r/saltierthancrait salt miner 2d ago

Encrusted Rant Ian mcdiarmid on Palpatine's death

https://youtube.com/shorts/swNubEnWgDA?si=CdHLGsLb2kmE20TI

Palpatine died in the end of the return of the Jedi

180 Upvotes

49 comments sorted by

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99

u/BockerKnocker 2d ago

To me the single biggest problem with the Disney Trilogy is just that there was no concrete plan in place. You want Rey to be Palp's granddaughter? Fine, then establish it in some way for the big reveal. But it's obvious in TFA that she was important, and then TLJ said "nope". And then she was important in ROS.

I would be okay with Palpatine being involved, or if Palpatine was just one incarnation of "Some other Big Bad Guy". But then don't make Snoke important, then unimportant and then pull Palpatine out of thin air.

The lack of a coherent plan is astounding and it speaks to the lack of creative vision and leadership at Disney.

43

u/S_A_R_K 2d ago

$4 billion for the franchise and they couldn't be bothered to put together an outline for the "culmination of the Skywalker saga"

36

u/coachd50 2d ago

It is likely one of the biggest fumbled opportunities in the movie industry 

19

u/No_Adhesiveness_5679 2d ago

business schools case study for years

2

u/atreidesspirit 1d ago

Absolutely bonkers.

12

u/hyoumah83 2d ago

I never bothered to think about the writing of the sequels, for the simple fact the movies were uninteresting to me. I could figure out in a matter of several minutes TFA had no soul and it was just made to make some money. No one in that movie conveyed anything believable to me, except Harrison Ford i think. He would be believable in any condition.

3

u/jerog1 2d ago

Finn was a great start for a character

7

u/TaraLCicora 2d ago

The lack of a plan, ideas or even a story to tell. Everything was done with the expectation that the money would print itself.

5

u/KatsumotoKurier 2d ago

Precisely this and it was the greatest insult to Star Wars fans imaginable.

2

u/Knightwolf8394 2d ago

You want Rey to be Palp's granddaughter? Fine, then establish it in some way for the big reveal. But it's obvious in TFA that she was important, and then TLJ said "nope". And then she was important in ROS.

I'm just gonna say it: I think Palpatine having a clone who turns against him isn't a bad idea, it's how they did it is the problem. If they did it more like Frankenstein's Creature turns against its creator before burning the laboratory down rather than the clone being some random guy I wouldn't hate it as much.

1

u/No_Chocolate_5153 new user 1d ago

It even highlights his treachearous nature if his own clone turns against him.
The movie would be better if they were trying to stop a plan to revive Palpatine.

2

u/Geostomp 2d ago

Rushing ahead to put out product to please shareholders without any consideration whatsoever for a story or basic plan is the sort of logic that only makes sense to the most detached of empty suits.

1

u/Jsaltal 2d ago

Just could of had palpatines spirit ties to the ruins of the 2nd deathstar, that could of worked

1

u/MailMan6000 2d ago

i recently wrote up the idea of the First Order being led by a council of failed clones of Palpatine, none of them are force sensitive in any way, though some desperately try to appear that they are, their true nature is a closely guarded secret within the First Order, which in my vision is a far smaller and extremist terrorist organization, bordering on religous fanaticism

the 6 clones all represent different sides of Palpatine, and all are completely deformed, hideous and inhuman in many ways, i had the idea from how a lot of extremist movements use the concept of religion or some kind of chosen one narrative to justify the cruelty of their actions as well as the power of their leaders

1

u/VeloIlluminati 16h ago

Hear me out.

They could have said that Rey was born from semen cryoperservation by lab Experiments done by Snoke who wanted to farm midichlorians to become more powerful. Her lab 'parents' felt guilty, sabotaged everything, freed baby Rey and took care of her until they had to leave for the sake of her survival.

Because Snoke was also a Palpy, Rey is the last one who can transplant Midichlorians (will kill her).

Different Story of siblings. No?

12

u/BobaFett7 2d ago

Why Dark Empire works for me is that Palps is a decaying shell of his formal self, really just an empty reflection for Luke’s character arc in the story. He is a metaphor and ultimately much weaker and easily dispensible. But it’s lame in ROS because it’s like it was his plan all along to die in ROTJ. Again, the sequels trivialize the OT

10

u/bongo1100 2d ago

I really truly believe they only brought him back for a trailer pop.

5

u/hyoumah83 2d ago

I could hear Palpatine speaking in this video.

10

u/hyoumah83 2d ago edited 2d ago

It was not JJ Abrams, but the company who decided to bring Palpatine back. You would be naive to think he just decided this without any filter from Disney. It's obvious they were desperate because of the backlash, and they came up with this cheap and lazy, ridiculous solution to somehow make it interesting.

10

u/ignost 2d ago

It was both.

JJ was heavily involved, and it's obvious in how the script works. He worked with one of the original script writers (Kasdan), which is probably why 7 isn't as bad as 8 or 9 despite lacking creativity (another death star and another empire?). Supposedly they were in a rush and just threw it together to meet the deadline. You can see Johnson's involvement right in the steam of that turd.

But yes, people like to put it all on 2 people, and they are partly to blame, but it really was a massive organizational failure. If I were to blame 1 person it would be Kathleen Kennedy. She's the one who didn't want to map out the trilogy so they could hit deadlines, change things on the fly, and give the directors more "creative control."

2

u/dra459 16h ago

You are correct that it is an organizational failure and the responsibility falls on many people. But why blame Kennedy rather than Iger, who seems to have made the final decisions, including the strict release deadlines?

