if you say so

source: https://screenrant.com/star-wars-rise-skywalker-kylo-ren-redemption-mistake-bad-reason/

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"After being healed by Rey, spiritually as well as physically, he returned the favor by bringing her back from seeming death. Unfortunately, the act ended up costing the newly restored Ben Solo his own life. It certainly made for a dramatic moment to which Driver customarily gave his all. However, it also felt like something of a narrative shortcut and very much a missed opportunity. After all, Ben Solo was fighting fit - having previously bested the Knights of Ren in their entirety and even survived a seemingly fatal fall. Unlike Vader, it felt as though Ben Solo still had much more to offer to the galaxy far, far away."

"Redemption through sacrifice has become a common trope for a reason - and carries great impact if and when it's used effectively. In the case of Ben Solo, however, it felt entirely too easy. It's not clear just how widely known Kylo Ren's true identity is. In any case, whether recognized or not, the sight of a redeemed Ben Solo living on to actively atone for his past mistakes and heinous actions would have arguably have been even more impactful. The conceit of Ben Solo actively seeking to undo the devastation he caused and restore the legacy that his family actively tried to put in place would have been likely more meaningful and emotionally resonant."

—

After the Throne Room, Rey and Ben pretend nothing happened. If only their dreams would leave them be.

All the things that never happened in the year between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. An interlude to my upcoming post-TRoS comic.

If anyone were to pull me into a Hollywood studio office or lunch at some see-and-be-seen L.A.-area restaurant (personally, I like The Ivy) and ask me, a lifelong t.v. and movie viewer, what should show runners, directors, writers, and anyone who has a creative say in a production avoid doing, one thing I would say is, “Don’t unintentionally make a character a martyr.”

I don’t mean the sense of being a martyr in-universe but being a martyr to the audience.  

First I should define what I mean by “martyr.”  In a Christian sense, it’s a particular kind of saint who suffers and dies a horrible death for his or her faith.  In a secular sense it can describe anyone who suffers and/or dies horribly for a cause or that suffering/death calls attention to a matter of injustice.  This can also be applied in a more colloquial sense, such as when anyone suffers in some way or tries to use the impression of suffering to elicit sympathy.

If anyone at Lucasfilm is wondering why there’s a tribe of people on social media doing Ben Solo hashtags, making pins, and putting blue butterfly emojis on their handles, I’m here to tell Lucasfilm it’s because you guys made Ben Solo into a martyr to the audience.  

First, they made Kylo Ren/Ben Solo Han and Leia’s son/Anakin and Padmé’s grandson.  This makes him an easy investment for fans who have loved those characters for decades.  The killing Han Solo part might have made a certain segment of longtime fans so angry at Kylo they not only couldn’t forgive him but  they didn’t even want him redeemed but others could see how the death clearly affected him which elicits sympathy and compassion.

Second, they got an extremely talented, charismatic actor to play Kylo/Ben.  Adam Driver refused to play Kylo as a one-dimensional mustache-twirling killing-machine villain.  He added subtlety, nuance, and humanity to the role, all the while captivating the audience.  That he’s also sexy didn’t hurt.  As bad as Kylo could be, we also see the soft underbelly, the hints of the real Ben Solo hiding behind the persona.  He managed to create the kind of hero we’d been hoping to see in the ST within a short amount of time and practically no dialogue.  That’s extraordinary.  Driver took Kylo as seriously as he takes any other role.  He could’ve been making a bunch of other Oscar-nominated movies instead and we all know it.  Getting him was a gift and some fans out there think it was ultimately kind of wasted.

Third, if TFA hinted at Kylo’s humanity, Rian Johnson made it entirely the point of Kylo’s arc in TLJ.  When Kylo destroyed his helmet, Johnson was able to let Driver go nuts with a script that treated its characters like human beings instead of caricatures.  While Kylo was still capable of evil and all-around bad guy-ness, we also saw someone who could be gentle and caring, a tortured young man struggling with deep remorse, a lonely soul who can only find connection with someone who’s supposed to be his enemy, and sometimes, a hero.  Those pleading puppy dog eyes and trembling lips did a lot to elicit sympathy from filmgoers.  That he’s also sexy didn’t hurt.

