Creating new work is hard, but editing is easier. Today we’re tackling Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This is a continuation of changes I made in The Force Awakens post here and here.
Finally, I’m on to the second movie in this trilogy. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I would do these last two movies because I felt like they needed a lot of rewriting, and I’m trying to avoid turning this into fanfiction.
More on that later.
I think the biggest problem this movie had was conflicting themes. Multiple characters have to recognize the universe is full of grey morality, but the film ends by doubling down on the world’s black and white. For some reason, the Finn/Rose introduces themes of anti-capitalism before abandoning that with a warning about the cycles of violence/hate. Poe’s story is the most consistent with a message about not being reckless, but it weirdly focuses on Poe’s lack of faith.
This time I will try fitting the characters and plot rewrites in one post because fewer new characters need extensive changes.
Tonal Shift
The first thing I need to touch on is a problem that can’t really be fixed in writing, but I’ll give a general run down on what I want to change.
This movie has a tone issue. This specific problem I’ll call “The Marvel Effect.”
The Marvel Effect is when a movie injects a comedy into serious scenes or situations so as not to make the film too dull or dark. It’s named for how MCU movies tend to tell their stories with a more laid-back and comedic attitude despite the darker themes. This can be tricky to do right without undercutting a serious narrative, and that’s where this movie fails.
I get that this was supposed to be a family movie, but that doesn’t mean there needs to be a laugh every ten minutes. Snoke punishing Hux shouldn’t be funny or amusing. Luke being jaded and having lost faith in the Jedi Order shouldn’t be comedic. Rey gaining a deeper understanding of the Force shouldn’t have Luke playing a prank with some grass.
To fix this, I would probably give more of the comedy moments to characters like Finn, Poe, and Chewie, who can afford to be comedic in their lighter plots, and their actors have the charisma to pull it off. Characters like Luke and Rey can have one or two small funny moments, but that’s it.
Adding Some Time Between Films
Based on context clues, The Last Jedi takes place maybe a week after The Force Awakens. Maybe two, if I want to be generous.
This means the Resistance spent this time sitting on their thumbs and waiting for the First Order to regroup and mount an assault against them.
The last movie ended with both forces suffering losses. The Resistance lost the Senate, and the First Order lost their Starkiller Base. While the Resistance was handicapped by that loss, they were at least in a better place combat-wise compared to the First Order, who lost their superweapon and a chunk of their forces.
The Resistance should have spent that time doing what they were trying to achieve in this movie: moving their base and forming allegiances with other planets.
To fix this problem, I’ll simply change it so that the Resistance tried just that. However, their local allies lacked sufficient troops or weapons to assist in the battle against the First Order. They could have even experienced offscreen fights with the First Order that resulted in losing more troops to put them in the bad spot we found them in at the start of this movie.
This ensures that the Resistance Generals aren’t just dropping the ball regarding the military advantage that destroying the Starkiller Base gave them. They just happened to place their faith in the wrong people.
Snoke’s Understated Disappointment
During the scene where Snoke uses Force telekinetics to make a fool of Hux from a different ship, I should have been intimidated by this show of strength, but I felt nothing. The slapstick nature of the scene as Snoke dragged Hux around the bridge only made it worst.
Snoke’s power over people comes from his ability to manipulate their weaknesses, not his physical strength. He isn’t Vader, who force-choked people, or Kylo, who was prone to violent outbursts.
The way Hux acts before the call support this theory. When he heard Snoke was on the line, he tried to make the call private. He didn’t want the other officers to listen to him getting yelled at, so he tried to make it private. But Snoke planned on humiliating Hux because that was his punishment for losing the battle.
Since Snoke’s power clearly comes from those around him wanting his approval, let’s lean into that. Instead of him dragging Hux across the floor, Snoke forces Hux to kneel, gives him a dressing down, and maybe even brings up Hux’s backstory (apparently, Hux was a bastard that was raised by an abusive father) in some derogatory way, and finally threatening to strip him of his command. This would cause Hux to beg for Snoke’s forgiveness and promises to make him proud.
A small detail that I wanna change. I want to imply that Hux’s next scene occurs immediately after we leave him and Snoke. Instead of Hux physically being on board Snoke’s ship, Hux is just a hologram still kneeling in the Finalizer. The First Order aren’t the ones worried about a spy (I’ll get into that later), so it’s weird that Hux waited until he traveled to Snoke’s ship to tell him about the tracking device.
