ragdoll :)

The second reason is simplicity, a lot of my “fixes” are tweaks to the story structure of what we got, especially ep 8 which had a lot of good ideas it just didn’t really develop that well, and because of that keeping the baseline of ep 7 the same helps create a strong base to build on.

OK, with that out of the way lets get on to my changes.

Episode 2: the last retcon.

So this movie has a lot of good ideas and sets up some interesting things, I like Rey and Kylo’s dynamic each trying to convince the other one to change sides (this is a surprise tool that will help us later) fin still feeling like wanting to run but also not wanting to abandon his friends and kind of needing to find a purpose, and Poe advancing into a leadership position and having to learn that he cant do everything himself, he has to rely on others.

So, the movie would start in a similar way, a big space battle with the rebellion, sorry, resistance fighting the new order in space, cut a few of the marvel jokes, not that there can’t be funny moment or comedy in this movie but some of the humour in the movie really messed with the tone. Poe leads a good strike on a first order ship led by Kylo ren and snoke same as the movie they do a good job but lose some fighters and are forced to retreat again very much what the movie sets up.

Now the main changes, in this we have 3-4 main story’s going on at the same time, each of our main characters has a story that they are the hero of that build towards the overall lesson. Like ep 5 and ep 2 the movie will end on a loss for our heroes but will help them develop the skills necessary to win in the end.

So the resistance are on the run the new order are somehow tracking them and preventing them for resupplying, hoping to destroy home one and cut of most of the resistances leadership to cripple them, major difference here is that instead of being able to track them through hyperspace, something that I would argue goes against literally all of previous star wars cannon, there is a spy on board, sabotaging home one and reporting there location to the new orders, eventually due to the size of the new order fleet, being far from the core world were the new republic is running stuff the new order will eventually catch home one and destroy it.

Poe:

Poe’s story is similar to what it is in the movie, keeping things simple here, it’s about leadership, Poe leads from the front, he sees others die and wants to prevent it which leads to him trying to do everything himself, which he obviously cant do, his story is, with the guidance of admiral Ackbar, and Mon Mothra, our mentor characters he has to learn to rely more on others. Poe’s does everything he can to try  and catch the spy but at every turn he is just one step behind, the spy is sabotaging the ship, he’s getting frustrated eventually he walks into a trap and something bad happens, people are hurt and he gets really depressed, he is again reminded that he cant do everything alone, they reference how the rebellion is built from the hopes and dreams of thousands of worlds, callback to how the destruction of both death stars were team efforts, getting the plans destroying shield generators and actually fighting in space. Poe reflects on this, then he bumps into Rose, who was introduced earlier on and is still the sister of a pilot killed in the opening battle, of which po feels responsible for, rose doesn’t blame him maybe talks about how she wants to blame her self as a mechanic she should have seen any issues with the ship maybe if she had done more her sister would be alive, poe says that isn’t fair on her and basically gives the mentor lecture to rose which is how he finally realises he is in the same place, he asks rose for her help and the two hatch a plan. It turns out one of Poe’s friends, a pilot on his team is the spy someone who he never would have suspected or been able to catch because she always knows were he is and what he’s up to due to being on his team, but she doesn’t account for the background characters, the no named engineers working hard like rose who go unnoticed but who’s work is critical, its them who noticed the sabotage and suspicious log activity. Poe and crew confront them and they as a final act sabotage the ship, only partially, because they didn’t have time to finish, but enough because po spent so long trying to do it himself, destroys a part of the ship, Ackbar and Mon Mothra sacrifice themselves to save Poe and gang, in a heroic manner, pass on the message they trust them to keep the spirit of the resistance alive.

Poe is set up to be the new person in charge, Poe still takes an active role but is now ready to assume the mantle of being in charge, relying on other and live up to the expectations of the mentor characters we knew and loved.

This is the main theme of this movie in my rewrite, the conflict between Fascism and Democracy, fascism sets up everyone as trampling over everyone else to benefit themselves whereas our heroes benefit from mentors who seek to help them be better than they were, to make a stronger world for others not themselves. This point will be very apparent in the Rey arc but well get their eventually.

