Kylo Ren is trying to protect the balance between Light and Dark

yeah that is super dumb, anyone who thinks evil just... goes away forever, is super duper dumb...

There is always going to be evil, there is always goign to be new battles... that is the way of things.

 

Yeah its common sense. However there was a time when saying that was blasphemy on a Star wars forum or at least the jc forums outside of the EU section.

 

i suppose i could have made a new thread, but the title of this one felt appropriate, so even though it's been dead since December, i've decided to co-opt it for this rant. because i keep seeing strange online commentary/articles/whatnot that make me cringe.
and maybe i'm the one who's got it all wrong, so you can let me know in response.

For those of you who don't want to read all the blah blah blah, i included a TL;DR cut below ~ hahaha

Kylo Ren is the villain of TFA. anyone who argues otherwise is deluding themselves.
he's a conflicted villain, but he's a villain.
that said, he doesn't know that.

i keep seeing people say things like: Kylo Ren chose to be evil. but when you look at the film and the novel together, and then consider the interviews and other information (Visual Guide, etc.), it's been made pretty clear that Kylo Ren thinks he's "right" in what he's doing and that the Resistance is the enemy and the New Republic is the evil.

we don't agree with him, naturally, but if you insist on ignoring what's driving him, of course it must look like he's "choosing evil."
and lately there's been a lot of talk about his "bad childhood" being the source of his disordered thinking:
about his parents, Luke, Vader, the KOR, his role with Snoke in the FO.
but that's not really looking at the whole picture either.

[warning: rant ahead]

so i came across this post earlier this week (i hesitate to call it an "article"):

Bad Childhood Or Not, We Need To Stop Making Excuses For Kylo Ren’s Villainy In Star Wars 7​

i don't doubt some people are making excuses for Kylo Ren because boo-hoo he had a bad childhood.
maybe he did ~ we don't really know for sure what it was like, but clearly he wasn't happy about it.
and it's true: anyone claiming the mere fact of his unhappy childhood excuses his awful behavior is missing the point.
the same is true for people who write things like this and suggest that Kylo Ren is a product entirely of his own making.

the writer asks whether his past excuses his actions, while at the same time stating (regarding Rey):

"She's her own person, not controlled by anyone as Kylo Ren is controlled by Snoke."​

the author doesn't seem to recognize that she's answered to her own question.
Rey isn't being controlled by anyone.

Finn's own brainwashing experience is a better comparison, but even there Finn doesn't have the ongoing "support" of an evil mentor sculpting the formation of his thinking. Finn has broken that dependency and removed himself from the circumstances.
also, Finn does not have a mission within context of his position of the FO.
Ren does.

we don't know what this mission is, but i would wager it has to do with the title of this thread: Darth Vader was the chosen one and Ren's been led to believe he did not finish what he started because he was turned. Darth Vader's mission as such is a neutral mission. it's neither good nor evil in spirit. it's about balance.

Kylo Ren is not psychotic and he's not a temper-tantrum-throwing cry-baby.
he's a person who has been led to believe that he has to do something cataclysmically right/important in the galaxy and that desire/belief has been co-opted by an evil fishy-eyeballed toilet monster (that he doesn't recognize as such).
at some level he realizes that things are out of his control, but he has such poor coping skills and feels so trapped, he just gets in a rage (and destroys stuff).

and that's not just my personal read on the character. it's what we're shown in the material and that's what we've been told time and again in the interviews.

i see a lot of arguments about Kylo Ren being driven by power, but power is secondary (at best). his primary motivator is purpose.
like all of the other characters (in keeping with the theme of belonging), he's trying to reconcile his place in the galaxy.

and no, not one bit of that excuses him from the bad things he does ~ especially since it's clear that he has a sense that something is desperately wrong with the "choices" he's making. but you can't overlook the fact that Ren thinks he has a job to do and it's more important than anything.
it's irrelevant what, specifically he thinks he's supposed to be doing. the point is he's driven. it's the only thing that gives him meaning.

for either the apologists or the detractors to say wah-wah Ren had a bad childhood and that's what "made" him evil is reductive.
and worse, ignores the complexity of what it's like to be isolated, manipulated, and controlled.