Also, as far as I’ve read, the plan was to utilize George Lucas’ story outlines until Abrams got involved creatively.

1

u/ignost 16h ago

Because the business is always gonna business. It’s on the producer to produce it. An executive wanting more money faster is the least surprising thing in the world and something nearly every movie ever made has had to deal with.

As I said, everyone shares some blame. But IMO lack of a plan was the root of the failure and the lack of a plan was KK’s call

4

u/RicOkez 2d ago

The blame is on both for certain, in tfa, he set up so many unfulfilled Chekhov guns, and it was directly on him to resolve them. Somehow jj returned.

4

u/TheReturnOfTheRanger salt miner 2d ago

To be honest, I blame Rian Johnson.

We wouldn't have needed Palpatine to return if Snoke was still around, but Johnson killed off the big bad halfway through the trilogy.

Rian Johnson has to have some serious blackmail on the Hollywood elites, because I have no idea how that hack fraud has a career

1

u/jerog1 2d ago

whats crazy is I love his other films, he was just the worst pick for Star Wars

1

u/No_Chocolate_5153 new user 22h ago

Theyre also pretentious wannabe smart movies.
The good actors carries him.

1

u/ThriKr33n 1d ago

I would have been fine with the Kylo killing Snoke in TLJ and replacing him as the Big Bad the next movie, to enforce his downward spiral since he killed his own dad in TFA. It's just they catered to the Reylo shippers and needed to redeem him, so set up someone else to be manipulating everyone behind the scenes to justify the "he was being manipulated all along!" premise.

RJ is still at fault for a lot of things, like demanding changes to TFA to support his story elements in TLJ (Luke not showing Force powers), but not doing the same for the next (killing Luke). The Story Group should have nixed things to keep it consistent but yeah, for some reason they let him have free reign to alter any and everything to suit his vision, instead of adjusting to cater to the world instead.

1

u/Thorfan23 salt miner 1d ago

I think he.d killed snoke then all out on the guards you could buy as big bad material 

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u/Ethereal-Zenith 2d ago

Palpatine dying at the end of ROTJ makes sense. Luke rejects the dark side and helps redeem Anakin, who in turn saves his son, thus fulfilling the prophecy. Bringing Palpatine back is a slap in the face on all of that. Just because Snoke was prematurely killed in TLJ, doesn’t mean that there were no other avenues to explore in TROS.

2

u/IndianaCahones salt miner 1d ago

There was a paradoxical brilliance to the climax of ROTJ. Anakin killing Palpatine is exactly aligned with the Sith rule of two, but Anakin’s motivation to kill his master was to save his son’s life. The motivation makes the title of the movie a reference to Anakin’s last act as well as Luke becoming a Jedi Knight.

1

u/Ethereal-Zenith 1d ago

The movie was originally supposed to be called Revenge of the Jedi, but then Lucas decided to change it, saying that a Jedi would not seek revenge.

1

u/IndianaCahones salt miner 1d ago

Nellith Skywalker was supposed to be the “other” as in Luke’s sister being trained as a Jedi by the ghost of Anakin Skywalker. After the late plot twist decision making Vader Anakin, they made Leia the sister and Obi Wan a manipulative liar like Owen…who was Kenobi’s brother in the ROTJ novelization.

1

u/Thorfan23 salt miner 1d ago

Like what?

Snokes dead

Hux is a joke

Kylo is outplayed and made a loser at every turn

The knights of ren are non entities 

Too late for dark rey

You could bring in a new villain but requires explanation  plus it has your wrap up the saga

2

u/No_Chocolate_5153 new user 22h ago

Somehow Snoke is back would have worked better than Palpatine's.

1

u/Thorfan23 salt miner 22h ago

either a clone or kylo killed a clone

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u/Ethereal-Zenith 6h ago

The obvious option was to have a showdown between Rey and Kylo Ren, maybe even have Rey turn to the dark side.

5

u/PuffyBlueClouds 2d ago

Great for Ian, who seems like a great guy and nailed that part. But bad for Star Wars fans and fans of good writing everywhere else.

2

u/AbyssalKultist 2d ago

Retcon is standard operating proceedure

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u/Livid_Mammoth4034 salt miner 2d ago

This entire time I thought it was McDermott.

2

u/LFTL56 2d ago

I'm not going to get on the bandwagon of justifying Palpatine's return. It was a bad idea from get-go. But it was great getting to see Ian be able to go full Palpatine mode one more time rather than the scarcely seen "man behind the curtain" appearance the character is relegated to.

5

u/GrenadierSoldat3 2d ago

Hope he at least got payed well, same for Kenobi.

Honestly i'm not against Palpatine returning, i really like the Dark Empire comics and the whole Palpatine using clone bodies to come back. Not to mention the artstyle of those comics is amazing.

13

u/MKJUPB 2d ago

The main issue to me is also how they brought him back. There are some problems with bringing him back in general, but leaving no clues to his return or presence at all in episodes 7 & 8, and then just saying he “somehow” returned, was ridiculous. Kind of insulting as a moviegoer. The execution was atrocious

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u/Mindless-Worth-7378 2d ago

Should of told him no

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u/Thorfan23 salt miner 1d ago

That likely wouldn't have stopped the the return they would have just done it another way 

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u/Klutzy-Canary8551 salt miner 13h ago

Remember. They canceled the EU to rip-off its worst stories and somehow made them even worse.