Saga Grandfather and grandson, Anakin and Kylo Ren: a comparison of characterizations and behaviors

Exactly. He wants to be Vader as he sees him. But the cracks in Kylo's composure betray the flaws in his strategy and in his conception of Vader.

When a character is clearly misguided it provides an escape route by which they can be guided back to some state of redemption.

Evidence of Vader's misguidedness is buried beneath his monolithic physique and only becomes apparent when we realise he cannot kill his son and yet still believes that the Emperor will help him turn Luke who will then help overthrow their master. It's fatally flawed and when Vader eventually gets it, he makes the right choice. The only choice.

Ren assumes the appearance of Vader (again, misinterpreted as a choice made by his grandfather) but he doesn't have the will to sustain it. He removes it as if to say, I'm actually ok, see? I can be liked and not just feared.

I figured that after a full ten years of a Jedi education he may have been more enlightened than an ordinary teenager. That he wouldn't be constantly describing his position as a member of an exalted order of knights in the same way that Luke describes his inability to go to Tosche station and do whatever it is he'd rather be doing besides farming.

That the young adult Anakin would be a youthful version of the benevolent and wise looking man we met at the end of ROTJ before turning to the darkside. Instead, Anakin was set up to fail as a character by making him unlikeable in his frustrations, in the context of what he's frustrated about.

 

Kylo doesn't want to be evil.


He wants to be responsible for restoring the "safe, secure society" of the Empire and assume his father's role in the leadership of that regime. People who stand in his way or resist the FO in that pursuit are the enemies of society and are expendable. Killing when it is presumed to be empowering by fortifying oneself with the darkside is also justified in that equation. It is the absence of compassion in pursuit of ones interests that defines evil. But you have to be conscious of that, voluntarily or not, to actually desire to be evil.

The disorder that Kylo is fighting against is a reflection of the tumultuous homelife of Generals Organa and Solo following Endor and the ongoing civil war. The solution of sending Ben to be trained has backfired by giving him the notion that he can and should have the power to himself to make that a reality.

The melted helmet is just a substitute for a graveside or a headstone. Are the millions of people who "talk" to long dead family members or other people at memorials all creepy and not worthy of sympathy by default?

Palpatine was at the summit. He had nobody else's ideals to try and live up to and express fear of failure to or for.

 

Kylo wanting to be evil is a perception that comes directly from the movie, because TFA only said he wanted to be like Vader and he is killing his conscience to be like Vader, but never elaborated on the why he wants to be like Vader. And without the why, all we have is a portrait of a guy who wants to be like an Evil Monster.

I think – well, I hope – the reasons why he is doing this will be elaborated in TLJ. Until then, he just wants to be evil. Because.

 

As far as we can tell- between Aftermath: Empire's End (when Ben was born) and Bloodline (when Ben is at the Academy, in his early 20s, and Leia's Vader heritage was revealed - the galaxy, and the Solo homelife, wasn't tumultuous - it was fairly quiet. Leia and Han were able to go from freedom fighting, to starship racing + politics - the civil war is over.

 

And ANH and most of ESB gave us the impression that Darth Vader only wants to do and to be evil. The backstory to what actually happened wasn't delivered for another 16 years. I think we'll survive the next couple of years of deferred gratification on the ST backstory.

Kylo only consciously wants to be an evil monster if it is widely accepted and known, to his generation, that Darth Vader was an evil monster who murdered innocent people. Vader killed enemies of society, when society was the Empire.

People in the western world (not anti-communists, obviously) wanted to emulate Josef Stalin until it became widely accepted that he was directly responsible for millions of deaths while delivering the egalitarian socialist dream in a totalitarian society. Whatever sacrifices were made were perceived to be a means to an end.

The idea that people can be misguided and not consciously endorsing evil while doing it or unwittingly permit it is not so far fetched.

And what if Luke and Leia told Ben their grandfather was a good man (as at least one of them always believed and seemingly proved) and then he finds out the truth of his imperial career? He discovers he's been lied to and that he should somehow be ashamed rather than proud.

