ROS is bad, yes, we know. But why is this one line the thing that people always point to?

“Somehow, Palpatine returned” isn’t that bad a line. It’s honestly something someone might say if they didn’t understand how he had returned, and had to convey that to a group. Obviously it isn’t great dialogue, or even good dialogue, but it’s not some terrible atrocity of ultimate doom like so many people say it is. I just don’t know why this line in particular gets so much hate when it’s average at worst.

What do yall think? What are some lines of dialogue you think are worse than this, if any? (not limited to ROS)

It’s the “kick off”. Works like a charm. 👌

IMO it’s a great line. The Rise of Skywalker is not going to waste time trying to convince you that bringing back Palpatine makes any sense. Because there is no way they could ever justify it. Audiences would totally see right though whatever bullshit explanation they could ever come up with. This is just the movie where Palpatine comes back. How did Palpatine come back? Somehow. You’re either on board with it or you’re not.

“tHey fLY nOW!”

Dude, they’ve always been flying now. Like, since the Mandalorians.

BenduDestiny9 said:

“tHey fLY nOW!”

Dude, they’ve always been flying now. Like, since the Mandalorians.

I found that quote lame because of the delivery and repetition.

I think it’s perfectly normal for them to be taken aback by it considering none of the characters were alive back then and even before their lifetime during the age of the empire, flying storm troopers had not really been a thing.
None of these characters had encountered flying First Order Stormtroopers before.

It’s a lame line because it has real “that happened” energy.

I could argue that jet packs and flying troopers absolutely would not and should not be a surprise to these people…but whatever, right? It’s f*kin ROS.

Fan_edit_fan said:

I could argue that jet packs and flying troopers absolutely would not and should not be a surprise to these people…but whatever, right? It’s f*kin ROS.

I saw a meme template which someone did and honestly it would have been a better exchange:

Finn: They fly now?

Poe: What, have you never seen a jet pack before?

Finn: I didn’t say “What’s that magic flight-granting box”, have you seen any jetpack troopers in the First Order before today? Because I didn’t!

It was a meme template but honestly it would have worked better as a panicked, seat-of-the-pants dialogue exchange.

timmaaaah said:

Fan_edit_fan said:

I could argue that jet packs and flying troopers absolutely would not and should not be a surprise to these people…but whatever, right? It’s f*kin ROS.

I saw a meme template which someone did and honestly it would have been a better exchange:

Finn: They fly now?

Poe: What, have you never seen a jet pack before?

Finn: I didn’t say “What’s that magic flight-granting box”, have you seen any jetpack troopers in the First Order before today? Because I didn’t!

It was a meme template but honestly it would have worked better as a panicked, seat-of-the-pants dialogue exchange.

I think I remember both clone troopers having jetpacks in the clone wars and stormtroopers having jetpacks in Jedi fallen order, both came out within a year of TROS.

timmaaaah said:

Fan_edit_fan said:

I could argue that jet packs and flying troopers absolutely would not and should not be a surprise to these people…but whatever, right? It’s f*kin ROS.

I saw a meme template which someone did and honestly it would have been a better exchange:

Finn: They fly now?

Poe: What, have you never seen a jet pack before?

Finn: I didn’t say “What’s that magic flight-granting box”, have you seen any jetpack troopers in the First Order before today? Because I didn’t!

It was a meme template but honestly it would have worked better as a panicked, seat-of-the-pants dialogue exchange.

They should just say “they fly now?” once and that’s it.

A second death star is reasonable because they already made one, the second one is unfinished, and there’s a sense of secrecy around it. In the very first scene of the movie you see they’re dealing with the logistics of building it, needing more men, more time, etc.

While machines can be built and rebuilt, people don’t ordinarily come back to life, especially after falling into a bottomless pit and exploding. You have plenty of slack there because he is an evil sorcerer that already looks like he’s way older than he should be. But that’s why it’s baffling that they don’t use that. The real explanation is essentially just a copy of Dark Empire where he can move between clone bodies. They hint at this when Merry says “dark science… cloning… secrets only the Sith knew” but they could have just come out and said it plainly, or better yet, shown it.

Saying “somehow” draws attention to how they’re not really interested in explaining it. It sounds absurd within the context of people knowing who Palpatine is, both in and out of universe.

NeverarGreat said:

To try and explain why I think this line is so bad, let’s compare it to Return of the Jedi, which introduces in the opening crawl that somehow, the Death Star has returned. Granted, it strains credulity much less to believe that the Empire would rebuild the Death Star, but it’s still a hamfisted way of giving the final movie in the trilogy an instantly recognizable threat.

