#if I lived in the Star Wars universe I’d like turn into Darth Nihilus

[chibelial]

Back in my bullshit listening to edge lord songs on repeat

[jupitermelichios]

What I’d change about Rise of Skywalker

To be clear, these are changes I’d make to the existing script, not what I would have written instead. We can all agree Sheev coming back was, at best, a bit dumb, I’m also fully aware that a lot of people disliked TLJ for a variety of reasons and wanted ros to retconn more stuff, but this is not an attempt to change any of that. I’m taking the basic structure of the movie and shifting stuff around to create something I think is tonally and thematically more in line with the overall trillogy.

Also i’m aware the extended universe is sort of canon-until-proven-otherwise at the moment but as far as i’m concered there was a DC style crisis and it’s now open season on worldbuilding elements

- Starting right at the very beginning, our opening crawl is now just about immortality being one of the secret sith powers Sheev kept hinting about in the prequels

- Our very first sequence in the movie is now a (short) montage of Sheev sending psychic messages to members of the First Order, telling them to join his secret sith club. It’s not just Kylo, this is a thing he’s just generally doing, Hux, Pryde, Kylo, random Storm Trooper number 7, they’re all getting this same message.

- Kylo buggers off to go murder Sheev, because Snoke never actually let him graduate (or whatever modern sith do) so he’s not actually a sith lord, but he’s like ah, new/old sith lord is in town, I go kill him and I get to take his title by right of conquest rule of one styley, and also take out a threat to my power base. Also in the one scene we see of him interacting with the first order it’s pretty clear he actually really fucking hates being in charge, so a mission to kill Sheev is looking super win-win

- The reason Exigor is sacred to the Sith now, the reason Palpatine’s able to communicate accross planets, and the reason he’s still alive (ish) are all the same - the planet “has a heart... oF KAIIIBURRRRRR!” (yes the line should be delivered exactly like that) that amplified force powers

- Instead of just being Ian McDermott in white facepaint, Sheev’s design draws heavily on Darth Nihilus or Darth Sion, his body is dead or maybe nonexistant depending on how gross they’re prepared to go. The point is, the answer to the question ‘how the fuck did he survive?’ should be essentially ‘he didn’t’; he’s a consiousness and a fuckton of willpower and not much else

- We establish a temple/cult in this universe that worships twin gods and are generally all about balance and shit coming in twos and they think force diads are sacred. I’m thinking someone at the temple has resistance information, and when Rey and Poe visit, Poe goes to talk to the contact while Rey meditates and sees Luke’s ghost who tells her how he and Leia came here together and about their belief system and how there are different ways of connecting to the force than just being a jedi, setting up the plot point of the diad, our theme of ‘the people we love are never really gone’, and also laying the groundwork for what’s going to be a second theme of building something new rather than repeating the mistakes of the past, by establishing the sith/jedi dichotomy isn’t the only possible path to take.

- Rose and Finn are bored and stuck on base while their friends are on this mission, so when they get a distress call from a minor First Order base they go off to investigate. They find Hux, who’s been ousted in a coup in favour of the First Order just straight up following Sheev after Kylo wondered off, who promises them information. At this base, Finn also sees some young storm trooper cadets.

- Back at the rebel base they all meet up and Hux (who they’ve taken prisoner) tells them about Sheev being back, which they didn’t know about because he’s only been speaking to bad guys.

- Leia is already dying, Rey is super upset about it and during an accidental mind share, Kylo finds out and tells her Sidious knows how to heal people by transferring life energy from one person to another. The healing thing is specifically a Sith power this go around. We get a moment pretty soon after during a mission where someone gets injured, probably Finn, and she figures out how to heal them based on the hints Kylo gave her

- Also this time Leia still isn’t a jedi but not because of a prophesy, it’s because she disagrees with their philosophy, which is going to be relevant later. We get a line to the effect that ‘Luke didn’t grow up surrounded by the legacy of the Jedi’s failings, I did’

- The weird knife thing isnt anymore, it’s just a hollicron now, and the whole bit with both Lando and Rey’s parents and the bonty hunter are removed to give us breathing room elsewhere, it’s just a more tradtional fetch quest now.

- In order to get the holicron translated, Poe’s like “you’re not going to like this, but I maybe know a guy from doing undercover missions”, and takes them to Black Sun to speak to Darth Maul, that’s right, Darth Maul is here now, and he helps them because his prosthetics are breaking down and Rose fixes them and saves his life. Also he’s pretty pissed at Sheev for getting him killed so he’s totally chill with them killing the guy.

- The Hollicron tells them that the last known map to Exigor was stored in the archives of the temple of Corisant.

