ST Were you disappointed that Rey and Finn's relationship never became anything romantic?

Aesthetically, it seems to me that what they were going for with Adam and Kylo Ren was very much a kind of anime type villain. Like Vicious from Cowboy BeBop or Uchiha Madara from Naruto, something like that. Even the name Kylo Ren is very anime.

 

Oh I Love Adam. Like I said, easily the best performance of the sequels. Not even close. And yes, tastes are subjective. Nothing in ANY of these movies is the fault of the performers. Its on the writing & creative teams. Usually is!

 

I was not disappointed that Rey and Finn did not become romantic. I was disappointed that Rey and Ben did become romantic.

 

Where was the last couple posts criticizing Adam Driver?

 

The entire forum is littered with them, sadly.
@zackm - but did they?
They shared a kiss which LF and novel author Rae Carson both said was a kiss of gratitude. When you look back on the entire ST any 'romance' was one sided. I'm pretty sure Ben Solo loved Rey, but I don't for one minute think she reciprocated those feelings. She went to the Supremacy in TLJ to get him to win the war for the Resistance, not to save him from the dark side, as Luke went to save his dad. She healed him on the Death Star because she was afraid that killing him would turn her to the dark side. She did not mourn his death. At the end of the novel it's stated that she 'would have liked to have got to know him', rather than that she grieved for him.

The only time we got a hint of a 'romance' between two characters was Finn/Rose in TLJ. Which was thoroughly quashed by Abrams in TROS.

There was zero romance in the ST. Rey did not need a boyfriend.

 

Hurrah. Somebody else who spots it. You are correct, the sequel trilogy is indeed devoid of romance. This idea that Rey 'fixes' Kylo via romance is an interpretation which doesn't really stack up to me.

 

To me, that does indeed describe a profound connection of two people who find each other, but if it is supposed to be romantic, it skirts around the usual things you might expect to read. It's all very aloof.

'Gratitude and acknowledgment' are quite "cold" descriptions to describe two people who kiss who are in love or have romantic feelings for each other. You would expect to actually read words like "love" and "passion" etc

Also, she doesn't mourn him, or show any kind of sadness when he dies / disappears.

The kiss was a real odd move on JJ Abrams' part. A simple nod of gratitude or relief or acknowledgment would have worked better, and would have been in keeping with the rest of their dynamic.

 

It feels like two separate ideas pitching against one another. I've said it before about Rey in that she appears to have been written as a very unromantic / non-sexual character, without a hint of romantic appeal.

 

Rae Carson has joked about the 'kiss of gratitude' thing on twitter. The obvious implication was that yes, its romantic, and the focus by some on 'kiss of gratitude' devoid of its surrounding context was misconceived.



(and of course it is, the kiss is clearly romantic and is intended to be. It's plain as day in the performance and the direction)

Also, it should not at all be controversial that Kylo and Rey's interactions in TLJ have a clear romantic subtext, and this was quite intentional on the part of Johnson (see: the deleted scene where Luke tells Rey she's opening herself to the dark side "over a pair of pretty eyes [Kylo's eyes]") - Abrams clearly picked up on it and carried it forward. People (especially much-maligned shippers) didn't imagine it or invent something that wasn't there in TLJ.

 

I....think the kiss was a sop to reylos, 'look, he's kissed the girl, are you satisfied now?'

And ironically....we weren't. I am a Ben/Kylo fan more than a reylo fan, but almost every die hard reylo I know would have preferred a live Ben to the kiss any day. Including me.

 

Yeah it feels like a "Pander to all, please none" type situation that they ended up in.

 

I agree with everything you've noted and I agree that the romance was one sided...up until the kiss. Frankly, I don't buy the "kiss of gratitude" bit. The visual cues in that scene say otherwise.

 

She did reciprocate them.

According to Rian Johnson:

"Je voulais qu'on reste du point de vue de la jeune femme: je souhaitais qu'on puisse croire á cette romance."

"I wanted us to stay in the young woman's point of view: I wanted us to believe in this romance."
Source: French magazine "Classica" and Google Translate


According to Sariah Wilson, he also confirmed that he saw them as a romance (and, as far as I know, he hasn't challenged that statement)

She also let her hair down and put on a bit of make-up when she mailed herself to the Supremacy. The film also failed to provide a motive for her to spare Kylo Ren in spite of that action being in direct contradiction to what was suppose to her reason for going to him in the first place.

An argument could be made that, after all the awful stuff he'd put her through, Rey's feelings for Kylo Ren died a quick death but the kiss at the end of the Rise of Skywalker contradicts that, especially considering that "platonic gratitude" is rarely, if ever, expressed through a kiss on the lips in real-life and the Sequel Trilogy never bothered to establish that a lip kiss could have this meaning in-universe; a kiss on the lips has, to my knowledge, only ever been used as an expression of romance: Anakin and Padme, Leia and Han, and even Leia kissing Luke was her pretending to be interested in him to annoy Han.

The novelization is Disney's way of trying to walk back on the romance.

 

That I do agree with.
They wanted to please TLJ haters, therefore spent so much of TROS retconning it they forgot to tell a proper story. They gave reylos 'the kiss' to make up for both regressing Kylo's character and killing him off. They killed him off to please his haters. They made Finn force sensitive to please his fans. They turned Luke into a 'noble' Jedi again after the disillusioned man he was in TLJ to please Luke fans.

