Episode IX fan theories (warning: here be dragons).

[Lord Revan]

I think Snoke is suppose to be sort of a red herring(you think he'll be main bad guy but he isn't) so having a complex or important backstory would be counter-productive that said giving him something could help even if it's just to say "he was a nobody before his rise to power".

[FaxModem1]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

Because when Star Wars came out, he was part of the setting. He was the ruler of this evil empire who had somehow corrupted Vader.

Snoke runs into the problem of how he doesn't fit into such an established setting without elaboration. He was either a pawn of Palpatine's, a competitor of Palpatine's that, for whatever reason, Palpatine didn't care about, or someone Palpatine wasn't aware of.

Same way that apparently the good guys let an entire empire sneak up on them and didn't notice until Starkiller made them go boom. Explaining, or even better, seeing, how this happened while our heroes were on watch would help us know the stakes of what's going on and why we should care about these guys aside from, 'Dude, their Death Star knockoff is really fricking huge'.

[Elheru Aran]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

Eh. We knew as far back as ANH that for there to be an Empire, generally there must be an Emperor, and I'm fairly sure they mentioned him although not by name. Then ESB built him up a bit further by exhibiting a fairly close relationship between Vader and the Emperor. Jedi expanded that further when Obi-wan elaborated on what happened, I really want to say that he mentions Palpatine corrupting Anakin/Vader but it's been a really long time since I watched the OT. Anybody who had watched the previous two movies would already know that a.) the Empire is bad and Vader is a bad guy, therefore his master the Emperor was probably a bad guy too, and b.) considering he was talking with Vader about capturing Luke for their own purposes, potentially he was a Force user as well.

Anyway, that's backstory right there. Big? Extensive? Deep? Not really, no. But Snoke doesn't have anywhere near that kind of foundation, because there's no good way to fit him into the established canon of the OT films' background. The prequels had the advantage in that they only had to fill in the blanks of an already existing illustration; the sequel trilogy has to pretty much draw an entire picture that still matches the other two reasonably well.

[Vympel]

No you can't otherwise you wouldn't have to point to out of universe ramble by the director about King Arthur something something Beowulf something something. We are talking about Luke. What made Luke change and how it fits his character arc from the original trilogy. The answer is it doesn't.

ROFLMAO. "Out of universe"? Are you on drugs? This isn't a versus debate where we argue about what is and isn't canon. We're talking about what is and isn't good writing. And writing Luke as if nothing has happened to him in 40 fucking years is bad fucking writing, and fundamentally dishonest about the character to its core.

In any universe, people grow and change as they grow older.

Yes exactly. That is the point. He was intent on saving Vader even though he never really knew him and even though he wasn't responsible for his fall. But he gave up on the person he watched growing up and for whose fall he felt responsible? This change in Luke's character makes no sense. Oh yeah I know Beowulf something something, King Arthur, myth, etc.

It's not a "change" in Luke's character at all, it's a totally different situation with which he had never dealt with. Feelings of responsibility, guilt and hubris had no role to play in Luke's feelings about Vader. Why would his experience with Vader mean he would be less inclined to be ashamed of his failrue with Ben? It is - again - a totally irrelevant complaint.

Yes a panic attack, that's what it amounts to. He saw something that might be the future and then hysterically ignited his lightsaber but just then whoops Kylo woke up.

You mean like that time he flipped out into a dark side rage and almost murdered his father at the mere suggestion that Leia might be turned to the dark side and only stopped after he had maimed him?

Oh, what horrible writing - don't these dumb writers know that when something bad happens to you and you pull yourself back, you freeze into the perfect version of yourself and it'll never happen again - no matter how briefly - no matter what the situation is?

Yeah dude I know he doesn't miss them or give a shit about them. That's kind of what I'm complaining about.

Whoever could've suspected that someone who has deliberately exiled himself will not be running into someone's arms the moment they burst through his door screaming in rage. Terrible writing.

No you are confronted with mention of widespread technologies and concepts: holograms and force projections. You respond by complaining that we have never seen a 4K holoprojector and besides we don't know whether they have HDMI extension at the salt planet.

"Yes, my argument is nerdy and ridiculous, but its not that nerdy" is not the winning argument you think it is.

But Dooku only says that after fighting Yoda and knowing for sure that their Force abilities are roughly evenly matched. What on Earth would make Kylo think he can stand up to Luke after that display? He hated him so it was organic? What if his lighstaber was destroyed on Snoke's ship? Would he run at Luke with his bare hands because he's very very angry?

Yes, it was organic, for the reasons already explained. Your criticism amounts to nothing but "oh but this was not rational" as if that's the reason we watch movies - to watch our heroes and villains behave in 100% ratioinal ways and always make perfect decisions! Good luck finding any remotely good film that does this, ever.

Wait a minute. How does all this help your case? The fact that Kylo and Rey spent so much time communicating with each other would only serve to put Kylo in the "projection and telepathy" headpsace and would make it even more likely to think about projections and illusions when facing Luke. There is even a scene where Rey shoots Kylo "through the stomach" with a blaster during one of their sessions. So now that Luke has survived all those blaster bolts...

Oh wow. Seriously? When Ben and Rey "link", the premonition and feeling of it is immediately apparent to them the moment it happens, before they even see each other. It is clearly personal and specific. Everyone could see Luke, not just Ben, which automtically makes his experience different from his experience from Rey. The most significant part is that we know such projections are not mere optical illusions, and Ben's comment to Rey that "you're not doing this, the effort would kill you" would make him extremely unlikely to believe that Luke was doing something that would kill him.

But no it's really Luke, he can deflect heavy blaster bolts like it's nothing let me run down there and do...what exactly?

Kill him with his lightsabre, obviously. Not hard, this stuff.

Again naratively it's an optical trick and nothing more. The moment Kylo figured it out Luke was useless.

