ST Kylo Ren/Adam Driver Discussion Thread

I’ve already explained in that conversation how I think it changes them. From TFA and TLJ, it’s appropriate to assume that they know Kylo is guilty, that it’s not merely an assumption. The comic changes it to both an assumption and them being wrong. This makes them a horrible father/uncle, and it makes everything their, but especially Luke’s, fault. It’s an absolute major change that imo isn’t in the films because LF wasn’t trying to stir the pot more after TLJ by blaming more crap on the OT3.

Of course I do. I get to decide what is illegitimate story telling - to me. A comic rewriting the films to pander to a fan group isn’t legit storytelling imo. It’s corporate profiteering. What I always loved about GL and SW was the integrity of the story being paramount. Don’t get me wrong, GL knew how to maximize profit lol, but the integrity of the story was always central. As I keep saying, LF imo wants Kylo to be all things to everyone. JJ is horrible with this in general with the story - don’t commit to any path with specificity. Be vague so people can imagine that the story is whatever they want. This is how Rey and Kylo were both written and yeah no, it doesn’t deserve to be in the same saga with the clearly defined stories of Luke and Anakin.

That was a romantic kiss. Your explanation makes it shockingly grosser. Does the monstrous villain with an 11th hour good deed deserve a reward of romantic affection from the heroine in all cases then? Since that’s how “recognition” is apparently shown and all.

 

The Kylo Ren/Ben Solo/Rey scenes was pretty much the highlight of the trilogy for me and the scenes with the most emotional impact too (also the Han and Ben scene in TROS)

 

Why didn't Rey become a force ghost?

 

How?

How does it make them horrible peaple becuse they made a logical assumption that anyone would make based on evidence avilable to them? It does'nt make them horrible, it just makes them wrong - and through no fualt of their own.

It certinaly does'nt make anything their fualt, becuse they still had not control over what happened - Palpatine/Snoke destroyed the temple, not Luke, and Han was'nt even present.

And honestly, I'm going to be blunt, but I don't think TLJ blames anything on the OT3. At the most it shows Luke had a moment of weakness and made a mistake, but the movie utilimatly ends with him being a hero who is fully vindicated, so even that issue (which really seems to small to be an issue) is counteracted.

There's a difference between not liking something and viewing it as unworthy and it being non-canon. One is your personal opinion, the other you can only have control over if you go buy Disney and change their offical police regarding lore. Wether or not you think its legit storytelling, it's still as fully canon as the films under the Lucasfilm's own policy.

Perhaps she was only mostly dead?

 

I don’t remotely see assuming one’s son/nephew mass murdered his entire school “logical.” The concept is over my head. I can’t personally imagine making such a leap without finding out exactly what happened.

I think TLJ tries to blame Kylo on Luke, but regardless of what I personally think, I think LF felt that lots of fans felt that way. I think JJ was trying to rectify some of that in RoS.

I have a view of storytelling. I’m not talking about canon so I don’t know why you’re bringing it up. The integrity of the story is the most important thing to me. Something being a hodgepodge of garbage that exists to pander to this fan group and that fan group isn’t legitimate storytelling to me. It never will be. It doesn’t qualify as storytelling at all imo. A story should have consistent themes. Characterizations should follow naturally and make sense. The point shouldn’t be rewritten with every new piece of media. Etc.

 

I largely agree with you on those points. On the other hand, when the ability to bring people back from life / stop them from dying (which is probably more likely to have happened to Rey than being dead) has to be a larger than life Force ability. It's the holy grail of Force use that was set up in the PT so in a way it makes sense that anyone able to do it, should essentially be overpowered.

Perhaps there could have been a better way of portraying it though.

 

Besides the trite romance, I don’t see what the narrative point was to the dyad. They didn’t defeat Sheev because of their dyad powers. Kylo was yeeted like immediately. All the dyad appeared to exist for was the resurrection after Sheev’s death. I obviously think the resurrection is bad for the story in many ways, but I’m curious what the argument even is to defend it. What SW theme was solidified by having Kylo resurrect Rey? I know what themes it trampled, but I can’t think of any arguable narrative point to it in the positive.

 

I don’t think bringing people back to life has been portrayed as an attainable goal for force users. The point of it was that dark siders are obsessed with it to their detriment, and Jedi learn to let go because death is natural. Yes I understand that force ghosts could arguably be seen as contradictory to that, except they only exist to guide the living. They’re not clinging to life for life’s sake. They exist for the opposite reason that dark siders seek the power, and that’s the point. It’s why dark siders fail. The resurrection undermines all of that, and for what? What’s the message? Why can reylo do it and it’s okay?

