ST Kylo Ren's Future/Fate. Death/Redemption/Other?

Not sure if this was already posted, but people were mentioning the Han, Leia, Kylo family backstory in the documentary and going through my notes, it's not much info at all, just a character sketch that starts after Carrie's around the 56-57 min mark.

• JJ: "They had this kid who was born with equal parts: good and evil. He is someone who is broken."
• AD: "If you really imagine the stakes of him in his youth, having all these special powers and having your parents kind of be absent during that process...on their own agendas, equally as selfish. He is lost in the world that he was raised in and feels that he was kind of abandoned by the people he's closest with. He's angry because of that I think. He has a huge grudge on his shoulders."
• JJ: "It's more than just having a bad seed as a kid. Snoke had targeted this kid, who he knew was going to be incredibly powerful in the Force and wanted him as an ally. This mother and father had a target for a son. Someone was watching their boy. These parents aren't there enough to guide him."

Again, I don't think it's a sob story, but it's more for JJ and AD to establish character psychology in relation to others. If Rey is a Skywalker, then it'll be interesting to find out if Snoke's targeting of this bloodline was linked to a purposeful abandonment on Jakku, and people will of course wonder, how would Rey have turned out if she had been the targeted one?

And here are some caps of father and son on the day of the big wrap. Like me, Kylo has a penchant for braiding his hair to get bigger curls

 

Thanks gizka, very interesting. Is it a different part where JJ talks about Leia wanting to start the Resistance and Han being against it, and her nature as a freedom fighter clashing with his nature as a wandering rogue? MSW has that in their notes.

 

Now I remember: Joffrey Lannister had a tough childhood (his "father" really hated him) but his actions were inexcusable (poor Sansa) and Joffrey was a great villain.

 

I'll quote The Hound on this one.. " **** Joffrey!"

 

Yes, just watched that part....very interesting.

 

Love that's it's confirmed that Han and Leia are kind of crap, Career First, parents.

 

I don't remember those specific details? In the Carrie section, Leia and Han exchange these lines, and then it goes into a brief summary of their relationship:

Leia: "You could always see him clearer than I did."
Han: "I don't know what I saw."
CF: "Can you imagine those two people together? They were good initially, and then they reverted to type."
JJ: "It's about these two people who loved each other, who came together, but whose natures were always very different. The idea of Han remaining in one place is hard to imagine. The idea that Leia would stop fighting for the cause and greater good, hard to imagine."

 

This. If they're seriously going for the story that Kylo is the result of a working mother and adventure seeking father, I mean that's the story and all, but it has the opposite effect on me than I gather it's meant to. In fact, I'm not sure they could have come up with too many back stories for Kylo that would be less sympathetic to me.

 

"The idea that Leia would stop fighting for the cause and greater good, hard to imagine" So a woman needs to choice: work or family, hm? Leia couldn't fight and be a mother? or a wife? Oh god...

 

Fair points guys. I was kinda shallow with my comment.

I bet you though that every parent who has a kid that goes on to do something horrible does a major guilt ridden self evaluation of their lives and how they brought up their child. You'd blame yourself, even if you don't deserve it.

 

To be fair, the word "career" isn't used......simply that Han and Leia keep doing what they always did, and kinda ignore Kylo, which gave Snoke the opening he needed.

 

Seriously, who are these people that still talk this way? Who is AD? He literally called Leia and Han equally selfish, her for working, him for doing stuff not all about Kylo. And CF? Whoever that is assumed Leia and Han would revert to "type?" Here's a tip to writers - a character is only a "type" if you fail to write a 3 dimensional character. In other words, if Han and Leia became types, LF is giving us a crap story.

I really thought if they went this route, they'd be careful to emphasize that it wasn't Han and Leia's fault, they just weren't equipped to deal with Snoke due to Han's lack of force abilities and Leia's lack of training. Then I figured the story would be they sent Kylo to Luke too late because they wanted him to have a normal life, or something along those lines. I never expected the story to literally be that Leia is selfish for having a career and Han was a deadbeat, so abandoned Kylo turned to the only adult around who cared. That's some trash right there.

 

I think they may have been talk gin about it from Kylo's perspective.

 

Also, another thing. Adam Driver also says that he doesn't think of Kylo as a villain. So his point of view on things such as Kylo's actions and other characters are probably skewed by the fact he plays Kylo Ren.

 

Yeah, hopefully you're right. I should wait to watch the documentary before jumping to conclusions.

 

Thanks! Well it's not as bad as MSW made it sound, just because they had different natures doesn't mean they had some horrible marriage that caused their son to turn to the Dark Side. Apparently they are still a happy couple in Bloodline, so it couldn't have been that bad if they stuck it out for 23+ years.

