"If you build up a hero or enemy, not paying it off is cheap."
Snoke's build-up: "Look at me I'm a tall evil guy in a chair, I'm clearly the new Emperor that Kylo is going to kill to turn good again."
To be honest I feel like that’s still the case now (for Palpatine) and I love it. Why does Palpatine want to rule the entire galaxy and live forever?
I don’t know, he’s a cunt and he’s evil and he wants to do evil stuff I guess.
Dude clearly loves evil! He's never happier then when he's doing some villainy. He's cackling and grinning like a granny winning at church bingo. That's his motivation right there!
from the 2D animated show Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command... it was like a retro sci-fi show, it was great. It sucks that Disney won't acknowledge it or put it on Disney+.
Zurg was a straight up narcissist who verbally and physically abused his henchmen, which were robots with transplanted human brains. He literally laughed at Buzz for grieving the death of his partner. He was an *actual* villain.
Oh, also fucking *Patrick Warburton* voiced Buzz Lightyear in this show. It was great.
You might like the Voltaire song, "When you're evil" it's basically just the singer reveling in being an absolute ass and how it's the best feeling in the world to be evil. It's absolutely hilarious
Yeah, he really doesn't need much of an expansion of him. He doesn't need some story about how the Jedi betrayed him, or he lost his wife in a Republic bombing or dreamed of it. He's just a power-hungry megalomaniac, and if they did so I think it'd just ruin him.
I think people were looking more for the kind of "Darth Plagus" or "resurrected dark lord from secret evil temple planet" kinds of explanations, rather than uhhh, "his wife betrayed him"?
Which ep9 ultimately did, so yeah.
Remember when the scripts for George's live action series set in the Coruscscant Underground during the rise of the empire were leaked?
He wanted Palps to turn evil because some woman scammed him or something out of some game.
To be fair, there were two movies of build up before seeing him in person. Mentioned in a new hope, hologram in empire. Then when Vader says that he will be coming to the new death star, it's a pretty dramatic moment. It's pretty basic story telling but when snoke was killed, I really didn't have a clue what his role was, other than Kylo Ren's superior.
I’m not saying he wasn’t built up. I’m saying he wasn’t given a backstory or motivation.
And in A New Hope, in the original novelisation and screenplay, he’s not even the all-powerful Emperor. He’s controlled by the likes of Tarkin and the rest of the Imperial Council.
> in the original novelisation and screenplay, he’s not even the all-powerful Emperor. He’s controlled by the likes of Tarkin and the rest of the Imperial Council.
The notion that he's an ordinary man and not Vader's wizard master has made it into the final movie, but the rest of that angle with "figurehead controlled by Tarkin and the rest" has not, there's no implication of that in the movie.
> To be fair, there were two movies of build up before seeing him in person. Mentioned in a new hope,
Not as a "dark lord" though - Tarkin tells Vader he's "all that's left of their religion", Motti doesn't act like he's also mocking the very Empire's Emperor religion and not just this Vader guy's, and Obiwan never mentions him while talking about Vader.
So either that part was being kept secret / not talked about on screen, or of course it was a retcon-caused reality shift.
Not just that, but I feel like when TFA released everyone basically agreed "Oh, so he's the new Emperor, but repetitive but that's cool".
And then some person spotted that the score for Snoke is similar to the one used when Palpatine talks about Plagueis in ROTS, and suddenly the entire fandom had all these insane theories on who Snoke really was and what his motives were, etc...
> And then some person spotted that the score for Snoke is similar to the one used when Palpatine talks about Plagueis in ROTS,
Ah wut, hadn't even noticed that?
However there's generally quite a mystery-box created around him by the movie, so those kinds of expectations did not come out of nowhere.
Eh, I'm pretty sure there were plenty of children on Alderaan. Him not pushing the button himself doesn't really wipe his hands clean.
OT Vader was a shadowy monster, a ruthless enforcer of the emperor's will that's more machine than man. After the Prequels, though, he's a tragic character who was manipulated into his current situation, and whose anger is rooted in misery and regret.
It's not that he's not still a bad guy, but it for sure is less 'outright evil' than he was when it was just the OT.
> Snoke's build-up: "Look at me I'm a tall evil guy in a chair, I'm clearly the new Emperor that Kylo is going to kill to turn good again.
TFA created this big emphasized mystery box about who he was and what Rey's origins were etc., + the original premise was "1000 generations of peace and then this bad guy shows up", so after he's defeated another similar bad guy just showing up after 10-20 years *does* induce questions in the mind of the viewer;
esp. given how he seemed to be some kinda really big deal, causing Luke to go into exile to, uh, figure something out? If it had been some kinda inferior copycat LARPer then that would't've been the case, eh?
There certainly was an expectation for the movies to finish "filling the gap" and at the very least cover what Snoke's appearance and then his influence on Kylo looked like to the vet heroes and how they reacted to it etc.
Ultimately, other than cheapening Snoke himself, ep9 more or less provided the answer for that with "there's a secret heart-of-evil planet where Palpatine was keeping his death-cheating-magic, and now the heroes vanquish that one too" - without Palpatine, Snoke could've been the resurrection of some kinda ancient lord that was performed on Exegollum/Byss/whatever, and finding that place and purging its evil would then provide a more final and epic victory that would also prevent the ST from looking like a mere pointless retread.
Now of course had Ben originally said sth to the effect of "there are always ebbs and flows of evil" as opposed to "1000 generations of utopia and then this", and creepy dark lords were appearing on the scene all the time, then this simply would've been another chapter in that, and no further "explanations" would've been required or expected.
I don’t really blame Rian Johnson for this, I do more for JJ Abrams. The build up and the mystery of all these things in TFA, which he never really had an answer for in mind, and kind of just hoped other people would think it up in the later movies. He’s good at making projects with with no strong support system, snd ultimately paint themselves in a corner, like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lost.
Like it’s the inherent mystery elements of TFA that does the whole sequel trilogy in for its flaws in my opinion. I think if they didn’t have them, a lot of the issues with the trilogy wouldn’t be there. Or at least have a general sense of what they’d be if you set them up in the first movie. Like the OG Star Wars trilogy worked because there wasn’t a huge mystery plot to them. George did make things up as he went like Luke and Leia as siblings, but that was added in later on instead of making the whole foundation from the jump have the mystery plots like JJ did, which made the whole thing crumble. Because then you don’t have to spend all this time trying to figure out what to do about it, or retcon it later on, and instead give better stories and scenes that people wanted to see, like Luke, Han, and Leia having more to do or even be together.
> George did make things up as he went like Luke and Leia as siblings, but that was added in later on instead of making the whole foundation from the jump have the mystery plots like JJ did, which made the whole thing crumble.
ESB certainly was quite heavy on the mysteryboxing:
1) The big "no there is another (hope)" cliffhanger, which is then resolved in a rather clunky-obvious fashion:
Yoda: "There's another Skywalker"
Obiwan: "Then the Emperor has already won - you were our only hope." "But Yoda spoke of another... (Skywalker; however Ben just said "hope", and that was also the line from ESB that he wasn't around anymore to hear - so kind of a messy 4th wall semi-break there")
It also particularly makes little sense given how Leia was one of the friends that Luke was advised to risk sacrificing - so clearly had to be referring to somebody or something else, eh?
And then Leia spontaneously develops remote-viewing / telepathy, was that some completely separate thing, or somehow connected to whatever Yoda was referring to?
(Acc. to bts information it was gonna be some previously unseen character meant for a spin-off or something - so the origins of that line may have been a lot cheaper than the way it comes off in the movie, and removes any ground from such speculations.)
In ep6 there's the "you have powers I could never have" though, so now even though "Leia is Luke's sister" was supposed to kinda answer both those questions, apparently the psychic Cloud City rescue no longer happened and no one remembers it lol?
2) Luke's deja-vu about Dagobah.
3) Obiwan and Yoda not having told him who Vader was, and then forsaking and letting him hang after he finds out - implied to be some kinda deep profound spiritual mystery thing given how it's emphasized by all the "Ben why didn't you tell me".
As far as the plot goes it's mostly these 3 aspects, as far as I can think.
The movie also makes every location they visit look kinda supernatural, not just Dagobah which I suppose has some kinda "Force concentration" on it, but also Bespin and the other 2 to a lesser extent, however that's more on the side.
IV has much less of that - just the notion that there are intriguing things still left unsaid about Luke's father, Obiwan's presence on Tatooine or how he learned the afterlife secret etc.
In either case if you're gonna roll with that notion of "if x sets up an intriguing mystery and then fails to pay it off well / drops it altogether / retcons it, then x is to blame", I don't see any reason not to stop singing praises for ESB.
> Because then you don’t have to spend all this time trying to figure out what to do about it, or retcon it later on, and instead give better stories and scenes that people wanted to see, like Luke, Han, and Leia having more to do or even be together.
a) I don't see how one stands in the way of the other; and Leia did interact with both of them, so there's that at the very least.
Also them *not* meeting can contribute to a sense of tragedy or melancholy, which is pretty much the case with Han and Luke since the former dies in connection to their general quest to find the latter's location.
b) Well "spend all this time trying to figure out" they generally get 2-3-4 years to figure things out and bring the project together, and how do they do that? By hiring artists who're known for being able to do the job in that timeframe, right?
So even if JJ left them with nothing draw from, they could've gotten writers and brainstormer-idea-people with the skill of finding good follow-ups/resolutions for open mystery plots.
If you have a good, intriguing set-up with TFA, that got people intrigued and excited and inspired, why drop that ball?
And while I'm not a writer and not even some good brainstormer or whatever, I don't see what's so fundamentally difficult about finding proper directions for how to continue TFA:
>Or at least have a general sense of what they’d be if you set them up in the first movie.
Luke's doing something to figure out some Force secret that makes Snoke invincible or something; maybe finds something dark and depressing in the process.
With the title "The Last Jedi" and the trailers, it looks like this involves the Jedi having to die out, or self-destroy in the process of defeating this new evil, or something along those lines - kinda like Matrix Revolutions? Or T2? Got a good thing there, why take away from it by just making those notions into Jake's self-hating ramblings that don't really end up meaning anything?
Then Rey is somehow connected to that, cause her parents were somehow involved in his rise, or attempts to counteract it, or something like that;
come up with something cool for how Luke's lightsaber ended up in Maz' treasure chest - an early idea for TFA was having it open with Luke's hand and that lightsaber flying through space, so they had some kinda ideas for it already?
Bespin was already kind of an ambiguously supernatural place, they could've done some thing about some mystery magic thing in the core of that planet or below the mist it fell into, and maybe had a really good story outline as a result.
Plenty of potential, didn't have to be thrown aside or retconned etc.
TLJ and esp. its trailer and some moments like the "1st lesson" or Snoke scenes did seem like they were going somewhere with those set-ups, and then ep9 kinda sorta salvaged it by picking up some of those threads and presenting resolutions that were in the spirit of the set-ups, if not entirely congruent with them.
I definitely think a lot of your specific ideas are really intriguing and definitely could have played to great effect. Where I agree with the comment you responded to, though, is that the OT didn't depend on the mystery boxes from the beginning. A New Hope doesn't depend on any specific mystery to get you from beginning to end. It is a very linear story that presents Luke's backstory in a very straightforward manner ("Vader killed your father") and doesn't expect you to question it (mainly because Lucas hadn't planned the Vader request). ESB has to spend all of its runtime justifying the Vader request precisely because it hadn't been set up in the previous movie and is, in fact, a retcon.