we don't know whether Finn could have resisted re-conditioning (if he'd actually gone through it).
I suspect he might because he's emotionally strong.
Ren is under the controlling influence of probably the one person he learned to trust at a time when he was most vulnerable
(so far as we know Finn did not have this).
as a result, Ren is in a constant state of reconditioning: treatment he has been groomed to believe he needs.
Ren demonstrates time and again that he's emotionally weak (he's fearful, he has poor impulse control, he hides behind a persona).
the moment Han challenges him, his self-delusion gets fractured (that's how unstable he is)--unfortunately it's only briefly and not deeply enough.

so by all means call Kylo Ren weak-willed, easily manipulated, emotionally compromised, and fanatical on the point of his purpose.
but he's not a villain just because he had a bad childhood. it's more likely he had a bad childhood because he's all of the things i just listed above.
he probably never got the support he needed to address these essential character failings (which was completely not in his control).
and he's not a villain because he's a power-hungry Dark-side-seeking jerk either.
he has a lot of rage and a lot of self-absorption that clouds his perception (all of his actions could be argued as acts of self-preservation).
at his core he is just lonely and afraid.

it's not entirely Han & Leia's fault their son deep-ended into the Dark. they didn't want their kid to be this mess of fear and pain and rage.
it's not entirely Ben's fault. he doesn't want to be this mess either (he even has the presence of mind to say so).

the fault is Snoke's.
he's the only person who did this deliberately.

unfortunately Kylo Ren has to answer for crimes. it was Snoke who made him a monster, but that doesn't change the fact that he is a monster.
and yet it's a special kind of hypocrisy that would square the fault on a weak-willed child whose moral compass has been so clearly compromised.
punish him if it means justice.
but what really is just?

at the end of the "article", the writer states:

"All these characters [Rey, Finn, and Ren] are isolated, tempted by darkness, but ultimately their actions determine whether they're good or bad. When all is said and done, Kylo Ren chose to be a bad guy, one so twisted that he even keeps the ashes of his victims as a shrine to his dark side idol (seriously.)"
​

another case of bringing up the ashes as if it were relevant, but there it is: this patently weird "Ren chose to be a bad guy".
this argument has zero legitimacy unless you can prove Ren actually knows what he's doing is "bad".

the closest one can get to arguing this "choice" is his murder of Han (because we should instinctively know this is "wrong", right?).
and yet ironically one thing we know for sure Ren thinks is "bad" is himself: he understands that he's weak/broken and he's trying to fix that.
which is why he asks Han to help him.
consider this: he's got a galactic task he was born to fulfill and he's afraid he can't do it.
he's been convinced he can strengthen himself by killing his father.
it doesn't excuse or change the action, but it should provide insight into how Ren thinks about the morality of his choice.
when he makes this decision to choose "the needs of the many over the needs of the few," he's actually choosing against his own need as well.

Kylo Ren doesn't follow Snoke because he believes in Snoke's power, he follows Snoke because he believes in his wisdom.

you can't chose evil if you can't recognize it. period.

[/rant]

TL;DR:

• Ren doesn't want power, he wants to fulfill his purpose.
• at his core he is lonely, angry, and fearful about his destiny and his brokenness (and his ability to fulfill that purpose)
• there are a lot of factors that have contributed to his disordered thinking, but Snoke is the one who deliberately crafted him.
• he doesn't recognize evil; he thinks he's aligned himself with wisdom (again, to fulfill the above purpose).

sorry this is so insanely long. if you managed to read it, i certainly welcome your perspective.

 

Kylo is fully aware he is Dark villain and bad. He killed his own father. He wipes out entire villages of people for no reason. He knows very well.

 

i think it's a more than fair question to ask "How can he not know?"

but if you're going to come to the premise with the assumption that because we can recognize what is evil than so should he, then of course you're never going to see any other perspective.

 

At the risk of getting a little too political... When I first saw TFA and was discussing it with my family afterwards, I asked, "Was I the only one who thought that Kylo Ren seemed like an angry teenager who has joined ISIS and is way in over his head?" Everybody agreed with that assessment.

I think Kylo has aligned himself with the Dark Side because he sees it as the path of results. He thinks that the Light Side is too soft and too merciful to get the job done. In a galaxy that seems to always be consumed by conflict and misery, how can anybody choose the Light Side when the Light Side only permits the conflict and misery to continue? Palpatine pitched the Dark Side as a stabilizing force to Anakin; Vader made the same pitch to Luke, and with the addition of calling the Galactic Civil War destructive.

