Anna Daniels
Emperor Palpatine made his presence felt very early in Rise of Skywalker, and audiences were clued in to his return quite matter-of-factly right in the movie’s opening crawl. He’s seen hooked up to a massive machine that appears to be keeping him alive, indicating that he wasn’t revived by some magical means; no, it seems that he actually lived through his impromptu tour of the second Death Star’s lovely bottomless shaft, and had been manipulating events behind the scenes during the entirety of the sequel trilogy.
Brandon indicated that writer/director J.J. Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio essentially decided to trust that the audience would glean all that they needed to know from the Emperor’s reliance on that big-ass machine, and that when additional information was included, the story became less streamlined. “[There was at one point] a little more information about it, what was keeping [Palpatine] alive,” Brandon said — but, when it was presented as part of that opening scene, “it seemed to go off topic.”
She went on to say that as dense as Rise of Skywalker‘s narrative was, it made sense to trim unnecessary exposition. “There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on,” she explained. “I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know.”
Fair enough, we suppose — but this isn’t the only Palpatine-related question some fans needed answered.
Written by: Looper
