Current Events > Snoke's identity was fundamentally uninteresting to Rian Johnson *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

At this point we probably know the majority of how the First Order got into power anyway right?
*The Mandalorian and Bloodline spoilers*

While the New Republic was attempting to rebuild and de-escalate the galaxy there were still a large remnant of Empire fanatics who wanted to bring that back. They invested a lot of money into secretly rebuilding which includes;
The Starkiller Base
Using Grogu's blood to clone a new Sith Lord called Snoke
Secretly bring back Palpatine
A massive army using children abducted on from isolated planets

Snoke uses the Force to corrupt Ben Solo which destroys Luke's Academy and takes him on as an apprentice. This move devastates Luke and Leia and likely removes them from play as much as they otherwise would have been. When Starkiller Base is complete they use it to destroy the planet that houses the New Republic only leaving behind Leia's Resistance.

I'm sure there can be some other twists left but I think there's only a few blanks left to fill.

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I Like Toast posted...

where did the emperor come from and how did the empire get so powerful so quickly?

answer using only the original trilogy.

The empire is the backdrop of the OT. The protagonists are the rebels.

In the ST the protagonists essentially are the new empire and the antagonists are the rebels but for some inexplicable reason the new rebels have as many more resources than the old rebels who were hiding in ice giants of no interest to avoid detection. There's no explanation for how they got that powerful.


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I have no issues with his explanation for not giving Snoke a backstory, and I thought Snoke getting cut down like that was actually pretty great.

However his "pushing the main 4 characters forward" goal was a big failure for the movie, Kylo in particular. He was not set up at all to be a threatening villain, but that is what we were supposed to believe at the end of the movie.

The first half of the movie was pretty good, when we got all the talk about how the Jedi were failures, not the heroes we believed, they didn't have a monopoly on the light side of the force, etc. Also the Empire wasn't the answer either, Kylo and Rey were going to start their own thing, break the dichotomy of light vs. dark side. But then all of a sudden the movie just pulls a full 180 out of nowhere and actually Kylo just wants to be emperor, The Jedi are actually good, the entire 90 minutes leading up to this meant nothing, a huge bland return to the status quo.

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AngelsNAirwav3s posted...

But then all of a sudden the movie just pulls a full 180 out of nowhere and actually Kylo just wants to be emperor, The Jedi are actually good, the entire 90 minutes leading up to this meant nothing, a huge bland return to the status quo.

Yeah, TLJ's biggest weakness is its lack of commitment to its own themes. It's really poorly done and that's why I side-eye anyone who says it works on a deeper level. Rian clearly attempted themes, but did it really poorly.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

In the ST the protagonists essentially are the new empire and the antagonists are the rebels

That isn't the case from the opening scroll of The Force Awakens

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The problem was having Kylo ascend at the end was that Kylo was a bumbling rageaholic moron. He was also barely breaking even with someone who at this point still had no Jedi training

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marthsheretoo posted...

Yeah, TLJ's biggest weakness is its lack of commitment to its own themes. It's really poorly done and that's why I side-eye anyone who says it works on a deeper level. Rian clearly attempted themes, but did it really poorly.

Luke was always intended to be wrong. The audience is meant to side with Rey.

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BlueHairVegeta posted...

The problem was having Kylo ascend at the end was that Kylo was a bumbling rageaholic moron. He was also barely breaking even with someone who at this point still had no Jedi training

We could have had a movie that actually explored what it's like to ascend to bring the top Sith Lord and the knowledge and power you gain from that position. Probably could have been pretty powerful.

Regardless an out control kid out of his element being at the top is also something that would have been new for Star Wars and had a lot of interesting possibilities to explore.

Oh well.

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Snoke could have been fine if they treated him like a Thrawn style bad guy instead of another evil emperor with force lightening.

They could have just made him like an ex-high imperial general or something trying to keep the remnants of the empire together.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Luke was always intended to be wrong. The audience is meant to side with Rey.

Rey is clearly going on her own journey through the film. She's not 100% right from the get-go, and if she was, that would be an even bigger misstep.

Luke is going through a crisis of faith, but Rey is also exploring her inner darkness and finding harmony with a dark Kylo, who's struggling with the light. Rey and Luke can both be wrong initially, and from a narrative perspective, almost certainly should be.

Of course, the concept of grey Jedi is something I find dumb and I think it's better for the universe in general that it ended in Rey embracing the way of the Jedi and Kylo doubling down on his darkness, but it is... not the culmination of the first 2/3 of the movie.

RustyFerret posted...

