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Do you consider Palpatine/The Emperor a legitimately good character? If so, in what way?
- Thread starter Veelk
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Star Wars villains are almost invariably mustache twirling carton cutouts. I'm hard pressed to think of any villain that was remotely interesting or had any depth to him (Kylo Ren, maybe?).
Man, i love your posts. I'm so happy you're here on ERA, when the meltdown on Gaf happened i thought you wouldn't come.
On topic, i agree completely, actually never really analyzed it that way. FMA has such an amazing cast that it was kinda easy for me to not consider Father that much, never really thought about the symbolism on him expelling his flaws as the homunculi.
He's funny and Sheev is amazing, but he's still a Mac Guffin.
Like, I saw Snoke's destiny as soon as he was presented, it's literally incredible how people expected some crazy character story. These are intentional cliché characters.
Like, I saw Snoke's destiny as soon as he was presented, it's literally incredible how people expected some crazy character story. These are intentional cliché characters.
Why?
You're looking for some complex answer when the reality is quite simple, people enjoy a villain that is truly villainous. One they can really hate and want to see the hero conquer. You may enjoy TKJ version of The Joker as he tries in his own twisted and tortured way to connect to Batman, but many prefer Ledger's Joker who has no backstory and is just a force of nature, an Agent of Chaos. Ledger's Joker acts as the perfect foil to Batman. He's just that, an Agent of Chaos, the polar opposite to Batman's need for order and control. He isn't complex. He has no sympathy. Yet, he's extremely effective as a villain/antagonist and that resonates well with audiences. A "simple" villain can work wonders, especially when they are boiled down to the very force/concept the hero is trying to defeat.
I'd argue that a number of villains are hampered by attempting to add "complexity" to them. The Emperor is a satisfying antagonist as he serves as an embodiment of evil, ultimate power, and control. The very thing are heroes are fighting against as a Free Republic. Meanwhile, I'd argue that Thanos is ineffective as some great villain by forcing some nonsensical motive of population control on him. What does that add to his character? How does that challenge our heroes we've followed for 20 something films? Never before Infinity War did our heroes face the subject of population control. Never was it a theme to fight against. Yet, here comes the Mad Titan railing against unchecked population growth and finite resources. We're meant to sympathize with him as he must, with strained tears, enact his plan to save life in the galaxy by sacrificing half of us. We should feel some agony as he must sacrifice his own daughter in service of his believed righteous cause.
Of course, it's all nonsense. His motive is utterly nonsensical and not something ever mentioned nor witnessed before in the MCU. Thus, our heroes must push back against a villain whose motives they cannot understand, in a conflict that is ultimately never resolved. Thanos would've been far more effective he'd just been an evil dude enjoying wanting to rule the entire galaxy. At least there he'd exist as a concept our heroes have faced off against, pure authoritarianism and ego.
There was a Plagueis novel that despite the title was more about Sheev, but it was from the old EU and frankly, IMO it wasn't that good.
I think Palpatine's objectives and motives are pretty clear. Destroying the Jedi from within, which had been the long-term goal of Sith since ancient times of that Universe. Palpatine simply was around at the right time to do it.
Anything he did while the "Emperor" was to feed his own narcissistic ego and to brainwash a galaxy of citizens using tactics from what we would know of as Imperialism and False Flag terror to keep citizens in constant fear. "Democracy Bad" "War and Imperialism Good, anyone who is against us is a terrorist".
Anything he did while the "Emperor" was to feed his own narcissistic ego and to brainwash a galaxy of citizens using tactics from what we would know of as Imperialism and False Flag terror to keep citizens in constant fear. "Democracy Bad" "War and Imperialism Good, anyone who is against us is a terrorist".
This is quite an outlier opinion - most people thought the Plagueis novel was one of the later EU's high points!
He's what he needs to be: a villain who is fun to watch on-screen. Sometimes you don't need more than that. The complex villain character work has been left to Vader and Kylo.
