ST Palpatine "Gran Palpa" Discussion Thread

Metaphorically speaking, "Force ghosting" is the power to come back from the "afterlife" under your own power.

Still allows a certain amount of room for "dragging a Sith's spirit back from the afterlife" without allowing Sith to "Force ghost".

 

Because they technically aren’t dead. The Sith are cheating death. Their ‘living’ soul or consciousness gets absorbed into the new Sith Master and lives in the new master’s body. Their disembodied midichlorians stay together after the body dies and are replanted in the body of the Sith Master.

 

I'm sorry but that's just head cannon. disembodied midichlorians stay together and are replanted. lol Okay.

It's trash.

That's all this is. Utter trash. Just looking at all of Palpatine's lines in TROS, they all basically contradict one another, or are just vaguely inconsistent with something he says earlier in the movie, or even the same scene. Let alone anything he says in the saga. I'm betting that's because that was the only way to wedge in Palpatine. Every scene was treated as its own thing. Just get to the next scene. Insert evil dialog here.

It saddens me that people will defend it and try their best to continue to unravel the entire franchise to just make it all work, when the people who 'wrote it', spent approximately 2 minutes on this, and never once stoped and asked 'does this make any damn sense'. Burn the saga down to make TROS work. It's amazing.

Sith Highlander and bringing back Palpatine in the way it was done, is the worst idea in a long line of horrid ideas that JJ has come up with. Sith living inside another Sith Master is the least Sith thing a Sith Master could ever desire. The Sith don't cheat death by ... dying and being replanted into another Sith. They live by a dog eat dog world. They use the dark side to just live on as long as they possibly can. They take on apprentices to do the dirty work that's beneath them, knowing that the apprentice will try to take him out, and will either succeed, or lose. That's it. It's no more complicated than that. Palpatine didn't want to live in another Sith body, with all his former Sith lord buddies, being used as a power-source. That's just absurd.

 

"As all the Sith live in me," could easily be fudged as Sidious proclaiming himself as the living embodiment of the Sith tradition. Outside of that I don't have an answer, I just know that current canon doesn't appear to interpret that statement as if his body contains the combined essence of every previous Sith.

The fanon "each Sith passes on into the body of their apprentice at the time of their death" DEFINITELY isn't what's going on.

How are the spirits of past Jedi accessed? If we're going strictly by statements Lucas has made about the Force and the Jedi ability to transcend death, then none of the Jedi aside from Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Luke, Anakin, and maybe Leia should be able to communicate with Rey. Mace Windu, Adi Gallia, etc. were never taught how to manifest as Force ghosts.

 

They aren't. We simply have fans who a determined to rip a part the entire franchise in order for this to now make sense.

 

Well, they were. Lucas' opinions are no longer gospel.

 

Except for the fact that it's phrased as an example of the same type of thing that would have him passing into Rey's body.

What I meant was, how are the spirits of past Sith even around to be accessed?

Ahsoka could have learned from Luke at some point, since we know she had visited the site of his Jedi school. As for Mace and the Jedi killed in order 66, you are correct - they should not have been able to ghost. I suspect those voices were present for political reasons. Abrams may have been uncomfortable with the ghosting scheme left behind by Lucas, in which the only people who ghosted happened to be white men.

 

This reminds me of the question of whether having fewer Jedi and Sith around makes those who remain stronger in the Force. Is the Force a limited resource that is made stronger when fewer people are alive to use it?

If you consider that possibility, then Palpatine’s declaration reads primarily as a statement of power. He is the last Sith standing and has inherited all the power of the dark side. The power that Sith Lords past have helped grow over the centuries until it made them strong enough to defeat the light… that power is all his in that final confrontation. Perhaps including the power that once belonged to Darth Vader.

Tom Veitch discussed something like this in his endnotes to Dark Empire. I’ll have to look it up, but the basics do fit with what the first movies told us of the Force: life creates it, helps it grow. If the Force has a source, and is not itself extinguished when living being die, then it stands to reason that it is very much a measurable quantity in theory, a limited resource.

 

"As all the Sith live in me, you will be Empress. We will be one." That's relating to his half-truth that Rey will inherit the throne by containing Palpatine's essence, not necessarily that there are multiple spirits indwelt in that body. If it's purely figurative, then Rey allegedly inherits the power of the Sith by assuming the throne; if it's literal, then she's still inheriting the power of the Sith because Palpatine is drawing that power from them as Rey drew power from the Jedi. There is some evidence for the latter, but there's no evidence for a spiritual gestalt. And of course, again, the fact that there were many, many Sith lords that never met their end in a traditional Banite conflict between master and apprentice, means that Palpatine couldn't possibly be "all the Sith" in that sense.

