ST Andy Serkis (Supreme Leader Snoke) in Episode VII

Or, Snoke could just be a lesser Sith Lord who's time is about up because he sucks. I'll bet against a 3-movie arc for him after having just watched Palpatine cruise through 6 films in the prior movies. Doubt they do that again.

 

"The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture." -Alfred Hitchcock.

 

I think that Snoke will have to be a credible threat right from the outset. I'd suspect that they'll present him in a somewhat similar level to Sidious, in terms of his influence. The general audience don't really have a grasp of what I'll call the 'Top Trumps' style power rankings that we fans like to ascribe to the characters. Their understanding of Sidious' power comes from his on screen actions, and by the way that other characters react to him. They know he's the top Darkside power during Eps 1 to 6 because other characters that they know are scary, and powerful, such as Vader, defer to him. It very well could be that once the ST is done and dusted, we'll look back and decide that on balance, Sidious was the saga's most 'powerful' Darkside practitioner. I don't think that this will necessarily be presented as such during the course of the ST, though.

I think that there could be something in the 'Kylo takes down Snoke', scenario, and it would be a refreshing twist on the power dynamic that we've seen in the movies so far. I do think that Lucasfilm will want to set up Snoke as a real threat and power in his own right, though. Otherwise, what glory for Kylo in taking him down? Taking out a second stringer, or middle of the road Darksider doesn't add much to Kylo's character, it merely ticks a box on the 'How to be a Sith' list. If Snoke is a real monster, Kylo taking him out is a huge step in his character arc. It establishes him as an unquestionably powerful villiain in his own right, which is what I think Lucasfilm is aiming for.

 

I think we will see a mirroring of Rey and Kylo, a lightsider and darksider, each becoming more powerful throughout the trilogy, then we lose Luke and Snoke to leave each as the main hero and villain respectively. It would be good to see a dark character training and growing, something new.

 

This is exactly how I view it. It would be refreshing if the end of IX does not mirrow the end of ROTJ and Snoke is not involved. I think Kylo should kill him at the end of VIII or early in IX. Of course, in order to make Snoke´s death relevant they should really build up his character in VIII, which should really show us much more Snoke and Luke.

Not sure about how Luke will die, though. He is most likely the last Skywalker named character and the OT hero. His death, it if happens on this trilogy, should be something really relevant.

 

I had a theory early on, before we even knew if there was still an Empire in TFA.
I speculated that the Empire and Alliance were in a cold war for the last three decades and then an outside threat arrives that forces them into an uneasy alliance. I could still see that happen with Snoke being an envoy from that outside threat that has taken over the Imperial remnant and used the ongoing conflict to prepare the galaxy for the arrival of his invasion force (not Vong of course). This could be the rumored Seven leading that Invasion, Snoke is one of them. They kept the Empire and the conflict alive by eliminating the struggling Jedi Order early on.

 

^ further to that, it could be that Finn ends up commanding Stormtroopers, working with the resistance, by episode 9, which would be interesting. And could also function as a reversal of order 66

 

I thought we'd see an inversion the likes of which had Han and Leia in charge of the old iconography of the Empire; commandeering Star Destroyers and commanding Stormtroopers in an endless battle against a First Order type of organization. As if to say we become the very thing we fight against the longer we're consumed in the politics of war. Of course continuous warfare and chaos benefit the machinations of the Sith. Peace adverse to those who would do humanity wrong. That has his own repetitions, though.

 

My guess is Snoke survives until the 3rd film unless Luke is involved with his death and possibly his own in Episode 8. The one thing I think has almost a zero chance of happening is Snoke being a lesser Sith Lord. If Snoke is killed in Episode 8 its either with Luke's help or by his ship getting destroyed and not by Kylo Ren passing him or anything like that.

 

No one would waste Andy Serkis and his talent on a throwaway character. Now, the brilliance is he can always come back, but why line him up as a primary threat if you're going to knock him on. If anything, I'd see Kylo dying. But then, none of the villains may die. If Lucasfilm is properly building a trilogy with a cohesive story then I would just as easily believe TFA is more about setting the stage.

