ST Kylo Ren/Adam Driver Discussion Thread

The facial scar Kylo receives perhaps derives from Jack Kirby's idea that Doctor Doom should only have a small scar on one cheek under his mask, with his vanity driving him to wear his armor at all times - rather than being hideously scarred underneath it, in a way that was one of the inspirations for Darth Vader.

 

I don't think dark siders are vain. they care mostly about themselves, But i'm sure vanity is the least of their concerns tbh.

Palpatine for example wasn't crying in the mirror after he had his face burnt. he just kept going. if anything what happened to him was a worthy sacrifice for his desire for power. he was happy over the power he would get more than his overall appearance.

WIth Kylo it was probably more of a power thing. not a vanity thing that kept him wearing the helmet.

As for the scar looking goofy. People are complaining that Johnson moved it but he only moved it slightly to the left. its still a huge noticeable scar on his face. so its not like its hidden or anything. In retrospect even Anakins scar is still less noticable than Kylo's

 

I think it important to consider the significant of that even small move. It was subtle altered to change from a wide, disfiguring scar running across the cheek and nose and forehead at an odd angle, to a neat scar across the eye which was much heroic or roguish looking, and that was deliberate.

 

Villains also have scars like that.







I just think people spent too much time overthinking to find new issues with Johnson's decisions. which is basically everything. Everything johnson does has a shallow motive behind it.

 

And moving it slightly to the left to his eye, like Bloefeld, changed that?

 

I was looking for a RJ quote I remember reading right before TLJ came out but can't find it. Hopefully someone here is better at looking than me. Anywho it was RJ saying (paraphrase) 'i needed to find a reason for kylo to turn evil that would be relatable.' and he felt seeing his beloved uncle standing there with a saber out apparently about to kill him is enough.

Frankly I find 'my pregnant wife is about to die so I'll join and co-lead the fascists' more relatable than 'my hero uncle has gone crazy so I'll join and co-lead the fascists'.

GL has said that while Anakin may have had good intentions of wanting to save Padme at first it quickly becomes all about him and his lust for power. What does he tell Mace? "He's an unarmed prisoner, it's not the Jedi way. He must live. I NEED HIM." It's all about Anakin's selfishness and need for control. What does Kylo have? Mad at the Big 3 for...reasons? Manipulated mentally by Palpatine and didn't tell anyone? Genuinely asking cuz I don't know and the movies didn't tell me.

 

Having a scene analogous to a sexual assault according to it's director followed up in the next movie by the director trying to pretty up the assaulter so that the girl will fall for him is not just nitpicking or people trying to find things to complain about. It's a symptom of the offensive writing that permeates TLJ.

 

Kylo Ren didn't have the deform eye like Blofeld. If you think about Anakin Skywalker, he only became really disfigure when he burned. That was his final physical transformation to becoming evil Darth Vader. Before that, he carry some scars on his face, but they were positioned quite careful so to make him look battle worn and heroic, but to keep his good looks and not to make him ugly. I think that JJ Abram may originally have the same idea, we would see Kylo become more disfigured as he descend further toward evil. His physical appearance becomes more ugly along with his character. Rian Johnson reset Kylo back to "before burned Anakin", and made him with less intrusive scar to appear semi-heroic and so will benefit the story he wanted to tell.

 

It does feel like that, in addition to moving the scar, they did make it more handsome. It feels like it's meant to be something that adds to a character's face rather than something that mars it: it's a new feature, not an intrusion, basically.



And yes, it does feel like it falls into the "attractive, fashionable" category.

Spoiler: Examples

While I think Rian Johnson was trying to make the scar look less goofy - although I disagree about it being necessary - I also think he was definitely and deliberately trying to make it a "handsome" scar because it wasn't just the placement of part of the scar that changed: it was how severe it looked. Then there's also that the scar looks old - it's completely healed and looks faded, at times. It was inflicted not even a day ago in the Last Jedi.

And that's also why I'm not a fan of the scar because it doesn't look like it came from any serious injury, let alone one that was inflicted, again, not even a day ago. If this had been what it looked like in the Rise of Skywalker, that would have been something else because there's a timeskip between that film and the Last Jedi.

I also just find it to be a very boring scar, especially considering the injury and the situation.


