Do you feel what happens to Padme is enough for her to lose the will to live?

Leia's father is a senator thats why she became one not cause of her mother. If she has no real memory of her mother she doesnt know she's a senator or a leader she just knows she's kind, beautiful, and sad. Sorry that memory still holds no purpose.

 

"You know, I agree with this. And it's funny, because I'm arguing with MeBeJedi about this in the Classic Trilogy forum and he disagrees....."

You know, this is why I stopped arguing with you in that thread. Your reading comprehension is abysmal. If you'll read over my posts - either there or in other thread on the same subject - you (or, at least, everyone but you) will clearly see that I've argued over and over that Lucas has made up a great deal of both the OT and PT as he went along. In fact, whenever I made that point, you said it was not contested. Go figure.

 

It's purpose was to establish that their mother did exist as a character. To link to the PT. To set up Luke's revelation to Leia about their heritage. There never was a deeper meaning in 1982, when Lucas chose to write that scene.

 

In fact, he almost didn't write it into ROTJ.

 

MeBeJedi:

You know, this is why I stopped arguing with you in that thread.

I doubt it, but go on.....

Your reading comprehension is abysmal. If you'll read over my posts - either there or in other thread on the same subject - you (or, at least, everyone but you) will clearly see that I've argued over and over that Lucas has made up a great deal of both the OT and PT as he went along. In fact, whenever I made that point, you said it was not contested. Go figure.

Yeah, go figure.

Because, "as everyone can see", you argued that, nonetheless, he did have details mapped out for the backstory, using the ROTJ novelization as evidence - Leia's ruminations about her mother "running and hiding".

Did you forget that?

You claimed that all of author James Kahn's exposition came from GL's notes...

As for "abysmal" reading comprehension, you were the one who insisted that my argument was that Lucas made Vader=Luke's father in ANH....

 

Guys, take your business elsewhere.

 

you (or, at least, everyone but you) will clearly see that I've argued over and over that Lucas has made up a great deal of both the OT and PT as he went along

"In writing Episode One I spent a lot of time doing research. I had to develop an entire world. I had to make a lot of decisions about things that would affect the next two movies, as well as this movie. Everything had to be laid out in this script so that the next two scripts would follow as they should. I alo had to apply this script against the three movies that had already been made, making sure everything was consitent and that I hadn't forgotten anything. There was a tremendous amount of minutiae in these movies that I had to consider".

George Lucas - "The Making of The Pahtom Menace" Book

 

This kind of argument is crazy.
It is not what is being said, it is what is being implied that is the problem.

Every single director who has ever made a movie is constantly being compromised by reality.
That is - what they planned to do, when they got down onto that set/location is not what they were able to do.
In many cases before a set has even been built revisions are being made.

Even ignoring those logistical and commercial pressures, it is just a simple fact that any auteur worth his or her salt will simply see a better way of doing things - whether that is a narrative change or something purely cosmetic.

And that is all before we even enter the crazy world of post-production.



With that in mind - of course Lucas treat each film as a separate entity on a certain level.
That is what directors do - direct a film, move on to the next one.
The only way round that is to shoot back-to-back a la Back to the Future of LOTR - but even then it is clearly an evolutionary process.
To have written six fully-formed screenplays in one sitting which go on to be filmed without any changes is simply unheard of.
To write a six part saga which has intrinsic continuity from one film to the next and have that end up being shot without changes is just impossible.

The simple fact is - however this panned out, this was always going to be an intuitive process - a learning curve.
It was always going to be dealt with "one movie at a time" - whether that ended up being 12, three or six movies.
That is the nature of the film industry.


However - what is implied by saying Lucas "made it up as he went along" is that he gave it no thought, that he was just busking.
This simply was not the case.
There was always a story there - just not six screenplays.
The core themes of the story have remained, the screenplays have been written around those themes.
To impy that Lucas in some way didn't know exactly where he was going with all of this is ignorant of the facts.
By the same token, to believe that you have an idea one day in 1974 and six screenplays just fall out of your ass ready to be made into movies is just a bit naive.