 

Perhaps Snoke is something of an emissary for the real head honcho (which would probably be the character for whom Del Toro is being considered) and we don't find that out until Episode VIII.

On paper, I don't like this idea as it could effectively marginalize Snoke's role in the antagonists' ASPirations, but if this scenario is in service to a particularly compelling goal of the bad guys, it would be justified.

 

I doubt Snoke answers to anyone else with a name like "Supreme Leader," unless he's just a puppet figure with some other unseen force pulling the strings.

My bet would be the Del Toro character is a high-ranking First Order official to replace Hux or a big bad Jabba-type from the criminal underground. With Han Solo gone, I would hope we wouldn't lose access to that seedy underbelly of the GFFA, as it's an important element to keep balanced with the Force and military stuff.

 

Cushing's Admirer

Sorry I didn't respond to your post above earlier. I think perhaps I'm not being clear enough in my reference to the Thing-in-itself. There's long been in philosophy, and religion too, a concept of the absolute as being, in principle, not directly perceivable by mortal beings; in fact, it's not even part of the physical world, but the "spiritual." The noumenal world is, as such, transcendental, not immanent to sense perception (but even if it were, it would be too full for the senses to take in, a kind of infinite fullness). There are different conceptions of this, but basically it means that mortal minds are too limited to perceive the Absolute/Truth directly and remain sane. For some this means our only epistemic path to the supersensible is via faith (theologists) or the imagination (Kant), or for others, via reason (Plato, Descartes).

As for Snoke, I would say that if he wasn't a sociopath or narcissist, he might have the chance to change from evil to good, if he desired it. But cognitive science has proven that some brains aren't changeable past a certain age. Sociopaths have a very small amount of time during childhood to have their evil urges nurtured into something society appropriate. But even when they are shaped in this way, it doesn't mean they experience empathy. Empathy is a necessary condition for full humanity; without it, people are just objects for others to use.

Maybe one day we'll be able to inject empathy into people, but not yet.

So, in a nutshell, I think that if Snoke is someone actively seeking Truth, he's probably not worthy of it and has selfish motives. Moreover, not only is he unlikely to find the absolute, but even if he did he'd lose his mind.

 

What remains of the Empire is broken up into warring factions locked in perpetual civil war with one another. They are ruled by warlords with their own section of territory left in Imperial space. Snoke and the First Order only control a certain portion of Imperial space. There will be rivals which see them as a threat and will sincerely ally with or use the Republic to help survive long term and expand by eliminating the threat Snoke and Kylo Ren poses to them.

 

Right.

Maybe Snoke was the first to discover/unearth the True Form of The Force, and as such was the first being in the GFFA's generally accepted understanding of reality to have crawled out of this allegorical "Force-cave.".

And he gained True Knowledge of the Force, and is thereby a sort of super-being or demigod. He can have CULTivated Imperial allegiance to himself simply by performing unprecedented Force-"miracles."

But, unbeknownst to Snoke, it's essentially a facade; he crossed an invisible line by lucking into exclusive knowledge via exploiting an imperfection in the design of Existence (hey, the Force ain't perfect), took a big bite of that poison Force-apple--and his near-divinity, while euphoric and characteristic of Force-enlightenment, is merely an early symptom of his eventual transmogrification into a "Force-blight."

Perhaps the Force "awakens" in order to correct this loophole he's discovered. This "awakening" of the Force is the easiest way to describe what is simply a cryptic, spiritual message communicated to Force-sensitives that, if the Force could simply send a mass-email, might read "some dude broke the Force-rules and it'd be great if you could help us try to stop him because left unchecked he's going to, like, ruin everybody's day, pretty much."

The Force, in this thought-experiment of mine, turns out to be some sort of entity or omniscient collective that has been trying to "fix" all of these imperfections in the universe by gifting certain individuals with some of its knowledge. But this knowledge is rationed out very carefully because too much of it leads to all sorts of problems. Snoke was able to access a Force-"wellspring" to which mortals were never meant to have access, and the relative balance of the Force is at risk of tipping in the wrong direction.

