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

That describes kylo and pettigrew to the letter, cowards. A true hero is Hurin from Children of Hurin and the Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien.

Hurin refused to kill for Morgoth and was tortured for 30 years while screaming for God to help him and his family, but Eru (God in Middle-earth) never did. Morgoth, using his power as an evil member of the Valar, turned Hurins son into a psychopath and had hurins daughter defiled and impregnated, but hurin still refused to kill for morgoth.

With his family and life destroyed, hurin threw himself off a cliff. But the elves remembered him as a true hero, and he was mentioned in lord of the rings novel in the council of elrond.

Kylo is a pathetic coward compared to hurin.

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I think the whole thing with Kylo Ren is he is LITERALLY a Imperial fanboy. He's a guy who is trying desperately to live up to the example of Darth Vader and reveres him the same way, we the audience, revere the Heroes of Yavin. The point of the character is he's a poseur. A guy who isn't naturally a hardcore murderous Imperial but a guy who grew up nice and decent with good parents. He has no tragic backstory to justify his actions but WANTS desperately to be great.

He's not Anakin.

He's EVIL LUKE.

He's the Luke who wants desperately to be a Jedi.

But he's the Luke who desperately wants to be a Sith.

 

If kylo wanted to be a sith he'd have named himself one. He says in 8 he's done with the past including the sith.

The problem is his goals of killing all jedi and ruling the galaxy are exactly the same as the sith.

I miss set harth from the darth bane novels. He's the only darksider who smartly realizes ruling the galaxy is too much trouble and just wants an easy life of fun.

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That's the pitiable part of Ben, all that wasted potential.

I think Luke's mistake was training him fully as a Jedi rather than just simply teaching Ben how to probably understand and control his powers like he did with Leia.

 

Going by 8 luke had control issues himself. Just take ben to a counselor, get him a good job, and let him play hologames in his free time.

Training ben to be a jedi is like turning jason todd into robin. Doesn't go well.

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Is murdering people for doing or saying things they don't like no longer just standard villainy?

I guess I just don't understand how him saying he's a monster (and I'd characterize his tone differently) is him making "puppy dog eyes" or trying to "charm" or not taking fault. He spends the whole movie trying to convince her to join him, and in their big scene together he yells at her for not seeing things his way.

Yeah, absolutely. Seriously, this is like Star Wars 101.

 

Hopefully, Kylo Ren will realize he's being silly and go back to his Vader fanboyism. I pretty much am hoping Part VIII can be rendered as irrelevant as possible to follow up on the plots from TFA.

 

Honestly, if you wanted to prevent Ben from falling to the dark side, just have him consistently spend them with his dad.

Whatever schemes and misadventures Han, Chewie and occasionally Lando could get up to would be bound to set Ben on the straight and narrow path.

 

Well I disagree. All this would do is get Kanjiklub, the Hutts etc. after Ben too. If I wanted to help a troubled young person, the LAST thing I would do is involve them with cheating gamblers, drug smugglers, and people with a penchant for getting into debt.

The Solo movie with Qi'ra and Dryden Vos shows what a true living hell a life tied up with the underworld is like. The movie makes Lando look "cool" the way certain unfortunate gangster movies make that lifestyle look cool, but realistically cheating Lando would have been permanently mutilated by an angry gambling victim long ago.

New canon also showed that Lobot ended up a vegetable for life due to getting involved with Lando's dubious lifestyle, with the particular incident that debilitated Lobot being Lando's "brilliant" scheme of stealing the Emperor's yacht.

That comic book was enough to make me feel like crawling under the bed and tearfully cry for my old EU canon to come back.

 

I think it's rather inhuman and Anti Star Wars. It's certainly the opposite of what we see in ROTJ. It also starkly contrasts the reason for Anakin's turn in ROTS.

The conflict between good and evil is universal...but humans struggle to be good, while Kylo struggles to be evil. Anakin didn't want to be evil, he fell. Kylo is trying very hard to embrace the dark side...while most fight the dark side within themselves.

