My thoughts on Rian Johnson decision not to reveal Snoke's backstory in Last Jedi

Warning: spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Rian Johnson wrote:
Rian Johnson  decision not to reveal Snoke's backstory in Last Jedi

Here's what he had to say about it.

   "In this particular story, it's much more like the original trilogy, where with Snoke if you think about the actual scenes, if suddenly I had paused one of the scenes to give a 30 second monologue about who he was, it would have kind of stopped the scene in its tracks, I realized. Even though it could have been interesting, something that fans were interested in, as storytellers, we have to kind of serve what the scenes need to be. It was a tough thing, even though I knew some fans were interested in it I also knew it wasn't something that dramatically had a place in this movie. Hopefully it can be addressed elsewhere or even J.J. may address it in the next movie. But it's not something that's particularly interesting to Rey, so we kind of had to follow through."

IMO i would have preferred hologram Snoke in TLJ like TFA to flesh and blood Snoke



and yeah I belong in the camp of more Snoke, less of Canto BLIGHT

re: Rian Johnson specific claims

Rey's character is interested in learning the ways of the Force. Snoke could have offered to teach her.

a common theme of the Hero's Journey as outlined in Joseph Campbell is temptation, the hero is tempted with sin.

in Star Wars, that means the Dark Side for the hero.

Rian Johnson could have engineered a meeting between Snoke and Rey, where Snoke offers her temptation of the dark side

temptation that he can stop the attack on her friends,
temptation that he can arrange for Rey to meet her parents in the Force
temptation to learn the ways of the dark side

and part of that temptation is Snoke reveals his back story, how he learned the ways of the Force, and how he concluded the dark side is stronger.

so yeah i'm not buying Rian Johnson explanation

more Jedi training between Rey and Luke, like Yoda and Luke in ESB

Rian Johnson and Kasdan could have re-written Last Jedi to make these points. basically a different movie than what was presented.
then again, i think TFA could have been re-written to be less like ANH with blowing up star killer base.

TFA made a lot of money but yeah there were a lot of unanswered questions about the 30 years from ROTJ to TFA, and perhaps a trilogy before TFA that discuss this and shows how the First Order met Snoke, how Ben Solo fell to the dark side, what became of the Republic and resistance would have been helpful.

Snoke's death in TLJ had no emotional impact bc he is totally unknown. he's a funny guy tho'