Saga LOVE HURTS: Why is Star Wars Romance Always Sad or Tragic?

They had a romantic relationship. Before smoking Snoke

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Kek it even had "dad walks in on the couple" trope.

Before facing off Palpatine

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They were It's Complicated couple.

 

They were discovering commonalities with each other. That does not a romantic relationship make.

I think that's a scene about the fact that it actually *couldn't be* a romantic relationship, and her sadness about that.

 

I wasn't trying to be smart, just responding to the part "not every relationship ends". It's like saying "not every life ends". But my main point is that SW relationships are no worse or more tragic than the ones in other movies. The only one I find tragic is Anakin and Padmé. I wouldn't even consider Han and Leia to be very tragic. I mean, they had about 30 happy years together and eventually drifted apart. This happens every day, it's life. What I found tragic is that Han was killed by his own son, not that he and Leia became somewhat estranged.

 

I can understand that. Anakin's final attack on Padme automatically disqualifies it from being "the ideal romance." On the other hand, I remember reading a lot of Episode 3 fan scripts from 2002-2003 that had Palpatine easily convince Anakin that the Jedi allowed Padme to die or something of that nature, and, it always bugged me how easily Anakin was convinced. Now grant it, these were obviously amateur writers, but the idea never quite landed for me because of it.

I like that ROTS punishes Anakin for his fall, and Anakin's choice to turn ends up being counterintuitive on his own accord. Contrast that to TROS where the film it seems wants the audience to believe that Rey and Kylo had to live for one another. That Rey wanting to hold Ben's hand is a factor in his redemption and that Ben has to live to save Rey after she dies from Palpatine, which is quite corny imo. I like how ROTS makes it pretty explicit by the end that Anakin was never going to be able to save Padme, because Padme never needed to be saved in the first place.

 

Does being married to Star Wars count?

 

Chuck Norris plus SW is a powerful combination.

 

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I was originally going to be cast as Luke, but then they realized that lightsabers don't cut through me. I cut through lightsabers. So it was impossible for my hand to be cut off in ESB. That and Sidious' force lightning would have just bounced off of me. I give George credit for trying, but it just wouldn't work.

 

@Deliveranze

That's something Pablo talked about. Anakin wanted to save Padme for himself not because she needed to be saved. His love wasn't unconditional. Take this:

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then she died and all he did was



He didn't die. In fact, he lived for good 20 more years even though he had no reason to. Padme was dead. He believed the baby died with her. he was a roast chicken. And yet he lived.

I like the character because he feels real. He makes grand statements but no follow through. Life goes on.

 

I don't think Rey wanting to hold Ben's hand was a factor in his salvation at all. I don't think *any* feelings Rey might have had for Ben was a factor in his salvation. I don't think Rey had a lick to do with it. I think Ben's salvation had to do with the love of his parents, and his mother in particular. I think Ben saves Rey because she's the last Jedi. End of story, roll credits.

 

I’m sure I’m not the only one with that view point. It seems clear enough once the fog of some expectation-created criterias have been put aside. I doubt people who watch the ST as saga newbies think of Rey as being essential to Ben’s return, the way Luke was to Anakin’s. I think when the next saga trilogy is inevitably released in another 10-30 years, it will be easier for more people to see this, because they will have internalized this story and thus have brand new unreasonable expectations to measure the freshly-hated new trilogy against.

 

This is mostly accurate, but if you read he TROS novelization Kylo/Ben definitely had the heart eyes for Rey.

 

Maybe he did. I just don’t think it was a contributing factor in his turn. Also, from what I gather, if you take the novelizations of all the movies together, they don’t actually form a consistent canon? I could be wrong as I haven’t read any of them. In any case, I’m going by movie canon.

 

LOL @ Ben saved Rey only because she was the Last Jedi. What BS. Nobody gives their life for another just because they are the last Jedi and lets not forget that Palaptine and his Sith minions were dead so whether there was the last Jedi or not was irrelevant. Heck, Ben could have been the last Jedi.

He loved Rey so much so that he would rather give his life to her than live without her. His redemption had many factors including that Rey decided to heal him and confessed that she loved him ("I did want to take your hand. Ben's hand").

