PT Palpatine's "Scars"

Can force lightning really cause facial scars, or was it the revelation of Darth Sidious's true appearance?

First, here is the list of people who have been attacked by Sidious's force lightning:
--Sidious himself
--Mace Windu
--Yoda
--Luke


Now, Sidious's force lightning only caused scars in 3/4 of the times mentioned. (Vader does not count because his face was under a mask.)

Second, Luke and Yoda both incurred a serious volley of force lightning, especially Luke, yet neither developed scars like Sidious.

Mace is a tricky case, because it is possible he may have developed scars we did not see due to his being thrown out of a window. Nevertheless, while he was still on-screen, I did not see any facial distortion.

Third, some may argue that nothing suggests this in the films. I counter with the following quote: "The dark side is a pathway to many abilities some consider unnatural." Because Sidious was one of the most powerful Sith lords of all time, he had used the dark side extremely frequently. In contrast to Dooku, he was a Sith for a great deal of time before TPM (anyone know how long?), and he was considerably more evil in that: he loved hatred & revenge, and he gleefully goaded people into executing people he had considered friends (Anakin and to an extent Dooku) In fact, Dooku seemed shocked that Sidious/Palptine just casually ordered Anakin to kill.

Therefore, I suggest Sidious's "scars" are actually the revealed consequence of meddling with the unnatural powers of the dark side. They are the revelation of the previously hidden phantom menace.

 

we've discussed this many times. there are threads floating around. my conclusion is palps lightning looped back on him and melted his face. no one else is scarred because no one else is having the lightning they generate coming back into them. he is in essence cooking himself. his nails and teeth are burnt black as well.

i also pointed out that palps didn't need to mask his face all the time. when he was in private with maul or dooku his face could have looked that way but it doesn't. the only time he looks that way is during and after the mace fight. plus you don't see his face fade away ala theoden in lotr, you see it melting.

 

One of the biggest issues with the Prequels is that there is way too much ambiguity. Palpatine's disfigured face being one of them.

 

So you are arguing that Sidious's lighting was more severe because it was re-directed? I don't know about that. Force lightning seemed just as or more severe when it was used to throw Yoda across a room, and nearly kill Luke.

 

ambiguity isn't a problem. it's a part of art.

it was coming out of palps and being reflected back into him, then coming out again. it was essentially completing an electrical circuit. since it wasn't hitting mace it was coming back through palps again and again. looping.

this is of course my theory but i think all the other facts point to it. there's nothing to prove it was "a dark side" mask.

 

Yeah, but sometimes art can look like ****.

 

yes because it's subjective.

 

Right. But that's the problem a lot of people have with the Prequels — it's too subjective.

 

I think both of our theories are plausible. To each his own.

 

well when is a myth not a myth? when it's fact. star wars isn't a factual account of history. it's a myth cycle.

 

I assume the force lightning disfigured Palpatine because it was amplified by Mace's Lightsaber.

 

Ah, this debate again. I've always just believed getting hit by the lightning at such close range caused the disfigurement, and I'd agree with the earlier "it looped back on him" theory mentioned here.

 

the only way this question could be answered is if in ROTJ Palps turned to Luke, Joker style and said

"do you want to know how I got these scars? well a Jedi master named Mace Windu.......<finish sentence>"

even then though it would be ambiguous on whether he was telling the truth

 

As previously stated, this has been discussed several times. I came to the conclusion many years ago that Sidious Palpatine had was already pale and yellow-eyed due to dark side degradation years before the lightning incident. It is weird, however, to see that Palpatine looks older and more worn in AOTC than he does in ROTC prior to the lightning incident. http://www.rossiters.com/swo/images/aotc-006-13_640.jpg It's like Lucas was implying that he would slowly deform into the monstrous figure we saw in ROTJ, but then out of the blue, he changed his mind and decided that Palpatine would become scarred and deformed in the final prequel. To reconcile all this, I think Sidious was using Sith alchemy to make himself look better, since he was chancellor. He wanted to appear a bit younger and more handsome in order to keep up this appealing image...before he didn't need it anymore. I do think it's telling that Sidious is animated with unhealthy pale skin and yellow eyes in TCW when he is in his Sith robes and not in his chancellor get-up.