So how does ROTJ deal with this awkward plot device? By letting the crawl do all the heavy lifting. By the time we get to the briefing scene with Mon Mothma, nobody is questioning how the Empire managed to build a much larger Death Star than the first in a fraction of the time, they are too busy working on how to blow it up. Imagine if instead Han Solo learned of the new Death Star in the rebel briefing and he started asking questions. Maybe this could work if the writers really wanted to explain exactly how the new Death Star was built, but if the writers don’t have an answer, then Han Solo’s question would do nothing except draw attention to the fact that the writers don’t seem to have any idea either. It would go a long way to destroying the audience’s suspension of disbelief in the movie itself.

Thus, one reason why ‘Somehow, Palpatine returned’ is so bad is because it shines a spotlight on the movie’s weakest part, and in so doing lays bare the falseness of the entire narrative.

I think that this line is in large part a self-inflicted wound, since Rise of Skywalker could have taken the Return of the Jedi route and simply established Palpatine’s return off screen, as it had already done. Then the Resistance could behave in a way that illustrates that everyone believes that Palpatine has returned, regardless of the reason, and now the audience is swept up in the quest to destroy him instead of questioning his entire existence.

I agree. They definitely spent time re-establishing things that the crawl should have established, or slightly established. If they spent the first act figuring out the source of the message it could have left suspense in the plot. The opening scene with Kylo Ren was not very smart, also covering stuff that didn’t really need to be on screen.

I think your explaination on why it gets singled out is good.

Vladius said:

timmaaaah said:

Fan_edit_fan said:

I could argue that jet packs and flying troopers absolutely would not and should not be a surprise to these people…but whatever, right? It’s f*kin ROS.

I saw a meme template which someone did and honestly it would have been a better exchange:

Finn: They fly now?

Poe: What, have you never seen a jet pack before?

Finn: I didn’t say “What’s that magic flight-granting box”, have you seen any jetpack troopers in the First Order before today? Because I didn’t!

It was a meme template but honestly it would have worked better as a panicked, seat-of-the-pants dialogue exchange.

They should just say “they fly now?” once and that’s it.

Agreed, that also would have worked well. Tbh, a simple fearful reaction shot would have worked too, maybe followed by asking Poe whether he can go any faster. Conveys all that it needs to. The triple-line is just so cringey.

Bringing back Palpatine in the Disney trilogy was stupid. Why didn’t they just do something with Kylo Ren as the supreme leader since Rian cut space Gollum in half. Your Snoke Theory sucks and all that.

Kylo smashed his helmet and JJ fixed the helmet so he could go back to being a Vader wannabe again.

Amongst other course correcting of the Last Jedi. Like having Luke admit to being a coward and, A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect.

Rey was always a Palpatine even though in the previous movie she was Rey nobody. Luke never trained her, the movie acts like she was Skywalker’s student.

Magically Leia is Rey’s Jedi Master despite only flying like space Mary Poppins in the previous but not being a Jedi.

And Finn is just there to yell Rey. and Rose is a nonentity from a character who moved a portion of the plot in the Last Jedi to all but being erased.

Finn doesn’t become a Jedi or lead a stormtrooper rebellion. Rey taking Luke’s story role and even his surname is a waste of the character. They did a requel trilogy.

They could have done so many things with a 9th episode to justify the choices Rian did in the Last jedi.

They should’ve leaned into Rey being a scavenger and given her a journey of her own.

JadedSkywalker said:

Bringing back Palpatine in the Disney trilogy was stupid. Why didn’t they just do something with Kylo Ren as the supreme leader since Rian cut space Gollum in half. Your Snoke Theory sucks and all that.

But I think Kylo is fairly worthless as a character and a villain to me.

Kylo smashed his helmet and JJ fixed the helmet so he could go back to being a Vader wannabe again.

I’ll take that over having to look at his face.

Magically Leia is Rey’s Jedi Master despite only flying like space Mary Poppins in the previous but not being a Jedi.

Though they retcon Leia to having had training I think.

And Finn is just there to yell Rey. and Rose is a nonentity from a character who moved a portion of the plot in the Last Jedi to all but being erased.

What plot did she move in TLJ rather than mostly being Finn’s sidekick in TLJ?

Finn doesn’t become a Jedi or lead a stormtrooper rebellion. Rey taking Luke’s story role and even his surname is a waste of the character. They did a requel trilogy.

But considering TLJ did basically nothing with Finn’s character in I think, I think it’d be a bit random to start doing it at that point, when there was no concern about it before that.

They should’ve leaned into Rey being a scavenger and given her a journey of her own.

