Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

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Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Darth Yan »

For those who have not seen the Clone Wars tv show there was a three episode arc in season 3 where Anakin encounters three godlike beings called the ones. The Father (who embodies balance), the Daughter (light) and the Son (Darkness). The Father wants Anakin to replace him in keeping his kids in line, Anakin refuses, the son makes a play for power and the entire misadventure sees all three beings dead.

There are rumors that the Son was considered the main villain of the movies and that he was supposed to be who Matt Smith was portraying but they cut him because they thought not enough people would have been familiar with him. I'm not sure I buy this given how many people watch the show but whatever.

Thing is I've read at least one fan interpretation where the Son is the main antagonist and honestly, it was actually pretty good. So that got me thinking. The son has the raw power to be a threat (the treatment I read had it be that his endgame is to open the gates of chaos and burn the entire galaxy to the ground so that he can rebuild civilization as a god emperor) and yet he's ironically MUCH more sympathetic than Palpatine is (he genuinely mourns the death of his family and the interpretation I saw also has it that he's trying to get Kylo and Rey to become his "children" in order to create the twisted dynamic of the Son becoming the Father, with Rey and Kylo replacing the daughter and the son. In essence he's recreating the family he lost).

I think that in the right hands the Son could have had the power to be a compelling antagonist while not retreading Palpatine.

So. Thoughts anyone?
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Gandalf »

They sound fucking ridiculous. So no.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Iroscato »

Gandalf wrote: 2020-07-14 05:51am They sound fucking ridiculous. So no.
Have you, y'know, watched the episodes before passing judgement? The Mortis arc is considered among the best of the Clone Wars storylines and added a lot of lore to the nature of the force.

Personally if they'd allowed Filoni and Co to handle the sequel trilogy story it would've at the very least been more coherent, and to my mind likely better. Having The Son as the main villain with that kind of motivation would've been interesting and much more original than just Papa Palps again.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by FaxModem1 »

Maybe, if done really, really well. Otherwise, no. Mostly because such a villain would be very hard for most audience members to wrap their head around.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Darth Yan »

Iroscato wrote: 2020-07-14 06:01am
Gandalf wrote: 2020-07-14 05:51am They sound fucking ridiculous. So no.
Have you, y'know, watched the episodes before passing judgement? The Mortis arc is considered among the best of the Clone Wars storylines and added a lot of lore to the nature of the force.

Personally if they'd allowed Filoni and Co to handle the sequel trilogy story it would've at the very least been more coherent, and to my mind likely better. Having The Son as the main villain with that kind of motivation would've been interesting and much more original than just Papa Palps again.
Gandalf’s a rather judge-mental fellow so it isn’t that shocking

Agree that Filoni and Favreau should have been in charge.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by chimericoncogene »

They could have heavily modified and spun up the whole Abeloth arc about galactic chaos, etc, etc.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Vendetta »

Godlike beings aren't very on-brand for Star Wars.

Despite its mystical elements, the problems of the galaxy were caused by people, and solved by people.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Solauren »

Oh hell no!

Yes, it was a great arc in Clone Wars.

No one would know who the hell he was. Also, isn't he as dead?

Darth Sidious revealed as the Ultimate Big Bad wasn't a bad idea. It was just executed horribly.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Gandalf »

Iroscato wrote: 2020-07-14 06:01am
Gandalf wrote: 2020-07-14 05:51am They sound fucking ridiculous. So no.
Have you, y'know, watched the episodes before passing judgement? The Mortis arc is considered among the best of the Clone Wars storylines and added a lot of lore to the nature of the force.
Yes, I have indeed suffered through Clone Wars. Thankfully I was on the Playstation at the time. Now I try to be more discerning.

As stated above, godlike beings read really weirdly in SW, and are a bit off brand.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by mr friendly guy »

Never saw the Clone wars, but couldn't you portray this guy in a similar situation to "God" from Star Trek 5. He was trapped somewhere (in this case Mortis) and he managed to luck out by getting a stupid human or alien to help him escape, and he has been causing strife ever since.

Also if you're going to make Rey really powerful, you may as well go all the way and have her fight a "God." Explain it as the Force trying to balance itself so it needed a powerful tool to stop the Son.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Solauren »

Still bad idea.

