ST Kylo Ren/Adam Driver Discussion Thread

The thing for me is that Kylo never rose above monster, which meant that Ben Solo never really rose to the level of a tragic character I could care about enough to be rewarded in his redemption. Vader rose to Tragic Fallen Hero when he was revealed as Anakin, and Maul to Tragic Wretch when his past was clearly painted as being denied a chance at the light and being abused by Sidious, where they could still be a monster, but were more than *just* that.

Kylo Ren and Ben Solo's key problem is that they have a very good and safe premise for success, but that the execution fails to deliver, and in fact turns parts of the premise against itself, and I'd argue that's because TLJ poisoned the character by being shallow in its treatment of him and doing things backward.

A lot of that was because of a lack of communication between the two directors: Abrams basically burned the bridge completely for a simple emotional appeal pulling Kylo back from the brink and made Rey caring about Kylo antithetical to her personality and characterization *as he was*... only for Johnson to treat a simple emotional appeal as still worth considering before also rejecting it and decided Rey should be attracted to Kylo *as he was*.

It created this weird kind of mixed message - both directors seemed to agree that Kylo couldn't be redeemed the conventional way, neither explored his background, but TFA insisted he was loathsome yet TLJ was insisting he was sympathetic and tragic even though those previous two facts render that almost impossible without massive amounts of double standards or dismissing the meaning of his story thus far. Basically... Kylo's actions and story didn't matter in TLJ, merely his concept, which doesn't make him an interesting character. But the worst part was Rey being wrecked as a character because she couldn't believably find Kylo sympathetic, and the story overall being wrecked because Kylo's internal conflict just wasn't appealing enough to carry the weight of a male lead. You can't make a mass murderer with no attractive personality features attractive to his biggest victim or make his weak-willed resistance to just not doing evil the central premise of a film without making it shallow and downplaying and dismissing everyone else's conflicts.

Rey was basically getting undermined twice - she was becoming a shallow person because she was supposed to find him attractive when he couldn't realistically be, and his actions against her weren't permitted to matter, which neutered her story as well.

If TLJ had established Ben Solo being a sorrowful wretch brainwashed by Palpatine and let Rey talk to that side of him, they could have slowly built to her caring about him for the next film, or if they managed to make her get him redeemed first, she could have had faith or cared about him. The way Johnson did it, though, she fell in love with Kylo the Monster... which isn't really a good story.

 

You raise some great points, and I agree with everything you say. Especially the part I bolded. I hope in the future Hollywood can get a bit better about thinking of male and female main character relationships in ways that stretch beyond the always romantic. That would be great for creative and meaningful storytelling.

 

If they weren't going to have Rey successfully pull Ben over, than yeah, a long-lost siblings or cousins relationship where she would have some reason to not want to kill him in spite of everything, but also wasn't wholly invested in his soul because of their separation would work.

...It would also have allowed Rey to more likely than not have HER story take precedence over his - her and Luke's interactions wouldn't be wholly dependent on Ben, but on her as Luke's niece or daughter. That would automatically resolve a huge portion of the problem with Rey's story in TLJ - namely, that it wasn't Rey's story, but instead Luke and Ben's story with her as an audience member.

 

It’s a two-way mistake that Kylo didn’t suffer - creating a mystery box about Rey’s parents created a needless liability about the *best* possible answer (Rey Skywalker or Solo) by being a needless postponement of the necessary reveal, and then because that answer was obviously the best one, the temptation to go against it to avoid predictability led to Rey Random, which was the worthless answer, and worse than worthless of Kylo was getting special treatment because of his family legacy.

And you can see how Kylo’s family legacy becomes the single overriding feature of his character, even as his actions and storytelling are actively working against it... likely because Rey doesn’t have that connection as originally conceived. In TFA, he’s 90% the Jedi Killer from early drafts, and only 10% a bit of Sam. But in TLJ, even though he’s still mostly Jedi Killer, the small part of him that’s Sam becomes the target of tunnel vision by LFL.

