2 minutes ago, Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun said:

In Attack of the Clones and the animated The Clone Wars they were still technically called the ‘Red Guard,’ although they were already attached to then Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and where christened ‘Imperial Royal Guard’ as the events of RotS transpired.

Supposedly they got armor upgrades despite retiaining their original design, although this is not stated when this happened.

[In game terms, due to superior modifications, they did not take armor penalties to their Dexterity based skills like most other Stormtroopers did.]

The Evolution of the Royal Guard from the Senate Guard and the parallel development of the Clone Troopers into the Stormyroopers and Coruscant Guard are the stuff of wiki pages. And I’m not about to rehash that stuff.

From a viewpoint of ‘just the movies’ we got Blue Centurian-type guys in TPM, Red Robed guys that have a similar look as well as a change in the blue guys to closed helmets in AotC, then Red Guys look identical in RoTS and RotJ. That’s really nice continuity. and your average SW fan won’t give a poodoo about game statistics or wheather some helmeted guys were part of the same unit military branch as other helmeted guys. The costumes are bad *** and it’s awesome to see them on screen but they only come into the story for a little cgi green guy to take down with a flick of his wrist.

It does make you wonder though if any of the blue/red guards were the same individual characters between movies. And if any were nonhuman, or cyborgs, force sensative or Have some other weirdness about them. I’m sure there’s plenty of Legends/EU stuff that I ignored that delved deeply into this stuff, like the X-wing novels that gave us certain pilots and the red painted Squints (missing their extra fins).

16 minutes ago, Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun said:

I’m curious, is this thread one of the longest in this Forum?

Sadly it’s longer than GUNBOAT THREAD but then GUNBOATS will outlive Rebels, and I assume that includes this thread.

1 hour ago, GrimmyV said:

? At least we got to see the Praetorian Guard Fight. They were still as equally effective at protecting Snoke as the Royal Guard were at protecting Palpy on DS2.

To be fair, Sheev in his arrogance dismissed the Royal Guard (although they did put up a bit of a stand agaisnt Vader in a cut scene). The Praetorians don't even have that excuse.

3 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

To be fair, Sheev in his arrogance dismissed the Royal Guard (although they did put up a bit of a stand agaisnt Vader in a cut scene). The Praetorians don't even have that exscuse.

Not sure how Royal Guards or Praetorians intended to protect their leiges when they allowed possible threats with force powers like Luke and Rey into the same room anyway. And especially after the Yoda smack down Vader’s betrayal (or did Snoke and the FO not know?). The cut scene from RotJ showed that at least the preferred guard position was outside the chamber.

Its a good thing those imperial dignitaries didn’t try anything, they were totally within range to blast or poison Sheev throughout the first part of RotJ. One of them could have even been mind-tricked by a rogue Jedi to carry a bomb and blow up the shuttle that the Emperor was on. I’m sure there was a way for a ‘trusted’ old crusty white dude to smuggle a bomb onto a star destroyer and then onto the Emperor’s personal shuttle.

1 hour ago, GrimmyV said:

Sadly it’s longer than GUNBOAT THREAD but then GUNBOATS will outlive Rebels, and I assume that includes this thread.

Not if you go by canon

2 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Not sure how Royal Guards or Praetorians intended to protect their leiges when they allowed possible threats with force powers like Luke and Rey into the same room anyway. And especially after the Yoda smack down Vader’s betrayal (or did Snoke and the FO not know?). The cut scene from RotJ showed that at least the preferred guard position was outside the chamber.

Its a good thing those imperial dignitaries didn’t try anything, they were totally within range to blast or poison Sheev throughout the first part of RotJ. One of them could have even been mind-tricked by a rogue Jedi to carry a bomb and blow up the shuttle that the Emperor was on. I’m sure there was a way for a ‘trusted’ old crusty white dude to smuggle a bomb onto a star destroyer and then onto the Emperor’s personal shuttle.

Snoke knows about Vader's betrayal and has told Kylo as such. There was a deleted scene from TFA from when we first meet his oversized hologram he talks about Vader's moment of weakness. I believe this scene made it into the novel so it's still canon.

10 minutes ago, FlyingAnchors said:

Snoke knows about Vader's betrayal and has told Kylo as such. There was a deleted scene from TFA from when we first meet his oversized hologram he talks about Vader's moment of weakness. I believe this scene made it into the novel so it's still canon.

Well ****, Snoke has no excuses. He guaranteed that Kylo was gonna betray him and still placed his guards as far away from himself AND Kylo that he could. Yeah he deserved it.

19 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

Well ****, Snoke has no excuses. He guaranteed that Kylo was gonna betray him and still placed his guards as far away from himself AND Kylo that he could. Yeah he deserved it.

