ST Palpatine "Gran Palpa" Discussion Thread

Yeah, exactly. He's a Shakespearean actor and former director, anyway. I think back in a 2001 article he compared his performance of Palpatine to Iago from from Shakespeare's Othello. Good comparison.

 

I'd say that these two scenes are the best ones in the movie.



Love that Sidious was able to use his powers to impersonate both Snoke and Vader.



Also, Sidious throwing Kylo Ren down is one of my favorite things in the movie. Lol.

 

Would it have been better or worse if the explanation for Palpatine’s resurrection had been that it was a clone of his being controlled from a distance that had been killed in ROTJ rather than his original body?

That’s essentially what happens with Snoke in TLJ, though Snoke is not fully controlled by Palpatine. But it would’ve at least retconned Snoke’s death as another example of how he escaped his death in ROTJ. And it would avoid having to introduce the dicey concept of essence transfer from the EU.

That said, this explanation would’ve potentially retroactively hurt ROTJ by making it less meaningful if that was not the actual Emperor that Vader killed. Which calls the prophecy of the chosen one even more into question and doesn’t make Vader’s sacrifice look as good. Plus it’s possible that Palpatine’s plans in TROS needed essence transfer to be a thing to make sense. Though we know there were drafts where he was not intending to body hop, so maybe that wouldn’t have mattered as much.

Anyway, despite its problems, I’m kind of intrigued by how this would’ve played out. It would’ve meant that his original body was possibly in a worse state at the time of ROTJ than what we originally thought. Or that he had mutated into something even more different from what we expected. This would’ve also somewhat fit more closely with the older plans Lucas had for the sequels to the OT, where the Emperor wouldn’t be encountered until the final of six films.

 

I've thought about this too. He could have said, "Did Luke really think I was foolish enough to send my true body to the Death Star II?"

This also reminde me of Vitiate's "voices" in SWTOR.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Emperor's_Voice_(Sith_Empire)

 

Apart from the clone wars obviously, cloning was always a part of the star wars universe and the old EU. In fact thrawn had clones of himself or at least 1 clone to go in his hand of thrawn fortress type castle in visions of the future. We also had a clone emperor in Dark empire.
You could argue ad far back.as AOTC the emperor or supreme Chancellor palpatine could've been planning the possibility of cloning himself and being ready to go if needed? We know in the mandalorian that they were working on cloning which I think was setting up the creation of Snoke.

Did the emperor transfer his essence to a body after the events of rotj and cheated death which he learned from his master Darth Plageuis? Was the emperor in rotj a clone? I have doubts about that as I think he was confident enough to believe he would survive but still had a failsafe in place.

I think over time we will learn more about the emperor we see in TROS and how he and indeed snoke came to be. I still don't believe we have the complete story.

 

With the Rise of Skywalker comic adaptation finally coming out in a few months, we may be getting some more cool Palpatine/Exegol scenes. In fact, we already have some intriguing new stuff in the previews released yesterday.

It’s an old story, but the comic might have new scenes, so I’ll put those images and my discussion under spoiler tags:

Spoiler

That scene at the bottom of the second image is especially intriguing. It seems to show the moments right after Palpatine was reborn in his clone body.

It’s a minor point, but he has legs! And his hands look intact too. I have often wondered if his clone body was fairly healthy at first and only started degenerating over time. That seems to be the suggestion here, which I think is cool.

 

Isn’t that snoke? We see snoke in those tubes in the film. We didn’t see palpatine clones in any tubes.

They removed the dialogue from this panel but this could be around the time he says he is Snoke

 

Looks like Palpatine clone

 

Oh yes i thought you meant the body on the table

 

Well yeah the body could be Snoke too. Considering he doesn't look that different the things in the tubes.

Unless they are going to suggest that Snoke is infact a palpatine Clone not fully formed.

 

Only time will tell. But it looks like Palpatine to me. And I was wrong about a detail because his hands do look already degraded there. Plus the tubing and the mechanism he is on resemble his setup in Rise of Skywalker.

My guess is the comic will include the cut dialogue that McDiarmid described at a convention:

Kylo Ren: You’re a clone!

