Probably "Wow, we already made all our money back by 2018, within 6 years of the purchase lol"
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Sariah Wilson (Rian Johnson interviewer): "the question of Snoke's identity was fundamentally uninteresting to him"
- Thread starter DiipuSurotu
- Start date
It's really incredible how badly Disney treated this trilogy. It doesn't take a genius to understand what you suggested.
Yup. This is the moment where the sequel trilogy felt like it could go anywhere. And then JJ ruined it with TROS.
That's why he was a good villain in my opinion, he was a spiteful bastard, consumed by his own anger, and all his talk of 'killing the past.." "no jedi, no sith", was him assigning a greater purpose to himself, how he lives with these petty and vindictive actions. Or at least that was my interpretation from TLJ at the time.
Like a Trump supporter telling themselves they voted for him 'to burn the old system down', but they supported him because they were all for his spitefulness and good old fashion fascism. There was no other reason, they were being awful.
This kind of felt like Rian didn't want to fully commit to putting Kylo on any one path, being nice and letting the next director have an open book where to go with him. It was so open it let JJ turn him back into another Vader, the opposite of what Rian wanted.
Kylo killing Snoke should have been a massive game changer, a window into a new kind of Star Wars story where the apprentice actually succeeds in killing the master and all the chaos it would unleash. But alas.........I would preferred if TLJ ended with Kylo doing something really crazy and different like idk.....kill the rest of the FO upper brass with the Knights and then go on the comms and say that the FO is disbanded. The resistance is down to nothing, the FO is in chaotic shambles, and Kylo has turned into a true wild card. JJ still could have bullshitted out Sheev and the Final Order but I'm just spitballing nonsense
I guess the phenomenon I'm thinking of here is not so much people who think they could tell the story better, or even that the storyteller is telling it badly, but that they're telling the story inaccurately. Kind of like the people who watch comicbook movies and only engage with them on the level of whether or not they accurately depicted exactly what happened in the source comic, only with TLJ the source material is... their imagined version of how Snoke's story was going to go. People saw Snoke in TFA and thought up a whole story for him, then when it didn't go that way in TLJ they didn't say "Oh, guess I was wrong" but rather "No, the movie was wrong".
It almost feels like the criticism starts from the standpoint that Snoke's predictable evil puppetmaster backstory delivered in flashback was already canon. Like, that's what we all knew the story was going to be after TFA. It was practically written already, we could all see it in our mind's eye. We all read it in the Star Wars Episode VIII manga, the epic lightsabre fight between young Luke and Snoke when he was still calling himself Darth Plagueis. Then when Ruin Johnson went on to direct the anime adaptation and didn't include that scene, well, that was simply the wrong choice. Where was young Snoke? That was my favourite scene and I have been robbed of it!
I liked this bit and the part where Yoda was all it's just a prank bro. Snoke sucks and TLJ gets a bad rap.
Even though TROS completely backtracks on Rey's backstory the ST is still entirely about a new generation being passed the torch as they combat the last cries of fascism from an old empire. TROS even tries to fit that into the theme.
They didn't go into the trilogy initially with Anakin being a young boy.
And obi-wan must be trained by Yoda and be reckle---wait.
Leia's royalty literally has nothing to do with Padme's royalty lmao. She's a princess because people think she was Bail Organa's biological daughter. Something he was apparently always planning on doing. Did I mention the part where Leia apparently remembers her mother? #plannedbtw
The Senate doesn't disband until ANH. 19 years later.
Who said that the emperor needed to manipulate events from the shadows? Nothing from the Ot indicates that this is what happened. the exact opposite in fact.
Again, where is this mentioned in the OT? Or even the production of Ep. 1?
Given SW lexicon Clone Wars could have meant something way less literal. Let alone, clones fighting droids. That wasn't planned. Or part of some outline. They came up with it while establishing a ten year long backstory for Ep. 2. Because oops ep.1 had a child self insert because of George and now we need to actually tell the story.
