Cheesman Chronicles

In the first Terminator movie, while captured in a police holding cell, the character Kyle Reese is interrogated as to what he knows about the future to disbelieving police officers. He tries to convince them of what exactly will occur in the future, describing his experiences of living in that dystopian hellscape, scurrying for food and barely making it by as the machines bore down on him and his fellow humans. How he had barely made it back to the past to protect Sarah Conner from the Terminator that hunted her mercilessly and was, in fact, on his way now. The officers simply scoff at his logic, trying to poke holes in it and get all the information on how things work in the future. How he travelled back in time, how the machines worked, the specifics of the technology and life. And try as he might, he can’t answer them. “I didn’t build the… thing,” he yells.

We watch that scene with a mix of hopelessness and anger too. As the audience we know that what he says is true. We’ve seen the terminator doing repairs on himself and how he is able to take on so many bullets and fire. Yet when it comes down to it, Kyle Reese can not explain how this all works. And he shouldn’t have to, either. Why should he be expected to know this?

There’s an annoying trend I’ve noticed in how we talk about characters in movie’s and how they explain things. If someone doesn’t know something, that’s either lazy or poor writing. Because a single part of what is being discussed isn’t addressed in clear detail to those who, let’s be real, probably don’t actually care about the story and only use this as justification to hate on something. So if a character doesn’t know something, then the writer is just being a hack.

Except… no? Obviously not? If a character doesn’t know something when asked, then that tells you something about that character, not the person who wrote them. Think about it. If a character is asked to explain something or is trying to explain it themselves, how they respond tells you what they know and don’t know, as well as believe or choose not to believe. Kyle Reese knows a lot about how to survive in the future created by machines, including how to make weapons from scratch and survive off what little he can, but he can’t tell you about how those machines work in specific detail or how exactly it all happened.

This sort of criticism leads through most ‘media analysis’, unfortunately. Quite famously, in Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Poe Dameron expresses disbelief at Palpatine being able to return, saying “Somehow Palpatine Returned”. While I do have problems with him returning (especially how they broke Rey’s character development by making a nobody a famous descendent), this line isn’t terrible. For one, how should Dameron know how he returned? It would be suspicious if he did. And others around him proceed to guess what could have done it. And we are basically shown it when he is on Exegol. All the strange tubes and genetic experiments to bring him back. It is shown, not told.

Yet people still point to this line as poor writing. Maybe, yes, with the intention of showing that Disney bringing Palpatine back was a sign of desperation (and to be honest it kind of was). But with how much the line has been mocked to death it’s not surprising when people may genuinely believe that the line is how the movie treats his return. Star Wars fans aren’t exactly known for getting the intention behind things now, are they?

So what can we do about fixing this? How can we convince people that characters not knowing things is totally fine? Well we can’t, to be honest. People are going to hate on things and use bad examples as frameworks for this analysis. I’m not going to act like I’m above it. Sometimes we just don’t like things and need to find things to explain it even if it doesn’t make sense. But one thing we can do is this: when someone says that a character not knowing something doesn’t make sense, ask them why. Why should Kyle Reese know how time travel works? Why should Poe Dameron know how Palpatine came back? Why would a character know something and why would they not?

(Yes this article was just my thinly veiled attempt to defend ‘Somehow Palpatine Returned’ but I stand by it God damn it!)

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