PT [TFA Spoilers] Criticism of Anakin vs. Kylo Ren

there are NO invalid feelings. all feelings are valid. even the ones i vehemently disagree with.

i've been thinking about which scenes are echoed in han's death ...


so, it's luke/vader in ROTJ and anakin/obi-wan in ROTS but also, as per fall to the death i thought that it's luke/vader in ESB, no? or am i missing a scene of a character falling to their death?

 

The universe tolerates those attitudes, and ever since I achieved Henosis...

 

tolerance isn't the same as validation. i personally cannot invalidate or validate anyone's feelings on a given matter/their past/their present/future/other people. it's not a matter of negotiation. their feelings are their feelings and i have to respect that. what you are asking for is judgement. anyone can judge - i simply prefer not to. if it helps others to judge, so be it.

either of these characters does things i fundamentally disagree with and things i wouldn't do myself (i'm guessing, i have not been in those situations) but i can empathise with their feelings and understand them (i have even felt some of them myself) and they are, at the end of the day, characters and not real people.

i find it funny that empathy is being equalled with 'tolerance of whiny attitudes'. that's like... an interesting take on empathy.

the prequel discussion i remember was that anakin's feeling and worries towards padme were being invalid for a jedi. and yoda was right because ... it's yoda and he's right and stuff. one has to let go and worries are the dark side.

yoda had zero people skills and i'd be suicidal if he was my counsellor.

now the discussion is whether ben solo being parented by HEROES means that he cannot be disappointed in his parents.

déjà-vu much?

they have to have been the bestest parents ever and there's not a snowball's chance in hell that he might feel disappointed because that's how he feels. not because he WANTS to be disappointed but because he is.

whether there are things he doesn't know, that would un-disappoint him, or whether he's got it wrong, or whether he's right - it's irrelevant. at the moment we've got two guilt-ridden parents and one son who feels let down. and i'm just taking that on board.

maybe it's his choice to feel they've let him down but it just seems to be a little... flat. you know, people don't generally choose their feelings, they come to them. just like anakin probably would have preferred not to feel worried about padme. but he did and on moves the plot.

 

Unquestionably there's alot more backstory to be filled in regarding Kylo. IMO we shouldn't assume too much. All we have are the vague broadstrokes of what happened. You can bet that some curve-balls are in store in terms of his fall to the Dark Side. What's very unlikely is that it was just a matter of him being a spoiled ungrateful brat. That's an incredibly dull backstory. Can't see R.Johnson serving that up. From what little we do know, the key event seems to've been Leia sending him away as a young child to be trained. She says in TFA that was her big mistake. Seems it had the two-fold effect of creating feelings of abandonment within him & exposing him to Snoke. When we find out all of the specific circumstances that's when I'll be passing judgement.

 

I think the real question should be Dark Helmet vs Kylo Ren!

 

problem is, i'm just a ****head is incredibly flat dramatically, no matter how much you wish for it.

and at this stage you want a particular story, so i guess your bias is showing. i don't mind bias, i have some myself, or else i'm hoping for a dramatically rich story that doesn't cheapen any conflict and doesn't make this a my-parents-never-loved-me-boohoo kinda sob story, - although i personally think that han has never shown his commitment to his son quite like this before, which is why it touches him.

the way it's played, the film certainly for me, hints at a past that wasn't all ideal and fluffy clouds and silver spoons. it doesn't mean i can't see arrogance and entitlement in the character (i can see that plentifully), it means that where he is isn't just an effort of his will, although i believe he is also there willingly.

anyway, yadayadayada. yoda knows sith about feelings. or working through them. i'm thinking he should have watched more of the dr phil stuff you are on about.

 

I'm think I'm still confused by this thread. The gripes about Kylo seem to be about the very things that make him villainous. The criticisms seem to boil down to criticisms of his personal character, when his weaknesses in this regard are the very point. We SHOULD be repulsed by his behavior.

Anakin and Ben have different motivations and insecurities that drive them. Some of us are bound to be more infuriated by one more than the other, because of what we ourselves bring to the table.

This debate is like debating apples and oranges... except the apples and the oranges are both dressed in black.

 

And I seriously doubt it will be presented that way. Of course Han & Leia sent Ben away with the best intentions. Just like other parents of Force sensitives had done in the distant past. I can't see them being bashed at all. Using kiddie logic young Ben may've felt that he was seen as a problem that needed to be passed onto to someone else. That his parents were happy to get rid of him. If he did I'm sure those feelings were cultivated by Snoke. That's the key to the whole thing. Snoke somehow got to him. That's why Leia regrets sending him away. How & why Snoke corrupted Ben is what we're still to find out. We only have a fraction of the story.

