The whole Kylo Ren/Rey connection was a swing/miss

[MASTER-OF-SUPRISE]

Would he have even known how? Rey was using old Jedi texts he didn't have access to.



Why couldn't Ben not interfere with Luke's duel with Vader on Bespin?

Wait Rey summoned them? I thought it was just them showing up. Also I literally asked your second question. Back then I thought it was just that the ghost interact with anything physical. However Yoda clearly proves that wrong.

[godisawesome]

Wait Rey summoned them? I thought it was just them showing up. Also I literally asked your second question. Back then I thought it was just that the ghost interact with anything physical. However Yoda clearly proves that wrong.

Rey is shown trying to call them up in some way in her very first scene, likely because Abrams didn’t want to have the Avengers: Endgame-esque scene come out of nowhere or seem blatantly copied. Showing her trying to do this earlier allowed them to have the scene and say it was setup earlier.

Now, to be honest, their ability to interfere with the fight is kind of just the most natural progression of TLJ showing Yoda summoning lightning and Luke raising the X-Wing in TROS - their able to do a so things as Force Ghosts, and it nicely facilitates the desire of LFL add yet another tie to the other six films outside of the ST, though if you ask me, just going with Rey Skywalker would still have been better in every way.

The thing about that scene that gets me to side eye it hard is her “dying” afterwards, seemingly for no good reason. I mean, both she and “Ben” got drained by Palpatine when their plot-coupon/artificial excuse for a relationship/Force Dyad got revealed to him... but Ben managed to survive a fall down a hole and then climb his way back up and commit some necromancy, so I don’t see any real good reason why Rey using some Force Pull and holding the lightsabers up while Palpatine shoots himself in the face is supposed to be too much for her.

It feels like a contrived excuse to make a Snow White/Sleeping Beauty type of damsel in distress so that Ben gets another excuse to pretend he’s a worthwhile male lead as resurrect her... kind of like how Palpatine’s motivations changed three times in five minutes and he gave us a lot of totally new and contrived exposition to try and make it so Ben’s arrival would be needed for Rey to win.

[Godzilla2099]

Rey: Overpowered, made no mistakes, had the personality of white bread

Kylo Ren: Other than a cool weapon and costume (when he took his mask off it went down hill for him). Nobody took Kylo Ren seriously. The theater was laughing when he yelled "Traitor!" at Finn. Also getting his butt handed to him by somebody who never picked up a lightsaber didn't help his case.

Overall, the new trilogy was a hot mess. The story had no real direction and none of these new characters were interesting.

[Jackalope89]

Rey: Overpowered, made no mistakes, had the personality of white bread

Kylo Ren: Other than a cool weapon and costume (when he took his mask off it went down hill for him). Nobody took Kylo Ren seriously. The theater was laughing when he yelled "Traitor!" at Finn. Also getting his butt handed to him by somebody who never picked up a lightsaber didn't help his case.

Overall, the new trilogy was a hot mess. The story had no real direction and none of these new characters were interesting.

Finn started out interesting, and then got derailed after Force Awakens.

[Moon Ronin]

Why couldn't Ben not interfere with Luke's duel with Vader on Bespin?

I think this is where Lucas dropped the ball here. When Obi-Wan said to Vader that "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine".... by becoming a ghost and talking... George could have done more. I for one kind of like that the force ghost showed that they were more than that in the new trilogy with out being used as a major plot device.

[ChrisIII]

Regarding the Finn thing, curiously I think they shot a scene with Finn already recovered and helping with the bomber squadron, and perhaps feeling some guilt for what happened to Rose's sister as a way to introduce her; Instead of entering the movie a bit later just recovering from his coma and running around in a bacta suit.

There's some evidence of this, the Sizzle reel for TLJ shows Boyega, although it's a bit unclear especially since his hair is different.

Here's a Reedit thread about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthan...ck_down_in_an/

[godisawesome]

Rey: Overpowered, made no mistakes, had the personality of white bread

Kylo Ren: Other than a cool weapon and costume (when he took his mask off it went down hill for him). Nobody took Kylo Ren seriously. The theater was laughing when he yelled "Traitor!" at Finn. Also getting his butt handed to him by somebody who never picked up a lightsaber didn't help his case.

Overall, the new trilogy was a hot mess. The story had no real direction and none of these new characters were interesting.

I think both Rey and Kylo exited TFA in a place that could be great - but only provided the next film had the right perspective of them, and knew what their stories needed, especially for their personal conflict.

Rey *had* struggled against Kylo in most of their scenes, and only beat him when he was shot in the stomachs, wounded int he shoulder, going through a full emotional breakdown, and still taking it easy on her, and that after Finn had to hold him off for a few minutes while Rey recovered from being one-shotted into a tree at the start of the fight by Kylo. And she had room for improvement at the end of TFA, particularly in the less feat-based and more philosophy based parts of being a Jedi... and she coincidentally happened to have the perfect setup to have to struggle with wrath and the darkside. Against Kylo, the dude who tortured and violated her mind, killed one friend, and maimed another.

Kylo *was* set up to be an unsettlingly realistic Neo-Nazi type villain, a truly loathsome scumbag, with powers we hadn’t seen yet, and his own potential as a rising villain in counter to Rey. He was a fanatic capable fo some things even Vader wouldn’t do. He was also arguably setup to be an anatgonist in a genuine “Villain’s Journey” of sinking further into evil and threat level. He’d suck as a protagonist, but as an antagonist he could still work very well.

Both characters had great potential... but only really in dynamic and confrontational arcs against each other, and with a mind to have their next confrontation almost certainly end with Kylo delivering the traditional second act defeat to Rey.

