Grumpy Bulldog Finishes His New Star Wars Trilogy

Yesterday I posted my version of The Last Jedi that was way more epic than what we actually got.  The thing I tried to do that the movies haven't is get the original characters more involved and yet still let the newer characters do stuff.  Anyway, I'm going to build on that and try to come up with an epic finish.  It's just disappointing it'll never actually be on the big screen. 😪

We need a big action sequence to start with, so I thought about this:  Kylo Ren, now head of the First Order, and an armada descend on the former Imperial seat of power, the city-planet Coruscant.  (Maybe the First Order already owns this?  I have no idea.)  There's only minimal resistance and plenty of sycophants welcoming them.  Kylo takes the Emperor's old throne and declares himself the new Emperor.  And one of his first actions is to put a million-credit bounty on the top members of the Resistance:  Rey, Finn, Poe, Rose, and of course Luke Skywalker.  (Who's still alive in my version, so before you say "Actually..." read yesterday's post.)

Meanwhile in some hive of scum and villainy, Rey, Finn, and Rose are in a cantina-type place to meet with Maz Kanata, who has some information on where the Resistance can salvage some ships.  The holographic displays or monitors or whatever show Kylo's announcement and all the sudden our heroes start to feel really conspicuous and beat a hasty retreat.

But of course they're noticed by Phasma, who was discharged from the First Order and has become a bounty hunter.  She figures catching Rey and Finn for the First Order would help to get her back in Kylo's good graces..  Rey and company take off in the Falcon and are followed by Phasma.  She starts firing on them but before they can stop the Falcon, their back-up shows up in the form of Poe and his X-Wing.  The two ships escape to light speed, but unbeknownst to them, Phasma has a tracker on the Falcon.

The Rebel ships return to their hideout, which since we've had ice planets and jungle planets and forest planets and volcanic planets, how about an underwater planet like Mon Calamari?  That would be pretty neat.  They land safely, though by then the tracker on the ship is already reporting their position to Phasma, who in turn relays it to the First Order.  Hux tells her that she'll be back in so long as the Rebels are captured.

In his new throne room, Kylo is brooding (what else does he do?) and Hux comes in with the word that the Rebel base has been found.  So they load up their armada and head out.

Meanwhile, Poe, Finn, Rose, Lando (remember him?), and other Rebel big shots discuss what to do next.  There's probably that token wuss who panics and says, OMG we have to surrender now!  But they decide they need to stay the course for now, so Finn and Rose take a shuttle to go check out the information Maz gave to them.

Luke is off doing Jedi shit like meditating and so Rey goes to join him.  Though Luke (reluctantly) admitted he's her biological father, they aren't all lubby-dubby yet.  They talk about Kylo and Luke feels he's gone too far to come back now that both of his parents are dead.  Rey thinks maybe there's still hope, but it's hard even for her to believe.  They're meditating then and both feel the disturbance at the same time.  Kylo is coming!

They sound the alarm not long before the actual alarms start to sound.  The First Order fleet is all over the planet and sending troops down to the surface.  As usual the Rebels have to buy time to escape to a backup location.  Of course there's the "how did they find us?" question and then BB8 or whoever finds the tracker and disables it.

Our main heroes are of course the last ones to leave.  Poe gets in his X-Wing while Chewie, Lando, etc are getting aboard the Falcon when Kylo shows up--and he's pissed!  Luke tells Rey to get aboard and leave.  She refuses, so he uses the Force to push her onto the ship and lift it into the air.  Though Rey still doesn't want to leave, Chewie is smart enough to know they have to go now or get blasted to bits.

Kylo and Luke have a throwdown then.  Luke can feel that Kylo is stronger than ever in the dark side now.  Eventually Kylo gets the upper hand and so Luke breaks open a wall to let the seawater around them flood in.  The whole base is eventually destroyed, taking the First Order troops with it--and Luke.  (Did I just kill him after being pissed Rian Johnson did it?  Yes.  Yes I did.  Feel free to comment on the hypocrisy.  Not that anyone will comment on anything.)