Snoke could have been fine if they treated him like a Thrawn style bad guy instead of another evil emperor with force lightening.

They could have just made him like an ex-high imperial general or something trying to keep the remnants of the empire together.

Yeah, if they'd done this, nobody would care.

Or just made him a young person instead of super old. The son of an imperial general in exile, who was born with a connection to the dark side of the force and uses it to reform the remnant under the flag of the First Order. Simple. Easy.

But JJ wanted his emperor ripoff, and it all got retconned anyway into being a clone created after the fall of the Empire since that actually makes sense, rather than having Snoke's talk about witnessing the rise and fall of the Empire pan out in any way.

Gah, what a mess.

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I think the Kylo and Rey element in TLJ works fine. Rey is ultimately looking for a place to belong. Kylo and Luke both offer her answers that aren't really easy for her to hear. Kylo himself is also looking for a place to belong. He never found that with Han, Leia, Luke or Snoke. He finds himself drawing to a connection with Rey as someone who has to connection to all of this old bullshit that dictated his life before he was born.

I don't think Kylo ever had any intention of being good or even neutral when he was talking to Rey. He wanted to lead the First Order with Rey. Just like Vader wanted to do with Luke. His goal is to wipe the slate clean and do his own thing. Which is inherently an evil act.

Unlike Vader he actually manages to kill Snoke and ultimately he doesn't need to make the same moral decision Vader does. He has the power in that situation. Despite relating to each other Kylo and Rey need to head on their own path and their paths lead to conflict with each other. Ultimately their arc is learning to move on from the legacies that they are supposed to inherit and making their own. But they're still both heading down a light and dark path respectively. Rey still ends up keeping the Jedi texts to learn from and Kylo wants to destroy it all.

Of course these arcs are immediately stopped in ROS.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

The empire is the backdrop of the OT. The protagonists are the rebels.

In the ST the protagonists essentially are the new empire and the antagonists are the rebels but for some inexplicable reason the new rebels have as many more resources than the old rebels who were hiding in ice giants of no interest to avoid detection. There's no explanation for how they got that powerful.

oh okay, explain where the rebels came from and how they got so powerful, using only the original trilogy.

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This is all so shitty because Vader is the only Sith to have any sort of characterization and story.

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I Like Toast posted...

oh okay, explain where the rebels came from and how they got so powerful, using only the original trilogy.

The rebels were a tiny camp of a few thousand people living on the moon of a random planet and had barely enough astromechs to go anywhere and their former main base of operations (Alderaan) just got blown up. The rebels are servere underdogs as they should be.

They later strike an alliance with Mon Calamari in ROTJ.

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RJ isn't wrong here, tbh. Snoke was fundamentally a bad idea, he really was only good as fodder to make Kylo more of an independent character. Disney fucked that up though and i don't think RJ did a great job anyway

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Snoke was more interesting when I thought he was 40 feet tall

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so when the rebels live on a planet with a few thousand people, it's okay for the bad guy to not be explained. because they're so big and powerful.

when the the resistance live on a planet with a few thousand people, FUCKING RUIN JOHNSON, the empire was clearly a hive and once palps died they all would realize they are the bad guys and just give up all their power and go spend the rest of their lives in prison. Afterall a small group of a thousand or so people hiding on the moon of a random planet AND the mon calamari would surely take over everything right away.

Thanks for being a clown. As always.

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The rise of the First Order and the end of the New Republic was all depicted in The Force Awakens anyway. So it doesn't really have anything to do with Rian Johnson unless you expected him to spend a chunk of the movie working his way backwards. The movie already had to explain the relationship breakdown of Luke and Kylo. Y'know something that was actually relevant to the plot.

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I Like Toast posted...

so when the rebels live on a planet with a few thousand people, it's okay for the bad guy to not be explained. because they're so big and powerful.

when the the resistance live on a planet with a few thousand people, FUCKING RUIN JOHNSON, the empire was clearly a hive and once palps died they all would realize they are the bad guys and just give up all their power and go spend the rest of their lives in prison. Afterall a small group of a thousand or so people hiding on the moon of a random planet AND the mon calamari would surely take over everything right away.

Thanks for being a clown. As always.

Rian Johnson didn't make up the first order first of all.

Secondly:


Like where the fuck did all these people come from.

I Like Toast posted...

the empire was clearly a hive and once palps died they all would realize they are the bad guys and just give up all their power and go spend the rest of their lives in prison

I guess all those 60 year old storm troopers are still fighting the empires fight.

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Like where the fuck did all these people come from.

Empire loyalists and kids abducted from planets. The latter of which had Finn as a primary example IIRC.