The absolute worst thing they could get would be stagnant and static arcs that would try to make them into protagonistic partners, particularly of that story embraced weak interpretations of them or enforced some kind f absurd double standards that their predecessors didn’t have to deal with.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what TLJ gave them. TLJ looks at Kylo, mass murdering patricide and fanatical narcissist, and thinks: “Damn! This dude is super easy to empathize with! The only thing keeping him from seeming sympathetic and attractive to Rey? Saying ‘Luke started it!’ while recounting the night he murdered all his fellow classmates! Growth as a villain? Oh sure, we’ll make him the Suroeme Leader, but more because of how annoying I find Snoke. Kylo’s great just where he is!” Then it looked at Rey and said “Ooh! A plot tool! Someone who can be an audience stand in so Luke can explain his man pain and help Kylo’s story move forward! Oh wait, she’s supposed to be the lead... eh, I’ll just establish her as even more freakishly powerful, make it clear she needs no training and decide her dark side temptation is Adam Driver shirtless in high waisted pants!”

That’s how you get a Kylo who is simultaneously pathetic and loathsome - because the script thinks he’s already sympathetic even as a human garbage fire - and a Rey who is simultaneously over-powered but unbelievably dumb and lifeless - because no real human being would be as open and ulitmately friendly towards Kylo as she is if they went through what she went through.

Also, on a related note, the *only* useful thing about those character decisions going forward? Kylo as the Supreme Leader - for which being viewed sympathetically is arguably more of a liability than an advantage... and something LFL ordered dropped for IX because it would make Ben getting redeemed harder... which, also on a related note, probably had as much, if not more to do with TLJ deciding Kylo was just fine as the last Skywalker.

Regarding the Finn thing, curiously I think they shot a scene with Finn already recovered and helping with the bomber squadron, and perhaps feeling some guilt for what happened to Rose's sister as a way to introduce her; Instead of entering the movie a bit later just recovering from his coma and running around in a bacta suit.

There's some evidence of this, the Sizzle reel for TLJ shows Boyega, although it's a bit unclear especially since his hair is different.

Here's a Reedit thread about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthan...ck_down_in_an/

I’ll raise you one on that: Johnson reportedly described his whole reason for cutting the scene in the Art of TLJ book as being because he knew giving Finn a tie to Paige would require actual drama in his relationship with Rose - and he “didn’t want to write it.”

Of course he was also a guy who reportedly didn’t put Finn and Poe on the same mission because he found them too similar. Read that again. He looked at a deserting Sotrmtrooper torn from his family and deprived of a name by a fascist regime and thought he was too similar to the son of freedom fighters who’d lived most of his life in a democratic Galaxy.

Rian Johnson had no idea what made Finn interesting, or what potential the character had. If I can be blunt, looking at the meat of TLJ for him, I think the only thing he though about Finn was that he was in the way for the Rey and Kylo story Johnson wanted to tell - thus why Rose is such a lackluster character who seems to exist primarily to be a not-Rey love interest for Finn.

[WebLurker]

Wait Rey summoned them? I thought it was just them showing up.

Yeah, the "Be with me" mantra we see her trying and failing in her first scene. That's the whole point of it. Granted, I have no idea if she only learned it from the Jedi texts (or if it was something that Luke figured out post-ROTJ, taught it to Leia, who passed it onto Rey), but the point is there's nothing to indicate that characters in the previous movies knew how to do this or that this skill even existed.

Also I literally asked your second question. Back then I thought it was just that the ghost interact with anything physical. However Yoda clearly proves that wrong.

Fair enough, but the way I see it, the idea that Force ghosts don't always directly help, if at all, was established long before TLJ. Heck, even in TROS, where Rey gets a boost from several or more past Jedi, it's still her doing the heavy lifting and actually taking on Palpatine (no Lord of the Rings dead army here).

[ChrisIII]

What's kind of curious is that ROTS kind of implied that Qui-Gon discovered how to be a ghost and somehow passed that knowledge to Yoda, and then Obi-Wan etc. Anakin/Vader isn't quite clear, although I think some EU said that Obi-Wan somehow 'helped' him at the moment of death somehow.

However in ROS we have some Jedi voices who presumably had no knowledge of the technique (I'm guessing Luke presumabely got the knowledge either from Obi-Wan or his own research, passed it to Leia and possibly Ben etc)-Mace, for example. However, we only hear their voices, they don't physically show up, and it's questionable if one is dead at all (Ashoka).


Then again the whole thing doesn't quite make sense because Qui-Gon's body didn't vanish in the first place....


Could just be the "Anybody can be a force ghost" that everybody assumed before Lucas tried to explain it.

[Jackalope89]

What's kind of curious is that ROTS kind of implied that Qui-Gon discovered how to be a ghost and somehow passed that knowledge to Yoda, and then Obi-Wan etc. Anakin/Vader isn't quite clear, although I think some EU said that Obi-Wan somehow 'helped' him at the moment of death somehow.

However in ROS we have some Jedi voices who presumably had no knowledge of the technique (I'm guessing Luke presumabely got the knowledge either from Obi-Wan or his own research, passed it to Leia and possibly Ben etc)-Mace, for example. However, we only hear their voices, they don't physically show up, and it's questionable if one is dead at all (Ashoka).


Then again the whole thing doesn't quite make sense because Qui-Gon's body didn't vanish in the first place....


Could just be the "Anybody can be a force ghost" that everybody assumed before Lucas tried to explain it.

I thought Clone Wars (the series) covered this? Obi-Wan and Yoda (I don't remember if Anakin was there) come across a bunch of crystals, as well as Qui-Gonn's ghost. Which is where the Force Ghost thing comes from.