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

I consider Caillou Ren bad and whinny.
Ugh, I hate his character.
What a weak ass brat.

Not, that Anakin's evil is excused, but he had motive for going to the darkside. Even though I didn't like how it was done in ROTS.
What's Caillou (Kylo's)? Han and Leia not buying him a fidget spinner?

His character is so stupid.

Kylo Ren is a terrible character not just morally, but storywise too.

What reason does he kill his father, kill his uncle's student's, and idolize Vader?
Klyo Ren is another reason I hate the Force Awakens.

Btw Klyo, Grandfather Vader wouldn't put up with your ass.
He does know Vader gave up be a Sith right?

Vader gave up his life to save Luke.
So why does he want to kill his uncle and serve the kind of person Vader killed, if he admires Grandpa so much?
It doesn't make sense.

Nothing will convince me, that Klyo Ren is some great SW character.

 

Because he believes in Vader's power and legendary reputation as a figurehead of the Empire and aspires to them.

Anakin wanted his secret wife to stay with him. And whined about the inability to do this.

 

Well, how great that you've already made up your mind, without knowing any of the details and having seen one movie out of three.

 

This is seriously accurate. If I ever tried to criticize a few parts of TFA (which has honestly grown on me over the past year) my friends would always say "shut up you like the prequels" lol

Eh not the worst SW character. Kylo is interesting. To say the least. The tantrum scene is either something you really laughed at or really hate, no in between.

See this is the type of in-depth criticism I enjoy. The small things that make it clear this is Disney Star Wars now. I don't really hate the Stormtroopers walking up and then turning around but it was so predictable. Theres a few parts in the movie where Disney over does the jokes stuff. Like Finn asking about a girlfriend, bleh. And then the over the top I'm In Charge Phasma rant was Disney trying too hard again.

Well your post basically nailed it. I want to give Kylo a chance, he seems like he has a deeper part to him that we will see. It is kinda shocking to hear people fanboy over Kylo when he literally acts like a buffoon in TFA ahah. What was the worst tantrum Anakin did? Throwing a tin can and pouting for a few minutes. That was it. Kylo is just a psycho lol

 

I don't need his entire life story, I've seen enough and it's bad.

Also I don't like PT Anakin either. But I hate Klyo's character more.

I don't need some lame backstory for Klyo.

 

Actually Anakin slaughters all the men women and children in the Tusken village before whining about it being Obi Wan's fault and throwing stuff around the garage.

Is or isn't Kylo whiny and does his realisation as a screen character (not the villainy) be criticised on these terms. The only honest answer is a categorical no, he isn't to both questions.

Is there anybody in this thread that understands the distinction between the creation of the character for the screen and the character itself? I mean, for decades, the creation of Darth Vader for the screen in three movies was as celebrated as any villainous icon of fantasy cinema has ever seen. Nobody was approving of the wickedness and cruelty behind the character that is analogous with, say, Heinrich Himmler or Reinhardt Heidrych.

People critical of Anakin Skywalker's portrayal as a whiny teenager who whines and whines until he turns evil are not criticizing the evil that he ends up doing. That's a given. It's that any emotional catharsis that may have been possible from his transformation from ostensible do-gooder to ruthless tyrant was undermined by him being predominantly obnoxious and unsympathetic in his portrayal BEFORE he turned to evil. Unlikeable whiny kid turns even badder is just not appealing to most people. Which is a problem if you want people to be impressed by their sudden and unheralded redemption and rehabilitation which has about five minutes devoted to it at the end of their story.

In his first appearance, Kylo Ren has seemingly assumed the persona of Darth Vader (not the whiny teenager that turned into Vader as a result of being whiny and needy) . But there are cracks in the facade that show insecurity and immaturity. Whether he was whiny before he chose to join the darkside is not know. But it is often the case that adolescents who try to advance beyond their years in one respect, arrest their own development in other respect. Like anger management. But that's a different matter from being whiny and complaining a lot.

