ST How TROS Has Affected Your View Of The ST Films

It's easy. Snoke had so much potential as an interesting villain and yet ST played way too safe with this character. Snoke at first was designed to be a more wiser figure, not prone to the arrogance that Sidious had. The few scenes he had in TFA made him to be a figure bigger and badder than the Emperor, which is extremely hard to do when you're faced with the embodiment of evil. But with enough contrasting traits, that can be done.

But someone decided to play up his Emperor Palpatine qualities, which are the most boring parts of Snoke. Consequently, all of Snoke's contrasting characterization goes from his strength to his biggest weakness as that characterization prevents Snoke from reaching the level of camp that Ian McDiarmid perfected with Palpatine. Now, he's just Palpatine minus anything that made Palpatine so entertaining to watch.

Snoke is at his best when he's not reminding people of the Emperor. And honestly, I think JJ Abrams should have followed one of the older ideas for Snoke. That Snoke was going to be an old, female villain rather than the cliche male baddie. That would have at least make Snoke different. Even better?



There exist characters that fit the basic description of Snoke and don't raise as many questions for the audience. In fact, they might have tied the ST to the rest of the Saga a lot better than Palpatine's Alien Clone 2.0.

 

The sequel trilogy didn't need a big bad, because there was only one big bad, and he was dead. It needed a "regular bad", so to speak. JJ really screwed this trilogy by making people think of it in terms of the OT (because he set it up as a soft reboot). Not every movie needs a mustache-twirler, so I thought it was awesome when Kylo killed Snoke, and thus undid JJ's stupid soft reboot. It had the feel of free will winning out over destiny. Kylo is a new type of villain for Star Wars. He is one of the few things that set the ST apart from the OT. What I love about TLJ is that we relate to both the protagonist and antagonist. In that way, it reminds me of The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.

I just assumed that he used "unnatural" methods to create a son. Perhaps a clone? There's potential for a cool story there, in which Palpatine thinks he can just create another version of himself (a la Jango and Boba), but his "son" is horrified by him and cuts himself off from the force, wishing to live a normal life as a "nobody."

 

I enjoyed Palpatine like many people, but I think it's obvious that this was weak storytelling. For some reason, JJ, KK, and LFL seem to think the general audience would only understand a return of the previous villain. Trevorrow's Tor Vallum was a vastly superior option -- giving us something new and old all at once. Snoke should have been more like Tor Vallum and then perhaps Johnson wouldn't have felt the need to kill him off.

The other superior option would be to once again do what Trevorrow planned: turn Kylo into a real villain. Episode 9 needed a real villain, and JJ and KK could only think of Palpatine; they thought general audiences could only understand that, despite the absurdity of his return; at least he was familiar and connected the Saga.

I enjoyed Rise of Skywalker, but not because it's a good movie. It fixes some problems with Episode 8, and it almost makes the ST consistent enough to bother watching together. However, my honest feeling a few weeks removed from RoS is that the ST just doesn't stand on its own enough to warrant considering it canon.

I'm still holding out hope for a post-Return of the Jedi tv show that somehow makes me view the ST as necessary material.

My takeaway from the ST is that LFL needs better leadership. It would be a bad idea to keep the same people in charge who have already shown consistently poor decision making.

The new leadership needs to figure out a way of making films that appeal to both hardcore fans and wider audiences. I think this can be done if the people in charge actually understand SW lore deeply. Lucas did it, Filoni and Favreau could, and I'm sure there are many others. I can't see a good reason to stay pat with KK.

 

The Robot Chicken sketch almost writes itself!

The one big problem with that character is: What about Plagueis?

 

Plot twist: The original Snoke is an older Sith than Palpatine and it was his personality shining through more so in ROTJ overall since all of the Sith live in him. So, his clone has some of those same traits.

 

Tor Vallum was Plagueis's master. It sounds like he was more of a teacher than a warrior, and he also seems distanced from the Sith. I don't see a problem if you look closely at what Trevorrow had planned.

