ST ST Criticism Discussion Thread

I also viewed the dark side as a drug addiction. That is I think how it was presented in the OT, Vader specifically came across as someone who had a hard time letting go of his dark side addiction. The OT over emphasizes how the dark side is seductive and difficult (if not impossible) to get out once you’ve fallen.

Which… doesn’t really jive with the ST, which presents the light side as a seduction for Kylo Ren. Which never made sense to me.

 

Indeed the drug addiction doesn't work.
Imo it's more like harmony and peaceful/longlasting happiness vs ephemeral pleasures.

Kylo is like a person who does everything to be the best in his career, and sees his beloved ones as an obstacle for such a goal. In this sense the light is a temptation for him. It blocks him in his attempt to pursue his goals, even though the realization of those goals cannot give him real happiness.

 

I see The Dark Side as being like a cancer or some other type of disease that spreads and eventually consumes and destroys you.

 

@Thrawn082
But you don't do your best to get cancer, whereas Kylo does it for the Dark Side.

 

Precisely.
I think the cancer analogy is a good one too.

As a smoker who tried to quit and knows the dangers of lung cancer, I can grasp the concept of the darkside being a metaphor for bad things being seductive, but spreading out like cancer and hard to quit once you've fallen into it.

Which is probably why I have a hard time wrapping my head around the Kylo Ren issue. He is like a kid trying to smoke despite not being addicted to it, and worse, being tempted not to smoke, but still doing it because... *reasons*. And he is 30. He is not even a teenager in his rebel years. Like, he is a huge, unrelatable moron, but the ST expects me to sympathize with him.

 

@La Calavera
But you might be obsessed with the goal of losing weight even if you're not fat. So you stop eating. And you see as a temptation your mother (the light) who tells you to eat.

 

^ Umm... not seeing what you're getting at. Eating food is neither good or bad thing by itself, it depends on the food you eat. Also it's something we need to... uh, survive. Of course if my mom tempted me to eat McDonald's that would be bad.

Loosing weight is not an analogy I think of when it comes to Star Wars light/dark temptations.

 

@La Calavera
Sorry, I didn't explain my point well.
You might decide to do something that's actually toxic for you, like stop eating, in order to obtain what you consider to be a positive result, like becoming Miss Universe.
In the example of smoking, it would be like doing your best to start smoking in order to be considered cool by your classmates.
All this metaphors are just to say that I actually can imagine someone like Kylo, who "tries to be evil" but is tempted by light.
Even when you have the wrong objectives, you might still be very motivated to accomplish them.

Kylo wants to be powerful and free. So the love for his parents is an obstacle, a temptation.

 

In the OT and the PT, the Dark Side is presented as being like a drug addiction. And people follow it because it gives them what they think they want (power, revenge against enemies), and people think that they are strong enough or smart enough to avoid the bad effects. They figure they can get all the advantages and sidestep the disadvantages ("Hey, I can quit whenever I want!"). But, by the time they realize just how far things have gone, they can't live without the high it gives them. So, they embrace it and figure if they have to go, they'll go out feeling powerful. Or they just won't care about the downside, as long as they get what they want.
In the OT, that's why Palpatine was so confident in ROTJ. He knew that if Luke used the Dark Side enough, he'd become obsessed with it and unable to put it aside. So, even if Luke killed both him and Vader, Palpatine would still win. The Dark Side's dominance would continue through Luke. Of course, Palpatine was certain he could either control Luke's descent, or kill him in order to protect himself.The PT follows this idea, as Ani goes further and further into the Dark Side while (he thinks) staying good until he's conned into thinking he needs to go fully Dark. And, by the time the damage has been done, he's gotten used to it. Then, it's (supposedly) too late to turn back.
As for how the ST presents the idea...I'm not quite sure, actually.

 

I perceive it differently. I see TFA as showing Rey on a more superficial level and TLJ going deeper. I also think that RJ was attempting to deconstruct the characters and that this is very much the case with Rey.

I also think his deconstruction of the characters kind of fails in a way because to me it gives this illusion at first at coming closer to the character's core, but then it doesn't provide much of substance from the character's core or provide satisfying answers about the character.

