Post by eyesofmist on Feb 20, 2016 10:41:17 GMT
I am going to add this post, because it is perfection IMO. Just read it, beautifully written.
Jakku said: ↑
"Reading the posts in the 'Kylo's best moment' thread, it occurred to me that during the course of the film, Kylo is being 'awoken' just as much as Rey. He starts off cold, in control, dispassionate (when he's not having brief tantrums to vent frustration, and he recovers control quickly after those). The turning point is the interrogation of Rey. He starts off cold, in control and dispassionate...but by the end he's wide-eyed, disempowered, frantic. The sabre fight with Rey climaxes (sorry,can't think of a more appropriate word) with him hot-eyed and pleading with her. By the time he's sprawled in the snow, he's not remotely the cold and clinical figure who dispatched Lor San Tekka."
'The Force Awakens' is a clever title.
Thank you for bringing up this larger "awakening" issue. I had thoughts on this after someone's post about 100 pages ago, but the thread moved so fast I didn't get a good chance to bring them up. These thoughts also connect with the desire of some fans to have Kylo Ren turn into a super-cool, unemotional darksider. And my thought is that we may have already seen that ultra-cool darksider.
Think about it. At the beginning of the movie, Kylo is already in the classic Dark side zone. He is professional and thorough. He brings a large enough team to subdue the village (unlike Hux who send two guys and two tie-fighters to get the droid), he is unfazed by the firefight, he keeps a bolt suspended in mid-air without a second thought while he goes about his investigation, he orders searches, he orders the destruction of evidence and enemies, he takes out Lor San Tekka when he becomes useless, "whiny" and inefficiently time-consuming to him, while he has Poe put "onboard" because he still might be able to get something out of him. Throughout this whole thing with fire and screaming and people killing and dying and Finn going into shock, Kylo Ren is so calm that he actually seems bored by the whole thing, almost like he wants to get it over with so he doesn't have to stay on Jakku a second longer than necessary.
However, just as he is about to leave, a teeny thing hits him and he stares at Finn, knowing full well that Finn didn't follow the "Fire" order. He stares at Finn, considering him, but then he spares him. Why does he spare him? Finn defied an order, and I am sure Kylo could have killed him with impunity. Yet he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't because something in him tells him to let him go, the same something that woke up Finn when his friend was killed and told him not to fire. I see the sparing of Finn as the first crack in the dark armor or haze or iron grip, whatever you want to call it, that surrounds Kylo Ren.
This sparing of Finn is huge because without it, none of the following events could have happened. Poe would have been questioned and executed and Hux's men would have found the droid and Rey would still be waiting for her parents on Jakku. Ren would have gotten his ticket to Luke Skywalker for whatever reason he wants, the Hosnian System would still exist, and Han Solo would still be alive.
That's why Kylo loses it over and over again when it comes to Finn with increasing frequency. Ren doesn't just hate Finn for his relationship with Rey, though that's a part of it. He hates Finn for screwing up the search for Skywalker, for the destruction of the planets *and* for the death of his father, which he has successfully avoided for probably years. But for as much as he hates Finn, he hates himself more ... because he is the one who was "stupid" enough to listen to the Light in that moment to let Finn go. If anything, Ren's experience with Finn is going to make his journey back to the Light all the more difficult because in his current mind that "slip of Light" led to more death and destruction and disorder than anything the Dark did. (Sure, it's more complicated than that, but not for Kylo at this point who is still quite immersed in the Dark side).
So back to the Awakening point. Finn obviously starts his awakening on Jakku, but I argue so does Ren, just a lot less obviously. Finn is pretty open to it because he is not already immersed in the Dark side like Kylo is, so he is going "to go with the Force Flow" more easily. If the Force wants Kylo, which I believe it does, it needs to start cracking through the Darkside haze.
I keep saying Darkside haze because I actually don't believe that serious darksiders like Ren actually have full agency once they dive down past a certain point. In fact, I am not sure that any force sensitive does. I have thought this kind of thing since I was a kid watching ROTJ in the theatre as an 8-year-old in 1983. Even then I felt that Darth Vader's redemption couldn't work unless the Dark side was a mind-addling thing ... like heroin, severe mental illness or even like demonic possession ... a mind-addling thing that once thrown off, (something that always seemed extremely hard to do), that person's mind would return to their rational, clearer and hopefully more moral pre-dark side state.