Fourth, both the films and ancillary material showed Ben was subjected to abuse and suffered greatly for the mistakes of his elders.  Ben was targeted at conception and suffered with voices in his head most of his life.  A kitchen droid tried to take him out.  His parents were too busy doing whatever to really give him the attention he needed, even though Leia was aware some outside force was after her son.  His parents ultimately feared him and his emotional freak outs.  Han and Leia shipped him off to Luke’s poor man’s version of Hogwarts, leading to some deep abandonment issues.  Luke almost killed him in his sleep.  The very popular The Rise of Kylo Ren comics series basically acquitted Ben of everything he supposedly did leading up to his fall.  Then Kylo is verbally and physically abused by Snoke.  This has created a tremendous amount of sympathy for Ben, especially by those who have struggled with any number of real-world problems.  They identified with him.  Hollywood as of late has coded a lot of villainous or antihero characters as having mental illness or being neurodiverse or having addiction problems as well as enduring physical and verbal abuse.  I get that writers want to enrich these characters and make them relevant to a modern audience and that actors like the challenge in playing them but I also think Hollywood is being a little irresponsible about it.  Not only is it potentially stigmatizing it also seldom has a solution to those characters’ arcs other than death.  How is someone living with bipolar disorder or autism finding a kindred spirit of sorts in Kylo/Ben going to feel about the constant message that such a life isn’t worth living?  Ben just suffers and suffers and suffers and gets nothing for it.

Fifth, we’re presented with material depicting Ben’s youth.  Ben, when he’s not getting the stuffing kicked out of him by life, is quite lovable and as a child, adorable.  At least with Anakin Skywalker, we’re supposed to appreciate the tragedy of a good person who was loved falling to the Dark Side.  With Ben it makes us love him 10x more and at the same time make us even more upset they unceremoniously killed off that darling little moppet who played with butterflies, ran around the house naked, and begged his daddy to come home.  

Sixth, it didn’t seem like Ben was sufficiently loved either in the films or by Lucasfilm.  Or, to put it this way, whatever gestures Han, Leia, or Luke tried to throw Ben’s way were cases of too little too late.  I always wondered why, if Leia knew Snoke was manipulating Ben, she didn’t go out to find the mo-fo and kill him?  I would!  Leia tries to reach out to Ben in TROS but in the movie it comes off as her distracting him so Rey could inflict a fatal wound.  In fact, the weird thing about TROS is it feels like Leia was trying to take out Ben all along:  the distraction, ensuring Rey takes up her “Jedi path” which Leia knew full well this would somehow lead to Ben’s death, and finally her disappearing the same time he does.  It’s weird!  Han tries to save Ben but he’s a muggle who’s no match against his unstable son gifted with magic powers and lightsaber abilities.  Luke apologizes in TLJ but never had anything to say to his nephew again.  Adding insult to injury, the Blue Ghostie Exposition Scene From Hell establishes Luke and Leia as resigned to Ben’s fate all along, kicking their flesh and blood to the curb for a surrogate more to their liking.  It’s horrible!  The worst is of course his soulmate barely reacting to his death.  In the end nobody cared.  He’s like the kid who cleans up his act, gets good grades, gets into a decent college, and his family couldn’t care less.  The movie abruptly kills him off and it’s on to cheering and celebrations.  Nobody remembers or speaks of Ben and he’s not seen again in any form.  Four-five months after the film has come out, there’s no official Ben merchandise or collectibles.  It’s like “Ben Solo?  Don’t know him.”  You just know that every time the Star Wars social media team has to mention him or post something with him in it, they’re muttering under their breath, “Oh God, here it comes again.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had raised the hopes of Reylos, fans who longed for Rey and Kylo Ren to end up together in the end, healing the wound inflicted on the galaxy two generations earlier by Emperor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker. The marketing certainly hinted at such and, at least for less-invested viewers, the film delivered on its promise of romance: Reylo (and Bendemption) did occur, and Rey and the redeemed Ben Solo shared a passionate kiss, which is why it may be so perplexing for the general audience that Reylos hated the ending. Two weeks after the release, they're still mourning on social media, and demanding for Disney to #RealeaseTheJJCut, a reference to an edit that would have delivered the conclusion they wanted, and purportedly what director J.J. Abrams intended. So, what happened, exactly?

