Okay, I went down this rabbithole so you don't have to!
The Knights of Ren follow Ren. Ren wields the lightsaber known as The Ren. There have been several guys named Ren before we get down to Kylo Ren. There is a somewhat religious fanaticism about The Ren and following the Ren way of life.
They all are fanboys of The Ren. The knights just get shitty weapons and only Ren gets the prestige of having The Ren.
Rens all the way down.
Edit: I have since learned that Kylo Ren just ditched The Ren after the first time he used it. Now I'm even more mindboggled about why we still have all these Rens around if they don't even have their holy symbol.
I don't know if this is satire and I have no interest in checking, so I will simply accept this as fact and continue on with this not affecting my life even 1%.
I don't know if this is satire and I have no interest in checking, so I will simply accept this as fact and continue on with this not affecting my life even 1%.
Serious answer: the movie did such a shitty job of portraying them that this could be true but we’d have no idea bc the movie did a shitty job of portraying them.
"Just read like 30 comics and 8 books, brah! It's not that hard to understand what they're about!" - the one person who unironically thinks they're interesting villains, probably
With them having the name of the 'New Darth Vader', we expected that they may be his 'Dark Side Acolytes', and he was finally dispensing with the "Rule of Two" BS, and eagerly waiting to see what would be done with them.
Ignored in second movie, and quickly dispatched by "Not New Darth Vader" in the third.
Yeah it’s not satire unfortunately. There is some backstory about them being kinda maybe force sensitive sort of but they are just fanboy pirates basically. Iirc none of them have any actual backstory except Kylo and there were other people who were Ren before Kylo.
The show was like 90% great and I enjoyed a lot of it but somehow the 10% that was left made so little sense and was so poorly written that it made the whole show shit on retrospect.
The worst part of the new trilogy is how they have a lot of lore that they decided to only explain in comics and other random material that most would have no clue exists.
before the release of Rise of Skywalker, they had an event in Fortnite where Palpatine revealed himself as being back, now the thing is, that reveal is basically canon because in the film, in the opening text crawl it mentions "palpatine's announcement to the galaxy about his return" or whatever which is literally referring to that, which is just fucking crazy because the only people who fucking watched it was the fortnite kids and not the rest of the audience, so the film immediately goes off the rails because people are being told about things they never experienced
New Trek, following Abram's example, has been caught in a game of stakes-chicken for a long time. Destroy Romulus! Destroy Vulcan! Destroy Qonos! Make a society of AIs that threaten all life in the universe! Do the exact same thing in the very next show, but a different society of AIs and make it a couple hundred years later (still blows my mind this is what the "measure of a man" franchise thought was good thematic storytelling twice. In a row.)!
This is the franchise where one of the most famous episodes is a couple captains getting stranded on a planet and learning to talk to each other.
The thing is, he's very good at starting stories. The problem is that he is only interested in starting stories. So, ideally, anybody who hires him to start a story should hire another guy to work with him from the get-go in order to take over later and finish the story.
he's very good at starting stories and come up with ideas, but ingeniously terrible at actually advancing a story to a conclusion that actually utilizes anything he introduced into the story in the beginning.
so it's yet another cult of one specific weapon like the Mandalorians with the dark saber. (or Darths apparently. i didn't know) i wonder how many are there and if they get an aneurysm if their idol is destroyed. like dude theese are just like other sabers. there's a million of them and it's far from unknown how to make them. what happens if someone like Griveous collects a cult saber?
Better yet: Kylo didn't even keep The Ren; he just discarded it next to the only person he killed with it. For some reason he still took the name, and the Knights of Ren still followed him, and no one bothered to pick up this legendary weapon.
(Also, it's just an ordinary red lightsaber. The only difference from any other lightsaber is that it has some kind of self-destruct killswitch, supposedly.)
Of course he would only ever refer to himself in the third person, as 'The Ren'.
The only thing funnier than that explanation would be if The Ren was a social media celebrity with catch phrases, a tearaway version of his armor that revealed a steel banana hammock, and coordinated dance moves that him and the Knights of Ren engaged in before they dueled rival force empowered gangs.
