Broom Kid

My problem with the idea of either Kylo or Vader surviving their respective redemptions is that even in a fantasy film universe as wide open as the one Star Wars occurs in - I simply don’t see a future for either character where they’re not immediately murdered as retribution for their crimes, either by the respective governments, or by mob rule. Asking audiences to accept that family members (or possible lovers) can forgive the terrible in those they hold dear is one thing. Asking the rest of that fictional universe to get in line behind them is… a lot. And really, really pushing the suspension of disbelief.

Their only real future along those lines is self-exile. Which was actually pitched in the case of Kylo, but ignored by Abrams as a possibility. Kylo communing with the Force for the rest of his life, in solitude, on Ahch-To makes sense to me. Kylo wandering the galaxy like some sort of do-gooder Ronin? I don’t see it. It’d just be wave after wave of people trying to take him out because of, you know, the whole genocidal dictator thing.

I could see self-exiling either character for literally DECADES, and then being summoned out of that exile as a last ditch “you’re our only hope” sort of hail mary for whoever the heroes of that follow-up story were. i.e. “I know of one man who could help. Maybe. But you’re not gonna like it”

That’s one hell of a long game to play. But it’s probably the only real shot at a plausible “redemption/atonement” storyline for those characters. You need a ton of time and a whole lot of distance from the events of the movie they redeemed themselves in. Give them a chance to become legends/spectres, and then they finally get a chance to do the right thing for the right reaons on a large scale.

But in the case of Kylo… I just don’t see him surviving like 50,000 assassination attempts if he lived past The Rise of Skywalker. He’d have to hide out in a place where no people go for a very, very long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzeIb-TZo_I

I still don’t understand why she wasn’t the “TRAITOR” trooper. Finn loses that fight, but Chewie knocks her out of it with his bowcaster. It doesn’t kill her because of the armor, but it definitely knocks her out. Then they meet up again on Starkiller Base and Finn gets the jump on her.

It would have made the rematch in The Last Jedi a little more meaningful. I really wish Rian Johnson hadn’t deleted that scene where Finn almost starts an uprising right there on the Supremacy, and Phasma shuts it down immediately. I know it saved him like 2 minutes in the edit but MAN that would have been great.

Honestly it’s kind of just Lucas’s narcissism thinking that everyone would just blindly follow what he had laid out for them without having ideas of their own.

I sort of agree but I also think if it’s narcissism, it isn’t entirely unearned. He handpicked Kennedy, and chose to take the company to Iger. He spent the last 5-6 years essentially feeding story ideas to Filoni & Co, who consider it a personal point of pride to be Lucas’ conduit for ideas becoming reality. And before all that was the prequels, where he didn’t exactly have a squad of Yes Men rubber stamping everything he thought of, but he also made it a habit to essentially tell everyone who raised a concern that it didn’t matter because it was his company and ultimately he was going to do what he wanted anyway.

But I do think that the Clone Wars experience might have led directly to his believing Abrams and Arndt (and then Kasdan) were just going to carry his water the way Filoni did. That Clone Wars experience probably fooled him into believing that’s how ALL his hands-off projects would go. That it was owned by Disney wouldn’t make THAT big a difference. They’d still have the meetings once a month and they’d sit around a table and listen to him bloviate about the Force and take his word for what Star Wars is, etc. etc.

I 100% agree that there was an abundance of villains who could have slid into Kylo’s role post-redemption for both of them to face off against, and Palpatine didn’t HAVE to be done the way it was, it could have worked (and I figured the move was so bold that it HAD to be supported by a great take on how he came back, which was a mistake on my part, LOL) in other ways. The potential of this part 3 was abundant! A story where Hux goes completely barking mad and Kylo is redeemed on the way to Rey & Kylo finally taking him down could have worked. A story where Hux pursues his weird Force fetish as in Trevorrow’s script but instead of him comically trying and failing to lift a rock or whatever, THAT weird obsession leads to the resurrection of some ugly monstrous Palpatine-THING at his hands (w/ the help of the Knights of Ren, even) could have also been great. There were a lot of ways that could have gone, and I think a lot of discussion about TROS is going to by default end up a requiem for the failed potential, left unfulfilled. The point you made about Rey’s threat being her own insecurity and unsurety pushing her to the darkside is a great one! And I wish THAT had been made a little more concrete and was done a LOT more cleanly and effectively! And you can see how that’s sort of what they’re TRYING to do by “completing her arc” on Exogol, but it just doesn’t land because it’s all done so poorly, and it’s being sorta/kinda presented as PART of the same thing that leads to Kylo’s redemption, but the two aren’t really linked very strongly at all, and it ends up diminishing BOTH arcs in the end.

