main
side
curve
  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

PT How does Padme love Anakin? (Did she have too much whine?)

Discussion in 'Prequel Trilogy' started by Garrett Atkins, Mar 5, 2013.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. PiettsHat

    PiettsHat Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 1, 2011
    How does Padme love Anakin?

    To find out:

    Step 1: Go to wikipedia
    Step 2: Search "sex positions"
    Step 3: ???????????
    Step 4: Profit!

    If you want to know why Padmé loves Anakin, though, feel free to use the search function on this site as we have about a million and one threads on the topic with nice, comprehensive answers concerning various users' interpretations.
     
  2. DRush76

    DRush76 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 25, 2008
    I have yet to come across anyone who really knows or understand anything about the chaotic nature of love, and that they will forever confuse love with moral compass. More importantly, I see that no one really understands anything about Padme or Anakin, because the pair does not fit into any neat category of human behavior. Actually, I can say the same about all of the major characters.



    Or perhaps she viewed the Tusken Raiders as nothing but a bunch of savages or animals who deserved what Anakin did to them. Cliegg Lars seemed to hold them in low regard and Padme was never a saint . . . even if many STAR WARS fans have this bad habit of viewing her as one or some ideal woman.
     
  3. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2003
    @ J_F_P
    I couldn't think of a smarmy-enough title, actually.

    Come up with something worthy and I'll color-you-up today.
    Your reply was THAT good...
    reminded me of the SA DAYS, I used to do it like that when replying to Cryo's posts. [face_mischief]
    :p
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber and Cryogenic like this.
  4. Zapdos

    Zapdos Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 7, 2013
    How exciting. Will there be a ceremony? (Fo reals)
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber likes this.
  5. Jedi_Ford_Prefect

    Jedi_Ford_Prefect Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2003
    Title? What, like "Grand Poobah", "Plenipotentiary", "Number One Super Guy", and all that jazz?

    I have no idea. Um... "Prequel Evangel(ion)ist"? "Anime Antipope"? "Comrade"? Better red than dead, after all.

    Other that, I'm drawing a blank, here. Can I open the floor for suggestions?
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber likes this.
  6. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    Maybe a title related to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
     
  7. Jedi_Ford_Prefect

    Jedi_Ford_Prefect Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2003
    Eh, I actually haven't even read those books since I came up with this name, like... Oh, good lord, ten years ago.

    I'm trying to think of something tied to the Prequels, "Evangelion" and communism. Not easy.

    I guess I'll go with "Prequel Evangel(ion)ist". Sorry, Karl...
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber likes this.
  8. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2005
    (For the purposes of this specific answer, I've nabbed a couple of screencaps from TFN member Ingram_I, from HevyDevy's "Visual Links" thread in the saga forum ->> http://boards.theforce.net/posts/50491255/ )

    It is a cool hand (luke). I admire the gold plating. Similar plating can also be seen in the same film on the head apparatus of some of the Jango/Boba clones and adorning the hilt of Mace's "electrum" lightsaber.

    In the case of the clones, the thinner gold pieces, extending out in front of the face and terminating in these small serpentine tips, somewhat resemble the phalanges of Anakin's skeletal hand.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Returning to the "Boba" shot: the clones look like ants with antennae super-humanly busying themselves -- enslaved -- with a project far beyond their individual reckoning.

    I daresay that this insectoid quality -- evoked by the Boba head extrusions, but seen much more obviously with Anakin's exposed hand -- is what people find subliminally "creepy" about the hand (if they find it creepy, that is). A skeletal limb obviously draws a strong association with decay and death, but I think the "insect" qualities are what take it over the edge (us being mammals with a hard-wired dislike/disgust of insects, arachnids, and anything else that crawls or creeps and might pose a threat to our bodily survival -- literally, "creepy" has been used multiple times as a pejorative word in this thread). AOTC shrewdly plays up to this fear when alien centipedes are literally dropped through a bedroom window in the dead of night while a vulnerable young woman innocently sleeps on a lightly-covered bed. Anyway, it's interesting to me.

