Why Palpatine returning makes sense.

It's pretty common knowledge that the story group and Abrams don't get on. Pablo Hidalgo has talked about it in the past. He made changes to TFA without consulting them, and wasn't all that happy they blocked certain ideas like Coruscant being destroyed by SKB.

Also, the story group aren't robots, they've already acknowledged some mistakes and contradictions they've made outside of TROS. Dave Filoni has also admitted that he misremembered stuff like the colour of Ahsoka's sabers when Ahsoka was being written. That's why her sabers are green and not blue in the novel, when facing Maul.

 

I’ve never bought into ‘Mary Sue = Bad Character’, so that whole kerfuffle has been a proper mystery to me.

Veering way off topic here, but . . . screw it, this is fun. My take is that the emphasis on training is really geared more toward the indoctrination into the Jedi creed of ‘selflessness’ and ‘nonattachment’. Truthfully, those pretty concepts are as unnatural a mindset as you can get. They run counterintuitively to our basic human instincts.

I think that’s the stress on starting training so early. If you’re raised with that as your normal, then you have no other frame of reference. You accept that as reality. That’s why coming to it later in life - say, as a nine year old slave who’s totally dependent on the love of his mother - would suffer a massive culture shock and have a difficult time adjusting to this insanely foreign modality.

Probably best not to discount the ‘gifted’ factor of the equation either. Luke, Leia, Rey - they’re anomalies. They have inordinately strong connections to the Force that is the exception to the rule rather than the rule itself. They’re above and beyond normal ‘forcies’. Makes sense they’d be quick learners.

Must have read it in a book

 

The Jedi suck. Like really suck.
Maybe the Sith weren't so bad afterall.....

 

And that's why Palpatine returning made sense.
Well and because anything to say about it I did have not.

 

I don't think you understood my point.

The Story Group would not sign off on details that were actually contradictory to other details already established by existing lore, and even if something might seem like a contradiction, I can guarantee that there is an explanation that has been conceived of as to why it is not.

 

But why explaining stuff with contradicting information in the first place? Wouldn't it be much easier to explain it correctly and coherently from the get go?

Kinda off topic, but IMO you should always explain the necesseary points in the movie itself. If you don't explain it threre, fine! But don't explain it in a throw-away line in an useless book then. "Fixing" it afterwards doesn't make the previous work any better. The movie itself still lacks that information.

 

My ‘go to’ example for this is always the TFA novelization. Rey and Poe meet at the end of that book. In TLJ though it’s clearly shown that their first meeting happens at the end of that movie. It's a contradiction and the Story Group 'signed off' on it.

When asked about it, Pablo Hidalgo’s response was that the novelization was based on a deleted scene from TFA’s screenplay. Deleted scenes aren’t canon, so that moment in the book isn’t canon.

Spoiler

Basically: it's the movies that matter. The books, less so. There absolutely is no Story Group 'explanation' for this. They’re just different continuities. Simple as that.

 

Amen, brother. Best bad match in the whole lot belongs to RotS.


That novelization was exponentially better than the movie for me.

 

Minor contradictions like the TFA novel example are going to happen and don't actually matter.

When I say that the Story Group wouldn't sign off on details that are contradictory, I'm talking about things on the scale of the other examples used:... Which is why I firmly believe that said details are not actually contradictory.

 

Of course. People are fallible. They make mistakes. They will continue to make mistakes. The vaunted Lucasfilm Story Group is no exception.

My point is that the books and movies already don’t agree with each other. That ship has sailed. So it’s probably better, regardless of what LFL says, to treat them as separate things. The novels should maybe be viewed as novels only and not compendium pieces for the movies. Just a thought.

 

Which should, in turn, force the movies to be more comprehensive about information given and making things complete without additional reading. But hey....

 

I’m probably out of the loop on this. Not sure. I’ve only heard of a few novelization revelations (novrelations? . . . . nah).

1. The Palp in TROS was a clone. I’m not really sure how knowing that changes anything (for good or ill) that happened in the movie.
2. Palp’s son (Rey’s dad) was also a Palp clone. Again, I’m not really sure how that would drastically impact what we saw.
3. The ‘Reylo’ cementing kiss we got wasn’t necessarily as romantic as was portrayed. For me at least, this again lands comfortably in the ‘so what?’ category.

Am I missing something huge? Was there a massive reveal that fundamentally recontextualizes something major in the story? I’m honestly asking. I haven't heard anything so far that's made me say "this changes everything" or "OK, now it all makes sense". Y'know? A bunch of 'whoop-dee-doos' from me. Am I in the minority?

