ST Kylo Ren/Adam Driver Discussion Thread

There is only one living person capable of telling that story, Luke, who to him probably has the least credibility to convince him of anything.

Also, have Force Ghosts ever manifested themselves to darksiders in canon? Honest question.

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with Kylo being inspired to be like his grandfather Vader, but I do wish that they committed to his wrongdoings instead of sweeping them under the rug.

 

All excellent questions.

 

I blame this stuff on TLJ. The second film of a trilogy, like the second act of a play or movie, or the middle chapters of a book, like Empire Strikes Back, is typically where all the heavy lifting is done in terms of character development, motivations, backstory etc. But TLJ gave us nothing, besides the brief flashback with Luke creeping on him but Kylo had already turned to the dark side at that point anyway. By the time of Episode 9 we know basically nothing more about Kylo, what his motivations are, what made him turn to the dark side, why he was obsessed with Vader, what the Snoke dynamic was etc than we knew in Episode 7. Made his turn back to the dark side feel unearned and unsatifying since we dont know why he turned or what was driving him to begin with.

 

Whilst I’d agree that it’s typically the second act of a play where the ‘heavy lifting’ is done… the second act is usually written by the same person that writes the 1st and 3rd. Bringing in another person to write the 2nd act, when the 1st act is so narratively and thematically pedestrian and undefined is (IMO) a recipe for a creative disaster. Couple that with the fact that the 1st act ignores (and at worst undermines) the previous stories, it was never going to work well.

 

Yeah, if TLJ was interested in telling an actual story with Kylo in trying to present some form of development for him as a character, away from his villainous characterization, with forward momentum, I think they would've presented him as actually in conflict, after killing his dad, with the narrative he'd been fed as a brainwashed member of the First Order. If I were giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, I think it may be the idea of having Kylo try to attack Snoke so early in the movie... but the thing is: I'm not sure if the movie remembers that Kylo was ranting about how wise Snoke is and being a zealot for the first order and Snoke and all that, because it seems, to me, TLJ, basically is going by the angle that he's closer to an apprentice to a sith, than a zealot like that or whatever. Vader never has his head as firmly planted up Palpatine's butt as Kylo's is with Snoke in TFA, to my memory.

 

The problem with Kylo-Brainwashed (which would have been far more interesting) is that they can't just tell that story by itself. Because Finn was also brainwashed and broke his programming, well before Kylo does, it means that Finn would have had to factored in to Kylo's arc in some way. Even if just as a foreshadowing device.

TLJ takes the complete opposite view. It's so scared of Finn overshadowing Kylo, or for taking up potential romantic space that needs to be left wide open for Kylo to dominate, that is shoves him off on his own journey, with his own not-Rey love interest. TLJ doesn't want an ensemble cast. It doesn't want its A plot and B plot to interject. It doesn't care about anyone other than Kylo, and possibly Luke (but that's only because he's to blame for Kylo)

Kylo-Brainwashed would have been far too difficult to set up for the ST writers.

 

Brainwashed Kylo would have been easy way to have the son of Han and Leia be a darksider with an easy, get out of jail free way back to the light.

It would have been an easier story to tell, because it's basically mechanical, like a switch, and can be easily diagrammed. It doesn't require any character explanation for the fall. It doesn't require flaws. It doesn't require foreshadowing. It doesn't require development. It's an instant made villain. The return doesn't require character growth. It doesn't require redemption.

It would play out the way most brainwashing stories do, sort of the way Manchurian Candidate plays out, like a mystery. You reveal that the brainwashing exists through hints. You have the heroes notice. Then you unravel it. You find out who did it and how. Then the heroes work to break it. The spell is broken, and Ben Solo emerges.

Finn is a separate issue, but a brainwashed stormtrooper can easily be worked into the same story.

I think it's all very easy, very mechanical. Don't think it would have been very satisfying, it doesn't really belong in the Saga, it doesn't fit the style, the story, or the themes (the PT clones could be called back), but it would be easy to make work for what it is. It's so easy you could write it from a template.

It would have been the easiest set up for dark Solo, because it's not really a dark Solo, it's just brainwashing. Brainwashing doesn't have to be explained at all from a personality or character standpoint, because it's literally not the person, the person is being controlled externally, the person is under a magic spell.

