A personal note before I get to my point This is going to be long, so before I get to my main topic I want to say that we all share a love for a galaxy far, far away that we are deeply invested into. No reason to get disrespectful with each other over difference of opinion on one of its installments. TLJ has its problems, but I feel like some of them aren’t as big of a deal as the ‘RJ’s TLJ needs removed from canon’ camp make them out to be. Every Star Wars movie has its problems, some more than others. The Prequels should have already taught us the lesson Star Wars is not always what you expect it to be, and over time even the ones you dislike the most are still lovable and have great moments. In time TLJ will be the same way, and some who hate it now will come to love the good it does bring while still being angry that Padme died of a broken heart and Vader was introduced like Frankenstein with an iconic NOOOOOOOO!!! (tongue in cheek). Sometimes we imagine the story to unfold differently, and sometimes it’s in moments that are really frustrating. As much as I think it’s awkward, I think I might like Super Leia more than I do Frankenstein Vader or a key character’s death due to a broken heart.I also feel the need to point out the fact that exploring tiny details/nuances of a Star Wars movie is exactly what we did after TFA… take tiny snippets and give them great importance, analyze the sith out of it, and then come up with a dozen theories. So the argument that someone is ‘stretching’ or ‘digging’ to make a point, that’s exactly what we do as Star Wars fans.How RJ handled Rey & JJ’s Mystery Box about her parents in TLJSome say that RJ completely abandoned/destroyed JJ’s mystery boxes from TFA. The biggest of JJ’s mystery boxes was probably Rey’s parents. It might be Snoke, but I’m not going into that one here.Personally, I loved all the theories about her being a Skywalker or Kenobi or even a Palpatine, but I said that I would be ok with her being a nobody. Why not. Because a lineage would explain why she’s so powerful? It didn’t for Anakin. Yeah, yeah, yeah… virgin birth and midi-chlorians blah, blah, blah. Anakin was a nobody, from nowhere, who doesn’t know who his dad is and who’s mom is a nobody. Let’s not get into the fact that Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Qui-Gon Jinn were all nobody’s. I understand, Rey is ‘so powerful,’ so a family tree will explain that. But will it?I am going to explain why I don’t believe that to be necessarily true. Personally, I think RJ took JJ’s mystery boxes and used them to give depth to Rey’s character while using misdirection to make us think the answer to her parentage has been answered but leaving the mystery box intact for JJ to do with as he pleases in IX.Here’s an interesting article that goes into the challenges JJ’s mystery boxes presented and RJ’s use of “narrative substitution.” Here’s a snippet from the article:”Narrative substitution is where you appear to tell one kind of story, but later reject it and reveal that this was actually a different kind of story all along… It changes your perception of the emotional need of the story’s outcome. Where a collapse causes the pillars of a story to fall apart, narrative substitution asserts a new structure that builds in a new and unexpected direction – but still on what was fundamentally established by the mystery box.”So that being said, let’s look at a few things RJ said about Rey:"Well, the idea that this natural place reflected […] The idea that if there’s a Jedi Temple up top, the light, it has to be balanced by a place of great darkness. We’re drawing a very obvious connection to Luke’s training and to Dagobah here, obviously. And so the idea was if the up top is the light, down underneath is the darkness. And she descends down into there and has to see, just like Luke did in the cave, her greatest fear. And her greatest fear is [that], in the search for identity, she has nobody but herself to rely on."“For me, it was a dramatic choice. It was just that her hearing – and also for the audience hearing that… if the answer had been, that’s presented in this movie at least, in this context. If the answer presented to her was, ‘Your parents are so-and-so, here you go, here’s your place in this story.’ That would be the easiest thing for her to hear. And easiest thing for us to hear! Wish fulfillment. It’s like, ‘Oh, great! That’s who I am. That’s that.’ The hardest thing she could hear is, ‘No, you’re not going to get that answer, that definition.’ In fact, the fact that you don’t have that is going to be used against you by Kylo, to try and make you lean on him. You’re going to have to find the strength to define yourself and stand on your own two feet.““I was thinking, what’s the most powerful answer to that question? Powerful meaning: what’s the hardest thing that Rey could hear? That’s what you’re after with challenging your characters. I think back to the ‘I am your father’ moment with Vader and Luke, and the reason I think that lands is not because it’s a surprise or a twist but because it’s the hardest thing Luke and thus the audience could hear at that moment. It turns someone into a bad guy that you just hate and want to kill into suddenly, Oh my God, this is a part of our protagonist. We have to start thinking of this person in more complex terms. We need to start thinking in terms of a redemption arc.”RJ’s explanation of Rey’s Ahch-To dark pit scene is a parallel to Luke’s Dagobah dark cave scene in ESB. There’s a few things we can take from that. First of all, Luke saw himself in the Vader mask in Dagobah, it was his greatest fear. As well all know fear is one of the steps that lead to the Dark Side. It didn’t come true though, he overcame his fear.In Rey’s dark pit scene she is faced with her greatest fear. As RJ said, it’s the hardest thing she could hear. Since she was a child she’s been waiting for the return of her parents, and has been hoping that as she’s been thrusted on this epic journey that an explanation would be given to her. Not getting the answer she wanted to hear was her greatest fear. She has to overcome the fact that she feels alone, that she has no family, that she doesn’t have an easy answer to where she fits in this storyIt would be easy to follow the OT blow by blow and give us the same answers. But RJ keeps with the Star Wars cinematic tradition George