We’re both, when we’re not splashing around in the sadness of all this failed storytelling potential as presented in TROS, advocating for the same thing, really: A better, tighter, more clear and thematically satisfying resolution to Rey AND Kylo’s story. We disagree on how to get there in some pretty big ways, and you’re maybe a little more inclined to disqualify some options than I am, but really, we’re more or less starting from the same point: “This could have gone another way, a much more satisfying way, than how it was given to us.”

So far as the Reylo aspect goes, I do honestly feel like the only legitimate romance this trilogy ever had an honest shot at was Poe and Finn. That’s not just shipping wars stuff, those two actors were the only two to have anywhere near the sort of chemistry that Ford and Fisher had in Empire. So if you’re not going to actually get those two together and make the most out of the sparks they were throwing, then I think there probably shouldn’t have been a romantic element to the sequel trilogy AT ALL. To some degree, all the other possible pairings (Finn/Rose, Rey/Kylo, Rey/Poe) just didn’t have it, and it was palpable that it wasn’t really there.

“Just on a basic level though, why does Kylo’s redemption have to be a part of Rey’s story?”

I don’t know how else to answer this for you! LOL. By the point his redemption becomes legitimately viable, it’s firmly her story and he’s HER villain. He’s not a supporting or secondary protagonist. I don’t understand how you possibly make his redemption NOT in service to her story under those circumstances, and those ARE the circumstances by the time his redemption is seriously on the table. It’s not a what-if or a hypothetical at that point. It’s 2 1/2 movies into a 3 movie cycle that is absolutely her story, and his place IN that story is just as firm and absolute. He’s the villain of her story. His redemption needs to be in service to that to be successful.

And even if I grant the argument his redemption as it is serves her story, just the mere fact it serves the story isn’t enough to overcome how poorly it’s done. Just because a thing is baseline done doesn’t mean the doing of it was laudable. The Prequels tried to do a lot of things, and you can argue that those things WERE achieved. But they were largely done poorly. The execution of a storytelling goal is just as important as the arriving at it.

I disagree that Kylo’s potential descent into irretrievable villainy for the third movie is “in direct contradiction” with what came before, but we’ve done that do-si-do, LOL. Kylo Ren’s direction as a character is up in the air after his defeat on Crait. The film itself makes an argument that he could double down on pursuing the dark just as clearly as it makes the case Rey could have turned him. I don’t think a failure to be redeemed in part 3 contradicts anything that’s there in the first two Sequel Trilogy stories. I feel if it directly contradicts anything, it’s that conventional wisdom of “Star Wars” as retconned by Lucas via promoting Anakin’s redemption story as its ultimate “true meaning”. But like I’ve said, I find that conventional wisdom not only to be fundamentally broken, but unnecessarily limiting.

I still don’t understand why redeeming Kylo would have made it his story as much as Rey’s.

I’m not saying that. I’m saying his path to redemption needed to serve her story, ultimately, because the sequel trilogy IS REY’S STORY first and foremost. It’s not his. That’s not a logical leap. It’s not his story, it’s not structured as such, and it doesn’t play that way. It’s her story, and his role as villain is in service to that story. If you’re going to make him a good guy, it needs to happen in a way that resolves her arc just as much (preferably moreso) than his. Otherwise you’re just dividing focus and introducing confusion. This was also a big problem with the prequels, there wasn’t any unified focus to the storytelling.

The redemption of Kylo Ren is poorly done in TROS for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that it doesn’t really serve her story or close any of her arcs. His redemption isn’t a key want of hers as she heads into the finale, so when it happens, it’s not as meaningful as it should have been. Not only is his redemption not done very well, it’s not thematically clear who its for. If it’s for HIM, then it’s out of place because it’s not his story. If it’s for Leia, it’s really out of place because the only way that has any impact is through the audience carrying ALL of the water for Abrams via metatextual familiarity with the series. If it’s for Rey, then it needs to be the last piece that slots into her arc that reallizes it’s successful completion - but the movie tells us THAT happens on Tatooine, when she buries the sabers and takes a last name.

So it’s a redemption that doesn’t have a clearly stated purpose, doesn’t serve a primary thematic need, and isn’t done very well on top of all of that. I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened. I’m saying the way it did happen was very unsatisfactory on a number of levels, and the idea that other possibilities were tossed out before even being explored simply because “that’s not very star wars” was probably a mistake.

Well what I mean when I say “of his own” I mean that it doesn’t have to be in service of another character, which is what you seem to be suggesting it has to be.

I’m suggesting it has to be because the story is REY’S story, not his. He only starts to creep into co-lead status 2/3rds into The Last Jedi. What you’re effectively asking is “why isn’t it Kylo’s story” and my answer is “Because it’s Rey’s.” - and it is. It’s not both of theirs. It’s hers. The “two sides of the same coin” thing got a lot of play, but her side of that coin HAS to be the one that lands face-side up at the end because it’s HER story. And really, the “Two sides of the same coin” comparison only really works as a reflection on, and reference to, Rey as the main character. She’s the focus.