 

Let the Reylo die. Kill it if you have to

 

I heard this had been hinted in the EU novels. And Disney had decided to make full use of this in not only "The Mandalorian", but also in "The Rise of Skywalker". Just as they are now portraying Force abilities as something that can kill you if you make an extra effort to use it. Go figure. I haven't been able to fully accept this yet. I suspect that within a decade, Disney will make the Star Wars franchise so formulaic that it will be a ghost of its former self . . . which seemed to have happened with the MCU franchise in the past four years.

 

Likely there is a cognitive dissonance between what folks (SW universe jedi, for example) think is the holy grail and what it actually is. Maybe it's a 'what you want' vs 'what you need' thing. Mortals would think that bringing people back from dead/stopping them from dying is what immortality is, when in fact it is becoming a Force ghost is. And while a lot of our heroes in the movies seem to become Force ghosts, in fact not many jedi do become one.

 

This is basically how I see it, but I can't imagine that this is how LF would argue it because this is (imo) all horrible storytelling. Basically, to sum it up less charitably, the dyad exists to ex post facto explain Rey's inexplicable characterization in TLJ. It exists to create a bond between the hero and the villain using a gimmick rather than organic storytelling with a substantive bond. It exists to allow Kylo a redemption using the gimmick, rather than just writing an emotional redemption that arises from the story naturally. Vader killing Sheev didn't steal the spotlight from Luke, for example, but that's because they had a substantive, not a gimmicky, connection, so Vader's actions were inextricably linked to Luke's. It couldn't work that way with reylo. Kylo being the hero would effectively just steal Rey's spotlight. It's all a bunch of meta analysis ticking boxes. It's not a coherent story.

 

No, not certainly. At the very least, 'compatible by intent and not by coincidence' is not to be ruled out. In fact, it seems standard procedure when it comes to leave things open, and leaving certain things open for others to complete/discard/modify them was not a coincidence and was the intent. It still is, just like Ben Solo's fate.

The handful of students being the KOR was my theory at some point, but even then I knew it was just a theory. That was the only pretty obvious thing. I had this theory about the KOR infiltrating the temple. It was possible and the film supported it, by intent -and maybe it was considered at some point- and also nothing more than a theory - also by intent. Nothing definitive was said, and that was in order to keep retcons in the family, so to speak - to keep them as a part of the development process, where they belong.

Ben Solo is and is not dead. We know about Han and Leia and Luke and Rey (and those jedi ghosts), but not about Ben. We are not shown. Anakin was shown in ROTJ, at the end, but Ben hasn't. That is intentional, but not going beyond that also is.

His past still exists. 'Through the force', as Yoda once said, others could be able to see glimpses of it. He could be able to see it: in the film C3PO resurrects with his mind wiped. The same, but younger. Anakin went back to his ROTS jedi self in ROTJ. The same, but younger. Maybe there's a broom/scavenger boy around at the end of TROS, with a certain Skywalker path before him. I wonder if that's the thinking behind baby Yoda, and also if it has something to do with 'if Skywalker returns, the new jedi will rise'. The new jedi is also plural, and Ben is called 'Skywalker' for the first time in TROS. You don't have a plural unless you have two people, and that's true for 'sith' as a plural too.

But this is just one set of possibilities. You are invited to reasonably ask, and to ask subtly, but nothing more.

 

Anyone know roughly what time of day Marvel comics become available digitally?

It's Feb 12th here

I think I gotta wait.

 

I think the dyad was something partially intended from the beginning, based on Abrams' comments to the effect that Rey's steep learning curve would eventually explained. She always powers up when she confronts Kylo Ren. Whether this also weakens him is an interesting concept. Snoke referred to something similar, but didn't seem to have the dyad concept in mind. It's fruitful territory for fan theories and I like it.

 

The information that would have avalible to them would be the same whether Ben destroyed the temple or not. And would have been overwelmingly in support of him being the culprit, especially when he immedatly chose to run to Snoke and the KoR and subsqently killed anouther (or possible three other) Jedi.

