ST Kylo Ren/Adam Driver Discussion Thread

I don't know how anyone could expect Ben Solo redemption to be convincing when over 60% of ST was most irrelevant filler with most irrelevant characters. Anakin had PT to himself and all major players directly influenced his decisions and actions. Unlike ST where 50% of main characters (Rey's friend and friend's friend) had no impact on Kylo whatsoever. So one had to sit through their crap (which also meant there were additional irrelevant characters such as Holdo, Rose, DJ, Jannah, Zorri) to get to very scarce meat of the story. say what you will about PT execution but it knew who the story was about. ST was meandering and aimless precisely because it had too many characters that existed at the margin of the story yet got disproportional screen time.

 

Driver's acting probably did more to endear him to me than anything else, but the big problem with the ST is it left far too much to be told in filler material.
I can't help but wonder if it would have been better to make it a television series rather than three films, that way we could have had a more complete understanding of the events post the OT leading up to what truly turned Ben Solo to the dark.
Rian Johnson made the best job of it, TROS focused on action and provided a story that was a hybrid of far better films, such as Wonder Woman, Raiders of the Lost Ark and ROTJ.
Ultimately, it was a disappointing conclusion to a forty two year old saga.

 

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/06/adam-driver-kylo-ren-backstory-cut-star-wars-films-1202238452/

 

They never wanted Rey to be related to Skywalkers period so it's redundant to speculate about something that was never on table. And I don't think it's the best option either. It's void of any dramatic weight. They simply botched Rey Palpatine because they wanted her origin to be a prolonged mystery whereas it should have been a reveal right away.

 

How I wish I could get him drunk and spill what it was!

 

She fell in love with Ben. That's going to work for some and not for others. But that's what happened. She saw Ben via their dyad bond and fell in love with him. They had common ground - extreme Force sensitivity, feeling of abandonment, struggling with dark heritage. It should have gotten much more focus than it did because it's relevant to 9 movies and lines up really well with PT. But no point lamenting what will never be. I plan to get a Phantom Cut of ST that will eliminate filler and just straight up focus on Rey and Kylo. I think it's going to be very solid. I've seen YT vids with that ficus and the story is really good when seen condensed and not having to wait between irrelevant chapters.

 

I never found Kylo the character act in such way to really have Rey accept his interest much less want to fall for him. As the ST progressed we did see him wanting to talk to her and be somewhat gentle with her briefly, but it never lasted long before his anger caused him to say more hurtful things. To me that isn't a lead up to romance but rather more conflict and more hurt. When he did change in the third act it worked for me (just barely) redemption wise because Ben surfaced and was shown to the audience for the first time. The idea of romance was still a ways off for me though.

 

In the first two films, they were like Yin and Yang as in Kylo having some light in his darkness, which he tries to deny, and Rey has some darkness in her, which scares her.
Rey was abandoned by her parents, he believed he was abandoned by his. Hence him telling her 'he would have disappointed you'.

This was what TFA and TLJ set up.

TROS erased it all by retconning Rey's parents and ignoring her potential for darkness, referring to it in a brief 'vision' which in the long run meant nothing.

Looking back over the entire trilogy I now am convinced Kylo loved Rey. But she didn't love him back. This could been developed in TROS , but they went in the opposite direction, repeatedly showing Rey with her 'family' in the Resistance, putting Kylo back in his helmet, and finally.....lone Rey.

I find myself thinking of Rey's words to Luke in TLJ.
"If I go to him, Ben Solo will turn. He could win this war."

Luke went to turn Vader because he was his father, and he wanted to save him. Rey went to turn Ben Solo because she wanted to save the Resistance.

 

ST is an absolute mess when it comes to any romance. They split Han and Leia in order to justify why he's still a smuggler (his most popular incarnation duh!) and she's still rebelling (but Princess title is replaced with masculine and therefore PC General which I'm happy to report never caught on). Finn is a player who cannot decide between 3 girls and Poe and keeps wasting his breath (literally!) on the one that doesn't want him. Poe is clearly into Finn but is given a beard because the studio didn't want a gay major character. Instead, they have two female randos kiss. Rey and Kylo are caught between Reverse Anidala and "but but Rey is a strong woman who needs no man (that also extends to her male friends)". Capital letter MESS.

 

Rey having history with Kylo, which would provide an actual reason for her to care about his redemption, hurt the trilogy in another way, in that it forced the Rey/Kylo story to be completely disconnected from the Resistance story. If she had history with him, then it could have provided an interesting conflict as she hoped for his redemption while her comrades sought out his death. However, they can't have Rey and the other characters address this struggle in the movies as developed because the premise for Rey/Kylo's connection is so flimsy that if it is put to any analysis it completely falls apart. This puts the latter two films down this strange path where it feels like there are two disconnected movies running parallel.

