Driver has been discussing how how Kylo Ren’s character arc across the sequel trilogy was very different from the one he signed up for.
It’s been four years since the release of The Rise of Skywalker, the rather unloved end to a nine-film arc of Star Wars films that stretches all the way back to 1977. Whilst it was great to see such a long-running franchise get an ending (something we don’t always get with other long-running series such as the MCU or 007) it was a shame that the ending was, well, pretty terrible.
Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren was a key part of the film’s ensemble and whilst out promoting Michael Mann’s Ferrari, he made an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show where he chatted about the process of playing Ren over the three films. Like much of the audience, it seems that he too was wrong-footed by the narrative U-turns that occurred as JJ Abrams helmed the first and third films, with Rian Johnson taking things in a very different direction in the middle instalment.
“I had an overall arc that in mind that [JJ Abrams] wanted to do,” explains Driver. “His idea was that [Kylo’s] journey was the opposite journey of Vader, where Vader starts the most confident and the most committed to the dark side. And then by the last movie, he’s the most vulnerable and weak.
He [Abrams] wanted to start with the opposite. This character was the most confused and vulnerable, and by the end of the three movies, he would be the most committed to the dark side. I tried to keep that arc in mind, regardless if that wound up not being the journey anyway, because it changed while shooting. But I was still focused on that.”
Of course, Johnson’s follow-up, The Last Jedi didn’t just abandon that idea, it pushed in completely the opposite direction so when Abrams was persuaded to return for the third film (following the departure of Colin Trevorrow) he was left to graft a new ending out of bits of his movie, and bits of Johnson’s. As Driver alludes to, that led to ideas and moments that didn’t feel earned:
“The last one, it changed into being, you know, about them and the dyad, and things like that, and evolving into Ben Solo. That was never a part of it. He was Ben Solo from the beginning, but there was never a version where we’d see Ben Solo when I first signed up for it.”
The trilogy serves as a reminder to maybe plan out a full three-arc story (and stick to it) should you want narrative cohesion across three films. After all, carefully planning overarching stories was a tactic that was working out pretty well for Marvel Studios at the time. Lucasfilm for some reason chose to go in a different direction and years later, we’re still baffled as to why. So it seems, is Driver.
