Disregarding the TCW series, we didn’t get much in the prequels, and he was in Episode III for barely a few minutes before being de-handed and de-headed. If Sir Christopher Lee had not been cast, Dooku would be forgettable.
I don’t believe that you believe that Dooku and Snoke are equivelant.
Dooku is a character with a smaller role than Snoke, yet we learn more about him.Dooku and Snoke are 100% comparable. And in 5 years you’ll probably be able to say the same thing about Snoke thanks to books and comics and TV shows - which is exactly how we know anything worthwhile about Dooku.
The thing is, that I wasn’t the biggest fan of Dooku either for exactly the same reasons. You introduce a disposable villain in one movie, and dispatch him in the next with little character development, as was the case for Darth Maul. It was a waste of a very talented actor to be honest, and his portrayal of Dooku contrasted starkly with his presence in LOTR at that time. However, I agree with MikeWW, that more context was provided for Dooku than for Snoke, which makes Snoke a more problematic character for me.
I hate to look a gift post in the mouth but I don’t Lee’s performance in SW was worse than his Saruman, if that’s what you’re implying.
I’m not saying Lee’s performance was worse (he was good in pretty much anything). I’m saying he was given far less to work with to the point that the Dooku character was a waste of his potential, a potential that was on full display in LOTR.
I just looked at it as two different sizes of roles. Dooku was more of a Tarkin type role to me.
Smallish but fun and relevant.AOTC is all about Dooku. From the start of the movie it’s “Dooku this” or “Dooku that.” He is the character that has the final confrontation with our heroes, and survives to the next film. He is a far more prominent character than Tarkin, which is one of the reasons why his poor characterization is so harmful to the overall quality of AOTC.
I disagree on two counts. He’s not really the centerpiece of 2 anymore than the commander of the Death Star is for 4,
Okay, so the primary threat in each movie is the Death Star, and the Separatist alliance. So if you look at mere rank, the two are on equal footing. But the key distinction, is that while Tarkin is in charge of the Death Star, he’s not the face of it. Whenever the threat of the Separatists is considered, it always essentially referred to as Dooku’s Separatist movement.
Now there’s also the henchmen to consider. Unlike Vader, Jango Fett is dispatched before the final, climactic showdown. Which means that, while in ANH you have Vader in his TIE about to shoot down Luke, in AOTC it is just Dooku who is fighting Anakin, Obi-wan, and Yoda. So again, Dooku and Tarkin aren’t exactly comparable.
and also, again, his characterization is way more substantial than Snoke, the dead guy responsible for the plot of the entire sequel trilogy.
There’s more information, but that doesn’t mean the characterization is necessarily better. Knowing where a character comes from does not necessarily make them a good character (consider an obvious example on the flip side, the Joker). Snoke plays a fairly straightforward role in the two films he’s in. There are question marks about where he came from and why he’s doing what he’s doing, but ultimately we do know who he is in the sense that we know what his goals are and we know his resolve, so when you factor in how little screen time he has, do we really need to know more about him? He’s incited the plot, sure, but Kylo Ren is the actual central villain of both films.
In AOTC, Dooku is the central villain (not the big bad, who in that film only really gets one scene). While we know about where Dooku came from, there are question marks when it comes to things that are more relevant to his characterization in the narrative of the film. AOTC masks this for most of its runtime by having a central mystery that the plot revolves around, but the problem is that the whole thing ultimately unravels in a way that doesn’t make sense.