Kingherb said:
I just wish Kylo Ren only took his mask off in front of Han Solo, the rest of the movie he could should have kept it on, but perhaps the mask had some sand caught inside it from the planet Jakku which was coarse and rough and irritating…
So here’s why this is not a good idea: overload.
Even if the bridge scene didn’t do anything for you personally, it’s undebatable that it’s a keystone sequence in the movie. It’s Ren’s biggest decision as a character (so far) and it’s the culmination of Han’s development throughout the saga–the Han we meet in the Mos Eisley cantina would never have a kid, let alone reach out and try to reconcile with one while leaving himself physically and emotionally vulnerable.
By saving the reveal of Ren’s face–and identity, as some others have suggested–for that scene, you risk piling too much information and OH MY GOD revelation onto this emotionally cathartic confrontation. It might seem cool on paper, but from a storytelling perspective there would just be too much going on at once.
Imagine the famous catwalk revelation at the end of Empire, except in that sequence we see Vader without his helmet for the first time and he drops that Leia is Luke’s sister. There’s just too much going on for the audience or even Luke to reasonably parse.
Plus we need the proceeding two scenes of maskless Ren to establish his very human conflicts and insecurities–not to mention Driver’s unsettling facial and vocal performance–to sell how absolutely tormented he is in that confrontation.
And yeah, as Frink said having Ren masked during the interrogation would have kneecapped that part’s emotional dynamic.
TL;DR version: that change sounds cool on paper but the scene would have imploded under its own weight in execution.
