ST Andy Serkis (Supreme Leader Snoke) in the ST

They pretty much just wrote Palpatine into the new films, scratched his name out and gave him a new wardrobe. It's very lazy to me, and a big contributor to why Snoke comes across as a device rather than a character.

 

but again there is still episode 9 how do we know It wont delve into Snokes Backstory? People also complain that The Knights Of Ren weren't It. again may be they will be in episode 9? In J.J. We Trust I love J.J. Abrams he Is one of my favorite Directors, Loved His two Star Trek's and I loved Super 8 and I loved one that JJ Produced Cowboys And Aliens! And I loved TFA!

 

Yep. Watched TLJ again last night and was just shaking my head at how lazy the Snoke writing was. RJ didn't want to do anything at all with him, so just lifted the ideas from the OT where Palpatine says "It was I who allowed the rebels to know the location of the shield generator"....."It was I who bridged your minds." And the "Look here now and watch your friends die."

And the throne room...lazy as well. Plus, looks so boring. If I was Snoke I'd get bored sitting there with literally nothing around besides my guards. So lazy!

 

Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, and my opinion may change, but I can't go off of what-ifs. It's a bummer to me that I have to wait for a third film to be released to find out if I really enjoy it's predecessors. But that's the danger of mystery box storytelling.

 

Its not what ifs that is for the past, This Is basically we don't know the future so we shouldn't make assumptions one way or another but we can be excited for the future but not think about it to the point it consumes our lives. Also it Is an unhealthy obsession to be over negative. It Is a Buddhist thing something I get into But have not fully mastered.

 

J. J. Abrams was also the creator of LOST. He is good at setting up mysteries with no idea as to the explanations behind them.

 

Can't we just agree that at least it's just as likely that:

a) EPIX will expand on Snoke's backstory and reasons to why he was what he was as well as Rey's 'true' origins and backstory
b) Snoke was and will remain a mystery box without any backstory or payoff to be explored in the films but will be part of the comics, tv shows, books, etc. and Rey's origins are also moot and she's the daughter of two drunks that died and are buried on Jakku

 

Snoke is dead, too little too late now. This is info that should have been revealed while he was still alive.

 

may be Snoke was projecting himself like Luke or may be Snoke comes back as a force ghost who said dark side users cant do that. These Filmmakers Disney Is hiring this Is what they do for a living Write Scripts and Make movies lets see what Abrams comes up with.


@MrElculver2424 to Snoke being like Palpatine Its called Symmetry something Lucas has always put into these films it was done on purpose as an homage.

 

Snoke may indeed work best as a mystery box. I think most fans (who care) would be okay with that, so long as they provided just a little more context. Perhaps learning more about the First Order would do that, give us the shelf on which the mystery box can rest comfortably. I'm still hoping for a post-Bloodline but pre-TFA novel that covers the FO's entry into galactic politics, Ben's transformation into Kylo Ren, and frankly anything to do with the Knights of Ren. Of course, that book would likely not be released until after Episode IX, since Abrams is very likely to play with some of the mysteries he set up, even if he doesn't resolve them.

Ghosts from the dark side of the Force have been a concept that concept artists have been toying with for the last few years. Purely from the conceptual stage of planning these movies, both TFA and TLJ had artists imagine what it would be like if Sith ghosts were somehow involved in the current drama. For TFA, they imagined a dark side creature manipulating the protean Jedi Killer (in the form of Darth Talon at the time), as well as being a manifestation of Anakin's dark side. For TLJ, one artist imagined that a dead Sith Lord may be in control of the dark side and manipulating the living villains through it.

That said, this concept has rejected by Lucas in the past because to his mind, survival past death should only be something that can be achieved through selflessness, and the Sith could never do that. Similar ideas that appeared in TCW thus became more about dark side illusions, ghosts who appeared to be Sith or dark siders who survived death were really only manifestations of the dark side. This seems to come into play in Aftermath too, since there we see dark side cultists who receive instructions from supposed dead Sith Lords. My interpretation was that this was another trick, and it was a dark side figure manipulating their visions. Snoke is the most obvious culprit, and I also imagined that he did this to Ben through illusions of Darth Vader, hence Ben's communion with the helmet.

