(
http://scriptshadow.net/screenplay-review-star-wars-episode-9-duel-of-the-fates/)
The original plan for Star Wars: Episode IX was
that it would be directed by Colin Trevorrow, then most famous for Jurassic
World. However, he was fired
from the project a couple of months before production was due to
start. The reasons for this have never exactly been spelled out, although The
Book of Henry bombing
at the box office, and production
troubles on Solo: A Star Wars Story likely gave
Lucasfilm cold feet about allowing a relatively inexperienced director to have
a handle on the big tent-pole finisher for the franchise. Rian Johnson was
originally offered the gig, but he baulked at the tight production schedule and
so J. J. Abrams was brought back. The Rise of Skywalker was
the result.
Whatever you thought of The
Rise of Skywalker (my own view: fun popcorn movie, but misses
opportunities to be something more), it had something of a disappointing
reception. As a result of this, many people started to wonder 'what if' and
whether or not the Trevorrow draft may have been better.
Well they need wonder no more.
Since the turn of the year Colin Trevorrow a mysterious person
has been leaking concept
art that was done for the movie, followed up by the script being
obtained by a YouTuber who
promptly gave a rendition of the plot. And, come February, the script itself,
by Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, was leaked online. You can find it here.
So, on this May the Fourth,
let's try and answer the question of whether it could have
been better than The Rise of Skywalker, as we take a look at Star
Wars: Episode IX; Duel of the Fates.
Now, obviously, the first thing
to set out is that this script is not the complete version of what the
Trevorrow film would have looked like. We don't know how finished this draft
was, as screenplays often undergo constant revision as production begins and
even whilst filming is in motion. This draft was also before Carrie Fishers
untimely and unfortunate death, so rewrites would have had to happen to account
for that in any case (though perhaps less than allegedly happened with The
Rise of Skywalker, as Leia's role here is not that large). Similarly we
don't know how the backlash to The Last Jedi would have
effected things (as seemed to again do in the case of The Rise of
Skywalker, which seemed to written with a checklist of complaints next to
the monitor).
The plot essentially divides
into three main strands. Rey, equipped with a snazzy new double-bladed lightsabre,
is continuing her journey as a Jedi, but is struggling with the Jedi codes
rulings, particularly as regards straying away from emotions of all sorts. The
Resistance has worked out that all signals between planets are being blocked by
the First Order, now fully, if shakily, established as a new Empire and set up
on Coruscant. They realise, however, that there's an old Jedi communication
network beneath the Jedi Temple that they can use to bypass the communication
blcok.
Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Kylo
Ren is off (leaving Chancellor Hux in charge) searching for a way to make
himself more powerful, whilst being haunted by the (literal and metaphorical)
ghost of Luke Skywalker. This journey has taken him to Mustafar, former home of
Darth Vader, where he finds a Sith holocron that may provide the answers he
seeks.
With that preliminary
established, I'll now set out what I think are the bad parts and the good parts
of Duel of the Fates (I won't do a long summary, as those are
already out there if you're not inclined to read the screenplay). So, first of
all, the bad.
The Dark Side
There are I think two
major issues. The first is that, for some Godforsaken reason, they've
crowbarred in a Rey/Poe romance. This doesn't work at all, and seems to exist
for no other reason than to stop people (including Oscar Issaac and John
Boyega) from clamouring for a Finn/Poe pairing. Whilst Hollywood is happy to
accept that homosexual romances are a thing, in blockbusters they must be
confined to the background and be short, to make it easy for the Chinese
censors to snip it out. Rey's only two plausible pairings (if she had to have one)
are either Rey/Ben (which Rise of Skywalker sort of went with)
or Rey/Finn, and the latter was never going to happen given Hollywood's
squeamishness over black male, white female pairings. As it is, then, this
pairing feels forced, doesn't really add much to either character (other than a
means of externalizing Rey's struggles with her emotions) and saps time and
space away from other characters to develop. Which leads neatly to the second
issue - Kylo Ren/Ben Solo.
Kylo here has an interesting
plot. Searching for more power, but also an easy way of obtaining it, a
hologram of Darth Sidious sends him out to search for Tor Vallum, a 7,000 year
old Sith Lord responsible for teaching Darth Plageius (Sidious' master). With
his face new mutilated by the hologram, and a new mask applied, Kylo heads out
and finds Vallum. The sequence here is quite cool and Kylo goes through a
parallel of Luke's journey in the Empire Strikes Back, where
he faces a Vader conjured by the force. Unlike Luke, however, Kylo loses his
duel (symbolizing his inability to overcome the darkness). From Vallum he also
learns the power to drain the force for living beings and add it to his own. He
promptly does this to Vallum.
