a seesaw when one person sits on one end (the Sith), and the other person only sits in the middle (the Jedi).

The problem with the idea of balance in the Force is that, while the Sith are Evil, the Jedi are not actually Good. The Jedi were more about maintaining balance in the Force. It's hard to maintain balance on a seesaw when one person sits on one end (the Sith), and the other person only sits in the middle (the Jedi).

As I might point out the idea that the Jedi are about "balance" is this really cheesy shoe horn George Lucas kept trying to shove into the franchise in his last few years, and that anyone with a moral compass more complex than an eight-year-old is capable of picking to pieces.

It's one of the reasons why Star Wars internal ideology is actually completely bonkers. The Sith are evil because they're encouraged to be selfish, power hungry, and abuse the force*. The Jedi are balanced because they're encouraged to be selfless, not pursue personal power, and respect the force as some kind of god entity that guides them. Wait what? All of those seem like unquestionably good things. How is that "balanced" on a scale of black and white morality? I mean sure maybe they're more balanced personality wise but any attempt to proclaim the Jedi as "not paragons of goodness" falls on deaf ears the first chance the Jedi get to go out of their way and rescue someone just cause. And that's really just if you buy into the Jedi as serious about all that. If you instead turn it around and frame the Jedi as massive hypocrites, then both the Sith and the Jedi are different brands of evil and the rest of the galaxy is held helplessly hostage in a millennia long civil war between evil space wizards, with the Jedi simply being preferable because their brand of tyranny doesn't involve mass murder and slavery (except when it does).

There's been a bit of back petal on this in recent Star Wars material, most notably the character of Bendu in Star Wars: Rebels. The writers seemed to realize how much Lucas was butchering the concept of Dharma and no one was buying into it either because it was too confusing or too transparently false. Now the Jedi are the Good, the Sith are the Bad, and the middle is occupied by some lone alien on a deserted planet who likes playing mind games. Of course they still managed to feth that up because despite Bendu constant protestations about how he was "the one in the middle" he pretty much always sided with the good guys when it counted and only ever uttered his middleness as an excuse to do nothing which makes him more morally hypocritical than enlightened.

But this is Star Wars, and it always worked best when operating on a more black and white scale of idealism, so maybe people should stop trying to randomly shoehorn in the gray when none of the plots or story lines of the franchise outside Drew Karpyshyn are really built for it.

And this is why the internal ideology of Star Wars is bonkers, and people really shouldn't put that much thought into it

*I want a cross over of Code Geass and Star War by the way. Lelouch would have some harsh words for the rhetoric this universe runs on

 Galef wrote:
If Rey is an immaculate birth, reincarnation, or some other contrived new "chosen one", I am not going to be happy.
That would put this new trilogy lower than the prequels in my mind.

But... its pretty clear she IS a Chosen One. Complete with nonsense orphan origin.

So far with TFA, she's a trope, not a character.

Rey needs to be Luke's daughter, preferably also Obi-Wan's granddaughter too (see his relationship with Satine from the clone wars, old Ben totally could have had a daughter that grows up to be Luke's wife)
Come to think of it, this could be the AMAZABALLZ reveal for the movie, because it requires a bit of elaboration for movie goers that are not familiar with the (canon) Clone Wars.
It would also explain why Rey is so darn good. She has a distilled force heritage.

This would be fairly ridiculous nonsense. It pretty much doubles down on ridiculous nonsense. Not only does it invent a plot-central character out of thin air for a trope-filled 'reveal,' it also reinforces the idea that the sum total of the OT's characters is to be terrible parents who abandon or give up on their children. And since Joss Whedon isn't involved, that seems unlikely.

As far as the audience goes, it would just be a confusion point. It wouldn't require elaboration, it would require the entire story from ground zero. Why Ben was randomly bonking people (and apparently, also abandoned his daughter), why she was a secret, why Luke would have met and married her, why they both abandoned Chosen Girl and so on and so on. As for distilled force heritage, it would also have to explain (and justify) that. It's too much, and too darn silly.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I prefer Rey's parents to be nobodies. That she's just a naturally powerful Force user - and they didn't know how to handle her, so ditched her.

