ST Who Should Have Been the Main Villain in Episode IX?

Yeah, and if anything, you start by establishing the protagonist, figuring out their strengths, but also more importantly, their weaknesses. And then going, how is this person going to be challenged, and what are they fighting for. What's their ultimate goal. Usually the villain is a polar opposite character, with polar opposite desires and motivations, and stands in their way of archieving this, but in learning about both, we come to realize that they actually have things in common, they're a reflection of one another, and where one went right, the other left. And that is the core of the narrative and where the entire drama exists.

Works for pretty much every great-good protagonist and antagonist.
Batman & Joker
Superman & Lex
Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty
Harry and Voldemort
Jesus and Satan
Luke and Vader

The ST has none of that. Rey and Kylo have nothing in common. And aren't polar opposites, or reflections of one another either. And neither is Kylo and Luke. Or even Rey and Palpatine. There are no relationships in this trilogy that make any damn narrative sense. So it's rather futile to even pick a 'better' villain because the real issue here is...the hero.

 

But Palpatine is such a huge villain in the Star Wars universe that he has 2 trilogies of build up and you will just bring someone new in and say this new person is a greater foe?

What makes Palpatine such a great and dangerous foe is how scheming and conniving he is. He is practically the devil. He sits on shoulders to manipulate people and succeeds. Like yoda, palpatine is a character thats far more powerful and more far clever than he appears to be.

So when it comes to Palpatine being the villain. well he has earnt it. Palpatine has been a guiding force in the PT and OT. So to try and shift away in the ST Like Snoke is now the greater villain. You would never be able to see him as a greater foe than palpatine.

 

Exactly that Lulu. The problem was/is that the driver for the ST wasn’t a great story or great characters, but a check list of things to tick off in order to maximise initial audience interest. Harrison Ford. Tick. Orphan on a frontier desert world. Tick. Stormtroopers. Tick. X-Wings. Tick. Darth Vader. Tick. The Millennium Falcon. Tick. The Death Star. Tick. Etc. And if that’s the approach, the writers invariably spend more time figuring out how they can work Darth Vader or the Falcon into the film, than they do conceiving and writing an interesting/engaging original story.

So are you saying that Palpatine has to be the villain of every future Star Wars film? Sorry, but I think that’s a bit ridiculous…

 

At least with the return of stuff like X-Wings and the Falcon, it was only superficial stuff, and it made sense following the ST. You can believe those things would still be around in the galaxy decades later.

But you don't just repeat things because it's already been done. You can believe Threepio and Artoo are still around, and they "tie the saga together", but they make sense. Palpatine... no. There's too much contrivances, too much development, too much you mess with by bringing him back.

 

@Daxon101
Forget Snoke. Again, if the story is such that a different villain emerges organically and it all comes together as one great narrative where it just makes sense and nothing feels tacked on, then what's the problem?
Story always comes first. If a resurrected/surviving Sidious somehow fits into it, cool. But you don't bring him back just because of who he is, because he's somehow earned it (whatever that means). This isn't a story about him. He's just a part of it.

 

Agreed. To me, it would have been a much more organic continuation of the saga if it were all about the consequences of the heroism of the OT3 in the original and what they did in the last stages of their heroic journeys. Maintaining the promise of the New Republic and the new Jedi Order (and defending it), fulfilling the difficult task of imparting wisdom on a new generation that didn’t personally experience the horror of the previous regime and galactic conflict, coming to terms with one’s twilight years and not being the center of action anymore, and handing over the baton in a way that will last, etc. Instead, while there were touches of that, they simply wanted to create a new OT dynamic with a new group of young kids (the biggest mistake being the immediate destruction of the New Republic and reset to the OT political scene, just not as well done), while the old crew was slotted into the young kids’ story awkwardly, and the old big bad just…comes back. There were some almost unbelievably weak and risk-averse decisions made at the start by JJ that doomed this trilogy to feel more like a pale facsimile of the OT than an actual continuation of it. I’m over it, but I can’t deny how disappointing this was. Thank the Maker we’ve gotten some clearly superior content in other timelines.

 

And this video gamey emphasis on the villain having to either be a bigger bad than Palpatine or Palpatine himself is deeply un creative and undermines a search for novel story and thematic value for the ST. For example, the villain of the ST didn’t need to be bigger and eviler than Palpatine. It just needed to be a threat that was different, and more difficult (and complicated) to defeat, much as Senator Palpatine was in the PT. Even Ben Solo/ Kylo Ren could’ve been presented as a more subtly insidious threat to the New Republic. A son of Rebel heroes and New Republic leadership who turns against the legacy of his parents in favor of the pre-redemption legacy of his grandparents, and maneuvers against the New Republic, his parents’ efforts, and Luke’s efforts, throughout the trilogy in order to bring it down, would’ve been a fascinating exploration of a more subtle evil. Sort of how Tolkien conceived of a Fourth Age evil in an abandoned story - no more obvious Dark Lord, but rather, a lingering, festering evil that slowly eats at the peace and prosperity that was achieved after the end of the war/ conflict with the Dark Lord. PT-like, in a way, but even more difficult and tragic because the internal threat is coming from the progeny of the heroic age. Now that’s a trilogy I would’ve come back to time and again. As it stands, why should I bother re-watching a clearly inferior take on the themes, stories and characters of the OT?