There's a breed of angry young men who see the world fail to live up to their expectations, who begin to wonder if the paths they've been told are illegitimate might actually be a way to make the world as they wish it to be. Then some charismatic person comes along, and tells them that yes, the path or philosophy that everybody has told them is wrong is the way to achieve their dreams. So they join this leader, tell themselves that they have to reject everything they were told was right and embrace what they were told was wrong... but it's hard. Many of them don't realize how hard it is to murder someone in cold blood, to act like a monster. And the frustration that they feel when it doesn't get easier, it gnaws at them.

That's where Kylo Ren is. He's a foolish young man who's gotten himself into trouble because he thought he knew best, and can't admit to himself that he was wrong.

 

i agree with this in spirit ~ absolutely!

to recognize wrongness of the path he's on is to destroy everything he has ever believed in. it is to destroy himself.
whatever may be clicking in his conscience is buried under layers of fear and a self-preservative delusion of righteousness.

i think the only mitigating circumstance in Ren's case is that his political agenda was originally formed (or grossly warped) by Snoke; that in some ways he never had a chance, really, to understand what he was agreeing to.
and now, as you stated, he's in so deep he can't extricate himself (and not even because his essential ideology has changed).

 

Thank you for this reasoned argument. A question this brings up for me, then--and for all of us, really, since we have no definitive info--is, Was Kylo in fact a man when this began? How old was Kylo when Snoke started grooming him? Was he a child instead of a man? A young man has the capacity to reason, whereas a child does not.

 

I've always assumed that Rey is 19-21 in TFA, and that Kylo is 29-31. Assuming that Rey was left on Jakku around the time she was 4-6, and that she was left on Jakku about the same time that Kylo and the Knights of Ren murdered Luke's students, that gives us a 13-17 year gap between Kylo's betrayal and TFA. So with those figures, the youngest Kylo could have been was freaking 12, the oldest he could have been was 18.

Personally, I think it was fifteen years between Kylo's betrayal and Rey's abandonment, it could've been longer or shorter than that. I don't know the exact figures if they have been revealed.

 

Well, I'm the wrong one to ask about the timeline--I'm not even sure the KOR attack and the Jedi temple destruction are the same thing. I meant at what age did Snoke start to get inside Kylo's head and start messing with it, which probably would have been for at least some time--maybe years--before any kind of attack.

 

at the point of his betrayal, yes. he had to be older than 12, younger than about 23 (it's a big span there).

but i think part of the question is: how long was Snoke tinkering in his head even before the betrayal?
clearly Snoke was already mucking the kid up before Leia and Han even sent him to Luke (Leia says so).

it's the difference between a teenager who has learned or developed a capacity for discernment, and a child who never learns a clear distinction between right and wrong, nor the tools for discernment.

 

Great minds, etc.

 

The way Leia refers to Snoke, it makes me think that Luke, Han, and Leia personally knew Snoke. I've always been of the mind that Snoke presented himself to Luke as an Jedi who had survived Order 66, or a practitioner of a different Force tradition. He pretended to help Luke's Academy, perhaps as a sort of adjunct professor , but that was just cover for his real scheme: corrupt Luke's students and turn them into his acolytes. Then he finds Ben, figures out Ben's heritage, and starts in on him hard. The image of Snoke playing a kindly, grandfatherly type to trick a child or pre-teen Ben is so insidious that I really hope it happened.

 

insidious indeed!

this is where i have a really hard time with Snoke. i feel like he preyed on a vulnerable child and turned him into a monster.
and it's Ben who has to pay for it, which is the real evil so far as i'm concerned.

early on i had an idea that maybe Snoke and Luke were connected too somehow, but now i think the connection was through Leia more likely.
i dunno ~ on this matter we've got so little to work with.
either way, it does feel like when Leia says that Snoke was there from the beginning, that Snoke got his hands on Ben pretty early (and as you said, with a ferocity given his heritage).

 

Kylo Ren actually wants to be beaten on every balanced fight and kill unarmed people.

Well, this is what Vader started I guess

 

Well, it's the same thing with Palpatine, isn't it? He lost his apprentice, and then almost immediately after that, he ran into this young, impressionable boy with massive potential and some emotional issues. "We will be watching you're career with great interest," indeed.