While romance is certainly not a new concept to Star Wars, it was never depicted from the perspective of a woman. However, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi made moves to remedy that: The camera stays with Rey when she interacts with Kylo; the lighting, music and the chemistry between the actors drew in many women. The trope being trapped was "enemies to lovers," a classic of romance literature. In The Force Awakens, Kylo is infatuated with a "lowly scavenger," despite himself and his training. In The Last Jedi, the two characters establish a connection that goes deeper than their pasts, ripe with wedding imagery from around the world, before separating again.

The comparisons with the doomed romance of Anakin and Padmé popped up. If the tragic lovers of the prequel trilogy married in the second movie and died in the third, surely the sequel would turn it around, allowing the last descendant of Anakin Skywalker to fix what he had broken and to triumph where he had failed.

It's easy for a certain segment of the audience to dismiss the power of romance, but it remains most lucrative literary genre in the world. Romance writers master the art of the promise and the delivery, which is a happy ending for the main couple. There are tragic romantic novels in which one or both of the lovers die, but that's not what Disney was promising with Episode IX. From that perspective, The Rise of Skywalker punishes the male lead by killing him the moment he chooses to save the love of his life. Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio were going for a parallel with Return of the Jedi, but that movie was never promoted as having romance at its core, and Darth Vader didn't have his entire life in front of him.

The Rise of Skywalker then goes out of its way to show how little Rey really cared for Ben, to the point where, after watching the final scenes, it's difficult to assess what impact he had in the plot. The film also does that to[Finn] and Rose, but in the case of Ben Solo it's particularly egregious because he's the last of the Skywalker bloodline. If they were going for Return of the Jedi parallels, they could have included either a funeral or a Force ghost, but the audience is denied that, which is a strange and cruel narrative choice.

Even worse, the ending broke the promise made in the promotional material. Yes, there was a kiss, but it's swiftly punished: The heroine ends up alone in a barren planet; the Byronic hero is never mentioned again. The other side of fandom might argue that Star Wars should have never catered to romance, but they would be the first to complain if a film advertised like Fast & Furious turned out to be a family comedy; false advertising elicits the same kinds of reactions in everyone.

Ben Solo's death, isolated from the romance, is also problematic because he was coded as a conflicted, groomed, abused, abandoned and brainwashed child soldier fighting to break from his programming. The ancillary material supports this, and in Marvel's The Rise of Kylo Ren, it's shown he never attempted to kill Luke Skywalker, he didn't burn the Jedi temple, and he didn't attack his fellow students. It was a set-up designed to turn his family against him and place him within the First Order. Han, Leia and Rey work for two entire movies to try and bring him back. By killing every single character that even attempts to turn around, the film confirms their worst fear -- that the only way out is death.

There'ss another horrifying message lurking in The Rise of Skywalker, however, if you are coming to the film from this perspective: that your family will disown you and forget you the moment you misbehave, replacing you with a "good child." That's exactly what happens to Kylo Ren; despite his efforts to come back as Ben Solo, neither Luke nor Leia nor Anakin help him. Ben has to imagine a conversation with his father to move forward, and in the end, his mother and his uncle replace him with Rey, who becomes their "found child" and assumes the Skywalker name.

But Kylo was filling a different role too -- the monster boyfriend, whose most famous example is Beauty and the Beast. While the original purpose of tales like Beauty and the Beast was to prepare girls for marriages in which they would be under the authority of their (potentially monstrous) husband, the tale evolved, and the monster became a focus for those that society had misunderstood or repressed. It's the grown-up version of little children, who feel powerless most of the time, preferring the Hulk over any other superhero, only with romance, darkness and danger thrown in; it's a way to explore a problematic aspect of reality through fiction. Unfortunately, instead of allowing fiction to play its role for women, the monster boyfriend trope is incredibly policed ("it's toxic!"), a criticism that doesn't extend to monster girlfriends (see Mara Jade's murderous origins and her eventual marriage to Luke Skywalker in Legends).

