{"id":217058,"date":"2021-03-16T19:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T19:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gamerant.com\/star-wars-ben-solo-redemption-unearned\/"},"modified":"2021-03-16T19:00:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T19:00:53","slug":"star-wars-ben-solos-redemption-was-completely-unearned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2021\/03\/16\/star-wars-ben-solos-redemption-was-completely-unearned\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Wars: Ben Solo’s Redemption Was Completely Unearned"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

When moviegoers lined up around the block to watch the original Star Wars<\/strong><\/em><\/a> movie back in 1977 and they were introduced to the faceless embodiment of pure evil that is Darth Vader, none of them expected that in six years, they\u2019d actually feel sympathy for him. After The Empire Strikes Back<\/em>\u2019s shocking revelation that Vader is the biological father of Luke Skywalker<\/a>, Star Wars<\/em> fans had no idea what to expect from Return of the Jedi<\/em>\u2019s conclusion to the saga. In the final act of Jedi<\/em>, that nefarious villain has a change of heart and kills his manipulative master to save his son. Vader isn\u2019t necessarily redeemed for his years of war crimes, but he is at least redeemed in his son\u2019s eyes. Luke believed there was still good in his father and, inspired by his son\u2019s own heroism, Vader proved him right.<\/p>\n

This was the perfect ending for the story of the Skywalkers<\/a>, but unfortunately, it set a precedent for redemption arcs in sci-fi and fantasy. Countless post-Return of the Jedi<\/em> genre stories are about brooding, cold-blooded killers who end up being forgiven for their atrocities and labeled as \u201cantiheroes\u201d following a noble act or sacrifice that\u2019s nowhere near enough to make up for a lifetime of evil. Predictably, this ended up affecting Star Wars<\/em> itself.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Should’ve Focused On Finn<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The nostalgia-baiting, Disney-mounted sequel trilogy sets up Kylo Ren as a wannabe Vader: a masked Skywalker who turned to the dark side and led an empire to take over the galaxy. Just as Anakin was brought back to the light by Luke, Ben Solo would be brought back to the light by Han and\/or Leia. Yet another tired redemption arc for a fallen Skywalker was telegraphed from the beginning<\/a>. But killing Han in The Force Awakens<\/em> seemed to prove that Ben was truly irredeemable. Han gave him a chance to come home and abandon the First Order, and he murdered him. Making Ben irredeemable would\u2019ve been a neat twist on his wannabe Vader characterization \u2013 if he wasn\u2019t going to be as intimidating or powerful as Vader, then he could\u2019ve been more evil than Vader.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

After Abrams and his pesky \u201cmystery box\u201d left Ben\u2019s redemption arc up in the air, one of the many subversive turns Rian Johnson took in The Last Jedi<\/em> was to double down on Kylo being irredeemable. Throughout the movie, Snoke senses that Ben is struggling with guilt over murdering his father. He struggles to do evil things like blow up his mother\u2019s ship or kill Rey, then he snaps and cuts his master in half. This was Ben\u2019s make-or-break moment: after killing Snoke, he could either turn on the First Order and help the Resistance bring it down or take Snoke\u2019s place and rule it himself. He went with the latter and took on the title of Supreme Leader, hammering home his inability to return to the light. Interestingly, in Colin Trevorrow\u2019s leaked script draft for Episode IX<\/em><\/a>, titled Duel of the Fates<\/em>, Ben isn\u2019t redeemed. Luke deems him to be irredeemable and tells Rey that killing him will bring balance to the Force, so Rey strikes Ben down and peace is restored.<\/p>\n

When Trevorrow was fired and Force Awakens<\/em> director J.J. Abrams was brought back to complete the trilogy, Abrams started the script from scratch and went in the complete opposite direction with Ben\u2019s arc. In the opening scene of The Rise of Skywalker<\/em>, Kylo Ren is literally slaughtering a whole village full of defenseless people, seemingly for fun, on his way to pick up the Sith wayfinder. By the end of this movie, Rey is madly in love with him and makes out with him as he\u2019s dying.<\/p>\n