Rey’s Disdain
I want Rey to get angry when Luke refuses to help the Resistance. In the movie, she just acts a little confused and ready for the challenge of convincing Luke, but this ignores the first movie’s events.
Loads of people died for the map to Luke. With the Senate gone and the Resistance on their last legs, Luke is quite literally their only hope. Luke’s apparent apathy towards their plight isn’t a confusing challenge. It’s a heartless spit in the face of everyone who suffered because of the First Order.
Instead of following Luke around like a stoic reminder of the Resistance’s plight, Rey should be angry and demanding answers. I like the idea of animosity growing between the two of them that comes to a head later.
Poe’s Real Mistake
It never made sense to me that Leia criticized Poe for being reckless. What she should have gone after was his insubordination.
Being reckless is probably a prerequisite to joining the Resistance, and sorry to break to you, but anyone who enlists into any army assuming they won’t die doesn’t really grasp what they signed up for. While commanding officers try to mitigate the risks, there is no guarantee of safety, especially during active war times.
The problem was that Poe ignored his commanding officer’s, Leia, risk assessment for his own. Despite being rebels, the Resistance is an army, and armies should respect the chain of command.
So instead, insubordination is the reason Leia gives for striping Poe of his rank.
Finn Didn’t Join
I would like to add a quick exchange between Finn and Leia to emphasize a point.
When she shows him the beacon, I want Finn to ask Leia for the map to Luke so he can go after Rey. She tells him Rey took the only copy to minimize the chances of the First Order finding Luke. Leia then tells Finn about the cloaked beacon and that Rey will follow it back to them. Finn says he’ll stick around with the Resistance until Rey returns. Leia says that Finn is welcome to stay as long as he wants after all the help he gave them with the Starkiller base.
The reason for all that is to remove the later implications that Finn was trying to desert the Resistance because, at this point in the movie, Finn hadn’t joined the Resistance.
While he helped the Resistance with their mission to destroy the Starkiller Base, he gave them false intel and made it clear that saving Rey was his main objective. After that, Finn has been passed out. He was still with them only because he didn’t wake up in time to follow Rey.
Finn is not even close to being a Resistance fighter. He is, at best, a mercenary who helped the Resistance (and that actually matches his selfish behavior when he tries to leave.)
A Spy in the Resistance
Holdo’s actions only make sense if you assume a spy is on board, so let’s go with that. The perfect time for the characters to start worrying about a spy is right after the First Order tracks the Resistance through hyperspeed.
I just want to throw in a line or two when the characters suggest the options for the First Order tracked them. Someone could suggest maybe the First Order developed new tech, another could ask if Kylo or Snoke could track them with the Force, and someone could guess a spy is leaking information. The plot will get back on track when Finn points out that it doesn’t matter how they’re being tracked. They’ll run out of fuel if they try to jump again.
They don’t need to jump into investigating their potential leak, but the thought of a spy is now in everyone’s head.
Fixing Rose Part 1: Her Introduction
There are a lot of little things that contribute to the negativity that Rose and her actress received. While I can’t fix some fans’ racism, I’ll throw my hat in the ring for the writing shortcomings. First, we need to add more justification for Rose to be a part of the team. In the movie, we just kind of got lucky in meeting her. Here I want her to be recruited.
After being told by Holdo to return to his post and follow her orders (despite her refusing to give him any🤨), Poe instead elects to investigate how the First Order might be tracking them. I want Poe to be less willing to believe that there is a traitor, but he is still cautious about who he talks with and how he proceeds.
Because the higher-ups are either dead or refusing to share information, Poe approaches Rose looking for any explanation on how the First Order might be doing it. He can have a throwaway line about knowing her sister Paige and that she told him how brilliant Rose is in understanding ships.
This version of Rose’s introduction establishes her as indispensable in a way that the original movie failed. The film sets her up as a secondary character to Finn and, therefore, unimportant.
Finn keeps talking over Rose, undermining her, and taking credit for her ideas in an attempt at comedy, but that’s just rude and insulting to the character.