Examples of deconstructing the character:

- The movie gets the viewer closer to the heart of Kylo's conflict and to the wound that anchors him to the dark side. The wound is from abandonment issues (shown by Kylo seeing a connection with Rey because of her abandonment) and betrayal (his absolute hatred for Luke because Luke gave up on him and considered killing him - and I do believe that deep deep down, Kylo must know the truth that Luke never actually tried to kill him). The character is presented as being "torn apart" from the very beginning of TLJ - killing his father has only split him further and destabilized him more. This conflict is sensed by both Snoke and Rey. It drives him to consider opening his more vulnerable self up to his enemy (hand touch scene) and to actually considering trying to venture back towards the light. This, however, is only a glimpse the film offers before the character pulls his torn self back together and firms up on the dark side.

- The movie also draws the viewer to the heart of Rey's injury from when her parents abandoned her. TFA Rey lives in a world built of denial. She has told herself it was some kind of mistake and her family is coming back for her, and this gives her the hope she needs to get through each day. Surface Rey is okay and she embodies many of the qualities you noted @godisawesome. TFA shows beneath that however in Rey's reaction to Finn bailing and later to her reaction to him coming back for her, in her response when Maz confronts her about her denial, and the interrogation scene is telling as well. However, TLJ decides to dive further into Rey's injury. It is supposed to show her conflict with Luke as aggravating that injury (IMO) because Rey is looking for her parents wherever she goes and Luke is rejecting her at every turn (or is supposed to be shown as doing that). It is also supposed to show Rey feels utterly lost when it comes to having this power with the Force and doesn't know what she is "supposed to do with it." She feels like a fish out of water--she's left her comfort zone of denial and now she has to actually "be someone" in the world, and she doesn't know how to figure this out. This issue of Rey's identity is supposed to be brought out more in the mirror cave scene (who is Rey in the galaxy, who were her parents and what does that say about who she is). Lastly it is supposed to show how Rey can relate to Kylo's issues of abandonment/betrayal because of her background. Her parents abandoned her, and that is a terrible betrayal.

I think that TLJ is supposed to bring the viewer closer to both the wounded inner children of Rey and Ben, and this is why Rey is at her most vulnerable in TLJ. It is showing the underbelly of her personality, the wounded child abandoned by parents, the sum total of the trauma of her entire life. This is the deconstructing of these characters and they bounce off on another in firming up their identities come the end of the movie. Rey's identity crisis is resolved (or is supposed to be) by the end. She has learned to define herself and has defined her role. She no longer feels like a fish out of water. And I might say the same is true of Kylo as well--he's defined his identity and is no longer this fish out of water on the dark side.

If one is to argue that Rey's role was already defined in TFA, I would disagree. I at points filled in some assumptions for Rey in TFA, such as that when she claimed the lightsaber in the end fight scene, she was taking up her destiny in the Force. I filled this in because I was thinking perhaps the movie is attempting to symbolically show this by the act of her claiming the lightsaber that she rejected before (claiming the destiny that she rejected before). So when Rey goes off to Ahch-to at the end of the movie, I could then fill in that Rey is off to her destiny, having embraced it. Although TLJ could have picked up with this for Rey and it would have worked IMO, it's true that TFA doesn't really show us why Rey has decided to go to Ahch-to. We haven't really heard Rey's thoughts about what she thinks her destiny is or how she sees herself in the galaxy. We know in general she defines herself as "no one" or "just a scavenger." She never presented herself as Luke did, for instance. She's never presented to the viewer some lifelong dream or ambition. TLJ breaks down Rey's character to ask these kinds of questions.

As for why TLJ explores things like failure and identity and a person vs. a legend, that is obviously because RJ wanted to explore these things, not because they needed to be explored (IMO). It's creative choice. I think that the film is asking questions like "who is Luke Skywalker, really?" and so on, but the answers it pulls out are not always satisfying to a lot of people.

I agree with this. It doesn't tell me everything about who Rey is though. What I mean by Rey not being very well defined from the beginning is things like the following:

- Rey's motivations are rather unclear. The motivation I know (aside from seeking belonging and desire to help) is that she is waiting for her family and that she is in denial - she doesn't want to accept they are never coming back. She has been drawn into helping BB-8 and Finn on "their" mission, and plans to return to Jakku as soon as she's done helping them. Come the end of the movie she's accepted her family isn't coming back and has lost her coping mechanism of waiting for them and living in a dream world of sorts. I don't truly know her motivation for going to Ahch-to (and have to fill that in). I don't know if she wants to be a Jedi, if she believes she has a destiny in the Force, if she sees herself as more of a messenger or a prospective student, if she's still in a way looking for her family (as much as I usually argued she wasn't), etc. The movie shows Rey's attitudes towards the FO and Resistance, but doesn't show if she has an overall desire or objective to save the galaxy.

