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

I had no reason to think he was hiding his true face. I had no idea how old the character was supposed to be. I just kind of assumed 60-70, and add a couple decades onto that and I just assumed Palpatine in the OT was just what you get when you're 80-90 years old and consumed by the Dark Side.

Then in AOTC, there were some efforts to use subtle makeup to make him look slightly sickly looking. I know the Genndy Tartakovsky series definitely accentuated the redness under his eyes and the liver spots on his forehead. I think there was a publicity photo of Ian done for a magazine cover where he's looking especially aged vs TPM. So, still as of 2002, I was expecting to see Palpatine slowly degrade across the PT in such a way that it would just make sense for him to look the way he does in the OT, if you extrapolated that degradation forward a couple decades.

Then in ROTS, Palpatine looks normal, his complexion looks healthier than it did in AOTC. The liver spots are inexplicably gone. Instead, we get Palpatine suddenly in a single scene go from normal looking to the familiar OT Emperor.

The novelization was already out I think, and I think there were people leaking scans from the visual dictionary. And it seemed like the explanations were contradicting each other. That his face melted by the lightning, or that "the mask becomes the man." I know there was some attempt to reconcile the two by saying that the lightning brought his inner evil to the surface and that without the lightning, he never would have looked like that. Some people would point out that his fingernails grew which doesn't make sense if it's scarring.

I mean as late as 2015-2016 I asked Pablo Hidalgo on Twitter, if there was ever a canonical explanation, and he responded saying that George himself had given contradictory answers. Pablo also stated that in his opinion, he thought it was better to leave it mysterious and didn't want it to be concretely answered. But I feel like RoS did finally give a concrete answer 20 years later on screen. Since his absorption of the Dyad's power, restores him to his ugly self.

 

I think if he'd absorbed more of the power he'd have ended up looking more like Ian.

Actually, the problem was that they changed ideas midstream about how to age him. But whatever the behind the scenes whoop-de-doo was, functionally the appearance changes are the result of injury. This is seen when Rey hits him with his own lightning at the end of TROS. What happens? This time it's so damaging he's DEAD. And his whole head comes apart.

I solved for this in my fics by theorizing that he has autoimmune diseases that wax and wane that the dark side exacerbates. So, when he works more heavily with the dark side, it may make him look worse for a bit.

 

LOL Exactly!!!! Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the world of George Lucas!!

YUP!!!

He literally healed his fingers and regenerated his legs but to heal his “supposedly scarred face” ….nope that’s impossible. LOL

It’s because that is his true face.

Pure logic when Luke didn’t become scarred and Palpatine not getting any medical attention from that drastic of a change in appearance if that was truly life changing INJURY to the face.

 

Um ... nobody is born with a face like that.

Also, there are scars and disfigurements that medical science can only fix imperfectly or not at all. See: neurofibromatosis.

 

Practicing DVM here. A few candidates: Cutis laxa, here; proteus syndrome, neurofibromatosis. Not autoimmune, but could be lightning-induced. Please note that the truly horrible physical appearance didn't happen until the Mace Windu battle. Also the fact that Sidious was older and had been using the dark side for years; Luke was younger and had not, and was only exposed to the lightning a short time. No doubt Sidious had been hit by it before as a Sith apprentice.

"In contrast, acquired cutis laxa often has a triggering event such as urticaria, drugs (such as penicillin) or neoplasms.[15] Acquired cutis laxa may also be immunologically mediated, as it can involve dermal deposit of immunoglobulins and it can occur with autoimmune diseases.[5] Acquired cutis laxa has been associated with granular immunoglobulin A deposits as well as abundant neutrophils.[5] One hypothesis for the cause is excessive elastase release from neutrophils and macrophages.[15] It has also been considered that mutations in elastin (ELN) and fibulin-5 (FBLN5) genes can increase susceptibility of elastic fibres to inflammatory degradation in acquired cutis laxa.[15]

Acquired cutis laxa has also been seen in conjunction with a number of conditions including: rheumatoid arthritis,[16] systemic lupus erythematosus,[17] celiac disease,[5] and monoclonal gammopathies.[18] It can also occur as a postinflammatory response after urticaria.[19] Urticarial skin fibroblasts have shown a 2- to 3- fold increase in elastase activity in a patient with acquired cutis laxa.[20]"
This latter is off of Wikipedia.

Thanks for spurring me to look for this; I had been meaning to for a while.

 

Never said he was born like that BUT Palpatine’s history is unknown so maybe.

