PT The Emperors Facial Transformation.

I've been wondering for a while about the Emperors facial transformation when Mace deflected lighting back at him on that ledge.Do you think his disfigurement is actually from the deflection? or a good excuse to transform to his actual face/identity?

 

Opinions vary. But IMO the notion that Palpatine's "true" face comes out is better and more fairytale-like than the notion that he disfigures himself.

 

Botched facelift.

 

I think that both versions are somewhat true. He was both disfigured by the lightning due to the collision of dark side energies (his body and the lightning had) and went off to show more of who he actually was.

 

He tried to make himself look beautiful but failed miserably

 

I see it as a reveal, and it was the original idea.
Lucas' mind went back and forth on that matter however. At one point, Palpatine was supposed to switch from one face to the other, which confirms the idea of a mask. Mc Diarmid confirmed that too. But they gave up.

Then it was decided that the duel would reveal his true face : being Sidious, as opposed to Palpatine who was just a mask. The novelization supports that too.

Then it got confused. His face was disfigured by lightning, and not just as an in-movie lie for the senate.
People like Knoll, Luceno (in 'Dark Lord') and then all Lucasfilm représentatives went that way. The true face thing became symbolic, but what really happened was a disfigurement. The DVD commentary goes that way (Althoug Lucas says that with his ugly face, yellow eyes and rotten teeth, Palpatine is now Sidious). Lucas is rather vague, but Lucasfilm is not.

It's a good exemple of how things were run in the prequels. If you Watch documentaries (the excellent 'the beginning', and other making of videos) or read the interesting book 'making of ROTS' released back then in 2005, you find that GL changes his mind all the time. Surrounded by yes men who have a work to do (sfx, filming, designing, etc ...) but never really know what is happening in one scene ! Same for the actors. GL wanted absolute control and most of all, the ability to single handedly change anything until the last minute. On many occasions, the top yes men (mr Knoll?) would not even know the hows and the whys of the scene they were working on, where it came from and where it was supposed to go. And Lucas answers seemed pretty vague and not too convincing. Read reports in the ROTS Making Of and other sources.

Very different from the story discussions for ESB and ROTJ, which you can read in JW Rinzler's excellent Making Ofs books. Thins had to be settled, George set the general story but everyone came up with ideas for plot points, objections, propositions. The persons in charge knew what was supposed to happen, how and why.

The disfigurement idea doesn't work for me : Sidious is just a snowhite witch after the duel with mace, with a new voice, a new behavior, a whole new character. Pure evil. His eyes are yellow, fingernails rotten, etc. He laughs maniacally (even as Sidious before, he just sounded and acted like Palps with a Hood).

Saying that it's a little bit of both is just circumvoluted !

Storywise, it has to be a reveal.

But Lucasfilm's word on it is more on the disfigurement side.

You choose !!

 

One way of having "a bit of both" Palpatine was concealing some of the changes (rotten fingernails), minor facial wear and tear - but dropped this after his face was damaged, feeling it was too much bother.

The lightning only affected his face that way, because it reacted badly with the "mask" that he'd been using to hide the changes.

Thus, if he'd dropped the "mask" but never been hit in the face by lightning, he'd have looked different, but not as much.

Hence- you have a reason for lightning in the face deforming him a bit, but not Luke, and you can keep the concept of the "mask" in as well.

 

I'm really annoyed by the moronic ''yes-men'' argument.

 

Moronic ? Good god ! That's friendly !

Nevermind. The fact is that GL had almost absolute control over the PT, which he had not over the OT. For various reasons.
There were more disagreements, more headstrong artists or co-writers back then.

And I'm not really pointing my finger at 'yes men' on the disfigurement matter : more the fact that people working on the prequels had no idea what was George's idea exactly because he always let things to be fixed or improved later.
It's more like everything has to be decided for the novelization release, or the marketing guys afterwards, but nothing is really clear while the movie is being made. The writing and storytelling looks like a first draft. And the Lucasfilm marketing guys, pablo hidalgo and others deal with that as well as they can. Which is ... not well at all !

 

What i don't get is how doesn't Luke not get effected by the lightning like Palps did. Ya i understand that Palps had some kind of mask on and stuff but Luke should had at least had his hand short circuit from it like Vader's suit.

 

I am so sick of this idea that Palpatine's "true" face was the ugliness that reflected after his duel with Mace. This is just bad writing.

Why do people equate physical ugliness with evil and physical beauty with goodness? It's infantile. And if Lucas believes in utilizing that kind writing device for some of his characters, then he is guilty of being infantile, when it came to Palpatine's physical looks.

 

It was clumsy, whatever it was.

 

What we saw in RoTJ was a face that looked positively warped- with bright yellow eyes that are far from the human norm.

The idea that "use of the dark side warps the body" had been around in the EU for some time before the prequels came out- they simply extrapolated from what they saw in the RoTJ movie.

 

Why is it so hard to accept that all of the evil inside Palpatine didn't in some way affect his outer appearance? You could argue that the Dark Side of the Force was so strong inside him that when the Force lightening was hitting his body it was close to exploding, therefore pushing against his skin and causing his deformed appearance.

It's not lazy writing non infantile because as the Saga is set in a galaxy far, far away anythings possible.

 

That's pretty much my point.

 

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Sid's face looks... normal? More like Palpatine's?​

Or something in between?​

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This is wholly inaccurate. "It got confused" only because fans repeatedly insisted on "scarred-by-the-lightning" despite the holes in the theory. Knoll did not say Palpatine was scarred-by-the-lightning on the commentary. He said that "exertion" was the cause of Palpatine's transformation. Luceno did not support scarred-by-the-lightning; in fact, if anything he indicated exactly the opposite when he wrote: Palpatine's disfigurements were really nothing new. As far as the phrase "all Lucasfilm representatives" is concerned, I don't know who that's intended to refer to, but if it means Pablo Hidalgo, Hidalgo's statement really took no definitive stance either way and only reiterated that the lightning incident prompted Palpatine's apparent transformation, which is true in any case. Then we have Ian McDiarmid's statement, which also contradicted "scarred-by-the-lightning". In fact, no official source promoted scarred-by-the-lightning until Darth Plagueis came out.

 

It wouldn't be hard to accept if the movie did a better job of getting that idea across. But the way it was handled was clumsy. It was basically a shortcut from point A to point B. Like they didn't quite know how to make his appearance consistent with ROTJ.

 

I personally don't think it was needed at all. Far better that by ROTJ he is just wasting away. He does not need his old face in the PT.

 

Here we go...

 

Maybe it was simply people taking Palpatine's statement to the Senate about the attack and how it left him "scarred and deformed" at face value?

 

It's funny because I've seen this character called "a lying liar who lies" without irony.

 

I recall Star Wars & Philosophy making a big point of how he's brilliant at bending the truth without actually lying outright.

Also:

http://jasonfry.tumblr.com/post/22588801475/eg-to-warfare-endnotes-pt-6

I like the point that Sidious was telling the truth when he accused the Jedi of plotting against him, trying to kill him and scheming to take over the Senate. He’s leaving out some key details — such as, oh, being a Sith Lord — but he isn’t lying. The best plots depend not on lies, but on manipulating your opponent to do what he’d rather not.

 

He is definitely a lying liar that lies. He cons Anakin like a chump. Anakin's not the sharpest knife in the drawer though.

 

I love how that part of the novel justifies his transformation.

I believe that "exertion" was GL's intent in 2005 considering that he doesn't correct Knoll.