She’s not there in the slaughter scenes. That’s literally present day Rey watching the scene. Same way we see her there when Luke and Vader are fighting on Cloud City. We know the slaughter happened already. It’s literally told to us in the film. The only scene from the future is Rey running into Kylo in the snow.

Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I like the idea because it’s a little bit of whimsy. I like the idea of Old2-D2 bleep-blooping his war stories to his grandchildren-analogues. And there’s a certain poignance to that as well, that centuries later that’s the story he wants to tell.

“...not every work of fiction is written the style of having a narrating voice...”

Except... the stories we see on screen are not framed from a narration standpoint.

I understand the concept of an unreliable narrator.

Ok. I accept that the Journal of the Whills is canon.

So is Star Wars shown to us from the standpoint of an unreliable narrator, recounting 2nd and 3rd hand information? Or is it shown from a perfect, objective standpoint wherein we see and know things that no character in the story sees or knows? Honest question.

So, then, are the events shown in the movies shown from the perspective of an unreliable narrating voice? Or from a perfect, objective, and all-seeing 3rd-person viewpoint, as many many other works of fiction are?

So, honest question: Are we to believe that what we saw on screen may not have actually happened, but is only a rough accounting of it by unreliable 2nd and 3rd hand sources? Because that’s implicit in believing there is a “narrator” to star wars.

At that point all you’re saying is “at one point, *someone* in the star wars universe, be it R2 or 3PO, or Rando Nounverber, knows all about what happened during the movies” and... that’s not saying much of anything.

Um... Ok? Relevance? None of the movies are constructed as if there is a narrating voice. They’re from a strictly 3rd-person perspective. Compare any Star Wars film to, off the top of my head, Fight Club. In the latter, our information as an audience is flawed because it is limited to what our narrator, Edward Norton,…

That’s not what I’m saying. But not every work of fiction is written the style of having a narrating voice. Often, they’re written in third person, either with or without an omnipotent insight into what characters are thinking. Assuming that one of the characters must be the “narrator” demonstrates a basic…

Maybe he was just being really boring an unimportant, so he knew he couldn’t recount his heroics and instead told the Journal of the Whills that he passively recorded all the events while in hibernation mode.

Perhaps. But we all know everything that happened AFTER Bespin was based on third-hand accounts.

Counterpoint:

I seem to remember Artoo not being able to see Obi-wan’s ghost on Dagobah in the Return of the Jedi novelization. He probably thinks Luke is a crazy person, just like his father.

like the idea that Jar Jar was the key to everything...

Yeah, but you know now gossipy those droids can be during their oil baths at the spa.

TFA blows this out of the water.

On I-90 in Illinois going west toward Rockford, a tuned car (I say this because with the aftermarket body panels and ground effects I could not tell what it was...maybe a Toyota?) was right on my ass even though I was doing 85 and the speed limit was 55 (this is just normal Illinois driving as ALL of the traffic was…