In some ways RJ wants to have his cake and eat it. Snoke has to be super bad, far more powerful than Palpatine, but he has to go out like a chump. He remains a sort of copy of Palpatine, only to be replaced by his less capable luitenant. Somehow TLJ still feels like an alternate universe version of the OT, rather than it’s own thing. I personally wish they would have sticked with the theme TFA introduced for Kylo, and extended it to Snoke, to provide some proper motivation for Kylo to replace Snoke, and make Snoke more interesting, and not just another evil dark side user.
In TFA Kylo is revealed to be somewhat of a poser. What if Snoke had been the same, a sort of Wizard of Oz character, a small alien character with a limited knowledge of the Force, convincing everyone around him he’s this all powerful Force user through smokes and mirrors, really using Kylo for his power? This would provide Kylo the motivation to turn on him, and replace him, and would really set the FO and it’s origins apart from the Empire. A group of posers, who’ve slowly turned into this real threat, ultimately led by the grandson of Darth Vader. Just a thought to really separate the FO from the Empire using a common theme for Kylo and Snoke.
This was a cheap imitation of a Star Wars movie. TFA wasn’t the best movie ever but it was good in some spots. This one was horrible.
The other thing I’ve noticed with these new movies is they forget to show not tell. The way they did Luke’s character is such a drastic change, but they figure they can just tell you that’s the way it is and give a cheap flashback without showing a well developed story arc on screen. Kylo is Han and Leia’s son but they never have any scenes together. Just trust the writers and the director because they said he’s their son.
I dislike how pedantic these new movies are. It comes across as amateur hour. If they want to convey a message (even a political one), they need to carefully craft it through a well developed story and well developed characters. But the writing is so lazy and pedantic its impossible for me to see these movies as anything more than cheap knock-offs.