Kylo Ren’s Story Was Changed

The Disney Star Wars sequel looks and feels like it was made up on the fly with no apparent plan put in place. If there was a plan that started with The Force Awakens, then Ruin Johnson took it, shaped it into a phallus, and shoved it straight up his dirt box. Afterward, he pulled it back out and now caked in shit, he released it as The Last Jedi. J.J. Abrams was brought back on board with The Rise Of Palpatine but the damage was done. And as the saying goes, you can roll a turd in glitter, but it’s still a turd.

Well Kylo Ren himself, aka Adam Driver recently appeared on something called The Rich Eisen Show and revealed that Kylo Ren’s story arc was completely overhauled as the sequel progressed. There’s a shocker!

They Altered The Deal

Apparently, Kylo was never supposed to soften up and become a conflicted anti-hero, but he was to become eviler during the trilogy. Recounting his first discussions with Abrams, Driver explained:

“J.J. Abrams walked me through what he wanted to do with the character, but you had to sign up and be like, ‘I’m gonna do it,’ and once I did that, I went to London to star for pre-production, and it’s like, ‘there’s a tiny room down the hall, you can go in there and read the script.’ And so I was reading it for the first time.

I had an overall arc that in mind that he wanted to do. His idea was that Kylo’s journey was the opposite journey of Vader, where Vader starts the most confident and the most committed to the dark side. And then by the last movie, he’s the most vulnerable and weak. He wanted to start with the opposite. This character was the most confused and vulnerable, and by the end of the three movies, he would be the most committed to the dark side. I tried to keep that arc in mind, regardless if that wound up not being the journey anyway, because it changed while shooting. But I was still focused on that.”

Driver then says that Ruin Johnson took Kylo’s original arc in a different direction with The Last Jedi although “it still tracked with the character”, but that wasn’t the case with The Rise of Palpatine.

“The last one, it changed into being, you know, about them and the dyad, and things like that, and evolving into Ben Solo. That was never a part of it. He was Ben Solo from the beginning, but there was never a version where we’d see Ben Solo when I first signed up for it.”

I Feel The Conflict Within Me

Unlike Darth Vader, the Disney Star Wars movies are unredeemable, however, the thought of watching Kylo Ren embracing the dark side more and more as the story progressed feels like another missed opportunity for this once great franchise.

I’m going to get some shit for this but I don’t mind The Force Awakens, and I thought Driver as Kylo Ren showed real potential. He had the same volatile temper as Anakin and he seemed determined to emulate Darth Vader. I would have loved to see Driver really go for it and descend into full-on evil bastard mode as the movie progressed and I genuinely think he could have given us something memorable.

Unfortunately, thanks to Ruin and his desire to subvert our expectations, and Kathleen Kennedy’s complete fuckery, all we got was Kylo Ren carrying on like a kid throwing a temper tantrum every time something didn’t go his way, and a trilogy of movies so far removed from the originals that it’s nothing short of fucking scandal.