'Rise Of Skywalker': J.J. Abrams Explains Why Emperor Palpatine Is Back In 'Star Wars'

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“Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker” is finally out in the world, and how’s that working out for everyone? Well, kind of a mixed bag to be honest. The opinion on the film seems decidedly mixed at best. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a 57% rotten score, that’s the second-lowest RT score of every “Star Wars” movie ever, just above ‘Phantom Menace’ (to be fair, its audience score on RT is 86% which is way higher than ‘The Last Jedi’s 43% score; our review isn’t exactly positive either, Metacritic is mixed 54% score). Box office wise, the final numbers are not in yet. Still, the movie is tracking towards a $195 million opening this weekend domestically, but that’s down 11-ish % from the $220 million opening of ‘The Last Jedi’ in 2017, if those numbers hold. Its Cinemascore—the audio polling metric on how much they liked or disliked a film— is lower too with a B+ score (for comparison, ‘Last Jedi’ had an A rating, “Solo: A Star Wars Story” received an A- score). So yeah, a mixed narrative at best that’s definitely trending downward in its first few days of release. OK, now on to the spoilers (this is where you turn around and don’t read the piece if you haven’t seen the movie, but I swear I will yell at you if you complain about the headline because it was all revealed in the first trailer and every subsequent TV spot since).

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At a recent screening of ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ in L.A., writer/director J.J. Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio (“Argo,” “Batman V. Superman”) were asked about the responses to the film, which both filmmakers realize is mixed and polarized. Is there a problem with fandom? Abrams says no, and says they’re right to have their own strong opinions of the film either way. The director also suggested the movie was going to be received with polarizing responses because you can’t please everyone in the black and white age of outrage.

READ MORE: ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’: JJ Abrams’ Film Is The Last Word On The Saga, For Better Or Worse [Discourse Podcast]

“How do you please everyone?,” Abrams said he was asked by a journalist recently. “How would one even go about it? Especially with ‘Star Wars.’ We live in a moment where everything immediately seems to default to outrage… it’s a crazy thing that there is such a norm of [lack of] nuance, compassion, acceptance, allowing people to… it’s a crazy moment [in time right now], so we knew that any decision we made would please someone and infuriate someone else, and they’re all right.”

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Chris Terrio then suggested with such a war around “Star Wars” and discourse in general, the best you can do then is tune that all out and follow your personal instincts. “[Because of all that], your only compass, your only north star is your heart and how you feel about it,” he explained. “We knew into this movie knowing that it was a love letter to ‘Star Wars,’ the old school kind of filmmaking that inspired George… it’s the big mythic stuff that we love. So, we went into it deciding that’s what we want the final episode to be.”

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The decision to have Emperor Palpatine return—revealed in EVERY TRAILER and piece of visual TV marketing—has been a very controversial one since the get-go and Terrio explained how he and Abrams landed on it (and of course, that’ll only make sense if you’ve seen the movie). “The Skywalker/Palpatine family dynasty/tragedy like any kind of tragedy between two houses was deep in the DNA of ‘Star Wars,’ so we knew that Palpatine had to be a presence in this film in some way.”

Terrio also explained the inspiration for bringing him back: a nod to a key, essential scene in “Star Wars: The Revenge Of The Sith.” “As it turned out there was this gift that George Lucas wrote that was sitting there in a scene in one of the prequels where Palpatine says to Anakin Skywalker—which is directly quoted in this film, ‘the dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities, some consider to be unnatural.’ And it was hanging there as this tease of unnatural abilities that the Sith had to prolong life even after death. So J.J. and I thought we would be crazy not to pick up that thread and tie all the trilogies together.”

Here’s the scene in question.

Personally, I felt the same way and immediately thought of the tragic legend of Darth Plagueis and thought it made for a reasonable cause to bring Palpatine back. The rest of the way Palpatine is used in the story, though including the movie’s key reveal that I’m not going to get into yet (save that for another story), well, I found that questionable at best. Anyhow, if you were ever wondering about Darth Plagueis and ever thought he would return—geek speculation had thought he was tied to Supreme Leader Snoke—you now know your answer.

Thoughts? What do you think about ‘Rise Of Skywalker,’ and specifically the return of Palpatine and how he’s used in the film? Weigh in below — box office report with ‘Rise of Skywalker’ totals tomorrow.

And finally, is this Rian Johnson‘s comment on the Kelly Tran erasure in ‘Rise Of Skywalker’? That’s another story for another day too.