RJ answered the only question that was being asked

During the Clone Wars, he tried to secretly train Savage Oppress to overthrow Sidious.

Sorry, I'm not wrong. You are.

Dooku is a very complex character, though, and his motivations change over time.

 

I gotta be honest. I can see how casual fans may think that, but it's really because they aren't paying attention to the story being told. Rey Kenobi would have made no sense and required 2 films to make it work. Rey Skywalker would also need an entire film of backstory. Rey Solo makes no sense because Han and Leia would kind of know if they had a daughter. It was all just wish fulfillment by fans that are latching on to one line here and there and not paying attention to the whole story, in context.

 

I suppose the issue to me is that he resolved the questions in a less than optimal way. Rey's parents were nobody is an answer, it is just maximally boring. Why was Luke hiding? He gave up and wanted to die because he is not nearly the hero we loved. Who is this Snoke we have never heard of before now, but everyone is familiar with? Doesn't matter, not important, he is dead. All those answers are valid, they just add up to disappointment. I don't think that the community ran away with themselves fixating on questions they came up with themselves - they were signposted. And whats more, in answering those questions we didn't get much new and interesting to think about and look forward to.

 

At no point did the films indicate this. It seems all Sith betray their masters anyway. I'm just saying that nothing in the films would lead someone to arrive at this.

 

At least Dooku said something. Snoke didn't say anything.

 

Nah man, Rey Nobody means that the Universe doesn't belong to the Skywalker Bloodline. Heros can come from anywhere, even nowhere...like Jakku! That's much more interesting than a light and dark Skywalker fighting each other.

The important questions are. Does Ben Solo return or does he stay on the dark side until he's defeated? How does the Resistance defeat the First Order? Does Rey train herself or does Force Ghost Luke help? Will Hux try to overthrow Kylo? Will Finn and Poe be Generals with the new Rebellion? Who comes to the Rebels aid as allies?

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 6, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 6, 2018 ---

For those that still want to know who SNOKE is! All taken from currently released canon material.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Snoke

Biography
Early life
"It is where you are from. What you are made of. The dark side—and the light. The finest sculptor cannot fashion a masterpiece from poor materials. He must have something pure, something strong, something unbreakable, with which to work."
―Snoke, to Kylo Ren[src]
Snoke was a humanoid alien who was leader of the Attendants, a retinue composed of mute alien navigators who originated from the Unknown Regions. At some unspecified point in his life, Snoke acquired a black obsidianstone from the catacombs and mines beneath the castle of the Sith Lord Darth Vader on the planet Mustafar. He affixed this stone to a golden ring he wore, which was engraved with glyphs used by the Four Sages of Dwartii,[9]controversial figures of philosophy that dated back to the early days of the Galactic Republic.[10]

Eventually, Snoke witnessed the rise and eventual fall of the Galactic Empire.[1] Through a secret Contingency,[11]however, many former Imperial officers, nobles, and technologists fled to the Unknown Regions and took the shape of what eventually became the First Order.[12] Although most of the former Imperial officers would have likely perished while crossing this uncharted realm, the ancient hyperspace trails blazed by Snoke's retinue helped them to stay there and organize themselves. Although he was a powerful practitioner of the dark side of the Force, Snoke was not affiliated with the Sith,[9] which became extinct as a result of the deaths of Darth Sidious and Vader at the Death Star II thanks to the efforts of the Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker.[13] As such, Snoke, a master of the Force, was a seeker of arcane lore.[14]

Seduction of Kylo Ren
"No. It was Snoke."
"Snoke?"
"He knew our child would be strong with the Force. That he was born with equal potential for good or evil."
―Leia Organa and Han Solo[src]
Snoke became invested in the Skywalker bloodline, believing General Leia Organa and Han Solo's son, Ben Solo, the grandson of Darth Vader and nephew of the now Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, had the right balance of the dark and light sides of the Force in him.[1] Although Snoke's physical skills possibly had already faded, but his Force-aided abilities of persuasion, manipulation and perception were tremendous.[9]

Leia was aware of the influence Snoke could have on her son, but did not inform Han, believing he would not understand, and that, as a Force-sensitive, it was her responsibility to keep Ben away from the dark side.[1]Eventually, Snoke successfully turned Ben to the dark side, anointing him Kylo Ren, master of the Knights of Ren, and ordered him to destroy Skywalker's revived Jedi Order. Though Ren succeeded in slaughtering the entirety of the fledgling Jedi Order, Skywalker managed to escape into hiding.[4]

 

I don't mind that Rey is nobody, but it does feel like we were led to believe she was somebody. Don't signpost it and I would have already reached that conclusion and be excited about it. I don't know whose Finns parents are and it doesn't detract from him story. It is anticlimactic when the answer to "guess who this apparent [wink] nobody with incredible potential is?" is "just a nobody".