Seriously, what was the point of Snoke full stop? He did nothing. At all. Ever. The most pointless villain since Agent Smith #8923647. Might as well just have had Kylo and Hux one-upping each other, and left Snoke out of it entirely for all the impact he had on the story.

Mind you, there's a lot of things you can say that about in the new trilogy.

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Seriously, what was the point of Snoke full stop? He did nothing. At all. Ever. The most pointless villain since Agent Smith #8923647. Might as well just have had Kylo and Hux one-upping each other, and left Snoke out of it entirely for all the impact he had on the story.

Mind you, there's a lot of things you can say that about in the new trilogy.

Snoke was the impetus for everything.

No Snoke = No First Order as we know it.

No Snoke = No First Order pervasion then later invasion of the galaxy

No Snoke = No Kylo, Ben stays a Jedi

No Snoke = Jedi Order never goes extinct, new knights

No Snoke = No Rey (she is the force's balance to Kylo extinguishing the New Jedi Order)

No Snoke = No Sequel Trilogy

~

I could go on but just because we don't know much about Snoke doesn't mean he isn't important, that's an entirely wrong view of the character and I would argue storytelling.

You're seeing the destination and forgetting the journey. Any character's death is stupid if you conveniently ignore his story prior to.

Snoke, just like the Emperor, is the chess player pushing the pieces around. The necessary character that completes the hierarchy. The one who initiates the actions that coalesce into the story we watch.

Don’t confuse Snoke not having a back story with not having an impact on the story. In fact he does have a backstory, he built up the FO on the edge of the galaxy and has been working to take over the galaxy for a long time. He seduced Ben to the dark side and has been hunting Luke ever since. Do you need more than that? At least he had more lines than Boba (OT anyway) and had a much more awesome death scene.

Without Snoke we don’t have Kylo betraying his boss and assuming control of the FO mid story. This is much more interesting than Kylo just being in charge from the beginning. You know, character development?

It’s amazing that that when we get unexpected turns and unconventional story telling it suddenly ruins SW. which was already ruined in 83 by wrapping up too many loose ends with **** dialogue and shrinking Wookiees into Ewoks. Oh and the prequels too.

oh and the holiday special. Somehow The OT survived that too.

Snoke was the abusive step-father figure who stepped in and groomed Kylo, who felt abandoned by his parents. He clearly, in his arrogance, thought he was immune to the mistakes Palpatine made. In fact, that's pretty realistic; people are pretty quick to look at mistakes others make and go "I'd clearly never be daft enough to fall for that !"

Snoke is fundamentally important to Kylo Ren's arc.

Palpatine was a 'pointless' big bad in exactly the same way that Snoke was, people just feel differently about Palpatine because he's subsequently been fleshed out in both Canon and Legends. Palp was a guy who pretty much appeared from nowhere to be an arrogant master who gets hobbled by his apprentice. Snoke repeats the same mistake in his arrogance because it's kind of fundamental to what the First Order is; a very foolish and extremely dangerous nostalgia trip. This is what makes it subtly different to the Empire Proper but also quite insidious. The Empire were Nazi analogues, the First Order are Neo-Nazi analogues. It's not an insignificant difference past the surface level.

Snoke is a vital part of the character arc of Ren. And it's absolutely okay to have a character who exists only to further the narrative arc of another (I mean, that's Yoda and Obi-Wan to Luke, or Gandalf to Frodo/Bilbo or any kind of Mentor figure in fiction). Kylo destroying Snoke and then descending further into his way of 'coping' with his trauma, which is to say trying to further exert control over his future (by assuming control of the FO) and his past ("Kill the past. Let it die.") is part of his arc.

It also neatly contrasts with Rey who has similar abandonment issues. Rather than trying to actively destroy her past though, Rey dealt with her trauma first by constructing a fiction around her abandonment and then by trying to redeem Kylo. Kylo wants to control his future by dominating his past (killing Han and Snoke are both key parts to his goals) while Rey wants to forge a better future out of the ashes of the past. They are fundementally different ways of dealing with trauma and naturally Ren's is the dark side way (repress what you can, destroy what you can't repress) and Rey's is more Light sided (although her idealisation of her abandonment, her trying to rationalise it as her parents one day "coming back" is also an interesting part of her naivety and perhaps the naivety of the Jedi in general. the same naivety that blinded them to the mistakes they made during the Clone Wars that Luke specifically warns about. You shouldn't try and excuse the mistakes of those who came before out of sentimnetanlity). The difference in the resolution of TLJ is that Rey seems to accept her personal fiction was flawed but Kylo instead delves even deeper into it.

