Palpatine's ever changing plan

Peak Palpatine was reached in Return of the Jedi and it has been overdose and diminishing returns ever since as far as I'm concerned almost to the point of me hating the character now.

 

I didn't enjoyed him in ROTS. But in TPM and AOTC he was alright, specially in TPM.
In TROS was only the repetitive presence that I really dislike.

 

The problem (as the haters like to yap on ad nauseum) is the fact that there was no solid villain set up from the beginning,a and no solid direction. I honestly think it was a mistake with TFA to just make it a re-fried version of ANH, instead of going for something new.

They could have used another Palpatine esque type villain. Ie .made him another powerful Sith Lord who had spent years and years studying Sith Lore, building his power, rebuilding ships to take over the galaxy. It would have changed nothing. You could have kept everything as it was, from the previous films. Although hints of Rey being related to Palpatine was planted from TFA. That could still change it and made her related to a noble family.

But given that TROS really is about Rey and Kylo and their evolution as people. The use of Palpatine doesn't bother me. While he was the main villain his main purpose (as someone posted) was to be Satan to Rey's Jesus/messiah. He was essentially her foil and not a main character and had not that much consequence on the film, but to be the baddie. A lot of the success of the mission came down to the decisions made by Rey and Kylo.

 

I think just from the beginning they had in mind that Ben Solo/Kylo had to be redeemed.
But I don't see why. Maybe an evil Kylo with no possibilities of redemption could've been more interesting.

 

No one is beyond redemption if they will accept it. He could be redeemed in ten, twenty, or 30 years after a good run of wickedness.

 

I think if they structured the ST different (and actually had an outline from the beginning), an evil Kylo could have been interesting. I was actually against redeeming Ben Solo since TFA came out, and was suprised that it actually worked for me in TROS. I thought the use of Leia's story in TROS (even though it was all TFA footage) was really good and they integrated her with Ben's redemption. And we even got my favorite scene of the movie where Han Solo returns (was not expecting that) to give his son his final tug back to the light. Which goes to my point in that Han/Leia played a key role in the redemption of Ben, so that emotional weight in the movie overrides any different story they could have taken with evil Kylo's arc.

 

I agree that Kylo Redemption was very well made. And I love how Han surprisingly appeared in the movie.
I'm just trying to create excuses about Palpatine's return.

 

I was never a fan of Ren and just going from what was on TFA they could have been the villain. But I am glad that they didn't go there. Making Ben a mindless thug would have been boring and too cliched. Which is one of the many reasons I am glad that we got the treatment we got instead of the leaked outline for Trevorrow's script where he kills Rey's parents etc. In TLJ and TROS we see that he has many shades of grey to him. People behave badly for many reasons. Not to say that his choices were excusable they aren't. But the fact that much of Ren's bad behaviour came from a weak sense of self, which Snoke was able to play on and manipulate. While Rey's good choices were made on a strong sense of self. She never gave up and did not turn to anger or despair despite the suffering and humiliations she endured.

The use of Leia in making him turn was great. Because a lot of Ben's actions came from shame and guilt and pride (rigid mindset). He needed to hear that he was forgiven so that the could turn around.

 

I actually think the return of Palpatine makes Ben’s redemption even more believable. He essentially led a life where he felt deceived by everyone. He didn’t know his Grandfather was Darth Vader until Leia was outed in the Senate. His master, Snoke, turned out to be a puppet of Palpatine so everything Ben had done to become Kylo Ren was a big lie.

 

The book says Palpatine's intentions were always formed around the rule of 2. He only discovered Rey and Ben's Dyad when they were both present. He refers to the Dyad as a long lost practice because it was near impossible to reproduce. Palpatine then jumps on the opportunity to restore himself with this new found knowledge. I have the Audible of the book (2 books free to keep forever with a free month trial), so I don't have the text to show, but this is pretty close to what was said.

 

Fair but he wasn't aight enough to be worth Sith or Skywalker and in my opinion blowing a hammy character up into the lead of the saga is offputting to me but that is personal preference.

JJ just couldn't get out of the box of just wanting to remake the OT re-skinned with some new twists.