We’re about a month out from the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and the dust is finally settling. The movie made a boatload of money (although not as much as its predecessors), and while it divided fans and critics alike, Disney already looks to be moving on to the next chapter.
But we’re not quite done with The Rise of Skywalker yet. Just the other day, YouTube channel The Burnettwork broke down what host Robert Meyer Burnett claimed was Colin Trevorrow’s original script for Episode IX, which was then called Duel of the Fates. (A better title than The Rise of Skywalker, if you ask me, but I’ll leave you to debate that one in the comments.) Trevorrow was going to helm Episode IX before The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams was brought back on to finish what he started, and it looks like he and cowriter Derek Connolly had a very different vision of where things would go.
Anyway, it didn’t take long for Reddit to start talking about this, and for The A.V. Club to independently confirm that the leak was for real. The script we’re working with here is an early version — it probably would have gone through some changes before making it onscreen — but fascinating nonetheless. Let’s break it down!
Let’s start with Trevorrow’s opening crawl:
"The iron grip of the FIRST ORDER has spread to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Only a few scattered planets remain unoccupied. Traitorous acts are punishable by death.Determined to suffocate a growing unrest, Supreme Leader KYLO REN has silenced all communication between neighboring systems.Led by GENERAL LEIA ORGANA, the Resistance has planned a secret mission to prevent their annihilation and forge a path to freedom…"
Nice and simple, and you’ll notice that Emperor Palpatine isn’t mentioned. That’s probably the biggest, most obvious change from The Rise of Skywalker. In Duel of the Fates, Palpatine doesn’t come back and Kylo Ren remains the main baddie. And although lots of people — Rey, Force Ghost Luke, Han Solo makes an appearance at some point — try to coax Kylo back to the light over the course of the movie, he doesn’t get a redemption moment like he does in Abrams’ film. He remains lustful for power until the end, when he is “extinguished” while fighting Rey in Mortis, a kind of ethereal realm accessible by Force users.
Kylo also reveals that he killed Rey’s parents on Snoke’s orders. And yes, in this version, Rey’s parents are still “nobodies.” While Abrams’ movie pulled back from Rian Johnson’s more egalitarian interpretation of Rey’s ancestry, revealing that she was actually Palpatine’s granddaughter, Trevorrow’s script embraces it. “You’re not like my father or my brother,” Leia tells Rey at one point. “You’re new. Whatever happens, remember the force chose you Rey. You’re story isn’t written by anyone else.”
All that said, Palpatine does show up…kind of. As in The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo Ren visits Mustafar, where Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi had their final battle in Revenge of the Sith. But in this version, Kylo finds a Sith Holocron left for Darth Vader by Palpatine. A holographic version of Palpatine tells Vader that, should Luke topple the Emperor, Vader should take Luke to see Tor Valum, a 7,000-year-old “very Lovecraftian” Sith master who taught Palpatine everything he knew. Kylo Ren seeks out Tor Valum, trains under him, fights a phantom version of Darth Vader (and loses), and assumedly gains power he didn’t have before.
Meanwhile, Rey spends the movie training with Force Ghost Luke (who’s awfully chatty for a dead guy) and trying to grapple with whether she’s worthy of being a Jedi, or if the Jedi should even be a thing anymore. (I’m betting Leia would have ended up being her teacher in the final draft.) Despite Finn and even Leia being none too optimistic about the prospect of turning Ben Solo back to the Light, Rey still thinks it can happen. Finn: “You have to shut out. He can’t change. It’s too late.” Rey: “It’s never to late to change. You taught me that, Finn.”
So a lot of the movie is concerned with the battle of wills between Rey and Kylo, but the rest of the crew get their moments to shine, too. The movie opens with Poe, Finn, Rose Tico, BB-8 and Rey mounting an attack on a First Order base that ends with them stealing a Star Destroyer, and later, Rose, Finn, R2-D2 and C-3PO sneak onto Coruscant — now occupied by the First Order — to light a beacon hidden in an old Jedi temple that can call other planets for help with technology too old for the First Order to combat. While Rey and Kylo Ren have their final confrontation in Mortis, the climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance goes down on and above Coruscant.
Rose, largely left out of the Rise of Skywalker script, has a bigger role here. So does Hux — now Chancellor Hux — who has a lot of sniping sessions with Kylo Ren. Lando is around, although we don’t get many details, and characters like Zorii Bliss and the beloved Babu Frik are absent.
So what do we think? Is this an improvement? Is it worse? While I don’t love everything — again, this is an early draft and probably would have gone through some changes — I like that Trevorrow’s script actually runs with some of the stuff introduced in The Last Jedi. Whether you liked that movie or not, I thought The Rise of Skywalker spent so much time backing away from it that it never found time to tell a compelling story. You might as well just go for it.
Oh, and in the final battle Chewbacca pilots an X-Wing. Okay, and…debate!
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