Ditto. It's a midichlorian situation- it doesn't need explanation beyond 'natural talent,' and an explanation would likely anger the die hards and lose the casuals.

This trailer didn't really get me much more excited than I was with the first. It's like my excitement for these movies has kind of leveled off. It looks like it could be good, but i'm really hoping this feels like it's own movie instead of a rehash of previous ideas for a younger generation like the last two. The last two movies succeeded pretty well in reeling in a new fresh generation of youth. But I feel like those movies safe and lacking in atmosphere and rogue one had incredibly weak characters.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
(Yes, let's ignore the EU for the purposes of this discussion. )

Now that you mention it, it's easy to forget how little we knew of even the Jedi after the original trilogy. TESB established things about their philosophy and ways. But it was in the prequels where our knowledge was filled out, and where the Jedi became more cartoonishly earnest, emotionless, and chaste. I *think* the prequels tried to suggest that the Jedi had lost their way somewhat, but it was undermined by portraying Anakin as a impetulant, whiny brat rather than a regular guy chafing against oppressive, silly rules for legit reasons.

The Sith were almost a completely blank slate. Sure, Vader and Palpatine were bad guys, and the Dark Side was presented as something negative, but I don't think it meant that all the Sith were necessarily mustache-twirling villains.

Perhaps this film is about resetting our understanding, and using some narrative jiu-jitsu to show that the silly stuff we saw about the Jedi and Sith in the prequels represented two organizations that had become extremist and forgetful of important truths. Luke would be the perfect person to navigate this. In fact, it seems almost obvious once you think about it.

Regarding the underlined, someone (I don't remember who) put it this way in a previous Star Wars thread we had: The problem with the idea of balance in the Force is that, while the Sith are Evil, the Jedi are not actually Good. The Jedi were more about maintaining balance in the Force. It's hard to maintain balance on a seesaw when one person sits on one end (the Sith), and the other person only sits in the middle (the Jedi).

In the prequels the Jedi were about control. No real difference to the sith.

 LordofHats wrote:

The problem with the idea of balance in the Force is that, while the Sith are Evil, the Jedi are not actually Good. The Jedi were more about maintaining balance in the Force. It's hard to maintain balance on a seesaw when one person sits on one end (the Sith), and the other person only sits in the middle (the Jedi).

As I might point out the idea that the Jedi are about "balance" is this really cheesy shoe horn George Lucas kept trying to shove into the franchise in his last few years, and that anyone with a moral compass more complex than an eight-year-old is capable of picking to pieces.

It's one of the reasons why Star Wars internal ideology is actually completely bonkers. The Sith are evil because they're encouraged to be selfish, power hungry, and abuse the force*. The Jedi are balanced because they're encouraged to be selfless, not pursue personal power, and respect the force as some kind of god entity that guides them. Wait what? All of those seem like unquestionably good things. How is that "balanced" on a scale of black and white morality? I mean sure maybe they're more balanced personality wise but any attempt to proclaim the Jedi as "not paragons of goodness" falls on deaf ears the first chance the Jedi get to go out of their way and rescue someone just cause. And that's really just if you buy into the Jedi as serious about all that. If you instead turn it around and frame the Jedi as massive hypocrites, then both the Sith and the Jedi are different brands of evil and the rest of the galaxy is held helplessly hostage in a millennia long civil war between evil space wizards, with the Jedi simply being preferable because their brand of tyranny doesn't involve mass murder and slavery (except when it does).