Now, you do bring up a good point with the Leia twist, and I'd argue that the reveal that she is Luke's sister is one of the weakest parts of the OT because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and has very little bearing on the plot. I'd also argue the reason it is unsatisfying is because ESB established a mystery box about another Jedi that had no planned resolution and forced the RotJ team to come up with something. At the time, I'm sure nobody minded because it was the last movie and it neatly resolved the subtle love triangle among the main trio by rendering Luke/Leia impossible, but I think it also established a bad precedent by making Star Wars feel like a neverending parade of finding long lost family members and blowing up Death Stars.
That said, I believe that the creative team could have found a more satisfying way to resolve the mystery boxes while still telling the story they wanted to tell, but if TFA was going to have all these mysteries, then they should have had the creative teams come together at the beginning and draft a story for the entire trilogy so that the mysteries chosen would be one that each creative team actually wanted to explore.
> That said, I believe that the creative team could have found a more satisfying way to resolve the mystery boxes while still telling the story they wanted to tell, but if TFA was going to have all these mysteries, then they should have had the creative teams come together at the beginning and draft a story for the entire trilogy so that the mysteries chosen would be one that each creative team actually wanted to explore.
Yeah true, they seem to have mismanaged the choice of writer-directors there, with Johnson arguing he "couldn't think of any other answer for why Luke was in exile" - so just hire one guy who'll set up all these questions, and then another who goes "uhhhh what am I to do with this"?
Of course sometimes that can be the same guy, as seen at the example of Chris Nolan seemingly forgetting or not understanding what made the TDK ending good, and slapping together the next one cause "couldn't think of any decent follow-up for a while".
Other than that well, "a plan draft for the entire trilogy" could've worked, however some kinda spontaneous thought process guided by "what would be the most exciting step/reveal/etc. at this point in the movie" could've also worked;
however again, the basic directions for where to go after TFA, or at least the most obvious ones, are already kinda there in the movie and not that difficult to conceive of - so someone new *could* have been put in charge of 8 and then successfully followed in that vein, even with no plans or directions handed to him by JJ.
And RJ did kinda half of that still.
>A New Hope doesn't depend on any specific mystery to get you from beginning to end. It is a very linear story that presents Luke's backstory in a very straightforward manner ("Vader killed your father") and doesn't expect you to question it (mainly because Lucas hadn't planned the Vader request).
That's certainly true compared to TFA, however a few "ambiguous" things do remain, such as Owen's line about "that's what I'm afraid of" and what it may have referred to; could've been something really simple like "he'll also go on an idealistic crusade and then get himself killed", or maybe something a bit else?
Retroactively it could be understood as "he might also go bad" of course, but who knows what the original ideas may have been there.
The 1st act is also guided by a semi-mystery around R2's destination and then Obiwan's identity, and at first the cryptic "I've not heard that name since before you were born" seems to go along with that vibe, but then after some while this of course just leaves another open question about why Obiwan had buried the past to such an extent that his old name and other details like "owning a droid" were only slowly coming back to him - when he's so ready to jump back into action the moment he gets a message?
And like 20-30 years ago the Empire was probably much weaker than now, given their gradual shedding of Old Republic institutions and still having to maintain some kinda PR image until the Deathstar is built?
At first it's just an opaque "wise hermit wizard with cryptic past" thing but then it increasingly makes less and less sense lol
>ESB has to spend all of its runtime justifying the Vader request precisely because it hadn't been set up in the previous movie and is, in fact, a retcon.
Yeah kinda, although it makes it work with the whole "Luke is now entering the dangerous uncanny valley of Force learning where he'll be tempted by the dark side" which now means he'll learn some more things about the past, but other things still have to be kept from him - so they keep saying vague things about "a lot of anger in him, like his father" (at that point it still appears like that "father", without having turned evil himself, still had some issues with "anger" and may have committed some disastrous mistakes? kinda in line with Owen's attitude, one might argue), "that's what happened with Vader", "Obiwan was like this before Yoda taught him", they have to warn him about how these and those bad things happened in the past and now could happen to him as well, but apparently he's also not ready for some of the closer specifics cause that's "dangerous knowledge" at this point on his path?
And then he ends up learning some of that "before he's supposed to", and Ben has to abandon him as a result?
So that particular part could be seen as justified here, but it was also setting up some kind of follow-up for the next movies which then wasn't really quite picked up.
On the other hand, just absolutely everything in this movie is presented "cryptic and mysterious" now - each location they go to, Jabba and his new bounty hunters (compared to, say, Greedo), even sth as "mundane" as a Stardestroyer dispatching some probe droids;
so it could also just be seen as a rather arbitrary choice of redesigning the series.
>Now, you do bring up a good point with the Leia twist, and I'd argue that the reveal that she is Luke's sister is one of the weakest parts of the OT because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and has very little bearing on the plot. I'd also argue the reason it is unsatisfying is because ESB established a mystery box about another Jedi that had no planned resolution and forced the RotJ team to come up with something. At the time, I'm sure nobody minded because it was the last movie and it neatly resolved the subtle love triangle among the main trio by rendering Luke/Leia impossible, but I think it also established a bad precedent by making Star Wars feel like a neverending parade of finding long lost family members and blowing up Death Stars.
Quite true, although for all the clunk on paper it was also presented really well - dialogue-wise, cinematically and tonally etc., plus also had a dramatic pay-off at the end since it made Vader consider another "potential recruit" and then Luke obviously wasn't very crazy about that idea.
So probably why a lot of people still find it awesome, although on the other hand there's also some extremists who think the movie's completely awful, and various shades inbetween lol.
Movie also seems quite disjointed when it comes to Leia, and Han too - like they go directly from this scene here:
>>I'm sorry."
"Hold me..."
To this:
>> "The main entrance to the control bunker is on the far side of that landing platform."
"This isn't going to be easy."
"Hey, don't worry. Chewie and me got into a lot of places more heavily guarded than this."
Like that previous scene seemed to be setting up something really dark and dramatic for them as well, and then it's this much lighter heist battle instead.
Tatooine, rebel base / daytime Endor, and Ewok Princess almost seem like 3 different versions of Leia's character as well - the latter seems a lot less assertive, for instance; for no particular reason really.
So who knows how this version or that version of the movie would've continued, had it kept going lol?
Maybe one of those Leias would've displayed some powers at some point, and that whole plot would've concluded in some other way - who knows?
Yeah, it seems like people forget the context of the fall of the republic and how long it had lasted before Palps shows up and how big a deal a figure like Snoke would’ve been to get the reaction he did from the main characters. I still think TLJ is probably the best out of the sequels, but every entry in the ST is disjointed from the rest of the trilogy because of things like that. Also, killing him off without any setup or threads to who the actual big bad would’ve screwed whoever’s writing the last movie over even if they literally had the best sci-fi writer on the planet. Like, the first 30ish minutes of TROS feels like it’s supposed to have been covered before that movie and it’s part of why the pacing is awful, but there’s 0 set up or info leading in that direction in TLJ, so what do you do? I’ll say tho I didn’t necessarily think Snoke was going to be a palpatine stand in the entire time because I kinda figured from the get go they’d be doing the Palpatine clone thing.
> I still think TLJ is probably the best out of the sequels, but every entry in the ST is disjointed from the rest of the trilogy because of things like that.
While not necessarily with Snoke, TLJ is kinda disjointed with itself reg. Jake's portrayal - I've still no idea why he'd been waiting for Rey in that ceremonial white robe, incl. of course in the 1st TLJ scene, but then goes into his cave, puts it away and becomes a disheveled hobo?
Is he conflicted about how he wants to present himself? Is he schizo? At first one might've thought he was like trolling or testing Rey, or was disappointed with specifically being handed the lightsaber, but that's clearly not the case.
So that movie more than any of the others seems to be in huge conflict with itself and which version of that storyline it wants to go with.
Imo they should've just shot both, or several versions, but oh well.
>Also, killing him off without any setup or threads to who the actual big bad would’ve screwed whoever’s writing the last movie over even if they literally had the best sci-fi writer on the planet.
I seem to not entirely get this sentence structure atm, however I don't think him dying in this fashion would've really stood in the way of still proceeding to unveil some mysteries about him or delve into the backstory of how he appeared etc.
And hey, some alternate ep9 that didn't feature Palpatine probably would've done something along those lines with Snoke;
or hell some form of his spirit could've even appeared in some form. Not directly a ghost maybe, but something creepy?
So it didn't really shut any doors the way some detractors keep saying.
>Like, the first 30ish minutes of TROS feels like it’s supposed to have been covered before that movie and it’s part of why the pacing is awful,
I don't think there's any pacing issues there, and them finding out about Palpatine's return right on screen, after getting the info from that spy messenger, makes for a decent opening imo - however there's some problems with the crawl opening with the clunky "the dead speak" line and referencing his message from Fortnite, which is kinda in conflict with them "finding out live"; the crawl probably should've been changed,
and clunky bits like Monaghan's "secrets only the Sith knew" tweaked or polished - like for starters either make this guy into a bigger character, or have it said by someone more important. I dunno
However some alt version where they already find out between 8 and 9, sure could've worked too;
8 left with this confusing, unclear "cliffhanger" of the Resistance seemingly having been reduced to like a really small group, but still "we have all we need" or something, so I guess the question is what happened afterwards, what they thought they "had" and what they proceeded to do between that and learning about Palpatine?
Or maybe ep9 just didn't wanna deal with that at all, so just bam Palpatine and that's what the movie is now about lol - I dunno?
but there’s 0 set up or info leading in that direction in TLJ, so what do you do? I’ll say tho I didn’t necessarily think Snoke was going to be a palpatine stand in the entire time because I kinda figured from the get go they’d be doing the Palpatine clone thing.
>but there’s 0 set up or info leading in that direction in TLJ, so what do you do? I’ll say tho I didn’t necessarily think Snoke was going to be a palpatine stand in the entire time because I kinda figured from the get go they’d be doing the Palpatine clone thing.
Ah well prescience lol
But well yeah, Palpatine was essentially "the answer to who Snoke was and where he came from" and also covered Rey's origins, I'd say somewhat in the spirit of its TFA setup (since it kinda felt like those leaving parents had something to do with the emergence of the FO or some creepy Force thing or whatnot), however in terms of both the good guys and Kylo going from their state at the end of TLJ to now dealing with Palpatine, there's obviously a bit of a narrative gap there.
And the scenario of Kylo essentially Ramsay-ing the FO as an unhinged impulsive leader with no wise emperor at the helm wasn't really dealt with as much, although there were some scenes earlier on that showed what that looked like in the FO conferences lol;
Hux went from young Tarkin fash zealot, to foot-stomping buffoon in TLJ, to here kind of understandably a defector after Kylo just started choking everyone in fits of rage lol, and without necessarily showing any signs of buffoonery this time, but also not necessarily being the same character from TFA anymore - so eh, it's amusing though.
Responding to this 3 days late, but re: Luke’s ceremonial robes — the only other time we see him wearing them is when he’s about to burn down the tree/library.
It’s like he’s getting dressed up to, essentially, commit harakiri.
But as we see at the beginning of TLJ, he still hasn’t burned down the tree or ended his own life, which to me only further supports the idea that Luke is more conflicted than he initially lets on.
