Star Wars: The Last Jedi might have been a commercial and critical success, however, the Star Wars sequel trilogy installment managed to upset a very vocal part of the fanbase. Traditional fans found a lot to complain about in The Force Awakens sequel, and at some point the backlash became so intense that some started petitioning for The Last Jedi to be taken out of Star Wars canon.
One of the issues fans have with the film is director Rian Johnson's decision to turn Rey (Daisy Ridley) into a nobody. There was a lot of fuss over Rey's parentage ever since the character debuted in The Force Awakens, and some fans were hoping that the Jakku Orphan would be related to one of the legacy characters.
Though turning Rey's parents into nobodies makes the character's arc much stronger and more meaningful, Johnson admits in an interview with Slash Film that he actually had alternative answers for the character's origin to mess with the fanbase.
"I honestly listed everything I could think of. Even awful possibilities where I said, 'This is not what we're going to do'," the filmmaker explained."I mean the less silly one was, 'Is she a clone?' Anything that's a theory on Reddit now, I guarantee was listed on that document."
It's true though – there were a lot of ridiculous Rey Origin theories running around the internet before the release of The Last Jedi, and according to Johnson the silliest one they found was a theory stating that Rey might actually have been a robot.
"The silliest one was, 'Is she a robot?' OK, we've seen a bio-mechanical realistic flesh hand on Luke, could the technology have advanced significantly in the 30 years, and then I just started laughing. Look forward to the 'Rey was almost a robot' headlines'" Johnson joked.
It's really silly we know, but sometimes Star Wars fans can get really intense, and really strange. Luckily Johnson put story and character development above anything else – turning Rey into a nobody made The Last Jedi much more powerful because it meant that your legacy didn't really on who Rey's parents were, but who she was and who she wanted to become.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is currently screening in cinemas.
Read: Fan-Made Opening Crawl For Star Wars: Episode IX "Fixes" The Last Jedi's Mistakes
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