DaHeckIzDat wrote:ESauce wrote:And not every flat character is bad writing. If the character is important to the story it needs to be well rounded, a flat character is perfectly fine when the character exists for the sake of plot. Which was clearly the case here.
No, that's
not clearly the case here. They spent the first movie building him up to be Kylo Ren's Palpatine, a very big part of the story. You can't just write him off as a plot device after all that! Even if it was their intention for Kylo to kill him and take his place from the start, there has to be some kind of payoff for all that foreshadowing and buildup they gave you. It's like if the Marvel movies spent all this time building Thanos up as the ultimate bad guy, and then had Loki off him and take his place the first time he makes an appearance. No payoff! Major disappointment!
I think the point Esauce was trying to make is that Snoke is not an important character like Palpatine (or Thanos). He is merely an obstacle for Kylo Ren to overcome. TLJ was intended
not to mirror ESB but instead to break the mold, allowing the series to go in new directions. There is significance not only in Kylo Ren's hostility toward's Snoke, but also in the writer's own hostility towards the character.
Snoke does not have much screentime in TFA either. The endless anticipation and theorizing about Snoke's identity over the past two years has made people start thinking that the movie was implying something when really it wasn't.
For me, the scene did have a massive dramatic payoff but not because of Snoke. It's because of the significance of Kylo Ren killing of his master (and the person standing in the way of him achieving ultimate power). The director wasn't aspiring for the type of scene you are describing. He was trying to do the exact opposite, and executed it flawlessly. Notice how when the light saber ignites the camera briefly capture's Snoke's reaction, but immediately shifts in focus to Kylo and Rey, even while Snoke is falling in two in the background. The camera is cluing us in to the important thing happening on screen, which is Kylo and Rey's reactions to what has just happened.