Before he was reintroduced in TPM, Anakin Skywalker had always been a sympathetic character who, we were told, had been seduced by the emperor and made a servant of evil to kill the Jedi etc. We know as much about Ben Skywalker now as we did about Anakin at the end of ROTJ. So naturally, people anticipate a similar tragic end for an essentially likeable individual who makes a terrible error and enters a pact with the devil for some compelling reason.

The people who think that sort of attitude towards Ben Skywalker is unfair in the context of the criticism of the portrayal of Anakin Skywalker as a whiny kid who complains his way into the service of the Emperor can only be imposing that unappealing portrayal of the supposedly tragically good man from AOTC and ROTS onto Ben Skywalker's as yet undefined backstory.

 

Since he had a dream that his wife would die in childbirth he had a motive to leave & get her constant medical supervision in a hospital until the birth. A motive for going on a murderous rampage? Not so much. As for Kylo, all of his motives & backstory are yet to be revealed.

Why would you presume that Kylo knows all of that? He wasn't there in the throne room & it's unlikely that he has RotJ on blu-ray.

 

People wouldn't have an imaginary stick to beat the non-existent, hypothetical portrayal of young Ben Skywalker if the portrayal of young Anakin Skywalker had not been so regularly unappealing and unsympathetic at times before he turned into Darth Vader, the period where he is supposed to generate the sympathy that he reclaimed at the end of ROTJ.

You have to assume that Ben Skywalker must have been equally as whiny and obnoxious about being a Jedi in training.

 

I am not saying Anakin's motive is good or justified.
I don't like how Anakin's turn was done storywise, but it's better than Klyo just wanting to be evil.
Klyo isn't trying to save anyone and isn't part of a government's military like Vader.

And if we come just compare OT Vader and Klyo, I think Vader is still a better character. Vader apparently wanted order in the galaxy, yes I know he was evil,
but Klyo is just a terrorist. First Order isn't a government like the Empire, it's a terrorist organization.

Also Vader wanted his family. His character is more interesting than Klyo's.
Klyo wants to kill his parents.

Klyo is more of a "being evil for the sake of being evil villain" and he's not scary and incompetent. I think him being that combo type of villain hurts the story.

Vader could scare people and got things done.

And Seriously, Klyo Ren doesn't need to be in the throne room to know what happened. How does he even know his grandfather is Vader if he hasn't seen ROTJ. Ugh
How about his Uncle Luke told him. Duh.

When it come to SW, sometimes the more story given the worse it gets.
I'd rather Vader's backstory was different.

Klyo's character is already worse than Atoc Anakin's, so I wouldn't be surprised if Klyo's backstory was even worse.

 

Kylo is just plain and boring, he has no personality. Anakin was at least decent, he had character, and the development from boy to villain was interesting.

To be honest I might be a bit biased as I think TFA itself is naff, the acting is not great and the characters are dull, just felt like I was watching a terrible remake of ANH. Maybe the trilogy will improve with the different director for TLJ, and we will, hopefully, see more of the characters history, especially Kylo.

 

How do you know Kylo just wants to be evil. Kylo doesn't even believe he's evil at all. Neither did Anakin.

The First Order is trying to impose its idea of society on the rest of the galaxy. Kylo is a part of the leadership of the FO regime. It's pretty hard to miss that.

How does an establishment figure trying to maintain tyranny make Vader a better character than a member of an aggressive society trying to reimpose that same tyranny on the galaxy?

Kylo wants power and position. Killing family members that stand in his way or through whose death he can assume greater power is something he's prepared to do because he's been seduced by the dark side, like Anakin was.

The first part of your post is misinformed enough to invite a serious response. The rest of it is barely coherent so I;m not going to touch it except for the last part

It sums up some of the arguments against Kylo Ren's portrayal on this thread. You imagine Ben's portrayal in a hypothetical movie set during the equivalent period of his career as Anakin's in AOTC must be as unappealing and nauseatingly whiny. It's rather perverse to be angry or dismayed at an imaginary acting performance in an imaginary film.

