Is Emperor Palpatine the greatest vilain of cinema?

I think this belongs in this forum, but mods move it if you have to. Is Emperor Palpatine the greatest villain of cinema? To me the answer is unquestionably yes. He is superbly written and wonderfully acted by Ian McDiarmid. But is role in the story of Star Wars makes him easy to supplant a Hannibal Lecter, or a Frankenstein or a Shark. He didn't even get mentioned on the AFI Heroes and Villians list and I don't understand why. I guess to me, Lucas created a whole universe and one that I actually cared about as much as the one we live in. And when you care that much and an evil tryant is ruling it and seducing and confusing your favortie hero you just get mad. I got so pissed off in ROTJ. I was fuming. I just wanted to have somebody take him down. But Lucas made him so powerful in so many ways and that was another reason why he's the best. If he can't beat you physically, which he probably can, than he'll be you mentally. He'll push all your buttons until you crack. Yet, he'll do it while giving you what you think is complete freedom (all Luke had to do was pick up his lightsaber). And he plots so far in the future and so accuractly that you are just afraid of his power. He's never wrong. He knows what will happen and plans accordingly. He knows what your thinking (which is why Hannibal is such a great villain to me), and he knows how to beat you. He was just the purest evil in every way. I can't think of a single movie villian more bad and worse than him.

 

Great question!

He is my personal favourite. Palpatine has it all: the looks, the moves (well, OK, *some* of the moves -- eek, Mr McDiarmid!), the wit, the tenacity, and most of all ... the insight and the intellect. This guy makes being bad look easy. And fun. Oh, yeah: and the chair.

If he has a cinematic rival, then I'd have to hand it to Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Tim Burton's "Batman". It's the obvious choice, isn't it? A crazed loon of a creature mixed up in the psyche of a man (a lot like Palpatine). It's an outstanding characterisation in Burton and Nicholson's hands and an extremely memorable movie and performance. "Wait till they get a load of me!" There's also a lot of intertextuality and narrative folding / commentary, just like Palpatine and "Star Wars". The Joker almost seems self-aware, as if he's operating within a work of fiction, just like Palpatine.

Other great villains might be: Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), General Zod (Terence Stamp), Darth Vader (naturally -- or should that be unnaturally? -- thanks, Palpy!), Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), The Shredder (James Saito), Biff Tannen (Thomas Wilson), Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd), Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban), Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), The T-1000 (Robert Patrick), Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), Scar (Jeremy Irons), Shere Khan (George Sanders), Hannibal Lectur (Anthony Hopkins), Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) et al.

 

Great to see The Joker mentioned. Jack Nicholson gets all the right credit in all the wrong places. He was phenomenal in that movie. But Palptaine just has it all. The wit he has was something I forgot, yet one of the main things that makes him great. He is funny, but no one laughs because he is in control of the situation and therefore the people we love are not.

 

That's it.

I also think that Palpatine has an interesting relationship with the characters, especially Anakin.

What's that phrase? "Better the devil you know..." This sums up their relationship after the end of Episode III. By ROTJ, we can see that Anakin has accepted the fate he served up for himself all those years ago, and has placed all his servitude in Palpatine. Consider III: He has no intention of following Palpatine, even declaring to Padme that he can overthrow him outright, and in Episode V, this feeling is still there, but has now trickled down to the point where he never actually articulates it, and after Luke rejects his coded offer in a mirror of Padme (which Luke himself has no way of consciously knowing), Anakin seems to be affected greatly, and he never thinks on it again. It's just great how Palpatine "cheats the system" in this way. All Sith masters are meant to have short lifespans and be replaced (i.e. killed) by their apprentices, but Palpatine gets away with it for a LONG, LONG time, and when he is bumped off, it's not even because the next guy craves taking over! In a sense, Palpatine DID master everything, but as you said before, left a little blind spot in the form of a humble farmboy (which can be either Luke or Anakin, depending on your perspective).