The decision was made to make it her story for TFA, and that decision was underlined in TLJ. Abrams never put in the work, much less did that work well enough, for there to be a solid case that by the third movie, Kylo’s name should sit right next to hers. It COULD HAVE. But I don’t think the case was ever effectively made, and if a lot of that case rests upon the poorly argued precedent that Lucas himself set by trying to awkwardly (and ineffectively) retcon “the meaning of Star Wars” to be ABOUT Anakin’s redemption, then that’s not a good case in and of itself, and that precedent wouldn’t do Kylo’s redemption any favors. And it didn’t.

I’ve never said redemption was impossible. My primary beef is with the notion that redemption was the ONLY possibility, and therefore storyarcs that would have led to Kylo’s character staying firmly villainous were abandoned out of hand. I’m not arguing against redemption so much as I am arguing for the premature and short-sighted nullifying of story possibilities for the sake of adhering to broken conventional wisdom about what “Star Wars really is.”

If they were going to redeem him, it needed to be better than this, more well thought out, and more thematically rich - and it needed to be a key part of REY’S story. They didn’t really do any of that. And if they could have served Rey’s story better without driving towards redemption, but they decided against that for no other reason than “That’s not Star Wars” I feel they shot themselves in the foot a little.

I still don’t buy the idea that the antagonist can’t have an arc of their own

You keep saying I’m saying this but I’m not saying this. He can have an arc of his own. Vader has an arc of his own, but it’s primarily utility is as a supplement to Luke’s. Kylo has an arc of his own in both TFA and TLJ, but that doesn’t mean he’s a main character in either film (although you can argue he’s the co-lead of Last Jedi).

What we’re disagreeing on is the idea that his arc could and should be a PRIMARY storytelling engine. Ultimately, as the villain, his arc needs to be in service to the main character’s (Rey). This happens in TFA and TLJ. It doesn’t really happen the way it needs to in TROS to realize the effect Abrams is hoping to achieve with his redemption.

This isn’t an OT vs ST thing, it’s a basic storytelling structure thing. It’s not specific to Star Wars. The antagonist CAN become the protagonist, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get that antagonist to that point, and it’s got to be done in a way that informs and supports THE MAIN CHARACTER primarily before that transformation can be successfully completed. Otherwise you’re trying to switch horses midstream and it’s almost impossible for that not to play as a disservice to the main character, and to the detriment of your overall story.

I don’t see why Kylo/Ben’s story should matter only in respect to Rey’s. Even if you say Finn’s story in TLJ is supporting, he’s still having a story of his own with its own meaning, separate from Rey’s. These movies have never been about just one character’s story to the exclusion of another.

But I didn’t say “to the exclusion of another” nor did I say that Finn’s story is feeding Rey’s. I said Finn is a supporting character - I didn’t say he doesn’t have his own story arc. Kylo’s story primarily matters in respects to Rey and Finn’s in TFA (and Han and Leia’s, but they’re OBVIOUSLY supporting characters, where Finn is more like a co-lead in that movie) and not so much on his own. It’s the same in TLJ - his story matters most as a reflection on Luke, and as a potential mirror to Rey’s. But his primary utility as a character is to catalyze their actions/reactions. He’s the fuel for what our heroes our doing. He’s not a hero, or even an anti-hero. He’s the villain still.

Villains in these sorts of stories are often catalysts firsts, characters second. Vader is a great example of that - he’s a catalyst primarily that grows into a character just in time for his death to provide the final piece to completing Luke’s arc in that story. It works wonderfully. Kylo is a catalyst with some of the strongest characterization in Star Wars period, villain or not, and it’s great (And Driver makes a meal out of it, and should have been nominated along with Hamill for Last Jedi). But the transition into being a character for his own sake first and foremost never quite happens. If it was going to happen, it would have happened in the third movie, and Abrams couldn’t figure a way to make it work, and so it didn’t. It just didn’t work. And part of that is because for Abrams, character motivations are often secondary to AUDIENCE motivations. He often has characters do things so that their decisions resonate in that sort of “Oh, I recognize that reference” metatextual level before they work on a character level. He absolutely relied on “that’s just Star Wars” a LOT to paper over his bad decision making. That worked for him on TFA where the stakes were lower and the arcs were only beginning. It can’t carry any of the weight he needed it to as an ending, because he’s not doing the work. He’s relying on shortcuts and the faith that the audience will carry the water for him.

