PT When you first saw TPM, did you think Sidious/Palpatine was hiding his true face?

I think Lucas intended Palpatine to gradually become the face of pure evil.

look



the image on the left is taken from SW Insider magazine #53 for AOTC

When ROTS came out I was shocked at how much younger Palps looks



AOTC


ROTS

I imagine that having Palpatine be a bit more gnarled by ROTS would have drawn to much attention to itself that other characters would insist Palps see a doctor or at least retire. So Lucas went the other direction.
Evidently, a more ambiguous one

 

Indeed. In AotC the intention was to show that Palpatine was starting to become the figure we were familiar with from the original films. But when making RotS, Lucas decided to abandon the makeup that made him look older. Instead he decided on making his look the product of his confrontation with Mace Windu.

But we’ve also heard in interviews, I think with McDiarmid, that during the filming of RotS, Lucas considered the idea of making Sidious switch between his Sith face and his normal face. It’s not clear whether this would’ve only happened only after he was deformed or if it would’ve suggested the mask theory. Lucas evidently didn’t go down that direction, but it’s still true that he considered it.

 

That whole confrontation with Mace Windu went through so many variations, even whilst filming (Anakin was supposed to be present the entire time, and lend Palpatine his lightsaber for the duel) so I'm guessing that many of its early versions didn't include the "...and then the lightning gets reflected back, and it melts his face" part and that, as a concept to explain the transformation, it was added later, either during reshoots or via CGI (as the Palpatine we see getting melted is a digital double).

Regardless, I do think that Palpatine was always supposed to "drop the act" during or after that scene, though.

 

So I wonder if the Clawdite was introduced in AOTC to introduce us to the idea of shape-changing, if Lucas at that point was thinking that he'd have Palps have a shape-shifting ability revealed in ROTS ... ?

 

I actually can't remember what exactly I thought before seeing ROTS, probably because I watched the movies relatively close together so there wasn't much time for theories to sink in before I watched the next movie and readjusted my interpretations. I watched in Machete Order, and I *think* this is how I interpreted things at each stage:

ESB: He didn't look very human, not just the unnatural looking wrinkles but also the glowing eyes. Plus the fact that he only appeared on hologram added to the eerie feel. I think my mom even suspected he was a ghost or something. I probably thought he's a different species and that the weird wrinkles are normal for them.
TPM: Didn't realize Palpatine is Sidious.
AOTC (beginning): Yeah he aged a bit since TPM, totally normal aging though, nothing like what we see in ESB
AOTC (ending): Holy moly what happened?! I'm talking about this scene here (sorry I'm going to steal Dandelo's screenshot):
Not much time has passed during this episode, so it's a very big change to happen in a short time frame. It seemed creepy and unnatural to me. He seemed to be on his way to slowly transition into what we see in ESB. I can't remember what I thought was the most likely explanation though. I think I felt that the ESB version was his true face and the human looking one is some sort of Force-mask, and now that the dark side is getting stronger (the Jedi were able to sense a massive shift in the Force during AOTC), the mask was slowly falling apart and the real appearance was leaking out. I don't know if I thought it was intentional on Sidious's part, or if the dark side was too great to conceal.
ROTS (beginning): Back to normal? Ok never mind... lets see what happens
ROTS (during face change but before he screams "Power!"): Exhausting his energy thus turning old?
ROTS (after he screams "Power!"): Yeah it was a mask, deliberately removed at the right time as part of his act.

As for why he doesn't switch back and forth, I guess maybe it takes a lot of Force energy to do each switch? So just unnecessary to waste the effort, he's staying in one spot anyways so hood covering face in hologram is all he needs. He could've lowered/covered his head even more if he was worried they would recognize who he was, but he felt it was unnecessary.

 

It would make no sense for Sidious to hide his assumed Sith face from his apprentices Maul and Dooku, remember Lucas also directed the Clone Wars and Sidious's face was just normal while talking to Dooku in the Clone Wars as well not in AotC only.

Whats the purpose of hiding his assumed Sith face from Maul? It should be the opposite, he should've used his Sith face not Palpatine when he is with Maul if he wanted to hide his Palpatine persona but he didn't.

So the logical assumption is Windu scarred Palpatine just like Obi-Wan scarred Vader.

 

I didn’t think he was hiding it I just figured something was going to happen to account for the change.

 

Thought he would age throughout the prequels. But back then, I did not expect him to look like he did in ROTS, at the end of the prequels.

Think it would have been better if the way he looked like in ROTJ wasn't spoilt by ROTS.

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I remember before Ep 1 existed thinking he was horribly aged and distorted from the Dark Side. When I saw him in Ep 1, I figured he wasn’t ‘that bad’ yet. Ep 3 solved what I was wondering lol.

I appreciate how the same actor was used! So cool to see him before he was hideous! Haha!

 

My impression for TPM was initially one of "not that evil yet, will get worse" along the lines given above.
I think two different realities run in parallel with the end result being Palpatine's appearance in the OT. Firstly, there is the gradual decline/ageing of Palpatine's appearance because of the Dark Side, which the PT details in a progression from episodes I through III. Then the major scarring from Windu's deflection of his lightning in ROTS.