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I feel like you can really tell this forum skews male in how many people don't understand how an entitled yet powerful manchild can be really fucking terrifying and is a great idea for a villain.
Anyway Snoke sucks and was the dumbest part of TFA. Getting rid of him=correct move.
Anyway Snoke sucks and was the dumbest part of TFA. Getting rid of him=correct move.
Shit is so depressing for me still. Mostly because ST had such an amazingly strong and likeable cast that really worked well together and were just fun to watch. I would have loved to see them continue on with more films. But now after TRoS the ST feels so tainted and given how toxic and hostile the fanbase is most of them likely have no interest in returning anytime soon anyways.
TRoS just baffles me completely. It's like the worst kind of fan-fic nonsense and on top of it feels like JJ and Disney saw the absurd, vile and pathetic backlash to TLJ and blinked super fucking hard. Rian made a really outstanding film. Outside of the Finn/Rose B plot I thought it was fantastic. His handling of Luke was great and his development and setting up of Rey and Kylo for the final film was exciting. I was dying to see this girl from nowhere come into her own and take down this petulant manchild who had every advantage and opportunity, all the support, love and second chances to better and redeem himself but chose not to get taken down. Everything that was going on in the world at the time, Me Too, rise of the Far/Alt-right and so on it would have been a great opportunity for the series to take a stand. Especially with how much sexism, racism and abuse the cast and producers were subjected to up to that point. But nope they completely caved to that hostility trying to undo as much of TLJ as they could and dove headfirst into nostalgia harder than even TFA did thinking it would satiate the mob.
TRoS just baffles me completely. It's like the worst kind of fan-fic nonsense and on top of it feels like JJ and Disney saw the absurd, vile and pathetic backlash to TLJ and blinked super fucking hard. Rian made a really outstanding film. Outside of the Finn/Rose B plot I thought it was fantastic. His handling of Luke was great and his development and setting up of Rey and Kylo for the final film was exciting. I was dying to see this girl from nowhere come into her own and take down this petulant manchild who had every advantage and opportunity, all the support, love and second chances to better and redeem himself but chose not to get taken down. Everything that was going on in the world at the time, Me Too, rise of the Far/Alt-right and so on it would have been a great opportunity for the series to take a stand. Especially with how much sexism, racism and abuse the cast and producers were subjected to up to that point. But nope they completely caved to that hostility trying to undo as much of TLJ as they could and dove headfirst into nostalgia harder than even TFA did thinking it would satiate the mob.
The problem is that this is extremely generic.
We all knew that any ST would have a "new generation being passed the torch", this isn't a good outline for a three movies set (And it's easy to argue they failed to do this in Finn/Poe's case), unless said new generation was intended to have more movies of their own (which doesn't seem likely). Otherwise we're back at these movies having no point beyond nostalgia cash grab.
And while these movies are indeed about combating the last cries of fascism from an old empire, one would be hard pressed to claim that's how they were written, considering how powerful the New Order is and how the Resistance is on the defensive throughout. If this was the point of the movies, one would expect more context behind the current state of the war, scales of the armies, etc. Nah, it seems more likely the New Order/Resistance stuff was meant as a reboot of what was familiar and didn't have much more thought put into it. Once again, nostalgia cash grab.
you are being pedantic again because you can't prove your point
cinema sins
I haven't seen the prequels in like 8 years and obviously I have no idea what was in the outline, my point remains there was an outline
Here, I've fixed it for you:
Anakin must be trained in the force and fall to the dark side
Anakin must be trained by Obi-Wan, Obi-wan must defeat him and leave him crippled. This must be done in a lava setting
Anakin must become Vader
Anakin must fall in love with a women, they must have twins. This love must be tragic
One of the children must be adopted by Bail Oragana, the other must go to Tatooine to the Lars'
There is a senate, it must be taken over by the Emperor
There is an Emperor, he will manipulate events from the shadows and seize power
There is a galactic capital named Coruscant, it will fall to the Empire
There will be wars that will involve clones
My dude. I'm not saying this stuff was mentioned in the OT.