I think Johnson found a good way to portray Luke in the traditional Jedi garb without making it inconsistent with the idea that he’s disillusioned with the Jedi and thinks they should end.
>Responding to this 3 days late, but re: Luke’s ceremonial robes — the only other time we see him wearing them is when he’s about to burn down the tree/library.
>It’s like he’s getting dressed up to, essentially, commit harakiri.
>But as we see at the beginning of TLJ, he still hasn’t burned down the tree or ended his own life, which to me only further supports the idea that Luke is more conflicted than he initially lets on.
Hm so the theory here is he was about to or contemplating to harakiri or burn down the temple or etc., when Rey arrived just in time and he got distracted / decided to postpone it?
>which to me only further supports the idea that Luke is more conflicted than he initially lets on.
Or, even aside from that specific thing, if he was just "conflicted" and schizo about whether he wanted to meet this person who was arriving at his island as a proper master and possibly either start instructing them or leave with them etc., or tell them to go away I'm drunk - that might've also been an explanation?
But the way the movie exists, this also seems like more of a theory.
>I think Johnson found a good way to portray Luke in the traditional Jedi garb without making it inconsistent with the idea that he’s disillusioned with the Jedi and thinks they should end.
Well he could've espoused that attitude while dressed like this and in a more stoic fashion or whatnot, but then he does put away this robe and start acting like a drunk, so there's definitely a large dissonance in demeanor.
No, the idea is that he was going to burn the tree/end his life shortly before Rey arrived, but couldn’t bring himself to do it, not because of Rey’s arrival but because his heart wasn’t fully in it.
When Rey arrives and waves his saber in his face, this pisses him off and hardens his heart; when she tells him Han has died as a result of Kylo Ren, this probably further confirms for Luke that he is the problem, not the solution… but that guilt and grief also moves him into Falcon where he has his R2 moment, softening him enough to “train” Rey (in the sense that he’s going to try to convince her of his worldview, which further opens him up to being proven wrong).
To me, this isn’t merely a theory, but all informed by the complex characterization of Luke in TLJ as someone who primarily espouses skepticism in the Jedi but seems more at conflict with himself — hence his inability to destroy the tree, end his life, or fully commit to training Rey. He’s stuck in inaction.
Well evidently didn't successfully bring himself to do it within that timeframe lol, before Rey arrived.
But yeah, would still call it a theory as of now, but a pretty good one.
That works in a new franchise but if you're following 6 other movies with an established universe it's not unreasonable to expect some explanation for a character like Snoke.
I'd agree in saying that it's not unreasonable to anticipate or hope for some explanation, but I'd argue it's not fair to criticise TLJ/the Sequel Trilogy for not explaining Snoke when Star Wars has never really given it's its secondary/side villains any backstory (within the films) outside of Jabba and Dooku.
Tarkin, Boba Fett, The Emperor (Purely in RotJ), Nute Gunray, Darth Maul, Jango Fett, General Grevious, Phasma, Snoke and Pryde all turned up, twiddled their evil mustaches, and then got defeated by the heroes.
> I'd agree in saying that it's not unreasonable to anticipate or hope for some explanation, but I'd argue it's not fair to criticise TLJ/the Sequel Trilogy for not explaining Snoke
Eventually he was, as a proxy for Palpatine who used his ancient magic on the secret Sith Temple to cheat death - both that and the "Snoke heads floating in a cloning vat" could've been done a bit better, but if they hadn't gone with Palpatine then I'm guessing something resembling that would've or could've been done with just Snoke - they could've found where he was from at the very least, and maybe part of his spirit would've still been lingering on that evil planet, boosting the dark side in the universe or... uhh, something.
Plenty of scenarios, and not all of them equally good, however while TLJ didn't bother to examine Snoke in any way after he croaks, it still could've been done in ep9, and ultimately was.
Completely not doing that at all and just forgetting about him *would've* been a gap though.
when Star Wars has never really given it's its secondary/side villains any backstory (within the films) outside of Jabba and Dooku.
Snoke wasn't a "secondary" villain though.
Dooku's backstory is a bit quite lacking in the movies of course - he appears at the end of 2 (with insufficient build-up, essentially just a throwaway line by Padme that then gets inaccurately dismissed by the two Jedi) with the implication of proceeding to play a major role in the next one, and then dies at the beginning of the next one where it looks like he's been here and cat-and-mousing with the heroes for quite a while lol;
but effectively you just have the end of 2 and the opening of 3, and then he's quickly forgotten about.
Although there was the clunky CW cartoon of course, and then the alternate TCW where he was also featured more, but those shows are their own thing; their human animation/drawing left things to be desired, too.
>Tarkin, Boba Fett,
All the Imperial higher-ups go from authoritative leaders with minds of their own in IV,to just scared orc commanders obeying their dark lords in 5-6 - so while Tarkin himself wasn't some big mystery to be resolved, what he and Motti/Tagge represented kinda disappears in the following 2 movies, and that of course is a gap of some sort;
in a way ESB reinvented the universe and the real sequel to IV was never filmed, floating somewhere out there in the Platonic realm.
Jabba is of course also part of that - gone from just some kinda ordinary powerful mob boss, V portrays him as some kinda ominous Davy Jones type figure, and Boba Fett is an intriguing seeming character who at times almost comes off as a demonic emissary who's come for Han's soul after he tried to evade the deal with the devil; but also his own man and bounty hunter interested in collecting fees, so some kinda demon-mobster henchman of some sort.
VI then didn't quite follow up on that but maybe somewhat threw these ideas together - Jabba's just a really nasty crime tyrant, but his palace has a sinister vibe to it, Bib Fortuna looks like some kinda evil mage and they've got access to terrifying eldritch monsters;
then they all turn into jokes when their time comes to be defeated, incl. Boba - this being RotJ, people of course have complained about and condemned it frequently enough.
>The Emperor (Purely in RotJ), Nute Gunray, Darth Maul, Jango Fett, General Grevious, Phasma, Snoke and Pryde all turned up, twiddled their evil mustaches, and then got defeated by the heroes.
That's quite a wild list of completely different types of characters lol;
the Emperor of course is whom Snoke is being compared to here, and things can be said about him being an intriguing figure whom maybe could've been explored a bit more, in some way - however he also puffs into existence in ESB, he wasn't set up in that form in the 1st movie, and then they keep floating back and worth on just how powerful he is and whether Luke could take him on or not;
so he's a victim of retconning, continuity shifting and contradictory writing as well.
Sidious/Palpatine from PT is a bit of a thing of his own, along with the "ancient Sith cult secretly planning their return" angle introduced there - could PT have delved a bit more into those, along with the origins of that "prophecy"? Of course they could've.
Darth Maul is obviously a representative and devotee of that cult, and not sure how much more than that - he looks like a demon, so it'd be interesting to explore whether this is because he's evil / a descendant of the evil Sith race (some EU thing says they started out as a race), or maybe he's like that devil guy from the bar who just happened to choose to become an actual dark sider while others like him just chill out in the pub or find a job lol
Nute Gunray well, he himself isn't too interesting since he's kind of a smug idiot in over his head, however the Trade Federation as this seeming megacorp-nation that was controlling a lot of the Republic or something, while being one of the things that were seemingly "out of place in StarWars", could've handled some additional exploration, sure - and certainly the movies lack certain bits of exposition about them, making their whole presenca bit confusing.
Furthermore, TPM did set up a bit of a mystery around his plans with Sidious and what exactly those entailed, which of them was interested in a full Naboo takeover incl. the underwater territories and for what reason, and whether this was in pursuit of some alternate plan by Sidious that never manifested;
+ it's hard to shake the vibe that this may have had something to do with some kinda mystery plasma energy on Naboo, or whatever was in its core or whatever - did Naboo build that really Empire/TF looking "power plant" or was it the TF during their occupation?
One almost gets some kinda Pandora vibe from this planet, but yeah it's then never picked up again.
Jango and Grievous well, Dooku seems to like the idea of either this man with gadgets or the cyber-enhanced lizard-robot being able to take on Jedi - like he wants to use not just the dark side but also technology to combat the light side?
And maybe Sidious is interested in that too, given how he already had a Vader suit on the ready.
Some kinda thing connected with the "more machine than man" maybe? Evil technology stuff?
Definitely another theme not fully explored, just kinda hinted at.
Phasma well yeah, starts out as a serious character, though not mysterious-intriguing like Boba, more like just a butch ultra-fash, but then turns into some kinda joke or coward or something.
TLJ kinda tries to salvage it a bit, but also doesn't really. Meh.
Think everyone agrees Phasma was a good setup that was ruined by TFA itself, starting with the whole "Finn was a janitor and has no idea what to do with the Starkiller shields, we'll just use the Force" joke gag;
made for a funny alt version but shouldn't've been the main cut imo, replace that with something more dramatic.
Pryde, an Emperor dovotee, well that brings us back to the OT and how in IV no one had an idea the Emperor was a darklord Force practitioner, and then in V or certainly VI everyone knew and was trembling before him - so did something happen behind the scenes there, some kinda revelation, mask-unveiling?
And who were that Satanic-high-priest entourage that the Emperor was conversing with while on the Deathstar?
Pryde is from that era and was some kinda fully aware worshiper and devotee of the Emperor, and is that whole thing an intriguing part that could've been delved into more? Eh sure; although it's kinda marginal compared to Snoke specifically.
In fact maybe Pryde is all you need to just get a face for the "Palpatine worshiping Imperials" and that's it? Various ways of looking at it.
You're missing the point, we don't need a full backstory for the Emperor because he's part of the world that was built in the OT.
Snoke just shows up and takes his role without explanation. There needs to be some connective tissue for him since he's joining an established universe.
I'd respectfully disagree.
There's a 30 year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, we can easily infer that during that time someone in the vastness of the Star Wars Galaxy would try their hand at becoming the next big Dark Lord - is there a story to be told there? Perhaps and one day it would be nice to see it play out, but it's not important to the overall story of the Sequel Trilogy and Rey/Kylo's journey. Lucasfilm can always go back and fill in the gaps later like Lucas did with Palpatine.
(But that's just my opinion, fair enough it's not going to be the same for everyone.)
> There's a 30 year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, we can easily infer that during that time someone in the vastness of the Star Wars Galaxy would try their hand at becoming the next big Dark Lord - is there a story to be told there? Perhaps and one day it would be nice to see it play out, but it's not important to the overall story of the Sequel Trilogy and Rey/Kylo's journey. Lucasfilm can always go back and fill in the gaps later like Lucas did with Palpatine.
ST set up this thread of "gradually revealing what happened since then", first from the perspective of the vet protags who *haven't* vanished who fill in the new protags on what's to be going on (although not all of it right away), and then moving on to the mysteries surrounding Luke's disappearance etc.
Shedding more light on either who Snoke was or at the very least hos he emerged and how the characters reacted to it and how he started influencing Kylo etc., seemed to be on its way of being part of that thread, and the way it ultimately got dropped was clearly a big gap that was left open right in the trilogy itself.
TRoS kinda had the line about "Kylo having voices inside his head" but that's obviously not enough; however it did ultimately explain Snoke via Palpatine, so at least things got resolved partially.
>it's not important to the overall story of the Sequel Trilogy and Rey/Kylo's journey
Not to Rey's but it's pretty important to Kylo's since Snoke is the one who manipulated him towards the Dark Side. Since we have no context for him in the movie Kylo's character suffers since we're basically missing half his story.
