Today in beating a dead Sith Lord:

Look, I thought The Rise of Skywalker sucked. I mean, I'm not loosing sleep over it and I'm not starting a petition or anything, but I, like a lot of people, thought it was a weakest entry in a series that's half weak entries anyway and now I have proof. Mathematical proof.

"Steve, I don't know what to tell you, the math checks
out: nobody likes you and you stink. Numbers don't lie."

-Some math bully

Pictured: me, complaining
about Rise of Skywalker. Again.

Ok, well, opinion-based proof...anyway, This past week has brought the twin revelations that the decrepit re-animated corpse of Emperor Palatine that we see in Rise of Skywalker was actually a clone of the original Emperor and so was Rey's father. Which kind of makes Rey Palpatine's daughter rather than granddaughter, but we're not here to argue semantics, we're here to re-litigate why TROS is demonstrably the worst Star Wars movie. Yes, I know I said I was done with this debate, but like Palpatine's corpse, I'm bringing it back for no clear reason.

Anyway, this background information comes as a surprise because none of it is in the movie itself. It is instead drawn from the soon to be released novelization of the film. The book evidently explains away some of the story holes and murkier plot points of TROS, and this is what's sticking in my proverbial craw.

Yeah, but I see movies so I don't have to read...

"Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

                               -Palpatine, shortly

                                before exploding

And just to be clear, stuffing more lore into TROS would not have been the solution here. If anything, less would have been preferable. But the movie's premise, like the plot line the director felt was so interesting that he needed to abandon the other, more inventive plot lines established in The Last Jedi, was that Palpatine is alive again and he's Rey's grandpa. But instead of caring about that, we're too busy shrugging and wondering how that could possibly be the case since he spectacularly fell down a shaft and exploded in blue flame in Episode VI.

And really, doesn't establishing him as a clone raise more questions than it answers? Like, if he's a clone, why is he so old? The movie is only set thirty years or so after Return of the Jedi, so shouldn't he be a younger version of Palpatine?

"Old? I prefer to think of myself as Palpatine Classic."

-Some limp meat puppet

"Yeah, but that's like way easier so..."

-Some director

And where are the rest of his fingers? It's almost like the art director didn't know he was supposed to be a clone. And how come he didn't-ok, look, I'm going to stop there. I'm not saying that J. J. Abrams needed to stop mid-movie and explain sci-fi nonsense that allowed Palpatine to come back from the dead. What I'm getting at is that it's the director's job to tell a compelling, interesting story. Not throw a bunch of shit up on screen and then leave it to the expanded universe writers to explain away all the stuff that didn't work.

This practice of back-filling plot-holes is not something the writers on Star Wars movies invented and they're certainly not the only ones guilty of it. But with The Rise of Skywalker, it feels like the studio has given itself permission to release an coherent movie (easily the least coherent in the series) with the expectation that tie-in material will clean up the mess. And not for nothing, but historically speaking, attempts to "explain" Star Wars invariably only makes it worse, so maybe stop? Please?

"Micro-organisms Anakin. The Force is just micro-organisms that live in your cells. There's
no such thing as magic, and sooner or later we all die. Anything else I can explain to you?"

-Qui Gon Jinn making the case for why they 

should have stopped with Return of the Jedi