I think that’d be a random thing to pull out in the very last movie when I think TLJ relegated her to being irrelevant in the main structure of the movie and only really in service of Kylo’s story I think.

Bringing back Palpatine, and then just saying ‘somehow Palpatine returned’, is as dumb as John Cleese saying (in Monty Python’s Holy Grail) “she turned me into a newt…(awkward pause)…but I got better”.

I’ve bored folks with this before but I’ll say it again - the villain in the sequels should have been Mon Mothma.

She would be presented as a shadowy figure like Sidious in the prequels, the difference being she would actually be anonymous to the viewer. She would appear throughout the series as ‘herself’ in a fan-service kind of way, but there would also be red herrings (ie Holdo) to draw suspicion away from her true identity. And it is she who would be reconstituting the Empire in secret, as well as being a confidant to the son of her ‘friends’ Han and Leia and thus drawing him into her plot to honour the glorious ambitions of his grandfather Lord Darth Vader.

In the end it would be revealed that she had been promised a seat of power at the side of Palpatine in RoTJ. She had killed the Bothan spies herself and had delivered the false information to Akbar and co. And of course when the Rebels defeated the Empire, she began to plan her revenge.

This would make the sequels entirely valid. It leaves the Endor victory intact, it honours the prequels’ ‘balance of the Force’ crap, it gives a good reason for a reconstituted Empire, and it leaves Palpatine in the grave where he belongs. It justifies the conversion of Ben Solo and, best of all, makes the rebel briefing room scene in RoTJ really dark and nuanced in hindsight. We get our nostalgia fix without harming the OT (and the PT) whatsoever.

P.S. the construction of this idea would have predated Rogue One and Andor…

Shopping Maul said:

Bringing back Palpatine, and then just saying ‘somehow Palpatine returned’, is as dumb as John Cleese saying (in Monty Python’s Holy Grail) “she turned me into a newt…(awkward pause)…but I got better”.

I’ve bored folks with this before but I’ll say it again - the villain in the sequels should have been Mon Mothma.

She would be presented as a shadowy figure like Sidious in the prequels, the difference being she would actually be anonymous to the viewer. She would appear throughout the series as ‘herself’ in a fan-service kind of way, but there would also be red herrings (ie Holdo) to draw suspicion away from her true identity. And it is she who would be reconstituting the Empire in secret, as well as being a confidant to the son of her ‘friends’ Han and Leia and thus drawing him into her plot to honour the glorious ambitions of his grandfather Lord Darth Vader.

In the end it would be revealed that she had been promised a seat of power at the side of Palpatine in RoTJ. She had killed the Bothan spies herself and had delivered the false information to Akbar and co. And of course when the Rebels defeated the Empire, she began to plan her revenge.

This would make the sequels entirely valid. It leaves the Endor victory intact, it honours the prequels’ ‘balance of the Force’ crap, it gives a good reason for a reconstituted Empire, and it leaves Palpatine in the grave where he belongs. It justifies the conversion of Ben Solo and, best of all, makes the rebel briefing room scene in RoTJ really dark and nuanced in hindsight. We get our nostalgia fix without harming the OT (and the PT) whatsoever.

P.S. the construction of this idea would have predated Rogue One and Andor…

NeverarGreat said:

I’ve never heard that idea before, but it makes sense and would have been very cool, better than Leia turning evil as some have suggested.

I don’t see that really doing much. Like, what does this add to the overall story or main characters for this character to be the big bad? Especially considering she was only in one scene in one movie? Why would she care to have revenge? Why would Palpatine, if he had a spy in the rebellion, not use her to lead the empire to them? And why would Palpatine offer anyone a seat of power at his side and why would someone buy into that if he did?

I don’t see how this justifies Kylo’s return. Still comes off like, “oh yeah, he betrays his parents because someone he knew told him Vader was cool”.

I don’t really see a just older politician adding much as a villain, personally for me.

NeverarGreat said:

Shopping Maul said:

Bringing back Palpatine, and then just saying ‘somehow Palpatine returned’, is as dumb as John Cleese saying (in Monty Python’s Holy Grail) “she turned me into a newt…(awkward pause)…but I got better”.

I’ve bored folks with this before but I’ll say it again - the villain in the sequels should have been Mon Mothma.

She would be presented as a shadowy figure like Sidious in the prequels, the difference being she would actually be anonymous to the viewer. She would appear throughout the series as ‘herself’ in a fan-service kind of way, but there would also be red herrings (ie Holdo) to draw suspicion away from her true identity. And it is she who would be reconstituting the Empire in secret, as well as being a confidant to the son of her ‘friends’ Han and Leia and thus drawing him into her plot to honour the glorious ambitions of his grandfather Lord Darth Vader.