Palpatine: More than a clone. Less than a man.
​

Which would fit well with that panel.

 

I know I am in the minority of Star Wars fans...I loved Palpatine returning. I've loved the idea of clones/dark side magic/etc since Dark Empire. I just wish it had been woven more organically into the trilogy. That said, I wish Leia as the sister had been woven more organically into that trilogy so....

 

To me, TROS didn't make a whole lot of sense but I did enjoy watching it. It was nice to see Sidious again, still manipulative/scheming as ever, and see mysterious dark side stuff going on in Exegol. I view it as a fun fanfiction.

 

It's a cool concept and Ian was captivating as always. It is a retread, though. That's what it always comes back to for me. The whole trilogy, really. Which is especially disappointing considering that there was something in this story that could have been fleshed out and justified the premise. The idea that evil never dies, that we can't take peace, freedom, compassion or democracy for granted - what could be done with that? How could they have developed a trilogy around that theme in a way that made it truly meaningful to the Skywalker Saga? I'm sure it could have been done. They did touch upon it, but it never felt like that was the point of the trilogy because their focus was always on something else, on rephrasing things that had already been said.

The events in the story are canon and I definitely accept that, but yeah... It depends on your perspective of course, but as it stands, it feels like a sequel to the Saga, a separate entity, that was packaged and marketed as a part of it.
However, if they make episodes X-XII, XIII-XV and so on in the future and those trilogies also feel like they don't really try to be part of an overarching narrative, then this trilogy will seem more like a natural first step away from the original Lucas story. The Skywalker Saga will then metamorphose into more of an anthology of Skywalker myths and that'll be perfectly fine. Maybe even better.

 

I can appreciate the spooky cyborg vibe that Palpatine and Exegol brings, and McDiarmid's performance, but that's about the extent of my appreciation. Much like Dark Empire, the best thing about Palpatine returning was the aesthetic. The idea and execution are like something from a cheap and bizarre video game.

 

I get it. Yet, this isn't a big deal for me. Return of the Jedi had many retread elements...as did the PT. Different strokes for different folks....

 

Those are small retreads. Rhymes baked into a larger context, a double trilogy narrative arc where every episode and trilogy serves a distinct purpose.
If you're going to bring the tyrant back after his fall, within the same story, you'd better have a good reason. They didn't. This trilogy is just one big rematch with the same ending. That's why TROS is not what Lucasfilm claimed it was when they called it the final part of a generational saga. The finale of the story that begins in TPM is still ROTJ. TFA is the beginning of a new story. Which in itself is fine, but they should call it what it is.

 

I don't know, I feel like a 2nd death star, battle to destroy the death star as the climax, is a BIG re-hash of ANH. Jabba's palace (to a lesser extent) was specifically designed/imagiened as a redo of the cantina but "bigger, better, etc." I mean, they go back to Tatooine AND Dagobah. ROTJ is my favorite movie, but it is loaded with the "greatest hits" from the previous films.

Consider, the original Death Star is essentially the big, bad, dragon/labryrinth/monster of the first film. Say what you want, but ROTJ brings this back with little development and we just accept it. This doesn't cheapen what came before in A New Hope?

 

I feel like RotJ's repeats are mostly superficial and don't carry much meaning. But stuff like bringing back Palpatine? I don't put that on same level as building a second Death Star.

I'm not sure how. If anything it seemed to like letting its new characters take the older ones' place as the heroes who really defeat the Empire / Sith. Unless you're talking of more general stuff like Rebels vs. Empire and darkside vs. lightside.

 

Both the Death Star II and Palpatine's return show Star Wars recycling its hits, but there are some key differences in execution. The Death Star II feels particularly lazy - it's literally just dropped into the opening crawl with no setup or explanation. "Oh by the way, they built another one!" It's the same basic concept, same weakness, same type of finale, just bigger.

At least Palpatine's return tries to build on established elements of Star Wars lore. It draws from ideas seeded in the prequels about Sith powers and clone technology, and takes inspiration from how the EU handled his return in the Dark Empire comics. While it might not be the most creative choice, there's at least an attempt to weave it into the larger mythology and explain how/why it happened.

