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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 7880942" data-attributes="member: 63">My goal is that by the end of the trilogy, Ben gets to be a swaggering son of Solo, and Rey gets to be a heroic inspiration to a new generation of Force users.This might be a wild change, but redeem Kylo Ren at the end of episode VIII.[SPOILER="A bunch of backstory tweaks"]The First Order - After RotJ, they started as an imperial remnant that withdrew to the Uncharted Region and allied with Snoke, a Dark Side user from the planet Ren, who was head of a cult that served Palpatine. The First Order is not a 'new empire,' though. Rather, they have a base of operations, and then recruit people from around the galaxy with offers of power, and are methodically overthrowing planets by trying to foil efforts of the New Republic to keep the peace, and in turn claim that only the First Order can restore the security that the empire provided. In a way, they're a bit like the Islamic State.Also, they've been gradually kidnapping and brainwashing children to be their soldiers, and those who are found to be force sensitive are trained to be the Knights of Ren.Ben's Backstory - Luke tried to train some new Jedi, Snoke manipulates Ben Solo, and the Knights of Ren came and destroyed the temple. (Ben should've been a young teen at this point - this would've been maybe 15 years before TFA).Ben knows that when he leaves, Luke will come follow, and that Snoke intends to kill Luke. So Ben hacks Luke's X-Wing to take him to some random planet and strand him there. Snoke sees this as a mark of weakness, and wants to find and kill Skywalker, but Ben honestly doesn't know where he sent Luke. He just let the Force be his guide.Ben joins the Knights of Ren, and adopts the name Kylo Ren. He's the strongest Force-sensitive in the group, and travels to Endor to recover his grandfather's khyber crystal from his funeral pyre. There he had a vision (which we'll only learn of later), seeing the Force spirit of Anakin Skywalker. Anakin warned him that Snoke is but a minion of the Sith, and that he can sense the spirit of the emperor still persists. It is gathering power to be reborn. Snoke never reveals where his master is, so Ben decides to embrace the Dark Side, to earn Snoke's trust, and then to finish what Anakin started: the defeat of the Sith.Rey's Backstory - Her parents were no one famous, true. However, they're not scum. The First Order came to Jakku about fifteen years ago. Rey's dad had been a Rebel pilot, and his mother a Rebel spy, who after the Empire fell, Luke realized were both Force sensitive and offered to teach them. But they declined, wanting instead to return home and raise a family. After Luke was exiled, the First Order tracked them down. Afraid for their daughter, and with few options in an emergency, they sold her Unkar Plutt, moments before they were captured and carried away.Han and Leia Backstory - Their relationship fell apart after Ben disappeared. They hadn't heard about him for years after he joined Snoke, and while 'Kylo Ren' has become infamous, they only just realize that it's him during TFA.Leia has been trying to warn the New Republic about the First Order. At the start of TFA, there's not any coordinated Resistance yet.Han and Chewie aren't smugglers; they're on a mission to stop this ship of monsters from being taken to some villain or other, but they detoured when they detected the Falcon.Finn and Poe and Rose don't need any changes.[/SPOILER]Changes to TFAShort version - A bunch of small tweaks to set up Kylo's double agent role.[spoiler]Poe's on Jakku because Lor San Tekka was once a member of Palpatine's cult, and he has a map to the First Order's remote base. Nobody's looking for Luke. Poe doesn't get the map, Kylo does.Instead of Starkiller Base being a doomsday weapon, Starkiller Gate is some ancient technology, that lets the First Order fleet bypass the treacherous space around the Uncharted Regions. The Gate consumes a star as a fuel source for each time it opens a portal. The Gate is so old that it actually has its own biosphere.As in the real Ep 7, Poe's captured and tortured, Finn breaks him out, the ship crashes, Finn meets up with Rey, they steal the Falcon to escape, link up with Han and Chewie, get to Maz's tavern, Rey has a weird vision.Kylo senses this weird vision. This will be our first moment of the two of them seeing each other through the Force link. It's very brief.The First Order's fleet comes into orbit above a world; let's call it Hosnian. General Hux gives his fascist speech. He warns that the gate will consume their star if they do not immediately join the First Order. They must either die in darkness or join the darkness. (Give Hux a bodyguard from among the Knights of Ren, just to give them a bit more presence. And when Hux gives orders to Kylo Ren, it can be clearer that Kylo is not the leader of the group.)As in the real Ep 7, Kylo Ren attacks Maz's tavern, captures Rey. Han and Leia reunite.Finn is committed to rescuing Rey, but Leia says it's unwise. People were wary of the First Order, but there's no organized Resistance, and no chance to win a fight against them on such short notice. She's