The Redemption of Ben Solo: Does it Work?

Sometimes, the internet can just make a man smile.... your post was one of those moments.

 

Soooooo...? I don't understand your point. Are you arguing that if they weren't willing to keep the Skywalker bloodline going in perpetuity then there was no point in episodes 7-9? The ST was entirely wrapped around concluding the Skywalker Saga. Luke, Leia and Han, along with the only KNOWN grandchild of Anakin are gone. That bloodline has ended. Rey symbolically adopting the name is just that- symbolism. As far as it being a "salvage job", who determined that JJ Abrams, Kat Kennedy, Lucasfilm or anyone were obliged to "make up for" anything? They are the ones telling the stories. Sometimes you just gotta trust in them to be respectful of what has come before, and to tell the story in interesting and thought-provoking ways.

 

That doesn't mean the Skywalker line had to be wiped out. Are you kidding me? Lucasfilm could have ended the Skywalker saga with the family line still intact and move on with other characters as the leads, who are not part of the Skywalker family in future projects. How difficult is that?

 

Closure. It was much better to see the final destiny of the characters than to just spend the rest of eternity wondering whatever happened to them. I can see the argument that what was the point of Han, Luke and Leia dying to try and save Ben Solo, only to have him die anyway... but that's the story. All of their deaths served a purpose. Besides, we haven't seen many characters in the franchise retire to Shady Pines Retirement Village.

 

Precisely.
DLF wanted to move on post the OT?
Fine. But why not set their new films centuries in the future, signalling a new era, with new characters? Those who want new stories and characters got their wish, those who loved the Skywalkers still got the happy ending. I'm sure fans of the OT would have been cool with that, I'm one, and I would.

DLF wanted to have their cake and eat it; cash in on the popularity of Han, Luke and Leia in order to put backsides on seats - then kill the lot of 'em off so to make sure they would NEVER pop up in any future stories.
The worst thing of all for me was how they treated Ben Solo at the end....yes, I know I'm a fan of his, and therefore biased, but love or hate him, he was the last of the line. They 'villainised' Han and Leia's son, Luke's nephew, Anakin's grandson... then used TROS not so much as his swan song but to tell audiences how inferior he was to Rey.
He didn't play a part in ending Palpatine...which let's face it, he should have, as Palpatine was responsible for the destruction of his family. That honour goes to Rey. The Jedi didn't return to save the Last Skywalker....not even the grandfather he idolised. That honour went to Rey. He then was used as a metaphorical organ donor ...for Rey. And she didn't even mourn him. Luke built his father a funeral pyre, wept for him, the man who killed his uncle and aunt, cut off his hand, tortured his sister. Rey did not tell anyone Ben died for her....he didn't even get a Force ghost appearance alongside his uncle and mother....and having Ben and Rey as a 'dyad' was frankly ridiculous, he was an afterthought to her - she cried more for his father, who she'd known for five minutes.

What never ceases to amaze me is DLF claimed it was a 'hopeful and satisfying' ending.... but what was hopeful and satisfying about the Skywalker Saga ending with them all dead and Palpatine's descendant literally standing on their graves.....because her burying Luke and Leia's sabres was a metaphor for her burying them.

With a smile on her face.

 

I find it very telling that some are all torn up and sore about deaths of certain characters but take no exception with Palpatine somehow turning up alive.