As for Anakin, IMO the Jedi absolutely share the responsibility for his turn. Firstly, they had established rules for not taking in kids above a certain age who have strong connections with their parents. At first they adhere to that with Anakin, & then they change their mind. They broke their own rules. What's more the parent that Anakin was strongly attached to was left as a slave on a dangerous planet! That's called a recipe for disaster. And to top it off they failed to sense a powerful Sith Lord operating right under their noses who then spends a decade poisoning Anakin's mind. Starting from when he was just 9 years old. That's an appalling failure of guardianship for a child. Keep in mind, that's one of the things the Jedi Order does - raise children. From very young ages. In the case of Anakin they did a crap job. If all of that doesn't amount to a shared blame for his fate then I don't know what does.

He was quite whiny when he was accusing Obi-Wan of being jealous & of holding him back. That was right after he slaughtered a camp full of women & children. IMO that act was the end of him as a good guy. It was understandable to take out the Tusken warriors who kidnapped his mother & who would have fought him. That's combat. To then go around & murder the women & children...good guys don't do that.

 

A truly good guy would've just snuck out of there, though.

 

that's one of the ways i believe that snoke hooked into him. he has very strong feelings of inadequacy and shame (all that fighting against the pull of the light) and i think he could easily have taken himself being sent away to mean that he was unwanted. doesn't mean he was but it's actually quite common in children of divorce to think that the fighting and separation is about themselves.

one of the first things that struck me about these two characters after watching TFA for the first time was that... they both ended up on the dark side but somehow with anakin that always made complete sense (not because of obviousness... it just made sense with the set-up and the ethical and political and emotional and spiritual connundrum that lucas had created for the character) --- and he had no father. there was no father figure and therefore he was desperate to find a father figure... and that's why the relationship with obi-wan is so interesting because obi-wan shifts from master to brother and he's never the father but never quite an equal either.i feel very strongly that qui-gon would have been able to respond to anakin a lot better but we'll never know.

and with kylo/ben? he had parents. and he still ends up with mountains of daddy issues and on the dark side? how can this happen twice?

and i'm intrigued.

and i hope, i really hope, that the writers will be able to tell that story convincingly. because at the moment they have manoeuvered into pretty tight corners. and nobody wants to slag off the legacy characters but somehow this kid ended up with snoke, he desperately wants to go home but has become a murderer?

i'm hoping that his reason wasn't simply teenage stubborness and a mere will to not be with his family. that's not how he comes across to me. i'm not holding out much hope for his plans to finish what vader started although... it would be nice to think he's got something going on but i'm really not holding my breath at the moment.

 

This is even funny. Anakin was accused from part of the fandom to be indeed too vulnerable. Saying that there is no vulnerability in PT makes me laugh.
Again the problem for me is that Kylo is just saying that is conflicted but Anakin really is because it is shown that he is conflicted. But I cannot see Kylo's conflict in his behaviour. Even the most tempered defenders of Kylo Ren emotionality here cannot explain why and for what reasons he has any tantrums and that means a lot. I'm not saying that that all the motivations should be explained in details in one movie but at least we should have something. For example: Vader is not shown as conflicted man in ANH. He is presented as evil and merciless and we can explain why he is acting like that (and that why the viewer is surprised in the next episodes that the villain is actually still human, no matter that he/she has seen the PT or not). But Kylo is non stop declaring that he is conflicted; in the same time he is acting as cool blooded villain. So, why should I believe to his declarations of some invented tantrums? Maybe he is a pathological liar, or a schizophrenic person, I don't know, but I cannot see the so emotionally deep Vader-wannabe tantrums.

 

i would say he has tantrums because he cannot deal with frustration - much like a toddler. does that help?

i think perhaps reading the essay will help you understand what the vulnerability refers to. i don't see it a lot in the PT, not in the same way that it is in the OT, padme is when she confronts her husband, i suppose. but it's not done with the same, i'm prepared to die kinda attitude. she just comes across as confused to me.

and how is anakin vulnerable? not in a heroic way, that's for sure. that was what the essay was about.

 

Unless he was strapped to a chair and brainwashed, he's fully responsible for everything he does and he's just throwing a fit.

They don't. Anakin makes his own choices. He's responsible for them. No one else. Raising children doesn't amount to automatically who is bad for your child, when you have no way of knowing that.

Him being upset with Obi-Wan is because he blames him for holding him back because of the loss of his mom. He did an evil thing. But he doesn't enjoy it. The whole point that this person is making is that he's not an evil person at this point. He makes an evil decision. He's not a good person in this situation. But that's a difference between being fully evil and murdering everyone because you like it or because they disobey you and doing a very evil thing in a fit of anger and vengeance. They're both wrong. But why they're doing it is different. Have a very great day!

God bless you! God bless everyone!

 

Well, the frustration is a result of something, i.e. is not a quality. So, for me is strange to explain the tantrums that are result/caused by something with frustration that is again a result of the some cause/motive. For me the real problem is that I cannot see the motives for Kylo being frustrated (or to have tantrums, etc.). If this is part of his character, he is just a whinny brat (as was posted before) but if those tantrums/frustration are motivated by something it should be shown/alluded. And Lucas was accused in a lazy writing. Now this is lazy writing.

