I’ve started to think the real conflict in the sequel trilogy might actually not be between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force. The former can be immoral and the latter can be moral, after all.
Pacifism in the face of injustice can be irresponsible cowardice, which is why people have criticized the “That’s how we win” line. Rationality in the face of others’ pain can be dismissive and callous, as we saw with Yoda toward Anakin.
On the other hand, violence to fight unjust violence is moral. That’s the entire foundation of the Rebellion and later Resistance. Anger and pain in the face of oppression, suffering with those who suffer, can be compassion.
No, I now think the real conflict in the sequel trilogy is between elitism and egalitarianism. Think about it. JJ has said that it’s very deliberate that Finn and Rey don’t have last names. We thought it was because they would get big reveals later on (or at least fandom, including me, thought that was true of Rey), but what if he meant something else entirely?
The third main hero in the new movies is Poe, who has a last name and known family but who was at best solidly midle class his whole life. In TLJ we got Rose, whose homeworld was destroyed by the First Order.
These heroes are arrayed against Kylo Ren, a son and nephew of famous heroes and a genetically powerful Force user, who had every advantage growing up and every reason to be the greatest force for good the galaxy had seen.
In a way, being told he is the ultimate good may be the very reason he went so very wrong. Kylo’s actor Adam Driver has said that Kylo has absolute conviction that he is right and that he is an elitist. What would that do to a person’s morality if he is told, implicitly or explicitly, that he can do no wrong by virtue of being a good guy and that he is a cut above everyone else?
Maybe this is why many people are still flummoxed by Kylo Ren’s character and insist that his motivations are lacking, that he is incomprehensible. Our template of the main antagonist in Star Wars is Darth Vader, who was indeed a Dark Side villain whose passion and fear ran amok, motivating him to murder and destruction. That’s why fans read abuse, brainwashing, or the loss of a loved one into Kylo Ren’s character, so we can fit him in the mold of the Dark Side.
But what if there is no Dark Side to be read into his character? What if there was no anger, fear, or loss that motivated him, at least not from legitimate loss or pain?
What if Kylo Ren’s brand of evil is far more mundane: Self-righteousness and arrogance?
In this frame, we can see why Rey misjudged him in The Last Jedi. Like the fandom, she thought Kylo Ren was driven by suffering and could be reached by a hand of friendship and understanding, like Luke had reached Vader. She learned to her surprise that Kylo didn’t hate the father he murdered, which should have made her rethink her approach. Luke himself who knew both Kylo and Vader warned her that she was dangerously misreading the situation.
And when Rey forgave Kylo Ren the pain he caused her, believed in him, stood by his side, and fought by his side–it had no effect on him at all. He had plenty of people believe in him, love him, and even forgive him after he did the unforgivable. That wasn’t what was wrong with him. It wasn’t the Dark Side that made him evil.
Rather he believed he was he ultimate good, that destroying the galaxy and remaking it in his image was the right thing to do. He thought Rey was nothing and had no place in the story because of her unremarkable birth, and only through him could she find meaning and worth.
The real evil in the sequel trilogy isn’t lashing out in hatred and suffering. It’s the belief that you are better than everyone else and are entitled to use others as a means to your ends. Such a belief may lead to suffering, such as rage at the fact that people aren’t treating you with the deference you believe you are due, but in that case you are not evil because you suffer; rather, your suffering stems from your evil belief.
This is the kind of evil the heroes of the sequel trilogy are standing against, and that their backgrounds and choices refute. Finn was kidnapped and enslaved to be a means for the glory of his leaders like Kylo, but he refused the role. He asserted his own individuality and self-worth and wanted to run far away from the First Order before he decided to fight with the Resistance.
Rey grew up in deprivation but never gave up hope, always longing for people who would love her and with whom she had a place. She projected her own pain onto Kylo, and that very nearly became her downfall.
Poe, like Kylo, was raised as one of the “good guys.” Unlike Kylo, however, he always remained open to questioning himself and whether he was doing the right thing. When he saw evidence of First Order activity as a Republic pilot, he didn’t dismiss it because he thought the Republic was always right. Instead he changed his entire life, leaving behind stability and certainty, to do the right thing. When a Stormtrooper offered to rescue him, Poe believed him and became his friend. In TLJ, though the execution was somewhat muddled, he again showed the humility to question his assumptions and admit when others were right.
Rose, like Finn, was one of the people Kylo deemed inferior and expendable. Like Finn she rejected that to fight back, and like Rey she knows she is more than her birth. Like Poe she showed a willingness to admit when she was wrong and to change her views.
These are the democratic and egalitarian heroes who will fight Kylo Ren despite the odds, who respond to his terrifyingly egocentric worldview with a resounding “no.” No, we are not fodder for your ambitions. No, we do not accept that we are less. No, the greater good is not in some Übermensch because good and evil lie in choices, not individuals or sides. No, we will not bow to you. No, we will not let you continue on this path of destruction. No. No. NO.
Kylo Ren is not evil because he is on the Dark Side of the Force, but because he believes himself to be the absolute good and the ultimate worth due to who he is. It is why he is a villain for our times and why he must be defeated by our heroes.
In the battle against the evil First Order, Isaac thinks it’s easy to forget that the Resistance “are guerrilla fighters, adhering closer to something like the Revolutionary War fighters or even the guerrillas in Cuba with Che and Fidel and all these guys living in the mountains, coming down to do some attacks, and going back and trying to hide from the ‘empire’ of the United States. It’s that kind of ragged at this point.
