Padmé as a role model for girls - uh, not so much

Sometimes heartbreak can even override a person's attachment to their children. Yes, Padme had a good reason to keep living, but she was at the end of her rope, and everyone has one. I don't feel anyone should ever judge another person when it comes to how much they can take. Walk in another person's shoes, and all that. And sure, Leia was strong in most instances, but one can never say how she would have handled the same circumstances Padme had to deal with.

 

You all are missing a very important aspect as to why Padme CHOSE to die at that moment. She PURPOSEFULLY takes herself out of the equation. Let me explain...

Padme knows Anakin is obsessed with her and that this obsession causes him to do unspeakable things. She sees that Anakin believes he is doing all of this for her. He wants to save/protect her, and this is his justification for the murders, the plots, the evil that he embraces.

Padme, had she remained alive, would have justified Anakin's actions.

She cannot place her own life above those lives of all the people Anakin slaughtered or the Republic. She cannot condone his course of action. She cannot justify the things he has done "to protect her life" so she removes herself from the equation.

She willingly let's go because she cannot imagine the evil Anakin will tap into in order to always protect her. If she is gone, Anakin has no need to continue down this dark path. She senses good in him, and in an effort to bring him back or at least eliminate his motive, she let's go...

That's my take.

 

Think of the combination of stressors in her life.

To use another example, my mother is a very strong-willed human being. She has to be- there are four children in my family, plus my father. She has three brothers and three sisters, and kept them in line while growing up in a dirt-poor village in South Korea, post Korean War. She ran the Boston Marathon this year. The woman is a force of nature unto herself.

She also cried like a baby when she was preggers with me [the first kid] when she couldn't get chewing gum. Seriously.

When you're pregnant, and it's your first time, you don't know what to expect. Your body becomes weaker the further along you go. Now, compound the fact that the world is at war, her husband is going off his nut, she's had to hide both her marriage and her pregnancy, and now her husband has gone completely mental because of her, her lifelong work of Democracy has gone up the chimney, and everything has been shot straight to hell. A lot of women die in childbirth, and the more stressful the situation, the more likely it is to happen. She's lost everything, and she only has so much of a bond with her children. If they had been born before Anakin went haywire, she probably would have lived. But everything got dumped on her at the worst possible time.

I also read an interesting theory that Padme died to keep her children safe; they speculated that there was a bond between Padme and Anakin [moreso than the obvious] and she let go to sever that bond so her kids could be more easily hidden. Anakin would assume the children died in utero, so no one would connect Bail's adoption of Leia as anything more than coincidence.

Eh. Who knows. But I don't think it made Padme weak. I think it made her human.

 

Ewok, that's the best damn answer to this entire debate. Just exactly right on the nose.

Everyone needs to write down that post ASAP and commit it to memory.

 

Btw, i find it brilliantly hilarious that with Anakin as the "Luke" of the PT that we're debating whether, Padme, of all people is a good role model


Wait, wait.. hold on a sec! There are actually people who believe Anakin is the Luke of the PT?

 

Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme are the "Han, Luke, and Leia" of the Prequel Trilogy, the three major characters. It's sad to see a major character like Padme die in such a weak manner. I would rather have seen her give the twins over to Bail and Obi-Wan, and then die fighting, maybe at the helm of a starfighter. She could have gone out in a blaze of glory, in a way worthy of the mother of Luke and Leia.

IMHO this is part of the problem with comparing the PT/OT. GL has stated over and over that the PT is "plot driven" where the OT is "character driven". This is no small distinction. The OT can be summed up by calling it "The adventures of Luke, Leia and Han Solo". While the PT is driven by events rather than the characters themselves. Anakin, Padme and Obiwan are the central characters but by definition they can't exist and act as the "OT gang". I don't get the sense that Padme's story was ever meant to fully develop (hence the Mon Mothma scene cut). Instead, she serves as a plot device to show Anakin's deep attachment and greed issues. In another thread I mentioned that a few of the people that I know who've seen the movie didn't react strongly to Padme dying of a broken heart. They simply looked at it as an issue of "fate". To be honest, I've yet to hear anybody refer to Anakin has having "killed" his wife due to the force choke. The scene with the droid was pretty clear in that medically Padme was ok. Yet, she was dying and needed to give birth immediately to save the twins. I say all of that to say this. This same complaint can be made of the PT in general. All of the good guys lose and lose BIG TIME!! Padme character is in the same position as Anakin's mother. Something that happens (without direct reason) that Anakin has to deal with but cant.

 

Great post.

 

EwokThatCried's response has been the best interpretation by far. I was beginning to lose hope that any satisfactory explanation would come up. Thank you Ewok!

