Andy Serkis: His 8 Best Performances

In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Serkis's Supreme Leader Snoke was essentially kept in the shadows. He got to deliver some vaguely menacing dialogue from a hologram, reveal to the audience that Kylo Ren was Han Solo's son, and then essentially remain absent from all of the actual narrative. He may have been the scarred-face that launched a thousand fan theories but he had surprisingly little to do.

In The Last Jedi, however, Serkis gets to go all-in on the character, delivering thundering monologues and developing Snoke into a genuine character rather than just being the new-Emperor-Palpatine-stand-in. He makes lines like,

"The deed split your spirit to the bone. You were unbalanced, bested by a girl who had never held a lightsaber, you failed! Skywalker lives! The seed of the Jedi order lives. As long as it does, hope lives in the galaxy. I thought you would be the one to snuff it out."

sound like beautiful music. Similarly, he is able to bring some his own dry wit humor into the mix, making lines like his "take that ridiculous thing off" line to Kylo Ren about his mask all-the-more incredible.

Serkis gets to go all-out on a grandiose bravado here, golden robe and all, and its his unique ability to commit so thoroughly to this kind of a performance that makes Snoke's eventual and wonderfully-unglamorous death all the more satisfying.