- Rey's origins are rather unclear. It's common for a movie to ground a character in their backstory. Rey's backstory left so many questions that 3 zillion fan theories emerged about it, including (sub)theories about how much Rey herself knows about her own history. The movie does suggest that Rey was left (her vision shows a ship flying away and leaving her behind) and shows her wearing rags more or less while Uncar has her by the arm. This is quite suggestive, but there is overall no certainty about Rey's mysterious past. Rey is grounded not in a backstory, but in a mystery of sorts (depending on how you look at it). Many people also wondered if Rey's purpose will be defined by this "mysterious backstory." Why? Because she has no higher purpose in TFA (there is no "I'm going to be a Jedi like my father" for instance).

- Because Rey's origins are unclear, the exact nature of what she is dealing with from her past is unclear. I remember when I argued the abandonment angle in the Rey Parentage thread that this was often met with all the alternative possibilities, such as Rey being kidnapped, her parents being murdered, etc. That Rey's character is deeply rooted in abandonment issues because she was actually abandoned by her parents wasn't something one could be certain of, because one didn't know for certain where/from what Rey came.

- What Rey knows about Luke Skywalker and the Jedi is rather unclear. She obviously thinks great things about Luke Skywalker given her reaction when he is mentioned. She also thinks he's a myth. I can assume she has encountered stories about the Jedi in general. Although she's been dreaming of Ahch-to (home of the Prime Jedi), there is nothing specific about what she believes about the Jedi, or that she believes the Jedi need to be restored. From this I had assumed that Rey knows almost nothing about the Force, and I assumed also she probably would think of the dark side and the light side (as bad people vs. good) and would confront the dark side out of a desire to "restore peace and justice" very much the way she confronts Kylo at the end of TFA. I didn't see her as someone who would try to bring back Ben, because I indeed thought she would be unlikely to drop her ruling of "monster," and would keep to her harsh judgment.

- One of the questions I had about Rey is when she will overturn her harsh judgment. I figured this was inevitable in a Star Wars trilogy (in the Skywalker saga) and I was interested in what it would take, which I saw as entailing a slight transformation of her character. I did not know for sure how Rey would perceive the Force, the process of falling to the dark side, if people can return from the dark side, etc. I did assume Rey would want the most good resolution to matters (if she was not that way, she would have just killed Kylo at the end of TFA). I knew that Rey can forgive Kylo, but I didn't know how much of that is already a part of her character, where her compassion is limited or not, what her views are on good and evil, or even if she will forgive Kylo. There are things to fill in or grow regarding Rey's sense of morality because all I have is a surface reading.

It was the job of TLJ to go further into this and further define this character. And I think the negative response is a combination of TLJ not doing a good enough job of further defining Rey's character and people's assumptions about who the character is as a whole. Because I can understand, for instance, "sympathy for Kylo" I can understand how one can arrive at that, so I don't find it "off" that Rey can arrive at it as well. What I do find "off" is the manner of execution.

Amusingly, I'm as confused about Rey and her course (in a way) at the end of TLJ as I was at the end of TFA. I know things from the novelization, which I can't entirely "bank" on because it is a novelization. I don't know what Rey's strategy regarding Kylo will be come the beginning of IX, just as I didn't know what it would be come the beginning of TLJ. I can only assume and speculate.

I notice Luke and Anakin are missing from this. Rey is THE main character in this trilogy. If she is developed in a way that isn't on par with the main character in each previous trilogy, that very well might say something.

This is just where I disagree with some people. It's like how some people say TLJ made Luke into a loser. And though I can understand if I had the same attitudes about what a loser is as some of those people, I would see Luke as a "loser" as well, I just don't perceive that way so I fundamentally can't perceive Luke as a loser. Likewise, I don't see TLJ as dumping Rey's emotional toughness. I would even say this is untrue. Rey's emotional toughness is right back when she takes the blue lightsaber back from Kylo on the Supremacy. It didn't go anywhere. All that happened is that Rey, like lots of people, has a more vulnerable side that is not the face she normally shows to the world. TLJ delved into this part of Rey--her underbelly, her injury from being abandoned by her parents, her feeling lost in this larger world she is in now without her coping mechanism, the compiled trauma of what happened to her being left on Jakku like that. It didn't dump Rey's emotional strength at all. I actually perceive being able to be emotionally vulnerable and overcome emotional wounds of the past as something only the strongest people do. It takes an incredible amount of strength to do that.

