An excellent thread with likes and retweets from both Rian Johnson and Pablo Hidalgo. I don’t have much to add here except to say it’s an excellent thread, and it’s simply mindboggling that there are people who have willfully misread this story and its characters for so long.
Honestly, I think people seriously misinterpret Kylo Ren’s role as a villain, and not in a “he’s so misunderstood” Draco in leather pants kind of way.
He’s fascinating because he’s one of the few fictional villains that has some stuff in common with some of the real men who do dangerous and deadly things– he’s posturing, he feels persecuted, he’s explosive and uncontrolled, when he tries to look like a cool villain and give off that glib/‘badass’ vibe, it feels forced and awkward, it’s easy to laugh at him, but then he does something incredibly evil and reminds you that pathetic wannabes can be really scary dudes, too. He reminds me of school shooters, domestic abusers, extremely vitriolic alt-right internet trolls.
He doesn’t represent some grand vision or evil master plan like Voldemort. It’s all about outwardly channeling his inner turmoil and rage into self-aggrandizement, getting control over other people because he can’t control himself. He has thoughts, feelings, weaknesses, and at least a little bit of good in him. That doesn’t make him a misunderstood hero. The fact that he’s human and three dimensional and has people who care about him is part of what makes him more like the real evil that walks among us every day in the world.
People are always saying, “Kylo Ren is such a pathetic villain, he’s a whiny emo trying to dress up like a cool bad guy,” but that is lampshaded IN-universe, that people think that’s lame, too, even Snoke. People keep thinking that Kylo was supposed to be a cool villain like Darth Vader and that the movies failed miserably in portraying him as one, but I don’t see how.
White dudes are just pissed that they don’t have any heroes to identify with in the new trilogy, but see a lot of themselves in Kylo Ben, so rather than admit that they can be (and usually are) the villains in other people’s stories, they feel the need to justify that the one character they identify with is actually a hero…
Huh, it’s almost like it kinda hurts to only be represented by villains in blockbuster movies or something…
*sips this scalding hot tea*
Well, this got even better.
YES, THIS, and he’s so toxic in other, subtle ways, too. Like, in TLJ he outright negs Rey. “You’re NOBODY. Except to me.” He’s exactly what alt-right / “alpha” men see in themselves: secretly not so alpha, just kind of a pathetic bully, and now even major geek culture like Star Wars is rejecting him.
UNCOMFY
:))))))))
OMG LMAO, as soon as he said that, literally all the women in the theater (including myself) literally groaned and hissed. We have ALL heard this from some asshole – “You’re nothing, but I’ll fuck you anyway.” “No one else loves you but me.”
konekorambles 