ST Kylo Ren/Adam Driver Discussion Thread

I will agree that TROS was rushed and messy but it was far from decent. I could write a story outline that was better than anything we got in TROS, heck Trevarrow's story outline was better than we got in TROS so I can't give it a pass. There were a lot of ways they could have ran with it. JJ could have resurrected Snoke in some fashion considering he is from the Unknown Regions and originally was supposed to be thousands of years old. A darkside threat that had been hidden and outlasted the Sith. So many ideas. TROS was such a check box movie and it does such a disservice to all of it's characters especially Kylo. TLJ did start the mess IMO but TROS did nothing to clean it up it just made things worse.

 

I'm going to have to disagree with that comment, LOL.

 

And by the end of TLJ she hates him agian and their back to being enemies and even worse then before (not only that but she spends almost the entirity of TROS hating him and beliving he can be

I can only assume the peaple asking that question missed the point of the end of the film or ingored it entirely, becuase the film ends with him rejecting his redemption, defeating the inner conflict that has plagued him for two movies, seizing power as the big bad and having Rey relize he can't be saved and literally turn her back on him and shut a door in his face while he glares coldy at her.

The movie gave a reason for why Rey was doing what she was doing. Maybe you did'nt buy it, but it was given.

Listen, I'm sorry that the bad man hurt you, but it's just a movie - just becuase you don't like the direction Johnson chose to go with the story does'nt mean it was invalid or "bull****." Plenty of peaple did'nt like the direction Lucas went with the PT or Abrams went with TFA for instance, but that does'nt mean they did anything wrong.

So yeah, I guess it's his "fault" that he made a movie you did'nt like, but last I checked that's A; not a crime. B; not what LFL/Disney hired him to do and C; it's also his "fault" that he made a movie that I and a great many other peaple enjoyed a great deal, so it seems to even out, does'nt it?

And yet Johnson coordinated with Trevarrow while the latter was wrighting DTOF

Johnson had regard for what came before and after, it's just that he did'nt make the movie you and others wanted him to make.

You (or someone else) mentioned this before, but what's the source? I think someone said the TFA novelization, but I don't recall such a line being in there; I'm geniunly curious, is their an excerpt someone could post?

 

It's in the novelization that it comes out when they are talking about Snoke, I think it's when he reaches out to Rey during her fight against Kylo and encourages him to kill her or another time I don't remember where it was nor do I feel like finding it. There were some excerpts from Aftermath as well. There was also some stuff in the TFA visual dictionary about him. The TLJ visual dictionary and Andy Serkis confirmed he was hundreds of years old as well. Everything about Snoke was changed for TROS

 

Snoke was'nt in Aftermath - it was implied that Snoke was what Palpatine had been looking at in the Unknown Regions (and your right that is a change that TROS made), but it was'nt stated outright and in all honesty in hindsight it could just have been Exegol he was looking for and it works just as well. As for the VD's I belive what they stated was that he had witnessed the rise and fall of the Empire, which does'nt conflict with him being a clone (heck, him being thousands of years old does'nt conflict with him being a clone either, as there would still need to be an original template that Snoke was cloned from).

Serkis's opinion, though, is just his opinion.

 

Snoke's presence was felt in Aftermath when Leia felt a dark presence from the Unkown Regions reaching out for her child. The Canon did imply that Snoke was what Palpatine was looking but that did get changed over the course of the ST. The VD for TLJ states that he is hundreds of years old and why the First Order needed him were the special navigators and it was his knowledge and experience with the dark side that let him corrupt Kylo. Snoke wasn't a clone until TROS now you can cram that into canon and still have him be a clone just like they changed everything about Palpatine as having died before and being all the Sith...... Ugh just making me think about the terrible Retcons they did for TROS makes my head hurt. I hate the new canon because it's such a mess of Retcons changes and patchwork since they can't tell a coherent story. Anyhow this is not the place to discuss it.

 

That does'nt conflict with him being a clone.