It's really hiarious how much denial goes into how they felt about each other. Fine, deny that she loved him all you want but denying that he loved her, and claiming that all he wanted was to preserve the Last Jedi is preposterous.

 

I think you’re misunderstanding my post. I’m not denying what they may or may not have felt for each other. That’s up for interpretation and there are many right answers (meaning answers that are consistent with what is shown onscreen). I’m saying story-wise, the minimum sacrifice required of him as a character that had a significant hand in destroying what Luke was trying to begin for the galaxy, was to act in a way that protected it’s continuation. The *feelings* that might have motivated him to commit that sacrifice are irrelevant to that point.

 

he didn't do it for Luke. he did it for Rey only. Because he loved her, not because she was the future of the Jedi order. Do you honestly think his first thought, when he saw that Rey was dead, was "Oh noes, pop goes the Jedi order"? Why this needs any interpretation that isn't love if Vader's redemption, that was also love-based, didn't need it? The movie was clearly going for love. Hence the kiss. No need for mental gymnastics. It's really that simple.

 

These aren’t mental gymnastics. Ben was saved by his love for his mother (not for Luke). Han even reminded him that even though she was gone, that *what she fought for* wasn’t gone. I find it rather clear that he was making up for what he destroyed by preserving the last Jedi. Yes, the kiss at the end likely means that Ben and Rey had strong feelings for each other. But so what? He still had to make up for what he did, regardless.

[EDIT] if he did it for Rey alone, then what was the whole point of his stultification at his mother’s Force call or his conversation with the vision of his father?

 

he turned his back on FO and his Kylo Ren identity when he went to join Rey against Palaptine as his redemption and the right thing that his parents wanted him to do. Giving his life so that Rey could live is entirely his decision because he loved Rey, nothing to do with mom and dad who very likely would prefer that he lived.

 

Remember what Lor San Tekka believed and died for: “without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force”. There’s a distinction between destiny (saving the Jedi) and personal feelings (arguably for Rey). The two things may compliment each other, but in storytelling terms, I think they are distinct. In ROTJ, Anakin destroys the Sith and brings balance (saves the last Jedi) with a single act. An act implied to be what the prophecy referred to. Here, it is two different acts. Rey destroys the Sith and Kylo brings balance (saves the last Jedi)

It may be that Ben’s love for Rey is what motivated him to revive her, as Anakin’s for Luke may have motivated him, thus fulfilling his destiny. I’m not arguing with that aspect of it at all. I’m just saying that it’s open to interpretation. What I think is...for lack of a better term...”less open to interpretation”...is that his destiny was to save the Jedi. How that came about in terms of credible motivations is more interpretive.


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IMO, both acts accomplish that Jedi are preserved but neither is motivated by Jedi preservation. It's the side effect of saving the loved one (son, love interest) who just happen to be a Jedi but their being the Jedi isn't the factor that caused the sacrifice.

 

I think that’s where our conversation is getting confused. I’m not referring to the personal motivations of the characters when talking about purpose, but their narrative roles. The personal motivations are more subjectively discerned and so open to a much wider variety of interpretation. It may be that Anakin *personally* saves Luke from Palpatine purely out of love for Luke and it may be that Ben *personally* revived Rey purely out of love for her. That’s another topic of discussion. There’s room for interpretation. What I find to be more objectively the case is that both acts were done to fulfill the characters’ destinies within the larger narrative. That’s why they were both —- actually all three —— able to let go, illustrated cinematically by their bodies fading out: Anakin’s, Ben’s, and Leia’s.

 

I understand. I'm just saying that Anakin and Ben didn't do it thinking about their destinies, they did it cause they loved Luke/Rey. Both things exist it's just that you find destiny more important and I find love.

 

Oh, don’t worry, I def agree that love is more important, I just find destiny a more viable subject to speak of objectively, at least in the context of a fictional story. To me, the meaning of relationships are actually the most important aspects of stories, but I’m not going to speak of relationship meanings as though what one means to me should be the same thing it means to someone else. That’s more of a personal interpretation type thing, and I try to treat it as such.

[EDIT] I might even go so far as to suggest that the more meaning a story has to us as individuals, the less communicable that meaning is to others....