Intro
Throughout the past 48 years, since 1977, Star Wars has been able to create beautiful cinematic masterpieces, but how did they fall off?
The sequel trilogy has been the cause of the fall off of the once magical world that was Star Wars; from messing with every iconic composition that John Williams composed, to creating literary disasters that may as well have been created by artificial intelligence.
The last time we even faced a fraction of this disaster was from the dialogue in Revenge of the Sith.
Although there were many elements that went wrong with the sequel trilogy; Rey Palpatine’s story was a let down and took attention away from a potentially stronger story.
Rey is the main protagonist in the sequels of the Star Wars movie series.
So let us focus on Palpatine’s downfall as a character.
Backstory
Rey is a young girl from the planet Jakku where she lived as a scavenger. When we first meet her she is traveling through the sands of Jakku exploring for parts from crashed ships; specifically, the Ghtroc 690 light freighter.
Rey has a pretty depressing backstory, which has never been made completely clear. Originally, the story shows her memories of her family selling her to Unkar Plutt on planet Jakku; however, later in the series, a plot twist shifts her original ‘nobody’ arc.
This plot twist was the fact that Rey Palpatine was Emperor Palpatine’s granddaughter.
First of all, no one ever wanted to imagine that Palpatine would ever have children; it is revolting.
“It doesn’t make sense to me how Rey Palpatine is a Palpatine,” Vash Handford said.
Although that was a weird choice for the writers to make for her character, if handled correctly it could have played out much better; However, it was not.
The overall growth of Rey Palpatine as a character was a disaster. There never seemed to be much of a plan for her at all. She is constantly given random, new and shockingly strong ‘powers’ within the force as a Jedi.
How she differs
Many past protagonists in Star Wars had a slow and steady progression of their character development throughout their movies. For example, in the main trilogy, Luke Skywalker’s character builds power and strong traits over all three movies.
In addition, his character goes through many trials and tribulations that test his strength of mind and body. While training to become a Jedi, Yoda tests every attribute that he believes Skywalker will need.
Furthermore, although Anikan in the prequel trilogy ended up facing his downfall and losing himself, he still built up to that throughout his story. There were pieces of a puzzle that had to be played in order for him to finally join the Sith.
Even though he ended up as Darth Vader in the end, it took a long progression for him to get there.
Unlike Rey’s character where they would decide that they wanted her to do something and she would immediately master it without any error.
Moreover, her character did not just fall through the cracks because of the fast progression that the writer had pushed on her character but every relationship she builds as a character was overall very weird, as well.
She creates relationships with many people, but none of them are very impactful towards the story.
They even give seemingly deep relationships with old characters with no explanation on how.
For instance, after Rey returns from destroying Starkiller Base, and losing Han Solo, Laya Organa immediately comforts Rey (who had just met the man) instead of Chewbacca, who had spent a lifetime traveling the galaxy with Solo.
All of her relationships seem off-balanced and forced throughout the movies.
The one strong relationship she did have, with Kylo Ren, ended abruptly and in an awkward way.
Their relationship was built off of a ‘good always prevails’, but through their contradicting forces their relationship that arose was off-putting in many ways.
“Then her relationship between Finn and Kylo was really strange, sending mixed feelings towards everybody,” Handford said.
Finn was another twisted relationship that was trying to be built into her character.
There seemed to have been a strong connection between the two since they had met on planet Jakku. It started off ruff, but throughout the first movie they continued to expand this relationship.
Both characters had shown a deep understanding for one another, and overall a lot of care.
However, the idea seemed to be thrown aside, just as the writers had done with most aspects of Rey’s character.
This is possibly due to Rey’s character by producer Kathleen Kennedy being a self insert.
Alternate story focus
However, the sequel story had many very strong side characters who proved to have a very strong, impactful role in this trilogy. Characters like Poe Dameron, Ben Solo (Kylo Ren), and BB-8 have created a small amount of joy while watching the sequels.
One in particular is Finn, formally known as FN-2187, who could have risen to become a Jedi.
Finn throughout the entire trilogy drops many hints of being strong within the force, and even greater than all of those hints: he ends up wielding a lightsaber.
Finn is a very strong character who continues to prove his devotion to the Resistance; but one thing in particular that the writers should have been ecstatic over was his back story (writers can be suckers for a sad backstory).
Storm Troopers are all molecular genetic copies of one another, at least that was the original fact that followed Clone Troopers in the prequels. However, it is clear as the story switches to the First Order that many of the Storm Troopers had been taken as children, and trained, which is the case for Finn.
However, following Finn would have created an entirely new sequel, which I would have watched with much greater enjoyment, but it would have created complications to some of their original plans.
Although Star Wars has begun to fall apart through movies like the sequel trilogy and Ahsoka. Hopefully they will be able to create an entertaining, literary masterpiece, once again.
I hope that in the end, everyone who has ever enjoyed watching Star Wars can agree on at least one thing in particular… Rey is not a Skywalker.