 

What are you even talking about?

There is no imagined movie about Ben's performance. I don't like Klyo Ren and based off what is shown and what little back info we have, I don't think any backstory will make me like him.
I don't care enough about his character to even want a backstory.

A backstory won't fix his character. The one movie I have seen him in, and he's already a terrible character.

I like villains in a story to be a challenge for a the hero to overcome or one that has good intentions, but does bad things, but later changes for the better. Vader fits this.

Klyo Ren doesn't. He get's beat by an untrained force user in the first movie.

Too me it seemed like Klyo just wants to be evil with little motive, considering the "pull of the light" line and killing his father. That was stupid.

 

Everything you've said about the character that make them "bad" in your eyes has just been refuted. Are there any good villain characters in Star Wars?

By the way. It;s not Anakin's backstory is not an illustrious one that people criticise Anakin in the AOTC for. It's his portrayal as a nauseatingly whiny kid tthat turns evil because of it that is unappealing, less than sympathetic in the final analysis and criticised for undermining rather than enhancing the shocking and satisfying rehabilitation of Vader we witnessed in ROTJ when he had previously been simply an unambiguously evil tyrant in the two films preceding it.

We already knew Anakin's backstory before the prequels were made. The backstory isn't the problem. It's the execution and depiction of Anakin as a supposedly sympathetic person in that bacskstory that is criticised. If the backstory was so inherently "bad" then why would George Lucas have bothered to make the prequels at all

 

The point is we don't know Kylo's original motives, so how can we evaluate them? Yoda tells us in the OT that "Once you start down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny". We need to know what started Kylo down his path. Until then all of these assumptions are pointless.

 

I don't think throwing a self-destructive pout doesn't qualify as a tantrum. Kylo destroys equipment because he WANTS something. Whether the Droid escaping or Rey escaping. Also, the difference is Anakin has a completed arc, Kylo doesn't and we won't ever see his fall unless it's EU or exposition in the film.

If Anakin was projecting his own insecurities completely onto Obi-Wan and the Council, then there would be a different story. But Anakin isnt wrong about the Jedi and even Obi-Wan not fully understanding or trusting him. And it was deliberate.

Unless Leia and Han were truly terrible parents and Luke was systematically oppressing Kylo, I don't see how much Ben would fall unless Snoke was doing the old Palpatine on Kylo.

Anakin wears his heart on his sleeve, and talks through his problems. If one is being used for spying, I would hope Anakin would ventilate to Obi-Wan like a normal human with frustrations instead of screaming at a control panel. Palpatine was the only one who really pretended to understand his problems. Even Anakin knew he was in the wrong. Even after his tirade on things being unfair, Padme corrects him and he even admits he's wrong.

 

I'm not interested. I'm certainly not paying to see VIII at any point.

I don't care what Kylo's original motives are, not only did he not grab my interest, he repulsed me.

I didn't need to see AOTC and ROTS to know I didn't like Jar Jar. After TPM, I knew I had no interest in Jar Jar and would have liked him to disappear from the following movies, which he almost did.

Well, Kylo is worse than Jar Jar. I'd take Jar Jar in the ST over Kylo. Honestly, I'd rather Kylo's role was replaced by Jar Jar, that's how bad Kylo is.

Kylo DOES want to be evil, though. He aspires to evil, and wants to rid himself of his conscience/light. He's having a hard time with it, but he does aspire to evil. It's the dumbest ******* thing in the history of Star Wars movies.

 

There's always the "Kylo was just a Bad Seed" theory - Luke did nothing bad, Han and Leia did nothing bad, Snoke didn't need to do much of "the old Palpatine" - Kylo was always the type to listen to tempting words.

