10 iconic Audrey’s roles: Princess Ann (Roman Holiday); Sabrina Fairchild (Sabrina); Natasha Rostova (War and Peace); Jo Stockton (Funny Face); Ariane Chavasse (Love in the afternoon); Holly Golightly (Breakfast at Tiffany’s); Regina Lampert (Charade); Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady); Nicole Bonnet (How to steal a million) and Joanna Wallace (Two for the road)
Rian Johnson: Maybe evil is more than just individuals doing bad things? Maybe evil is also a system that is not only apathetic to the plights of the less fortunate, but also actively profits from their misery and perpetual war?
J.J. Abrams: NOPE! Evil is just that old guy over there
Rey was alone her entire life, living in a dark and cruel reality of poverty, injustice and of being taken advantage of.
She steeled herself. She built her morals and her identity around the idea of heroes. Of being something special. By making her a nobody Johnson gave her a slap in the face. He grounded while opening the path for her fully embracing herself for who she is and understanding that her strength comes from within and that she is not bound by the past but is perfectly capable of being loved, appreciated and of finding her own family in the future.
On the other hand Ben has latched onto people his entire life and the family he had did not seem to hold onto him in the same way. He was manipulated when he was vulnerable but that’s exactly the point… Ben’s goodness relied on his family; his path to the dark side relied on Snoke. He always had someone who affected his actions.
By having Ben kill Snoke and being away from Rey at the end of TLJ Johnson left Kylo Ren without his safety blanket of codependency. As the supreme leader he’d have to feel the full weight of his actions and the responsibility that comes with them for the first time ine his life. He’d have to find his true voice without his spite for Luke or for anyone else affecting his judgement. It woild be an inner battle of who Snoke tried to make him into and of who he is in his heart of hearts. Abrams retconned that.
People can hate TLJ all they want and they may disagree about the direction it took, but the thought that was put into the characters is undeniable.
okay but we didn’t even need jj’s sad attempt at parallelism at the end of tros with the two suns because a) that’s how luke’s story began, not rey’s and b) rian johnson gave us amazing parallelism with the conclusion of luke’s story when he died in the last jedi
The Last Jediresolved the intrigue surrounding the heroine of this new sequel-trilogy, Rey, and her parentage with a gracefully simple, bold assertion: Rey is… just Rey. Not the daughter of some space aristocracy or legacy lineage, but a hero of her own making. […] That Rey’s parents were ordinary people meant anyone from anywhere could be born a hero; what determined a person’s place in the world was who they chose to be, rather than their last name. “Rey is our protagonist. And the truth is, in the story, the toughest possible thing for her to hear is, you know, you’re not gonna get the easy answer that you’re so-and-so’s daughter, this is your place,” [Rian] Johnson told me after The Last Jedi’s release. “You’re gonna have to stand on your own two feet and define yourself in this world.”
Instead of taking the baton from Last Jedi and running with it to new heights, The Rise of Skywalker retreats right back into the safety of nostalgia. […] It’s as if Abrams and Terrio scrambled for a loophole specifically to mollify the “fans” upset that this hero—worse, this girl—dared to wield such incredible abilities with only her own strength […] Bookending the saga Anakin began with the story of a girl from nowhere who sets right what he helped unbalance might have been resonant. But who cares for that when there’s another billion-dollar franchise to set up and potential spin-offs to tease?