Viewing the PT as a comedy makes it watchable...mostly. PT Emperor, in that context, is one of the best characters. He's hilarious, and he really enjoys his job.
OT Emperor is a good character in a different way. You have Vader bowing to this person. That tells you a lot, without much screen time. Then in ROTJ you get that sarcastic evil that they went so over the top with later on, but it has a purpose. Trying to piss Luke enough to turn him.
And how do you know it wasn't just a pillow fight gone wrong? Accidents happen.
OT Emperor is a good character in a different way. You have Vader bowing to this person. That tells you a lot, without much screen time. Then in ROTJ you get that sarcastic evil that they went so over the top with later on, but it has a purpose. Trying to piss Luke enough to turn him.
And how do you know it wasn't just a pillow fight gone wrong? Accidents happen.
The only consistently written thing in the PT, and the only thing from the PT that I honestly think is better than the OT's iteration. Hammy thousand iq politician > typical evil wizard
Just because he lacks depth doesnt disqualify him from being a great character. He's an evil asshole but an effective one that brings character out of the ones he antagonizes. Theres a reason Hayden's best scenes are with Palpatine, both due to Mcdiarmid and the emperor's role in the story
He brought down the bureaucrats and brought power back to the people by subjugating them. He is a renaissance man.
But wasn't Ledger's Joker trying to prove a point to Batman? That's why he set up that boat stuff, and what happened with Harvey. It's far from just a "force of nature", or just chaos.
I also feel Thanos benefits from all his characterization and motives, it's easier to disconnect from characters when they are nonsensically evil just for the sake of it. Besides from psychopaths, those people rarely exist in the real world. That's why morally grey villains feel more ambitious and better as characters to me. Less cartoonish.
OP
OP
Thank you <3
Well, I have a few things here, but I think you retorted against yourself in regards to your first point to asking about why "A lot of people just like them" isn't enough of a reason. Lots and lots of people like the example you give, Thanos, so if that's the only criteria to be met, then everything you mentioned about why he doesn't work as a villain doesn't track: People like him, people like his reasonable man mannerisms and quiet manpain as he performs atrocities, and that's the end of that. That's not enough of a reason for me, or you, or anyone else. Anybody can be made to simply react to something. If you show me a video of a kitten playing with a ball, I'm probably gonna go "aw" and be filled with warm emotions, but that doesn't mean the kitten is a character, it's just....doing things out animal instincts and we have a visceral reaction to that. The same is with negative things. Showing you a video of someone kicking a puppy will evoke a visceral, hateful reaction from most people. It's neither hard to accomplish nor is it deep. There needs to be something more to it than shallow affective reactivity and there needs to be more justification than simple popularity.
That said, I think your interpreting my statement that a character ought to be humanized to mean that they have to have a sympathetic quality to them, and that's not necessarily what I'm getting at. Certainly sympathy is one route to take and one of the most common ways of doing it, but what I'm talking is maybe better described as a....idk, maybe a vulnerability? A psychological grounding? Maybe it's better if I just tackle your examples and say what I see as this humanizing element, because I actually think both examples you gave have it.
With Ledger's Joker, almost everything you see him do throughout the movie is a non-chalant lie on some level. He is introduced to us not just robbing a bank, but lying to his partners to get them to kill each other so he could kill them and take the money. And for the most part, he doesn't get ruffled at anything happening, whether he's threatened by gang members or if his party is interupted by batman. When asked about his motivations, he always gives an answer that he contradicts later. Not just his scar stories, but when he talks to the crime lords at the start of the movie, he says "If your good at something, never do it for free." only to burn a pile of cash with the words "it's not about money, it's about sending a message." So whats the one thing that the Joker shows consistency in? Being called crazy. He gets mad at the drug lords when they say he's crazy, he gets extra feral when the tried up fake batman calls him that, and his entire climax is about validating his belief to Batman that, when the chips are down, people will eat each other. The emotions that play out on his face when he sees that the two boats aren't going to blow each other up is interesting because there's shock, confusion, and maybe even a little bit of fear.
