THERE ARE SINS so dark, no amount of
penitence can erase them. Torture; treason;
Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts — things so
heinous they all but guarantee an eternity in
The Bad Place. For Kylo Ren, that fateful moment
came when he abruptly plunged a lightsaber into
Star Wars’ best-loved scoundrel. To forgive is
divine, but all the Hail Mothmas and Our Fistos
in the galaxy surely can’t buy salvation for the
man who killed Han Solo.
“I know,” says Adam Driver, wincing
apologetically. “That was Han Solo! It was so
moving being a fan of those movies and taking
in what all that meant.” Kylo Ren — Ben Solo —
had murdered his father, twisting a ’saber in Han’s
gut and casting his body into the abyss.
“I really did look at Harrison as a father fi gure,”
Driver recalls. “That whole scene was nerve-
racking but the feeling on set was very warm;
it was almost a bonding moment between the
two of us — even though the act was vicious
and cold-blooded.”
With Solo’s death, Kylo made those last,
diffi cult steps from light side to dark, severing
familial ties for the cold embrace of his surrogate
father, the twisted Snoke. But if Return Of The
Jedi taught us anything, it’s that no-one, not even
a masked villain, is ever truly beyond redemption.
For Driver, even at his darkest point Ren is more
than his evil agenda suggests.
“I never thought of him as a villain at all —
even when we were doing the fi rst one,” he says.
“Because what does that really mean? People
don’t think of themselves as being the villain,
they think of themselves as being right. When
people feel they’re morally justifi ed, there’s no
end to the things they’ll do. That’s more
dangerous and much more exciting.”
In the brief time we’ve known him, the
First Order’s tempestuous enforcer has
ricocheted between emotions like a blaster in
a trash compacter, pinging from rage to grief
to frustration to sadistic glee. But beneath Ren’s
volatile exterior, Driver imbued the character
with a fragile humanity, something Vader —
save in his fi nal gasping moments — never
truly manifested. The result is Star Wars’ most
layered and believable antagonist to date:
a hugely powerful, highly temperamental man
prone to adolescent tantrums. Darth Trump
comparisons notwithstanding, if ever there was
a Star Wars antagonist we can relate to, it’s the
brooding Knight Of Ren.
“We fi nd Darth Vader already completely
committed; I was curious about starting with
someone who was less together, who was starting
in a place of self-doubt.” He pauses, considering
his next words carefully. “The title of The Force
Awakens wasn’t just referring to the light side, it
was the dark side as well.”
Kylo’s true nature — and a backstory that was
deliberately omitted from VII — will move to the
forefront in VIII. For Ren, both fi guratively and
literally, the mask is coming off for good. ❯
marcin
(Marcin)
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