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A/V Episode VIII - THE LAST JEDI - Official Movie Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Karl0413, Feb 5, 2016.

  1. sidv88

    sidv88 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2005
    This has come up before: Kylo sweeping away the Sith means nothing if he is just like them in all but name. Down to ruling the galaxy like Palpatine.

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  2. Nobody145

    Nobody145 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 9, 2007
    We're two thirds of the way through a trilogy and Kylo still isn't an impressive figure. In TFA I could see how that was partially intentional, as a Vader fanboy, with the supposedly more impressive Snoke and Luke waiting in the wings, and TLJ opened with that, with Snoke mocking his ripoff Vader mask. Of course then it turns out neither Snoke nor Luke are that smart either, as Snoke is taken out and Luke spends most of the movie convinced the Jedi should just fade away until Yoda talks sense into him (so much for Luke surpassing the prequel Jedi).

    Prequel Anakin was annoying, but I didn't hate him, or rather, his fall was understandable. On his own Anakin Skywalker wasn't that bad- seriously flawed, but without Palpatine, he probably wouldn't have come anywhere close to galactic conqueror. We still don't know much about Ben's fall- we see the moment of Luke's failure, but still maddeningly little details about how it reached that point. Luke sensed darkness in Ben, but we know so little about Snoke and how he corrupted Ben (if he did), and apparently Ben was already more powerful than Luke at that point just because. And at least Anakin had a hard life (slave, his mother's death, galactic war, not that that excuses his actions), Ben was what, an ungrateful jerk who grew up in times of peace, thanks to the efforts of his family?

    By RotS we saw Anakin as a confident, skilled fighter who worried about Padme, or rather obsessed over her too much, but he wasn't too far gone, and he obviously held Obi-wan in high respect. Kylo apparently wants to burn everything down? I've read the novelization, it basically comes down to the Force telling Rey not to kill Kylo, so basically plot armor keeping Rey from killing Kylo and finishing the trilogy earlier. Again. Once would be a stretch, as it already happened on Starkiller Base (when Rey is standing over a defeated Kylo until a cliff conveniently opens between them, but she still had her chance). A second time is just stupid, but then that's TLJ for you.

    Well, Obi-wan failed to kill Vader, but that was only once, and also, Obi-wan honestly thought Vader was dead or would soon be dead considering he was literally on fire last he saw him. At least in the old EU Obi-wan was surprised when he heard about Vader being alive, no idea about nu-canon.

    Doesn't help that after Kylo kills Snoke, he then wastes the Crait assault to try to have a grudge match with what turns out to be a Force hologram. Even Hux is making fun of him ("Do you think you got him?"). Its not exactly a fun story when the main reason the good guys escape is that the bad guys are too stupid to finish them off (after their own multiple mistakes). Kylo makes Ozzel look smart. IX has a long way to go to make Kylo impressive rather than just a thug.
     
  3. The_Four_Dot_Elipsis

    The_Four_Dot_Elipsis Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2005
    But is he? His motivation for conquest is to enforce change, as was Anakin's. Palpatine's was control for control's sake and the eradication of his religion's sworn enemy.
     
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  4. EmperorHorus

    EmperorHorus Jedi Master star 4

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    Sep 3, 2016
    That doesn't mean Anakin wasn't a Sith. Any difference between the Sith and other Dark-Side users who want to rule the galaxy is purely semantic. You can go into random definitions introduced by EU novels about Sith code and what not but it's really meaningless.
     
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  5. The_Four_Dot_Elipsis

    The_Four_Dot_Elipsis Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2005
    He was a Sith because he was subservient to one. Anakin demonstrates far more resistance to existing systems of power than he does any interest in actual Sith orthodoxy (which is only vaguely referenced in the film).