------------

The bottom line is this - ANH "changed" from what it once was on paper while Lucas was actually in the midst of making ANH. TESB "changed" from what it once was on paper while that film was in production.
And so on.
But something else happened too - People's perception of ANH, and what happened in that movie, changed when TESB came out.
Ditto for both of the above when ROTJ came out.
And Ditto for all of the above when TPM came out.
And so on and so on.
Whether Lucas planned to alter our perception of what he had already committed to film from the start, or just decided 10 minutes before he went on set should not concern us at all.
Either way - he made that decision, and it is his decision to make.

There are six films out there now.
I don't see what difference it makes if the ideas that went into them came to Lucas back in 1974 or in 2004 - they are still his ideas.
Why is his "original idea", as some would have it, better than his most recent?
It isn't, because it is the films that count - and all six films have been evolving at every step of the way.
TESB changed perception of ANH - that is a fact.
And perception of ANH can still be changed in 2005 - that is part of the process, and part of the fun.

Padmé's death makes sense to me and a majority of the other users on the board.
I don't see any conflict with what we see and learn in ROTS and what we learned in ROTJ.
If your perception of what Leia said in ROTJ led you to believe that her mother spent time with Leia as a child - then guess what - you have to change that perception once again.
Just like you did when you learned that Vader was Luke's father, Leia was Luke's sister, the Republic led the Clones in the Clone war and Palpatine was once the guy the Jedi were serving.

 

Wow, this thread has been beaten worse than the proverbial dead horse!

But really, at this point, it's either like, accept Padme's death and move on, or just forget about SW all together, since it seems to really take all the fun out of it for some people.

It doesn't really bother me, though, since it works well enough, and I skip Luke and Leia's conversation on Endor now that we have the DVDs anyway

That scene's poor and you know it. "Search your feelings"

 

Well, said. Just one more thing to add.

Here endeth the lesson.

 

"Because, "as everyone can see", you argued that, nonetheless, he did have details mapped out for the backstory, using the ROTJ novelization as evidence - Leia's ruminations about her mother "running and hiding".

Did you forget that?"

Sigh...I didn't forget it - you simply missed the point completely.

---

From the ROTJ novelization:

[blockquote][i]"The Organa family was high-born and politically quite powerful in that system. Leia became a princess by virtue of lineage-no one knew she'd been adopted, of course. But it was a title without real power, since Alderaan had long been a democracy. Even so, the family continued to be politically powerful, and Leia, following in her foster father's path, became a senator as well."[/i][/blockquote]

Notice how Leia followed her foster father's footsteps into politics, rather than her natural mother.

In case you forgot, the PT rewrites Leia's desire to become a senator as being based on Padme being in politics. This is a major change from the novelization, as well as a major change from the early writings of Star Wars, where Leia was simply the daughter of Owen Lars. Notice how I keep pointing out the changes, rather than the consistencies.

"You claimed that all of author James Kahn's exposition came from GL's notes..."

LOL...I said no such thing:

His "reasoning"? More like, his "creative embellishments".

Is it really "creative embellishment" if the guy writes something that Lucas originally planned, and then later changed? What was the guy supposed to do - rewrite the novel to remove this slight change? It's not like he has the resources of Lucas who goes back and changes the actual films, right?

Owen being Ben's brother was in an early writing of Return of the Jedi. This was what Kahn read and put into the novelization, and it remained there after Lucas made his change, since the book was published before the film came out. It's not an "embellishment".

Not only that, but this is one specific instance, hardly the "all of author James Kahn's exposition" that you claim I am talking about. Even so, you've not proven which, if any, concepts in the novelizations came solely from Kahn, so yours is a moot point.

"Whether 'he actually worked with Lucas or not" matters little, if the backstory wasn't that detailed to begin with. Because if it wasn't, then there's no "running and hiding" for the novelization author to to be told about."

"Flashes from her infancy assaulted her-distorted visions of running?a beautiful woman?hiding in a trunk."

You call this "detailed"? We don't know who she is running from, or why, much less any description about what kind of person she was. Hyperbole does not make your case.

