Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII I kind of hope the rumor is just a rumor. Its far from a deal breaker, but I think it would be hard to do in a good way, and honestly it seems a bit of a waste to do that and not go for something different.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Just to be clear: unless Latino Review's 'scoop' contains details that weren't reposted elsewhere, the term "Emperor" doesn't necessarily or automatically mean "Palpatine", but I would still take this with a gigantic grain of salt.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Continued ... the CLONE wars have ... Oh man ... I hope this is true. If so, given the vehement debates leading up to ROTS, it's the biggest possible troll of the SW comunity I could have imagined. It'd be freaking epic.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Regarding the ice planet thing, there is one other cold planet seen in ROTS called Mygeeto during the Order 66 montage. The clone troopers in the scene even wear a variation of the snowtrooper armor.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII The OT clearly established that only one planet can have only one biosphere. So this whole Mygeeto bull&#$& in ROTS really pissed me off!!! That's not the way nature works!!!
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Careful, otherwise some very impressionable fan who reads this thread will take you too seriously. Then: begun the Nerd Wars will have.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII I think that's probably a stretch. JJ might have shifted the focus to the original characters a bit more in this first movie, but there's no reason to think the larger, underlying story has dramatically changed. In fact we know from past interviews (such as with Hamill in the 80s) that Lucas had always been interested in continuing the story with the older versions of Han, Luke and Leia, and that they would also continue to play a big role in the story-- with everything revolving around some huge search by Luke to uncover the origin of the Dark Side. Hell, if anything, it sounds like JJ is probably getting closer to the original story that the Arndt script did, which apparently had the original cast relegated to just small supporting roles.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII I kind of want that rumor about the villain to be true, but also kind of don't. On one hand we already got plenty of stuff with that character, but at the same time it could be cool to have one big overarching villain for all nine movies.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII I absolutely, definitely, and vehemently want the rumor to be true. Forget the movie, the reaction of the fans will be more than dramatic and entertaining enough. (And, for the record, regarding the rumor being true, I'm fine either way.)
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII I like the idea of these new villains trying to restore the Sith, but if they were going through all this effort to bring someone back, I'm not sure it would be some cackling old man who was previously defeated by simply being thrown down a shaft in the Death Star. There are probably much more fearesome and powerful Sith from the past that they could choose from.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Thing is, Darth Sidious/The Emperor was the most powerful and cunning Sith in a thousand years and the most dangerous member of their order since the days of Darth Bane. True, in his moment of perceived triumph over Luke and believing his forces would defeat the Rebellion he let down his guard and was unaware his longtime apprentice was about to return to the light side of the Force and hurl him down a long reactor shaft to his death, but that was just momentary hubris blinding Palpatine to the actions of those around him. It's true that his destruction in Jedi does make it seem like a partially-crippled cyborg with a missing hand who shouldn't have gotten the drop on anybody grabbed him and the guy screamed all the way down (who wants to go like that, seriously?), but when you know more about Palpatine's background and powers he comes off much more competent and diabolical than his final moments would lead some fans to believe.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Yeah I suppose, but when our last image of him is him struggling feebly over Vader's head and screaming pitifully as he falls to his death, I'm not sure it'll be so easy to see him as a huge, serious threat again. Plus I'm not so sure the new Empire really needs another plotter and schemer who's going to be sneaking around behind the scenes again (since I'm sure most people are probably wise to that by now). I would think they'd want someone strong who can actually go out and fight. Although I suppose they could always restore Palpatine to the way we saw him in ROTS and not ROTJ....
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Honestly, I don't see how Palpatine was "the most powerful Sith since Bane". He benefited from millennia of Sith planning, but he wasn't particularly skilled offensively. Mace Windu would have killed him without Anakin, and there was nothing to suggest he was ever particularly powerful from a force perspective, he was just clever and smart as a politician. If the jedi weren't blinded by centuries of becoming more and more cut off from the outside world, he probably would have been foiled. He was a great planner and schemer, but he never seemed like a very powerful force user. Now, he probably knew a bunch of darkside techniques that would tempt people like Vader and Dooku to be his apprentices, but not really offensively oriented stuff. He'd have been eaten alive by Revan or Bane, and I bet even Dooku was more than a match for him in a fight (honestly, Yoda only lost because of bad writing). His skills were in hidden aspects of the force, and stuff that helped his long term goals. He was very perceptive, and I imagine he tended toward the more mind oriented force techniques. But I doubt he was ever capable, even in his younger years, of being the kind of Sith who could have succeeded as an out in the open evil. He was good at what he did, which was to be subtle and clever. He won with planning, not blatant power.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII I never saw any reason to believe this. Sure, Mace disarmed Palpatine, and Palpatine looked helpless, but it was the whole idea for Anakin to see things that way when he entered the room. The idea was to tempt Anakin into directly acting against the Jedi. If for some reason Mace had gotten the advantage ahead of schedule and had moved to kill Palpatine before Anakin was in position to defend his lord-to-be, I don't doubt that Palpatine would have let loose with the force lightning and moved to plan B.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII ^ That's my take on that sequence in the film. Palpatine feigned helplessness so that Mace Windu would appear to be carrying out an extralegal, brutal execution in Anakin's eyes (and killing the one man who claimed to have the knowledge necessary to save Padmé's life), putting Anakin in the unfortunate position of striking out in anger and turning on the Jedi who'd helped raise and train him since he was a little boy. It was the plan all along: influence and force Anakin to sink deeper and deeper into jealousy, anger and the Dark Side until he'd attacked the Jedi themselves and had nowhere else to turn except Sidious and become his new apprentice.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII I always saw Palpatine as a schemer, good at planning for unforeseen things but completely useless if someone does manage to confront him personally if he's not expecting it. He's not a physical guy at all, he's a planner, a schemer. I never found him physically threatening, he's a psychological villain. I don't think he was a challenge for a skilled jedi, especially a master, to kill. Now, he may have known that Anakin would be around for a situation similar to what happened, but I don't doubt that he was easily killable to a skilled enough person in situations where he's vulnerable, and he was definitely vulnerable when Windu came for him. That's why he had guards in the OT, he was never going to win physical confrontations with people good enough to gt to him. His strategy was to never let people get into that position, and he was very good at that. That's just my opinion, of course. I can see how you could argue for him being powerful, i just never personally saw it. I thought he was a great villain, but not a fighter, which is why all of his apprentices seemed to have focused on that side of the force. Honestly, i'd bet that he just didn't care about offensive force powers. He probably wanted to learn the less obvious aspects of the dark side, which he'd use to get apprentices and to secure his position. His power always seemed to be from being clever and knowledgeable to me, while he left the fighting to others.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII How was it that Palpatine could slice through three Jedi masters like butter when it's four-on-one, if Palpatine wasn't really quite adept in Jedi swordsmanship? I know that Mace was supposed to be the best Jedi with the lightsaber, but was Mace really in that much of a different league from Palpatine and his peers? It makes much more sense to me that, when the four Jedi came to arrest him, Palpatine's opening move was to simplify the situation by taking out everyone in the party except Mace, then next to intentionally stalemate Mace until Anakin got into position. Note also that later Palpatine had no trouble besting Yoda. Right.
Re: New Casting and Story Rumors re: EPISODE VII Folks, we will have Han, Leia, Luke, R2, C3PO, Chewie, and the mother- Millennium Falcon in this new film. Is anyone seriously going to stay home if Palpy is the bad guy? I would pay to see SYBOK as the villain. Sheesh.