I am not going to comment on the rest because I perceive such a divide in our respective underlying attitudes that I don't think there's a point.

Again I disagree. I don't devalue Rey's Force vision. I know it is the overriding factor here. I also believe that Rey was able to see Ben in her adversary, and that her plan was not as baseless as you suggest. I don't see her survival instincts as a limiting factor.

Not really. Rey's biggest thing she can't understand is how Kylo could have murdered his father (Han). She is worried about Finn while she's away and there's that radiant hug between them when they are re-united.

I just really don't see it this way. I see this as you expected TLJ to reflect your attitudes.

I totally agree you are *justified* in thinking what you do and that there are good arguments to be made (which you did make good arguments).

I mean I don't have this bitterness about how RJ described protagonists, and he described Kylo as almost a co-protagonist, I thought (the meaning of that is not quite a co-protagonist BTW). I also don't have this bitterness about the story being all about Kylo. As a Kylo fan I find there's really not that much Kylo in the story and Kylo has even less screen time than in TFA. I see this all as very subjective.

Where I can agree is that the story is less about Rey than it should be. But Kylo did not take story from Rey. Rey has lost considerable screen time compared to the last movie and that is the time needed to fill in her story much better. This movie tried to juggle too much stuff and juggled it rather badly, IMO.

I actually agree that the film is based in concepts which it seems to fail to fully flesh out or make work. In other words, something substantial was lost in the chasm between the abstract and the realization of the abstract (the concrete).

PS: I didn't address your responses to Rey as an unknown meaning she doesn't have a unique character, but that's not what I mean by unknown. Obviously Rey has some characterization, and has character traits or characteristics.

 

What abandonment issues? That's a head canon that I see all the time from Kylo fans that is nowhere in the films or the novels. He's a master manipulator who seized on that with Rey in TFA and TLJ, because, wow, that's easy - she was left by her parents on a planet alone. Not hard to figure out. We don't know that he has the same issue but we know he's really good at manipulating people and playing to what they want to hear.

Now, should Han and Leia have abandoned Kylo? Hell yes. They should have taken off and nuked the site from orbit, to borrow from Aliens. But Leia guilted Han into going to try - of course, going by the life expectancy of the Resistance and old characters, Han was bound to die anyway. At least he didn't die from incompetent leadership.

Why wouldn't Luke "give up on him"? Kylo had already started turning dark and then pulled a house down on him and killed or turned his students.

I am getting really really tired of this narrative about poor abandoned Kylo who has to be saved because....well, no one can tell me why. Not the movie, not his fans, except some vague notion of the power of redemption or being kind and forgiving - nowhere does anyone tell me what the people saving him get out of it. Or frankly, what Kylo does?

 

I agree with you expect this part.

He is not a master manipulator. Nobody in and out of universe falls for his crap expect Rey and maybe Kylo stans. And Rey acts like an unbelievable idiot in the movie, whose actions have been rationalized as “she liked his abs” or “something something Force vision”, because that is still more convincing than whatever comes out of Kylo Ren’s mouth.

 

Okay, I can go with that....interesting - he can manipulate Han and Rey - maybe that's it, you have to have some relationship with him....

 

It's still as shallow as a puddle of mud if that's the case.

 

I only pointed that out because I do appreciate master manipulator characters, and some even can be quite likable and sympathetic (an example of this is Char Aznable, the poster bad boy of the Gundam series). A key trait of a good manipulative bastard is charisma. Palpatine had that. Hannibal had that. Kylo Ren doesn’t have that.

I once brought up the modern Voltron series as an example of a bad guy (Lotor) seducing a strong female character with his very good manipulative skills. It did not diminish her character in the slightest because he was so damn convincing (to the point that even the audience was fooled into believing he was turning good).

The issue with TLJ is that it doesn’t know what it wants. If it wants Kylo to be a magnificent bastard (and he had all the set up for it), then it should have gone all the way with it and the seduction of Rey wouldn’t feel so unbelievable. But if it wants to have Kylo as a kicked puppy then Rey should have been more than prepared to deal with that and call BS on him, considering he had no actual arguments for anything. In the end, it resulted in Rey coming across as an idiot.

As for Han, it's different because he's his father, and parents are naturally biased and more than willing to believe their children.

 

It’s very good for genuinely good character drama and I highly recommend it, but not very good for mecha action, in which is below average.
(a very nerd nitpick ).