My current Snoke theory is that he was a remote advisor figure associated with Palpatine but based in the fringes of the galaxy, or even in the Unknown Regions. At the time of the OT he would not have been too powerful, but without the Sith around he could've gradually gained power from the artifacts and lore that the Emperor had amassed, and then gained a place of power among fleeing imperials. In Aftermath we do get hints that the dark side cultists have other living masters, parallel to Tashu, and there is nothing that prevents a younger, less powerful Snoke from being one of these, and starting to come into power as he takes on the mantle of the dark side.

 

but Abrams didn't write TLJ its not fair to blame Abrams for things you didn't like about TLJ he also wrote TFA, Super 8, and Both Star Treks he directed all the films he directed had good endings IMHO and he only wrote the pilot for lost.

 

But JJ Abrams approved of RJ's script and didn't try to tell him of which story segments he should not dismiss. In fact, he wished that he himself had written this script. This implies to me that JJ Abrams values more about the mystery than the actual answers. He wrote Rey with a mystery backstory but never gave much thought of what that backstory was. It's something that has been a recurring trend in his movies and movies he produced such as Cloverfield. Otherwise, LOST would actually have an answer by the end because JJ Abrams would have provided them one.

As far as people is concerned, Snoke is dead and irrelevant. Nothing new was revealed about him in terms of how he got to Kylo Ren. Even when Luke has the opportunity to do so. At best, I think we'll see Snoke in a flashback scene telling his agenda to Kylo Ren which Kylo Ren would adopt for IX. But beyond, I ain't betting much.

 

Well being that me and the majority of Star Wars fans liked TLJ I think JJ made a good choice in approving!

 

I'm so conflicted about Supreme Leader Snoke... I simply don't know enough about him to truly form an opinion...who and what is (was) he?
Was he Palpatine's inheritor? Did they know each other? Did Snoke take it upon himself to build the First Order from the Empire? Where did his powers come from? Where did he come from? Was he Sith? Why did he keep calling Kylo "my apprentice?"
...
In the absence of answers to any of these questions, the way I enjoy his character the most is to imagine him as a sort of Wizard of Oz. Powerful, but not nearly as powerful as he wants you to think he is. That helps me swallow the shockingly abrupt nature of his exit, as well as lets me move forward without him. To Supreme Leader Kylo Ren now falls the mantle of main antagonist, for which I am very much on board.
As for Snoke... someone, somewhere, at some time, in some form or another (A Darth Plagueis-esque novel would be super), give me answers I need answers.

 

@Sauron_18 your post reminded me of something I'd thought about recently.

The Acolytes of the Beyond, and their worship of dead Sith still intrigue me. Is this something that will be resolved only in the books, or will it pay off in the movies in some way?

In Empire's End, we learn that not only do the Acolytes venerate Sith relics, they also recieve dreams and visions from them, and apparently, instruction. They regard them as their masters, "their living masters number far fewer than their dead ones". They believe that Vader, and seemingly other dead Sith, still live, beyond the veil of death.

This seems to tie in with Kylo Ren's veneration of Vader's mask. He believes he receives visions from it.

But this is also seemingly at odds with Lucas' assertion that Sith cannot retain their identity after death, as those on the light side of the Force can learn to do.

Perhaps there's a way here, though.

"All energy from the Living Force from all things that have ever lived, feeds into the Cosmic Force, binding everything and communicating to us through the midi-chlorians." - Qui-Gon Jinn ( TCW )


"The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of ourconscious awareness. ... According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behaviour and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences."

In essence, I believe that the Acolytes are practising a form of shamanism. Using relics of the dead as shamanic tools in order to access a the spirit world on a subconcious level. And though the Sith cannot retain a sense of their former selves in the physical world, they like all beings are part of the Force, and their essence will return to it in death. All that they were still exists within it on some level, and though in concious selves may cease to be, perhaps they still exist on a subconcious level, now as creatures of the id, rather than the ego.

So maybe departed Sith can still influence the physical world through the dreams of the living?

 

Well, it could be that Anakin's force ghost split ways with those of Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Yoda. Maybe that happened after Luke tried to kill Kylo?

 

@Sudooku Perhaps, though I tend to think if one were to ascend to that state ( Force ghost ), it's pretty much a one way deal. In order to achieve that state, you've left behind those qualities that are seen as negative, such as desire, anger, etc. I can't see Anakin's spirit moving back towards those emotions after he has moved on.

Which leaves, I think, an interesting question. What happens to the dark side of Anakin when he ascends to Force spiritdom? Does it go elsewhere? Does it still exist as Vader on some level, even a subconcious level? Is it part of the Force?