There's been a bit of back petal on this in recent Star Wars material, most notably the character of Bendu in Star Wars: Rebels. The writers seemed to realize how much Lucas was butchering the concept of Dharma and no one was buying into it either because it was too confusing or too transparently false. Now the Jedi are the Good, the Sith are the Bad, and the middle is occupied by some lone alien on a deserted planet who likes playing mind games. Of course they still managed to feth that up because despite Bendu constant protestations about how he was "the one in the middle" he pretty much always sided with the good guys when it counted and only ever uttered his middleness as an excuse to do nothing which makes him more morally hypocritical than enlightened.

But this is Star Wars, and it always worked best when operating on a more black and white scale of idealism, so maybe people should stop trying to randomly shoehorn in the gray when none of the plots or story lines of the franchise outside Drew Karpyshyn are really built for it.

And this is why the internal ideology of Star Wars is bonkers, and people really shouldn't put that much thought into it

*I want a cross over of Code Geass and Star War by the way. Lelouch would have some harsh words for the rhetoric this universe runs on

Uh, you are aware right that balance is actually total removal of the Sith right? According to George Lucas himself the Sith and the Dark Side is a tumor. It isn't supposed to exist. "Balance" is the Sith being completely wiped out and only the light side, which is the true force, reigning. Anakin Skywalker wasn't supposed to butcher the Jedi Order to bring balance to the Force, just killing Palpatine, Maul, and Dooku would have done that.

 Wyzilla wrote:


Uh, you are aware right that balance is actually total removal of the Sith right? According to George Lucas himself the Sith and the Dark Side is a tumor. It isn't supposed to exist. "Balance" is the Sith being completely wiped out and only the light side, which is the true force, reigning.

I'm aware that's what George Lucas said.

I'm also aware that cutting off the right leg so you can just stand on your left is a balls to the walls insane idea of what "balance" looks like.

Lucas managed to make it even more complicated by throwing in a "super good" to offset the Dark Side in his quest to make the Jedi the moral middle, and that super good displayed it's overt and inherent destructive super goodness by choosing to do nothing to prevent evil from taking over the galaxy until Obi-Wan convinced it to stop sitting on its butt, while correspondingly linking the Jedi to some "wise" old fart who's idea of balance was doing nothing to prevent imbalance at all. And to top it off, this highly "moral" tale concluded with the super good being the only one among the three who could be called heroic, while the other two just constituted mustache twirling and the enlightened high ground of "my one kid is clearly evil but if I stop him my one kid who is clearly good will take over and the universe will become overbearingly selfless and peaceful" (because that somehow constitutes a negative thing in George Lucas' mind... being selfless and peaceful... like all the heroes in this story happen to kind of be).

EDIT EDIT: Oh and that's without even touching the inanely disturbing evil of "the light side is the only true force, all other philosophies must be PURGED and then all will be right with the force." Yeah that sounds balanced

And that nonsensical ham stab at philosophy is still canon

Like a Disney exec making a movie, I'm going to continue ignoring EU "canon."

To me, the Force is just the Force. People can tap into it with good or bad intentions. Those intentions aren't present in the Force itself.

"Jedi" doesn't describe anything about the Force. Rather, that's a school of thought about the Force. Same goes for the Sith. Bringing balance to the Force wouldn't have anything to do with killing X Jedi knights or Y Sith lords.

Lucas is the one who tried to enforce the inane idea of the force being morally absolutist, and indeed Disney has been backpedaling on that to go back to something a bit less ham-handed. The EU more often than not treated the Force as a force, with the Jedi and Sith (among others) being philosophical approaches to how to handle it. EDIT: Especially in the later years when Star Wars fic started becoming slightly post-modernist in tone. Lucas for whatever reason got super bitter about that, among other things, and spent most of his final years trying to ham hand the Force into being morally absolutist, and generally botching it up by displaying a remarkable lack of capacity for philosophy beyond "evil is evil because it is evil and good is good because it is good."

I remember Lucas saying, maybe in a director's commentary, that 'balance' didn't mean parity or equality, it meant something more like clarity. Making the good clearly distinct from the bad. The problem for the Jedi was they had lost clarity, and couldn't
see the Sith Lord working his way up through the Senate.