Give the information they had, Ben's susbesqent actions and the darkness that Luke had seen while looking into Ben's mind, "Ben attacked and killed his fellow students and destroyed the temple" would be the only logical explanation - certianly more logical then "hmm, well maybe it was actually a giant blast of red Force energy that inexecpiably appeared in the sky right at the moment Ben had just finished incapcitating Luke."

I honest to god don't see how you would think that - the movie shows and flat-out tells us Luke's recounting of events was correct, and Luke's own words tell us that "Snoke had already turned his heart." If anything, Luke's actions in that single moment pushed Ben off the edge (though Luke could not have known this) but he seems to have already been building to snap well before that.

I mean, you entitled to your opinion and intepreation, but I'm legit suprised you got that from the movie, given how far afield it is from what I got.

Apologies. I misunderstood what you meant by "legitimate" - I thought you were saying it was not legitimate in the sense that it's not authentic. My bad.

Now that you've explained, I can say we actually have fairly similier views on such things - after all I've already made it clear how I feel on a lot of TROS retconns and narrative choices (*cough* the kiss *cough*), as well as the fact that I disagree with the decision to retcon away Kylo's massacuring of his fellow students. I think the only place we really differ is in our analysis of certian elements of TLJ and our tolarance for the stupidity of certian narrative decisions.

Agian, my bad.

Reviving a person whose been dead for as brief a time as Rey can also be done medically without the Force.

Firstly, regenerating someone's body to younger state would be much harder then just reviving a freshly dead and undamaged body. And secondly all Kylo did was just dump his life force into Rey. That's it, it was a simple matter of transference - this is using Rey's own explanation on the mechancics of how healing works - and was probobly even easier then regular force healing becuse he did'nt actually have to repair any pysical damage and only had to resart her vital functions.

Thirdly, this does'nt conflict with any of the previous films, becuse logically if someone (Anakin, for instance, with Padme) knew it was an opition they would have used it. The fact that they did'nt use it shows pretty clearly that they simply did'nt know that such a thing was possible.

Force lighting was never shown before ROTJ, Force pulling before ESB and Force speed never appeared on film before TPM.

Also Rey descibes the mechanics behind healing quite clearly earlier in the movie - it's transfering a bit of your vitiality (your life force) into anouther being to heal them. That's all it is - that's why anybody should be able to revive someone. It's simply a matter of having enough vitiality nessesery to pull it off and the person in question being recently enough dead.

As I said, all it was a simple transfereness, and it would be reasonable to think that anyone who knew how to using force healing could pull such a thing off assuming the body was'nt too damaged and they knew doing it was a possiblity.

All the Force Dyad is, from what little were told, is them sharing a single force connection and becoming strong when their in close proximity to each other. Alone their just regular Force sensatives who, in all likelyhood given what we know, are actually weaker then they would be without the dyad since they'd only have half a force connection.

How could the bond countiue after Snoke died if he was the one who created it? That makes no sense, becuse without him to sustian it the whole thing would collopse.

The reason to "privilege" it as an explanation is, before the dyad concept was pulled out of JJ's you-know-where, it was the only place it could have been formed, and its supported somewhat by the novelization of TFA, were Rey is able to suddenly able to have access to Kylo's knowladge of how how to use certian force abilities afterwards.

The dyad, as far I can tell, exists primarly to (unnessesrly) explain why Rey is so "overpowered" (lol) in the other two movies - anouther example of pandering, this time to the "Rey's a Mary Sue!" crowd.

It certinaly was'nt nessessery for the resurrection, since by the explanation the movie itself gives for force healing there's no reason to think Kylo could'nt have still healed her without the dyad existing.

It literally can't be by intent, since TLJ was written before TFA was realesed, which was in turn a full five years before the Kylo comics came out and all the material we've been given before has been

There's no reason to mention he left with a handful of students unless it means something, and the only handful of force-sensetives who hang out with Kylo Ren are the KoR. There's really nothing else Luke could have meant - if he was'nt referencing a specific group then there was no point to bring them up.

Ben was'nt shown at the end for the same reason Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, ect was'nt - it was'nt his scene. It was a scene were Luke and Leia were looking on Rey with pride as she took up their name to honor them. It was there scene, not his.

And yeah, Ben's dead. He dumped his life force into Rey and faded out of existence, ascending to become a force ghost.

I'm very confused as to what your suggesting. Are you saying that Kylo's ghost is going to posses broom boy or Baby Yoda? If that's the case then I guess he's still evil after all.