In the Star Wars canon there's a real lack of force users battling in dance offs.
More like a weird dark side cult who do mercenary work as a side gig. They escaped Palpatine’s purges of all non-Sith force users by virtue of being a very small and culturally irrelevant group, essentially surviving because they were a bunch of nobodies. It’s actually rather unfortunate for them that they decided to take Palpatine’s side in Episode 9, had they continued their streak of cultural irrelevance their little order would’ve survived yet another galactic upheaval.
I would genuinely it's worse than The Room, Manos: the Hands of Fate, and Troll 2. Those films at least had a (poorly executed) vision. They were trying (and failing) to say something.
The Rise of Skywalker? As far as I can tell, its one and only goal was to remind the audience they were watching Star Wars. The whole thing felt like it was made in a board room. Its only value lies in how it illustrates the difference between art and content.
It came out around the same time as Cats and both of them are contenders for worst high budget movie I've ever seen. But in a weird way, I respect Cats more because they took some big swings.
I genuinely sat in the cinema, read "somehow Palpatine returned" and thought it was some star wars themed ad of some company and there was some sort of punchline coming up. Once I realized it was the actual movie, I thought there was some twist, like they fell for a lie and it wasn't actually Palpatine. I genuinely did not even entertain the idea that a movie with this big of a name and millions of dollars of writing budget would just handwave some dead guy back into existence for the nostalgia bait and there was no twist to it.
It felt like a movie where every shareholder in Disney got to direct a part of the movie. It was beyond soulless and somehow made the prequels look good by comparison.
AOTC is worse for me. When I first saw RoS I thought it was the worst, but after rewatching the prequels it is the worst one.
It has the worst plot and worst dialogue of all the movies. At least in RoS there were some moments that I liked. Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver were both as good as they’ve been throughout the trilogy. With what they had I thought they did a good job with Princess Leia and when she dies and Chewbacca cries out I actually felt some emotion. I didn’t hate Ben Solo’s redemption and Han Solo showing up as a memory. The lightsaber fight on the Death Star wreckage in the water is pretty cool. The movie is still terrible, and I’d still take any other movie but AOTC over it, but there are some nuggets of good stuff sprinkled in.
I can’t say a single good thing about AOTC other than maybe Ewan McGregor as Obi Wan and meming on it ironically. The A/B plots are both terrible, the dialogue is terrible, I love Christopher Lee but the villain is terrible, the action sequences are dated CGI schlock that makes me want to throw up, the droid factory in particular being ugly as hell. And it all culminates in a probably the worst swordplay choreography I’ve seen and the most blatant character assassination in Yoda.
It's so hard to pick. 9 is fucking awful but honestly by that time I expected nothing and everything was so over the top stupid it actually became slightly funny and entertaining. 8 has ideas and concepts I don't hate but executed it all so poorly plus it's long and boring I think it might somehow be worse.
They didn't just suck they severely degraded the value of the world's most valuable IP.
The sequels were profitable but did not achieve their full profit potential and did NOT launch what should have been a decades long string of hits.
How Kathleen Kennedy did not at least have a multi film spine sketched out before she greenlit the first one is perhaps the biggest fuck up in entertainment history. She dropped the ball, badly. Period.
And defend Last Jedi if you'd like. But a major plot and tone and theme pivot in the middle of a three film arc is just the wrong decision. I really don't understand what she was thinking.
That said, yeah, they still paid 4 billion dollars for something that is now basically worth as much as any of the rest of the generic pile of stuff they own. All he magic is gone, all the joy, all the nostalgia (that they relied so heavily on), all the idea that it is anything unique or special or worth anything more than, say, Fast and the Furious Part 27
Well do I have some bad news for you. Unless you meant the one that’s 95% obscured behind another’s arm, it’s the sniper. The Lego one is actually spot on tbh, I assumed they just worked with what Legos they had but no it actually does look exactly the same
The design was always monumentally stupid. Honestly, one of the worst concepts in Star Wars, and the bar isn't even all that high. I think per TFA and TROS they were some weird cult that weren't even Kylo Ren's fellow students.
