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TweetReversals are a great creative challenge. They can also help you solve problems. Taking a key piece of information and reversing it early in a process (or a story) can yield unexpected insights and powerful results.
Sometimes turning the villain into the hero is the key to solving a problem.
Let’s take a famous pop culture example and unpack it a bit.
No, I don’t mean Toy Story.
I mean something… bigger. From a long, long time ago in a galaxy far far away.
Star Wars – when good and evil were black and white
Star Wars started out pretty straightforward when it debuted in 1977. Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo and the Rebel Alliance were the good guys. The evil Darth Vader, dressed in hard, shiny black was the bad guy. He killed people for no good reason. He tortured. He was menacing. He had an appropriately chilling voice. He probably made a few kids wet their beds in the day.
Later on, it turned out Darth Vader was just a lieutenant. The REAL bad guy was Emperor Palpatine, the evil Sith Lord who destroyed the Republic from within as a Senator, then as Chancellor. He ruled the resulting Galactic Empire with an iron fist (and Force lightning). Palpatine spent decades manipulating events just to crush all resistance and put himself in power. He was very good at that. It was only the defection of Darth Vader that led to the Emperor’s defeat.
Emperor Palpatine was the personification of evil. His face and body were yellowed and withered from an ancient battle. He craved power and control. He wanted to rule the galaxy and he did. There are few characters as one-dimensional as the Emperor, based on what we’re shown in the Star Wars movies.
And yet… there’s something fascinating about Palpatine, especially if you watch the Star Wars prequels: The Phantom Menace, Attack of The Clones and Revenge of the Sith, as well as the Clone Wars movie and animated series. Although he operated in the shadows as Darth Sidious, a Sith Lord, he seemed to be a harmless politician with a preference for privacy. He appeared to be a peaceful and quietly popular fellow who maneuvered his way into power with a soft touch. Palpatine even liked the opera, a touch that actor Ian McDiarmid used to try to make the obvious villain a bit more palatable.
The villain’s motivation
I’ve become fascinated by Palpatine because he’s a cypher. All you know about him is his desire for power and his ruthless methods. Yet, when you watch how he’s portrayed in the Star Wars prequels, he comes across as subtle and sophisticated. Sure, it’s all an act and that’s intensified because we know how the Star Wars saga ends.
But he doesn’t seem like a blood-thirsty conqueror. The lust for power and control seems so… unsophisticated. Especially towards the end of the movies when he was firmly established as the merciless Emperor. Is that what he really wanted? Power for the sake of power? Was he really just, say, the inspiration for Harry Potter’s Lord Voldemort, one of the closest modern equivalents?
Yes, that does seem to be his motivation. We judge him by his actions, because there’s nothing else to see.
What if the villain were actually the hero?
But what if there was another layer or dimension to Palpatine’s plans that we never saw?
What if he was convinced that he was filling it out a role in a prophecy, one that forced him to do evil things in order to serve some greater good? He made allusions to the fact that he could see the future in the movies… maybe he was convinced that he was serving the greatest good?
Maybe the Republic was sufficiently corrupt that it needed to be destroyed and remade? Perhaps the problem was with the Jedi Order?
Maybe he had to intercede in Anakin Skywalker’s life in order to prevent some other greater tragedy from happening?
Maybe the whole purpose was really to ensure that Anakin’s children Luke and Leia grew up a certain way?
This is all speculation, of course. But it’s interesting to flip around the plotline of the Star Wars movies and tell them from the Emperor’s perspective, isn’t it? Instead of an action story, Star Wars would become a political thriller. Palpatine would still be mysterious and part of the fun would be trying to figure out what Palpatine was really up to. It would be a more adult movie and it might have gotten more critical acclaim.
And George Lucas could have been a whole lot poorer – thrillers don’t usually spark toy sales.
Reversal as an ingenious problem solving tool
If you’re stuck, either in a story, a blog post or in a business situation, look at the reverse or opposite of your problem situation and see if it provides any insight.
- If you have a customer service issue, where’s the real problem? With you? With the customer? With a third-party? When you know where the problem lies, try flipping things around. How can the source of your problem yield a solution?
- If you’re writing a story that seems flat and worthless, look at the protagonist (the hero) and the antagonist (the villain). Is the villain more interesting? Try writing from his or her perspective. Or reverse the roles: make the villain the hero. And so on.
Your assignment, if you choose to accept it
Find a problem situation and reverse the role of the bad guy. Will things work better if they are the hero?
And if you know of any good Star Wars fiction where the Emperor really is the good guy, let me know, please? Thanks.
Images by kennymatic, and Wikipedia
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