    I didn't realize there were such great pictures of the Anakin hand prop: Google comes to the rescue again! I'm fascinated seeing it up-close in that "display"/"found artifact" context. It sorta looks like a guitar neck or a concealed rifle or something. Great choice to include that fabric. The hand takes on more mystery, and more a sense of having fallen into this world from some else-place, being conceivably of this world, just some undiscovered part of it, in this manner.

    And the hand is a thing of beauty: a little bit "steampunk" (I think there are flirtations with this aesthetic in the films, particularly the droid factory sequence in AOTC, which is where this particular hand-loss motif -- a red herring for now -- enters the film). The copper/brass/gold plating explicitly harks back to that great age of steam and metal and industrial reaching in a changing age when the world was being irrevocably transformed; which is an epoch AOTC depicts (Jedi/mystics being outpaced by formidably-improved technology: e.g., droids to clones --> "Blind we are if creation of this clone army we could not see"). Beyond that, it sorta works internally as a decorative finish, or included to offer utilitarian function, as plating consistent with this stretch of galactic history: it's in fashion. This may even factor into Threepio's classic brass/gold plating -- fresh, new, polished -- in the next movie. What was in fashion in II and III quickly fell out of fashion, perhaps, by IV: hard cheese for Threepio!

    And, oh, yeah: steam PUNK. Anakin is quite the "punk" of the SW galaxy.

    Lastly, check out the wires: Threepio one film back. Yellow and blue are found together along the index finger. Sithly red and black are prominent. Yoda turqoise/green. And there's even a purple wire running next to the green one. You would never see this much detail in the film, but the visual patterning of Lucas continues to disclose itself in even the smallest aspects of art-scaping.

    Two final points about the hand:

    i) The autumnal lighting of the final scene of AOTC -- the only scene, as a matter of fact, where we get to see this hand in strong light -- casts it in a strange yellow-orange glow. Anakin's strong hand is like a series of glowing embers and is eerily reminiscent of the collector arm burning up as it slides down that Mustafar lava fall: all that craziness theoretically enacted to "save" the very person who embraces him in this final scene.

    ii) The basic symbolism of the hand is obvious, but powerful: Anakin's fatalistic obsession with Padme, and his increasingly intransigent belief in swift, firm action to accomplish desired ends (his remorse over killing the Tuskens becoming more and more of a dim memory as the next film hurtles forward), essentially depicts Anakin as a chrome man bathed in amber/gold:

    [​IMG]

    Even before the inevitable "construction" scene in ROTS, Anakin is being constructed by his social environment: by the Jedi. "Machines making machines -- how perverse!" The mechanical hand lends the viewer, well, a hand, in helping them to see that reality. Padme may not care about Anakin's latter construction so much as she carries a flame for "that little boy [she] knew on Tatooine", yet her melancholic expression at the end -- remember, this is meant to be her wedding day -- says much about the paralyzing fear and sorrow she is terminally gripped by.

    Yet the wedding is still an unabashedly romantic configuration: an exultation (of the movie entire and much else). I think it is very agreeable in its various details. A famous poem in Victorian times was "Horatius" by Thomas Macaulay --> http://www.englishverse.com/poems/horatius

    Two verses resonate here:

    XXIX

    ‘Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
    With all the speed ye may;
    I, with two more to help me,
    Will hold the foe in play.
    In yon strait path a thousand
    May well be stopped by three.
    Now who will stand on either hand,
    And keep the bridge with me?’


    XXX

    Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
    A Ramnian proud was he:
    ‘Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
    And keep the bridge with thee.’
    And out spake strong Herminius;
    Of Titian blood was he:
    ‘I will abide on thy left side,
    And keep the bridge with thee.’


    Padme abides on both sides: she takes both hands and keeps the bridge with Anakin. This might seem a mundane observation, but her clasping Anakin's suddenly-mechanical hand (so sudden it didn't even make it into the early theatrical prints) gives this simple wedding gesture added significance. What's more, in the visual arrangements used throughout the film, she is often screen-right of Anakin -- sometimes on his right-side; sometimes simply on the right-side of the frame (e.g., the meadow scene with the two talking in the grass) -- but there are places where Lucas reverses it (notably, during the meditation scene/search-for-the-mother bit). Make of that what you will.


