Star Wars Episode 7: Best Movie of the Franchise - if my Hypothesis is Correct!

Major spoilers for Episode 7 await below, but by this point you should have seen the movie if you'd be bothered by such things. You'll note that this is both the first blog post in awhile (more on that some other time), and has nothing to do with politics. Happy New Year!

Episode 7 Summary

This post is not a review of the movie, but it helps to summarize and set things up. The main character, Rey, is a child of extraordinary abilities and mysterious parentage. Flashbacks establish that her parent(s) abandoned her on the backwater planet of Jakku when she was a child, around 8 years old. 

It's strongly suggested, both through her myriad abilities and her interactions with the movie's main antagonist (Kylo Ren), that she is somehow related to the major characters from the original Star Wars movies. It is also implied that she is not the daughter of Han or Leia, since they talk to her several times without letting on that she may be their daughter*. 

*Further, Han and Leia raised Kylo Ren, formerly named Ben Solo, to be a teenager. Why would they raise him but abandon their daughter?

I think the writers had fun hinting at possible false lineages for Rey, in the same way that they enjoyed the speculation that Kylo Ren was actually Luke Skywalker.

Criticism

While the movie got widely positive reviews, a subset of people on the internet complained that Rey was too great. I wasn't previously familiar with the term Mary Sue, but apparently this is a thing. Briefly, "Mary Sue" is a pejorative for a hyper-competent character, who enters an existing fictional universe to suddenly become a vital savior. Rey is a great pilot, mechanic, an instant study with a blaster pistol, and progresses her nascent Jedi abilities at an alarming rate. Some people on the internet were bothered by this, and saw it as evidence of runaway political correctness. I'm sure the Donald was outraged.

I, however, was not bothered by this at all! On the contrary, I think Rey's unbelievable abilities (she beat Kylo Ren in a lightsaber fight, and out-Force-pulled a lightsaber against the guy who previously stopped a laser beam in mid-air!) were the key plot point of the entire movie. I haven't seen any commentary to this effect on the internet, so this post will lack my usual bevy of links.

Absolute Power

I gave two examples of Rey's overpoweredness above, but there were many others. She invented the Jedi Mind Trick, having never seen it done before! We were told in the original Star Wars that "the Force (was) strong with Luke", but Rey did tricks in this movie that took Luke two or three movies to learn. I think this was all done for a reason: Rey is being set up to be the villain in this new trilogy. 

Coming to a theater near you, in May 2017

Power corrupts, and if you normalize by screen-time in the series, Rey is the most powerful character we've ever seen.

My Case

Welcome to the realm of speculation. I'll lay out what I think is the plot of this new trilogy, but most of this has absolutely no backing of evidence. 

• Rey, as some have speculated, is the daughter of Luke Skywalker. This preserves the tradition of the Skywalker family being the main characters in this series, and it echoes the "talented kid from a desert planet, with no parents, who goes on to be really important" vibe that the first two trilogies had going.
• We know that the Jedi have rules against marriage, and they certainly don't allow you to have kids. This is established in the prequels, but it's more thoroughly fleshed out in the now-non-canon Expanded Universe. The basic premise is that this promotes loyalty to the Jedi Order AND it prevents two Jedi from having super-powerful Jedi kids. The Light Side Jedi want to avoid super-powerful Jedi Kids (SPJK) because power leads to the Dark Side. The Dark Side Sith want to avoid SPJK because those kids would pose a threat to the parent Sith. 
• Despite all of this, the Luke of the abandoned Expanded Universe DID get married, and allowed his New Jedi Order to marry.
• I think Luke had Rey with some as-yet-unknown female Jedi, but later realized that this was a mistake. As was pointed out to me, maybe Yoda's ghost told him he was being dumb. Realizing this, Luke ditched Rey on Jakku, hoping she'd never figure out anything about the Force. Maybe he left Max von Sydow on Jakku to keep an eye on her, which would explain why Random Old Guy on Jakku has the critical piece of the map which points to the location of Luke Skywalker, Galactically Famous Jedi.
• I think what happens next is that Rey trains in the Force, but gives in to anger and falls to the Dark Side. You could sort've see a hint of this at the end of her duel with Kylo Ren, and it seemed that the rending of the planet's crust was the only thing that stopped her from killing Ren. I bet the next movie has her witness more horror, and she embraces the power offered by the Dark Side.

Let the hate flow through you!

• More meta-knowledge: Empire Strikes Back contained the massive "I am your father" twist. This plotline would set up a twist of equal magnitude for the second movie of this trilogy.
• Meanwhile, in Sith Land, this movie already established that Kylo Ren is being "tempted by the Light Side". This isn't a phrase we've heard before in Star Wars, hinting that something new is afoot. Ben Solo is the son of two of this franchise's biggest heroes, and I bet he gets tempted all the way back. 
• Ren was clearly portrayed as a Darth Vader fanboy, and he made hilarious and pathetic attempts to be just like his idol. This can't be a mistake of characterization. It does set up the revelation that he was just playing at being evil, even though it wasn't truly in his nature.
• This sets up a novel clash between Ben Solo and Rey, but inverting the roles we see in Episode 7. Ben gets to atone for killing Han, and has to overcome Rey's overwhelming abilities.

This plot may be far-fetched, but it has the virtues of being an actual new story in this universe, and of being way more interesting than a straight remake of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Best Movie Ever?

Many reviewers complained that Episode 7 was too-directly a remake of A New Hope. The plot had basically all of the same beats as the original movie, and ended basically the same way. Reviewers wrote this off as overly-enthusiastic fan service.

If my hypothesis is correct, then how much better does that make Episode 7? It will have planted all of the seeds of this plot, right out in the open, but their product will not be clear until the next movie. Rey's ridiculous Force abilities, rather than being this movie's biggest weakness, could set up a legendary narrative twist.

What do you think? Comment and share this article if you have anything to add!