 

I don’t believe in the death penalty, for a lot of reasons that are not on topic to get into here but which have little to do with compassion. And comparing Rey to someone who writes to mass murderers in prison and falls in love with them is probably accurate but also why I don’t like her as a character.

It’s not about whether Kylo was able to be redeemed and stop the horror. Obviously he was. It’s about Rey as a character and Rey having no motivation to reach out to him other than codependency and desperation, which is what I think leads many women to “fix” and fall in love with mass murderers—being paired up with someone who has killed multiple people and might easily kill you later (and in Rey’s case, has tortured her) is better than being alone? Or you can’t find a non-mass-murdering partner? Really? That’s pathetic. Or at best, a more charitable viewpoint—her motivation is listening to his drama and being gullible enough to go “awwww...”—and then show him compassion at the expense of others in the story because apparently Kylo’s feelings matter more than his treatment of them. I can’t respect her for that either, and it makes me dislike her.

 

Since you have a “track record of falling in love with none of them,” you are not Rey or any of the people I was talking about. If you think I was discussing prison outreach you missed my point entirely. And the disproportionate level of incarceration for marginalized people for “offenses” such as possessing a small amount of controlled substance, while rich ***holes get short sentences or no sentences for rape and murder because “awww, they have their whole lives ahead of them,” lead me to compassion for incarcerated people—and Kylo would be a GFFA version of one of the ones getting a short sentence or no sentence.

I do have a lack of compassion for privileged people who whine about their first-world problems and think their problems are more important than actual problems faced by marginalized people. I also have a lack of compassion for people who think they should be able to use some version of ‘I had the right to commit murder because someone or several someone’s made me angry.’ Those describe Kylo.

I also have a lack of compassion for people who—when they are fully aware of other options—decide that being paired up with a mass murderer is better than being alone or being with a decent human being, or decide that their mission in life is to “fix” mass murderers through romance—and ignore the suffering of the mass murderer’s victims because they are not as important as the mass murderer’s hot body and feelings. I call that “dumb on purpose,” and it describes Rey.

 

To me, it really comes down to this:

Is it an interesting or relatable story for Rey?

And the answer is a rather firm “No.”

And that isn’t because the concept of enemies to lovers or forgiving the mass murderer or having a dark attraction can’t be done. It’s because it’s exceedingly difficult to do it well, and TLJ wound up being a case study in the worst possible way to do it, where it ends up bringing nothing of value to the story dramatically, philosophically, or entertainingly save for if you’re invested in Kylo in a certain way.

In fact, it mostly ends up being a massive liability.

-Neither Rey nor Kylo get any real depth established to make the interaction make sense, thus both are made more shallow and less interesting by design.
-Any morality aspect of the story is horrifically skewed, as Kylo is blatantly abusive and exploitive of her but is treated with greater mercy and positivity than other like Finn and Luke; with Luke especially, attacking *him* while reaching out to Kylo becomes a bit of violent cruelty because it’s so unevenly applied.
-Philosophically, it’s a disgrace to critical thinking and any ethos you can have - it’s simultanesounly unable to be determined whether it’s supposed to be a message of compassion for the wretched or a misanthropic lesson akin to The Farmer And The Viper, and hypocrisy is blatant when other First Order members aren’t given the he same outreach.

Let me put it this way - the substance of their interactions has more in common with The Joker and Harley Quinn than anything else... and it’s not a coincidence that whenever Harley gets a solo comic, show, movie, or episode, it’s always by having her face Joker’s unworthiness of her affections or mercy, whether she then makes the right decision or not after that realization. And of course, its The Joker, so him being The Viper is always a given. Kylo doesn’t have to be a Joker and thus Viper analogue, but the way TLJ is written... that’s what he *is.*

...Which, yes, does mean that Harley Quinn is written better than Rey, and there’s greater characterization, dramatic, and ethical and moral lesson offered on her comics than is offered in the ST.

 

I’d say that Rey isn’t more grounded in her values because in no way does she have Harley’s set-up for her mistakes, and because the context is (startlingly) far worse of her than Harley because of context.

