Star Wars The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson explains how he decided Rey’s parentage
Star Wars: The Las Jedi is one of the most polarising films in the franchise. Star Wars: The Las Jedi is one of the most polarising films in the franchise.
Now that the dust has settled, we can safely call Star Wars The Last Jedi an another glittering iteration in the iconic franchise. But it is also one of the most divisive Star Wars film ever. Critics have almost universally loved the movie, but things are complex when it comes to audience reaction. The feedback has been, let us say, extreme – on both sides. Many moviegoers loved it, and others hated it with passion. The talking point have been mostly related to Luke Skywalker’s character and his ultimate faith in the film and Rey’s parentage. If you have not seen the film, it might be a good idea to stop reading.
In The Force Awakens, the first installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Rey, the primary protagonist of the trilogy had visions in which she saw her parents leaving her. The visions were supposed to lead the viewer to believe that Rey had special parentage and that is why she was so good with the Force. There were raging discussion on the internet whether she was Luke’s daughter or Han Solo’s daughter and so on. Whatever JJ Abrams may be intended, Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, made Rey’s parentage not-so-special. And that decision got the goat for thousands of Star Wars fanatics that called it sacrilege and said that it was not true to Star Wars canon that has previously showed that people with royal or special lineages are strong with Force.
In an interview with Collider, Rian Johnson came clean on how he came up with the idea that made the film so divisive. “It definitely was something that kind of slowly emerged. The truth is that was never like a driving thing for me in the movie, and I’ve talked a little bit elsewhere about the big decision with Rey and her parents. That’s one of the big things. It’s cutting loose the idea that of her being special coming from lineage. And that is true and I do like that, and I think that’s a good thing. That wasn’t, though, the motivating factor behind that decision. It was more a dramatic decision of ‘What is the toughest thing she could hear about her parents? What is the thing for her and for us what will make her have to stand on her own two feet and will make things the hardest for her?’ Because she’s the hero and that’s her job—to have things be the hardest for her. So it came from that and the other element came along with that, which is something I really liked.
“But I didn’t sit down and think, ‘How do we overturn this whole thing of Star Wars lineage?’ That wasn’t the driving factor. It was almost a byproduct of a natural process of, ‘Oh, this is what’s going to make sense for her as a character, as a dramatic turn there. And that means this, and that’s kind of nice.’ It’s a strange, organic process, I guess,” said Rian Johnson.
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