Marley23: Um, no. The Trade Federation never talks to Palpatine. I think I would have noticed something that blatant. But, the Dark Side does cloud everything…
One thing is, we never ever see Palpatine do anything evil in and of itself, not even look at the camera darkly or laugh menacingly. I think there would be some foreshadowing of this sort, unless Lucas was intentionally trying to keep it out. If Palpatine and Sidious are the same man, then Lucas at least wanted to keep it completely ambiguous on purpose, so as to flummox one side of this argument or the other. I personally think he’ll try to zing the side that says they are the same, because it’s bigger.
Also, we don’t know exactly how much the Jedi’s powers have degraded. I personally think that it would make sense if Sidious knew they were weak enough that he could fool them with one degree of separation from the Senate, but not with zero. The Jedi think that they could catch any Sith controlling the Senate; this is clearly not true. But I would bet they’re still strong enough to know that the guy they’re shaking hands with isn’t a Darth.
Achernar, I guarantee you that they are the same person. There is a twist here that is being foreshadowed, but you’re looking at it from the wrong angle.
Lucas ultimately wants the prequels to be viewed before seeing the original trilogy, not after, so you have to think of it that way. The twist is that Palpatine, a seemingly good, honest politician, is actually the evil Darth Sidious who has been playing everyone for fools since Day 1. Isn’t that “bigger”: that things are not as they seem and the man everyone trusted was really the devil in disguise? How boring it would be for the good guy to really be good and the bad guy bad!
The foreshadowing is everywhere. If you want the most obvious example, check out Qui-Gon’s funeral: after Mace Windu asks Yoda rhetorically whether Maul was the master or apprentice, the camera pans across and settles right on Palpatine. We then cut to a parade where the happy music is actually the Emperor’s theme!
I thought that the camera panning to Palpatine’s profile immediately after Yoda and Mace Windu have their “which Sith was destroyed, master or apprentice?” conversation was fairly blatant foreshadowing, personally. And this particular bit of foreshadowing would make no sense if Palpatine were just Sidious’ pawn- he has to be either the master or the apprentice. Considering that we know Maul was a Sith, and that he was deferent to Sidious, it is logical to conclude that Maul was the apprentice and the survivor, Palpatine, is the master.
According to the novelization of Episode II (as far as I remember it, anyway), the Sith have existed in the master/apprentice form since the Sith War, which would indicate that they’ve long sinced learned how to hide from the Jedi. Considering the millennia that have passed since that particular conflict, I don’t find it at all surprising that two things could eventually happen:
The Sith develop unparalleled mastery of stealth and secrecy through dark side usage.
An incredibly powerful Force-user, of a magnitude rarely seen, joins the Sith.
The combination of the two, I think, could lead to a dark lord of the Sith capable of befuddling a weakened Jedi Council to the point that they don’t even recognize his darkness.
If the stormtroopers are clones of Jango Fett, why do they fight so ineffectively and die in droves whereas the bounty hunter is practically a one man army?
I thought Jedis were supposed to be celibate - why would Anakin be allowed to marry the queen?
Does George Lucas care nothing about acting? In his hands, decent actors like McGregor and Portman deliver the most uninspired and wooden performances of their careers. Not to mention that kid who played Anakin; quite honestly the worst acting I have ever witnessed in a big budget film.
This movie was absolute shit. Even the CGI sucked - bland, unimaginative settings and models that is several calibers below the seamlessness of LOTR.
It’s a staple of the genre and not to be taken literally. The stormtroopers aren’t actually bad shots, it’s just that the genre demands that the heros face incredible odds yet come out unscathed. Think “space western” here.
Which raises an additional question: the first trilogy establishes pretty strongly that strength in the Force is inherited (My father had it. I had it. My sister had it.) By prohibiting Jedi from breeding, aren’t they eliminating strong force users from the gene pool, thereby dooming their entire order?
The only good acting from any of the Star Wars movies was in The Empire Strikes Back, and that’s because Lucas was as far removed from the directing of that one as he’s eveer been.
Now that is stretching things. Heck, what would be the point of cloning yoursef to make a puppet Senator? Its not like the Jedi have noticed anything up to this point!
Possibly. However, Force powers cannot be inherited normally. Remember, all sentient life forms appear to be able to have force powers. For a number of reasons I won’t get into, its truly ludicrous to assume that they were all inherited.
That said, the Force runs strongly in some familes. But great Jedi masters often simply appear at times with no force-sensitive ancestors at all. So the real answer is: Not by Much. Its also evident that the Jedi order changed its doctrine at some point - they were not always celibate.
I’m glad to see someone else noticed the finer points of Hayden’s performance. If any character is supposed to be a little whiny and a little creepy, and occasionally flip out and seriously slaughter people, Anakin is it.
He isn’t supposed to be menacing! At the moment, he really is still a kid. I doubt Hitler looked very mancing as a kid, either. Ironically, the things Lucas made most realistic were the things he got panned for the most. Anakin is a twisted teenager who is really not sure what’s going on. His Dark Side is weak - there are only hints of whats to come, albeit pretty strong ones. darth was not built in a day.
Honestly, had he actually been made menacing, eope would have gone around and yelled at GL for have “Like, a totally unrealistic transformation from that sweet brat to this freaky bastard. I wanted to see everything play out!”
Does everyone and their brother think Anakin and Amidala were supposed to have some sort of fairy-tale romance. They are freakish kids who’ve been stuffed into shoes way to big for them. Of course they’re acting like total gits - thats the point! Anakin knows about as much about mutual love as my PC does.