I mean, Joker, is traditionally a vile, unrepentant mass murderer... but so is Kylo, and while Kylo feels sorry for himself and offers up psychotic excuses for his actions to Rey, Joker is shown to embrace far more cunning manipulation strategies targeting Harley to exploit her good intentions and virtues. The sum total here is this: there’s at least a reason to be tricked by Joker and believe you can reach him, and far less reason to be tricked by Kylo or believe you can reach him.

Meanwhile, Harley is a psychologist who chose to work at the mental institution that Joker is in; she’s already got an education and motivation wherein “fixing” people and or practicing grace is a key ingredient. Rey is a scavenger survivalists on a brutally inhospitable planet, and demonstrates that her lack of choice in her situation has also contributed to some cynicism and vindictive philosophy to her personal ethos in TFA, in spite of her compassion. The sum total here is this: Rey does not have the philosophical underpinnings for a grace-based approach to her enemies, while Harley does.

And in top of that, there *is* an extra dimension added because Kylo is a fascist conqueror heading a slave state while Joker is a pseudo-anarchist super-criminal. They both have victims, but Joker are pretty much just those he kills and steals from, while Kylo must account for those he enslaves on top of those he kills and steals from. Plus... slaves soldiers themselves add a layer of “wretches” who arguably demand grace and compassion far more than Kylo. The sum total here is this: Rey has significantly more people to try and fix before Kylo compared to Harley trying to fix Joker, and even more people to save from Kylo than Harley does with Joker.

To me... what Rey needed to make her appeal to Kylo make sense on just a philosophical level is a complete overhaul of her approach towards him and others alongside arguably an overhaul on Kylo himself as well. What Rey needed to make her appeal to Kylo on a character level is a complete overhaul of her personality, priorities, and story so that her wanting to reach out to him would even make sense in the first place.

If you wanted to make a philosophical or moral point... you needed to do hilariously more work to do so without seeming hypocritical and biased as TLJ is.

If you wanted to make a believable dramatic story for Rey... you needed to even more work somehow to do it without seeming like you’ve hollowed out Rey’s character to serve Kylo.

(For instance, my pre-TLJ speculation of Rey Skywalker/Solo getting trained in Jedi morality by Luke still didn’t think she’d be anywhere near the moral wisdom and motivational headspace necessary to reach out to Kylo, and in that one, she actually has a personal and philosophical reason to do so - because telling the story to get there would still require more work.)

 

I'd more buy the Rey is very compassionate and that's why she wants to save Kylo if she consistently showed that same desire to save other people like Hux, Snoke, and Palpatine. She doesn't. So for her it is not a matter of universal compassion. It's just a matter of plot convenient compassion, and that's my biggest problem with it. She could have been like Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang the vegetarian. Aang who not only refuses to kill Zuko but also refuses to kill the Fire Lord Ozai. Aang who consistently displays compassion for all. If that was the ST's portrayal of Rey, I'd have many less issues with her character. Sadly, that was not the ST's portrayal of Rey. The ST's portrayal of Rey relied on vague explanations like Force soulmates instead, which ended up not being very meaningful or convincing for me.

 

Yeah, all encompassing commitment to compassion for everyone lends itself very easily to showing compassion to the main villain. The audience in ATLA had every reason to be okay with Aang killing Ozai, but we also had every reason to understand why Aang refused to accept that possibility.

Part of the reason Rey whooping at blowing up TIE pilots on Crait is a problem isn’t because we can’t understand her joy at blowing them up, but because if we had to have her offer sympathy and grace to either the TIE pilots or Kylo... we’d be hard-pressed to think that Kylo’s hound get it instead, unless we already value Kylo above the TIE Pilots even though we’ve got a far more visceral accounting of his crimes than we do of these anonymous pilots.

 

Yeah, that’s the point. She didn’t care. She is not a compassionate person, so any explanation of her behavior towards Kylo about ‘just being a compassionate person’ doesn’t work. Hormonal, silly, dumb enough to fall for wobble lips? Sure. But not compassionate at all. No compassionate person who isn’t related to Kylo is going to think he deserves special treatment.