Padme, the strongest woman in the Universe.

Padme is a great woman. She saved her planet from invasion when everyone told her hope was lost. She gives a crippled Jedi twins even when her galaxy is going to Sith hell. She stays beautiful even when she's surrounded by the ugliest beasts or situation or being touched by the ugliest robotic hand. That's why I like her and want her to survive the events in Rots, which I haven't had the pleasure of viewing by the way.

But how can she? Continuity dictates that she does not even though her daughter remembers some of her traits. Leia must have spent at least a year with her mom though so maybe she does remember her from that, if she's born at the beginning of the film.

Anyway, dicuss reasons why Queen, Senator Amidala, Naberrie, Padme Skywalker is the finest female of the stars and ways in which she can survive the coming darkness and her seemingly inevitable fate to raise the next great heroine of the Galaxy far far, at a long distance, away!

 

Padme is a strong leader, fairly selfless person, and generally an all around sweet person. However, she does seem to have something of an emotional weakness when it comes to letting people in closest to her heart, and then allowing herself to become completely enraptured by them. She was as wrapped up in Anakin in episode III as she was with him - letting her feelings for him overwhelm her sense of duty and obligation.

 

Keep things on the happy side of spoilers until Monday, please.

 

After seeing RotS... it just isn't fair.... why, GL?

 

She's the dumbest woman in the world. Her character went downhill right after comforting Anakin in episode II. He was mourning his mother's death then out of the blue he says that he will be the most powerful jedi. Who the hell wants to be power hungry after losing their own mother? And who the hell is dumb enough to fall for a lovable guy like that?

Hey, that's why playas get their women. hee hee hee.

 

Strongest woman in the universe? After seeing ROTS, surely you jest?

 

As much as I respect Padme, I feel that she is not the strongest woman in the Star Wars universe. She let her emotions so easily affect her common sense, Especially when Anakin was involved. The strongest woman to me is Leia. She seems to have all of her mother's strengths and none of her emotional weaknesses. We know she had feelings for Han, but she had to put those feelings aside for the good of the rebellion. She dealt with the situation with Han when she knew it was appropriate, when the galactic civil war was over. She did not let her emotions get in the way of doing what needed to be done. Padme let her love for Anakin cloud her sense of what is right and what is wrong. Do you think Leia would have allowed Han or even Luke for that matter, continue to be in her presence if they showed traits of going to the Dark Side? I don't think so.

 

Strongest woman in the universe? After seeing ROTS, surely you jest?

Ditto that.

 

I second on that!

 

"There is still good in him but obviously I can't do it because I've lost the will to live-- URK!"

 

She dealt with the situation with Han when she knew it was appropriate, when the galactic civil war was over.

Except she left the rebellion to rescue Han from Jabba the Hut. I agree that Leia is a vastly stronger character than Padme, but she didn't wait for the war to end to adress her feelings for Han.

 

she lost the will to take care of her kids....good job.

 

I dont blame her, I blame Lucas' bad story telling.

One of the worst outcomes in the PT is the way Lucas punks Padme's character.

Let's spend two movies conveying to the audience what a strong willed character Padme is. Then kill her off in the third movie citing "lost the will to live" as a reason. But not before she gives birth to two children and tells obi wan there is still good in anakin.

Yeah that makes sense. I could maybe (stretching here) see it if she beleived that Anakin was totally lost but her own words express that she beleives the opposite.

I like the PT's up till ROTS.

 

Over the years, I was much more interested in Padme's story than Anakin's. I've known for 28 years that Anakin betrayed the Jedi and gets burned by lava. Ho-hum. On the other, Padme was pretty much a mystery. I died when most of her backstory was edited out of AOTC.

Lost her will to live? There needed to be a little more imagination on GL's part. To see Padme change from a strong queen to a damsel in distress, and finally to a baby making machine, it's just sad. She had so much potential.

Maul, Dooku, and now Padme... What a waste.

 

I love Padme, I think before you dismiss her death as weak, you should really try to understand WHY she dies at the end of RotS.

Deconstructing Padme

[Part 1]

To best understand the Love Story in the prequels, we must understand our heroine. Padme is not a wilting flower, or a doe-eyed damsel in distress, in fact, she?s completely the opposite. Padme is strong and brave, but above all else she?s driven.

What do we know of Padme?s childhood? If we completely ignore the novelizations and only look at the 2 films and the deleted scenes, we don?t know a lot. But what we do know paints the portrait of a young girl who grew up and lived and breathed for an ideal. She sacrificed everything of herself and her own identity to champion freedom and democracy for the Galaxy.

To what do I base this on? Her bedroom scene with Anakin. (Deleted scene.) The moving pictures on her wall were a stiff portrait of her and her family, and her with all of those alien refugees who died.

Okay - let?s just think about that for a moment, Padme?s bedroom, we can assume, was pretty much not lived in much since she was a child. Normally, when kids move away from home, some of their stuff from their youth is left over ? pictures w/ childhood friends, crafts they made as a child?she had nothing like that at all in her room. She had an image of her and her family, and her with a bunch of kids who died?not exactly what one would readily think of as happy childhood memories.

This is quite telling and reveals a lot about her personality and her life?s dedication to her job. Padme sacrificed everything that a normal kid would experience ? including her one known crush on the cute, curly haired Paulo friend from her legislative youth program ? to be an adult.

Just looking at Queen Amidala?s costumes in TPM also paint another image to us. Much like Queen Elizabeth, her face is always painted white, her hair ornate, and her clothes were rigid, unyielding, and impenetrable. Even though they were mostly Japanese-inspired in style, they still created Padme?s Queenly presence to be virginal, uncorruptible, utterly unattainable, and untainted. Queen Amidala was Naboo?s virgin Queen ? her young age of 14 further removed any ideas of sex from her ? she bore in her bearing the optimism of youth that only age and life experience can destroy.

One of the things to note in the films is that Padme rarely smiles. Unlike what critics say, this isn?t because Natalie isn?t acting, or she?s stiff, or bad directing, it points to her character being very serious in being. I suppose that most people find that a bit confusing, as they probably expected her to be just like Leia ? feisty and argumentative. But the prequels were written from a different time, as Obi-Wan mused ?A more civilized age??

The OT easily documents its polarities in themes ? good vs. evil, compassion vs greed, free choice vs destiny. The prequels themes are there, but they are more difficult to determine, the main key theme being democracy (good) vs dictatorship (evil.)

Padme is everything that Palpatine is not. She is the champion of liberty, of justice, of freedom. The very fact that she?s female puts her at the completely opposite scale of the Empire. The Empire is a vast machine ? it ?creates? life through machinery ? through cloning and medical science. Padme is a woman and is the very essence of life itself. She will give birth to her children naturally, something that the Empire can never do ? they can never create real life.

Naboo is the epicenter of Democracy ? it is a world teeming with natural beauty, where art is obviously appreciated, where people freely speak their minds and share ideas. It is a utopia society that is completely polar to the Empire that Palpatine will create.

With all of this in mind, we come back to Padme. Padme is from Naboo ? she is the champion of her people. Over and over she survives assassination attempts on her life and outwits those that wish to cut out the main figurehead to this idealistic cause.

She has witnessed death,

 

Very well put PadmeLeiaJaina.

 

Padme, the strongest woman in the Universe.
NO.... I think Padme was too weak in Revenge Of The Sith for this comment... Leia still rocks!