In the first three "expanded universe" books--Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command--Leia is pregnant and then gives birth to twins Jacen and Jaina. And then the kids grew up over the course of the books. Then Disney came along and replaced them with Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren. And that was a mistake for a number of reasons.
One big problem was they never really gave Ben much of a backstory. As previously noted, there was more backstory in a Lego Star Wars Halloween special than any of the movies. He went to Luke's academy and turned to the dark side for...reasons and recruited the Knights of Ren to kill everyone. That's about it.
One day a couple of months ago I had one of those idle thoughts that really they should have kept the twin thing. Because that could have provided some motivation on how and why he turned to the dark side. My basic idea is pretty simple: Ben and his twin sister both go to the academy and train. One day they're out in the woods or whatever and his sister is badly injured. They get to Luke, but he's unable to save her. And so Ben gets all pissed off and bitter and turns to the dark side. I suppose you can complain about "fridging" in that the girl mostly exists to provide motivation, but it's still better than what they did.
The deluxe idea would have been to replace Rey with his sister, only we the audience wouldn't know they're related right away. The backstory is that they both went to the Jedi academy but Rey was much better at the Force than Ben. He got jealous and that led him to the dark side. He tried to kill her, but Luke helped her get on a ship to escape and she crashed on Jakku.
You could even take it a step further and have her lose her memory in the crash. And then it's kind of a Bourne Identity thing as her memory starts coming back when Ben, aka Kylo, shows up on Jakku trying to find her because this "dyad" thing would make them super powerful. Or just that he wants her out of the way because she and Luke are the only ones powerful enough to stop him. Basically then it's like his own personal Order 66 as he hunts down Force users.
This idea actually helps with motivation for other characters. Instead of Luke going to the Jedi temple and being a whiny bitch, you could say he was out looking for his niece. At one stop, Kylo found him and there was a fight and Luke was badly injured. He found the Jedi Temple place so he could learn knowledge to pass on when his niece found him, because he wasn't able to take Kylo on himself. And he didn't tell anyone because he didn't want Kylo to find him. And losing one child to the dark side and with another one missing would put a strain on Han and Leia so they break up. Han reverts to his smuggling ways in the hope that he can find some info on where his daughter might have wound up while Leia stays with the New Republic to work through official channels until the First Order shows up.
It is of course too late to do all that, and it's probably too much serious human drama for a Disney movie, but it's just a thought I had and it's Memorial Day so it's not like anyone's reading anyway.
3 comments:
Good points. They tried to create something original with no real idea what they were making.
makes more sense than the disney stuff...if only they had given thought to things before making some movies
I like the idea of a twin. It opens up more possibilities.
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