— Melissa Leon, ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ Erases the Power of Rey’s Story and Surrenders to Sexist Trolls
I’ll probably look like a clown in 16-17 days when “The Rise of Kylo Ren” #2 releases but whatever lol—after TROS I believe even more that the former leader of the Knights of Ren (Ren) is Ben from another timeline or a future gone (more) wrong
Anyways, my thoughts on this:
1) remember the outrageous “Ben sets the temple ablaze and runs away” from the Visual Guide? I’m sure it’s probably just even more retconning (like a ton of stuff from the VD), but what if it’s literal—except it’s just that the Ben who does it isn’t the Ben we know, therefore making it true while retaining “our” Ben’s innocence. Another option (painful but, I think, absolutely plausible) is that Ben himself accidentally set on fire the temple with his rage and sorrow unleashing a Force storm. However, the way the “prologue” of TROKR #1 ends (I’ll talk about later on in this post) seems kind of like a foreshadowing that Ben (well, “our” Ben) didn’t do it…? Kind of interesting, and hopefully we won’t have to wait until issues #3 and #4 (february and march) to know about that important detail
2) this interview with Charles Soule (the writer) and Will Sliney (the artist) dedicates, curiously, the first 3-4 paragraphs solely to talking about Ren—and the article, which is from the official SW webpage (an article called “Introducing ‘Ren’ in Marvel’s The Rise of Kylo Ren”), starts like this: “they call him Ren, but that wasn’t always his name”. Which is also how the comic starts:
… Tell me this doesn’t sound suspicious as kriff and like foreshadowing
And the interview keeps going like this:
“Born out of the flames,” as artist Will Sliney puts it, the leader of the Knights of Ren in the opening pages of the new comic Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren #1,
arrives battle-scarred and wearing a fearsome, featureless mask — a
blank expression save for a smattering of claw-like gouges. Concealed
within is a charismatic leader, the exact type of person who would be
able to seduce young Ben Solo away from the path of the Jedi.” Then they basically proceed to spend the first 4 paragraphs talking a lot about Ren besides talking about Ben (and then, lastly, about Snoke—and, fun fact: they knew about the Snoke twist of TROS beforehand), although I think they talk less about Ben even
3) Ben being compared to Anakin while Ren is compared to Darth Vader, except Charles Soule wanted Ren to read “like a more charming Darth Vader.
“A Vader who is charismatic and who is appealing. That’s why [Ren’s]
skin is burned and he sort of looks the way that he does. He’s embracing
the seductiveness and the damage that the dark side does. Darth Vader,
as impressive and imposing and terrifying as he is, is remote and cold
and distant because he has the suit surrounding him. Whereas Ren isn’t
hiding behind it. He’s someone you could have a beer with, in theory.”
4) more interesting interview stuff.
“Designed purposefully for the new comic series,
with issue #1 out now, Ren feeds the evolution of Kylo Ren. “The entire
seductiveness of the dark side poured into one character engineered for
Ben Solo is Ren,” Soule says. “He’s sort of a charming evil rascal that
can be really fun to write and I really like where he goes in the
series. But if Kylo Ren is going to take over the Knights of Ren, which
we know that’s what happens, there should be some transition.”
Also:
“I think the key to writing Ben Solo is to write him as a lost teenager
who is deeply in touch with emotions that teenagers often feel,” Soule
says. “He feels like no one understands him, no one sees him the way he
actually is, he’s utterly alone and there’s no one else out there in the
universe. So when he sees Ren, he’s like, ‘Wait a minute — maybe there
is somebody like me in the universe. Maybe there is a path for a guy
like me. Look at the choices he’s made. I could make those choices, too,
and I could be cool.’”
So… This is interesting. We have Snoke manipulating Ben to go to him, at first making himself appear friendly, while on some measure Palpatine’s pulling the strings from Snoke (I don’t think he would be like a puppet with Palps’ voice, though, given that chapter of the TLJ non-junior novelization that has a lot of stuff from Snoke’s perspective, but who knows). But then, Ben Solo’s basically obsessed with Vader… and, apparently, this Ren’s a walking dark side temptation for Ben. Well… We’ll see what happens, I guess
Also, crying inside at reading that “wait a minute—maybe there is somebody like me in the universe. Maybe there is a path for a guy like me. Look at the choices he’s made. I could make those choices, too, and I could be cool”. If Ren really was Ben from another time seeking to change things (probably something related to Rey): the implications that this has, the emotions that this has, the power that this has
Interesting, too, that it hasn’t been said if it’s Snoke who’s “the master” of the KoR (yes, they do have a master on top of their own leader), but that only gets weirder because the KoR were revealed time ago to be only loyal to their leader and to the “Ren philosophy” (which also makes possible ties with Snoke alone impossible)—so, if Snoke and the First Order aren’t, then who is it? Palpatine? Still, again, there’s the philosophy thing of following only their group leader…
Oh and: the Ren philosophy sounds very intriguing and I’m liking it a lot
(For context of the next pics: there are two brothers, being one of them Force-sensitive, and both the KoR and someone called SecSec are trying to recruit them—but the non-Force-sensitive one kills the other, which means the KoR doesn’t accept him, and Ren kills him)
5) just after that panel, in this pic below they talk a bit about “the master” here, being Ren who says it. Also it’s interesting that, after that happens, the KoR part ends with Ren saying “let’s go find something to burn”:
After that there’s a page as if this kind of prologue has finished, showing a page with the logo of the comic and all that… and then, next page it’s Ben standing in front of the fire and ruins of the temple all shocked (a note here: on that page it reads “now” and the name of the location, and the “prologue” happened “long ago”). I’d say that really looks like foreshadowing…
Now the thing is… If the KoR are not affiliated in any way with the First Order nor Snoke, and the KoR is only interested in recruiting Force-sensitives for their ranks, then how come they could’ve arrived in Luke’s Jedi temple… just at that right time to burn it down? I mean, right, there can be coincidences, but— uh, that might be a bit too much of a coincidence, perhaps? Who knows…
6) interview intensifies. “Born out of the flames”, is how Sliney describes Ren—well, thought it was worth mentioning this because guess what mythological being is born out of the flames too. Also, funny the parallel between that and the publisher’s summary of “The Rise of Kylo Ren” #3 (scheduled for February 12th):
“Soon, BEN SOLO’S path will end in a place of fire and blood, and a shadow will rise to take his place. He is with the KNIGHTS OF REN now, and they will welcome him, if he can pay their price.” Well, given that “our” Ben starts becoming Kylo Ren after what happens at the temple, and that they describe Ren (referring to the former leader of the KoR) like being “born out of the flames”… this does nothing to deterr me from believing this theory, to be honest
7) more from the interview.
