Yahoo News So, where were the Knights of Ren in The Last Jedi?
JJ Abrams set up many things in Star Wars: The Force Awakens that he never bothered to explain, which meant that some fans were quite miffed at Rian Johnson for ignoring those things and making a coherent, slower, character-focused movie in The Last Jedi.
Leaving aside who the heck Snoke is for the moment, one of the other big lingering mysteries surrounds the Knights of Ren – the mysterious force of dark side users that operate under Snoke and follow angsty bad guy Kylo Ren around sometimes.
They were mentioned once or twice in The Force Awakens and appeared in the briefest of flashes, while in The Last Jedi they were... mentioned once or twice, with literally no new information forthcoming.
While director Rian Johnson said he found the Knights of Ren "interesting", he has now admitted during an Empire podcast that they simply could not fit them in the movie.
"We have a very full movie already," he said. "There literally was just not room for another element.
"I guess I could've used them in place of the Praetorian guards but then it would feel like wasting them because all those guards had to die. And if Kylo had some kind of connection to them it would've added a complication that wouldn't have helped the scene.
"So the truth is, I just didn't see a place for them in the movie."
Fair point. But what about Snoke, who we still know nothing about apart from the fact that he likes gold robes and is now dead?
"I like Snoke as a character – as Andy Serkis plays him, he's delicious," Johnson continued. "He's evil and he's fun. But Kylo to me is where the interesting stuff is.
"And the notion of clearing the deck of the Vader-Emperor dynamic, so that all bets are off in the final movie in terms of how the villainy is going to play out. That to me seems much more interesting."
Johnson has previously spoken about how jam-packed The Last Jedi was, and how he really couldn't find much place for Gwendoline Christie's Captain Phasma.
Ah well, there's always Episode IX for the Knights of Ren, especially with JJ Abrams back on board. Or hey, maybe in the spin-off they travel back in time and become... Knights of the Old Republic!
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is in cinemas now. Pre-order the DVD or Blu-ray now.
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