Whoa...I'm getting a little too out-there, aren't I. I'm almost drifting into Herbert-ian territory here, but that's rarely a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: In full disclosure, I had to look up "noumenal" and "immanent." It always happens, man; whenever I start to think I'm a brilliant badass, some way-smarter jackass knocks me down several pegs. Spellcheck didn't even know "noumenal" was actually a word. I'm starting to think "Dra--" is some word so totally beyond the understanding of average people that it can't even represent the latter two characters as visible letters.

 

I like the term Force blight.

It's similar to what we saw with Palpatine's inability wield "unlimited" power without transforming (that's how I read the scene).

Snoke's mind (and body) may be suffering from Force blight. It's like doing too much cocaine.

 

Well, "doing too much cocaine" is simply reflected by cardiac arrest. Believe me, I've done it. (not really. The "too much" part. I think.)

OT: I should note here that it is impossible to overdose on Locaine*.


____________________________________________
* -- I believe it's actually impossible to get enough of it.

 

1. He could have been mistaken
2. Sidious could have actually killed him but Plagueis had a contingency in place that would ensure he would come back after the Prophecy was fulfilled, thus avoiding it himself
3. In TCW, Sidious, Tyranus, and Maul are all running around at the same time
4. I'm confused with what you mean here
5. He helped to lure Anakin to the Dark side in one of the most memorable scenes in the PT, and also had a positively-received book written about him (doesn't matter if it's not canon)
6. It's only one PT reference so that part of your statement would still hold true (I actually agree with it since the ST is closer in time to the OT than the PT)
7. Avoiding telling a story because you are worried about what a vocal minority thinks should not dissuade you from telling said story.

Not trying to be argumentative, just think this is a fun discussion to have

* Apologies for double post

 

Well, if we're still considering Andy Serkis is playing Darth Plagueis, the productions led by JJ Abrams have a considerable history of deliberately misleading a fanbase. As an example, during the promotion of CinemaCon, JJ showed a scene that, in the film Star Trek Into Darkness, Khan is called Khan, but in the scene shown, it was a cut of them saying Harrison, keeping up appearances. That's how far he's willing to go. Names mean little during the promotional period of a film, as we've blatantly witnessed. During SDCC, I was there, he did not answer directly, he did say; "I don't want to discuss story here, but I will say: No." Even my wife cried foul at that. He's telling us that he's choosing a word, not the truth. That's an open statement, and Kasdan having no knowledge of Darth Plagueis? When an interview after ROTS he acknowledged it was a stronger film, which means he saw it, found it favorable, and must have heard Plagueis. The sense at the panel was one of a deliberate dodgy writing duo. Again, all of this will render irrelevant to those who 100% doubt Darth Plagueis will ever appear.

I think it would be wild, and bring the entire saga together beneath a united front. Plus, I am totally comfortable with midichlorians. I also love the entire saga. Finally, in the novel Darth Plagueis, released when the ST was clearly being plotted and defined, Palpatine senses a great disturbance in the Force after he kills his master, the book never answers what that disturbance actually is, just what Palpatine thinks it is. Leaving a trail of potential allowing Plagueis to have survived. Furthermore, Force Unleashed originally considered Darth Plagueis as the protagonist until LFL stepped in. Clearly, he was not allowed to be touched, even his book was initially cancelled.

No one actually knows what's in this film, and frankly, there's no harm to speculation.

 

Not true. Vader was to be the protagonist, and he would try to resurrect Plagueis. That doesn't mean Vader would succeed and it was one of many concepts that was considered.

 

I'm going to be so happy when all this Plagueis silliness goes away.

 

I'd like him to be Plagueis cos it'll tie the saga together, but I suspect he won't be. Sadly.

 

If JJ really pulled that off it would be the greatest troll of all time.

 

It will so rewarding if they could bring down whatever's left of the Empire by the end of episode 9.