Last week Rolling Stone revealed their latest cover featuring Kylo Ren, Rey, and Luke from The Last Jedi. The magazine’s lead article contained quite a bit of interesting content about the film, so if you haven’t read through it yet, we strongly suggest you do so. In fact, Rolling Stone had so much content at their disposal, they couldn’t fit it all into one feature story. So they posted a follow-up piece on their site that includes additional comments from Episode VIII director Rian Johnson and members of the cast as well as J.J. Abrams speaking briefly about his return to the Sequel Trilogy with Episode IX.
Check out what Johnson had to say on the subject of Rey’s parents below and then take the supplied source link for the rest of the article.
For Johnson, the identity of Rey’s parents is less important than the character’s reaction to the information.
“What does it mean to her, what does it mean to us,” he says. “I really, really believe that it has to be rooted in something that has an emotional impact, and that’s the only thing that matters. Surprise is fine, but surprise by itself is cheap. The emotional and deeply-rooted resonance of ‘I am your father’ [in The Empire Strikes Back] is why we remember it. Not because, ‘Oh my god, I never would have guess that he was.’ Now especially that that’s set as a pattern, the audience’s expectations are now that, ‘Oh, you’re going to pull something out of your hat for this or that.’ And you can, and that’ll be fine, but you better damn well make sure that it also means something and is satisfying beyond just the, ‘Oh, it was this,’ reveal.”