This is because the one thing that the Joker values is this idea that he's got society figured out. He knows what people are really like and he uses that understanding that everyone around him seems to lack to both motivate and justify the atrocities he makes. That sequence of emotions that play out isn't him just being having his expectations subverted, it was him briefly wrangling with his worldview crashing down. Because if he's wrong, then all of a sudden he has to reckon with the horrors of who he is and how he truly is alone in being the kind of monster that he is. This is immediately followed by denial, as he tries to 'fix' the boat people's mistake, and then moving on, because it's imperative to him that he doesn't question his nihilistic worldview and ignores any evidence to the contrary for it.
And this is what I mean. I don't sympathize with the Joker because of this. I don't feel bad for him, I don't want him to be comforted, I don't expect him to become a better person, and I don't want mercy to be extended to him. But I do recognize the emotional interplay here as human because this is how human beings react when they are presented with evidence of their worldview being wrong, with insecure defense mechanisms. It allows me to see that the Joker as more than a representative of a philosophical concept because no real person does this. They just identify with certain ideologies or beliefs, and they do so because that gives them comfort, and they react as such when they are challenged or proved wrong. That makes the Joker human in that he's just a guy who believes in an extremist ideology for the same reasons everyone else does: Because it brings him psychological comfort and security in his actions.
Then you have Thanos, to which I fully agree with you that his population control nonsense is nonsense: As in, it's stuff that genuinely makes no sense if you think about it. I've written about it elsewhere, but even a cursory scrutiny of his arguments falls apart: If he kills off half of all living creatures, there won't be double the resources because all living creatures use OTHER LIVING CREATURES as resources. Having half of all life means half of vegetation and half of livestock. And just because he kills half the population, that doesn't mean the remaining resource, if they were plentiful, they'd be distributed equally. And this is to say nothing of the fact that depending on which population your talking about, culling half of them could be insignificant or it could mean their extinction.
So yeah, it doesn't make any sense. But for me, that's why you don't take it at face value and instead look at how he acts to discern what he truly wants. In my interpretation, what he actually wants is to be a hero. In terms of practicality, his solution to population control is beyond useless, but it's immensely useful as a personal narrative for himself. It gives him a very clear problem that he uniquely can resolve by applying his phenomenal strength to the bloody work of murder. A lot of other little things make much more sense in this framing. This is why he has built his army not just as an army, but as a cult of followers that view him as a father and themselves as 'Children of Thanos'. If why he's able to consistently take on this "reasonable man" persona where he respects and admires and sympathizes his enemies so much as he's brutalizing them, as they keep telling them that they hate his guts.
And it also explains why he's much more malicious in Endgame compared to his 'reasonable man' persona in Infinity War, because, as with the Joker and the boats, the fact that an future where he succeeds at his plan...and the universe isn't 'grateful' for it is undeniable proof to him that the way he sees things is wrong and this distresses him. He gets genuine upset that the Avengers aren't thanking him for his benevolence, and when the 2014 Thanos confronts them after seeing this, he doubles down and says he's now going to destroy the whole universe so he can rebuild it in such a way that people will be happy with what they got in life thanks to him. This makes it apparent that this isn't truly about population control, but his own ego, otherwise he wouldn't care that people don't see him as a benevolent savior. But he does, and that's the real reason he does everything. He wants to be a hero.
And while I agree it's disappointing that none of the heroes ever explicitly grapple with this false worldview he's built for himself, you have to admit that as the end-villain of the 22 year arc that they've been on, it's a far more thematically appropriate motivation: The MCU has become the most ubiquitous entity for which the superhero genre is associated with. What better motivation for the final hero to have if not a dark twist on what the all protagonists have been successful at being: Heroes. I'm not saying this is perfect, but it fits much more neatly into the franchise. And it provides that humanizing element - Again, this isn't necessarily to say that I sympathize with Thanos' desire to be a hero, but I understand it as a psychological framework that he takes on to view himself as a good and meaningful person, even if that's not what he is.
And I want to emphasize, I'm not just talking about internal justifications that villains do for themselves: Humanization doesn't necessarily have to be this mental framework that the characters give themselves to explain why they are right actually for murdering babies and so forth. It can also be much more simple and mundane than that too.
There's this character in the anime Yu Yu Hakusho that's basically the main villain of the series. He's more or less a monster at this point who is threatening to kill everyone the protagonist ever knows to get a good fight with him and done ruthless stuff and he hangs out with other monstrous people. He is talking to his sponsor at this tournament, right after having murdered a dozen other rich people around them more or less out of a whim. Their dead bodies are growing cold around them as they speak. His sponsor, being the casual sort and sipping at a glass of wine, offers the the villain a drink. And this big, brutal, evil man says "Sure, can I get some orange juice with ice in it."
That's....weird. This guy is such a goddamn beast, you expect him to have either some kind of alcohol like what the sponsor is drinking or nothing at all. Instead, he asks for...orange juice? It's not just taht my expectations are subverted, but that I have trouble reconciling a stereotypically villainous persona, who just got done with some murder, asking for a kids drink. This isn't really framed as a joke either, even if people have laughed at the exchange just the whiplash of it. I had to ask myself why he would ask for such a drink, because this detail doesn't serve to make him more of a threat or even more evil. The only plausible answer is the simplest one: He likes orange juice and has no insecurity of asking for some in a room full of bad dudes (corpses) while his boss offers some kind of alcohol. And I want to stress that this isn't to say that this detail makes him good in any way, obviously. He's not a good person because he likes orange juice. But it is still humanizing because the only kind of people who'd ask for a glass of OJ are those who just want to take in a simple, unpretentious pleasure in moment. In other words, just a normal person.
Thanos does this as well in Endgame. Whats the first thing we see him do after Infinity war, where his final act was the murder of half the universe? Cooking stew. Because yeah, even though he's a murderous monster...he's still gotta eat. And he doesn't want his food to taste bland, so he seasons it. And we get to see him as an ordinary person whose going about the mundane work of making a meal for himself before the Avengers appear to force him to pay for his crime. Again, this is not sympathy, we're not being asked to forgive or feel bad for him in this, but it is the acknowledgement that he still needs to eat and he likes his food to have some taste because he's a person and he is doing person things.
To bring this back to Palpatine, in the leaks thread (and I promise this has no spoilers), a conversation thread got developed talking about Palpatines nature, and I pointed out that Palpatine has such a flat villain presentation that I could never imagine him ordering and eating a sandwich. I mean, if I'm supposed to believe that he exists as a real person in this universe, then obviously he has to eat, right? He still has to do all the things regular people do like eating, sleeping, shitting, etc. And with his job, when he's not cackling at the heroes fighting his futile grasp, he has to do the mundane paperwork of running the empire. You know, logically, he should be an ordinary guy when he's not being the villain. So, it should be easy to imagine him going to his cafeteria or something and ordering his favorite sandwich, and being disappointed that they ran out, but like murdering the guy in question over running out of sandwiches is so stupidly disproportional that it would be beneath him to do that, so he just kind of shuffles off disappointedly.
But the series never presents him as such, to the point where I cannot imagine him doing these ordinary, human things. Doing so feels like a parody, like that one robot chicken skit where he does order some fast food. So I can't think of him doing these ordinary, human things because it clashes with his villainous presence....in other words, him being a villain prevents me from thinking of him as a person.
I can't get any sort of mental framework from his behavior either. Palpatine has desired power and absolute control since day one, but when he got what he wanted and became the emperor, do you notice that he didn't actually....do anything with it? Like, when you think about why people try to grasp power, you tend to think they do it for the luxury and privilege that gets them, but Palpatine doesn't seem to do it for that. He's almost an ascetic in his tastes, having no personal decorations for his throne room and he wears robes for as his daily attire, which aren't even congruent with the dress of the rest of the empire and if we include the prequels, that's been his dress code for literally decades. He has no personal relationships, the closest being Vader which neither truly give a shit about, and...that's it. Palpatine doesn't offer any even cursory justification for why he does what he does, he doesn't seem to truly want anything or anyone, and he has no insecurities. The only thing he was ever wrong about is Luke being turned, but like that wasn't really a challenge to his worldview so much as he was mildly disappointed there was someone he couldn't corrupt. If this and the vader betrayal did hurt him in a meaningful way in terms of his identity, we don't get to see it because he dies right after.
