I saw it again last night cuz I wanted to see it at the IMAX before it was too late.
Some thoughts about Kylo. Some spoilers here but I think we might be getting past spoiler tags.
I actually think that for the first half of the movie Kylo was super scary. I mean, his resume is every bit as daunting as vaders (considering that at the time ANH came out, we didn't know that Vader had slaughtered all the Jedi including the younglings)
He starts the movie by murdering a defenseless old man who apparently has known him for a long time. Then he orders the slaughter of the innocent villagers. He has the same kind of head butting with the General that Vader had and the general is obviously a little afraid of him. He flips out showing that he is a total psycho and chokes the dude with the force. And, I actually thought the scene where he is torturing Po is like, awesome. That was actually more graphic than anything Vader ever did and Po does an amazing acting job there.
What makes Kylo not scary is the whole crying to Vaders mask thing and basically EVERYTHING after he takes off the mask. The second he takes off the mask its like whaaaaat? This wimp is the villain?
But, I believe that it was deliberate to soften that character. Because he basically is a huge poser. People have called him a fanboy which I think is a great description. I think if you told JJ Abrams; that villain sucked he was basically a fanboy. JJ might say; Sweet, that's exactly what I was going for! I believe it was all deliberate and just might require a little patience on our part to see how it all shakes out in the rest of the series..
From wearing the mask he doesn't need, letting his guard down by to trying to convert Rey. (remember he was under orders to bring her to Snoke, not kill her. And he basically has her defeated before she went on force steroids.)
He's trying to convince everyone including himself that he is this big bad villain and he is obviously an entitled little child in many ways. But I maintain that this movie may all part of him turning into one of the worst villains we've ever seen. His psychosis and his desperation to prove himself has caused him to murder those closest to him and now that he has passed Snokes test of killing you know who, the reigns might be off this guy and we will see where he goes from here.
One question I would love answered is why does the Dark side always obsess about the Jedi so much? Going back to the old ones they are constantly raving about how much better the darkside is than the light, but they obviously fear the Jedi and are obsessed about taking them out. I mean, Snoke fears Luke so much that he made it Kylos main task to find him and kill him because he believes that the simple fact of Luke being found will bring rise to the New Jedi Order which will obviously be a huge threat to them.
This is why I think that the departure from the original mcgufffin was intentional. Hux feels like I do, he's not particularly concerned with finding Luke, he's all about the weapon. He obviously dislikes Kylo and see's through his facade as this big baddie and has zero respect for him outside of a moderate amount of fear. Hux finally gets his way to use the weapon and takes a moment to give Kylo that (deez nuts) look before leaving. LoL
Just some of my thoughts, not looking for an argument or anything.
Is this set up like another trilogy or is it an open ended thing?
Regardless of how we all felt about this one, I think we'd like them to keep em coming. It's better than 90% of the other garbage and look how much discussion it has prompted! Its fun going back and forth with everyone and hearing peoples critiques etc. I like it.