ST How TROS Has Affected Your View Of The ST Films

This is an apt comparison given JJ’s success with the new trek films and Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan 2.0.

 

They need a box office draw.

From what I've seen of Trevorrow's script it would not have made a billion at the box office. Bringing back Palpatine was a smart move, look at the world of Star Wars comics where the title that made the biggest impact was a story of Palpatine's return.

 

If you tell a good story and make a good movie, not only will people come see it, but any profit lost in the short term will be made up for by long term value. Kylo Ren is a unique villain who is super popular with the coveted female demographic. He is a new type of villain (akin to a school shooter or terrorist) for a post-modern era, and was all set to be the lead in Episode 9.

 

Ugh - I hated bringing back Palpatine. It really hurt Rise for me. It was probably smart from a "we have to do something to get people back on board with this" perspective but it seemed lazy and a panic move, IMO. Kylo Ren and his Knights should have been the villain(s) through the entire sequels saga. They blew it. The sequels had NO solid bad guy to help carry it. The prequels had Palpatine/Sidious, the originals had Vader and the sequels had Snoke.... errrr.... Kylo.... errrr.... Hux....nah...... Oh, Palpatine? Didnt work at all for me.

What Rise did for me is made me realize that Last Jedi is the best of the sequels and I wasnt a huge fan of it at first. Now that all three films have been out for a while I find it to be the best of the bunch. TFA was decent but a little too safe. Rise really let me down. Last Jedi, despite some issues is my favorite and Rise helped me realize that.

 

I remember you were sold when you heard him laughing in the trailer.

 

According to J. J. Abrams, Palpatine came back to tie everything into a cohesive, nine-movie story, instead of a six-movie story with another three-movie story tacked on the end, I guess. It worked, as far as that intent was concerned.

Not quite. Search For Spock didn't try to one up Khan with Kruge. Voyage Home had no antagonist. Final Frontier kinda tried that with the God alien, but that was a final act twist, with Sybok as the main antagonist, and he wasn't a Khan-type. Generations's Soren didn't fit the Khan mold, either. First Contact had the Borg, who were always on Khan's level in terms of threat and being a iconic franchise villains (seriously, of the post-TOS Star Trek creations, only the Borg have truly entered common pop culture). Maybe the So'na of Insurrection were meant to be Khan characters, but I will agree they didn't measure up. Shinzon (Nemesis), Nero ('09 Trek), and Krall (Beyond) where Khan wannabes and were as forgettable as that. And of course Into Darkness did Khan again as part of it's Wrath of Khan remake thing to beg fans to love it.

So, some did, others didn't, and only the Borg lived up to it all. Mileage may vary.

 

The irony is that he put himself in that situation to begin with. TFA undid everything accomplished in 1-6. If he wanted a cohesive story, he should've thought about that a long time ago. Bringing Palpatine back only makes things cohesive on a surface level.

 

Thought TFA was good, but a safe start. Like TLJ

This is right, for me the original sin of the ST is it hitting the reset button on the OT. At lest TLJ tried some new things but then RoS said nope I'm just RoTJ but with MORE stuff. Really weakened the ST for me, I could have forgiven TFA is the trilogy as a whole was more creative but blew it.

 

How many people really subscribe to the meat puppet theory? I think Snoke was a distinct character, and his personality had different shades, not exactly like Palpatine. Am I in the minority here?

 

I agree Snoke was a bit different from Palpatine. Quicker to anger.

 

Snoke was an awful character in my opinion. They went for McDiarmid levels of ham with him, but it didn't come off the same. Ian can really lay it on, and he does that kind of insane evil far better. I just find him irritating.

He was a disappointment overall because of his premature death, and then Abrams having to try and rescue the trilogy from where Rian left it, working him in as some kind of clone / slave thing (that I still don't fully understand tbh)

I thought he was going to be some kind of Galactic, Force-wielding aristocrat, because of his gold lamé dressing gown and slippers, and the fact that he came over as a kind of evil, wealthy dude. I was waiting for some background to tell us that he had financed and backed all this First Order shenanigans with his own money or something.

 

I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly, are you asking why each movie has to have an antagonist? And I'm not entirely sure what exactly made Snoke a bad character to you. Arguably, you don't see enough of him to love or hate in TFA. You hated him in TLJ? If so, you hated him/thought he was dumb because...?

 

I was asking why Abrams thought each film needed a Palpatine figure. It doesn't flow logically or thematically from ROTJ. It would be like making a sequel to Lord of the Rings with a villain practically identical to Sauron. Timothy Zahn handled this perfectly with his Thrawn trilogy, in which a lesser villain (Thrawn) emerges from the power struggle over the remnants of the Empire. Rian Johnson handled this as best as possible given the nonsense that Abrams set up in TFA, and Kylo Ren would've been the antagonist of Colin Trevorrow's Episode 9.

 

Not this female demographic. I hate to tell KK, but there were lots of female SW fans before 2015. The old and new ones didn't need to see Rey try and save Kylo. The ones that came for Kylo will be off to the next sad boy villain soon enough.

