The Hunt is On (Or Not)

Recently it was reported that a movie following Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren, had been pitched to Lucasfilm and Disney and that, despite Lucasfilm initially being interested in the idea, Disney eventually rejected it. The script, as put together by Ben Solo actor Adam Driver and director Steven Soderberg, would have picked up after the events of Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, seeing Solo on an adventure to find himself and redeem his soul after all the bad things he did in the name of the First Order.

As you can imagine, though, Disney rejected it for one clear reason: Ben Solo dies at the end of the ninth film (spoilers if you didn’t know that but, really, if you’ve avoided it that long you weren’t going to watch the ninth film). His ending is pretty definitive, with Ben passing out and then disappearing as all Jedi do eventually. That means that, as per the rules of the Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. universe, Ben is dead and can only come back as a Force ghost at best, but this story (as pitched) had him, somehow, alive and well once more, off to be some kind of gray Jedi as he finds himself again.

Look, this is nothing against Driver or Soderberg. I love the director’s works and I think Driver is a great actor (even if I felt he was wasted in his Star Wars role). I’m sure Driver saw that Daisy Ridley was set to come back to reprise her role as Rey for a future Star Wars film, if that ever happens, and he probably thought, “why can’t I come back, too?” If he loved playing Kylo Ren enough, and saw a story that would let him continue exploring his character, giving them new depths to plumb, then sure, why not try and pitch it to Disney. There’s no harm in that.

What’s funny, though, is how the Star Wars fanbase freaked out over the news. To be clear, the Star Wars fandom (at least the vocal minority online) is a toxic bunch that should never be listened to, even under the best of circumstances. They hate women, people of color, women of color, and anything else that, they feel, “diminishes the Star Wars universe.” They act like a bunch of entitled little children, declaring that their view of how Star Wars “should be” is the only perspective that matters. Anything that doesn’t fit their tiny, tight narrative, anything that could possibly push the series forward into new realms, is viciously and virulently mocked. And, generally speaking, Disney gives in.

So far, though, Disney has not caved on the decision to not do a Ben Solo movie that hadn’t yet been put into production, no matter what the fans might say. The fans claimed they were robbed of the next great Star Wars adventure featuring a tragic hero (who, look at that, happens to be a white dude) and Disney needs to listen to them and release the movie. That would be, the company needs to release a film that hasn’t yet been finished, hasn’t even been started, and has absolutely nothing about it released yet other than a rejected spec script written by two dudes on their own time. Yeah, I don’t see that happening.

On the one hand, Disney rejects more Star Wars films than they actually make. Despite us getting The Mandalorian and Grogu next year, and then Star Wars: Starfighter in 2027, this does not indicate some big wave of films that are in the pipeline. More often than not, Star Wars films that are pitched to Lucasfilm and Disney end up not getting made, even if they are, at first, officially announced (which, bear in mind, The Hunt for Ben Solo or whatever they were going to call it, was not). The list of cancelled Star Wars productions includes a saga from Zack SnyderOften reviled for the bombastic and idiotic content of his films, there is no question that what Snyder's movies lack in substance they (at least try to) balance out with flash and style, making him one of Hollywood's top directors... sadly. (which he eventually took, reworked, and made into Rebel Moon, and you can see why Disney decided not to make it because, yeah, that film sucks), a Solo sequel (which was canned because the first film bombed), an unproduced Knights of the Old Republic film, and more unproduced projects from the likes of D.B Weiss and Devid Benioff, Rian Johnson, Patty Jenkins (although she keeps saying one day it might get made) and even Kevin Feige. If Kevin Feige, master of the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe., can’t get a Star Wars movie made then you know that some spec script Disney didn’t even ask for has no chance.

But there is another aspect that we should look at: where could Ben’s character really go from here. Even if we could somehow explain away his death (which, come on, that’s a pretty big if), he already did his big redemption story. He started as the big bad of the trilogy, and then was slowly redeemed by Rey, Leia, and the Force ghost of his own father, Han. By the end of it he’s rejected the First Order and the Empire, picked up a blue saber, and become a Jedi once more. He’s had his arc. That’s the end of his character’s story.

Pushing him beyond that would, inevitably, lead to rehashing ideas. “Yes, I was bad, but now I’m good. Maybe I feel a little conflicted sometimes… but no. I can be good. Oops, I killed a guy, but it was for the right reasons…” It would effectively be a case of either Ben fights his urges to be bad each time he gets into a new adventure, or he gives in, becomes bad, and then has to fight to be good again. It’s all back sliding and repeating beats instead of finding something new. That isn’t interesting, it’s just redundant.

And if it is something truly new, like a big, new threat to the galaxy, then why is it just a Ben Solo movie? Shouldn’t that get some of the other characters, like Rey or Finn or Poe, involved as well? The adventure can’t be too big, but it can’t be too small either. It seems like it would be hard to find just the right balance that justifies sending the character on new adventures, especially when you’re already fighting an uphill battle trying to justify why the character is alive again at all. This feels like padding out the character simply for the sake of, no matter how you slice it.

We have a clear example of doing that already: The Mandalorian. Season one set up a new character who seemed to be on the fringe of the universe we know, someone not explicitly good or bad, just on the road by himself. Then he picks up a baby, Grogu, and learns how to redeem himself, becoming not just a better man but a “father” as well. By the end of the second season he’s finished his arc and become a hero. But, more to the point, he’s also let go of his “child” so that Grogu can go off and become a Jedi. It’s a sad, but fitting, end to their story.

And then the show was so popular that all of that great character development was reversed in The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian season three such that now Mando doesn’t even feel like a key character in his own story because his arc has nowhere to go. He’s just there, vibing, hanging out with Grogu (who also had their story reversed, leaving them with nowhere else to go, character wise) and being a Mandalorian. It’s a bad way to continue the story in large part because it was a story that didn’t need to continue.

Do we really want that for Ben Solo? No. That doesn’t do the character justice, and it doesn’t serve the audience in any meaningful way. I get that Driver and Soderberg were excited for it, and maybe they even had an angle that was interesting, but in the long run I just don’t think it’s an idea that can sustain itself. And that’s to say nothing about what it would do to the franchise if characters could simply come back from the dead, no harm and no foul. That would fundamentally destroy the very concept of character death in the universe and retroactively ruin so many meaningful moments. Luke dying to save his friends? Pointless. Obi-Wan giving up his life to protect Luke? Why bother?

No, it’s better that this project didn’t happen. Say what you will about the leadership at Disney but I think they got this right. Better to focus on new tales that tell new stories we haven’t seen before. You know, like The Mandalorian and Grogu… well, fuck.