I'm saying this stuff was likely the bare minimum that was in the outline, or "plan" for the prequels before George started writing. A bare minimum that far exceeds what the ST was working from
We knew about Coruscant falling to the Empire and the clone wars well back in the 90s, so it's reasonable to assume George planned to include both when he started the prequels.
No, Yoda training Obi-Wan did not need to be in the prequels just because it was in the OT, it could've happened before the PT, once again you are being pedantic because you can't prove your point. Once again, cinema sins
Or, maybe Lucas forgot, much like he did with Leia remembering Padme.
You are right, Lucas messed some shit up.
That doesn't change the fact that Lucas had an outline/plan for the movies he did make before filming them (not before the OT), complete with flaws
Show me anything like the above that Disney had for the OT
And yet again, since you love picking apart what other people write where you think it suits you, but you shy away from actual discussion because you can't prove your point:
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It was uninteresting to audiences too until people pretended to care about Stoke after Rian killed him. The whole discourse for 2 years after the TFA was that Snoke was an uninteresting villain that nobody cares about.
Killing him off in the second movie was shocking and it excited me so much in theater that for the first time ever in a Star Wars movie, I had no idea where the story was going to go.
Killing him off in the second movie was shocking and it excited me so much in theater that for the first time ever in a Star Wars movie, I had no idea where the story was going to go.
I think the execution (lol) could have been better but I agree with the general direction regarding Snoke.
I like how some people's argument is that essentially it would be better if it was planned out, but at the same time saying while sure the prequels were planned out they weren't good proving that something planned out doesn't automatically make it good (or better).
Complete and total revisionism
Why would Hidalgo have posted this image if the "who is Snoke?" discussions weren't running rampant online prior to TLJ release?
Snoke theories were almost as rampant as Rey parentage theories leading up to TLJ, to the point that some people thought he was Mace Windu
He was a sucky character, but people were definitely interested in figuring out what he was there for
There's a nice middle ground between planning every meticulous detail and having no fucking idea what's going to happen. I think it's pretty obvious that not having a basic framework at all was a terrible idea for the ST. Though, they only made it worse by having the third film spend a majority of its runtime trying to overwrite the previous film.
I think some people did care about Snoke, a lot of them them thought he was Darth Plageius because of his music, they thought his scar was inflincted from Palpatine, and his master did find a way to cheat death after all.
Not that backstory alone would suddenly make that arch type of character interesting
I wonder who you are referring to? Certainly not me:
You didn't quote anybody, after all... ;)
But go ahead, answer the questions Crossing Eden has been dodging:
Yeah right, after TFA I'm sure a lot of people were wondering who the heck Snoke was. Also, how he tempted Ben and how he developed the First Order. We didn't need a long extensive background, but we didn't get shit. Rian could have spent two minutes explaining something about Snoke before killing him, especially in a movie where he created at least 4 new characters and explained a little bit or nothing about them.
I think the point is that some overall story goal for a trilogy can't hurt right?
Like imagine if the prequel trilogy was not just completely humourless, dry and boring but it ALSO was completely directionless, or alternated between directors that thought the previous movies had bad decisions and changed course constantly.
there are examples of movie series that know exactly what is going to happen from movie to movie, and they are planned out beforehand, giving the chance for characters and plots to be set up and payed off from beginning to end. The Lord of the Rings movie adaptation should give these studios a fucking inkling of what to aim for.
I wonder if learning Snoke's backstory in TROS actually made anyone happy. We all know who was now: a pickled clone that Sheev operated like a drone, I guess. The wrong has been righted, the sin absolved, the Wookieepedia article fully filled out. Is there anyone who was upset over Snoke having no backstory in TLJ actually satisfied by him getting one in TROS?