Especially since you have two other main characters whose childhood was 100x more traumatic than Kylo's. Rey was abandoned by her family and left to fend for herself on a desert planet at the age of 5. Finn was kidnapped at a young age from his family and raised to be nothing but a soldier. Kylo...my parents had busy careers and didn't stay home and bake cookies. Wow, you had it so hard [/sarcasm]. At least he had parents who loved him very much (we can still see that in TFA).

I'm not going to get too worked up about what Adam Driver said since it's not like what he says is canon and as an actor he was trying to find motivation behind what his character thinks. Kylo's character may think Han and Leia are bad parents, but it doesn't mean they were.

 

I know so many sane people and posters had pointed out this and already gave up, but the saddest moment is always when you see some haters make fun of and give sarcastic comments about abused and groomed child-victims, then like, cheer and clap like an abuse festival.

Where is the humanity?

Thank god Lucasfilm doesn't even give a crap and concern about their ideas.

 

Assuming for the sake of argument that Han and Leia were terrible parents, I've actually pointed out (before) to the fact that TFA has shown three different kinds of results for (possible) bad parenting or the simple lack of it:

1. Rey has grown up relatively well, despite abandonment and a hard life.
2. Finn has turned out well -- despite never knowing his parents and a lifetime of brainwashing by the FO machinery. He's even positioned to be the movie's moral compass.
3. Kylo has turned out terrible.

So this is evidence that the writers have not made a simplistic argument that bad parenting automatically means bad children. There are all kinds of results in TFA. Based on Rey and Finn's story, should we then take the message that children should be completely abandoned so they grown up fine? We don't, right? That's because there's an implicit knowledge that parenting is only part of the story -- though it is a critical one.

What evidently happened in Kylo's backstory is alienation from his parents has driven him into the influence of a really bad person -- Snoke. Had it not been Snoke who was around to act as a foster parent to Kylo, but a benevolent and wiser person, then Kylo would've probably turned out fine. So (again) assuming Han and Leia were at the very least absentee parents, were they to blame? Partly in Kylo's case, because it was their responsibility as parents to see under whose influence he was falling. But are they entirely responsible? No, because it was Snoke who apparently influenced Kylo from an "early age". It's not black and white, and some things are just the result of a bad confluence of events and factors contributing different weights to an undesired result. It might even turn out that Han and Leia were deceived -- perhaps they hired Snoke because he was supposed to be a highly recommended male au-pair who had managed to deceive everyone around him. But to interpret the suggestion that Han and Leia being absentee parents as a factor in Kylo's development is a message saying that that's the entire reason he became a mass murderer totally ignores the presence of Snoke, the presence of Rey, and the presence of Finn in the story.

And if we look at real life, it's what we see around us. Some kids turn out fine even with absentee parents -- because they've found good foster parents in their grandparents, teachers, their friends, or their friends' parents. Some kids turn out bad because they were not so lucky. I guess the message of TFA to parents is, "Sure you can be largely absent in your kids' lives during their formative years and get great results (see Rey and Finn) -- but if they turn out well it'd be despite of you, if they turn out bad, it'll be partly because of you because you've outsourced that responsibility to someone else." Then again, there are parents who know they would be terrible parents and give up their children to others who could be better at it and with great results. So no, it's not black and white. Kylo's story is Kylo's story. It's not a generalization that absentee parenting results in mass murdering children. Like with most things in life, there's not one single reason for something.

Again, this is all under the assumption (only hinted at supposedly) that Han and Leia were absentee parents.

Reasons, not excuses.

 

Han and Leia are not even partly responsible for their son becoming a mass murderer. Having a working mom and a adventurer father doesn't even partly make a child want to slaughter people. Han and Leia's interests and goals in life don't even have a place in the conversation. That they do things not about their son doesn't have a place in the conversation.

 

Relax, folks. Recognizing that there are reasons related to parenting (among many other reasons, I'm sure), for why Kylo turned out the way he did, is not the equivalent of excusing his actions. It's simply basic psychological profiling. The point may also be that because Leia and Han weren't always around, Snoke found a way into Kylo's head. This would not be an indictment of Han and Leia, either. It's simply a little backstory on how what might otherwise have been a slight but manageable parenting issue, became a massive problem because a huge, evil, force-sensitive alien dude was living around the corner.

 

The final result? No.

That doesn't mean they don't bear some responsibility for their complacency in his formative years.

 

They would be responsible for their son falling into the influence of someone else, if they failed to make time for parenting. That someone else is (if he did start fostering Kylo at an early age) appears to be responsible for Kylo becoming a mass murderer.

Their parenting has a place in the conversation because it's where the chain of events starts. Young children don't just suddenly decide in a vacuum under whose influence they'd like to grow up.