You’d be hard-pressed to find a greater admirer of Eddie’s show-stopping performance as Balem Abrasax (love ya Eddie!), but I find it hard to express how staggeringly wrong he would have been for the part of Kylo Ren. I’m trying to imagine Eddie!Kylo chasing after Rey in the snow, and I can only think of Balem monolouging to Jupiter about murdering her past self. It’s very confusing.
Fawning over Eddie’s masterpiece of shriek/whisper acting aside, I must say that I’m desperately intrigued by what he was given to audition with:
No. So, I was going for, I think, for Adam Driver. They gave me like a Star Trek scene – or like something from Pride and Prejudice. It was one of those films. With films that top secret, they don’t give you the actual lines. So they give you a scene from Pride and Prejudice, but then they tell you you’re auditioning for the baddie. If you’re me, you then put some ridiculous voice on.
Now, the very fact that they wanted actors trying out for Kylo Ren to audition with a piece from Pride and Prejudice is fascinating. What could it all mean!?
to which Rian responded ‘Modern Man In Search of a Soul is a good place to start for Jung. Bly – A Little Book About The Human Shadow’. This seems interesting! 2/2
That is extremely interesting – thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I have only a very superficial understanding of Jung, and hadn’t heard of Robert Bly before you brought Rian’s tweets to my attention. Nonetheless, I did some homework and am very excited by what I found.
The works he mentions specifically have the following summaries:
The writing covers a broad array of subjects such as gnosticism, theosophy, Eastern philosophy and spirituality in general. The first part of the book deals with dream analysis in its practical application, the problems and aims of modern psychotherapy, and also his own theory of psychological types. The middle section addresses Jung’s beliefs about the stages of life and Archaic man. He also contrasts his own theories with those of Sigmund Freud.
In the latter parts of the book Jung discusses the psychology and literature and devotes a chapter to basic postulates of analytical psychology. The last two chapters are devoted to the spiritual problem of modern man in aftermath of World War I. He compares it to the flowering of gnosticism in the 2nd century and investigates how psychotherapists are like the clergy.
Modern Man In Search of a Soul by Carl Jung
Robert Bly, renowned poet and author of the ground-breaking bestseller Iron John, mingles essay and verse to explore the Shadow – the dark side of the human personality – and the importance of confronting it.
A Little Book About The Human Shadow by Robert Bly
This is all extremely interesting stuff to ponder, and I’m especially intrigued by the idea that Rian might – on some level – be drawing on Gnosticism to inform his film. I’m relatively well versed in Gnosticism (read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels for a great primer) and it’s a straight-up fascinating area to study. I haven’t noticed any striking Gnostic parallels in The Force Awakens as of yet, so that may well be something personal that Rian is bringing to the saga for his film.
Gnosticism aside, the characters this seems most likely to relate to are Rey, Luke and (especially) Kylo. Robert Bly in particular, is a leading figure of the mythopoetic men’s movement. I hadn’t heard of it before, but the endless font of wisdom that is Wikipedia explains that it essentially takes the standpoint that the modern man is in a dangerous position because modern societal constraints have created circumstances that either drive men to dangerous aggression and hyper-masculinity or excessive feminisation. It’s essentially a movement about celebrating a more healthy kind of masculinity, which seems to be achieved by celebrating mythic archetypes and encouraging male-to-male socialisation.,
Since Kylo Ren can be interpreted as striving for some mythic, hyper-masculine identity for himself (complete with bristling tension and sporadic displays of uncontrollable violence), I can see Rian’s interest in Robert Bly being connected to that.
My dearest wish for VIII is that it delves into the underlying psychological forces motivating the characters, and Rian’s reading list is strong evidence suggesting that that’s exactly what we’re getting.
We have known that Letter Never Sent is an influence on Episode VIII for just shy of two years, ever since Rian Johnson mentioned the title (alongside Twelve O’Clock High) in an interview with Filmspotting. On Sunday, both films were mentioned again – alongside various others – at the Future Filmmakers panel at Star Wars Celebration Europe (where I got to yell out the words “space bear!” with pride). And given that the cinematic influences for Episode VIII are suddenly back in the spotlight, now feels like a great time to look more closely at Letter Never Sent (the only film of the bunch I have seen so far) and consider what the filmmakers could be taking from it.
