PT How Did Sidious Become So Powerful?

OK, I will try one more time, then I am washing my hands of this conversation

The first problem is you can't separate his political skill from his force powers because they go hand in hand.

OK.... I get the gist of what you are saying, basically you are saying that (to use your example) Adolf Hitler (or any non-force user) could have done what Palpatine did in the Prequels as in relation to his rise to power. Assuming that's the point, I think you are dead wrong... Palpatine being a Sith Lord (thus his powers with the Dark Side), was paramount to his rise to power! Let me bring in evidence from the movies:

TPM:

Mace: I do not believe the Sith could have returned without us knowing.
Yoda: Ah, hard to see, the dark side is.

AOTC:

Palpatine: Master Yoda, do you think it will really come to war?
Yoda: Hmmm, the Dark Side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.
---------------
Yoda: Blind we are if creation of this clone army we could not see
Mace: I think it is time we informed the senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.
Yoda: Only the Dark Lord of the Sith knows of our weakness. If informed the Senate is multiply our adversaries will.
--------------
Obi Wan: I have to admit that without the clones, it would not have been a victory.
Yoda: Victory? Victory, you say? Master Obi-Wan, not victory. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun the Clone War has.

ROTS:

Yoda: Destroy the Sith we must!
Obi Wan: Send me to kill the Emperor. I will not kill Anakin.
Yoda: To fight this Lord Sidious, strong enough you are not.

The point of the quotes is to show that Palpatines power with the Dark Side of the Force is an important part of his rise to power. What we see happening across the 3 movies is the Jedi's powers are becoming less and less. Their ability to use the Force has diminished. This is a direct result of Palpatine, his power with the Dark Side, the chaos he is creating in the galaxy by using the Dark Side. His power is having a direct impact on the Jedi. As Yoda says, only the Dark Lord of the Sith knows of their weakness, why is that? Because the Dark Lord is the one causing it.

If we inserted Adolf Hitler into Palpatine's spot, then there is no diminishing of the Jedi's Power because Hitler would not have that power in the Dark Side to cause the imbalance and disturbances in the Force. If Hitler was in Palpatines spot, the Jedi would be able to see right through Hitler and his scheming. They would be at "full" power, and would sense everything he was up too. Hitler wouldn't be able to hide himself from the Jedi as Palpatine was able too.

Furthermore, even if Hitler would be able to get to the point where he is Emperor, as we see in ROTS, then it is only obvious that the Jedi (Yoda and Obi Wan) would make a move against Hitler to kill him. Hitler would not last very long against Yoda. So it has to be a Sith Lord, and a powerful and well trained Sith Lord to be in the place Palpatine is in because eventually the probability of him having to directly confront at least 1 Jedi is high, as again we see in the movie.

So I strongly disagree with you with the implication that Palpatine's abilities in the Force didn't play a strong part in his rise to power. They were a necessary part in his rise to power. Without those powers and abilities, he wouldn't have gotten very far. The Jedi would have sniffed him out very quickly.

Once again, there are differences between the two orders for a reason. The Sith didn't choose the rule of two because they thought it was the better way to go. They chose it out of necessity. Once upon a time there were thousands of Sith, however,the Sith realized that one of the weaknesses of the Dark Side is it's corrupting influence that caused those thousands of Sith to fight one another and almost push the Order to extinction. It is part of the Sith mythology that Lucas created:



"One of the themes throughout the films is that the Sith lords, when they started out thousands of years ago, embraced the dark side. They were greedy and self centered and they all wanted to take over, so they killed each other. Eventually there was only one left and that one took on an apprentice. And for thousands of years, the master would teach the apprentice, the master would die, the apprentice would then teach another apprentice, become the master, and so on. But there could never be more than two of them, because if there were, they would try to get rid of the leader, which is exactly what Vader was trying to do, and that's exactly what the Emperor was trying to do. The Emperor was trying to get rid of Vader, and Vader was trying to get rid of the Emperor. And that is the antithesis of a symbiotic relationship, in which if you do that, you become cancer, and you eventually kill the host, and everything dies."

