“Your Snoke Theory Sucks” has become synonymous with writer-director Rian Johnson‘s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the 2017 sequel to the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens. That film raised questions surrounding scavenger Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) parentage, why the “last Jedi,” Jedi Master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), vanished, and whether Kylo Ren’s (Adam Driver) master Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) was really Darth Plagueis, the shadowy Sith Lord that Palpatine referenced when Anakin Skywalker was seduced by the dark side in Revenge of the Sith.
Videos by ComicBook.com
The middle chapter of the Star Wars sequel trilogy cut down that theory when, midway through The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren ignited a lightsaber and sliced Snoke in half, killing him. The Emperor-like figure looming over Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens was thought to be the sequel trilogy’s big bad, but fan theories surrounding the mysterious Supreme Leader suddenly died with Snoke. (Abrams’ Skywalker Saga-ending The Rise of Skywalker would eventually reveal that Snoke was a puppet of Palpatine’s, who somehow returned from the dead.)
In a new Rolling Stone profile published Monday, the Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man filmmaker revealed that his planned Star Wars trilogy announced in 2017 is deader than Snoke and cleared up the conception that Abrams handed off Episode VIII without talking about a direction for the middle film.
“We communicated. We met and I spent days with him and was able to get into his head and all the choices he had made,” Johnson said. “That having been said, I communicated and I went and made the movie. And he was in the middle of Force Awakens. Ultimately, I feel like the choices in it, none of them were born out of an intent to ‘undo’ anything. They were all borne out of the opposite intent of, how do I take this story that J.J. wrote, that I really loved, and these characters he created that I really loved, and take them to the next step?”
He continued, “Kathy [Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm] said, ‘We’re looking at someone to do the Empire [Strikes Back] of this series.’ I took that assignment very seriously. Maybe more seriously than someone would have liked. I guess to me that didn’t mean making something that just had nods to Empire — that meant trying to genuinely do what Empire did.”
By the end of The Last Jedi, Luke was killed off alongside two characters that Abrams had introduced in The Force Awakens: Snoke and the chrome-plated First Order villain Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie). Kylo Ren told Rey that her parents were “nobody” but junk traders who sold her off for drinking money, seemingly dispelling theories that the orphan was related to the Skywalkers or that she might be a Solo or a Kenobi.
When Rolling Stone raised the point that The Last Jedi killed off the villain that The Force Awakens established as the new Emperor, Johnson said it was more of a pivot to making Kylo Ren — the corrupted son of Leia Organa and Han Solo, and former padawan of Luke Skywalker — the villain in Snoke’s place.
“That was, in reading J.J.’s script [for Force Awakens], and watching the dailies, and seeing the power of Adam Driver’s character,” Johnson explained. “The interrogation scene in the first movie, between Rey and Kylo, was so incredibly powerful. Seeing this complicated villain that’s been created, I was just so compelled by that. This is all a matter of perspective and phrasing, but to me, I didn’t easily dispense with Snoke.”
Johnson defended killing Snoke by saying that he “took great pains to use him in the most dramatically impactful way, which was to then take Kylo’s character to the next level and set him up as well as I possibly could.” “I guess it all comes down to your point of view,” he added. “I thought, ‘This is such a compelling and complicated villain. This is who it makes sense going forward to build around.’”
But in turn, Abrams resurrected Emperor Palpatine in the opening minutes of 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, having the overarching villain of both the original Star Wars trilogy and the prequels trilogy return in the ninth and final installment of the Skywalker Saga. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren also served as the film’s villain until his redemption in the third act, and — in another reversal — Jedi Rey turned out to be Palpatine’s descendant.
Most Viewed
-
Image Courtesy of Ufotable -
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
