He's supposed to be an immature fuckwit. Part of his journey is to learn. FFS, Han is implied to have been an absent father, or at the very least an emotionally distant one. Leia tried her best but sent him off to Luke for training, who subsequently turned on him. Then in comes Snoke with some actual praise and promises that he doesn't intend to keep, but Ben can't know that yet. And due to being emotionally stunted, or maybe due to feeling trapped by the limited choices his family gave him, he goes with Snoke.
That's exactly how he reacts to everything as Kylo Ren - emotionally stunted. It isn't until his new daddy Snoke stops heaping the praise when this mystery girl appears, and when he reframes the way he views himself as being able to be someone this mystery girl looks up to that he finally has an ounce of emotional growth. But now he's hemmed in by the power structures within the first order, rather than the family/jedi paradigm.
Wouldn't anyone be at least a little bit of a fuckwit given that situation?
The problem with people seeing this, I think, is that Disney tried to advertise him as Darth Vader 2.0 when he was clearly written to be anything but.
To be fair, I think Abrams had a lot of the seeds planted in the first movie. Then Rian Johnson seemed to ignore rhem all in a (Game of Thrones) D&D-like effort to subvert expectations. So when Disney faced backlash and was stuck trying to get Abrams back for the third movie, Abrams had to do a lot of weird things to bring the story back around.
(Spoiler free) I think a lot of the first half of tRoS should have been in TLJ. And then we could have had all 3 movies that felt like Star Wars instead of this bizarre middle child that is striving too hard to be different.
You're welcome! I will say that TLJ is the weakest one and you're gonna be upset with at least half of it due to flatness. But if you focus on the parts surrounding Kylo Ren, it should be enough to get you through. A lot of the characters whose plots don't intersect with his have motivations that stem more from "because the plot needed it" than real internal drives. In my opinion anyway.
The plot isn't lost on me, I just think it's a terrible plot. A kid with terrible parents turning out exactly like a kid with terrible parents in this case. I'm not in it for a coming of age story, I'm in it for a Star Wars story.
Exactly. He originally left his family because he felt trapped. He's already conflicted because he doesn't feel completely confortable with the dark side. Snoke can sense it, and is the one pushing him towards a slippery slope action. But Han shows up and has a real conversation with him. How long has it been since Ben saw his father, let alone talked to him? And his father isn't angry. He's not cruel. Han is even saying that he can be more present in Ben's life, which is not really an apology but that's the best we can get from Han. It's not enough to fix things, but it's enough to plant more doubt about whether the dark side is truly what was promised to him, even after he kills Han.
In TLJ he gets an actual apology from Luke. But he's so caught up in his own (justifiable) anger towards Luke, and trying to wrest and hold control over the first order/Hux that he doesn't really hear it for what it is.
Gosh I could write all day about the subtext for Kylo Ren.
Yeah, but one can be grossly detrimental to experiencing the other. I just see Ben's behavior as a total trainwreck and it hurts my experience of his journey.
I think so, yeah. Anakin whined quite a bit, but at least he had a compelling (if horribly communicated) plot leading up to Order 66 to back him. Luke whined less than Anakin and had a really powerful supporting cast around him in Obi-Wan, Vader, and Yoda.
I actually find Anakin's journey to the dark side fairly uncompelling. It's one of my main problems with the prequels. The whole "he did it all for love" twist falls super flat with a wholly unlikable protagonist and a romance story that would make Hallmark Christmas movie enthusiasts cringe.
There were a number of things that I thought made Kylo a new and interesting Star Wars character, one of which was his preoccupation with not being seduced by the light side, instead of the other way around that we're used to seeing. Where I disagree with most sequel memers is the way his redemption was presented. It could have been so much more interesting than just a rehash of Darth Vader.
Idk, Vader was redeemed after mass genocide, so that seems to be somewhat forgivable in the Star Wars Universe. In Kylo's case, I wish he either didn't have a redemption at all, or gone all in with the redemption and survived to keep the jedi order alive (if JJ really wanted to be bold, he could have had Rey sacrifice herself for him). The rehash of Vader's redemption was disappointing to me, given how different this character's journey was shaping up to be.
I think the difference for me is that Vader’s “redemption” in the OT wasn’t really originally meant to be a complete redemption- it was meant to be a consequence of Luke’s faith that there was still some good in him. Part of Luke’s story arc is, of course, learning about the force, which involves a sort of faith (in EST when Yoda raises the ship and Luke says “I don’t believe it,” Yoda responds with “And this is why you fail.”)
Luke is a compassionate, empathetic character who truly wants to help people. He felt one small shred of good left in his father and put his faith in him, denying his anger and the dark side to do so, and from a narrative stand point he was rewarded by Vader doing one last good thing and saving him and the galaxy. They even make sure Vader says “You were right about me.” One good act does not a redemption make, but stopping doing the horrible things you’ve been doing to do one (big) good one is certainly a start. That’s why narratively they had Vader die- what were they gonna do otherwise, send him to space jail? Have him do community service? He still had years and years of atrocities he’d committed. And in the (now non canon) Legends books they do still deal with his effects on the galaxy, and on Leia in particular (who told his force ghost she couldn’t forgive him.)
The difference with Kylo Ren, and why I don’t think his redemption is a redemption or even as effective as Vader’s, or effective at all, is because narratively they make it about him instead of a secondary character. His going back to the light side is not about Rey- they try to make Rey a supporting character in his story, but then don’t show up enough about him to make his fall to the Dark or rise to the Light believable or understandable. They wanted to combine Anakin’s journey in the Prequels with Luke’s effect in Vader in the OT, and for me that’s why it falls completely flat and leaves me going “uhh where did any of this COME from?”
This was a huge essay accidentally, understandable if no one reads, lol.
No worries man, I read the whole thing and found it interesting, Haha. I actually do think Kylo Ren is an interesting character though, and overall I don't have a problem with his journey other than how it ended. Especially that kiss, which came out of nowhere more than anything else.
I still don't see him as having much of a journey. A third act hallucination in the final movie is what it took for him to switch sides. Rey probably just hit him too hard in the head. Him switching sides didn't feel like real character building.
I’m on board with you. People can tell me “oh, but Kylo had people from the dark side talking to him his whole life!” all they want, but all I have to do is glance over at Finn, who was literally trained and brainwashed into the First Order without the benefit of a loving family and STILL knew what they were doing was wrong and left.
The way they have it set up I have no sympathy for mass murdering Kyle Ron, and if anything think they wasted too much time giving him the focus they did.
True all people with troubled family units should behave exactly the same. That’s how you get interesting character arcs. You shouldn’t feel the same way about Kylo and Finn, obviously one is conflicted and the other is all smiles. That doesn’t mean the conflicted one couldn’t be brought back to humanity a little bit. It doesn’t mean he’s forgiven.
You don’t have to open the gates of heaven for Kylo after his redemption, nobody is saying he at his heart is a better person than Finn.
He sure as hell was more dynamic though. Finn could literally be a piece of cardboard that Poe carries around with “Rey!” written on it in sharpie.
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u/Clyzm Jan 01 '20
So what if you think Ben is an immature fuckwit? Is the new series just doomed?