I'm trying to figure out whether you're simply arguing in bad faith or are just really just this bad at watching movies. The moment Kylo figured it out Luke had already done what he set out to do. His goal was complete.

You can be impulsive and still have a sense of reality. You can punch a guy if he looks at you the wrong way and still not jump into a tiger's cage because it roared at you as you passed by.

I'm sorry that your entirely subjective sense of "reality" does not accord with Ben's. Clearly this is terrible writing.

What on God's green Earth are you talking about? I mentioned Snokes attack on Hux as an example of a Force user physically affecting others over great distances. Of course it wouldn't do to show Luke using the Force to smash people around the way Snoke did. The point is that showing Luke physically affecting the attacking forces as the ultimate display of Force before he dies wouldn't be outside of what the movie has already shown in terms of ABILITIES NOT CHARACTERIZATION.

No it wouldn't, but it'd still be absolute story-telling dogshit, for all the reasons I just laid out and which you completely ignored and didn't address. I'll repeat:

If Luke somehow used some super awesome Force power to "affect" the First Order ground force remotely then he wouldn't have seen Leia again, made the ending of the film and the re-ignition of Luke's legend (as seen with the childen re-enacting the final confrontation, complete with ersatz Luke action figures) impossible, given Kylo absolutely nothing to do with no meaningful interaction with Luke, and had zero drama or tension.

A writer has to think about all of these issues to get the movie to where it needs to get, not subborn every single goal to this petty, arbitrary nonsense about "Luke doing something sufficiently 'real'".

Trying to stop the First Order from destroying the Resistance is defense isn't it? He doesn't have to use the Force do pop out Hux's eyeballs for God's sake there is plenty of room for him to do something real.

Like what?

I mean really, he couldn't even be assed to come to the planet in person. He literally phoned it in.

In the actual movie, Luke performs a feat so strenuous that it kills him.

Your interpretation of this: "lol he was lazy, he phoned it in, so dumb that he didn't do something "real".

Doing something so difficult you die isn't "real", apparently.

[The Romulan Republic]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

Because when Star Wars came out, he was part of the setting. He was the ruler of this evil empire who had somehow corrupted Vader.

He was a one-line mention in A New Hope, not even by name.

In any case, if he was "a part of the setting", so is Snoke. And neither of them has much backstory (outside of the EU, in Palpatine's case).

Snoke runs into the problem of how he doesn't fit into such an established setting without elaboration. He was either a pawn of Palpatine's, a competitor of Palpatine's that, for whatever reason, Palpatine didn't care about, or someone Palpatine wasn't aware of.

Because Palpatine was aware of every single Force user in the galaxy. That's why he found Luke, Leia, Obi-wan, Yoda, Ahsoka...

But if it really bothers you that much, just go with the theory of him being an Imperial Inquisitor. There's supposed to be a whole bunch we've never seen, and it explains how he had an in with ex-Imperials, and how he had access to a bunch of Imperial weaponry.

Same way that apparently the good guys let an entire empire sneak up on them and didn't notice until Starkiller made them go boom. Explaining, or even better, seeing, how this happened while our heroes were on watch would help us know the stakes of what's going on and why we should care about these guys aside from, 'Dude, their Death Star knockoff is really fricking huge'.

They knew, they just didn't want to fight (Leia aside).

[Vympel]

The kind of priorities in writing that consider explaining where Snoke came from as something of importance can very easily run away from you. The ultimate expression of that is the recent piece of shit stinker, Fantastic Beasts 2: Crimes of Grindelwald. The entire movie is built on the sort of logic that would devote time and energy to Snoke's backstory - excessive 'worldbuilding', ridiculous quantities of exposition and brand-reinforcement - but no clear narrative and no clear theme.

[FaxModem1]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

Because when Star Wars came out, he was part of the setting. He was the ruler of this evil empire who had somehow corrupted Vader.

He was a one-line mention in A New Hope, not even by name.

In any case, if he was "a part of the setting", so is Snoke. And neither of them has much backstory (outside of the EU, in Palpatine's case).

Yes, but as stated by others, this is a sequel property. It's an odd beat that makes you wonder if Snoke went to Minions R Us or something. It reminds me of the army Imhotep had in the Mummy Returns. Who are they? Who cares, you didn't question the secret society to fight against Imhotep in the first movie, so why should you wonder what's going with this totally new one in this film?

Snoke runs into the problem of how he doesn't fit into such an established setting without elaboration. He was either a pawn of Palpatine's, a competitor of Palpatine's that, for whatever reason, Palpatine didn't care about, or someone Palpatine wasn't aware of.

Because Palpatine was aware of every single Force user in the galaxy. That's why he found Luke, Leia, Obi-wan, Yoda, Ahsoka...

But if it really bothers you that much, just go with the theory of him being an Imperial Inquisitor. There's supposed to be a whole bunch we've never seen, and it explains how he had an in with ex-Imperials, and how he had access to a bunch of Imperial weaponry.

Ones who were worthy enough to be 'rivals' were, as shown with Darth Maul, or were very good at hiding and were pretty much non-entities, like Yoda and Obi Wan. Snoke seems to want to be the big conqueror of the galaxy, so we need to know to some degree why Palpatine ignored him, and where he came from. It's a line that would take three minutes, tops. But the writers just don't care.

Same way that apparently the good guys let an entire empire sneak up on them and didn't notice until Starkiller made them go boom. Explaining, or even better, seeing, how this happened while our heroes were on watch would help us know the stakes of what's going on and why we should care about these guys aside from, 'Dude, their Death Star knockoff is really fricking huge'.

They knew, they just didn't want to fight (Leia aside).

Really, in what scene was that established? All we saw of them was 'looks at incoming Starkiller beam with fear before going boom'.

[Patroklos]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

Because as Batman already said the OT was the start of a story working with a blank slate. We walked in knowing nothing and thus were willing to accept ground rules being laid out. The ST is the final act and is intentionally riding the coattails of what came before it, and by definition from a world building perspective is bound by what came before. They payed those billions for the property rights specifically so they could be bound by the previous story and setting. That doesn't mean it can't change things, but people are going to notice differences and want to know why they exist.