Finn Says Bye (Or Tries To)
Let’s re-inject a bit of comedy back into this movie, shall we? (Disclaimer: I am not a comedy writer, and anytime I have made you laugh is purely accidental and surprising.~(￣▽￣)~*)
Finn is about to abandon the ship, but he needs to say bye to his friend Poe first. The only question is how to say it, so we find Finn pacing and practicing his words outside Poe’s room.
Maybe he’ll try something noble, “I’m clearly Force-sensitive, so I’m gonna try to follow Rey and train with Luke,” or selfish, “The Resistance is clearly losing, and my staying on board and dying isn’t really gonna change that, so peace.” But maybe it’s best if Finn just speaks from the heart.
“I was raised to fight for other people’s cause, and now that I have the freedom to choose, I can’t throw away my life for the Resistance because I can’t believe in them right now. I recognize that this is a cause you believe in, but I really wish you didn’t cause I can’t bear the thought of my first friend dying again. You’ll probably stay here looking for some miracle to save the Resistance, but I don’t see any hope here.”
Deciding that this is the one he’s going with, Finn enters Poe’s room to find Poe and Rose discussing the logistics of the miracle that just might save the Resistance. Finn is stunned but is immediately on board with the plan when Poe asks him to.
This scene change removes the fact that in the original movie, Finn was so quick to abandon Poe to die without even a goodbye. I’ve always felt that Finn and Rey’s connection does better as a found family than a one-sided attraction, so it just feels natural to make anyone that Finn gets close to joining that family. Finn clearly views Poe as a friend, so it makes sense he would care for his well-being and at least try to say something before leaving.
Balancing the Force
Surprisingly, I don’t want to change a lot about Rey’s storylines in the movie’s first half. In The Force Awakens, I felt that they didn’t do an excellent job of introducing Rey to be a relatable “chosen one” while also giving her no motivation to be in the story. Here her storylines are clear. Rey learns that the world isn’t divided by black and white but in shades of grey because of her interactions with Luke and Ben.
The one thing that I think was majorly lacking from Rey’s storyline is self-reflection. I never thought for a second that Rey would switch sides for Ben, but she should be capable of falling to the dark side. She is a person with (admittedly understated) flaws.
I don’t really have a specific rewrite in mind for now. Just like Rey’s interactions with Luke, the tone needs to shift between her and Ben. In the movie, there is a general undertone of (well-earned) animosity and mistrust from Rey when she interacts with Ben at first. Still, given that she brings up the possibility of saving him, I think it would make more sense for Rey to be more open to talking to Ben.
Pretty much, I want to reverse Rey’s reactions to Luke and Ben. Not initially, of course. Rey still starts hopeful with Luke and angry at Ben, but I want her secondary reactions of cautious trust for Luke and distrust for Ben to be reversed.
Fixing Rose Part 2: Her Backstory
So I need to rewrite Rose’s backstory because it doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think about it for too long.
Rose’s backstory says that she’s from a “poor mining system” that got taken over by the First Order to “profit” from their mines before using the surface for weapons testing. Do you see the problem here?
How was the First Order making a profit from Rose’s system if the locals were in poverty? Why was the system so poor if their mines had valuable ore? How were they not making a profit with their mines? My guess is that the people running the mines were incompetent.
It’s also strange that the First Order let their victims live after that. Chances are many people died when the First Order used their planets for target practice, so why let the survivors live to tell the tale? It’s terrible PR, and the info getting out would undoubtedly lead to the Resistance gaining more recruits.
I guess I could see the First Order not killing them as Stormtrooper recruitment. Hmm, that could explain Rose’s combat skills.🤔
It’s up to you if you want Rose and Paige to have been former Stormtroopers. I’m against it because I felt like it might undercut Finn’s story, but The Rise of Skywalker already did that, so eff it, I guess¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
For my version, I’m changing it so Rose’s family lived in a farming star system instead of a mining one. When precious metals were found in the system, the First Order quickly bought the planets. They forced the citizens to mine their planets’ resources, destroying farmland. Despite a lot of money being made, the First Order kept the profits to fund their war, leaving Rose’s people with their farms destroyed and no money to show for it.
Dj: The Codebreaker
I want DJ to be the codebreaker they were sent to find, but he is just as callous and jaded as the movie version of his character.