In the end it would be revealed that she had been promised a seat of power at the side of Palpatine in RoTJ. She had killed the Bothan spies herself and had delivered the false information to Akbar and co. And of course when the Rebels defeated the Empire, she began to plan her revenge.

This would make the sequels entirely valid. It leaves the Endor victory intact, it honours the prequels’ ‘balance of the Force’ crap, it gives a good reason for a reconstituted Empire, and it leaves Palpatine in the grave where he belongs. It justifies the conversion of Ben Solo and, best of all, makes the rebel briefing room scene in RoTJ really dark and nuanced in hindsight. We get our nostalgia fix without harming the OT (and the PT) whatsoever.

P.S. the construction of this idea would have predated Rogue One and Andor…

I’ve never heard that idea before, but it makes sense and would have been very cool, better than Leia turning evil as some have suggested.

Thanks! The problem with following RoTJ is that it is such a definitive ending - even more so after the PT with its cosmic manifesto. All anyone can do for a sequel is posit a ‘new threat’ or an ‘unknown threat’ from beyond - which invariably negates the preceding saga (or worse, is just kind of redundant). This at least has a legitimate link to the original story that exposes a kind of ‘ghost in the machine’ that was missed when the victory was had…which means none of the resolutions in the original films are negated at all. But we get more Star Wars. Everyone wins!

Dagenspear said:

Shopping Maul said:

Bringing back Palpatine, and then just saying ‘somehow Palpatine returned’, is as dumb as John Cleese saying (in Monty Python’s Holy Grail) “she turned me into a newt…(awkward pause)…but I got better”.

I’ve bored folks with this before but I’ll say it again - the villain in the sequels should have been Mon Mothma.

She would be presented as a shadowy figure like Sidious in the prequels, the difference being she would actually be anonymous to the viewer. She would appear throughout the series as ‘herself’ in a fan-service kind of way, but there would also be red herrings (ie Holdo) to draw suspicion away from her true identity. And it is she who would be reconstituting the Empire in secret, as well as being a confidant to the son of her ‘friends’ Han and Leia and thus drawing him into her plot to honour the glorious ambitions of his grandfather Lord Darth Vader.

In the end it would be revealed that she had been promised a seat of power at the side of Palpatine in RoTJ. She had killed the Bothan spies herself and had delivered the false information to Akbar and co. And of course when the Rebels defeated the Empire, she began to plan her revenge.

This would make the sequels entirely valid. It leaves the Endor victory intact, it honours the prequels’ ‘balance of the Force’ crap, it gives a good reason for a reconstituted Empire, and it leaves Palpatine in the grave where he belongs. It justifies the conversion of Ben Solo and, best of all, makes the rebel briefing room scene in RoTJ really dark and nuanced in hindsight. We get our nostalgia fix without harming the OT (and the PT) whatsoever.

P.S. the construction of this idea would have predated Rogue One and Andor…

NeverarGreat said:

I’ve never heard that idea before, but it makes sense and would have been very cool, better than Leia turning evil as some have suggested.

I don’t see that really doing much. Like, what does this add to the overall story or main characters for this character to be the big bad? Especially considering she was only in one scene in one movie? Why would she care to have revenge? Why would Palpatine, if he had a spy in the rebellion, not use her to lead the empire to them? And why would Palpatine offer anyone a seat of power at his side and why would someone buy into that if he did?

Well the problem is that there is no story after RoTJ. RoTJ was the ending - definitively. So all you can do is what has already been done ad nauseam - just posit a ‘new threat’ and dust off some TIE fighters. Snoke was useless because, in the end, no one cared. He had no connection to anything. Palpatine’s ‘return’ was silly, unexplained, illogical, and ruined the ending of a 6 film saga.
At least with Mothma you get someone with emotional weight - a beloved (despite her screen time) character whose betrayal of Han and Leia would actually mean something. And the idea that she was in the Rebel briefing room basically laying a trap on behalf of her boss because he’d promised her power (or to spare her world or whatever) is infinitely more satisfying than ‘a new threat has emerged from beyond the outer rim…’

I don’t see how this justifies Kylo’s return. Still comes off like, “oh yeah, he betrays his parents because someone he knew told him Vader was cool”.

Kylo had no backstory really, until Rian destroyed Luke Skywalker in order to give him one. In the Mothma version Kylo is betrayed by an adored friend, someone masquerading as an ally whilst filling his eager mind with distortions regarding his ‘true’ grandfather and using him for his power. Again, seeing Mothma as the nice robed lady on the Mon Calamari ship and realising she would later turn Leia’s son against her is way more interesting to me than ‘random Palpatine wannabe appeared out of nowhere for no reason and turned Kylo bad’.

