Info & Ideas: ESB and ROTJ Wishlist — Page 236

rcb said:

on the videos, ady said he wouldn't do any flashbacks, still its a neat idea. I wish there was a way to extend the range of planets at the end. i would've thought george would put kashyke in there.

George Lucas never used flashbacks in any of the SW movies anyway, so to have one in Return of the Jedi would feel incredibly out of place. The Star Wars movies have always had a linear storyline, and it's been that way in all six movies.

darthmunky said:

His skin actually looks real in ROTJ. In ROTS, it looks like he's wearing a rubber mask and has 2 yellow pennies in his eyes.

I agree. The first time I saw a picture of the ROTS makeup, I thought it could have been a fan-made mockup or a make-up test, not the final makeup for the movie ...

Darth Solo said:

The mono colouring shines up like a shiney new penny for the main part of the image (although its not really mono).

Sorry, but I think it looks like "Sky Captain ...". Stylistic, not real. Hues of grey are never perfect grey in real life, we just think of them as being that. I look out the window from where I am sitting right now, and the snowy hillside outside me has hues of blue and magenta where it is reflecting more of the blue sky than direct sunlight.

Everyone knows that snow is white, so we think of it as looking white, when no object (apart from a lamp) actually has any colour of its own - only what colours it is reflecting.

The Emperor's throne room is lit by lamps of various colours, by Endor's atmosphere and by starlight -- stars shine in all hues, not just white.

The blue tint of the set also reflects the general mood in the movie when Luke enters the throne room. Everything the Rebels are doing at this point is going bad: on Endor, in the space battle and on the Death Star.

That is a really good idea!

Darth Lars said:

The blue tint of the set also reflects the general mood in the movie when Luke enters the throne room. Everything the Rebels are doing at this point is going bad: on Endor, in the space battle and on the Death Star.

Subtle lighting im all for. But the 'in your face' colouring of the SE's destroys the scene almost as much as the general mood on Hoth in the DVD's.

darthmunky said:

His skin actually looks real in ROTJ. In ROTS, it looks like he's wearing a rubber mask and has 2 yellow pennies in his eyes.

 that was his actual face, not the eyes, there was just a lot of make up involved.

rcb said:

darthmunky said:

His skin actually looks real in ROTJ. In ROTS, it looks like he's wearing a rubber mask and has 2 yellow pennies in his eyes.

 that was his actual face, not the eyes, there was just a lot of make up involved.

Yeah, I know. Which is why I just don't understand how it can look so fake.

Eyes I was just about to post something along those lines when you beat me to it.

I assumed when I first saw ESB (with the original Emperor) that Palpatine was maybe a non-human and almost certainly really, really ancient.

Come ROTJ he seemed to lose some of that really weird anti-Yoda quality but still looked like a truly ancient human (so old that he would defy even the anti-agapic technology available in a galaxy far far away, that only his will power was keeping him alive).

Doctor Who fans out there may be aware of a story called The Deadly Assassin which not only preempted The Matrix films but depicted the Doctor's arch foe in much the same state as this model of Palpatine in ROTJ (passed the point of regeneration his body is so ancient it's falling apart but his hatred is keeping him together despite his infirmity) :

(Ok so it looks a bit goofy but Peter Pratt does wonders under that mask and it was done a year before ANH on a shoestring budget)

For that to work Palpatine would have to be already very old in Episode One.

If he had been around for a very long time and saw the Republic already beginning to fall apart he may have been seen as a safe pair of hands when the Clone Wars started (like keeping Abraham Lincoln alive until the modern age and assuming that he would be the ideal person to lead America through the Cold War).

The Dark Horse Dark Empire series postulated that using the Darkside drains the vitality out of Palpatine so he has to keep decanting his essence into fresh but fast decaying bodies (another survival technique the Master used in Doctor Who).

The ROTS explanation for Palpatine's appearance was the most daft and pointless.

It seemed that Lucas felt the need to show a wrinkle faced Emperor and a polished perfect ESB Vader at the end of ROTS because that's how the audience recognised them.

We have already scene Vader's suit change in the relatively brief period between ANH and ROTJ so why didn't we see a more primative version of the suit in ROTS?

The same with Palpatine, it could have been expained by showing him using his powers more and more towards the end trying to defeat the remaining Jedi so by the time we see him in ESB the strain of trying to keep his Empire together has resulted in a prematurely really ancient looking mummy of a man when in fact he is just very old (but not that old).

The Halloween mask seemed to be the cue for Ian to throw all the subtlety of his performance so far out of the window with Mace Windu.

He went from this clever puppet master and a joy to watch and listen to a parody of his ROTJ performance (which was more than a little OTT to start with).

In a more general Wishlist I would prefer the ROTJ Emperor to be the culmination of decades of increased decay (much like Tiberius' arc in I Claudius).

Having him just turn into a prune because of a Force Lightning blowback doesn't make any sense on any level.

That would work too, the only way to get that to work would be in an edit of ROTS though.

If you got a preview of Palpatine's true face when he reveals himself to Anakin (just a micro morph...almost subliminal) it could then be that the prune is his true face.

He could drop the mask entirely when Mace tries to arrest him.

Though it does smack a bit of the silliness of Sith eyes.

It also begs the question why can't he maintain the illusion for the duration of ROTS?

Playing the victim card sounds more like something he would have done earlier.

You can understand him dropping it once he no longer has to bother with interaction with the Senate in ANH and he could let his real face out for a stretch when he is on his own.

Like Bram's Dracula it make sense to me that he would want to look his best for the public and not care when he is on his own or surrounded by the faithful.

Poor Angel, I'm always foxing him with my telepathic powers (EyeShotFirst did the same to me this time though).

Back to ROTJ though going on the idea that his looks are down to physical degradation perhaps the Sith eyes thing could be avoided by giving him cataracts which he wouldn't bother to surgically correct because he can use the Force to see with.

I'm sorry ME?

I find my use of acronyms self perplexing sometimes.

Now that I like :-)

As Ady and Darth Editous (and many others) point out these sort of things look great as single still images but doing that sort of thing to a moving image??

Can it be done?

The orange eyes are a bit obviously demonic (pretty much Linda Blair stuff) instead of a natural progressive deterioration (unless as I suggested earlier you factor in liver damage in which case the poor bugger would be jaundiced as well, though that would make the whole eye yellowy orange).

Emperor Palpatine doesn't seem to give a damn about his looks and if Luke can see better with a blast shield down why would he (the Master of the Dark Side) bother to have surgery on his eyes?

Vader trapped inside his mechanical suit as much as sustained by it but Palpatine is pure natural nastiness.

The cataract idea might not go down well with Ady mind as even with the limited colour of his revised ESB hologram you can still see the Sitheye colour.

As for the dark thone room, there will be times when the room is much lighter than it was (if the sun is breaking through one side as in your mockup it will swing around eventually, actually if you timed it right having the sun come around when Vader turns back to the light might add some impact).

Very rough it's early in the morning :

It would as you say give some drama to the saber and Force Lightning and hide some of the flimsy nature of the set.