    Okay, with all that hand crap out the way...



    I'd say that this is pivotal.

    "Are you an angel?"

    For such a visual series, the relationship that will rework the fate of a galaxy begins with a simple line.

    Unfortunately, Obi-Wan never seemed to appreciate just how powerfully wedded to this idea of Padme's purity Anakin was, thereby ruining everything -- the human being/everyman interfering with mythical demigods mythically entwined -- when he appeared at the top of that ramp on Mustafar.

    If we, mirroring Obi-Wan's grievous (GG) clumsiness (JJ), don't "get" this, we're probably just as bad as he is. Over so small an action or misunderstanding can so great a tragedy occur. This, to me, is one of the most poignant and profound of all the prequel contributions to the SW saga, cinema, and storytelling generally.


    Even more importantly, they both left the sanctuary of home -- Naboo and Tatooine: remote planets at the lip of Republic concern -- not knowing what would happen, and fearing their own shadow, perhaps, in Episode I, only to be rebuffed by the very institutions they naively hoped would at least be willing to take them seriously and regard their unique circumstances (invaded planet, strong ability with the Force) as valid. This could only have been further isolating, drawing them together in a tight weave of mutual sympathy and understanding: that crucial "us against the world" motif inherent to romantic love.

    Two more things:

    i) Jar Jar. One should consider how Padme's unconditional embrace of Jar Jar (different to both Qui-Gon and Anakin) shades her attraction and affection for Anakin. He's this free-spirited, pure-id creature who is timid and deferential around authority yet bucks social norms. He limbers Padme up (in one part of the movie, after she frees Jar Jar's trapped hand from Anakin's right podracer turbine, she practically skips with glee: her shoulders and arms subtly bobbing in the way George Lucas instructed Ahmed Best to carry himself) and saves her from the gloom of crushing obligation. The Anakin-Padme attraction is necessarily more complicated (e.g., Padme's "fixer/healer" persona manifests strongly in Anakin's direction after the loss of his mother), but there is a hint of what she particularly likes, admires, and finds enervating about Anakin in Jar Jar.

    ii) Meditation scene. This might just about be the most important chapter in all of the prequel trilogy, all of Star Wars. It looks absolutely gorgeous and is brimming with the structural intimacy, shading, control, and ascetic sublimity of a religious painting. The fact that it is the exact numerical centre of the prequel trilogy, marking a significant change in the fortune of these characters' lives, can hardly be overlooked, either. We find a petrification motif here as Padme slowly paces to Anakin, as if caught in a web, then regards Anakin from a distance -- he walks away from her -- as he simmers and glowers over what to do. In what has to be one of the finest moments of exhalation ever captured on film/digital, Anakin's flawless musculature is suddenly apparent beneath his lacy garment as he breathes a pregnant sigh. Cue Padme's reaction (which Anakin doesn't see: like in the preceding fireplace scene). She almost seems to be put into a trance by it. There is physical lust and something else. In Anakin's earlier words, she goes "quiet as a tomb", remaining chaste and barely saying a word until daylight has long broken over the darkest night of Anakin's soul. Just as Anakin is suggesting we do, this is a moment to meditate on. What HAPPENS to Padme here? Anakin seems to exert some unconscious control over her, like his true power -- the power to stir and sway people -- is otherwise unexpressed, unexplored, unconsidered, un-cared-for, and abandoned: hidden and remote. The true power of a Jedi? He does it inadvertently; and it seems to be an essential move in the dance of love: the move that finally sweeps Padme off her feet; yet sucks the life from her soul, unbeknownst to either of them, at the same instant: the Dark Side corrupting that which might otherwise do some good and enrich their lives, yet cutting short their worldly sojourn, instead. Tragic love, indeed.
     