Keep in mind that I never read really any EU, so the movies and some Clone Wars are all that I am working from, but to me, it always seemed like the Force was a meddlesome third party when it wanted to be. It always seemed to throw people in places it wanted, not necessarily what the person wanted. Also, if the person's mind was currently clear and not under tremendous stress, they might have some say in where they are thrown, but if the person is despairing or otherwise mentally compromised and does not get the support they need, the Force has more sway over them and frequently enough can throw them towards the dark and can distort their mindset the deeper the person gets entrenched, like a possession or an addiction.
Kylo on the bridge with Han is a perfect example of this, at least to me and my force theories <bg>, because he is definitely mentally compromised and despairing, and I believe he genuinely wanted to go with Han Solo, until the light went out, and the Force said, "No, you go this way ... because that fits with the larger plan." Adam Driver actually gets a really dead look in his eyes after having so much emotion during the Han kill moments, as opposed to his tears and pain from just a second before. He keeps this dead look until something wakes him up again (whether it be his soul coming to the surface again and/or his mother's pain), and he gets that gutted look of shock.
But back to Ren's "awakening" ... Cool Jakku Ren looks nothing like panting "I want to be your teacher" Ren. You can look at the whole movie as Ren's unraveling, but you can also see that same unraveling from a different point-of-view, that being the very messy awakening of his suppressed soul.
Indeed, the whole movie features Jakku Ren's perfectly cool darkside set-up being disrupted over and over again, unveiling him piece by piece, so much so that by the time he gets to Han on that bridge he really doesn't know what end is up. To me, killing Han can be argued as an "extinction burst" moment for Ren. (My understanding is that an "extinction burst" is outrageous behavior displayed by a dysfunctional person whose self or surrounding family system in undergoing change that they desperately do not want to happen, because the change is scary, so they run home to their most extreme dysfunctional behaviors). In other words, by killing Han, Ren is desperately trying to get back to his Jakku darkside self where he thinks he's supposed to be, where everything was in control and where he felt nothing.
More than anything I am convinced that Ben Solo was and is a guy who feels too much. I mean the man has some level of tears in his eyes at all times. I have rarely seen a screen character look so absolutely sad and intense. Just like Emo Kylo Ren and Bad Father Han Solo illustrate so awesomely, that's a hard mix between parent and child <g>. Han and Leia are passionate, emotional people, but not like unmasked Kylo/Ben. They're tougher cookies who can hide behind snark and tell-offs ... Ben, not so much.
However, as you can see with OT Vader, dark side immersion can really dull and mask a lot of those more dramatic and spiraling "emo" type of emotions. That's actually probably something of a blessing to someone prone to spiraling, intense emotions. Too bad Kylo/Ben was born to heroes and with the force ... he would probably be better suited to being a tormented artist of some kind <g>. But since that wasn't the case, I think he thinks that those type of "emo" emotions are bad, *and* that if he is ever going to accomplish anything, he needs to be much more like cool Jakku Ren so he doesn't get sidetracked, as he is wont to do when he's not his cool darksider self. (Hello, Rey!!! <g>)
I am also convinced that he has some larger, much more "grey", arguably legitimate type of goal for which he thinks he need dark side power (i.e. balance of the force, some unknown enemy, etc.), than the dumb "I want power" reasons some viewers throw around, and further, that he has no confidence that his naturally emotional self can get him to goal. The problem is that the killing of Han just makes the once comatose, but increasingly less comatose (with the introduction of Rey) soul wake up screaming like crazy. Hence his out-of-control death wish-like and "emotions on his sleeve" behavior at the end.
Now Snoke will probably somewhat tamp down that soul once again with a bunch of torture in the first part of Episode VIII, but probably only temporarily, because though Snoke might be a bada**, Snoke ain't the Force. And the Force has spoken, and it wants Kylo.
Ren, Rey and Finn are all awakening whether they want to or not. And it is going to be rough ride wherever they land. So as for Ren becoming that textbook, Emperor-like darksider again ... I don't this so ... He was already there as ultra-cool Jakku Ren. Now his soul, tormented and erratic as it is, has woken up, and it's just not going to go back into the bottle ... for not only compelling storyline reasons but also because that soul will certainly not disappear when they hired an emotional expression genius of an actor, down to every subtle eyebrow twitch or eye gleam, to play said tormented soul.
