Oh yes, I’ve seen those arguments if not that specific post. Never mind that he went along with Hosnia and everything else, and actually went FARTHER than Hux in wanting to annihilate the Resistance when Hux wanted to retreat. He also took over the freaking organization when he could have walked away lol.
Yeah I know he’s Buddhist. That doesn’t mean his cultural Christian influences are any less, though. Even atheists in the U.S. are frequently very Christian in their culture. Also George’s understanding of Buddhism is kinda shit if the PT are anything to go by.
Yeah I got that sense, since you seem super-invested in his redemption. It’s fine if you like redemption stories, I just find every argument you’ve made for it so far disingenuous.
Star Wars makes the divine as explicit as Lord of the Rings does, arguably more explicit. LotR has Eru Iluvatar and SW has the Force–you know, that power that brings about happy accidents like Luke’s uncle buying the droids that his long-lost twin sister sent from space? The supernatural is a huge part of SW, and yes, it was very Christian during the OT and PT. It’s disingenuous to suggest that it’s suddenly a story where the divine has no place.
Furthermore, you’re disregarding large parts of the story if you think the presence of the divine means character agency is meaningless. Gollum’s slipping and falling may be divine grace, but Gollum was there in the first place because of Frodo’s mercy, and Billbo’s before him. If Frodo had put on the Ring and then slipped and fallen, yeah, that would have been meaningless deus ex machina. But the Ring’s destruction came about because of Frodo’s decision to spare Gollum and that’s why it’s meaningful and resonant. It certainly wasn’t about Gollum’s utility–Frodo most certainly did not expect to fall to the Ring’s temptation and then have Gollum come along and bite off his finger before he fell to his death. Rather, Frodo pitied him and thought it wrong to kill him outside of necessary self-defense. Gollum himself was still a piece of shit but Frodo’s mercy had value. It’s a very Christian story written by a Catholic, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad story.
Similarly, if Luke’s and Rey’s decision to spare Kylo Ren results in his ending up doing some good, then he doesn’t have to be redeemed for their decision to trust in the Force to be validated. It actually brings the series full circle because it was Luke’s decision to trust in the Force that brought about the happy ending of ANH and RotJ.
Luke wasn’t the one to spare him, though–that was his intention, yes, but Kylo literally brought the roof down on him first. Rey was the one who had the far better chance to kill Kylo and chose to spare him. From the TLJ novelization I got the strong feeling that Kylo is not Vader but rather Gollum (ironic, after he’d just killed Gollum): Unrepentently evil, corrupted by his own choices, still conflicted and complex. Gollum ended up doing good, not because he made a good choice but by accident, and Kylo could do the same. That would validate Rey’s, and to a lesser extent Luke’s, decision to trust the Force and spare him much as Frodo’s mercy toward Gollum was validated–no redemption required.
The message of 7 Seconds is that the good guys don’t always win but there can be at least partial justice if good people fight for it with everything they have, often at great personal cost. If Kylo wins militarily because of his greater military strength, I could understand that as a tragedy. If the sequel trilogy ends up validating Kylo by Rey falling in love with him, Leia and Lando forgiving him, and the universe loving him, that would be like 7 Seconds saying that the hit-and-run cop Jablonski was the good guy all along and showing that by K.J. falling in love with him and Fish becoming best friends with him.
Found this on reddit, some basic Kylo apologia, just making up its own “facts”:
Really?
It’s only one of the most iconic parts of the Original Trilogy.
I immediately smelled bullshit there. Also OP is in direct contradiction both with Adam Driver’s statement about Kylo Ren’s elitism and with Kylo Ren calling Rey “nothing” because of her family.
I honestly think they saw your meta about Kylo not being a Dark Side character (but still a villain) and decided to respond in a reylo echo chamber. I only saw it because someone on r/StC linked to it.
I thought it seemed like a roundabout reply, too, because the post responded so directly to the points I made. It’s good to know my argument is bothering reylows–and it should, because it targets the heart of their thesis that Kylo Ren is basically Vader except even more victimized. Sucks to be them, though, because they might have had an argument up to TFA (which was what my Rey Solo theorizing–and perhaps yours–was about, trying to fit Kylo into Vader’s mold) but TLJ brutally undercut them and they’re still in denial about it.
Well, maybe. Leia was a Populist senator, after all. I get the feeling that even if the New Republic collapsed and never recovered, the worlds would start building alliances and trade blocs for governance and survival. There was a reason the Republic was created in the first place, after all.
Obviously we don’t know how new canon is going to write its galactic history, but in old canon it was basically colonialist expansion by human inhabited, Core Worlds.
Most of those alliances and trade agreements weren’t entered voluntarily.
I’d also say there’s a hell of a difference between making trade agreements between two more or less equal parties (or more), or having a mutual defense pact going, and be ruled by a central government. Just like the British Empire and US American Imperialism, the Republic was a huge mistake that the galaxy really needs to ditch and then recover from. Though that is going to take some centuries I could imagine.
So its pretty words about democracy and freedom were lies from the start? Its militarist later years weren’t actually a corruption so much as a logical culmination, then. Fuck the Republic, maybe the post-FO destruction will see the emergence of something better.
L.J.'s Obsessions 