---

[i]"In writing Episode One I spent a lot of time doing research. I had to develop an entire world. I had to make a lot of decisions about things that would affect the next two movies, as well as this movie. Everything had to be laid out in this script so that the next two scripts would follow as they should. I alo had to apply this script against the three movies that had already been made, making sure everything was consitent and that I hadn't forgotten anything. There was a tremendous amount of minutiae in these movies that I had to consider".[/i] George Lucas - "The Making of The Pahtom Menace" Book

Oh, that's a nice one. Here's another...

JV: The way I imagine it is that George has this great big leather book, covered in dust, it's the Chronicles of Space and you've written the whole thing already and it's complete in your own mind. Is that right?

GL: No, that's wrong.

JV: You don't have the complete story, mapped out from the start, all those years ago?

GL: No.

JV: Okay, nice one, so you're winging it.

GL: No, I have a little story treatment, a little outline that says this happened here, th

 

"I really question if these things would bring someone to the point they would lose the will to live."-Darth Sin

She was attached (perhaps obsessed) to the image of Annakin being the hero that when he turns her world is shattered. She's had several chances to see his darker side atleast three in AotC and three more in RotS but one of the themes of the movie is that attachment/love blinds people from seeing the whole picture (a malady almost all the characters in the film share) and she just ignores or perhaps explains away his flashes of darkness. What happens to her is mainly poetic and not completely logical, but the rise of Darth Vader meant the death of the good in anakin and by symbolism Padme'.

I hope that makes some sort of sense.

 

ok people keep using symbolism and symbiotic relationships.
Symbolism doesnt kill poeple. Emotional pain doesnt kill the physical body. It takes months to years for a person to die of a broken heart which is why Padme's death makes no sense. I had a debate about this subject in my SHakespeare class and it was stated that people dont die of a broken heart after 5mins.

 

It's a story, and the force serves the story

"Bravo!
If people cannot understand this, then they will never understand SW.
This should be at the top of every page of every forum."

Oh, come'on now, Yoshi. Isn't that a bit heavy? The Force serves the story, and if you can't understand this, you will NEVER understand SW? Six-year-olds understand the basics of STAR WARS- and not because they are super intellectual, but because STAR WARS ain't that deep. "The force serves the story": What does that even mean? And had these great words been so profound, obvious, and applaudible, wouldn't you have come to this conclusion already?

Saying the force serves the story just takes us full-circle back to saying things similar to "It's STAR WARS; anything can happen or whatever."

 

--Luke learns Leia is his sister and that she is equally important in the grand scheme of things, because she has the Force too.
-Luke asks Leia about her mother, because it is also his mother.
-Leia remembers vague feelings and images.
-Luke reveals to Leia that she is a Skywalker and she has a power too.
-Leia claims she has somehow "always known" this.
-The Force, the thing that Luke has trained in more than leia, it is established can reveal to you people and places past, future and present

gez - "aww, it didn't work, Luke still doesn't remember his mother. damn. "

sinister:
It just proves that you don't understand. The Force has to choose to show it to them or not. It did for Leia, it didn't for Luke. He could look all he wants, but that doesn't guarantee it'll be found.

I understand it fine, I've heard it from GiG as well, and it's a theory .
GiG said:
"What you describe as a "my theory" is just me looking at what we see onscreen and describing it"
and provided the above list as if that 'proved' the theory, but it doesn't.

----------

gez - "GiG was saying how Lucas knew what he was going to do in '83."

GIG:
I'm not sure I ever did say that at all (I wondered why you kept bringing it up).

If you look back at my posts I was not even refering to Lucas in 1983, I was refering to Lucas in 2003.

All I said was "Lucas knew what he intended in 1983"

Hmmmmm ... so you didn't say that Lucas knew what he was going to do in 83 but you did say he knew what he intended in '83 .
.....right, glad we cleared that up.
Well what was it he intended in '83 ?

------
Toschi:
This would all be fine, if we were talking about real people, but we're not....