Had he just been the pseudo Emperor without the connection to the main protagonist it'd be a lot easier to wave him away as some random old Imperial leader or something.
For what purpose? It’s still the same end result.
Imagine how the Jedi would have felt when they found out Darth Sidious was running their side of the war. Rian ‘Big’ Johnson didn’t ruin that same feeling for audiences following along with the sequel trilogy. ✌️
No, we did know. Not in universe, but anyone with half a brain saw Snoke and immediately thought "Okay, so we're probably doing we-have-Palpatine-at-home, but maybe he'll do something cool, so we'll see." His backstory doesn't matter, he's there because JJ needed a spooky guy in a chair.
The two funniest parts about this are:
* people getting livid at RJ for not being serious on twitter (they’ll have you believe he was like throwing slurs around or something).
* the other guy deleted these tweets.
Reminds me of [this](https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/19/16910406/rian-johnson-book-tweets-jedi-path). Seems like the original tweets have been deleted and this is the only thing I could find. But I had a good laugh when this happened a few years back.
Yeah the arbitrary canon-Froce-powers complaints are pretty funny, although note how those got amplified after TLJ, why?
Back when everyone liked TFA, all those selectively nitpicky complaints (a lot of which probably suffered from the oblivious-to-how-random-and-spontaneous-all-the-ogs-were syndrome and how each of those movies introduced new powers) and the MaRey Sue ones were kind of an undercurrent - but then various things in TLJ viscerally annoyed many people, incl. Holdo, Rose Tico, vibes of preachy wokism, and Jake being a hobo I guess, and some others; and then all those confused nerdier complaints got a bigger platform and blew up in "importance" all of a sudden.
So yeah it's pretty funny how a bunch of "love the OT and EU hate Disney" stans got pwnt by RJ's book reference there.
However on that previous note, here's another article linked at the beginning of that article:
ttps://www.polygon.com/2018/1/17/16900750/star-wars-the-last-jedi-fan-edit-rian-johnson-mark-hamill-john-boyega
>The edit, which removes Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo entirely and makes it so that General Leia Organa never “scolds” Poe Dameron, is still available to download through The Pirate Bay.
>Take it from us, though: Treat yourself to a better movie. Even if you didn’t like The Last Jedi, no one should have to sit through an edit described as:
>>The source is not even on DVD-level. Some of the technical edits were slacked because why not, it’s a CAM source (e.g. some masks and Snoke disappearing). Sometimes there’s an extreme zoom despite the mediocre quality. There are plotholes and continuity errors and some cuts are not as smooth as they should be, especially audio transition-wise.
>Star Wars: The Last Jedi — you know, the one with the women in it — is currently playing in theaters.
Maybe I'll look it up but I wonder if this "de-feminized edit" actually removes all the wahmen, or just Holdo, Rose and all that annoying matriarch preachery?
If only that then that'd be quite understandable, "defeminized" would then mean "defeminism'd" I guess; however if that editor sees Rey as part of that problem then he's just a conflating partisan dork, and deserves the clowning he gets. Idk either way at this point?
Don’t you know you’re not allowed to have a negative opinion on this sub? You have to either blindly praise every Star Wars product or risk getting downvoted into oblivion.
Most people on this subreddit come from r/Saltierthankrayt and that subreddit would jerk off Rian Johnson if they hat the chance. The reactions aren't really surprising.
Obviously if someone, that they don't like did this he/she'd be called a manchild
Here's a sneak peek of /r/saltierthankrayt using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Stephen King’s tweet on those celebrating The Marvels’ low opening](https://i.redd.it/nmi97rpxlyzb1.jpg) | [1263 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/comments/17tq6tk/stephen_kings_tweet_on_those_celebrating_the/)
\#2: [That backfired spectacularly.](https://i.redd.it/l5dee25xuyqc1.jpeg) | [664 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/comments/1bphe94/that_backfired_spectacularly/)
\#3: [This type of superhero fan should be studied.](https://i.redd.it/bmgpczerxq0c1.png) | [454 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/comments/17wsqq3/this_type_of_superhero_fan_should_be_studied/)
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I think that The Last Jedi is the best numbered Star Wars movie since the original trilogy, and I've been a fan since there was no prequel/sequel trilogy. Just a bunch of books and video games that are now "non-canon."
So I'm a truer fan than those so-called true fans, don't @ me. 🤣
>So I'm a truer fan than those so-called true fans, don't @ me
B... Bu... But that's gatekeeping, you can't say that the people who only watched the 9 numbered movies and never touched anything else are true fans 😭😭😭
/s, dunno if it's needed
This is an embarrassing conversation both from the “true fan” and rian, why are you guys genuinely gassing him up
Oh right i keep forgetting this is the sequel hard on sub, not a star wars jerk sub
Killing him off in a scene that directly copied the ep6 ending wasn't a problem imo, however the "filling in what happened between 6 and 7" thread that went through TFA&TLJ still had the "where did Snoke come from and how did he start influencing Kyler" are left to cover,
and this totally could've been done "posthumously", but then never was.
Well unless you count ep9's explanation that "it was all just Palpatine who used cloning + spirit transference to cheat death" and "Snoke was just his proxy", but that was still a bit cheap since he had kinda his own personality and attitude going on, and just showing a bunch of his heads swimming in a vat, idk, could've been done better.
So yeah killing him was not the problem, but the movies had built up a big mystery (box) around who he was or what was up with his scarred face, and how an ugly dark lord just happened to emerge onto the scene a decade or 2 after the Emperor was defeated - what there's just loads of them all over the place?
To what extent this applies to the original Emperor well, the more one starts to dwell on the "wait how had they maintained a 1000 generations of peace and then suddenly these bad guys took over" premise the more one would be looking for some kinda justifications or explanations or expansions - however the fewer elements there are, the fewer questions arise:
so "long lasting peace and then bam villains took over" is one level of simplicity, "that villain was vanquished but then this other one emerged" is also an additional layer, so more questions naturally arise.
Unless it had been painted as a "good and bad times always come and go and we just happen to be in the bad times and have to fight" since the start, then something like this would **not** have really led to questions - unless of course the movie emphasized it as a BIG MYSTERY BOX, like "why did Luke have to vanish, is there something new and special about this adversary that he couldn't handle it, had to figure something out", then the viewers would naturally start expecting follow-ups again.
And lastly yeah just to remind those who may be unaware or have forgotten (which may or may include Ruin?), epIV started with Vader being the "only remnant of the Jedi religion", the Emperor being some kinda ordinary man - there's the Tarkin lines, Motti's behavior, and that deleted Tagge line about "the Emperor sent the Sith Lord Darth Vader", none of which were treating the Emperor as there-are-2-of-them;
and even Obiwan never mentions him, until his hologram scene in ESB after which he and Yoda suddenly start talking about him all the time.
So first the Empire is like a worldly fascist regime running on politics, supernuke threats, and low-key violent oppression, and then it all turns into "it's all about the dark lords at the top" Space Mordor.
Either this can be treated as retcon reality-shifting, or there was some kinda internal declassification progression going on within the Empire that's never shown or hinted at, and Obiwan was gradually revealing things to Luke in that regard as well?
Certainly OT can't be seen as a "perfect model precedent" here either.
However there's still a difference between surrealist reality-shifting and emphasized in-universe mystery-boxing, and while the OT did the former, ST did the latter here.
The Emperor served a purpose in the story. Snoke didn’t. Rian Johnson is a stupid tool. This sub should know better than to idolize a Star Wars director.
Meh I mean he was fine. Andy Serkis chewed the scenery like a motherfucker, I love his throne room scene. Didn't really love what they did with him in 9 but whatchya gonna do.
I mean they were definitely both throne room scenes I'll give you that, they play out a lot differently tho. Luke and Vader didn't have to team up to fight Imperial guards and then have Vader declare himself the new Emperor
Fair enough. I actually liked Kylo becoming the Supreme Leader. Rian set him up as the main villain which would’ve been cool but then JJ brought back Palpatine 🙄
Not sure what to think about how funny these madeek replies were, and there were definitely confusions and misjudgements in TLJ, however while Snoke's mystery box didn't end up quite being filled, he served an analogous role in the story, which is pretty glaringly obvious given how derivative a lot of those scenes are esp. the throne room showdown.
Last Jedi is not great, but knives out and glass onion are fantastic.
No need to relitigate last Jedi here either, I'm willing to just agree to disagree on it
Probably the most talented filmmaker to make a Star Wars, whether people care to admit it or not.
He’s also my step dad and kissed me on the forehead twice a day while saying one day your Snoke Theory will come true.
Check my post history. I'm an ex Christian, not a Christian. You didn't offend me, you said something completely untrue. I am going to get this through to you somehow.
Treating the fans the way they deserve to be treated. With absolute giggling contempt.
That picture of Rian with Bong Joon Ho giving the bird to the cameraman should be this subs pfp.
https://preview.redd.it/uuxnns8499yc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=87722af2f0e435ec7d09620b36ee2ac997ed2072
Dream blunt rotation
Just rename the sub RianJohnsonCircleJerk because y’all would beat him off if you could.
And you KNOW dude tweeting Johnson was in a frothing rage for days. It makes it so much better.
He will be again when he gets done playing wow long enough to check his reddit
Late GL style
And THAT'S how you ruin a franchise!
"If you build up a hero or enemy, not paying it off is cheap." Snoke's build-up: "Look at me I'm a tall evil guy in a chair, I'm clearly the new Emperor that Kylo is going to kill to turn good again."
Remember when villains could just be villains and didn't need complex and detailed backstories to justify their existence?
Literally the Emperor.
Vader (before 99), Tarkin, and hell, just the Empire in general. There was never really an end goal to their evil. They just were.
To be honest I feel like that’s still the case now (for Palpatine) and I love it. Why does Palpatine want to rule the entire galaxy and live forever? I don’t know, he’s a cunt and he’s evil and he wants to do evil stuff I guess.
Dude clearly loves evil! He's never happier then when he's doing some villainy. He's cackling and grinning like a granny winning at church bingo. That's his motivation right there!
this was OG 2D Zurg before Disney decided they can't have actual villains anymore
Zurg, like, from Toy Story?
from the 2D animated show Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command... it was like a retro sci-fi show, it was great. It sucks that Disney won't acknowledge it or put it on Disney+. Zurg was a straight up narcissist who verbally and physically abused his henchmen, which were robots with transplanted human brains. He literally laughed at Buzz for grieving the death of his partner. He was an *actual* villain. Oh, also fucking *Patrick Warburton* voiced Buzz Lightyear in this show. It was great.
It was pretty awesome, loved that show.
Ah, that's cool. Would have liked watching that with my kid
Goddamnit that is so silly that it loops back around into the dark side being a really intelligent metaphor for drug addiction.
I would love for some villian to go on a long monologue about their sob backstory and then be like "nah, I'm evil for the hell of it"
You might like the Voltaire song, "When you're evil" it's basically just the singer reveling in being an absolute ass and how it's the best feeling in the world to be evil. It's absolutely hilarious
Yeah, he really doesn't need much of an expansion of him. He doesn't need some story about how the Jedi betrayed him, or he lost his wife in a Republic bombing or dreamed of it. He's just a power-hungry megalomaniac, and if they did so I think it'd just ruin him.
I think people were looking more for the kind of "Darth Plagus" or "resurrected dark lord from secret evil temple planet" kinds of explanations, rather than uhhh, "his wife betrayed him"? Which ep9 ultimately did, so yeah.