I can kind of see what Lucas is saying here, but ultimately as an explanation it sucks pretty bad. If you can only make sense of something by saying a word means something totally different to what everyone took that word to mean, you have a problem.

Personally, to me it's just another chosen one prophecy, and so I'm gonna try and ignore it as best I can like I do almost all prophecy. In fact, prophecy is another thing I should put in that thread about things we hate about movies.

 LordofHats wrote:
I'm also aware that cutting off the right leg so you can just stand on your left is a balls to the walls insane idea of what "balance" looks like.

Balls to the walls? Multiple walls? Either you're standing in a corner when you achieve that feat, or you sir belong in all the record books.

It's nonsensical, like George Lucas' constant attempts to make Star Wars a deep philosophical commentary

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
Looks decent to me, not seeing what all the nerd-ranting is about. To anyone gaking on TFA and the trailer for TLJ, go back and watch the absolute messes that are episodes 1-3.

Why? In what possible way does the abortion that are the prequel movies justify the abortion that was TFA? It doesn't, your argument is apologist nonsense.

Besides, even despite how terrible the prequels are, you can at least appreciate on some level that they were an original concept created with the intention of telling a specific story- George's story, for better or worse. The prequels for all their faults (of which they are legion) weren't designed-by-committee sterile trash that was created from a series of check-lists to be as safe and generic as humanly possible. There was more thought put into creating the universe then "will this cash in on the nostalgia from the first set of films"?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:


I think the obvious problem, of course, is that we all expect a "twist". And it is equally obvious that we're supposed to expect it to be related to Rey's parentage.

Yes, because that's what the Disney MO has conditioned us to believe with their behavior thus far. There will be a twist because the writers lack the creativity to diverge from the OT that much. As far as what it'll be... any man's guess. I wouldn't be surprised if the twist was about Kylo specifically more then Rey.

What I see definitely not happening is the teased Rey/Kylo team up. It's obvious that the two of them weren't even in the same room when the trailer showed them talking at the end. It's a red herring for sure.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:


Uh, you are aware right that balance is actually total removal of the Sith right? According to George Lucas himself the Sith and the Dark Side is a tumor. It isn't supposed to exist. "Balance" is the Sith being completely wiped out and only the light side, which is the true force, reigning.

I'm aware that's what George Lucas said.

I'm also aware that cutting off the right leg so you can just stand on your left is a balls to the walls insane idea of what "balance" looks like.

Lucas managed to make it even more complicated by throwing in a "super good" to offset the Dark Side in his quest to make the Jedi the moral middle, and that super good displayed it's overt and inherent destructive super goodness by choosing to do nothing to prevent evil from taking over the galaxy until Obi-Wan convinced it to stop sitting on its butt, while correspondingly linking the Jedi to some "wise" old fart who's idea of balance was doing nothing to prevent imbalance at all. And to top it off, this highly "moral" tale concluded with the super good being the only one among the three who could be called heroic, while the other two just constituted mustache twirling and the enlightened high ground of "my one kid is clearly evil but if I stop him my one kid who is clearly good will take over and the universe will become overbearingly selfless and peaceful" (because that somehow constitutes a negative thing in George Lucas' mind... being selfless and peaceful... like all the heroes in this story happen to kind of be).

EDIT EDIT: Oh and that's without even touching the inanely disturbing evil of "the light side is the only true force, all other philosophies must be PURGED and then all will be right with the force." Yeah that sounds balanced

And that nonsensical ham stab at philosophy is still canon

It's not really Lucas' fault that the only way you can think of "balance" is in the form of a scale, when there are more ways then that.

Unfortunately that's what balance is, and he made it a matter of scale by his own hand so...

 LordofHats wrote:
Unfortunately that's what balance is, and he made it a matter of scale by his own hand so...

The Force is Zoroastrianism. All you need to know is that the other side is evil and that the natural state of the world means that it doesn't exist. The two sides are mostly equal however and thus the struggle to quash the other will be great, but it will eventually be accomplished.


