Summary
- Andy Serkis created Snoke with psychological and physical damage in mind, as well as a sense of inadequacy.
- Serkis developed Snoke’s character without knowing his true nature, contributing to fan theories about the role.
- Despite the limited development of the character Snoke, Serkis demonstrated his talent in bringing complex characters to life in Star Wars.
Star Wars has a plethora of well-crafted characters with long-term development that fans love or love to hate, but one of the franchise’s most recent antagonists came to the big screen through a much more individualistic process, and the man behind him weighs in on how that happened.
Star Wars has had some of the most impactful and well-done villains in all of cinema history, with Darth Vader and Sheev Palpatine being so culturally revered that the franchise’s sequel trilogy found itself in a pretty tight spot when tasked with creating an antagonist of its own. This is how the Rey films ended up with Snoke, a villaint that Star Wars‘ Rian Johnson thought was ‘fundamentally uninteresting’ despite being the main villain of the trilogy at the time and being brought to life by the venerable Andy Serkis.
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Serkis, most well-known for his iconic and easily recognized work in the Lord of the Rings franchise as Gollum, had some words to say on the way he created his Star Wars antagonist. As reported by Popverse, Serkis was on hand to speak on a spotlight panel at the most recent Fan Expo San Francisco, where he discussed his take on the character. After joking that even he would like to know a little bit more about Snoke, Serkis explains how he approached the character when it was still just a blank slate. “I knew nothing about the character when I went into the film. We wanted this dark force character and a powerful character, but one of the decisions that I did make was that I wanted him to feel like he had suffered some psychological damage, and he had suffered some physical damage.” That physical damage played a big part in deciding how to move forward for Serkis, as the star goes on to explain. “Obviously, he’s scarred, and the front of his skull had been crushed. He was like a clone gone wrong, and so he kind of almost felt that in order to hold on to his power, he had to put himself out there in a stronger and more malevolent way just to kind of cover up the fact that he felt inadequate. Those are things I was thinking about.”
The star also revealed that he didn’t actually know Snoke’s ‘true nature, responding when asked if he knew that the character was a failed clone, ’“No, that was something we kind of happened upon and started to kind of think about.” The star also addressed all the theories that got thrown out into the ether between films, and how most of it fell short due to the spontaneity of the character’s development. “The amount of Snoke theories that were going around, that I’m sure many of you were a part of, trying to work out who he was. It was a lot that was a lot of smoke and mirrors, because it was still being evolved as we were making it.” This onslaught of speculation was so strong that fear of a repeat performance made Serkis hesitant to take on his Star Wars: Andor role.
Applying himself to develop a character beyond the directions given is something Serkis excels at, as fans saw to better effect in the backstory he developed for his role on Star Wars: Andor. However, as with many brilliant actors, he could really only work with what he was given, and Snoke wasn’t a character that got a fair shake from the onset. Being immediately sidelined by a change in leadership after Palpatine somehow returned also did the character absolutely zero favors. As far as the methodology goes, Serkis certainly hit the mark on what he had in mind, even if the effort would have been better spent elsewhere or by someone else, like the writers.
While the character (and really, the trilogy) could have been treated better by the franchise’s turbulent direction, the shades of intent in Serkis’ work are undeniable and a testament to his talent in bringing these sorts of characters to life. Seeing as the next mainline Star Wars film isn’t going to be done anytime soon, fans can only hope that the villain for this next installment gets a bit more structure and development for the actor behind the role to work with.
The Star Wars franchise is available to stream on Disney+.
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Source: Popverse