 

@PendragonM - I don't think it's headcanon when the actor says the character feels abandoned (I think the source for this was the documentary of TFA). People who like Kylo and have paid more attention to the interviews and outside materials because that's what people do sometimes when they are curious about a character, put this together from the actual information out there. I could see it from TFA alone though. The conversation between Leia and Han about Ben in TFA is pretty telling. Leia sent Ben away to train with Luke because he was exhibiting warning signs of falling to the dark side is what can easily be concluded from this. How will Ben feel about such a development? Did he want to go to Luke? As someone who doesn't show a favorable view of his parents (at all), I would guess he did not want to go. He thinks his parents made the wrong choice. He thinks they abandoned him. He probably thinks they gave up on him too. How old was he when this happened? It's stronger for abandonment the younger he was when it happened, but unfortunately I don't know when he was sent away. I only know that Leia could make this decision for him, which suggests he was probably under 18 at least.

It doesn't matter if the viewer agrees with Kylo that he was abandoned. The matter that's relevant regarding analyzing the character is that Kylo believes it. No matter how little sympathy one has for this feeling that Kylo has, it's still true that the character perceives things this way.

In TFA novelization Snoke accuses Kylo of having compassion for Rey. Many people chose to believe Kylo doesn't have any compassion for Rey, but I see in TFA that he does have some, and it centers around how Rey's parents threw her away. Kylo can relate to "being abandoned" (no matter how erroneous his feelings/belief, it is still how he feels and what he believes as a character). He can relate to isolation/loneliness. Kylo is too self-centered to feel compassion for another person (however little compassion) just because. He can feel a little bit for Rey because he can relate (so that way it remains "about him").

From TLJ, I know that Kylo knew Rey's parents "threw her away" in TFA. It was before their Force vision that he said that to Rey with certainty (he has no doubt). And he said it to her in the context of Rey saying she can't understand his feelings towards Han or why he murdered Han. Han is of course Kylo's father. Kylo asks, "Don't you? Your parents threw you away like garbage. But you can't stop needing them."

How much commonality does Kylo see between them here? A lot. He feels his parents threw him away too, but like Rey he loved his parents and he couldn't stop needing them. But Kylo is a monster, as he sees it (I think he saw himself this way well before he did anything monstrous like murder another person), and his place is on the dark side (that's where he can be what he was "meant to be"). And he can't be on the dark side if he loves, and is very much in the practice of destroying his ability to love and those he loves so as to kill all the light within him, which is of course incredibly vile.

All of Kylo's core resentment (what he fell to the dark side over) is towards his family (so of course they have abandoned him, betrayed him, thrown him away, never really cared about him, disappointed him, etc. etc). And the last straw for him was Uncle Luke trying to murder him.

Is his view about his family erroneous? Of course! He's the villain and has a warped sense of things. But it is still what the character believes, however incorrect he is.

--

I find the Kylo-as-master-manipulator discussion always interesting because there is no way this character is a *master* manipulator. I'm fine with calling him a manipulator, but not a master. Master manipulators don't offer the tempting offer of "join me and kill all your friends!" Master manipulators are more like Palpatine in the PT. Snoke is probably more of a "master manipulator."

 

I'll have to rewatch the episodes, but for them in particular there is not an exact quote I was thinking of. The quote is from TESB previously mentioned.

For the episodes, as I read them, Yoda has a dark side that he doesn't acknowledge (his fear, his anger and his aggression). Yoda claims that this dark side doesn't exist, while the dark side self declares he does exist and that he grows stronger the more his existence is denied. In the end Yoda acknowledges that he is a part of him (the incorporation) but rejects him (the nullification). This is what's called 'the integration of the shadow' in Jungian psychology. Again, it's important to note that I don't regard the dark side as simply evil per say (I understand my conception of balance would be difficult to understand if you view it through the prism of just being evil). Instead the dark side is the negative spectrum of human emotion - fear, despair, anger, aggression, grief, greed, selfishness as well as evil. When Luke lashes out in anger in ROTJ he is using his dark side (as Palpatine says he sense the darkness 'swelling') but it would be odd to say Luke is 'evil' in that moment. Evil is the complete imbalance towards the darkness (darkness overwhelming the light) which is why it's called the 'fall to the dark side'. So a balance between the light and dark doesn't mean a balance between good and evil - it's an acknowledgment that you have a dark side (a negative self) and in so acknowledging nullifying it.

I would agree with this. The dark side is always there but it must be kept in balance (which means, essentially, not using it).

 

I would support that thread. These forums have several movies dedicated threads but are quite lacking when it comes to animated franchises.