...And then that all got gakked up by TFA Having the Sith pop back.

 LordofHats wrote:
Really hoping Phasma isn't as much of a pushover in this one as she was in the last one. This series ain't going to continue the long tradition of great B villains without some help

She's got her comic series running right now that picks up where she gets out of the garbage while the base is starting to explode. She went back to the computer to delete the logs of her lowering the shields, found out someone already accessed them, and is trying to hunt him down before he can tell anyone. Shenanigans ensue.

That's not how Zorastrianism works. Beating Angra Mainyu (worldly evil) doesn't end the existence of Druhj (deceit, cosmic evil more or less) and Zorastrianism posits that a return to the perfect order of the first plant from which the universe derived is impossible even after Angra Maiyu is defeated. Ahura Mazda isn't all powerful and is incapable of restoring things completely to their full unity as they were in the beginning, and even after Angra Mainyu's defeat Druhj would still exist in the universe. EDIT: Eh "could" still exist. These particular sections of Zorastrian scripture are either fragmented or exceptionally confusing because the theological conceptions of Zorastrianism rely on massive amounts of word play from long dead languages and pieces that gak together is stuff people have spent their lives failing to do. And that's all kind of beside the point anyway cause Asha isn't "good" in Zorastrianism and Druhj isn't really evil in the way we think about it. There's no moral battle in the religion, just an existential conflict between primordial order and entropy.

Which is oddly fitting for this conversation

...And then that all got gakked up by TFA Having the Sith pop back.

I don't think TFA really gakked it up because functionally Kylo Ren isn't Sith (not like Vader anyway...) and even if he was it wouldn't really invalidate the duality version of the force as depicting a grand battle between cosmic good and cosmic evil. Either way, the duality version is better than the messed up trinity Lucas tried generating in Clone Wars so more power to the TFA from me.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
It doesn't, your argument is apologist nonsense.

You accused someone of being an apologist. For a movie.

Besides, even despite how terrible the prequels are, you can at least appreciate on some level that they were an original concept created with the intention of telling a specific story- George's story, for better or worse. The prequels for all their faults (of which they are legion) weren't designed-by-committee sterile trash that was created from a series of check-lists to be as safe and generic as humanly possible. There was more thought put into creating the universe then "will this cash in on the nostalgia from the first set of films"?

From what I saw when they set out to make TFA they focused on two things, making the world feel real again by returning to physical effects and grounded locations, and to make the characters entertaining and fun. Whatever plot that happened around them wasn't so important.

As to whether that approach worked... well opinions differ. I mean the yeah, the story is just a weak retread of the original, and is nothing interesting in itself, but it does a great job of getting out of the way and putting the new (and old) characters front and centre. All I can say is that TFA was the first time in 30 years I was sitting in a theater watching Star Wars and having fun.


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 LordofHats wrote:
It's nonsensical, like George Lucas' constant attempts to make Star Wars a deep philosophical commentary

Well played sir. Balls to the walls well played.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
The prequels for all their faults (of which they are legion) weren't designed-by-committee sterile trash that was created from a series of check-lists to be as safe and generic as humanly possible.

To be honest, I would love it if this criticism was more true. But there are two huge counterpoints. First, many of George's ideas seem to have the same goal as Disney; i.e., making those dollars. It's just that Disney's approach is data-driven while George's was anecdotal and instinctual. For example, Anakin is probably a little kid in TMP because that's the target demographic for 95% of the licensed products. Second, even if we assume George's ideas are less generic than Disney's (which is so debatable it probably qualifies as the third counterpoint) George's movies still aren't better than Disney's. This is true even if you don't like Disney's movies. I don't like R1 and it is still a lot better than any of the prequels or all of them together.

Like I said, I am sympathetic with your point. Disney's SW films are the definition of coloring inside the lines, and yes it is very much to their detriment in a number of ways. My hope is, they will be comfortable taking some risks with Ep VIII.