He was trying to mirror Hitler's rise to power in a sense, but I think it could have been done differently. I'm not sure how they could have illustrated that Sidious was manipulating the politicians and corporations to get into power without showing things like his play for Chancellor or the Senate voting to give him unprecedented power over the military. I guess they could have had characters just drop those things in discussions, but I don't think that would have cut the amount of time down any. I think it would be hard to completely ignore the politics, as some fans wanted, and still tell the story. I actually think the politics were the least of the problems with the Prequels. I actually think it was a pretty sophisticated play by the Sith. Of course that opinion could have been made with reading additional SW novels and not necessarily what was just in the movies.
Not just Hitler. Julius Casesar had a similar rise to power, and Augustus after him solidified it. But yes, Hitler is the most modern example, and probably the closer analogue of the two.
I don't think the average SW viewer had really given much thought to Palpatine's rise to power before they started watching the PT. Everyone knew the PT as the story of Akakin-->Vader and Palpatine's rise seemed like a distance second. But IMO Lucas had a very good way of approaching it.
Au contraire! I was SUPER pumped to see the rise of the Empire and fall of the Republic, precisely because I'd studied Hitler's rise for political science courses I'd taken.
Palpatine wasn't just a cardboard-cutout fictional dictator. He wasn't just making angry impassioned speeches to throngs of frustrated people looking to get riled up & believe in somebody. Lucas could have done this and the audience probably would have accepted it. But instead Lucas had Palpatine covertly set up an outside threat, and then took power in the name of protecting everyone from it. That often happens in real life, in our own world.
But now it could be argued that I'm getting into politics with that last sentence . . .
There are a lot of ways that Lucas
could have gone, but didn't.
Personally, I think the issue with the PT isn't so much that it did too much politically or too much in terms of Anakin, but rather that the balance was off,
and that the PT never effectively fused Anakin's own fall with the rise of the Empire. His motivations were entirely apolitical, aside from one scene in AOTC where he's sorta cool with the notion of a dictator who can get stuff done faster than the Senate. After that, everything is basically about his separation anxiety and such. It's all internal psychological drama.
I think you can tell an effective, compelling story about the rise of a dictator who manipulates public perception of external threats, and set it alongside the personal downfall of the dictator's right-hand man. I just don't think this trilogy did that. The politics and especially the manipulation always seemed...I dunno...kinda half baked and far fetched. Like, the notion that Palpatine manipulates
everything and is controlling
both sides is just too much to buy for me. I get that you need to have an internal threat because there's basically no "external" existence beyond the Republic (e.g., there's no other "nation" that would threaten them), but the internal threat could've sprung up organically, and Palpatine played it more as an opportunist and a demagogue, rather than as the sole architect of the entire galaxy-wide war and the gradual accumulation of power as a result of it.
Meanwhile, set alongside that, I thought it would've made more sense to have Anakin somehow be personally connected to the
war and to witness the untold costs of it, the devastation, as well as feeling that personally through loss of people close to him. This would ultimately lead him to a "Peace through force" approach where he would continue to use the Dark Side as a tool for -- he'd tell himself --
making peace. Like, basically, Anakin would become evil because he'd believe he was doing it for good reasons. I think it'd be really interesting to contrast the goals of Palpatine and Anakin; showing Palpatine wanting power for its own sake, contrasted against Anakin wanting power to exert his will on the galaxy for what he'd tell himself is the greater good. I base all of this on Vader's dialogue in the OT where he wants to "Bring order to the galaxy" and where he says it's too late for him in ROTJ. He's a man who wanted to do good, but did it the worst way possible. And in the end, it's that small kernel of a desire to do good that would allow Vader to redeem himself.