I don’t really see a just older politician adding much as a villain, personally for me.

Fair enough, but I would add - what exactly did Snoke add to the saga? What did resurrected Palpatine add to the saga? More pointedly, what did they take from the saga? The Mothma idea, to me, is a way to continue the story with all the good elements of the sequels intact without undermining the 6 films in any way. And it even adds a nice little twist to RoTJ.

Shopping Maul said:

Well the problem is that there is no story after RoTJ. RoTJ was the ending - definitively. So all you can do is what has already been done ad nauseam - just posit a ‘new threat’ and dust off some TIE fighters. Snoke was useless because, in the end, no one cared. He had no connection to anything. Palpatine’s ‘return’ was silly, unexplained, illogical, and ruined the ending of a 6 film saga.
At least with Mothma you get someone with emotional weight - a beloved (despite her screen time) character whose betrayal of Han and Leia would actually mean something. And the idea that she was in the Rebel briefing room basically laying a trap on behalf of her boss because he’d promised her power (or to spare her world or whatever) is infinitely more satisfying than ‘a new threat has emerged from beyond the outer rim…’

Beloved to only really more heavily invested fans, from one scene in one movie basically I think.

I think it’d kinda come out of nowhere really within the mainline movies, for me. And as for Han and Leia, they’re older characters. What does this mean for the newer characters? Beyond Kylo.

If it was to spare her world, then I don’t see what she’d care about after Palpatine dies and empire falls. I maintain my stance, why would Palpatine offer anyone this, and why would he not use Mothma lead the empire to the rebels instead, and why would anyone buy what he says if he offers them a seat at his side?

Kylo had no backstory really, until Rian destroyed Luke Skywalker in order to give him one. In the Mothma version Kylo is betrayed by an adored friend, someone masquerading as an ally whilst filling his eager mind with distortions regarding his ‘true’ grandfather and using him for his power. Again, seeing Mothma as the nice robed lady on the Mon Calamari ship and realising she would later turn Leia’s son against her is way more interesting to me than ‘random Palpatine wannabe appeared out of nowhere for no reason and turned Kylo bad’.

A friend that has about as much weight as, as far as the movies gave, “a voice in his head” basically. Why would he trust her over his family? Why does she matter this much to Kylo? Why would his granddad Vader matter to him this way? These are more my questions.

Fair enough, but I would add - what exactly did Snoke add to the saga? What did resurrected Palpatine add to the saga? More pointedly, what did they take from the saga? The Mothma idea, to me, is a way to continue the story with all the good elements of the sequels intact without undermining the 6 films in any way. And it even adds a nice little twist to RoTJ.

I’m not defending Snoke or Palpatine (in this avenue, as in a post TLJ story I think he works more than Kylo to me) as a villain. I’m just not for this.

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Vladius said:

Yes, Mon Mothma is a very minor character. Especially before the Andor show, which arguably gives her too much screentime anyway. General audiences wouldn’t freak out, they would say “who is she supposed to be?” You would have to develop her for a little while before you make it a big twist.

I’m not too familiar with the Yuuzhan Vong but I think that’s the kind of direction you have to go if you don’t want to repeat the Sith and the Empire again. Lucas’s idea of underworld criminal elements filling in the power vacuum left by the Empire is also good (though I’m iffy on it having Darth Maul.)

Being that this is Star Wars, I don’t believe there are ‘minor’ characters anymore. That’s why every scene in the Mandalorian has some kind of callback be it an alien, a piece of hardware etc. We even had the cantina guys repeat their '77 dialogue in Rogue One!

It would be so easy to generate a nostalgic connection to Mothma in ep 7. One early appearance in an RoTJ-esque outfit, with Leia saying “it’s so good to see you my friend - we’ve missed you terribly” would bring a rousing cheer and establish a ‘between films’ connection that would fuel the Ben Solo thread. Maybe he attended university in the Bothan system and stayed with the Mothmas?

The criminal underworld thing is plausible of course, but as much as we hate to admit it we do want the Sith and Empire again! Of course we do. Casual audiences definitely do. Again, the Mothma idea at least gives credence to the notion of a reconstituted status quo rather than the obvious ‘uh, the Empire grew back’ thing of Zhan’s novels, the Dark Horse comics, and the sequels. Again, it leaves the OT victory entirely intact whilst presenting the sinister idea that one of the lovely characters in the Rebel briefing room was actually a baddy with a future axe to grind…