ST Palpatine "Gran Palpa" Discussion Thread

Where did you ever get that impression? In the OT, multiple characters speak of a journey to the dark side. And although it's the quicker and easy path, it's still a journey. Luke wasn't in danger of going to the dark side because of one hateful moment. It was a series of missteps. Of gaining power, but not being able to control his emotions, and his attachments, and succumbing to anger, hate, etc.

It was always a full conscious decision. That's the entire point of the OT. That's what Luke get's Anakin to realize. Obi-wan and Yoda were wrong. Luke proved he was right about his father. That's it's not too late for him. That it's never too late to make the right decision. That the dark side is not a destiny if you don't choose it to be one for yourself. That Anakin isn't really a slave to his Master.

 

Well yeah the parts in ROTJ regarding Anakin kinda made it look like Yoda in ESB didn't fully know what he was talking about too. But from ROTJ alone (ignoring the context of the PT) I still get the impression that Luke was in danger of turning so Yoda's worry is still legitimate.

So was Luke ever remotely close to turning then? Let's say he kills Vader in the heat of the moment. Then what? There's still absolutely zero reason for him to join Sidious.

 

Luke was in incredible danger of going to the dark side. But your original point was that it was one single event, one act, right? And it's not. ROTJ is the culmination of his journey to resist or join the dark side. ROTJ is his final test.

Luke was very close to going to the dark side. It just wasn't a single momentary decision/event. Luke almost killing Vader was based on a years worth of progression, and a life time of emotion, fear, anger, love, etc.

 

By single event, I was referring to the act of killing Vader. How does that turn Luke to the dark side? The most reasonable next step after killing Vader would be to try to kill Sidious, which I don't think he was powerful enough for, so he would end up getting killed. So he dies as a Rebel. He doesn't become a Sith.

 

That part I bolded is strangely not mentioned at all for something so important though, and the part before it (killing Vader) is hardly related. To leave something so central to the story up to the audience's imagination seems like a rather odd choice to me.

In ROTS, we can see how Anakin's fateful decision logically contributed to his "trapped" state. He was tricked into attacking Mace, thereby making himself an enemy of the Jedi Order. If he still tried to go against Sidious, he would be an enemy of both the Jedi AND the Sith. That plus other reasons (Padme's safety, Sidious being so powerful etc) made Anakin feel like he didn't have much of a choice.

In ROTJ, Luke killing Vader doesn't really do anything (in terms of Luke turning) as far as I can tell. It would make more sense if Sidious tried to pressure Luke into attacking someone like Mon Mothma instead. If Luke fell for the trap, he would effectively be making himself an enemy of the Resistance. If Sidious then tries finding other ways to control him (like... maybe offer to spare Leia and Han's lives in exchange for Luke's surrender), it would make more sense to me.


Edit: By the way, I just noticed we're on page 66 of this thread! I think of Star Wars every time I see that number anywhere now lol, but in this Sidious thread it's actually meaningful

 

Palpatine doesn't have anything to offer Luke, like he had with his father. He implies he can help him save his friends, but that's weak and Luke immediately recognizes it. (Which is more than we can say for Rey who actually believes this when dealing with Kylo)

That's why Palpatine just immediately goes for rage. Taunts him. Boils his blood. Make him hate him and his father. Make him fear losing his sister. Make him taste that sweet-sweet dark side power. And then hope that once he does, he likes it, and won't care about anything else.

But Luke is smart. And he realizes the game. He sees that he could end up just like his father. And that dark side power ain't worth it. So he throws down his saber and refuses to play the Emperor's game. Which is basically the first time anyone does this in the entire saga. And that's when the Emperor knows there's no turning him. He won't be tempted. He's a Jedi.

 

Assuming Luke actually kills Vader and somehow finds the process enjoyable, that's still a very ridiculous thing to hope for imo. Some evil guy is threatening to kill everyone I ever cared for (except for the ones he already killed), but I tried his sweet-sweet doughnuts and they're so good I want to eat more, so I willingly become his servant to learn how to make those delicious doughnuts.

 

Yes, but you're a rational actor thinking rationally.

The dark side of the Force, on the other hand, is an irrational, corrupting energy field. It's evil Space Drug Magic and why we see so much unabashed villainy from previously noble characters who have since turned to it.

Dooku, Anakin, Kylo were all once noble Jedi and each engaged in open mustache-twirling at various points in the dark side careers because of the corrupting nature of that power.

This is further established in the PT. For all the cunning Sidious employs to get Anakin to the precipice of falling, the thing that ultimately tips him over is a split-second decision made an inflection point. Even though Anakin is distraught and expresses dismay after, he quickly succumbs to dark side influence, hunts down his former friends and allies, murders children, and generally behaves like a deranged, yellow-eyed Loon at Mustafar.

That's the power of the dark side and why Jedi Knights are in such a precarious emotional, psychological, and spiritual position. They have to constantly walk a tightrope that stretches over the howling abyss of the dark side. That's why it's so easy to fall and so hard to be upright.

 

I mean...it worked with Anakin. So he's probably thinking it'll work on Luke. And while Luke is very much like Anakin is many respects, he's ultimately not his father.

 

That's basically what I was saying on the previous page (based on the OT at least), but other people were saying it's not like that, that the dark side doesn't mess up people's minds, it's always the people themselves fully making their own choices.

But like I said, Sidious's strategy to convert Luke is totally different from his strategy to convert Anakin.

