Last Jedi Minute 76: The Snap

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It all makes sense now.

Date

May 17th, 2021

Summary

Guest commentator Riley Silverman returns to watch what Rey sees as she gazes into the Magic Force Mirror to discover the secret of her parents!

Guests

Riley Silverman

Notes

Film

• This minute starts with Rey telling us that she should have felt trapped or panicked. Ends with Rey's parental dyad coming into focus. There's two parents walking towards us, and then it turns out there was just one set of footprints and then… we don't know it's just a shadow.
• We get Rey's voiceover as she narrates her vision after the fact.

Podcast

• Referenced: "76 Trombones".
• The snap does come back around, but it doesn't go on forever.
• How much of this is real, how much is a vision or a hallucination? It begins and ends with her; she is the center of her own story, nothing else matters.
• Doing "the wave" in a sports stadium
• Other famous snaps in motion picture history. Thanos of course. The West Side Story dance fights.
• Riley is pathologically incapable of snapping her fingers.
• Everyone has their own snapping technique, just as everyone has their own pen-holding technique.
• How does Rey's reaction to what she sees in the mirror compare to how Luke felt in the magic tree? It speaks to each character's relationship with their antagonists.
  • What would Luke have seen in the Magic Tree after he learned that Darth Vader was his father?
• We walked backwards into a flashback. This doesn't happen a lot (if ever) in Star Wars. It's also a misdirect because we don't know who she's talking to.
• This scene is highly effective filmmaking. Walking the tightrope, where on one side you have "oh this is just a rehash" and on the other side you have "oh this is not Star Wars".
  • This movie does the most to expand the cinematic language that is Star Wars.

When Riley saw this movie for the first time she didn't know for sure that she liked it. She had to sit with it and process it, so by the second time she was fully on board.
 Originally, Riley was able to get a ticket to see it until the Saturday after it came out, but randomly she was able to snag a seat at the AMC near her work, so she headed straight over there at 5:00 p.m. on the Friday after it came out. That probably also impacted her first viewing. Similarly, she saw The Rise of Skywalker with her best friend from high school, whom she also saw The Phantom Menace with so she is an apologist for that movie.

• This minute ends in a great cliffhanger. Who did you think Rey's parents were going to turn out to be vs. who did you hope it was going to be?
  • Riley assumed not a Skywalker because Luke didn't know who she was.
  • Riley was on team "Rey Kenobi". Behind the scenes: apparently that was in contention at least at some point.
• Talking about the Magic Tree and there being only what you brought with you, Riley brought in her own love of Obi-Wan Kenobi as a character into this viewing. Mentioned: the many endings of the movie Clue.
• Who Alex thought Rey's parents were going to be.
  • Retroactively, he wanted her not to be related to anybody that we already knew.
  • With The Rise of Skywalker, we get the worst of both worlds because her parents are nobody, but she's still connected to somebody we know.
  • Similarly Pete didn't really expect it to be anybody, but if it had to be somebody he would have gone with Rey Kenobi.
    • It's nice to expand the universe as opposed to closing it down. At least if she were related to Obi-Wan, it would be an interesting side branch as opposed to just in the main trunk.
    • After having seen the Clone Wars cartoon where Obi-Wan has a relationship with Duchess Satine of Mandalore, her "nephew" looks like an exact blend of Satine and Obi-Wan, so there was the theory that he was his secret son. This adds fuel to the "Rey Kenobi" fire.
• Who would the most ridiculous person for Rey to see in the mirror be?
  • Pete's go-to is BoShek.
  • The theory that they cast a woman that looks so much like Daisy Ridley to play Jyn Erso meant that Jyn must be Rey's mother. The events of Rogue One' ' make that unlikely.
  • We don't see any human-alien hybrids in the movies, although in "Star Wars Rebels" there's Jacen Syndula (Hera's son with Kanan). And he's just a human with green hair.
    • This is mainly because Star Wars as a franchise is very chaste; we don't meet characters' children unless they factor into the story somehow.
    • Junior (Admiral Ackbar's son) looks a little bit less Mon Calamari in that he's smoother and less fishy. Maybe he's a human-alien hybrid whose mother may be Holdo?
      • It's revealed in a novels that she is pansexual.
    • It's more biologically realistic in the sense that species on Earth can't interbreed.
    • Pete anticipates within the next five Star Wars projects they will show a human-alien hybrid character. What alien would it be?
  • Mentioned: Cha-Ka from "Land of the Lost".
• Plug for Star Wars Minute on social media. Pete is back on the SWMLS on Facebook.

Meta Minute

• 36:14 podcast episode length.
• Alex has (mostly jokingly) made reference to who he thought Rey's parents were on numerous occasions. One notable example is when the guys covered the Episode VII teaser trailer.

• There is a Canon article on Wookieepedia for "Hybrid", which lists examples of species that could interbreed to produce a hybrid. It even mentions that some of these hybrids were themselves able to reproduce and formed "hybrid species" (such as the Alder-Espirion).
• Some notable hybrid individuals are in the table below:

  Individual	Parent species	Known from
  Jek and Shaeeah Lawquane	Human and Twi'lek	They appear in both the Clone Wars cartoon and The Bad Batch. Both their father and stepfather were human and their mother was a Twi'lek
  Rystáll Sant	Human and Theelin	She is one of the singers in the Max Rebo band at Jabba's palace.
  Diva Shaliqua	Human and Theelin	She was seen briefly alongside Diva Funquita and Jabba at the podrace.
  Jacen Syndulla	Human and Twi'lek	Star Wars Rebels.

• Hybrids of zebras and any other equine are known as 'zebroids'. "Zedonk" is one of multiple names for the (usually sterile) offspring of a zebra and a donkey. Our favorite alternative appellation is the 'Zebronkey'.
• Zebroids have been bred since at least the early 19th century, so it's a little difficult to say who (if anyone) "invented" them.
• HOWEVER, there was a Russian (later Soviet) scientist named Ilya Ivanov who was a pioneer of artificial insemination and was the first to use the process to create a zebra-donkey hybrid.
• He is most known/infamous for his (failed and incredibly unethical) attempts to create a "humanzee" or other human-ape hybrid.

• As a matter of fact, there is a Star Wars Minute bingo!

Quotes

• Pete: (referencing "West Side Story") When you're a Rey, you're a Rey all the way.
• Riley: A human male probably could not… fertilize that jar full of pickled baby eggs [from "The Mandalorian"]. Alex: Doesn't mean he won't try!
• Riley: *chuckles* Who do you think is more surprised this is where this conversation went based on this minute of this show? Do you think it's us or do you think it's the audience?

Links

Audio onnly

http://www.starwarsminute.com/2021/05/17/last-jedi-minute-76-the-snap

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc9H6GQOMn4

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