An interesting insight is that the appearance of Palpatine enables you to speculate how far he hid his persona both ways, not just from the Republic and Jedi, but also from Maul. Dooku of course knew the whole plan, except the fact that he wasn't intended to survive it.

 

Well Luke was scarred and his whole body became pale while his voice also changed when the Emperor bombarded him with lightning for a long period of time.

Oh wait…That didn’t happen.

Well of course the moment Palpatine was scarred, he immediately asked for medical attention ….surely a drastic change like that would need a response either from him or Anakin about that scarred appearance.

Oh wait..that didn’t happen either. They just went along with business like nothing happened to his appearance.

So the logical assumption is that is his true ancient face caused by his vast usage of the Dark Side unmasking himself to prove to the public of the Jedi assassination attempt on him.

Those doesn’t even look like scars…scars are uneven and chaotic…not symmetrical wrinkles. If lightning scars then Palpatine would look like a burn victim instead of ancient old man with pale face.

TROS validated this when Rey and Kylo shows they can heal wounds back to normal. And when Palpatine absorbed their essence healing ALL his wounds to his prime he reverted back to his Phantom Menace face.

Oh wait…that didn’t happen either. He healed all his wounds but his face looked like the same ROTS ancient and pale face.

So the logical assumption is that is his true face.

 

you make good logical points, unlike in the Mace Vs Windu thread

and on the whole I would agree that it would seem its his 'true face'

only....that doesn't make much logical sense either.

Unless all Sith lords mask their true face,

I think I would accept him being forced drained from using so much dark-side energy than I would "true face"
but that doesn't make much sense either.

At the end of the day Lucas did that whole scene the way he did, and we have to accept people have different views on the matter. Including whether it was one of the most badly thought out sequences -from Windu coming to arrest him to Anakin's turn- in the whole nine movies of the saga. (And in my opinion it was...) Lucas was capable of far, far better

 

We’ve seen other examples of less extreme dark side corruption in the EU. Palpatine is just an exceedingly old and powerful Sith Lord who is more thoroughly changed by the dark side than the others we see in the movies. In return of the Jedi concept art there was an idea that he was undergoing a mutation that was splitting his brain apart.

 

Fair enough.

But correct me if I’m wrong…but in all the movies I have seen when a character has gone through some kind of injury or scarring there’s medical attention involved or some explanation afterwards. Maybe there is a movie out there but I just can’t think of one right now.

Vader was sent to a medical lab.

Joker to a doctor with bandages.

Two-Face also to the hospital with bandages.

Palpatine however with that drastic change ..not one mention (instead of course in the senate forum where he was framing the Jedi) and no bandages at all…surely if that was scarred injury …it has to be treated asap.

But that change is more like Banner turning into the Hulk or when in the JL cartoon when Felix Faust blasted Hades which then revealed Hades’ true face.

 

yup, you would be correct that if it was damage directly caused by the lightning itself, it is extremely odd that he didn't seem all that bothered by it. Or wanted immediate medical attention,
I suppose a slight argument could be made that Luke was perfectly fine and immediately got up after being zapped by it, but as you say there was no scarring on him,
so, it's one of those things you just have to shrug at and go "whatever...head canon it"

 

I thought it would change over time.

 

Yes, I can see why Lucas changed his mind on this, though. I think he basically imagined Sidious using his mask power to make himself a bit more handsome in ROTS. Or, ya know, there's space Botox/plastic surgery. Gotta throw it out there. But however you look at it, Sidious lost this and his true self was revealed. His own lightning melted the mask away. Magic and the Force don't mix well. That's just my way of looking at it.

 

Not gonna lie, though. I think that his AOTC look is, in a way, his best non-deformed look. I felt that that was him trying to feign himself as a feeble old man who got pushed into things by the Senate. And all he needed to do was to fool Anakin and a few people. He didn't need to fool everyone. He got Jar Jar to do his dirty work for him, and how easy was that? Pretty simple. Padme gave Palpy a gift: Jar Jar the easily swayed.

 

Do you think there's a separate magic power in the GFFA other than the Force?

 

I tend to think that magic is loosely connected to the Force. I go by the old EU on this issue. I think of the magic of the Nightsisters, and the magic utilized by Darth Zannah and other practitioners in those stories. Big fan of Zannah.

The new expanded material also shows magic used by their version of the Nightsisters. Not sure if they've shown any new form of magic deployed by Jedi or Sith, but I doubt it. Wouldn't claim to be an expert of the new material outside of the television shows or the comics.

 

I wonder if any moviegoers suspected Valorum could’ve been Darth Sidious in TPM. It doesn’t really make sense, because Sidious is surprised and angered that the Chancellor sent Jedi diplomats to Naboo. But nonetheless, there’s definitely something slightly ominous about Valorum, and perhaps that was part of the point, considering he played an iconic villain in American cinema. Maybe the audience is supposed to wonder whether it might be him who is the secret villain.

 

Interesting thought! I remember rumors and theories of Palpatine only turning to the dark side over the course of the PT, when TPM was released.

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My assumption was that his deformed face in Jedi was his real face and through the dark side or his species that he was able to change his appearance to look 'normal' for all intents and purposes as a senator.