Of course Rey is bummed about her father and Jedi mentor being killed before she really got a chance to know him. 

Meanwhile, Finn and Rose come out of lightspeed to find a graveyard of Alliance and Empire ships from some old battle.  They start to check them out.  Most are not good for more than scrap, but Rose thinks she might get one or two to work.  But one of the Star Destroyers seems to still have some systems working, so they go to check it out.

Meanwhile of course Kylo has survived and is picked up by a First Order ship.  He maybe kills a couple of his own guys and rages that he'll find them and kill them yet!

The Rebels go to some desolate shithole Lando knows from his smuggling days so they can regroup.  Rey goes off to be alone with her thoughts.  As she meditates, hoping to get in contact with Luke (or his Force ghost), she sees a woman who bears a striking resemblance to her.  It dawns on her that her mother is alive and the Force is calling Rey to her.  So she steals a ship and goes off.

Kylo meets with Phasma, along with maybe a few other bounty hunters, and tasks them with finding the Rebels.  Or else.  He retreats to the Emperor's old quarters to brood.  The ghost of Emperor Palpatine appears to him (why can't the dark side have Force ghosts? Or maybe it's a hallucination) and tells him there's one sure-fire way to coax the Rebels out of hiding:  Threaten such terrible destruction that they'll come out of hiding to try to stop you.  There's not a 3rd Death Star (or 2nd Starkiller Base) handy, so Kylo tells Hux to get an armada ready and find a troublesome world to destroy.

Meanwhile, Rose and Finn board the old Star Destroyer to find the lights on and gravity and atmosphere and crap working.  They look around the creepy old ship and then stumble across some dudes in old Stormtrooper armor who take them prisoner.

The Force guides Rey to some shitty volcanic-type planet.  She lands and is jumped by some thugs.  She lets them take her to their leader, who of course turns out to be her mother.  (Though of course this isn't a real movie I was thinking who you might cast.  A dark-haired woman with a British accent who is old enough to be Rey's mom and has done an action movie or two in the last 25 years?  Kate Beckensale, Rachel Weisz, or Keira Knightley all seem like good choices.  Maybe Angelina Jolie?  She can do a British accent, right?)  Anyway, Rey tells the woman that she's her daughter and the woman is nonplussed.  Rey mentions who her real father is and the woman shoos her minions away.

The woman gives her name.  I don't know what it would be so I used a Star Wars name generator and got Allsus Gulturn.  Allsus confirms much of what Luke told her:  that they met and had a fling and she got pregnant and he pushed her away, afraid their child would be a target.  But what Luke didn't mention is that Allsus and Luke's meet cute was when she tried to infiltrate the Rebellion a couple of years after the Battle of Endor.  Luke figured out who she was and busted her, but instead of taking her to a penal planet or something, he helped turn her to the Rebel cause.  And for a while they were happy--until she got knocked up.  She tried to convince Luke he was being paranoid since the Sith were dead and all that, but Luke kept saying he had a feeling that the darkness would return.  Leia sent Allsus to a nice community of former Alderaan people, where she gave birth to Rey.  But once Rey started to show signs of having the Force, it was Allsus's turn to get paranoid.  She was scared that she'd have no idea how to raise a child like that.  One day a supply ship landed and a woman on the crew gushed over Rey and said she wished she and her husband could have a kid, but they couldn't.  So Allsus suggested they take Rey and raise her as their own.  Allsus felt like shit about it later, so she left the planet and came to this hellhole, where she's done some low-level scavenging and smuggling and stuff.

Rey is pretty peeved about all of this.  She doesn't understand why the Force brought her here.  Allsus says she can stay the night and then leave.  Rey takes her up on this and goes to some little shanty to brood.  That's when Luke's Force ghost shows up.  She's mad at him for not telling her the full truth and not rescuing her from Jakku and now dying when she--and the Rebels--need him most.  He gives her that Yoda stuff about not dwelling in the past or looking to the future.  She needs to be in the present because it's the present that needs her the most.

