Originally Posted by
godisawesome
If that particular phraseology is forbidden, I apologize, and I’ll confess to trying to use it for some particular venom; the scene was definitely coded and played as an intimate violation as well as torture, in a way that Liea’s torture was not, and I find most attempts to obfuscate on it to be full of moral relativism, condescension and “soft” on Kylo.
But the issue is not with the concept of Kylo getting redeemed after everything. The issue is how that played in his interactions with Rey, or rather how it didn’t get played, and how there’s an inequity that he benefits from while other characters, including Rey *and* Finn, and a perfect example of the double standard that other characters suffered from while Kylo became the main focus of LFL for the ST possibly because he was the “expected” white male protagonist.
I mean, it wasn’t Leia who was in the storyline about redeeming Vader, and it’s not like Luke’s approach to his father was presented as a naive gamble unsupported by anything else, and in fact pretty much all of Star Wars material touching on Leia and Vader have maintained a frosty attitude from her towards him, and since at no point was Leia portrayed as falling for a mass murderer or coming to sympathize with them over everyone else, and since even Luke clearly prioritized others over his father and himself, and was even cajoled into attacking and nearly killing Vader when Leia was threatened...
...It’s not so much the concept of Ben Solo getting redeemed that matters, as much as the story forsaking any and all dramatic impediments and opposing viewpoints to his redemption, often at the expense of other characters and even the themes of Star Wars. If nothing Kylo did in his TFA story was worthy of changing his possible redemption, than why does one line from Finn (“I’m just here for Rey”) that’s contradicted by his actions (coming back to Han before Rey is captured when he sees the Hosnian System go up, prioritizing the mission on SKB over Rey’s safety) need to define his entire character arc in TLJ, and why is he punished for caring about Rey... and perhaps for being too good of a screen companion for her?
Unlike Leia, Rey was made to treat Kylo as a sympathetic character in TLJ after nothing more than one quick scene where she shoots at him, and the film basically leapfrogs over him killing Han and doesn’t even consider his actions against her or Finn worthy of conflict between them. And LFL fully invested in that over everything else; hell, they never even made a serious case for why Rey would find Kylo attractive or sympathetic even if he weren’t the monster who assaulted her and murdered/maimed her friends.
That’s the part that’s bullshit between Rey and Kylo.
The part that’s bullshit with Finn and Kylo is the simple, unarguable fact (to me) that Finn was introduced, established, and fleshed out as a complex character with a unique backstory and potential as the male lead in TFA... and then got shoved aside for a Kylo Ren and Ben Solo who never progressed beyond the shallow and contemptible cardboard cutout he was in TFA.
I mean, it feels all but explicit to me that Johnson and LFL outright rejected Boyega and his MVP-caliber work in TFA as the male lead in exchange for a character who simply didn’t have anything over him... except a last name, and “conventional” favoritism that most optimistically was all founded on that name and therefore undermined a Rey entirely, and more pessimistically involved some systemic racism.
At no point did Ben Solo or Kylo Ren ever amount to half of what Finn was in TFA, even as LFL seemed to deliberately try to undercut and downgrade Finn not just in other movies but in expanded universe work as well.
And as an addendum to that... if you want to know a big part of Rey’s problem, it’s that a capable, complimentary co-Star in Finn was supplanted by a parasitic character in Kylo. Everything about their writing post-TFA lowered her complexity and dramatic appeal, whereas her interactions with Finn in TFA had helped sell her magnificently.