ST Who's The Baddie?

Well put Dra

 

Palpatine's not cliche at all. Where else does anyone have one group attack so that another will give them more power?

 

If Plagueis appears in the ST, many non-fans will say, "The Sith had a master?". Many non-fans think that "Sith" is Palpatine's race and that the phrase "The Sith" refers exclusively to Palpatine.

 

I think that Palpatine/Sidious's declaration that Anakin will become more powerful than both he and Yoda is simpler and more straight forward than you would have it. In light of Sidious and Yoda both being the masters of all masters when it comes to the Force, the dark lord is pointing out the irony in trying control Anakin at all, an irony that also suggests Plapatine/Sidious believes that he's one step ahead of Yoda for even knowing this about Anakin. Palp/Sidious is a really clever guy--ultimately too clever for his own good, no doubt, but I think that Palps believes he can control Anakin indefinitely, no matter how powerful the young lad promises to become. I don't see the Emperor-to-be looking forward to a time when he will peacefully transfer power to his beloved, dark apprentice.

As to your (strangely erotic) line of reasoning about Palpatine taking pleasure in Anakin's pain... Are you or were you at some point a fellow English major? Ha. Persuasive use of the material, but I think you're wrong. Sidious is content to see Anakin in pain because it's through suffering that the Sith Lord will be able to keep controlling Vader with the Dark Side of the Force. Or, as Yoda says it, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." Next step--the Dark Side. My take.

 

As a writer, I don't think you can worry about non-fans. The phrase confuses me anyway. Should we care about a non-fan? Or do we just mean average movie goer that will see Star Wars but not have a deep knowledge of it. If so, who cares which Sith we pick. The non-fan probably just wants to see a lightsaber fight.

Edit: Why would a non-fan/casual fan think that Palpatine is a Sith when Maul, Vader, and Dooku are also Sith?

 

I see Palpatine/Sidious trying to unify the galaxy and all that but I don't think he's doing it in some morally complex or ambiguous way. I might have missed some EU stuff or a PT commentary track on a Blueray or something, but I feel that for Palps "bringing order and a new philosophical doctrine" to the Republic, to quote your phrase, is just a means to an end--power. Unnnnliiiiiiiiiiimited POWER. =P Sorry, but our favorite Emperor just doesn't have the kind of depth as do the villains on that impressive you provide. Those characters might have embodied evil for evil's sake, but their actions made you even more curious about where they were coming from, not less. In Palpatine's case, I kind of knew exactly where he's coming from--the guy is Satan. I just wished, hoped ,really, that there had been more there as far as his being a Sith Lord, rather than just a ruthless and cunning dictator. Not really the same things. Then again... I dunno, I just feel that his character is a bit discordant in the scheme of SW, of all places, in that Lucas doesn't seem to have much to add to the discussion through the character/force of nature.

 

I agree. In fact, I wasn't trying to make an argument for or against Plagueis. I was just sharing some trivia.

As for Maul, Dooku, and Vader, non-fans don't remember that they're Sith in my observation.

 

Well said! =) And I totally agree. SW is sorta good like that.

 

When it comes to the movies, Sith is just another name for force-using/lightsaber-wielding baddies for casual viewers... the same as Jedi are the good ones. They all have masters and apprentices.

That's all it takes to explain it to anybody that couldn't gather that from casual viewing/conversation.

 

Thanks for sharing, I'm definitely going to look up this book. But my problem with your statement, namely that the "mysterious hatred [that] says a lot more about the human condition than does some psychological realist motivation like "his mom was mean to him"" in regards to Palps, is that the hatred isn't really mysterious at all. In fact, it's pretty superficial. Unlike, say P.T.A. in something like "The Master" or Scorsese in something like "Raging Bull", where you get Shakespearean-caliber melodramas about characters who don't change or change very little all, I doubt that Lucas was looking to make the same profound kind of statement about Palps (quite the contrary, I believe). I just kind wished there had been more to the point where I was maybe grasping at straws, admittedly.

 

I'm at work, so I can't get too into this now. But more on this later... =)

 

Palpatine is a Saturday afternoon matinee. That's exactly his character. That's not to say that I wouldn't be interested in seeing a Coppola or Scorcese treatment in SW, but that kind of realism is somewhat impossible in the fantasy/sci-fi/space opera and swashbucklers genre IMO. It's all about escapism and fun for two hours.

 

I wouldn't necessarily want to see a Coppola or Scorsese SW either (at least not within the numbered saga), but I hear what you're saying. SW is a guilty pleasure for me as well. But with the potential to be a little bit more... /=)

 

The devil?