Really, if you didn't want to go the 'Palp's route, then there are other routes to go.

A Clone of Darth Vader would have been a good way to go. That's why the Force is acting to differently. It's Chosen One, and therefore the force itself, was violated.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Vendetta »

Solauren wrote: 2020-07-14 08:48am Darth Sidious revealed as the Ultimate Big Bad wasn't a bad idea. It was just executed horribly.
Yes it was. Him not being dead undoes the entire arc of Anakin Skywalker.

Instead of sacrificing himself to destroy the emperor he helped to create, he merely inconvenienced him by a couple of years. As soon as you bring back Palpatine you undo the narrative arc of the original trilogy and its prequels.

Ultimately though, he was brought back because the writers couldn't cope with the idea that Kylo Ren should be irredeemable, despite all the things he had done in two movies to make himself so (Patricide, killing his master to seize power, attempted matricide). So they needed to install another "big boss" over him so that he isn't the evil overlord the protagonists have to defeat, and so is available to be redeemed. Chronic lack of testicular fortitude, just like all the other decisions they made.

(Bringing back previously defeated villains for a rematch is generally a bad idea anyway and should be avoided.)
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Darth Yan »

Given that Rian Johnson and J J Abrams we’re operating on different wavelengths I think a more consistent director through all would have resulted in a more coherent story.

I think the Son could have worked with buildup, and that having Kylo die a villain might be too bleak
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Vendetta »

Darth Yan wrote: 2020-07-14 12:57pm and that having Kylo die a villain might be too bleak
Once a character has cold bloodedly murdered his own father on screen, it's pretty hard to see a compelling ending for them that isn't bleak.

By the end of The Force Awakens, Ren should have been treated as irredeemable.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Darth Yan »

Anakin did a lot of evil shit as well but was still redeemable in the end.

I think the issue is execution. The treatment I saw had the Son planned from the beginning and he gets a lot of buildup before the final battle. It also creates real honest to god stakes where it really feels like everything is at risk (the entire galaxy literally dying vs another tyrant coming to power).

The same treatment also had it that while his father and sister were able to peacefully pass on the Son refused to accept his fate and managed to reach out across the realm of chaos into the mortal world, making contact with Snoke. He finally fully becomes free in Episode 9 and makes his play for power (the final battle is on Coruscant in the Sith Shrine beneath the temple); Kylo (or Ben) having finally realized the error of his ways, helps Rey (or Kira, who's his twin sister in this version) and they're able to defeat the son by embracing the light of the force.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Vendetta »

Darth Yan wrote: 2020-07-14 02:19pm Anakin did a lot of evil shit as well but was still redeemable in the end.
He did, but significantly the story of his redemption was told first, with us only knowing about what he's done as Darth Vader on screen. If we knew all along that he'd murdered a room full of children in cold blood, we probably wouldn't have bought into that either.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Formless »

I'm going to have to side with Vendetta, Gandalf, and Solauren, but for a different reason. Its not that I think the story is inherently ridiculous or that the Mortis characters are off-brand, but that to me the Mortis arc only works because its ambiguous whether or not it happened at all.

No, seriously. The way its written, either the characters were transported backwards in time at the end, or the whole thing was actually just a Force vision, and honestly I think the latter is a more compelling interpretation. We know from the first movie that the Force is both responsible for fate, yet individuals can control its actions, creating a tug of war dynamic between free will and destiny. The Mortis arc is all about Anikan being reminded directly about his role as Chosen one by the Force itself, only for him to be drawn to the Dark Side precisely by learning of what he is going to do as Vader. It shows that no matter what, his ego was always going to get in the way of his role as Chosen One. It shows that the Force chose the wrong person for the job, and validates the tug of war dynamic that Obi-Wan spoke of in the first movie (Obi-Wan after all was part of the same vision). It also is more on-brand for it to be a vision than for there to be literal force deities running around.

