Episode Seven of the Star Wars saga, The Force Awakens, was always going to do two things in terms of critical and commercial appeal. Of course, it was always going to succeed in comparison to the universally hated prequels. But at the same time, audiences were never going to be able to watch Episode Seven without reflexively comparing it to the original three films, a trilogy that inspires feelings of such strong warmth and nostalgia. So in The Force Awakens, any new Jedi would immediately invite comparison to Luke Skywalker, any new droid would automatically remind us of R2D2, and whomever the antagonist was, particularly if they were an evil organization or government, would instantly be contrasted with the evil Empire.
This was particularly the case with the saga’s original villain, Darth Vader, and The Force Awakens‘ antagonist Kylo Ren. Darth Vader, for his part, is one of the most popular characters in the original trilogy, as well as in the entire series. He was the driving force that spawned interest in creating prequels in the first place — awful as they were, the prequels set out to tell the story of Darth Vader because he was one of the characters that intrigued audiences the most. So when we watched the trailers for The Force Awakens and we saw a villain all in black with a mask and a disguised voice, we knew we would go into the theatre in December and compare him to the legend that is Darth Vader. I admit, it is hardly fair for a character to go up against such an iconic villain.
Because of this, I understood the route that J.J. Abrams and his team of writers took. They deliberately made their villain Kylo Ren compare himself to Darth Vader. He’s supposed to fail in comparison, so if audiences didn’t like him, the writers could say, “yeah, well, see, you aren’t supposed to like him as much as Darth Vader. That’s the point, he’s comparing himself to Vader just as you are.” It’s actually fairly clever.
But so far, I dislike the character of Kylo Ren, and it is not merely because he’s not as good as Darth Vader. At first, I wondered whether my nostalgia was affecting my judgment and I wasn’t giving Kylo Ren that much of a chance. But after watching the film for the second time, I realize that I’m perfectly within my rights to not like Kylo Ren. And this is not because he’s not as good of a character as Darth Vader– it’s because, at least within the first instalment, Kylo Ren is just not that good of a character in general.
What’s that I hear fanboys and girls saying?
“No, you don’t get it. See, this character struggles between good and evil. So he’s complex and human and you just don’t get it.”
Unfortunately, I am going to have to disagree with this argument — the argument that a character who struggles between good and evil automatically makes them complex, well-written, and interesting.
The conflict between good and evil is a popular theme in fiction, and indeed one of the major themes in Star Wars. One of the major reasons audiences liked Darth Vader so much is because he was a villain that turned out to not be purely a villain after all. He was on the Dark Side, but he ended his life betraying that darkness because he had enough heart to care about his son.
But it’s not the struggle alone that makes a character interesting or well-written. It is all about how this struggle is executed. Any character can struggle between being “good” and being “bad” — characters like Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead, and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are all characters that have arcs that have to do with “doing the right thing” and struggling between what they perceive to be “evil” or “good”. But some of the characters’ “struggles” are executed better than others, and some are not as believable or sympathetic.
So in this way, there is a degree of fairness in comparing a character like Darth Vader to Kylo Ren. Yes, they both had elements of good and bad in them, and they both struggled with the ethical dilemma of giving in to the Dark Side of the force. But why do people, including myself, dislike Kylo Ren? Why is it that Darth Vader’s struggle was successful and convincing while Kylo Ren’s has (so far) failed?
I do understand that Kylo Ren’s arc has not been completed yet, while Darth Vader’s has. So I understand that there is a potential that Kylo Ren’s development may surprise me and turn out to be unbelievably sympathetic and interesting. But as it stands, for me Kylo Ren’s struggle does not grab me like Darth Vader’s did in The Force Awakens because of the following reasons:
(Note: This article discusses Vader’s successful development is in the original trilogy, episodes 4-6, alone. Prequel development was executed poorly).
Show Don’t Tell:
Subtlety in the Struggle Between Dark and Light
In the original trilogy, we hardly see Vader alone. We don’t see him writing in his diary about how he’s tempted to become a good guy again, we don’t see him literally talk to another character or himself about how he ultimately cares more about his son’s safety than the power of the Dark Side of the Force.
Take for instance this scene in The Empire Strikes Back, where Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious speaks to Darth Vader:
EMPEROR
He [Luke Skywalker] could destroy us.
