Palpatine: Reverts to true form OR damaged because of Mace

Another thing: if he's getting fried so badly, how can Palpatine manage to maintain enough composure to play the "Oh help me Anakin, I'm melting" number? I'm not questioning whether what GL said is true or not, or whether that was his intent during filming, but whether it makes sense. IMO, it doesn't. In the end, I think GL screwed the whole scene up badly.


EDIT: by using the wonder 'playing' I mean that he's faking. If the prune-face look is really the of result lightening damage, he wouldn't be faking, he really would be begging Anakin for help.

 

Why would he really be begging for help? He obviously doesn't need it. He allowed his face to get disfigured in order to win Anakin's sympathy. Sure it hurt like hell, but Palpatine mustered all of his evil strength to keep himself from screaming. I think his eyes prove that. They turn yellow because he is consumed by hatred towards Mace. That hatred gives him the strength he needs.

On a sidenote, it would've been hilarious if Palpatine had actually said "Help, I think I'm melting"



Hatred is dangerous
/LM

 

What do you mean, he obviously doesn't need help. He's lost his saber, Mace has reflected his lightening back at him and is about to go in for the kill. He toally needs Anakin's help.

 

He makes himself out to be weak and as soon as Anakin has betrayed Mace, he practically jumps up and electrocutes Mace to death. He could've done that anytime, he was just waiting for the right moment.
If he really didn't want Mace to deflect the lightning attack back at him, he should've stopped shooting lightnings. He was obviously playing Anakin the whole time.



Surprise is the key
/LM

 

He could not have done it at any time while Mace was still armed with the point of his saber at Palpatine's throat. Mace had to be defenseless for the lightning to get to him.

Yes Palpatine faked being too weak to continue, but the deformation by his own lightning was real.

 

I agree with that.
Changed my mind, guys. I agree that he needed Anakin's help to take out Mace.



Palpatine needs an apprentice
/LM

 

I'm sure this has been discussed on this thread already, but I was thinking about whether Palpatine had planned the disfiguring of his face or if he just went along with it once the lightnings started to hurt him.
What do you think?



Planning or adapting?
/LM

 

Adapting. Definitely he adapted and used the deformation a proof of a Jedi insurrection.

 

He makes himself out to be weak and as soon as Anakin has betrayed Mace, he practically jumps up and electrocutes Mace to death. He could've done that anytime, he was just waiting for the right moment.


I absolutely agree with that. Once Anakin took the final step across the threshhold of the Dark Side, Palp showed that at anytime he could have killed Mace.

 

I don't think so anymore, though. Mace was at the ready with his lightsaber and would've deflected any attack made by Palpatine. It was all up to Anakin. He could've ended everything right there.



Palpatine has ugly teeth
/LM

 

^^^ DVD commentary


It makes it seem IMO after seeing it that Mace could handle Sids. He needed Anakin cuz he was out of options. Basically, he got whooped in the fight. Mace could handle the lightning. But he used his smarts and got out of it. That's the way I took what Lucas said.

 

So his face was deformed because of the exertion? I don't see the connection. He uses Force lightning as usual and all of a sudden, his face starts to transform because he is strained?
Forgive me if I take that explanation, however official, with a grain of salt. I don't care that it comes from Lucas himself, because it doesn't seem to make sense.



Waiting for a reply that will make me look stupid
/LM

 

i agree,this is exactly my take on the matter.

 

So his face was deformed because of the exertion? I don't see the connection. He uses Force lightning as usual and all of a sudden, his face starts to transform because he is strained?
Forgive me if I take that explanation, however official, with a grain of salt. I don't care that it comes from Lucas himself, because it doesn't seem to make sense.



Let's say it's too vague an explanation to work.

I agree with what you say. And there's also the fact that the face stops changing at one point. Even when he struggles with Yoda (the energy ball contest), and what a struggle, Sidious' face stays the same.

So if it's the strain of the exertion that caused the change it can only be that it didn't allow Sidious to hide his true face anymore. Hence the mask he created through dark side unnatural powers (healing his decaying cells or whatever) just falls. He cannot hide his face anymore.