Additionally, the First Order is not a new threat. So within the arc of the nine primary films, the entire rise and fall of Snoke should be encompassed within the timeline. Because the First Order is not new, just the Empire with slightly modified wardrobe, and we previously witnessed its rise and supposed fall in the previous films, there is no way for you to just pickup like they did and not expect the audience to wonder what the hell happened. Snoke is just an extension of that.

If the threat were entirely new, like a Vong style extra galactic threat with no link to previous lore (I am not advocating for the Vong, just using it as an example, pick your poison), then you could do what happened in the OT and start from scratch. There is no context to hold them against like exist for the FO/Snoke, the audience will accept more and it will be easier to avoid running afoul of previously established setting details.

[Kane Starkiller]

ROFLMAO. "Out of universe"? Are you on drugs? This isn't a versus debate where we argue about what is and isn't canon. We're talking about what is and isn't good writing. And writing Luke as if nothing has happened to him in 40 fucking years is bad fucking writing, and fundamentally dishonest about the character to its core.

In any universe, people grow and change as they grow older.

We are talking about what is and isn't good writing so you thought you'll link to a interview with a director after the movie was over where he babbles about Beowulf and King Arthur? But it's cool yo because this is not one of those nerdy versus debates.
No actually it's not cool. Either the movie itself showed how Luke changed or it didn't. And it didn't.
You don't get to say, oh but 40 million eons passed so now the movie gets to do with Luke whatever it wants. There needs to be a narrative that gradually establishes the change not just LOL entropy.

It's not a "change" in Luke's character at all, it's a totally different situation with which he had never dealt with. Feelings of responsibility, guilt and hubris had no role to play in Luke's feelings about Vader. Why would his experience with Vader mean he would be less inclined to be ashamed of his failrue with Ben? It is - again - a totally irrelevant complaint.

Yes it is a change. Luke doesn't leave his friends to suffer. Luke doesn't give up on people. His experience with Vader means that he knows even a person who was evil for decades can turn back. A person like Luke would be more determined to help someone if he thought he was partially responsible for their predicament not less.
Luke was hubristic remember. "You'll find I'm full of surprises". And then he got his hand cut off. He learned his lesson. He saved Vader. Where did all this self pitying hermit shit come from?

You mean like that time he flipped out into a dark side rage and almost murdered his father at the mere suggestion that Leia might be turned to the dark side and only stopped after he had maimed him?

Oh, what horrible writing - don't these dumb writers know that when something bad happens to you and you pull yourself back, you freeze into the perfect version of yourself and it'll never happen again - no matter how briefly - no matter what the situation is?

He charged a guy that he was pretty evenly matched with. He didn't jump out of an airlock and try to destroy the Death Star with his lightsaber. But more importantly this scene was all about Luke's rage. Palpatine worked for half the movie precisely to bring Luke to that point. Kylo is angry because he is always angry to the point of being an idiot.

Whoever could've suspected that someone who has deliberately exiled himself will not be running into someone's arms the moment they burst through his door screaming in rage. Terrible writing.

Yes terrible writing. They butchered Luke's character. Glad we agree.

"Yes, my argument is nerdy and ridiculous, but its not that nerdy" is not the winning argument you think it is.

I mean we saw holograms and force projections in that same damn movie. How nerdy is it to point out something seen 5 minutes ago? It is however nerdy to say "yeah but those holograms are only 16-bit color".

Yes, it was organic, for the reasons already explained. Your criticism amounts to nothing but "oh but this was not rational" as if that's the reason we watch movies - to watch our heroes and villains behave in 100% ratioinal ways and always make perfect decisions! Good luck finding any remotely good film that does this, ever.

It was organic in the sense that it was a common trope of "my henchmen failed and now I must fight you mano a mano". But it was stupid in the sense that you just saw someone do something way above your paygrade and you're still going down to fight them even though you stand no chance of winning. It's like when the 10th guy tries to take out Steven Seagal after witnessing what he did to the first 9. At some point it just becomes silly.

Oh wow. Seriously? When Ben and Rey "link", the premonition and feeling of it is immediately apparent to them the moment it happens, before they even see each other. It is clearly personal and specific. Everyone could see Luke, not just Ben, which automtically makes his experience different from his experience from Rey. The most significant part is that we know such projections are not mere optical illusions, and Ben's comment to Rey that "you're not doing this, the effort would kill you" would make him extremely unlikely to believe that Luke was doing something that would kill him.

The effort of projecting would kill him but the effort of blocking all that firepower wouldn't? So jumping from personal projection to "multicast" is just way out there. No one could've thought of that. But standing up to that firepower? Yeah makes sense. But more than that Luke's entire plan was hoping he'll be able to fool Kylo. If Kylo wasn't fooled they would all be dead.

Kill him with his lightsabre, obviously. Not hard, this stuff.

But it is hard. He could barely beat those red guards. Snoke flicked him off like a bug when he got uppity. What the fuck is he going to do against a guy who can't be killed by heavy guns. What's the plan here?

I'm trying to figure out whether you're simply arguing in bad faith or are just really just this bad at watching movies. The moment Kylo figured it out Luke had already done what he set out to do. His goal was complete.

I know. The shitty script had Kylo and the entire ground force stand there and waste time with an optical illusion. Luke's entire plan hinged on Kylo and everyone else being fooled and standing there uselessly watching the grudge match like it's a fucing UFC final event of the evening. It was fucking stupid.

I'm sorry that your entirely subjective sense of "reality" does not accord with Ben's. Clearly this is terrible writing.

I'm sorry too. And yes terrible, horrible writing.

