10 Movie Sequels That Pointlessly Took Away Things Fans Loved

4. Palpatine's Epic Death - Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

The original Star Wars trilogy of course concluded with Darth Vader (David Prowse) committing the ultimate face turn and saving his son Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) by throwing Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) down a reactor shaft to his doom.

George Lucas' prequels were able to bring the character back without undermining his demise, and in fact, McDiarmid's deliciously scenery-chewing performance in the prequel trilogy is arguably their strongest asset.

When Palpatine was confirmed to make a return in the recent saga-capping The Rise of Skywalker, fans were a mixture of intrigued and nervous. Could J.J. Abrams find a way to justify the Emperor's resurrection, or would this be yet another pandering dose of lazy nostalgia bait?

Sadly it turned out to be the latter, with Palpatine's return ultimately undermining what his demise actually meant in Return of the Jedi.

Resurrected in the film's opening titles with little further explanation - beyond him apparently being a crude zombie-puppet-thing hooked up to a mechanical arm - it didn't feel nearly worthwhile enough to justify effectively undoing one of the most iconic and straight-up awesome moments in the entire saga.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Palpatine's new, definitely final death at the hands of Rey (Daisy Ridley) was intensely underwhelming, amounting to her simply deflecting his Force lightning and letting him fry himself into nothing. Terrible.