 

I agree with most of what you said regarding Rey's character but I'm almost sure there is nothing in the novel saying Luke recognizes Rey...

 

I do get what you are saying. JJ being mysterious with no payoff is classic JJ. The thing is, it's natural for us to ask that question when we see this girl who has latent strong force powers from a desert that has the Skywalker lightsaber call to her. The imagery was purposeful. But we just missed the purpose. It's to show the parallels of Rey's journey to Luke's, not to show they are related.

 

I'm prolly full of BS. Its been two years since I've read it. I pay by the megabyte for data, but i'll redownload and listen to that part tonight.

 

IMO the actual movie matters more than the intention behind it. If JJ was attempting to leave viewers wondering about Luke, he failed. Everyone, even people like my dad who don't watch Star Wars usually, left TFA wondering who Rey was. The idea of finding Luke drove the plot but it was never the main question.

 

You know.

When I was a kid (the gambit of the Goonie's troop's ages), one of the things that was wonderfully fun was sitting around with friends and sharing our own imaginative takes on things not fully explored in Star Wars - and never really expecting them to be addressed.
If it weren't for filling in what Star Wars didn't talk about, my Lego collection would have never been so fun, and I wouldn't have spent so much time dreaming up worlds of ideas spun off of imagining something out of the subtext or 'missing' information.

I remember once, for a creative arts program, creating an entire world and backstory that could be used for a story and most of the ideas came from rebounding off of Star Wars' subtexts as well as things briefly summarized.

I basically drafted a world, Antivion* , out of the dividing up Star Wars' social categories across territories, and put it into a position where an Empire (the Talstinian Empire) was moving to overthrow the democratic republics of the planet, but had not done so yet. There were two religious provinces, and the Empire was favored by one, and the republics by the other. One province was Xenos the Second, XS, which was like if Bespin was inserted into Jaba's palace and dressed up like Blade Runner's city style (which interestingly enough Canto Bight looks a lot like things I drew for it - I just had it go much higher up and no where near water). It was the Switzerland of the planet and I'm sure you can imagine how I expected that to be used.
And then there was the vacant canyon land to the east called "Si" (because that's all the artifact that was a marking stone had left of the name), which was now barren and dry but where a once great kingdom ruled in wisdom before some point when it fell, for reasons no one knows. Ask anyone - no one lived there, no one could. But there were actually people there, and they were a tiny remnant of the old Sirinatha Kingdom. Monks of a sort. They had no interest in letting anyone know of them, nor did they care about the world beyond them.
*(not related to the book...I made the name up, along with the project, back in the mid 90's by taking the German ante vi von [something along the lines of 'by the force' and the concept of Latin vita [life] and flipping ante to anti [Greek of not/against] - therefore also stating 'against living on' in a conceptual map, which fit the world theme of yin/yang struggle between life and death)

The entire design of the world was so that a person could write a story which shows the Talstinian state rising to international power politically, breaking out into war eventually, and rising until they pretty much had taken over everything except for resistance fighters and ragtag rebels.

About 90% of the ideas were drafted from thinking about things not filled in within Star Wars movies about the galactic politics because it was heavily focused on our heroes and their adventure to lift Luke up to the point of beating his dear old Dad.
As well as ideas floating about exploring the 'rest of the Force' beyond what we saw, and how independent religious factions interact geopolitically back in the Bronze age - exploring the Jedi/Sith rivalry if it were two rival cultures surrounding similar concepts of interacting with a universal power (actually modeled them after Israel and Judah). Meanwhile the Si explored the Buddhist position of non-ownership and mysticism.

Even the names. Xenos the Second. Why second? What happened to the first one?
Exactly. I purposefully threw that into the name as a little nod to Star Wars having things that if you stopped and looked at them for more than a passing second, you start asking questions and trying to make up answers.

This is basically another flavor of what we see bouncing around a bit in the PT, but explored through my imagination instead of Lucas'.

Point is, the great thing about Myths is that they have a vague nature about their story just beyond the spotlight of their primary focus that, when looked at, beckons the imagination to employ it as a playground.

I'd be pretty sad if Star Wars filled in everything so tightly that I was left with just buying the books to read everything the author came up with already.
Part of what makes a myth great is that we can all put into it whatever we want.

I don't think everyone who has a problem with the film fits into one category of issues, but in regards to just this consideration alone as a thought, I love that Star Wars has blank spots like mythology of old and gives you images and implicit conceptual ideas for some things and doesn't bother addressing it; leaving it to me to interpret that how I want.

