Darth Plagueis: Tragedy or Reality?

Star Wars is without a doubt one of the most successful movie franchises to ever be created. In the midst of its third trilogy in over forty years, its content has spanned much of our recent history. Some have even recently gone as far as to draw parallels with movies such as Rogue One and the resistance and protest we see in America today in response to Trump’s inauguration. To be sure, our reality and this fictional universe have a great deal in common. One such similarity comes in the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, a story told by the antagonist of the first trilogy of movies, Chancellor Palpatine. 

The story describes the rise of a man who became so powerful he came to possess the ability to halt death itself. He eventually passes this power on to an apprentice, who, ironically, kills him after having learned all he had to teach. Yet, this tragedy grips its listeners. It appeals to our imaginations, but it also captures something more near to our heart, something more palpable. The tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise probes our own fear of death, entices our yearn for such a power to control our own mortality. At the same time, however, it challenges our willingness to claim such a power and forces us to confront our moral code.

Darth Plagueis’ tale is one of the vicious cycle of evil’s rise to power. But stirring beneath this tragic story is the question, wouldn’t it be great to have such a power? The atmosphere of this scene is dark, with intimate camerawork that emphasizes the rather calm and intense conversation between our two main characters. In the background, this rather dark exchange is contrasted by a bright and extravagant light show. The decadence of their surroundings juxtaposes excellently with the story being told to challenge our concept of value. Much of society is built on arbitrary constructs like governments, nations, and money.

These things pale in comparison to the very mortality of our species, yet one dwarfs the other in our daily lives. True, one can’t currently attain the powers that this character Darth Plagueis does, but this concept appears disproportionately in our science fiction, demonstrating an infatuation with the idea of the thing. And what’s so appealing, as with many sci-fi elements, is how close it feels to reality. The Jetsons, Star Trek, and so many more popular media products exist as realizations of things we hope to one day come true. To go to space, to have friendly robots who care to our every whim. So too, with this power described in Darth Plagueis’ tragedy. With all the advances in modern medicine, the power to reverse or halt death feels so palpably close.

What Plagueis’ story - and the ensuing downfall of our protagonist - offers is an answer to that almost taboo question. Perhaps if one could harness this power, it would only consume them as it did Plagueis and as it does all those who learn it. The scriptwriters seem to suggest that perhaps the power over mortality is too great a perversion of our humanity, that to possess such a power demands too high a cost.

Again, it challenges us to question the morality of such a power, if there is something inherently wrong about changing nature’s course. Our protagonist, Anakin Skywalker, is motivated by powerful visions he has of his lover dying in the near future. At a glance, one would argue that such a power would spare so many people from the terrible pain of losing someone they cared about. The scriptwriters again capitalize on this deep-seated emotion in this narrative, tempting not only Anakin, but we the audience as well, with such a fantasy.

Anakin inevitably is devoured by paranoia and gives himself over to evil in the hopes of learning this power to save his now wife from the inevitable death he foresees. Ironically, it is this evil path that brings him to killing her with his own hands (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-rMXlu-39c), and losing his humanity and most of his body in a battle with his former master. In fact, he never even learns the power, and ends up nothing but a slave to his inhumanity for the remainder of his life. This quest and its suspenseful end goes far beyond being a compelling plot point. The moral of the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise is not just that power corrupts. The real moral cuts far deeper, suggesting that the quest to escape death is not only fraught with immorality, but it is corrupting. It is motivated by fear, and it claims that this fear will create self-fulfilling prophecies just as Anakin’s visions came true by his own hand. Or perhaps it asserts that humanity just isn’t ready to control such a power until our motivations become more pure.

However, this incredibly compelling story so artfully nestled in the movie is lost in the cracks. Anakin’s motivations are never fully explored in light of this moral dilemma, nor are his actions well driven by his intentions. It seems as though George Lucas and the producers found an incredibly motivating narrative in the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise, and abandoned it instead for flashy fights and one-line zingers. Yet, they left behind an incredibly complex piece of fiction that challenges not only the fear of death, but how that fear might drive us in the presence of a power that might make death a thing of the past. It offers a very plausible and disquieting consequence of such a power over mortality that forces us to question if it is even moral to seek it out. It leaves one wondering just what Plagueis’ tale can teach us as we blaze a trail onward to a future where such a power exists.