Rose and Finn are taken to an old hangar or something converted into a living space.  There's a few guys in tattered Imperial uniforms.  They reveal they've been stranded there for decades.  They managed to get the lights and life support working well enough but they haven't been able to call for help or make the ship go.  Rose volunteers to help them get the ship working enough to fly it to safely.  Finn is skeptical about this plan, but she assures him it'll be all right.

Over some planet (Naboo?  Endor?  Tatooine?  Does it matter?) the First Order armada arrives.  The planet's leaders contact Kylo's flagship and he tells them he's going to level the place for their crimes against his new Empire.  They plead with him to let them live, but he insists they're going to be an example for the rest of the galaxy.  And so the First Order fleet opens fire.  The planet is devastated, though of course we won't show too much of that.  Maybe just some rubble after the fact.

Poe, Lando, and company watch the destruction and want to do something, but no one knows what.  Rey feels a disturbance in the Force--like millions of voice are crying out and then silenced.  She goes to see her mother, who shows her a replay of the First Order destroying the planet for no good reason.  Rey laments that there's no way they can fight back and Allsus says that she knows a way.

While Rose is working on the ship, Finn talks with some of the former Stormtroopers and officers about the end of the war and the new war and stuff.  They're pretty impressed with how he escaped from the First Order and joined the Resistance.  Rose comes back to say she's got the hyperdrive working.  There was also a message from the Resistance.  It shows the First Order destroying whatever planet and then gives the location of where the Resistance has fled to.  Finn asks the former Imperials which side they want to be on and they decide to join the Resistance.


Our heroes are still trying to figure out what to do when Rey returns with her mother.  There's a brief happy reunion and then Rey introduces everyone to Allsus.  She gathers them all together and says that when she was with the Empire there was a weapon they were working on, something that could temporarily disable a whole fleet.  But before it could be brought to bear the Empire was defeated.  Though our heroes don't necessarily want to trust her, they decide that they have no choice.

So our core heroes take off with Allsus to find this weapon while Lando and other Rebel honchos will work on assembling a fleet to counterattack and maybe deal the First Order a crippling blow.  ;As our heroes take off in the Falcon, Phasma locates them and follows them.

They arrive at some planet that's pretty much a ghost town now.  Allsus leads them to an old Imperial compound.  There's not much on the surface, but once BB8 or R2D2 gets a terminal active she's able to use an old code to access an underground complex that's much bigger.  As they're exploring, the bounty hunter shows up to shadow them and find out what they're up to.  Like in a Scooby-Doo cartoon they split up with Rey and Allsus going one way, and Poe and BB8 another.

Allsus tries to talk to Rey, but she's not really having it.  They trigger some defenses that Rey deals with before they can kill her mom, but she tells Allsus it's only because they need her for the mission.

Meanwhile back at Resistance HQ, a Star Destroyer shows up and everyone is freaking out until Rose and Finn contact them.  The Rebels agree to work with the former Imperials and try to get the Star Destroyer has functional as possible.

Meanwhile Poe and BB8 are walking around when they're ambushed by Phasma!  There's a firefight that brings the others running to them.  Phasma is about to escape, until Rey stops the ship with the Force and brings it down.

They interrogate Phasma, who reveals she hasn't reported their position yet.  Rey uses the Force to knock her out, or someone just does it the old-fashioned way with a bonk to the head.  Then Poe gets in the weapon with BB8 and they get it to fly out of there while the others take off in the Falcon.

On the way back, Rey and Allsus are alone in the Falcon somewhere, Allsus still trying to talk to Rey.  Then Luke's ghost shows up.  He admits to Allsus that he was wrong because their kid has grown up into a good, responsible person even without their guidance.  He wishes now he hadn't pushed her away.  After Luke has gone, Allsus breaks down and Rey comforts her.

On the flagship, Kylo is brooding as usual when Hux alerts him to a call from Phasma.  She reports that the Rebels were there and took something from an old Empire facility, though she doesn't know what it is.  Kylo thanks her and promises to give her a reward, which is of course to be Force choked to death.  Then he tells Hux to put the fleet on alert; the Rebels will be here soon.

