I think TestingOutTheTest is referring to something I said, like, a month ago about TRoS and ESB’s reveals. And it’s a fair enough point for Palpatine’s return in a sense, you can look back at RotS, TFA, and TLJ after the fact and read foreshadowing into them even when it was never there. But foreshadowing alone isn’t really enough.
I wouldn’t even really call the example of Ben’s Hut scene foreshadowing, it’s more that it’s a detail which makes more sense after the twist than it did before. Stuff like that sells a twist. Stuff that either makes more sense, or only makes sense after a twist. Stuff that takes on a new, deeper meaning after the twist. Stuff that you look back on and see the twist in.
Not to use the some of the same examples again, but (avoiding spoilers for movies people haven’t seen…) Oh Dae-Su’s captivity doesn’t make a whole lot of sense… until it does. The time dilation aspect of Planet of the Apes isn’t all that relevant… until it is. Bruce Willis’s wife’s behavior seems like a detour from the main focus of the story… but it’s not. Adam being in Nerv’s basement is a blatant contradiction of the facts we know… because that’s not really what’s going on.
Those are the kinds of clues you need leading up to a twist. Foreshadowing is great and all, especially on rewatch once you know the twist, or to flex if you’re an author who’s sold a convincing twist. But it doesn’t actually sell the twist.
Bad twists fail to sell themselves to an audience when they aren’t really rooted in what’s come before. They’re just random new information which changes nothing (which is ironic). Like in Now You See Me.
They could have had every single screen in TFA and TLJ flash “Palpatine will return in Episode 9” in Aurebesh, I doubt it would help sell the reveal to many people. Because how does Palpatine returning and being Rey’s grandfather really have anything to do with the story of TFA and TLJ?
I guess it answers a few unanswered questions, but while those questions were unanswered, you can extrapolate and infer reasonable answers from the info we’re given. More importantly, though, there’s no reason Palpatine is a better answer. Not in an entertainment sense, that’s subjective. But in the sense that the answers we were led to believe were flawed or contradictory, and Palpatine is a better answer.
Snoke being a Palpatine puppet might be better setup for Palpatine’s return if we were led to believe he had another backstory, but had some reason why it couldn’t be true. Maybe we’re led to believe Snoke is some cultist or something who took power by managing to swing old Imperials and Neo-Imperials to his side by acting like the next Palpatine. Then, separately, we learn that he has some secret knowledge or something that the Republic thought died with Palpatine, and that’s how he’s able to… I don’t know, maybe build Starkiller Base or raise a clone army (fake twist misdirect there) or something related to the conflict or plot of Episode 7. When it turns out Snoke was a puppet all along and Palpatine’s still out there, you look back and think “I should have seen this coming, there’s no way Snoke could have been just some nobody because of that secret knowledge.”
But that’s kind of cheating, retroactively coming up with ideas for 7 knowing how 9 eventually turned out, because that’s not a luxury Lucasfilm had.
Another thing worth mentioning is that Vader being Luke’s father fits because it’s a natural continuation of Luke’s arc in ANH. Not the natural continuation, there’s no such thing, but it logically flows from ANH. Luke spends ANH and most of ESB wanting to be like his father, then learns his father is not at all what he should be striving to become.
Nothing about TRoS really flows forward from TLJ. Rey ends TLJ moving on from placing so much importance on her family to her and the movie placing tons and tons of importance on her family in TRoS. TLJ ends setting up Kylo Ren as the Supreme Leader who’s going to be in conflict with Hux, but to say Kylo Ren is playing second fiddle in TRoS, that alone is a pretty charitable interpretation when he’s even being upstaged by Pryde. The conflict with Hux is there, but it’s inconsequential and I wholeheartedly believe it’s only there to dodge criticism. If it weren’t for “I want Kylo Ren to lose” becoming a meme, I think people would forget Hux was even in this movie.
Every loose thread from TLJ is dropped and ignored in TRoS for an entirely new story, and like I said, the reason a lot of people don’t buy Palpatine’s role in TRoS is because it’s not a twist, it’s a premise for an entirely new story which tries to sell itself as the completion of an old one.
What do you guys think? Do I make sense or have I gone too deep into schizo territory?