Revenge of the Sith *spoilers*

Remove all ads!

Ok, question.

Palpatine force-lingteninged (yes, that's a word!) Luke in the climax of RotJ for just as long - I daresay longer - than he force-lighteninged himself in RotS. So why didn't Luke get all white and pruny? Why did Palpatine end up looking like an albino's scrotum, and Luke walked away without so much as burnt hair? Am I missing something? I can't believe Luke is somehow powerful enough to withstand the full effect of force lightening and Palpatine isn't.

OR - I have another theory. Maybe the force lightening didn't scar Palps at all. Maybe it can't scar force-users at all. Maybe that was his true appearance, warped by the darkside as he was, and he'd been using the force all this time to disguise his features? And that revealing his appearance would be a convincing ruse, so he can serve as a visual reminder of how the Jedi "attacked" him? Eh? Anybody?


Sidenote: Best SP thread in a long time, hands down.

 

I'd like to take a closer look at what little we could see of Palpatine's face when he is in his Darth Sidious guise at various times in Episode I and II. I'm sure he looked pretty ugly under that hood.

Although an official Revenge of the Sith book I was browsing through at the shop had a diagram of Palpatine with an arrow to his face indicating "disfigured by Sith lightning".

 

Come to think of it, the long-running (in the SW novels) theme of "prolonged use of the darkside disfigures you" must be out of sync with the movies. Dooku (who the hell comes up with a name *that* bad and actually uses it in two films?) and Darth Maul looked normal. Okay, so normal's relative with Maul, but still.

Maybe Palps wanted to disfigure himself (for Anakin's benefit), whereas the goal with zapping Luke was just death?

Or maybe we're putting way too much thought into this. Nah.

 

Sorry for the delay, vacationing/wedding planning in Arizona. Ok, you make a great case Beren, and I believe it is supported just as well as mine by the movies. The truth is, it is never spelled out either way. You have to decide for yourself at what instant Palps was faking it or if he was faking it all along or not at all. Personally, I find great satisfaction in believing that just for a couple seconds after being disarmed and while scurrying on all fours in retreat, Palps really thinks he may have screwed up. That this is the end for him. But he keeps his composure and starts hamming it up for Anakin and Mace. However, you make great points. Again, the neat thing is either one of us could be right, in the end, you decide. Death Rabbit, your question about white prunyness of Palps versus no pruyness for Luke has merit. Again, I think more people lean towards a view that Mace was not redirecting lightning back at Palps, merely blocking it, and that Palps' face change is more a process of letting go of his disguise/ the dark side physical properties of Palps finally surfacing for all to see. Harbourboy, the holograms of Palps in episodes I and II are of a normal Palpatine, not a pruny one.

Mon Mothma was not in the film, and the woman at Padme's funeral is her mother. And here is where I find some fault with the prequels. Because both Mon Mothma and Pamde's mother get the raw end of the deal. Padme's mother is in the deleted scenes for AOTC, but can be found on the DVD. We can only hope that the same will be true for Mon Mothma for the ROTS DVD. There were at least two, maybe even three, really good scenes where Padme was sitting down with senators like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma and talking about Rebellion/Alliance type things in the script. It would have been awesome to have those, but they didn't make the cut. While I like the prequels, after seeing all three, even I have to admit they are not as polished and efficient as they could be. One area of needed improvement being the editing out of important stuff such as the conception of the Rebellion occuring alongside the birth of the Empire. Now these scenes would be at that second quarter of the film where there are already a numerous amount of talky scenes, but I say better planning should have been done from the start of TPM to fit all of this in. I think it is safe to say that to a degree Lucas backed himself into a corner by the time of ROTS and didn't get everything in like he originally intended. Otherwise, we'd have better explanation of Padme's family and insight on her character (so people would better understand her relationship with Anakin, and why she believes there is still good in him, yet looses the "will to live", etc.) and a better presentation of Bail Organa and Mon Mothma and the formation of the Rebellion. My suggestion: Lucas should have had rough drafts of all three prequels before filming TPM rather than just treatments and ideas floating around in his head.