    How Kylo will differ from Palpatine is quite literally a wait and see proposition, but there are any number of things Abrams and Terrio could do. FWIW I think Johnson turned him into a terrifically compelling villain by honouring the fact that this guy is the son of the ultimate anti-authoritarian. "You have too much of your father's heart" - and how
     
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  6. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

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    Dec 16, 2012
    I will have to disagree, Kylo don't seem to really be driven by anything like that. He just use that as an excuse to continue being what he has become.

    And to me Luke was just using that talk as an excuse to continue with his self-exile and not take up his responsibilities.
     
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  7. EmperorHorus

    EmperorHorus Jedi Master star 4

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    Sep 3, 2016
    Exactly. None of the films give any real meaning to what "Sith" is, other than "bad dark-side guy who wants to rule universe". Hence why saying "Kylo Ren isn't a Sith" is pure semantics. It literally just means he doesn't call himself a Sith so he's not a Sith.
     
  8. Ghost

    Ghost Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Oct 13, 2003
    The biggest thing is that we still don't know what Kylo's main motivation is, or how Snoke seduced him to the dark side, and the two are probably linked.
     
  9. The_Four_Dot_Elipsis

    The_Four_Dot_Elipsis Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2005
    You can impose what you want onto a text, but that's not inherent in the text itself.

    He literally calls it out as something that he rejects, but also we do have some understanding of the philosophy from Palpatine, which is power for power's sake (the Opera chat). Again, how you can invert and differentiate from that is the challenge set for IX.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  10. MrDarth0

    MrDarth0 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2015
    Kylo has no real motivation in TFA/TLJ other than he wants to be like his grandfather in TFA (why?) and after he's smacked down by Snoke in TLJ, he gets 'offended' and just wants to destroy everything (why?).

    Adam Driver plays Kylo excellently and gives us some of the best acting performances we ever saw in SW, but that also helps to hide the fact that Kylo is so far not very well written/explained character.

    Ben grew up in privilege with parents that loved him, even if they didn't always have time to be with him (though there's very little evidence of that in the current EU so far), he could have been anything he wanted, he even has magical powers, yet he decides to become a murderer for a tyrannical totalitarian regime, because reasons. That to me says spoiled ungrateful brat.

    I cannot imagine a reason why would Ben do the things he has done unless he has some serious mental disorder.
     
  11. Vialco

    Vialco Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Mar 6, 2007
    The Sith have been extinct for three decades by the time of TLJ. They're already gone. Kylo's reference to letting them die makes no sense. The Sith are already dead. They've been dead for decades.

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  12. The Positive Fan

    The Positive Fan Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2015
    The physical embodiments of the Sith, perhaps, but the legacy of the Sith was very alive as far as Kylo was concerned - whether he considered himself one or not, he clearly saw himself as carrying on their work ("I will finish what you started"). At least until Snoke stripped him of that illusion - at which point the Sith become another aspect of the past that needed to be swept away.
     
  13. Soontir-Fel

    Soontir-Fel Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 18, 2001
    I mean we are sèeing a lot of this behavior in America with mra s incels and privileged angry white boys. It doesn't make any damn sense but it's there.

    Hell half the people on Twitter harassing rian j and pablo are pulling stuff from kylos wheelhouse and not self aware of it
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  14. sidv88

    sidv88 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2005
    We're not even seeing that Kylo is an incel though. If we had some backstory where Ben Solo was rejected by every girl he ever met, blocked him on the holonet etc. But we don't have this.

    Ben doesn't even mention it as a reason that he went bad. And believe me, having never had a girlfriend in my entire twenties and early thirties, living a life where I went to work, came home, and never met anyone despite going to Berkeley, doing research with Nobel laureates, getting a Master's degree and a professional degree and a high paying job (all extremely hard work), and getting rewarded when talking with a girl, even just in a friendly way without romantic intentions with "I don't want to be rude, but I don't know you" (as if having a full time job working 40 hours a week where you don't get to know people was some sort of crime)--I know how much rage the incels have. And they would mention it every time (I've worked so hard and girls don't even want to get to know me! I mean, not even as friends! They're walking away before they even know anything about me!!). But Kylo makes no mention, in films or nuEU, about anything regarding rejection or having no female friends/girlfriends. A real incel--it's almost all they talk about.

