bettydays:

i wasn’t going to write this because i don’t put a lot of stock into jj how-about-a-few-more-lens-flares abram’s directing chops, but after some speculation on how the next two sequels will pan out, i thought i’d toss in my few cents.

star wars has always had the pattern of mildly subverting tropes to tell a classic story in a different way. what’s special about luke skywalker is that he’s not a department store hero, nor a Chosen One – he shares his heroism with two others. what’s special about anakin skywalker is that he is the Chosen One but he fails miserably. what i think is going to be special about kylo ren is that tfa set up an impending redemption arc, but i don’t think it’ll be his.

i wouldn’t put money on it, but a lot of people out there are saying hux is going to die, and i think maybe his story might end up being more complicated than we assume. what’s the point of casting someone like domhnall gleeson if you’re just going to kill him off? they could have cast any nobody who could keep a straight face, but no, they got the most glaringly unique, expressively nuanced motherfucker available.

think about what hux represents in the star wars universe: the heavy hand of blind law. he provides a foil to kylo ren, an example of another kind of villainy. he’s the guy who gives the order to knock down the dominos. 

this is an interesting contrast to the original trilogy because there were only two primary layers of evil: the guy who called the shots (palpatine), and the guy who did his bidding (vader). (phasma, by contrast, is the Threat. she’s the sequels’ darth maul and boba fett.) hux provides a confusing third wheel to this dynamic, which leads me to believe his real function in the overall story is yet to be seen.

i don’t think hux will ever be a hero, nor do i think he deserves sympathy. he’s an allegory to fascism, and to seek actual forgiveness of his character is incredibly dismissive of all the actual victims of fascism, as so many kylux haters are wont to point out to us humble sinnamon roll fic authors.

but i do think there will come a time in the next two movies where he might betray the first order and/or kylo ren.

lighting has always been pretty symbolic in star wars due to light sabers (green and blue [and purple] being Lightside, red being Darkside), but the lighting in tfa is particularly meaningful. i was originally going to write a post about The Scene but i thought it was too obvious to discuss the symbolic lighting. you’ve all had 8th grade english, you don’t need me to explain it.

just in case, here’s a short version…

before ren kills han:

after ren kills han:

the (blue) light dies here, and so does ben solo. ren is then cast in darkness (red). 

characters tend to be bathed repeatedly in the colors that reflect their light or dark side.

which is why i find this so particularly interesting:

every time red and blue mix together is a point of conflict, and one always wins. here we have half of hux’s face in blue and the other in red, right after ren basically tells him he’s fucked. 

this screencap also begs an interesting thought: why are there so many shots that linger on hux’s (really emotional??) reactions? 

if hux is a throwaway bad guy like his predecessors, why is he so emotional? why do we care how he reacts? why does he look so remorseful and conflicted? just like finn is a complex interpretation of a stormtrooper, i think hux is a complex interpretation of a Tarkin. 

if he is really a foil to ren, his equivalent Darkness Moment is when he blows up the Hosnian system. but unlike ren, who has fallen beyond any light at all…

…hux retains an ounce of light in his eyes:

in conclusion, i think hux has a shot at being more to the sequels’ story than his handful of tfa screentime would have us believe. i don’t necessarily want him to find the light, but it would be really great if he could put a wrench in the dark side.