No JJ didn't ruin it. Disney ruined the whole damn thing by not having the movies planned out at all. How could you start the production of a trilogy and not have it written and planned out?!
The problem with this reasoning is that there's no way to falsify it. Like, truly, short of dimensioning hopping to alternate realities where we see a planned version of the ST by someone, how could anyone possibly convince you that planning has no significant influence?
All we can do is point to the OT, which had no plan at all and was great, and the PT, which had atleast a notion of the plan in the framing of "We need certain things, like anakin becoming Vader, to happen", and was awful. The Lord of the Rings trilogy had an installed 'plan' in that they are an adaptation of the books which meant they at all times knew what plot points and themes they were building up to, but the hobbit, which also had an installed plan in that it was an adaptation of the book meant they at all times knew which plot points and themes they were building up to is one of the worst movie series in existence.
You hear so many stories about movies and shows and books where the creators openly admit they didn't know what they were doing but it all worked out great, but also where they admit they didn't know what they were doing and it turned out to be The Room, so many situations where there was a guy with a vision in the room and it turned out shit and so many situations where there was a guy with a vision in the room and it turned out amazing
For me, it's obvious that a having a plan is basically a non-factor in terms of predicting how good a story turns out. Like, none whatsoever, it's just that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and for me the deciding factor seems to be whether the people making the decisions make the correct ones for that story at the time. But if the history of storytelling isn't enough to convince you of that, what can?
No, it made nobody happy, because it was clearly an afterthought, rather than a clever setup/payoff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLLGN7zv-3k
The fact that people weren't happy with this is further proof that the bullshit Wookiepedia false dichotomy pushed here is not what disappointed fans wanted, because you are right, ROTS did give us a soulless Wookiepedia answer... and we remain pissed
The ROTS Snoke explanation honestly could have worked if there had been some hints to Palpatine coming back or Snoke being a clone in the prior movies (it was one of the major theories going around). It wouldn't have been amazing or inspired, but it could have been some form of payoff and at least justified the lame character's presence
The one thing we can almost all agree on is that ROTS was trash, and it's attempts to "fix" things often made them worse
As it stand's, Snoke was a Chekov's gun never fired.
Using that logic, Rian could have followed after TFA with something that was consistent instead of doing his own thing. Perhaps we would have had a decent sequel trilogy.
I loved everything Rian did with the Force users.
I really could not have given less of a shit about Rey being a secret Kenobi or whatever, so I was elated when it was revealed that her parents were just a couple of drunks.
Snoke was clearly an Emperor stand-in from the get-go who looked like a Voldemort figurine that got put in the microwave. I was intrigued by what his history could be but it was never essential for the story. Kylo cutting him in half was absolutely the right call and my only disappointment was that we didn't get more of Andy Serkis.
Luke had never been an interesting character to me until this film. Seeing him become disillusioned with the Jedi (which is completely fair, given what serious fuckups they are in the prequels and Clone Wars) and rejecting the legacy that was forced onto him was so refreshing, only for him to return and redeem himself in the most Jedi-like act ever written. Hamill's performance is my favorite in any Star Wars media.
Kylo, an emotionally unstable and petulant killer, usurps the leadership of the First Order and is subsequently humiliated in front of own army by the one person in the galaxy he hates the most. Hux hates Kylo's guts. This was all such great setup for a ruthless, isolated, and unhinged Supreme Leader who now has to contend with a coup or full-blown civil war on top of the pesky insurgents he let slip away.
JJ must have felt pretty slighted by Rian to throw all this great setup away and bring in the guy who helped write Batman V Superman and The Justice League.
Rey Nobody? Rey Palpatine.
Snoke's dead? The dead speak!
Supreme Leader Kylo? Assistant to the Regional Manager Kylo.
I really could not have given less of a shit about Rey being a secret Kenobi or whatever, so I was elated when it was revealed that her parents were just a couple of drunks.
