Some interesting development on the Episode IX shooting front.
Yesterday John posted this pic on his Instragram of him flying somewhere
and today he posted a video of a prayer call from a mosque, here a screencap of the video.
Now a quick bit of Googlemancy have led me to believe that that is the Abu Dawoud mosque in Aqaba, Jordan.
Why is this at all interesting?
Because Aqaba is the closest large city to the Wadi Rum desert where the IX team started shooting about a week and a half ago as reported by Making Star Wars. The person who initially noticed the IX set being set up in Wadi Rum said he thought he saw Daisy Ridley being given a tour, but he only saw her at a distance and in a brief glimpse, and frankly given the number of youngish, white brunettes in Star Wars there are others it could have been: Daisy’ stunt double or Keri Russle just to name two we know are involved in IX.
But if Daisy it was it is just confirmation of what we already knew, that Finn and Rey will spend a good deal of time together in IX.
What’s interesting to me is where this is supposed to be. Speculation have gone into it as the Making Star Wars page shows, personally I find the most compelling theory to be Jakku if it is a repeat location and not somewhere entirely new.
I could see Rey go back to Jakku to find answers about her family that aren’t told to her by a Dark sider known to be lying through his teeth.
For Finn there’s another thing entirely. For one thing emotional closure over what happened at Tuanul, there was nothing he could have done to prevent what happened but that massacre left a profound impact on him and he might feel a need now that time have passed to face the location again. For another there is on Jakku an old Imperial base, in fact it’s the base where the First Order was born so to speak, when Rae Sloane killed Gallius Rax and took the Imperial remnant with her to the secret location discovered by the late Emperor where the Empire could be reborn. And finally that base is also where Brendol Hux, father of Armitage Hux, first created what later became known as Operation resurrection, the First Order’s code name for the Stormtrooper program.
Yes there is indeed many interesting plots that could be spawned by a revisit to Jakky for Finn and Rey both.
~Mod Mara
A Star Wars sequel movie? Do actual worldbuilding and follow through on its own and EU materials’ plot threads? Dare I hope? Jakku on TFA was filmed at Rub’ al Khali desert, Abu Dhabi, but there’s precedent for location changes on the same planet. The Tatooine scenes in ANH were filmed around Tunisia but the ones in RotJ were filmed in U.S. locations, for instance.
A potential point of interest is that Rub’ al Khali is a sand desert, the largest continuous sand desert (erg) in the world, while Wadi Rum is a valley, the largest in Jordan. Rub’ al Khali was perfect for shooting things like the trackless desert that Finn wandered through, while Wadi Rum would be great for showing dramatic crag formations–like the Jakku Observatory located under the Plaintive Hand Plateau, perhaps, which Rax was originally guarding?
(Wadi Rum, btw, evidently means “the valley of light/airborne sand.” I’m guessing we won’t see Anakin’s Force ghost there.)
Tuanul was also a religious community, and the Church of the Force could tie into a larger plot about the Force. The Lor San Tekka character was set up to be a seeker after the ways of the Force much like Maz and Chirrut. He was a Church member too, since the days of the Empire when it was illegal in fact, so it’s easy to see why he would have been with them when he was on an inhospitable world. But what was he doing there? Was he on a religious retreat, or visiting with his religious brethren? Or was he a guest while on other business? If so, what was he trying to discover?
It would be perfect if Finn and Rey could revisit the sites of their trauma amid all this plot and worldbuilding as well. Finn could go to the ruins of Tuanul, perhaps to look for clues, and Rey could see the devastation for herself and see what Finn was talking about when he said he made a choice. Rey could visit Niima outpost, or its remains if it was destroyed. At minimum I want an answer what the ship she saw flying away was about. Finn and Rey could support each other and talk, something they didn’t get to do in TLJ or even TFA.
L.J.'s Obsessions 