ST ST Criticism Discussion Thread

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Though, Kylo Ren has to much of a strong personality (even if unlikable) to believably come across as a completely broken, non-entity person. He is definitely no Bucky.

And I personally don’t find characters without agency to be remotely interesting. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Bucky, for instance. He is a non-character to me. Although, admittedly, I wouldn’t have that much of an issue with a redeemed Kylo if the story stated he had no previous agency. I wouldn’t care for him as a character, but at least his existence wouldn’t annoy me and the story wouldn’t feel so much as an utter destruction of the Skywalker family.

Personally, if it were me, I would just have Kylo Ren’s character rewritten from the start. Give him sympathetic motivations – maybe he joined the FO as initially a double-agent but slowly fell to the darskide – don’t have him killing Han, and have him being more competent from the beginning. And have him not killing the innocent villagers at the start, but do something equally bad latter. That would show a) he is getting worse (villain progression) and b) he definitely wasn’t that bad before. And he would still retain his agency.

 

I say discard the sequel trilogy and do the legacy series with Cade who has to deal with a Sith Empire, the Fel Empire in exile and the New Republic as well as a Jedi Order that isn’t at prequel levels but still large enough to make a difference. That would be interesting to see on the big screen, plus it wouldn’t tarnish the legacy of the originals the way the sequels have done.

 

Regarding redemption, I think we forget sometimes the way Star Wars has presented the Dark Side as almost a kind of spell or addictive drug that these people fall under that twists and corrupts and changes them further. They even used to take it so far as to change their eyes to make the transition more clear at the darkest levels of rage.

But within minutes of threatening to turn Luke’s sister and his own daughter, and after taking 30 seconds to decide between his boss and his son being electrocuted... it only took this smile...

and some kind words to make it seem like the spell was lifted.

Kylo Ren has done so much on screen that I think that without Leia to help a redemptive effort a movie and an audience would need to see him slowly helping others and witness the spell being lifted as the movie went on and tapping into Driver’s charm to show him remorseful and less intense and eventually even slightly charming for it to work. By the end you’d need to see some moments even that reminded you of Han and Leia. That transition would be formidable to behold.

I’m reminded in some ways of Jaime Lannister’s transition on Game of Thrones from being willing to push a kid out of a window in the first episode to allowing others to escape and risking his life for others and seeing the extent of his sister’s and father’s evil and realizing he’s not at their same level.

IX needs a villain more scary, more powerful and harder to imagine defeating than Kylo Ren who makes Kylo Ren realize the same thing after experiencing how empty the throne is without anyone to care for.

They need to present it as though his ambition and propaganda about his grandfather and desire to finish what his grandfather started lead him this whole time but now that he’s achieved his goal it’s empty and he regrets it because the power didn’t fill the void he expected it would.

 

I also don't care about Bucky at all. I never cared, and I never sympathized with Captain America caring so much. I don't hate Bucky, but when it came to poor Bucky or angry Iron Man pissed off about being lied to about Bucky killing his parents, even while lacking agency, IDGAF about Bucky's pov.

If Kylo lacked agency like Bucky, he'd be even less interesting to me. Right now he's skirting the line because LF has been so afraid to pick a story for him. He might be revealed to have lacked agency all along, but then I'll just feel like whole story was a waste of time and had I known, I never would have given him a second thought. A character that lacks agency isn't the driver of the story. Why waste our time focusing on the slave that's being controlled by someone scarier and stronger? Vader remains interesting because he never lacked agency. He chose, and he owned it. I don't root for Vader, I want him to lose. But I'm entertained watching him.

A good example of a reasonably sympathetic villain is Killmonger to me. I still don't root for him. He's a psycho. I don't root for mass murderers. Same for Magneto. But at least when I understand where they're coming from, they're more interesting. I think that comes from empathizing with how even good motivations can twist a person. That's an entirely human thing that I can relate to and seek to recognize and prevent even in myself. I can't relate to being brainwashed into murder, and I can't relate to a spoiled brat feeling so sorry for himself that he just has to mass murder the galaxy.

 

I've been told that Ben is the person Rey talks to during the Force Skype sessions.

During those sessions, Ben agrees that he is a monster.

Ipso facto, Ben is a monster.