-Quote from Lucas interview with Bill Moyer

So again, the Sith created the rule of two in order for them to survive, not because they thought it was the better then the Jedi way. More than likely Palpatine would rather have thousands of Sith Warriors with him and take the Jedi head on, however, he can't because it would just all crumble before him anyway as those Sith fought each other. That is why it took the Sith a thousand years to work their way back into being in a position to be able to make a move against the Jedi. The Sith learned to work in teh shadows, learned to be cunning, they learned to be patient. This allowed them to become stronger and stronger with each passing generation of Sith Master. When the apprentice became stronger than the Master, that apprentice lusted for the Masters spot, and killed him, this leapfrog effect helped ensure only the strongest apprentices moved on. Does that mean every apprentice ever picked was the best candidate? No, obviously not, there were placeholders, there were mistakes, and those mistakes were discarded when a stronger candidate became available, which again as i have pointed out in previous posts is what we see Sidious doing to Vader with Luke.

While the Jedi may have been in a better position with their ability to train multitudes of padawans and future Jedi, at the end of the day it didn't do them any better. The Jedi had peaked at the time of TPM. What the Jedi were at the beginning of TPM was the best they could do as an Order. Lucas called it the golden age of the Jedi. When the Sith reveal themselves, that is the end of the Jedi Golden Age because they are caught off guard and they are unable to extract the Sith cancer, and the order dies.

So there is no real way to draw comparisons between the two orders because the Sith Order operated the way it did out of necessity, and the Jedi Order operated the way it did out of philosophy. The Sith were able to destroy the Jedi because after a thousand years of planning, training, scheming, it all finally came to a head when Palpatine rose to the spot of Sith Master and took advantage of his Sith Powers as well as the Jedi apathy and arrogance.

In the end, it was not the Jedi Order that beat the Sith Order, it was not one orders philosophy versus the other orders necessity. It was a Father's love for his son. It just so happened that the son was a Jedi, and was able to make the correct decisions that his Father failed to make.

 

I don't necessarily see it that way. I think they are (mostly) seperate skills.

Take Darth Maul, for example. Very skilled in combat with a lightsaber. I have always believed that his combination of skill, style and speed is the most visually aesthetic we see in the PT. Took out QGJ and would have beaten OWK had he not let his guard down. But does he seem like the type who could manuever through the political structure of the galaxy and take it over? No, not really. Great warrior, but probably not JFK behind the podium. But I could, however, see Count Dooku being a major political figure in the galaxy and accomplishing a rise similar to Palpatine's. He has the personality and charisma for it.

So I don't think that every Sith Lord (including Palpatine) was necessarily Ronald Reagan and John Rambo rolled into one. I don't think that because Palpatine manipulated his way to the top automatically means that he is also the best in combat too.

My point with Hitler is that someone doesn't necessarily have to be the baddest dude (or anywhere near it) to achieve a position of great political power. It obviously happens all the time in our Real World universe. Now, we don't have the Force at work in our universe and you have to take that into consideration. And while I am sure Palpatine's power in the Dark Side had something to do with his rise, I don't necessarily think that it also translates into being the most powerful warrior in the universe - or at least in the top few. We also aren't real sure how hard it is for a force user (especially if he hasn't been identified as one) to mask his presence and intentions. We do see Obi-Wan and Yoda go into exile for 20 years and are never found by the Empire in spite of knowledge that they're out there. We even see Luke Skywalker grow up on Tatooine 50 yards from Ben Kenobi as he is raised by his father's stepbrother in the same house as in AOTC and neither Palpatine nor Vader knows this kid exists until he blows up their Death Star? That's a bit of a head scratcher

So I dunno. Maybe there are just some pretty big blind spots in the Force no matter what side you're on.

Since Star Wars is a fictional world, some things are going to work out in an illogical way. Happens in a lot of movies. But I am supposed to believe that every Sith Master always found a better apprentice that could advance the Sith agenda? Am I supposed to believe that there was never a time when an apprentice bombed out or died prematurely and the Master did not have time to take on a new apprentice before he died himself? If there's only 1-2 of these guys at a time living an incredibly dangerous lifestyle over the course of 1,000 years, I think there's going to be screw up at some point that's gonna be their downfall.

I don't think the Sith one master/one apprentice model is a viable and realistic. Like I said, though, it's a movie. And there are tons of unlikely things that happen in movies. But in the realistic sense, is the Sith method likely to produce a force user capable of taking on the best of the Jedi Order that are 10,000 strong? No, I don't think so.

 

I like what the novelization of ROTS says about this. Paraphrased, it says something like: the violence, hatred, and bloodshed that was ignited by the Clone War and Order 66 shifted the balance of the Force to the Dark Side. As a result, when Yoda confronted Sidious, he realized that he was almost unbeatable during this time.

