#not me making the exact same gifset i made two weeks ago bc i wanted to include the harbor scene

[captain-flint]

Tommy skipped one (1) date with Buck, made him sad, then said I'm never doing that again

[horrorgay]

Reylo is/has ruined the Sequels

Hot take: TLJ both story level and writer level used reylo to make every single character removed from their initial storyline and undercut any potentially meaningful representation, by pushing them to the far sides of the narrative to make room for a “Rey saves Ben Solo redemption” story. 

It also, in order to make Ben Solo a more #relatable soft boy, played the game of “but maybe Luke thought about killing him”.

A. To begin, here is a list of canonical TFA!Kylo actions:

Ruined Luke’s attempts at teaching children how to use the force

Contributed greatly to the creation of the New Genocidal Order, the First Order.

An Order which, by the way, takes literal babies and brainwashes them into soldiers that will commit their genocide without question. 

Ordered and contributed to the slaughter of an entire village of innocent people.

Tortured two of the three main characters on SCREEN, which caused them to scream in agony and sob because it was a painful torture. 

(Throughout the movie is clearly hostile towards Rey, even when talking about her to his fellow first order members)

Sent the orders to obliterate four (?) ENTIRE planets and oversaw it without even flinching

Tried to blow up Maz’s castle

Purposefully intimidated and stalked Rey through the forest, after which he held her VERY CLEARLY against her will with the force and brought his lightsaber inches away from her face before forcing her to pass out, carrying her away from her new loved ones to torture her on Starkiller Base. 

From there he is shown to be continuously destructive, exhibiting no anger control as he damages the things around him.

He kills Han, who reached out to him. Though he does seem to show regret, he shoves it aside because he wants to continue to grow as a powerful murderer.

In the forest fight, he shows no mercy or kindness to Rey and Finn. He is brutal as he fights them, and intends to kill Finn, seriously harming him in the process. He throws Rey against a tree with potentially lethal force. I wouldn’t say this scene is inherently EVIL as it is just 1v2 combat, but it does further display that they are clearly on OPPOSITE SIDES.

He then offers to teach Rey to use the dark side of the force (not explicitly stated but obviously in the same GENOCIDAL manner he’s been using it with the entire movie).

She slashes his face and leaves him to die, and then SOBS by Finn’s side, ready to die on Starkiller Base.

Rey, throughout the whole movie shows CLEAR disgust, fear, anger and bitterness was towards Kylo as he has been nothing but a monster. (You can SEE them in the gifset linked below.)

B. Here is the thing about The Last Jedi:

If they wanted to make Kylo a “redeemable character”* they should have done at least one of the following things, EVEN THOUGH it absolutley would not undo his actions in TFA

*Its not Rey’s fucking job to turn back time and make a genocidal monster turn back into 10 year old innocent Ben Solo

Build Snoke up as an even worse bad guy, and show how he reached out to Kylo while he stayed with Luke.

What they did in tlj: implied snoke had some reason in his turn to the dark side and then killed him halfway through the movie (after Kylo watched him torture Rey, mind you). This provided NO in movie backstory for Snoke or Kylo‘s turn and does not give the audience even an once of sympathy for Kylo.

No one likes it but reylos, but at least SHOW if Han and Leia had been incredibly neglectful of Kylo. It would be very OOC of Han and Leia though, so they didn’t. It also would not NEARLY be enough reason to excuse his murder lust and genocide. I remind you of the classic “Rey is raised by sand and Unkar Plutt, does not become murderer.” 

What they did in tlj: Basically ignored this entire subject. Sending Kylo to Luke, HIS UNCLE WHO LOVES HIM, is not nearly enough evidence or reason for redemption. Hell, they didn’t even directly address the fact that Kylo murdered Han A WEEK BEFORE THE MOVIE TAKES PLACE.

BARE MINIMUM: Show that he is actively remorseful of his previous actions. 

What they did in tlj: He hesitates shooting the bridge he knows Leia is on. He doesn’t call off the attack though, and it still is destroyed. That’s it. The rest of the movie is Kylo playing kicked puppy in front of Rey (bc of the Luke Incident). After the fight scene on the bridge, where Rey is hopeful (addressed later on) he will reject the first order, he says she could rule as the new first order by his side. When she rejects this, he spends the rest of the movie trying to obliterate the entire resistance (INCLUDING: Leia, Luke and Rey). Like he’s straight up even more wrathful and murderous than he was when the story began.

Conclusion: It doesn’t make sense at all that both inside the story, and out (with Lucas Film) Kylo can/should be redeemed. They didn’t write it into the story NEARLY WELL ENOUGH. And it is also tone deaf, considering the political climate. Imagine if everyone started cheering for Trump the under dog, “will he get his redemption story?”. 