My favorite explanation: Eventually, the clones will age, and have to be replaced. Since Jango Fett is dead, they will have to clone a clone. And, as everyone knows, a copy of a copy isn’t as good as the original
One man army? Where’d this come from? Let’s see, what did Jango do in this movie…killed his own employee with a poison dart after they had already been dismembered and subdued. Then, he got his ass handed to him by Obi Wan sans lightsaber to the point his 8 year old son had to save him. Then, tried to set Mace on fire, shot at him a number of times, and got his head cut off. All the hype about Jango really led to one hell of a dissapointment. He didn’t do shit, and I’m not suprised that the clone troopers are terrible shots.
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Oh, I agree that Anakin is it. I’m just saying, Hayden did a terrible performance portraying such a person. His whole confession scene that he delivered to Amidala should have been an incredibly powerful moment emotionally. Instead, it just made me want to smack the bastard. Piss poor delivery. The guy’s a terrible actor.
Instead, we get a transformation from an excited little boy who loves to race and fly and build robots to a whinny little punk ass teenager who couldn’t kick his way out of a paper bag because he’d be too busy complaining he was cold and it wasn’t a fair enough test? Darth may not have been built in a day, but there were a good ten years between movies to show a good progression and reasons behind his change. Plus, whinny little bitches don’t get tough and grow up to be the terrors of glaxies…they grow up to be whinny little bitches. From what I gathered from Obi Wan’s talk about him in Episode 4, I always figured that, when the two of them knew each other, Anakin was already in his mid to late 20s, was a great fighter pilot, and a really happy go lucky kind of guy, who eventually went bad. This Anakin is nothing like that.
Yes, I did think they were supposed to have a nice fairy-tale romance. An overall tragic one, but it shouldn’t have started off like the defenseless girl and her abusive boyfriend kinda shotgun marriage. And they’re not freakish kids! We know Amidala has got to be at LEAST 28 years old (say she was 18 in episode 1, ten years later, makes 28), and Anakin’s 18. Sure, he’s still young enough to fall into the trapings of puppy love, but he’s still old enough not to be such a whinny little shit. And honestly, what woman would go for a guy like that? (“She thinks of me as a child…whaaaaaaa!!”)
Overall, Anakin’s character was poorly written and doesn’t give any link to the Dark Lord of the Sith he is supposed to become, and Hayden’s portrayel of him just made it worse.
Lunch time! Now I can give you my own theory on why the Stormtroopers are so much less competant than the original clone troopers.
At some point, either in Episode III or after it, Palpatine will conquer Kamino. Think about it: why would he leave the source of his military might in the hands of freelancers? Perhaps the Kaminoans sabatoge their cloning equipment before they get taken over. Or maybe they Kaminoans are all killed, and it turns out that the Empire doesn’t know how to train soldiers as well as the Kaminoans did. In either case, the result is a new generation of troops that are noticably inferior to the original ones.
My prediction for Ep.III:
since Lucas has said that the entire Star Wars saga is the fall and redemption of Vader, Anakin will not “grow” into the Vader persona. He will be forced there by a tragic circumstance.
Palpatine orders Dooku to kill Amidala. She gives birth first, and the children are taken into hiding. Palpatine then tells Anakin Dooku is after Amidala. Obi-Wan tries to stop Anakin from going after her, they battle, and Anakin loses. This delay prevents him from reaching Amidala in time, and Dooku kills her. Anakin loses control (to an even greater degree than he did after his mother’s death) and kills Dooku, thus completing his journey to the dark side. He blames Obi-Wan for delaying him. He is unaware that his children have safely been born. Obi-wan takes them into hiding.
For Vader to be a tragic hero, he cannot willingly turn to the dark side.
Padme was 14 so its 24-18. A freshman in college dating a fourth year grad student. Odd, but not unthinkable.
JBB the problem with your prediction is that, as I recall, Leia remembers her mother. I suppose this could be an aunt who agreed to play the role, but I would prefer to think that Amidala survives and raises Leia while Luke goes to his uncle. Eh, YMMV.
This is the one question that keeps going around and around and also the one that is the most interesting. I think for dramatic possibilites, they MUST be the same person. Imagine how diabolical and supremely powerful and intelligent one guy would have to be to orchestrate the collapse of a republic that has stood for so long. It would truly show that Palpatine’s power was more cerebral and subtle instead of obvious. If they were revealed to be different, it would just seem like a poor joke–a cop out that would greatly diminish Sideous’ appeal. If he’s the same person, he’s the total badass package–easily the smartest and most powerful dude in the galaxy.
I just watched AoTC again and did clearly see the foreshadowing of the camera focusing in on Palpatine after Windu asks the master/apprentice question. I was like: duh! There’s my answer! The hints were actually all over the place.
Anyone care to explain the story behind midi-chlorians and Anakin? Am I to understand that as a result of midi-chlorians Anakin was conceived through immaculate (sp) conception?
And my next big question is this: I just realized that during a conversation between Maul and Sidious, Maul says “Finally, we will be revealed to the Jedi and seek revenge.” WHAT REVENGE? What did I miss?
By the way: thanks to everyone is contributing to this thread. You’re all giving me great perspective.
JaxBeachBoy , thanks for your interpretation of what is to come. I will co-sign to pretty much everything you said except in Return of the Jedi, Leia says that she has a vague memory of her mother. How does that fit into your prediction?
Wolfian , your age theory is pretty much what I was thinking also.
That’s my recollection as well, and I practically had the thing memorized as a kid, but I can’t find my copy right now. I believe it was in the intro section.
[nitpick]The Immaculate Conception does not refer to the Virgin Mary conceiving Jesus without “knowing man”. It refers to Mary’s own conception, by normal means, but without original sin. The term you’re looking for is “virgin birth”.
But that aside, since Lucas seems willing to forget about midichlorians, I’m willing, too.
