One Palpatine Moment In Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith Had Ian McDiarmid In 'Total Shock'
There were a lot of surprises in the "Star Wars" prequels, perhaps the biggest of which was the sheer extent of Palpatine's machinations. We knew he was evil and powerful, sure, but we didn't know he'd ever been called Darth Sidious, and we certainly didn't know he'd been the Chancellor of the Galactic Republic. The Palpatine of the prequel trilogy operates right under the Jedis' noses for three movies straight, scheming his way into a dictatorship with barely any hitches in his plans.
It's a different approach from how the original trilogy shrouded Palpatine in mystery. Even by the time Vader was chucking him off that shaft at the end of "Return of the Jedi," we still didn't know much about the character. If you're being critical, you can say the prequels' portrayal of him was a bad choice that made the Jedi seem like buffoons and took away the Emperor's mystique. If you're being nice, you can say this choice really helped emphasize just how cunning and scary the Emperor is.
The other thing the prequels did to make Palpatine extra scary was to let him be surprisingly adept at a lightsaber. To younger viewers, it might have seemed expected that he would be a great swordsman capable of holding his own with multiple Jedis at once. But for those who grew up watching the original trilogy, where the older Jedis and Siths barely bothered with lightsabers at all, Palpatine's lightsaber prowess was definitely jarring.
This was especially true for Ian McDiarmid himself, who's now played the character across all three trilogies in the Skywalker Saga. "It was a total shock," he said in a 2005 interview with Empire Magazine. "I had imagined that all his power was in his brain and in his fingers."
Silly, but fun
Sure enough, fans have criticized Palpatine's first lightsaber scene in "Revenge of the Sith" for being too out of left field. After spending the entire franchise sitting down and being evil via his scheming and lightning powers, it's more funny than scary when Palpatine suddenly pulls out a lightsaber and jumps 10 feet forward to where Mace Windu is standing. It felt cartoonish, as though creator George Lucas had forgotten what made the character so intimidating and memorable in the first place.
It also felt like a repeat of what happened with Yoda in "Attack of the Clones," where the film gave him a drawn-out lightsaber fight scene with Count Dooku that never really accomplished anything. Yoda was a fan favorite in "Empire Strikes Back" for his wise, pacifist approach to the Force; giving him a cool lightsaber battle might seem fun, but it undermines a major part of the character's central appeal. The additional fact that Yoda's lightsaber moves are functionally useless, with him randomly doing flips and spins with barely any apparent intention of actually hitting his opponent, just reinforces the popular criticism that the prequels are more concerned with spectacle than with honest character work or any sort of realism.
Questionable writing aside, when McDiarmid found out he'd have to go through fight training for "Revenge," he was perfectly happy to go along with it. "I thought, 'Oh, that'll be falling and things, I'll have to fall down a hole or something. And indeed, it was a bit of that, but there was 'saber-wielding,'" he explained. He admitted that unlike the more youthful Samuel L. Jackson or Hayden Christensen (who played Windu and Anakin respectively), a lot of Palpatine's fighting was done via stunt double (although the actor still got "a few strokes" in).
In defense of the prequels
As much as "Revenge of the Sith" put a little too much focus on pointless action at the expense of organic character development, it did at least sort of understand what Palpatine's main appeal was. Not only did he get to use his iconic lightning powers in a memorable, harrowing sequence featuring Mace Windu, but he is also consistently portrayed as a deeply intelligent schemer throughout the films.
Sure, the writing doesn't quite convey this as effectively as the original trilogy's fans might have hoped. His speech about Darth Plagueis the Wise has become such a viral meme in recent years in part because of how clunky it is; Palpatine is clearly and clumsily manipulating Anakin here, and yet Anakin is falling for it as if Palpatine were the master of subtlety. Rather than make Palpatine look like a diabolical plotter, it instead makes Anakin look easily misled, undermining the supposedly epic story of the character's tragic fall to the dark side.
Still, one has to give Lucas credit for trying. His prequel version of Palpatine may not have fully lived up to the legendary implications of the original trilogy Emperor, but at least Lucas knew that mere lightsaber battles weren't enough with him. The Emperor's real evil power has always been his intelligence, and the prequels always at least tried to stay true to this idea.