ST Sequel to the Sequel trilogy coming?

If you're not invested, I think that's your opinion. I don't think the same.

I don't agree that a generic hero type would make the same choices that would necessitate a transition to who Vader is. Edginess doesn't mean much to me, in regards to this. I don't think of turning from evil as the exact same as changing back to exactly who they were before they turned.

 

I said other things in that post.

 

Having to 'like' a character in order to feel empathy, and to be able to distinguish the 'tragedy', is absolutely your prerogative... but for me personally, I've never really had to like a character (in terms of me finding them personally likeable), and I don't particularly think that's a consideration/requirement of the writer in this instance... For example, I wouldn't particularly want to be friends with Travis Bickle, Michael Coreleone or even Bruce Wayne, but I absolutely understand that these characters have other things going on in their lives that underpin/shape their actions, which makes me empathise with them... even if I don't agree with their methods etc.... Saying that, whilst Anakin's story is ultimately one of how someone who isn't innately evil turns into a monster, I do get than he also has to be accessible in order for general audiences to engage with the story... but IMO, that Lucas managed to make Darth Vader even remotely relatable (in terms of understanding the bad choices he made), is a significant achievement on Lucas' part, and that of the PT, and is something that is lost on many people (even those that broadly like Anakin in the PT).

 

Bad choices to the extent of killing children, several other dozen Jedi you grew up with and living with Palpatine for years in a ruthless empire system? Don't think a nice person would suddenly do that one day. A nice person tortured by enslavement, war and visions are more likely to commit suicide than cut a deal with some devil and willingly murder thousands of people.

They must have some signs of psychopathy from the start to make it believable like I said.

I cared about Kylo and thought his angst and conflict was well done. Looks like you didn't care, you seem to be taking the bad writing of the PT and saying all characters with conflict are bad. PT Anakin being poorly received by people was because of bad writing by Lucas, not because he had a darker edge or something.

On the other hand Kylo was well-received and is considered the best character of the sequels by a lot of people. The difference is better writing.

 

The difference is that Kylo is a rather one-dimensional character that was designed to please people who want to feel like adults when they watch Star Wars while Anakin is the opposite.
No matter what one thinks of the acting or the dialogue, Anakin is more believably alive; a living, breathing, complex person whose personality and decisions we can understand since we know what's behind them - because there actually is something behind them. He's relatable that way (even if we don't like him or agree with his decisions and reasoning).

Kylo, by contrast, is just a lot of effect without cause. Apparently, a lot of people like that. I guess it makes them feel smart that they're told to read between the lines all the time - even (especially?) when the space between the lines is miles wide.

 

Better writing? Okay, you saw a version of the ST that I didn’t. The difference is that a whole bunch of people like Adam Driver and think he’s a good actor. Those fans write the movies for RJ and JJ, who can’t cobble together a believable conflict or reason why Kylo does anything. If you don’t like Driver, like me, Kylo is a disaster of a character even before he murders Han - and that seals the deal. He has no motives and no reason why I should care. He’s a privileged jerk who was in a position of power and then threw it all away to be in the First Order because….yeah, they conveniently didn’t tell us. It’s a blank canvas to throw your own thoughts against and mine are that Leia should have never told Han to go after him and when she did, he should have shot first and saved the Galaxy.

 

I'd argue the liking of Kylo isn't a reflection of the quality of the writing of the character, but a reflection of what the audience wants to see in him. Because there is barely much writing for the character. I think he's a vessel for the interpretations and expectations of fans to be poured into, with little to no real depth, goals, motives or origins, as a character.

Anakin, on the other hand, had all those things. He is a better written character. But I think not one some fans chose to engage with liking. So no, Kylo has no better writing than Anakin. He's certainly not the best character.

 

LOL. Most people believe the ST to be excruciatingly bad… there’s nothing ‘well written’ in it at all really. I think the design of Kylo Ren’s costume was well received, and fans tend to appreciate that aspect of it… but that’s damning by faint praise. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is probably one of the thinnest drawn villains in all of Star Wars (he makes Dooku look Shakespearean in contrast (and I like Dooku, I just thought he was under-utilised). Kylo is effectively reduced to a man child villain 15 mins into TFA, which significantly reduces the drama/peril (the ST having very little), and is never elevated above a 2nd tier villain. He has very little motivation, little function (other than at the most rudimentary level) and his utility is compromised from start to end.

