ST Palpatine "Gran Palpa" Discussion Thread

Ha ha ha - this should have been the closing shot of TROS

 

I don't really understand the ending. its suggested that Rey can stop the attack on her friends by killing him and taking the throne. i assumed the idea was that if she killed Palpatine she would then become empress Palpatine, aka dark side Rey. but would also be in command of the fleet to stop the attack. and that would be the reason why Rey felt she had no choice but to kill Palpatine. it was the only option she had.

But if we go by the idea that Palpatine would take over her body... then whats the advantage in it for her? Palpatine could have just continued the attack either way after he took her body. not like she would be able to do anything at that point?

Also it was abit video gamey once Rey sensed Ben was there... Palpatine wanted her to kill him... ok... so why after she gave Ben the saber and took out the other saber did Palpatine then decide he better move out of the way and sent in the red guard characters? what changed? she was still there with a saber... did he change his mind? what happened?

 

JJ Abrams happened

 

Getting a bit speculative/headcanony here, but

Presumably, the ritual would only work because Rey was his own blood descendant. Ben killing him would accomplish nothing. With Palpatine realizing what was going on, he retreated to safety. He was probably planning on waiting until Ben arrived to throw him into the pit and then further goad Rey into killing him before realizing their dyad status allowed him to properly revive himself, thus negating the need for the ritual to begin with

 

The Jedi join the Force itself and manifest to users. The Sith possess the bodies of Dark Force users (think demonic possession). It's like having angels appear in form, but demons need to possess a body.

 

I think the repeated ROTS line about "The dark side of the Force is a path to many abilities some consider to be unnatural" is actually a pretty good explanation. First off, it's a calllback to one of his best lines/moments in the PT and retroactively makes it foreshadowing in Episode III. And it is an answer, whatever it is why he's back it's "unnatural". And then you have the Hobbit guy pipe up with "Cloning! Dark science! Secrets only the Sith knew!" So I'm really like 80% cool with the sorta explanation, and 20% annoyed, but that's more positive than not. Seriously the "unnatural" repeat line (complete with scary lightning flash) is actually a decent answer that draws from SW lore.

And he looks like a freakin' corpse! And he totally says that he died! Repeatedly! So Anakin definitely killed Sidious and now we have whatever that is. I mean, there could be essence transfer, like Sidious' spirit jumped into something which became the body on Exegol, or he grew out of that, or he was like Voldemort jumping from bodies to bodies (like he wants to transfer his mind into Rey). I'm not totally sold on a Clone body, though, because why would Palpatine transfer himself to a busted up clone?

Personally, I think Councilor Rax's (from Aftermath) one real job was to find Palpatine's corpse and plug it into the robo-arm thing on Exegol but he could only find his half exploded torso so he did his best and then ran away back to the Empire before Palpatine woke up. "Wha happened? Why you, little Jakku desert rat Raxxxxxxxx!!"

Anyway, that aside, McDirmid is great in this and he does this little smirk before he Force lighting attacks the Resistance fleet that is way fantastic.

 

I'm also satisfied enough by the whole "unnatural" line repeat. Some may call it fanservice (and I suppose it is in a way), but it adds so much. It makes the dark side that much scarier. Whereas before, the idea of Plagueis cheating death was just something theoretical, possibly even something Palpatine completely made up to tempt Anakin, now we see exactly what he meant and the result of that unnatural ability

That said, at the same time - I do hope we get some novel or comic or something that does explain in more detail the nature of Palpatine being alive. Or at least forcing (no pun intended) his spirit into his dead body

 

I also liked this explanation. I also always thought he was doing more of a Volemort thing where he's alive but not *really* alive until he absorbs the life force of the dyad, and I'm okay with that.

 

There's a lot of materiel for the authors, you've got Palps from ROTJ to TROS, you've got Snoke from whenever he was created up until TFA and all those OT characters that haven't been seen since ROTJ that suddenly turn up in TROS.

