Star Wars Meta INCOMING

[rj_anderson]

Since I'm not updating my Tumblr any more, you all get the dubious benefit of me overthinking The Force Awakens here instead (because that is basically how I've been rolling non-stop since the end of December).

Comments

[deva_fagan]

Oh, that is very cool speculation! I did indeed assume "Academy" myself and was assuming there were many students, but the "single student" (or even if it was only a few, and they were traveling around a lot with Luke) makes so much more sense to me in terms of how Ben became Ren...

I look forward to more of your thoughts!

[drakyndra]

I'll just bring up the counter arguments first to get them out of the way: I am pretty certain that StarWars.com mentions Kylo Ren killing fellow students, and Pablo has said that Han and Leia's separation was instigated by Ben/Kylo becoming a murderer. So whatever happened, it was likely he left under violent circumstances. The debate seems to be more a matter or scale and specifics

[rj_anderson]

There's an Wookieepedia article called "Destruction of Luke Skywalker's Jedi", but even the title of the article is labelled "pure conjecture". It's very carefully worded to stick to pretty much exactly what Han said in the movie, as well. Though it does add the tidbit from the Visual Dictionary that "destroying the Jedi that Luke had been training" earned Kylo the nickname of "Jedi Killer". I'll be interested to see if that nickname is ever repeated in the films

[drakyndra]

I'm fairly certain the titling of that Wookiepedia article has been subject to furious debate. (Actually, IIRC there was even debate about what surname to give Ben). So for now they are erring on the side of hard evidence.

The acolytes thing makes me think the vibe they are going for with Luke's new Jedi temple is learning more to the mystical side of things rather than political peacekeepers of the prequels. But your speculation certain explains how Lor San Tekka knows who Kylo Ren is and what happened.

Definitely two incidents, but past or future is up for debate. That entire scene is just fodder for debate, especially because it's all so cryptic, and a lot of things were apparently cut. There was an interview with the film's editor who said it was cut back to focus more specifically on Rey. But she also said a cut scene in that vision involved Snoke with a "young boy". Which is interesting.

When I first saw Star Wars it was a (the OT part, anyway) closed canon. This not knowing what happens next is very frustrating.

[elouise82]

Interesting! I would argue that the phrasing "ONE boy, AN apprentice," rather than "the boy, his apprentice" indicates more than one apprentice ... but it could still easily be only a handful of students, or even two (Rey and Ben, *coughcough*, hence the need to hide Rey and focus the First Order's attention on finding Luke to keep her protected until she grew into her full potential). I never really liked the idea of a Jedi Academy anyway ... the ways of the Jedi Order in the prequels led to their downfall, and Luke has already proven that he will do what he believes is right rather than blindly follow tradition, so I don't see him adhering so closely to the old practices and ways. Plus the Jedi Academy plot has already been explored quite thoroughly in the Expanded Universe (er, Legends, I guess we're calling them now) novels, and I really, really don't want to see the movies imitating those particular plotlines

[rj_anderson]

Yeah, you're right about the "one boy, an apprentice" line. And there's certainly been a lot of speculation about Rey possibly being one of Luke's students, but leaving her on Jakku would involve mind-wiping her or replacing her memories with false ones so she wouldn't remember anything about Luke or the Force, and that would mean introducing new Jedi force powers we've never yet seen in canon. Also, Luke would have had to have left Rey on Jakku a long time before Ben turned to the Dark Side, since in Bloodline Ben is 23, still travelling with Luke, and Leia thinks of him fondly and without any apparent concern. (Which would make Rey 13-14 at the time, far too old to be the newly abandoned child in her flashback.)

