"Somehow, Palpatine..."

That’s really more what’s going on here. Nobody is expecting Poe Dameron, Resistance fighter, to magically deduce the nature of the supposedly long dead emperor’s miraculous resurrection. Of course he wouldn’t know.

But his incuriosity is about the same as the movie’s itself. It’s reflective of that particular criticism and so became its figurehead. It isn’t just the character saying this, it’s the filmmakers themselves telling the audience that a specific story point, they might be invested in, is entirely irrelevant. And some folks have a pronounced opinion on that.

Yes, it would

“Leia knows what must be done, Artoo. To reach her son now...will take all the strength she has left.”

 

I think it was just something that people didn't stop to reconsider because there were so many 'booboos' in TROS...half of the story happened off screen before the film even started; when I first started watching it I felt as if I'd walked in during the middle of the film.

 

That’s generally part of the structure of Star Wars though, yeah? One of the things George Lucas wanted to capture was that feeling of catching an ongoing serial during the middle of its run. The way he had as a kid with Flash Gordon. That’s why there’s an opening crawl. To fill the audience in on the stuff that they missed. To present them with the illusion that there’s a way bigger story going on that they’re only seeing a part of.

In this case, it was a pretty big part of the story we missed. But the idea itself is comfortably baked into the premise, I feel. You had the feeling you were supposed to have.

 

Basically, it is irrelevant to the story of not only TROS but the entire saga. That's if we're using the saga's incuriosity about the origins of Darth Sidious, how the Sith can return from extinction at all, and how the Jedi have no sense of these things occurring as a the benchmark for how much these things actually matter to the story/plot in the movie/saga itself.

The discrepancy is with how some fans value knowledge like that in and of itself regardless of its actual role in the plot/story/character development. They have to know.

A few factors make it less forgivable for those fans. a) it's been years since the saga gave us the return of the "extinct" Sith so fans have filled in gaps by themselves and to their own satisfaction b) for some fans, knowing that Palpatine's total and final death happened in ROTJ is a prerequisite for certain other threads and aspects of the saga up till that point carrying specific meaning and importance. Like the fulfilment of the "prophecy" (which the OT never mentions and was clearly invented years after the OT was completed). In spite of Yoda openly admitting that prophecy chasing was unwise, some fans feel that the six part saga succeeds because Anakin definitely makes everything all alright, including the slaughter of the younglings in order to save Padme, because he kills Palpatine to save his and Padme's son. Thus "destroying the Sith and bringing balance back to the force".

For me one of the more appealing aspects of the prequels is how we see the hitherto more instinctual, nature focused appearing Jedi are actually held hostage to ancient prophesies and scripts of dubious provenance. They only know what will happen in the future one day from what someone wrote thousands of millennia ago? That's a bit weird for a group of clairvoyants. (Not clairvoyant enough to see that trying to fulfill that prophecy will ensure their destruction until it's literally just about to happen.)

Anyway my point is that the Jedi don't really know what they claim to know. Which throws stuff like "Only two there are" into doubt too. If the Jedi don't know then how am I supposed to know? But for some fans, we ARE supposed to know. TROS indirectly but bluntly telling us we still don't need to know (at the moment) is just unacceptable for some. Not for me. It's consistent. Star Wars has never been about how.

There's no reason for Poe to say anything other than "Somehow Palpatine returned" at that briefing. He's not talking to anyone who was there when Palpatine "died" so he's not having to explain that what they saw wasn't his final end. And he's not talking to the audience so whatever the audience wants to be told at this stage is irrelevant. Sorry.

 

Outside of the Jedi a couple of Sith, Padme once or twice and the Viceroy, no other person in the whole galaxy is shown speaking of or too Palpatine.

It felt odd when Poe even said his name. And when Dermot's character started wondering aloud if it was dark secrets/Sith magic, I flinched. That chat ended quickly enough for me.

 

Interesting. Personally, I felt the prequel portrayal of the Jedi’s supreme confidence of the Sith being vanquished, was the explanation itself. To borrow a line, ” The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”

The Sith survived by convincing the Jedi they’d died. And the Jedi, all too eager to accept themselves as victors, gladly bought that lie. It’s a condemnation of hubris and pomposity. It was their arrogance that undid them - architects of their own demise. That’s what I see as the ‘how’ of that matter. It isn’t irrelevant. It’s a core theme to that trilogy.

I’m sure that’s probably a fairly significant factor. For myself, I’ve seen the critique lobbed more from film critics than fans. The concept is simple: an evil from the past, thought to have been defeated, has returned. It’s a pretty basic metaphor for personal and societal relapse. For that great ill to have revisited, mistakes must have been made, right?