    Kylo does not strike me as an incel at all. And then the way he casually displays that physique in 8? I'm sorry, he's not giving me incel vibes.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  15. BobaMatt

    BobaMatt TFN EU Staff star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2002
    I don't...think anyone was making the argument that Kylo Ren was an incel.
     
  16. sidv88

    sidv88 Force Ghost star 5

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    Aug 22, 2005
    I might have misread icels as incels, sorry. :oops:
     
  17. BobaMatt

    BobaMatt TFN EU Staff star 7 VIP

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2002
    I have to imagine the argument being made isn't literally that Kylo Ren is an incel, but that he's displaying a lot of toxic entitled behavior.

    I think Ren grew up in the lap of privilege but was still personally unhappy, and has extrapolated that out into being a problem with the world. He didn't live through the Empire, but I can imagine he thinks the dysfunction he sees is proof enough for him that his family are wrong. Well maybe not grandpa.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  18. sidv88

    sidv88 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2005
    After 7, the impression I had with Kylo Ren was that he just suppressed hormones to not be distracted in his dark side work, the way Sherlock Holmes refuses girlfriends because they get in the way of his detective work. (I thought of Kylo in the manner of Jinyong's Chinese novel 笑傲江湖 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiling,_Proud_Wanderer where the villain literally neuters himself to get more dark side martial arts power).

    But 8 threw a wrench on my theory with Kylo crushing on Rey; which didn't match up with how I imagined the character after 7 (and I don't even like Kylo's character much). But 8 just made his motivations even more contradictory than they already are, for me.

    As for the toxic incel behavior; if Kylo isn't an incel, where is the source of this behavior then? That's why the character is falling flat with me and a lot of other people. We haven't been given a reason for his actions. The reason is everything--it's what turned Magneto from a cardboard villain in the 1960s to the in-depth character that Claremont recreated in the 1980s by giving him a persecuted Jewish background.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  19. starfish

    starfish Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 9, 2003
    Obviously. I was commenting on Chewies mood not whether it was canon or not
     
  20. BobaMatt

    BobaMatt TFN EU Staff star 7 VIP

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    Aug 19, 2002
    Self righteousness and a desire to prove himself better/more powerful than everyone else seem to be core personality traits of Kylo Ren. We don't know what event or cleavage started him down the wrong path, but we know what he's like.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
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  21. Soontir-Fel

    Soontir-Fel Force Ghost star 5

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    Dec 18, 2001
    Yeah. This
     
  22. sidv88

    sidv88 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2005
    Kylo: You see it doesn't matter if you catch me and send me back to the Republic... Luke was driven mad before he died. I've proved my point. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the galaxy is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right Rey? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed.

    Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... if I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!

    Do you know what triggered the Clone Wars? An argument over how many taxes Neimoidia owed the Senate! Taxes! Ha ha ha ha HA! It's all a joke! "The will of the Force", and everything anybody ever valued or struggled for... it's all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can't you see the funny side?

    Rey: Because I've heard it before... and it wasn't funny the first time!

    Mark Hamill would love this ;)

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    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  23. mnjedi

    mnjedi JCC Arena Game Host star 5 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 2012
    I don't think Kylo Ren even knows what Kylo Ren wants, oh sure he's been told what he should want, by pretty much everyone, and he buys into what Snoke sells more than anyone else. But the hesitancy that laces everything he does seems to indicate to me he's still not entirely sure. Which is going to be the interesting thing about where he goes in 9, he's got the throne, but what's he going to do with no one left to tell him what he wants to do with it?
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  24. sidv88

    sidv88 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2005
    It's not going to be that simple though. Even Palpatine spent the last few years of his life swatting away Rebels and wannabe Jedi and ultimately failed. If Palpatine, the greatest Sith Lord who ever lived, couldn't handle this, how does Kylo expect to? And the Rebels and wannabe Jedi are already lining up immediately as of the ending of 8. That's why Kylo's "letting the Sith die" seems so false. He's doing everything they did, down to their mistakes, without any indication how this time with him it will be different.