To provide some context for this, here’s a synopsis:
The film follows four Soviet geologists who set out into the remotest reaches of Siberia on a mission to uncover diamonds. When the forces of nature turn against them, their mission becomes reduced to the simple matter of survival.
There are two distinct types of influences I think I could be extracted from Letter Never Sent, and while they overlap I think it’s worth separating them out into visual influences and thematic/narrative ones.
So, visual influences:
– Tight, gorgeous and intensely emotional close-ups on actors’ faces.
– Natural landscapes and weather conditions being used to mirror the characters’ internal struggles and emotions.
– Endless vistas being transformed by the camera, gaining an almost alien quality.
And thematic ones:
– Sacrifice, in many different forms (noble and ignoble).
– The hopelessness and futility of unrequited love.
– The triumph of a greater mission over individual needs or desires.
– Man being overpowered and overwhelmed by natural forces.
– A small group of characters being stranded by forces beyond their control, revealing their truest selves when placed amidst extreme conditions.
If you want to read extended thoughts on how these ideas are expressed in Letter Never Sent and how they may feed into Episode VIII, dive beneath the cut.
Three Outlaw Samurai is another film name-dropped by Rian Johnson at the Future Filmmakers panel at Celebration Europe, and of all the titles mentioned this was the one that leaped out to me as the most intriguing. A 1964 chambara film, Three Outlaw Samurai is the debut feature of Hideo Gosha. The central figure of the film is Sakon Shiba, a wandering ronin who comes across three peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of the local magistrate in the hope of coercing him to lower taxes. Sympathetic to their plight, Shiba decides to help them, but in doing so he precipitates a series of events that result in his faith in the systems of honour and law being shattered.
Now, it is safe to say that Star Wars: Episode VIII is unlikely to concern tax disputes (ground already amply covered by the prequel trilogy). Indeed, as with almost all the films mentioned at the Future Filmmakers panel, the influence of Three Outlaw Samurai is most likely to be thematic and/or visual. To break it down, I can detect the following themes:
– Loss of faith in established systems of order, honour and justice.
– The fundamental cruelty and senselessness of the class system.
– Relationships taking radical and surprising 180-degree turns.
The most striking element of the film (and the one I will focus on here – the others will have to wait) was the disintegration of Shiba’s faith in external sources of morality, justice and social order. By the end of the film, he is disgusted not only by the corrupt magistrate, but also by the cowardice and inaction of the peasants themselves. The three peasants who kidnapped the magistrate’s daughter have already been murdered, in an act that saw the magistrate break his solemn vow to Shiba that they would not be harmed, and those they were trying to help are too afraid to act even when they are handed the petition that their friends died for. The systems ordering society – be they judicial, moral or honour-based – are proven hollow. By the close of the film, the samurai of the title only have their own consciences left to guide them. They are lawless, but only because the law demonstrably doesn’t deserve their respect.
Almost everyone in the film betrays someone – you have a daughter defying her father by helping the man who kidnapped her, a samurai ignoring his solemn vow by ordering the deaths of the peasants he swore to pardon, a father forsaking his daughter by selling her to a brothel, a woman betraying her vow to kill her husband’s murderer by agreeing to run away with the killer, a samurai betraying his friends to be with the woman he loves, etc., etc. These betrayals are motivated by many different forces, and adequately representing them would take the mother of all Venn diagrams. (So let’s just say I pass on that – watch the film!)
I don’t see any of these specific themes making it into Episode VIII, but I do see the general idea of betrayal playing heavily into the story. One of the main reasons for believing this is that Episode V, the middle film of the original trilogy, is also very much about betrayals – Luke betrays his duty to train as a Jedi, Lando betrays the trust of his friends, and Darth Vader betrays every fatherly duty conceivable when he chops his own son’s hand off and leaves him a miserable, snivelling wreck who chooses likely death over an evil father/son double act. More specifically, I can also see the idea of betrayal playing into things
on a macro level – whereas the betrayals of The Empire Strikes Back were all very personal and intimate (being between friends and family members), I envisage the betrayals of Episode VIII being betrayals of values, beliefs and systems of order.