The new jedi Snoke reffered to were those that Luke would train and lead if given the chance.

Rey's "steep learning curve" never existed - all of her skills are very clearly explained or are vastly overstated by viewers with an agenda. As for powering up every time she confronts Ren, not really, as he clearly has the upper hand in both of their big showdowns, with her only winning the first time becuse she surrendered herself to the Force and the second time becuase Leia distracted Kylo (who had her his mercy).

 

What in the world, I don't know what saga you are watching. Rey discovered some powers apart from Kylo (the battle on Jakku is her "awakening" as the film puts it) but she becomes much more powerful after Kylo tries to read her mind. After that contact, she masters the Jedi Mind Trick with relative ease. Then when he goes for the lightsaber she acquires Force Pull instinctively in a manner that she herself finds stunning. The obvious explanation for these leaps in her capabilites is that it has something to do with the dyad. Although there is the strange thing where Kylo says she will experiment and grow more powerful in short order, something that annoyed many fans who take training seriously. Since he didn't know about the dyad yet himself, we are left to wonder why he expected her to be able to do this. Maybe it's just because he realized she escaped on her own and makes an inference.

Rey beat Kylo in their first battle for many reasons. He was injured by Chewbacca, for one thing. he had also been wounded by Finn. It's explicit from The Last Jedi that he was unbalanced because he wasn't able to deal with what he had done to his father. Last but not least Kylo really didn't want to kill her. He wanted to become her teacher. I suppose the serious Reylo contingent will also say he was in love with her on some level. From her end, his comments remind her about Maz Kanata's advice (her first lesson, if you will) but I think retrospectively it's an easy reading to construe that she picks up abilities quickly since her "light" rises to meet his darkness and it's heightened by the dyad.

Of course, there is plenty of potential there because as Kylo later says she has Palpatine's power. We don't know anything about his early training but maybe the force just sort of slipped out of him too. People have different personality traits they can inherit and different specific relationships to the Force are presumably a part of this.

It's probably worth noting that Luke's amazing shot in episode four came from surrendering himself to the Force at Obi-wan's prompting. He'd hardly trained at all. Then early in the next film, he seemingly teaches himself Force Pull. Since we can presume neither Yoda nor Obi-Wan would coach him in it, he seems to have taught himself Force choke by the beginning of episode six. In fact he seems to have grown much more powerful without additional training, so maybe there was a quasi-dyad with his father. Who knows? Fans get to speculate and build theories and it is part of the fun. But clearly it is possible for the extremely gifted--I will call them "Force titans"-- to teach themselves a few things. On has to wonder about Broom boy, though. Even Anakin didn't teach himself telekinesis at that age with zero training. Maybe that's just because of the balance of the Force.

 

"The Kiss" is JJ's slide of hand magic card trick in saying "look over here at REYLO, this is what this dynamic was about and this was our trilogy's emotional narrative all along".

And it doesnt feel earned, nor does it feel part of the cohesive story, because its not the emotional narrative underpinning this trilogy.

There are 2 that were set up from the beginning; a major one and a minor one.

The minor one was Rey's parentage. She begins the Trilogy wanting them to return to Jakku and views Han as a father figure. During the middle, she wants Luke to become that mentor / father figure and she still yearns to know who they are; ie. The cave. Kylo gives her an answer that she does not fully accept. And in the last, Leia has beome the mentor / mother figure and Rey finds out what happened to her parents. More importantly, she finds out her ancestry and who her grandfather is and it horrifies her so much that she turns her back on her true family name and embraces a name that she more identifies with; Skywalker - as her core beliefs and traits are the good parts of the Skywalkers. Introduction, Revelation (detail), Resolution (closure). This is a cohesive narrative here.

Now the major narrative. The only "Skywalker" of the 3rd generation has fallen to the dark side. It has torn his parents apart where they've become estranged and sent his uncle into hiding where he has turned his back on everything. Ben keeps talking of conflict within, mentions how Han Solo would have disappointed as a father and needs his father's help to kill him because deep down, Ben knows what he is about to do is 110% wrong on all levels. During the middle, the revelation concerns what happened with Luke on that night at the temple. The emotional narrative purely concerns Luke and Ben and what is did to Luke. The focus at this point is less about his parents here; but this is still briefly explored when Ben struggles to fire upon his mother and dismisses answering Rey's questions as to how he can murder a father that loves him. The final movie, a superficial turn back to the light with no real answers or narrative detail or depth.