 

This kind of parallelism troubles me. It seems to set up Sith spirits as an exact analogue of Force ghosts, just on the other team. I got the impression Lucas didn't see it that way, despite the prevalence of Sith spirits in EU.

( And why is it that Rey can draw power from Force ghosts, when Luke could not in TESB or ROTJ? )

 

Yes I agree - Lucas, I'm sure, certainly didn't see it that way. It's just bad writing on DLF's part. That, by virtue, the Jedi had an ability that the Sith don't have/can't replicate is totally lost on them. That this ability is predicated on the notion of being selfless, and giving oneself to the force, rather than being selfish, is a philosophical view that the writers either haven't got the creative intelligence to explore, or the intellect to grasp... or they just don't care... but fans should (IMO).

 

I’m not sure it’s as simple as the filmmakers ignoring something solidly established. For one thing, the specifics of Force spirits is not something the movies get into. TCW gets into it toward the end. But it’s not much, so it doesn’t necessarily stand out as a blatant contradiction story-wise, even though we know philosophically it goes against what Lucas ended up deciding.

More importantly, though, Rey connects with all the Jedi, not just the six Jedi who had learned to retain their identities in the Force after death. That means that she’s connecting with the Cosmic Force, to the light side itself and every Jedi who became a part of it after their death. That would mean that the parallel is Palpatine connecting to the dark side of the Cosmic Force, not to individual Sith spirits, but to the part of the Force they joined after death.

Going back to what I mentioned about Dark Empire, here’s a relevant passage from an interview with writer Tom Veitch where he responds to criticism from fellow writer Tim Zahn in relation to a similar concept in his story:

I don’t reference this to suggest a collective spirit gestalt living inside Palpatine, but rather to connect this to both Rey and Palpatine connecting with the cosmic aspects of their respective sides of the Force. We know TROS took a lot of inspiration from Dark Empire, so it isn’t a stretch to look there to help make sense of some of the ideas that ended in the film. And this one does tie well to the theme in the movie of characters connecting to their ancestors and embodying their legacy.

 

But that collective mind, I don't think are all the dead Jedi. It's the Force itself. Lucas never got around to his Whills idea on screen, but in the first film its laid that that the force can control you, while also obeying your command. So there's something there, there, that isn't just being tapped into by Jedi/Sith.

I would think that all the Jedi who died, save for QGJ, Yoda, Obi, Luke, etc etc, would have simply moved on to whatever exists on the other side, if anything even exists at all, just like anyone else in the galaxy would. QGJ, Yoda, etc, figured out how to become one with the Force, by giving themselves up to it, and in the process retain some form of their identity. Which I believe - I can't find it now - Lucas has mentioned that eventually would weaken and even they would pass on to the other side (again, if any even exists there)

So...I don't mind a character drawing power from the Force itself, or even the collective Whillls power that might exist there, but not former living beings. Certainly not All the Sith All the Jedi. Especially ones who had no ability to retain their identities upon death. All the Jedi, save for the ones who ghost, are truly gone. Their bodies and midis turned to dust. Their personas gone.

 

I don’t disagree with you, only I’d say that the Force is precisely the energy that was once living beings. Not just the Jedi and the Sith who came before, but certainly including them. The Force is created by living beings. While they are alive, they are part of the Living Force. But when they die, they feed into the Cosmic Force, which grows over time. And the Cosmic Force has a light and a dark side. Those aspects are also fed and grown over time by living beings who embraced one path or the other.

In Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine is in full mastery of the dark side, or fully enslaved to it from another point of view. So he’s drawing on all the dark power that has grown over the centuries. The Sith who became a part of the cosmic dark side no longer retain their identities, but they still exist as a part of it. Rey has spent the entire movie trying to reach a higher level of connection with the Force, to move past her self and reach those who came before her. She repeats the refrain, “Be with me.” And in the end she succeeds in reaching the Cosmic Force, and all who came before her and are a part of the light. She hadn’t achieved this before, and when she does she finds out that even if Palpatine is drawing on the reserves of all the Sith who came before him, he still won’t win, because “there are more of us.”

The light is stronger than the dark, despite the dark side growing stronger over the centuries, and that’s ultimately what the end battle really embodies.

 

Wrong. For me there are discrepancies in the movies that never made sense about the Sith. This possessed Sith Master solves most of those for me.

 

So we can only assume that Plapy will show up in the Super Sequel Trilogy as an evil Sith Baby voiced by Justin Roiland?

 

The movie never really develops that that's happening.

 

What discrepancies exactly?

 

Here are most of Palpy's lines in TROS, which relate to either Kylo or Rey. Although not in precise order.

