By There’s little question that whatever overall plans the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy had early on, those plans went out the window fast.
J.J. Abrams’ arguably overly familiar “The Force Awakens” appeared to lay some groundwork that Rian Johnson’s ambitious but divisive “The Last Jedi” subsequently ignored to do its own thing.
Colin Trevorrow’s originally proposed third entry was scrapped and replaced by an awkward Frankenstein’s monster called “The Rise of Skywalker” as Abrams tried to tie up his and Johnson’s arcs and bring both the sequel trilogy and the Skywalker saga to a close.
Amongst those undergoing the biggest changes was the Kylo Ren character, at least according to actor Adam Driver speaking with The Rich Eisen Show whilst out promoting Michael Mann’s “Ferrari”.
The acclaimed actor confirmed his arc as Kylo Ren completely changed from its original plan over the course of his three films – instead of finding redemption as Ben, he was originally supposed to become more evil:
“I had an overall arc that in mind that [JJ Abrams] wanted to do. 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.”
Driver said whilst Rian Johnson’s “Last Jedi” shifted his original arc in a “different direction,” he said the move “still tracked with the character”. ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ on the other hand threw it all away:
“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 result has been a trilogy that to this day still yields plenty of arguments, the one thing mostly agreed upon being “The Rise of Skywalker” as the trilogy’s weakest – scoring both the lowest audience CinemaScore (B+) and the lowest critical score on Rotten Tomatoes (51%) to date for any live-action film in the franchise.
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