What caused Palpatine's change of appearance?

hmmm. no.

have you seen episode 1? when he is talking to darth maul outside the balcony and among other scenes? he has the yellow eyes and the parted forhead. he was deformed in ep1. I'll show U some pics if I can find them.

 

Well in the scene you can see the lightning arcing back at his face, but I feel he is knowingly doing this on purpose. He later uses it as proof that the Jedi had tried to assassinate him with their terrible powers, warping his face. Sidious is slicker than slick.

 

I don't recall seeing his eyes at all in that scene. Maul's, but not Sidious'. Is this somewhere in "The Beginning"?

 

ugghh... You cannot see Sidious' eyes or forehead in Episodes 1 when he's hooded.

[image=http://www.cybertronical.com/allsites/starwars/main/characters/darth_sidious/ds.jpg]

 

Yah, this isn't accurate. Look at the skin tone. That's the easiest way to tell that he wasn't deformed until AFTER the Mace confrontation. His skin tone is always normal until then. After, it's very pasty grey.

 

No, you won't, because you can't. We can't see his forehead OR his eyes. We can see the rest of his face, though, which is neither pale nor excessively wrinkled.

The fact of the matter is, Ian McDiarmid wore no makeup for Sidious before ROTS. It's a fact- Sidious looks normal until his battle with Mace. This doesn't discount the possibility that he has an ugly face underneath, but what we are seeing in Episodes 1 and 2 is the same face we see when he's senator/chancellor. The only difference is a hood.

 

I agree.

 

Yes. Even during his first scene in TPM, you can barely make out his entire face in the hologram (even his eye), and he looks just like normal Palpatine.

 

Of course he doesn't show you his face. that's the Genius that is Lucas. He doesn't want to show you his deformity until the end. obviously, he was deformed then, in EP1 and that's why he was hidding his face all the time. come on guys, it's common sense.


I only wish we would have seen more of him in AOTC.

 

No, it's not "common sense," because it's simply untrue. This has nothing to do with theories on his deformity. All sides of the debate have to accept that what we see on film in TPM and AOTC is a normal face.

I'm not trying to push a theory here. If you want to believe that the face in TPM and AOTC is an illusion, that's fine. But what we are seeing, in film, is a normal face. That's not theory, it's fact.

 

merry xmas to you too.

this looks like a normal face to you?

[image=http://www.destinationhollywood.com/movies/starwars/images/phantom_emperor.jpg]

So I've provided the fact that Sidious already looked like that, from the darkside energy around him. he used the force to mask his true identity while being Chancellor Palpatine.
I think that explains it, this is not a theory, and lightining doesn't explain why his teeth turned rotten in a matter of seconds.

 

thanks for clarifying that for me DS, I can always count on you. Lucas hiself has said that... that was his true face...he had been hiding it all along, masking himself to appear a nice old politician.

 

When did he say this? I've heard this said before, but never with a source.

Yes it does.

 

first page. talks about it alot more in depht.

 

The first page is no more enlightening as DarthSapient doesn't mention when or where Lucas confirmed that it was his true face. And Justin Peeler brings up how Pablo (who supports the "it was the lightning" argument that is mentioned in Sidious' and Palpatine's databank entries on the official site) tells people not to take what Ian has said about it being his "true face" too seriously.

Now don't get me wrong. I support the argument that it was his use of dark side power that disfigured his face (as in addition to Ian, McCallum and Knoll have suggested the same thing without speaking ambiguously). But I am still suspicious about any claims that "Lucas confirmed it" as nobody has been able to provide a source. I've also heard people say that "Lucas confirmed it was the lightning;" it just seems made up to me.

So far, I see the break down as such:

In support of the lightning theory - Pablo, the starwars.com behind the scenes feature on the DVD, the official site (though I thought Pablo had a hand in managing the site though? So maybe I shouldn't count the latter two)
In support of dark side use deforming him - John Knoll
Somewhat ambiguous - McDiarmid, the visual dictionary

I tend to give John Knoll's claim the most weight, as he discusses it directly on the DVD and would have worked with Lucas on the scene. But that's just me.

 

well, I know what U mean, but I try to ignore anything that Pablo 0r John have said. It has to come from Lucas himself! And I trust DS with his statements.

saying that, I believe that Lucas used alot of Joseph's campbells Idea about the man with the thousand faces and how some people mask their true identity. Many belive that there are people that under certain circumstances can hide their true facial features. also known as the lizard people.

 

Look at the SKIN TONE. That is the easiest way to tell.

Before:

[image=http://www.cybertronical.com/allsites/starwars/main/characters/darth_sidious/ds.jpg]

After:

[image=http://www.empiremovies.com/images/gallery/revenge-of-the-sith-lg-40.jpg]


I think his fingernails growing a half inch from the lightning is weird, though.

 

Looks perfectly normal to me... other than the fact that it's a hologram.

 

"Because the real Palpatine is the one who bursts forth at a calculated moment in Episode III just after persuading Anakin to kill Mace Windu. That is when the true person comes out, letting the evil fully manifest itself. The Emperor that you see in the last film looks like he does because he's very old and very evil- it is what he always looked like. He just had this carapace of looking like a fairly ordinary guy, a politician that smiled a bit, and so on. I don't think George had made up his mind when we started shooting whether to continually show Lord Sidious as he really is after his initial transformation or if Sidious would go back and forth with his appearance...the nice guy that you saw was revealed later in the monstrous mask as the self, the Sith self." Later he says that, "in Episode 3, it's more like Hyde in the guise of Jekyll".