As you can see from this video, Sidious looks more demonic and creepy when he is pre-ROTS Darth Sidious than when he's in his disguise as Chancellor Palpatine. I don't know what was going through Lucas's head, but I imagine some people had Lucasfilm must have thought about this, as well. Unless we're talking about comic books, it's not really the responsibility of EU authors to describe pre-ROTS Sidious visually due to the fact that Lucas issued absurd mandate to keep the fact that he is Palpatine secret. Anyway, if you pause the video toward the end, when he throws Maul and Savage against wall telekinetically, you can see his sickly yellow eyes. I agree with the criticism that the prequels should have have unambiguously presented Sidious and Palpatine as the same person from the get-go. The films have this sense of hope, which makes no sense, for we know what will happen in the Classic Trilogy. They should have been written with a sense of foreboding, since Sidious would inevitably win and Anakin would become Vader. Part of that would have involved us seeing Sidious's face before ROTS. They could have kept it mysterious for a while in TPM, for the kids, but eventually they could have shown us that it was him. It undermined that movie and the other two not to do so. I recall reading about how they had originally wanted to show Darth Sidious Force-choking Nute Gunray in TPM with him light-years away in order to illustrate exactly why the Trade Federation is afraid of him and taking his orders. He's that powerful and lethal. They apparently revisited the idea by showing him Force-choking Dooku in TCW, but I think something like that should have been in the prequel trilogy itself. Anyway, that's my rant on the deformity and other issues.

 

I think he used the force to hide his real transfigured face

 

In the CW series, Sidious had horrible teeth, but Palpatine's looked perfectly normal.

 

I guess deflecting the lightning into your face with the lightsaber is kind of different than hitting you with the regular lightning itself. One makes you paralyzed while other just gives you scars, while Mace deflecting it, Sidious wasn't seemed like taking a force lightning on himself, he just get fried.

 

i think it was also the length and power at which he used it.

 

Palpatine was scarred because the Lightning was all being redirected into his face, hands, and arms. It was focused into those areas and he was putting a lot of power behind it. The energy was all focused in one area.

All other times we've seen it used are in short bursts or are spread across the body.

 

In the CW series, Sidious had horrible teeth, but Palpatine's looked perfectly normal.
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as has been said in the CT and Saga forums by Anakinfan: "sometimes I think CW exists just to troll the movies"

seriously if Lucas wanted to show Sidious having horrible teeth, he would have shown the audience that.

 

I figured that "Palpatine's face is a disguise" was the approach they took.

 

heh, must have done

don't like that theory much though. If Palps was masking his face then he was doing it with the Jedi directly looking at him (see AOTC for example in his office)....and they sensed nothing at all? don't really buy that. I go by the fanon theory (of my own) that the fact Jedi don't sense any force activity in Sidious is simply because he doesn't use the force around them...he doesn't have to.

Still, you're then to question why does lightning damage make you have longer, sharper fingernails, and gnarly teeth...but eh I'm more open to theories on that than "the Jedi were just dumb" or "Palpatine is like a god...he could use the force undetected in front of a dozen top Jedi and get away with it without suspicion"

 

no it's because the dark side clouds their perception. he's hiding his evil with the dark side. i mean his overall evil not his face. in tcw, palps doesn't look like he does after the mace duel. he actually doesn't look bad at all. watch again. when he's "evil sidious" his eyes may turn yellow but his face doesn't change at all.

lightning is also used on people like maul and savage oppress with nothing happening. i think the biggest proof is count dooku. dooku is a sith lord. he is evil. he is powerful. yet he looks as normal as palps. even though he's powerful enough to use lightning he never looks like an evil monster.

 

It was due to that Damn purple lightsaber. Mace and that funky crystal he used in its creation......

 

I have no idea what the right answer is, but I prefer the "hiding his true identity" explanation, partly because it makes the character seem more sinister/mysterious, and also because I don't know how else to explain that otherworldly voice that he has after he morphs, or the fact that his "disfigurement" is so perfectly symmetrical and looks nothing even remotely like lightening burns.
Besides that, I just think it the "true identity" explanation fits better with the mythological trope of the devil revealing his true face at an opportune moment.