10 Awesome Movie Characters Ruined By Terrible Writing

To be fair, terrible writing ruined a good deal of the new characters in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, but none quite as egregiously as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).

Ren was introduced in The Force Awakens as a compellingly multi-faceted villain, a petulant Darth Vader fanboy desperately trying to live up to his grandfather's legacy.

The Last Jedi then saw him grow into a more threatening antagonist in his own right, culminating in his surprise murder of Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis).

This seemed to suggest that Kylo would assume the primary villain mantle for The Rise of Skywalker, only for that spot to actually be taken by a nostalgia-baiting zombie-puppet version of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).

And so, rather than double down on Kylo Ren's villainy, the film more or less walked back his prior characterisation, lazily giving him an unearned Vader 2.0 redemption story, ending with him defeating his own Knights of Ren and sacrificing himself to revive a dead Rey (Daisy Ridley).

But what truly left fans feeling insulted was the hilariously out-of-place smooch the two shared seconds before Kylo - sorry, Ben Solo - died.

Even ignoring how blatantly the scene was pandering to the most sentimental quarters of the fanbase - looking at you, "shippers" - having the trilogy's main hero make out with a mass murderer wasn't a good look at all.