Some Thoughts On Kylo Ren

[grav_ity]

redbrunja asked, and I didn't think Twitter could contain me.

So when I walked out of the theatre on the afternoon of Friday December 18, I was so pleased. With everything. But there was one thing that kind of bugged me: I cared about Kylo Ren.

Let's back up.

I am never here for the villains. Ever. The gif "Cool Motive, Still Murder" is basically my motto, if I had a motto. I don't care about their tragic backstory. I don't care about the actor who plays them. I. Don't. Care.

But I cared about Kylo Ren.

Part of it is his face. Adam Driver has an amazing face. I'm not very good at remembering what people look like, but I am pretty sure I'll have Ren's face after he takes off his helmet the first time burned into my mind forever. He's perfect.

I also had no intention of learning Adam Driver's name (I'm sure he's lovely, but: villain), except then he did that a cappella version of The Imperial March and couldn't keep his shoulders still while he was hitting the high notes and, well, I learned his name.

But I couldn't figure out why I cared about his character.

I think it's that he's just written so well. There's none of the grossness we get with Hiddleston's Loki or Tennant's Kilgrave. There's no sexual element to his torture (I mean, it's still a violation, but no one takes a stitch of clothing off, except the mask, and he talks to Rey the same way he talks to Poe, and also that old dude whose name I keep forgetting). He, to put it bluntly, knows what he's about.

(Dear Grant Ward, FUCK YOU FOREVER)

*ahem*

Anyway, so he has a nice face and he's well written and I don't want him to die in a fire. All of this would be okay, except I also wish to know his backstory, and I don't usually care about the villain's backstory. Except, of course, the villain's backstory is in this case ALSO THE HEROES' BACKSTORY, and so that is why I want it.

(It took me 24 hours to figure that out, btw. It was an uncomfortable time and I doubted myself a lot.)

I hate that KyloR3n joke account on Twitter. I hate it because Ren is the white boy I'm afraid of, and the white boy I'm also pretty likely to meet. A lot. PROBABLY AT A STAR WARS CONVENTION. Ren is, probably literally, a school shooter. At the very least he's a mass-murderer. You know, the sort we put bullet proof vests on, and show nice pictures of on the news, and then say "he was mentally unstable" and "no one would sleep with him".

Ren is the fanboy I've spent my whole life avoiding. Ren is the reason I don't tell people I like Star Wars unless I trust them. Ren is everything that creeps me out about Star Wars marketing (why is there so much dark side merch? Why is the stormtrooper the iconic Star Wars motif? WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE WANT THAT?). Ren is the boy you don't trust with your drink. Ren is such a dick.

What was it like to be Leia Organa and have your son look at you and say "Tell me more about my grandfather. No, my real grandfather."? What was it like to be Luke Skywalker, and have your nephew named for your mentor, and then have that child grow up to idolize the man who MURDERED him? What was it like for Han, who didn't even believe all this in the first place until Ben Kenobi showed him how, to blame the darkness in himself for this? What is it like for Rey, who wanted a family? What is it like for Poe, who could have been Ben Organa's best friend?

Star Wars has never been nuanced when it comes to evil, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. We see Rey - poor, starving, scavenging, desperate, Rey - choose kindness over and over. Ren, like Anakin before him, wanted something without having to work for it. Like a spoiled white boy. He even gets Anakin's lines, to remind us of that fact.

Kylo Ren killed HAN FUCKING SOLO and it's not enough to make fandom dislike him.

Damn right, he's scary. Frankly, I'm still in shock that someone was self-aware enough to write him.

More character essays to follow, I am sure.

Comments

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Okay, wow, those were not the feelings I was expecting you to have.

As someone who has her history of falling for morally grey/black characters, Kylo Ren was one I just had ZERO TIME FOR. (I'll be honest, a lot of it has to do with killing Han and WHAT THAT WILL DO TO LEIA and BETRAYING LEIA HOW COULD YOU BREAK YOUR MOTHER'S HEART LIKE THIS?)