Agreed that we don't need to see the EU plotlines rehashed in the new movies, any more than we needed to see the Virgin and BBC New Adventures plots rehashed in the Doctor Who revival (even if they did sneak an adaptation of the former 7th Doctor NA Human Nature in at one point

[elouise82]

My hunch is that the very existence of the Jedi Academy in the EU made it easier for us all to assume that's what Luke did when he set up the training of the next generation of Jedi, just as Anakin's slaughter of the Jedi younglings in ROTS made it easier to envision Ben/Kylo doing something similar to Luke's students. But I for one like the idea of Ben NOT simply rehashing Anakin's sins (that scene in ROTS is the reason that particular movie is the only Star Wars movie I have only seen once, and do not own - heck, I even have the two Ewok movies, but that scene just turns my stomach. It very nearly wrecked Star Wars for me altogether, particularly the framing of it to attempt to build pity for Anakin as he is engaging in the act of murdering children). Not that Ben's betrayal of Luke, whatever form it might have taken, nor his act of patricide, is fine and dandy. Just ... not murdering children who are, with good reason, expecting you to protect them from evil, would go a long way toward making me believe in Leia's insistence that

[rj_anderson]

BLOODLINE is super great and I highly recommend it. It's a fantastic look at Leia's character, has some really engaging and fascinating new characters (one of whom was in the original draft of the TFA script, but got cut) and definitely adds a new dimension to the events of the film. I personally haven't read any of the SW novels since Courtship of Princess Leia, which was so dreadful it put me off reading any further, but the EU's no longer considered canon anyway, so that's all right

[imbecamiel]

Oh, now that is a very interesting angle that hadn't occurred to me. I'd definitely gone along with the assumption that there was some form of Jedi Academy and that Ben was involved in its destruction. If that's not the case, and his turning was more of a personal betrayal but didn't directly involve the killing of fellow students... Doesn't in any way negate the choices Ben made, but it does throw a different light on things. Both in terms of what Ben and Luke's relationship/apprenticeship would have looked like (possibly much closer to what we see of Qui Gon and Obi Wan), and in the scope of what his actual turning probably involved (if there were one or more other students who were killed/harmed/threatened in the process, it was probably not the kind of cold-blooded wholesale slaughter that I think many had been envisioning).

Hmm. Again, it doesn't discount or minimize anything Ben/Kylo has done since then, but it is very interesting indeed, and may be influential in the likelihood of seeing a redemption arc for him in the future.

[rj_anderson]

I think, along with what drakyndra and others have said above, there's still a good chance that Kylo killed a bunch of Luke's acolytes who were trying to help him bring back the Jedi, even if those people weren't actually Jedi themselves. So in that sense it doesn't make a redemption arc any more likely...

Although I do think it's interesting to note that unlike Anakin Skywalker, who was explicitly shown murdering (or at least about to murder) a large number of Force-sensitive younglings who were utterly incapable of defending themselves or even realizing what he was about to do, we have no reason to believe that Kylo has ever killed a child, fellow student or otherwise. (The villagers in Tuanul were all adults who had chosen to follow Lor San Tekka as part of his Church of the Force. Some were obviously better fighters than others, and none were strong enough to beat a squadron of stormtroopers, but they weren't kids

[imbecamiel]

Yep, his killing Han is definitely the biggest hurdle at this point. Because it's Han, it's his father, and because from an audience perspective, even if it turns out to be arguably not the most egregious act someone's committed, what we actually see playing out in realtime tends to have a bigger emotional impact than past events that may feel more theoretical (regardless of the light we'd assess those actions in from a more objective perspective).

But yes. Given Han's forgiveness, and Leia's line, and the way we see him struggling with that pull to the light side... It would seem uncharacteristically bleak to turn back from that potential without payoff.

[rose_in_shadow]

I'm desperately hoping for a good, hard redemption arc for Kylo/Ben ala Zuko.

So many times in fiction and movies, the villain we love gets redeemed by dying. And yeah, that's well and good and can be very powerful (Exhibit A: Anakin Skywalker). But living with what you did after you come back from the dark is harder to write, is harder to make work in a story. I want to see that. I want to see if someone who killed off a beloved character can be fully redeemed and still live; I want to see how he makes restitution and if he is or even can be restored to what he was before his fall.