And there are people born like that in this reality not exactly like the way Palpatine looked but look aged I forgot the name of the condition. But in SW reality where aliens exists then it’s more likely compared to our known world.

As for the medical attention I was referring to…..I wasn’t talking about Palpatine having surgery for vanity reasons…I’m talking about….NOBODY in real life or in any MOVIE situations….that have a character getting “injured” like that without asking for any medical attention let alone NOT ACKNOWLEDGING his new face UNLESS it’s a REVEALED or Unmasking on his true face.

That’s like you talking to someone then someone came in and burned your face and after your family kill or subdue your attacker…you stand up and carry on your conversation like nothing has happened to your face. It will be ODD for everyone UNLESS that was your true face unmasked.

Physically that doesn’t even make sense. Legs are the biggest part of the body…if it regenerates the whole legs the face should have been automatic.

And let’s just say, Palpatine consciously can control which can heal first….surely he should want to heal his “scarred” face.

And again that doesn’t look like a scar at all. More like he aged rapidly. A true injury to the face is random like what happened to Vader when his faces burned. Palpatine has symmetrical wrinkles not consistent with random injuries.

And you can’t have Luke looking perfectly after intense lightning to the face while having Palpatine not having the same results.

 

This is a clone body of Palpatine that Palpatine’s spirit inhabited after the events of RotJ. It has never been hit by Force lightning. He lacks the “prune face” that we are familiar with Emperor Palpatine having. He just looks more like Ian McDiarmid as a zombie. His body is breaking down due to its inability to withstand his power.




This is Palpatine after absorbing the power of the Dyad to restore “the one true Emperor.” Note that his face is “scarred and deformed” now.

Why would draining the Dyad to heal his body give him Force lightning scars on a clone body that had never been hit by lightning up to that point?

That just seems to be what Palpatine looks like when drawing upon the full power of the Dark Side.


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BINGO!!

But to be fair. We really can’t see Palpatine’s whole face before the Dyad absorption. Like his forehead is covered not seeing his wrinkles but most likely your right that before the Dyad absorption he doesn’t have that wrinkly appearance.

 

Oh wow I hadn't noticed that before.
Before the duel:

Right after the lightning (length most visible on index finger):

That and the yellow eyes are not things someone can get from an injury.

He doesn't necessarily have to be born like that for it to be his "natural" look. He could be, say, 200 years old (kept alive by the dark side), and that's just how he looks at that point.
Alternatively, he's not human and he was actually born with wrinkles. I have seen some fanart of baby Sidious with wrinkles lol, like this and this (the 10th photo).

 

You can get a decent look at the makeup artist working on his hands here around 4:10. It looks like his left thumb nail is broken and his remaining nails seem sharper.




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Actually, there really is a medical condition that can turn your eyes yellow or orange. It's called uveitis and can arise from many conditions, or be idiopathic. I actually see several cases a year and it does cause some funky-looking irises.

Back in the days of the Dark Empire comics, which presaged this storyline by a great many years, all Palpatine's clone bodies aged rapidly to look like ROJ Palpatine. I would imagine the dark side beats up his body pretty badly. He's the greatest Sith who ever lived, so I guess he's taking quite a beating.

 

My initial post was simply in response to the OP. Now that I’m getting brought up to speed, am I correct that this argument- that has existed in some form or another since 2005 - has now evolved into;

1. It’s Sidious’ true face

Or

2. Palpatine has an autoimmune disease and the use of Force lightning has given him uveitis, as well as cutis laxa, possibly as the result of triggering his Crohn’s disease?




I change my answer. I want to go with #2


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Funny thread. Anyway, I don't know how Palpatine can be 200 years old, because:

1.) and I'm aware the old Legends books have been retconned away, BUT in Luceno's books, Palpatine was born and lived ... a real person, about the age of 52 when first elected Chancellor (and don't think I'm thrilled about this, because long before the Luceno books I had a Palpy backstory in a fan fic.)
2.) The entire reasoning behind Palpatine's cruelty and his takeover of the galaxy is, he's afraid of death. Now, if he can already exist 200 years and he's still around ... I guess he's not afraid of dying, right??

 

Honestly, based on the movies alone we don’t even know whether Darth Sidious really was born on Naboo. The Sith could’ve infiltrated their society and faked the Palpatine identity long ago. They needed Naboo specifically for their plans. And, with its being a world that was part of the Republic, wouldn’t the Jedi have known of anyone born there who was strong with the Force per TPM? That suggests he may have been born elsewhere, and his true origins could be a complete mystery.