 

I've often thought they should've done something like they did with Snape/Lily. Snape and Lily is believable because Snape knew Lily as a child. It's 100% not believable that Rey would care or fall in love with a man who stalked, abducted and tortured her before she even knew him. She says she would've "dearly liked to get to know Ben Solo" in the TROS novel, confirming she doesn't know him. She's not in love with him. She doesn't even know Ben Solo. She's seen shadows of him, but she doesn't know him.

Kylo Ren was in a weird sort of obsessed power love with her, until he dropped his entitled act and realized there were more important things than his wants and desires and then it became selfless.

 

Novel doesn't mean anything. You hold onto it because it feeds your headcanons but movie takes precedence. So if Rey says that she wanted to take Ben's hand than she knew Ben. Likewise, movie kiss is lustful and passionate as it gets so gratitude copout is just that, damage control for fans like you who feel better if they get any kind of faux-validation from unimportant source. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Only movie does and only another movie can undo the previous one.

 

Novel is 100% canon. Rey never says she's in love with Ben in the films. I don't doubt that it's an easy interpretation to make, but she still never says she's in love with him. She sure moved on fast from losing this love in TROS. Next scene we see is her looking lovingly at Finn and Poe and being wrapped in their embrace. Then she's happily skipping off and naming herself Skywalker, without even so much as mentioning Ben Solo on screen.

 

Novel is weak canon. It's canon only where it lines up with the movie. Outside of it, deleted scenes and writer's interpretation/editorials are not canon. You hold onto it because the movie doesn't give you enough material to build a headcanon.

Rey didn't have to tell Ben that she loved him for us to be sure. She wanted to take his hand. She healed him (including the scar that she gave him in TFA). She kissed him. She also looked devastated enough when he died but they cut the scene short because editing in the whole movie was relentless (remember, they also cut the payoff to Finn's confession so they were clearly more interested to get done and over with the movie than how it made characters look).



yeah, that's a pretty damn sad face.

Also, she reunites with her friends as expected but the movie ends with the twins tribute so it's up to interpretation where she goes from there because the movie doesn't want to commit. She's walking into the sunset and where she goes from there, no matter what novel says, will be determined by the movie reception. I guess she'll be walking and walking and walking given how poorly TROS did on all levels.

Point being, she doesn't have to say the L word for it to be obvious from her actions. As the matter of fact, he didn't say either but it's easy to see he loved her from what he did.

The only ST character that said the L word was Rose to Finn. We know how that ended.

 

She looks much more devastated when she thinks she's lost Finn in TFA.



Like I said, it's your interpretation that she's in love with him. It's not mine, and nothing in the movie or novel convinced me she was. In fact, it's the opposite. The very fact she chose "Skywalker" as her name and not Solo (like Rose Dawson does in Titanic) is proof enough.

 

Wanting to take someone's hand doesn't mean you are in love with them.

 

Even kissing someone doesn't mean you're in love with them, otherwise Leia and Luke have some explaining to do. And Rose kissed Finn and well.... yeah. That went nowhere. The kiss was unneeded and undeserved, but it doesn't mean Rey's in love with Kylo Ren.

 

I don't believe Rey is in love with Ben because she looks like such a tremendous weight has been lifted from her shoulders after he is dead. That's not how you behave when someone you love has died.

 

This is true. I thought she looked relieved, lol. I am not sure that's the intention of the filmmakers, but she had a sense of peace about her, and exactly what you said, like a weight had been lifted from her. Maybe it's "peace and purpose" they were going for, like when Luke died.

 

well,not wanting to take someone's hand is definitely a proof that you don't even find them physically attractive let alone love them.

Also, Rey was more devastated when Finn was comatose because TFA wasn't relentlessly edited. She friendzoned him right away and that never changed.

ST thinks its strength is in non-commitment so that everyone can get validation for their own headcanon. If you don't want Rey to love Ben, you can say 'she never said she loved him, she grieved him for about 1 second" so that proves my point. While fans who shipped the two will point out everything I mentioned in my previous post. The result is that they lost 48% of TFA audience so karma. People don't like uncertainty and everyone-can-interpret-any-way-they-like. That's what divides fandom. commit to something even if you lose half of the fandom but the other half will be loyal. this way, no one is because they have no reason to be. what's the point of being emotionally invested if the movie can't even make it clear what you are invested in. And can take it away on a whim (from Rey Nobody to Rey Palps for example).

 

That is definitely a problem with the ST and I've been saying it since TROS came out. They tried to please everyone and left everything open to interpretation, so nothing is correct and everything is correct at the same time. It's very easy for me to believe Rey and Ben were twins in the Force and that's how I see their relationship (and novels have even confirmed this); I see absolutely nothing romantic about it. Others can choose to view it how they want - the movie left things open for many interpretations. That is the biggest problem with this entire trilogy. Nothing was planned, and nothing was set.

Rey can end up with Zorii Bliss post TROS, or she could end up with Finn, or she could end up with Poe, or she could remain unattached. Everything is possible with how TROS ended, because nothing was answered. Rey could even end up being related to Obi-Wan post TROS and I would not be surprised in the least, with how unplanned things are regarding the ST characters.