IX is going to go back to that door shutting scene and re-start there, and open the door right back up. Door's closed. No, it's not. Or maybe it's going to show a flashback scene in reverse, so that the door starts closed and then Rey opens it for him. Fixed!

 

I`m different. I actually thought Iron Man acted like something of a brat in that situation. T`Challa was in the same boat, was much younger and he managed to be a bigger person and realize where blame ought to be put and where it shouldn`t be. So, I was fully on Cap`s side in that thing.

That said, Kylo is like none of those guys to me. His main mode seems to be "whiny". TFA skirted around the issue with mask time but TLJ just had him lip-wobbling for an entire movie. Anakin in AOTC, when he was at his teenage whiniest, was more of a man to me.

So turn into a different character, never before seen at all then with completely new made up personality traits and the pretense that his entire previous personality as shown was just "darkside"? That is not a transformation. That would be cheap, not to mention white-washing IMO. Of course I can actually picture them doing it.

If the character was supposed to have charme, he needed to have it as a darksider, too. Charme is not something you can suddenly tack on a character in the third act, that is atrocious character-work. If he was a charismatic personality, he needed to be that even as a darksider. Just a twisted darker version. Lots of dark characters are sexy and charismatic by design. Kylo is not, by design.

Being on the darkside didn`t have to mean "come across as an incel brat". But they made that bed with the character and now they have to lie in it.

Jaime Lannister had a different starting point in how he was portrayed. Yes, he pushed a kid from a tower to protect his incestouus relationship but he was still depicted differently than Kylo Ren from the start. That`s why you can go about differently with perhaps redeeming him.

I think Ben is the person who answered Rey`s question to come with her with "let it all die". The monotone "I don`t even know what I want, I just don`t want this", that seems to be "Ben".

What kind of personality did he show during the force skypes to latch onto? It`s still a lot of "I have no idea what I want" and "my lip wobbles".

 

That’s another reason why I’m not convinced he will remain evil to the end actually. He’s run out of things to be angry about. He perceived that Luke was coming to kill him and Luke is gone to him until he works through that and sees Luke again.

My guess? They use Luke’s voice as a clue that he’s on a better path near the end. Rey would have first heard and later seen Luke but Ben, exiled by a new threat, would not be able to see or hear him and then, near the end, after a sacrifice, Ben would hear Luke for the first time telling him to concentrate and let go and we’d see him do something big to help someone like Finn or Poe escape the FO with some incredible pilot moment or something.

Him saving one of them would be the big moment and we’d see him expressing regret and disbelief over what he did and how he knows he can’t take it back, which would then lead back to Rey’s Achilles heel/crux where she would have to wonder if he’s truly changing and truly helpful or if all of it is some elaborate ruse once again for him to retake the thrown. She’d be non-trusting all the way to the end where she’d have to choose to save his life or not. Perhaps after she’s learned of her grandfather and been told by the new villain that it’s her destiny to fight him as her grandfather fought Vader and that he won’t stop lying or scheming until she and the new villain are dead while applying some leverage on her to do so.

There has to be more questions and uncertainty about an outcome in IX because there’s no question Rey can beat Ben. She’s done it like 4 times already.

 

I have my own crazy theory about how a Kylo redemption could possibly work, but I won’t subject you all to it as it involves Palpatine clones, force ghosts and lots of other nonsense.

One of the central problems with setting up his redemption in a way that works on screen is that he doesn’t have heroic qualities. He’s not classically handsome or charismatic. He’s no longer physically intimidating after getting owned all the time. His shrill outbursts are cringeworthy, and bleed over into his dorky fanboy-esque lightsaber technique. His only legit victory, over Snoke, was through subterfuge rather than a heroic confrontation. His personality is resentful, self-pitying, and sociopathic.

This illustrates the problem quite well. Kylo supporters think he’s a Byronic anti-hero, but he’s not. He’s a toady, a goon-level bad guy who aspires to be an antihero. I don’t think you can achieve that transformation in Ep IX just by sitting him on a throne and letting him do an Emperor impression.

 

100 % agree.

I think there are villains who have been redeemed who have done as bad or even worse in stories. And in theory, even Kylo could be redeemed if we`d be looking purely at his actions. However, those bad guys were introduced differently. in movies they were depicted differently.

All I see is variations of ideas on how those characters were redeemed but none of them fit with Kylo`s character type.