And in some ways, that makes the Death Star II more egregious. While Palpatine's return might seem to undermine Vader's sacrifice, it's worth remembering that in ROTJ, that moment was primarily about a father choosing to save his son - the whole "bringing balance to the Force" angle wasn't added until the prequels came along. But even with that aside, the Death Star II shows a kind of creative bankruptcy that's almost more insulting in its casualness. It's like they didn't even try to hide or justify the recycling. At least TROS attempted to make its rehash feel significant and built into the larger story. ROTJ just goes "yeah it's another one, deal with it" for its main threat.

Neither are great examples of pushing the saga forward, but the Death Star II feels more like pure copy-paste. It's just "remember that cool space battle? Let's do it again but BIGGER!" without any real thought given to justifying its existence in the story. They're both playing it safe by remixing old ideas, but one at least tries to provide some narrative foundation for its rehash.

Again, don't get me wrong. ROTJ is my favorite film. TROS is...not. However, I am not going to pretend that ROTJ isn't full of casual rtreads, retcons, and could be accused of a "too convenient" rushed finale.

 

Of course! What else?

@jaimestarr: Like @Saga_Symphony says, that's all superficial stuff. The costume, if you will. The story in ROTJ, what it's actually about, is the natural continuation and conclusion of all the preceding episodes.
The story in VII-IX, on the other hand, is a reiteration of the story in IV-VI. Narratively, they didn't continue forwards, beyond the fall of the tyrant. Instead, they moved the goal posts so that the same fight with the same outcome could be fought again.
We've seen the fall of democracy and the rise of tyranny. We've seen the fight for freedom and the fall of tyranny. If what follows is the same fight for freedom in a new costume, topped by the fall of the same tyrant, with one surviving Jedi and a victorious resistance movement that will now have to rebuild the Republic - again - then what we have is not a continuation of the original narrative. It's just a retread.

Now, again, the return of Palpatine could have been used differently. I'm sure they could have made that work as a next step for the original narrative somehow. They just didn't. And again, that's fine

 

I didn't feel that that was the climax though. The stuff inside the room with Sidious, Luke and Vader seemed like the focus to me while the stuff outside just sorta happened in the background. I agree it's a rehash of ANH, but I can be more accepting of it when it has downgraded in importance. The side characters can take care of that while the main character has moved on to the heart of the matter.

 

Maybe it’s because I saw ROTJ first as a kid, but it never bothered me that they built a new Death Star. It was less impactful to me than finally meeting the Emperor in all his evil glory. The Death Star is just a machine, a tool, and ultimately replaceable. Even Vader, we learned, could be replaced by Luke. So the only way to stop the Empire turned out to be to destroy its black heart, the Emperor himself.

Sure, they could’ve given him a new weapon. But that might actually not mean much. Starkiller in TFA certainly didn’t really give off a more threatening aura than the Death Star. So just bringing back the same machine is in a way more honest and direct. And it emphasized what the real threat of the movie, and of the two prior movies, actually was all along: the Emperor.

The sequels tried doing some of this, but I don’t think they succeeded. They wanted Snoke to be a darker and scarier version of the Emperor, but he was barely in TFA, and then Johnson went in a totally different direction with him in TLJ (and I don’t just mean by killing him off). So they brought back the actual Emperor for TROS, and that was better, more of what we got glimpses of with TFA’s Snoke. But the movie was so rushed and barely explored the significance of the Emperor’s return. Which had the accidental effect of making the Emperor himself seem replaceable, another dark leader, rather than seeming even more threatening, which is what they were trying to do. The idea isn’t necessarily bad, but the execution was not great, and that ultimately resulted in a very different impression than ROTJ’s decisions.

 

I was talking more about what the repeats mean, for the characters, for the saga. Both Palpatine's return and the Death Star II are uncreative, whether they're sudden or whether they try to tie into any narrative, but Palpatine's defeat, especially at Anakin's hands, meant something. Another DS is just another obstacle for the Rebels to blow up.