VADER
He's just a boy. Obi-Wan can no
longer help him.
EMPEROR
The Force is strong with him. The
son of Skywalker must not become a
Jedi.
VADER
If he could be turned, he would
become a powerful ally.
EMPEROR
Yes. Yes. He would be a great
asset. Can it be done?
VADER
He will join us or die, my
master.
This scene reflects Vader’s “complexity” and “morality” struggle well as it is fairly subtle. It can be interpreted in two ways:
- Vader is evil interpretation:
- When Vader says “he’s just a boy, Obi-Wan can no longer help him”, he means that Luke isn’t worth worrying about because he isn’t a threat; Obi-Wan was the threat and he has been removed.
- When Vader says “If he could be turned, he would become a powerful ally”, he is saying this because he wants to aid the efforts of the Empire and the Dark Side.
- When Vader says “He will join us or die, my master”, he means it.
- Vader has some good in him interpretation:
- When Vader says “he’s just a boy, Obi-Wan can no longer help him”, he wants Palpatine to think Luke is not a threat so that Luke will not be harmed.
- When Vader says “If he could be turned, he would become a powerful ally”, he is doing so to offer an alternative to killing Luke.
- When Vader says “He will join us or die, my master”, he is saying this hoping that he will be able to convince Luke to join the Dark side, and he will not have to worry about the alternative.
This scene can be interpreted these two ways, but never does Vader say “Can’t we spare Luke please? I am struggling between the Dark and Light and my Light side wants to protect my son”. The subtlety is what creates the interesting dynamic to the struggle.
In The Force Awakens, however, Kylo Ren’s “struggle” between good and evil is mostly “tell” and not “show”. There is no subtlety. Kylo Ren speaks to Darth Vader’s old helmet, literally saying “I feel it again.. the call of the light”. He says “I feel like I’m being torn apart”. He may have well have said “Please regard me as a complex villain”. And on the subject of masks and helmets…
Kylo Ren Takes Off His Mask Too Early:
A Villain’s Presence
Vader’s mask aided his characterization in many ways. Masks, as a rule, are intriguing because of the things that they hide — they connote mystery, secrecy, and perhaps an ugly secret.
Underneath their masks, Vader and Kylo Ren could be anyone. This is what is frightening — we cannot help but identify them as evil and dark because they are obviously hiding something. We are afraid of things we cannot see or identify, and in this way, when we first saw Darth Vader, we knew there was something threatening about him. He had a real presence: as well as the mask, he had the dark theme song, the inhuman breathing sounds, the excellent threatening lines. His behaviour is violent and seems emotionless, and because his face is always covered by a cold, plastic mask, we cannot judge his face or his expressions to see whether we can detect any humanity. His identity and softness is therefore hidden behind something harder and emotionless.
Because of this, it becomes ambiguous that Vader will ever change. Visually, what we see is a man that looks and behaves like a machine or a monster. Yet at the same time, there is some quiet foreshadowing that there is some good in him anyway. Take this scene with the ghost of Ben “Obi-Wan” Kenobi and Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi.
BEN Anakin was a good friend. When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong. My pride has had terrible consequences for the galaxy. LUKE There's still good in him. BEN I also thought he could be turned back to the good side. It couldn't be done. He is more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.
From this scene, as well as many others, we know that Darth Vader, once Anakin Skywalker, was a good man in his past. We know that Ben does not believe he can redeem himself. And, of course, we know that Luke does. So the truth behind Darth Vader’s nature is uncertain — we don’t know whether Ben or Luke is correct, and in the meantime, it is challenging to determine Vader’s nature ourselves as his face and humanity is always hidden.
But when Vader does take off his helmet, we are completely blown away by his vulnerability, his age, and his weakness. Vader’s change from threatening to soft and frail is thus something that makes his struggle between dark and light interesting.
Kylo Ren, conversely, takes off his mask early on, about halfway through the film. Arguably, he takes off his mask too early. He doesn’t have enough time to establish himself as mysterious and threatening before we see his face. And because of this, the secrecy, the darkness, the threat, is gone. Kylo just seems like he’s a kid. He isn’t a bad character because he’s “too human”, it’s because he was human too soon. When he takes off his mask, it blows the subtlety and it becomes harder to take him seriously. He just seems like a dumb kid who wanted to be “Dark”.