This, then is the problem, that
Kylo's motivations are never exactly clear. He wants more power, but it's never
really spelled out why or what he hopes to do with it. It's a bit of blow
because his more conflicted characterization is lost in favour of 'being more
evil' as a motivation. Tor Vallum is also a bit of wash. Built up really well,
and then having survived 7,000 years is suddenly defeated really easily by a
somewhat angsty young adult. It doesn't really work and points to the general
problem of the Kylo segment, lack of development.
There are some minor issues as
well. I won't dwell on all of them, but I think the one that sticks out most
prominently is the sequence where we meet the warlord backers of the First
Order. Hux has a conference with them and we're introduced to a variety of
alien lords who all appear to be the funders of the First Order. This seems to
be an attempt to build on Johnson's point in The Last Jedi on
the way capitalism profits from war, but it's clumsily done. It only exists for
one sequence and is then never mentioned again, so it sticks out as an odd part
that doesn't really add anything to the story.
The Light Side
So what's to like? Well,
there's a number of things. Rose Tyco is fully integrated into the story, and
gets a number of contributing parts, which is good to see (particularly after
the character was more or less written out of The Rise of Skywalker). There's
also no regression in the characters either. That is it feels like these are a
group of people who lived through the events of The Last Jedi,
rather than collectively having amnesia and only remembering The Force
Awakens. The plot in general feels more coherent - that there's an actual
direction to what's going on rather than a bunch of stuff happening and being
thrown together. Hux is also not given short shrift and is allowed to develop
as well (and he also gets an amusing sequence where it's revealed that he's a
real fanboy for the Jedi and is trying to learn how to use the force - which
also puts a new spin on his conflict with Kylo, adding a factor of jealousy to
the mix.)
Finn also gets a good arc, as
he completes his journey from coward to leader. On Coruscant he leads a
revolution of the people against the First Order, including most prominently
the stormtroopers. A queasy question mark that's always been hanging about since The
Force Awakens, was that if Finn could break his conditioning and rebel, why
couldn't the other stormtroopers? And, additionally, if they were all kidnapped
and conditioned as children then wouldn't this raise moral questions about just
slaughtering them? Here we get an attempt to address that and one that ties in
with Finn's own growth.
The Knights of Ren are also in
this script but here they feel like an actual threat and a
group of people who you would actually be running from, rather than a bunch of
cosplayers who stumbled onto the stage. They also help push forward Rey's own
characterisation.
Rey, Poe romance aside, is also
handled much better here. She is still a nobody and is not wedged into being
Palpatine's granddaughter, which consequently allows her to grow into her own
terms, as well as with the realisation that not coming from a lineage does not
mean she's a 'nobody' (as Poe puts it 'no one is a nobody'). This feels true to
the arc. Granted, this is botched slightly by the revelation that Snoke had
Kylo kill Rey's parents. Why is never revealed (I think the implication is
supposed to be that Rey was a student at Luke's academy, but then that really
screws up the timelines), but I imagine this would have been cut.
That aside, it also means that her conflict is more internal and
true to her. Rey struggles with her emotions because she is an emotional person
with trauma, which makes sense given her abandonment in one the most inhospitable
planets in the galaxy, not because she has some bad genes from Palpatine. This
makes sense of her struggles to follow the Jedi way, which is phobic towards
any kind of emotion. The completion of her arc, then, with the realisation that
emotions are not bad, but can be used productively, feels real and also serves
as a good way of resolving the central conflict of the Star Wars series
between the dark and the light sides, with the integration of both of them.
It's not all perfectly handled,
and I think more could be done in engaging with the mythology of the world.
With that said, it is a Hollywood blockbuster movie and so exists to sell tickets,
not do deep ruminations. That sort of stuff gets left to the additional
material, such as Knights of the Old Republic II, which does
an exceedingly good job of flipping the conventional mythos of Star
Wars on its head.
From a Certain Point of View
So, would Duel of
the Fates have been better? On the basis of the screenplay I'd
marginally give it the nod. It's not perfect by any means, there's issues here
even in the stuff I liked and think it did better. For instance, I like the
opening sequence where a botched bombing mission turns into a dramatic stealing
of a Star Destroyer. It's silly, and far too easy really, to but it feels epic
and fun and also neatly establishes the characters and how far they've come and
developed in the meantime, as well as the respective positions of the factions.
Overall, I think Duel of the Fates works better as a conclusion
to the saga. It builds on the themes evident through the series, and, more
importantly, it does try and engage with character beats and themes that were
developed in The Last Jedi, so it feels like it follows more
fluidly.
Now of course we can never know
how this would have turned out. Even if Carrie Fisher had not passed, and The
Last Jedi hadn't had such a vocal backlash from a minority, the script
likely would have changed. Add in these two developments and who knows. Similarly
whilst a bad screenplay will rarely make a good movie, good screenplays don't
always make good movies. What works on the page doesn't always translate well
to the big screen.
But, from a certain point of
view, I think it would have done.