Actually, I wanna dispute the thing that Star Wars is about redemption. Return of the Jedi is, the saga as a whole isn't. The OT is mainly Luke's story, and Vader's redemption hinges on Luke's growth and learning to see the full truth of his father. So many villains in the series just die without redemption, not least Kylo's slave-soldiers - by the million. The Clone Wars gets into very different territory with its treatment of Maul.
The way Ben Solo is redeemed by the love of Rey and Leia also sends a whole load of really grisly messages.
Hah, I know what twitter thread you've been reading
I think saying ROTJ is about redemption and the saga isn't is kind of a nitpick that elides what George says Star Wars is about and ignores the role the ending of the trilogy does to serve as a capstone to the whole story.
Similarly I think its a somewhat overly literal take about Ben Solo/Kylo Ren that doesn't really engage with how we relate to characters in fiction. By being one of the main characters, by being the son of Han and Leia and the nephew of Luke - yes, he's more important than some random trooper (who RotS also should've saved! Absolutely! They set up an army of slave-child soldiers and did nothing with it! They doomed them!
Fuck!). There's nothing wrong with that - it's the nature of fictional stories.
I also think the argument that this is some sort of bad message is not an argument anyone who's had a child would ever make. Like the idea that parents who have a place in the story and the audience's sentiments should somehow stop loving their son and its somehow acceptable to have him just die without trying to the end to save him - that's a really, really depressing message.
I'm leery of 'message for the kids' arguments generally, because they can go either way, but its equally arguable that if you're a sufficiently bad person your family just abandons you and you don't deserve your parent's love anymore is equally problematic.
I don't mind that tweeter generally, but I think he's one of those guys that just ... fundamentally didn't get what TLJ's ending really came down on in terms of Ben Solo. It was
not that he was irredeemable. Like every single comment Rian has made on the subject has indicated quite the opposite. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is a character Rian actually identifies with and wants the audience to relate to, as he once patiently explained on twitter to someone incensed at the prospect ("it's not about imagining yourself literally doing what the character is doing on screen", he explained).
But Kylo is also a different man to Anakin. His redemption essentially pushes the message that actually, he is more important than other people and his bloodline/power makes the acts of violence he chooses to commit irrelevant.
Admittedly in IX Abrams tries really hard to gloss over his badness, but he still has Kylo force Rey to commit manslaughter, despite the film trying to make it look like Rey's fault.
I don't see how there's any material difference whatsoever between Anakin and Ben for redemption discourse. If this is a message that is being sent, its identical for both. Anakin murdered actual toddlers in cold blood, dude's soul still got saved at the end.
I think it confuses the issue somewhat to go into what the characters were made to do and didn't do by the writing, but like - it was Rey's fault. She initiated the duel and insisted on prosecuting it even when Ben didn't. Kylo didn't force her into attacking him, that's a choice she made. That he destroyed her bauble isn't an excuse for wanting to kill him. The writing in that scene is all going back to Rey's 'genetic darkness'
from being a Palpatine than anything to do with Ben.