Conflicting messages and a deterioration of trust. For a young person, these contradictions and complexities are what drives people to take a side, and it is not guaranteed that they pick the right side, no matter their intent.

 

For a grown up he was pretty torn up about how mean his dear old daddy was...in the midst of torturing someone.

A. Anakin Skywalker was ultimately redeemed; Kylo is praying to a man who learned the error of his ways and turned back to SAVE someone he loved and ended the threat of the Emperor.
B. Do you think an active Darth Vader would look down lovingly on a whimpering little sissy who is having a "hard time" being a ruthless warlord? Would he cradle Kylo in his bosom and tell him it's okay to feel the light side every now and then?

 

ANH never assigned a specific motivation to Vader joining the Empire, so there was never given room for “why the f- is he doing this” questions. For all we knew, he could be just a born sociopath. His motivations didn’t matter to the story. And when they did, they were immediately reasoned with the “why” answer. Because Luke was his son.

The questions that arise from TFA is because of the different way they chose to introduce Kylo. They wanted to show in right from the start that he has a conscience. And a motivation to join the darkside. Expect, that doesn’t make much sense. He has a conscience, he has a family that cares about him, but… he wants to be evil like Vader, and so he kills his father. He is not a born sociopath but he sure has a weird motivation to do what he is doing.

Which is why fans, like you, and myself too, speculate on other possible reasons why he wants to be like Vader, just so to give some sense to his seemingly nonsensical motivation in the movie.

But in the movie, the why isn’t there. And the why is important here because the movie decided to attribute him a specific motivation and a specific characterization that other villains (like Vader) didn’t have when they were introduced.

 

Seven pages in and it seems that no one has actually taken on the mission statement of this thread. Well, I think it's a fascinating topic, so I would like to address it.

To compare their characterizations, we need to define (and then, I imagine, debate those definitions) the primary motivation of each character. Anakin's core motivation, I would say, was the fear of loss, ultimately twisted into the need to become as powerful as possible, so as to prevent all loss. Mixed in with this was prodigious natural power that he didn't understand, that the council insisted he repress, and Palpatine encouraged him to use. This confused and conflicted him, and when faced with loss, his only response was all-consuming rage.

After losing everything and becoming Vader, his motivation had to change. He devoted himself instead to his master's vision, to the Dark Side, to the Empire. That would drive him through the Empire's reign, up until he learned he had a son, at which point his priorities changed for the last time, becoming all about finding, then recruiting, and finally saving him.

We don't know as much about Kylo Ren, but his goal is clear enough: he wants to be like Darth Vader. What's so interesting about him is his interpretation of what that means. He thinks he needs to commit acts of darkness, namely the killing of the innocent, and of those who love him, to cross some threshold, to reach the point of power, or of dedication, that he imagines his grandfather had.

It's very easy to imagine him learning about Vader, and becoming more and more obsessed, to the point where he wanted to be him. His conflict comes from his "pull to the light," and his perception that this a shameful, inexcusable weakness. Presumably, his parents, and Luke, raised him to believe that the Vader and the Empire were evil. His hero-worship of the Dark Lord may have been his own, or something that Supreme Leader Snoke instilled in him, whenever and however they met. Trying to reconcile these two perspectives is what causes him such anguish, to which his response is to throw himself deeper into darkness and anger and pain, thinking it will bring him closer to his grandfather. And if he resembles Darth Vader enough, all his problems will be solved.

To my mind, then, the biggest similarity between Grandfather and Grandson is the fact that they both grew up being pulled in two different, bipolar directions, resulting in instability, confusion, and irrepressible anger. The biggest difference is probably that Anakin's motivations were driven, originally, by something like compassion, and Kylo Ren's seem, so far, very much misguided.

But there's still so much we don't know about Kylo Ren, and won't know for another fifty-five days, at the time of this posting.