 

So, if Palps' spirit enters bodies, does that mean he enters Rey's body after she dies, but before he can fully rez himself, Ben smooches her, trading his life for hers, which means Ben Solo kissed Sheev Palpatine

 

The official databank on Starwars.com still says at the end of Palpatine's bio:
"At long last, the Emperor was dead, taking a nightmarish era of tyranny with him."
I know they have to say he was dead to not contradict themselves (as they had previously said that new Canon wouldn't be changed moving forward), but if so, his era of tyranny definitely wasn't over, but getting worse. The 1st and 2nd death stars blew up one planet between them. The '3rd death star' blew up a whole star system at once, and the conflict never stopped, to the point where at the end of TLJ, they gave up playing semantics with the 'Resistance' and just started calling it The Rebellion again.

 

Well, in Robot Chicken war ends not because you blew up the Death Star, but because you blew it up and killed the Emperor.

For Palpatine to possess her, it’s not that she had to kill him, but’s he had to kill him and become a Sith. But she killed him not to embrace the Dark Side and become Empress, but with help of the Jedi. Without their help, she was too emotionally weak when she accepted his offer, and too physically weak after he took so much life force from her.

 

Ian McDiarmid and John Williams tried so hard in terms of acting and music to make Sidious Palpatine work in this film. But bad writing is bad writing. Dark Empire did it better.

But let's be clear about Sidious Palpatine. I subscribe to the view that James Luceno told us who he truly was. As complex and mature, despite being grandiose and selfish, as Darth Plagueis/Hego Damask was, he was not as evil as the young Palpatine who slew his family. Palpatine had no remorse for that. He was only humiliated that Plagueis manipulated him, and he waited decades to get his revenge. Ian McDiarmid may or may not know that story, and certainly John Williams doesn't. But they get that about Palpatine better than JJ or anyone else could. Palpatine is not someone you admire. Palpatine is a sociopath. Plain and simple. He abused the child Zabrak Darth Maul; the abused the elderly Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus; and he abused Anakin/Vader. All three of his apprentices were not good people, but he enjoyed harming anyone in his path just to get what he wanted. He did not want to destroy everything like Darth Nihilus, nor did he want to control everything like Darth Krayt. He just enjoyed abusing people (which means he was both a ruler and a reality-butcher in his head). Abuse is not a good thing, folks. It hurts people. He enjoyed hurting an entire galaxy because that made him feel better as a result of not being able to do it to his late parents and siblings. Not a good person.

That's the point. Sidious is the ultimate Napoleon/Hitler/Caesar of Star Wars, as George Lucas intended. A sociopath, not someone to admire. McDiarmid, who has a master's degree in psychology, and Williams, who is a brilliant composer, got that.

 

Star Wars is carried by the music and actors, rather than the writing, and with very limited directing, it feels like

 

Did Palpatine really want Rey to kill him? Was he really surprised about the dyad? Or was his purpse of Rey to somehow purposely create a dyad with the offspring of the Chosen One?????

 

Why should we believe that Sheev is really dead? He survived being shocked by his own Force Lightning, thrown down a hole, and blew up TWCE? So him being blown up by Force Lightning, we're supposed to buy him being "truly dead?". No it doesn't work like that.

Them not having a good explanation for his survival doesn't help wither.

 

You are wrong thinking that killing Snoke were a mistake. It was taking a chance to
- not give us a lame repetition of the OT
- and to remove the placeholder Snoke in order to give way to one of only two people who was able to give us a new overarching story: Palpatine (the other one who could have connect the trilogies is Anakin).

Episode 7 cut a deep and unnecessary wound into the sagas, undermining the Star Wars before, Rebels vs Sith, rise and redemption of the Chosen One. The damage was done by Episode 7 which funnily many did not understand and who dared to criticize Episode 7 seven was told to go to the cave. “Great” discussion culture here *cough*.

There had to be damage control and it was Episode 8 itself.
To keep the ST from being
- a boring rehash thing
- that gets pointlessly tacked on at the end of the saga without becoming a part of itself, without becoming part of an overarching story

Many people don’t understand
- that their first impressions construct a flawed view in their minds
- which means that people never were as open to a further exploration of Star Wars again as they were when they watched the first Star Wars movies they watched. Many thought that three movies told them everything but Star Wars and the force were always bigger than what you get told in just three movies. They were always bigger from the very beginning, before the very first shooting was done.

Many fail to understand this. That’s why many unconsciously want a repetition of what they know so far and reject further exploration.

This includes that many fans don’t understand the Force and don’t understand Star Wars.

