>The fun part though, is that the fandom isn't going to want him to get
>redeemed now, even if, like Vader, he dies immediately afterwards.
>After all, he just killed Han. That's got a lot more emotional impact
>than anything Vader did in the original trilogy, even killing Obi-wan.

George kind of did Vader's villainy a disservice in the original films by leaving a bunch of it offscreen. In the first film, he's not the one who pulls the trigger on Alderaan (in fact, he gives the distinct impression that he thinks it's a waste of time); in the second, everybody I can think of whom he actually kills on-camera is an Imperial officer, so who really gives a shit; both there and in the third, apart from talking a lot of shit while beating up on/getting beaten up on by Luke, he really sort of doesn't do anything evil. It's all just implied. After the establishing scene on the blockade runner he ramps way back on the unprovoked murder. The closest he ever really gets to proper villainy after that is when he kills Obi-Wan, which is structured such that it's obviously unfinished personal business.

Even when he's torturing Princess Leia in the first film and having Han tortured in Empire, in the first case they don't show it, and in the second he can't be bothered to do it himself. Besides, in both cases it's plainly Just Business as far as he's concerned. She's an Enemy of the State and he's a way of getting Luke's attention. That's ruthless and sociopathic, to be sure, but it's also his job. He doesn't indulge himself much in the kind of casual mayhem that his reputation throughout the series implies he's known for.

But then, as a clone of the Emperor once pointed out in one of those now-discarded post-Jedi comic series, "The great Darth Vader was a sick man in an iron mask." Maybe he just couldn't be arsed to be properly evil most of the time. In fact, say what you will about Revenge, he certainly is in that between when he fully turns and when Obi-Wan chops off his shit! Way more psychopathic than he ever appears in the Dave Prowse era.

Kylo, on the other hand? Kylo is like one of those lame Are You Shocked Yet? magicians-cum-protest-performance-artists. You get the impression he would have expressed his inner torment and his disdain for Polite Society by taking up polesitting or suspending himself upside-down by his many-piercingèd ballsack in the portico of the Galactic Senate building, except that bullshit like that has never actually been invented in the galaxy far, far away and he's not innovative enough to think of it himself.

Which is fine, if that's the way you wanna set up your villain, but the more I consider it, the more I'm really not down with the filmmakers deciding that what he's gonna Shock Us with is killing my favorite guy from the original films.

Oh, yeah, speaking of the Galactic Senate, wow—didn't take the New Republic long to re-establish the conditions that led to the downfall of the Old, did it? The old one managed to last 20,000 years somehow, but it's like when they set up the new one, someone loaded a saved game from after they lost the game but before the "you lost" cutscene played. :)

That last is not a dig at the film, since I expect anyone setting up a replacement for the Old Republic as seen in the prequel trilogy probably would fuck it up that way. After all, anyone who remembers how the thing worked back when it did actually work is probably long dead.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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