Finn:

Finn: Finn’s arc is about discovering his purpose and doing something with his stormtrooper background, he’s not super in the rebellion at this point but is willing to help to save Po and Rey, he sneaks aboard the enemy flagship and uses his skills as a stormtrooper to try and find a way to sabotage the ship or fleet to help the good guys get away. He is eventually caught by captain Phasma who in a twist is also in the process of building a rebellion, yea the reason she was so willing to give up the shield on star killer base was because she was also questioning her loyalty, maybe in part because of Finns actions. She reveals she’s been building a team of “dysfunctional” stormtroopers who would be killed or imprisoned for being to out of the norm of the stormtrooper brainwashing, we get a cool cast of wierdos with fun quirks, maybe one dude loves flamethrowers another like fighting in melee with batons basically just people who have a personality. A “bad batch” of troopers if you will. This is where fin learns his purpose, he wants to help other stormtroopers escape, obviously not all stormtroopers will be good people but within them will be some and it’s those people he wants to help, to give them a chance to live their own lives. The are the cool elite team that damages the star destroyer enough to let the good guy’s escape (barely) during the climax.

Again, leaning into the individuality is good, and how fascism crushes people’s personalities to just be cogs in a machine for the benefits of a few, it’s the actions of individuals which is why the rebellion won the war with the empire and why the resistance will eventually win against the first order.

Rey:

Rey: Rey jedi training arc time, this parallels very similarly to Luke in episode 5, she wants to be trained quickly so she can go back and help her friends, Luke who better than anyone understands this and understands that it’s the wrong decision, again the idea of learning to rely on others, and realise you cannot do everything yourself. Luke pulls a Yoda and acts senile and drags out lessons and points trying to teach Rey patience, she still has her talks with Kylo and the two continue to try and convince the other to swap sides (foreshadowing). eventually Rey makes the same decision Luke makes in episode 5 and runs off before completing her training to try and help her friend, Luke follows her. She gets to the flagship and confronts Kylo and snoke, they argue, fight etc. This is were snoke pulls a palps, and try’s to convince Rey to become his apprentice, talking shit about Kylo, how she has only had a small mount of training but can compete with him, who has “super blood” bloodline from the Skywalkers. Very eugenics reasoning from snoke which makes sense cause he’s a fascist dictator. Using his dark side powers and through manipulation he convinces Rey to fall to the dark side, before she can kill Kylo and take her place as his new apprentice (very rule of 2) Luke shows up and saves Kylo, forgives him for everything, apologies for failing him as a teacher and tells him to leave and warn the rebellion. In this moment Kylo and Rey have flipped teams, are enemies still but are now on different sides, Kylo returns to the light, early enough to take steps toward redemption.

Kylo flees the ship taking Fin, Phasma and the “bad batch” with them. Luke stays behind to confront snoke, and by time for our heroes to escape (very episode 4 obi-wan) it’s a fight he cannot win but he doesn’t have to, after an epic fight between him and snoke, with crazy lightsabre swings and force powers, they have a finally dialogue, snoke talks about how Luke is weaker than him and got the weaker of the two apprentices, how he fails to understand true strength, snoke is very much a use things so they can get further again everyone is a tool for them to use, Luke on the other hand counters with the idea that no, Rey and Kylo will both end up being stronger than he was, because that’s the whole point, to help people, to teach so that those who come after become better than those who came before the. Then he is struck down in a similar fashion to obi-wan.

I Think this is particularly important for Reys character, I think, more so in getting the audience to accept how strong she gets to be, same for Kylo, instead of just making her super strong which led to her being disliked (although a lot, and I mean A LOT, of that was just sexism from the SW fanbase tbh). Rather she and Kylo are stronger than Luke because the audience believe Luke is capable of training people to be better than him, think that Gurran lagan line.

Believe in the me, that believes in you.

Make the audience want Rey and Kylo to be cool as heck because doing so Honours the legacy of Luke and all the characters that came before them, not just to replace them.

Thus, ends episode 8, the good guys are on the run, Rey has fallen to the Darkside, Kylo and Phasma are on team good guy and while things seem dire, the characters are resolved to keep fighting, to win, to rescue Rey and stop the new order.

Episode 9: Rise of a good ending.

I won’t go into as much detail as I did for episode 8, mostly because due to the changes I would have made ep 9 looks very different and is much more a wholly different movie than ep 8 was. But I’ll hit the main points that build to the conclusion.

Time has passed since the last movie the resistance and new republic are putting up a fight against the new order, but things are still bad, Kylo and crew are still not wholly accepted by many in the resistance because of their previous actions but Poe, now helping lead and coordinate the resistance, trusts Tin and is willing to accept Kylo’s help. The major plot of the movie is about snoke.