As far as something being written to put backsides in seats? Do you really think there is some other reason ANY movie is made? And just to play along for a minute, if Han, Luke and Leia had rode off into the sunset, there would still be a part of the fan base wanting to see more of them. I'm as big a fan as you can get of the OT and the heroes. I literally shed tears in my popcorn when each of them died. At least their lives and their deaths meant something in the overall story. EVEN Ben Solo, who I had hoped would be redeemed and go on to fight the good fight like his parents and uncle. That could have been a good seque to the future movies. That's not what the producers gave us, and again, sometimes you just gotta have faith.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 9, 2022, Original Post Date: Nov 9, 2022 ---

On this specifically- We don't know how she deals with Ben's death and as far as his father, Han Solo was a Legendary Hero of the Republic. They knew of him as soon as he introduced himself. Plus, look how her life changed in a short time because of Han. Just like Luke and Obi Wan in ANH. Luke was able to properly honor his father and it was a symbolic act as it mirrored the end of The Empire. It also should be said that I'd loved to have seen a couple more funeral Pyres. If they'd tossed the pieces of Maul and that wrinkly ol' bag of Palpatine bones onto a fire, we would have been spared two ridiculous and unnecessary resurrections.

 

Rey was such a good character, I didn't like the fact she trained on her own. Luke had Ben and then Yoda... in the Rise of Skywalker Rey trains by herself once again, which to me isn't plausible no matter how powerful you are in the force... you need a mentor to guide you... as Filipino Martial Arts practitioner Rey's training really bothered me... Kylo Ren should have killed her easily... as Kylo Ren said in TFA you need a trainer, or some other... Rey got lucky striking Kylo Ren while he was distracted by his mother's death... TROS is a mess to say the least, but I still love Star Wars...

 

Agreed. I really liked Rey at first, but bit by bit they made her into some sort of Force goddess...Johnson tried to show her 'humanity' by having her defences last five minutes against Snoke, but TROS threw away all of that, the flaws that made her such an engaging person and practically shouted at the audience to worship her as the 'icon' of what a perfect Jedi should be ( despite her obvious dark traits). I read a couple of excerpts from Shadow of the Sith in which she's described as 'pure light' and other nonsense which only goes to prove DLF intend to continue with her deification.

What I couldn't help find repugnant is how Terrio and Abrams seemed to make out that she was a more 'deserving' substitute for Ben Solo...I've spoke to a number of real life abuse victims online who found that deeply distressing for them.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 9, 2022, Original Post Date: Nov 9, 2022 ---

According to supplementary material - the novel - this was Rey's reaction:

'She would have liked to have gotten to know Ben Solo, but she could never mourn Kylo Ren'.
That's it. No mention of her telling Poe and Finn who'd saved her. Just a brief thought of how she 'might' have gotten to actually 'like' the person who'd fed her his life Force. No real sadness or regret. They were supposed to have been a dyad, which is one soul divided into two. Going by that, the passing of the other half of her should have had serious repercussions. Instead, it's as if Rey took everything as if it was her right. This made her into an unfeeling being who was more an icon than a human being.

They character assassinated everyone in that film, but Rey most of all. Post TFA I loved her character and really wanted to see where her story went. Post TROS I couldn't stomach Rey of Perfection for another minute.

 

Didn't like that either.

 

Star Wars is a story that they tell you. It's not an awards ceremony or a popularity contest where the value of a character is determined and dictated to you by how long they remain on the stage or is owned by the last one to leave it.

 

I think most of us are aware of that, and don't need to be lectured.

 

You give us several daily lectures on the relative moral values of the story they chose to tell us. You continually paint everyone who accepts the death of certain characters, including one where the actor died before the movie was even made, as lacking morally.

So don't accuse my one sentence of lecturing please. Particularly when it describes perfectly your true sense of values.

 

I just found my moderator's hat and put it on for a moment to just kindly remind everyone to not get personal.
Please don't forget this is a discussion and on the other side of your screen are people with a bunch of different opinions and feelings.
Putting down my hat again...
I can pretty much accept the redemption of Kylo Ren and I think they managed todo a decent job on this one, when you keep in mind that the probably crucial person of that redemtion couldn't be used for that because Carrie Fisher died.
Maybe I have liked it more if Ben had survived. But is there a stronger Image than someone giving his live to save someone else?

 

As a person of faith this is actually a super conflicting question when it comes to stories. My opinion changes by the day, but the way I see it today is that the sacrifice is as important as the reason it's needed and the relationship between the one who sacrifices themself and the receiver of the gift.