  9. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2005
    One further thing about the hand -- and I will shut up about it, then (that'll teach me to not keep editing my posts after submitting them)...

    Through his limb loss, Anakin (sounds like anarchy/agony --> "I'm in agony") ends up having a connection with Cliegg Lars (and Cliegg, with his floating chair and whatever else, is explicitly connected to Yoda), but Anakin is part of the Republic, so gets the more fashionable hand/arm at the end of the movie (Cliegg, of course, seems to be reliant on his chair: no leg prostheses for poor Tatooine farmers, I suppose). I would speculate that the Jedi might actually disapprove of Anakin covering his hand, because they might wish for adherents to be reminded of their failures in battle, or losses at moments of great anxiety and tribulation. On the other, er, hand, Anakin might just be willing to show his vulnerability a bit more here, then takes on a thick glove for martial expediency (a matter of practicality and wishing to project a strong image). I do, then, like that fleeting glimpse of it in the bright (if waning) sun of Naboo, marking a time of great change and strife in that galaxy far, far away -- and ... never to forget (art being allegorical)... not so far, far away.
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber and minnishe like this.
  10. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2003
    Cryo + learning to not edit after posting = impossible.;)

    :p

    Done. Enjoy the rest of the week.
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber likes this.
  11. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2005
    [face_nail_biting] 8-} [face_peace] [face_whistling]
     
  12. Jedi_Ford_Prefect

    Jedi_Ford_Prefect Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2003
    Only a week? Oh. Well...

    [​IMG]

    See you, Space Cowboy...
     
    VMeran, StarWarsVerses and Cryogenic like this.
  13. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2003
    Cryogenic What you did there. Doesn't count.
    Jedi_Ford_Prefect Your gift has been noted in MS as best winter rebuttal and while fantastic, it wasn't THAT fantastic.:p
     
    Cryogenic likes this.
  14. themetresgained

    themetresgained Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 23, 2013
    Pretty much this.
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber likes this.
  15. Jedi_Ford_Prefect

    Jedi_Ford_Prefect Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2003
    Hey, I didn't even know that any of this existed until a few hours ago. So it's all cool.
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber likes this.
  16. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2003
    That's because it did not exist until just a few hours ago.
     
    Jarren_Lee-Saber likes this.
  17. _Catherine_

    _Catherine_ Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 16, 2007
    I feel like there's a difference between not being the "ideal woman" and being a huge racist. Not sure, though.
     
  18. Sistros

    Sistros Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2010
    if one thing that has been done to death is this Tusken slaughter thing.

    It's becoming a bit boring,

    and whenever it rears it's ugly head, it goes into pretty unfriendly territory in my experiance
     
  19. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    EDIT: never mind. What Sistros said. I have rarely seen a balanced point of view on this topic, it's usually emotional and no one changes his or her mind on it.
     
  20. _Catherine_

    _Catherine_ Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 16, 2007
    Padmé didn't seem to get too upset about Anakin's mom or the Tusken genocide. Maybe she really is just a horrible person. :p
     
  21. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2003
    She just might be.:p

    One thing I've never understood is why some posters try make the Tusken Raiders seem like saints. I'm not saying they were mindless monsters, but they shouldn't be considered as victims either. You live by the gaderffii, you die by a gaderffii lightsaber.
     
  22. sinkie

    sinkie Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    May 27, 2004
    Honestly, I think many people who look to explain why it didn't work for them will end up looking like they don't get "love" or the illogical side of it. Because, sure, similar bullet points can be made for any on screen (or probably off screen) romance and you can say, well, yeah, there's all that and then there's hormones, or desire or whatever...that can override any checklist that would seem to indicate they should not be in love.

    What I find though is that the harder to "bullet point" spark called chemistry was simply lacking. It is harder to prove, harder to demonstrate as there or missing but that's my biggest issue. I just never once, except for the crying across the city scene before Anakin rushes off to kill Mace, bought it for one second. That one moment made me wish I could have. But I didn't. No amount of dialogue, putting them in scenes together changed that for me. If anything it just made it more painfully obvious since a lack of chemistry just screamed a me each time they appeared together trying to fake it.