Snoke is a very old very powerful Sith lord, he does an emperor from the old republic and every few hundred years kidnaps and tricks a bunch of force sensitive individuals and uses them in a ritual to make himself more powerful and extend his life spam. The good guys learn he is planning to do this again, soon on Rey and some of the jedi from Lukes old jedi school, including the knights of ren. The good guys realise they don’t have long before they lose Rey, and Kylo isn’t convinced he can beat Rey, let alone snoke alone. IF you wanted this is where you have fin be revealed to have been force sensitive and Kylo must teach him to be a jedi to help rescue Rey, and by teaching he learns, which is a common thing for jedi through all of Star Wars, like with Kanin teaching Ezra. Poe leads a big space battle to challenge the new order and by time for Kylo and Fin to sneak into snokes citadel and try to stop his ritual.

This is the plan to rescue Rey and kill snoke, like the empire snoke is the sole leader of the new order, everything comes from him (again fascist dictator) if they kill him infighting and power struggles should cripple the first order, like the empire after Palpatine is killed.

Poe leaves Kylo and Fin to rescue Rey, and kill snoke, he leads the fight in space, to buy them the time they need. When things get dire, he hops into his x-wing to kick ass while still coordinating the new republic forces in his custom 2-seater x-win with rose as his co-pilot.

Kylo and Fin fight through some punks to get to snoke and they fight Rey and “lose” because they are trying to convince her to rejoin them, Kylo and Rey could still have been having force conversations like the last movie throughout. Eventually just before snoke can kill them they manage to convince Rey who breaks through and saves them, they have a short heart to heart moment and turn to challenge snoke. Snoke is annoyed but he’s still in the middle of his ritual and if he wins, he can still use their energy. The three of them fight a big epic fight while the space battle rages on, each using a different lightsabre style, Rey with a double because she had a staff in movie 7, come on Disney it just makes sense, Kylo with his Cross guard but fighting more defensively and supporting his two friends, and Finn with the single, and give him a cool force power, he deserves it and the other 2 got one. The trio eventually end in a force blast clash with snoke, dragon ball z style, snoke boasts about how weak they are, how feeble their forces are how there are nothing to him, but they stand united and the force ghosts of previous mentors appear as the ritual is about to conclude, the extend hands in support of our heroes, again reinforcing the idea of building a better future, and standing together for the benefit of all rather than selfish power grabbing and being alone. With force ghosts at their back the win the struggle and kill snoke permanently, without snoke the new order predictably ends up infighting and power struggling which cause them to lose the battle even though they out gun the new republic.

Each character has their arc concluded, Kylo gets to be redeemed from being a villain and continue to teach to honour Lukes’s legacy.

Finn concludes his arc by helping convince Rey to switch sides, to rejoin the good guys, the power of friendship and acceptance, and gets to be a jedi, who spends his time helping other get out of bad situations.

Rey realises that the circumstance of birth doesn’t define you, she helped to convince Kylo to change sides, which was her main goal in the last movie to honour Leia and Han, gets to be a jedi and help people.

Poe is helping organise the new republic, not just in military efforts but has expanded to be in a similar position to Leia and carries on her legacy, as the surrogate son he always was to her.

Thus ends the sequel trilogy, which told the story of standing against fascism and how we build a better world by supporting each other and teaching the next generation to be better than we were. It passes on the mantle to new characters while honouring and respecting those who came before and for fans of the original series.

A couple optional things.

 I didn’t mention Leia much because I feel weird about how I would use her in the story given carry fishers tragic passing, you could potential have her be the main mentor of Po in episode 8 and sacrifice herself to save him, which I think would be the best way to do it, but also she obviously passed before the movie was fully shot so this might have been impossible and also killing of her character as she passed may come across as disrespectful to the actor, it’s just something I wasn’t completely sure how to handle.

If you wanted to set Rey and Kylo up I think this would give you more chemistry and time to see them bond, but that’s up to you I’m not a Reylo shipper, and I don’t particularly care one way or another.

I didn’t mention our little droid friend, their still here being comedic relief and sad when Rey joins bad guys, teams up with Kylo reluctantly because of Finn and does some cool stuff, at least that’s how I would envision it, but I didn’t feel this was critical to the changes in the story, so I didn’t mention it.

Finally, I just want to mention.

I’m not a good writer, I watch a lot of cartoons and some shows and have a lot of ideas that I think would be good, but I’m not a professional writer, I haven’t written any big blockbuster movies and most of my changes come from seeing a completed story, something the actual directors didn’t have, and hey maybe you even hate my changes or disagree with how characters should have ended up, that’s cool. This was just a very late frustration project from my experience of the trilogy. I really liked the characters of Po, Finn, Kylo and Rey and had my own hopes of the direction the movies would take.

Anyways hopefully you liked some of this ramble, maybe you have your own interpretation about how you’d have like to see the sequels go which I’d love to hear.