The Definitive Answer to Palpatine's Face in ROTS

YEAH
There was no Bloody Mask!

 

Works for me!

 

Hey, isn't that pretty much what I have been saying?

 

Seems so.

 

>>>and Rouge your wrong palpatine never changed his face in any of the prequels until after the lightning thing because hes not using a mask! <<<

Except that Sidious always looks different from Palpatine in the comics, the cartoon (by the Force, look at those teeth! ), and in the films themselves. The face we see for Sidious, cloaked as it is, is always more decayed than that of Palpatine. IIRC, Ian put on more makup for Sidious (in TPM and AotC) than he did for Palpatine, indicating that there was not just a subtle change. I believe that this is the reason that WotC put up the Alchemy Mask ability: to explain why Sidious looks unlike Palpatine in the other films, not to explain the change that happened in RotS.

Yeah, what dp4m said.

 

Sorry about that.

Peace?

 

This may be slightly off, but did Palps have any time as Supreme Chancelor to practice DS arts? If he did then he would have needed the above mask. If he didn't he could have been a sprightly 14 year old as well at the start of TPM. I mean Padme looked old for a 14 y.o. Maybe she had been using the dark arts?

 

I'm just wondering what the likeliness of a face melting symmetrically is.

 

About the same likeliness of the Supreme Chancellor actually turning out to be a Dark Lord of the Sith, I think. I think it was rapid aging from all his own dark-side energy being turned back on him as he was sending it out himself.

 

Sorry about that.

Peace?

No problem

It's nice to see there's plenty of reasonable people here willing to compromise.

 

Why did the lightning have that effect on Palpatine and not Luke, Yoda, Anakin or Mace? I tend to think he pretty much looked that way before the lightning.

 

Please refer to Sauron_18's theories on the previos page Darth_Guy.

 

The other were not generating lightning, if that is important.

 

1) There's no evidence to indicate that Force lightning could somehow absorb and carry more energy than the user intially produced.

2) If he had not used lightning in a long time, shouldn't it have been weaker than normal? It's not like there was a well of energy building up in him and waiting to be released as lightning.

3) Again, shouldn't that make the lightning much weaker? If the energy is more spread out, there should be less damage.

4) Since when does lightning always hurt the user? It usually doesn't even touch the user. Dooku had no apparent signs of accelerated aging.

 

1.) Theories don't required evidence. They're just possible explanations. Like why Panda Boba was the only one to bleed from a lightsaber wound. People have a theory that it had something to do with his race's blood.

4.) I think Sauron was basically saying that ALL Dark Side techniques hurt the user gradually.

I thought Sisyphusrocks' idea that the lightning deformed Palps because he was also producing lightning was a good one. Notice that ALL the dark-siders who exploded upon death were in the middle of using Force Lightning.

Palpatine, Dothamir Witch, and Jurrus C'boath

 

That was my idea

 

Sorry. I don't mean to give credit to the wrong person.

 

"And so the mask becomes the man" - Chancellor Palpatine, Revenge of the Sith novellization. The "Sidious" face was a mask - perhaps even in the sense that WotC imply here; a rather more appropriate appearance for a Sith Master than that of the well-groomed and generally mild-mannered politician who was the real Sith Lord...

I'm also going to suggest that things are more complicated than they seem from WotC's paradigmization. We wouldn't call Jacen's transformation at the end of TUF a mask, or Mara's recovery of health after childbirth, or [Joiner King spoilers!!] Luke's rejuvenation after his major power-expenditure in cloaking the Jade Shadow - similarly, Palpatine may use Force techniques to maintain his "normal" appearance, but I doubt he regards it as a masking of his true appearance...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Prior to his little face-melt in Sith, cloaked Sidious always looked the same as Senator Palpatine to me. In the Clone Wars cartoon, though...now that was weird!

 

Palpatine is not going to all to all of a sudden change his appearence just to be Darth Sidious,that is a waste of time and energy,thats also why he wore the cloak...he did however speak with his deformed sister voice,whichs says alot.

 

Got my Star Wars Insider yesterday. Pablo Hidalgo confirms there was NO mask. It was damage from the lightning and I guess the yellow eyes were from anger and hatred, and according to the Visual Dictionary so was his pale skin.

I even believed that it was at least partially a mask.

Oh well. So be it!

 

Here's my take on it:

I believe that the Dark Side had aged and possibly even deformed Sidious repeatedly through the years, and each time he had managed to fight it back with his Dark Side skills, reclaiming the face of Palpatine. This explains why he looks older in AotC then he does in RotS. In AotC "the shroud of the Dark Side has fallen" but the cost can be seen on the Chancellor?s liver spotted and sickly looking visage.

Sometime after AotC but before RotS, when deaths from the Clone Wars and defections from the Jedi order have strengthened the Dark Side, Sidious is again able to fight back these effects, once again reclaiming the features of his chronological age.

When Mace reflects all of that Dark Side energy back at Palpatine in RotS, the sheer force of it not only instantly ages and deforms him, but also permanently scars him to the extent that he will never again be able to use Dark Side magicks to reclaim his features.

 

I thought your RPG obsession was in remission until I saw the opening post's stats, dp4m. But after two KOTORs for once I actually understood them.

 

Yes, that's my favorite theory too, just because it actually jives with all of the pre-ROTS continuity. I really don't know why they had to invent that convulated "mask" explanation in the first place, especially as Palpatine was aging naturally from TPM to AOTC.