Poll: Should Rey have *just* been a “real” Skywalker?

[godisawesome]

It's specifically because we already had that particular trope in the story that made it feel like fanfiction, not the actual plot device itself. You do it once and it's a tantalizing twist, but you do it again after that and it just feels like you're over compensating.

And yet they’d already done it again, with Kylo.

And it had worked in TFA with Kylo because they “remixed” the formula - TFA had Kylo positioned as the inverse of Vader, as a self-interested son who murders his father to secure his dark side choices. Rey could easily and probably *should* have been an inverse of Luke - a daughter of a heroic character who’s reconnection with him actually causes more friction between them and derived her to the dark side and away from him. To be honest, that idea sounds more intriguing and rewarding to me right off the bat, because you’re tying Rey into the Skywalker Story, and making her a mirror character for Luke *and* Kylo... while still having a good foundation for a new character and personality from TFA ... which TLJ dropped (more on that in a moment.)

And it’s not like TLJ wasn’t going to *keep* replaying tropes and twists with Kylo throughout its run time... it just did it in a way that made it a liability to Rey, wasn’t as good as TFA’s replay, and was just less thought out overall.

Kylo was getting treated to a replay of the ROTJ story that only made sense for him, and actually damaged Rey as a character along the way since she didn’t have anything resembling the soundness of Luke’s story and was stuck acting as a plot tool for Kylo’s story instead while simultaneously acting as just an audience stand-in for Luke’s story. The result was killing momentum for Rey and putting Kylo in what would be her place instead.

That’s why I would have applauded having Rey be revealed as a Skywalker in TROS; yes, it would have seemed like a hackneyed plot point, but it would have been a hackneyed plot point in favor of Rey over Kylo. TLJ’s story for her had been a hackneyed plot point already, but on in favor of Kylo over Rey, and TROS just used a hackneyed plot point that didn’t fix that.

And just so we’re clear, let me explain why, while I can see the appeal of the message and idea behind Rey Random, it became a hackneyed message to me:

Look, your'e arguing with the wrong guy; even though they telegraphed Rey was likely Luke's descendant. I actually love the scene of Rey's infinite "vision" expecting to see some answer that suposedly defines who she is, looking back at her. Yet all she sees is herself, looking back at herself, gong to infinity.
That ^ is my favorite scene in the whole sequel trilogy. It's powerful and a beautiful message. It's what it should be*.
Yet people act like Rey being a found nobody was some radical new paradigm shift in story
When the whole premise was already built off a random slave, found by chance in the desert. That's the main trope, It's not new either. A bunch of twitters saying it's new, or pretending it is, doesn't mean it is.

The cave scene in TLJ could have major power, and has a good message behind it in terms of looking to yourself for your identity...

...but the way TLJ plays it, it makes it an overwrought bit of melodrama that does nothing for Rey’s character, acts as a liability around Kylo and Luke, and ignores the solid foundation of characterization and identity that Rey has in TFA that could have been used for TLJ’s supposed lesson.

Rey in TFA was introduced as a tough, assertive survivor, rough around the edges and beautifully foiled by Kylo’s bratty, thin-skinned entitled brat, and complemented by Finn as a dynamic original character with comparative suffering to her.

You want Rey not being a Skywalker to move her to look inwards at herself? Than focus on that hardened survivor from TFA dealing with the aftermath of TFA and being her own person; she has a feud without Kylo that could very easily drive her to the dark side, a view of the Galaxy and the overall conflict that doesn’t really match up to Luke, and have her have a unique tutelage under Luke. You want her to stand in the “place” of a Skywalker? Than Kylo’s a foil that deconstructs the idea, and you make sure Rey totally supplants him in the family story; he’s already passed the “point of no return” by killing Han, has no method by which Rey could care about him believably, and he needs to be broken down and rejected from any elements of the expected, conventional “Skywalker story,” because that story has too much weight from too many people for him to even head fake with it around Rey. No, I don’t think its as interesting as Rey Skywalker because that idea has more weight for her and more security for the family storyline, but you could make this dubious idea work.

The problem is that TLJ did everything wrong with the idea.

TLJ downplays and dismisses Rey’s hardened survivor elements in order to have her sympathize with Kylo and to keep her from getting more assertive earlier with Luke, or just recognize that Kylo’s just a threat, and nothing more. It subsumed her in both Luke’s mopey man-pain and in Kylo’s mopey man-pain, totally ignoring how she could be tempted to the dark side against Kylo and how she really should have been trained by Luke. And the end result of undercutting her story, under serving her character arc, and ignoring her characterization where convenient for worshipping Kylo and fixating on Luke instead of her? Making a moment that’s supposed to be a false lead - Kylo telling her she’s nothing and that she has no place in the story - *true* instead; when Kylo makes her say she’s not a Skywalker, she gets demoted by the story so that Kylo and Luke’s story take center stage over her.

Episode IX, even if it did a good job telling her own story, like Colin Trevorrow’s Duel of the Fates script wanted to with “Rey Solana”, was always going to have some problems. Trevorrow’s story was basically constructing a whole new plot for Rey, because TLJ had both killed off her TFA story in most ways and because TLJ didn’t really give her much fo a story itself. And I think it seemed to do a pretty good job at that, all things considered... it was just always going to be kind of a weak ending to the Skywalker Saga, and leave her underserved compared to Anakin and Luke because neither f them had a second movie that displaced them as lead and did nothing with them. And you were still going to have the Skywalker Family story screwed over, because there was never any real way that Kylo could provide a good ending for them.