The Way Forward

Last time, I talked about what wouldn't work.  Here's a look at what might be a better start.

Basically, this is going to come down to the things that were promised in The Force Awakens.

1.  Luke isn't dead. 

Probably the biggest mistake that this second trilogy made was the way that it treated the legacy characters of Luke, Han, and Leia.  Rather than giving them a noble role as the returning heroes that all the fans loved, they were each made fallen heroes:  failed generals, failed parents, failed crusaders... Too much nihilism was packed into Rian's attempt to make a french art house film.

The final dagger in the side was when drunken hobo Luke was killed off by vanishing into the Force after his astral projection to save Leia.  Rather than a triumphant sacrifice, it was the last gasp of a has-been, using up the pitiful remainder of his strength; the once-proud warrior now enfeebled with age, with disillusionment, all his beliefs betrayed, all his dreams shattered.

Except that wasn't what Luke's character was all about, and he certainly wasn't old or feeble or used up.  Luke should be in the prime of his life, as a Jedi.  To take that away from fans was unkind, to say the least.  I personally think it was a betrayal of the trust that George placed in Lucasfilm

What really happened:
 Luke was successful in his mission to Achto, and did actually attain some enlightenment there.  His power in the Force is greatly magnified and he has mastered moving in and out of the Force at will.  What we saw was Luke shrugging off his self-imposed exile at the Jedi Temple, now firmly resolved to enter the conflict with the first order.  He had attained a deeper understanding of the Force, but with it, had harbored some doubts about his place in the struggle.  Was it really his place to wield the force in this conflict..  The calling from Leia, and his subsequent conversation as a Force projection with Kylo convinced him that it was right for him to act, and that Kylo needed to be stopped, and that this task was his responsibility.

That is the story that we want to hear about Luke.

2.  Rey's parents aren't drunken junker nobodies.  Rey is connected to the Skywalker or Kenobi lineage.

One of the greatest accomplishments of JJ Abrams in the first movie was the establishment of Rey's character and the narrative arcs for her to follow.   Rather than completing these arcs, Rian decided to cut them off, sending Rey's character spinning without foundation.  The most symbolic of these was in intentionally subverting the most interesting things that Adams established about her in Force Awakens:  the lightsaber Force vision and the way she felt drawn to Luke.  

Rian ruined all that by destroying the significance of each of those moments.  Through Kylo, by having him minimize the significance of the lightsaber vision, and through Luke, by having Luke toss the lightsaber over his shoulder in a comic, buffoonish way.

 Rey's character lacked a traditional "earned" backstory, where, like Luke and Anakin, she learned to wield the Force.  Instead, it looked like Rey was just unreasonably proficient with the Force, diminishing any struggle or challenge she had to face.

What Really Happened:
Anakin and Luke's stories were enriched by surmounting the challenge of learning to use the Force.  This will be important for Rey as well, but her story was enriched by the unique circumstances of the Force calling to her.  Far more than simple historic scenes were conveyed to Rey through her initial encounter with the lightsaber at Maz Kenata's temple.  Yes, it gave her visions, but I think it also conveyed to her some rudimentary understanding of the Force.

I think this was possible because first, I do think that the Force calls heroes when it has need of them.  I think it is very clear in the film that Rey was called to the basement area of Maz's temple, called to that specific wooden trunk where the saber was kept.  Neither was it just a coincidence that Rey happened to be on the planet in the company of Han Solo. As Obi Wan said, "In my experience, there's no such thing as coincidence."  Everything that happened to Rey on Takodano was shaped by the Force.

Second, because Rey was participating in the lineage of a major Force user. The Force vision seemed to indicate that Rey's parents were unique in some way, and she herself felt that there was more to the story of her parents, to the extent that Maz had to talk her out of her compulsion to return to Jakuu. 

And, third, because of whose lightsaber she was holding.  This was the lightsaber constructed by Anakin after he lost his first one on Geonosis, the one he wielded throughout the Clone Wars, the one he lost to Obi wan in Revenge of the Sith, who later passed it down to the young Luke Skywalker many years later and who lost it himself when Anakin cut of his hand in Cloud City. The key to this is that this was not merely a random weapon Rey was using but one imbued with the Force of two of the greatest lightside force users of that time period, Clone Wars Anakin and Luke Skywalker.   The result was that Luke's lightsaber spoke to her because it was powerful, in and of itself, and because it had been wielded by one of her lineage, or very close to it.  It spoke specifically to her, in a way that it did not for Fin, for example, or even to Maz.

Far from being an un-earned golden child, an illegitimate mary sue, JJ Abrams surrounded Rey with many layers of justification for her introduction into the Force where she was imbued with knowledge of the Force on a temporary basis through the Lightsaber.

I also think that we will learn that Rey did quite a bit of training on Achto, both by herself and under the tutelage of  Luke.  While we didn't see much of those scenes, I think that the training did happen, just offscreen.

3.  Rey and Kylo's teen romance no longer exists.

This was never a promising line of the story, and it felt awkward and out of place.