Hux & Kylo: Children of War
I recommend the Visual Dictionary to anyone with even the slightest interest in furthering their knowledge of The Force Awakens - it’s filled with marvellous photos, bizarre names and amusingly petty labels (one points at Hux’s pasty face and says “pallor from time spent indoors").
It’s also very helpful for illuminating backstories and character motivations, and the particular detail I want to consider here is that both Hux and Kylo have the same ultimate goal - they both want to rule. Hux, we’re told in the VD, “feels it is a matter of destiny that he be given a chance to sit on the throne that rules the galaxy”. Kylo, meanwhile, “sees it as his birthright to rule the weaker beings in the galaxy”. In light of their eerily similar ambitions, the fierce competitiveness that exists between them becomes clearer - they’re not just arbitrarily vying to outdo each other. They’re competitive because they have the same goal, and the nature of that goal means only one of them is going to achieve it.
While ‘rule everything’ is pretty standard as far as villain goals go, it’s worth considering why it’s the particular desire of Hux and Kylo. And while we only have a few details, they give us some idea of the psychology underpinning their behaviours and obsessions.
Hux was the toddler son of an Imperial Commandant when the Empire fell, and he will have grown up with the remnants of the once-mighty Imperial faction. In the VD we’re told that he was raised on stories of the heroism and justness of the Empire and the people who served it. Alongside this, he also understood the Rebellion to be little more than a terrorist organisation. However, despite the many stories of Imperial glory he was told as a child, Hux will have known that his parents and their glorious Empire failed. Ashamed and embittered, on his own behalf and on the behalf of his parents, he longs for a return to the order and prestige of the vanished Empire. Naturally, he sees himself at the head of any restored system of governance.
Kylo was born around a year after the Battle of Endor, and while the details of his early life are even slimmer than they are for Hux we know that he’s the only son of Han and Leia. He will have been told what his parents achieved, and he will have (presumably) been expected to follow in their footsteps by helping to consolidate the new democracy they had fought for. It’s reasonable to speculate that he felt enormous, crushing pressure because of this, which would perhaps explain his susceptibility to Snoke’s temptation and the allure of his grandfather’s monolithic image. As Kylo sees it, Vader represents an uncomplicated and reassuring model of power and authority - a mask betrays no emotion, no humanity and no weakness. By following Vader’s model and finishing what he started, Kylo’s goal is to become the ultimate authority in the galaxy.
Both men suffer from an acute sense of inadequacy that they’re endlessly compensating for with everything from their clothes to their speech. Hux presents an image of absolute control and self-discipline, which is manifest in every aspect of him, from his immaculately polished boots to the pristine, shining halls of the Finalizer. Kylo, meanwhile, wears a mask just as his grandfather did - but unlike his grandfather, there is no necessity or function to it. Kylo’s mask serves two purposes - it hides Kylo’s poignantly vulnerable human face, and gives him an unyielding shield to hide behind.
Both men have found and latched onto entirely different models of power and control. For Hux, that system is military order - there are rules, uniforms, systems and a clear chain of command. Kylo, meanwhile, relies on the Dark side of the Force for his meaning - and the Dark side simply doesn’t play very well with the things that Hux likes. The Dark side is fundamentally selfish, and has no time for bureaucrats and pen pushers who spend their free moments writing the imaginary legal code of their dream dictatorship (no one can tell me that isn’t what Hux does at weekends, okay?) One of the central sources of Hux’s loathing of Kylo - a wild card, a Force user and the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa - is that he effectively undermines everything he has striven to achieve. Kylo’s mere presence on the Finalizer is a sticking point for Hux - Kylo is an irritant Hux only endures because a.) Snoke wants it and b.) he knows Kylo could snap his neck on a whim if he so desired.
If Hux is order and control, Kylo is chaos and passion. Whereas Hux demands conformity, efficiency and protocol, Kylo is primarily concerned with his feelings and what they dictate in any given moment. While Hux will only betray his pent-up emotions by letting spit fly while delivering his Hitler First Order Youth Revival speech, Kylo will variously hack at equipment with his lightsaber, strangle junior officers with the Force, make angsty confessions to his dead grandfather’s charred mask, and bring back young women he finds in the woods for mysterious reasons. In short, they both represent opposite extremes and entirely different paths - this is why they hate each other’s guts and are incessantly bitching about the other man’s incompetence (especially with Snoke).
In short, Hux and Kylo do whatever the opposite of ‘play nicely’ is and I love it. They’re just so fun to watch. I’m sorry Poe, but I want Hux and Kylo to have the spin-off comic book series.
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