What could have been? That's what we ask ourselves a lot of the time with our life choices. Sometimes, we ask ourselves this with certain movies, and no movie in recent memory (aside from the Snyder cut) has generated much debate like Star Wars 9. Although The Rise of Skywalker was successful, it did not reach the heights that its predecessors did, and there are multiple factors behind that. One of them is the story. Lots of fans felt let down by The Last Jedi and did not see how it could continue from there. There was a vision in the beginning, but due to the mixed audience reaction to The Last Jedi, Lucasfilm decided to dial it back on the risks and rehire the director who started the sequel trilogy instead of trying to work things out with the director that they had originally hired for the final entry of the trilogy: Colin Trevorrow. He left due to creative differences, and two years ago, his script was leaked, and the audience got to read it. Many people liked it. This article will explain some of the points from the original plan for the final installment of the sequel trilogy.
1. The State of the galaxy
The First Order reigns supreme. The galaxy is on its knees. Any hope of freedom and peace is all but gone, save from the small band of rebels who will stop at nothing to bring the First Order down. That sounds cool, right? That's because it is, and it is where The Last Jedi left things. The Rise of Skywalker gave us only a concept of this, but the original Duel of the Fates script would have shown us just how bad things were. They were going to open with a scene of a conquered planet where people were queueing for scarce food that they themselves produced, which the Empire was giving them in limited rations. We would have also learned that communications between planets was banned, thereby limiting any chances of rebellion and keeping hope in a stranglehold. Everywhere the heroes would go would lead to danger that would keep the audience at the edge of their seats. It really emphasized on how bad things were throughout the movie, even until the very last battle, unlike the final product which had things in a setting that the audience is already familiar with. Duel of the Fates was going to go deep into it.
2. Rey's training
We got to see only the beginning of her training in The Last Jedi. She started with Luke but never got too far into it because she lost hope in him changing his mind about the decision he had made to stay away from galactic affairs, stating that the Jedi were not needed because they created evil and were redundant. Of course, he changed his mind in the end and sacrificed himself for the Resistance (at that point, a rebellion) to escape. This movie would have shown that Rey underwent training with Leia, as she filled in for Luke. This was in line with the final product. The difference is that while Rey ends up using the Skywalker lilghtsaber as it had always been, in the final product, in the original plan, she was going to have transformed it into a double-sided lightsaber. Her training would have been different. Just like in the final product, she would have also interrupted her training in order to go assist the Resistance, but the time gap between The Last Jedi and this movie would have been a bit longer and given her more time to refine her skills, which, in this movie, did not include force-healing or teleporting objects.
3. Kylo's path
Kylo Ren had a pretty complicated path in the sequel trilogy. From the very moment he was mentioned to be Han and Leia's son in The Force Awakens, it was obvious that he was going to go through redemption in the final movie of the trilogy and turn against his master in order to help Rey defeat him. To make it even more painfully obvious, he was a Darth Vader fan. The way the subsequent movies went about it made it complicated. The Last Jedi had him kill his dark side master and take over as Supreme Leader of the First Order, providing the audience with an unexpected change in direction for the character. It left fans confused, and even now, 6 years later, they say that the movie killed off the big bad and left Episode 9 with no big bad, because of how obvious it was that he was supposed to go through a redemption arc exactly like Darth Vader's, which wouldn't really be possible since he was the Supreme Leader. The original plan would have had Kylo double down on how dark his path went and he would have been revealed as the one who killed Rey's parents. He was also going to go through the whole movie pursuing more power, and would eventually get it after killing Palpatine's Sith Master, called Tor Vallum. After returning to the main fight, he would have gone to Mortis and faced Rey there for the final duel, in which he would have defeated her in combat...twice, and then would have realized that he had gone too far and sacrificed himself, showing that even deep down, if it was little, there was still some part of him that was good. The final movie had him give up on the dark side halfway through, after being defeated by Rey a handful of times already. He then went to assist her against Palpatine and did nothing in that fight except for bring her back to life when she and the Emperor died. He mostly served as a distraction to Rey and the rebels in the final movie, whereas in the original idea, he would have been the main threat, and a very powerful one at that.
4. Callbacks to the previous trilogies
Despite the many things fans disagree on about the sequel trilogy, one thing everyone can agree on is that there are a lot of moments which make use of nostalgia. They make use of the past events in order to get us excited. Palpatine's first line in The Rise of Skywalker is a popular Star Wars meme quote. Of course, it is something he said to Anakin as well, but it did not really make sense, the way he said it to Kylo. It was a line for the fans. The Rise of Skywalker was marketed as the concluding chapter of the Skywalker which started in 1977, which was initially concluded in 2005's Revenge of the Sith, whose trailer explicitly said that it was the conclusion of the saga. The Rise of Skywalker certainly used some nostalgic elements like X-Wings and having Death Star weapons. It also showed us Endor. That was about it, if you exclude all the "parallels" to Return of the Jedi that it had. The original movie made more callbacks and had everything connect better. The original movie would have been set on Coruscant for the last battle. Finn and Rose even visit the Jedi Temple and would have battled stormtroopers there, where they would have blown up the tower where Obi-Wan Kenobi and the other Council Members would have their meetings. Bossk was going to have a cameo too. At some point, R2-D2 would have been shot and practically destroyed. They would have brought him back, and in that instant, he would have played holograms of major events that he witnessed throughout the saga, reminding audiences of special moments R2 viewed. The last lightsaber duel would have been on Mortis, a planet shown in The Clone Wars, where Anakin found out what his destiny was as the Chosen One of Jedi Prophecy.