 

It would need a completely different trilogy structure, where saving Ben has to be done well before the final act of the third movie, so that real Ben, in a sense, goes after those who brainwashed him. It wouldn't be a redemption angle, because Kylo doesn't have agency. but more so that his real self overcoming the programming, and then vowing to make up for the things he did while brainwashed (because, as a good person, he still feels guilt, and even possible looming shadowing thoughts that may never quite go away)

EP 7: We're introduced to the concept of brainwashing by the FO. Finn defects and breaks the programming foreshadowing that it can be done. Han and Leia know their boy is still out there and needs to be saved. They're convinced he's brainwashed just like the rest of the troopers. (who they know are former kidnapped kids. They want to save them too, even though they are firing on them.)

EP8: Set months later. Luke is in exile. He tried to get through to Ben but nothing worked. He feels nothing will the brainwashing. Whatever dark side source is doing is far stronger than anything he's met before (No Palpatine. Something worse is out there. Maybe even controlling Snoke too) Rey offers Kylo a way out. His interactions with her from the past 2 movies changes something. His programming tells him to kill her, but can't. The programming breaks and he joins her. Suddenly Ben is there, as if waking up from a deep sleep, but was aware of everything he did for the past 6 years. He feels immense guilt.

EP 9: Ben and Rey complete training under Luke, and go to confront the FO/Dark side source. Hell, maybe even throw in Finn as force trained, and get a real new class of Jedi by end of movie.

 

Or have Ben Solo *possessed* by Palpatine or other...

 

I think a lot of issues with the ST could have been solved with something that was staring Abrams in the face. Have Ben Solo kidnapped by the First Order as a child. Han & Leia break up as they both blame themselves and have spent years looking for him. Kylo now has an internal struggle that makes more sense. JJ could even have his mystery box by Rey discovering Kylo is Ben Solo. Luke goes in exile because he can not kill his nephew. Rian now gets to keep faking out the audience after Kylo kills Snoke but still chooses to go dark side. Finally in episode 9 after Ben Solo returns the kidnapped stormtroopers could en masse revolt against the First Order.

 

I also think this would have provided a nice way to bring in Rey Skywalker and tie the whole ST together much better. It does make sense that the Skywalker kids would be targeted by dark forces. Maybe Ben (before he is descended into total madness) takes Rey and hides her in order to protect his cousin (or sister) from the mental torment he is dealing with as a Skywalker descendant. That conflict would create a much more interesting journey for both Kylo and Rey. You then could have restored Ben in 9, and that creates juicy conflict with Poe and Finn too.

 

What I still find amazing is almost any fan or fan group who's thought about it can come up with a better story than the one given.

What I still find amazing is NO ONE sat there and said "y'know, it might be a good idea to not make the only child of the beloved OT humans into a villain that murders/wrecks their lives."

Or was it like that cartoon of the meeting where the person who says that is thrown out the window?

 

I don't know if I need that. I'm of the opinion, that any normal human on their own can choose to do evil, so I think Kylo can do that without kidnapping as a child. I just think the character still has to have reasons, and motives and goals for why he does it, to me.

In a redo of TLJ (after TFA, as is) I was piecing together, the pitch had a Kylo who'd grown up surrounded by a legacy of importance and power in his family, and thought that that legacy would be his one day. The promise of the power of the force he could have as a Skywalker was something he coveted. But as he trained with Luke, he struggled with training to achieve that, over the years seeing others surpass him, him becoming more frustrated and embittered at it.

In spite of Luke trying to explain to him that each individual is different, and has their own proficiency with the force (Kylo's being his ability to use the force to reach out easily to the thoughts and emotions of others), Kylo only allowed himself to feel more angered at that, at his personal skill being so passive, something that could never fulfill his ego of the idea of what he wanted to be, the legacy he was obsessed with in the power of a Skywalker.

To prove he was better than the others, Kylo sought out dark side teachings and trained himself in them, becoming more and more driven by his anger and ego, in the dark side, through his mental reaching out, he found Snoke, who encouraged this and taught him ways to increase his power, Kylo furthering his obsession with his bloodline and the desire for power he felt within it, within Darth Vader, idolizing that power that he held, that he felt Anakin lost to his weakness.