 

If Palps has to be the villain of every Star Wars film, then that means that Tatooine has to be featured in every future film right? Fans want Palps to be the be all and end all connection of the saga but when planets get revisited for example they're tired of seeing the same old same old. They want new and interesting- why can't the same be a requirement for the villain?

 

You know what. Tatooine sorta would make sense to appear in the ST. Probably not the way they used it in TROS. But if it did have a presence, it probably would tie together well. Palpatine makes sense to be the villain too. when you make a trilogy you often try and go full circle to complete a story and make it feel well interconnected. So when you do a saga of 9 movies. you have an even bigger job of that.

Lucas tied 6 movies in with a rhyme. The ST would benefit from having that rhyme too. Especially since they would be watched as a package. Not 6 movies and then the other 3 is ya feel like.

 

Kylo Ren. TLJ was setting him up as a unique anarchist Darksider (for the films, they exist in Legends), who wanted to abandon the Sith ideals and purse his own manipulation of the dark side (a la Dark Jedi). This would have made Kylo a opposite of his grandfather who was dogmatic in the ways of the Sith, followed orders, and kept a clear chain of command. Kylo as a loose canon using his powers to tear everything down makes a great foul for Rey who is holding to the ways of the Jedi; a great great yin and yang: chaos and peace, tearing down versus tradition.

 

I find the idea of going beyond he Sith about as odd as the idea that you can add attachments to a Jedi order and improve things.

It sounds about as cool as calling the red storm troopers "sith troopers" for no reason. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense, it just sounds good.

 

I see Kylo as on a trip of destruction. He wants everything to burn, kinda like the Joker in TDK but less logical. Its like he has reached a break in his mind: oh a mentally unstable Force User, a mad man would be cool.

 

I'm surprised Maul isn't an option. George Lucas wanted to make him the main antagonist in his story treatments for the sequels.

 

Problem is Maul is dead by the Sequel Trilogy according TCW.

 

I think you mean Rebels? But yeah, fair enough.

I still would have been interested to see it. Maul's arcs in TCW were some of the best.

 

Correct, Rebels. Him being in both series messes me up sometimes.

 

I think the issue is that the focus placed on the iconography of the OT... be that X-wings, planet sized super-weapons, Stormtroopers etc. reflects a wider issue around the derivative nature of the ST's storytelling, aesthetic choices, and an unwillingness to really move Star Wars forward (creatively speaking). This limits/restricts story opportunities, and ultimately has negative ramifications for the overall story/characters (IMO), For example, wanting to use the existing iconography of the Empire and Rebels, means that the writers must create the 'scenario' for those factions to still exist circa 30 years after the OT... and without those 'scenarios' being fleshed out/developed in a meaningful way (which they weren't IMO), it means that the premise of the entire conflict is flaky/opaque, which in turn reduces the potential for drama.

DLF/Abrams/Kasdan absolutely told the wrong story with the ST (IMO). Even if the ST were to follow the same broad outline e.g. Palaptine's resurrection, the emergence of the First Order etc., choosing to focus on the aftermath of events rather than the events themselves, was a mistake. The emotional heartbeat of the story should have been what Luke, Leia and Han did next (even if told 30 years after ROTJ), what directly led to the emergence of the First Order, what pushed Leia away from the New Republic, what led to Luke feeling he had failed Ben Solo, and how Han felt about losing his son under Luke's watch etc. That was absolutely where the drama of the story was, and where the points of interest where.

 

The OT managed to have its characters speak of the past, while staying focused in the present, and making the present the important story being told. The ST doesn't do this. The most vitally informative scene in the ST is a flashback. And as horrible as that scene is, and how it depicts or destroys a certain character, it's still leaps and bounds more important than anything taking place in the actual ST time period.

That's all we need to know to realize the the ST should have told the story happening 10-6 years before TFA. Instead of the one where Rey Palpatine falls in love with Kylo Ren.

 

The OT didn't have a past. the PT focused on giving it a past. The ST has 2x a past.

 

Totally disagree. It was told, not shown, mainly in OWK's exposition. Sir Alec's delivery made that one of the most compelling and fascinating scenes in the original movie, IMO.

 

We should know by now that when something is just told, people make their own minds up to what it means or what happened. Once its shown. Thats it. What you see on screen is fact. No longer speculative.

The OT wrote the PT. The PT filled in the blanks. The ST has 2 trilogies of backstory to take into consideration.

 

Agreed. That scene is one of the most Tolkienian in Star Wars in the way it reveals a glimpse of a deep history within a history.

 

Two Times the Past, Two Times the Power, Two Times the nostalgia!

 

And what's great is that backdrop completely informs the present story in all aspects. The government. The Jedi. The Skywalker family. It's all right there. Things change up in later episodes, and certainly again in the PT, but it remains totally consistent with that telling.

The ST's backdrop is kept mysterious to the audience for no reason whatsoever. All the characters know what happened, and how they got there, but it's kept from us for no other than to create some kind of interest in the 'story', not with the story itself.