The sequel trilogy deliberately and consciously plays on ideas of how we view the past, and it consciously plays on ideas of nostalgia. I don't know if that's even something they are doing deliberately (but I'm quite sure it is). Now, I'm not saying you have to like that , it's definitely something that could be seen as a little navel-gazey. I myself quite like it though. It hits the similar action plot beats but there's some interesting clockwork (deliberately or not) going on under the surface. It leans into that. Maybe that's a bit on the nose for some people but to be honest I think it's probably one of the more interesting moves when you're dealing with a series with the nostalgic clout Star Wars has.

I'd like to add on that Palpatine was never truly given a motivation after becoming Emperor other then...

That is until the beginning of the Vong arc in the EU, when he suddenly was unifying the galaxy against a single threat or some other jank fizz wizz.

At least Snoke has a motivation that's serves itself to being a little more dynamic.

FWIW, and I've mentioned it before, I despise the "Oh, I was only being a giant evil fascist to save the galaxy from an even greater threat!"

Realistically, I do not think there is any situation where a fascists dictatorship or military junta is going to be stable enough to deal with a threat of the scale of, say, the Yuuzhan-Vong. Certainly I doubt it'd be more resilient than any type of government, not in a way that reasonably justifies any trade off.

I mean, it demonstrably failed in the Star Wars universe: The Emperor ended up promoting more strife in the long run AND to be honest I think the idea of the Emperor being a "secret good guy" is way more distasteful to the spirit of Star Wars than anything that Disney has done in the sequels. (And if they do go down this route explicitly I'll be the first one to be ranting angrily about it)

The acquisition of power and power alone was a perfectly good reason for Palpatine to be a horrible person. Especially since he was 1) a Sith and 2) the villain.

I don't believe that the "Emperor was only doing it all to save the galaxy" BS was ever more than a theory. It's implied that he was aware of the Vong, but he was still a flaming ****** that only wanted power for its own sake. Heck, the Essential Guide to Warfare included a reference to the idea as a piece of Imperial propaganda and historical revisionism, not historical fact.

Alright then, I guess let's rephrase the question:

Quote

Seriously, what was the point of Snoke in TFA or TLJ ? He did nothing in either film . At all. Ever. The most pointless movie villain since Agent Smith #8923647. Might as well just have had Kylo and Hux one-upping each other, and left Snoke out of the films entirely for all the impact he had on the movies .

6 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Sadly it’s longer than GUNBOAT THREAD but then GUNBOATS will outlive Rebels, and I assume that includes this thread.

When Rebels is over this will become the ultimate Star Wars Lore discussion thread!

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Seriously, what was the point of Snoke full stop? He did nothing. At all. Ever. The most pointless villain since Agent Smith #8923647. Might as well just have had Kylo and Hux one-upping each other, and left Snoke out of it entirely for all the impact he had on the story.

Mind you, there's a lot of things you can say that about in the new trilogy.

My personal thought on the matter was that JJ Abrams had a plan and storyline for Snoke through the Sequel Trilogy, but Rian Johnson did not when he took over as director and decision-maker for the story going into The Last Jedi. Johnson settled on just getting rid of Snoke rather than forcing in a character he had no use for in his vision for how TLJ and Sequel Trilogy should be going forward.

Hence why Snoke was introduced as a Big Bad, then axed off pretty quick in the next film.

Although, at this moment, I don't have hard facts to back that up. It's just a guess from how characters were handled in TFA to TLJ.

13 minutes ago, NotBatman said:

Alright then, I guess let's rephrase the question:

Except we wouldn't have known his involvement in setting up the inciting action.

We wouldn't know any of that without him in the movie.

We'd all be arguing over who the heck Snoke is and why did he die off screen?

That's how storytelling works! You have to actually see this stuff.

Snoke is the leader of the First Order and behind all of their actions until the moment Kylo kills him. That's not unsubstantial, that's like a significant portion of the story dude.

With your logic extended to other franchises:

In Dune, why even show the Baron Harkonnen at all, what use is he in the story when other people carry out his actions? We could just see the result of his orders rather then see him give them.

In Star Trek why do we see the enemy commander's viewpoints ever? Why should we see Khan giving orders on the bridge of the Reliant?

In Lord of the Rings, why do we see Saruman discussing his machinations with Wormtongue?

4 minutes ago, Derpzilla88 said:

JJ Abrams had a plan and storyline

Nope. The Mystery Box is always empty, filled with a fart and a prayer. The best that JJ can bring is planing for having plans later. Maybe.

2 minutes ago, Forresto said:

Except we wouldn't have known his involvement in setting up the inciting action.

We wouldn't know any of that without him in the movie.

We'd all be arguing over who the heck Snoke is and why did he die off screen?

That's how storytelling works!

He's the leader of the First Order and behind all of their actions until the moment Kylo kills him. That's not unsubstantial, that's like a significant portion of the story dude.