P: At last. Snoke trained you well.
K: I killed Snoke. I'll kill you.
P: My boy, I made Snoke. I have been every voice...
P..you have ever heard..
P...inside your head.

P: The First Order was just the beginning. I will give you so much more.
K: You'll die first.
P: I've died before. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.
K: What could you give me?
P: Everything. A new empire. The might of the Final Order will soon be ready. It will be yours if you do as I ask. Kill the girl, end the Jedi and become what your grandfather Vader could not. You will rule all the galaxy as the new emperor. But beware. She is not who you think she is.
K: Who is she?

P: Your journey nears its end.

P: [to Kylo Ren] As once I fell, so falls the last Skywalker.
P: Long have I waited and now, your coming together is your undoing.
P: This will be the final word in the story of Skywalker.

P: Long have I waited, for my grandchild to come home! I never wanted you dead. I wanted you here, Empress Palpatine.
P: Let the final battle... begin.

P: The Jedi apprentice still lives. Perhaps you have betrayed me. Do not make me turn my fleet against you.
K: I know where she's going. She'll never be a Jedi.
P: Make sure of it. Kill her.

P: The ritual begins! She will strike me down and pledge herself as a Sith! She will draw her weapon... she will come to me... she will take her revenge... and with a stroke of her saber... the Sith are reborn! The Jedi are dead!

P: Your hatred, your anger. You want to kill me. That is what I want. Kill me... and my spirit will pass into you. As all the Sith live in me... you will be Empress... we will be one.​

P: With your hatred, you will take my life. And you will ascend.
R: All you want is for me to hate, but I won't. Not even you.
P: Weak. Like your parents.
R: My parents were strong. They saved me from you.
P: Your master, Luke Skywalker, was saved by his father. The only family you have here... is me.
P: They don't have long. No one is coming to help them. And you are the one who led them here. Strike me down. Take the throne. Reign over the new Empire, and the fleet will be yours. Only you have the power to save them. Refuse, and your new family... dies.

R: I haven't come to lead the Sith. I've come to end them.
P: As a Jedi?
R: Yes.
P: *No.*

P: Stand together, die together!
P: The lifeforce of your bond... a dyad in the Force. A power like life itself. Unseen for generations. And now... the power of two restores the one, true Emperor.
P: The time has come.

P: I am ALL the Sith!
R: And I... am all the Jedi.​

These are all just random lines with no meaning. They're literally trying - rather desperately I might add - to wedge Palpatine into this movie. So at times he wants Rey deader than dead, and doesn't care that she's his granddaughter at all - she's just a scavenger - then at times he wants to spill the beans on how he's trained Kylo to rule, but apparently that 30 year plan can only happen if Kylo kills the girl and ends the Jedi.

But then later on, he demands that Kylo go on a fetch quest to get Rey, who he wanted dead but now doesn't, to bring Rey to him, so that Rey will kill him in anger and he can transfer his spirit on to her. So that 30 year train Ben Solo under Snoke plan, was all just to get Kylo to bring Rey to Palpatine so that he could...whatever.

Even though he literally just said that for the Sith to rule, the Jedi (Rey) needs t be killed. So which is it? This isn't just Palpatine trying to trap Kylo. It's at odds with itself.

Palpatine also mentions that he wants to die, literally, so that his spirit passes on to Rey. All the Sith live inside of him. He mentions that he died already, he fell, those are his words, so...where did his, and all those spirits go then? Since he died in EP 6, why didn't all of these Sith spirits get transferred to Vader, who is the Sith in line who killed him? If they resurrected Palpatine here, somehow retrieving his blown up body from the DS explosion, why would his spirit, and all the other Sith spirits being hanging around a dead body? Why would they return to it, once he was resurrected?

Again. Pure nonsense. Each scene is written just to get out of that scene, with not a single care about the previous scene or the one coming after it.

And then even more fun nonsense happens, once Palpatine realizes that his granddaughter and Kylo are a dyad. Did he not know that at the beginning of the movie? Why not? So both previous plans go out the window and he decides to just suck dyad force out of them, to heal himself, and remain Emperor.

This is now the third plan, or desire, Palpatine has had in this one movie alone. Each act has Palpatine wanting something completely different. Hahaha. I can't get over how bad this is. And is amazes me that people will go to such great lengths to defend it, and argue that it "fixes" the franchise, when it doesn't even fix the movie, or the sequel trilogy.

 

He's playing them off against each other because he wants the strongest one as a vessel.

 

No. That's not it.

That's the audience going, how do I mentally make this nonsense work so that I feel better about this.

 

I agree.

