RJ answered the only question that was being asked

Lol what? I asked you the question already, never said anything about logical flaws or plot holes because I'm not interested in discussing semantics, if you don't want to answer that's fine.

 

I'd like to know what question is needing to be answered and what problem with TLJ's story would be aided by answering it.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

It's been clearly stated (by Pablo Hidalgo and the TLJ visual dictionary, which was also written by him) that the prophecy was only about ending the Sith and their evil empire. Ending the dark side was never part of the deal.

 

We didn't have backstories in the OT because we didn't have 7 movies that had preceded it. The TLJ does. That why backstories are more important in the ST.

Kylo's backstory is very weak. Again as I've said twice - Snoke's backstory could provide depth to Kylo, and Kylo's backstory could provide depth to Snoke.

Here's what we know about Kylo's backstory - He was Han & Leia's kid. At some point (we have no idea when) he hooked up with Luke. Then at some point (we have no idea when) Snoke started turning him to the Dark Side (but we have no idea how). Luke freaked out about it (just randomly out of the blue) and nearly killed him. Which finally pushed Kylo to the Dark Side. That's it. That Kylo's backstory. How can you not find that lacking?

 

What logical or plot hole problems in TLJ were caused by this amount of backstory for Kylo?

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I'm sorry, but I can't quite follow your logic here. Star Wars' style of storytelling has always been "show, don't tell". Leaving things vague and up to interpretation is basically the way these movies work. I would have loved to get more info on the state of the galaxy and the nature of the resistance in TFA, but I get why JJ cut those sequences: It had a lot to do with Leia's introduction to the story, but it also stuck true to the way the OT only hinted at the bigger picture and only told the audience the absolute minimum of what they needed to know.
I honestly don't believe we ever had as much backstory in a single Star Wars film as RJ gave us in TLJ. It's totally ok to not like it content wise, but considering the basic laws of storytelling in these films, it really was a lot.

 

Was it not said that Rey’s parentage would be revealed and that it would be satisfying?

Instead we got vague. Being nobody for sure would have at least brought closure to it. It wasn’t something that was made up by fans either. It was one of the main subjects of TFA.

Rey seeing herself in the cave made me do the Jim Halpert face.

 

I'm not sure what backstories have to do with plot holes. 2 separate issues.

Once upon a time there was this one guy who didn't like this other guy so they fought and one guy won. Plot holes? No. Lack of backstory? Yes.

 

I'm trying to understand what part of TLJ's story required Snoke's backstory.
It was stated that Kylo Ren would have benefited from this addition, which implies that Kylo Ren's narrative plot suffers in TLJ in some regard by the lack of Snoke's backstory.
What problem with Kylo Ren's narrative plot was there to solve which would have been solved with a backstory regarding Snoke?

Cheers,
Jayson

 

On the on hand, RJ is right: When you watch TFA, it seems that all the characters - especially Leia and Han - know who Snoke is and use his name like it is quite normal. And yeah, the only question, that is asked by both, the audience AND the characters, is the question about Rey. A special place is taken by the question who Kylo Ren is, because it is an information, that everybody knows, but for the audience, it is a kind of a surprise.

On the other hand, so the story is just written in the wrong way. When there are questions that are asked by a great part of the audience but that are never answered in the movie, because the characters know everything and haven't to repeat it, it is just "bad writing". I mean, of course, these cases exists - and sometimes, it feels really weird, when the characters explain something to each other, that should be clear to both interlocutors. But normally, an easy way in this cases is just to use a character, that has a background, where it is believable, that this character just doesn't know these facts. Normally, with Rey, there was such a character introduced. And both, JJA and RJ, missed to use her in this way. I see no reason, why Rey, when Luke mentioned Snoke, just didn't asked him, who Snoke is. This little scene, with just three sentences about Snoke added, and maybe, this thread wouldn't even exist.

 

Yeah, you might have to face an opposing argument! Or worse, you might accidentally learn something! Don't want to get out of that comfortable cognitive dissonance, aren't ya?