Many women in Star Wars fandom identified with Kylo Ren for those reasons, and the more the character was attacked on social media ("he killed his father!" "he's ugly, unworthy of being a hero!"), and the more stories about what really happened to him were published, the more affection he drew.

And while we are talking about ancillary material, The Rise of Skywalker contradicts almost every single narrative thread about Kylo published to date, which were hinting at redemption as far back as 2017. Most Reylos engaged with that material wholeheartedly. Despite the amazing talent involved in its creation, those fans view the ending of Episode IX as a slap in the face, and many women feel like they have wasted their time buying into a franchise that ultimately never cared about fulfilling its own promises about happy endings, telling a complete story, or even offering hope and compassion to the characters that needed it the most.

However, all of that might have been better received had the film been generous with the heroine, the first woman to be the primary protagonist in the Skywalker Saga. For two and a half movies, it even looked to be a story in the fairy-tale tradition, with a poor orphan discovering her inner power, defeating an unspeakable evil, forging friendships and, ultimately, finding the love of her life and becoming the leader of her people.

Instead, The Rise of Skywalker leaves Rey effectively where she started, on desert planet, taking with her someone else's droid and someone else's name. She doesn't grow, and she doesn't even confront or integrate her inner darkness. Rey, who had been wonderfully feral up to that point, becomes a creepy Stepford smiler.

Or arguing with Jon?

Or this VERY ADORABLE scene?

Or reading people’‘s comments on “Chirper” because tHey’rE TALKING ABOUT HIM

BeCAUSE GUYS, HE‘S A LITERAL KID TRYING TO BE AN ADULT, LEARNING HOW TO BE A NORMAL TEENAGER IMDB FFSDJHFDKSJFDSLJSFD

The whole point of his personality being the way it is its to show how fucked up his up-bringing was djbsjhbkdhbskjhf

They seem to have a lot of trouble with understanding that Damian, just like Jason, is an abused child. He’s got traumas, but he tries.

When he was like five his mother and grandfather made him fight literal godlike entities to prove he was worth keeping alive. He watched his keepers blind his teacher, one of the only people who treated him with respect and kindness. He never got to be a kid. But he still had the need to cry over Goliath, who in all sense was him. A baby monster who doesn’t know anything other than war. But who still guided him to the light and saved his life.

Some of the (even the canon) writers out there will literally still have him siding with Ra’s, and following Ra’s’s ideology, even after he’s shown so much growth with Batman, Supersons, and the Titans.

(Click to be able to read the words)

This kid was grown in a test tube along side, like, actual Frankenstein-style monsters (as in they were also victims and talia was the real monster) who sacrificed themselves for him! He released them onto the island they were made on when he was ten! They died for him when he was ~11 or so! And people complain about him at thirteen having trouble communicating with others.

We don’t even know how many people he’s killed. Or how many times he’s died and been revived. Or what kind of branding-carving-torture nonsense his grandfather would’ve inflicted. And you hate him because he says he hates Tim? Is egotistical? Complains when he realizes his father is smarter than him? This is a high-empathy child who didn’t realize he was allowed to Not Kill Things until he was already in too deep to forgive himself. He didn’t tell Job about his past until his mother showed up and forced him to say something.

He’s stuck between acting like a mature adult and his own immaturity because he wasn’t socialized like a child. When he was a baby, he wasn’t treated like one. When he was three, they were cramming training in so much on him there’s almost no way they just let him play. He probably didn’t see a kid his age until they put him in charge of the tiny assassins we see at the beginning of titans. He’s got the behavior of an adult, the whims and emotions of a ten year old, and the emotional intelligence of a baby. Honestly it’s astounding he’s past the egocentrism of an infant.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8114015/Donald-Trump-tries-pay-German-company-creating-experimental-coronavirus-vaccine-US.html

https://www.curevac.com/news/company-founder-ingmar-hoerr-succeeds-daniel-menichella-as-ceo-of-curevac-ag

Your government, in the middle of a global fucking pandemic, literally tried to buy the vaccine under development for said pandemic exclusively for the US.