I disagree that Last Jedi makes it a fait accompli that Kylo’s getting redeemed, either. it’s ambiguous still. There are things you can point to in the text and performances that supports either read. But structurally, Kylo’s failure on Crait serves Luke and Rey’s story more than it serves his own, and that’s good. That’s honestly how it SHOULD work for a good villain in a moral fable like this. That’s not a failing or a shortcoming. That’s making a choice as a storyteller to maximize the punch you want to land at the end that makes the point you’re trying to make thematically. Kylo’s story is primarily supplementing both Luke and Rey’s arcs, because those are the two most important ones in the movie. That doesn’t mean the other ones (Finn, Rose, Poe, Holdo) don’t EXIST. Just that they’re not AS important on a character level as nailing Luke and Rey.

Stories can’t be everything to everyone at all times, and you have to make decisions on what you want to emphasize and why, and you have to have very good reasons for making those decisions and placing that emphasis. If you’re going to make your villain a hero in the third act, you have to figure out a way to make it work and matter to your MAIN hero in a way that rewards THAT character’s arc. If you can’t do that, it’s not going to play right, and The Rise of Skywalker is a good example of that storytelling failure. Vader’s redemption worked because it was Luke’s greatest reward. Kylo’s redemption doesn’t because it’s not Rey’s ultimate goal. Return of the Jedi keeps hammering home that Luke is going to the Death Star to turn his father. That’s his goal. He wants his dad back, and he’s going to save him. Maybe the biggest failure of Rise of Skywalker is that it never solidly explains WHAT Rey really wants in that movie, and it never settles on a solid answer. “That’s just Star Wars” kinda fills in a lot of those blanks. And a big part of that failure is that Kylo’s redemption is presented as what Rey really wants - but Kylo’s redemption ISN’T why she’s on Exogol. It’s not why she’s on Ahch-To, either. So what is it doing, and what purpose is it trying to serve at the end of a story that is, by that point, obviously Rey’s?

There’s no good answer, becasue “That’s just Star Wars” isn’t enough, and it’s all Abrams has.

But where are you getting the idea that Disney is making Lucasfilm stay away from prequel era storytelling in the sequel trilogy?

If you’re going to be infuriated by their (whose? Disney’s? Lucasfilms? Trevorrows? Abrams?) shortsightedness it helps to actually know whether or not they’re having the vision problems you’re diagnosing in the first place.

There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy in place for questionable decisionmaking to appear. That can happen completely independently, and often does. I understand that it can be more comforting to imagine an effort to screw things up leading to things we don’t like showing up in a movie, but the uncomfortable truth is that a lot of the stuff that goes wrong is often just… unforced errors.

And considering most of the time we don’t actually know what’s going on behind closed doors focusing SO much time and energy on outright GUESSING why a decision was made and getting mad about that guess as if it was fact seems like wasted energy, especially since ultimately it doesnt’ change the fact of what we did get, and why it doesn’t work ON IT’S OWN.

To tie it back to Kylo and his redemption, I think the retconning of Vader’s importance as a character, to the point where “The Skywalker Saga” from 1977-2005 effectively became HIS story, and not Luke’s, is partially why I feel Kylo’s ultimate redemption doesn’t work , and the focus on his being redeemed is dramatically unfulfilling and brings down the Sequel Trilogy. TFA has a dual POV. Finn/Rey. Eventually it becomes REY’s story, solidly, by the end of TFA, but it’s mostly a two-hander. Kylo’s character is interesting, intriguing, and NEW in ways a Star Wars villain hadn’t been, no doubt. I still think he’s overall the best villain the saga’s got. But TLJ is pretty solidly Rey’s story. Finn is supporting. And Kylo’s story is there mostly to inform and illuminate and shade both Luke and Rey’s characters.

I think the problem is that, because of how Lucas sledgehammered Anakin into the center of Star Wars through clumsy, repetitive (and most importantly, NOT via successful storytelling) means, people came to believe that making your bad guy interesting and thoughtful and relatable in a Star Wars movie meant you HAD to redeem him because isn’t redemption what Star Wars is all about? Listen to Lucas! What’s he been saying for the last 30 years? It’s obvious that the whole point of Star Wars is this!

And it makes for great copy, but it’s also, if you ignore the after-the-fact interviews and just look at the stories themselves, and the quality of the storytelling within them, not very true. Vader’s redemption isn’t ABOUT Vader, it’s about Luke. Lucas spent three movies TRYING to make it about Vader and it didn’t really work. He then spent 6 (now 7) seasons of a television show to further make that point, and what ended up happening is Anakin’s apprentice became the heart of the story, to the point where Anakin’s fall gained more impact and more meaning to Star Wars as a story in REBELS, during Ahsoka’s realization and ensuing confrontation with him, than it did in Revenge of the Sith.

