Originally posted by quanchi112
Just as Luke is great at everything just as Ren is all the same.
Luke is a good pilot and powerful with the Force, but I don't recall him being a mechanic and he's certainly not a tactician.
Kylo has never been praised as a pilot/mechanic. As far as tactics are concerned, he's shown to be reckless.
The point being, neither are as memorable as him, because neither end up using those powers to make intriguing additions to the story.
It is not just the feat itself which was awesome but the coupling of him freezing the bolt and the reflexes to freeze it so quickly it could not travel far. Vader gets hit by multiple bolts from Han showing his reflexes are not on par plus we never see him demonstrate the ability. Ren also froze his opponents body at the same time. In terms of success far more effective than Vader and his reaction to Han.
Do you believe that JJ Abrams put the bolt-freezing scene in the film to show that Kylo is faster than Vader?
And what do you think Vader would have done instead, if his reflexes were faster?
The directors and film makers truly do not care.
Well, I certainly won't argue that.
But in all seriousness, you're missing my point. The Original Trilogy was made at a time when it was both difficult and unprecendented to show characters using powers extensively on screen, so the feats from the movies are inconsistent. Therefore, it's unfair to argue that the feats shown in the OT are representative of the character's implied power. This effect is less present in comics.
Quotes and accolades are a better guage of how powerful the writers/directors intended for a character to be. Kylo is afraid in TFA that he'll never be as powerful as Darth Vader. Far more reliable.
Eu is fantasy so who cares.
Now that sounds like the Quan I know!
Yes, he tracks them down and loses Luke. Well done losing a guy you just beat despite having the resources of the empire. Is this not Vaders fault either?
What was he supposed to do? His worldview was that power was everything. Under that assumption, he did everything perfectly. His only miscalculation was that Luke didn't think the same way. Now, if he had known how Luke thought, he wouldn't have joined the dark side in the first place, would he have?
Not reading a persons facial expressions does not create more emotion regardless of you believing it so.
Mah 'pinion>You're 'pinion
You might think its cool but it does not amplify anything other than makes us focus solely on his voice inflection to determine his expressions.
When does he express anything other than "be scared of me"? Seeing his face would have taken away from that effect, if anything.
He failed in both at the end of the day...Vader was a mess at the end of rots
I don't think you understood my argument. I meant that he's good at his job, which makes him an enticing villain. You know he's going to mean trouble for our heroes, every time you see him onscreen.
It was precisely his failures in the PT that carved the way for him to become as competent as he eventually did. Having a failure in your past to learn from doesn't diminish your accomplishments. And it certainly doesn't make Vader any less a heart-chilling threat for the Rebels.
So yeah, he failed as a hero. But he's not a hero. He's a villain. And he does a great job at being a memorable one.
If he had not been beaten by Kenobi and left for dead
See above
maybe the idiot could have altered her fate.
No.
Sidious was killed by a one armed Vader so entirely possible to kill him. When he actually grew a set he did not need two hands or even a light saber to hurl the girly old man to his death.
Okay, I'm confused: Do you care about the creator's intent or not?
You bring up times when the intent was story-based and use it as evidence for how powerful a character is. And you bring up times when the intent was to show you what's possible in this universe and use it as an example of failure/success.
The intent with Palpatine's power was shown in the following lines:
"Do not underestimate the power of the Emperor" - Yoda
"You don't know the power of the Dark Side. I must obey my master!" - Darth Vader
[Palpatine appears as a towering hologram] "What is thy bidding, my master?" - Darth Vader
"You, like your father, are now...mine." - Palpatine
These explicitly explain that he's too powerful for Vader to defeat on his own.
The intent behind the scene where Vader kills Palpatine was to show that the real battle was the emotional struggle between the desire to do the right thing, and the desire to survive/gain power. While Vader was in the "power" phase of his life, he was effectively Palpatine's slave. When Vader managed to win that battle, he freed himself from that position. It would have been pointless to have a sequence afterwards showing how difficult it is to physically kill Palpatine, since that would drive the focus away from the real conflict.
Now, this does make Palpatine himself seem less threatening, but it's fairly obvious that this was not the point Lucas wanted to make.
Yes, I wanted to praise Ren over Vader for being more evil in relation to Vader and more accomplished.
Alright, so now that we understand Vader, let's try and understand Kylo.
His story is that he's never had freedom of his own. He was like a slave to his various masters (Luke, The Knights of Ren, Snoke, even Vader's voice). Despite this, he's not able to find a clear goal in life. He eventually comes upon the conclusion that power must be the answer. It was for his grandfather, after all.
He tries really hard to be like Vader, even kills his own father to gain the power he thinks he'd gain if he embraced the dark side. But this doesn't get him anywhere. He's still not found his path.
At the end of TFA, he makes a decision for himself, for the first time in his life. He rejects "wise" Snoke's teachings, and tries to get Rey by his side so he can overthrow him.
She does reject him, but the greater significance of that moment is that he's taken his first step toward becoming independent.
After this point, he struggles to act like an adult in the world where he's given responsibility. This is the learning process. He has to discover himself and what will bring him peace.
He eventually does become independent, and independently powerful, when he realizes he needs to balance the Light and Dark within him.
The enticing thing about this character was never that he was evil (he wasn't), nor that he was competent (once again, he wasn't). He wasn't even the real villain, since he was never what came in the way of our heroes. He never added any sort of twist or challenge to the goal that our heroes were trying to accomplish.
The enticing part was how he srtuggled with himself. Now, the problem is, since these movies were an unconnected, retconned mess, this never really took the shape it was supposed to. TFA took too long getting to the point, and TLJ developed it too much, and put him in a position that didn't make sense for him by the end.
Now, yeah, he was powerful. There wasn't much of a way around it. But he was never meant to be liked because he was powerful. Vader was. When it comes to what made him more interesting to watch, I think Lucas said it best himself: "Well, children love power because children are the powerless. And so their fantasies all center on having power. And who’s more powerful than Darth Vader, you know? And, some, you know, will be attracted to Luke Skywalker because he’s the good guy. But ultimately, we all know that Darth Vader’s more powerful than he is."
Now, it's easy to want that for Kylo, since he clearly wants it for himself too. But that's not what makes him interesting, and it's not what the filmmakers wanted to develop about him.