No it wouldn't, but it'd still be absolute story-telling dogshit, for all the reasons I just laid out and which you completely ignored and didn't address. I'll repeat:

If Luke somehow used some super awesome Force power to "affect" the First Order ground force remotely then he wouldn't have seen Leia again, made the ending of the film and the re-ignition of Luke's legend (as seen with the childen re-enacting the final confrontation, complete with ersatz Luke action figures) impossible, given Kylo absolutely nothing to do with no meaningful interaction with Luke, and had zero drama or tension.

A writer has to think about all of these issues to get the movie to where it needs to get, not subborn every single goal to this petty, arbitrary nonsense about "Luke doing something sufficiently 'real'".

He would've seen Leia again and reignited the legend if he bothered to fucking show up in person.
Tacking on a forced scene of children recreating that epic battle when master jedi Luke Skywalker fooled evil dark wizard Kylo Ren for 2 minutes that he was there when he actually wasn't (!) doesn't change how godawfull that scene was.
And sufficiently real? How about just real. How about something that cannot be replicated by ingesting a sufficient amount of marijuana.

Trying to stop the First Order from destroying the Resistance is defense isn't it? He doesn't have to use the Force do pop out Hux's eyeballs for God's sake there is plenty of room for him to do something real.

Like what?

Is this a job offer?

In the actual movie, Luke performs a feat so strenuous that it kills him.
Your interpretation of this: "lol he was lazy, he phoned it in, so dumb that he didn't do something "real".
Doing something so difficult you die isn't "real", apparently.

It's strenuous because the writer decided it was strenuous. If the writers decided that farting was some kind of strenuous task that kills you and then had Luke appear in Kylo's shuttle and fart so that he can't concentrate because of the bad smell it wouldn't suddenly make that feat epic or heroic.
If he's going to die then have him come personally to that planet and do something worthy of his character. Rian had Leia drag herself through vacuum for no fucking reason, he could've come up with something for Luke before he dies.

[KraytKing]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

I can't believe we're having this dumb fucking argument again. As others have said, we are operating in an established universe with persistent characters and events. We get a little pissed off when something happens that doesn't fit clearly with those persistent characters and events. Thus, we need someone to say something about how it came to be.


Here's a theory: the reason the New Republic won't do anything is because the galaxy is in a crippling depression following twenty years of brutal civil war. They fought the Empire as much as they could, but the devastation and scorched earth tactics eventually rendered both sides unable to continue. The First Order came out of the Unknown Regions and joined with the rump Empire, bringing their fresh resources together with an existing, if damaged, economic base. Snoke is actually a genius, and was able to heal the Empire's economy while the New Republic continued to suffer, beset upon by the Hutts and other crime lords.

Still don't know where he came from.

[Gandalf]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

I can't believe we're having this dumb fucking argument again. As others have said, we are operating in an established universe with persistent characters and events. We get a little pissed off when something happens that doesn't fit clearly with those persistent characters and events. Thus, we need someone to say something about how it came to be.

This whole thing reads like you're ticked off that something new turned up without it being spoonfed to you. The SW galaxy is pretty fucking big, with plenty of room for new heroes, villains, and adventures. That's o e of its big strengths, in that anything could be waiting on the next of its millions of worlds, or in the deepest reaches of space. If you're going to get internet angry every time something new happens, you're going to have a bad time.

[Batman]

Who says Snoke was even an item during Palpatine's time? It's been 30 years. For all we know Snoke may not have been born yet by the time of the OT.

[Vympel]

We are talking about what is and isn't good writing so you thought you'll link to a interview with a director after the movie was over where he babbles about Beowulf and King Arthur? But it's cool yo because this is not one of those nerdy versus debates.

Yeah I forgot how often directors talking about their thoughts when they wrote a film is a feature of versus debates, happens all the time!

No actually it's not cool. Either the movie itself showed how Luke changed or it didn't. And it didn't.
You don't get to say, oh but 40 million eons passed so now the movie gets to do with Luke whatever it wants. There needs to be a narrative that gradually establishes the change not just LOL entropy.

LOL, you honestly expect me to believe given all your bad faith caterwauling and scoffing that you'd ever consider the change to have been established? The narrative clearly established the change and why, you simply didn't like it. Your refusal to take the movie at its word and make petty, irrational complaints that constantly lie about what happened in the movie and treat the story telling with contempt and disbelief throughout your posts demonstrates that handily.

Yes it is a change. Luke doesn't leave his friends to suffer. Luke doesn't give up on people. His experience with Vader means that he knows even a person who was evil for decades can turn back. A person like Luke would be more determined to help someone if he thought he was partially responsible for their predicament not less.

Bullshit. What personal failure did Luke in the original film that is in any way relevant to his failure with Ben in character, content or consequences? Where did Luke commit a fuck up as epic as his star student turning to the dark side and slaughtering all but 6 or so of his other students? What movie was that in? This is just a naked irratinal fanboy hero-worship assertion, based on nothing at all.

Luke was hubristic remember. "You'll find I'm full of surprises". And then he got his hand cut off. He learned his lesson. He saved Vader. Where did all this self pitying hermit shit come from?

It should be obvious to even the painfully stupid how desperate and weak this argument is. Luke's 'hubris' in TESB was nothing but overestimating abilities to fight Vader. The consequences were entirely personal to him, and didn't effect anyone else. The idea that this is at all equivalent to Ben's fall or its consequences is ludicrous.

He charged a guy that he was pretty evenly matched with. He didn't jump out of an airlock and try to destroy the Death Star with his lightsaber. But more importantly this scene was all about Luke's rage. Palpatine worked for half the movie precisely to bring Luke to that point. Kylo is angry because he is always angry to the point of being an idiot.

What does any of this bullshit you're talking about have to do with anything? The point is that even in ROTJ, where you apparently believe your idealised perfect heroic caricature of Luke exists all it took was for Luke to almost murder his father was the mere taunt - entirely seperte from reality - that Leia would join the dark side. But yeah, Luke considering for the briefest moment to kill Ben when he has a powerful premonition of all the death and destruction he would cause and then ashamedly turning off his lightsaber - so out of character, lol. Betrayal!

