Palpatine: Reverts to true form OR damaged because of Mace

Nevermind, I figured it out
It's your explanation and mine at the same time! Because Palpatine is hit and weakened by the lightning attack, he must, as I said before, conjure up all of his dark side power in order to continue his attack and that extreme use of the dark side changes his body.
There! Mystery solved!



Aah, that feels good!
/LM

 

but guys, this has all been confirmed, he was deformed because the lightingng was shot back at him and it was such raw evil that it pulled his evil out

 

Well, it hasn't been explained very thoroughly, which is why it feels so good to have figured it out.



AOUÃ…
EIYÄÖ
/LM

 

it is explained very throughly in insider 83

 

I don't read the Insider, so I have to use my brain. Much more satisfying!

Would you like to quote the Insider for us?



Magazines - they are readable
/LM

 

im not gonna quote the whole article because its several paragraphs long, but ill post a sentance that pretty much explain it for us


" As described in the novle and in the screenplay, its the intensity of reflected lightning and the channeling of such raw dark side power that are the catalysts for palpatines transformation. Perpahps the face that boilds up to the surface is shapped by his dark side corruption, but the lightning definatly is the cause"

 

Thanks!
I'd say that fits my explanation. The lightning is the cause, because it forces his dark side corruption to surface as he struggles to keep the attack going.



The dark side corrupts your body
/LM

 

I'm under the impression (given my observations, the insider, and databank entries) that the fact that Sidious transformed while all the others hit by lightning did not, is because it was a circuit. As can be seen, when everybody is hit by lightning is that when the Sith stops generating lightning, there still are electrical currents that spread through the attacked individual for about a second or two until they finally fade. Palpatine was channeling dark side force powers and then released it as lightning. But then this darkside energy hits him, travels through him and is recycled to make more lightning in addition to the darkside power he is still channeling. Such that when a bolt strikes him the first time, the darkside energy involved is channeled through him so that more darkside energy is released in the next bolt that strikes him. And then the energy of this bolt is recycled again and again. Such that each time he is struck it is stronger than the last. The only issue with this though is why do Mace, Anakin, and Luke scream and convulse when shot with normal lightning while Palpatine is calm while he's getting hit with lightning 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x... stronger. The only real assumption I can make to this is that since the darkside energies that he used to make the lightning were generated by himself, it didn't cause him any sort of pain when it hit him.

The increased intensity of the circuit would explain the deformation of the face, while the constantly increasing amount of darkside power could explain why the changes to voice and eyes were permanent in Sidious while only temporary to Palpatine and Anakin respectively.

Then again, my interest into all things related to Palpatine seem to be read into probably more than they should.

 

I was thinking more of a short circuit. Just an attempt to make sense of a scene that doesn't really make sense, unfortunately.

If the prune face look was really the result of damage from having his own lightning shot back at him, why would Sidious need to "fake" when begs Anakin for help? Again, I just think this whole sequence, beginning with Mace's folding-chair posse going down in the blink of an eye, straight through to "What have I done", was biúngled really badly by Lucas. Which is pathetic, really, because it's the pivotal scene in the PT, really the whole saga.

 

7 days to go before we get an answer. well, hopefully.

 

Don't hold your breath.

 

Well, as has been suggested, I really believe that the dark side corrupts his body because he needs to conjure up all of his power to be able to keep generate lightnings while being weakened by the lightnings that hit him.
The prune face is an effect of extreme dark side practice(letting go of all restraints), not actual damage from being hit by lightning. He isn't any weaker in that moment than Luke was after the lightning attack in ROTJ. Except for being exhausted from the extreme effort.
Exhaustion wears off pretty quick, though.



Palpatine should really brush his teeth
/LM

 

Hey I've been gone for a while.....

and as you all know I was one of the most faithful 'no' voters around...

so how about it mods .....just so I can catch up, is it OK if I add a couple of 'flames' in with my bragging and maybe do a little bit of 'baiting' in my 'I told you so' speeches??





just kidding



But seriously though....can somebody tell me what all I've missed?

 

"George once said a really useful thing when I began playing Palpatine (in The Phantom Menace), and I don't know if he remembers this. He said, 'In a sense, your eyes are contact lenses.' In other words, the Palpatine character was the most artificial - it was as if they grafted his face and put in (his) eyes. Because the real Palpatine is the one who bursts forth at a calculated moment in Episode III just after persuading Anakin to kill Mace Windu. That is when the true person comes out, letting the evil fully manifest itself. The Emperor that you see in the last film looks like he does because he's very old and very evil- it is what he always looked like. He just had this carapace of looking like a fairly ordinary guy, a politician that smiled a bit, and so on. I don't think George had made up his mind when we started shooting whether to continually show Lord Sidious as he really is after his initial transformation or if Sidious would go back and forth with his appearance...the nice guy that you saw was revealed later in the monstrous mask as the self, the Sith self." Later he says that, "in Episode 3, it's more like Hyde in the guise of Jekyll".