Kylo Ren on crusade
Why do I think this? Well, the primary reason would be that Kylo Ren, as he is presented in The Force Awakens, is a fanatical ideologue. As Kylo sees it, he is a crusading knight on a noble and essential mission to purge the galaxy of the Jedi and their sympathisers. He is honour bound to compensate for the mistakes of his grandfather and “finish what he started”. He experiences this responsibility as an unbearable weight on his shoulders, and openly struggles with what he has come to perceive as his ultimate destiny.
Kylo clearly places immense faith in a tenuous system of abstractions. He tentatively trusts Snoke and wants to believe in his promises of the power and glory of the dark side. He chooses to believe that killing his father will bring him the power and stability he seeks, but when he commits the act he is “horrified”
(as per the script). In the aftermath of the act, he seems weakened rather than strengthened – his strategy is nonexistent, his behaviour is erratic, and his loyalties are most striking in their absence. But, of course, The Force Awakens ends with Kylo being ignominiously dragged back to Snoke. As much as the prospect might have appealed to Kylo in those final moments on Starkiller Base, there is no chance of him going ronin because his master proves efficient in scooping him up and restoring him to the evil fold.
So, in The Force Awakens you already have a profoundly ideological (and, in a perverse way, honour bound) character whose beliefs are tested to the extreme. That, in my view, leaves two possibilities for Kylo Ren going forward – his doubts are resolved as he completes his training under Snoke, and he fully commits himself to the dark side; or his doubts persist and grow, and his certainties are eroded still further over the course of Episode VIII.
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
The influences of samurai films – and Kuroawa’s filmography (The Hidden Fortress, in particular) – on the original trilogy are well documented. In those films, the Jedi were clearly analogous to the samurai, being bound by a code of honour and a careful system of discipline. This was manifest by Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope, a figure who embodied the values of Jedi knighthood and taught Luke the ways of the Force. In light of this, the very absence of the Jedi and their teachings is probably one of the most striking elements of The Force Awakens. We meet Maz, who speaks of the Force and its ways, but she is a mere proxy – “no Jedi”, she cannot teach or guide Rey as Obi-Wan could teach and guide Luke. In the absence of any Jedi training or structuring system, then, we only have the dark side equivalent in the triptych of Snoke, Kylo Ren and General Hux. There is no Jedi code on display, but it is clear that Kylo is following some kind of dark side equivalent. So, in the sequel trilogy we almost have an inversion of the original trilogy in that we have dark side ‘samurai’ (after a fashion) and the young Skywalker dashing hopes instead of restoring them.
And then, of course, there is the elephant in the room – the biggest betrayal of The Force Awakens (besides Han’s murder) occurred in the past, when Ben Solo betrayed his uncle and “destroyed” his work to rebuild the Jedi Order. While I certainly don’t expect to see this explained away as a heroic deed following the example of Three Outlaw Samurai (where betrayal is, under certain circumstances, shown to be honourable and commendable), I would be unsurprised to see it being presented as a decision motivated by a ‘crisis of faith’ that saw Ben Solo’s faith in the Jedi irrevocably shattered.
So, with all that blather out of the way, let’s get to predictions!
1. Kylo’s betrayal of his uncle was, to a large degree, ideologically motivated, following some kind of crisis of faith or the discovery of evidence suggesting that the Jedi were inherently corrupt or dangerous.
2. Kylo’s new ordering system for the dark side will be challenged as his old one for the light side was. This is likely to cause some kind of psychological crisis or loss of faith.
3. There is likely to be betrayal at work in other quarters, though this is likely to be betrayal of a more personal nature (think Lando in ESB-level betrayal).
These predictions are dangerously specific (much more specific than those featured in my Letter Never Sent blog, for example) and may be entirely off-base. For all I know, Rian may just be modelling lightsaber battles on Gosha’s sweet, sweet fight choreography. Whatever the case, Three Outlaw Samurai is a great touchstone for any film to reference and I recommend it highly (accept nothing less than the Criterion transfer – you owe it to yourself).
Monsters and Villains 