Star Wars was always planned to consists of 9 to 12 parts.
What you see in one trilogy is just a small part of a bigger picture, just a small corner of a galaxy that is bigger than we see it in any movie.
With each movie you learn more about the Force which still many don’t understand.

The Force was always based on Daoism. The Dao / the force is an energy field that connects everything together. The Dao / force manifests in everything that you can see, hear, feel, taste, smell (which is referred to in the PT when Qui-Gon states that he believes that force sensivity can be seen in midichlorians). The Dao / force is the origin of everything that exists, of Yin and Yang (Rey and Kylo) and all that comes from them. The Dao / force has an inner drive for balance. When Palpatine returned from the dead, he caused the force to react. In the end, it took the Chosen One plus his children and successor.

Kylo is to Rey what Luke was to Anakin - the force’s tool to bring out the best out of the Chosen One.

This is how every Star Wars trilogy adds something to the bigger picture. Everyone who is stubborn and insists on what his first impression of Star Wars was fails as it is the case in real life. If someone does not step back from one’s first impressions and rejects to learn more information, one gets always frustrated and rightfully so. Social media makes people stop thinking and just quickly reacting and claiming what they read somewhere, so opinions become wildfire.

 

And yet TLJ was 95% rehash of OT anyway, sorry I give Roan no credit there. Also if yup' re going to crap all over Luke and Anakin, and the ending of ROTJ, you need to set it up FAR better than this. It was clearly damage control, the contrived nature of it proves that.

Also apparently Big Daddy Sheev can just, grow an uber-powerful Force User, stronger than Vader, Dooku, Kylo, etc, in a tank somehow, AND make more than one? Wow, way to cheapen The Force and what it stands for there JJ.

 

As soon as he realized that he could heal himself via dyad, he immediately changed course, because why be someone else when you can be yourself?

 

This thread wouldn't even exist if Rian hadn't killed off Snoke ( the main villain of the ST ) halfway through the middle chapter so rather the JJ using Snoke in EP9 he had to drag Palpatine from the dead to drive the story forward with the Grandchild killing her Grandfather and Kylo having a plot devise to be redeemed.......

 

yah but we got Palpatine instead which makes sense as he is the Uber-baddie of the series and it would have been weird to have the ST go by without him being referenced except for Luke saying "Darth Sidious" in TLJ.

I think the Rey Palpatine reveal is sort of JJ trying to have an "I am your father" moment but I am down with it because things repeat over and over in Star Wars (it's a thing), and Palpatine is such a huge aspect of the series (arguably, him in the PT makes him even more important, probably top Saga characters that are Important to Stuff with the Skywalkers, Obi-Wan and Han) that you get him overhanging the whole time since, it is revealed, you're watching his Granddaughter in the ST. And he should be the final bad at the end.

Does it muck with the prophecy of the Chosen One, Anakin's redemption and balance in the Force all that jazz, absolutely. But it works for a 9 part overall story to have one bad guy behind it all, and we've been watching his big evil plan in ep. 7 & 8 without knowing it. (as for all that Chosen One balance stuff, hey, we got a Dyad in the Force with Rey and Kylo, that sorta compliments it if you squint).

 

Putting aside the question of how exactly he survived, my question is, how is Rey his granddaughter? I admit, the dialogue in Kylo's chambers about her parents kinda skimmed over me (for once, I wish I had a rewind button in a movie theater). Ben's mother (Leia) and Rey's father were connected somehow?

So before her parents hid her/abandoned her/sold her/whatever, the plan was for this bounty hunter to bring a young Rey to Palpatine to...what? For him to train her in the ways of the Sith so at the proper age and time, she would be willing to kill him in anger thus succeeding him in becoming Empress and launch a new stronger Empire but in reality, for him to possess her and continue on in some twisted form of immortality and rule from beyond grave?

What?

 

This 'script' was, supposedly, the 2nd draft of VII. Feb/Mar 2013. This is Cosinga Palpatine talking to our Palpatine, his 17 yo son, in the 'Plagueis' novel (January 2012). Palpatine is about to kill him:

Also:

Maybe the 'Ren' (Ruin?) element, the sith eternal symbol (a flame; and also palpatine's order to Pryde, 'let it burn'), the sith throne, and others, have to do with that 'jedi sect' of old. That 'Ruin' would have been a jedi in the originally.