Star Wars: The Last Jedi - 13 Audacious Moments That Have Divided Fans

Defenders of The Last Jedi seem adamant that the key complaint of the film's detractors is its heavy-handed dismissal of matters which had previously seemed vitally important to many fans.

When The Force Awakens introduced Andy Serkis as Supreme Leader Snoke, it was clear that this was the new Emperor to Kylo Ren's Vader. So many questions presented themselves: just who is Snoke? Why is he so powerful? When and where did his corruption of Kylo Ren begin? How is he related to the existing protagonists of the Star Wars pantheon?

The Last Jedi, however, makes no attempt to address these questions - and, instead, allows Kylo to kill his master midway through the film, then sees him fight side by side with Rey, allowing the audience to think for a few exhilarating minutes that the First Order's mightiest warrior may defect to the Resistance.

Perhaps it's to be expected that, after two years of fan theories, not everyone would be happy to see Snoke disposed of so prematurely, with no insight into who he really is. Ultimately though, do we really need to know anything more? When all's said and done, the character really was just a fairly obvious facsimile of the Emperor; a character who, it's worth noting, the original trilogy tells us just as little about.

(Side note: much the same can be said of Gwendoline Christie's Captain Phasma, essentially the Boba Fett of the new trilogy, who also meets a similarly surprising early exit - although, in that case, there is greater scope for the character to have possibly survived.)

As established, The Last Jedi is all about breaking with tradition, so it makes sense that Snoke be swept out of the way - allowing Kylo Ren to assume the mantle of Supreme Leader. In doing so, Kylo not only lives up to the legacy of Darth Vader; from his perspective, he effectively outdoes him, as Vader remained subservient to the Emperor, before killing him and renouncing the dark side of the Force.