If you like animated fairy tales, then please consider supporting the korean movie “Red Shoes And The Seven Dwarfs” in any way you can.

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After seeing Frozen 2 again this weekend, I had a lot of thoughts about this scene of Elsa crossing the Dark Sea and how it could be seen as a metaphor for mental health.

This whole sequence leads up to Elsa’s personal transformation, and ultimately, self-acceptance and love. Seeing this transformation from a character who was already shown to have anxiety was such a personal and touching thing, and I’m sure others dealing with mental illness can agree. I cried each time during Show Yourself, because I knew I wanted to find what she did. That ultimate love and self-acceptance. To be able to say, “I’m the one I’ve been waiting for.”

We see Elsa go through quite the struggle to cross the Dark Sea. Her plan doesn’t work the first time. Things don’t go as planned. She slips and falls and fights tooth and nail to get across that sea.

This is a direct relation to how it feels when you’re struggling mentally. It feels like you’re drowning, like nothing works no matter how hard you try. The waves keep crashing, you get pulled under, and you fight your way back up to try again. The cycle repeats and repeats, but it’s not hopeless. You put your brave face on-even if you don’t feel brave-and you keep fighting. And eventually, all of that fighting pays off.

Things do get better. You start to tame your fears, you find something to hold onto, and things get better.

This bit right here is what gets me. With Atohallan in front of her and the hard part behind her, she wipes her tears. You can see the relief, the knowing that something better is coming. Her journey isn’t over, not yet, but the she made it. What was so draining and terrifying wasn’t the end, and now she’s at a place where she can truly discover and accept herself, and that’s what we’re all after, isn’t it?

Here, she’s stronger than she thought she was. Now that she’s made it here, she knows that she can get though whatever is thrown at her. Through her journey in Atohallan, she faces each obstacle head-on, and is able to get through it easier than the Dark Sea, because she has learned and grown, and the darkness is lifted.

“I am found”

Just look at that expression. The tears of happiness, relief. Finally, the burdens and hurt of the past can fall away. The future has room to breathe now. It’s not suffocated by fear anymore, it’s right in front of you and waiting. You made it. You are found.

Like if she ended up going through with the sacrifice. Or if Ben went on his journey to find himself and returned to find dark Rey. Imagine how much more emotional that would be.

Then she starts wrecking havoc and Kylo Ren confronts her, he realizes now, seeing her at her darkest, that this is not what he wanted for her and for the future he saw for both of them. He turns back to Ben Solo, goes to the Resistance to ask for help. 

They go battle the Sith fleet while he confronts Dark Rey because they’re a dyad and he’s the only one who can confront her. They fight, she almost kills him but that’s when she realizes this is not her, this is not what she wants. She asks him to kill her, but he doesn’t want to, he wants to find another solution. So she starts fighting him, pushing him to counterattack, until he accidentally kills her while fighting back. 

Rey dies and with her all the Sith, but Ben, desperate, calls out to the Jedi of the past, they answer his call; Anakin, Luke and others appear in Ghost form and they help him revive Rey. Anakin also has time to tell Ben about how he was wrong to turn to the dark side and how he listened to him all those years but couldn’t reach out to him because of Palpatine’s influence.

The Resistance wins the battle and they celebrate the victory. Rey and Ben join the celebrations, he gets to see Leia, Chewie and Lando again. He hugs his mother, finally.

Though the First Order is not gone, they know now that they can make it, they can restore the peace in the Galaxy, also thanks to Rey and Ben, who decide to build a home on Naboo (or Chandrila) and start their new life there.

Cut to a few years later, Rey&Ben set up a Force-users academy. They don’t call it Jedi academy anymore, their teaching methods are different. They understand everyone has light and dark inside of them, and their goal is to avoid having someone else go full dark because of the restrictive teaching methods of the old Jedi order. 

They also built a family of their own, they have children and they’re happy. The War is over now, the galaxy is truly at peace for the first time in decades. They are outside of their home, looking at the endless green fields in front of them. Their kids are playing in the distance with BB8, you can hear their laughter.