PT Anakin Padme Romance makes sense now, finally!

PiettsHat you are right.

The uncomnfortable feeling is not just Anakin 'coming on to her' unnecessarily, or at an inappropriate moment, it's also her conflicting realisation that she really likes him to.

I'm not for one minute suggesting that that let's him off the hook because, well, 'com on she want's him to', but you can tell in both thier eyes that this is what it is about. Look at the scene when they first meet again, I think it's really well done, Padme lights up like a candle - wether she knew him or not before is irrellevent, she likes this guy - no doubt. She plays that subconscious 'mmmm...hello !' thing really well.

She is uncomfortable - but she's also flustered. He knew that to, so backed off when told. She knew he knew as well, and put a stop to it.

Just 'one of those moments' - that once you have lived long enough you'll remember as could have beens. They can and do happen very quickly and catch people off guard - our social norms and work a day contexts dictate that these urges are kept at bay, or quickly snuffed out. Unless, of course...

 

Excellent point and very well said about the Tusken. I'm not quoting the whole post because there is no point in making this thread unnecessarily longer. But I agree with everything you wrote, and there is nothing much to add. Just one more thing I would like to point out. There is a chapter early in the TPM novel where Anakin actually rescues a young Tusken, stays with him the whole night and returns him to his family, or something like that. I don't have the book here now so I'm not sure about the details. Anyway it shows that even though the Tusken are generally considered evil and random killers on Tatooine Anakin is not biased against them, on the contrary, he even feels compassion for them. I know it's not in the movies but the novels are canon too. And it gives a lot of insight into his character. He definitely was not a bad person to begin with. I don't want to start another debate on justifying his actions. But is it so hard to understand how he felt at that moment? That was his mother who has just not only been kidnapped for no reason but even tortured, for about a MONTH. That would push most people over the edge, even in this "normal" world. He acted blindly, and that literally. After all it was dark, remember? He probably didn't consciously kill children, unlike in RotS, just attacked everything that moved. As to women, can they even be distinguished from the men, by humans, in the dark? I have my doubts. In SW Tusken have always been nothing but ruthless murderers, beginning in ANH. They attack randomly and mostly innocent farmers. I don't get all the "Indian" analogy some mention. They may be "victims" of human settlements in some respect, but that is EU stuff. If it is mentioned anywhere in the canon please correct me. In the canon we have no real back story, we just know that the Tusken are basically dangerous monsters.
As to the love story, well, I bought it from the beginning. All the arguments in favor of it have already been said. What bothers me are things like "creepy", "stalker", or them not acting like "normal teenagers". How could you possibly expect people in STAR WARS to act like "normal" people in our world? We can accept light sabers, the Force, a (relatively) small space station destroying planets thousands of times its size, etc., but NOT that two people a few years apart in age might fall in love? Really?

 

As I said, try that at your office and see what happens.

 

Lol.
I agree with PiettsHat though.

Although I've said before that on the surface the romance makes much more sense for the character of Anakin than Padme. More to do with the final cut of AOTC than a reflection on any incompatibility in Padme's eyes.

 

Yeah, and try holding a woman in a corner, and kissing her, even when she said no several times...

 

Except the situation is different. Leia tells Han to let he go, he acts a little dickish and makes an excuse to hold onto her a little longer. However the next conversation, when she is fixing whatever it is shes fixing, starts off as him trying to help her, them appologizing about antagioning each other, and they willing kiss.

Anakin is told flat out - I'm not interested and your advancments make me uncomfotable, and he keeps going.

 

What is that? Some kind of competition to know who is a better flirt than the other?

 

What doesn't make sense about the romance? The only problem I have is the way Anakin is so excited to see her/remember her in the gap between TPM and AOTC.

The last time he saw her he was pre-pubescent

 

Well it'd be an awkward situation for me from the get-go since I'm a heterosexual woman. But okay.

Here's a hint: There's a difference between "uncomfortable" in the sense of "creeped out" and "uncomfortable" in the sense of "I'm not comfortable with my feelings...oh god I can't be attracted to you."

Padmé is experiencing the latter. I have as well - I used to work with a guy that I was hugely attracted to but I often felt uncomfortable around him as well because I had an enormous crush on him while he was married with children older than me. For obvious reasons, I never made my attraction known, but it was still uncomfortable and felt "wrong" to be attracted to someone when you're telling yourself you shouldn't be. That's Padmé's dilemma, which she makes clear during the fireplace scene.

No, the "let go" scene is only the first time Han ignores Leia's objections. The second scene (where Han doesn't apologize) has Leia tell him to "stop that" twice and yet he never does let go of her hand. Instead, he presses her up against a wall and kisses her.

Go ahead and try that at work -- if a woman colleague is fixing something go ahead and grab her hand and then hold onto it, massaging it, while she tells you to stop that. Then press her against a wall and kiss her. See how that goes.

