PT Is Ian's portrayal of Sidious a bit over the top after killing Windu?

Yeah I think it's completely over the top in Palpatine's office. When he's going "I'm too weak. Ooo. Don't kill me." I just couldn't take it seriously. I mean are we supposed to think Anakin is an idiot for falling for such obvious play-acting? And then he's back to cackling about POWAH a second later. Would've preferred if he'd played it a little more subdued like he did in the rest of the prequels.

 

This. He hates people so hard it makes his eyes change color and he's been keeping it bottled up for nearly 3 decades at this point at least...of course he's going to act ridiculous when he doesn't have to anymore.

 

I agree with that too. He is reveling in the fact that he can now unleash his true nature. I don't have a problem with it

 

Yes to the above.
He's on the verge of fulfilling a millennia-old blood feud that will place him in a position of power unseen in galactic history...who wouldn't go a little over the top?

 

I dont have a problem with it. If I was Sidious and I knew that I had just killed a very powerful enemy and won over the chosen one I'd be the same.

 

I really don't see much difference, if anything, between third "Sith" act Sidious and the performance in ROTJ. He has a habit of cackling in evil glee. Guy ain't exactly subtle.

 

WAY over the top, and I loved every minute of it! During his battle with Yoda, I half expected Sid to shoot lighting with his hand behind his back while cackling. As others have said, after all those years of playing nice, he finally got to be his usual *** self and he (both character and actor) were loving every second of it!

 

I think it suits Palpatine very well, he's finally letting out all his frustrations, dreams and hopes as a Sith and doesn't have to hide or use false emotion anymore, he can do as he pleases, how he pleases.

What I don't get, but I love watching every time...is how OTT Palps goes when he blasts Mace... "No. No! No, you will die!"

I've never heard or seen such excellent, hammy "No"-ing!

 

yeah after watching Revenge of the SIth alot, i really do think Ian really overdid it with his final senate duel speeches when fighting Windu. Yeah its the last time Ian to star as Palpatine. He just overdid it with the whole "No, no you will die!" it felt a little too cartoonish

 

Sidious, like Yoda, walks a fine line between being intimidating and comical. The more they do, the easier it is for them to come out looking like the latter. Sometimes less is more.

 

He was over the top, but understandably so.

 

This makes sense, but I still think it was a little too much.

 

Throughout the PT, there were only two characters who hadn't been completely ruined. The first was Obi-Wan Kenobi; the second was Palpatine.

That is, until RotS. Palpatine was always cacklingly evil, but he was always perfectly sane and in complete control, and portraying him as bat-guano crazy undermined the character beyond repair.

In a trilogy full of failures, this was one of the biggest.

 

I think after Order 66 he could fully let the real Palpatine come out. I don't think he went around cackling day in and day out after that though.

 

Indeed. Getting "Drunk on the Dark Side" may help in a fight- but very little of Palpatine's life would involve fighting.

 

Just like the OT really. The whole point is that the PT fills in all the major explanations that were left out of the OT. Their will be no movies to fill in all the details of the PT so you have to look to the books and the like just like before these things were where you found out the details of the OT.

Of course the OT then had it's original explanations either overwritten by the PT completely or the basic concept was the same but expanded.

I just watched III last night again. Totally marvelous. Sure I'd have loved to have a bit more with Yoda's thinking in terms of both his commune with Qui Gon and his reasons for not training the children in the Jedi way but that is more Yoda's story which is not the point of the movies anymore than all the machinations of Palpatine are. The movie's are about Anakin and sculpted to his point of view. If you went into all of the side stories with Yoda, the Jedi, Palpatine etc then you don't have 2h 15m movies you have to have LOTR 3h movies (or even more).

Looking at the OT there is no doubt that reading the books and listening to the radio series makes the story better and deeper just as reading the PT novels and other books like Darth Plagueis do but that is such a miniscule part of the audience who will do that. The movies are movies and made as movies. It's like looking at the movies that were made from books. LOTR and Harry Potter for instance. Although in the reverse way book to movie as opposed to movie to book the actual effect is the same. The books can give a complete and detailed character and story depth that movies really can't.

Not at all. He's been spending decades under the Palpatine mask and now he's coming out and having some "fun".

Remember these are movies based in large part of the style of Saturday movie serials.

 

Double post

 

I'm pretty sure that that was intentional. He could see that Ani had a soft spot for those who were unarmed, so pleading would send Anakin over the edge.

 

Problem is- it was him that told Anakin it was OK to kill the unarmed Dooku.

 

What I mean is that it's so incredibly obvious Palpatine is play-acting. This is a Sith Lord we're talking about and Anakin literally just saw him shoot lightening at Windu with genuine menace. And two seconds later he's grovelling about how weak he is. Is Anaking that stupid that he would buy that?

 

He's obsessed with saving Padme- so he's trying to come up with a justification for sparing Palpatine, that he thinks Mace will buy.

 

Exactly. Through some dark power he was able to manipulate and produce his grandfatherly appearance and soothing charismatic voice. There are a few windows when he drops the disguise, for example in ROTS when he commands Anakin to execute Dooku; "Do it!"

 

Can't really be all that cool if it wasn't worth including in the movie(s) in the first place. Fact is that 98% of these after-the-fact explanations are the works of EU authors, comic book writers, etc, attempting to explain things after-the-fact which they had no input on in the first place.

 

I don't buy that. If that were the case, then why didn't he go back to "handsome" Palpatine when he next addressed the Senate?

The movie makes it clear that he was deformed by his own Force Lightning. We're all free to interpret it however we want, but IMHO things that others say outside the movies are worthless. However, I don't have any problem with the fact that it didn't have an identical effect on Luke in E6.

 

"The attempt on my life has left me scarred and deformed..." -His wrecked face served a greater purpose; it was "proof" that the Jedi tried to take over.

Right. One force-power negated the other and it matters not that he did that to himself with an assist from Windu.

To each his own, but its all Star Wars to me.... even the Holiday Special.

Me either. Palpatine toyed with Luke until he told the boy that he was about to die and that's when he ramped up the barrage... Vader knew the difference in power, he'd seen it firsthand. He didn't act until the Emperor got serious with his assault.