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Ben Solo's Fall to the Dark Side


Darth Wicket
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It (Bail) is her father's name. A man who would likely be a heck of a lot more a hero to her than Ben Kenobi. I would rather be true to the character of Leia than have her name him something that doesn't really make sense.

 

You or I have no idea of how much of a hero Bail Organa or Ben Kenobi was to Leia. Twenty years passed off screen. Maybe She resented her father and looked up to good ol' Uncle Ben. The point is, her past is a unknown, and it's unimportant. I fail to see why you can't accept the fact it's possible Leia (and Han, for that matter) honored and respected Ben for his sacrifice. If he doesn't go on that tractor beam suicide mission, they get caught, and the entire galaxy is screwed. What could be more heroic?

Han didn't even like the guy.

And then he realized he owes his life to him and changed his mind.

it only makes sense as a cheap bone to throw at the audience. "see guys! We referenced Obi-Wan."

Yeah it's reference to the OT. If they used Bail's name it would be a reference to the PT. Sounds like they chose wisely. Nobody is upset over this.
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Like I said, I'm not married to the idea of Bail. It's only a suggestion for a better legacy name. Though, I'm not sure how it's suddenly become a bad name when it's been around Star Wars since the beginning and is a fairly innocuous one-syllable name.

Oh come on now, Bail isnt even a name, its what you do when the Empire rolls up with a fleet of Star Destroyers. Julia is an innocuous name, but it sucks if your last name is Gulia. Bail Solo sounds dumb when you say it out loud, and it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue like Han Solo or Bail Organa does, and it was tolerated because Bail Organa isn't a character as much as he was a nanny to raise a baby Leia between episodes.
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Wow, you're really stuck on something I just tossed out there. Wasn't really looking to defend the name, but whatever, we'll go with it.

 

 

 

Bail Solo sounds dumb when you say it out loud, and it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue like Han Solo or Bail Organa does

 

Han, Bail, Ben. These are all basic one-syllable names. They all roll of the tongue pretty much the same. And it's not as if Bail, as a name, is some completely made up gobbledygook. I'm sure you don't have such an opinion about Christian Bale or anyone else who sports it as a surname.

 

 

 

Yeah it's reference to the OT. If they used Bail's name it would be a reference to the PT. Sounds like they chose wisely. Nobody is upset over this.

 

Bail Organa might have only shown up on-screen in the Prequels, but he and his name have been a part of Star Wars lore since A New Hope.

 

Heck, for the whole first half of the movie, the quest was to get the Death Star plans to him personally. That's what Leia was trying to do when she was captured. That's the mission she begs Obi-Wan to complete. So, much like the unseen Emperor, he was a very important person in the first movie's story despite his lack of screen time.

 

So, no, you can't play the OT vs. PT card here.

 

 

 

Maybe She resented her father and looked up to good ol' Uncle Ben.

 

The whole of her interaction with Ben was seeing him pull his magic trick as she was running to the Millennium Falcon.

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Well, I ask again, do you think twice about saying Christian Bale? Or Gareth Bale if you happen to follow soccer? Pretty much any name sounds awkward if you spend too much time thinking about it. But, if you're just looking at it normally, it's a pretty innocuous name that isn't even completely made up. It's an accepted real-world surname turned into a first name and given an alternate spelling.

 

In a universe where two of the great menacing villains' names are Dooku and Snoke, I rather doubt anyone would flinch.

 

Edit:

 

Bah, took the Jacen pun bait.

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Fair enough.

 

In actual seriousness, though, all possible logics of naming him Ben or Bail within the story aside, from a practical standpoint, his name needed to have a hard sound at the end for it to sound so great when Han yelled his name. A soft sound, like in Bail, just trails off could even have people hearing something like "Baio" when he said it. It would be similar in that way to the original trailer for Cloverfield where a character yelled "It's alive!". Many people claimed he said "It's a lion!" instead because of a combination of the diction and the word's soft ending. You could certainly help control the diction somewhat, but it would still be messy with the echo.

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Wow, you're really stuck on something I just tossed out there.

It's just something kind of fun to argue about, I suppose.

I'm going to apologize now for not multiple-quoting as I find it incredibly tedious on iPhone. I'm surprised I bothered with it earlier.

 

Bail Organa barely qualifies (if at all) as an OT character, let alone an important one. He was a plot enabling device, so I guess that adds significance, but he didnt actually appear in the OT films, and he was never even mentioned by name in them. He was of course a prequel character, and in my opinion a crappy one. Most of the audience either won't remember him at all, or will be reminded of the prequels which, warranted or not, I'm positive JJ wanted to avoid like it was AIDS. Im sure he considered naming Kylo "Bail" at one point, because obviously naming him after Leia's dad is of course logical; but he probably decided not to go with it because prequels, and possibly also to Jacen's point about the way it sounds during the...I'm going to call the "big BEN" scene.

 

The opening line of dialogue can even be interpreted as a slap in the face to the PT "this will begin to make things right". I bet that was 100% intentional for all the OT lover/PT hater fans who were tenuously wondering to themselves if 'its goona suck like the last three'. This had to be their strategy: PT = AIDS, and subtle slaps in the face with dialogue made of Retrovir.

 

Plus..(I'm sorry!) I find "Bail Solo" so silly a name I almost laugh out loud when I say it. And no...not Bail Organa. Not Christian Bale either. Bail Solo is just a terrible combination. Ben Solo fits the 'Star Wars is simple' concept much better.

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You could certainly help control the diction somewhat, but it would still be messy with the echo.

 

Well, that keeps the assumption that it was some mystery to be sprung on the audience during the final confrontation. If it's not "Ben!" (Flashing sign: "Hey kids, it's a Kenobi reference! You are now free to experience a fangasm."), then there's no reason to have that in there in the first place. So the worries about an echo aren't particularly important. It would probably be mentioned sometime earlier by Leia or Han.

 

Beyond which, really who cares? I thought it was Dark Vader and lifesavers back when I was a wee lad. Didn't hurt anything.

 

Go back to Star Trek and how to do a little Easter egg. Pike in the chair, the Kobayashi Maru scenes, and too many Wrath of Kahn/Into Darkness parallels to mention were too in your face and practically nudging me in the ribs saying, "Get it? Get it? See what we did there?"

 

If you want an example of something like that done right from that movie, it would be the reference implying that Scotty accidentally killed Porthos. That was a rather good Easter egg. Not too difficult to follow, but not bashing it over our heads either. Plus, kinda funny in a dark humor sort of way.

 

Abrams' style is to take the cheap reference and mistake it for cleverness. It's a large reason why The Force Awakens, though it outwardly hits the right buttons for a Star Wars movie, feels a bit hollow once you start digging in.

 

 

 

Im sure he considered naming Kylo "Bail" at one point, because obviously naming him after Leia's dad is of course logical

 

I rather doubt he ever gave it any consideration. They probably hit on Ben immediately in the writing process and that was it.

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After exciting and exotic names like Mace, Plo, Shmi, Qui-Gon, Jango, Watto and Cliegg in Episodes I-III, the name Luke seems totally pedestrian and out of place. There is NO WAY Padme would name her kid something like that. As soon as I heard the name Luke I was like WTF. Total distraction. George was obviously just stroking his own ego with a derivative of his last name.

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