 

But each story does operate just as adequately so far without asking the question. It does not mean that there wasn't a question to be answered in ANH. IT's just that the movie's own lack of concern with justifying Vader's motivation lead the audience not to ask why. It was convenient for the audience to assume that Vader had no conscience or never had one.

When in later movies we begun to glean motivation and reasons why, ANH was still accepted because that movie could not have operated the way it did if it had attempted to squeeze in all the motivation and the backstory. Further movies were necessary to raise and then satisfy some of those questions for us But even the following two movies didn't do it justice yet all three films are accepted.

Right from the start? Do you mean the chat with Vader's helmet? Yes it's raising the question, why would someone who, we must presume, was ostensibly a good kid/man at some point make certain choices? We only have past experiences of characters in previous films to draw on at the moment. And yet Ben has a perverted concept of those previous stories. That raises another question.

I don't believe it was obligated to raise and then answer all questions in the first movie of the ST. The guy who's motivation is obscure and his acts cruel gets his butt kicked. The guy who's motivation in the first movie was neither know nor challenged was defeated too. That movie didn't raise and not answer the question because it was redundant at that time. The sequels, as they came to be conceived, were not planned. And there were no plans to expand his role and give him certain motivations until after that first movie proved to be a success. But we've got other movies to look forward to that can shed light back on the character's motivations and not just delivered in one pat Q&A which the first Star Wars film neither attempted or was obligated to do.

This would only be a problem if LFL decided that Episode VII was intended to be the final or only Star Wars movie. I don't get how Episode VII of a minimum of IX is obligated to answer all questions it raises and then we start Episode VIII with entirely new unasked questions and answer them before its conclusion and so on...

Here is the mission statement of this thread.

 

Theres no if about the first part there. We can almost categorically say without shadow of a doubt unless Leia is lying that Snoke did that. "No. It was Snoke. He seduced our son to the dark side." And don't forget Han's "Snoke's using you for your power..."


But there would need to have been a reason for Kylo Ren to be receptive to Snoke's seduction. A betrayal of trust. Misinformation. Misconception. etc (Hopefully not that he was a whiny teen in spite of having ten years of Jedi school under his belt.)

 

How about Ben Solo having a younger more powerful sister? This is all speculation, but how about the idea, that Kylo who for a while was Luke's protegé, Luke's Chosen One, suddenly had to play second fiddle to his more talented sibling. Jealosy is a powerful emotion, one that could be exploited by someone like Snoke. Kylo is obviously suffering from some sort of inferiority complex, projecting those feelings of inadequacy on his parents, particulary his father.

 

Martoto77

There are curiosity questions raised by the movie that don’t matter to the story but it would be cool to know (who was Vader's wife?) and then there are questions that do matter to the story and not knowing them can negatively impact a person’s appreciation of a concept or a character (why Kylo wants to be like Vader, why did he kill Han).

I am well aware that TFA set up a bazillion questions, partly because JJ does love mysteries more than he likes giving explanations, but I’m not convinced that all these questions did not need answers. Some answers would’ve greatly enhanced people’s appreciation of the movie, imho.

Especially if you want to convincingly sell your villain as someone battling with the light side, in a movie where he supposedly battles with the pull from the light. You gotta give the audience something more than “he wants to be Vader”.

 

Which only tells us that something very bad & very dramatic happened to Ben Solo after that.

Not really. He was probing Rey's mind, she thought of Han & all Kylo did was dryly say "He would've disappointed you". Hardly a big deal, he said nothing about himself. But sure, keep pretending he was having a cry over daddy.

Anakin did though:

- Murder defenseless Tusken women & children ("I know I'm better than this!).
- Decapitate a defeated & unarmed prisoner ("I shouldn't have done that!").
- Attack & help murder the leader of the Jedi Council ("What have I done!).
- Massacre a bunch of Jedi children & then kill the unarmed Separatist leaders (a dramatic tear runs down his cheek).
- Choke his pregnant wife & later discover he killed her (NNnnnooooooo!!)