But (like with him reaching out for the unborn Kylo) it was never outright stated to be Snoke, so it still fits fairly well and is'nt really a "conflict" at the end of the day - Palpatine looking for Exegol works just as well, as does Palpatine looking for the original, older Snoke that he later cloned the one we know from.

Does it?

I don't feel like digging the VDs out of my closet so I've been looking up scans online, and I can't find any that state anything about his age - the closest reference to thousands/hundreds of years in relation to him that I can find from the TLJ VD is in reference to the linage of the Sith.

And Snoke can still be a clone and command the special navigators/corrupt Kylo to the Dark Side.

Then you must absolutly loath the old canon, lol.

Your absolutly right, so unless someone wants to move this to whatever thread is better suited to it, we should probobly just move along.

 

If you’re watching Star Wars, and one of your takeaways is that the Empire and the First Order are not evil organizations, then I think you might be missing the point...

 

To be fair, he did start out by saying "the EU had a lot of stories..."

And he's not really wrong - the Imperial Remnant/Felpire ended up being...not really that bad by the end. Granted, that's like saying 1950s/60s Taiwan (the Remnant) and the Second French Empire (the Felpire) are better then the Third Reich, but I'd rather live in either of the former then in the latter.

Given the opinions experessed by some characters in Bloodlines regarding the fallen empire and the Imperial characters being given focus and sympathetic portrayals in Aftermath, Lost Stars and the Thrawn comics and novels, I'd say that the new canon is going to take the "the Empire is evil and needs to be overthrown, but is'nt a black-and-white group of comic book villains and accomplished some positive things during its time in power" route (after all, Hitler built the autobahn and Mussolini made the trains run on time, so it makes sense)

 

“How” those things were accomplished is fundamental to the definition of evil in the Star Wars universe. I’m not saying they are cartoonishly evil (though the First Order comes close). I’m saying that being a brutal dictatorship, they are fundamentally not good guys. I’m all for giving the conflicts in the GFFA all the nuance they can get (and I love the ancillary material for that). But that doesn’t change what the ethical judgment of the antagonist entities in Star Wars is supposed to be. If Lucasfilm ends up communicating to the public at large that authoritarianism can be beneficial, then it has completely lost the spirit of Star Wars. Somehow, I doubt that’s where Kathleen is taking the franchise.

 

I have no problems with Rey disliking Kylo Ren. In my opinion, her dislike of him should have been maintained throughout the Trilogy.

 

I don't think she hates him at the end of TLJ, to me. I think she seems more non-commital, to me, if anything in regards to that direction.

 

Could I say something here please - regarding the Kylo hate, some people here are extending their hatred to Adam Driver. This isn't fair, because at the end of the day, he's merely an actor playing a part.

Kelly Tran received some terrible'hate mail' so to speak, whatever problems any of us are having with the films, it isn't the actors fault.

 

I just rewatched Kylo's entrance scene in TFA. I'm surprised I didn't notice it before, but tonight it was so obvious. The shots before and after he exits his shuttle are solidly red. But when they cut to his entrance it is a mix of red and blue. It was a beautiful way to visually introduce the conflict within him. (It was much more obvious on SKB.)

 

Yes, and when he kills his father, everything goes dark, but when Starkiller turns into a sun it represented the rebirth of Ben Solo which we eventually got to see in TROS.
I also liked how when we were first introduced to Finn, Rey and Kylo they were masked, and one by one the masks came off so we saw the people behind them. A young girl, a man trained to kill but horrified by it, a man who tried to hide his vulnerability but couldn't. Take away the masks, you see the human beings.
At the end of the day, they were all frightened kids.

 

I never said they are not evil organisations. I never sided with them and yes, I 'get the point'. You maybe late to the party but I have explored the simplicity of good vs bad in the OT/PT before against the complexity of the ST.