 

I'm pretty sure Rey knows that Snoke is the Supreme Leader of the First Order. As much as the FO is known to the inhabitants of the GFFA, so is their leader. They probably don't know he's force sensitive, but they know he's the big bad. Characters didn't ask "who's the emperor?" in the OT, and the question was never answered on screen.
I'm sure we will get more backstory on him, and it probably won't be as satisfying as all those theories people came up with - at least to those who still think he's an important character for the story JJA an RJ chose to tell. Kylo is this trilogy's villain. We expected Snoke to be important for the complete narrative, but he was just as important as Kylo's arc needed him to be.
We don't write these stories. These would be terrible movies if we did.

 

You're right, it is senseless not to differenciate between Snoke, the Supreme Leader, and Snoke, the force user, but in this special scene, Luke talks abiut the force user, about Snoke, the darksider. So it would have been really easy to let Rey ask, if Snoke is a Sith or something like that. There were many ways to write this dialogue in a way, that three sentences about Snoke wouldn't feel wrong, and RJ decided not to use one of this possibilities.

Of course, it is possible, that we will get more informations about Snoke in Episode IX, but I don't believe it - but I would be happy to be wrong in this case...

 

Both sides have been circling this topic for some time, I'll endeavor to explain imo.

A portion of fans wanted backstory to Snoke, they either felt it would have added to Kylo, or that he could have linked the movies to some books (Bane) or they were simply curious. In TLJ we got "light meets dark" which further fueled the question as to who is Snoke. What light countered his darkness? I suspect if you cornered LFL and managed to force an answer out of them, they'd say Snoke was the anti-thesis to Luke (or possibly the reverse). When Snoke died, Luke was free to go too. Now I don't know if that's true, it certainly isn't canon, but I suspect it likely will be after the ST is done.

Now even if Luke isn't the answer to Snoke, a galaxy is a huge place. Without knowing how the force works specifically, it's quite possible that the Force attempts to balance itself with all force users. So it's possible there are Dathomir witches, Ewok medicine men and a slew of other force users that the Force is concerned with as to balance light and dark.

I'm not a fan of TLJ, but Snoke is hardly its biggest issue. I'd go as far as to say that plot wise, no backstory isn't that big of an issue as he could possibly get (or be involved in) a spin off, live action, cartoon, book ect... and it would have little to no impact on the ST. They (RJ and TLJ creative team) may have made the issue slightly bigger by suggesting that when there's an imbalance in the Force (the proverbial can of worms), the Force rectifies it be creating an equal antithesis of that powerful Force user. I think in the end this might be more limiting than having a Skywalker Dynasty for future films.

I can see an RJ type in the future coming out and putting the kibosh on that idea (light meets dark) in the future as it is too limiting to where the story can go, but for now, we have what we have.

 

Now that's some constructive criticism. I might not completely agree with you, but I can totally see your point. I wish we could have more of these discussions about different points of view on TLJ, without having to get into all that "best movie / worst movie ever" drama.
I think we can all agree to disagree on this movie. I really enjoyed it, but that's not the point. I love a good discussion, but the last thing I want is to convince other people of my point of view. In the end it's all just opinions and constructivism.

 

I'm going to flip around for a moment....

There is actually a missing backstory in Star Wars which really does present an unanswered question, and it does actually cause a problem for the narrative:

"Many Bothans died to bring us this information."

That's all we still know about a pretty important piece of information. Who, what...wait...go back. Say what now?
What's a Bothan? How many exactly? Why's that important? What the hell went down? Why's everyone looking sullen and uncomfortable?

That is something that could use a bit of a backstory because the story itself literally brought it up and used that information, without a backstory, as an attempt to raise the value of having obtained the Death Star plans.

We are left to look at their facial expressions for clues that this was bad, but we have no real idea of the value of this information or how we should feel about it.

They could have been talking about a household plant, or a type of ant...I don't know.

I assume they are referring to an alien, but what exactly is so sad and special about a large number of them dying versus an entire planet of non-violent people being exploded back in the first movie?

I don't know. Everyone certainly seemed very moved by that fact - whatever the value of that fact is.

No character saw a Bothan before the meeting and said,

​

HAN​

Hey! Bru Hi, long-time! How are you?
(leaning quietly over to Luke as they walk away)
Sad really, they've been hit hardest by the Empire.