I think the movie is implying that because Maz knows the codebreaker, and we know she’s good, then the codebreaker also must be good and on the side of the Resistance.
I guess the movie wants us to forget that Maz works with the smugglers and mercenaries who ratted out the heroes to the First Order in The Force Awakens. It’s not crazy to think that she knows people who are neutral to this war.
No Child Endangerment, Please
During the escape from Canto Bight, Rose, and Finn recruit child slaves to help them escape, and I hate it.
These kids’ lives are already at risk every day at the hands of their cruel masters, so let’s not add to that by potentially getting them in trouble. It also makes me uncomfy how Rose indoctrinates these vulnerable kids into the Resistance, like her friends aren’t actively dying while they are on this quest.
Instead, Finn and Rose can just escape on their own while the children watch from a safe distance. This change makes it so that the children will be inspired to rebel against their enslavers but hopefully will wait until they are a little older before putting their lives at risk.
I’m also taking away the fact that the children recognize and trust Rose because of the Resistance symbol because they have no reason to care about or be fans of the group.
The Star Wars movies have a general problem where they don’t explain why people are rebelling against the baddies. The narrative tells us who is good and evil, so the characters are biased toward those alignments without explanation.
Look at how Rey was pro-Resistance even though the Republic would have been responsible for her terrible life. The First Order doesn’t become a real threat until Rey is about 13, only 6 years before the plot, so her hard life was due to the Republic’s neglect. The kids in that scene suffer from that same bias because the movie goes out of its way to tell us that the rich people on Canto Bight sell to both the First Order and the Resistance, so those kids have reason to be wary of both groups.
The Misguided Mystery of Rey’s Parents
The identity of Rey’s parents was never brought up as a mystery in the story.
Sure, the fans had questions, but those were purely external viewer-specific questions. As far as the characters were concerned, Rey’s parents matter just about as much as Finn’s parents. Unlike the fans, the characters had no reason to question their identities, making it super jarring when they, unprompted, started doing just that.
The easiest way to fix this problem is to have a character give a reason for questioning Rey’s lineage. Thematically it makes sense for Luke to ask. Despite wanting nothing to do with the Jedi, he can’t seem to let go of their legacy. So, when Luke asks Rey where she’s from, he can also ask her about her parents.
Rey will just say they were no one important, just a couple of poor desert rats who abandoned their daughter. Remember, Rey already came to terms with their abandonment at Maz’s Palace (both in my version and canon). Luke tells her that no one that strong in the Force comes from nowhere.
Luke’s line of thinking makes sense, given his family. Ben’s and Luke’s natural talents with the Force are because they’re descent from Anakin, who was immaculately conceived by the Force. (If I ever do a version of this post for the prequels, I have a much less controversial idea for that.) In Luke’s mind, Rey would also need to be descent from someone powerful to justify her power.
This also changes Rey’s motives when she’s in that cave. She came to this planet for the legendary hero Luke to train her, but now that she’s learned that she might be a legend equal to him. Suddenly, she isn’t just some no one from nowhere who brought back Luke. Now, Rey would be the galaxy’s hope, a lost lineage that came forth to save the galaxy the same way that Luke did.
So when she enters that cave, it’s to find her Jedi legacy, only to be devastated when she finds nothing.
Ben Let’s Go of the Past
Let’s change Rey and Ben’s exchange right before they touch hands. It still starts with Rey explaining what happened in the cave but takes a pivot from there.
Ben speaks about how finally sharing what happened with Luke that night has brought him unexpected peace. Rey can be shocked to hear this and ask how he isn’t still angry. He replies that there is still anger, but the peace calms it.
Rey explains how angry she is at Luke for everything he’s done and refuses to do. She says that she finds it challenging to find peace herself. Ben replies that through their connection, there is a desire to reach out to Rey, and maybe if they reach out, he can share his calm with Rey.
I needed to make this change because Rewrite! Rey is slipping into the dark side, so she can’t really make the offer of light anymore.
I’m also utilizing the detail that Ben canonically isn’t a Sith or a Jedi. He is walking a line between light and dark while Snoke pulls him towards one side. Since Ben isn’t entirely gone like Anakin, it should have been easier for him to find the light within himself without someone else having to offer it to him.
Speeding Things Along and Ousting the Traitor
For what I have planned, the Resistance’s plotline needs to hurry along.