Yes terrible writing. They butchered Luke's character. Glad we agree.

No actual substantive response there I see.

I mean we saw holograms and force projections in that same damn movie. How nerdy is it to point out something seen 5 minutes ago? It is however nerdy to say "yeah but those holograms are only 16-bit color".

I'm sorry you want carte blanche to make up arbitrarily perfect holograms never before seen in Star Wars as a 'plot hole' without it being called out for being painfully stupid. It's as dumb as complaining that Luke could've been a perfect droid copy of a human equipped with a powerful miniaturised deflector shield, ffs.

It was organic in the sense that it was a common trope of "my henchmen failed and now I must fight you mano a mano". But it was stupid in the sense that you just saw someone do something way above your paygrade and you're still going down to fight them even though you stand no chance of winning. It's like when the 10th guy tries to take out Steven Seagal after witnessing what he did to the first 9. At some point it just becomes silly.

No, its organic in the sense that its consistent with how we know Ben behaves and his obsession with personally destroying Luke.

The effort of projecting would kill him but the effort of blocking all that firepower wouldn't? So jumping from personal projection to "multicast" is just way out there. No one could've thought of that. But standing up to that firepower? Yeah makes sense. But more than that Luke's entire plan was hoping he'll be able to fool Kylo. If Kylo wasn't fooled they would all be dead.

"Hmmm, I have no real response to anything actual being said ... what to do ... I know, I'll just appeal to my own personal and entirely arbitrarily incredulity at an entirely fictional construct for which I have zero pre-existing frame of reference and therefore no remotely rational basis for skepticism!"

But it is hard. He could barely beat those red guards. Snoke flicked him off like a bug when he got uppity. What the fuck is he going to do against a guy who can't be killed by heavy guns. What's the plan here?

The plan was ... kill him with his lightsaber. I'm sorry the movie didn't draw this out on a blackboard, but rage and hatred don't really allow for it.

I know. The shitty script had Kylo and the entire ground force stand there and waste time with an optical illusion. Luke's entire plan hinged on Kylo and everyone else being fooled and standing there uselessly watching the grudge match like it's a fucing UFC final event of the evening. It was fucking stupid.

You know? Really? Cos it sure doesn't read like it:

"The moment Kylo figured it out Luke was useless."

But yes, Luke's plan hinged on knowing how Kylo would react. How stupid, the Jedi Master bet on knowing how his evil former student will behave. But yeah it would've better to write it so as to save everyone with a thing that is guaranteed to work, to eliminate all tension and thereby improve the audience's experience. That's how good writers write movies.

I'm sorry too. And yes terrible, horrible writing.

No actual substantive response there either I see.

He would've seen Leia again and reignited the legend if he bothered to fucking show up in person.

Oh, so we're not talking about remote affectation anymore?

Tacking on a forced scene of children recreating that epic battle when master jedi Luke Skywalker fooled evil dark wizard Kylo Ren for 2 minutes that he was there when he actually wasn't (!) doesn't change how godawfull that scene was.

Ah yes, it was 'forced'. Real substantive criticism there.

And sufficiently real? How about just real. How about something that cannot be replicated by ingesting a sufficient amount of marijuana.

Who knew that you can project a perfect facsimile of yourself to an entire army and even droids with marijuana? Good faith engagement with the material there.

At this stage, its quite obvious you don't have any remotely rational objection to the mechanism of Luke's final sacrifice. Its completely and wilfully irrational, based entirely on assigning a totally arbitrary sense of importance to him "actually being there" irrespective of how totally irrelevant it would be to anything actually happening in the story.

Why don't you just be honest and admit that? "I don't like it" is a lot more honest than all this asinine faux intellectual bullshit where you try and pretend its something more than that.

Is this a job offer?

No, its an invitation to see you proffer alternatives that could actually survive any of your faux intellectual objections to the movie as written and achieve the same story-telling goals.

Of course, none of them actually could. That's the ultimate point.

It's strenuous because the writer decided it was strenuous. If the writers decided that farting was some kind of strenuous task that kills you and then had Luke appear in Kylo's shuttle and fart so that he can't concentrate because of the bad smell it wouldn't suddenly make that feat epic or heroic.
If he's going to die then have him come personally to that planet and do something worthy of his character. Rian had Leia drag herself through vacuum for no fucking reason, he could've come up with something for Luke before he dies.

No shit, of course the writer decided it was strenuous. What, you think the writer should have gone to the Objective Truth Library of Star Wars and written the movie off of that? You don't know how writing fiction works?

Not only is your obsession with Luke "coming there personally" entirely arbitrary, doing so would lose one of the movies great parallels. "Luminous beings are we - not this crude matter." But hey, fuck that, its soooo important where Luke's flesh coffin happens to be plonked when he sacrifices himself! Just ... because.

[FaxModem1]

Here's a question I would like answered. What was the purpose of handing Han's dice to Leia when they weren't really there? I get that it adds to the scene, but shouldn't the script supervisor have pointed out that those are going to vanish as soon as Luke ends his force projection?

[Gandalf]

I took it to be a symbolic statement about how Han would always be with her, and how he's with the Force even if he can't make a ghost.

[Vympel]

If you were to compile a list of Star Wars villains in the films without an exposited backstory, the answer would be "nearly all Star Wars villains". Vader and Kylo Ren are pretty much the only ones with any real background, for obvious reasons. Palpatine in the prequels ... sort of? We know literally nothing about him except his job and the planet he represents in the Senate. Also implied he was Darth Plagueis' apprentice.

I can't believe we're having this dumb fucking argument again. As others have said, we are operating in an established universe with persistent characters and events. We get a little pissed off when something happens that doesn't fit clearly with those persistent characters and events. Thus, we need someone to say something about how it came to be.