But...I think the people they did their best to please.....were themselves. Terrio was a HUGE Luke/Leia shipper as a kid, so he put them together as a FG couple in TROS. Whereas to Lucas the Skywalker saga was really Anakin's story, to Terrio the 'original sin' was his children being separated at birth, despite them both having relatively happy, if very different, childhoods. For JJ it was all about Rey. He wanted Rey to be the 'everything', so he put her front and centre to such a degree in TROS just about every other character faded into the background.
It's interesting but a lot of Finn fans were disappointed that his character was given a 'red herring' in TFA when he was shown with a lightsabre, but the actual Force sensitive was Rey. He did exactly the same with Kylo fans and TROS. The title, plus playing a 'triumphant' version of Kylo's theme in the trailer background music, led many Kylo fans think that he would ultimately be redeemed, destroy Palpatine and 'rise'. But the Skywalker who rose was of course.....Rey. And Kylo had nothing to do with Palpatine's destruction, once again.....all Rey. Apparently Kylo was originally intended to disappear down the pit, never to be seen again, but his popularity with those on the SW poll led to a few hasty re shoots, hence his absence as a FG at the end with his mother and uncle.
Ultimately what the entire aim of the ST was to erase the Skywalkers and replace them with new characters. Why JJ chose to give the name to Rey is as big a mystery to me as him choosing to make her a Palpatine. Because the message of the entire saga is...the bad guy wins. His bloodline lives on, the heroes' doesn't. It's like an inverted version of The Stand, only ALL the heroes perish and Randall Flagg's child inherits the earth.

 

TROs retcons TLJ, only so much as TLJ retconned TFA.

And I honestly couldn't have cared less that Kylo faded away peacefully. It was a hollow ending. In fact, that's the worst way he could have gone. After getting a kiss from his girlfriend who spends almost the entire movie/trilogy trying to murder. There's no punishment for him. No pain. No penance. His 'redemption' feels more empty than even Vaders. And they were trying to copy/beat that. I don't even think he says sorry to Rey. He's just a mute character at that point.

 

Good shout on Sephiroth. I keep thinking that an Asian actor in this mould would make for an awesome Star Wars villain. Somebody like Power Rangers actor Yoshi Sudarso maybe?

 

I actually didn't think TLJ 'retconned' TFA.
There were a lot of loose ends left behind. Biggest was why had Luke chosen to exile himself, why did he blame himself ( Han's words), why hadn't he been in touch with his sister. RJ tried to come up with a valid reason and he did.
Regarding Kylo....wow. What sort of punishment would YOU have decided for him?(by the way Rey spent most of the trilogy trying to murder HIM - and in TROS actually succeeded, to quote Jack Sparrow!)

 

Luke left a map in TFA, to the most unfindable place in the galaxy to not be found in TLJ? That's not a retcon?
The FO are last seen escaping for their lives in TFA, but now they 'reign' in TLJ
The Resistance won in TFA, but now there's none of them left and are fleeing for their lives in TLJ. (This worked in ESB, because the Empire still ran the galaxy despite losing their DS. The FO is supposed to be small here. A remnant. But nah, they reign)

There are others too.

And Rey isn't out to murder Kylo. She's out to defend herself. That's a big difference. She's allowed to do that.

What I'd expect for Kylo is the punishment fitting the crime.

Vader was at least remorseful at the end. He asked to see Luke with his own eyes, not the mechanical evil ones. He wanted to see the truth. The light. He knew that as soon as he lifted the Emperor up, it was a death sentence. He did it anyway.

Kylo becomes Ben, and then has nothing more to say for himself. I don't really see his last act as purposefully sacrificial. It's just accidentally sacrificial. I don't see Ben remorseful. I don't see him say sorry to Rey. Or "I was wrong". Instead, he gets his kiss. For being a 'good' boyfriend. And then he makes Rey alive again, yet it kills him for doing it. And that's not even getting into that this come back to life power business is inherently ... un Jedi like. The writers fail to understand that Anakin wanting to save his loved ones from dying is a bad thing. It's a bad power. The Jedi are supposed to be willing to let go of life. That's how you have healthy attachments. You realize that death is a part of things. You don't hang on to it, unnaturally. That they are luminous beings. Not this crude matter that dies. Lol. They didn't even get this one little thing right. And it's obvious.

So maybe something along the lines of, a life time of making things right. Journey around the galaxy trying to fix his wrongs. Lifetime exile on Ahch-to learning who Ben really is. Maybe having his connection to the Force turned off somehow - making him 'mortal' and 'weak' like his father. (And still make him act heroically afterwards) And maybe even death, but one based off a sacrificial act, and one where Ben literally says something close to an apology for being an evil psycho.

Instead they proved just how uncreative they are. And copied the 2 minute Vader redemption as best they could.

 

Implying he didn't repeatedly try to murder her?

In the Force Awakens, he aims for her head during the fight in the forest.

In the Last Jedi, he orders his men to blow her out of the sky and outright tells Luke that he'll destroy her (and this takes place after she chose to spare his life, which he knew she'd done)

Spoiler: Gifs

In the Rise of Skywalker, he tries to run her over with his TIE fighter and later, he goes for her head on the Death Star.

Spoiler: Gifs

 

Look at that murderer. And the other poor dude who's just trying to defend himself from her and rule the galaxy. Why must she unfairly attack him like this.

 

Rey defending herself....against an unarmed man. Who earlier could have killed her....but didn't.

Nice little Jedi, isn't she?