Star Words: Episode III, Part 15

[matril]

That's right; I'm not done with this scene yet. There's just so much to look at here!

After Palpatine has set Anakin off balance with hints of moral relativism, he brings out the big guns. The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise. Note the careful wording. For Anakin, the Sith title "Darth" has always been associated with evil. But Palpatine softens that stigma with the surrounding terms. A wise person is admirable. Someone who suffers a tragedy elicits sympathy. He's shifting the script.

Lots of expanded material has explored how much of Plagueis's story is really true; that he was actually Sidious's master rather than a figure of ancient legend; that his experimentation was not the cause of Anakin's conception as Palpatine subtly implies, but that it set the Force off balance enough to spark the creation of a corrective agent -- look, that's all interesting stuff, but it doesn't really matter here. Palpatine could be making up this story from nothing, as long as it serves the purpose of drawing Anakin down forbidden paths.

Anakin must have always wondered about how he came to be. A miraculous conception is a pretty wild way to come into existence, after all, and his mother couldn't have offered a satisfying answer, not having any explanation herself. (Brief soapbox moment -- "immaculate conception" does not refer to a virgin birth and it drives me INSANE when people use the terms interchangeably. It's a Catholic term referring to the conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and it has to do with original sin and various concepts unique to Christian and/or Catholic doctrine, so just stop using it in reference to Anakin, please, I'm begging you. Ahem.)

So naturally, he's already going to be intrigued by this tale of Darth Plagueis. But then, when Palpatine brings up the notion of saving people from dying -- well, you can see Anakin's brain pretty much exploding as he reacts with quiet intensity. Could he really, actually do this? And then Palpatine's slippery response:

"The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be...unnatural."

What a great delivery from Ian McDiarmid. What a chilling, perfect moment of pinpointed ambiguity. Oh yes, many abilities....possibly even the one you're desperately seeking...but of course we can't speak of them openly because of that pesky notion of things being evil, wrong, unnatural.

He pulls back, offering the ostensible moral of the tale, which is the universal drive to seek and maintain power. The tragedy of Darth Plagueis was not that he delved into dark arts; no, the tragedy was that he wasn't wary enough of his treacherous apprentice. Trust no one; everyone will betray you, everyone wants power.

But we all know that's not the main lesson he's teaching Anakin here. The main lesson is that the Sith have powers that the Jedi would never teach. The power to prevent his worst nightmares.

Next, a heartfelt moment that's all the more poignant for echoing a scene from Episode I...

Comments

[krpalmer]

I'm afraid I get hit with a strange sort of "well, it could be otherwise too" contrarianism when I see reports one Star Wars novel or another (which I'm also afraid to say I haven't read for years and don't seem to miss) has "provided official answers to all your questions." (Even with the movie Rogue One, which doesn't fall into the "page versus screen" category, I now seem to think "it might have happened that way; it could have happened in some other way doubtless less explosive and action-packed, but better-planned and with more of the agents making it out alive.") Maybe the careful elaborations of backstory feel like "taking things too literally," as you might have alluded to.

I could also admit to a second burst of "imagining unusual interpretations" in wondering if Palpatine might have thought in a flash "I thought he'd show more of a reaction there; well, I also understand he seems to want to 'keep people alive'"...

[matril]

Yeah, we know that by the time Palpatine reveals himself as a Sith Lord, he's figured out that Padmé and Anakin are secretly married and he would do anything to prevent her death. But when, and how, he learned those secrets, we don't know. It could be something he's foreseen for years, or it could be something he's intuited during the short time since he was "rescued" and started actively looking to replace Dooku with Anakin. It's anyone's guess, but I'd always rather leave the spaces open to interpretation and imagination rather than trying to fill in every single blank.

I haven't yet seen Rogue One and don't know that I ever will simply because it seems so intent on filling in and "fixing" things that were never gaps or plot holes in my view (trying to explain why the Death Star has a fatal weakness is like making a story about why Smaug's armor has a chink. Big scary things always have a hidden flaw; that's just a good trope of stories and it's stupid to dissect it. Besides, it turns out that it was only exploitable by someone with Force-sensitivity, so if someone made it on purpose, they really weren't doing the Rebels that big of a favor!)

[krpalmer]

I didn't quite see the need to proclaim "the Death Star's weakness was designed in" myself, although I suppose that by having the father of Rogue One's main character Jyn design it in, there's a reason for her to be involved in the story... (However, I also wonder about the first trailer made before the Disney executives ordered reshoots, which gave me an impression she was just being promoted as "somebody so ruthless and rebellious it was obvious she'd be let loose to steal the plans.") I can think of a few other points where Rogue One didn't quite seem to mesh with the movie just following it, but they might be pickier.

At the same time, I can still imagine being told "you say you don't need those little explanations, and yet you didn't use your imagination working out your own backstory." I have to try and work towards an response like wondering how many people back then really focused on the main characters and "redemption" as something that might have seemed to "just happen" as opposed to concentrating on the space battle (and muttering about the Ewoks)... Sometimes, Rogue One feels like the sort of movie those who looked at the trilogy as something like "military science fiction" would have really wanted.