You think you "need" it because you've projected the utterly exhausting volume of received wisdom built up over 30 years of medicore licensed fiction back in time and distorted the way the films have actually always operated.

You get the information you need to get to follow the story, no more and no less. Snoke was never presented as a mystery or as a question that required an answer in TFA. Everyone in the film knows who he is. He's not even an antagonist in the film - he's a vehicle to provide exposition as to the First Order's objective re: Skywalker.

Here's a theory: the reason the New Republic won't do anything is because the galaxy is in a crippling depression following twenty years of brutal civil war. They fought the Empire as much as they could, but the devastation and scorched earth tactics eventually rendered both sides unable to continue. The First Order came out of the Unknown Regions and joined with the rump Empire, bringing their fresh resources together with an existing, if damaged, economic base. Snoke is actually a genius, and was able to heal the Empire's economy while the New Republic continued to suffer, beset upon by the Hutts and other crime lords.

Still don't know where he came from.

Thinking about all the times in Star Wars movies someone exposited anything remotely along the lines of that in content or detail. Answer: its literally never. Star Wars movies have never actually bothered to exposit the past like this, because it'd be utter shit and a waste of the audience's time. If you want writing like that, go watch Crimes of Grindelwald, see how you like it.

[KraytKing]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

I can't believe we're having this dumb fucking argument again. As others have said, we are operating in an established universe with persistent characters and events. We get a little pissed off when something happens that doesn't fit clearly with those persistent characters and events. Thus, we need someone to say something about how it came to be.

This whole thing reads like you're ticked off that something new turned up without it being spoonfed to you. The SW galaxy is pretty fucking big, with plenty of room for new heroes, villains, and adventures. That's o e of its big strengths, in that anything could be waiting on the next of its millions of worlds, or in the deepest reaches of space. If you're going to get internet angry every time something new happens, you're going to have a bad time.

Sure, the Star Wars galaxy is big. We were shown that in ANH when they built a battle station the size of a moon, and other feats of the Empire. The Empire was big, it controlled all of the bigness of Star Wars, and it could do these big things. And now we have a new contender who we're being told is BIGGER. It doesn't build battle stations the size of moons, it builds PLANETS that eat STARS and blow up whole SYSTEMS. It doesn't have Star Destroyers a mile long, or SSDs five to twelve times that size, when it can have beasts with CANNONS that big (exaggeration, but only just). If you're claiming to be such a superlative to what came before, you need to explain why the earlier bit wasn't bigger, or why this is. Otherwise it feels like you don't care.

The simple solution: make it smaller.


EDIT:

Here's a theory: the reason the New Republic won't do anything is because the galaxy is in a crippling depression following twenty years of brutal civil war. They fought the Empire as much as they could, but the devastation and scorched earth tactics eventually rendered both sides unable to continue. The First Order came out of the Unknown Regions and joined with the rump Empire, bringing their fresh resources together with an existing, if damaged, economic base. Snoke is actually a genius, and was able to heal the Empire's economy while the New Republic continued to suffer, beset upon by the Hutts and other crime lords.

Still don't know where he came from.

Thinking about all the times in Star Wars movies someone exposited anything remotely along the lines of that in content or detail. Answer: its literally never. Star Wars movies have never actually bothered to exposit the past like this, because it'd be utter shit and a waste of the audience's time. If you want writing like that, go watch Crimes of Grindelwald, see how you like it.

Yeah, you're right,it's pretty desperate. I tried.

As I said, if it was smaller, you could show that more easily and cut some of the extraneous stuff. Snoke isn't Emperor 2.0 but rather Tarkin or Krennic 2.0, or even smaller, and the whole conflict takes place in one ruined sector. You see the devastation in every scene, every shot. None of the Unknown Regions bullshit. But of course that movie would never be made, because it would by necessity focus on one small art of the galaxy instead of claims to fame as THE FATE OF THE GALAXY.

You know, the worst Star Wars movie of the OT was the one where it had all the grandiose claims of SAVING THE GALAXY at the end. The other two were just about living to fight another day.

[Gandalf]

Did you fail to understand my post or are you just raving aimlessly?

[Vympel]

As I said, if it was smaller, you could show that more easily and cut some of the extraneous stuff. Snoke isn't Emperor 2.0 but rather Tarkin or Krennic 2.0, or even smaller, and the whole conflict takes place in one ruined sector. You see the devastation in every scene, every shot. None of the Unknown Regions bullshit. But of course that movie would never be made, because it would by necessity focus on one small art of the galaxy instead of claims to fame as THE FATE OF THE GALAXY.

You know, the worst Star Wars movie of the OT was the one where it had all the grandiose claims of SAVING THE GALAXY at the end. The other two were just about living to fight another day.

I assume you mean ROTJ, and it's undoubtedly the worst movie of the OT, but is it the fault of the saving the galaxy stuff? The movie's got a lot of problems:

- Harrison Ford's performance is woeful - he's over it and you can tell. It doesn't help that he looks pudgy, either (seriously, compare him to how he looks in TESB and after, in Indiana Jones)
- The dialog is ... not great
- Richard Marquand was the wrong director of the film.
- The movie's Vietnam War allegory is painful
- The entire first act of the movie is devoted to tying up loose ends from the previous movie and is utterly irrelevant to anything going on in the rest of the film. Also, the writing for that act in particular is incomprehensible though its easy not to notice which is actually credit to the film

[KraytKing]

Did you fail to understand my post or are you just raving aimlessly?

Alright, let me try again, a little simpler. Star Wars is as big as it is shown to be in the OT. That is accomplished by showing how big the Empire is. When the First Order is shown to be even bigger, massively so, than what we previously thought was the maximum, then we need some explanation. This is especially true when it comes only a generation after the previous bar was set.

Now that you get it, please go back and reread my previous post. I rather like it.