 

well,i would say the same as ewok ^^

uhm..i'm dutch so i can't tell all what i think..because i don't know how to spell it allright i try..

so..anakin did it all for her.but the reason en the things he actually offerd for her were to wrong.she didn't wanted that anakin did that all for her...so she just died.and he said such awfull things on mustafar.anakin said they could rule the universe together.

if you know what i mean

still,i think padmé is a very very nice chara in the SW movies. ^^

 

The good in Anakin that Padme says with her dying breathe is represented by their children. Concieved out of love. However misguided Anakin was or how seduced he was to the Dark Side or however wrong he was or did, it was still out of love.

But Padme could not let those horrors that he did, no matter if it was for love, to be justified. She chose to die....

 

I have to chime in and agree on Ewok's take. Very well articulated, indeed. And it sort of soothes my disappointment a bit -- the only real criticism of the movie I had was the lack of Padme's "aggressive negotiations" spirit. The scenes that were shot with her conversing with Senators, and the scene where she confronts Palpatine with the petition to have him roll back his powers -- those were all scens that would have made her stronger to me as a character, and made the tragedy of her love even more dramatic.

Of course, I wonder if in the EU literature that will be coming out, somebody will invariably make the incredible leap that her death was staged, mostly for Bail's benefit, so that word would spread to the Republic that she died. She would have pre-agreed to send the children away, so that Anakin would not know of them and would assume they died with her. And she would live as someone else, forever tortured by her lost love, but doing what she could underground to fight the good fight. But that scenarios raises far more questions than can possibly be answered in trying to link up to the OT. Besides, it's silly.

Anyway, I still consider Padme a role model. But this is a good discussion, folks -- good job.

 

Master_Gallia,

Excellent post. I don't consider myself a "basher" and I spent hours on these boards in 1999 defending TPM. But in my view there are clear problems with the PT overall and this explanation by GL is a great example of why. My problem with Lucas on this score is that his plot / character choice is ultimately a false one. To say that you can't properly develop three main characters over the course of 3 feature-length films (and 7 1/2 hours of screentime) because the plot demands too much is a hollow excuse. Padme was reduced to a soap opera role in ROTS, and it was a terrible waste of a compelling character and a talented actress.

 

She wasn't reduced to a soap opera character. There were more scenes filmed with her, in which she, Bail Organa, and Mon Mothma form the seeds of the Rebellion. They were cut, but that doesn't negate their existence.

 

She wasn't reduced to a soap opera character. There were more scenes filmed with her, in which she, Bail Organa, and Mon Mothma form the seeds of the Rebellion. They were cut, but that doesn't negate their existence.

And Padme was carrying the "seeds" of Rebellion inside her. She died so they could live.

There's a big ol' birth-death allegorical thing going on in these scenes.

 

For that matter, Luke should have died when he found out his father was Darth Vader. "Oh no, my daddy is the dark lord of the sith! I've lost the will to live!"

 

Vader didn't use Luke as an excuse for his dark deeds. Luke couldn't blame himself for the fall of the Republic and Jedi Order.

 

They were cut, but that doesn't negate their existence.

And I've argued that those exact scenes would have gone a long way toward giving the character some needed dimension. So I appreciate that, but it doesn't change my opinion of what actually did make it to the screen. (Which, in fairness, is all that most people will ever see.)

 

On the one hand, the deleted scenes would make Padem look stronger, but on the other hand, her death might actually be even less believable: why did she give up all hope when she could still fight for the freedom in the Galaxy?

 

I was dissapointed in ATOC when she heard about the slaughter of the sandpeople she didnt seem to care, unless Anakin dumbed it down a little afterwards to not make it seem so bad. heck if a loved one came to me and said they took out a group of people in anger even the women and children i would be kinda worried, i would take that as not being a good thing about that person and run as fast as i can.

 

On the one hand, the deleted scenes would make Padem look stronger, but on the other hand, her death might actually be even less believable: why did she give up all hope when she could still fight for the freedom in the Galaxy?

I don't think she would. At all. That's why I hate the "lost the will to live" explanation. I understand that she most likely had to die for the story, but I thought the method was lame.

This is a good thread btw, I enjoy the discusion. Thanks to ~ô¿ô~ and all others.

 

She is a terrible role model. Let's see; pretend to lead people at a young immature age (which led her planet to a war) Becomes intimate with a young man whom is going to be a jedi (who leads a monk or preist life), Turns him away from his true focus, marries him (making him dissobey the rules of the jedi) And pretty much brought about the destruction of the civalized galaxy.

 

I agree

 

Again, I would like to point out Ewok's post at the beginning of this page. It explains it all...

 

EwokThatCried, besides the being in symbiance with Anakin explanation, that's one of the best I've read.

 

EwokThatCried, that was the best reply I have seen regarding Padme's death.

Great job!