Snoke was clearly an Emperor stand-in from the get-go who looked like a Voldemort figurine that got put in the microwave. I was intrigued by what his history could be but it was never essential for the story. Kylo cutting him in half was absolutely the right call and my only disappointment was that we didn't get more of Andy Serkis.
Luke had never been an interesting character to me until this film. Seeing him become disillusioned with the Jedi (which is completely fair, given what serious fuckups they are in the prequels and Clone Wars) and rejecting the legacy that was forced onto him was so refreshing, only for him to return and redeem himself in the most Jedi-like act ever written. Hamill's performance is my favorite in any Star Wars media.
The blue milk scene is aces.
Kylo, an emotionally unstable and petulant killer, usurps the leadership of the First Order and is subsequently humiliated in front of own army by the one person in the galaxy he hates the most. Hux hates Kylo's guts. This was all such great setup for a ruthless, isolated, and unhinged Supreme Leader who now has to contend with a coup or full-blown civil war on top of the pesky insurgents he let slip away.
JJ must have felt pretty slighted by Rian to throw all this great setup away and bring in the guy who helped write Batman V Superman and The Justice League.
Rey Nobody? Rey Palpatine.
Snoke's dead? The dead speak!
Supreme Leader Kylo? Assistant to the Regional Manager Kylo.
I didn't think The Last Jedi was great - but my god, its Casablanca compared to ROTJ.
What kinda blows my mind is didn't Disney know what movie TLJ was going to be? They pivoted so hard and focused so much on retconning that it ruined it. At least TLJ took some risks.
FWIW, I don't think Kylo works as an antagonist either.
Its kinda amazing that of the 9 main Star War films, you could say 3 are great, 1 is okay, and 1 is controversial (TLJ) the rest are kinda terrible? Solo was uninteresting as heck. At least Rogue One was good.
What kinda blows my mind is didn't Disney know what movie TLJ was going to be? They pivoted so hard and focused so much on retconning that it ruined it. At least TLJ took some risks.
FWIW, I don't think Kylo works as an antagonist either.
Its kinda amazing that of the 9 main Star War films, you could say 3 are great, 1 is okay, and 1 is controversial (TLJ) the rest are kinda terrible? Solo was uninteresting as heck. At least Rogue One was good.
An argument can be made that that gun was fired in TLJ (pushing Kylo to the brink resulting in him snapping, killing him, and becoming the new Supreme Leader) but just not in a way the viewer liked, which really isn't a valid reasoning for dismissal. He served his purpose.
I apologize for not wanting to engage in a discussion that is nearly as old as this forum itself. I've tried to move on from beating dead horses that have no clear end in sight.
The issue that I have with Snoke being irrelevant is that his actions led to the complete nullification of the ending of the original Trilogy. It feels like if they can just randomly introduce a new threat that upends everything, even without any build up or weighty story explanation, then no victory has any value in this series. Of course, a cheap excuse to bring back the emperor wasn't any better...
Anything that does not happen in the way a viewer liked is a perfectly valid reason for a viewer to be dissatisfied. Thus these are opinions
You are free to think Snoke served his purpose
We are free to feel his potential was squandered
and yet you posted this a few posts up:
and when engaged, you backed down
I'm not buying the apology
Well it's not an opinion. That was Rian's intent and ended up being what happened on screen. You can dislike it but it still happened.
Damn you got me.
I needed to know more about Snoke to give a shit about him or have any investment in Kylo overtaking him, without that it was just a wet fart
Yeah with the OT it wasn't as important since the Star Wars galaxy was something new and that was just the state of the galaxy. Even so we were eventually given 3 movies to flesh out the backstory of the rise of the Empire. Resetting the Star Wars Galaxy to basically the same state was the OT by some rando was not a great decision. Having the New Republic face some kind of new non Imperial threat that pushes it to the breaking point probably would have been much more interesting than Rebels vs Empire 2 Electric Boogaloo.