Some fans complained that Kylo Ren wasn’t “badass” enough, but that isn’t exactly the problem. The problem is that if we never found the villain threatening in the first place. We never got to see dark and scary to soft and vulnerable. We only ever got to see a fanboy villain who wants to be bad but is just juvenile and is playing at a game because he thought it seemed fun. I mean, he wasn’t even wearing his mask for his health or anything; Darth Vader used it to breathe, Kylo just wore it to look cool and evil.
But, to be fair, Kylo Ren is a lot younger than Darth Vader. It makes sense that he wouldn’t become as hardened and emotionless in a shorter span of time. Perhaps Kylo Ren didn’t have time to become a machine.
Except, he is evil. He’s not scary, but he kills an old man in the first scene we see him. He’s not threatening, but he tortures Poe Dameron to figure out where the droid BB8 is. He has a baby face, but is complicit in the genocide of an entire system of planets. And it’s hard to forgive Kylo Ren for not being threatening while also being evil because…
It is Nearly Impossible to Sympathize with Kylo Ren
Here’s the thing: Darth Vader was sympathetic because, at least until the prequels, he was a mystery. We never learn exactly why he turns to the Dark Side except that he was seduced by the Emperor for unknown reasons. And because we don’t know the true reason why Vader was corrupted, we can imagine possibilities of awful things happening in Vader’s past that might explain why he betrayed the Jedi.
Perhaps he saw corruption or hypocrisy within the Jedi council. Luke and Leia’s mother is mentioned briefly in the original trilogy — perhaps Vader loved her very much, and her death drove him to darkness. Perhaps he was too weak to protect his wife or his family from dying, and he sought strength and power with the Dark Side because with the Jedi he was too weak to protect them. The point is, Darth Vader’s darkness and cruelty is believable because we’re not entirely certain why he turned away from the Jedi. We can believe that there was a understandable if not excusable reason why he became Dark.
The prequels, of course, ruined this. Anakin Skywalker ends up turning to the Dark Side because the Jedi didn’t appreciate him enough. So, he went and murdered a bunch of children (“younglings”). This made his character seem a lot more angsty, emo, and ridiculous.
And that is a problem with Kylo Ren’s character. He’s not sympathetic because it’s really difficult for us to imagine any reason for him to join the Dark Side that isn’t emo or ridiculous. And why can we imagine so many possibilities for Vader and not for Ren? It is because we know who Kylo Ren’s parents are, and we know what they are like.
We can justifiably believe that Han Solo and Leia Organa could possibly be less-than-ideal parents. They bickered a lot, and of course Han was a criminal. But because we know Han and Leia as characters, we can’t justifiably believe that they would do anything terrible enough for their son to be seduced to the Dark Side. Maybe Han Solo neglected his son emotionally, but he would never physically abuse him. Maybe Leia constantly compared Kylo to Luke, but she would never treat him like she didn’t love him.
Because Han and Leia are established characters, no matter what their flaws are, we know them well enough to know they would never harm their own child or treat him with cruelty. Yet Kylo Ren seems to really strongly hate his father and says he “would have disappointed” Rey if Han were her father. As a result, we can only presume the reason “Ben Solo/Organa” became Kylo Ren is that he thought “Darkness looks cool, I guess, and my parents don’t appreciate me”, and went off to be evil. This looks stupid and makes us unable to sympathize with him, and is the idea that generated the Twitter account “Emo Kylo Ren“.
To be perfectly fair to Kylo, it is a weakness in the Star Wars saga in general that the films never really explore the reasons for turning to the Dark Side. Nothing but the vague notion of “power” is ever offered to explain why someone might be “seduced” and begin murdering a bunch of children. But despite this, it really made a bit of a problem when the writers decided to make the new villain the son of characters we already knew.
I still really liked The Force Awakens for the most part. But I didn’t like Kylo Ren, and I have a good reason not to. If you are a fan of Kylo Ren, that’s perfectly fair. And I admit that in the later films, things might get better. But Kylo Ren is not sympathetic or complex in this film. And don’t tell me that the only reason I didn’t like him is because he was way too complex and human for me to understand.
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