ST Praetorian Guard Discussion

I'll rank the fights for fun:

1. Luke/Vader ROTJ
2. Luke/Vader ESB
3. Rey/Kylo TLJ
4. Rey/Kylo TFA
5. Obi-Wan/Anakin ROTS
6. Sidious/Yoda ROTS
7. Sidious/Mace ROTS
8. Obi-Wan/Vader ANH
9. TPM lightsaber fights
10. Anakin/Dooku ROTS
11. AOTC lightsaber fights

 

I like the TFA duel much better for the same reason the PT duels don’t do much for you compared to the TLJ duel. In TFA, I absolutely felt the tension. Rey and Finn didn’t know what they were doing but still had rudimentary skills and decent instincts. They were afraid. Their swings reflected their experience and likewise so did Kylo’s. I worried about them. The TLJ duel is more of a dance to me, which is what I consider the PT duels. I like dances though, so that doesn’t mean I dislike it. I just prefer a fight with drama that has weight and where I feel the risk and the threat to the hero.

 

what i love about tlj is that a lot is different. this is what people wanted and complained about in tfa but when they got something really different it wasn't what they wanted.

 

The Darth Maul one in TPM is still the best lightsaber battle to me by far. The OT ones were alright for their time I guess.

 

Could Ren have used the Force freeze power on them?

And who are these red dressed people, do they have Force training?

 

I would say Ren could have tried Force freeze but with multiple attackers it would be difficult. I find the guards mentally strong but not totally inept against the Force.

Love the fight as I have waited 34 years to see Red guards in action! May have not been the original ones from ROTJ, but these were good enough. Wish we could also have had an actual saber to saber fight in TLJ also, but Luke's Force projection is all we got. Wish Luke went with Rey and fought off the guards with a Force push out the window.
Looking forward to the fight every time I watch TLJ. I thought both Rey and Ren held there own. Will check out again tomorrow for another viewing.

 

i love that scene where kylo uses anakins lightsaber on one

 

Obi-Wan v Anakin
Maul v Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon
Luke v Vader TESB

These are my top three in the series. TLJ’s praetorian guard fight would be the best of the ST.

 

The throne room fight for me is the worst of all fights, from all trilogies:

I don’t get why these guys are guards. If you are guarding against all comers, surely a bit of Force knowledge is needed? They didn’t know their boss was about to do die.

Just imagine if they had Force powers? They may have prevented that act and, you know guarded Snoke? They were guards after all.

Once their employer is dead, they finally get their act together only to be sliced up up by a tiny girl!

I’m glad they weren’t “guarding” me!!!

They looked pretty good but in the end they were pretty useless.

It did rather dilute the fight unfortunately. For me anyway

 

Snoke didn’t know he was about to die either.

 

snokes death was such a waste of a potentially very interesting caracter

 

Can someone explain to me, like I'm 5 years old, why it is that in-universe, the red guys attacked the good guys after the good guys killed Snoke? Is the intended consumption to be that the red guys wanted revenge? Wanted to die with their leader? Was Kylo one of the red guys at one point?

 

My take is, they were trained as Snokes' guards to automatically attack anyone who attacked Snokes. So that's what they did. Too late, but that was their conditioned reflex.

 

Its possible kylo used to be one of them but its very unlikely. my opinion on your first question is the guards ere just trying to stop rey and kylo doing more damage.

 

Conditioning is a decent in-universe explanation. Darth Maul came back from worse than Snoke got, and to all appearances Snoke has greater control over the Force, so, it can be plausible that the red guys engaged the enemy to buy time while Snoke's paramedics were paged. It's also plausible that they are conditioned to not comprehend that Snoke can die, because he's come kind of glorious leader, and so they can go into action even if to all outside observers Snoke is "plainly" dead.

Johnson's subversion of having goons not defend prior to fait accompli but attack after the fait accompli causes the investment train to run off the tracks. Obviously none of these red guys is going to make it, so what is this exercise for? What is the function of this exercise? The closest analogue is the SW77 scene where Han and Luke break into the detention center, but are not yet in a position to rescue Leia. The shootout enhances the payoff of opening the door, and then also raises the tension another unit, because the bad guys know about the shootout. This red guy scene is backwards for no value that I perceive. A forwards red guy scene would have one red guy take a hint, intercept that light saber with his head, the other red guys jump in, get defeated, and then the good guys still manage to overcome Snoke. That's a linearly rising schedule of tension capped by commensurate payoff.

 

True. But then you lose the shock of Snoke getting offed so suddenly. And I assume the subsequent fight was more about showing that Rey and Kylo could work together than it was about raising tension.

 

Why it's weird for Praetorian's to take revenge for their master? I got Darth Maul vibes from those fighters (double bladed weapons, red/black color combination) and Maul's main motive was revenge, and they are obviously serving to the dark side. It could be even Snoke's orders. ''If someone kills me, take my revenge.''

 

The shock / subversion was the objective of the choice. Rey and Kylo could have been demonstrated to work together / settle their differences without the shock.

"revenge for their master" - This is why I stipulated in-universe versus out-universe. It can be "not weird", in-universe, for the red guys to take revenge for their master. The play that out-universe Johnson elected is front loaded for shock and poor pay off from deferred gratification. You could have had Rey versus Kylo tension maintained the entire way through an escalation of red bad guys then Snoke, and then it is demonstrated QED that they can work together.

I believe these are objective arguments but I can care so little that it can be a toss up to personal taste. So let it be personal taste. I'll just admit "I didn't like / get / appreciate / understand how it was handled, but no one is wrong."

 

In real world terms, what do you think the Secret Service would do if someone shot and killed a president that they were serving under? Would they just shrug their shoulders and say "Well, nothing we can do now. They're already dead." or would they try to capture/kill the perpetrator?

 

The guards only realized he was dead when his body hit the ground. Their angle and limit of sound and visibility through the helmets prevented action before hand during that scene. Snoke he was not still alive when his torso dropped. Maul was still alive cause its not easy to kill a Sith and Maul is far stronger and more powerful. Maul was one of the 3 of the most powerful Sith that ever lived(Sidious and Vader the other two). Maul's connection and control of the Force led to him surviving and cheating death and also allowed him to break his fall down the reactor shaft also saving his life again.

The Praetorian Guards attempted to avenge their dead leader but they failed. I don't even know how good they were, since they posed and danced around swinging their weapons even during the fighting sequences like idiots and waiting for eachother on cue to attack the character. It didn't make much sense. I don't even no why they did not call in reinforcement warriors or even Stormtroopers on a comlink. But with them wasting time posing while they knew who Kylo Ren was and what he was capable of was kinda comical. While they had Kylo never uses the Force while combating them which made no sense either - they also should've been dead a lot sooner since they made these characters non-Force users. While it was a fun scene it was just bad on many levels, especially choreographically and editing.

 

It might of been badly done but it was a cool fight all the same (its my favourite part of TLJ)

 

I feel it was well done. Most enjoyable part of the movie. The actors worked their arse off to pull this scene together. Yes Snoke perishing too soon without a worthy fight was a let down, but seeing the guards in action had my 7 year old ROTJ self in awe.

 

Its hard to rewatch these days as the one of the warrior's weapons gets visibly deleted and there was so many openings for them to kill both Kylo and Rey. Also their armor doesnt make any in-universe sense, Besksar was more effective,lol.

 

That fight always has me pondering a "what if" scenario, every time I see it. As in, what if they had gone with a Jedi protagonist couple from the start? There is some nice choreography in the fight, such as the back to back fighting when Rey leans on Kylo. Could have been a really neat idea.

 

that's a great scene, a great fight brilliantly filmed