Interior of the Invisible Hand:
Anakin is deciding whether or not to kill Dooku.
Sidious laughs, breaks free from his restraints, claps his hands together and says, "Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take Dooku's place as my apprentice!"

 

Could introducing Palpatine as the secret main villain in the last movie of the trilogy have worked satisfactorily without any hypothetical changes to the first two movies?

Many versions of this basic premise were considered. We’ve heard of a version in which the Sith loyalists were actually hiding out in the ruins of a war-ravaged Coruscant, with the resurrected Palpatine seeking the dyad specifically so that he could rejuvenate himself and lead his secret fleet in a war of conquest and revenge. This would mean that the dyad was always part of his plan to come back, which makes slightly more sense than the end result.

Would having a younger Palpatine who was more involved in the story in a broader sense have made more sense or even changed anything?

 

I don't think so.

Palpatine still isn't a personal nemesis to either Kylo, who becomes submissive to immediately for no reason what so ever, or Rey, his last minute control-z cloned granddaughter. The entire ST is about putting down the FO, and Kylo, and then in the last minute it's about ... stopping Palpatine. Who just so happens to be the puppet master of the FO, and related to Rey. But it makes no difference. There's no threat of Rey becoming like Palpatine, in the same way that Luke was in danger of becoming like his father. There's no confrontation. There's no drama. He's the big bad because it's Star Wars and the audience knows he's the big bad.

It just doesn't thematically work. The closest way I could imagine it working - last minute as it does - is for Palpatine to simply be a recording that Kylo finds. It informs him of something deeper. Something he didn't know about before, but still allows Kylo to be the main draw.

 

I don't know about satisfactorily , but I think it would have certainly worked better if they had built up his return over the first half of the movie instead of shoving the reveal in the opening crawl


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I'm actually a huge fan of "The Dead Speak!" opening crawl cuz it's super bombastic and very B-movie serial and get to the point. I can practically hear people yelling in terror "The Dead Speak!" Also exclamation point. Also I love that the crawl calls him "The Phantom Emperor" which is a callback to the title of Phantom Menace of Episode 1. (There's multiple Phantom Menaces in Episode 1, Anakin, the Trade Federation, Palpatine/Sidious) and I like that calling him that sort of confirms/conveys who the Phantom Menace is.

 

Somehow, the dead speak.

 

I saw this screenshot from the TROS doc that includes a couple of concept pieces of the resurrected Palpatine:



One of those was shared by Kevin Jenkins not too long ago:



The other one, I’ve never seen, though it seems to be a similar visualization of Palpatine, only seen from a different angle. But it seems to be based on this shot from ROTS:



Admittedly he looks younger in the artwork. And it could’ve been interesting to see him fully rejuvenated. To see Darth Sidious rising from the ashes, younger and stronger and more powerful than ever. Commandin a powerful fleet, and with no Jedi Order to stand in his way, no Republic, ready conquer the galaxy.

With this younger Sidious, the Sith would have returned not as assassins, not as conspirators, but as conquerors. Sidious would have been a Sith King, leader of armies, ready to wage war and use the dark side of the Force to control the universe. These concepts are pre-script, when the general ideas are discussed and illustrated to explore the possibilities of the story. But I find the possibilities strangely interesting.

 

Yes, but JJ Abrams, so…the least interesting concept gets the green light.

 

I'm reminded of this old concept art for ROTS by Ryan Church. This is barely half the picture, but as you see, it shows Palpatine taking on a more hands-on role in the war. An interesting sort of imagery that could've been revisited for TROS.

 

Woah. That’s the first bit of concept art from Ryan Church that I like (he’s my arch-nemesis).

 

That is awesome concept art. Really reminds of LotR.

 

Probably, I honestly think introducing Palpatine last minute doesn't really change much of what we know now outside of Rey's backstory, but the rest of it, the First Order, Resistance the whole geo-political situation, if anything brining in Palpatine just makes sense in terms of what Force Awakens sets up.

If Force Awakens is (For better or worse) the Sequel Trilogy main Lore Driver (Since TLJ is more a thematic/character one) then in my mind Palpatine brings senes.

Younger Palpatine however only makes sense if you make him the Villain for 7-9, but brining in a young Palpatine for like 15 minutes only for him to explode doesn't really do much. Not even in Dark Empire it did much in all honesty. Better to keep him as Ian Mcdirmid and get all his amazing performance goodness out of him as much as possible.

 

Yah agreed, I much prefer restored Emperor (doing his little hand thing which reminds me of him declaring himself Emperor in ROTS, like poetry it rhymes) than some new actor playing a young version. If he's going to restore to his former glory it should definitely be that.

 

Somehow, Papanoida returned would have been better.

 

I don’t think there was any way bringing him back in 9 without at the very least mentioning him in 8, would have worked for me.

In hindsight, when the Resistance sent out their message asking for help and nobody responded, I think it would have been neat had they established that during the exact same time Palpatine was playing his broadcast about unleashing his revenge, scaring the population.

Hearing his voice in a transmission at the very end of TLJ so that fans could then accept it, digest it and speculate on it for two years would have made everything go much more smoothly IMO.

The only other way would have been to split 9 into a 2-part finale that way things could have at least slowed down. 9 flew at a breakneck pace to its detriment, IMO.

I think the Sith cult/dagger/Ochi stuff had no added value other than layers of macguffins. Had they trimmed a lot of that fat to add more scenes with Palpatine and Rey, the climax might have gone better for me.


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