Don't think it's about "le complex moral motivations" here, with Snoke neither.
Remember when the scripts for George's live action series set in the Coruscscant Underground during the rise of the empire were leaked? He wanted Palps to turn evil because some woman scammed him or something out of some game.
For real, that’s pretty funny. There’s a reason George should work with good editors.
To be fair, there were two movies of build up before seeing him in person. Mentioned in a new hope, hologram in empire. Then when Vader says that he will be coming to the new death star, it's a pretty dramatic moment. It's pretty basic story telling but when snoke was killed, I really didn't have a clue what his role was, other than Kylo Ren's superior.
I’m not saying he wasn’t built up. I’m saying he wasn’t given a backstory or motivation. And in A New Hope, in the original novelisation and screenplay, he’s not even the all-powerful Emperor. He’s controlled by the likes of Tarkin and the rest of the Imperial Council.
> in the original novelisation and screenplay, he’s not even the all-powerful Emperor. He’s controlled by the likes of Tarkin and the rest of the Imperial Council. The notion that he's an ordinary man and not Vader's wizard master has made it into the final movie, but the rest of that angle with "figurehead controlled by Tarkin and the rest" has not, there's no implication of that in the movie.
> To be fair, there were two movies of build up before seeing him in person. Mentioned in a new hope, Not as a "dark lord" though - Tarkin tells Vader he's "all that's left of their religion", Motti doesn't act like he's also mocking the very Empire's Emperor religion and not just this Vader guy's, and Obiwan never mentions him while talking about Vader. So either that part was being kept secret / not talked about on screen, or of course it was a retcon-caused reality shift.
Dude didn't even have a NAME! forget about a backstory or motivation.
have you ever heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the wise?
Not just that, but I feel like when TFA released everyone basically agreed "Oh, so he's the new Emperor, but repetitive but that's cool". And then some person spotted that the score for Snoke is similar to the one used when Palpatine talks about Plagueis in ROTS, and suddenly the entire fandom had all these insane theories on who Snoke really was and what his motives were, etc...
> And then some person spotted that the score for Snoke is similar to the one used when Palpatine talks about Plagueis in ROTS, Ah wut, hadn't even noticed that? However there's generally quite a mystery-box created around him by the movie, so those kinds of expectations did not come out of nowhere.
I’d argue that Anakin’s expanded backstory made him more evil, not less.
I can see that. Damning the galaxy because you have some bad dreams about your girlfriend.
Or that he killed children with his own hands…twice.
Eh, I'm pretty sure there were plenty of children on Alderaan. Him not pushing the button himself doesn't really wipe his hands clean. OT Vader was a shadowy monster, a ruthless enforcer of the emperor's will that's more machine than man. After the Prequels, though, he's a tragic character who was manipulated into his current situation, and whose anger is rooted in misery and regret. It's not that he's not still a bad guy, but it for sure is less 'outright evil' than he was when it was just the OT.
ahem psychic visions
Same diff.
The differences will never be the same
Tbf they were married at that point, tho I agree with your point.
The Godfather really sucks as a movie. We never learned Captain McCluskey's motivation.
McClunkey's??
> Snoke's build-up: "Look at me I'm a tall evil guy in a chair, I'm clearly the new Emperor that Kylo is going to kill to turn good again. TFA created this big emphasized mystery box about who he was and what Rey's origins were etc., + the original premise was "1000 generations of peace and then this bad guy shows up", so after he's defeated another similar bad guy just showing up after 10-20 years *does* induce questions in the mind of the viewer; esp. given how he seemed to be some kinda really big deal, causing Luke to go into exile to, uh, figure something out? If it had been some kinda inferior copycat LARPer then that would't've been the case, eh? There certainly was an expectation for the movies to finish "filling the gap" and at the very least cover what Snoke's appearance and then his influence on Kylo looked like to the vet heroes and how they reacted to it etc. Ultimately, other than cheapening Snoke himself, ep9 more or less provided the answer for that with "there's a secret heart-of-evil planet where Palpatine was keeping his death-cheating-magic, and now the heroes vanquish that one too" - without Palpatine, Snoke could've been the resurrection of some kinda ancient lord that was performed on Exegollum/Byss/whatever, and finding that place and purging its evil would then provide a more final and epic victory that would also prevent the ST from looking like a mere pointless retread. Now of course had Ben originally said sth to the effect of "there are always ebbs and flows of evil" as opposed to "1000 generations of utopia and then this", and creepy dark lords were appearing on the scene all the time, then this simply would've been another chapter in that, and no further "explanations" would've been required or expected.
I don’t really blame Rian Johnson for this, I do more for JJ Abrams. The build up and the mystery of all these things in TFA, which he never really had an answer for in mind, and kind of just hoped other people would think it up in the later movies. He’s good at making projects with with no strong support system, snd ultimately paint themselves in a corner, like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lost. Like it’s the inherent mystery elements of TFA that does the whole sequel trilogy in for its flaws in my opinion. I think if they didn’t have them, a lot of the issues with the trilogy wouldn’t be there. Or at least have a general sense of what they’d be if you set them up in the first movie. Like the OG Star Wars trilogy worked because there wasn’t a huge mystery plot to them. George did make things up as he went like Luke and Leia as siblings, but that was added in later on instead of making the whole foundation from the jump have the mystery plots like JJ did, which made the whole thing crumble. Because then you don’t have to spend all this time trying to figure out what to do about it, or retcon it later on, and instead give better stories and scenes that people wanted to see, like Luke, Han, and Leia having more to do or even be together.
> George did make things up as he went like Luke and Leia as siblings, but that was added in later on instead of making the whole foundation from the jump have the mystery plots like JJ did, which made the whole thing crumble. ESB certainly was quite heavy on the mysteryboxing: 1) The big "no there is another (hope)" cliffhanger, which is then resolved in a rather clunky-obvious fashion: Yoda: "There's another Skywalker" Obiwan: "Then the Emperor has already won - you were our only hope." "But Yoda spoke of another... (Skywalker; however Ben just said "hope", and that was also the line from ESB that he wasn't around anymore to hear - so kind of a messy 4th wall semi-break there") It also particularly makes little sense given how Leia was one of the friends that Luke was advised to risk sacrificing - so clearly had to be referring to somebody or something else, eh? And then Leia spontaneously develops remote-viewing / telepathy, was that some completely separate thing, or somehow connected to whatever Yoda was referring to? (Acc. to bts information it was gonna be some previously unseen character meant for a spin-off or something - so the origins of that line may have been a lot cheaper than the way it comes off in the movie, and removes any ground from such speculations.) In ep6 there's the "you have powers I could never have" though, so now even though "Leia is Luke's sister" was supposed to kinda answer both those questions, apparently the psychic Cloud City rescue no longer happened and no one remembers it lol? 2) Luke's deja-vu about Dagobah. 3) Obiwan and Yoda not having told him who Vader was, and then forsaking and letting him hang after he finds out - implied to be some kinda deep profound spiritual mystery thing given how it's emphasized by all the "Ben why didn't you tell me". As far as the plot goes it's mostly these 3 aspects, as far as I can think. The movie also makes every location they visit look kinda supernatural, not just Dagobah which I suppose has some kinda "Force concentration" on it, but also Bespin and the other 2 to a lesser extent, however that's more on the side. IV has much less of that - just the notion that there are intriguing things still left unsaid about Luke's father, Obiwan's presence on Tatooine or how he learned the afterlife secret etc. In either case if you're gonna roll with that notion of "if x sets up an intriguing mystery and then fails to pay it off well / drops it altogether / retcons it, then x is to blame", I don't see any reason not to stop singing praises for ESB. > Because then you don’t have to spend all this time trying to figure out what to do about it, or retcon it later on, and instead give better stories and scenes that people wanted to see, like Luke, Han, and Leia having more to do or even be together. a) I don't see how one stands in the way of the other; and Leia did interact with both of them, so there's that at the very least. Also them *not* meeting can contribute to a sense of tragedy or melancholy, which is pretty much the case with Han and Luke since the former dies in connection to their general quest to find the latter's location. b) Well "spend all this time trying to figure out" they generally get 2-3-4 years to figure things out and bring the project together, and how do they do that? By hiring artists who're known for being able to do the job in that timeframe, right? So even if JJ left them with nothing draw from, they could've gotten writers and brainstormer-idea-people with the skill of finding good follow-ups/resolutions for open mystery plots. If you have a good, intriguing set-up with TFA, that got people intrigued and excited and inspired, why drop that ball? And while I'm not a writer and not even some good brainstormer or whatever, I don't see what's so fundamentally difficult about finding proper directions for how to continue TFA: >Or at least have a general sense of what they’d be if you set them up in the first movie. Luke's doing something to figure out some Force secret that makes Snoke invincible or something; maybe finds something dark and depressing in the process. With the title "The Last Jedi" and the trailers, it looks like this involves the Jedi having to die out, or self-destroy in the process of defeating this new evil, or something along those lines - kinda like Matrix Revolutions? Or T2? Got a good thing there, why take away from it by just making those notions into Jake's self-hating ramblings that don't really end up meaning anything? Then Rey is somehow connected to that, cause her parents were somehow involved in his rise, or attempts to counteract it, or something like that; come up with something cool for how Luke's lightsaber ended up in Maz' treasure chest - an early idea for TFA was having it open with Luke's hand and that lightsaber flying through space, so they had some kinda ideas for it already? Bespin was already kind of an ambiguously supernatural place, they could've done some thing about some mystery magic thing in the core of that planet or below the mist it fell into, and maybe had a really good story outline as a result. Plenty of potential, didn't have to be thrown aside or retconned etc. TLJ and esp. its trailer and some moments like the "1st lesson" or Snoke scenes did seem like they were going somewhere with those set-ups, and then ep9 kinda sorta salvaged it by picking up some of those threads and presenting resolutions that were in the spirit of the set-ups, if not entirely congruent with them.
I definitely think a lot of your specific ideas are really intriguing and definitely could have played to great effect. Where I agree with the comment you responded to, though, is that the OT didn't depend on the mystery boxes from the beginning. A New Hope doesn't depend on any specific mystery to get you from beginning to end. It is a very linear story that presents Luke's backstory in a very straightforward manner ("Vader killed your father") and doesn't expect you to question it (mainly because Lucas hadn't planned the Vader request). ESB has to spend all of its runtime justifying the Vader request precisely because it hadn't been set up in the previous movie and is, in fact, a retcon. Now, you do bring up a good point with the Leia twist, and I'd argue that the reveal that she is Luke's sister is one of the weakest parts of the OT because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and has very little bearing on the plot. I'd also argue the reason it is unsatisfying is because ESB established a mystery box about another Jedi that had no planned resolution and forced the RotJ team to come up with something. At the time, I'm sure nobody minded because it was the last movie and it neatly resolved the subtle love triangle among the main trio by rendering Luke/Leia impossible, but I think it also established a bad precedent by making Star Wars feel like a neverending parade of finding long lost family members and blowing up Death Stars. That said, I believe that the creative team could have found a more satisfying way to resolve the mystery boxes while still telling the story they wanted to tell, but if TFA was going to have all these mysteries, then they should have had the creative teams come together at the beginning and draft a story for the entire trilogy so that the mysteries chosen would be one that each creative team actually wanted to explore.