This doesn’t necessarily means he’s ancient, though. I believe Lucas’s official explanation is that the “Emperor” look is a deformity or mutation caused by excessive use of the dark side. But rather than this excessive use being something that gradually happened, ROTS suggests it was specifically what he did during the duel with Windu that pushed his body to those extremes and changed his appearance.

If we go beyond the Lucas movies, TROS does introduce the events of Exegol mentioned above. I agree that you could read that as the director suggesting Sidious is ancient. But you could also interpret it more along the lines of what happened in ROTS. In other words, that this is what happens when the dark side of the Force is fully channeled through the body of a skilled enough Force-wielder. It’s what Sidious looks like when he can wield the dark side to his full potential, without having to hide from the Jedi in the prequels or after healing his clone body’s physical limitations in the sequels.

 

All we have is Luceno, and that can be crossed out and rewritten at any time.

 

Which, according to LFL story group member Pablo Hidalgo during a 2016 panel, is not what Lucas had in mind for Palpatine’s and Plagueis’s backstories. He didn’t specify what Lucas did have in mind, but he said the book wasn’t brought into canon because several aspects of it would contradict whatever Lucas had planned. Which, at least back then, LFL still intended to respect, regardless of whether they made a new story with it or not.

 

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Darth_Plagueis#Behind_the_scenes

“Although Legends works show that Plagueis had power over life and death, Lucas himself stated Palpatine's tale about Plagueis' abilities was a lie.”

The source cited is:

Duncan, Paul. The Star Wars Archives: Episodes I–III, 1999–2005. Taschen, 2020

Which makes it sound like at that time at least, George had no intention of the Sith having the ability to cheat death be real.

But in the wake of his sale to Disney, the ability to cheat death became an obviously major element for RoS, now being fleshed out further in Bad Batch. I think it’s fair to say that in George’s mind, Palpatine was not ancient. And according to Pablo, George was inconsistent in why he looked the way he does, offering the explanation of scarring and of it being his true face as mutually exclusive.

But now, Palpatine’s face seems to be his “real” face, he has the capacity to cheat death, and his age is up for grabs in the absence of any canonical backstory for him.


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Well Ian did mention WAY before the prequels and during ROTJ…he said GL told him that he looked like that because he is very old and the toll the Dark Side has done to him. But that was way back in the 80s when he recollected that story.

 

Bleah.

Personally, I get more out of Star Wars when it isn't about ancient demons and silly impossible things, but people.

I'll stick with fan fic. Pretty sure I DarthIshtar and I can write a better Palpatine than any of the "pros."

 

I haven't actually read any of the books. I go by movie-only canon, nothing supplemental, not even Lucas quotes.

There's a difference between long life and infinite life. "Long" life is relative. From a fly's perspective, humans live extremely long lives, but most humans are still afraid of dying even after living for decades. Sidious might have lived for centuries, but that doesn't mean he will live forever or that he has lived long enough already and is cool with dying.

I do assume he would prefer to live longer if possible, but what does that have to do with taking over the galaxy? How does ruling an empire increase longevity?

That's a good point, the Jedi never discovered him as a young child. Either he wasn't in the Republic, or he was but was already hidden from the Jedi at that young age.

The world of Star Wars has a lot of non-human entities though. I personally like the idea of some symmetry between the Jedi and Sith. One aspect is that the top Jedi (Yoda) and top Sith (Sidious) are both very old, very knowledgeable, and very powerful.

 

The theory is that the suffering of beings flows more and more power to the dark side. Sidious commands the dark side, therefore he is the recipient of all that power. The theory is that one must be extremely powerful to cheat death, so he needs all that power because he's terrified of dying.

 

That's an interesting theory. Was it from one of the novels or is it fan speculation?

 

There may be more support for it in the Plagueis novel, which I have not read. But I see a lot of fan speculation about this, fueled by Palpatine lines in the films.

 

OK, so I just watched TROS one more time. Thoughts on why Palpatine doesn't end up looking like his ROTS self pre-Mace when he leaches off the Ray/Ren bond: Because he pulls all the power he can off of them without killing them. If you will notice, they look about dead by the time he's his post-Windu self. If he pulled any more off, he'd kill them both, and you can't draw from dead people (that I know of.) Rey is near death once he stops pulling from them and she doesn't revive until she calls on all the prior Jedi for help.

Palpatine doesn't go all the way back to Galaxies Opera Palpatine because he can't. It takes more than they've got. I'm sure that if he could have he'd have let them "recharge" and then leached some more. He wants to live forever and be healthy; why wouldn't he?