 

How Did Sidious become so powerful ?

Because of the training from Darth Plagueis the Wise.

 

A few things to chew on

1: After a certain point the focus of the Jedi Order shifted. They no longer focused on training their students how to duel opponents with lightsabers just blasters and a few other weapons. And at least Qui-Gon was a philosopher or something like that and not a warrior. The Jedi didn't seem to start to shift to teaching students how to duel until some time after TPM, if they hadn't started by the time AotC rolled around they must have taken those classes a little more seriously.

2: The Jedi Order had closed themselves accidentally off from the Will of the Force. In fact if you want to use the novelizations Obi-Wan tells Padme that the Jedi either didn't know or understand the Will of the Force any more than a civilization that didn't experience gravity could understand why a river flowed downstream. Maybe he didn't say it quite like that but he made a similar comment about a river and gravity. If it's the case that the Jedi don't know the Will of the Force and they claim to serve the Force then they ALL need to spend time meditating.if they didn't understand it either than they need to meditate anyway.

3: Numbers don't mean a thing. The Jedi Order numbered into the 10,000 range but is that everyone from the toddlers in the the creche to those that had to retire due to injuries? Just the Knights and Masters? Padawans, Knights and Masters? But for the sake of this we will assume that they were talking about 10,000 Padawans, Knights and Masters since those would be the only active ones. Obi-Wan while a fine warrior at his heart seems to be a negotiator, Madame Jocasta Nu is a librarian granted she has skill but she chose that path, Qui-Gon as I stated above was a philosopher and Yoda was more or less retired to teaching the Younglings. There were probably very few Jedi that were warriors beside the dudes with the yellow double bladed lightsabers from TCW but their job was to protect the Temple and there had been no serious threat in a thousand years.

4: Sidious could have escaped notice of the Jedi by controlling his thoughts near and around them. Instead of daydreaming about how much fun it would be to destroy them while they are in front of him or in the Senate he looks at their GOOD points so if they try to read him with the Force all they will get is his appreciation of Mace's bluntness and Yoda's experience.

 

QGJ and OWK both fought well against Maul. So if QGJ was just a philosopher and OWK was just a padawan and neither was expecting to confront a Sith lord until they actually did and yet they still managed to destroy him, well, that doesn't say a whole lot for Sith lords.

Numbers are very important.

Ask a college sports coach if he'd rather recruit California, Florida and Texas vs. Wyoming, Delaware and North Dakota. Certainly the first trio. Why? Because the combination of CFT is more populous than WDN by a ratio of at least 80/1. You're more likely to find your 5 star program savior in Los Angeles than Cheyenne, Miami than Dover, and Houston than Fargo.

And if you look at the NFL Draft and the history of #1 picks, a lot of them are complete busts and few turn out to be the best player in the draft. J. Clowney was the #1 pick this year and he's been hurt most of the year. He has bust written all over him. There are lots of other prospects and diamonds in the rough who have turned out to be better than the #1 pick in the draft. Happens all the time. And if you gave team a choice of having the #1 pick in the draft or (after the class's rookie season is over and they have had a year of seasoning against NFL competition) being able to select whichever prospect turned out best between #2-#224, I think they'd rather wait on #2-#224 because one of those guys is likely to turn out better than #1. You just don't know who and that's why the draft is largely a crapshoot.

So my point is that when you have a far larger number of prospects flowing through your system, you're much more likely to end up with the high-end prospects. Even if you gave the Jedi 1,000/1 advantage over the Sith, that's like comparing Omaha, NE., to the rest of the United States. 10,000/1 is like comparing Washington, D.C. to the rest of the world. These are huge differences and the advantages point to the Jedi.

At the end of the day, it's just a movie and you can overcome any odds you want in movie. But in a Real Life situation, as Real Life as it can be when talking about a fictional universe, the best of the Jedi Order is likely to be superior to the Sith's single prospect because of the numbers advantage.

 

What is with this fascination with sports? Those that play sports are different than soldiers; period.

If you crack open history books you will discover that at times a smaller force outwitted a larger force. I read a story about some backwoods men that lived during the American Revolution that outwitted some British Troops. They shot from the trees before retreating to another point in the road. Because they were dressed in dear skins they blended in with the trees. The only evidence that they were there were the smoke from their rifles and then the impressions they had left from laying in wait. Granted they didn't wipe out the group since they were just delaying the British Troops.

The Battle of Thermopylae is a classic example of a smaller force standing up quite well to a larger force.