So what were those mistakes and how do we correct them so we aren’t stuck in an endlessly repeating pattern of behavior? It’s the film’s total incuriosity about THAT which is most concerning. If you aren’t invested in how you got into a destructive situation, then how will you ever get out of it? You don’t? You just accept it? Can’t say I’m in love with that conclusion.

 

Film critics were far less impressed by TROS than they were with TLJ and even TFA. But unless we're counting Youtube channels with dudes (it's clear these people are genre fans more than they are film critics) who use "Somehow..." as a meme in videos unrelated to TROS or even Star Wars (as a substitute for wit/humor I suppose) then I don't agree with that assessment that film critics are more critical of the lack of an explanation for how Sith cloning and the dark side works.

I don't agree the the trilogy or the two trilogies before it were set up as a description of what mistakes can be made when vanquishing a Sith lord and what specific measures must be taken to fix that mistake and so on. I think the saga describes how generations have their own problems mixed in with the previous generations and how pessimism/fear about things never getting better and complacency at having solved problems that actually require constant attention are pitfalls we all must negotiate.

That doesn't mean I don't care and its's not to say that an examination of how mistakes are made and how to address them isn't a valid area for storytelling. (I proposed a format for future SW movies which run parallel stories from past and future GFFA and which shows the ancient Jedi and the post GCW/FO Jedi facing the same problems https://thecantina.starwarsnewsnet....wars-films-post-tros.62456/page-2#post-616915) I just don't feel that SW (the Skywalker Saga) has ever promised to deliver this and ROTS was certainly not obligated to do so except by the fan's sense of needing to know.

 

I agree with your argument given that the messenger was Poe. I suspect that a much more substancial explanation for the whole 'Return of Palpatine' storyline will be addressed in future seasons of The Mandalorian which has already hinted at the Emperor's experiments with cloning.

 

I believe we’ve had this discussion before. I’m not referring to the nuts and bolts minutia of “cloning” and “dark science” or whatever. This isn’t a matter of detailing the nuances of pseudo-science or technobabble or jargon. The make-believe technology and mysticism of this imaginary world can operate however it wants. That’s not the criticism being pushed. That’s just a misdirection. I’m talking about the underline themes of the narrative - the characters and what they represent in an allegorical fashion.

The Palpatine character represents the dark side. The dark side in all of us. He’s our negative tendencies that can override our better sense of judgement and duty and principle and allow us to fall into destructive behaviors that lead to misery and suffering. He’s the obstacle we must overcome and continue to overcome on our journey toward happiness. Our negative qualities don’t simply get defeated and then remain banished forever. It’s a continuous effort. And when they do return and when they do thrive, it isn’t anything they managed on their own. It’s because we let them. We relented. We allowed it.

The premise behind the sequel trilogy was that the First Order, this remnant of the Empire created by the Sith, had survived and begun to spread. It only manages to do this because it was allowed to. The New Republic, fearful of escalating conflict, tolerated their violent expansion and ultimately became victims of it. Similarly, our hero Luke Skywalker, aware of the growing darkness in his nephew/apprentice, tolerated this spiritual decline and ultimately his new Jedi Order became a victim of it. In both cases, darkness didn’t prevail all on its own. It was allowed to by those who could have prevented it. The ‘how’ of that matters. It’s essential to the thematic core of the narrative.

TROS reveals that the Palpatine character, the one who represents darkness and negativity in this series more than any other, survived his apparent death and has nearly restored his lost influence. And evidently he’s managed this entirely on his own in total secret. It isn’t the result of anyone’s shortcomings or fears or failings of judgement or principles. Our heroes of virtue didn’t stumble and let it happen. It would have happened regardless. He was just really really that prepared.

When someone critiques “Somehow, Palpatine returned”, that’s what I’m hearing them say. How our deep set character failings that corrupt us reemerged is irrelevant? But that’s the whole point. That’s what we’re supposed to be learning about.

No, not specifically “Sith Lords”, but what they represent: corruption of character. The evil Emperor, his Empire, and his apprentice didn’t rise to power all on their own. They were allowed to because those who could have prevented it gave into their darker anxieties and willingly participated in their own demise.

Star Wars is a didactic fairytale. It’s a fable that teaches lessons in ethics and conduct through exaggerated fantasy allegory. The expectation is that the young audience will observe the failures and victories of the story’s heroes and apply those earned lessons in their own lives. The prequels serve as a classic cautionary tale. What NOT to do. We see our heroes make the wrong decisions and how it results in tragedy. The originals serve as an endorsement tale. What TO do. We see our heroes make better decisions than before and how it results in success. Mistakes were made and then redeemed and the kids learn a valuable lesson in the process that they can later then apply to their own lives.

