There’s your problem, you expected something from JJ Abrahms.
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I agree with this.
Seriously, if Rey had turned out to be a Skywalker that would have killed my interest in the next Star Wars movie. Rey is an interesting character because of what she’s done, telling me she is heir to some force dynasty does not make her more like able, more powerful or more deserving of her accomplishments thus far.
The idea that she’s “The chosen one” diminishes her as a compelling character in her own right. at least to me.
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Oh, I agree; I just disliked the false build-up surrounding her identity. It seems like that was a cheap ploy created just to manufacture some “buzz”…
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That’s why it’s so hard to like Star Wars right now, there is so much bad storytelling baggage that it is sometimes hard to suspend disbelief.
I’m just glad they wiped the slate as clean as possible by killing off the old rebellion and the big bad, because now it becomes a story about an empire in chaos and how a resistance is formed to overthrow it. But we’ll see if they actually follow through on that, in the meantime:
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I got the feeling from the whole dialog about the Force in all things, fuck the Jedi, burn the books, etc… that they were breaking down the whole chosen one idea. At least somewhat. I thought they were trying to subvert the midichlorian thing. “If you pay enough attention, you too can grab a broom without reaching all the way.”
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I got thinking about this after seeing the movie. My conclusion was: it doesn’t matter. She can be a bit part, a non part, a Tarkin style cgi, a new actress, who knows and it matters not. Sad that Carrie Fisher is gone. We could really use her voice as a sassy classy human on this souring planet, but it’s time to let her go.
Maybe they can make a Star Wars movie full of vignettes featuring Princess Leia and in each one, have a different actor play the role… Whoopi Goldberg, Kate Mulgrew, Michael C. Hall…
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The rotating roster of Doctors is baked into the very lore for that franchise, though.
Also, UK audiences seem like they’re generally more open to different actors occupying beloved characters more than US audiences are, at least from what I’ve noticed.
We tend to get attached to specific people portraying certain iconic roles; to many fanboys and fangirls, only CF can be Leia, just as only Harrison Ford can be Indiana Jones, and only Michael J Fox can be Marty McFly and so on…
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We’ll have to wait for the next film, then - and discuss all the open ends again.
I really great JJA is going for the easy explanation. I like open questions, and I think I’m pretty ok with Bennyboy’s backstory to stay at least opaque, if not open. 
BTW, unrelated, y’all: did you all notice how cool that battering ram walked?
This whole film is full of brilliantly stolen visual ideas, I think. Most of them I haven’t followed to their sources. Yet.
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$500 million US box office take on opening weekend.
I have no plans to increase that revenue.
No, I expected something from Rian Johnston and maybe Kathleen Edwards to have more forward planning and a better payoff.
Personally, I think that’s the best kind of payoff there could be. Rey’s parents were nobodies. She’s an orphan junk-scavenger girl from a crappy desert planet in the ass end of the galaxy, not some secret heir to a mystical tradition or an illustrious bloodline or whatever.
And that doesn’t matter. What matters is Rey herself, what she does and the choices she makes. That’s why the mirror in the cave beneath Luke’s island, when she asked to see her parents, showed her just her own reflection. Rey is Rey, and she needs to come to terms with having no secret awesome background; that fantasy may have helped her get through the day on Jakku when she was a kid, but now she’s an adult and she needs to accept the reality, and then move on.
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At the risk of repeating myself, then they shouldn’t have introduced the plot where there was a mystery about her parents. By default, she’s just an person on Jakku. Why hasn’t she left? She’s poor and has no means to leave. No real reason to either until Finn shows up and the Imperials attack. Once she’s off world, then you can give her a reason not to go back. In her case, find Luke and learn about the Force.
What was the point of raising it in TFA if they’re not going to pay it off in TLJ?
I should clarify that I’m looking at this from the perspective of some good pulpy stories where these kinds of character background elements are often used to introduce interesting new plot twists.
Maybe she was the daughter of Phasma, who knew what the First Order does with kids and didn’t want her own daughter to be involved. It’s hypocritical, for sure, but people aren’t always logical. It would have given Phasma more to do and it still leaves Rey as not the scion of a grand Force using dynasty. Shocking reveals of family are completely in line with pulp stories. However, I think Johnston isn’t interested in telling a pulp story. That’s fine, buy we have 7 pulpy stories in the main Star Wars franchise, so why stop now? Use the other movies to tell tales in other genres.
Now I’ve totally repeated myself, so I’ll let it go.
During Kylo’s shirtless scene, did anyone notice if he had a scar or bandage on his abdomen from being shot by Chewbacca’s bowcaster like 3 days earlier? I didn’t notice one, but I might have missed it. I can imagine that a Sith Lord could survive an injury from a powerful weapon that easily takes out armored stormtroopers, but it still seems like it would leave quite a mark.
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I feel like the door to Rey’s parentage plotline is still wide open. It has been reconfigured some, but the mystery is still there. Everyone including the cave and her arch enemy are telling her not to worry about her past. So to me that makes it more interesting. Why? Don’t know yet. It’ll be interesting to eventually find out.
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Thank you for coming here to inform us to this fact.
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He had a large shoulder wound and his lower abdomen was covered.
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No porgs were harmed in the making of this comment.
Well maybe a couple of them.
They are kinda tasty when roasted just right.
OK a great deal many porgs were harmed.
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