Review Tuesday: Star Wars Episode IX Duel of the Fates script by Colin Trevorrow

STAR WARS

Episode IX

Duel of the Fates

script by Colin Trevorrow

The original script for the final installment in the Star Wars: Skywalker Saga.

I have been reading all these online reviews stating how the version of Ep9 that hit theaters was a pathetic slopped together mess that Disney threw togethter because they had creative differences with the awesomeness of the original director, Colin Trevorrow. THAT is a high claim to make, and after the billionth article telling me i was an idiot for actually liking the movie that ultimately hit the silver screen, I felt I had better see what all the raves were about. 

 Let's start from the beginning, shall we? The name DUEL OF THE FATES isn't even original in the Star Wars saga. It was the name of the song written by John Williams for the epic light saber battle in Ep1, The Phantom Menace between Darth Maul, Qui Gon and Obi Wan. Maybe the idea there was  that we are coming full circle. The story of the Skywalker family started and ended with a lightsaber clash. Okay, flimsy, but I can see it.

 

Time has passed since the events of Ep 7 & 8 (since they were supposed to have happened one directly after the other. Like Rogue One into Ep4.) This script starts with the two main story-lines: Rey and Kylo. Kylo is on a quest for ultimate control and power through the Force. Rey is a Jedi Master, and a symbol of hope for all those under the thumb of the First Order. Right from the beginning are a couple ideas that translated into the final script. The First Order has jammed all interstellar communications so that no one can coordinate anything, isolating that was left of the Resistance. Kylo was on a personal journey to find the secrets of the Sith held by Darth Vader and the Emperor. This sends Kylo on a journey in which he learns the horrific secret to becoming an eternal being and, untimely, to the planet where civilization began. The trouble for Kylo is that Rey has detected his intentions and makes it her mission to prevent him.

With the groundwork laid down, there is Resistance work to be done. A poorly concieved plan to wreck the Kuat shipyards ended up a failure for the heroes. Finn and Poe join Rose (ugh, yes, she has a good sized role in this one and as annoying as ever) to try to get this job done. When it goes south, Rey appears. Unbeknownst to the other heroes, she snuck in to be sure they were safe. WTF?!?! Clad in black and wielding a double ended light-saber, Rey easily holds off the troopers long enough for the locals to join in for our hero team to escape. So they sneak off planet and HIJACK A STAR DESTROYER. Big as a city in the sky, the docked Star Destroyer ECLIPSE had no security detail on board. Huh?!?! They steal the ship and bounce out of there. 

 

Once back at base the good guys decide now is the time to make a move because, hey, they have a stolen Star Destroyer with a belly full of obsolete equipment. Afterall, this is all you need to topple a massive interstellar tyranny, right? Of course the First Order shows up and busts up that party, scattering the Resistance YET AGAIN. Rey goes off with Poe and Chewie to try to thwart whatever evil plan Kylo is brewing up. The rest attempt a low-tech plot to try to muster reinforcements. 

As you can imagine, the rest of the movie is a mess of ill-conceived ideas that magically causes the fall of the First Order hierarchy. But before the end of this story, there are a bunch of things that annoyed me about this script. Rose is still whining about rich people. Rose seems to be able to stand next to any circuit and be able to make it do anything she wants now. At one point she crawls under a workstation in the bridge of a First Order capital shiop, pops open the control board, and is able to send undetected and encrypted messages to her Resistance buddies. Additionally, she was able to re-program the coordinates for the craft, having it crash into a planet, but somehow the explosion could be seen everywhere in the entire cosmos. Impressive!

 

If you were hoping that this script did better with the Knights of Ren... it didn't. They show up at one point after the theft of the ECLIPSE and summarily execute the Captain who called in the theft. What??? Then later they confront Rey, who dispatches them relatively quickly and easily. They are barely developed and unimpressive in this iteration as well. 

Finn spares the life of a stormtrooper. Guess what? That stormtrooper ran off and convinced all the others to become traitors! Easy peasy! Oh, he gives a 30 second speech in the bowels of Coruscant and gets the population to rise up against the First Order, just like that!