Matt's Solo Cousin, Wednesday at 5:40 PM #16087
Speksy, Zeralyos, BlackIsTheColor and 17 others like this.re
"Reading the posts in the 'Kylo's best moment' thread, it occurred to me that during the course of the film, Kylo is being 'awoken' just as much as Rey. He starts off cold, in control, dispassionate (when he's not having brief tantrums to vent frustration, and he recovers control quickly after those). The turning point is the interrogation of Rey. He starts off cold, in control and dispassionate...but by the end he's wide-eyed, disempowered, frantic. The sabre fight with Rey climaxes (sorry,can't think of a more appropriate word) with him hot-eyed and pleading with her. By the time he's sprawled in the snow, he's not remotely the cold and clinical figure who dispatched Lor San Tekka."
'The Force Awakens' is a clever title.
Thank you for bringing up this larger "awakening" issue. I had thoughts on this after someone's post about 100 pages ago, but the thread moved so fast I didn't get a good chance to bring them up. These thoughts also connect with the desire of some fans to have Kylo Ren turn into a super-cool, unemotional darksider. And my thought is that we may have already seen that ultra-cool darksider.
Think about it. At the beginning of the movie, Kylo is already in the classic Dark side zone. He is professional and thorough. He brings a large enough team to subdue the village (unlike Hux who send two guys and two tie-fighters to get the droid), he is unfazed by the firefight, he keeps a bolt suspended in mid-air without a second thought while he goes about his investigation, he orders searches, he orders the destruction of evidence and enemies, he takes out Lor San Tekka when he becomes useless, "whiny" and inefficiently time-consuming to him, while he has Poe put "onboard" because he still might be able to get something out of him. Throughout this whole thing with fire and screaming and people killing and dying and Finn going into shock, Kylo Ren is so calm that he actually seems bored by the whole thing, almost like he wants to get it over with so he doesn't have to stay on Jakku a second longer than necessary.
However, just as he is about to leave, a teeny thing hits him and he stares at Finn, knowing full well that Finn didn't follow the "Fire" order. He stares at Finn, considering him, but then he spares him. Why does he spare him? Finn defied an order, and I am sure Kylo could have killed him with impunity. Yet he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't because something in him tells him to let him go, the same something that woke up Finn when his friend was killed and told him not to fire. I see the sparing of Finn as the first crack in the dark armor or haze or iron grip, whatever you want to call it, that surrounds Kylo Ren.
This sparing of Finn is huge because without it, none of the following events could have happened. Poe would have been questioned and executed and Hux's men would have found the droid and Rey would still be waiting for her parents on Jakku. Ren would have gotten his ticket to Luke Skywalker for whatever reason he wants, the Hosnian System would still exist, and Han Solo would still be alive.
That's why Kylo loses it over and over again when it comes to Finn with increasing frequency. Ren doesn't just hate Finn for his relationship with Rey, though that's a part of it. He hates Finn for screwing up the search for Skywalker, for the destruction of the planets *and* for the death of his father, which he has successfully avoided for probably years. But for as much as he hates Finn, he hates himself more ... because he is the one who was "stupid" enough to listen to the Light in that moment to let Finn go. If anything, Ren's experience with Finn is going to make his journey back to the Light all the more difficult because in his current mind that "slip of Light" led to more death and destruction and disorder than anything the Dark did. (Sure, it's more complicated than that, but not for Kylo at this point who is still quite immersed in the Dark side).
So back to the Awakening point. Finn obviously starts his awakening on Jakku, but I argue so does Ren, just a lot less obviously. Finn is pretty open to it because he is not already immersed in the Dark side like Kylo is, so he is going "to go with the Force Flow" more easily. If the Force wants Kylo, which I believe it does, it needs to start cracking through the Darkside haze.
I keep saying Darkside haze because I actually don't believe that serious darksiders like Ren actually have full agency once they dive down past a certain point. In fact, I am not sure that any force sensitive does. I have thought this kind of thing since I was a kid watching ROTJ in the theatre as an 8-year-old in 1983. Even then I felt that Darth Vader's redemption couldn't work unless the Dark side was a mind-addling thing ... like heroin, severe mental illness or even like demonic possession ... a mind-addling thing that once thrown off, (something that always seemed extremely hard to do), that person's mind would return to their rational, clearer and hopefully more moral pre-dark side state.