The 'bad guys' do have their reasons to do what they do and if you think the ability to try to understand someone else's point of view and have empathy equals sympathy, then you are either lacking in emotional intelligence or understanding in how logic and reasoning work.

If my fault is that I try not to mix my emotions into my logical thinking, then so be it. I enjoy exploring the nuances of both sides, their motivations and their dynamics. I prefer a balanced view.

 

My biggest problem with Kylo:

Hey, lets have Kylo Force Freeze a blaster and people in the close vicinity. Looks so cool.
Cool indeed. Lets do it.
Hey, lets have Rey fight Kylo.
But why? he can easily Force Freeze her?
Oh, snap. What do?
D&D: may we suggest that Kylo should kinda forget about the Force Freeze?
Excellent idea! Lets do it. Kylo, forget that you can Force Freeze or otherwise you won't have badass fights in the future
Sure whatever.

 

Interesting points but I think you forget that they pick up each other's skills with ease. The duel of this duality manifests very well on the Death Star fight.
I think in the grand scheme of things this would be a minor issue.

 

The point is that they forgot about his signature power. There's no explanation why FF suddenly disappeared and he had to rely on the lesser Force Push like any rando Jedi/Sith.

 

I won't make excuses for the writers but I know from experienced that in a duel everything is hard to predict. Sometimes you want to explore new options to the detriment of well-trodden ways.

I guess it's like the Force Lightning. It maybe the the signature for the sith but it's not like that's what they solely use all the time.

 

Duel may be unpredictable itself but if you have the p[ower to freeze someone you do it before the duel begins. Kylo had to forget about FF because there would be no duel. They overpowered him at the start of the movie and had to backtrack in order to make dueling possible. Instead of never giving him the power that would stand in the way of saber fights, be it a duel or multi opponents. That's what happens when you are driven by cool over practical.

 

Haha, from the little I know of blockbusters, cool will always trump logical.

 

True though gifted writers make sure that cool doesn't paint them into a corner. which Force Freeze totally did.

 

What you're missing is that there are countermeasures to Force Lightning. For what Kylo does, not really.

 

There are and will always be people who benefit from dictatorships. One of the questions that has to be asked is, is the cost of the suffering and death of millions an acceptable price for their continued gain?

That comparison is faulty for a number of reasons. Furthermore, the rise of the Empire bears a strong resemblance to the people who are currently taking advantage of the epidemic so they can roll back civil rights for vulnerable groups and dismantle the democracy in their respective countries.

​

By default, there were innocents who died as a direct result of the Empire and the Empire's actions. Not only was it a daily occurrence, it was intentional.

In Boba Fett: Agent of Doom, the Empire commissioned ships that were created for the sole purpose of locating and exterminating non-human civilisations. The Empire had a codified policy of humanocentric speciesism, centered around the belief that humans were inherently superior to other species. These ships were active for years and were only stopped by the Empire's fall.

Yes, people died as a result of the Rebellion: it was war which means that, sadly, casualties are going to occur and some of them are avoidable and due to negligence but that, by no means, injects moral ambiguity into Rebellion-Empire War. It only injects moral ambiguity into the Rebellion.

The Empire and especially, the First Order are morally black construct because of their methods and ideology. That there were good and/or morally grey characters within both does not change this.

Even the most truly wretched ideologies in the world will contain morally nuanced people but that does not change what those ideologies are or what their impact upon the world and other people is.

Neither the Empire nor the First Order were better than the government body that came before them. The Republic and, no doubt, the New Republic were flawed but they were both better than their "successors".

For example, you mention that the Empire improved things on worlds that were previously neglected by the Republic. The thing is this came at the cost of many others meaning that there was no net improvement across the galaxy. There was, at best, a change in which where the benefit some people experienced was moved to some others.

Whatever possible benefits and improvements were made by Empire, came at a steep, steep price that those same benefits and improvements didn't have during the Republic.

The same applies to New Republic and the First Order, although I have seen nothing to suggest that the First Order positively impacted the lives of anyone.