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Kylo Ren was shirtless in Star Wars: The Last Jedi for a reason

Audience gratification aside

Roisin O'Connor
Thursday 21 December 2017 05:25 EST
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Star Wars: The Last Jedi Back trailer

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Kelly Marie Tran screamed for several seconds when asked about shirtless Kylo Ren, who appears to have become one of the biggest talking points of Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

"Oh my god, right? Am I right?" she asked the interviewer. "You're right," the journalist responded.

Tran, who plays Rose Tico in the film, isn't the only one who thought the shirtless scene was "hilarious and awesome and surprising and different". But many fans have also been asking: Why did he have no shirt on?

Apparently there was an actual reason asides from making millions of cinema-goers say "omphhhhh" at the same time.

In the scene, Kylo [Adam Driver] and Rey [Daisy Ridley] experience a telepathic episode which allows them to suddenly communicate across great distances.

During one of these episodes, Rey links with Kylo's mind and realises he's shirtless. She asks him to put something on and he says no.

To try and quell the confusion (but no complaints), co-sound supervisors Matthew Wood and Ren Klyce told Huffington Post that it was to show the Force connection.

"The way in which [director Rian Johnson] decided to create the Force connection by just simply doing vertical cuts without using any CG... it's pure simplicity in terms of filmmaking with visual cuts," Klyce explained.

"We cut to her side; we cut to Kylo Ren; we cut to her; and back and forth."

Basically Kylo didn't have his shirt on to show that Rey couldn't just hear him, she could see him as well.

"That was important to establish what she was actually seeing," Klyce continued. "Was she hearing his voice or seeing his face or just his eyes? And so that [shirtless] scene is to inform the audience: 'Oh, she can see his body.' It's also good humour."

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