 

But Anakin is not Vader in the PT, so I don’t think Lucas should get awards for making a young human protagonist across three films “remotely relatable.” That’s arguably the bare minimum expectation.

 

Awards? Maybe not. Stonger constructed than Kylo? I think so.

 

The point isn’t that Anakin is relatable in the PT, but that his characterisation/depiction works to make the audience better understand Vader’s actions in the OT. The PT completely, and successfully IMO, recontextualises Vader of the OT, to make him a much more tragic version than he was originally… and that’s mostly because of how Anakin is written and portrayed.

 

That’s a very low bar, though. Kylo is barely a character.

 

Hey, far stronger constructed than that is something I can go with. How does 1 old man with a computer over 20 years ago do better than a multi-billiondollar corporation? It's preposterous man.

 

That is a low bar, yet still one that the sequels failed to reach, though of course sequel fans would dispute that.

What is clear is how... empty of a character Kylo is, especially compared to prequel Anakin and OT Vader. At both stages in his life, there was plenty for Anakin to do, people he could interact with, challenges he could work on. During the prequels he was training (and clashing with) Obi-wan while being manipulated by Palpatine, then fighting in the Clone Wars. During the OT Vader is hunting down Rebels, plotting against Palpatine and slowly changing after finding out about Luke.

Whereas there's not much for Kylo to do, not many plots for writers to mine. He was a jerk at the academy, the Knights of Ren don't have much detail to them (a four-issue comic series is not much content), and he already got rid of his master so no higher position to try and seize (until Palpatine comes back out of nowhere). There's not even much of a war going on during the sequels for him to wage as the New Republic is wiped out near instantly and the Resistance is way, way outmatched.

Not like there's much ways to set up Kylo's TRoS get out of jail free card since Leia just does something and dies. Nor does Kylo has anyone left that could get him to hesitate. Despite my low opinion of the sequels, I figured Disney would have been pushing sequel character stories, yet there's barely any media (comics, novels, cartoons), not while the sequels were in progress or in the years since.

Its easy to write stories for someone like Poe since he's got lots of problems to deal with (fighting the First Order, trying to recruit allies, etc.), yet Kylo's had an easy life (no more Snoke and Rey spares him), so not much else for writers to do anything with him. And that's not even getting into how vile Kylo is (we already saw how violent and short-tempered he was, then he moves on to patricide).

If the character of Kylo really was that popular, you'd think there would be more media for fans to buy, yet there hasn't been much in the years since. It'd be nice for someone to try to do something with Kylo's life, so that it won't have been all a waste (look at what they've done with Dooku's backstory more recently) but they'd probably have to rewrite a lot of things to try to lay out even a semi-coherent arc. And I hope they come up with something for the next movie's villain to do, before we end up with someone like Kylo again.

 

Correction: most of the fandom thinks the ST to be excruciatingly bad. Both TFA and TLJ got a very positive response from critics and general audiences.

 

Let me be more accurate. The popular consensus, both within fandom and elsewhere, is that the ST is poor. Which is why, even if one is neutral or generally positive towards them, one usually perceives them to be unpopular. It’s a bit like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which most people perceive as being bad, but actually got quite good reviews at the time (77% critics score on RT), and was a financial success. Now as a film, I don’t think it’s half as bad as people say (and for the most part I enjoy it), but I don’t think I’ve ever met another person who admitted they liked it, or believed it a good film.

it’s a bit of a strange phenomena, but it’s possible for a film to be both popular, whilst building a consensus of it being bad/inferior. And regardless of whether one likes the films or not, regardless of their technical flaws or merits, the ST was still (generally speaking) popular with audiences… hence the box office… but which of course diminished from one film to the next as audiences began to fall away.

 

Positive responses doesn't make it good.

 

No, but it does mean that a lot of people disagree with your opinion that it isn't good.

 

The question is what most people think. A positive response is the same as thinking it’s good. Nobody knows exactly how many people thought the sequels were good or bad, but it’s true the the first two got generally positive critical reviews, which is all that was said, not implying that any opinion is correct.

 

Them disagreeing doesn't change anything, all by itself.

I may have initially overlooked the context of the post in them replying to someone saying what most people believe. I was wrong for my misunderstanding.

However, they themselves seem to be stating, I think in a blanketed way, that it got a very positive response from general audiences, a claim which they also, as you suggest here, can't possibly corroborate, as they can't know the feelings of all general audience members. Not just critical reviews.