5. Leia's role
Carrie Fisher's death made this one a bit difficult to handle. The studio was in a tough spot regarding what they could have done with her. Recasting was not an option, so they went for the next best thing: use whatever unused footage they had of her and rework dialogue so that it fits whatever she is saying in that footage. That's how she was handled in the final movie. She then died, and her death shook Kylo and he made his decision to go back to the light. In the original project, Kylo continuously chose to remain in the dark, even when sensing the grief his mother was going through. It was not enough to sway him. Even when the rebels managed to find a way to reestablish communication with the rest of the galaxy, Kylo used the Force itself to stop the communications from going through, as a testament to his newfound and incredible power. He was real monster in the original plan. Leia would have been the one who went to speak to Lando about joining the fight, and the last battle would have included her. She would have survived the movie, too.
6. Hux's fate
General Hux was perhaps the most loyal to the cause. He was a genuine fanatic of the way the First Order did things, and was not ready to accept Kylo Ren as the new leader that he would have to follow. This was evident in The Last Jedi, when he was pulling out his gun to finish off an unconscious Kylo aboard Snoke's ship. He was too slow, as Kylo woke up before Hux could get the chance to do so. In the actual movie, he was revealed as a spy working against the First Order. He was not betraying the cause. He just wanted Kylo Ren to lose. He ended up dying over a minute after that revelation. In the original script, he was something of a fanatic of the Force. It seemed that he was trying to test himself to see if he would be able to wield the power of the Force. It is shown that he collects lightsabers that he finds, and one very familiar one would be among his collection. Some fans theorize that it would have been Mace Windu's lightsaber. In all cases, he ends up dying, but only does so when the First Order is defeated, preferring death to imprisonment, and he dies by suicide. He stabs himself in the way the Japanese practice seppuku.
7. The final fight
The final fight in the final product took place on Exegol: a secret world where Palpatine had been hiding for 30 years and amassing his army for what he called the "Final Order". The movie reveals that he was behind everything since his supposed death, but did such a good thing at hiding that not even the directors knew that he was still alive until pre-production of this movie. The rebel forces arrive and fight off his forces before they have a chance to leave the planet. That would be a big problem because every stardestroyer in the armada had planet-destroying capabilities. They all had the capacity to destroy entire planets with one shot. The rebels had to make sure that they destroyed the beacon that was guiding them upwards in order to win, and this took everything they had, but it was not enough. The whole galaxy united in order to finally take down the Emperor once and for all. All this happened while Rey and Ben Solo fought against Palpatine and his forces. In the original plan, the final battle would have taken place on Coruscant, the capital of the old Republic. It was planned to be there since that was where the Republic fell, so they felt that it was fitting to have it be where the Republic would be reborn.
8. Poe's role
The ace pilot was first introduced in The Force Awakens and had practically nothing going for him, character-wise. It was clear that there was no real plan for him since they did not even bother to explain how he survived the crash in Jakku and the TIE fighter he was in being devoured. He just showed up again and many people missed the opportunity to ask such questions since he was not really in the movie as much as a main character would be. He was given an arc and a personality in The Last Jedi, where he learned to become a better leader and realized that being a leader takes more than what he thought it did. In the final movie, he is revealed to be a former spice runner and constantly bickers with Finn. In the end, he has a crisis in leadership just before reinforcements arrive to help in the last battle. There is also a hint of a romantic past between him and a spice runner he met in his youth but it goes absolutely nowhere and honestly feels like it should not even have been mentioned or hinted at. In the original idea, he was going to be more closely linked to Rey, and they would have shown a mutual attraction to each other. He clearly wants to be with her romantically, and she does too, but feels that it is not right, not only because she is a Jedi but because it is not the right time to discuss such things. They have an emotional moment where she says goodbye to him with a Jedi mind trick, as he does not want to let her set off on her own to fight Kylo Ren. She kisses him and makes him go away with a Jedi mind trick. He then leads the attack against the First Order on Coruscant, flying the Millenium Falcon.
9. Finn's role
Finn had the most promising role in the sequel trilogy. However fans may disagree on what role that was exactly, there was definitely a missed opportunity. When he was introduced, he was a stormtrooper who could feel that what he was doing was not right, and so he turned against the First Order and helped Poe escape. He then joins Rey and they go on their adventure which leads them to Han and the Resistance. The Force Awakens ends with him in a coma after being defeated by Kylo Ren, trying to protect Rey from him. It was a very powerful moment and a lot of fans theorized that he was force-sensitive. The Last Jedi abandoned the force-sensitive theory and made him go through an arc of self-discovery and newly-found awareness of what really goes on in wars. This put more emphasis on Rey as the force-sensitive hero of the story. He became more than just Rey's biggest fan and learned to fight for more than just himself and her safety, like he did in The Force Awakens. The third entry in the trilogy made him a very memorable character for all the wrong reasons. The only thing people remember him for is the number of times he screams "Rey!", and to a lesser extent, how often he talks about the Force like he knows everything about it. There is also the secret he wanted to tell Rey but never got to...for some reason. In the original script, he was going to be something far more symbolic than what was theorized as the original plan for him. He was going to lead a raid on the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, then was going to lead a stormtrooper uprising, as well as slaves who wanted to break free from First Order control. Imagine an actor of African descent leading slaves to freedom in a climactic battle that decides the fate of the galaxy in a Star Wars movie. That would have made Finn a far more symbolic and legendary character than having him become a jedi. Although he was going to have a lot of screentime with Rose, he would not have ended up with her.
10. Luke Skywalker
コメント