Kylo began to see his weakness as he thinks Anakin's was: His family, seeing Han Solo, that part of his bloodline as being the cause of his weakness in the force. In one of the variations of this pitch, Luke would still find him sleeping and sense his dark side, after feeling it in his training, and consider murdering him in his sleep (though not pull out his weapon), to prevent further pain, for the galaxy, for his family, for even Kylo. Kylo senses this thought and attacks Luke in anger at, to Kylo, offense that Luke would do that, seeing it as Luke being jealous of his growing power.

Going forward Luke still struggles with the guilt of what he sees as his fault and not wanting to face that he may have to kill his nephew or at least his nephew die, and finding himself disconnected from the force after the jedi academy destruction, thinking he was being punished by the force for what he did. In this variation of the pitch, Luke's flaw here is that after the death of Vader, Luke saw it his responsibility to fix his dad's mistakes, the burden of the legacy of Darth Vader weighed on him. He became more militarized, more focused on stopping everything he felt was on him, finishing the imperial remnants and such. He trained his students in kind, to be driven, to be ready, essentially preparing them for war when there wasn't one. Luke has to let this go, to truly forgive his dad and move forward instead of trying to fix the past.

Though that is a more villainously driven story, one of power and ego for Kylo, not quite as sympathetic as Lucasfilm may have wanted. In another pitch I posted here once, there's a more sympathetic structure for Kylo in TLJ, that places him more as an extremist jedi. And there's other variations that starts with TFA and has a much more driven by seemingly heroic goals Kylo, even with abusing of power.

 

This is what it should have been, yes. We're just proposing alternatives based on the factual premise that JJ and RJ were incapable of a story like the one you describe.

 

Probably a bigger underlying problem is that Disney wanted Kylo as both the villain and the hero of the sequels, and at the same time to boot. Not even as a villain protagonist or from villain to hero but rather they made everyone else failures (especially Luke) so that Kylo would look better, and have Rey waiting for him as as a big part of her scenes during TLJ and TRoS, as if he's that important.

Yet we never see any decent qualities from Kylo, no standards, just cruelty and stupidity, nothing to even hint he might come around, or that he could turn the war around (and that's probably part of why they brought back Palpatine since Kylo was a bad joke of a villain but neither was he pitiful in any way). He says he's better than the past, but given what we actually see on screne, yeah, no.

They didn't want to bother trying to come up with motives or backstory to explain how we got to the Kylo we saw in the sequels, as the Vader (wannabe) and with Skywalker blood and as Han and Leia's son, he's just the center of things and that's supposedly it. Which is why they just went with Leia doing something magical (with the strain killing her) and poof, Kylo turns nice.

They wouldn't even leave him alive so other better writers could try to use his character better in hypothetical post-sequel stories, maybe some guilt or more attempts at atonement, he got to have a "heroic" death to save Rey.

 

Yes I think that's a far better option than what's presented in the ST. Like the classic John Ford film The Searchers, they could have had the Jedi temple being sacked and Ben being kidnapped right at the start of Episode VII, and then a combination of Luke, Leia and Han go searching for him and uncover the new villains/threat etc. Or they could have jumped into the middle of that story and have Luke, Leia and Han find Ben at the end of the first film, and the next 2 films deal with the aftermath of Ben being brainwashed etc. Far more compelling than the ST as it stands.

 

Agreed. It's always a problem when a story confuses you instead as opposed to intrigues you. Some movies and novels will leave the viewer/reader with questions that make the work profound. But TLJ didn't do that. It was a train wreck instead of a nuclear explosion.

 

Well since Ben was still with Luke and just sleeping. It would seem like Ben had not made any decision about anything. If Ben had not fully commited to the dark side, while Snoke filling his head with so much doubt. As palpatine once did to anakin. And then he wakes up to see Luke about to kill him. That might be the tipping point.

And Yoda warned anakin about sensing the future. Lucas was getting at the idea of how acting on these events can have consiquences. Lucas was never straight forward with these abilities.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

 

This is how I saw it in 2017, but Luke had already experienced his dark side trials in ROTJ and conquered them. He wouldn’t fail like this. The implication in ROTJ is stated- “I’ll never turn to the dark side.”