ST Rey & Kylo Ren in Episode IX

Lol! No!

I’m saying that Rey, herself, took in the welcoming doormat that she put out for him (via forgiveness to win the war since she was convinced he’d turn) in VIII and brought it inside the Falcon and slammed the door closed.

 

I wanted to see how others feel about this. One of the biggest issues people have with TLJ was the idea that Rey wanted to "save" Kylo, despite all the evil Kylo has done. It is especially unacceptable to many people that Rey feels this way about Kylo because of how badly he has treated her personally, both physically and mentally. This evokes the idea that somehow females are obliged somehow to put up with or expected to save men from themselves, which almost everyone agrees is not the case. And while I think I understand the point of view fairly well, I do find it slightly confusing. Now believe me, I have a thousand complaints about TLJ... but oddly, this is not one of them. Because I do believe that Rey is attempting to practice true forgiveness, in the Christian sense, for someone who is clearly suffering in his life. I actually found it inspiring that Rey wanted to save Kylo, it was one of the only things in TLJ I actually enjoyed. A real Jedi would be willing to forgive an evil person. I think ultimately that's what these movies are about. It is the power of forgiveness. Not only for the sake of the person you are forgiving, but maybe even more so for your own sake, and how it affects your own psyche. For Rey to want to bring someone back to the good side, despite their failings, is an admirable action on her part. Now the problem, IMO, comes in the context in which Rian Johnson tells this story. The idea that Rey seemingly wants Kylo to come fight for the good team, in their fight against evil, it seems to me, is the main problem. While it is admirable to try and save Kylo's soul, it really makes no sense if the idea is that he's going to be welcomed back by the Resistance and everything can go back to the way it was when he was Ben. Now that, of course, is not how it works, and the fact that Anakin died at the moment of his turn back to the good side, allows for his character to be saved. If Anakin had lived, he would have had to been locked up for life or given the death penalty. Anyway, I wanted to throw this out there, because I think the way it was executed by RJ was so poorly handled that it actually changed what was really interesting about the situation in the first place. Any thoughts?

 

Rey isn't a Jedi, real or otherwise, nor do I think being a Jedi means prioritizing your enemy's soul over one's own physical safety. I personally don't feel she should be concerned about forgiving the man who tortured and violated her the day before, but even if one wants to believe she is that magnanimous, forgiving her enemy does not mean she abandons self-respect to rush off to save him.

 

The way Johnson cleverly utilized her growing trust in the force to lead her astray also factors into the topic. The mind bridges weren’t just a brilliant way to put these two into a situation where they tire of shouting and can’t harm the other but also because neither knew what was causing it and neither did the audience and Johnson expertly knew that the mystery box both for them and many in the audience would lead them astray. This is a guy who on Knives Out is being praised for being consistently a step or three ahead of the audience and you can see it all over TLJ and how it will ultimately connect into IX. It won’t surprise me at all if Johnson influenced IX or left notes or a treatment that inspired JJ. IX reads likes JJ explaining what he liked about VIII’s key developments regularly.

 

It never ceases to amaze me that the same people who praise RJ for completely ignoring the movie he wrote a sequel to expect JJ to also ignore his own movie in favor of appeasing the aberration that is TLJ.


And no, the leaks do not indicate to me that he is doing any such thing.

 

I would argue that the point is supposed to be that all people, even Darth Vader, even Kylo Ren, have good in them. Hitler had good in him. I can totally understand why someone would disagree with that statement. But it seems to me like if Darth Vader could be redeemed by Luke, then anyone can be redeemed. Which means everyone has good in them. No? And Rey would see that simply because she believes that about everyone. No question, he has done nothing to deserve her compassion.

 

One can choose to forgive someone who had hurt them personally without putting one's self in a vulnerable position that allows that person to hurt them again.

 

Regarding the bolded...

Then this approach has potential to work as I hope it will because I’m about as big an VIII fan as there is and many of these beats are how I wanted it to be built off at the broadest of strokes. I’ve written here about concepts close enough to some of these that I’m happy.

If I feel like he is considering fans like me and you feel like it’s a retcon then JJ’s approach may end up being the reverse mystery box that I hoped.

The most exacting and specific of demands won’t be met and will lead to those folks upset but a lot of others will feel like they were heard. I knew this had potential when I saw some people who hate VIII and Reylo concepts as much as I’ve enjoyed them write that they feel like Lucasfilm answered their concerns at the same time that I was feeling like Lucasfilm didn’t pretend like the most interesting aspects of VIII didn’t happen.

If some of you end up happier and I end up happy that’s a win in my books and a win for the fandom.

 

It's interesting that people are so willing to invalidate Kylo's character that now he is being likened as the equivalent of the completely irredeemable Tarkin or Jabba the Hutt rather than his actual natural surrogate, Darth Vader himself.

 

It’s because they know him less than they knew Anakin and better understood Anakin’s issues and what lead Anakin to the dark side. They also didn’t see Vader reject two appeals at redemption the way Kylo Ren did. All of which is understandable. Redemption arcs are personal experiences. We come to them with our own life experiences and they didn’t make it easy for anyone to see good in him for anyone who wasn’t rooting for him to find his way back just naturally.

 

That's only because of the benefit of the Prequel Trilogy which was literally created to give us Vader's backstory to chronicle his rise and fall, something missing in the OT outside of vague exposition. And Vader himself rejects appeals by his son in ROTJ. Vader only turns because his son's life was threatened and he himself was fatally injured from taking out Palpatine. I'm very curious to see what Vader's reaction would have been had he killed Palpatine while being left completely unscathed. I can't imagine he would want anything different from what we already see in both TESB and ROTJ, which is to rule the galaxy as father and son, something that would be even more possible now without Palpatine. Also what he wanted in ROTS but with Padme back then. The one obstacle in all those films was always Palpatine so I don't see Vader's actions being any different in a "what if" scenario than what Kylo's were in TLJ when he too killed his master to save someone he loved but then continued on his path of wanting to rule the galaxy.

 

Nah, fam. It's because Darth Affluenza has no redeeming qualities, and our protagonist Rey has no in-universe reason to overlook that fact.


And this "because prequels" idea is silly and factually innaccurate. It's like people don't realize RotJ existed for years before the prequels happened.

 

As much as they want this to be the OT. The ST can not be the OT. There is far to much backstory and other content that these characters are carrying the weight of when it comes to expectation.

Vader had no redeeming qualities until the PT. And till this day there are probably people who did not wanna see those qualities.

 

The PT made Vader's redemption arc less believable for me. The only reason RotJ works is because the protagonist had a reason to want that for Vader. Rey has no reason to want that for Kylo.

 

Oh, goodie. More "damaged girl likes getting tortured" rhetoric.
She had other people to build an emotional attachment to. People that haven't tortured and violated her. People that haven't killed tried to kill her. People that aren't Supreme Leader Baddie.

That does not work for a motivation for Rey to GAS about Kylo.

 

I need that Will Smith presents GIF next to Finn, Poe, Leia, Rose, Chewie, BB8.... She's so lonely she can only go to Darth Afluenza, whose own family can't even muster up good words for.

This.

 

Although this is Kylo & Rey relationship thread, selling it is surprisingly hard work at JCF But I know what you mean and I agree