During the scene where Poe realizes Holdo’s plan to evacuate, I’m changing it to the fact that he doesn’t just call her a traitor. His frustration with Holdo withholding information from her subordinates leads to him accusing her of being the traitor.
The bridge crew would have been present for the earlier conversation about the tracking, thus worrying about a possible traitor. No one moves to act when Holdo calls for Poe to be removed from the bridge. Poe then explains Finn and Rose’s mission, saying that if Holdo isn’t the traitor, then she would wait for them to succeed before risking the whole Resistance to her plan.
When Holdo responds negatively to the plan like she does in the movie, Poe officially mutinies along with the members of the bridge who agree with him. The infight of the Resistance starts a firefight while Poe is preparing for the jump. He also takes the time to inform Finn and Rose of what’s happening and that they need to hurry up.
The infiltration group successfully makes it onto the Supremacy. In this version, DJ opens the door, and Rose successfully shuts down the power breaker. Before they can inform Poe, they are captured. DJ still takes this as an opportunity to betray the Resistance to save his life and earn some cash.
Leia wakes up, puts an end to Poe’s mutiny, and continues the evacuation plan with Holdo. They’ll also have an exchange about how easy it was for the Resistance to turn on each other, and considering this keeps happing to them, maybe their systems of power need some serious retooling.
Oops! I Found a Plothole
The ship that DJ, Finn, and Rose infiltrate is the Supremacy, but Hux wasn’t on the Supremacy when he started tracking the Resistance’s fleet.
We know this because when Snoke calls Hux earlier, the officer says Snoke “is making contact from his ship.” So, Hux would have been on his and Kylo’s ship: the Finalizer. Directly before this line, we see the Resistance prep their jump into hyperspeed, meaning that Hux was already having them tracked.
Later, we catch a glimpse of Hux explaining what he did and Snoke being impressed. So either Hux (in a massive breach of security) placed unknown tech on his higher-up’s ship and had remote access to it, with Snoke having no idea, or Finn and Rose got on the wrong ship.
This doesn’t change anything. I just thought it was interesting cause I couldn’t find anyone talking about it.
Where’s Rey
I don’t want Rey to already be on Supremecy yet. She’ll just be leaving Ahch-To with Chewie when this is happening.
This is because I’m removing the entire throne room battle from this movie. The only thing it did was throw the grey morality of the story out of the window after spending two plotlines building it up.
Rose, Finn, and BB-8 aren’t with the Resistance.
It doesn’t really make sense that Finn’s team was able to make it to the planet before the Resistance could lock down their base. Instead, they’ll make it just in time to see the doors close.
Rose could insist that they try to fight the incoming First Order troops, but Finn will argue that they’ll be sitting ducks in their weaponless shuttle, and their friends will likely fire on them because they won’t know it’s them. So during the battle, they’ll look for another way into the base.
After that battle unfolds, Finn could use the Force to find the opening in the rockslide when Rey arrives, and moves said rocks. From there, Finn, Rose, and BB-8 are reunited with their friends and escape.
Throwing Away the Snoke Battle
Things go the same as in the movie with Holdo’s last stand, and the Resistance makes it to Crait. The difference comes in with Snoke still being alive.
The First Order is still devastated, but Snoke and some of his personal guards survive this onslaught, though they are very handicapped by the attack. Kylo, like Hux, was fine after the attack, so Snoke ordered him to go down to the planet with their remaining forces and whip out the Resistance.
The main reason for this change was Ben’s earlier hesitating when he was close to killing Leia. Ben clearly is conflicted by the idea of killing another parent so soon, and nothing in this movie explains why he would change this stance. I don’t think he would just up and kill his mother because Rey rejected him. It makes more sense if he feels that he has to mount the attack because of Snoke’s orders.
This also leans into the idea of moral grayness. Ben is still following the order to attack, and Leia could still potentially die as a result. No matter how much Ben might not want this, he isn’t changing because he has made himself too dependent on Snoke’s approval. Hopefully, Snoke will try to take Leia as a prisoner rather than turning her into a martyr, as unlikely as that may be.