On the dvd commentary, they call the ugly make-up "full sidious make up". Sidious make up. Same for the different voices : Lucas points out that the Palpatine (politician) voice is different from that of the Emperor we know.

IMO : Ugly Sidious is almost a different character. Not the same character deformed.
Senator and Chancellor Palpatine are just Sidious acting, creating a character, giving himself a public face and voice.

 

I'm getting dizzy.... I guess my explanation will take shape over the years, as I continue watching the movie, because right now, I honestly can't say what I believe



Interesting....
/LM

 

In the end, I'm not sure I'll ever know what to believe except one thing:

This scene, from the folding chair posse going down in a few seconds to Anakin's "What have I done", was seriously botched. So much of what happens in this scene is confused and self-contradictory. I always voted for the mask theory becuase thought it made the most sense, both in light of the rest of the scene and other uses of force lightning. Now I'm starting to believe that nothing in this scene makes any sense, and that the leastsensical explanatin is the correct one, in GL's mind.

 

Hmm. I love this scene. IMO, it's one of the best in the saga. To each his own!



Scenes can be bad
/LM

 

agreed. this was supposed to be the most pivotal moment in the PT, but it turned into a total mess.

i believe that quote above by Knoll is totally *ucked up. it supports neither of the 2 major arguments, and seems to make no sense at all. the exertion?! WTF! he never shot lightning before? although, maybe he HAD to do it because he had lost his saber, and it was his only method of defense from mace (better to be scarred than dead). but then this blows away my theory that palpatine was faking defeat! godammit, will we ever have answers?

 

I cracked it! I have an explanation that to me is fully satisfactory. The great thing about it is that it fits the official explanation like a glove:

It's the combined effort of getting hit by lightning and generating it which causes Palpatine's body to deform.
Allow me to explain: The lightning hits him in the face and runs through his whole body. It weakens him by purging him of life energy, which makes the effort to continue to generate lightnings much greater. The weaker he gets, the more effort he must put into keeping at it. He looses more and more energy and his body withers under the tremendous strain.
So, he is truly exhausted when he stops and says that he's too weak to continue. While he rests, though, he regains enough energy to be able to kill Mace once Anakin has cut his arm off.

Now, the eyes. I believe that the yellow Sith eyes illustrate that the Sith have no souls. Yellow, as I understand it, is the color of death and the eyes are mirrors of the soul. Yellow eyes, then, must mean that the soul is dead.
In other words, the reason why Palpatine's eyes turn yellow is that he must conjure up all of his evil power in order to keep shooting lightnings. The evil within comes forth and shines through in the eyes. He's been hiding his evil all these years, pretending to be good. That's why his eyes weren't yellow until now.



Yellow is death
/LM

 

He could not have done it at any time while Mace was still armed with the point of his saber at Palpatine's throat. Mace had to be defenseless for the lightning to get to him.

Yet he does this exact thing to Yoda...Palpatine's lightning is too powerful to just block with a saber, especially at close range. Palpatine is faking it here.

 

Yoda was not at a ready stance to block the lightning.

Mace moved his head and quickly deflected the lightning aimed at his face. Lucas says Palpatine is trying to destroy Mace with his powers.

He's not faking until he pretends to lose his powers.

 

this is answered in issue 83 of the insider


im not gona type the whole thing cuz it would take me forever, but baiscally it says that "its the initensity of the reflecte lightning and the chanelling of such raw dark side power that are that are the catalysts for palpatines transformation"

 

I still hold that Palpatine lost on purpose because Anakin was coming in. They cut to anakin in the middle of the fight, then Palpatine moves to the window and the charade begins.

 

and why couldn't he have thrown things at Mace? Or ramp up the lightning? Incase you missed it he was talking to Anakin the whole time while he was shooting the lightning. Lucas said that it moved Anakin's decision down to this point. Thats the whole point.

 

... the point where he pretends to lose his powers, not before. Anakin is not choosing while the lightning is happening, so Palpatine stops and pretends he cannot continue with his powers. That is what forces Anakin to protect him.