 

The only path I see for this trilogy is to accept that it's about making Luke, Leia and Han total losers who get defeated then killed off and go from there.

There is no redemption for any of them personally. The only thing that can be done is to reveal that they were undone because of their love of Ben and that he was compromised very early on by the vengeful wraith spirit of Sidious.

Ren finds this out and with Rey he is able to finally free himself from the slavery of Sidious. This leads to the true Ben Solo (who almost literally has never existed for some 20 years) to reemerge. This is the Light that Ren was taking about in TFA. Ben Solo himself was put out of balance by Sidious in a Jekyll and Hyde way where he's been "Hyde" on and off since he was 12 years old then went full time Hyde since the night of the Jedi massacre but Ben/Jekyll is still in there like Anakin was in Vader.

Ben Solo returns and they do a mindscape battle between his two halves ala Yoda in the Yoda arc where the two sides are reconciled.

Is that really anything satisfying? No but what much can anyone really do in this one last movie? JJ must have meant something with Ren talking to the Vader helmet so there was some spirit talking to him and his Snoke was not the idiot we saw in TLJ. Whatever he meant him to be doesn't matter now so they need a replacement and at least Sidious allows some tie-in to I-VI. Not that this trilogy can ever really tie into those movies but cosmetically they have to make it look like it does.

I'd bet it all works far better than the nonsense that they will do!

Maybe that is this trilogy's story then?

Rey and Ren are two characters through two movies that have no agency. They are merely controlled by the Light and Dark sides of the Force which now have been devolved into sides battling like some Greek gods in a Clash of the Titans ethic where the Light side gods and the Dark side gods are using everyone as chess pieces.

Rey and Ren unite and with help from Luke, Anakin, Obi-Wan and Yoda take the "gods" of the Force down to return it to where it should be.

 

T’Challa wasn’t lied to by a friend that I recall, a friend using the murdered guy’s invention as his signature weapon. I find Cap super arrogant and heartless with Iron Man in that story.

But to the point of Kylo, either way Bucky is the non-entity. The character that lacks agency is the moot point. It’s not about Bucky, it’s about Cap and Iron Man. If they try and turn Kylo into Bucky and make Bucky the actual star, I mean I can’t even imagine it. It would be so bad to me. How can one individual major studio do so many uninteresting things with so much money and therefore presumably talent?

 

Yeah, it’s painful to see that but it seems like the direction things are going, although I bet JJ will try to pull out something happier, even if it makes no sense.

If we’re sharing our own redemption theories I’ll try to throw my ridiculous one into the mix as succinctly as possible: Sidious had cloning facilities that he could use to resurrect himself like in Dark Empire, and popped out of a tank immediately after ROTJ. Luke found him years later and killed him, but his ghost escaped and tried to jump in another clone which was Rey, but her infant/embryonic spirit was strong enough to reject him. She pops out like a normal baby, no growth acceleration. Sidious then jumps into another clone, but it’s messed up and comes out mutated, which is Snoke, and he begins using sorcery to influence Ben Solo. Years later at Luke’s academy, Ben learns about all this, and confronts Luke, who says even he doesn’t know how to permanently kill Sidious. Ben wants to go to him as a double agent, and learn his powers, then kill him. Luke forbids it, which leads to the temple massacre, and Kylo joins Snoke, convincing himself that every evil deed he commits is in order to finally destroy the Sith, but he has fallen to the dark side.

Kylo and Rey team up to kill Sidious once and for all, and Kylo sacrifices himself in the process, thus getting some modicum of redemption.

 

Cap was told by an AI in The Winter Soldier that Hydra had the Stark parents killed, that was stalling to kill him and Natasha. Then Project Insight came around and could have been forgotten in the shuffle. Nat gave Cap files on the Winter Soldier but do we know for certain that he knew then? Tony could have still been dealing with the fallout of IM3, Then Age of Ultron, the business with Loki's scepter, Ultron, the Maximoff twins, and Cap and Tony weren't on speaking terms. Then Lagos, the Sokovia Accords and Bucky being framed in Civil War. Besides, Cap knew that Tony didn't like Howard, Cap could have thought that Tony would have thought that Cap was trying to exonerate him one last time, and would Tony believe that Hydra did it? Oh and would Cap really want to open that wound by bringing in new knowledge about Tony's parents deaths? What would have been a good time to tell him?