C. AND NOW WE GET TO THE ACTUAL REYLO ASPECT.

In the beginning of the movie roughly a week after the events on Starkiller base, Rey shows clear anger and disgust towards Kylo. This part of the movie makes sense. She hates him for what he’s done. In her words: he’s a monster, and he has to pay for what he’s done. 

Kylo has been nothing but violent, malicious and invasive to both her and the people she loves (Finn, Han, Leia etc.). 

But then, inexplicably she starts calling him Ben Solo. Maybe this would make sense if she felt like he could be redeemed, but five minutes ago and the entire previous movie she thinks the exact opposite. 

Rey calling Kylo “Ben Solo” seems more than anything to be the writers of TLJ pandering the side of the audience that does want to see him redeemed still. Sure, whatever. It’s the beginning of the movie. Anything could happen. 

But as stated before in section B, any potential attempts to portray Kylo being redeemed in the plot are then neglected completely. Leaving us with Rey, who previously hated Kylo with every fiber of her being suddenly treating him like he’s soft and kind-hearted. It becomes OOC drivel, and detrimentally ruins the heart of Rey’s character. (It also fumbles Luke’s character in what apparently is his last movie, but that’s a whole other rant.) 

After the throne room, they go back to their original status of Hero vs Villain. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that the 45 minutes (more?) of the movie made No God Damn Sense, and was a series of severe fumbles in the narrative. 

D. WHY THIS HURTS THE REST OF THE NARRATIVE. 

Recall that in the year before 2015 and the years following up until the Last Jedi, that Lucas Film and Disney presented what was supposed to be the main good guys trio: Finn, Poe and Rey. 

Finn, played by John Boyega, is the Main Male Protagonist and Rey and Finn were mutually portrayed as love interests in TFA. It would seem fitting that he’d continue to be treated in such a manner. Except he CLEARLY wasn’t. For goodness sakes, the main trio STILL is not consciously in the same room as each other until the VERY end of the movie in a few-minute long scene. 

His storyline also has pretty racist issues. Rose was introduced to give a vague purpose to his storyline in TLJ, and even then SHE was OOC from star to finish. Rian Johnson did not take his time to write a meaningful story for the MALE LEAD. 

I love Poe to death, but he and Holdo’s story did not really work. From a purely common sense POV the story should not have gone down the way it did. From a less common sense view, and a more character based one, their storyline caused Poe to be OOC. The heavy handed white feminism looks bad. It made Poe look bad, even if what he did was reasonable. (More in depth explanations here and here.)

The narrative was given to Kylo, and to (OOC) Rey. Which WOULD HAVE BEEN NOT IDEAL BUT TOLERABLE if they’d actually given depth to Kylo’s story. But again the didn’t.

E. WHY LUCAS FILM SUCKS FOR LETTING THIS HAPPEN. 

Rian Johnson has been explicitly clear in his tweets and interviews that he wanted to focus on Kylo. He wanted to make him more human and relatable (regardless of whether or not he failed). 

He has been clear that he did not care or take into account what the cast thought of the story he was writing. 

(Ignoring Mark Hamill’s advice on the portrayal of Luke, pushing aside Daisy Ridley’s tears [which let’s be real, it’s fairly evident that she was upset because Finn and Rey had no story nor interactions, and Rey was turned into an OOC plot device].)

He had joked that he would have left Finn out of the story and in a coma. He also unabashedly romanticized Rey and Kylo’s actions, despite that being VERY VERY VERY VERY QUESTIONABLE. 

He teased FinnPoe in promos and events leading up to TLJ, and decided that if Finn and Poe were going to get a long and like each other, he might as well separate them too. 

The Last Jedi leaves any representation deeply flawed, sidelined or non-existent. It is not a movie for the everyone. It is a poorly written movie made for an audience I can’t even pinpoint, but certainty not for anyone who wanted to see themselves in a narrative in a positive way. 

Star Wars has always belonged to everyone. In 2015, the took a step forward to make it belong to everyone. But in 2017, Lucas Film moved backwards and made a movie that belonged to a specific group of people who idolize and romanticize white male violence. Once you pull down the paper thin smoke screen of supposed diversity, you’re left with a bad movie, and poorly assembled narrative about Kylo, at the expense of everyone: the audience, the cast, and the characters.

NOTES:

Feel free to reblog, and repost elsewhere, but please credit me. 

Please, feel free to expand upon what I said here.

I am going to make a gifset that highlights Kylo’s actions and Rey’s response through TLJ and TFA, as well as an additional set with Rey and Finn. I will link them here when I’m done.

DISCLAIMER: IDGAF IF YOU LIKE KYLO. It’s not a crime to like characters. It is a fucking crime to write an official star wars trilogy and center it around the garbage man stink boy at the expense of everyone else.