Keep in mind that Dave Filoni and George Lucas were both initially excited to use this arc to introduce Darth Bane and Darth Revan to the Clone Wars story, having their ghosts be the instigators manipulating The Son into committing evil. The interpretation that some have concluded from this is that the Son and the Daughter are not supposed to be the Dark and Light side incarnate to begin with, but rather representations of the emotions and motives that direct people to one side or the other, and the pitfalls that are faced by those who walk each path. This concept even got far enough that the voice acting was already done and the animation was partially finished for the scenes involving Revan and Bane. However, Lucas and Filoni ultimately scrapped the idea, as both independently decided that it actually weakened the story if the Sith were manipulating things behind the scenes even here in this abstract space of a story. And while its neat to think that the Sith are evil even without the Dark Side, I tend to agree with their decision for the same reason that I gave above. It would actualize the existence of these characters when it makes more sense for them to be a vision.

As for who should have been the main antagonist of the Sequel trilogy, I have to point out that a sequel here isn't necessary insofar as Return of the Jedi neatly brought the story full circle and gave a satisfying resolution to most if not all the dangling plot threads of both trilogies. The only thing it doesn't have is the restoration of the Republic, but most audience members will see the size of the Rebel fleet and the victory celebrations at the end, and consider that a less than important detail. We know the Republic will be restored, and that is all that matters. So knowing that, its important that the sequels bring in new ideas that haven't yet been seen on the silver screen. I don't care where those ideas actually come from; we could import stories from the EU and still have something better than what the Sequel trilogy actually gave us, insofar as it is mostly rehashing the original trilogy, and any ideas it did take from the EU were probably coincidental (like the similarity between Kylo Ren and Darth Cadeus), and either done worse (like Kylo Ren VS Darth Cadeus) or were stupid to begin with (like Dark Empire and the resurrection of Palpatine-- Which was also done better in Dark Empire; at least there we got an explanation for how he did it). No, in my opinion, if Kylo Ren was supposed to be a retelling of Darth Cadeus, then he needed to be the Big Bad in his own right like Darth Cadeus was.

Honestly, I think you could just condense that story without much trouble and re-work most of the elements that would have to be cut out due to length or a desire to fix the problematic elements from the EU, like the ridiculousness of the Vong invasion. You could even keep the Vong, just don't make them an extragalactic threat. There is plenty of room in the Galaxy for an opportunistic alien species to try and take over the power vacuum left by the fall of the Empire. Make the ending of that war the beginning of the sequels, much like the self contained conflict between Naboo and the Trade Federation started off the Prequels. A cold opener where Luke and his niece are sent into a Vong stronghold to rescue his nephew(s) would make for a cool call back to the rescue of Palpatine in ROTS and Liea in ANH, while managing to be aesthetically new due to the difference between the Vong and previous threats. Then draw out their mission for most of the movie while other characters establish the new status quo like the winding down of the war, and the ordeal that Jacen/Ben (whatever you decide to call him in this take on the story) has gone through with other force sensitive prisoners so that, once he has been captured, we know where his unorthodox views of the Force come from without resorting to the Sith Master trope. Then the next movie could see him transform into Darth Cadeus/Kylo Ren (again, whatever you want to call him), using whatever elements from the original story you want, or perhaps bringing in elements of Lucas's "microcosm of the Force" concept he pitched to Disney where the Medichlorians and Whills are behind all things, but even the Jedi and Sith don't know the full extent of it. Then the final movie could be an almost straight adaptation of Legacy of the Force. I don't know if this is a perfect concept, but the point of it is to pay homage to the many faces of Star Wars-- the willingness of the Prequels to play around with aesthetics and cinematography, the OT's focus on familial relationships, and the EU's willingness to find new and different sources of conflict-- while bringing in something that is new to most of the audience, and probably appreciated by many existing audience members. And even if you don't like it, at least it would be infinitely better than a half assed adaptation of Dark Empire. :P
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Darth Yan »

That doesn’t make sense. Obi Wan and Ashoka were also there and they remember everything. In Rebels we see a mural of the Mortis Gods on Lothal and Palpatine recognizes them. Even then there are scenes where Anakin and Obi Wan and Ahsoka are not on screen but the others are (the son at his sisters grave, the son overpowering his father)

Honestly the vision theory makes more sense than some other theories but I think Rebels fully put the kibosh on that interpretation. Even scrapping Revan and Bane doesn’t change that the son exists. It just means he’s making his own choices
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Formless »

Darth Yan wrote: 2020-07-14 07:04pm That doesn’t make sense. Obi Wan and Ashoka were also there and they remember everything.
Its a shared vision. What doesn't make sense about that?
In Rebels we see a mural of the Mortis Gods on Lothal and Palpatine recognizes them.
Rebels was written after, and under the mandate of Disney, not Lucas. I was talking about the original intent, and the interpretation that I think works best for the story. Whatever was shown in Rebels is irrelevant. They could have made different decisions, and better ones. That's the whole point, after all, of asking how they should have written the story differently.