Vympel, I agree with you on almost all counts. I'll amend what I said: ROTJ isn't the worst because of the "saving the galaxy" bit, but the other two prove you can have a good, compelling story that makes internal and external sense without it.

[Patroklos]

Why does Snoke need a backstory? Palpatine didn't have one in Jedi and we all seemed cool with it.

I can't believe we're having this dumb fucking argument again. As others have said, we are operating in an established universe with persistent characters and events. We get a little pissed off when something happens that doesn't fit clearly with those persistent characters and events. Thus, we need someone to say something about how it came to be.

This whole thing reads like you're ticked off that something new turned up without it being spoonfed to you. The SW galaxy is pretty fucking big, with plenty of room for new heroes, villains, and adventures. That's o e of its big strengths, in that anything could be waiting on the next of its millions of worlds, or in the deepest reaches of space. If you're going to get internet angry every time something new happens, you're going to have a bad time.

I look forward to your rave reviews of Mr. Poopy Butthole's debut in the Episode IX. So new. So fresh.

[Kane Starkiller]

Yeah I forgot how often directors talking about their thoughts when they wrote a film is a feature of versus debates, happens all the time!

Who cares about directors making vague references to other fictional characters after I have walked out of the theatre? It's absolutely irrelevant to the quality of the movie.

LOL, you honestly expect me to believe given all your bad faith caterwauling and scoffing that you'd ever consider the change to have been established? The narrative clearly established the change and why, you simply didn't like it. Your refusal to take the movie at its word and make petty, irrational complaints that constantly lie about what happened in the movie and treat the story telling with contempt and disbelief throughout your posts demonstrates that handily.

"Refusal to take the movie at its word"
That's a very amusing way of saying "just accept whatever shit the movie is shoveling your way and don't ask any questions". The movie happens to be a sequel that is supposed to continue the story of already well established characters. You don't get to just take the characters and do whatever you want with them with no rhyme or reason and then say well this bad thing happened to them so all previously established characterization is out of the window.

Bullshit. What personal failure did Luke in the original film that is in any way relevant to his failure with Ben in character, content or consequences? Where did Luke commit a fuck up as epic as his star student turning to the dark side and slaughtering all but 6 or so of his other students? What movie was that in? This is just a naked irratinal fanboy hero-worship assertion, based on nothing at all.

Right, right unless the exact same bad thing already happened to Luke before then the writers get to have Luke react however they want and change his character however they please.
So never mind that the droid Luke chose to buy ultimately caused his aunt's and uncle's death which caused Luke to spring into action.
Never mind that he got defeated by Vader and didn't manage to save Han which caused Luke to try again next movie.
Never mind that Vader was fighting Luke even up to the very end of ROTJ which still didn't cause LUke to give up on him
See Luke never had to deal with the specific problem of all but 6 of his students dying and therefore his characterization is up for grabs!
Hey if in the next movie he looses all but seven of his students instead of all but six is that also a COMPLETELY NEW SITUATION and the writers get to move his character in another nonsensical direction?

It should be obvious to even the painfully stupid how desperate and weak this argument is. Luke's 'hubris' in TESB was nothing but overestimating abilities to fight Vader. The consequences were entirely personal to him, and didn't effect anyone else. The idea that this is at all equivalent to Ben's fall or its consequences is ludicrous.

Of course of course it has to be equivalent. If it's not equivalent then the sky is the limit as far as what you can do to Luke's character. Never mind that Luke is much younger in TESB, never mind that the events since that movie served to further strengthen his character. Fuck all of that because he never had to deal with this specific situation so it's totally cool to have him react exactly the opposite of the way we've always seen him react to setbacks.

What does any of this bullshit you're talking about have to do with anything? The point is that even in ROTJ, where you apparently believe your idealised perfect heroic caricature of Luke exists all it took was for Luke to almost murder his father was the mere taunt - entirely seperte from reality - that Leia would join the dark side. But yeah, Luke considering for the briefest moment to kill Ben when he has a powerful premonition of all the death and destruction he would cause and then ashamedly turning off his lightsaber - so out of character, lol. Betrayal!

Dude it's not a betrayal it's just a shitty movie.
Yeah it was just a taunt! It wasn't as if he was facing a guy that killed Obi-Wan in front of his eyes, attacked the ice base killing who knows how many people, cut off his hand and was throwing spinning lightsabers at him. Oh and at the same time being keenly aware that the Death Star is currently in the process of grinding his friends into dust.
All it took for Vader was to threaten his sister and the guy blew up! Geez talk about my perfect heroic caricature crumbling before my eyes! This is totally no different than Kylo the Idiot rushing at a dude he hasn't seen for years, who is currently making no threatening moves and who can apparently withstand 10 AT-AT concentrating their firepower on him.

No actual substantive response there I see.

Nothing substantive to respond to in that paragraph.

I'm sorry you want carte blanche to make up arbitrarily perfect holograms never before seen in Star Wars as a 'plot hole' without it being called out for being painfully stupid. It's as dumb as complaining that Luke could've been a perfect droid copy of a human equipped with a powerful miniaturised deflector shield, ffs.

Yeah I'm just bouncing of the walls crazy man! Between holograms, Jedi mind tricks, Force ghosts it's just cuckoo to point out that a guy surviving all of that could be an illusion. Because we've never seen HD Force ghosts and HD holograms. So it's more reasonable to conclude that Luke was deflecting that firepower.

No, its organic in the sense that its consistent with how we know Ben behaves and his obsession with personally destroying Luke.

He can be obsessed all he wants as long as his character maintains some sense of reality. Otherwise he's just an idiot. As is the script.

"Hmmm, I have no real response to anything actual being said ... what to do ... I know, I'll just appeal to my own personal and entirely arbitrarily incredulity at an entirely fictional construct for which I have zero pre-existing frame of reference and therefore no remotely rational basis for skepticism!"