Lucas put in place of having parallels and inverted parallels throughout the saga, in his own words like a “symphony.” But if the Dagobah and Ahch-To scenes are a parallel, why would we believe that what she saw is the truth? We know Luke didn’t become Vader, this also might not be Rey’s truth. Sure, it could be an inverted parallel. But it still could go either way.In the dark cave mirror sequence, she starts to see two shadows coming close to her, then they merge as one and then she touches the mirror and sees that it’s her. The Dark Side of the Force was toying with her emotions and her greatest feat. Teasing her with the possibility that she might get an answer only to reveal that she is alone. When Luke went to Obi-Wan, when asked why he wants to be a Jedi, he said because his father was. Rey is a nobody from nowhere trying to find her place in this story, why would the Dark Side answer that question for her? There are two other ways that scene could have gone. One is something RJ almost did, a direct parallel to ESB with her in Kylo’s mask, the fear of turning. The other would be her parents if she was Rey Palpatine or someone else on the Dark Side that would challenge her allegiance. If she is a descendant of a Kenobi, that wouldn’t be the place to do it.I understand it’s not just the mirror scene. There’s Kylo’s confirmation that she’s a nobody too:Kylo Ren: Do you know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known? You've just hidden it away. Say it.Rey: [in tears] They were nobody.Kylo Ren: They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money. They're dead in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert. You come from nothing. You're nothing. But not to me.We know that Snoke bridged the minds of Kylo and Rey. In regards to the connection after Snoke’s dead, sure we can go with the possibility that he’s not dead… but I go with the idea that we don’t know a lot about how it works but it could be that it was a one-time thing, not something that required Snoke to keep it continuously active. So Kylo – Rey Force face time. We know they weren’t just talking but they were looking into each other’s minds. They both reference what they saw a couple of different times. Now, taking the meaning of the mirror scene and apply it to the conversation between Kylo and Rey, he saw into her mind and saw what she experienced in the dark cave and he used her fear to manipulate her. Why wouldn’t he? He thinks he can take her feelings of being alone so that he can turn her and have her by his side.So she may actually be a nobody, but RJ did not destroy JJ's mystery box. He left it up to JJ to decide if there's more to Rey's parents or not. Some say the moment wouldn’t be right or has passed, why? Because it didn’t play out the way we wanted it to? I think that it’s another example of an inverted parallel. In ESB Luke finds out that Vader is his father, but in TLJ Rey doesn’t get her answer.Some say that Rey being a nobody makes her a “Mary Sue,” I completely disagree. The Force works in mysterious ways. Mark Hamill once said “Luke is not the sharpest tool in the box. Things are right in front of him, and he doesn't get it. Like when I'm looking for Ben Kenobi and I don't recognize Alec Guinness for who he is. I shoo Yoda away, 'Get out of my rations, I'm looking for a great Jedi warrior!' Those touches are so human.” Luke has never experienced the Force before, he’s stubborn and doesn’t see what’s right in front of him. He was sheltered by his aunt and uncle, and he wasn’t a fighter, he was a pilot. Rey says that she’s always felt it in her, and she is open to the Force. She was not sheltered, Rey had to fend for herself; she’s already a fighter. I think training with Luke would have been nice, and we know that they cut the 3rd lesson which might have given us that. But I think it has more to do with a state of mind, a willingness to be open to letting the Force guide her, for Luke that was more difficult.So while there are still some issues with Rey, RJ did not destroy or disregard JJ’s mystery box in this case. All he did was focus on her narrative, her character arc, what she needed to address to allow her character to progress. The truth is Maz might have answered this in TFA:Maz Kanata: Dear child. I see your eyes. You already know the truth. Whomever you're waiting for on Jakku... they're never coming back... But... there's someone who still could.Rey: Luke.Maz Kanata: The belonging you seek is not behind you... it is ahead. I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. It moves through and surrounds every living thing. Close your eyes... Feel it... The light... it's always been there. It will guide you. The saber. Take it.Maz might have been saying the belonging she sought was not be fulfilled by her parents but with the Resistance. She warned Rey that the Light Side of the Force would be there to guide her, not the Dark Side of the Force represented in the Ahch-To dark pit. She had to learn to stop waiting for her parents to come back into her life, that chapter is closed and the only thing that matters is progressing forward. She had to learn to rely on the Force and overcome her curiosity and self-doubt. She has to learn to find her belonging in her new friendships that stand with her against the FO.Rey’s mystery box question in TFA sets up big expectations, TLJ uses it to instead redirect us to an internal conflict that she has to overcome which is more important to her character development and arc than answering the mystery box question itself, interesting as it might be. If Rey knew the answer to the question and she found out she was a Skywalker or Kenobi it would have changed the dynamic between her and Kylo that is created by her not knowing the answer. That is why I believe RJ used JJ’s mystery box to get deeper into Rey’s character rather than actually answer the question. It didn’t throw it away, just gave you a possible Dark Side deception and kept the possibility to answer it differently intact. It gave ‘an answer’ but not necessarily ‘the answer,’ it’s still there if JJ thinks the answer to his own mystery box is something he wants to answer. But then again, we all know how JJ likes to keep his mystery boxes up on a shelf, unopened because the answer isn’t as great as the mystery itself. via /r/StarWars http://ift.tt/2nldo3q
No comments:
Post a Comment