Monroville said:You know, I never thought about it until the recent mock-ups - are those "bridges" supposed to be bridges or supports for the inner elevator tube inside the tower shaft? I guess that's the problem with the shaft around the elevator being unmolested by any sort of gantryway looking things in that without anything connecting the inner tube with the outer tower structure, it wouldn't be very stable.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post a few pages back (its funny how ideas you bring up are brought back up again by other posters), it would be kinda cool to see Palps falling down Mola Ram style, though I have no idea how one could do it other than taking the Mola Ram scene or the Gandalf TWO TOWERS entrance scene and modifying them appropriately.
Or we could just leave it as is.. >:)
As supports they are just as useless as they are if they are bridges, perhaps someone should try replacing the bridges with some other form of support but we don't know what the ring (which contains the walkway Luke defeats Vader on) is made of, it might act as a giant clamp holding the lift shaft in place.
The Star Wars universe is full of bizarre architecture which would defy current engineering skills (how does Cloud City stay up?) but it might look more stable with a bit of support.
My admittedly far from perfect mockup of Palpy falling backward was just a hand drawn (and it shows) silhouette with a few inserts from commercially available models (the face, the clasp, the hand).
If someone made a good model and filmed it either under water or on a strong support and virtually panned away from it to infinity I'd imagine the effect could be quite convincing. Palpatine's face make up is so cartoonish that a blurry model falling (maybe kicking too) could be made to look rather like the old guy.
The Mola Ram shot was terrible by the way (one of the most embarrassing special effects in ILM's portfolio). The Indiana Jones films need the same sort of make over that Ady is doing with Star Wars (not so much Raiders which is near perfect but all the others and especially TOD).
Angel, I can't imagine Palpatine laughing his way to death.
He is evil not insane (though Lucas himself seemed to forget this in the later stages of ROTS) and would see death as a defeat not a transition to a higher realm of existance (like Obi-Wan).