Solo4114
Master Member
Actually, I wasn't. Mostly because I expected a lot of what we're now getting, and I was concerned it wouldn't be handled well. When initially announced, I wasn't really ready to let go of "my" heroes. I didn't want to watch them die on screen, and I fully expected exactly that to happen once their appearances were announced. It wouldn't make a ton of sense story-wise to have the saviors of the galaxy sitting this one out and letting the next generation handle things. And it wouldn't make sense to have them save the galaxy and overshadow the new heroes. So, what'd that leave? Killing them off or otherwise incapacitating them.
The only way to "save" them would be to hurl the story so far into the future that you could have them dead for generations, having lived to ripe old ages and died happy in their beds. Which makes marketing it really difficult because to most people, Star Wars is either: (1) Anakin, Obi-Wan, and maybe Asokha kicking battle droid butt, or (2) the "big four" flying around on the Milennium Falcon kicking Imperial butt. To them, Star Wars is much less the environment and setting, and is much more the characters they already know. The first two Star Wars stories play on this, by either focusing on events that are themselves familiar, or on familiar characters and familiar-ish settings. It won't be until "phase 2" of the Star Wars Stories films that you'll have any chance of seeing an entirely new setting or era depicted alongside entirely new characters. I think it'll take a few more rounds of "expansion" before people will begin to view "Star Wars" as the setting/universe and less as the characters.
I'll do my best to explain my own perspective on this, and much of it is tied to my view of who Ben/Kylo is and what drives him.
First, a bit on Ben. The implication from TLJ and (to a lesser extent) TFA is that Ben has kind of had everyone else telling him how to live his life for as long as he can remember, and focusing heavily on his heritage and bloodline. Leia pushed him to become a Jedi and gave Ben to Luke to be trained. Even after he turned, Snoke sought him out because (so he says) of the strength of his bloodline. In all of these, the common, underlying tension for Ben is that his free will is ultimately frustrated at every turn, because everyone seems to be suggesting that it's his destiny to become a Great Jedi (or Great Dark Lord). In other words, Ben's future is entirely decided -- by other people -- based on his and his family's past.
At first, Ben seems to find some structure from this, even going as far as to emulate his grandfather by wearing a mask. Eventually, Snoke tells him to lose the mask and that he looks like a petulant child (which he kind of is anyway, but is beside the point). It's after this point that he (apparently) makes a decision to completely abandon the past altogether, including going so far as destroying it wherever he can. He's conflicted, though, because he obviously still has some kind of love for his mother (and can't bear to blow up the bridge). So, anyway, Ben's motivation, to me, seems to be to forge a new destiny for himself, one where he is free to rule the galaxy as he sees fit, and is free from his past. One where he charts his own course. I actually see Ben and Rey as connected in this sense, except whereas Ben runs from the past, Rey looks to it for guidance (but finds none, or at least not as much as she hoped). Ben rejected the identity forced on him by the past, and Rey searches the past for some kind of identity that she can adopt.
So, to the point about "let the past die." I see it as essentially just a general rejection of the past, but in Ben's case, a rejection of the limitations and bonds of the past. Only by destroying the past that has bound him, constrained him, and (in his view) otherwise harmed him can he truly be free to make his own identity and in turn shape the galaxy.
But there's a difference between "let the past die" and "kill it if you have to," which is the second half of his point. I think there's a tension between past and present (and implicitly, the future) in the story. Even Luke suggests that it's time to move on from some aspects of the past (e.g., let the Jedi die out). And, in a way, the Jedi are dead now in the sense of the old Jedi who allowed Sidious to rise and destroy them. And in terms of Luke's version of the Jedi which never quite got off the ground anyway. Rey, instead, is the last Jedi, or arguably, the first new Jedi. I don't get the sense that Rey will buy into all of the old Jedi teachings (after all, Yoda notes that they really aren't compelling reading), but won't necessarily reject them out of hand just because they're old. For that matter, Rey -- by the end of the film -- acknowledges that it's time for her (and the galaxy) to find her own path, but not necessarily in a way that destroys the past. Rather, in a way that appears to preserve it, while not being blindly beholden to it.
That's my take, anyway.