 

1.) For me, explaining Palpatine's return is a big deal. it adds context to the whole thing, again, for me. I still don't like it but it's better than "Oh he's just there again" which is essentially what we get in the film. And going in depth on this, is a lot more important IMO than wayfinder heists for the lulz.

2.) I don't think it matters about his son, this whole thing is kind of dumb to me no matter what they do. They're just trying to make it less dumb. So whatever.

3.) I think this one matters to a lot of people. There's no way that wasn't a romantic kiss. Backpedaling on it is cheap as hell. And I am NOT a Reylo

 

I can only speak for myself, but when I came out of the movie, I didn’t just want an explanation for the Emperor’s ‘new groove’. I wanted an explanation that actually mattered to: the story; the characters; the themes. Palpatine having an in-case-of emergencies-break-glass backup body doesn’t enrich the narrative for me. If anything it just confounds things even more. Now I have a dozen more questions that won’t likely have satisfactory answers.

If this was the best they could manage, then I totally see why it was omitted from the theatrical release . . . it’s dumb. I’m glad it’s not in there. I’d prefer they had landed some clever writing and incorporated it into the plot meaningfully, but failing that, keeping that goofiness out of the movie was the next best move . . . in my opinion.

That’s kind of where I’m coming from. They say there are no stupid questions, but there certainly are stupid answers and I think this counts. How about we just head-canon that idea out and pretend something else happened instead. Do that for the whole movie if you need to

Agreed. The cinema grammar of that scene is pretty hard to confuse. That wasn’t a kiss of ‘gratitude’ . So why care about how Rae Carson interpreted the unfilmed script she was handed? Why treat this book as gospel? I don’t mean you specifically, but folks that were put out by that amendment. If you appreciated something in the film, then don’t let something in a book ruin that.

That brings me back to the crux of my previous posts: probably best to look at the ancillary ‘canon’ as their own thing rather than extensions to it. It’s not worth the headache. But that’s easy for me to say. I don't think I'm quite as invested as some

 

I think the issue for me is, it COULD have mattered for the story and characters and themes. Instead it just feels hollow and like a distraction from the things that matter (I agree with you on those).

I think it's less that Ms Carson interpreted it, but rather that it felt like them trying to cover all their bases rather than just making a singular decision. Which is a MAJOR problem I have with the film as a whole. It feels like there's no actual choices made in the film. Oh they died? Lol JK still alive. Oh they fell in love? Lol jk not really. Oh she's a nobody? Lol jk not really. Oh she's not a Skywalker? Lol jk not really.

 

I disagree.

Fandom has a pervasive misunderstanding of what Canon is and why it actually matters and to whom.

As my signature on another message board states, "Only those responsible for creating content for a given property have to worry about Canon. To everyone else, it's a meaningless and irrelevant concept" .

The Story Group exists for the sole purpose of determining what the Canon of Star Wars is and ensuring that anyone who comes to "play in that sandbox" understands it and follows it unless there's a very good reason to amend or rewrite it.

 

If it's irrelevant, then forums like the Cantina are also irrelevant. In a matter of fact the whole fandom - the consumers - would be irrelevant. People like to understand the franchise which they're invested in. If the rules and canon is always changing why should we speculate in the first place? This sounds really boring to me.

For now, they did a pretty moderate job.

 

Canon, simply defined, is "that which narratively matters", and the primary reason it exists at all, in regards to fictional stories, is to establish a consistent and unified narrative framework for storytelling, which is why it only truly matters to those people doing the actual storytelling.

As an aside related to the Signature I quoted, it's derived from comments made by Lucasfilm Story Group member Matt Martin during a convention panel I attended.

 

Because in one the entire story is based on the return and the how which is tied to the narrative and in the other it is nonsensically and without explaination pulled out of the ass of the story for meta reasons (aka tie up the saga and fan service).

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 22, 2020, Original Post Date: Mar 22, 2020 ---

You do notice you went along defending a good little bit but didn't say why or what the defense is, just that there is one and it "requires little mental adjustment" and that you think it fits in beautifully.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 22, 2020 ---

Did "kinda" in some comparatively unread books is very thin gruel for making sense in the context of the movies.

Seems more akin to "I like it so I can work it in my head to make sense enough to me" which is fine but should come from a place that accepts it is going to be a stretch for others at least.

 

Disney? Maybe. Abrams? Nope, he was going full out but is a heck. A very talented and smart hack but a hack none the less.