However, Palpatine being familiar with them was explained in the EU before the Disney buyout. In the EU, it was revealed that Xendor, the first Jedi to split from the order and cause a schism before the Sith even existed, actually encountered Mortis and the Three himself. The Jedi obviously did not preserve any of Xendor's knowledge due to being at war with him and his Legions, but the Sith did. In fact, thanks to magic stasis technology, Palpatine would even encounter Xendor's lover and hire her as one of his agents. However, one important distinction exists here between the EU and Rebels: Xendor denied that the Three were necessarily avatars of the Force. To him, apparently, that was just one interpretation, but others were just as valid. What they even represent was apparently a matter of debate in-universe. Now Xendor is a character whose motives are pretty explicit-- curiosity about all aspects of The Force and all interpretations and traditions relating to it, including those the Jedi deemed dangerous (hence the First Schism). Having him say this pretty much confirms that the intention was to keep Mortis mysterious and the events happening there ambiguous. At least, before the Legacy of the Force went and created Abeloth, which was also a mistake IMO. But the EU is notorious for that kind of thing, because there were too damn many writers not communicating all their ideas with each other. That's why there were tiers of canon, after all.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

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Formless wrote: 2020-07-14 07:24pm
Darth Yan wrote: 2020-07-14 07:04pm That doesn’t make sense. Obi Wan and Ashoka were also there and they remember everything.
Its a shared vision. What doesn't make sense about that?
In Rebels we see a mural of the Mortis Gods on Lothal and Palpatine recognizes them.
Rebels was written after, and under the mandate of Disney, not Lucas. I was talking about the original intent, and the interpretation that I think works best for the story. Whatever was shown in Rebels is irrelevant. They could have made different decisions, and better ones. That's the whole point, after all, of asking how they should have written the story differently.

However, Palpatine being familiar with them was explained in the EU before the Disney buyout. In the EU, it was revealed that Xendor, the first Jedi to split from the order and cause a schism before the Sith even existed, actually encountered Mortis and the Three himself. The Jedi obviously did not preserve any of Xendor's knowledge due to being at war with him and his Legions, but the Sith did. In fact, thanks to magic stasis technology, Palpatine would even encounter Xendor's lover and hire her as one of his agents. However, one important distinction exists here between the EU and Rebels: Xendor denied that the Three were necessarily avatars of the Force. To him, apparently, that was just one interpretation, but others were just as valid. What they even represent was apparently a matter of debate in-universe. Now Xendor is a character whose motives are pretty explicit-- curiosity about all aspects of The Force and all interpretations and traditions relating to it, including those the Jedi deemed dangerous (hence the First Schism). Having him say this pretty much confirms that the intention was to keep Mortis mysterious and the events happening there ambiguous. At least, before the Legacy of the Force went and created Abeloth, which was also a mistake IMO. But the EU is notorious for that kind of thing, because there were too damn many writers not communicating all their ideas with each other. That's why there were tiers of canon, after all.
Was it though? Even Filoni said it depended on point of view so saying they were always intended to be just a vision isn’t right. It was always just as possible for them to actually exist. In fact given the scenes of the son turning on the father after they leave and him visiting his sisters grave im inclined to believe it DID happen and is the simplest explanation. Then going right back could just be that time moves differently on Mortis

Thanas also pointed out that force visions are usually vague and difficult to make out.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Formless »

Darth Yan wrote: 2020-07-14 08:09pmWas it though? Even Filoni said it depended on point of view so saying they were always intended to be just a vision isn’t right. It was always just as possible for them to actually exist. In fact given the scenes of the son turning on the father after they leave and him visiting his sisters grave im inclined to believe it DID happen and is the simplest explanation. Then going right back could just be that time moves differently on Mortis