The sequels rely on the idea that our established heroes eventually also made their own mistakes and so now must also be redeemed. It’s the same setup. Wrongs were made and must be made right again. The catalyst for all this though, as is revealed in TROS, is that Palpatine somehow survived his death. Something that has nothing at all to do with anyone’s mishandling of the situation. No one could have reasonably anticipated this or prevented it. It wasn’t a mistake. He returns because . . . he can. It’s just a thing he can do. That he could have always done. And probably could do again.

I think that’s only part of it though. Those problems don’t come from nowhere. We, ourselves, have a critical role in their prevalence as well as their resolutions.

 

I was totally okay with the notion of bringing Palpatine back in the ST. After all, the return of a Big Baddie is what comic book villains are famous for.

I also think it was okay for the Powers-that-Be at Lucasfilm to keep his rebirth mysterious. The problem was the ham-fisted way his reintroduction was approached. I fully understand the pickle JJ was in. Palp was obviously an eleventh-hour addition because the guy who was supposed to be the trilogy's ultimate bad guy got killed off in the trilogy's second act instead of the third.

If Lucasfilm had intended to bring back Palpatine all along, they would have approached his return entirely different. You build up the tension and suspense by teasing his return through the first two films. You don't suddenly spring him on our heroes in the last one. It's another one of the reasons why the ST films felt so disjointed.

 

I guess it’s one of those “your focus determines your reality” type deals. I don’t really engage with ‘gotcha’ culture where wannabe celebrities mine someone else’s hard work for every slight imperfection so they can make revenue off others’ bad faith inclinations. So I prefer approaching things by extending everyone the benefit of the doubt.

If someone has a genuine misgiving about how a story element was handled, then that’s coming from somewhere sincere. They just might not have the tools to properly articulate why it didn’t work for them and fall back on the easy clichés they’ve heard from others. So, let’s do the work. Let’s figure out where that reaction is coming from, rather than shutting it down and saying it doesn’t matter. That it has no value.

I’m sure there’s an absolutely vast number of fans who have committed themselves to memorizing cross-section diagrams of ships and the name of every single planet and they care deeply about grasping the practical mechanics of ‘how’ things work in this mysterious far away land of playtime. But I don’t believe that makes up anything close to the majority. Stories are emotional journeys. They aren’t technical manuals. When people ask for a ‘how’, I believe they’re asking for a personal explanation and not a pedantic one. An explanation that makes it matter emotionally rather than mechanically.

 

Your whole post was well-said, eeprom.

I would add that 'the how's or 'the why's come into play only if an explanation is deemed necessary for the viewer's emotional buy-in to the story being told.

 

I still believe bringing Palpatine back for the ST was a joke and a sign of just how unoriginal Disney Studios, Lucasfilm and J.J. Abrams were.

 

Palpatine's return was being critiqued long before the movie was released. As soon as it was revealed in the trailer. The argument was that ROTJ had definitively depicted Palpatine's end. Vader's impulsive act had wiped out and reversed the Emperor's rise. The light show and howling winds marked the flipping of the universe back into balance with the Sith lord completely destroyed we imagined) It was written. How on Earth were they going to unwrite that?

Palpatine returning needed to be physically justified. Like, what was the escape route? When were plans put in place for just such a contingency? Who in the Empire helped? Who knew? And why didn't .... and so on and son.

I don't agree that the "critiques" of "Somehow..." are concerned with the justification of Palpatine's return being thematically robust. It's basically about looking for credible answers to questions of "lore". How could they unwrite the end of ROTJ as we know it? How would they unwrite the ending of ROTJ? Somehow they would. But in fact, it had actually already been rewritten years before when Lucas and Disney were in negotiations for LFL's sale and the production of new SW episodes.

 

Okay, maybe this is just a rumour, but I did hear that Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter was a last minute decision...but if they'd planned for his return earlier on, why on earth couldn't they have come up with something more interesting? He could have come back as a 'dark' FG...remember his little speech to Anakin in the PT about Darth Sidious having knowledge of prolonging life?
Heck, they could even have Anakin return as a FG and put him down once and for all!

 

I meant to add that TROS was meant to answer those critiques of the choice to bring Palpatine back. "Somehow..." was cast by the audience as the answer that was supposed to satisfy all those pre-existing critiques. The "critiques" of "Somehow..." are more to do with what it is not, than what it is.