darth_ender said:
I seem to recall a great deal of Star Wars lore indicating that the dark side is the quick and easy path, wherein its weilders often learn powerful tricks swiftly, but at the cost of other skills, particularly with self mastery. I could easily see a Dark user like Kylo Ren, who is clearly powerful and talented, but also immature and lacking in self control, performing such a potent move, but in a rage motivated battle losing to someone inherently stronger.

Ren wasn’t characterized as a pretender in the rest of the film though. That’s the problem. He wasn’t consistently portrayed as some weak wannabe. His power was virtually unlimited until the ending, and then at the end, it’s suddenly not. The excuse “well he wasn’t fully trained yet” is just dumb. It’s like retconning within the same film.

Look at Luke in Empire Strikes Back. He’s not fully trained, but was he badass Return of the Jedi Luke throughout the movie? No! Luke grows throughout the entire film, and yet he’s still always portrayed as not good enough. Luke succeeds in doing this. He succeeds in doing that. And yet, from the beginning of the film all the way until the climax, the message is always present that HE … IS … NOT … READY.