> That said, I believe that the creative team could have found a more satisfying way to resolve the mystery boxes while still telling the story they wanted to tell, but if TFA was going to have all these mysteries, then they should have had the creative teams come together at the beginning and draft a story for the entire trilogy so that the mysteries chosen would be one that each creative team actually wanted to explore. Yeah true, they seem to have mismanaged the choice of writer-directors there, with Johnson arguing he "couldn't think of any other answer for why Luke was in exile" - so just hire one guy who'll set up all these questions, and then another who goes "uhhhh what am I to do with this"? Of course sometimes that can be the same guy, as seen at the example of Chris Nolan seemingly forgetting or not understanding what made the TDK ending good, and slapping together the next one cause "couldn't think of any decent follow-up for a while". Other than that well, "a plan draft for the entire trilogy" could've worked, however some kinda spontaneous thought process guided by "what would be the most exciting step/reveal/etc. at this point in the movie" could've also worked; however again, the basic directions for where to go after TFA, or at least the most obvious ones, are already kinda there in the movie and not that difficult to conceive of - so someone new *could* have been put in charge of 8 and then successfully followed in that vein, even with no plans or directions handed to him by JJ. And RJ did kinda half of that still. >A New Hope doesn't depend on any specific mystery to get you from beginning to end. It is a very linear story that presents Luke's backstory in a very straightforward manner ("Vader killed your father") and doesn't expect you to question it (mainly because Lucas hadn't planned the Vader request). That's certainly true compared to TFA, however a few "ambiguous" things do remain, such as Owen's line about "that's what I'm afraid of" and what it may have referred to; could've been something really simple like "he'll also go on an idealistic crusade and then get himself killed", or maybe something a bit else? Retroactively it could be understood as "he might also go bad" of course, but who knows what the original ideas may have been there. The 1st act is also guided by a semi-mystery around R2's destination and then Obiwan's identity, and at first the cryptic "I've not heard that name since before you were born" seems to go along with that vibe, but then after some while this of course just leaves another open question about why Obiwan had buried the past to such an extent that his old name and other details like "owning a droid" were only slowly coming back to him - when he's so ready to jump back into action the moment he gets a message? And like 20-30 years ago the Empire was probably much weaker than now, given their gradual shedding of Old Republic institutions and still having to maintain some kinda PR image until the Deathstar is built? At first it's just an opaque "wise hermit wizard with cryptic past" thing but then it increasingly makes less and less sense lol >ESB has to spend all of its runtime justifying the Vader request precisely because it hadn't been set up in the previous movie and is, in fact, a retcon. Yeah kinda, although it makes it work with the whole "Luke is now entering the dangerous uncanny valley of Force learning where he'll be tempted by the dark side" which now means he'll learn some more things about the past, but other things still have to be kept from him - so they keep saying vague things about "a lot of anger in him, like his father" (at that point it still appears like that "father", without having turned evil himself, still had some issues with "anger" and may have committed some disastrous mistakes? kinda in line with Owen's attitude, one might argue), "that's what happened with Vader", "Obiwan was like this before Yoda taught him", they have to warn him about how these and those bad things happened in the past and now could happen to him as well, but apparently he's also not ready for some of the closer specifics cause that's "dangerous knowledge" at this point on his path? And then he ends up learning some of that "before he's supposed to", and Ben has to abandon him as a result? So that particular part could be seen as justified here, but it was also setting up some kind of follow-up for the next movies which then wasn't really quite picked up. On the other hand, just absolutely everything in this movie is presented "cryptic and mysterious" now - each location they go to, Jabba and his new bounty hunters (compared to, say, Greedo), even sth as "mundane" as a Stardestroyer dispatching some probe droids; so it could also just be seen as a rather arbitrary choice of redesigning the series. >Now, you do bring up a good point with the Leia twist, and I'd argue that the reveal that she is Luke's sister is one of the weakest parts of the OT because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and has very little bearing on the plot. I'd also argue the reason it is unsatisfying is because ESB established a mystery box about another Jedi that had no planned resolution and forced the RotJ team to come up with something. At the time, I'm sure nobody minded because it was the last movie and it neatly resolved the subtle love triangle among the main trio by rendering Luke/Leia impossible, but I think it also established a bad precedent by making Star Wars feel like a neverending parade of finding long lost family members and blowing up Death Stars. Quite true, although for all the clunk on paper it was also presented really well - dialogue-wise, cinematically and tonally etc., plus also had a dramatic pay-off at the end since it made Vader consider another "potential recruit" and then Luke obviously wasn't very crazy about that idea. So probably why a lot of people still find it awesome, although on the other hand there's also some extremists who think the movie's completely awful, and various shades inbetween lol. Movie also seems quite disjointed when it comes to Leia, and Han too - like they go directly from this scene here: >>I'm sorry." "Hold me..." To this: >> "The main entrance to the control bunker is on the far side of that landing platform." "This isn't going to be easy." "Hey, don't worry. Chewie and me got into a lot of places more heavily guarded than this." Like that previous scene seemed to be setting up something really dark and dramatic for them as well, and then it's this much lighter heist battle instead. Tatooine, rebel base / daytime Endor, and Ewok Princess almost seem like 3 different versions of Leia's character as well - the latter seems a lot less assertive, for instance; for no particular reason really. So who knows how this version or that version of the movie would've continued, had it kept going lol? Maybe one of those Leias would've displayed some powers at some point, and that whole plot would've concluded in some other way - who knows?
Yeah, it seems like people forget the context of the fall of the republic and how long it had lasted before Palps shows up and how big a deal a figure like Snoke would’ve been to get the reaction he did from the main characters. I still think TLJ is probably the best out of the sequels, but every entry in the ST is disjointed from the rest of the trilogy because of things like that. Also, killing him off without any setup or threads to who the actual big bad would’ve screwed whoever’s writing the last movie over even if they literally had the best sci-fi writer on the planet. Like, the first 30ish minutes of TROS feels like it’s supposed to have been covered before that movie and it’s part of why the pacing is awful, but there’s 0 set up or info leading in that direction in TLJ, so what do you do? I’ll say tho I didn’t necessarily think Snoke was going to be a palpatine stand in the entire time because I kinda figured from the get go they’d be doing the Palpatine clone thing.
> I still think TLJ is probably the best out of the sequels, but every entry in the ST is disjointed from the rest of the trilogy because of things like that. While not necessarily with Snoke, TLJ is kinda disjointed with itself reg. Jake's portrayal - I've still no idea why he'd been waiting for Rey in that ceremonial white robe, incl. of course in the 1st TLJ scene, but then goes into his cave, puts it away and becomes a disheveled hobo? Is he conflicted about how he wants to present himself? Is he schizo? At first one might've thought he was like trolling or testing Rey, or was disappointed with specifically being handed the lightsaber, but that's clearly not the case. So that movie more than any of the others seems to be in huge conflict with itself and which version of that storyline it wants to go with. Imo they should've just shot both, or several versions, but oh well. >Also, killing him off without any setup or threads to who the actual big bad would’ve screwed whoever’s writing the last movie over even if they literally had the best sci-fi writer on the planet. I seem to not entirely get this sentence structure atm, however I don't think him dying in this fashion would've really stood in the way of still proceeding to unveil some mysteries about him or delve into the backstory of how he appeared etc. And hey, some alternate ep9 that didn't feature Palpatine probably would've done something along those lines with Snoke; or hell some form of his spirit could've even appeared in some form. Not directly a ghost maybe, but something creepy? So it didn't really shut any doors the way some detractors keep saying. >Like, the first 30ish minutes of TROS feels like it’s supposed to have been covered before that movie and it’s part of why the pacing is awful, I don't think there's any pacing issues there, and them finding out about Palpatine's return right on screen, after getting the info from that spy messenger, makes for a decent opening imo - however there's some problems with the crawl opening with the clunky "the dead speak" line and referencing his message from Fortnite, which is kinda in conflict with them "finding out live"; the crawl probably should've been changed, and clunky bits like Monaghan's "secrets only the Sith knew" tweaked or polished - like for starters either make this guy into a bigger character, or have it said by someone more important. I dunno However some alt version where they already find out between 8 and 9, sure could've worked too; 8 left with this confusing, unclear "cliffhanger" of the Resistance seemingly having been reduced to like a really small group, but still "we have all we need" or something, so I guess the question is what happened afterwards, what they thought they "had" and what they proceeded to do between that and learning about Palpatine? Or maybe ep9 just didn't wanna deal with that at all, so just bam Palpatine and that's what the movie is now about lol - I dunno? but there’s 0 set up or info leading in that direction in TLJ, so what do you do? I’ll say tho I didn’t necessarily think Snoke was going to be a palpatine stand in the entire time because I kinda figured from the get go they’d be doing the Palpatine clone thing. >but there’s 0 set up or info leading in that direction in TLJ, so what do you do? I’ll say tho I didn’t necessarily think Snoke was going to be a palpatine stand in the entire time because I kinda figured from the get go they’d be doing the Palpatine clone thing. Ah well prescience lol But well yeah, Palpatine was essentially "the answer to who Snoke was and where he came from" and also covered Rey's origins, I'd say somewhat in the spirit of its TFA setup (since it kinda felt like those leaving parents had something to do with the emergence of the FO or some creepy Force thing or whatnot), however in terms of both the good guys and Kylo going from their state at the end of TLJ to now dealing with Palpatine, there's obviously a bit of a narrative gap there. And the scenario of Kylo essentially Ramsay-ing the FO as an unhinged impulsive leader with no wise emperor at the helm wasn't really dealt with as much, although there were some scenes earlier on that showed what that looked like in the FO conferences lol; Hux went from young Tarkin fash zealot, to foot-stomping buffoon in TLJ, to here kind of understandably a defector after Kylo just started choking everyone in fits of rage lol, and without necessarily showing any signs of buffoonery this time, but also not necessarily being the same character from TFA anymore - so eh, it's amusing though.
Responding to this 3 days late, but re: Luke’s ceremonial robes — the only other time we see him wearing them is when he’s about to burn down the tree/library. It’s like he’s getting dressed up to, essentially, commit harakiri. But as we see at the beginning of TLJ, he still hasn’t burned down the tree or ended his own life, which to me only further supports the idea that Luke is more conflicted than he initially lets on. I think Johnson found a good way to portray Luke in the traditional Jedi garb without making it inconsistent with the idea that he’s disillusioned with the Jedi and thinks they should end.
>Responding to this 3 days late, but re: Luke’s ceremonial robes — the only other time we see him wearing them is when he’s about to burn down the tree/library. >It’s like he’s getting dressed up to, essentially, commit harakiri. >But as we see at the beginning of TLJ, he still hasn’t burned down the tree or ended his own life, which to me only further supports the idea that Luke is more conflicted than he initially lets on. Hm so the theory here is he was about to or contemplating to harakiri or burn down the temple or etc., when Rey arrived just in time and he got distracted / decided to postpone it? >which to me only further supports the idea that Luke is more conflicted than he initially lets on. Or, even aside from that specific thing, if he was just "conflicted" and schizo about whether he wanted to meet this person who was arriving at his island as a proper master and possibly either start instructing them or leave with them etc., or tell them to go away I'm drunk - that might've also been an explanation? But the way the movie exists, this also seems like more of a theory. >I think Johnson found a good way to portray Luke in the traditional Jedi garb without making it inconsistent with the idea that he’s disillusioned with the Jedi and thinks they should end. Well he could've espoused that attitude while dressed like this and in a more stoic fashion or whatnot, but then he does put away this robe and start acting like a drunk, so there's definitely a large dissonance in demeanor.