Here's a link for anyone interested in it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

 

The comparison is valid. If you are trying to find someone who is really good at something your chances are better if you're drawing from a larger sample size. If the U.S. military were recruiting 18-20 year old males to train to be Special Forces operatives and could only draw from one state, they would be better off if that state were California rather than North Dakota. There are far more 18-20 year old males in California than there are in North Dakota. For every North Dakota prospect who has the ability to be a Navy SEAL, you should be able to find approximately 35-40 of them in California. I think that's very simple to understand. The more prospects you have, the more elite soldiers you should find.

Similarly, the Jedi vastly outnumber the Sith in both their numbers and their outreach. They bring in more prospects and can search more systems for the ones who are truly special in the Force. That doesn't necessarily mean the Jedi will discover and train the best single prospect (even Lloyd Christmas had "a chance" in Dumb and Dumber) but the odds are strongly for it.

Apples and oranges.

1. I don't believe anyone was outnumbered 10,000-2 in the American Revolution or any other war or battle. No one is overcoming that disadvantage.

2. The wars and battles that you are referring to were defensive battles in which the overmatched side merely tried to stand its ground and often had the help of the terrain. That's a far different set of circumstances than going on the offensive. The United States lost the Vietnam War on the other side of the world, but if the N. Vietnamese army had made an assault on Washington, D.C. - well, that wouldn't have turned out too well for them.

Look, I'm not saying it's impossible for Sidious to be as powerful as the best Jedi. But from a numbers standpoint, it's an unlikely scenario. But there are a lot of those in movies. If movies reflected Real Life, then Andy Dufresne probably would have encountered a grate over the end of the pipe he escaped from in The Shawshank Redemption. Wouldn't that have been a downer? Ha!

 

Just focusing on the opera scene when he talks about the "tragedy" of Darth Plagueis, he told
Anakin, he was so powerful but taught everything he knew to his apprentice, but he couldn't save himself from death!

So to make it easy to understand, he implied that this apprentice(Sidious) was more powerful than Plagueis the Wise, killing his own master when sleeping(Plagueis didn't feel him) so siths become powerful enough when planning things in advance, in the shadows, secretly,that not even a sith master could feel that premonition(remember Anakin s nightmare about Padme s dying from child birth? That made him feel scared yet focused on the dark side). After all, Sidious fullfilled his destiny with order 66( great strategy) to instal the first Galactic Empire, having Anakin/vader as the brute force in the particular issues he ll have to handle in representation of the political mastermind (emperor)that always was Sidious but trained many years to have those abilities mix with the dark side of the force as a powerful ally, very much like Jedis trusted in the Republic, but they never saw what next move Palpatine/Sidious was going to do ,because they (as Jedis ) evade political problems, leaving that to the senate.

 

Well he is the Dark Lord of the Sith so that must mean he is at least as strong as a Jedi master and he was well trained with the force though i dont know how he got so good with lightsaber dueling his master Plageuis wasn't that good at dueling but yet he and all his apprentices were amazing duelists especially Count Dooku, he was able to fend off Yoda himself

 

Well, I admit I still haven't really thought about this, and I've barely skimmed this thread, but....

Some people who watched the OT thought anybody could learn to use the Force, even as well as Yoda, and that perhaps there was nothing particularly special about Yoda (i.e. he wouldn't have a high midi-chlorian count), just his understanding. As a kid, I did at least entertain (perhaps more than entertain) the idea that your ability to use the Force is entirely in your mind, it's about confidence, faith, willpower, all that stuff.

As Yoda said, "No! No different! Only different in your mind".

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."

"I don't believe it."
"That is why you fail."

Well, maybe Palpatine had the same kind of understanding, the same belief. He doesn't need lightsaber practice or physical conditioning, that's crude matter. He doesn't need to lift rocks anymore, he can wave his hand and move ships. Palpatine just did, there was no try. Palpatine was a guru of the dark side.

Some of the dialogue could support this. Palpatine's mentions of the subtleties and the great mystery of the Force seem to suggest deep understanding.

 

Palpatine is the master of manipulation - whether it be politics, the Force, or someone's mind. There is little he can't do with his determination. His vast knowledge was taken from many powerful sources, like Plagueis and Talzin, and countless darkside wielders that came before him. He is the sum of all that knowledge and power in my opinion.

 

Practice.

 

Force enhancing drugs...

 

Dont do drugs kids or else you start shooting lightning out of your hands.