 

I'm fascinated by the rumor that Lucas wanted to reveal The Son (from TCW) as the ultimate source of evil behind Palpatine. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it was definitely a heck of a better idea than Snoke!

 

Yeah, but general audiences don't know who he is; therefore, he can't be used. Disney era SW films need to overcome this slavish devotion to the GA, which the GA probably doesn't even care about.

 

Tor Vallum would only be like Snoke again, with the only exception being that he has a cooler design.

And honestly, it might as well be TROS Palpatine based on what I've read. Disney, if you think Kylo Ren can't carry the film, maybe you should have reconsider your decision to kill off Snoke in favor for Supreme Leader Ren.

 

To be honest, TROS has only reaffirmed my negative view of the Sequel Trilogy.

I didn't care for Snoke to begin with, but I was not impressed by Johnson's decision to kill him off without informing the audiences on who he was. I thought that was sloppy writing. Abrams' decision to bring back Palpatine also struck me as disastrous.

 

Tor Vallum seems different than Snoke. Snoke is trying to be Supreme Leader while Tor Vallum was more of a teacher figure not interested in ruling.

Someone else mentioned that LFL/Disney wasn't confident in Kylo Ren being the main villain. I disagree. The problem was that they wanted him to be redeemed, and that would be more difficult to pull off if he had become the true big bad. So another big bad was needed so Kylo could become good again.

 

Dunno, some of the best villains in fiction were fairly humanized (think Magneto or Mr. Freeze).

Dunno, I think redeeming Kylo was one of the mistakes the series made in the first place.

 

TROS is so bad it reveals the hidden badness in TFA and the obvious grand errors made in TLJ. (One of the worse films ever made)

 

I'll take the opposite position here and say that ROS went a long way to redeeming the ST as a whole, including The Last Jedi. I might wish it had accomplished more, but considering my need to lower expectations before entering these days, I had a great time in the theater. I'm considering seriously between holding the ST as the weakest trilogy in my head canon now or considering it really good fan fiction that doesn't quite cut it. I'm in a similar position to where I was while watching the The Force Awakens, but my attitude is now much more favorable.

 

How can another movie make previous films bad?

 

Without seeing it and reading the spoilers, TROS has affacted my view of Star Wars films in the way that is finally SW film I have no desire to see it in cinema and maybe ever. As many people on the internet, I now see Episodes I-VI as a cohesive whole and I am much more inclined to overlook Prequel´s problems.

 

Primarily because, IMHO, there were problematic elements of TFA/TLJ that were cut some slack because there was an assumption they would be resolved/explained in TROS e.g. Rey’s ‘oven ready’ abilities in TFA, the lightsabre calling to Rey, Luke’s characterisation, Snoke etc. etc.

 

In a vacuum, I believe Sly Moore could have been an excellent and logical successor to Palpatine and a compelling big bad for a very different sequel trilogy, but it would have required JJ of 2015 to acknowledge the prequels as relevant during the development process.

I don't want to speak for @UK Sullustian , but, for me, TFA on its own, and with two additional movies on the way, was - at best - severely flawed, but salvageable depending on what the following two movies bring to the table. I said many times during 2016-2017 TFA's fate rests in the degree to which VIII and IX provide meaningful followup to the sparse non-committal setup provided by TFA. From my perspective, without getting specific, the following two movies failed to salvage TFA and TFA is, therefore, now worse than it was in 2015 when the trilogy could still have been saved.

(edited for clarity)

 

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER gave me a new appreciation for the prequel movies. I thought that no other SW film could be as weak as ATTACK OF tHE CLONES and, boy, was I wrong! Despite his many flaws, Episode II had at least a solid basis storywise. Episode IX has none: it is litterally nonsensical. I just don't understand JJ's choices (Palpatine's connection, Kylo stabbed ala Qui-Gon but healed through the Force, etc.) and I'm pretty sure now that my personal Skywalker saga will end with THE LAST JEDI.