 

The thing that some people just don't get is that Palpatine is the ultimate puppet master who would control all the Frankensteins, Jokers, Lex Luthors and Hannibal Lectors of cinema history. Thus, Palpatine indeed is "greatest" or worst villain in cinema history.

 

Palpatine is the closest cinema has EVER(and thats no exaggeration) gotten to portreying pure evil. Hes not a sci-fi version of Hitler or Stalin(hes a better stratagist of course), and hes not frothing at the mouth either. Hes closer to Satan then any real villian has been in fantasy/sci fi(along with morgoth from the sillmarillion). Horror movie monsters of the 70s and 80s(like Freddy Krueger) are also manifistations of pure evil, but their more intimate, as in, palpatine brought suffering upon an entire galaxy rather then a select few people. Thats why Luke Skywalker is our modern day hero, hes the ONLY one who could of brought down this,for lack of a better term, monster

 

I'd say after the Prequels Palpatine certainly is at least one of the greatest villains as they portrayed just how cunning he truly was as well as his complete lack of any redeeming qualities as well as his wit, which is one of the reasons he's so entertaining.

 

He'd have to be right up there. His merciless manipulation of everything and everyone around him in order to achieve ultimate power is possibly without peer. Puppet master extraordinaire indeed.

 

According to AFI, Hannabal Lector is #1, with Norman Bates and Darth Vader following in order. Palps isn't even on the list. Don't know how much I agree with AFI since Luke Skywalker wasn't even on the top 50 for greatest heroes.

 

Norman Bates! Completely small-time compared with Palpy.

Agreed on AFI.

 

Yeah, there's a few things that I think are wrong with that list, such as the abscence of Palpatine.

 

It's AFI. They think Snow White is better than Platoon, for the love of crumbcake.

 

That's because it is.

"Snow White" is a profound work of animated art from a master storyteller, replete with striking universal motifs and themes (not unlike "Star Wars" and other mythological works), while "Platoon" is a marginal anti-war movie from an overrated hack, replete with vacuous plotting and sapped-up appeals to emotion.

(IMO)

 

Not exactly, because even though he is a great villian, he is still somewhat...ridiculous. I'd say Vader still holds number one, because the transition of a hero into a villian makes the background more powerful. Palpataine is probably second, because even though he's the one who made Vader, he didn't do anything really special except just make Vader do the work and sit there and cackle.

Then theres Nurse Rachette, whos been ranked greatest villian since One flew over the cucoos nest.

 

Ah!

But that's what makes him great! He doesn't do the dirty work; he tricks other people into doing it for him. In fact, this point has already been well-articulated by someone else. Take another look:

Why do you think he's shown sitting so much of the time? It's a motif. It represents something: Palpatine's utter calm and restraint. He doesn't go to people; they come to him. When we see him in the flesh for the first time, a character remarks, "There's Senator Palpatine waiting for us." Waiting. For others. To come to him. Look what happens with Anakin and Luke. They essentially bring themselves before him. Luke allows Vader to arrest him and take him to his master, while Anakin himself is constantly moving towards Palpatine as he slides to the Dark Side (rescue mission on The Invisible Hand, going to his office, running inside the opera house). Palpatine expects them every time: "I've been expecting you". He's the greatest bad guy ever conceived.

 

I think there is a difference between being a great film bad guy and the most evil bad guy. I reckon the AFI list on top villains was mostly regarding the former. Hannibal Lector and Darth Vader are iconic film characters, although they are far from the most evil.

Sidious is indeed both, at least in my opinion. He is both iconic and a truly evil character. He is the devil. Completely iredeemable. Blacker than black. He'e the ultimate manipulator and incredibly powerful to boot.

The best evil characters arent just those that committ evil themselves - its those that spread evil, manipulate people into doing evil themselves. That is Sidious. He grasps old of any darkness that may appear, be it corruption, greed or fear and uses it to his advantage. Increasing it. And with the power and influence he gets from that, he is able to get more and more control and use it for his own selfish and evil means.

