Ahmed Best on the ST

[Moon Ronin]

Well, that's the Alliance/Empire conflict who has always interested me more in Star Wars than anything concerning the Force really.

I've liked the stories that or sort of on the outside of it. I really liked Solo because it was something different than intergalactic war and wasn't force focused.

I really didn't have an issue with the force ghost and them being able to use the force, When Obi-Wan told Vader that if he was struck down he would come back more powerful than he could imagine, just to come back and give advice and stuff kind of seemed like a let down on the more powerful bit. Wasn't really big on the force "Skype" but to reach out to some one through the force over space like Vader force chocking from one ship to another is there. Objects through force dose seem a bit out there though.

[godisawesome]

I'm genuinely curious as to whether Abrams originally wanted Kylo Ren to be redeemed. Because it really seems like they were setting him up as a contrast to Vader with Han's death. Appeal to family sensibilities didn't work. But TLJ has him still very conflicted about Leia.

With Vader, the concept is you start with the fully formed villain, and then gradually peel back the layers to reveal the good man buried deep inside. It seemed like Kylo was the reverse arc--he starts out kind of sort of conflicted, but killing Han seals his fate. It's like if Vader had killed Luke at the Emperor's request.

So I feel like, initially at least, TFA was setting up the ST to subvert the traditional expectation of a Skywalker redeemed through family connections. If they had followed through with that, it actually would have succeeded where TLJ failed (which supposedly tried to subvert, but pretty much set things up according to the formula: Kylo being redeemable, and the heroes in an ESB cliffhanger.)

Or maybe--there was no plan?

Have wondered about that myself, esp. since he wrote TFA Kylo who seemed to be the most evil version of the character in the trilogy.

I feel like if Abrams had control of the characters from start to finish, Kylo would have been the big bad and Rey would have been revealed to be his sister or cousin.

So you'd have Skywalker vs. Skywalker for the family legacy.

Since I consider “faith in the mythology” to include operatic musings on fate, the Force, fate, and the burden of family history, I didn’t really see any way to embrace that side of mythology other than to have Rey be a Skywalker/Solo - Kylo’s derivative by himself, since by his lonesome he can only be a twist in the Vader/Anakin character, and only really in two ways: either he plays the character straight with a redemption, or he stays evil, all alone he can’t provide anything new himself.

This is also because I think he’s constructed too lightly to actually have that much substance himself - he’s built more to enhance someone else’s story, not to have them enhance his.

...And not uncoincidentally, I think Rey was built more to exploit Kylo as her contrast and spiritual threat to her than she was to be his partner, companion, and pseudo-romantic interest. Even without any any relation to him, Rey is composed to be the opposite of Kylo and to offer interesting spiritual questions - he had a privileged life compared to her deprived one, and he has no good reasons to be evil while she has plenty of reason to be tempted to violence and the dark side... and they’re almost all derived from him. If she was just Rey Random, but Luke’s final student, you could actually do a lot to struggle with the theme of legacy, inheritance, succession, and the Force...

...And if you made her a Skywalker, than you get all of that added into the formula along with a possible reverse of either Luke’s story (Rey has to track down her light side father and then struggles with feelings of being abandoned vs Luke being tracked down by his dark side father and dealing with a desire to reconcile with him) or what the original storyline probably was for the female Jedi hero (trying to redeem a fallen brother).

Weirdly enough, I think Kylo’s chances of getting redeemed and staying alive would have increased if Rey were related to him - because then she would be the “standard bearer” for the family story and LFL wouldn’t have to worry about him overshadowing her, and his redemption could become its own story at a later time, if need be. I also believe now that Driver’s comments about the character having a planned ahead of time may actually be true - I think that Kathleen Kennedy and LFL kept on thinking of him as the original male lead “Skylar Solo” who was Rey’s companion/likely brother, and who fell in the first movie instead of starting out as evil, which lends itself more clearly to a. Redemption arc than what Kylo actually had.

[Pinsir]

Agreed, modern Star Wars is all about bloodlines now, basically eugenics.

[godisawesome]

Agreed, modern Star Wars is all about bloodlines now, basically eugenics.

It’s hilariously weird how much the first half of the Disney era *doesn’t do that*, before TLJ comes along and kind of marks the shift towards bloodlines.

TFA is more about Rey making a found family with Finn and Han before privileged pretty boy Kylo starts trying to destroy her new family and his old one, and where he’s basically an unworthy heir symbolically disinherited by the Force itself.

Rebels launched with totally new and unrelated characters *also* forming their own family unit, with Vader and a Leia as guest stars only.

Rogue One comes out, with an all new group of characters, then Vader just had another (awesome) guest appearance.

Then TLJ drops in and drop kicks Finn out of the lead male role to replace him with both Luke and Kylo, before having Kylo tell Rey that her parents were nobodies, thus she’s nothing, and kick her out of the climax, before arguing that Luke doing a glorified puppet show is more key to inspiring the Galaxy than everyone who died and everything destroyed in TFA.

And then LFL fires Trevorrow and drops his story where Kylo’s the main villain and opponent and demands a story where Ben Solo gets redeemed and fights someone else, which Abrams provides but tries to counter from making Ben the main character by making Rey related to the returning Palpatine. And before TROS is released, we get the only box office bomb in the era centered on explain how Han became Han.