 

Anakin was regularly quite whiny and it put people off sympathizing with him even though his story had an underlying reason for people to be sympathetic toward him and a generation of people already sympathetic towards him and his fabled backstory for years.

Kylo isn't whiny. That's why people aren't criticising him for being a whiny and unsympathetic character. He may not be sympathetic, being a servant of evil and all. But his backstory is not yet described and therefore not been tainted by the whiny and unappealing treatment that Anakin's got. That's not including his slaughter of the Tuskens. Terrible as that was, and hard to relate for most people, the motivation comes from a place that is rather sympathetic. Nevertheless, being whiny about it the rest of the time squanders any chance reconciliation with a large part of the audience's sympathies.

 

All of these justifications & reasons don't address the real problem people had with Anakin's whining. That is the tone & the manner of them. The pouting, sulking, stamping his feet & shouting "it's not fair!!" on multiple occasions. It's infant behavior. Kylo has two outbursts of rage & in the movie they're not taken seriously. They're played for laughs. That went a long way to not turning people against the character. To me that's the simplest answer to this thread title.

 

Right. The movies have often thrown in stuff to let you off the hook from taking them too seriously. Vader choking his subordinate then capping it with laconic whit helped us enjoy, vicariously, his villainy and appreciate that he was almost as dangerous to the other bad guys as to our heroes. In TFA, Ren is purposely depicted as being devoid of such whit and the joke is instead played on him. Particularly when he's embarassed by Rey escaping right under his nose after believing he was doing the right thing by leaving her to inform Snoke of her potential. Situational irony.

 

Just because I sympathize with Anakin's troubles doesn't mean I condone his slaughter of Innocent Tuskens nor Order 66 nor the evil he commits as Vader. And obviously we are going off of what we know of Kylo from one film, no one disputed that. But since you obviously don't like prequels Anakin, what would you have rather seen besides what GL did with Anakin?

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However you interpret it , for laugh or not (when the troopers turned around that was for comedic effect, the other time was not), Kylo is obviously a whiner and immature fit thrower. He literally starts wrecking equipment when something doesn't go his way. Yeah maybe he will mature in Ep8 but in Ep7 he was a petulant child. And yes Anakin was as well when he complained to Padme, I agree.

 

No it's not "ok that Kylo is lacking maturity" in areas of his personality. That's the straw man that defines everything else you've posted about what's considered permissible in Kylo's case and not in Anakin's case thereafter.

It's not about Anakin's fall making sense. It's about Anakin's whininess getting under people's skin with very little positive characterization to offset the whininess.

It's that the depiction of his immature aspects is employed more effectively and not to the detriment of any chances of him being redeemed personality wise.

People still don't get it. Anakin's whiny demeanour made it hard for people to sympathise with what could potentially have been a sympathetic story of someone who becomes consumed with evil and commits terrible crimes. It's why Anakin becoming a murderous fiend was neither a shock or a surprise.

You can approve of the realisation of a character to the screen without approving of their character. Because Kylo Ren is a well received cinematic performance does not mean that they turn a blind eye to his villainy and not to Anakin's.

Anakin's persona and characterisation in AOTC is more like a victim in a slasher movie. Not the first one you want to see diced up but he's definitely asking for it.

Palpatine massaged his ego and validated Anakin's onscreen whining.

Kylo does not whine. He does not act whiny. That doesn't make him an OK guy or a great character but it doesn't hurt his character that he is not whiny in the slightest, never mind even a fraction of the whining.

It's not my fault the OP made "whiny" the basis of the supposed double standard about the reaction to Anakin's whiny personality throughout his entire adolescence.

If you want to say that Anakin's backstory is better than the backstory to Ben's fall that we haven't heard then yeah, go ahead. Whatever.

If one day they try to tell that story and turn what could have been a sympathetic character who turns evil because of his fears into a less than sympathetic whiny personality then we might have something to talk about.

At the moment this is a ridiculous argument comparing an orange to a bunch of grapes (sour ones).