    Even if I could buy that Anakin and Padme are screwed up people, liking each other for all the wrong reasons and the apparent lack of chemistry was intentional? I still wouldn't enjoy it. I didn't find them interesting enough in that screwed up way to enjoy it. I never found their level of "screwed up-ness" to be original or conveying any real insight, so I was never sure if it was supposed to be painful or not, intentional or not and even this ambiguity wasn't interesting to me, not in a SW film at least with that performance and dialogue and subject matter.

    Oh, the only other moment where I believed they loved each other? The original Clone Wars cartoon when he sees her in the window from his Jedi stargighter. That again had me wishing I could have felt that way most of the time with them.
     
    TOSCHESTATION likes this.
  23. Cryogenic

    Cryogenic Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 20, 2005
    I'll agree that she doesn't seem super-perturbed by either, but...

    That's just Padme: i.e., she holds her emotions in.

    She likely feels, grimly, that Anakin's mother is already dead. She almost has a sixth sense about it. Cliegg can only confirm her suspicions when he tells Anakin, "There's little hope she's lasted this long." Hope. Such an important word in this saga. Also, in the garage, she comforts Anakin with, "Sometimes, there are things that no-one can fix", like she knew Shmi would most likely be dead or in a critical condition. Anakin's naive, childish hope impelled him to go, and it's not that Padme wasn't with him all the way, but she also had a more reserved, clement attitude: she could see on the gathering horizon what Anakin refused to face. I think she knew what the outcome would be, but she also knew Anakin had to go.


    Funny, a guy I used to work with was using that shopworn saying at work on the day it was announced that Colonel Gaddafi -- how's that for semantic resonance? -- had died. It's a rather ugly saying, really, because it implies "eye for an eye" thinking.

    Moreover, you can't condemn a whole tribe for the capture and possible torture of a single person. Else you might as well be the Anakin that emerges after pledging himself to Sidious: "from my point of view, the Jedi are evil."

    White-man-led western civilization has so much blood on its hands -- right up to and including the present moment -- that I don't know where you're possibly going with that. Perhaps we should just nuke the planet and start again?

    Yet Anakin's actions are still understandable: that's the most basic of (emotive) points, I think. Crucially, we are with him in that tent when he decides to do what he does: "with" him in the cinematic sense; the camera places us there and we share his frame.

    On Mustafar, the character is probably correct when he says, "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy." It's the fallacy of excluded middle, sure, but it also jibes with the mechanism of the films, and HOW we watch: i.e., if we're not "with" Anakin in the psychological sense, we're probably against him (as years of heated debate would seem to attest). I have to say, for all his flaws, and everything he does wrong, I'm "with" Anakin: he seems the most human, the most textured of all the SW characters, to me.
     
    minnishe likes this.
  24. SithStarSlayer

    SithStarSlayer Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2003
    Should have put a disclaimer in my last post. [face_blush] Women and children aside, I have no problem with him killing the men just as I had no problem accepting that Solo shot Greedo first. In my new personal canon: Anakin let the soft targets go after killing the men, but was so emotionally imbalanced from his Mom dying in his arms, that he lied to Padme about taking out the entire tribe of savages because he didn't want her to think he was weak. 8-}

    I know we have talked about (or at least were involved in the same discussions regarding) the Tuskens and the younglings that were butchered in the temple... both of which have long been as grains of sand under my eyelids. But I haven't the time, or the desire to rant about them in detail this evening. :p I will say this before I go: when it comes to an "eye for an eye", only Luke was above that... and seeing him again is the only reason I am interested in the Sequels.
     
  25. Sistros

    Sistros Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2010
    Should have put a disclaimer in my last post. [face_blush] Women and children aside,
    ------------

    I was going to say something, but thought "why bother?" I've explained my stance over and over and if people want to think i'm looking at the whole thing like the sand people were saints..

    "oh well".
     
    SithStarSlayer likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.