I think if you were to make a global dominant religion off of Star Wars, it would be sectarian due to fundamental interpretive differences.

We can't even, all as fans, agree what exactly the Force can and cannot do, and that's about as fundamental to Star Wars as it gets.
I think one of the only truly unifying things about Star Wars is that we love Star Wars, which ironically enough we're all thinking of slightly differently as we talk about loving.

Have fun loving what you love about Star Wars everyone!

Cheers!
Jayson

 

I've been saying this since I saw The Force Awakens. You don't need speculation fodder and pretentious posturing in order to make Finn a compelling character. He is fundamentally interesting due to the very nature of the conflict we're presented with. He has direct stakes, he has a history with the antagonistic faction, he has a unique mindset in the Star Wars universe that is rarely ever focused on with a character and with an actor as committed as Boyega seems to be, it could have been great. Could have been.

 

It is indeed a wonderful thing to fantasize and make up your own subtext. That's what all great works of art, literature and cinematography should do.They should make us talk, have a conversation. But we should all realize that we shouldn't judge a movie or state that it is objectively bad on the basis of questions we have formulated for ourselves even though those questions weren't presented to the audience in the first place or are serving in the interest of plot. For instance Return of the Jedi didn't answer my burning question: "how did vader become vader". However I wont judge that movie any less because it didn't answer this specific question I had. First of all, I realize that the question isn't really necessary for our main characters. Secondly, I realize that the mystery is itself functional in that I had to think up a question and pondered about it (quite a bit ). I'd rather judge the movie on the basis of what it is rather than on what I'd previously wanted it to be.

Berfore TLJ I wanted to know who Snoke is. When I had seen TLJ I realized that the question "who is snoke" wasn't really necessary for my understanding of the story and the actions and motivations of the characters in the first place. Furthermore, I realized that I still had the question "who is snoke" and the mystery itself, and my own subtext I ascribe to that question, is ten times more satisfying than actually knowing the answer. I love lacunae, especially intentional and functional ones. When someone answers these questions for me, I always feel a bit disappointed. The mystery was so much more fun. I love that they get this mechanic perfectly, the writers of the new trilogy, when they present us with mystery.

The concrete effect is that I'm a bit allergic to explanatory prequels who make every thing 'holistic' and thus very small. Prequels try to provide us with all the answers. I don't want all the answers. Though I love the story of Anakin's fall and Palpatine's rise, I'm a bit sad to know exactly what happened. When it was still a mystery and I had to make up my own mind about it, imagine how it would have happened, it was so much more fun. Pablo Hidalgo also likes to explain everything to fans. I didn't like that. But I believe he has stopped doing this for now, which is a good thing I suppose, but also probably annoying a lot of people who actually want to know everything.

 

Agreed, a story about a stormtrooper who has moral doubts and switches sides sounds incredible on paper. This realisation however... :/

 

Great post,

I'm always annoyed when people want all the questions asked in a movie being answered straight away.
Who are Rey's parents?
Who is Snoke...etc..etc
These are all questions that can still be answered in time, the directors just choose not to because they are questions for another time.
And why should they already reveal all their secrets so soon?

A movie is NOT like a book that you can read backwards if you want to know how it ends.
We'll just have to wait if our questions will be answered in the next movie.

 

I have absolutely no problem with TFA or TLJ, but I do agree with this post.

The biggest 'problem' I have with the films is that they don't fill in the 'how' of things as it relates to where things stand in the galaxy.

It isn't a deal breaker for me, just a thing.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 7, 2018, Original Post Date: Jan 7, 2018 ---

Hadn't even considered this!! Very good points!

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 7, 2018 ---

Well holy hell. Now I NEED to know who Finn's parent's are!!!

Thanks for that, buddy!!

LOL

 

I, for one, am hoping he is a Kenobi....

 

I always thought Rey never needs any backstory for anything.

I think the story telling was kept ambiguous to drive speculation. I would have had no issue whichever direction they would have gone, any decent writer or writing team could have made it work well enough to fit the story they wanted to tell. It would not have taken a movie or two to explain, much like other back story elements, they could have kept a full detailed explanation for books or cartoons or other media.

Telling fans they just weren't paying attention comes off as being a little bit arrogant. If they come back in 9 and say she's a Skywalker or Solo, that doesn't mean that those who believed that before TLJ are in any way superior at keeping up with the story as people who thought she'd be a nobody. The story was left loose as whether she is from a bloodline or not, and which one, because it emphasizes how that doesn't matter. When the Force chooses you to balance things, your parentage has little to nothing to do with anything.