In Jurassic Park, we have Nedry meet with Dodgson outlining what his he’s being hired to do. Then we see him on the phone with the guy on the dock about buying him 15 minutes to steal the dna and get to the boat. Nedry announces to everyone that some minor power systems might go off, we then see the cameras shut off as he’s in the lab stealing the dna.

At every step, the audience is told what the bad guy is doing, and gets reminders along the way.

In Cars, when Doc challenges Lightning to a race. He makes no attempt to leave the starting line and asks Mater if he has his tow cable, letting the audience know he’s up to something. Then when Lightning crashes, Mater says “I’m beginning to think Doc knew you were going to crash!” to drive the point home.

In Coco, we are told that Hector is being forgotten and that once forgotten he’s gone forever, and then they establish a clear motive for why Ernesto de la Cruz wants to prevent him from being remembered.

In Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine is all over the place and people make excuses. It’s bad storytelling. Less divisive movies tend not to leave glaring gaps like that in outlining a characters motivations. It’s usually clear what they want and what their plan is to achieve it, with sometimes with reminders sprinkled throughout reinforcing those plans.

Palpatine just pivots hard in the final moments of the film, with no explanation. He wants Kylo, he’s been watching him for the past 30 years. Then years later he was after Rey but she went missing. But then Rey pops up and Snoke wants her dead. But wait a minute! Snoke serves Palpatine? So Palpatine is doubling down on Kylo? Palpatine is apparently ok with Rey being killed.

Kylo kills Snoke. Palpatine lets that play out for a year. Then again he reinforces that he’s going to give the throne to Kylo. But then Rey shows up. Oh he never wanted Kylo, he wanted Rey the whole time? No strings attached? Palpatine tried to make Kylo kill Rey before giving him power, whereas he wants Rey to immediately kill him?

So had Palpatine just let Kylo kill him invthe opening minutes, he would have won?

Oh but then there’s this Dyad thing that comes out of nowhere to explain how Palpatine doesn’t need either of them, because he can just drain them!

It’s atrocious IMO.


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Yeah… just reading all of those Palpatine lines from TROS listed above really brings it home. Palpatine just says words in this movie. We’re supposed to gloss over the details and think it’s all nice and logical and villain-like, but none of it actually means much of anything, and even less of it agrees with the other things he said.

 

If Palpatine wanted to pit Rey and Kylo against one another, why doesn't he also tell Rey to fight Kylo, in her dreams, the same way he's done with Kylo his entire life.

Why doesn't he try to seduce his granddaughter to the dark side, so that when she comes to him, she's more willing to kill him and be possessed?

Why when Kylo returns with Rey, he just flicks him into the canyon dead, instead of goading them to killing one another?

Why does Palpatine hatch a 30 year plan, to create Snoke, to trick Ben Solo, to train Kylo, so that he kills Snoke, to rule the FO, so he comes back to Palpatine, so that Palpatine can promise him and Empire he already has, just so that he can have Kylo and Rey face each other - which was going to happen regardless. whether Palpatine was there or not - in an attempt to ... possess the stronger force user. Don't say "revenge because Vader mahwhwhahahahaha". Because that has nothing to do with it.

Why is it that when he finally discovers they're a dyad (because he couldn't figure that out in TLJ, which he claimed thru Snoke to be controlling - does he scrap both 30 year plans and just drains both of them in order to heal, when he could have Sith Transferred himself into one of them, and then become super powerful?

It goes on.

 

No that’s your personal deflection because you are unwilling or unable to engage in new ideas counter to the discarded EU and your own head canon. (On this particular subject.)

And you’re so angry or scared by this you disrespect and disregard any other person who has a vaguely differing opinion. You demean people by calling their interpretations ‘trash’ and calling them ‘stupid’ or ‘sheep’.

I love your posts other places on this forum. Talking about the sequel trilogy brings out your inner Kylo Ren.

The Rule of Two has some giant holes in it being viable long term for the Sith.

The biggest issue for me was generational learning loss. The apprentice would never learn all that the Master knew. So inevitably the Sith would be relearning lost knowledge. Long term that would cause their powers to plateau. It would make the Sith lose ground to the Jedi. Cause the Sith to lose focus of their long term goal.

I’m not even getting into how precarious only having two is. What if the master dies early? Etc, etc.

The Emperor wanted both Luke and Anakin to kill him. He hungers for it. Why would any part of him want that?

That line about Darth Vader being more powerful than Darth Sidious or Master Yoda was a complete head scratcher.

On screen the Emperor displayed other odd behaviors, gestures, voices, and mannerisms that made it seem to me like more than one mind was behind those eyes.

Why were Force Ghosts a new thing for the Jedi? Why were they so important at this time?