I’m fairly certain if you would have asked just about anyone before seeing The Last Jedi who they thought Rey’s parents were they wouldn’t have said no one. That question is very much a part of the first film and a big part of her character. So yeah it basically was a deceptive storyline or at the least a not very well thought out one if they didn’t have a better answer. A non-answer like we got is just very anticlimactic and I see why it’s bothersome to people.

I mean it goes against basic storytelling. Set something up so blatantly only to answer but not really answer and expect people to not be upset? Again a big part of Rey’s character hinges on her discovering who she really is. To say she’s just no one is a disappointment.

I think the problem is that the film subverts so much of what the first entry in the trilogy puts into motion. It takes too many unexpected twists which can sometimes work but in my opinion don’t really work here. I think of these films were outside of the main saga I would be more accepting of some of the twists but I wanted something more being as it is tied in with what’s come before.

As I’ve said I don’t entirely dislike this movie and I like The Force Awakens a lot but the more I think about aspects the more parts of it do start to bother me. In a lot of ways I wish these were just completely separate and didn’t include the legacy characters.

I'm not talking about her parentage in a general sense, I'm talking about her parentage in a sense that the narrative was pointing to her as a Skywalker/Solo. I think you could have kept the narrative of Rey wanting to know who her parents are in upcoming movies without throwing around the 'Anakin/Luke's lightsaber' plot point, along with other 'wink-winks' that she maybe a Skywalker/Solo.

You could still have Kylo tell her she is a nobody in TLJ and came from filthy drunks who sold her for drinking money as it would have been just as devastating. The whole 'finding Luke's lightsaber from Cloud City' was a dumb plot point to begin with, but it would have paid off if Rey was related to him. That's what is sort of annoying is that they purposely put things like that out there with no pay off, which goes back to my original point. Fans didn't get mad because they didnt' get the story they wanted, they got mad/annoyed because it seems like now there was some cheap head fakes thrown in TFA that MADE them wonder about point a = point b, not the other way around.

From an October 2017 article, Our Final 4 Theories On Who Rey’s Parents Are:
https://www.tor.com/2017/10/10/star-...ents-theories/
From a Star Wars speculation thread in August 2017:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starwarsspe...vs_rey_nobody/
"Rey is a nobody" is a theory plenty of people speculated on before TLJ, and one that at least one person preferred.

They had to get her a lightsaber. Who has lightsabers? Well, Luke has one, but he's literally in hiding and won't be seen until the end of the movie. Kylo has one, but it's red and evil and what we want Rey to fight against using hers. She could just find a random lightsaber in Maz's collection, but that wouldn't have as much impact as if it was from a character we knew. Obi-Wan's? Lost in the first Death Star explosion. Yoda's? Off on Degobah, if he even still had it there. Hey, didn't Luke lose his original lightsaber? Wouldn't it be cool if someone had recovered it, and that was the one she found? An almost literal passing of the baton? And then, at the end of the movie, she could return it to Luke, as if returning Luke to the Force?

Okay so some people thought that but still I would imagine the vast majority of people wouldn’t have said that she’s a nobody. The way it’s set up I don’t think most would have really went that route.

Not just some, it was characterized as a major theory, one of two, by those that spent their time speculating about it.

But no, not the majority of people. The majority of people, if asked, would've likely said "I don't know," or "I don't care." There's only a very small group of people who got emotionally invested in trying to figure out the answer before the movies supplied it, and an even smaller subsection of that who got upset at the answer.

Could you please stop saying this term in every argument you make because it is not fact. Nobody knows how many people were theorizing about Rey's parentage, or other things from TFA, even to the point where you are using to make your point who liked and disliked TLJ.

Everyone I know was talking about whether Rey was a Skywalker, Solo, Kenobi, etc, but I'm not going to say that is the law so that means the vast majority of the fans were doing it. So please stop saying it for your arguments too.

It’s such bullshit to say people didn’t care. I can buy casual fans saying they don’t know but even they I would imagine (probably more than most) would have not guessed no one is the answer. The fanbase definitely cared and sure a segment of that group probably guessed no one was the answer but I would think most would try and connect the dots to who her parents are based on the the previous films.