About the essay: I read it, of course, but I completely disagree with the thesis of the author. To not fight back, to stay defenseless is not vulnerability in the mentioned situations. To be ready to sacrifice all, even their own life is not vulnerability, is the ultimate strength, it is called self sacrifice. And the strongest sacrifice is exactly to refuse to strike back. In the essay we read: "Instead of culminating with a straightforward battle between “good” (Luke) and “evil” (Vader)" … well, I disagree. There is a battle. But the good cannot use the weapon of evil to win. It can only win by the good way. The really interesting thing in ROTJ is that the father saves his son by 'separate' him from the emperor and sacrifices his life. Vader is not actually killing the Emperor, he is just throwing him away. It is very important not to cut him with the lightsaber or something, because it would be just some killing, but it is not. So, there is no vulnerability here or in Luke's decision. And of course I was talking about the ‘classical’ vulnerability of Anakin: he is vulnerable by his emotion to the people he loves. (and this is not the main, but just one of the reasons that the Jedi shouldn't be involved in attachments: they make them vulnerable).

 

EDIT: Accidentally posted without finishing.

 

i feel like i'm walking into some debate over which character is better. it's not my main point and never will be. the characters aren't the same and the writer weren't and so on. it's moot to me. i'll allow myself to compare contextually maybe. but i wouldn't want to compare the quality of the writing as if there was an objective measure for it.

anyway, you were asking why he has tantrums, if you don't *like* the rason i gave you, that's a different problem.

maybe you could rephrase by saying, why can't he cope with frustration?

i find it massively annoying personally that not being able to cope with frustration in the eyes of some people = being whiny. it simply isn't true. have you tried coping with frustration? a lot of people fail. i don't destroy things but people do allow their frustration to get the better of them ALL THE TIME. road rage, shouting at others, sometimes they throw things. these will be adults as well. they will get enraged because their phones aren't transmitting, because they missed the bus ... blahblahblah. maybe you are just so zen or your world runs so smoothly that you are never frustrated. but in my world it's a frequent thing. watch yourself lose your adult self every time things don't go according to plan.

anyway, you learn coping with frustration, some people learn it better than others but not being able to and unleashing yourself on equipment isn't unusual.

in kylo's case i would say that in each case there is a perfectly sound reason to have a tantrum, for things not having gone his way. he keeps losing track of the droid, and then he loses the girl because he underestimated her. so, i'm not sure how lazy that sort of writing is. it's there in the film. you can say that he isn't much of an adult but it's part of his characterisation to not be able to cope with frustration. that's how the character is written.

maybe we need to go over the meaning of words?

vulnerability is being defenseless. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vulnerable have a look.

i agree that it amounts to a kind of strength, to me it's a very christian sort of thing and the readiness to die, maybe not readiness but the openess to the possibility, renders people very powerful in a way that weapons don't. there is an interesting convergence there when vulnerability and power meet. it's very beautiful to me when it happens and it is very rare.


i think luke makes himself vulnerable by delivering himself to his father and the emperor, i don't see how he isn't. han does the same thing. he may have a blaster at his side but ultimately it wouldn't be much use against his son. and i feel that either of them didn't do that out of some manipulative goal of suggesting vulnerability. i think that it ihas to be genuine and it is.

i think you are seeing the outcome of luke's actions as a victory and thus justify his cations against that. he didn't know that, see it from his pov.

i agree that anakin is vulnerable to manipulation etc because of his character and such, but that's not heroic, it's who he is. he doesn't go into things prepared to die for his beliefs. maybe at the end of his life but anyway.

like i said, i have no interest in bashing either character or to pitch the prequels against the sequels. i like all of these films equally (sort of) and i'm not going to engage in a battle of what's better.

 

No, for me the victory of Luke consists in the fact that he refuses to strike back because and especially for the reason that he cannot be sure if he could survive or not but the important thing is not the surviving, is the self sacrifice and it is indeed strong Christian motive. So, he could die there and this will be victory again, because the battle for Luke is not to defeat the Emperor. The real battle for Luke is not to fall in the darkness: in both cases he wins.
So for me 'heroic vulnerability' as concept is something that doesn't make sense, because if we speak of the etymology of the words: hero comes from Greek and literally means protector or defender, not defenseless

But let's back to the main topic. I'm afraid you misunderstood me. The problem of the Kylo for me is not that he is frustrated or not. Anybody: good or bad can be frustrated, no matter that Kylo's frustration looked fake to me, but anyway. Frustration is not natural quality of somebody's character, it is temporal state provoked by something. So we cannot explain frustration with tantrums or vice versa, because they are result of something. And here comes the problem, because we have no idea why Kylo is in that state of mind now; his "motivation" looks fake and empty. I mean, this is not ANH, it is Episode 7. There is a back story. Kylo couldn't repeat the Vader effect: here comes the bad guy, menacing with no face, i.e. pure evil and that is his motivation and everything looks logical, as was in ANH. But here we know that Kylo is Han and Lea son and Luke's nephew and that make the things even worse.

 

anakinfan always brings classic GOAT posts.

 

How do you know he had great parents?