ST Kylo Ren/Adam Driver Discussion Thread

I think the “Snoke talking to him in his head” idea is actually the best one, but there’s a wide range as to how that is portrayed and where it can work, and honestly, it would need something supplementing it for the sympathetic element if you want him to end up as a worthy heroic Skywalker. TFA poisoned the well for the character we saw there as even an anti-villain deuteragonist - killing Han is a step beyond what Vader was capable of, and says more horrible things about the personality of Ben than anything we saw for Vader.

The specifics depend on what your goal with the character is.

If you see him as the “real” male lead, as befits a Skywalker, and as a romantic option for Rey... then I think you don’t just need someone saying “Snoke was talking to him in his mind;” you need to go towards a full on pseudo-possession/split-personality type of route regarding Snoke and his darkside... and you need to give us a version of Ben Solo on-screen during TLJ.... and you’ll probably want to go ahead and give him some tie to Rey in his past.

After having him kill Han, and kill him the way he did, and act as he did towards Rey and everyone else... the Kylo Ren we know? He can’t be the male lead, or romantic lead, or “the Skywalker,” or any of that. *That* character is already defined as more fanatical and self-centered than Vader was. He ain’t getting cheered for sufficiently for those larger more positive roles. He’s too loathsome and too shallow.

But Adam Driver is a VERY good actor, so having him do “two” roles instead of one might work.

Just establish that Snoke was going overtime in trying to corrupt us young mind as a child, severely traumatizing him, and causing a split personality issue. Have the Kylo from TFA be the fruit of Snoke’s labors, and growing more evil and more powerful... and then have Rey awaken the Ben Solo personality, and have him act completely differently, and maybe establish that the Ben Solo personality manages to spare a young Rey and send her away from his dark side when he was young, so that she has a reason to care about him. Have the Kylo side seem to win out in TLJ (maybe even using the helmet to symbolize that) so that Rey has a person to “free” more literally from Kylo.

If you see him as a sympathetic or pitiable villain, but don’t see him as the male/romantic lead and not as “The Skywalker” because Rey’s fulfilling that role in a metaphorical sense... then you can just have him be a massively brainwashed and traumatized victim of Snoke whispering in his head the entire time.

This ratchets up his capacity as a pitiable and sympathetic character... but also depends on denying him agency or any non-Kylo identity in the present day. Rey can pity him, and maybe want to free him, but she might also think this wretch would benefit from a mercy killing. There basically is no “Ben” in this scenario, because Snoke is smothering it. Freeing Ben of Snoke’s influence would basically leave the man adrift with the horror of what he’s done and no certainty of his own identity.

*This* option might bear the best fruit for telling later stories, and a more drawn out and longer redemption. He just isn’t lead character material because he depends on being a construct and creature of the dark side more than a tragic human being. His victimization by Snoke kind of includes a removal of his functionality as a POV character, and kind fo undercuts any actual character arc he could have.

If you see him as a villainous deuteragonist and male lead, and want to “move past the Skywalker...” Then you use the “Snoke spoke in his mind” thing... but you abandon any pretext of him being sympathetic.

This Ben Solo is already kind of a bad person underneath it all, and has a weaker moral center than even Anakin had. He’s not so much a victim of Snoke as he is a weak-willed narcissist. He’s also the best version suited to a non-Skywalker Rey Random; he acts as a negative reinforcement of their legacy, proving why we “need” to move beyond them. He also probably dies unredeemed.

 

Anakin is not morally more sympathetic.

His background makes his choices more understandable. I “got” why Anakin was so afraid of loss that he would be tempted by Palpatine’s offer. I still thought he was stupid for taking the offer.

And the PT never pretended that Anakin should not be held responsible for his behavior, whereas the ST tries to blame everyone who made Kylo sad or made Kylo feel bad about himself.

What does Kylo have in his background that equates in sympathy to spending the first nine years of one’s life enslaved? And was Kylo’s mother tortured to death, with Kylo only finding her minutes before she died? No? Then Kylo has nothing on Anakin in regards to a sympathetic background.

(Just a side note that any pretense that “his enslavement wasn’t that bad” loses me immediately, because enslavement has no morally grey area and there is nothing about being someone else’s property that can be considered “not that bad”.)

 

He was already fully on the Dark Side when he killed his father. He had already murdered an elderly man just for mentioning his family (and before anyone mentions Dooku—Kylo murdered a good elderly man) and ordered an entire group of villagers slaughtered (and not because some of them tortured his mother, just because they were there).