LUKE​

But Alderaan was blown up!

HAN​

There's worse things out there than dying, trust me.

LUKE​

(ponders at Bru Hi and then looks back to Han)
I don't get it. They look pretty harmless.
Why's the Empire threatened by them?

HAN​

I don't think it's about threat.

(looks back)​

I think it's more hate.​

Luke looks back sadly as they both walk on.

​

And move on to yada yada plan, and then we get the "Many Bothan's died to bring us this information" in a bit and...OHHHHHH, now it makes sense why everyone's so blue about this. They're the galactic Jewish people to the galactic Nazi's - got it.

But no. We don't get anything. It's just __________


Now...

We didn't have anything of the sort happen regarding Snoke. He's there. He's big. He's ugly. He's evil. He's powerful. OK.
That's about on par with the Emperor, sure. There, small and frail, ugly, evil, powerful. OK.

But no one brought up something like,

"You don't want to test Snoke. It didn't work out well before. Many died as a result."​

And then never bring it up again.

Or...

"He's worse than you have imagined. Behind him lies power, death, and pain you do not wish to learn of."​

There was no, "Who, what...wait...go back. Say what now?" moment like there was in ROTJ with Bothans.

In fact, there were actually lines like that phrased around the Emperor back in the OT, and those too were left just hanging.

JERJERROD​

But he asks the impossible. I need more men.

VADER​

Then perhaps you can tell him when he arrives.

JERJERROD (aghast)​

The Emperor's coming here?

VADER​

That is correct, Commander.
And he is most displeased with your apparent lack
of progress.

JERJERROD​

We shall double our efforts.

VADER​

I hope so, Commander, for your sake.
The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.​

That is implicitly comparable to someone saying, "You don't want to test him. It didn't work out well before."
We have no idea what could be going through Jerjerrod's head regarding the Emperor that he fears so much. He clearly doesn't fear the death choke from Vader...or something...he's surprisingly loose and candid with Vader, but seems very, very worried about the Emperor dealing out punishment of ... some ... kind?
We actually never have any idea how the Emperor runs his group and why they're all so scared of him.
We're left to only imagine.

Snoke's backstory could have been added, but it wasn't needed in the story anywhere close to the level that the Bothan's backstory was actually needed in ROTJ.

It's just another one of those things left off the table like back when Fett was just being referred to by behavior of other characters as scary, but there was absolutely no reason given for why.
It just was a fan curiosity and Lucas picked up on that later and included it into the PT because Fett was a surprise.

Like the Emperor, Fett, Tarkin, the Generals, Bothans, and more...Snoke just wasn't the focus.

He's just another part in the large wheel of the myth of Star Wars, because Star Wars doesn't really answer very many questions, but it provokes a hell of a lot of imagination and thoughts, and it does this because it is extremely vague and loose on the details - following the mythological format.

Maybe one day we'll get a Snoke story...in fact, we probably will.
Star Wars films may create lots of curiosity by not filling in all of the blanks and edges, but the franchise sure has a long running history of picking up any open gap anywhere and diving in to it to create new content.

It just wasn't TLJ's place for Snoke's backstory.

Now...about that Bothan movie...

Cheers,
Jayson

 

I’m fairly confident I wasn’t the only one sitting in a theater in 2015 who heard Snoke tell Hux “It's time to complete his training” and thought “oh wow, we’re finally getting a darkside master/student relationship.” Not one that was simply alluded to, but an active dynamic where we get to see that side of the spectrum. Apparently Snoke was only referring to clowning his mask and having him perform another execution.

Rian Johnson isn’t beholden to my, our anyone else’s, hopes or expectations. But to claim that finding more out about Snoke wouldn’t have enriched the Kylo character is rather disingenuous. It could have if that was direction he’d decided to go.

Ultimately though, he felt it more fitting to keep with the trajectory JJ set. Kylo, being Rey’s opposite, was as desperate to severe his paternal bonds as Rey was in reestablishing hers. That included Snoke.

 

I wonder if Kylo is going to keep Snoke's hand around as a trophy.

Now that's a twist on the limb dismemberment motif that I could get behind!