Originally posted by: Number20
As for the Emperor's look in ROTS, if you compare how Palpatine looks in AOTC, it looks like they started with the darkside corruption/rapid aging, then decided to shift to the goofy force lighting scarred him. He looks younger in ROTS to me than he did in AOTC. I don't see why they needed to have him get really old really fast for ROTS. Just have him look older still. After all, it was 25 years between ROTS and ESB. And the ESB makeup looks nothing like the ROTJ Emperor anyway. Did Lucas even bother to watch ROTJ before designing the makeup? Maybe that will be the next change. Making ROTJ emperor look like ROTS/ESB emperor.

McDiarmid has said Lucas changed his mind on the nature of Palpatine's disfigurement. That still doesn't explain the AotC/RotS inconsistency though, as they could have just as easily applied the same make up for "normal Palpatine" until he transformed into Sidious. Just because they went the bizzare scarring route didn't mean Palpatine had to look younger at the beginning of the movie. And yes, there's just something not right with the Emperor makeup for a majority of the film. I've come to accept it and it almost doesn't bother me, but it's still just not right. I will however give credit where credit is due as he looks perfect on Mustafar and during Vader's birth. But then I get mad again because if they could get it right then why couldn't they get it right the rest of the movie?