You see, with story characters, the most important thing is what their purpose or role in the story is. The individual POVs don't matter as much.

oh dear.
No they're not real, but here's a secret - they don't know that. . Fictional characters must be brought to life, otherwise we won't care about them . This is very basic drama. It must seem as if they would actually do what they do. otherwise you've got... well - actors! And their POV's are most definitely important, that's an aspect that makes them 'real', we all have povs, so should they.
If it looks like they're just serving the plot then the illusion of life is broken.

"When did Leia demonstrate any wish to redeem her parents? "

By the way she 'lived' her life in the movies.

she didn't even know anakin needed redeeming until 5 hours into the story, and according to you redeeming her parents is her purpose, and even after that she showed no intention of redeeming him.
and what did padme need redeeming for? for looking beautiful or sad?

"Well there's a bit more to a character than just their role. "

Not substantially more.

Well according to you Luke's role in the saga is to redeem his parents, but by the end of ANH he hadn't done that, so did he have no role in that movie?

And how does redeeming their parents explain how leia remembers padme?

I've been pointing out the inconsistency in people who have 'problems' with the PT, when they 'excuse' the OT for having the very same 'problems'.

Well you talk about having done it, but this is all in some other thread, and I haven't read it so I don't know if you've achieved what you say. you said something about Mebejedi in another thread too...

No. The 'driving point' of the story ensured those things.

and what's the 'driving point' in this instance?

Well, I think that you're main objection to the way Padme dies, isn't in the 'minutiae' of whether "the Force kills her"

The Force killing her is not something I'd call a "minutiae" !

It seems the main objection is, "Her death is contrived.

yeah, good so far.

It's simply to ensure that not only is she eliminated from the 'future' story of the OT which has been already heard, but that we see this event so that her character will

 

Yeah, you're right Neo, it was a bit of a hyperbolic statement. What I meant, really, is that there's no point in trying to find consistency in the use of the force in the series. There are plenty of examples when using the force would have been a great benefit to a Jedi, but they don't use it, because it doesn't serve the story. Then, there are other times in which the use of the force is a bit overdone, again, for the sake of the story.

The point I was making is that asking "Why didn't Jedi/Sith x use the force in x situation?" is a fruitless question. The force is very similar in SW to deus ex machina in a play, something than can just come into the story at any time and solve problems. I personally don't think that the force is very logical in the films.

Aww, come on, I'm not that conceded, I give credit where it's due. I've always thought that the force serves the plot, but I had never said it in such a concise manner, that's why I applauded his quote.

I'm not all powerful Neo

 

Neither am I, but I should me. Alas, I won't whine about it.

I was surprised at how vast the interpretation of the force is amongst people. I think a lot of times people look at it unrealistically, in the realm of STAR WARS at least- and even then, i'm sure each person favors their own take on it. I see people wondering why didn't a Jedi sense this, or why didn't the Sith sense that. I don't think the force is meant to work as some people believe it does. They arn't the X-MEN. They don't have specified powers. The force is ever moving and flowing, so sensing one thing won't mean that force-adept people will sense, everything. The gift is the ability to sense and feel the force, controlling it and interpretating it's messages is not a taught skill. Look at Anakin's dreams: He saw his Mother dying in his dreams and it was so in real life. But he was betrayed by his dreams of Padme's death, because it was his reaction to the dream that actually lead to her death in real life. This is why Yoda tells Luke to chill on his clud city visions and why Obi Wan tells him that even though he can feel the force, he can't control it. The Jedi can move objects and summon the force for physical feats, but sensory perception, ghosts, and what the "will of the force" entails is an entirely different story. There are many different outlooks to how it works.

 

This is what I'm talking about. This is absolutely on the money. The force is very fluid in nature. Great post!

 

*pokes head in*

Hey....what's up "Do you feel what happens to Padme is enough for her to lose the will to live?" Thread. How have you been?