We now know from the Obi-wan and Anakin comic that Palpatine was using his friendship with Anakin to mold him from the start, muddying the waters little by little, introducing bits of moral grayness to his life. "Go on, Anakin, it's okay to use your powers to do bad things to bad people, they deserve it... someone needs to stop them. The Jedi say you shouldn't? Well, maybe they don't know everything. Maybe you know better than they do, in some cases." And then, right when Anakin is at his moment of greatest emotional instability, Palpatine says, "Look, I'm a Sith Lord. I'm totally cool with you being married, unlike the Jedi. Join me, and we can save your wife and fix the galaxy. Who are you going to listen to, the old farts who have told you "no" for most of your life, or the friend who has told you "yes"?

That's the tragedy of characters like Kylo Ren and Darth Vader. They don't know better, or they think their crimes are necessary to achieve good, or they are so filled with self-loathing that they don't think they deserve redemption or can even achieve it. And that's the true evil of people like Palpatine and Snoke.

 

I posted this in the Kylo thread but I feel it is relevant here as well:

Kylo will be redeemed. I can't believe this is even a debate. The producers and director went out of their way to cast a gorgeous actor Adam Driver and recruited him to play this role. No one cared who played Darth Vader because he was a villain. Kylo is not a villain, and I can't believe anyone would think he is after watching the movie. He is a tormented hero who has led a tragic life and is on the road to redemption. It starts with his falling in love with Rey.

I have extensive experience in film making, and it is glaringly obvious that they are going down the route of Rey being the Light (Ray of Light) that leads Kylo back from the Darkness. This trilogy will be, above all, a love story about the love of the heroine leading our hero back on the right path. I can't believe anyone would think otherwise.

Kylo has led a terrible, neglected, lonely life. He has been abused (by both his parents and Snoke) since he was a a baby. He never stood a chance. My heart hurts for him every time I watch the film. Unloved, unwanted, horribly abused and neglected since he was a birth, he has never known love until he meets Rey. She opens up his heart to him in the scene where he enters her mind.

His dad, murderer Han Solo beat Ben and Leia within an inch of their lives every day of Ben's childhood. I cannot (luckily) begin to imagine the damage that that would cause a young child to watch his dad beat his mom, his mom screaming for help, and not being able to do anything. When Leia was done, Han would turn to Ben and beat him. The poor child grew up watching his dad abuse his mom and suffered his abuse. Han's alcohol and drug problems made him a volatile, violent presence in the home. Leia tried her best to shield Ben, but it wasn't enough. That's why Ben hates Han and considers him a disappointment. When he was older, Ben finally tried to stand up for himself and finally Force shove his father - and this made Leia fearful that Ben was falling to the Dark Side so she sent him off to Luke. Ben was devastated! Who would protect his mother now? He was leaving her to the mercies of his violent abusive father - that's why he felt abandoned by Leia. Leia didn't love Ben (as JJ and Adam Driver said, the only thing Leia cared about was her career, not her family), but Ben loved Leia. Not having that love returned by his parents damaged him irreparably. While away at Luke's, he felt helpless that he was not around to protect his mother from his father's beatings.

Luke did not love Ben, but reluctantly took him in after Leia decided she didn't want him around. He failed as a teacher and he was a poor excuse for an Uncle - never showing any love or affection to his only nephew. Ben felt alone and abandoned.

Snoke was able to come in and be a father figure to Ben. Ben never had a father figure who loved him, and finally he had the love of someone else. He felt loved and wanted for the first time in his life. But poor Ben, Snoke only wanted him for his own power.

Kylo Ren has done nothing wrong, and it's painful to read that some people in this thread seem to think he's an evil person who does evil needs. Nothing he has done is wrong, or any worse than what our heroes have done. Han Solo is a smuggler and murderer. Luke Skywalker murdered thousands of civilians when he blew up the Death Star in ANH. Neither of them are any better than Ben - in fact I would argue they are worse, since Kylo never beat his partner.

Kylo is engaged in a war against the corrupt New Republic and in war soldiers die. This is a theme in Star Wars. No one cries when Leia shoots stormtroopers in the original trilogy, because that's what happens in war. The New Republic is corrupt and ousted Kylo's mother. That's why he hates them. A corrupt government deserves to be destroyed.

The villagers on Jakku were part of a fanatical religious organization who worshipped the Jedi. As we have seen in Paris and Brussels, nothing good comes out of extreme religious factions. Kylo did the galaxy a favor by getting rid of them. LST was their leader and he was the one who confronted Kylo, not Kylo. Kylo would not have killed him if he had not tried to confront him.