Palpatine tried to sell Anakin on a life of conscience. Kylo is struggling to get rid of his.

I don't think its Star Wars at all. I think its just another one of JJ's idiotic, flippant inversions, and alien to the human condition.

 

Well, he buried his head somewhere....

 

But yes, I think Kylo Ren is a character who is driven by his desire to be great and do great things.

He could never live up to his parents example in the New Republic so he became an epic hero of the First Order.

 

Making the dark side a difficult path -- rather than the quick and easy one -- does seem more than a little daft and I can't say I'm much of a fan.

Still, I don't think Kylo is struggling to embrace the dark side. I think he's done that and benefited tremendously. At least in terms of power. He's struggling to find the point of no turning back and will always come up short because Anakin Skywalker has effectively demonstrated that no such point exists. And, in-so-doing, crippled the hold of the dark side forever.*

Previous masters of the dark side might have felt "the call to the light" and got over it swiftly because they "knew" there was no turning back. Kylo will never be able to do that. He'll probably always be second guessing himself.

* And even if he's not the first example, he's the most FAMOUS and DRAMATIC example and the guy everyone in the galaxy has heard of. No future dark sider is going to care that Asajj Ventress rejected the dark side, or whatever.

 

Force ghost Luke had better show up and give more detail on just what went horribly wrong with Ben. Did he end up browsing the wrong kind of websites or he just grew up a spoiled brat? Especially with how he's busy trying to prove himself evil, really evil. Not to mention that nonsensical line about him trying to ignore the light side. I always thought of the Force as reflecting human nature- the darkside is easy, but its not really worth in the end. Unless that meant Kylo was trying to ignore what's left of his conscience, but by TLJ he's just raging at all his mentor figures (Luke, Han and of course Snoke).

I could somewhat buy Vader's redemption since by ESB it showed he had some purpose to most of his actions, then RotJ showed his clear regrets. Kylo's main regret is not killing his parents sooner apparently. Rey tried the "I sense something in him" but when Kylo had his chance, when it was just the two of them, Kylo just wanted to burn everything down. Luke's last words to Leia about Kylo were ambiguous, but then I don't trust Luke's judgment by now that much considering he was wrong for most of the movie. Otherwise, everybody else has already given up on him as irredeemable (and he'd probably be dead already except for Force plot armor protecting him from Rey repeatedly).

 

Kylo didn't kill his mother I remind people. He pulled back.

I don't see the problem if you're not naturally vicious, evil, or a bully. Plenty of real life people struggle with killing and hurting people.

 

The only intimidating characters in all of Star Wars are the Emperor and Vader. I've never been intimidated by stormtroopers who miss all their shots and bang their heads on ****. Not even Piett is intimidating. He actually seems like a guy I can have an interesting convo with.

 

I think it's because he wants to be great and famous. Kylo Ren has never meant to be right, just understandable. He's a hero to the FO.

 

Tarkin? Maul in TPM? Dooku?

 

Sorry, I meant in the OT specifically. Not sure why my brain went to "all of Star Wars". While Tarkin is a commanding character, I think Vader overwhelms him with presence alone despite the fact that Vader acts like Tarkin's dog throughout the movie.

 

Just reposting because I think it's a really lovely and concise way of putting this, and feels super theological which, you know, is my thing. I don't think falling to the dark side is hard for Ben - but staying there when he knows this isn't the only path is harder for him.

I still don't buy this puppy-dog eyes thing. He's not really very charming at all, and I don't think anything he says to her is, from his point of view, misleading. In their one-on-one communication scenes, Kylo ranges from aloof to hostile.

We don't know Ben's "reasons," but we know that Anakin tried to kill a pregnant Padmé on the landing platform on Mustafar, and Palpatine thought it was good medicine for him to believe he had killed her.

Right but Kylo is a villain.

They are different people.

There was a whole Star Wars novel in Legends about what Kylo Ren does to Han on the bridge.