So if Vader’s redemption is now the FOUNDATION of what Star Wars is, thematically, its’ a shaky foundation because the reason it worked in Jedi is unique to Jedi, and the specific lead-in it got from Empire. You can’t just copy-paste it into other stories. And Kylo’s redemption in Star Wars almost always had a hint of “well, that’s just how Star Wars works” as its key justification, and that’s probably why it never really rang true to me as a possibility, and DEFINITELY didn’t ring true in its eventual execution. Kylo’s redemption was never really established as a thing Rey wants for the sake of saving Kylo. The closest you get to that is The Last Jedi, where Rey specifically calls out how turning him would help END THE WAR. Nothing about his soul, or his light. She speaks about him as if he’s a useful tool. A means to an end. And she’s not wrong to do so. She’s approaching it pragmatically, really, like a scavenger would. She doesn’t like him, but she recognizes he can be useful to her cause, and THAT’S why she goes to Snoke’s ship. And she wouldn’t have if Luke had gotten over himself just a little bit sooner, either. There’s a connection, and a level of understanding… and that just makes it harder for her when he shows her hope in his goodness to be naive and mostly unfounded after the throne room fight.

So already, right there - Kylo isn’t in a great storytelling position to have a successful redemption because nobody involved really wants it for the sake of his redemption alone, and it doesn’t mean that much to anyone IN THE STORY on that basis outside of Leia… who isn’t really a character in TFA or TLJ, and who, by the end, also doesn’t seem to particularly want Kylo’s redemption. There’s nothing his redemption does to serve ANY of our main characters arcs being fulfilled at that point. THAT’S why it feels unearned to me in TROS, because Abrams and Terrio never figured out a way to tie his redemption to Rey’s character arc meaningfully, or to Leia’s, honestly, and the execution of that was even worse.

Which is probably the most prequel-y thing Abrams could have done.

Where are you getting that “Mandate from Disney” noise from? That flat out doesn’t make any sense.

Also, they didn’t “can” George Lucas’ scripts because George never turned in scripts. He had notes that he didn’t want to hand over as part of the sale, but then he did anyway. And apparently they were really weird and Osmosis-Jones-y stories about the Midichlorians - and even that we only know because HE said so in an interview with James Cameron. There were never “scripts” of the sequel trilogy for Disney to “can”

These sound like YouTube talking points, which are very often designed to infuriate you so you’ll keep watching because that’s how their algorithm works. Factual accuracy is - if you’re LUCKY - a secondary concern.

I think the problem w/ Vader’s redemption is in trying to unpack it from Vader’s POV, which is damn near impossible because Vader isn’t really a character RIGHT UP UNTIL Lucas pulls out “I am your father” from out of nowhere late in the script game around 1978. For the sake of having a big twist to carry Empire into Jedi, Lucas almost ACCIDENTALLY gives Vader a completely different dimension.

But that’s still secondary to how it affects Luke. Vader’s status as Luke’s dad – again, one of those things that was made up as it went – is there mostly for LUKE’S benefit as a character, to complicate him that much more. It’s not really about making Vader a more well-rounded character at all, though that does (sort of) happen in Return of the Jedi.

So when Luke succeeds in his mission, does what Yoda and Ben think impossible, and becomes a TRUE Jedi against all the odds, getting his dad on his side IS THE REWARD. It’s for Luke’s benefit as a character, not for Vader’s. Vader turns because Luke is so good he has no choice BUT to turn. It’s the perfect fairy tale ending… for LUKE’S character, in LUKE’S story. I like that it’s there, and I like the way it happens in that movie.

All of “Anakin’s” importance as a character, independent of his utility to Luke’s characterization, was essentially retconned into the OT metatextually via a crush of self-congratulatory interviews with Lucas between 1983 and 1997, and then the Prequels cemented that (unearned) importance into canon. You repeat a thing enough times, even people who aren’t inclined to listen will start hearing it. Lucas’ choice to redeem Vader made sense for Return of the Jedi. His choice to then make that redemption the central point of ALL Star Wars was one of the most tedious and unfulfilling acts of retconning he ever visited on his own story.

Space Hunter M said:

I also second the notion that a fully 35mm sourced version of it is one of the last “holy grails” of the OT for me. The Belcubus and Puggo/Jaxxon presentations are nice, but both have their limitations (being sourced from TV airings and 16mm optical, respectively).

I do wonder if the original recordings of those sources could be dug up. If I’m following the chain correctly, the mono audio on these restoration projects is all processed to some degree - it sounds very much to me the “35mm Mono Mix” that’s on both 4K77 and Despecialized has audio artifacting, and it also sounds like a faint reverb effect was applied to attempt masking those artifacts. The software used at the time that track was created (am I right that those specific finished Mono tracks are now about 10 years old?) would be pretty out of date now, and 10 years is a very, very long time in terms of what audio programs can do so far as cleaning and restoring audio.

re-capturing the VHS mono audio (or even the 16mm audio) might be worthwhile too, if that’s possible. I’m coming very late to this, and I’m not trying to cast aspersions on the work that was done all that time ago. But I do think if it’s possible to re-capture that audio source, it might be worth trying, to see if that mono audio could be given a slightly better once-over.