I hate that KyloR3n joke account on Twitter. I hate it because Ren is the white boy I'm afraid of, and the white boy I'm also pretty likely to meet. A lot. PROBABLY AT A STAR WARS CONVENTION. Ren is, probably literally, a school shooter. At the very least he's a mass-murderer. You know, the sort we put bullet proof vests on, and show nice pictures of on the news, and then say "he was mentally unstable" and "no one would sleep with him".

Ren is the fanboy I've spent my whole life avoiding. Ren is the reason I don't tell people I like Star Wars unless I trust them. Ren is everything that creeps me out about Star Wars marketing (why is there so much dark side merch? Why is the stormtrooper the iconic Star Wars motif? WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE WANT THAT?). Ren is the boy you don't trust with your drink. Ren is such a dick.

I 100% feel this is true, and thus and PRAYING that Ren does not get a redemption arc.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Well, we usually come at these things from exactly the opposite direction. :)

To tie it back to Ward, though, I don't TRUST those writers to deal with the (very compelling!) villain they created. There were like 10 glorious seconds after his reveal where I was all "OH MY GOD IS THIS HAPPENING?" and then it didn't, and I think that with Ren it will.

I am also not here for redemption. I want him to suffer. Even though Star Wars is basically built on redemption (hello, Anakin, who murdered children ON SCREEN), we've done that before, and I hope he lives to the pain, such as it is. Because of what he did to Leia.

[ancarett]

Interesting. I don't care about Kylo Ren at all, except insofar as he intersects with the other characters. Even then, I find him sad, pathetic, laughable and needy. His tantrums made me want to send him to his room. I also find the casting off-putting. Adam Driver doesn't appear to be the plausible genetic offspring of Leia and Han.

I like Rey a whole bunch, though. Enough to make up for that. Poe is fun but underused. Finn, after the breakout, is alternately plucky and boastful; I really like him. Maz was awesome. Han and Chewbacca were familiar. Leia was great.

Going again tomorrow!

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I would trust Ren with my drink, actually, not because I think the "light in him" would keep him from misusing it, but because I don't think the idea of doping a girl's drink would ever occur to him and it would probably repulse him if he did. That would be COWARDICE. That would be WEAKNESS. Darth Vader would never do something so craven and petty.

There are a million other things I would never trust Ren with, though, and most of the things he would do are even scarier. I'm just saying that he is not, in my estimation, a sexual predator. He's a fanatic, and that's a whole different sort of scary.

As far as I'm concerned, the Emo Kylo Ren Twitter is whistling in the dark. It's funny because it shows the sheer banality of evil and the pettiness of the ideals Ren thinks are so lofty, and I find that kind of black humor cathartic. Nonetheless, Ren as he's shown in the film is not funny at all, despite the Stormtroopers' "Nope" scene getting a laugh. I would be terrified to be in the same room with him, even if he was only destroying the furniture.

[shadadukal]

I don't want Ren to be redeemed because he seems to have chosen the dark side because it seemed cool and he wanted to be evil. Anakin, by comparison, misjudged badly and went nuts.

And it's as you said, we all know Kylo Ren. We've all met him and we've all seen him pardoned on the news.

And yes, I hate that there's so much dark side merch and basically no light side merch outside the droids.

I'm not as uninterested in villains as you are. I like a handful but mostly because they've had a redemption arc (like comics!Loki and comics!Magneto). But by and large, they're terrible people who don't give a damn about anyone and I hate that.

Why am I going to the SW con alone again? Wanna come?

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Watching the movie for the first time this afternoon, I flat out did not like Kylo Ren. And then he killed Han and I'm right there with the stormtroopers going nope and backing the fuck away. He sat there and decided that he wanted to be evil. Hell, he sits there talking to the burned mask of Vader and apologizes to it for being tempted by the light side and having to figure out how to go back to being more evil.

In contrast, and I can't believe I'm being supportive of Anakin Skywalker here, at least Anakin fell by degrees under extreme pressure and manipulation from one of the most successful and manipulative Sith Lords of all time. We spent two whole movies trying to show why Anakin was slipping into evil, and they mostly failed like the faily things they were, but Anakin had reasons that weren't "evil is totally cool".