--Ian McDiarmid, Star Wars Insider #82

 

The lightning is what gave him the wrinkles and the pale skin and wretched fingernails and teeth. He wasn't a "looker" by any means before, but he was acceptable. You don't have to look like a monster to be a Sith. Dooku proves that. Dooku didn't turn into some crazy ass looking orc when he fought Yoda.

 

Disfiguration debate;
From Wookiepedia:

"The attempt on my life has left me scarred and deformed. But, I assure you, my resolve has never been stronger!"
?Palpatine

The frequent use of the dark side took its toll on Palpatine's features. During his fight with Mace Windu, Palpatine's appearance changed as he was hit with his own Force lightning, which was reflected from Windu's lightsaber back at him. Palpatine went from being a handsome middle-aged man to having a sagging face with burning yellow eyes, scarred grayed skin, and long black fingernails. What caused this change of appearance has been the subject of much debate.

One possibility was that his own lightning simply scarred and melted his face, in the same way electricity in the real world damages anything it hits. Though most of the circumstances behind Palpatine's duel with Windu and the other Jedi Masters were not publicly revealed, he did garner sympathy in the Senate by claiming that he had been disfigured when the Jedi attacked him, a claim that was truthful, from a certain point of view. But no other Human hit by Force lightning was physically deformed in the Star Wars movies and Expanded Universe.

"He looks like a walking corpse? Like a mummified body dead a thousand years. Amazing he is still alive, much less the most powerful man in the Galaxy. He isn't even that old; it is more as if something is slowly eating him."
?Prince Xizor

Another theory is that Sidious's deformed appearance was his true face, which had been gradually deformed due to the immense dark energies he wielded (a process that has happened to other devotees of the dark side, though to a lesser extent), and that prior to his fight with Windu he had been using some kind of Sith or other technique (like Force Concealment) in order to cloak his true form and appear normal to others. He may also have had cosmetic surgery which "corrected" his real face, like Seti Ashgad did, who looked many years younger than he actually was. According to this theory, he dropped the guise either because he wanted to look injured and weak to Anakin, or because he lost concentration while fighting Windu, or because he had been using too much energy to continue to maintain it, or just because the lightning melted the mask away, and kept this look in order to frame the Jedi for deforming him. The short story Sithisis supports this theory, depicting Sidious literally masking his face with a Sith ritual. Sithisis could possibly explain Palpatine's younger and healthier appearance in Revenge of the Sith when compared to Attack of the Clones. Additionally, the official Star Wars Role Playing Game published by Wizards of the Coast features a dark side feat aptly titled "Force Mask," in which it alchemically alters the user's features. The mask could be dispelled by another dark side power such as Force lightning, but once it withers away completely the "Force Mask" ability cannot be used again.

It is most likely, though, that both theories are partially true. It makes sense that some of Palpatine's deformities (presumably those that seem characteristic of concentrated burn wounds, such as melted skin and facial indentations) were caused by the lightning itself, while other supposed deformities (presumably those that couldn't possibly be caused by lightning and are known to have been the side effects of intense Force?and particularly dark side?use, such as pale and wrinkled skin, raw eye sockets, yellow eyes, bad teeth and elongated, blackened fingernails) were aspects of Palpatine's true appearance being revealed. Moreover, Sidious's hands (and presumably his entire body) remained unchanged after the disfiguration of his face. The next time he was seen though, he had pale, swollen hands with long, black fingernails.

 

It makes sense that some of Palpatine's deformities (presumably those that seem characteristic of concentrated burn wounds, such as melted skin and facial indentations) were caused by the lightning itself


Not really.

The behind the scenes starwars.com feature on the DVD (which supports the lightning scar theory) suggests that the reason that he becomes scarred is because he is using so much of his energy in a barely controlled fashion (i.e. it's an incredibly potent dose). But that doesn't really make sense to me as the idea that Sidious is giving it his all and melting his face conflicts with the idea that he's faking his weakness. The way I see it, if it was the lightning that did it, then there's a contradiction in the scene. Where as if it was due to the conjured dark side energy used to fuel the lightning, then that's more feasible to me.

Also in the script there is a line that reads something to the effect of "Sidious rises with ease" which emphasizes, in my opinion, that he was not harmed in any serious way.

 

The thing is, the Wookieepedia explanation is unreliable for a single reason: it was intended as a compromise not for the sake of explaining Palpatine's deformity, but for the sake of peace. This issue's been widely debated all over the fandom, and Wookieepedia and Wikipedia both suffered from edit wars over the explanation. The theory as written on Wookieepedia is a compromise made in the absence of a clear victor. That, and aside from Wookieepedia itself, I don't think anyone has actually claimed it was "a little of both."

On the subject of just how damaged Palpatine was, I think there's a bit of sincerity in his act: he wasn't anywhere near as weak as he pretended, but at that point he probably did need to stop for a moment. Either way, it had to at least sting.

 

Wookiepedia is cannon

 

The lightning destroyed him.