Ben Solo's emotional narrative is Introduction, revelation (detail from Luke perspective - but remembering that there are 2 seperate streams here which are between Luke and Ben and Ben and his parents) and then finally......brickwall. You get some glimpses of the resolution with hints of Palpatine talking to Ben through many voices and Leia opting out of Jedi training because she has a dream of Ben going dark. And we kind of get a half-hearted acknowledgement from Ben that he has been responsible for the choices that he has made, but there was no narrative detail of the problems between son and parents. Nothing to explain why he felt Han Solo is a disappointing father or to why he struggles to kill them.

So with him, again the emotional narrative, the major one that underpins this trilogy, is introduction, revelation, brickwall - or in other words the brickwall meaning the REYLO kiss.

 

I think she wasn't quite dead, but then again many people will have a case against me here. Leia didn't disappear immediately either, and again maybe she was not quite dead. But most fans think Anakin had to be "rescued" by Obi-Wan and Yoda, which didn't happen immediately, so maybe she would have been "rescued" too in a few minutes.

 

The way I understood the dyad was not just a simple force bond but something a bit akin to how knowledge in the Matrix is loaded into human consciousness. Once their bond was created, at each encounter they learnt from each other. When one used a technique, the other was able to replicate it. It wasn't so much of a level up to me but a living experience and knowledge base. To me that's why Ben is able to heal Rey without prior training. She discovered the knowledge and he simply replicated it. Just like when he interrogated her and read her mind and she fought it off and read his mind straight away.

It was this interpretation of mine why their 'relationship' came as no surprise to me. It's for this reason I expected the two to end up together. Bit like siamese twins. I didn't see how they would be able to avoid each other, had the story took different turns and were they just complete strangers, wanting to live their lives independently. The bond and the dyad wouldn't have let them. With this setup the jigsaw piece of why Rey feels she can and needs to help Ben is also explained. I mentioned this before: if they are one and the same in the force, he can't hide his feelings and his torments from her and she has that intimate knowlege, unlike even his mother, that he has good in him. He can be redeemed. Nobody knows Kylo/Ben better than Rey and vice verse. It's why it made sense to me that he would never lie to her either. It's pointless to lie to your mirror image.

 

But TFA was written before TLJ, and the KOR date back perhaps to 2013. They were pirates (and related to the sith pirates Lucas had created in 1974); and they existed before Kylo. Kylo joined them. They appeared in the original vision - the KOR attacking the clan when Rey was a little girl. Etc.
There was maybe the intent of letting that identification (students=KOR) as a possibility, but in no way as a certainty. That 'in no way as a certainty' is intent, the intent of not locking that part of the story. Snoke mentioned the KOR, and we see them. Luke mentions the students and we dont see them. They are different groups until proven otherwise, and not the same until proven otherwise, no matter how the two groups being the same people fits a certain narrative, and no matter how that narrative is internally coherent and/or neat.

It was a part of his POV, what Luke inferred. He was unconscious. There's no reason to think it to be necessarily more than that. We didn't see what happened, just as we didnt see the KOR and the students being the same individuals. All that is removed from Rey POV, and as such, a good candidate for books or comics, not for a film.

Haha, no. More like Ben Solo being alive, in the flesh, at the end of TROS. Maybe as an adult, maybe as a child. With no memory of his previous life.

Sure, just as his 'Skywalker, I assumed - wrongly' was about Luke. But he assumed correctly, and now (Rey) Skywalker and the new jedi lie ahead.

 

In the comic book explanation of things, the bolded is no longer valid. Kylo wasn't already evil and ready to mass murder his peers. His heart wasn't already turned. That's the whole point. The comic makes Luke and Han wrong about everything.

I totally disagree with your first paragraph. I would never assume my child mass murdered her school if they ended up dead and she had disappeared. That doesn't make any sense and once again, my brain isn't computing what you're saying. Perhaps Ben was kidnapped by Snoke and the KoR. How would they know?

Wait now you're contradicting the comic book with TLJ's story even though I could have sworn you were saying the comic doesn't contradict anything lol.

Like I said, I'm less interested in debating what I personally got from the movie that feels super clear cut, than I am in the point that I feel is relevant - LF recognized that audiences took it that way and were po'ed.

But in terms of it's contribution to the story, what did Rey and Kylo being uber powerful because of each other contribute to the victory?