Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (spoilers obviously)

With Maul's survival, I think the big thing working in its favor is that Maul is an Ensemble Dark Horse and one of the most common suggestions for improving the prequels was "don't kill off Maul, have him become The Dragon". Him being resurrected is something people requested.

With Sidious, he is not seen as a wasted character.

Personally, I don't mind Sidious being resurrected, so long as they only do it this one time. "The evil villain you thought was dead is back!" and Hijacked by Ganon are workable plots, but they really only work once.

When a character gets resurrected twice, that's when you have something akin to a running gag. Le Chuck in Monkey Island, for example-that Le Chuck keeps getting resurrected is played for laughs. Demon Zombie Ghost Pirate Palpatine doesn't quite work as well.

Though admittedly, I can think of at least one good exception to the above rule with Ridley from Metroid. He gets resurrected a ton (his Joker Immunity would make the trope namer jealous), and it isn't too hard to take the character seriously.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Feb 21st 2020 at 12:17:11 PM

Also Ganon has pulled that move several times and I don't see anyone complaining. Hell most of the games have Ganon as the true villain one way or the other

People started to complain about Ganon in Twilight Princess, and then Skyward Sword retroactively hijacked Ganon by revealing Ganon and presumably other villains were an incarnation of Demise's hatred. BOTW was the first main game to have Ganon as the Big Bad in quite a while since Skyward Sword's revelation.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Feb 21st 2020 at 12:23:16 PM

Samus is always there to finish off Ridley again, and Link and Zelda keep getting reincarnated to punt Ganon back in his hole, so there's less of an impression that the previous protagonists' efforts were all for nothing.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 21st 2020 at 12:23:00 PM

@Vengeful Bale To be fair, there definitely is at least one notable instance of people complaining about plots being literally Hijacked by Ganon with Twilight Princess. In fact, I suspect that game is the primary reason why Ganon is the Trope Namer.

An even worse example of Hijacked by Ganon would be Dr. Wily in Mega Man. It's practically Wily's standard MO to set up a fake villain or frame someone, and for it to turn out to be him all along. It's so overplayed that even him openly being the villain is practically subversive. Though it does help that it isn't entirely clear if anyone in-universe buys that the pawn villain is the real threat. It actually isn't overly relevant to Mega Man whether the villain is a pawn or not.

Huh, didn't know that.

And no comment on Willy, because I don't follow the Mega Man franchise at all

The thing with literal Joker Immunity is that it's something that only works for a few archetypes of villains.

Ridley gets away with it because he's an attack dog, whose sole desire in life is to kill everything in sight. And he's That One Boss. Ganondorf gets away because his defeats last for centuries, meaning that Link and Zelda will never have to see their works be undone so quickly. And keep in mind, Ganon didn't have the best days with resurrections considering that Hyrule Historia retconned many of his earlier characterizations to be the result of losing his mind.

The issue with Darth Sidious returning is that Lucas stated that the Sith cannot survive death and Sidious looks pretty dead by the end of ROTJ. There's no Boba Fett fighting his way out of the Sarlacc Pit, and no Maul technically surviving bisection and getting with Never Found the Body.

For Darth Sidious to return, he cannot be the same person as in ROTJ. And to ensure that he doesn't suffer Villain Decay, he must be a greater threat upon his resurrection. This is why I advocated for a Calamity Ganon scenario for Sheev's return.

At this point with Ganondorf he's turned up so much that even the Zelda series itself has had a few jokes and subversions of it, such as cases where he gets hijacked.

And Ridley has typically not been the Big Bad, just the persistent and recurring (ahem) Dragon.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 21st 2020 at 12:43:14 PM

So, speaking of tie ins for explaining stuff the Star Wars Holocron Twitter said this a few days ago about Exogol.

So apparently Exogol was populated by people beforehand unrelated to the Final Order who ended up the same as Stormtroopers. A brainwashed army the protagonists mow down.

I don't get how Exegol is so secret that it's supposedly impossible to get to without a wayfinder and yet there's all those people there. Or how Ochi got contacted by Sidious and D-O had data on the Final Order fleet even though he doesn't appear to have been to Exegol since both Wayfinders were undisturbed until the year of TROS's events.

Wait seriously?

I...I was more okay with how the final order and Sith troopers were treated because they were a bunch of Crazy Cultists instead of kidnapped orphans. But then they did that?

The stupidest thing was how Rey held that.....whatever that thing was into the shape of the crashed Death Star which somehow showed her the way.

What, did the Force laserguide that falling debris exactly into the spot where over 30 years later somebody would go on that stupid quest?

What kind of drugs were the writers taking?

Edited by Forenperser on Feb 21st 2020 at 10:40:29 AM

The writer said

"rey needed to complete leia’s jedi journey for leia to be able to join the jedi pantheon in the afterlife"

I am convinced they were on drugs whilst making this.

The writers are clapping a hand over protesting mouths, saying: "Shhhhh, don't think about it, only think about the pretty pictures..."

Pretty much everything looks like stuff you'd realize were very stupid once they start saying it out loud.

Dont forget the mystery boxes!

I do believe 'memberberries are the drug they were on. You 'member? I 'member.

And because he didn't really care what they did in the EU as long as they didn't step on his toes. He'd make embargoes about what can't be covered in the EU, but that's about it.

Lucas has gone on record as saying that to him, the only real Star Wars canon is the two film trilogies he made. Despite this, he was not above swiping EU ideas for the Prequel Trilogy if he liked them.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 21st 2020 at 3:05:20 AM

I hate the idea of film DLC. You need to look for random tweets, Fortnite events, etc to get the full story?

That speaks to your incompetence as a writer. Either put it all in or trim the fat and cut the plot point altogether.

The most consistent line of thought in writing TROS seems to be that audiences only care about what they see and not where it came from. All that matters is that Palpatine is back doing Palpatine things, where he comes from surely no one cares about. All that matters is there are stormtroopers to shoot again, where they come from is left to the encyclopedia writers. All audiences must want is a cake, without knowing what's in it, how it was made, and only caring about what it tastes like when you're eating it and not whether it will leave you satisfied.

How... condescending.

Intentionally so - it's literally based on Adolf Hitler's Nero Decree.

And just like in real life you had some people (i.e. Rae Sloane) who basically threw a wrench in things.

I'm still annoyed we didn't get somebody like her as an antagonist instead of Snoke.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Feb 21st 2020 at 12:02:36 PM

The Imperial Remnant made sense

When an Empire Fractures it tends to turn into smaller weaker factions and only stabilizes when those factions cannibalize each other

With Palpy gone and no clear line of succession , The Empire descended into infighting while the NR declared itself its own sovereign entity

Basically if The ST wanted to continue the Imperial line...

A post fall of Rome Empire would have been the inspiration but again that would mean the NR is the Stronger of the Two

and They didn't want the heroes in the position of power... that would have taken effort

The Blood Empire, the True Empire, the Holy Empire Empire.

@Tucker : Really. Man the Disney trilogy really likes indoctrinationed child soldiers as their easily mowed down mooks for some reason.

It helps make the First Order look more evil, and might be a dark reflection of the old Jedi, but the usual line about these movies apply to the morality of it all.