Top 10 Rejected Kylo Ren Concepts
Over the last few months, the character design for Kylo Ren has evolved dramatically. The new villain’s appearance has changed at almost every stage of the process — from initial concept art dump to the teaser trailer and the leak from last week. After the jump, let’s shine a light on the top 10 Kylo Ren design concepts that didn’t make the cut.
Here is one of the first concepts of Kylo Ren. They planned on having him as an almost human alien whose hair would burst into flames while in battle. Sadly, this idea was scrapped when JJ informed the artists that the concept looked too much like Heat Miser from his favorite stop-motion animated Christmas special, A Year Without a Santa Claus.
This concept went as far as the costuming department and Adam Driver.. whoops sorry, spoiler Adam Driver is Kylo Ren, to try on. After he donned this outfit he told JJ that this design resembled a character from his niece’s favorite pre-school television show.
For this concept, they took the idea of a man who was critically injured and was rebuilt with cyborg parts. Without JJ’s approval, the artist forwarded the design to Hasbro to begin production of action figures. This $5 mistake turned into a $5000 mistake when Mr. Abrams himself called Hasbro to cancel the order of thier “6 Million Dollar Sith Lord” figures. Hasbro denied having any knowledge of the toy line, yet we have a photo of the bastard here.
Here’s an instance where they made the costume without JJ’s approval. Kylo Ren was also planned to be a cyborg that would be able to “transform” from “man” into a “truck.” When JJ first saw this he said, “What the hell is this? Who do I look like? Michael Bay?”
The artists at Bad Robot/LucasFilm thought they were original when they drew up this masterpiece, depicting Kylo Ren as a blue armored man with a cannon, not canon, for an arm. When they showed off their work, they were very proud of what they produced. JJ took a glace at it and said, “That’s f**kin’ Megaman.” and walked out of the room.
Another “great” idea was for Kylo to be furry green alien. He had the yellow/red Sith eyes, black fur coat and hat, and finally a lightsaber with four points, Jony Ive’s idea, which we know now as three points. This concept was actually JJ’s favorite until Mark Hamil pointed out it was basically the Grinch with a lightsaber. JJ promptly grabbed the drawing up, crumpled it into a ball, and swished a three point shot into the waste basket.
Next, we have this beauty. The geniuses in the art department thought it would be super original to have a sexy female Twi’lek with tattoos like Darth Maul who wears lingerie that would make Princess Leia in a metal bikini blush. Little did they know, Darth Talon was a Sith Lady in the Star Wars Legacy comic line. When Adam Driver saw this design he said, “Oh hell no! I’m not dressing up as that b**ch from Legacy!”
When several concepts from the boys in the art department were trashed, they turned to drug use (provided by Josh Trank). After several shots of morphine, they drew this dude up. A man that could turn into a pile of goo or a giant. Upon waking up from tripping balls they realized they had stolen from themselves. Years earlier, they had created Ivan Ooze of The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Movie after a bad acid trip fyi.
This one was actually a joke and the first drawing of Kylo Ren from the Michael Arndt script days. Darth Darth Binks made JJ laugh so hard, he took it to Bob Iger who almost agreed on the look until Kathleen Kennedy spilled the beans that it was really Jar Jar Binks. Iger was pissed and almost fired JJ on the spot as he “doesn’t like jokes like this unless it’s April Fool’s Day.” It was April 2nd by the time JJ was able to show the design to Iger.