Sure sure it's not like we've seen Jedi blown away by handheld blasters during the Order 66 including that conehead Jedi Master on the bridge that even had his lightsaber. It's not as if Kylo Ren would've learned during his training roughly what Jedi can and cannot do. So there is absolutely no reason for Kylo to doubt that Luke can survive the combined firepower of 10 AT-ATs and that an illusion might be at play.
It's just me and my arbitrary incredulity dude! Because increasing the color palette from 16-bit to 32-bit is no more likely than surviving combined firepower of 10 Abrams tanks. Silly me and my irrational skepticism.

The plan was ... kill him with his lightsaber. I'm sorry the movie didn't draw this out on a blackboard, but rage and hatred don't really allow for it.

You mean like he tried it with Snoke and got flicked away like an insect? But now he's going to do it to a guy that can withstand that firepower? Retarded.

You know? Really? Cos it sure doesn't read like it:

"The moment Kylo figured it out Luke was useless."

But yes, Luke's plan hinged on knowing how Kylo would react. How stupid, the Jedi Master bet on knowing how his evil former student will behave. But yeah it would've better to write it so as to save everyone with a thing that is guaranteed to work, to eliminate all tension and thereby improve the audience's experience. That's how good writers write movies.

He's betting that Kylo will order every single AT-AT to fire at him? And also bet that after Kylo comes down for the duel he won't simply order the other forces to continue on. Also he knew that Kylo and not Snoke was in command because the midichlorians told him that Snoke was killed 5 minutes ago. Beacause that's how good writers write movies.

No actual substantive response there either I see.

Nothing substantive to respond to.

Oh, so we're not talking about remote affectation anymore?

They are not mutually exclusive in discussing the alternatives to cheap parlor trick he pulled.

Ah yes, it was 'forced'. Real substantive criticism there.

Yes forced. They dumped some random children we've never seen on screen to make sure the audience understands just how HEROIC Luke was because the writers probably knew themselves that the way Luke was written does a shitty job of doing that.

Who knew that you can project a perfect facsimile of yourself to an entire army and even droids with marijuana? Good faith engagement with the material there.

At this stage, its quite obvious you don't have any remotely rational objection to the mechanism of Luke's final sacrifice. Its completely and wilfully irrational, based entirely on assigning a totally arbitrary sense of importance to him "actually being there" irrespective of how totally irrelevant it would be to anything actually happening in the story.

Why don't you just be honest and admit that? "I don't like it" is a lot more honest than all this asinine faux intellectual bullshit where you try and pretend its something more than that.

You pretend I was literal with my marijuana reference and then immediately talk about "good faith engagement".
And you are strawmaning my point. I was talking about Luke doing something that didn't depend on the utterly idiotic script that called for First Order to completely halt their advance and watch a UFC special between Kylo and Luke. He doesn't necessarily need to be there. Obi Wan wasn't "there" as it encouraged Luke to the Death Star exhaust port from beyond.
And since you mentioned droids, guess what, if they were in command they would just continue onward with the mission and stomp on Luke's illusion as it flickers out of existence.

No, its an invitation to see you proffer alternatives that could actually survive any of your faux intellectual objections to the movie as written and achieve the same story-telling goals.

Of course, none of them actually could. That's the ultimate point.

I'm not going to write their movies for them dude.

No shit, of course the writer decided it was strenuous. What, you think the writer should have gone to the Objective Truth Library of Star Wars and written the movie off of that? You don't know how writing fiction works?

Not only is your obsession with Luke "coming there personally" entirely arbitrary, doing so would lose one of the movies great parallels. "Luminous beings are we - not this crude matter." But hey, fuck that, its soooo important where Luke's flesh coffin happens to be plonked when he sacrifices himself! Just ... because.

Yeah of course the shitty writer decided performing cheap parlor tricks is strenuous in order to try and turn Luke's phoned in parlor trick into some great act of heroism. He did a remote Starlord dance off but it's deadly so it's oh so heroic...not.
And it's not just about "coming there personally". Neo didn't confront Smith "personally". But his activity in the Matrix wasn't just an illusion, he could physically affect it. From the narrative perspective it was real, Luke's actions weren't real, he could stop no one and help no one unless the First Order behaved exactly the way he needed them to. Fortunately the scriptwriters were on his side.

[Gandalf]

Did you fail to understand my post or are you just raving aimlessly?

Alright, let me try again, a little simpler. Star Wars is as big as it is shown to be in the OT. That is accomplished by showing how big the Empire is. When the First Order is shown to be even bigger, massively so, than what we previously thought was the maximum, then we need some explanation. This is especially true when it comes only a generation after the previous bar was set.

Now that you get it, please go back and reread my previous post. I rather like it.

Yep. Missed my point completely. I was stating that the setting was big, not the objects. Millions of worlds, so who knows who sits around the next corner? The OT shows us a dozen or so characters and a half dozen or so planets. While the Republic and Empire controlled a lot, they clearly couldn't control it all. So I don't see why you're so bamboozled by this space wizard.

[FaxModem1]

Did you fail to understand my post or are you just raving aimlessly?

Alright, let me try again, a little simpler. Star Wars is as big as it is shown to be in the OT. That is accomplished by showing how big the Empire is. When the First Order is shown to be even bigger, massively so, than what we previously thought was the maximum, then we need some explanation. This is especially true when it comes only a generation after the previous bar was set.

Now that you get it, please go back and reread my previous post. I rather like it.

Yep. Missed my point completely. I was stating that the setting was big, not the objects. Millions of worlds, so who knows who sits around the next corner? The OT shows us a dozen or so characters and a half dozen or so planets. While the Republic and Empire controlled a lot, they clearly couldn't control it all. So I don't see why you're so bamboozled by this space wizard.

The odd part is how it's wearing the trappings of Empire. There's a relationship there that we're not seeing. It's not the evil civilization discovered over the next hill, it's how the current government became the new one.

[Gandalf]

Or they just used Imperial iconography for legitimacy. Lots of regimes have done that throughout history.