Spoilers All Things STAR WARS - News, Speculation & Spoilers Thread
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O rly? Here's what's said about Kylo's turning bad in TFA (mildly trimmed for brevity):
Han: "There was nothing we could've done. There was too much Vader in him."
Leia: "That's why I wanted him to train with Luke. I just never should have sent him away. That's when I lost him."
Han: "We lost our son, forever."
Leia: "No. It was Snoke. He seduced our son to the Dark Side."
And that's all that's said.
"He's bad because a bad person influenced him to be bad" is not meaningfully different than "he's bad because he turned bad."
Leia: There is no explanation. It just happened. The answer is that there has never been an answer. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, spice boy.
Sounds like another trilogy I heard of...
The Sequels for the most part aren't particularly well crafted nor adequately explained movies. This is not news. 
There's a near-infinite number of good movies in the world; I'm not going to try to gaslight myself into liking two bad ones.
Nope. Both TFA and TLJ make the question of whether Ben's soul can be redeemed a major part of their stories and themes, so "he's bad because he turned bad" is not an adequate explanation even on a narrative level, let alone a character one. TRoS' explanation of "It was Palps' long-range hypnosis all along, we guess" was a lazy shrug of an explanation, but it at least passed the bare minimum of narrative sense.
I don't see the problem, they said "there was too much Vader in him" and Snoke seduced him to the Dark Side, so there's the explanation you were looking for right there.
It's why the Prequels didn't work for me as they do for others. Anakin's fall feels like a push by others for him, and if Obi-Wan shows up and says "Anakin, Palpatine is a Sith Lord. I'm going to arrest him" right after the Vader naming scene, Anakin would be like, "sounds good, Master."
He's the Renfield of the Force.
The Sequels for the most part aren't particularly well crafted nor adequately explained movies. This is not news.
Now we need to just remove them from canon! May we save Luke from the fate of spending his old age drinking green milk out of a big aliens nipples!
Celebration Japan Panel Schedule
No. I was looking for an explanation more detailed than a single sentence only a six-year-old could find acceptable. That explanation is about as complex and narratively interesting as this here piece of literature:
"Look," said Dick. "Snoke told Kylo to be a bad person, so he's a bad person now."
Jane said, "Oh, look! Kylo is a bad person now. He's bad, bad, bad."
Then I am genuinely concerned for your cognitive health and fitness.
“Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.”
Luke Skywalker: Ben! Why didn't you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.
Obi-Wan: Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be the Jedi Anakin Skywalker and "became" the Sith Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So, what I told you was true... from a certain point of view.
Luke Skywalker: A certain point of view?
Obi-Wan: Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Anakin was a good friend. When I first met 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.
Luke Skywalker: There is still good in him.
Obi-Wan: He's more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.
That is about the extent of background we get for Anakin’s turn to the dark side in the OT And honestly a lot of it from Jedi is designed to retcon Anakin and Vader being separate characters.
I’m not suggesting by any means that we get more from the ST and I like the sequels generally. But even the “No, it was Snoke” line from Leia fell a little flat for me. I agree. I would have liked more. But if we comparing to the OT (and maybe we’re not, I’m getting over being sick), then we need to have all the evidence on the table.
Luke Skywalker: Ben! Why didn't you tell me? You told me that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.
Obi-Wan: Your father... was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be the Jedi Anakin Skywalker and "became" the Sith Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So, what I told you was true... from a certain point of view.
Luke Skywalker: A certain point of view?
Obi-Wan: Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. Anakin was a good friend. When I first met 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.
Luke Skywalker: There is still good in him.
Obi-Wan: He's more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.
That is about the extent of background we get for Anakin’s turn to the dark side in the OT And honestly a lot of it from Jedi is designed to retcon Anakin and Vader being separate characters.
I’m not suggesting by any means that we get more from the ST and I like the sequels generally. But even the “No, it was Snoke” line from Leia fell a little flat for me. I agree. I would have liked more. But if we comparing to the OT (and maybe we’re not, I’m getting over being sick), then we need to have all the evidence on the table.
I have non-verbal learning disabilities, social anxiety, and we suspect I might be on the autism spectrum.
Stop the personal insults unless you want a Trolling warning.No. I was looking for an explanation more detailed than a single sentence only a six-year-old could find acceptable. That explanation is about as complex and narratively interesting as this here piece of literature:
"Look," said Dick. "Snoke told Kylo to be a bad person, so he's a bad person now."
Jane said, "Oh, look! Kylo is a bad person now. He's bad, bad, bad."
Then I am genuinely concerned for your cognitive health and fitness.
I noticed Bit Reactors turn based strategy game is going to have its own panel.
That's true. As a character, OT Vader gets just about zero complexity until he meets Luke on Endor. But, here's the crucial difference: ANH and ESB don't try to make him a complex character. We're not supposed to spend four hours or more wondering if he can be redeemed. Even when Luke learns the crushing truth at the end of ESB, there's no indication in the following scenes that Luke thinks he can turn him back to the Light Side. When the Emperor questions Vader's motives in ESB, he's not questioning his commitment to the Dark Side; he's only questioning his ambition and priorities (recruit vs. kill Luke).
Kylo in the ST, however, is completely different. In pretty much his first scene, he's shown more or less praying to Vader's spirit to keep his commitment to the Dark Side strong. When he talks to Snoke, Snoke questions his commitment to the Dark Side. When Hand meets Leis, they talk about Kylo being in thrall to the Dark Side. When Kylo meets Han, they talk about his being in thrall to the Dark Side. And Rey spends a good two-thirds of TLJ trying to coax Kylo back to the Light Side.
So, IMHO, it's simply meaningless to compare the motivations given for Vader's fall to the Dark Side in the OT vs. Kylo's fall in the ST, because it's not any kind of concern until the very end of the OT in Vader's case, but it's a major throughline of the ST in Kylo's case.
The ST wanted the audience engagement of grasping with a complex character, but did none of the requisite character work. The OT took a one-dimensional goon, introduced the idea he could be redeemed, and resolved that idea just minutes of screen time later. There's quite simply no equivalency.
I've never seen where why they fell to the Dark Side had any impact on whether or not a person could be redeemed. Hell, Anakin killed dozens or hundreds of his fellow Jedi, including kids, and he was so pretty much as far into the Dark Side as a person could get, and he was still redeemed, so it probably doesn't really matter as long as you can find something good left in them. And the fact that so many people questioned Kylo's loyalty to the Dark Side, even Snoke, would make it seem like he wasn't nearly as far gone as Vader was by the OT.