I just read this RJ interview.
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/...-rian-johnson/

Last Jedi had some cool things like Leia's old message, red guards fight, lightspeed smash, Force projection.

I can live with Rey's parents being nobody but this is a lame reveal next to "I am your father".

I'm OK with SNoke's death. Shows Kylo is badass. RJ said he wanted SNoke out to create a new power dynamic other than a Vader/Palps thing. Force ghost Vader would be proud to see Emperor Kylo...

Force projection trick was cool but Luke vs Kylo was dull. Could have been done better. Han's death has more of an emtional impact even though Luke's death was supposed to be more meaningful.

I still think the stable boy ending stinks because it just drags things on and doesn't focus on the heroes/villains like the other movies did. RJ said he wanted to show that the galaxy was inspired by Luke. But this didn't work for me.

Well, I did qualify it with a "likely" in the sentence before. I guess I could add qualifiers to every sentence in a paragraph, but I thought that'd be redundant and unnecessary.

But yes, specifically on the question of who people thought Rey's parents were, there's no factual basis to make a statement about how many thought what. However, in terms of people liking the film, there is a factual basis, based on the evidence of polls and the like, to say most people liked the film.


Yes, and casual fans make up "the vast majority of people," which is the claim I was responding to.

Some of the fanbase cared. I didn't care, in that I didn't care the specifics as long as it made sense to the story.

This is just you wanting to deny reality without any evidence of your own. You made a bold, baseless claim, and I was able to provide evidence of the "Rey is a nobody" being not only considered before TLJ, but ranked as a "major theory" by those who spent time online speculating about it. You say that you "think" it's different, based on.... nothing. Nothing factual to back up your claims. Listen, just because you and your small circle of friends didn't consider it doesn't mean it wasn't considered by many, doesn't mean it's not a valid answer to the question, and doesn't mean most people weren't satisfied with how it played out in the film.


So what you're saying is that someone being stabbed to death by their own kid has more immediate emotional impact than someone who dies peacefully and on their own terms?

Casuals didn’t care enough to theorize but there’s a difference between that and just them not knowing. From the perspective of coming off the last film that question is posed and in films like this which are admittedly generally safe there’s usually a better answer than essentially a non-answer. I’ll give the film that it’s got some balls to subvert expectations but that doesn’t necessarily mean it works for everyone. It did for you, great, but surely you should be able to acknowledge both sides have valid points.

I don't understand this statement. This is all in referent to your hypothetical of "if you would have asked just about anyone before seeing The Last Jedi who they thought Rey’s parents were..."

If they didn't theorize, they wouldn't have an answer when asked who they thought Rey's parents are, and may simple state "I don't know," because they don't.

Or did you mean something else?

I mean people do talk about movies to an extent and there are directions that a casual fan would have expected from my experience. Like my dad for instance, not a diehard fan but we go to the Star Wars films together and he right away thought Rey would be related to Luke somehow. I had other more casual friends with the same ideas or that her and Kylo were actually siblings. If I had to guess there were other people out there who aren’t the types to read message boards and speculate but still have an idea of where something could lead.

As mcnabb pointed out, this type of speculation is pretty pointless, since nobody can say with any precision what amount of people were thinking exactly what before the movie came out, because this wasn't a question anybody thought worth polling the average person about.

You're leaning hard into trying to assert that many/most people were thinking a particular way. But even if provable, which it's not, I'm not convinced that it's a compelling argument that JJ mislead people towards one particular answer. It's also not a compelling argument that the answer that was given in TLJ is wrong, or unsatisfying from a narrative point of view.

If anything, Rey being related to the Skywalkers would be the laziest possible result of the "mystery". I'm thrilled they didn't go that direction.

But then why even make it a question at all? To pull the rug out from under people and say: nevermind? Saying her parents are no one seems pretty damn lazy too as it comes off like they either didn’t know what to do and or just didn’t care to find a resolution.

You're too invested in the "mystery" of the question and aren't understanding that the answer given has a very powerful impact on the story and characters as presented in the film. It's a very clever answer, because it's the answer that has the most impact on the character who the answer matters most to.