- They go to the ruins of the temple, a place that is both nostaligic and also has actual character significance to kylo and ties into our theme of how the jedi and the sith are both a bit shit, and even though it makes more sense for it to have been cleaned up, it’s full of little baby skeletons from Anakin’s massacre, just for the drama of it

- Rey and Kylo fight, he taunts her again with the promise of healing Leia, but this time Rey uses their bond and her knowledge of how to talk to force ghosts to basically force Kylo’s third eye wide open so he’s hearing a hundred force ghosts all at one, stabs him while he’s distracted, heals him, and then she fucks off, leaving him to talk to the force ghost of Anakin, who tells him he’s a moron who’s falling for the same bullshit Sheev used on him

- Rey joins up with the others, but at the Rebel base Hux has managed to escape and shoots Leia (it’s dramatic and she dies saving someone but it’s not actually particularly plot relevant so imagine your own death scene of choice here), and obviously Rey feels it

- At this point the gang split up, Poe and Rose go back the the Rebels because they know they’ll be needed, Finn goes off to rescue the storm trooper kids he saw earlier (yeah I’m adding a subplot what’re you going to do about it), and Rey goes off to fight Palpatine

- In the temple, Leia appears to Kylo as a force ghost while he’s doing dramatic ‘i can’t go on’ kneeling pose and gives him a little pep talk and name drops the title

- Finn goes to the first order base, finds the kids, and the little ones are on board with escaping but then they run into some teenagers who actually have guns and it cuts away on a ‘will they turn him in?” cliffhanger

- Rey arrives in Sheev’s big cave thing, tries to fight him but he’s all ‘the jedi could not defeat me before, what makes you think they can now when you’re barely more than a padawan’ and force lightnings her a bit. They’re not related in this universe, he just wants to steal her lifeforce to heal himself more because she’s powerful

- Turns out that the First Order have been tracking Hux, so they know where the Rebel base is so there’s a big space battle going on, and the First Order don’t even have any fancy secret weapon but there’s a lot of them and there’s not enough Rebel ships left after TLJ. Poe’s up in the air flying even though he’s the boss now, and Rose is on the comms trying to contact allies

"This is the Rebellion, please. In the name of Leia Organa, we're calling you. Please, if there's anyone out there. For Leia Organa, for Luke Skywalker, for Amilyn Holdo, please…" and then when there's no response, in tears, she whispers, "For Rose Tico, please!"

There's a beat of silence, and then the radio crackles to life.

"Rose Tico calls for aid, and Black Sun will answer."

A moment later another, "Leia Organa calls for aid and Cloud City will answer."

and then a moment later, “The Rebellion calls for Aid and the Free Troopers will answer” and we cut to Finn in a stolen First Order ship full of the trooper cadets of all ages.

A makeshift amada joins the fight, same as in the original version, and rose and circular briad crown girl who’s also been trying to call for back up hug in celebration and have a very brief ‘oh wait maybe i’m into you’ moment

- Back on Exigor, Kylo arrives to find Rey on the floor, dying. He takes her hand and we see them as spirits, surrounded by the flickering memories of their lives, they’re seeing one another properly for the first time, and they ackoledge one another as twins via the force (personally i’d make them explicitly siblings, by force if not blood, here to carry on the proud star wars tradition of ambiguously incestuous twins, but that might not fly with disney execs in the the 21st century), and then he gives her his life force to heal her and his last words are a title drop again, mirroring what Leia said to him, because this movie is cheesy as hell

- "The power of the Jedi could have lived in you, as the power of the sith lives in me. But instead you threw it away, for what? For that pathetic little boy? He was no more a true sith than you are a true Jedi!"

"I don't need to be a Jedi. The force is with me, and I am with the force. You have the sith. I have all that was and is and will be!"

Behind her force ghosts begin to appear, but not just jedi. There is as many of the Skywalker clan as we can get (including some reused green screen footage of Carrie Fisher), and Rose's sister, and Han, and people visually implied to be Poe and Finn’s parents, and Holdo, and behind them hundreds of others. Basically if we can afford them, they’re cameoing here, alongside a load of extras. And last of all, standing beside her is Ben.They exchange a look, and then Rey strikes. Palatine tries to force lightning her but it doesn't work, and she presses her hands to his cloak, pulls the life force out if him. Thes a terrible screaming and we see glimpses of the other sith, before they dissipate and the robe falls to the ground.

And obviously the space battle also gets definitively won at the same time, this is movieland, I’m thinking Finn and Poe have to coordinate an attack that relies on Finn using the force is that vague ‘jedi’s are all amazing pilots’ way episodes 1 and 4 both used

Oh and then at the end they’re all celebrating back on the Rebel base, and Finn starts to hit on Rose and she’s like “I’m not the one you want to say that too, also you’re not my type” and smooches circular braid-crown girl who’s been in the background of all these movies with nothing to so

Finn joins Poe and Rey and they all hug in the same ambigiously-poly way they did in the original, and then Poe’s like “I’m sorry about Kylo” kind of awkward because he still hates the guy but he knows Rey doesn’t, and Rey’s like ‘I’m not, the people we love never really leave us’

and then the final scene, Rey is carrying Kylo’s lightsabre and lays Luke’s and Leia’s on the altar of the temple of the twins, and goes to ask the priests to tell her about their religion, with the implication that she’s starting to build her own new version of the jedi

(and if I was disney this would totally be the set up for a new animated series about Rey travelling around the galaxy meeting new weird alien cultures and learning about what cool force powers they have, and the knights of Ren can be the bad guys, and sometimes she’ll come and help Finn and Poe and Rose with trying to rebuild the galaxy. And then they have to take out Black Sun in season 2 and it’s all super dramatic because they were allies sort of and had cameos, and now rey and maul are forced to have super cool spider-legs lightsabre battles instead)