Tyranthraxus posted...

I guess all those 60 year old storm troopers are still fighting the empires fight.

Those people do have kids.

Even then it's not like it's explained how people ended up fighting for the Empire in A New Hope considering every soldier in the prequels were clones and robots. Sometimes a little common sense explains it enough no?

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Just came here to say that TLJ is a great movie.

https://imgur.com/mfxlJrT
Best cinematography in Star Wars history.

EllieWilliams95 posted...

https://imgur.com/mfxlJrT
Best cinematography in Star Wars history.

Shame about the rest of the movie


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Thinking about it no movie in the entire saga really fleshes out the regular people of Star Wars at all. The no names are a bunch of criminals and soldiers but that's about it. The low level perspective of people are just poor people in desolate settlements.

Do normal people on Coruscant have office jobs? How did their lives change from the prequels to the sequels? Does Tatooine have a representative in the Galactic Senate?

The closest time the movies talk about this sort of stuff is the trade dispute stuff in the prequels and the casino planet in TLJ that implies that the conflicts keep going because of people who profit from war. But people hated both of those.

For the most part Star Wars is focused on a small group of characters and the rest of the stuff is just background fluff that for the most part doesn't matter. Nobody knows or cares about the larger details. Which is why people joke about all the janitors who died working on the Death Star that we know nothing about.

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Agree with the topic. Snoke was incredibly uninteresting. His only purpose was to be Kylo's abuser.

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FUCKING RUIN JOHNSON!!!! when will the madness ever end.

sure is impressive how the rebels stuck on a single moon had a whole spy network up and going to find the death star plans.

This is shit that never needs to be explained. If it didn't hurt your enjoyment of the OT, it's not magically a problem in the ST. The problem with the Sequel trilogy is Disney having no fucking clue what they were doing and JJ not being able to do anything but retale the OT but worse.

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Snoke is lame and Kylo Ren's mask voice is even lamer and left me with a lasting shit first impression of the ST <_<

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EllieWilliams95 posted...

Just came here to say that TLJ is a great movie.

It's really not, but it is the best of the ST and had the best ideas. I just don't think they were executed well :(

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ledbowman posted...

hes right

Blightzkrieg posted...

TLJ was the only entry that felt like it was trying to make an actual sequel instead of an imitation

Killing off Snoke was a part of that

The entire premise of the sequels as a retread of the OT kind of fucked the trilogy from the beginning

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This woman is just making shit up now. She said that Johnson wanted to Kylo and Rey to kiss when she was handcuffed in the left going to snoke.

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EllieWilliams95 posted...

Just came here to say that TLJ is a great movie.

Hahahahah FUCK no, the thing is so poorly written, its an inferior version of Batman v Superman, except a "Martha" moment once every five minutes.

Zack snyder made a better trilogy than Star Wars. Thats sad.

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The problem with TLJ is that Rian Johnson tried to make a real movie instead of a shameless cash grab rehash like TFA was but he couldn't quite figure out how to do it. The sequels were doomed from the beginning when Disney had no vision for what they wanted to do with their trilogy, they just wanted to make a profit after paying a ton of money for Lucasfilm.

TheDurinator posted...

The problem with TLJ is that Rian Johnson tried to make a real movie instead of a shameless cash grab rehash like TFA was but he couldn't quite figure out how to do it. The sequels were doomed from the beginning when Disney had no vision for what they wanted to do with their trilogy, they just wanted to make a profit after paying a ton of money for Lucasfilm.

TLJ is not a real movie. There are so many WTF moments in this movie it is not even funny. The only thing he did was write out a intresting character for a another story about a white guy who is upset. Every single thing in this movie is to make Kylo look better .

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TheDurinator posted...

The problem with TLJ is that Rian Johnson tried to make a real movie instead of a shameless cash grab rehash like TFA was but he couldn't quite figure out how to do it. The sequels were doomed from the beginning when Disney had no vision for what they wanted to do with their trilogy, they just wanted to make a profit after paying a ton of money for Lucasfilm.

I actually agree with this. At leasy Rian tried. JJ Abrams just rehashed ANH.

Rian had bad ideas but JJ Abrams had none.

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MildEnergy posted...

I actually agree with this. At leasy Rian tried. JJ Abrams just rehashed ANH.

Rian had bad ideas but JJ Abrams had none.

A storm Trooper who defected, who has an epic show down and even injured the soon to be big bad-- JJ.

Funny black man fall down-RJ.

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cjsdowg posted...