 

It's hard for me to like the ST as much as I did. It had flaws 2/3 of the way through, but the end basically made none of it worth doing.

I think the lack of payoff on obvious set ups makes it hard to like TFA as much as I could. The lightsaber calling Rey, Maz's interaction with Rey, Han seemingly being suspicious of who Rey is as if he knows who she is or knows of her, ditto for Kylo, ditto for Leia.

It chose to just make it about Palpatine...blah. What a "make the fans happy" choice. People want to deny it, but this was a big apology letter and an attempt to not do a TLJ.

TLJ looks shiny and beautiful in contrast to TROS. Like it or not, calling it a bad movie is silly.

 

I agree with this. I hated TLJ at the time and still feel like it is a poorly written Star Wars movie made by a director who didn't truly understand the mythos and was only interested in his own ego and subverting expectations. With that said, TROS was able to retcon several plot points from TLJ in a way that at least for me made them more cohesive with the overarching saga. With that in mind I'd have to say that TROS really improved my view of the ST. I enjoyed TFA but after watching TLJ I didn't think I'd be interested in whatever would come next. TROS proved me wrong.

 

Anakinfan pretty much said a lot of what I was going to say. But I will say that I liked TROS better than TLJ, as I've said before. Also, I won't bash Rian Johnson like I once did. After all, he's good with his own movies. I think his ideas could have worked if he had more than one film to explore them. I also don't hate him for inventing Reylo. I think he genuinely went into that thinking that it would be an interesting challenge to write. He just didn't understand the icky connotations behind it.

There's no question that Rian Johnson is in many respects more talented than Abrams. Abrams tends to make films that are both average in some places and outstanding in others. I know people didn't like his Star Trek films, but I thought they were fine. Not as good as TFA, but that's just my take. TFA I like both for its new ideas and its nostalgia. I don't care that it's similar to ANH. It's not too similar for my tastes. Besides, ANH is a proto-Star Wars film, whereas TESB is the SW film.

I do think that Abrams and Johnson were too different to helm this trilogy. I think that Colin's story ideas were interesting. He should have been given a say. Even if the film was bad, I still think some of the ideas would have been intriguing.

My primary problems were the Reylo situation and the mishandling of Luke Skywalker. Also, I feel that there was an attempt to make Kylo Ren deeper in TFA that was destroyed in TFA and TROS, and only Driver's performance made the character watchable. Daisy Ridley, as well, crafted a character through a performance that was more impressive than what was on the page. Rey was at her best TFA. In TLJ, she was annoying, and in TROS, you want to love her, but you wonder why she is simultaneously dumb, innocent, dark, naive, and childlike. It's confusing. Ridley did that for the money, and there's nothing wrong with that. I would, too. But you can tell that she wanted a better character to portray. I feel the sequel trilogy was weighted down by a lack of focus on Han, Luke, and Leia. Han was not mishandled. But Luke and Leia were mishandled. I believe Finn was mishandled beyond belief. I also feel that the way that certain actors like Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran were mistreated showed us the darkest side of the Star Wars fan base. Yes, I don't think that Holds and Rose were written well, but that's no excuse for sexist comments or threats toward actors. Honestly, Holdo may be written oddly, but she's technically my favorite character in TLJ for her final move. I also like DJ in TLJ. While he's not fleshed out, his moral ambiguity makes sense. He's loyal to no one but money and chaos, and it's intriguing. TLJ is the SW film I dislike the most, but there are some good things in it despite Johnson's intentions.

Overall, I'd say that this is a disjointed trilogy. Johnson portrayed Snoke differently than Abrams. Lots of stuff. We didn't get to see Rey's training. Johnson gave Abrams the middle finger. Then Abrams gave Johnson the middle finger. This whole trilogy was like a custody war between two spouses (regardless of gender), and it was a cray cray ride, to say the least. I prefer the prequels, despite their flaws. TFA is the only ST film I like as much as the prequels.