Thanas also pointed out that force visions are usually vague and difficult to make out.
The real point is that it should be left ambiguous. I think the better interpretation is that it was a vision, as among other things that is more "normal" for how the Force works. Force visions can be blurry, or they can be super-focused like Luke's vision on Degobah, where the issue isn't making out what he saw but rather interpreting what it means until the film's finale. Mortis is the same way. Everything is coherent, but its meaning is hard for the characters to decipher, and even the audience has fun debating it. Making a Force deity from this trilogy of episodes the main villain of a movie series would ruin the appeal. Since there were three different characters witnessing the vision, the events they don't witness can be seen as inferences that the three witnesses to the vision made to make sense of it, or as symbolic storytelling about what is going on with the Force itself during the clone wars. Any and all of those explanations work for the Mortis arc as a piece of TV media. But what works on television for a children's TV series doesn't necessarily work for a blockbuster movie trilogy. Human villains are still the best villains for a Star Wars film.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Darth Yan »

We've had human villains, and tyrants who want to take over. Dark Gods are another matter entirely and the Son has a fairly unique personality compared to Palpatine (for starters he truly mourns his family, he has a reason to be interested in Rey and Kylo and he actually DOES see himself as benevolent rather than as a sadistic monster.)

It also creates a different set of stakes. Rather than just a tyrant who wants to rule we have a god who wants to burn everything to the ground and rule over the new world. For a Grand Finale that's PERFECT.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Formless »

What you call "bigger stakes" I call "jumping the shark". Its literally the same problem, conceptually speaking, as having Palpatine show up with a fleet full of Star Destroyers with superlasers. The stakes are so big that most of the audience will tune out to how ridiculous it is, and even those who like it will wonder where you could possibly go with Star Wars after that.

Mortis will always have a special place for fans of the cartoon. Its intrigue comes from the fact that it is debatable. Make the character of the Son a straightforward Evil God, and you ruin the very thing that made him interesting. Even in Rebels, he hasn't shown up as a character, only in art, which can be made sense of in a similar way to the EU having Xendor meet the Three. You can always interpret them however you like as long as they are confined to these ambiguous spaces like art, visions, and ambiguous situations (again, the trilogy of episodes dumps the characters seemingly back in time to the moment the story started with no explanation). The fact is, he only works as a villain when placed in proximity to Anakin, and Anakin is now dead. Because the Mortis arc wasn't about the Three, it was about Anakin. That much isn't ambiguous.
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Darth Yan »

Formless wrote: 2020-07-15 12:34am What you call "bigger stakes" I call "jumping the shark". Its literally the same problem, conceptually speaking, as having Palpatine show up with a fleet full of Star Destroyers with superlasers. The stakes are so big that most of the audience will tune out to how ridiculous it is, and even those who like it will wonder where you could possibly go with Star Wars after that.

Mortis will always have a special place for fans of the cartoon. Its intrigue comes from the fact that it is debatable. Make the character of the Son a straightforward Evil God, and you ruin the very thing that made him interesting. Even in Rebels, he hasn't shown up as a character, only in art, which can be made sense of in a similar way to the EU having Xendor meet the Three. You can always interpret them however you like as long as they are confined to these ambiguous spaces like art, visions, and ambiguous situations (again, the trilogy of episodes dumps the characters seemingly back in time to the moment the story started with no explanation). The fact is, he only works as a villain when placed in proximity to Anakin, and Anakin is now dead. Because the Mortis arc wasn't about the Three, it was about Anakin. That much isn't ambiguous.
If it's the Grand Finale you can get away with bigger stakes. Rise of Skywalker was built up as the end of the Skywalker saga, so this is theoretically supposed to be the biggest movie in the entire saga.If it's built up enough (i.e. over the previous movies) it can be exciting rather than jumping the shark.

Maybe the intrigue is part of it but I always interpreted it as happening at that precise moment and not being some weird vision. Them going back to the original situation is simply the force working differently on Mortis
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Vendetta
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Re: Should the Son of Mortis have been the Big Bad of the Sequel Trilogy?

Post by Vendetta »

I think you're confusing what makes stakes "big". Stakes are big when they are decisive to the outcome of a wider established conflict. In Return of the Jedi the stakes aren't bigger because the second Death Star was bigger and boomier and there were loads of ships there for a big battle.

The stakes were bigger because The Emperor was there, win there and win it all and you only get to try once.

That's what big stakes mean, they mean decisiveness in the conflict, not bigness in the presentation of the conflict.
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