The First Order doesn't seem to have enough personnel with all their stromtroopers, so now they are hiring Mandalorean Brutetroopers to do the heavy lifting, because why not?

Hux is now a Chancellor. He is also obsessed with force abilities. WUT. Yep, He has a private office with a bunch of Jedi memorabilia. He even tries to use a Jedi mind trick to try to get information out of a captive Rose. When did this guy ever show any interest in the Force? This entire storyline caused me to lose IQ points, it was so stupid. Oh! When Hux sees the writing on the wal, and that the Capital might fall, he runs into his office and impales himself on the blade of a purple lightsaber. WHAT?!?!

In their final showdown, Kylo manages a lucky swing and injures Rey's face, making her blind. He also reveals it was HE who killed her parents. (I'll get to all that later) As he continues his path to ultimate power, ready for this? she puts a blindfold over her blinded eyes and confronts Kylo again. I suppose it wasn't enough that she was ACTUALLY BLIND, but she felt the need to drive the point home and use the blindfold to seem cooler, or like Kenshi from Mortal Kombat, or maybe she was worried about whatever was out there in the movie THE BIRD BOX. Naturally, being blind and relying on her other senses and the Force, Rey was able to easily defeat Kylo. 

THAT was when Kylo used the trick of immortality on her. You see, in the movie we actually saw, Rey had the ability of Force HEALING. In this prototypical version of the movie, the Sith trick for immortality was based on STEALING the life Force from others and absorbing it. It's healing and can extend your life INDEFINITELY. Kylo begins to absorb Rey's essence into his own. AT THAT MOMENT Leia reaches out to him and asks him to come home. Inexplicably he changes his mind. He reverses the process and returns all of the life Force contained within him back into Rey. 

Now getting back to the murder of Rey's parents. Apparently the flashback to the Knights of Ren from Ep7 was from the moment they murdered Rey's parents. The Knights were sent to destroy all people strong in the Force and could present a problem for Snoke down the line. Kylo admits that he was the one who killed Rey's parents, but allowed her to live. Huh? Aren't Rey and Kylo close in age? She was a small child when she was orphaned, so he murdered these people when he was a child? This entire plotline MADE NO SENSE AT ALL. There is a small chunk of dialogue going back to Kylo's youth, between Ben and Han Solo. Ben said he had gone and done something. That was it. Did Ben Solo, as a child, pick up with the Knights of Ren and chased down a Force-strong couple, murder them, and still get home in time for supper? Is that some of the brilliant writing that was supposed to be contained in this script? I wanted to scream. 

People said that what we saw on-csreen for Ep9 was bad, but this tripe was a million times worse. It's stupid, flimsy, awkward, and ridiculously naive. This thing isn't even that long, only taking me, a VERY slow reader, a couple days to read. There were many occasions I caught myself groaning out loud with how terrible this script is. And you can tell they were relying on all sorts of new and shiny things to distract you from the pathetically bad plotlines. It even seems like they planned a lot of Rey fan-service with her new tight black Jedi threads for this episode. Not gonna lie, that part I WOULD have liked to see. Other than that, I found this script laughably bad to the point that it would be a toss up if it was the NEW worst installment in the series since Ep8. 

 

I am not going to lie, however. There were a couple things from this script I would have liked to have seen. Kylo Ren has an episode like Luke had in Empire, having to face off against a Force generated Darth Vader who quickly hands Kylo a beat-down. Also, near the end the Force ghosts start popping up to stall for Rey's benefit. Not to mention that Luke has spent several scenes trolling Kylo, so this was more of the same, just more hardcore. For some [stupid] reason Kylo decided to take a swing with his red lightsaber at the Force ghost of Luke Skywalker who grabs it with his hand. This sounds both stupid and cool at the same time. Force ghosts can GRAB things?!?! Additionally there's a plethora of new equipment introduced in this move what I would love to see what they looked like. 

If you want to see for yourself how bad this thing is, you can google Star Wars Episode IX Duel of the Fates script by Colin Trevorrow and it will come up pretty quickly.