--Ian McDiarmid, Star Wars Insider #82.

"Palp's crinklebutt look is the true face of Sidious, but he needs a bit of lightning for it to come out of him."

--Rick McCallum: Hyperspace chat.

 

How about quoting Pablo from Insider #83, Sinister? You know, the one where he says it was damage from the Force Lightning and don't take Ian so literally?

 

Never mind, found it myself:

"As described in the novel and the screenplay, it's the intensity of reflected lightning and the channeling of such Dark Side power that are the catalysts for Palpatine's transformation....

"Now, it should be noted that George Lucas and Ian McDiarmid, and other crewmembers decribed the makeup...as Palpatine's "true face" and the Chancellor's features as the mask. I'd caution against taking that too literally. I can probably point to interviews in the same vein with Christain Bale describing Bruce Wayne as the mask and Batman as the true face, but no one would take that literally"--

Pablo Hidalgo, Star Wars Insider #83.

From the databank of the Official Site

With Anakin Skywalker's help, Sidious was able to defeat Mace, though he was severely scarred by the reflected power of his dark side lightning. To conceal his disfigured visage, Sidious returned to his simple Sith robes.

Skywalker witnessed a stunning sight: the Chancellor, cornered, with Windu looming over him with his lightsaber blade extended. Palpatine unleashed a torrent of Sith lightning at the Jedi Master, but Windu was able to deflect it back at the Chancellor. The evil energies twisted Palpatine's face as they flowed through him, scarring and disfiguring his once handsome features. His eyes burned yellow, his voice grew ragged and deep, and he became a well of dark side energies.

 

Peeler! Where have you been man?

 

In the political forums at Op som and Phatooine mostly.

I love Star Wars but topics like this one remind me that I'm really not all that intertested in the silly theories of my fellow fans. Never was, never will be.

I don't need a theory to tell me why somethig happened when I can watch the movie and see it for myself.

 

Of course, we have this as well now...

"...These close up shots where Palpatine is getting the Force lightning reflected back, and he's getting zapped, and the strain of all of this exertion is what's transforming him into the Emperor that we see later in Return of the Jedi, is a computer generated shot..." - John Knoll, ROTS Audio Commentary

 

Some of these quotes contradict eachother, but most of them confirm my view. The prune face is the true face of Sidious, but not because he always looked like that(because he didn't). Rather, it's his use of the dark side which twists his face and reveals that he is a Sith Lord. He could have looked like that before, but he used the Force to block the physical effects of the dark side. In that sense, the face of Palpatine is a mask, even though it's the face he was born with(he wasn't born gray-haired, but you get my point).



Palpatine was a toddler once
/LM

 

If that's true than at last the nightmare of his face "melting" due to the lightning is over.

 

Some of these quotes contradict eachother, but most of them confirm my view. The prune face is the true face of Sidious, but not because he always looked like that(because he didn't). Rather, it's his use of the dark side which twists his face and reveals that he is a Sith Lord. He could have looked like that before, but he used the Force to block the physical effects of the dark side. In that sense, the face of Palpatine is a mask, even though it's the face he was born with(he wasn't born gray-haired, but you get my point).


I agree 100 %. I've been a supporter of the mask theory since the beginning.

In the "mask theory", it is quite clear that the politician face is the face Sidious/Palpatine was born with. I never thought that the Politician face was an invention, something created from scratch by ugly sidious.

And it is quite clear as well that Sidious' ugly face is the result of heavy dark side use. Maybe he looked deformed with yellow eyes before, probably at the end of his apprenticeship, but he managed to hide it, or revert to his undamaged look thanks to his powers. MAybe he learned it from Plagueis.

That said, Palpatine must have spent quite some time in political circles since his youth. He cannot just come out of nowhere and be elected governor, senator, chancellor. He probably always had a double life, hence a normal face. I don't see him switching easily from one "mask" to the other.

Unless we admit that he is much, much older than we think he is, and at some point he started a new life with his younger normal face. But that would be quite complicated and convoluted if you think about it.


If Palpatine is not older than he looks ( as a politiican), I think he always looked the same (normal) until his struggle with Mace. All sources seem to confirm that except one. If he is the old near-immortal Sith Lord we sometimes think he could be, then he has already spent a few decades looking ugly in earlier lives (only Ian Mc Diarmid confirms that possibility) ...

 

I still stick to the "Dorian Gray" interpretation. And the commentary by Knoll doesn't contradict it in the least.

 

"I cant hold it any longer"

Why would you even want to, if it's deforming your face?

 

i'll say it as simply as i can. it was a bit of both.