George Lucas and J.J. Abrams
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It was never J.J. Abrams’ intention to kill off Supreme Leader Snoke.  Under Abrams’ watch, ‘The Force Awakens’ introduced this new menace (played via motion capture by Andy Serkis), who seemed to be the new saga’s answer to Emperor Palpatine.  But the original plan was for a different director to helm each of the final three Skywalker Saga pictures, with Rian Johnson handling ‘Episode VIII’, ‘The Last Jedi’.  And fans were somewhat shocked by the rather callous killing off of this new villain.

 

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Disney and Lucasfilm reversed their decision and brought Abrams back for ‘Episode IX’ to replace Colin Trevorrow.  However, Abrams wasn’t ruffled by his big bad being taken off the board.  As the director told Rolling Stone:

“When I read his first draft, it made me laugh, because I saw that was his take and his voice. I got to watch cuts of the movie as he was working on it, as an audience member. And I appreciated the choices he made as a filmmaker that would probably be very different from the choices that I would have made. Just as he would have made different choices if he had made Episode VII.

 

“I felt the biggest surprise was how dark Luke was. That was the thing that I thought: “Oh, that was unexpected.” And that’s the thing The Last Jedi undeniably succeeds at, which is constant subversion of expectation. The number of things that happened in that movie that aren’t the thing you think is going to happen is pretty fun.”

Was Abram’s solution to losing Snoke bringing back Palpatine?  Perhaps, as the original franchise villain was heard cackling at the end of the first trailer.  And there has been a lot of talk about Force Ghosts lately.

Well, we only have one more month before we find out how Abrams chose to wrap up the entire Skywalker Saga.  ‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker’ opens on December 20, 2019.