In A New Hope, "The Emperor" fills the same niche, but since he doesn't take direct action or really influence the story on the screen, the story moves on without him. We first see the Emperor in Empire when he starts moving things around, but it's a pretty minor role overall, without a ton of fanfare other than the ominous "Vader bows to this guy, holy ****!" The Emperor doesn't have a real role until Jedi when he's an important part of the story that we're watching. He does stuff. He contributes. He drives the whole Skywalker conflict and takes a critical role in Vader finally having had enough of his ****.

That's how storytelling works.

1 minute ago, NotBatman said:

In A New Hope, "The Emperor" fills the same niche, but since he doesn't take direct action or really influence the story on the screen, the story moves on without him. We first see the Emperor in Empire when he starts moving things around, but it's a pretty minor role overall, without a ton of fanfare other than the ominous "Vader bows to this guy, holy ****!" The Emperor doesn't have a real role until Jedi when he's an important part of the story that we're watching. He does stuff. He contributes. He drives the whole Skywalker conflict and takes a critical role in Vader finally having had enough of his ****.

That's how storytelling works.

I edited my post after you quoted so i'll put it here

8 minutes ago, Forresto said:

With your logic extended to other franchises:

In Dune, why even show the Baron Harkonnen at all, what use is he in the story when other people carry out his actions? We could just see the result of his orders rather then see him give them.

In Star Trek why do we see the enemy commander's viewpoints ever? Why should we see Khan giving orders on the bridge of the Reliant?

In Lord of the Rings, why do we see Saruman discussing his machinations with Wormtongue?

Snoke served that purpose until he was killed.

If you really wanted it boiled down, as @ktan said, Snoke served Kylo's arc just as the Emperor served Vader's, except their epiphanies led in opposite directions with Vader returning to the Light and Kylo delving further into the dark.

That's it. That's the only reason either of those two characters serve.

9 minutes ago, Forresto said:

We'd all be arguing over who the heck Darth Plagueis is and why did he die off screen?

FTFY

35 minutes ago, NotBatman said:

Alright then, I guess let's rephrase the question:

The whole thing of him grooming Kylo and radicalising him is a fundamental part of Han and Leia's dialogue (and, by extension both Leia's arc and the very arc that culminates in Han's death) in TFA. Someone needed to pray on young Ben Solo's insecurities.

The abusive step-parent thing is not only implied in TFA but also directly shown in TLJ with Snoke both verbally and physically attacking Ren. Also, the whole "you're super special, Kylo Ren" further reinforces the grooming thing.

If you don't have Snoke you don't have the Kylo Ren we have, who is easily one of the best and most complex Star Wars has ever had, especially on film. Otherwise we have someone going "Oh, Kylo is being abused off screen, how sad" which breaks the cardinal rule of show don't tell.

You can't just replace this with Hux and Kylo's sort-of-sibling rivalry and we need to actually see Snoke's behaviour towards Ren for it to have any impact. The Emperor did not need to be on screen in ANH because he had little bearing on the plot or characters, he was backstory at most*. Quelle surprise, when his presence is needed to move Luke and Vader's arc forward he starts appearing in the films.

16 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

Nope. The Mystery Box is always empty, filled with a fart and a prayer. The best that JJ can bring is planing for having plans later. Maybe.

This is absolutely a fair criticism, and I think Rian Johnson actually benefited the trilogy by jettisoning the idea. FWIW it's why Filoni gets a pass on his Timey-Wimey shenangicans with Ahsoka. It was all Part of The Plan.

JJ is probably honestly making it up as he goes along. Which is fine, many authors do (GRRM refers to it as the 'gardening approach' to writing as oppose to the 'architect' who plans every stage in painstaking detail)**, just don't pretend you're an architect when you're a gardener.

*In fact, originally the emperor was nothing like he ended up being in ANH. He was more a snivelling recluse than a scenery chewing megalomaniac in the initial drafts. which indicates how minor his existence is to ANH.

**As it happens, no one author is 100% of either and it's worth clarifying GRRM is pretty clear that neither style is particularly better, it's just a personal thing.

3 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

FTFY

We know who Darth Plagues is.

He was Sideous's master who Sideous betrayed thus illustrating the rule of two. Palpatine used this story to manipulate Anakain.

For the story, that's all we need because Plagieus does not further the plot in any way.

Snoke is the same thing, we don't need to know any more about him to benefit the story. I would like to but it doesnt alter the story we have.

2 hours ago, Forresto said:

Snoke was the impetus for everything.

Holy mental hoop jumping Batman. How much of what you've written there actually occurs on screen?

Snoke is little more than a ,e,e at this point. A pantomime villain at best. His influence in the films can be summed up as follows:

TFA: "Bring Kylo Ren to me. Eeee. It it time to complete his training."

TLJ: "Take off that stupid mask". **dies**