 

I think you're absolutely right Shaitan especially with regards to the AFI list.

 

It's the (pardon the pun) insidious nature of what he does that makes him so spine chillingly evil.

 

It's the (pardon the pun) insidious nature of what he does that makes him so spine chillingly evil.

 

It's an interesting question, as my inclination is to isolate the two personas, finding Palpatine and Sidious to be distinct not only in mien but in the spheres they inhabit. (Try comparing, say, Milton's Satan with Henry James's Gilbert Osmond.)

Odd as it may sound, I lump Palpatine in with villains such as Chinatown's Noah Cross or Chad of In the Company of Men infamy, sociopathic monsters whom we instinctively deem success stories. (And who can blame us, the straps to those masks can be awfully tight, no?) Palpatine, of course, is no magnate or businessman but a politician; and like the aforementioned figures, he is frightening precisely because there exists men such as he within the corridors of power. (Though historical references are unnecessary here, I'd aver that in chiseling this character, Lucas unwittingly crafted an amalgamation of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the former's immeasurable charisma--capable of cloaking any crime or misdeed--merged with the latter's messianic monomania). Honestly, apart from Grand Moff Tarkin, I think Palpatine is the saga's sturdiest anchor to our reality; whenever there comes a Coruscant scene, I often forget I'm watching fantasy.

With Sidious, I conjure the same larger-than-life personas as everyone else: the Nietzschean dandies showcased in James Whale's The Invisible Man and the myriad Hannibal adaptations, and the demigods who lent a sense of majesty to Disney's Snow White and Ridley Scott's Legend. Watch the scene wherein McDiarmid volleys the Senate pods at Yoda--bringing ruin to Creation in both the figurative and literal--and you'll witness the same infectious glee with which Claude Rains unwound his bandages and Jack Nicholson poisoned the denizens of Gotham.

Still, whether one opts for fissure or a Palpatine/Sidious fusion--at which point he is at once mythic and authentic, like Robert Graves's Livia and Caligula--the true villain of Star Wars deserves a place in the pantheon.

In the top ten, easily.

 

I'd have him in the top 10 for sure. Put him next to Lecter, The Joker (which by the way, I'm glad to hear someone on the internet liked Nicholson. Lousy internet... full of people who just b&m) and Vader and it's hard to choose where to put who.

But for folks who never cared to see the movies, hold up a picture of Vader and they'll say "Darth Vader." Hold up a picture of the Emperor and they'll draw a blank. I don't know who AFI is, but it seems likely they went off fame more than character content.

 

They (AFI) also voted before ROTS came out, and probably have no idea that he's even a villain. They weren't paying attention, that's all.

I'd like to see a revised edition of that list in about a decade.

Although I'd pick Palps as #1, I'm sure he'd be in the top 5 of all time on an objective list that doesn't only include American films.

 

I think that's probably a big part of it, along with the fact that the ranking is based on one movie performance, not a movie series, although his performance in rots alone would make him a good candidate.

 

That is a tough one. He is certainly up there I'd say.

I guess it depends how you look at and if you consider being scary an important part of being a good villain as I do. Michael Myers (see Halloween 1) is an unstoppable evil killing machine. In a way he's more scary because he's basically a phsycho in your neighborhood or hiding in your closet simply waiting for you. The classic "boogey man". Palpatine on the other hand is the guy way at the top pulling the strings behind the scenes who can be directly or indirectly responsible for blowing up your planet...which is more difficult to relate to. Unless you follow politics.

Palpatine certainly spooked me out as a kid though. Speaking in terms of what I can relate to on some level is that he represents temptation. He's the devil who gets in your head and manipulates situtations to his advantage.

I'll have to think about this one more though before really giving an answer.

Great thread!

 

Palpatine's still the only movie villian I've ever felt instant loathing for. I mean, jeez, at least Vader was sorta honorable. Palpatine is just like "I own you, *****."