Supreme Leader Snoke facts for kids

Supreme Leader Snoke is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. He was created by J. J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt for the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, in which he is introduced as the Supreme Leader of the First Order, a military junta formed from the fallen Galactic Empire. In the films, Snoke is a CGI character voiced and performed by Andy Serkis via motion capture.

The Star Wars universe establishes Snoke as a Force-sensitive artificial being created by Emperor Palpatine to reclaim control of the galaxy. As Palpatine's puppet ruler, Snoke leads the First Order against the New Republic and manipulates Luke Skywalker's nephew, Ben Solo, into becoming Kylo Ren.

The character appears as a major antagonist in The Force Awakens (2015) and the secondary antagonist in The Last Jedi (2017), and is referenced in The Rise of Skywalker (2019). Aside from the films, Snoke appears in related Star Wars media.

Portrayal

Andy Serkis portrays Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

While Serkis secretly joined the project in February 2014, his casting in The Force Awakens was first announced on April 29, 2014. When asked about his role in July 2014, he joked, "I'm not Yoda." In May 2015, a StarWars.com interview with photographer Annie Leibovitz about her The Force Awakens shoot for Vanity Fair revealed that Serkis would be playing a CGI character named Supreme Leader Snoke, and featured an image of the actor in motion capture gear. Serkis had previously played several CGI characters using motion capture technology, including the titular ape in 2005's King Kong, and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot series.

In November 2015, Serkis said of the process of creating Snoke:

When we first started working on it, [Abrams] had some rough notions of how Snoke was gonna look, but it really hadn't been fully-formed and it almost came out of discussion and performance ... We shot on set of course, and I was in the scenes I have with other actors, but the beauty of this process is you can go back and reiterate, keep informing and honing beats and moments. So J.J., after we shot last year, we've had a series of sessions where I'd be in London at The Imaginarium, my studio, while he's been directing from L.A., and we've literally been creating further additions and iterations to the character. That's been fascinating. And in the meantime I've been able to see the look and design of the character grow and change as the performances change. So it's been really exciting in that respect.

According to Serkis' costar Lupita Nyong'o, who played the CGI character Maz Kanata in The Force Awakens, the actor coached her on performance-capture work, telling Nyong'o that "a motion-capture character you develop the same way as any other. You have to understand who the character is and what makes them who they are." Serkis said of filming:

It was quite an unusual situation. I worked specifically with Domhnall Gleeson and with Adam Driver. My first day was basically standing on a 25-foot podium doing Lord Snoke without the faintest idea what he looked like ... or in fact who he was! I was very high up, totally on my own, away from everybody else, but acting with them ... we used sort of a "Kongolizer" method of having sound come out of speakers to give a sense of scale and distance for the character. So it was very challenging and scary, in fact probably one of my most scary film experiences I've ever had.

Costume designer Michael Kaplan had the idea to give Snoke gold robes to contrast from his red and black throne room in The Last Jedi. Director Rian Johnson said the red motif was intended to evoke curtains in a nod to The Wizard of Oz, in which the titular character hides behind a curtain.

Description

Explaining why CGI was the only way to create Snoke's unique appearance, Serkis said before the film's premiere, "The scale of him, for instance, is one reason. He is large. He appears tall. And also just the facial design—you couldn't have gotten there with prosthetics ... he has a very distinctive, idiosyncratic bone and facial structure." Chief of creature and droid effects Neal Scanlan said, "This character is much better executed as a CGI character. That's just a practical reality when he's 7-foot-something tall; he's very, very thin." Snoke's "scarred, cavernous face" was not revealed before the release of the film, in which he appears as a "massive, ominous hologram". The character's deep voice was first heard in the teaser trailer released on November 28, 2014.

Appearances

Film

The Force Awakens (2015)

In his first appearance in the film, Snoke is introduced as Supreme Leader of the First Order, and master to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Seduced to the dark side by Snoke, the masked Kylo is really Ben Solo, the son of Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher). Snoke senses an "awakening" in the Force, and warns Ren that the limits of his power will be tested when he faces his father in pursuit of the wayward droid BB-8, which carries a map to the missing Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Later, Snoke orders General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) to destroy the New Republic with the Starkiller Base superweapon. He then orders Ren to bring Rey (Daisy Ridley) to him after she refuses to disclose the map to Luke. After Ren is defeated in a lightsaber duel with Rey, Snoke orders Hux to bring Ren to him to complete his training.

The Last Jedi (2017)

Following the events of The Force Awakens, Snoke leads the First Order forces as they pursue the outnumbered Resistance. He reprimands Hux for his failings as a military leader, and Kylo Ren for his failure to defeat Rey and find Luke Skywalker.

The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

In The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo Ren finds several clones resembling Snoke at Palpatine's (Ian McDiarmid) lair on the Sith world Exegol. Snoke's voice is briefly used by Palpatine when talking to Ren. It is revealed that Palpatine had created Snoke as a puppet to lure Ren towards the dark side, and to reclaim the galaxy through the First Order.

Other works

Snoke appears in the 2015 novelization of The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster. In the novel, Leia tells Han in more detail how Snoke, aware that their son would be "strong with the Force" and possess "equal potential for good or evil", had long watched Ben and manipulated events to draw him to the dark side. An unplayable Lego minifigure version of Snoke appears in cutscenes in the 2016 video game Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but became playable in Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga as a character of the Dark Side class, and is the only Sith, (aside from the Classic and Holiday Special versions of Darth Vader), to not be unlocked through playing the story, instead as an unlockable from a sidequest in Exegol. In the spring of 2018, Snoke was added to the mobile MOBA Star Wars: Force Arena as a playable Dark Side squad leader.

Snoke is the focus of the 2019 one-shot comic book Age of Resistance: Villains – Supreme Leader Snoke, in which he says to Kylo, "If I had your uncle by my side instead of you, the galaxy would have been mine a long time ago."

According to The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary (2019), Snoke's physical appearance was purposefully designed by Palpatine to ensure his species remained unidentifiable. Furthermore, Snoke's reluctance to meet in person with his First Order underlings helped conceal the fact that he was an artificial being. General Pryde (Richard E. Grant), a supporting villain in The Rise of Skywalker, was one of the few characters who knew Snoke was subservient to a higher power. The Star Wars Book (released in 2020 and co-authored by Lucasfilm creative Pablo Hidalgo) suggested Snoke may have been unaware of his origins. In The Rise of Kylo Ren comic book series, Kylo believes that Luke is responsible for Snoke's injuries.

See also

In Spanish: Líder supremo Snoke para niños