And Anakin did not pull the melodramatic whiny crap that was “I’m being torn apart” before choking Padme, and if he had, no one would have suggested that he deserved pity for it. Choking Padme was viewed as exactly what it was—an act of evil. We also never had anyone suggest that Padme choked herself and that it wasn’t really Anakin’s fault.

 

For me, it’s actually something of a matter of context and intent, but also importantly modified by the functionality of the character

Anakin choking Padme and Kylo murdering Han are both pitch-dark vile acts... but they are not presented similarly in terms of the motive behind them, the reactions the two villains have to them, and Anakin is a protagonist (though a villainous one) who is related to our future protagonists Luke and a Leia, while Kylo is an antagonist and most definitely not a protagonist at this point, and has no relation to Rey or Finn, our new protagonists.

From a characterization standpoint, Anakin/Vader choking Padme is a rage of paranoia and “betrayal” is a world of difference from Kylo forcing himself to coldly murder his father so he can be stronger on the dark side, as is Anakin flinching, freaking out, and being horrified at what he’s done before diving into denial and Kylo thanking Han for being murdered and shoving him off the catwalk. There’s a reason why a jealous spouse get a tragic protagonist song about them even if they murder a loved one, while the greedy Bluebeard or Black Widow features more as a stock loathsome figure in ballads who the audience isn’t supposed to care about at all.

But we’ve also got the functionality going forward where Anakin, as both the clear protagonist of the PT and as the father of OT’s protagonists, has the benefit of the audience having multiple reasons to care about him, both as the character they’ve followed across three films, and as the heroic father figure Luke was told to idealize and still can’t deny being tied to in the modern day.

There’s more reasons to see the horror and tragedy in Anakin’s fall into darkness even at his worse than there is to see the same in Ben’s fall; the effect is that Vader’s evil has a multi-dimensional aspect to it, while Kylo’s doesn’t really have that.

It’s a bit like comparing MacBeth from the eponymous play to Iago from Othello; the former character is the featured character of his story, who’s motivations, despair, and tragically flipped virtues-into-vices can make him a terrifying, despicable and sad at the same time, while the latter is the malevolent antagonist who’s motives need not be focused on, and who’s main function is just the terrifying and despicable part.

I can see this perspective... but I think it needs to be acknowledged that TFA supplied ample reason to identify more with Rey, Finn, and Kylo’s other victims than it did with him; a good chunk of the reason some Rey, Finn, and Han fans hate the very idea of sympathizing with Kylo/Ben is because we’re given a greater glimpse into their POV, and in that POV there really isn’t that much way to avoid despising fearing, or being horrified at Kylo.

Heck, Kylo’s POV is purposefully obscured and obfuscated on a bit to ensure his killing Han remains a bit of a surprise.

And if the audience empathized with Rey’s tears and feeling of violation in the interrogation seen, or with the “Kriff you!” feeling of Finn charging Kylo after running to Rey’s prone form, or Rey weeping over Finn’s maimed form, or with the screams of the villager’s Kylo ordered murdered, or with Leia and Chewie after losing Han... well, a lot of those can feel an awful lot more sincere and visceral than Kylo complaining about emotional discomfort.

 

If he is indeed a villain and we are meant to hate him, then why the pushback against those who point out that he does not deserve sympathy in-universe and out-of-universe for his villainous behavior, and why is there some pretense that his villainous behavior wasn’t even villainous or did not happen? Like pretending that he never tried to hurt Rey or that he was “comforting” her in the hut scene?

And you’re wrong. I didn’t hate PT Anakin at all. I was pretty annoyed with him in some scenes but overall, due to his background, I found him far, far more sympathetic than the entitled privileged Kylo who never suffered for anything he needed and whose worst problem was apparently parents who had careers.

 

Worth repeating:

In Star Wars no villain has ever just gotten away with what he did.

In Star Wars there is a morally correct side, and a morally incorrect side.

If you want to argue that Kylo might have gotten off more easily if he had survived and offered information to the Resistance as a double agent, I agree, in fact I think that would have made a great story. It would have had to happen beginning in TLJ or early in TROS, but the idea might have worked.

Once you argue that the Resistance is morally just as bad as the First Order, or the Alliance is morally just as bad as the Empire, or the Jedi are morally just as bad as the Sith...talk to the hand. Nope.