First, he's on record somewhere as not liking ROTJ (which shows in how he treated Han and Leia and why he let Kasdan get his original ROTJ ending - Luke gone, Leia in charge, Han dead). Second, JJ will never rise above 90s TV and shove a charismatic big bad into every plot whether it needs it or not. It's like mystery boxes at this point.

 

At least things were wrapped up somewhat coherently. Now hopefully the post-ST world won’t be plagued by derivative Empires and cackling Emperors. It can be a distinct new era with its own identity.

 

I'm less concerned about how TROS affects the films (they're negligible for rewatching 1-6 and I don't plan on rewatching TFA or TLJ any time soon), and more worried about how it'll affect novels/comics being made now that take place in those past eras.

 

The shame of Snoke for me is that Andy Serkis is a seriously good actor, and very charismatic. The character would have been so much better if Serkis had been able to perform him ‘in the flesh’. I remember seeing Serkis (during production of TFA), at some event/party thing, and he was stood there looking really cool with a dark suit, goatee beard, mad eyes and a dark quiff... and I thought ‘he’s going to be brilliant as a Sith Lord’... but that was obviously before I found out he was going to be a CGI alien. I thought that was a wasted opportunity.

 

Yeah, I love Andy when we see him for real in LOTR:ROTK as Sméagol before his descent into the Gollum character.

There’s something about Snoke that I can’t place as to why I don’t like him. I hate the name for a start. It’s only one step down from “Dooku”, another name I didn’t like. They are such goofy names for villains.

I think it is because the character is just so unlikeable. I know that I am not meant to ‘like’ the villain, but at least with Palpatine and Vader for example, you know that they are like, bad, but they are deliciously bad in the best possible tradition of a villain. Snoke wasn’t even hammy enough to be that kind of bad guy, he was just an arse. I usually gravitate towards the bad guys in movies, I just find them so much more fun. But Snoke? Nah, he wasn’t a great villain imo.

 

I'm ashamed, and must confess.
I have only seen TROS once so far, and am heading out tonight for a second view. I wish I had seen it at least 5-6 times by now. I will have to wait for the DVD for repeated viewings and marathons.
My soul is cleansed.

 

Eh, I don't get that at all. But I'm weird like that.

 

I guess I'm still not understanding what made Snoke dumb. It sounds like, you didn't want a repeat of Palpatine. You also got a repeat of Darth Vader, a corrupted, mask wearing, Skywalker, was that dumb as well because it existed in the OT? You also got a Luke Skywalker character, a child on a desert planet going on a quest, was that dumb. I'm trying to figure out what character archetypes are offensive when repeated and why, and I'm having trouble discerning what makes Snoke different.

 

What makes Snoke different is that Palpatine is THE villain of all villains. He caused everything. He's the Star Wars equivalent of Satan. (Imagine a third testament of the Bible, in which, after God defeats Satan, we learn that Satan secretly escaped from hell and has been puppeteering an equally-powerful being who has been causing problems in heaven. How emotionally satisfying would that be?) When Palpatine died in ROTJ, that was the end of him. Any villain after that should've be a lesser villain; Kylo Ren was the perfect bad guy for this trilogy. There is simply no equaling or replacing Palpatine.Bringing back Palpatine ruins the end of ROTJ.

Rey being another Luke is in line with Anakin being another Luke. Lucas established the "rhyming" thing with the prequels.

Kylo Ren isn't another Vader. He worships and imitates Vader, but fails to understand anything about him. He's a sad, angry and violent little boy looking for a role model. That makes him a unique villain for Star Wars.

 

The problem with making Kylo the big bad villain was that he was already too relatable because of who his parents were. That doesn't mean we can relate to his actions, clearly he's a psychopath, but it means we see his humanity. The big bad villain needs to be essentially inhuman, because in a SW movie the big bad villain represents evil itself. While Palpatine and Snoke were obviously real characters they don't really represent real people. They represent evil itself. I'm not sure whether RJ actually intended Kylo to be the main villain of EP9, but if he did, IMO, he doesn't understand the utility of the big bad villain of a SW movie. It's also why Palpatine having a granddaughter just doesn't really work. To learn that Palpatine had any sort of a family really is ridiculous, because it humanizes someone who was never meant to be humanized. Senator Palpatine was a mask. The idea that he actually lived a life as that man in the real world to the point where he even had a son who grew up as a moral man just feels contrary to his essence. Again, I don't know what JJ could have done. RJ put the franchise in an impossible corner it could never climb out of... I'd love to hear how he would have ended it. I'm thankful I never had to see it, but I am curious to know if he ever thought about what Epsiode 9 would be about, and what would happen if Kylo was the one and only main villain.

 

I think they knew that the audience wanted the last member of the Skywalker family to not be evil all the way to the end so when the choice was made not to make Rey a bloodline Skywalker the choice to have Kylo Ren seem further down the dark path functions as a second act setback for fans wanting his redemption, making it harder to see.