Star wars...which befouls the OT legacy more...PT

[Lord Varys]

This part from the Veitch interview

Quote

Now, Zahn has said in an interview that bringing back the Emperor goes against the story of Return of the Jedi, where we see the Emperor destroyed by Darth Vader. But Zahn misses something essential about that scene: When the Emperor dares Luke to "strike me down", he seems utterly indifferent to his own death! He feels that whatever the outcome of this confrontation with Luke, he, Palpatine, will conquer.

 

It was my thesis that the Emperor chose this moment to come out of his deep seclusion in the Imperial City, because he no longer feared for the safety of his physical body. His mastery of the dark side had become such that he was now ready to make a transition he had been working toward for many years — namely the replacement of his aging, diseased, and crippled body with a young clone! Tempting Luke to strike him in anger with a lightsaber could thus accomplish two things: It would bring Luke over to the dark side...and it would mark the moment when Palpatine made the transition to his clone body.

 

Luke, as we know, resisted the temptation to kill the Emperor. But then Vader hurled the Emperor down the deep shaft, and we saw a series of blue flashes marking the Emperor's demise. The blue flashes represented the Emperor's living energy, his conscious dark force, leaving his body. And according to our story, his consciousness was translated across the Galaxy almost instantaneously and entered a new youthful body. Using cloned bodies Palpatine could live forever...and perhaps rule the Empire for thousands of years!

is something they really used well in TROS with the stuff about Rey striking down Palpatine, too. As I think I said about TROS already somewhere the one thing one can draw from that film is sort of add a (semi-official) reinterpretation, having Palpatine actually desiring Luke killing him, so that he can take possession of his body.

If one wants to spin things further, we could also imagine that Vader stopping Luke's blade in the last moment was not only his attempt to show his loyalty to his master but also to prevent Luke from becoming possessed by Palpatine's spirit.

The fact that he later offers Luke's Vader's place at his side doesn't fit all that well with such an interpretation, though (unless he was still somewhat fine with the ugly body).

[Rhom]

If that was honestly the plan, then by God... stick a cloning facility somewhere in TFA.  Blow up a station with Snoke on it early in TLJ only to have him show up and go all boogie man on Rey/Ren later in the movie as they kill him.  Sprinkle in some things that could lead to a Clonepatine revelation.  Earn it!!!!

If you do that, you don't negate RotJ.  People are angry that RoS resets everything accomplished in RotJ.  No it doesn't (in that situation).  RotJ is about the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, it doesn't have to be about the defeat of Palpatine.  But you need to establish early with some hints that you are going that way in the new movies.

[Lord Varys]

8 hours ago, Rhom said:

If that was honestly the plan, then by God... stick a cloning facility somewhere in TFA.  Blow up a station with Snoke on it early in TLJ only to have him show up and go all boogie man on Rey/Ren later in the movie as they kill him.  Sprinkle in some things that could lead to a Clonepatine revelation.  Earn it!!!!

Essentially Joke (I'm calling him that now for real ;-)) was a stand-in/copy for Palpatine. He was some ugly humanoid hologram giving orders in TFA and continued to be the ugly guy in robes on a throne in TLJ.

I don't think I have to explain why it makes no sense to first invent a Palpatine copy when you plan/intend to bring back the original, anyway. They wanted to go with a new Emperor who they did not call 'Emperor' just as they wanted to go with the Empire without calling it the Empire.

And if you look at the PT then, rather miraculously, we have very distinct and recognizable villains there in the Neimoidians and their eccentric battle droids, Darth Maul, Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus, new robots, Geonosians, and General Grievous. Only Darth Sidious/Palpatine (who was established in the OT) is an evil guy wearing a hood and likes to show up as an evil hologram.

In the ST we got Babyface Vader wannabe, Palpatine 1.0 and Palpatine 2.0 and various 'clones' of Imperial officers.

8 hours ago, Rhom said:

If you do that, you don't negate RotJ.  People are angry that RoS resets everything accomplished in RotJ.  No it doesn't (in that situation).  RotJ is about the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, it doesn't have to be about the defeat of Palpatine.  But you need to establish early with some hints that you are going that way in the new movies.

Well, it is a tidbit more complex. If you take Lucas' spin on the OT & PT combined then Anakin Skywalker fulfills the prophecy of the Chosen One (destroying the Sith and bringing balance to the Force) when he kills Darth Sidious at the end of ROTJ. He could have done that back in ROTS - but he failed back then.

In that sense his redemption is a necessary part of the story (and Luke is instrumental in that, being the greatest hero in the entire saga, believing more in the power of good/the light side than anyone before ever did, including his father (obviously), but also Obi-Wan and Yoda), but the crucial thing is the destruction of the Sith in the destruction of Emperor Palpatine.

And that didn't happen as per the new movies, making them a huge 'Fuck you!' to the entire Chosen One prophecy which was a rather important part of Anakin Skywalker's story. This is nothing one can just push aside.

[The fact that DE also doesn't fit well with the PT goes back to the fact that Lucas made the PT after DE and chose not to consider the implications the resurrected Emperor would have on the story when making it. But the ST makers do know both the PT and the ST movies and could have tried to make them fit together better.]

In fact, if you think about the Chosen One prophecy for a moment then one can see Rey as being the one who fulfilled it in the end. And that thing could have been the core of the new movies - they could have made Rey another artificial creation of the Force (like Anakin may have been) with Palpatine wanting to create a new and better version of the disappointment that was Darth Vader.

They could also have made sense of the end of ROTJ by making it clear Anakin accomplished something by killing Palpatine back then - or by revealing that Anakin wasn't the Chosen One at all, and the prophecy having been misinterpreted. That could have worked very well if they had actually introduced the text/words of the prophecy as such (which never happened in the PT).