“ The creative team engineered some surprises for this charming dark
sider, a foil in many ways to Darth Vader hiding beneath his protective
covering. “You expect the dude hiding his face under a mask like that to
be all messed up, particularly with his body looking the way it does,”
Soule says. But in issue #2 we’ll see what he’s truly concealing, a
reveal that speaks to Ben on a whole other level” … This whole paragraph, I swear. Sounds like when they talked in the times between TFA and TLJ about Ben’s face behind his mask, and about his unmasking. Also, the talk about the face reveal…
What kind of “reveal that speaks to Ben on a whole other level” could it be? I don’t think they’d be referring to that with something more going on in his face, as in, scars or charred skin. In fact, it wouldn’t make sense for Ren to cover that up given that he shows with pride his scarred body
And faces of men he might know? The probabilities just lower and narrow soooo much here. We have yet to see, however, if Ben gets the reveal as a kid or an adult, which could make a difference. Still, back to “what man could this guy be”, I just can’t think of someone that he’d recognize and have this impact on him… … And now it’s when it’s a Ben clone from another timeline, lol
8)
that big panel on “The Rise of Kylo Ren” #2 where the KoR and Ren are facing Luke, Ben and Lor San Tekka, and Ben and Ren seem to mirror poses:
9) this is jut something that came to my mind, but… It still bugs me to this day the phrase “it is you” that Ben says regarding Rey on the TFA novelization (when she calls forth the Legacy lightsaber), because Ben didn’t know back then about them being a dyad, nor have we seen any mentions to him having dreamt of Rey before or anything—so maybe Ben’s encounter (encounters? Still not sure about it) with Ren involved Ren telling him something that will happen in the future? Something which could also tackle that random “which girl?”
The sad thing, if Ren was really Ben from the future? Like I said in my previous post about this teory (pre-TROS): … that Ben would’ve literally killed himself, and therefore made true what he told Han that his son is dead and that he’d killed him (which then is reversed in TROS with that “Kylo Ren is dead, my son is alive”). That would be such a kriffing trauma for Ben that I don’t know if I could stomach it, after seeing Ben’s death in TROS… I mean, we would literally be seeing another Ben die… even if somehow his actions meant a worse future would have been avoided
Anyways my brain seems to find fuel in angst (why), because now reading “Ren” only makes me think of Ben’s name but taking on the “R” from Rey if in that future something happened to her… (Or that the Knights would be called “of Ren” in reference to Ben and Rey)
… And now it’s when we’ve been played like a fiddle all along and
the novels, with their differences/expanded material as hints (like the “it is you” in the TFA novelizations), are but one of the timelines. Can you imagine? To cite the TLJ non-junior novelization: “time is a circle. The end is the beginning”. At this point I believe anything could happen, specially after seeing TROS and how wtf it’s all that surrounds it…
10) to finish the post, the thing that made me start thinking Ren could be Ben: the hair that peeks from below the helmet looks apparently like Ben’s both in shape and color (an interesting detail is how the color of their hair seems to match in tone: in issue #1 it’s brownish for the both of them even though one’s surrounded by fire and the other by ice, and on the preview pages of issue #2 their hair is shown black). And in a universe so diverse as SW, and given that Ren and Ben are characters so connected, that’s a pretty… interesting choice. Here are some more images for comparison between Ben and Ren: