Oh Where Oh Where is the Emperor?

And now...the continuing rant about some of the failings of the greatest movie franchise of all time, Star Wars. I know this is somewhat contradictory. Oh well. I started out by stating that, love it or not, Star Wars has some serious issues as far as plot, quality, and continuity. And I stand by that statement. Today we tackle the case of the missing emperor.
For the True Geeks of the Star Wars Republic it is common knowledge that our creator, George Lucas, had a general outline or plot line or vision of Star Wars in the early or mid-seventies and that, not knowing whether he would have a chance to make anymore than one film, started in the middle of the series. It's also accepted into the canon of Star Wars that our creator pulled bits and pieces from different aspects of the stories into what would become known as "Episode IV: A New Hope." To put it another way: He did some of this on the fly. And he has continued to write and create Star Wars on the fly. The evidence is overwhelming and his own thoughts betray him.




For example, one of his latest mantras is that Star Wars is really, in the end, the story of Anakin Skywalker.




Um, no it isn't.




Because in the first movie, the fourth episode, Anakin, as Vader, is hardly in it. Oh, he (along with Han Solo) steals the show, but clearly, "A New Hope," is not about Anakin. And it's not about his kids. It's not about the Republic Anakin once defended and it's not about the Empire he helped usher into existence. No, ANH is about Luke. It' s Luke's baby all the way and there's really no getting around it. Yes, the spaceships are neato and the canteen scene is really keen (sorry), and as a kid it was cool to see a "walking carpet" who could also navigate interstellar space, but the most famous shot in the entire movie is of Luke, standing and looking longingly at the multiple suns setting on the horizon. In one image Lucas neatly summed up what it means to be growing up, looking out "there" for your life, destiny, future.




Maybe Luke should have been looking for the Emperor.




One of my issues with the entire "fly by the seat of your pants" making of Star Wars is that there are problems with characters coming and going and not coming and not showing up. I've already talked about the complete disappearance of Yoda and Anakin and the Jedi in general from known existence in ANH and "The Empire Strikes Back." But even General Grievous, who apparently slaughtered entire worlds---just kinda, sort of, appears...in "Revenge of the Sith." Just like that. A slaughterer of entire worlds. According to the book, "Labyrinth of Evil" and the novelization of "Revenge of the Sith" (both of which are interesting reads if you are a Star Wars Geek, like myself. Of the two I prefer the "Revenge of the Sith" novel as it fleshes out the characters well and gives a whole extra dimension to the evilness of Palpatine, who was, at one point, supposed to be the focal point of this blog!), entire populations were wiped out by Grievous. Again, this isn't the sort of thing that makes the news out there in Tatooine. The fabled Death Star wipes out one world of peacniks (Alderran) and we're all mightily impressed but poor ol' Grievous kills billions and billions and a whole bunch of Jedi but no one ever recalls him. Nobody. It's a tough galaxy. You can be forgotten very easily. Even if you're the Emperor.



If you have a fabulous memory or still are a collector of Star War cards from back in the day you know that there wasn't ever any mystery as to the true identity of the Emperor. He was listed on a card, in the first set of cards for the movies, as "Emperor Palpatine." So when we met Senator Palpatine in "The Phantom Menace" you knew he wasn't a very nice guy at heart and the only true mysteries were how he was manipulating everything and how he would become disfigured--was he a clone, was he in a battle, bad skin genes, did he smoke a lot? But the biggest mystery of the all--where the Hell was he for the first two films?



In "A New Hope" one of the many white men in charge of the Death Star announces that "The Emperor" has done something like disbanded all the senate and made the regional governors in charge of their...um, regions. And that's it. So long Emperor. It's been good to know ye.



But then! An actual sighting of the Emperor, you know, the man in charge of the entire, umm...galaxy. Yes, in "the Empire Strikes Back" we actually see a "Holo image" of the Emperor, the ruler of the galaxy. (A clever Star Wars Geek really ought to edit some Monty Python dialogue into the film, such as, "You're such a big (emperor). We're all really impressed!")
And not only do we get to see a holo image of the ruler of the galaxy, we get to see it for, oh, sixty seconds! (I'm sure someone will correct me on this: "Dude! You are SUCH a jerk! The Emperor is on screen for ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT SECONDS! DUH!") Of course, the True Geek will know that this is another one of those deals where Lucas keeps changing things. First it was some other guy (actually, it was a woman, with a voice over by a man, and yes, if you know this, you are a True Jedi Geek) who had fish eyes and then the image was replaced by Ian McDiarmind's face which had somewhat less fish eye looking eyes. And the dialogue was changed too. Originally it was the standard "there is a great disturbance in the Force" routine and then blah, blah, blah. And now there's the standard "the offspring of Skywalker" routine and then blah, blah, blah. I really should minimize this stuff as the Over Zealous Geeks have written entire books longer than the Bible on these MINUTES of film and dialogue asking the timeless questions of "What Does This All Mean?" and "Why Do We Live?" and "Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear, Every Time You Are Near?" I'm serious. But our Over Zealous ones are missing the real point, which again, is: Where's The Emperor?