Which leads me into another aspect of the prequels that in hindsight, could use some polishing: the secondary villians, specifically Darth Maul, Darth Tyrannus (who? Count Dooku), and General Grievous. I for one think it would be far less confusing and pack a far greater punch with the characters of Dooku and Grievous if they were combined and used in at least AOTC and ROTS. Grievous seems too much of a tack on in ROTS, and just when we're getting to know a little bit about him, he's gone. And we never really get to know a whole lot about Dooku either. It's too bad the characters could not have been merged: quality instead of quantity I say. A few minor things would have to be rearranged of course, but it could have been done. For example, let's just say the character is Darth Grievous (after all that's a cooler name then Dooku), formally known as Count Grievous, a Jedi that was once Qui-Gon's master. Grievous is an insect in AOTC that is severly wounded by Yoda in his duel on Geonosis, forcing him to have bionic parts in ROTS such as he does. Who says Qui-Gon's master had to be a human? There are plenty of alien Jedi. So see, it works. Merging the two would still work and pack a far greater punch character wise I think. Instead of two hardly fleshed out characters that in many ways serve the same purpose, why not have one solid character exhibiting qualities of both. Now there's no way the charasmitic leader of the Confederacy could be quite the coward that Grievous is in ROTS, but surely some minor villian with cowardly traits could be worked somewhere in the prequels to make up for that. And of course it would of been a toss up between having a bad guy for Obi-Wan to kill in ROTS versus having a bad guy for Anakin to kill even though he should have just arrested him. But with some rearranging I think this could have been worked out.

Real quick, about Maul, I think he could have benefited from a few more lines and things to do in TPM, but that is a minor nitpick compared to Dooku and Grievous. In conclusion, just a little rearranging is needed to tighten a few things up here and there. Well, in any case, the prequels are still good, and potentially, anything can be greater than it already is.

I'm still loving SW though. And I saw ROTS for a third time as part of my first digital projection experience. Oh yeah!

 

DR´s post mirrored my own musings. From what I gathered playing KotOR2, you turn into one fugly bastard if you´re a sith lord..

 

A couple things about RotS:

The Clone Wars cartoons give a little more detail into Dooku and Grievous, such as how Grievous got his cough and how Palpatine was captured.

You should rent or buy them when you get a chance, it definitely adds to the movie!

 

Episode VI is on tv; 3 hours back I came out of the cinema talking about Episode III and what a great movie I think it is; also I came out wondering some things like how Obi didn't know Luke had a sister when he was there, or how come he didn't know R2, of course, maybe too much time in that sand planet made him 'forget' some things; anyway, I love to watch almost every little thing in those wide scenes where there are hundreds of ships, so after the scene where Ani and Obi landed the ship (with R2 and Palpatine) and a little before Obi says that the hero is Ani, they are landing in another ship and you can see the Milenarian Falcon landing too, is just 2 seconds...

Episode VI has just ended, nobody has posted yet so I have to edit and make a question: at the end of Episode VI Luke sees Obi, Joda and Anakin; I remember the original version and it was an old man as Anakin, I just saw the 'new' Anakin (Episode III); I know the re-edited version has new added scenes but I can't believe that Episode III's Anakin could be placed here...

[ June 05, 2005, 00:56: Message edited by: Sydax ]

 

Awesome movie...the lightsaber duels had my jaw on the floor the whole time...especially Anakin vs Obi-Wan.

I think I'm seconding a lot of other people's sentiments, that the whole Anakin/Padme relationship, which was so crucial to the plot, as to Anakin turning to the dark side, was done so badly...it ruined a good deal of the effect the movie could have had.

However, easily the best among all three of the newer Star Wars Episodes...hands down.

 

Just saw it the other day. I waited for the crowds to die down. I had to stop myself from opening this thread though.

All I can say is Damn! We all knew how it was going to end but Anakin's fall still affected me. I actually felt sad and betrayed.

A lot has been covered already so I will just mention my general impressions. I loved the movie, lots of action. Acting and dialogue aside, I really enjoyed the movie. It explained most of the questions from the first trilogy. Anakin killing the Younglings made me cringe. That was cold!!!

I heard that Natalie Portman was disappointed that she couldn't do any action scenes since her character was supposed to be pregnant. She was pregnant for the whole nine months. I assume it's the same as humans. The reason she wasn't beautiful was because her pregnancy made her bloated and all the other effects of her infanticipating.

I plan to watch it again. I saw Tarkin the first time and I think I saw the Millenium Falcon as well.

 

Just as Anakin and Obiwan are landing on Coruscant on their shuttle. It's landing at the bottom right hand side of the screen. (After the landing-crashing ship scene)

 

Is it definitely the Falcon? Or just another ship that looks the same (I assume there musty be hundreds of ships in the galaxy with that same design)?

 

Probably wasn't the Falcon, although it was quite old during Episodes 4 to 6. I believe it's just Lucas having some fun. He and his son made cameos. Tarkin and the Death Star did as well.