Guys, I just got laid off, and since I have nothing to do 9 - 5 except sit on the phone and hotjobs, I decided I'd do a little research on "losing the will to live" in literature, as well as real life. Know what I've found so far? Snake Eyes! I'm really disappointed. I completely thought this: Lucas must have had a basis for this decision...there's a literary or real life cue that I've missed. There's some other level to the will to live thing, and I *will* find it. Well, found it I have not, and I won't lie, I'm depressed. So depressed that I almost had to turn off TPM half way through just now, as I could only hear in my head the voices of MeBe and Loco saying "Fly by the seat of the pants directing...This Film sucks."

 

You've just summed up the answers that everyone, from Palpatine is Sidious to this thread, have refused to grasp.

Anyway, the whole point of the memories was to advance the plot, really. See, once Lucas decided who the other was, he had to work it into the story. Initially, Luke finds out right before the duel takes place. And he tells Leia during the victory celebration at the end of the film. Along the way, he and Kasdan revised the concept into what we have now. Also, Lucas originally had two different references to the mother. A passing reference in the first draft and Luke visiting her grave in the second and third drafts of ANH. However, Lucas decided to remove that plot point and opted for having Leia remember.

It's whole purpose was to advance the plot of how Luke tells Leia about her true origins and what it is that he has to do now.

 

Let me rephrase that once again then, if you still don't get what I'm saying:
In 1981-83 Lucas wrote the story a certain way - presuming that period is indeed the genesis of anyone having memories of "Luke and Leia's mother", which Lucas says it is anyway.
That way was to have Obi tell Luke, in so many words, that Leia was Luke's sister, Owen was his own brother, and that Leia was taken to Alderaan by Luke's mother.
This whole notion, I will refer to as "what Lucas originally intended in 1983".

At some point between this dialogue being included in the shooting script and making it's way to the James Kahn novelization - "what Lucas originally intended" was jettisoned.
I believe the dialogue was cut onset - but when or how is moot.
Lucas was still keen to keep the reference to "Luke and Leia's mother" in the script, to tie it in with the prequels he [now] intended to make at some point in the future.
It was left vague, and unspecified.
Nothing implied Leia spent time with "Luke and Leia's mother", nothing suggested that she didn't.
This notion I will refer to as Lucas "not knowing what he was going to do in 1983".


So when it came to ROTS, Lucas knew full well "what he originally intended in 1983", but he didn't have to go down that road, because he had subsequently decided he "did not know what he was going to do in 1983" and had intentionally left it open to interpretation.


In other words - anyone who is campagning for Leia to have spent time with Padmé on Alderaan, you better get campagining for Han to be reinstated a green-skinned lizard too.
Both are jettisoned script ideas and have no meaning in the established SW canon.

 

Quoted for humor value. Sinister -

 

>>>>It doesn't really bother me, though, since it works well enough, and I skip Luke and Leia's conversation on Endor now that we have the DVDs anyway. That scene's poor and you know it. "Search your feelings"

Yoshi, I really respect your opinion, my friend. But I`m afraid here you are talking absolute piffle!

That scene is such a wonderful one. I get even more tears in my eyes watching it now that we have the PT. Mark and Carrie play it perfectly. And I love how the camera drops down a notch as Luke stands, and we get that messiah-like halo of light behind his head.

Brilliant.


On topic.
Padme sacrifices herself for her kids and her hubby.


-JR

 

Desperate for anything Star Wars, I recently picked up a new junior novel which takes place just after the events of RotS. The story is about Obi-wan Kenobi being forced to leave Tatooine to go back to Polis Masa to make sure the Twins' secret remains safe.

Obviously the story is mostly juvenile, but there was in interesting passage in which Obi-wan reflects on Padme's death and why it confused the medical droids. He believes that her encounter with Anakin left her closer to death than they recognized. That she only had the strength left in her to either stay alive and lose the babies, or give her life to let them live. It was actually heart breaking to read how Obi-wan felt the Living Force leaving her body.

I can't imagine there's a mother out there who wouldn't make that same choice.

 

So Anakin did kill her?

I thought the whole point was that he was tricked into believing he killed her.

It sounds odd - Anakin's Force choke didn't cause any significant physical injury, but it somehow destroyed her ... whatever .