Dangerous, yes. But it's the Big Bad mastermind that heroes worry about the most. A rabid dog is destructive, but pathetically predictably once you accept he's a mad dog with no real plan.
The only time an angry and crazed lunatic like Kylo Ren could ever be more threatening than say Emperor Palpatine or Darth Vader is if the First Order just blindly follow his orders without question (something I don't see happening with Hux) or if Kylo Ren turns into a giant smoke monster with the power of a thousand Death Stars.
Kylo doesn't have to be the same kind of villain as Palpatine to be threatening. The genre (fantasy/adventure/sci fi) is open to lots of different kinds of Big Bads: from masterminds to mad dogs to brutes to monsters. It all depends on the narratives those Big Bads are made to function within.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 31st 2018 at 7:01:46 AM
Again, being incompetent doesn't mean he's not dangerous. He doesn't have to be able to outwit and outdo our heroes at every turn himself for his presence to raise the stakes to a foreboding degree. Likewise, just because he's a crap leader doesn't mean it'll be at all easy for the heroes to defeat him, given the power he wields regardless.
I still say "Kylo burns the First Order to the ground, but that fire threatens to consume everything around them due to the damage they've already done to the galaxy" is a fine plot, especially for what is supposed to be the concluding chapter.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 31st 2018 at 7:15:22 AM
I remember in the last movie Kylo Ren nearly single-handedly wiped out the entire Resistance's fighters and most of its leadership, followed by taking out the Supreme Leader of the FO and five of his personal guards at once.
But he isn't dangerous enough?
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jul 31st 2018 at 7:11:31 AM
Ren did not do any of that. He not only committed patricide he didn't even have any kind of blackmail slippery slope. He doesn't have a single redeeming quality other than he is seen as a hottie by some people, which they have intentionally enabled to the massive detriment to the character.
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Oh you can do your hardest to be the most badass and ruthless fighter there ever was in the galaxy...
But if you slipped on a banana peel and the whole universe sees it, you'll Never Live It Down.
It's also not helped by the fact that Rey defeated him... twice.
Edited by Shadao on Jul 31st 2018 at 7:16:55 AM
An issue I have with the idea that both Kylo Ren and Hux are immature and violent children is that there is no counterbalance to it, they both put on an air of confident sophistication but turn into smug assholes who throw tantrums. Even Phasma, strutting around in cool armor, caves under pressure. While maybe not a One-Scene Wonder, the First Order needs more characters like the Captain who complains that Hux didn't scramble TIE fighters earlier, someone who seems at least semi-competent. Otherwise the First Order is composed entirely of ineffectual blowhards. Their danger is solely because of their fancy toys, and that's really not enough.
The TLJ novelisation also mentions that they effectively "dissolved or destroyed" most of the kingdoms and political entities in the Unknown Regions. Possibly even the Chiss Ascendancy, but that's merely speculation.
I guess the books and others are just going to fill the gap.
Edited by TerminusEst on Aug 1st 2018 at 3:02:38 AM
Si Vis Pacem, Para PerkeleAgreed. The First Order are not the Space Nazis of yesterday. They're the idiot children of today who walk around in swastika fursuits and giggle about how they're totes trigging the Republibs.
But with enough money and resources, that can be every bit as dangerous.
They probably have their own alternate history where, like, Alderaan shot first and shit.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 1st 2018 at 7:32:59 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.It's a combination of the heroes coming off as milquetoast, the villains being deeply pathetic and having a contrived technological and military advantage, and the main cast in general being aggressively boring, bargain-bin replacements for earlier characters utterly lacking in gravitas. There's just too much screaming and shouting.
The plot is slapdash and rushed, and we've only gone through like a week of in-universe chronology where 2/3 of the old trio is dead, the Galaxy is reconquered by a fascist regime, democracy was destroyed without ever being fought for or for that matter valued, and nothing of importance happened.