 

Yeah, I kind of feel that’s the best way to approach Snoke. There was visual short hand and dialogue that deliberately evoked Palpatine, but for methat wasn’t so much as a way of ripping off Palps as a way of using those sorts of references to make us assume “big bad”, setting us up for the twist that he’s dead halfway into episode 2. Snoke backstory will be really interesting to read/see, but considering the reactions to anything subversive from one episode to the next, if we’d got any meaningful history for the character, RJ would have been criticised for killing him off and not respecting the character created for the ST

 

That's exactly why it was good that Plagueis wasn't included in TPM, though he was alive during the whole episode.

 

That's true, @Mungo Baobab, and I've been meaning to go back to read some of Lucas's statements on the dark side of the Force because I seem to remember him saying that Force-users who became especially immersed in the dark side (Vader, in the case of the comments) eventually seem to lose their will and autonomy entirely and become slaves to the dark side completely.

That made me wonder if a sort of survival is possible, but just not one where the individual's identity is preserved, exactly, even as they are subsumed and incorporated into the dark side. That would mean a dark side ghost could exist, but it would be less the actual person and more of a mouthpiece for the dark side. If it begins to dominate over the individual even during life, then it is not too farfetched to imagine that it retains some of them after death.

And indeed, they do become part of the Force upon their death, since they are not somehow excluded from the natural order of things by virtue of violating them. That makes me wonder if the dark side is something that grows more powerful as more dark siders perish and imbue the Force with their experiences. In that case, could the dark side have changed significantly once Palpatine died and became part of the Force?

The dark side cults seem to believe that he and other spirits would not only survive but possibly also reincarnate under the right conditions. Of course, this is likely their being fed a lie or wishful thinking from their masters, but like you said, is it all leading somewhere? Definitely the impact of dark siders is alive and relevant in the artifacts or places that they influenced while alive. Could that go further?

 

Well, they change so much now in the NU-CANON, that it will be difficult to make any forecasts about what will come out about the transcending of the Dark Side in the hereafter. They changed the history of the crystals for lightsabers, saying they are corrupted from green and blue to red by Darkside users, instead of the former theory that the Sith baked their own crystals which are red. That twist for me is culminating in E.K. Johnston's Ahsoka-novel, where Ahsoka can feel throughout the galaxy the presence of HER new crystals at the moon Raada. But in the very same novel she still can't feel (to come back to Anakin/Vader) her former now dark master's presence while he is acting his way through the whole galaxy? Tha't so ridiculous!

 

This is pretty much were this line of thought led me. If the dark siders cannot retain a true sense of themselves, but yet do still exist on some level within the Force, are they merely shades of their former selves, something like the inhabitants of She'ol, or Hades, shadowy echoes of the person they once were? And if that's the case, if the dark impulse and actions that the Sith possess and perpetrate in life can somehow be carried on through the Force after death ( their subconcious desires and emotions remaining, even if their intellect does not ), like She'ol or Hades, is there a part of the Force in which all of this this darkness gathers? A vergence of the accumulated darkness of the Sith? Could this be Palpatine's source of the dark side in the Unknown Regions?

"She'ol, in the Hebrew Bible, is a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and from God.

The inhabitants of Sheol are the "shades" (rephaim), entities without personality or strength.Under some circumstances they are thought to be able to be contacted by the living, as the Witch of Endor contacts the shade of Samuel for Saul, but such practices are forbidden (Deuteronomy 18:10).

While the Hebrew Bible appears to describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BC–70 AD) a more diverse set of ideas developed. In some texts, Sheol is considered to be the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was considered a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone, and is equated with Gehenna in the Talmud. When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria around 200 BC, the word "Hades" (the Greek underworld) was substituted for Sheol. This is reflected in the New Testament where Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheol

 

My guess is they always envisioned Snoke as being very powerful and had already agreed pretty much he would be killed Sith style but Johnson made the decision to do it in Ep 8 instead of the middle of Ep 9. I think that was a mistake myself as it limits what they can do in Ep 9. The same with the decision to give Rey's background as a common person. Imo Johnson should have just kept that for Ep 9 if she wasn't a Solo or Skywalker.

 

I’m Legends. Let’s hope they don’t revive that mistake.

 

Uhm ... which mistake exactly?