When Luke arrives, Snoke’s voice can return to Ben’s head in full force, commanding him to attack and reminding Ben of Luke’s betrayal. He could also insist that Leia is siding with Luke to add some fuel to the fire. All that earlier peace and calm is gone from Ben’s mind, and he is dead set on killing Luke. Luke’s words during their fight will only cement that path.
The End of the New Republic
I want to add one last change to the story. I want someone, probably Finn, to call out the New Republic for being a lousy government. They allowed the First Order to kidnap children train them as soldiers, take over star systems for buying and testing weapons, and enable multiple planets like Jakku and Canto Bight to abuse their poorest citizens.
In response, Leia will acknowledge that the New Republic was too lenient in overlooking so many atrocities to transpire under their watch. In the New Republic, they were too busy trying to rebuild what was lost, but The Empire wouldn’t have risen if there weren’t any problems in the first place. All the New Republic did was repeat the past’s mistakes. She says maybe it is time to let the old things die and start a new government.
I’ve been alluding to this all post, but the New Republic kinda sucked. It allowed people to take over the galaxy just 30 years after they took back control because they were so bad at governing.
This is a similar problem that the United States almost had when it first formed.
Quick History Lesson!
Shortly after the United States was formed, people weren’t exactly excited about having a strong central government, so they gave all the power to the state governments. But, it didn’t take lawmakers long to realize they had made things way too lenient. So, they came together in The Constitutional Convention and wrote the United States Constitution giving the federal government more control over the states. If you want to learn more about this, here’s a video by John Green explaining this.
Alright! History lesson over, back to Star Wars. The Republic made itself too weak to face threats like the First Order or Unkar Plutt hurting their citizens. The failure in leadership is never addressed in the movies, and we just keep getting told that the Republic is the only way to peace. None of the characters ever bring up the fact that the Republics we’ve seen have had deep problems and that maybe the galaxy needs a new kind of government to run it.
Pobody’s Nerfect
Sorry that this took so long to come out. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had a lot of stuff in my life that delayed this post. But not even taking that into consideration. I was just having a rough time with this post.
I didn’t really know what direction I wanted things to go in and had to resist the urge to go down fanfic lane. I actually had this same problem last post. I almost gave Ben a sister to take over Rey’s mechanic role before I thought better of it.
One of my scrapped ideas was killing Rose. After this movie, she ultimately doesn’t contribute much to the plot, so I figured she was just making it so that Finn couldn’t save her. Altering Finn’s arc probably kept her alive in my mind. Her sacrificing herself for Finn doesn’t really make sense with my changes. (It didn’t make sense before, which is why I cut it.) In the original movie, Rose’s role is to show Finn why people choose to fight and how the Resistance isn’t ruled by vengeance and rage. My version of Rose represents the short-term goals of the Resistance, while Finn represents the bigger picture of rebelling. If they had made it onto that battlefield, Rose would have likely been the one to sacrifice herself instead of Finn.
Another character who was saved in this rewrite was Leia. Since Carrie passed and Leia was placed in a near-death situation, I saw Leia’s survival here as the movies delaying the inevitable. I planned on swapping Leia and Luke’s deaths so that Luke trains Rey (and Finn) in The Rise of Skywalker before dying. The only reason I kept in things like in canon is that I don’t really like Luke here. He made a decision that led to Ben seeking out dark side users for guidance and love, then went into hiding instead of cleaning up his mess. I also get the impression that he lied to Leia and Han about it based on their dialogue in episode 7. And since we’re on the topic of Ben…
I almost had Ben and Rey switch sides for the final act, but I think that would have been going too far. It would have meant a complete reworking of this movie’s finale and the entire plot of The Rise of Skywalker. Instead, I kept Snoke alive to replace Palpatine. This makes for a much more cohesive story than Ben “Let Old Things Die” Solo ever considering working with Palpatine. This is probably the main thing that slowed down the post because I had to look ahead to the next movie for details before scrapping the idea.
I lay all this out to say I can see how this movie had many problems. Plans and ideas can get confused or lost in the process. Based on my experience, I suspect that the final version suffered from a story being in the middle of edits. They wanted to add some details and remove others, but they didn’t always go back to see if everything worked together, causing discrepancies. It’s a rookie mistake that probably shouldn’t have happened with a big studio, but from all the rumors of executive meddling in this film, it tracks that it might have suffered from last-minute changes.
I Think Thinks 