Keep in mind that I never read really any EU, so the movies and some Clone Wars are all that I am working from, but to me, it always seemed like the Force was a meddlesome third party when it wanted to be. It always seemed to throw people in places it wanted, not necessarily what the person wanted. Also, if the person's mind was currently clear and not under tremendous stress, they might have some say in where they are thrown, but if the person is despairing or otherwise mentally compromised and does not get the support they need, the Force has more sway over them and frequently enough can throw them towards the dark and can distort their mindset the deeper the person gets entrenched, like a possession or an addiction.
Kylo on the bridge with Han is a perfect example of this, at least to me and my force theories <bg>, because he is definitely mentally compromised and despairing, and I believe he genuinely wanted to go with Han Solo, until the light went out, and the Force said, "No, you go this way ... because that fits with the larger plan." Adam Driver actually gets a really dead look in his eyes after having so much emotion during the Han kill moments, as opposed to his tears and pain from just a second before. He keeps this dead look until something wakes him up again (whether it be his soul coming to the surface again and/or his mother's pain), and he gets that gutted look of shock.
But back to Ren's "awakening" ... Cool Jakku Ren looks nothing like panting "I want to be your teacher" Ren. You can look at the whole movie as Ren's unraveling, but you can also see that same unraveling from a different point-of-view, that being the very messy awakening of his suppressed soul.
Indeed, the whole movie features Jakku Ren's perfectly cool darkside set-up being disrupted over and over again, unveiling him piece by piece, so much so that by the time he gets to Han on that bridge he really doesn't know what end is up. To me, killing Han can be argued as an "extinction burst" moment for Ren. (My understanding is that an "extinction burst" is outrageous behavior displayed by a dysfunctional person whose self or surrounding family system in undergoing change that they desperately do not want to happen, because the change is scary, so they run home to their most extreme dysfunctional behaviors). In other words, by killing Han, Ren is desperately trying to get back to his Jakku darkside self where he thinks he's supposed to be, where everything was in control and where he felt nothing.
More than anything I am convinced that Ben Solo was and is a guy who feels too much. I mean the man has some level of tears in his eyes at all times. I have rarely seen a screen character look so absolutely sad and intense. Just like Emo Kylo Ren and Bad Father Han Solo illustrate so awesomely, that's a hard mix between parent and child <g>. Han and Leia are passionate, emotional people, but not like unmasked Kylo/Ben. They're tougher cookies who can hide behind snark and tell-offs ... Ben, not so much.
However, as you can see with OT Vader, dark side immersion can really dull and mask a lot of those more dramatic and spiraling "emo" type of emotions. That's actually probably something of a blessing to someone prone to spiraling, intense emotions. Too bad Kylo/Ben was born to heroes and with the force ... he would probably be better suited to being a tormented artist of some kind <g>. But since that wasn't the case, I think he thinks that those type of "emo" emotions are bad, *and* that if he is ever going to accomplish anything, he needs to be much more like cool Jakku Ren so he doesn't get sidetracked, as he is wont to do when he's not his cool darksider self. (Hello, Rey!!! <g>)
I am also convinced that he has some larger, much more "grey", arguably legitimate type of goal for which he thinks he need dark side power (i.e. balance of the force, some unknown enemy, etc.), than the dumb "I want power" reasons some viewers throw around, and further, that he has no confidence that his naturally emotional self can get him to goal. The problem is that the killing of Han just makes the once comatose, but increasingly less comatose (with the introduction of Rey) soul wake up screaming like crazy. Hence his out-of-control death wish-like and "emotions on his sleeve" behavior at the end.
Now Snoke will probably somewhat tamp down that soul once again with a bunch of torture in the first part of Episode VIII, but probably only temporarily, because though Snoke might be a bada**, Snoke ain't the Force. And the Force has spoken, and it wants Kylo.
Ren, Rey and Finn are all awakening whether they want to or not. And it is going to be rough ride wherever they land. So as for Ren becoming that textbook, Emperor-like darksider again ... I don't this so ... He was already there as ultra-cool Jakku Ren. Now his soul, tormented and erratic as it is, has woken up, and it's just not going to go back into the bottle ... for not only compelling storyline reasons but also because that soul will certainly not disappear when they hired an emotional expression genius of an actor, down to every subtle eyebrow twitch or eye gleam, to play said tormented soul.
Matt's Solo Cousin, Wednesday at 5:40 PM #16087
Speksy, Zeralyos, BlackIsTheColor and 17 others like this.re