He sure wasn't "owning" anything. He basically goes on wild killing sprees across two movies & then says "whoops, sorry!" afterwards . He reminds me of this.
At least Kylo didn't sulk & cry crocodile tears after offing his old man. He owned it.

 

Rey doesn't even need to be Ben's sister. The very idea that he, a direct descendant of the Chosen One, is less talented than a stranger, seemingly preferred by Luke, could be enough of a trigger for feelings of inadequacy, and jealosy leading him on a path to the dark side. That would also explain his hatred for his father, who he believes to be the source of his inadequacy. Han Solo is afterall not Force sensitive. He's a muggle in Harry Potter terms, an average Joe. He's literally the part of him, that Kylo wants to cut out, and here's Snoke telling him that he can overcome those weaknesses by learning about the dark side of the Force.

Then again if Rey is Ben's sister, he could feel, he's at the shallow end of the gene pool, which again would explain his negative feelings about his father.

 

There was nothing to stop audiences wondering why Vader wanted to be the way Vader is. And the movie still did not need it answered. TFA doesn't need that question answered. The TFA audience wants that answer, eventually, only because later Star Wars movies elected to explore the question ANH raised.

What you're talking about is the desire for those questions to be answered. Not the inherent necessity of a movie to answer its own questions. I would have loved to have know the answer to whether or not Vader was, as he claimed, Luke's father, how etc right then and there. Deferred gratification turned out to be far more satisfying than it being linearly and instantaneously explicated.

What do you mean exactly by "the reason". Do you mean the actual reason or cause that the audience is expected to endorse? Or as in the reason that Ben has told himself?

 

Dunnnnnnn, dun dun dun dun dun

And do I dream again? For now, I find:

The Phaaaaantom of the Opera is there, inside my mind.

Dunnnnn, DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN

You've made the argument that Kylo was emotionally compromised after killing Han, not that he owned it.

 

The thread title was changed a page ago.

 

He kept that to himself. I've said he's conflicted, just as Vader was in RotJ. However there's no crocodile tears & no shouting "I shouldn't have done that!...what have I done!...It's not the Jedi way!...I know I'm better than this!" & blah blah.

 

So "owning" something is emotionally breaking down over it quietly, regretting it, just a few minutes later. Okay.

I'm sure he won't angst more in VIII and IX.

 

He prayed about it alone, to an empty helmet, then Snoke brought it up, then he whined about it to Han in person. So to pretend that he wasn't actually hurt by Han and making it open in that scene, is a farce.

 

The rewards for doing it were not forthcoming as he had expected and been promised.. That doesn't mean he has disowned or disavowed the decision to do it.

His next words are "Han Solo won't save you now!" He's still taking ownership by trying to project the consequences on to his intended prisoners, rather than admit to himself it was a bad choice.

 

I can’t speak for the audiences in ANH, but I would imagine nobody was wondering why Vader was acting like the villain he was supposed to be because was simply behaving like people expect traditional villains to behave. When things changed later in the sequels and he was supposed to a Conflicted Villain, well he acted like one and the movie gave a reason why.

People questioning Kylo’s motivations and whether he wants to be evil or not is not just out of curiosity or because of past movies. It’s due to the movie introducing a concept and not convincingly selling it well. These are not questions raised from intentional cliffhangers, like "is Vader really Luke's father? Find out next movie!". These are questions about things that happened in the middle of the plot. Questions that are pertinent to understand and appreciate the concept of this supposed conflicted villain that wants to be Vader that they are trying to sell. Adam Driver's tearful confession about being torn apart still falls flat to me (when it shouldn't) because I still have no idea what the heck is he talking about or why the heck is he doing that.

And you may believe that the movie didn't need to answer these questions about Kylo, but I personally do. I do think it would have enhanced the character among the criticizing audiences that are having a hard time buying into the concept of a villain wanting to be evil but isn't.