In Arrow (not high art I know) there's a character who sacrifices himself for his daughter. This character was a villain in every way and sense of the word. He was manipulative and abusive towards her, but he loved her in his own way, despite her having learned to hate him. After the sacrifice, the daughter was conflicted about how the feel. Sure, he sacrificed himself for her, but he had put her in so many situations and was just an overall terrible person that she couldn't grieve or praise the One Good Thing either. Something like that would be appreciated in Star Wars. (Also in Arrow and in the children's comic Amulet, the sacrifice starts the story rather than ending it. That way we can see how the sacrifice affects those who were saved by it, and how that shapes their journey.)

In Rurouni Kenshin, in a characters, flashback, one person sacrificed their life to save the person telling the story. In the present, two people talk about that sacrifice and if they would do the same. One character says they would in a heartbeat, while the other disagreed, stating that such a sacrifice would make living even more painful for the person in question. This is another potential approach, asking if the sacrifice is being done as a way to declare some sort of feeling or if it's truly out of the benefit for the person in question.

Also in Rurouni Kenshin - and more recently My Hero Academia - the idea of atonement and living with the guilt and shame and pain of past actions is far more present. That's also what I'd like to see Star Wars explore, particularly when Kylo was involved, as I've probably mentioned ad-nauseum. But that's not what we got, and that's life. I just wish it wasn't nearly every villain in Star Wars who decides to return to the light who they pulled the "sacrifice" or "cut down before true redemption" trope with.

 

Okay, fine, I'm out of here. Let me just say we agree to disagree, and that's that. In future I won't be responding to anything you say to me because I don't want to get banned on this forum as well. As the mods say, we are here to discuss SW and not each other. Good day to you.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 11, 2022, Original Post Date: Nov 11, 2022 ---

It was the way it was played that added to the disappointment, at least for me. When you compare how Vader died and Luke's reaction to it there's no comparison. In ROTJ it was moving and inspiring, in TROS it was as if everyone wanted to quickly get Ben out of the way so they could rush to the end where their shining angel in white was smiled upon by Luke and Leia aka Mary and Joseph of Alabama as one disgruntled reviewer put it!
It made Rey seem so cold...so indifferent. And poor old Ben didn't even to get to play a part in Palps' end, despite him being the destroyer of the Skywalkers...even worse, Anakin's FG rushed to Rey's aid but ignored his own grandson when he was being targeted by a predator.
They just made him Darth Vader the 2nd....difference is, Vader was a physical wreck for whom death was probably a mercy ...Ben had actually already been redeemed by his father before he died...so it wasn't a very nice message was it? Get redeemed, but they'll still kill you off anyway.

 

After TLJ I wrote in a thread here that I would have liked Ben to be redeemed and afterwards go away into exile and Leia going with him.

 

There were dozens of conflicting 'leaks' of how TROS was going to end, I wonder if they intended Ben to die originally? Because there were so many reshoots. I also think that originally they meant for Rey to have actually killed Chewie, then changed their minds at the last moment.
I was a reylo until TROS - I love edgy romance, I refuse to be ashamed of it, and Rian Johnson I suspect, saw it as well...I really thought it would be a Beauty and the Beast kind of story, with Rey and Ben finding happiness with each other ....but they had other ideas.

I remember Daisy Ridley saying post TFA that she 'didn't think Rey would be a Jedi'.....throughout both TFA and TLJ she desperately wanted a family, which isn't something a Jedi is allowed. Yet another reason why the sight of her ending the film alone was so...jarring.

 

You know...I was so sad dear Carrie passed before they were able to shoot a scene with her and Ben. I actually wish they had had Leia die of her injuries pre TROS and started the film with a dignified memorial service for her....then had a scene where she sends Ben a holographic message using her deleted scenes. That way she at least got to interact with her son one last time.