Has JJ ever come 100% clean on who he was considering as Rey's parents as he did TFA? Because I certainly think it was purposely hinted at that we would know who they were as viewers that had watched the other movies. Could have been an intentional misdirect if JJ was to admit as much. But also could be that Rian chose to ignore where JJ was going.

All he said was that Rey's parents weren't in TFA.

https://www.businessinsider.com/reys...awakens-2016-4
So that statement eliminates Luke, Leia, Han, Snoke.... a lot of people.

Prior to TLJ, Daisey Ridley said the question of her parentage wasn't that important to her.
http://screencrush.com/daisy-ridley-...not-important/

I can see how maybe she doesn't care but the lineage of force users has always been an important topic during the series. If anything, that just shows how disconnected she is from the story. If she were a big SW fan, she would care.

Only for the Skywalkers. The prequels establish that typically lineage is not important, or a factor at all, since Jedi don't marry or have kids, so most all Jedi came from non-Jedi families.

It only mattered in the other films because the Skywalkers were the main characters. And really, considering that of the known Skywalkers with Force powers, half of them turning evil is pretty damning evidence for going towards lineage.

Kylo Ren, aka Ben Solo, is the Skywalker in these films. Rey doesn't have to be one too.

Not saying she should be a Skywalker (that would be phoning it in, IMO) but to go 3 movies without any real detail on the main character's background is the issue. Just saying "oh, her parents left her and were never seen again" is a cop-out. Sounds to me like they've been unable to commit on a backstory.

Do all Jedi learn the force on their own like Rey has? I feel like that needs some explaining as well. AFAIK, all others were trained from children.

There's been two movies dealing with Rey.

That's not all that was said. It was specified that they were nobody drunkards who abandoned her on Jakku for booze money, i.e. they sold her off, and they're now dead.

And whether it's a "cop out" depends on how satisfied you are with the answer. For me, it's the answer that fit the story being told. Any sort of "clever" answer wouldn't have worked, and making it Luke would've been boring.

Luke got all of one quick training session on the Millennium Falcon before he blasted away the Death Star, with Vader saying "the Force is strong in this one," and force pulling his lightsaber from the ice in ESB.

For me, the interrogation scene in TFA show that Kylo using The Force to try and read her mind backfired and cause her to read his mind. I think she might've gotten some Force abilities from this "mind meld" too, such as the Force suggestion she uses almost immediately after, and the telekinesis and lightsaber skills later on in TFA. But TFA established she had Force abilities, not TLJ.

That said, in the original trilogy, Yoda both dismisses Luke as too young and too old for training. In the prequels, Anakin is considered "too old" to join the Jedi academy, but this seems to be a matter of other factors, like attachment to family, emotional temperament, etc., than about strictly teaching the skills. Qui-Gon mentions that Anakin is already using the Force in his pod-racing, and Obi-Wan is able to train Anakin himself to be a skilled Jedi.

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/ques...-jedi-training

The problem with Rey is that she has succeeded in EVERYTHING she has done with the Force, and they haven't given her one setback like Lucas did with Luke.

Yes Luke blew up the Death Star in ANH, but you have to remember that movie was written in the context of a standalone with no sequels, so the destruction of the Death Star isn't really about the Force per say, but more about the payoff and happy ending for the moviegoer. As I stated before, if Lucas knew he were making 2 more movies in 1977, the structure of ANH would be different, and Luke's arc in ANH would be too.

So when we get to ESB that is when Lucas starts to get more into character development: Luke fails at the cave, he fails when he tries to lift the X-Wing fighter, and then he gets his ass KICKED by Vader physically and emotionally on Cloud City. What setbacks did Rey have with the Force in the 2 movies that would make her arc interesting? She picks up the Jedi Mind Trick in TFA which is never explained (unless it was in the novel?). She beats Kylo Ren in her first Lightsaber battle at the end of TFA. She moves rocks without any problem at the end of TLJ.

What threat does she face in Episode 9? That is why killing Snoke was a bad idea (not because we didn't get his backstory), but because he was the only one who seemed to be more powerful then Rey as he treated her like a rag doll in TLJ. Snoke was the real threat in Episode 9. I would ask anyone who likes the Rey character arc in the ST, who is a threat to her in Episode 9?

Nolan's version of Luke's death would have us all in tears and win five Academy Awards.