Well, I don’t think ROTJ makes a great argument for Vader’s redemption, either (and that’s partially why the Prequels are so hamstrung, because they’re primarily interested in retroactively centering Anakin so as to make that by-that-point foregone ROTJ victory HIS, and not Luke’s.) but Vader’s “redemption” isn’t really about Vader at all - it’s Luke’s reward, not Anakin’s. Vader’s redemption is representative of Luke’s faith in himself, and in the Force. Knowledge and defense. Love and compassion. Those are the things he believed in, and his reward for that belief was finally getting to REALLY meet his father for the first (and last) time. The redemption’s purpose isn’t to reward Anakin’s character. It’s to reward LUKE’S. It’s an affirmation of the Jedi way. Basically, Vader’s redemption is a byproduct of Luke’s arc completing successfully, and that moment’s resonance hits so hard because it’s a reflection of how well Luke’s story concluded.

Reframing that moment so that it’s a referendum on Anakin, and then going back to tell Anakin’s story as a means to justify that reframing is basically the exact place that Lucas lost control of Star Wars from a storytelling perspective, and it’s arguable that he never really got it back, either.

(that his attempt to re-frame it was as confused and awkward as it ended up being didn’t help, either).

“You still haven’t explained how Kylo being redeemed comes at the expense of Rey and Finn’s stories.”

Because time is finite and spending time, energy, and effort on focusing both Rey and Kylo’s arcs on “Saving Kylo” as the primary goal takes time away from better, more interesting, more worthwhile storytelling endeavors for both of those characters. I don’t think my argument above is in any way “antithetical” to “what Star Wars has built up” because I’m not arguing that Star Wars can’t ever be what you’re arguing for. I’m simply saying it would have been worthwhile to pursue something else BESIDE that, too, and suggesting that Star Wars can’t do that is limiting and somewhat shortsighted. It also isn’t borne out by the history of multiple artistically successful Star Wars stories, the majority of which don’t take as read the idea that the bad guy is going to be redeemed somehow in the end.

I’m also not misunderstanding your point. I’m not saying Kylo isn’t redeemable. He CAN be redeemed. He DOESN’T WANT TO BE, though. And that’s where the compelling aspect of his character really kicks in, and where the tragedy of him is most resonant. And that’s the story of the first two movies. That’s different. That’s the point at which a lesson can be learned, and lessons in fiction can (and have been and will be) learned by taking relatable aspects and showing what happens when you behave in a certain way. You say it’s boring to follow that to a different conclusion, I say rejecting all other storytelling possibilities for the sake of ensuring some kids projecting themselves into him to the point where they’re not paying attention to THE REST OF THE STORY or its context AT ALL is shortsighted and limited. There are other ways to speak to those kids, and I think there’s worth in considering those options. You don’t have to “abandon” themes in order to play with them differently. All of that just reinforces the idea that there’s some weird dogmatic adherence to “the rules of Star Wars” that I don’t necessarily agree with very much, if at all.

I understand that you and I have fundamental disagreements on this specific issue, and despite the fact that we’re probably not going to bridge that divide ever because of the way we look at the story, the story’s possibilities, and other key factors, I do want to say that while I disagree, I DO understand where you’re coming from, and I appreciate the level of thought and time you put into the conversation, and that you’ve never gotten angry, impatient, or mean-spirited about that disagreement. It’s very much appreciated.

There was only one conclusion

I don’t agree with this. Never have. There isn’t only one way to tell a Star Wars story.

Making Kylo Ren understandable doesn’t mean you NEED to make him forgiveable, or further, make him a good guy. You don’t HAVE to do that. And especially not at the expense of Finn and Rey’s character arcs. You can engender sympathy with the devil, you can highlight the parts of a villains personality and characterization that are relatable, but you don’t HAVE to reward that character with a victory either. That character can pack just as much punch by being a negative example, an object lesson of what will happen if you refuse the opportunities provided you time and time again. I never argued for him to stay bad “just because it’s new” or for him to be flatly characterized as one-dimensional evil, either. But there are ways to have his arc track in a different, more villainous route that doesn’t include redemption, and tackling the story as if it’s a fait accompli that he’ll be redeemed is short-circuiting so many good dramatic possibilities. That’s not to say there isn’t a way to have redeemed him that could be satisfying. Just that nobody seemed to have figured it out when the saga ended. Although that one story group idea that he take Luke’s place and exile himself to Ahch-To was a good option that… nobody pursued.

further, there’s something very, very useful to addressing the notion, especially in children’s entertainment, ESPECIALLY NOW, that sometimes you can’t make friends with the bully, that sometimes the bad guy won’t become the good guy, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO OR HOW HARD YOU TRY. That you wanting someone to change really, really hard doesn’t mean they’re going to, especially if they don’t want to do their part to make that happen. That doesn’t mean that bad guy doesn’t have humanity, or has their dimensionality removed. But it also lets kids know that you don’t have to stop everything you’re doing and give up on the things that are important to you in order to cater to THAT ONE GUY, either.