We get to see quite a bit of him in "Return of the Jedi" and that's really good because his scenes on the New and Improved Death Star (I envision the galactic ads screaming, "It's so good it doesn't even have to be finished to be a completely operational battle station!") are intertwined with teddy bears taking on the most feared armed forces in the galaxy, the Imperial Stormtroopers, and winning! Which, if you are a True Geek you know that originally this battle was supposed to feature Wookies rather than Care Bears but Lucas already had Chewbacca piloting a starship and so portraying his kinfolk as being a little backwards would have been a little, umm...backwards. So, in a fit of genius, he made the hulking, seven foot tall wookies into walking teddy bears, which sold roughly eighteen billion toys and helped Lucas to buy all of San Francisco. So, it's--cut from the Teddy Bears of Death to-- The Emperor!

Yay! We found him! We found him!

Actually we found him earlier when he first arrived at the Death Star II amid great pomp and circumstance and found out that Vader is in fact, his lap dog. We don't know why because "Revenge of the Sith" wouldn't be made for another eighty nine years but we do get a real sense of the Emperor's power. We already knew from ESB that he had some serious skin issues but now we see him in full form and find out that he is, like his Jedi counterpart Yoda, wrinkled and bent over and in need of a walker. And this points to what is good and true about Star Wars: Lucas has, with or without knowing it (I think he knew it and did this deliberately), created what I think is a fascinating parallel between the Jedi and Sith by having their "leaders" resemble each other so much. On some level it says, "See, this is what having a lot of power does to you. it corrupts absolutely, and isn't good for your skin or posture!"
We get a lot of "other stuff" in between his entrance and his attempt to seduce Luke into turning to the Darkside, which really is his attempt to get Luke to kill his father, which really is an attempt for Palpatine to secure the Sith's legacy because there is no way Vader is healthy enough to take his place when he's gone, I mean, the dude can't even wield the Force Lightning on account he's "mostly machine" and it wouldn't work with his suit so well. And you can't blame Paply for wanting to see a change at the Vice President level either. Look at how many years he had to endure countless Senate speeches and political maneuvering just so he could start the Clone Wars and take over the galaxy. I mean, you don't want to throw away all of that hard work for nothing!
For me now, twenty five years later, the Emperor's truly menacing presence betrays the Ewoks for being a truly, truly bad idea made worse in the later revisions with music even worse than that played in the original version (which makes me wonder if Lucas has an ipod and, if so, who does he listen to, I assume it must be Captain Beefheart and The Velvet Underground because the dude has some seriously twisted takes on what he construes to be music...).
On the one hand we have the guy who is so scary he makes Darth Vader go doo-doo in his death suit and he's laughing and cackling and throwing a little lightning here and there and watching father and son do the whole Oepidal thing and then--cut to--"an entire legion of (his) best troops" getting the snot knocked out of them by the Teddy Bears From Hell. Oh, it doesn't play well does it? Don't give me the whole, "Well Lucas was trying to show us how the primitive but good natured Ewoks would persevere over the highly advanced but naughty stormtroopers and their lasers and sixty foot tanks." I'm not buying it. If you had fifty machine guns and fifteen cannons and a reasonable amount of ammunition for them you could go back in time a mere two hundred years and take over the world in about one month. Ewoks may be cute and they may be clever but no, they aren't really going to defeat the best troops the Empire has to offer are they? Really? The wookies I would have bought. But not Teddy and the gang.
After seeing "Revenge of the Sith" it's a little disappointing to see Paply get wasted so easily in ROTJ. I mean, Vader just picks him up and throws him, which I can do with my cats but seldom have done to any Sith Lords. But I digress. At least in this instance we can grant Lucas some room for artistic license because Palpy is older, his vision of the future is a little clouded because of all the stuff the Skywalker clan is going through, and if we've learned anything in Star Wars (besides that they don't get the daily paper on Tatooine) we've learned that the Force is strong in a particular family (which makes me wonder if, when growing up, kids in the Star Wars galaxy hurl taunts such as "The Force is weak in your family--hah hah!"). But still, in "Revenge of the Sith," Palps is a force to be reckoned with: He can control the entire Senate (or at least most of it, and frankly, who would want to control the unfortunately named Mon Mothma?) and kill three Jedi Masters in a single bound. And then he can manipulate events so that it looks like Jedi Master Windu is about to commit a heinous act of treason against the Republic and the Jedi Code by killing an unarmed man, gets Anakin to slice Mace's hand off, and then kills himself a fourth Jedi Master...oh what a day, what a day. So this is the same guy who gets picked up and thrown by his apprentice. Oh well. It's a fitting end I suppose. It fits neatly into the up and down nature of the entire series. In one movie Palpatine is killing Jedi left and right and in another he's tossed around like a dead puppy and then in yet another, to paraphrase Bob Dylan,


He's not there.