For me, there's a deep sense of apathy that I'm hoping Episode IX will be an antidote for.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Aug 1st 2018 at 12:29:02 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."And the fact there ARE competent first order members, but Hux etc are at the top implies that it's probably due to Snoke. Also Hux does seem competent militarily and relating to his non-Force using colleagues. He may just be an oily climber, but who has actual competence.
He just becomes a butt-monkey when Kylo throws a super tantrum.
I think the First order are a way of throwing shade at the Rooting for the Empire side.
It's not about believability, but about narrative strength. In both movies the heroes were able to reduce the villains to bumbling fools on par with Cobra Commander, if not the villains doing it to themselves. Note that half the theories of Episode IX are that Hux and Kylo will implode the First Order in some way on their own. We need a Hyper-Competent Sidekick to balance that out, if only for the impression of the Only Sane Man watching something they helped build collapse around them.
"The fact that he's basically a brat with no discipline whose angst is being weaponized by much stronger and smarter people makes him, in a way, scarier than Vader."
No it dosent, it just make him more "real" in a bad way, since it seen and atempt to shock the audience in a edgy way "look he is like mass shooter, that is evil!",specially since anakin kinda cross the moral evident horizong three or four damn times in ROTS: he cut windus hand which allow palpatine to kill him, he murder the younglings, he kill his wife and even them he fight is best friend who even after all that try to save him.
I feel kylo being inredemable step more in how much he stuck the middle finger to the audience than to anyone in particular.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Do we actually know that Kylo is incompetent, though? He's a brat, he's impulsive, and he's given to temper tantrums, but the guy did totally outwit and kill Snoke (a far stronger Force user than him) and many of his bodyguards.
Also, I know this is a pipe dream but I hope Phasma isn't really dead. She's too cool to die after so little screentime.
Actually, I don't hope she's alive. Her death at the hands of Finn is perfect. But I wish she'd had more to do before then.
According to the writers once they realized Phasma wasn't as popular as they hoped but worked in a Butt-Monkey way, that's what they'd use her as—someone who comes back again and again to be thoroughly humiliated.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Aug 2nd 2018 at 6:40:11 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.

The short of it is because his arc has led to him choosing not to be redeemed (twice, no less), so he comes off as a character who cannot or will not be given it.
The best way to compare to to Vader, I think, is to acknowledge Vader as a character in two different stories with two different roles (which is also a reason why people disconnect Vader's earlier actions with his later ones).
The OT story introduces Vader as an intimidating figure, then as a twist reveals this dangerous adversary as the father Luke yearns for, and then focuses on Luke's desire to have that father back, a desire Vader is conflicted by. The PT story introduces Anakin as a good person, then an increasingly obsessive person, then reveals that he is willing to do awful and monstrous things in the pursuit of those obsessions, which he is ultimately not conflicted by, hence his fall.
OT Vader is a character led to a choice to do good. PT Vader is a character led to a choice to do evil. Because of this, PT Vader is less redeemeable than OT Vader, despite not having done some of the worst things Vader is complicit to yet, because once you make that choice in a story, you're defined by it by the arc and the audience from then on. And yes, the distance helps: OT Vader's evil was of the indirect form - explosions, murdering other bad guys, offscreen manipulations, etc. PT Vader's evil was more direct: killing good-coded characters like children personally, choking the female lead, trying to stab Obi-Wan in the face, etc.
In the same vein, Kylo is introduced as someone who had chosen to do evil, but could choose to do good in the right circumstances. But then, we faced with that choice, he spits on it. Twice. And both times happily shows himself willing to be worse than previously thought, including directly killing Han in a way that hearkens back to PT Vader choking Padme, and directly attacking Luke in a way that hearkens back to PT Vader attacking Obi-Wan: a show of him choosing monstrosity over kindness.
That's why he ultimately feels less redeemable than OT Vader, because while Vader had his choice at the end of his story, Kylo had his at the beginning, and he's made it clear that he will violently reject it. So that violence defines him in a way it doesn't for Vader, who is honestly defined with more of a two-dimensional mystique before we find out he's Luke's father.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 31st 2018 at 6:55:09 AM