Kellythatsit said:
I think you mean “I’ve been waiting for you Obi-Wan, we meet again at last.”Similar but different enough. I wouldn’t consider it fan service though, maybe an echo or a soft reference to the earlier duel.
If everything, a strange echo. Who would greet his father that way?
That’s the point I think. Kylo Ren doesn’t see him as his father any more.
The whole kill the mentor thing was was quite a rehash of ANH’s moment, with the major flaw of a more dramatic scenario for a far less important moment (Jedi Anakin Skywalker, known as Darth Vader, responsible for the destruction of the Jedi Order and the implementation of a galaxy-wide tyranny meets his former friend and master Jedi General and hero of the Clone Wars Obi Wan Kenobi in a random fluorescent-lighted corridor in the Death Star vs. unknown Ben Solo kills his famous yet-muggle father based on an unexplained resentment due to the orders of an unexplained supreme leader in an expressionist bridge in the middle of an unexplained abysss which has a single stream of light that baths the character that is supposed to be good while the rest is in darkness. As much as a videogame scenario as mustafar, actually.
To be fair though you’d have to agree that when we first saw it, the initial duel between Vader and Obi-Wan had barely any of the weight you are loading it with now. In 1977 we didn’t know that Vader was Anakin. All we knew was from a short conversation earlier in the movie. Vader was once Obi-Wan’s pupil, he killed Luke’s father, he helped hunt down the Jedi. Obi-Wan was once a Jedi knight, he fought in the clone wars and he was friends with Luke’s father. That’s it. Vader’s motivations are still largely unknown, Ben’s history is largely unknown.
To say that the latter scene is simply a rehash is to completely misunderstand the scene entirely. Not only is it a pivotal moment for Kylo Ren’s character it also creates gravitas and a tragic depth that was not present after Kenobi’s death.
The death of the mentor character does seem to be a continuing device in each of the trilogies. Each of them though are significant, course changing moments. To simply highlight one as a rehash or some kind of fan service seems wilfully dismissive.