The Rebels all gather together somewhere to go over their strategy.  It's pretty basic:  hope the weapon works as advertised and then pound the First Order with the ships and fighters they've scraped together.  The resulting damage should help to cripple the First Order and inspire more people to join with the Rebellion, creating a new Rebel Alliance.  But since it would take too long to destroy the First Order flagship, it's suggested they send a team in to plant some charges in it.  Rey, Finn, and Rose of course volunteer because they're our heroes--and they know ships like that better than a lot of people.  Allsus asks to go as well and Rey reluctantly allows her

Poe says goodbye to the strike team and then meets with a cocky young pilot who it turns out is the son of Wedge Antilles.  (Since the actor who played Wedge refused to be in the movies, I'll do this to throw my brother a bone.)  Wedge's son is going to be flying escort along with some other fighters.  Poe is less than thrilled.

Then everyone takes off.  They leap into the system and find the First Order armada with its guns hot.  Poe gets into range to trigger the weapon...and nothing happens.  So the Rebels have to buy some time while BB8 works on trying to get the thing to work.  While the battle is going on, our heroes get in close to Kylo's flagship to sneak on board.

Rey tells Finn, Rose, and Allsus to go on ahead; she's got some other business to attend to.  They're skeptical, but there's not much choice about it.  They have to dodge patrols and such while they search for places to plant their charges.

Rey makes her way towards the bridge.  Sensing her presence, Kylo goes to meet her and they duel.

Meanwhile Poe is trying to keep the weapon from being destroyed while BB8 is trying to get it to work.  Wedge's son bails him out of a jam and Poe thanks him.  Then finally BB8 gets the thing humming and Poe tries it out.  It's basically like an EM pulse that puts the lights out on all of the First Order ships.  With the First Order ships helpless, the Rebel fleet begins pounding away on them.

Finn, Rose, and Allsus are planting their charges when the power goes out and the ship starts rocking from hits.  They hurry to set their charges and get out of there.

Meanwhile, Rey and Kylo are fighting pretty furiously when the power goes out.  Since they have lightsabers it doesn't really put them in the dark, though.  But the rocking of the ship and stuff makes things difficult for them.

Meanwhile, the Rebel fleet is doing damage, but not fast enough.  Things turn bad when the First Order fleet starts to come back to life.  Some turn tail, but Lando and some of the others stay, knowing they won't get another shot at this.  Poe tries to use the weapon again but it's pretty much fried now.  The former Imperials in the Star Destroyer refuse to leave.  When their ship is nearing finished, they ram it into some other ships to do major damage to the fleet.

Kylo and Rey are still dueling.  He knocks her down and is going to land a finishing blow when he's shot by a blaster.  Kylo is pissed and uses Force lightning to fry Allsus, who shot him.  She goes down but Rey has an opening then.  She uses her lightsaber and chops off both of Kylo's hands.  Then she goes to help her mother up.  Allsus is still alive, though hurt bad.  Finn and Rose show up and help Rey get to a ship.  They leave Kylo behind to swear revenge.

The charges go off as our heroes are escaping.  Hux finds Kylo on the deck without his hands.  Kylo orders Hux to get him off of the ship.  But instead Hux basically tells Kylo to help himself and then takes off, leaving Kylo on the exploding ship.

Our heroes escape and retreat as the First Order flagship explodes and takes a good number of ships with it.  Rey thanks her mother, who passes out.  They get her to a bacta tank or whatever to heal.

Later there's a celebration.  The First Order is in chaos and now other planets are coming out to support the Rebels.  Rey visits her mother, who's doing better.  After her mother has gone back to sleep, Rey sees Luke's ghost.  He tells her that Kylo might be gone now, but she has to be vigilant because the darkness will return.

Then Rey goes back to the celebration and we cue the music...

I need to find Poe more to do, especially in the middle, but it's just a first draft.

OK, now I'll go write a whole 'nother trilogy...not.