TLJ is not a real movie. There are so many WTF moments in this movie it is not even funny. The only thing he did was write out a intresting character for a another story about a white guy who is upset. Every single thing in this movie is to make Kylo look better .

I never said TLJ was a good movie, it's actually a very bad movie. But Rian Johnson is an actual filmmaker who was handed the most boring pile of crap ever in TFA and told to write a sequel to it, and he at least put in an effort even if it came up short. As the middle part of a sequel, obviously a lot of time was going to be spent on Kylo and Rey's character development since they're the two main characters of the sequel trilogy.

Zero_Destroyer posted...

It's really not, but it is the best of the ST and had the best ideas. I just don't think they were executed well :(

You have good opinions at least judging by this post.


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TheDurinator posted...

never said TLJ was a good movie, it's actually a very bad movie. But Rian Johnson is an actual filmmaker who was handed the most boring pile of crap ever in TFA and told to write a sequel to it, and he at least put in an effort even if it came up short. As the middle part of a sequel, obviously a lot of time was going to be spent on Kylo and Rey's character development since they're the two main characters of the sequel trilogy.

Finn was the leading male in TFA, it literally drove the plot, and even in the 3rd act he was the proactive while Rey was reactive. But Johnson doesn't do black leads so he changed that.
John didn't care about making a movie, just making his author stand in look good.


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cjsdowg posted...

A storm Trooper who defected, who has an epic show down and even injured the soon to be big bad-- JJ.

Funny black man fall down-RJ.

He was a joke from day 1

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TheDurinator posted...

I never said TLJ was a good movie, it's actually a very bad movie. But Rian Johnson is an actual filmmaker who was handed the most boring pile of crap ever in TFA and told to write a sequel to it, and he at least put in an effort even if it came up short. As the middle part of a sequel, obviously a lot of time was going to be spent on Kylo and Rey's character development since they're the two main characters of the sequel trilogy.

"Removing everything the last boring movie attempts to entertain the audience with will surely make a good movie!"

FOH

TFA had ideas. Dumb ideas i guess. Unelaborated on ideas. His mystery boxes. Its how jj works.

Tearing all that shit down on a two hour waste of fucking time?

Im not surprised when the followup writer (jj who returned in mid shitshow) comes up with the genious line "Somehow, Palpatine Returned" becaude you spent the last two hours undoing what youve already done.


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KyoryuCyan posted...

TFA had ideas. Dumb ideas i guess. Unelaborated on ideas. His mystery boxes. Its how jj works.

Literal rehash of anh

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cjsdowg posted...

Finn was the leading male in TFA, it literally drove the plot, and even in the 3rd act he was the proactive while Rey was reactive. But Johnson doesn't do black leads so he changed that. John didn't care about making a movie, just making his author stand in look good. Sorry, I read that as aggressive it doesn't mean to be. I just think you are giving RJ too much credit. They both dropped the ball

Rian Johnson did Finn dirty in TLJ no doubt, but even in TFA JJ basically used him just as a comic relief character. He's a real character when he's introduced, and a real character when he tries to fight Kylo at the end, but inbetween he's a cowardly doofus. And if you've ever seen the movie poster for TFA in China you might think that Finn getting sidelined was a decision from the top.

Finn got done dirty in TLJ because his arc was boring and weird. But he got his own arc. By the end of the movie he was set up to actually take his place as revolutionary hero. I'm RotS he was reduced to fawn over Rey with no development of his own :(

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I like Rian Johnson, but the second act of TLJ is prequel-level bad.

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They should have brought back prequel Palpatine, the one that was more goofy & cackling. Instead we got a more boring satanic version of him.

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see, it does make sense

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/400-current-events/79367628

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My issue with the lack of Snoke's backstory is intertwined with my general lack of information on the entire First Order. How did a remnant of the Empire become so strong and resource rich that they can build weapons and fleets the Empire at its prime couldn't do? How did they keep it a complete secret? Why does the Republic, the leading power of the galaxy, have to use a resistance force to fight them?

Don't get me wrong, the OT didn't exactly give an indepth explanation of the Empire when it started out, but by the end of the trilogy the Empire's head had been cut off, the Sith were dead, and things were looking good. I don't think it is unreasonable for the audience to expect some level of explanation for how 30 years later we are back to rag-tag rebels fighting a powerful regime. One that doesn't require to read a bunch of books on the side.

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Finn's character in both movies was fine. He wasn't "reduced to comic relief" in TLJ more than any of the other characters who came over from the first movie.

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One of the cherry-picked things I liked about TLJ was that Rian clearly gave just as many fucks about Snoke as a character as I did.

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