There is no evidence that Kylo massacred Luke's Jedi Academy. Han only says "a boy" did, not Kylo. I believe Snoke framed him and when Kylo believedhe had massacred his friends, he felt he had no choice but to follow Snoke to the Dark Side.

Finally, Han. Han has been an abusive, unloving and neglectful father to Kylo his entire life. Ben grew up watching Han beat his mother and suffered his beatings himself. He never loved Ben and made it clear he preferred adventuring over Ben (JJ and Adam Driver say so in the documentary). I remember reading about a case in the States about a son who after his father had abused his mom and the defendant for decades, the defendant finally snapped and shot his dad in the back. He was acquitted.

To me, this is no difference. What happened with Han was self-defence not murder. Han was the one to approach him, Kylo was trying to avoid the confrontation. Kylo knew Han is a violent, murderous man who is a criminal. He knew that Han would start physically abusing him again, possibly kill him. What Kylo did was what any other boy who had been abused and neglected his entire life by his father would have done. It was justice for his mother, who Han battered their entire marriage (Leia: "No matter how much we fought".

Kylo is a good man, and a hero. Episode VIII I fully believe will end with Kylo and Rey falling in love, possibly getting married. Rey will go to Kylo to try to defeat him (as instructed by Luke, who is a selfish, manipulative person - just like Obi-Wan was.) Rey will be manipulated by Luke and try to go to Kylo to defeat him and Kylo will kidnap her. While Rey is being held captive by Kylo, she falls in love with him (similar to Beauty and the Beast, also by Disney). Kylo teaches her about the Dark Side, and Rey will teach him about the Light Side. They will both emerge as Gray Jedi, balancing the Light and Darkness within themselves. Finn and Poe will officiate their wedding, then Episode VIII will end. Episode IV will be about them teaming up together to take down Snoke and then rebuilding the new Jedi Order. At the end of Episode IX, Rey will announce she's pregnant...thus starting the new Jedi Order for Episode X. Episode X will be about Kylo and Rey's child, now grown up, with Rey and Kylo having been happily married for 20 years by that point.

 

i kinda see Anakin as having a different path. i feel like Anakin had a lot of trauma in his early life and a lot of frustration growing up with the Jedi, but that Obi-Wan tried to provide him with a solid moral foundation and that Anakin gave in to the Dark side for personal gain.

i don't see that in Ben at all. i feel Ben had maybe an unstable childhood, perceived himself as neglected and abandoned, took comfort in Snoke who propped him up, and set him to a purpose (the purpose itself being the reward). i feel like Anakin really did make a choice among choices, whereas Ben fell under bad influence for lack of guidance and lack of choices. i feel like Ben was uniquely abused in this regard.

nevertheless, i agree that there's a certain amount of self-loathing that precipitates the fall of both characters (a sense of unworthiness), and that, yes, people like Palpatine and Snoke absolutely prey on that vulnerability and exploit it for all it's worth.

 

I think Kylo wants to be like his Grandfather and he thinks he has to go to the depths of evil to get to the power of the dark side but he can't. Even after killing his own father he wont be able to get there. He will fail to become like Vader because he is seeking it. Anakin was never seeking to be part of the Dark Side. He was seduced. Kylo is trying to follow a path that is not his own. Unlike Kylo, Rey is very susceptible to seduction to the Dark because she does not seek it.

Anakin became evil by accident, Kylo is pretending, even to himself to be evil. He is action it out rather than actually being it.

 

i think that's a really curious perspective and i honestly don't understand it at all given what we've seen of Kylo Ren's behavior in the film (even ignoring what the book and other sources tell us).

even Leia says flat out that Snoke was the one who seduced their son.
and Ren's behavior is absolutely that of someone who has been brainwashed--in a way Anakin/Vader never was.
Anakin actually made choices for himself. and those choices involved embracing the Dark side, killing children, the whole nine yards.
Ren barely has any agency of his own and when he does try to exercise it, he's a distracted, befuddled mess. we know he's killed--for Snoke, but again, his motives for doing so are hazy at best. Anakin flat out did it for personal gain.

i agree Rey is susceptible, but i also think she's emotionally strong (she has strength of will) and she'll resist.
Kylo Ren does not possess this characteristic. it's why he's Snoke's puppet.