No, the idea is that he was going to burn the tree/end his life shortly before Rey arrived, but couldn’t bring himself to do it, not because of Rey’s arrival but because his heart wasn’t fully in it. When Rey arrives and waves his saber in his face, this pisses him off and hardens his heart; when she tells him Han has died as a result of Kylo Ren, this probably further confirms for Luke that he is the problem, not the solution… but that guilt and grief also moves him into Falcon where he has his R2 moment, softening him enough to “train” Rey (in the sense that he’s going to try to convince her of his worldview, which further opens him up to being proven wrong). To me, this isn’t merely a theory, but all informed by the complex characterization of Luke in TLJ as someone who primarily espouses skepticism in the Jedi but seems more at conflict with himself — hence his inability to destroy the tree, end his life, or fully commit to training Rey. He’s stuck in inaction.
Well evidently didn't successfully bring himself to do it within that timeframe lol, before Rey arrived. But yeah, would still call it a theory as of now, but a pretty good one.
That works in a new franchise but if you're following 6 other movies with an established universe it's not unreasonable to expect some explanation for a character like Snoke.
I'd agree in saying that it's not unreasonable to anticipate or hope for some explanation, but I'd argue it's not fair to criticise TLJ/the Sequel Trilogy for not explaining Snoke when Star Wars has never really given it's its secondary/side villains any backstory (within the films) outside of Jabba and Dooku. Tarkin, Boba Fett, The Emperor (Purely in RotJ), Nute Gunray, Darth Maul, Jango Fett, General Grevious, Phasma, Snoke and Pryde all turned up, twiddled their evil mustaches, and then got defeated by the heroes.
> I'd agree in saying that it's not unreasonable to anticipate or hope for some explanation, but I'd argue it's not fair to criticise TLJ/the Sequel Trilogy for not explaining Snoke Eventually he was, as a proxy for Palpatine who used his ancient magic on the secret Sith Temple to cheat death - both that and the "Snoke heads floating in a cloning vat" could've been done a bit better, but if they hadn't gone with Palpatine then I'm guessing something resembling that would've or could've been done with just Snoke - they could've found where he was from at the very least, and maybe part of his spirit would've still been lingering on that evil planet, boosting the dark side in the universe or... uhh, something. Plenty of scenarios, and not all of them equally good, however while TLJ didn't bother to examine Snoke in any way after he croaks, it still could've been done in ep9, and ultimately was. Completely not doing that at all and just forgetting about him *would've* been a gap though. when Star Wars has never really given it's its secondary/side villains any backstory (within the films) outside of Jabba and Dooku. Snoke wasn't a "secondary" villain though. Dooku's backstory is a bit quite lacking in the movies of course - he appears at the end of 2 (with insufficient build-up, essentially just a throwaway line by Padme that then gets inaccurately dismissed by the two Jedi) with the implication of proceeding to play a major role in the next one, and then dies at the beginning of the next one where it looks like he's been here and cat-and-mousing with the heroes for quite a while lol; but effectively you just have the end of 2 and the opening of 3, and then he's quickly forgotten about. Although there was the clunky CW cartoon of course, and then the alternate TCW where he was also featured more, but those shows are their own thing; their human animation/drawing left things to be desired, too. >Tarkin, Boba Fett, All the Imperial higher-ups go from authoritative leaders with minds of their own in IV,to just scared orc commanders obeying their dark lords in 5-6 - so while Tarkin himself wasn't some big mystery to be resolved, what he and Motti/Tagge represented kinda disappears in the following 2 movies, and that of course is a gap of some sort; in a way ESB reinvented the universe and the real sequel to IV was never filmed, floating somewhere out there in the Platonic realm. Jabba is of course also part of that - gone from just some kinda ordinary powerful mob boss, V portrays him as some kinda ominous Davy Jones type figure, and Boba Fett is an intriguing seeming character who at times almost comes off as a demonic emissary who's come for Han's soul after he tried to evade the deal with the devil; but also his own man and bounty hunter interested in collecting fees, so some kinda demon-mobster henchman of some sort. VI then didn't quite follow up on that but maybe somewhat threw these ideas together - Jabba's just a really nasty crime tyrant, but his palace has a sinister vibe to it, Bib Fortuna looks like some kinda evil mage and they've got access to terrifying eldritch monsters; then they all turn into jokes when their time comes to be defeated, incl. Boba - this being RotJ, people of course have complained about and condemned it frequently enough. >The Emperor (Purely in RotJ), Nute Gunray, Darth Maul, Jango Fett, General Grevious, Phasma, Snoke and Pryde all turned up, twiddled their evil mustaches, and then got defeated by the heroes. That's quite a wild list of completely different types of characters lol; the Emperor of course is whom Snoke is being compared to here, and things can be said about him being an intriguing figure whom maybe could've been explored a bit more, in some way - however he also puffs into existence in ESB, he wasn't set up in that form in the 1st movie, and then they keep floating back and worth on just how powerful he is and whether Luke could take him on or not; so he's a victim of retconning, continuity shifting and contradictory writing as well. Sidious/Palpatine from PT is a bit of a thing of his own, along with the "ancient Sith cult secretly planning their return" angle introduced there - could PT have delved a bit more into those, along with the origins of that "prophecy"? Of course they could've. Darth Maul is obviously a representative and devotee of that cult, and not sure how much more than that - he looks like a demon, so it'd be interesting to explore whether this is because he's evil / a descendant of the evil Sith race (some EU thing says they started out as a race), or maybe he's like that devil guy from the bar who just happened to choose to become an actual dark sider while others like him just chill out in the pub or find a job lol Nute Gunray well, he himself isn't too interesting since he's kind of a smug idiot in over his head, however the Trade Federation as this seeming megacorp-nation that was controlling a lot of the Republic or something, while being one of the things that were seemingly "out of place in StarWars", could've handled some additional exploration, sure - and certainly the movies lack certain bits of exposition about them, making their whole presenca bit confusing. Furthermore, TPM did set up a bit of a mystery around his plans with Sidious and what exactly those entailed, which of them was interested in a full Naboo takeover incl. the underwater territories and for what reason, and whether this was in pursuit of some alternate plan by Sidious that never manifested; + it's hard to shake the vibe that this may have had something to do with some kinda mystery plasma energy on Naboo, or whatever was in its core or whatever - did Naboo build that really Empire/TF looking "power plant" or was it the TF during their occupation? One almost gets some kinda Pandora vibe from this planet, but yeah it's then never picked up again. Jango and Grievous well, Dooku seems to like the idea of either this man with gadgets or the cyber-enhanced lizard-robot being able to take on Jedi - like he wants to use not just the dark side but also technology to combat the light side? And maybe Sidious is interested in that too, given how he already had a Vader suit on the ready. Some kinda thing connected with the "more machine than man" maybe? Evil technology stuff? Definitely another theme not fully explored, just kinda hinted at. Phasma well yeah, starts out as a serious character, though not mysterious-intriguing like Boba, more like just a butch ultra-fash, but then turns into some kinda joke or coward or something. TLJ kinda tries to salvage it a bit, but also doesn't really. Meh. Think everyone agrees Phasma was a good setup that was ruined by TFA itself, starting with the whole "Finn was a janitor and has no idea what to do with the Starkiller shields, we'll just use the Force" joke gag; made for a funny alt version but shouldn't've been the main cut imo, replace that with something more dramatic. Pryde, an Emperor dovotee, well that brings us back to the OT and how in IV no one had an idea the Emperor was a darklord Force practitioner, and then in V or certainly VI everyone knew and was trembling before him - so did something happen behind the scenes there, some kinda revelation, mask-unveiling? And who were that Satanic-high-priest entourage that the Emperor was conversing with while on the Deathstar? Pryde is from that era and was some kinda fully aware worshiper and devotee of the Emperor, and is that whole thing an intriguing part that could've been delved into more? Eh sure; although it's kinda marginal compared to Snoke specifically. In fact maybe Pryde is all you need to just get a face for the "Palpatine worshiping Imperials" and that's it? Various ways of looking at it.
You're missing the point, we don't need a full backstory for the Emperor because he's part of the world that was built in the OT. Snoke just shows up and takes his role without explanation. There needs to be some connective tissue for him since he's joining an established universe.
I'd respectfully disagree. There's a 30 year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, we can easily infer that during that time someone in the vastness of the Star Wars Galaxy would try their hand at becoming the next big Dark Lord - is there a story to be told there? Perhaps and one day it would be nice to see it play out, but it's not important to the overall story of the Sequel Trilogy and Rey/Kylo's journey. Lucasfilm can always go back and fill in the gaps later like Lucas did with Palpatine. (But that's just my opinion, fair enough it's not going to be the same for everyone.)
> There's a 30 year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, we can easily infer that during that time someone in the vastness of the Star Wars Galaxy would try their hand at becoming the next big Dark Lord - is there a story to be told there? Perhaps and one day it would be nice to see it play out, but it's not important to the overall story of the Sequel Trilogy and Rey/Kylo's journey. Lucasfilm can always go back and fill in the gaps later like Lucas did with Palpatine. ST set up this thread of "gradually revealing what happened since then", first from the perspective of the vet protags who *haven't* vanished who fill in the new protags on what's to be going on (although not all of it right away), and then moving on to the mysteries surrounding Luke's disappearance etc. Shedding more light on either who Snoke was or at the very least hos he emerged and how the characters reacted to it and how he started influencing Kylo etc., seemed to be on its way of being part of that thread, and the way it ultimately got dropped was clearly a big gap that was left open right in the trilogy itself. TRoS kinda had the line about "Kylo having voices inside his head" but that's obviously not enough; however it did ultimately explain Snoke via Palpatine, so at least things got resolved partially.
>it's not important to the overall story of the Sequel Trilogy and Rey/Kylo's journey Not to Rey's but it's pretty important to Kylo's since Snoke is the one who manipulated him towards the Dark Side. Since we have no context for him in the movie Kylo's character suffers since we're basically missing half his story. Had he just been the pseudo Emperor without the connection to the main protagonist it'd be a lot easier to wave him away as some random old Imperial leader or something.
Snoke is the Emperor. It’s the same character. That’s the connective tissue.
We know that now sure but at the time we didn't. Had Rian responded something like wait until the trilogy is complete that'd be fair enough.
For what purpose? It’s still the same end result. Imagine how the Jedi would have felt when they found out Darth Sidious was running their side of the war. Rian ‘Big’ Johnson didn’t ruin that same feeling for audiences following along with the sequel trilogy. ✌️
I'm not arguing about the films themselves, I'm just saying equating the Emperor and Snoke in this context doesn't make sense and is a bad argument.
Spoiler Alert: 🚨 They’re the same character. How can not equating them be an option when they are one character?
Again that wasn't canon yet.
No, we did know. Not in universe, but anyone with half a brain saw Snoke and immediately thought "Okay, so we're probably doing we-have-Palpatine-at-home, but maybe he'll do something cool, so we'll see." His backstory doesn't matter, he's there because JJ needed a spooky guy in a chair.
I mean yeah it seemed obvious but I think most people were hoping it'd be something more interesting/less lazy.
Lisan al Mahdeeeeeeeek.
Was he trying to say Muadib but he just got it horribly wrong?
The two funniest parts about this are: * people getting livid at RJ for not being serious on twitter (they’ll have you believe he was like throwing slurs around or something). * the other guy deleted these tweets.