I like the way that it looks here (and yes, I know it's still an active injury) because it looks severe enough to match its injury (a lightsaber directly to the face) and it looks cool. It looks like something that got slashed open with a burning blade as oppose to something that was sliced open by an ordinary blade (which is what I think his TLJ scar looks like) It has the line where the wound is deepest and then you have the surrounded indentation which is the burn mark. And of course, there's the indent (which is also present with his TLJ scar)

Then there's the situation which was a very heated climax in which Kylo Ren was permanently scarred by a furious Rey. It makes sense for the scar to be notable because it was inflicted in a significant battle - it was their first battle and it was where Rey was actually acting darkside-y because she wasn't just trying to kill Kylo Ren for her own and Finn's safety, she was deliberately dragging the battle out so that she could take out her anger over everything he had done. For example, she cut his leg and stalked around him, waiting for him to get back up so she could continue.

I feel like Kylo Ren should have had a scar that was more visually interesting.

This one's fine too.

 

I mostly don't post here anymore.... but RJ's 'version' of the scar was just as long as the original injury; in a lot of stills including shirtless still shows that it was present down the side of his cheek, over the jaw, down his neck and across his shoulder. It was gaping open on his lower cheek in TFA; but that it healed into a narrower scar is easily explained by the fact that it was sutured closed. Remember, these people had massively advanced medical treatment, and also - you can quite clearly see the bruising around the injury throughout TLJ, especially in his fight scene with Luke.
FTR; I and quite a few Kylo fans were fine with it being a more serious injury - we thought he was going to end up with a damaged arm as well - but if people are saying RJ 'prettied him up for Palpwaker', then it also worked the other way as I doubt if he'd of fancied her if she'd crippled and badly disfigured him.

 

Kylo had no scar when he killed Han or tortured Poe&Rey or killed San Tekka.

So the smaller the scar, the closer you are to 0, the closer you are to being a torturer and murderer.

Poor, Big Scar Kylo didn't kill Han after all. He never killed anybody. He just looked at Rey after she kicked his ass.

So in fact RJ was underlining Kylo's villany with that scar.

This is no less idiotic than the smaller scar>handsome>less of a villain line of argumentation, which is quite idiotic.

Jesus H Christ on rubber crutches.

 

He did try to kill everyone on the salt planet, including his own mother.

 

You know what. im gonna say this. It would have been a huge mistake to turn Kylo into a reverse Vader. in the end it was better he was a reverse Anakin. and i think that and alot of things become very clear to Lucasfilm by TROS. to me alot of the decisions with the ST were abit damage control, and even if you shoved Kylo under a car for the sake of Rey, Poe and Finn, the Sequels, even more so, would have been out of place with the first 6 movies. which they shouldn't have been out of place with those movies. So pushing Ben Solo. the child of Han and Leia out for new characters would IMO have hurt the saga more. many might not think that now, but in the long run, as time went on in self-reflection, it certainly would have. and i ain't saying this as a Kylo Ren Fan. im saying this as someone whose picturing how 9 movies with this current ST structure could work together. and it just doesn't. sure they tried with TROS to make the ST work with the first 6 movies. but they left it abit late to realize they had to do it. and yeah i don't think TFA was trying to connect, i think it was trying to reboot. and i think that whole idea did not help in how the ST turned out. constant damage control.by each movie.

 

I think my preferred ending would have been redemption at the end of IX through Leia and then exile. I always loved the idea of a parallel between Leia saving kylo and luke saving vader (making Leia also a kind of chosen one). And the mother-son mirror between Episode I/II and IX. Any good version of this story would've found a way to dig deeper into the underlying dynamics pushing one to either the light or dark side and have proposed some kind of thematic resolution showing how the characters can overcome that cycle and find a new way of wielding/interacting with the force. There really was so much potential to build off the themes of both the OT and the PT.

I honestly don't know where Rey would have fit in there. I think there's a world where Rey's story can be all-encompassing and not completely center around Kylo, where the Resistance and Finn feel actually important to Rey's story while Kylo and the family storyline became more of a B plot.

 

Maybe he learns to love sand and is bad at podracing.

 

lol I would like to watch Kylo being bad at podracing

 

His journey would be from bad to good in the ST. while the PT with Anakin journey was from good to bad

It actually would go full cirlce with the PT. and in so creating a rhyming franchise. that Lucas himself would probably appareciate.