    What you propose is an interesting storyline, but I highly doubt that 9 will be an introspective movie of Kylo sitting alone on his throne, realizing it isn't what he wants, and ultimately killing himself or something. It'd be funny if they did something like this, along the lines of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_(2002_film)

    Actually they should do this. Just pay off Zhang Yimou, and rewrite 'Hero' with Kylo as the Emperor, Rey as Flying Snow, and Finn as Broken Sword for 9. :p The First Order is needed to unify the galaxy. :kylo:
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
  25. CaptainPeabody

    CaptainPeabody Jedi Grand Master star 3

    Registered:
    Jul 15, 2008
    Yeah, this is the whole point. Kylo's fundamentally a wounded, confused kid--his real flaw, what makes him evil, is this confusion coupled with a fundamental selfishness and pride that again and again sabotages the possibility of redemption. He's not Literally the Devil like Palpatine, nor does he represent some fundamental civilizational force of Evil like the Sith. He's a confused, prideful man with the power to cause harm.

    It's actually fairly psychologically astute in its own way. Kylo doesn't have a Big Important Reason to go dark like Anakin, or even Anakin's half-assed Incipient Fascism. He's clearly disappointed with his family and the state of the Galaxy, he has emotions and issues he doesn't like dealing with, and he gets attracted to the colorful mythology peddled by frauds like Snoke and Hux. Even so, the turning point in his fall to the Dark Side isn't intellectual, but directly personal and relational: a mentor figure, Luke, disappoints and threatens him, and he reacts violently from a sense of disillusionment and betrayal. He turns to Snoke, then ends up feeling disillusioned and betrayed by him, too, and again reacts emotionally and violently.

    Really, though, I would say that it's a mistake to focus too much on the backstory of Kylo's initial fall; what we see in the ST is in a real sense his Fall, his Tragedy. It's actually about 500 times more like a classical tragedy than the lame, over-telegraphed psychobabble of the Prequels.

    Like the heroes of Greek tragedies, Kylo's fundamental flaw is a self-sabotaging pride and selfishness, and we see that getting played out in real time again and again. He discards teachers and paths and ideologies, but even so it always has to be about him, he always has to be right, and he can never really turn back or admit fault. He has a path to redemption with Han Solo that he rejects because he's too focused on his own emotions and being strong and continuing on the path he's chosen. This experience teaches him beyond doubt that the path he's on is wrong, and he gets another chance at redemption with Rey; but again, rather than admitting fault and accepting help, it still has to be all about him, he has to be the leader with a Grand Destiny, even if it's just to burn everything down. When he meets Luke again, he doesn't want to reconcile or even understand, he just wants to win and be vindicated yet again in the choices he's made.

    The point of a tragedy like this is that the tragic hero really doesn't have a good reason to do as he's done, but his arrogance and pride and inflexibility prevent him from recognizing that and turn a stupid decision into a greater and greater punishment and ruin for everyone (Oedipus kills his father in a random outburst of anger, then keeps pursuing the unknown culprit even when it's absolutely clear it's a bad idea; Creon passes the law against burials in a fit of pique, effectively, then refuses to bend even the tiniest bit for any reason; Pentheus is just an arrogant stupid kid, really, who bans Bacchus out of jealousy and then gets manipulated and driven by his own pride to the destruction of his entire family).

    I'm sure some of this could have been portrayed better, but it's still pretty clear I think, and it makes Kylo Ren definitely the best part of the ST, and a pretty different kind of villain for a major blockbuster. The fact that some people would prefer him to be a Palpatine figure of Ultimate Power and control or a Marvel villain with a exculpating tragic backstory doesn't really change that, IMO. Keep Kylo unique.
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2018
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