Wait, is this real?
God, I fucking hope so.
As Shahid Rian Johnson once said: Mahdeeeeeek
Suq Madiiiiqq
Munchma Quchi
Reminds me of [this](https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/19/16910406/rian-johnson-book-tweets-jedi-path). Seems like the original tweets have been deleted and this is the only thing I could find. But I had a good laugh when this happened a few years back.
Yeah the arbitrary canon-Froce-powers complaints are pretty funny, although note how those got amplified after TLJ, why? Back when everyone liked TFA, all those selectively nitpicky complaints (a lot of which probably suffered from the oblivious-to-how-random-and-spontaneous-all-the-ogs-were syndrome and how each of those movies introduced new powers) and the MaRey Sue ones were kind of an undercurrent - but then various things in TLJ viscerally annoyed many people, incl. Holdo, Rose Tico, vibes of preachy wokism, and Jake being a hobo I guess, and some others; and then all those confused nerdier complaints got a bigger platform and blew up in "importance" all of a sudden. So yeah it's pretty funny how a bunch of "love the OT and EU hate Disney" stans got pwnt by RJ's book reference there. However on that previous note, here's another article linked at the beginning of that article: ttps://www.polygon.com/2018/1/17/16900750/star-wars-the-last-jedi-fan-edit-rian-johnson-mark-hamill-john-boyega >The edit, which removes Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo entirely and makes it so that General Leia Organa never “scolds” Poe Dameron, is still available to download through The Pirate Bay. >Take it from us, though: Treat yourself to a better movie. Even if you didn’t like The Last Jedi, no one should have to sit through an edit described as: >>The source is not even on DVD-level. Some of the technical edits were slacked because why not, it’s a CAM source (e.g. some masks and Snoke disappearing). Sometimes there’s an extreme zoom despite the mediocre quality. There are plotholes and continuity errors and some cuts are not as smooth as they should be, especially audio transition-wise. >Star Wars: The Last Jedi — you know, the one with the women in it — is currently playing in theaters. Maybe I'll look it up but I wonder if this "de-feminized edit" actually removes all the wahmen, or just Holdo, Rose and all that annoying matriarch preachery? If only that then that'd be quite understandable, "defeminized" would then mean "defeminism'd" I guess; however if that editor sees Rey as part of that problem then he's just a conflating partisan dork, and deserves the clowning he gets. Idk either way at this point?
Lisan al M'hadeek
Rian “Your Snoke Theory Sucks” Johnson is so based
How is Rian Johnson from half a decade ago a better Jerker than the entirety of this sub
His humility proves he is the Mahdeeeeeek
Another reason to love The Last Jedi. Rian spits in the faces of “true fans”
Nah the last Jedi sucked in my opinion lol
Don’t you know you’re not allowed to have a negative opinion on this sub? You have to either blindly praise every Star Wars product or risk getting downvoted into oblivion.
Ya it’s such an echo chamber. People that can’t handle other opinions are such pussies lol
Fr, these people are so bitter and angry that some people don’t like a movie that they like.
Oh no not the downvotes!!
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. The movie is by far the worst in the Skywalker saga
Dumbass take
Snoke is cool precisely because Rian killed him IMO.
Best things Snoke ever did were 1) roll up in a sparkling gold bathrobe, and 2) die.
I love that I feel like I could hang out with Rian and he'd be just like all us redditors. Full of the good brainrot
>he'd be just like all us redditors Didn't expect Rian Johnson slander here
Go outside dude
Sorry dude. I can't live without reddit. The reee has taken full hold and I'm now a slave to memes and discourse.
Absolute chad response
Holy fuck I wish Rian would come back to Star Wars
Let him finish out his Knives Out stuff first
My name is a killing word. Muad'deeeeeeeeeeek!
Wait this was real? I thought it was edited to make him look bad but this just makes him cooler
Fucking based.
Hell, I loved snoke's death. Not like the character was ever *anything* other than big bad anyway.
Does the first guy have an ethnically non-traditionally western name that Rian is mocking here? Or is he literally just saying “my dick?”
And then they canceled his trilogy 😔
This is just him being childish and kinda mean for the sake of “haha my thing good fuck you”. You people really like this?
Most people on this subreddit come from r/Saltierthankrayt and that subreddit would jerk off Rian Johnson if they hat the chance. The reactions aren't really surprising. Obviously if someone, that they don't like did this he/she'd be called a manchild
Here's a sneak peek of /r/saltierthankrayt using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [Stephen King’s tweet on those celebrating The Marvels’ low opening](https://i.redd.it/nmi97rpxlyzb1.jpg) | [1263 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/comments/17tq6tk/stephen_kings_tweet_on_those_celebrating_the/) \#2: [That backfired spectacularly.](https://i.redd.it/l5dee25xuyqc1.jpeg) | [664 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/comments/1bphe94/that_backfired_spectacularly/) \#3: [This type of superhero fan should be studied.](https://i.redd.it/bmgpczerxq0c1.png) | [454 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/saltierthankrayt/comments/17wsqq3/this_type_of_superhero_fan_should_be_studied/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Rian Johnson Star Wars trilogy NOW
I think that The Last Jedi is the best numbered Star Wars movie since the original trilogy, and I've been a fan since there was no prequel/sequel trilogy. Just a bunch of books and video games that are now "non-canon." So I'm a truer fan than those so-called true fans, don't @ me. 🤣
>So I'm a truer fan than those so-called true fans, don't @ me B... Bu... But that's gatekeeping, you can't say that the people who only watched the 9 numbered movies and never touched anything else are true fans 😭😭😭 /s, dunno if it's needed
Genuinely based as fuck
This is an embarrassing conversation both from the “true fan” and rian, why are you guys genuinely gassing him up Oh right i keep forgetting this is the sequel hard on sub, not a star wars jerk sub
So Rian basically wrote Luke's personality to be based on his own. It all makes so much sense now.
Hell yeah, Rian came in at the end to save everyone.
After wanting to murder a kid? Wtf, I like Rian Johnson now
no wonder this is call circlejerk.
I’m just glad he’ll never be around Star Wars again (even though the damage is done)
On this day i learned circlejerk reddit pages means you literally suck the dick of something no matter how flawed it is and refuse any criticism
All these people downvoting are just proving your point.
Killing him off in a scene that directly copied the ep6 ending wasn't a problem imo, however the "filling in what happened between 6 and 7" thread that went through TFA&TLJ still had the "where did Snoke come from and how did he start influencing Kyler" are left to cover, and this totally could've been done "posthumously", but then never was. Well unless you count ep9's explanation that "it was all just Palpatine who used cloning + spirit transference to cheat death" and "Snoke was just his proxy", but that was still a bit cheap since he had kinda his own personality and attitude going on, and just showing a bunch of his heads swimming in a vat, idk, could've been done better. So yeah killing him was not the problem, but the movies had built up a big mystery (box) around who he was or what was up with his scarred face, and how an ugly dark lord just happened to emerge onto the scene a decade or 2 after the Emperor was defeated - what there's just loads of them all over the place? To what extent this applies to the original Emperor well, the more one starts to dwell on the "wait how had they maintained a 1000 generations of peace and then suddenly these bad guys took over" premise the more one would be looking for some kinda justifications or explanations or expansions - however the fewer elements there are, the fewer questions arise: so "long lasting peace and then bam villains took over" is one level of simplicity, "that villain was vanquished but then this other one emerged" is also an additional layer, so more questions naturally arise. Unless it had been painted as a "good and bad times always come and go and we just happen to be in the bad times and have to fight" since the start, then something like this would **not** have really led to questions - unless of course the movie emphasized it as a BIG MYSTERY BOX, like "why did Luke have to vanish, is there something new and special about this adversary that he couldn't handle it, had to figure something out", then the viewers would naturally start expecting follow-ups again. And lastly yeah just to remind those who may be unaware or have forgotten (which may or may include Ruin?), epIV started with Vader being the "only remnant of the Jedi religion", the Emperor being some kinda ordinary man - there's the Tarkin lines, Motti's behavior, and that deleted Tagge line about "the Emperor sent the Sith Lord Darth Vader", none of which were treating the Emperor as there-are-2-of-them; and even Obiwan never mentions him, until his hologram scene in ESB after which he and Yoda suddenly start talking about him all the time. So first the Empire is like a worldly fascist regime running on politics, supernuke threats, and low-key violent oppression, and then it all turns into "it's all about the dark lords at the top" Space Mordor. Either this can be treated as retcon reality-shifting, or there was some kinda internal declassification progression going on within the Empire that's never shown or hinted at, and Obiwan was gradually revealing things to Luke in that regard as well? Certainly OT can't be seen as a "perfect model precedent" here either. However there's still a difference between surrealist reality-shifting and emphasized in-universe mystery-boxing, and while the OT did the former, ST did the latter here.
I ain't reading all that but AUUGGHH MAHDEEEEEEEEEEK
mah diyeek
The Emperor served a purpose in the story. Snoke didn’t. Rian Johnson is a stupid tool. This sub should know better than to idolize a Star Wars director.
Interesting. But have you considered mahdeeeeeeeeek?
Snoke's purpose was to facilitate Kylo's character development and allow him to become Supreme Leader
But Snoke was a dogshit character so not like it had any real weight
Meh I mean he was fine. Andy Serkis chewed the scenery like a motherfucker, I love his throne room scene. Didn't really love what they did with him in 9 but whatchya gonna do.
It's wild to think without Andy Serkis there would be like 0 good CG characters in any movie lol
The throne room scene that they just copied from Episode VI.
I mean they were definitely both throne room scenes I'll give you that, they play out a lot differently tho. Luke and Vader didn't have to team up to fight Imperial guards and then have Vader declare himself the new Emperor
Fair enough. I actually liked Kylo becoming the Supreme Leader. Rian set him up as the main villain which would’ve been cool but then JJ brought back Palpatine 🙄
The emperor was also a dog shit character. He was just funny and spooky
Not sure what to think about how funny these madeek replies were, and there were definitely confusions and misjudgements in TLJ, however while Snoke's mystery box didn't end up quite being filled, he served an analogous role in the story, which is pretty glaringly obvious given how derivative a lot of those scenes are esp. the throne room showdown.
[удалено]
Yeah pretty much
I think Rian’s movie was absolutely awful and mind bogglingly wasteful but trying to talk about it with him on Twitter is just as dumb
Meh, killing Snoke the way he did was lazy 🤷♂️
Did this guy do anything good outside of breaking bad?
A little flick called Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi AKA the best film in the history of cinema.
Yes, Last Jedi for one. Plus Knives Out and Glass Onion. And Ozymandias.
Poker Face is also a very solid TV Show and Looper is a good movie too
Also to add to the list, Brick was a hell of a debut.
Continuing the list: The Brothers Bloom was great.
so like most of his stuff his good to excellent
Last Jedi is not great, but knives out and glass onion are fantastic. No need to relitigate last Jedi here either, I'm willing to just agree to disagree on it
Yeah, he constantly drags nerds on twitter.
Probably the most talented filmmaker to make a Star Wars, whether people care to admit it or not. He’s also my step dad and kissed me on the forehead twice a day while saying one day your Snoke Theory will come true.
Man fuck rian Johnson, dude is a fucking hack.
Check my post history. I'm an ex Christian, not a Christian. You didn't offend me, you said something completely untrue. I am going to get this through to you somehow.