…
“It is a war movie,” Isaac says. “I mean, above and beyond, it is a movie about warriors.”
Shit, they’re not getting a huge upgrade to manpower? HOW THE FUCK ARE THEY GOING TO WIN otoh he did compare the Resistance to successful revolutionary movements…🤔
Doesn’t look like it, though that does lead to several interesting theories. For one thing it looks like we’re going to see actual guerrilla warfare on screen, only time we’ve got close to that was in Rogue One.
Another is that part of both campaigns is that a lot of it was finding allies, so instead of the ally finding taking place off screen we may get to see that too.
But you know, with all of this, it looks more and more like this is going to be a two parter. JJ simply has too much happening to be able to fit it into one movie, there seems to be more than enough plot for two in fact.
Yeah, for a Rebellion they had very little guerilla-ing going on in the movies. The main Rebellion seemed a well-funded military with multiple Senators in the leadership, and actual guerillas like Saw were called terrorists and extremists. It would be cool to see Episode IX show heroic characters being guerillas/partisans on a sustained basis, which was inevitable after the ending of TLJ. I kind of expected that part to be done during the time skip, but EpIX may be showing at least the tail end of that time period. Maybe the characters shown in the outdoors scene with Finn and Poe are representative of the allies the Resistance is gathering. It also raises the question of when Lando will make his appearance and what kind of resources he will bring to the table.
It seems really late in the game to announce a two-parter–Lionsgate announced it two years in advance for Mockingjay, and if LF is going to go that route it seems we would have heard something by now. But then again LF under Disney and KK has not been a terribly well run operation so nothing would surprise me at this point.
I gotta say I love Oscar comparing the F.O. To the United States cause he is 100% correct in his analysis. It would feel really weird if they split the film up into 2 parts seeing as you said LJ that there was never a prior announcement of them doing such a thing before filming. Maybe it’s just going to be a really long film like tlj but with time being spent wisely. You know not being wasted on alien milking, salt licking, and weird shirtless scenes.
I was debating myself whether to emphasis that part or not. Ended up deciding against it, but damn I was tempted.
As for it not being announced yet. For one thing JJ didn’t even get the script done until February, this production is actually quite rushed. And he might see if he can fit it into one movie. Or he may go a full on Braveheart with four hours and intermission in the middle with IX.
Who knows.
But really, with the hints that Oscar drops here it looks like IX may end up a very different movie and a very different story, from what people have been expecting.
I really find the reference to the Cuban guerrillas and the early American Civil war interesting, because if we look at how those conflicts went down, we had one enemy (British Empire, US backed Batista government) but multiple factions fighting them.
Like the US army ended up allied with France against the Brits, then Span allied with France (but not with the US) and finally the Netherlands jumped into the fray allied with no one. And in the case of Fidel and Che, their rebel army ended up allied with others, among them an Anticommunist movement.
So in IX we may have one big enemy (the First Order) and then multiple factions fighting them, Leia’s Resistance among them, who need to get organized among themselves to be efficient.
Though this indicates that though there is a time skip, it might be a whole lot less than people imagine it to be. The estimates I’ve seen – five years or so – is based on what would be needed to build a functional army to oppose the First Order. But if that is not what is happening between TLJ and IX, the skip might be a whole lot shorter.
There’s obviously enough time for Finn’s hair to grow a bit longer and him to buff up severely, but apart from that we don’t know. It could be skipping only a year or two ahead in time.
Yeah it really does feel like the skips much shorter than we where expecting with the information Oscar giving I wouldn’t put the skip past 3 years. I feel that’s enough time to regroup the people you have left and start looking for new allies.
I’m very interested and nervous to see where JJ plans on taking the film. I think all be happy as long as Finn gets the story he truly deserves.
I can really follow you with the nervous and interested part. The more we get of this, the more torn I feel. Because I think we’re either looking at maybe the best Star Wars movie to date, or one of the worst clusterfucks the franchise has ever made. Not quite as bad as TLJ perhaps, but worse than TMP and AotC.
And the damn thing is, we won’t know for sure until over a year from now. The promotion will probably give some hints and the fact that John and Oscar seems to be enthusiastic again is promising. But as previously shown, the cutting of the movie can change the whole picture once more, so we can’t know for absolutely sure until we have the movie.
It’s going to be fifteen very long months.
I thought what @pikrollo said about the U.S. being the bad guys was pretty much canon–I mean did anyone not immediately think of the Iraq War when they saw the marketplace battle on Jedha? I’m just surprised that Oscar was comfortable making that comparison in public. Also Oscar is from Guatemala, a country that like much of Latin America suffered significantly from U.S.-backed military dictators, so I can imagine he has Thoughts about the U.S. as an evil empire.
From the way John and Oscar have talked about EpIX, in John’s case before even reading the script, it seems like we’re looking at another military movie like Return of the Jedi or Rogue One, scrappy guerillas/saboteurs against a huge military force (at least on the ground, they seemed more evenly matched in space). I could live with that, RO is one of my favorite SW movies and the last good movie LF has put out to date.
OMG…I just saw a screen grab of twitter thread that said Kyle saying “join me…please” to Rey is the ST’s equivalent to Han’s “I know” from ESB and
Like…how HOW can you compare the “I love you/I know” moment with a scene where Kylo yells at Rey, emotionally manipulates her and tells her she’s nothing??
I mean hello THIS:
Is the scene from the OT that Rey and Kylo scene is actually paralleling.
L.J.'s Obsessions 