to me with Ren more then anything else, up until he killed his father, he wasn't pure evil. He was caught in the middle being lured by the Dark Side and the Light Side.
It was interesting, my nephew got me the Sith Handbook for Christmas, it was kind of a joking gift because he knows that I'm a big Star Wars and I love the Sith. so maybe he wants me to follow the dark path.
But when you read it it really high lights some interesting things. We always hear that the Dark Side and the Sith were evil. But the Sith look at it more pragmatically as the term evil is a term employed by the weak to justify not freeing themselves.
for the Sith, the Dark Side is all about breaking the chains that stop you from fulfilling your destiny and reaching your potential, and controlling your world.
those chains, are things like family, friends, compassion, mercy, attachment to mundane possessions.
By sacrificing those things, you break those chains and your power grows.
With Kylo in this movie he was still very much chained. He was trying to be like his Grandfather without making the sacrifices that his grandfather made in the pusuit of power and control.
What was tougher for Anakin was that a lot of sacrifices were forced on him. the death of his mother, the perceived betrayal by the Jedi, even the death of his wife. Those chains that kept him from fully immersing in the Dark Side were snapped and removed by outside sources, mostly by people like the Jedi, and by Palpatine.
With Kylo, he was still lured by the Light Side, he still had love for his family. So yes when he put on the mask he felt for the most part that he was powerful and in control, even though he was clearly not, when the mask came off that personal illusion of himself was shattered, and he became more insecure and indecisive.
He had to finally make his first sacrifice and he wasn't sure that he wanted to. but he had come to that fork in the road that the force presents.
show mercy compassion love, spare yourself and your family pain and go down the light side. Or make that sacrifice, snap that first chain that's holding you down, kill the one you love. Kylo weighed the choices down and clearly made the decision for personal power and reaching for his destiny and killed his father. Now as they say he is going down the Dark Path and its going to dominate his destiny. They even made the point of marking him or scaring him, I doubt that outside of a key scene similar to Anakin being put in the suit, or the helmet coming down to cover Vader that we will see Kylo outside of his mask. I would also bet that after his hip got blown out that he is going to be wearing a new suit.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Reven look that they designed for him, but I expect to see a more intimidating look to go with his commitment to the darkside of the force and following his destiny to finish what his Grandfather had started.
Now the whole ROTJ thing.
I get the saying that removing the mask of Vader was to show the high price of the Dark Side and the lie that it represents, but I've always felt that was the suits job. For Anakin to fully become Vader, the Dark Side took everything from him and he was trapped in a suit that kept him alive.
I've always thought that the removal of the mask and reveal of his face more represented Anakin being freed from Slavery. there was never a moment that he wasn't a slave in the first 6 movies.
He was a slave as a child.
He was indentured to the Jedi and the Force and a slave of the prophesy
He was a Slave to Palpatine and more importantly to the Dark Side.
This was the lie of Anakin's life, the Sith believe that gaining power and sacrificing everything in pursuit of that power would snap the chains that keep you from gaining ultimate control. But the lie of the darkside is that the chains of compassion, morality, love, family etc are all broken, but they are replaced by the one chain stronger then the others, and that's the will of the Dark Side to leave you with nothing but it in your life.
Anakin removing that mask snapped that last chain and truly freed him.
Quote:
The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.
The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.
You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.
You don’t even have lungs anymore.
Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.
Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?
And you can’t, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain.
You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you.
Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous.
Padme? Are you here? Are you all right?you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.
“Padme? Are you here? Are you all right?”
I’m very sorry, Lord Vader. I’m afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her.
This burns hotter than the lava had.
“No… no, it is not possible!”
You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death.
Never.
But you remember…
You remember all of it.
You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader’s blood. You remember the furnace of Vader’s fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth-And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.
That it was all you. Is you.
Only you.
You did it.
You killed her.
You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself…
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith-Because now your self is all you will ever have.
And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
In the end, you do not even want to.
In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself-And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame. This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker. Forever…
~ Matthew Stover - Revenge of the Sith ~
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