The argument that it had to happen this way because “It’s Star Wars” and “It’s for kids” just rings false. It’s pop-culture dogma and it doesn’t carry weight with me. There were other options, and they were rejected out of hand, it sounds like, for the sake of “doing the Star Wars thing” and I disagree with that decison, and with the reasoning behind it, because it’s limited and circular. “The Star Wars thing” is pretty nebulous, especially since “Star Wars” is basically a mixtape of pop myths with great production and sound design and that’s about it. It can be a lot of things. It can be more than it is now, and a lot of what it IS now, it only is because someone years ago decided it needed to be different from what it was.

I also think whether he was intended to represent modern-day fascism or not doesn’t really matter. He does. He is. He’s Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk and all the young self-righteous super-angry and combative people who learned the absolute wrong lessons from the destructive forces who came before them. And I think there’s something not only shortsighted in making sure the entire story of Star Wars in the 21st century is about REDEEMING that guy, but slightly dangerous as well, because if we’re going to talk about kids movies, we need to talk about teaching children that the most important things are making sure that Kylos are heard, Kylos are listened to, Kylos are catered to, and Kylos are CENTERED in EVERYONE ELSE’S stories.

Everyone worries about the kids who project onto the bad guy and whether or not they’re going to give up - nobody seems to worry about whether or not the kids projecting onto Rey and Finn are being told that their desires, their hopes, and their dreams need to be sidelined or ultimately sublimated to ensure Kylo’s redemption occurs. And I don’t find that particularly fair, either. This was an opportunity for Star Wars to be about new people, and instead it’s about Kylo, and making sure he died with the light in his eyes.

The idea that a villain in Star Wars can’t stay the villain because it’s letting down “bad kids” seems like a particularly empty strawman, to me. Bad guys can (and should) just as often be object examples of what happens when you keep making awful choices no matter how “right” or “justified” you think you are to be making them.

How does it make Leia look like an idiot? Why WOULDN’T you want to run as fast as you could from the thing that your captain just called “a Fleet Killer”

Nobody knows about hyperspace tracking, so him getting back to the ship ASAP while they jump makes perfect sense to her. It makes perfect sense, period, especially considering how little they know about what the First Order can do at that moment. If they can get away, they should get away, because they’re not really in a great position to take it out right there. As proved by how sideways everything goes even WITH Poe’s plan (which he had ready to go without her knowledge, which is some pre-meditated insubordination, really).

She’s not wrong to want to run. He’s not wrong to want to seize the opportunity. They can both be right, but it’s not always about being right, either. Life isn’t a point-scoring exercise, and The Last Jedi is a story that speaks to that quite a lot.

Leia doesn’t “look like an idiot” there, though.

My understanding was the bombers were only deployed because Poe himself deployed them. They weren’t part of the original mission and only came in when Poe audibled after succeeding with the first part (which Leia had believed was the ONLY part right up until he kept going)

I think a lot of Last Jedi arguments tend to snag up and break down along the basic right/wrong questions, when the movie is interested frequently in acknowledging the motivations behind why people are doing the things they’re doing, but not always justifying those motivations, either. That’s a huge part of the engine that fuels The Last Jedi - understanding isn’t the same as acceptance or agreement. “Poe was right” isn’t even really the point, and it’s why discussions tend to break down along the lines of people trying to prove he was “wrong” as a counter, and people reinforcing their belief that he was “right.” and round and round from there. You can be “right” and still make the wrong call, and that’s hard. But it’s also true. And learning from THOSE experiences are vital. The Last Jedi is a movie all about those moments, and a lot of what it’s saying and doing just blows right by if ultimately all you’re talking about once it’s over is whether or not the justifications for their actions are sound.

It’s partially why Rose/Finn and the speeder KEEPS coming up, because people are approaching the scene from the POV that “Finn was right to do what he did.” and the question isn’t even so much whether he had the justification, and whether he was right to make that call (and whether Rose was wrong to stop him). The question is precisely along the lines NFB very clearly laid out in their excellent posts above.

The Last Jedi is a movie that very often puts its characters in situations where they honestly believe they’re doing the right thing, and most of the time they are. Their reasoning is understandable and their intentions are good. But it still goes wrong. That’s frustrating and complicated and annoying. But it’s also NECESSARY in a lot of ways, and for me, hugely relatable. Especially when it comes to Poe and Finn’s behaviors in this movie. Often they’re just as interested in doing the big thing as they are doing the right thing, and they think a lot about how to make the big thing as right as it can be, and that’s why they miss out on doing THE BEST THING. They’re more concerned with doing THE MOST instead of figuring out what will allow them the biggest chance to do THE BEST. That’s not easy, and it doesn’t get any easier if you spend even more energy retroactively justifying why you made the one choice instead of refocusing and learning why that choice didn’t work.