 

It's not the complexity or simplicity of a character that makes it work or not work dramatically. It's how few attributes the author can refrain from giving him/her. The less attributes a character or situation is given, the more we subconsciously project our own attributes and complexity onto them and this allows us to be engaged in the journey in a personal way. We might appreciate the complexities of a character with attributes different from us, but we have to do so with a certain distance, because of that difference. What make a character work dramatically, whether simple or complex, is how much we are allowed to recognize them.

 

The devil may be a cliche, but he's one of the greatest characters of all time. If the devil or some other evil entity came up to you, would you ask them why they were going to kill you, or would you just try to stop from screaming?

Nenim Chela: Evil doesn't have to be some surface feature; in fact, evil as Baxter envisions it is an absolute, and because of that fullness and never-ending depth, incredibly powerful and interesting. Palpatine may be one dimensional, but that one dimension is so full and absolute that it's mysterious in the sense that it can't be penetrated by reason. It just exists. Like the hurricane that kills innocent children, or the sociopath who naturally enjoys the pain of others, their existence is beyond human understanding because they suggest an amoral or even evil universe, one that's hostile to innocents. Palpatine at his most exaggerated perfectly portrays the texture of this essence in our world. Evil like this can't be understood; it can only be felt or experienced.

Look at the painting The Scream. We have no reason given for the figure's scream; instead, we are supposed to experience the texture of a scream itself. To me this gets at an emotional level of reality that language or realism can't convey. Palpatine is similar.

 

Just as a side note, every time the title of this thread comes up, I keep thinking it says "Who's Your Daddy?" Ok, carry on.

 

Speaking of which, should there be a "Who's The Goodie?" thread?

 

If I do say so myself, I agree with this nicely articulated and erudite argument, over all. I get it. I'm just not sure if it applies to Palpatine/Sidious in the PT. Also, I just don't see the kind of "boundless depth" of evil in Palps to which you refer. Palp/Sid has two faces and one level. He's power hungry. He actually is motivated by something and I feel I deserve to know more about it. Unlike say, good 'ole Iago. We never really know why Iago does what he does. We can't conclude that he schemes to achieve power or because he hates Othello. Iago schemes and plots and fills Othello's mind with garbage out of some perverse pleasure that we can't ultimately understand. It might just be in his nature.

Either way, I'd argue that even Iago seems human at first. This is my real issue, again, with Lucas's execution of Palpatine/Sidious in the PT--it's not dramatic enough, even for SW: Palp is a symbol of evil right from the start, so we never get to see a "hurricane" of evil unfold.

You mention "the sociopath who naturally enjoys the pain of others," someone like, say Ledger's Joker in "The Dark Knight"? This Joker starts off seeming to be human, then gradually peels those layers away. That's why he's so scary and ultimately do effective as an agent of chaos (not because he, uh, actually tells us that he is =P). I mean, the first time he explains the scars on his face (up there with the most frightening Daddy Made Me This Way-stories to date) I was like, 'Dang. Yeah, no wonder this dude turned out to be a homicidal clown. Whoa!' The second time he explains how he got his scars--using a different story, however, I was like, 'Wait...' By the third iteration of this story I knew that this cat was out of his mind and that I would probably never understand what truly makes him tick. Point being that even Ledger's Joker seemed human at first, which is what makes the gradual realization that he's a force of nature that much scarier and more effective in dramatic terms. So it's not so much that Palps is evil incarnate that bothers me, but that I kinda knew it the whole time. He was essentially Malebolgia from "Spawn" but with way too much screen time. Yikes!

Even other essence characters like Iago, Lecter, or Anton Chigurh from "No Country For Old Men" have moments that humanize even them. In Chigurh's case, the guy genuinely doesn't seem to know just how crazy he is. He then literally gets bulldozed by an even greater force of evil* towards the end of the movie. Lecter really, really, REALLY dislikes rude people. We never get anything even this subtle in Palps.

In turn, when the audience realizes that the Senator from Naboo is in truth Darth Sidious, aka, the Devil, this reversal has very little emotional and psychological impact on the audience (the characters themselves on the other hand...). And not because we've already deduced it (Lucas treats us all like five year-olds here), but because he never seems human at any point in the PT. The Devil is scary because he can seduce us in various ways and in various forms, i.e., as a serpent, as a human (usually a woman), etc.. Until ROTS, Palpatinr never actually reveals a truly human side, so there's no real seduction of the audience by the character. I wanted to be seduced by the character and by the PT in general but I never was. Maybe because I wasn't the target audience, i.e., the Playschool crowd.

Forget The Jedi Forums, man, let's start applying for some MFA grants here!

*Maybe not even more evil, but simply a more destructive force.

 

You'd be surprised how easily people can be seduced by politicians.