The Mystery Of Dark Rey…

In an otherwise largely uneventful day at the D23 Expo (you know, if you ignore Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt trying to outdo each other with dramatic entrances), Star Wars was the main talking-point: while not even a snippet of the new Rise of Skywalker footage has leaked online, it’s still all that the internet is discussing – specifically, the final shot of this unseen footage, which apparently shows a major protagonist wavering between the Light and the Dark.

I guess I should include a warning for potential spoilers, but all of this footage is expected to officially drop on Monday – so I don’t know if you should be too worried about it. And, yes, that also means that I’m rather premature with this news, but it’s one of the few things we have to talk about that will make for an interesting post today.

So what am I talking about? Well, apparently, the Star Wars presentation at D23 revealed a few things to the audience of several thousand fans: apart from a brand-new poster that looks epic, director J.J. Abrams also showed a brief sizzle reel of footage from the upcoming installment in the franchise, which is expected to be the last in the forty-year long Skywalker Saga. And so it was that those spectators got to witness a shocking reveal: Rey, the unwavering heroine of the franchise’s last two entries, might be reconsidering her values and moral code.

She was apparently seen dressed in a black cloak with a hood, holding a double-bladed red lightsaber that apparently strongly resembles the one carried by Darth Maul, the central antagonist of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. While we can’t yet know for certain what this means, there are already hundreds of theories floating around the internet. Some believe it’s merely a trick: that this scene is probably only part of a vision or nightmare-sequence which will end up having no real impact in the film itself. Others, however, are rather less cynical: Rey could be the daughter of Darth Maul, apparently, or even the daughter of the long-dead Emperor Palpatine, who will be making a comeback in some form for this film. She and her nemesis/possible love interest Kylo Ren might switch sides, with Rey becoming an embittered Sith Lord while Ren joins the Jedi. She could be using this appearance as a disguise, in order to work her way up through the ranks of the First Order. Palpatine could be manipulating her. There’s endless possibilities.

Some of them make sense, some don’t. For instance, the theory that Ren and Rey switch, while very cool, could seem contrived: yes, Rey was obsessed with that weird evil cave on Luke’s island in The Last Jedi, but she hasn’t ever seemed interested in the dark side or the ways of the Sith – she’s been mostly focused on trying to lure Kylo Ren over to the light, in fact. So changing that now could result in an outcry similar to that which followed the decision to randomly turn Game of Thrones‘ heroine, Daenerys, into a psychotic genocidal war criminal for no apparent reason other than that it looked cool and justified her being murdered at the end of the show. And in both cases, it would be a female protagonist who gets retconned to be evil – not a good look for Star Wars, just as it wasn’t a good look for Game of Thrones. As for Kylo: well, he’s stared longingly at the light many times before, and he seems like he might be doubting his lifestyle choices, but making the jump to the Jedi is a big commitment – something that doesn’t seem like it could be adequately covered in a single film.

Me, I’m actually ever so slightly more concerned about another shot from the footage: supposedly, a glimpse of C-3PO with glowing red eyes, implying that the lovable droid is also heading down a dark path. We’ve seen evil droids in Star Wars before, but never one that actively chooses to pursue a career with the Dark Side (correct me if I’m wrong, hardcore Star Wars fans). And if he gets hacked and destroyed by agents of the First Order, I swear to Yoda I will boycott.

So what do you think? What’s Rey doing? Is she Sith or not? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Star Wars Episode IX Teaser Trailer!

This is going to be something of an unusual review. I will admit why right up front.

The truth is, I haven’t watched the last few Star Wars movies. The original trilogy? The prequels? I’ve watched those, multiple times. But this new saga had never appealed to me until now, when, suddenly, I find myself standing dazed and confused wondering what on earth, or what on Tattooine, this trailer means. And that is very unfortunate, because this trailer looks pretty awesome, even though a good bit of its symbolism is probably lost on me.

We’ll discuss the big stuff first though, just because this is the stuff I do understand pretty much entirely. SPOILERS AHEAD, for those of you, who, like me, had never watched the last two Star Wars movies.

1: The Title. The film’s long-anticipated title has been revealed to be Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, which is very cool – “Every Generation Has A Legend” is the movie’s slogan. I am aware that Luke Skywalker is dead, and I have no clue whether this title is supposed to refer to him returning, or something like that. We hear Luke’s voice in the first part of the trailer, as he tells Rey about her inner power, and how a thousand generations live within her.

2: Princess Leia! The late great Carrie Fisher is in the movie, as expected, and gets a beautiful and heart-warming moment in the trailer, tearfully embracing Rey (Daisy Ridley). Having not watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I can’t give any opinion on Rey herself, except that she looks like an incredible heroine: there’s a moment here, at the 1:08 mark, where she backflips onto a very fast moving spaceship that seems to be trying to mow her down. It’s a great shot.

3: THE EMPEROR IS BACK? I didn’t even realize what I was seeing, at the 1:39 mark, when we see Rey and her team looking out over a wide barren landscape, gazing towards some distant mass of broken metal: I probably should have realized immediately that this is the remains of the literal Death Star – and, at the very end of the trailer, we hear the ominous laughter of Emperor Palpatine: who I, at least, thought was dead. Was this common knowledge to people, that the Emperor is back? That the Death Star is still out there, somewhere in the universe? Though, to be fair, the Death Star looks pretty dead and lifeless at this point, but it looked only half-built in The Return of the Jedi and turned out to be fully functional, so I don’t trust that megalithic weapon, however broken it might look. There’s something really scary about the Death Star, honestly, that makes its appearance here really awe-inspiring.

Those are most of the big things, I think, that this trailer shows. One surprising reveal, at least for me, was the appearance of Billy Dee Williams reprising his role as Lando from the original trilogy. We see characters like Chewbacca and C-3P0 again, though, of course, there’s also appearances from the newer generation, such as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Poe (Oscar Isaac), and Finn (John Boyega). The backstories of these new characters are a total mystery to me, and I’m eager to fill this gap in my knowledge, because they all look pretty interesting. The droid BB-8, I could do without: I’ve seen this character pretty much everywhere for years now – like Olaf from Frozen, or Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, these “mascot” characters always become really annoying to me, really quickly.

The trailer looks really awesome, and there’s no way I’m gonna miss seeing this in theaters: this is the end of an incredible and beloved era. I used to love the Star Wars movies, but lost my enthusiasm for them – now, as the story comes to an end, my passion for this brilliant universe has been renewed. Maybe I’ll even get around to watching The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi sometime in between now and December, when The Rise of Skywalker will come out.

Trailer Rating: 9.5/10