I really liked Kylo Ren in both movies too, but TFA Kylo and TLJ Kylo feel like they’re not even the same incarnation of the character. I do love him in both TFA and TLJ though.
Really? I’m interested to hear why. I feel like his overall arc between two movies is compelling and really well bridged. Everything that motivates him and drives him seems consistent throughout and he plays it as such. I’ll admit that him in the Last Jedi is so much better than him in TFA, but mainly cause of the richer material that the character had to work with in the middle installment of the trilogy.
I was being a bit hyperbolic. Rian apparently decided to ignore the Vader wannabe aspect of the character, which was a major part of Kylo, so that kind of passes the message that he wanted to just not care as much about consistency to me.
I should rewatch TLJ and TFA maybe back to back once I get my TLJ Blu-ray and think more about the matter, but yeah, that’s mainly what I’m talkig about. I believe there’s more but I can’t think of anything right now.
He didn’t ignore that aspect at all, it’s a big part of his character in TLJ.
I do recall two scenes where they address it - the first Snoke x Kylo scene, and the one where he destroys his helmet
Which informs his later actions.
Those scenes are where Kylo stops being what everyone is afraid of/hopes he is (Vader’s Legacy, which he wasn’t very good at pretending to be) and becomes himself, which is actually a little bit closer to Vader than he was before. And, honestly, much scarier than his previous Vader-wannabe persona.
Everyone comparing him to Vader his whole life has made him into what he is now.
Exactly exactly. First it was Luke trying to make him not Vader, then Snoke trying to make him nuVader. What he does here is “kill the past,” and forges his own path.
Yeah, I meant to mention that’s why he’s suddenly so into “killing the past.” Every time he destroys or loses a part of his past, he’s able to be more himself. He’s lived his whole life under the spectre of Vader: whether people were trying to exploit his lineage or suppress it. Luke and Leia were afraid of it, Snoke wanted to control that power for his own. He’s never been allowed to be himself, and once Snoke is dead, he’s suddenly freed from another part of that past and he realizes “if I can get rid of all of this, I’ll be free from this expectation.”
That’s why Rey is so important to him: she’s nobody. She doesn’t care where he came from, she’s not interested in his lineage. She’s an outsider and really the first person to see him as him and not “Vader’s Heir.”