Andy Serkis Calls out ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ for Its Cruelty to Snoke

Star Wars: The Last Jedi star Andy Serkis "cringed" when watching his powerful dark Force user get cut down by temperamental apprentice Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), EW reports.

"So cruel," Serkis said of the scene that sees Snoke sliced in half while sat on his throne. "He's disposed of so early on in his career."

Asked if the Supreme Leader is as dead as he looks, Serkis answered, "It's a Star Wars movie, anything can happen. I'm saying this with the hope that someone's listening out there."

The Rian Johnson-scripted and directed blockbuster left the elusive Snoke a mystery after J.J. Abrams' The Force Awakens introduced the shadowy villain as a hologram-projected overlord.

Johnson defended the decision to kill Snoke during a 2017 BAFTA Q&A panel, explaining the surprise murder was more pivotal for The Last Jedi than Snoke's long-questioned backstory.

"In this particular story, it's much more like the original trilogy, where with Snoke if you think about the actual scenes, if suddenly I had paused one of the scenes to give a 30-second monologue about who he was, it would have kind of stopped the scene in its tracks, I realized," Johnson said.

"Even though it could have been interesting, something that fans were interested in, as storytellers, we have to kind of serve what the scenes need to be."

Serkis admitted his being killed off was "a bit of a shock."

"But I could see exactly why they were going that route, and I think it was a huge surprise in the middle of the film," he told GamesRadar. "But I really loved the scene where Rey plays with Snoke. That scene was a fantastic. I just wish he'd survived, but who knows?"

Snoke's death at the hand of his abused apprentice has made way for the corrupted son of Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) to assume full control of the iron-fisted First Order, which he will use in his attempts to quell the heroic Resistance in Star Wars: Episode IX.

That film, again penned and directed by Abrams, reunites Luke Skywalker star with original Lando Calrissian star Billy Dee Williams. Episode IX opens December 20, 2019.