 

With only one movie to go any new villain would need to have some easy to understand tie to what we already know in this trilogy or tie into a previous trilogy somehow.

They can’t monologue too much about why they’re here. They just need to enter the picture in a big way and kick butt early on.

A son of Snoke could be a pretty easy way to handle things. You could make him more mobile than Snoke was. Younger looking. And yet incredibly powerful. You could also have him steal the Knights from under Kylo Ren and swear to be even more ruthless to all Kylo Ren holds dear. Making it his personal mission to kill Leia, Rey and him and remove the entire Skywaker bloodline from history.

Show him terrifying, powerful and coming for the throne he thought he’d inherit naturally. Perhaps Snoke even sent junior to somewhere to gather an artifact of immense power that further makes him hard to defeat.

Matt Smith perhaps in motion capture? Then we’d have a villain with clear motives and revenge and of power.

 

It's awful to contemplate that we have to think up scenarios like this to try to make some modicum of sense of this "trilogy".

Sidious is the only way to go on that route.

 

I've never seen Winter Soldier, I know nothing about that movie. It doesn't appeal to me at all. I only conclude that Cap lied to Iron Man because IM asked him flat out in CW if he knew something he didn't tell IM, and Cap admitted that he did.

It doesn't really matter to me what Cap's reasoning would be to withhold information from Tony about the death of his parents. It's messed up. You don't do that.

 

A son out for revenge? Why should we care? Snoke was more of a plot point than an actually fleshed out character?

 

I didn’t find Bucky sympathetic. He seemed pretty bland. But in infinity war I found myself rooting for him. There is no crazy theory that makes him sympathetic to me and nothing that makes me okay with Luke blaming Obi Wan. I just feel that shows a lack of understanding of the character. Oh well, will hope for some good anthology stories


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If that is effective, it still runs the risk of easily overpowering the screen as a charismatic bad guy while still not redeeming Kylo but making him look more pitiful. Just because you bring in a better bad guy, doesn`t mean the previous bad guy suddenly works as a good guy, even if they supposedly do good things now.

The last thing rather bland characters need is someone mesmerizing to upstage them. Which goes for both Rey and Kylo.

While it`s a no-no in terms of friendship loyalty, he has equal if not more friendship ties to Bucky - and Winter Soldier really fleshed that out more, it`s actually a movie ten times better than Civil War IMO - so I`m not faulting him for showing his old best friend loyalty. He shouldn`t have to let him take the fall for a crime that was ironically not his fault, even if he did commit it.

 

But I mean, even if it's understandable for Cap to care more for Bucky than Iron Man, it's not Iron Man's responsibility to care more about Bucky. Iron Man gets to be po'ed about being lied to by an ally about the murder of his parents while that ally used his dad's technology for his signature weapon. In that scene, I so felt for Iron Man. He was hoodwinked and made to feel like a sucker.

 

Ironically I felt more like rooting for Cap than Iron Man in that scene. I don’t even remember why. Maybe because Iron Man came off too much of a brat in the beginning and I had a hard time liking him/caring about his feelings?

Anway, despite being off-topic, that was an interesting discussion.

 

I agree. But I think he expected Cap to stand aside and let him kill Bucky in retaliation and was po-ed that Cap didn`t. Which IMO felt too much to ask. That he was pissed about being lied to, that I understood.

Heh. No matter the individual sympathies in that scenario, can we agree that both men are a million times better than Kylo and each one`s motives a million times better than Kylo`s motives of nothingness?

 

Is it just me or does he look a little Muun-like?



How would you guys feel if he played Plagueis?

 

I actually agree with this which is why episode 9 could do a cartwheels now and it would change nothing for me. The ST is done and dead as far as I`m concerned. I can`t take it as a canon or else I would have to accept the defecation on the OT as canon.

 

Matt Smith would not only blow Driver off the screen, I'd instantly root for him over everyone else. As annoying as he could be as the Doctor, he can actually perform and has a bit of life to him. It would be like throwing Loki into ep 9 - oh, look, someone with some charisma. Hell, the Doctor and River Song showing up would fix a whole lot of this mess.

But seriously, bringing in a new villain in the last act without any foreshadowing? People are going to scream.

Well, they already have done it so you're right, why not just take credit for it?