I don't think this is true at all. A lot of stuff in the original trilogy was brainstormed and changed as they went along but George still had a general idea of where he wanted things to go. And he was a consistent factor in every film. There was no creator here to even admit that they didn't know where the story was going. It's supposed to be a trilogy. You need SOME connective tissue between each film. Even if they didn't have a consistent writer across all three films, the least they could have done was rolled with the creative decisions made by their directors. Instead, they had the last film in this trilogy fighting to erase the middle film. I don't really understand what you're trying to argue here. You think most stories are just improvised? Of course writers don't have EVERYTHING mapped out from the get go. That's why we have drafts, editors, etc. But generally speaking, if you're creating a story that spans multiple films, books, etc. you need a rough plan or a consistent creative force behind the story. The ST had neither.
no one was happy because it was a shity explanation. Also there was no possibility of ever making him an interesting character, he was killed off in a 'surprise twist'.
by your logic they shouldn't have any backstory for characters ever because they are all shitty Wookieepedia entries.
The other option that doesn't get brought up so often is to maybe have interesting characters in your trilogy, instead of introducing characters that a director finds 'fundamentally uninteresting' or is incapable of making interesting.
Exactly. There's few things more terrifying than a child who can't be reasoned with that has access to the most destructive weapons available. You don't know what a tantrum may lead to. It all depends on their mood.
I don't see why the payoff has to come in the form of backstory reveal, though.
I would say that Snoke is set up as a powerful evil wizard who claims to be impossible to outplay or defeat, and who you assume (based on your familiarity with a series that tends to tell the same stories over and over) will be the bad guy that must be defeated at the end of the third movie in the trilogy. The payoff comes when this ostensibly invincible foe is defeated through a cunning plan to use his own hubris against him. That's Snoke. Set up and paid off, with his death acting as a way to transition the story away from the predictable ending and towards something new and interesting.
I just don't know why you'd get so fixated on needing to know who he was. His identity isn't treated as a mystery in the movies. No character wonders who he was. There's no hanging question posed within the text that remains unanswered. You learnt everything you needed to know about who he was by watching the movies; if you needed to know more you would have been told more. He was just a fuckin' guy with some powers, and then he died so you don't have to worry about him any more.
It's fine if snoke wasn't interesting...
but the previous movie made him seem like someone mysterious and interesting... this is because I was under the impression that the sith were mostly wiped out. in a vacuum, the decision makes sense. But not sure if it's consistent with what the previous movie was trying to set up.
The fundamental problem with this new trilogy was that each movie had a different vision. and the end result is a mishmash of conflicting themes.
imo, each sequel was a overcorrection of the previous.
but the previous movie made him seem like someone mysterious and interesting... this is because I was under the impression that the sith were mostly wiped out. in a vacuum, the decision makes sense. But not sure if it's consistent with what the previous movie was trying to set up.
The fundamental problem with this new trilogy was that each movie had a different vision. and the end result is a mishmash of conflicting themes.
imo, each sequel was a overcorrection of the previous.
Why would it automatically be a rehash of ROTJ? Snoke was a mysterious character and could have literally created any backstory or shaped him in anyway. Instead, he was just pissed away.
It's not smart, it's incredibly lazy and shows no care for the actual material.
If your only 2 creative paths are rehash or cut, then that's pretty piss poor.
It's not smart, it's incredibly lazy and shows no care for the actual material.
If your only 2 creative paths are rehash or cut, then that's pretty piss poor.
I still think TLJ sucks, but I see where he's coming from here.
I would've liked it if he actually did anything more interesting with it. "You thought I was going to do the thing, but I didn't!!" Isn't especially engaging on its own.
Writers should only give characters backstories if they think it's necessary to inform their personalities and characterization within the story that's being told, otherwise they shouldn't waste the time. Not every character needs a backstory. Most don't.
Thinking that every character in the universe needs a full biography is 100% Wookieepedia mindset. You don't see fans of other series that don't have exhaustive lore encyclopedias complaining that a character didn't have their entire backstory told on-screen.