And that's what I mean. Villains like Sauron and Ledger's Joker and Thanos, they were still doing what tehy were doing under a comprehensible human framework. They were villainous through their humanity. Palpatine, he offers no reason for why he accrues power like he does, he doesn't seem to live his life as a normal person at any point, so he's just doing what he does...for no real reason. This makes him more like a machine than a person, and while his presentation as an evil force for nature obviously resonates with audiences, I already said that I don't find that in itself to be a mark of great characterization.
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Sheev's only mistake in the OT was thinking that Vader was beyond salvation. Which, to be perfectly far, was an understandable assumption. The way things went down in the Throne Room, Sheev clearly had two separate plans depending on Luke's final choice.
Option 1: Successfully convince Luke to go to the dark side and kill his father. Who cares if the death star gets blown up again? He can just build yet another one. And he and his new apprentice will already be long gone on that shuttle that was conveniently waiting nearby his throne room.
Option 2: Kill Luke if he rejects Vader's offer, then Vader and him continue on as usual.
Either way, Sheev wins, cause he's robbed the Rebels of their last hope. (Well barring Leia, of course, but I'm sure Sheev was already thinking about how to position her to be his new apprentice if Luke didn't take the offer.)
They've over used him as the big bad, there's basically nothing between the prequels all the way through the timeline of the sequels that he doesn't have a hand in
In the original movies It is an amazing character as not much is shown on screen he is just the guy that even Vader fears so after building how amazing Vader is your imagination can run wild about who that guy must be.
As with many things in Star wars it was better unexplained.
As with many things in Star wars it was better unexplained.
He's awesome in the prequels and pretty menacing in the OT. Clone Wars even gives more development to his relationship with Anakin which is nice. He's also a very successful villain, turning the prophesied Chosen One of his arch-rivals against them, orchestrating their downfall, playing two sides of a massive war, and seizing power on a galactic scale. How's that not a good character?
The charismatic evil mastermind is a winning formula. And the particular menace, physicality, and way of speaking that Ian McDiarmid brings to the Emperor make him so memorable and entertaining.
He's always beenmore of a plot device than a character. He's just pure evil in human form and he vaguely wants unlimited power and domination. Gives the main characters a call to action and a villain to fight
Yeah he's an amazing foil, Maul in Clone Wars wouldn't work half as well if Palpatine wasn't what he was. He's the master schemer populist always one step ahead. Maul spends half the time both in total fear and in complete awe of Palpatine. As a fellow schemer he can't help but be impressed by the way he operates but is also fully aware of what the horrifying end game actually is.
He gives people what they think they want, easy fixes but stands as warning to pursuing those easy fixes.
Palpatine is the literal embodiment of everything luke is struggling against. The empire, the temptation of the dark side, and the redemption of his father.
He does everything a villain needs to do.He is immediately recognizable, easily understood, and has strong dialogue with luke. He is also shown to be a very legitimate threat and obstacle for the main character. He is a fantastic character for achieving all these things.
He's not very complex but the story doesn't need him to be complex. The story needs him to be the ultimate test of luke and everything he is fighting for. And he does that perfectly. Oh and he has a great theme song.
He does everything a villain needs to do.He is immediately recognizable, easily understood, and has strong dialogue with luke. He is also shown to be a very legitimate threat and obstacle for the main character. He is a fantastic character for achieving all these things.
He's not very complex but the story doesn't need him to be complex. The story needs him to be the ultimate test of luke and everything he is fighting for. And he does that perfectly. Oh and he has a great theme song.