clearly had her spirits crushed. Han then says that this Rey girl was taken by a Knight of Ren. And the knight had a light saber. Leia and Han both realize this must be their son.In the Kylo-Rey interrogation, he offers to teach her, and have her join the Knights of Ren. They have a battle of wills, and she sees in his mind an island, and the coordinates he punched into a nav computer. This is how Rey is able to find Luke.Han, Chewie, and Finn head to Starkiller Gate. Finn worked on it, and knows that while it's open, it's vulnerable. Meanwhile Leia calls in a few old allies to defend the Hosnian system. (I'd love to involve Poe here some more, but that's too heavy of a rewrite.)As in the real Ep 7, the sun is consumed, hope fades, Kylo kills his father, and then Finn and Rey each fight Kylo.The good guys blow up enough stuff that the gate becomes destabilized, so most of the First Order flees back across to the Uncharted Regions. We can give Poe something fun by having him see what's on the other side, which worries him. Finn is injured, and Rey goes to find Luke.[/spoiler]Changes to TLJShort version - Leia dies when her ship is attacked, and so after killing Snoke, Ben is actually persuaded by Rey to renounce the Dark Side. He reveals that this whole time he'd been trying to get closer to Snoke, because there was some dark secret he wasn't ever willing to share.[spoiler]We have a small time skip. Rey takes some time to find Luke, and the First Order takes some time to regroup.The core difference here is that Kylo Ren meets with Snoke, who is proud that Kylo killed Han. He offers a chance to come learn the true purpose of the First Order, but first Kylo must prove himself by killing Leia as well. His conflict is that he needs to get closer to Snoke to decapitate the First Order, but it's tearing him apart. We come to gradually learn this through his Force connection conversations with Rey.We don't have the First Order obliterate the Resistance, though. Instead, they lure Leia's fleet into an ambush, which is where Rose's sister dies, then pursue with overwhelming force. Leia and company jump to hyperspace and drop out next to an asteroid belt, which hides the planet Crait, where they hope to hide out until allies arrive. Kylo hesitates when he could kill Leia, but the other ships fire and she dies.Meanwhile Rey gets her training from Luke, and is tempted to the Dark Side but hesitates. When she decides to leave to confront Kylo Ren, he stays behind. That's the last we see of him in this movie.The rest of the fleet goes to ground on Crait, but they detect that the First Order has sent a ship to Canto Bight. That planet is a major arms dealer, and Akbar realizes the FO will be able to get a weapon that can crack their base's defenses. He sends Finn, Poe, and Rose to Canto Bight too.There they run into Phasma, who's buying that big doom laser they use at the end. They rescue some kids, who are going to be press ganged into the First Order, but doing so gets them caught.The climax timing is that simultaneously the doom laser is aimed at the Resistance base, and the Finn/Poe/Rose trio are about to be executed. Kylo turns on Snoke, and when Snoke dies, an alarm goes off at the execution, causing a distraction that lets the heroes make a run for it. Ben teams up with Rey to fight the guards, and maybe we let Akbar do a suicide attack since there's no Laura Dern character here, though that's got some cultural associations maybe it's best to avoid.Ben flees with Rey, and together they link up and escape.In the aftermath, Hux and his forces withdraw back to the Uncharted Region, where he is escorted by several Knights of Ren to the Sith Temple. He reports the misfortune of the fleet being damaged, and Snoke being slain, but not all news is misfortune. There is a new crop, fresh from Canto Bight. They shove forward that force-sensitive stable kid.End with Palpatine, shrouded in shadows, saying, "Good, good."[/spoiler]Changes to TRoSShort version - We explicitly have the characters contacting spirits from the past, which is why they're traveling all over, instead of just following clue A to clue B to clue C.[spoiler]Erm, heavy rewrite? Putting Ben Solo on the side of the good guys is a big change.Rather than a series of locations with different plot coupons, I'd have the journey be to gather allies: deserter storm troopers, heart-of-gold smugglers, some fan service, etc. Along the way, Ben and Rey commune with the spirits of lost Jedi. We can hit all the same locations, just rejigger the whys.If we have to keep the fleet of Star Destroyers, at least remove their Death Star beams, and make it clear that the First Order has some worlds here they conquered that are building them. Maybe just have fewer of them, but have them staffed by conscripts, so Finn can have a hero moment rallying them to rise up and resist.Eh, I'm not sure how to make this work, and I've been typing for, like, three hours.It is a shame if we don't have some lightsaber on lightsaber action. Maybe Palpatine does possess Rey?Have Luke do his magical transmission thing to trick and defeat Palpatine, maybe?[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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