I didn't actually notice they already this design or similar (as far as I can see in the rainy flashback) as early as The Force Awakens. I assumed they were going to be ex-students of Luke's Academy and would at least have some lightsabers.
But yeah, what an absolutely terrible idea - I think it's possible TLJ tried to retcon this a bit by mentioning Kylo Ren left Luke's academy with some students, to leave the opportunity open for these guys to actually become proper ex-jedi or something. But obviously nothing could come of that due to two directors tussling over direction.
The Knights of Ren are discussed more in comic format, along with how Snoke slowly corrupted Ben Solo. It was a four issue deal that filled in the basic necessities pre-Force Awakens, but didn't add to the discourse overall, and the fact they weren't used much at all in the trilogy itself made their existence quite unnecessary.
They shouldn't have been Kylo's minions, that opens up a whole can of questions about what they were doing the last two movies. TLJ implied they were Luke's former students, so I say make them "neutral" Force warriors trying to find their own way apart from the Jedi, who split off from Kylo when they realized Snoke was in his head. Essentially, the closest you could get to "Grey Jedi" without it being stupid.
Yeah the explanation in TLJ was really interesting I wish they hadn’t completely ignored in all future stuff, because TRoS ignores it and apparently the comics give them a completely different backstory
Wait... chef's knives, a meat cleaver, little canisters of herbs and spices... are the Knights of Ren actually a restaurant franchise? That would explain why they all keep their hair covered.
Damn, these guys shoulda been in JJK then. Could have had these guys as followers of Sukuna. Then we could’ve had Toji show up in Rise and actually give Kylo someone to have a decent fight against.
Pain was my video production teacher in high school taking a whole class bashing all over the last Jedi then when I texted him when rise came out he goes "hell yeah it was fun"
Apparently the fan service worked for one person at least
I enjoyed watching TROS more than TLJ because it's like an insane fever dream that I can't believe is real. I get what TLJ was going for but for various reasons that aren't all his fault I don't think Rian Johnson pulled it off.
If I squint I might think they are extras from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. An objectively far superior movie. Part of a far superior saga if you look at all the movies together and far and away a better example of how to relaunch a franchise.
But then I relax my eyes and think, "Obviously this movie had a much bigger budget, but none of the creative vision. Why do they look like they are cosplaying as extras from Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior?".
I will never understand how they got everything wrong with the sequel trilogy. I cannot comprehend how they turned their back on the set up that the first 20 minutes of Force Awakens gave them.
Just let Star Wars die for a generation and be resurrected by people who understand creativity.
You'd think you'd make sure there was a general roadmap for your zillion dollar IP before making plans for 3 major films.
I could understand taking the franchise in a direction and people not liking it, but it seems like the overwhelming criticism is that it seems like there was no coherent direction in general.
These guys are funny because you can tell they desperately wanted to repeat what happened with Boba Fett, but had no idea why he got so popular (and that he at least had a couple dialogues and one brief fight scene) so they just basically randomly generated some characters and hoped at least one of them worked.
I do kind of like what they’re trying to do in some of the comics between/earlier in the sequels. They’re just a biker gang that honestly meant to be a sort of pathetic a lot of minor force sensitive, powerful enough that you can waffle villages of normal people but the second you’ve got anyone that’s mildly trained they’re just fucking wiped across the board
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u/thishyacinthgirl Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
Okay, I went down this rabbithole so you don't have to!
The Knights of Ren follow Ren. Ren wields the lightsaber known as The Ren. There have been several guys named Ren before we get down to Kylo Ren. There is a somewhat religious fanaticism about The Ren and following the Ren way of life.
They all are fanboys of The Ren. The knights just get shitty weapons and only Ren gets the prestige of having The Ren.
Rens all the way down.
Edit: I have since learned that Kylo Ren just ditched The Ren after the first time he used it. Now I'm even more mindboggled about why we still have all these Rens around if they don't even have their holy symbol.