The romance between Rey and Ben was a strange juncture that Rian Johnson took in The Last Jedi<\/em>. He recently clarified that a love story was always his intention<\/a> with their dynamic, but that\u2019s strange, because the movie is set across the couple of days that follow Ben\u2019s cold-blooded murder of his father, Han Solo, who\u2019d become a sort of father figure to Rey throughout The Force Awakens<\/em>. There are several bizarre layers of wrongness in this romance. And what\u2019s worse is that the romance always felt painfully forced. Reylo\u2019s love story is even worse than Anidala\u2019s panned romantic arc from the prequel trilogy. This weak writing of Reylo\u2019s love story would\u2019ve been much more obvious if it hadn\u2019t been for the incredible on-screen chemistry shared by Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

But even Ridley and Driver\u2019s chemistry couldn\u2019t save The Rise of Skywalker<\/em>. The sequels had always ignored Vader\u2019s redemption, but The Rise of Skywalker<\/em> took steps to invalidate the entire original trilogy<\/a>. Throughout all three movies, Kylo Ren worships the charred remains of Vader\u2019s mask and pledges to finish what his grandfather started. In all that time, Anakin\u2019s Force ghost never appeared to his grandson to say, \u201cHey, Ben, I turned back to the light. The dark side is the wrong path.\u201d Resurrecting Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker<\/em> was a lazy way to shift villain status away from Ben ahead of his redemption and, for good measure, nullify Vader\u2019s own redemption by revealing his final sacrifice stopped nothing.<\/p>\n

J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson rejected Lucas\u2019 framing of Vader as a tragic hero<\/a> and instead wanted to make him a straightforward villain again. Meanwhile, their own \u201ctragic hero,\u201d Ben Solo, is a reprehensible mass murderer without a shred of remorse. In The Rise of Skywalker<\/em>, Ben is forgiven by a vision of Han on the somehow-still-intact wreckage of the second Death Star. Han tells Ben it\u2019s okay that he murdered him, and that it\u2019s not too late to still be a hero. But Han wasn\u2019t Force-sensitive, so that vision is just Ben\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no grand act of heroism that redeems Ben. He kills his own knights after the trilogy failed to characterize any of them in any capacity, then joins Rey in fighting Palpatine. Rey defeats Palpatine alone while Ben\u2019s lying in a ditch, then he Force-transfers his life into her to bring her back from the dead. This sacrifice deserves some credit, but it\u2019s basically nonsense in terms of the lore \u2013 only Darth Plagueis could cheat death. The kiss that Rey and Ben share before the latter dies for good<\/a> is messed-up on a few levels, especially since Rey identifies herself as one of Ben\u2019s relatives to a passing stranger in the next scene.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0The Star Wars Sequels Failed Because Of One Big Problem Behind The Camera<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n

\\\"IT\u96fb\u8166\u88dc\u7fd2
\u7acb\u523b\u8a3b\u518a\u53ca\u5831\u540d\u96fb\u8166\u88dc\u7fd2\u8ab2\u7a0b\u5427!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<\/br>Find A Teacher Form:\r\n<\/br>https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/1vREBnX5n262umf4wU5U2pyTwvk9O-JrAgblA-wH9GFQ\/viewform?edit_requested=true#responses\r\n<\/br><\/br>Email:\r\n<\/br>public1989two@gmail.com






\r\nwww.itsec.hk<\/a>
\r\nwww.itsec.vip<\/a>
\r\nwww.itseceu.uk<\/a>
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kylo Ren’s return to the light was telegraphed from the beginning \u2013 so much so that the trilogy didn’t bother to come up with a real reason for it.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Star Wars: Ben Solo's Redemption Was Completely Unearned - ITTeacherITFreelance.hk","description":"Kylo Ren's return to the light was telegraphed from the beginning \u2013 so much so that the trilogy didn't bother to come up with a real reason for it."},"footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217058"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217059,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217058\/revisions\/217059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}