The Last Jedi is a movie that ultimately says “you can do what you’ve always done and get mad when it doesn’t work like it always worked, or you can acknowledge that things keep changing and you have to change to get ahead of it.” I think it does this well, but I also understand when people get caught up in the minutia of why things aren’t working the way they always worked.

Here’s my problem with Kylo’s redemption - it re-centers the entirety of the trilogy on him and shifts focus from Rey/Finn. Now that it’s all done, Finn is obviously the biggest missed opportunity of the entire trilogy, and I think a lot of his story got subsumed by the level of importance Kylo’s potential redemption took up. Basically - starting the story one way, and then shifting to make it all about Kylo (which it ultimately ended up being) sucked a ton of air out of the story.

I think that maybe there was a way to achieve a redemption (or at least a measure of it) for the character without doing that, but I also think that the entire prospect of a shitty Skywalker son figuring out that he doesn’t need to be a genocidal maniac was only barely pulled off in the OT, and for a sequel trilogy so concerned with the weight and meaning of legacy, having a huge part of the story hinge on more or less the exact same dilemma felt counterproductive at its core. If this story was largely about how the next generation found their own way to move forward from both the victories AND the mistakes of the previous generation’s, then Kylo’s “arc” as it were shouldn’t have simply traced Anakin’s. He should have been the personification of the worst aspects of that previous generation’s failures. His should have traveled in a different villainous direction, much like Rey’s trajectory on the hero path didn’t go where Luke’s went. And like Finn’s probably would have gone, if not for the shift in storytelling focus away from him in the third movie and towards making Kylo a good guy and doing all the heavy lifting needed to not just refocus his arc, but center him as the most important character in the sequel trilogy - which he ultimately became. The Last Jedi did a great job in explaining how someone could believably and understandably corrupt themselves to that degree, The Rise of Skywalker then made the decision to forgive him for it, and I honestly think that was a mistake, and even worse, a mistake made for not much more reason than “That’s how Star Wars works.” It’s a mistake rooted in bad conventional wisdom and unexamined storytelling dogma.

I think TFA set up some amazing arcs, and TLJ complicated and enriched them. But the third movie needed to pay them off, and Trevorrow only got partway there (at least he managed to give Finn something great that realized the potential he was given in TFA) and Abrams fumbled almost everything that wasn’t named See Threepio or Babu Frik. Ultimately deciding Star Wars’ quality as a story would live or die on the successful redemption of this galaxy’s equivalent to Stephen Miller or Ben Shapiro was the wrong decision at PRECISELY the wrong time, and if people at Lucasfilm were adamant that decision NEEDED to be applied to this story or else it “wouldn’t be Star Wars” then they hobbled their own storytelling potential for no good reason.

Reading the script I do believe you could probably have accounted for Fisher’s absence by using the film’s time jump to have her die between movies, and then split her storytelling duties here between other characters. Have her military duties handled by Connix, and then have the familial/Force duties handled by… Anakin. Honestly, his effect on Kylo probably would be more meaningful as he’s written than Leia’s since Anakin is who he looks up to, Anakin’s the only person in the world who has ever been where he is, and Anakin’s the only person who can explain to him why it’s better to do good while you can before you go.

Plus, having the film stop for a second after the first act to recognize Leia’s absence through a resistance memorial somewhere on the compound that the characters meet at would have been a much better tribute to the character than the weird semi-resurrection they gave her in TROS. Plus having Fisher’s real-life daughter assume the duties of Fisher’s best known character, but with Lourde’s character instead, seems more in keeping with how this trilogy works.

Alternatively, you could have ROSE be the new Resistance leader in that case, but I feel that probably takes her out of the action too much and I like the way she’s used here.

To the idea that they should have pushed this back a year - they probably could have developed this in the time they gave it just fine, if they hadn’t been so insistent on specific beats being hit. If they were actually going to push it back a year, my feeling is they’d have done that, and then just gotten Rian Johnson back. But then again - who’s to say they wouldn’t have tried the same thing with him that they did with Trevorrow, now that they’re developing THE END instead of just a Part 2.

MAH BOYYYYY

This is real.

The pre-existing details you’re talking about came from this .pdf in the first place.

What’s more interesting to me is whether Connolly/Trevorrow are the ones who leaked it to Meyer-Burnett in the first place a couple months ago.

Broom Kid said:

I gotta imagine if random reylo-user 583 on twitter’s got the pages, the full script isn’t too far from leaking in its entirety very, very soon.

FIVE DAYS!

I’m feeling good about this getting turned into a fan-made comic before long.