Anakin is not told that Padmé isn't interested. He's told the way he's looking at Padmé is making her feel uncomfortable. So he apologizes and the scene ends. But Padmé is not uncomfortable due to being creeped out given that she kisses him later on, follows him to Tatooine, and then tells him (unprompted) that she loves him. You might not find the romance believable, but you're clearly projecting your feelings on Padmé. The reason she's uncomfortable is NOT due to being creeped out but rather due to the fact that she doesn't know how to handle her newfound and unexpected attraction to Anakin.

 

No, you're wrong.

 

Great argument.

 

I think I have posted this question before . . . or perhaps something similar. But is it possible that the real reason that many try to label Anakin and Padme's relationship as "unhealthy" or "disturbing" is that he eventually becomes a Sith Lord? And is Padme's reaction to his confession about the Tusken massacre another reason? Is it because they cannot perceive that a character who is regarded as near ideal by many would fall in love with someone who becomes evil? Are they mixing up love with morality?

 

Its frustration with people who refuse to grasp the differences in things. At the end of the day, thats all there is to say.

 

I agree. Arguments like it's so unlikely that someone like Padme could fall in love with someone like Anakin are not valid. Why not look at real life situations? Has it never happened that you could absolutely not understand how some girl could possibly like some guy? Happens all the time. You may not be able to relate to that but you are not that person. You can not see inside them. Besides, since when is love rational or has to make sense? It was never that way in our world. Why should it be different in another galaxy?

 

Hmmmm...there is some truth in this.

To put it another way...you seem to be arguing a point I have made about characterisation (or rather, the lack of it) in reverse.

"Is it because they cannot perceive that a character who is regarded as near ideal by many would fall in love with someone who becomes evil?"

The character of Padmé from everything up to this point, would not overlook the slaughter of a village, including the women and children as...a little flaw, a challenge in a relationship. Padmé, up to this point, would perceive what Anakin has done for what it is. A crime. "To be angry is to be human" is such a weak line given what has just been revealed to her.

Also, what does it mean to say "...who becomes evil"? This is antithetical to Anakin's redemption...which is predicated that there isn't an entity, a thing which is "an evil man" but that by one's deeds you do good or evil. That if you act in evil then it is as if you are "an evil man". So..there is no "evil man" that Anakin will become, he appears as if he is "an evil man" because of his misdeeds...and this is as evil as any of those. He has done evil.

But back to Padmé. So...and this is clear from the reasons given here on this thread, it seems that she does this because she is attracted to Anakin. For all the talk of "courtly love"...the truth is that there is only, really, base attraction at the heart of this 'romance'. Although she says to him that she "truly, deeply" loves him...that isn't the case, that line is out of place.

And so, we have this strong, independent and principled character who ...puts all that aside because she (essentially) has a crush on some guy. And then secretly marries him....

Padmé changes character in order for Lucas' story to move along. This becomes particularly obvious in ROTS where she is, to all intents and purposes, a non-character - simply, instead, a simpering addendum to Anakin's...utterly beholden to his whims and desires. To the point that...she 'loses the will to live' because he's betrayed her.

If Padmé falls for Anakin as she does in AOTC then...she isn't the character she was portrayed as up until then. The character she becomes is, frankly, dull, dumb and shallow.

It's as if...as if they were entirely different people who just looked a lot like each other.

 

I think in the grand scheme of things Padmé's developmental regression is one of the whole points of the earlier episodes of the Saga. Lucas tied the fates of all the characters to the status of the Republic. As the Republic slowly dissolves into an evil Empire, the characters who acted as pillars to that Republic crashed under the weight of its fall. That's why practically the only characters who truly develop in those films are Obi-Wan and Yoda. Everyone else just burns.

 

^^ Absolutely. It's a story of a downfall. Not just Anakin and the Republic, but everyone else (except the Sith). Even Obi-Wan and Yoda fall (literally, if you think about it) and have to reinvent themselves in the OT. Adapt or die.

As for Anakin/Padme storyline, I feel it's been hurt by weird editing in AOTC. Some scenes are out of order, Padme's family scene should have been included for sure while the scene with the queen was unnecessary and made Anakin look like an ass (again).

 

Yea she was out of character in ROTS.

 

You may be right...but then, I've always disagreed fundamentally with that aspect of the story-telling; that somehow it is everybody's fault that the Republic fell. And that is especially so when that notion depends upon characters becoming morally shallow/bankrupt and/or...stupid. I disagree with it because it undermines the level of betrayal of what Anakin does...and of what Palpatine does.

 

I think she only comes off that way because her (IMO) best scenes were cut, i.e. the Delegation of 2000 and confronting Palpatine. Focusing on Anakin seemed to be the only thing she did all movie in the final version, to the detriment of her character.

 

Even in those deleted scenes...she is focused on Anakin. She offers nothing outside of her feelings for Anakin.

 

True, but at least she seemed to be involved in fighting back in the Senate against what Palpatine was doing. That strikes me as much more in line with Padme's character, as opposed to just sitting around and worrying about Anakin.