PT Padme. What would you change about her character.

This was a hard thread to find a location for. She is mainly a movie and tv character since her character has barely been touched in the literature department. There is a Padme thread in the PT forum but it seemed to be more of a fan thread and I didn't want to derail it and start posting that I didn't like the character much and think she should have been different. So given that outside of the PT Padme was seen in the most was TCW I figured I might as well put it here.

Padme is one of my least favorite characters so far in the Star Wars universe. The thing that really made it difficult for me to get into the character (aside from the bad dialogue in the PT of couse) was that I never bought into her backstory. It has always been difficult for me to accept the whole 'being elected queen at the age of fourteen' deal. I realize Lucas likes the strong young female characters but that was pushing it a bit to far. Leia was ok because she was just a princess who decided to join a rebellion but I'd have to question the sanity of a planet that elected a queen at the age of fourteen. And then in Ep. II they mention she wasn't even the youngest queen they ever had.

As much as I dislike that backstory it wouldn't be that difficult at all to fix. All they would have to do was instead of her being elected she could have simply been heir to the crown.

Her story in TCW wasn't so bad. Mainly I think just because it was an improvement on the first two movies but I still definitely would have changed it. Being one of the best senators in the entire galaxy by your mid twenties is still pretty far fetched. But it still wasn't as bad as the Padme in Ep. I and II and TCW didn't really use her that much so it wasn't quite so noticeable.

But anyways how would you of changed Padme's character? I've heard people in the past say they would have just turned her into another Jedi and her and Anakin could have met that way. I've also thought that she could have simply just been a regular person that Anakin happened to get to know somehow and they eventually fell in love.

 

That she was actually injured and had a reason to die.

Let's face it...she just gave birth to twins...no matter how much of a tool Anakin turned out to be she had some serious reasons to live.

 

She *had* reason to die. Really, the only thing I'd do is flesh her out. Dying from a broken heart isn't impossible nor weak.

 

I think it was a bit of wire held in her teeth that she was using - but I agree with the general thrust of the argument.

AOTC novel:

"I was beginning to wonder if you had gotten my message," Obi-Wan replied. Both he and Anakin winced as Padme was similarly, roughly dragged over to the post next to Anakin, and roughly chained up. They saw her curl a bit, defensively, in what seemed a futile resistance. What they didn't see, though, was the resourceful Padme managing to slip out a wire she had hidden in her belt.
"I retransmitted your message just as you requested, Master," Anakin explained. "Then we decided to come and rescue you."
"Good job!" came Obi-Wan's quick and sarcastic reply.


"What about Padme?" The two turned to discover that their clever companion had already used the concealed wire to pick the lock on one of her shackles, and had turned her body about, facing the post. She climbed right up the chain to the top of that post, then went to work on the other shackle.
"She seems to be on top of things," Obi-Wan commented wryly.

 

I'm wondering if the Padme we saw in ROTS is the character Lucas always envisioned Anakin's wife to be from the beginning. Where as the Padme we saw in Ep. I and II was the character Lucas just started working on when he started writing the script in the mid '90's for the prequels. They did seem like two entirely different characters.

 

Attack of the Clones "To be angry is to be human"

That is not what I would want any girlfriend to say, after their Boyfriend just confessed to killing women and children.

Personally I would have had her "character" more like Ahsoka's character which for me would work better as Mrs Vader and the mother of Luke and Leia. Not the bit of cardboard that she was.

 

@Cushing's Admirer

She was killed off because she had to die so taht Luke would be an orphan. They could have been more realistic with it and have had Anakin/Vader do some serious internal damage to her with the Force and had one of the robot doctors on Polis Massa make a comment about "massive internal damage to the organs in her thoracic cavity....it is amazing she lived this long."

The whole 'lost the will to live' crap was nonsense.

 

Moved from SWTV to Saga. Carry on the discussion.

 

Get rid of her losing the will to live. Good lord she says to Obiwan that there is good in Anakin at the end of the movie and then she gives up after having twin babies??? If there is still good Anakin, then stick around raise your kids and try to turn him back!

Lucas should have stuck with his original version from ROTJ when Leia said she died while she was very young, and had her die with Leia on Alderran a few years later of Cancer or something life threatening.

 

One thing i'd change? Have her sing a life day song!

 

Yeah I really feel like the reason Lucas decided to do that is because he wanted to show her death onscreen. You are right though it definitely would have worked better for him to stick with the original idea of her dying when her kids were a few years old instead of at childbirth. It also would have been believable for her to go into deep deppression over what happened to Anakin as well as the Galaxy and succumbing to that over time.

 

Underwhelming.....

Having her death on screen served so much more story and emotion than tie in a plot thread.

 

Why not go all the way if connecting plot points doesn't matter to you. Lucas should have had Padme give birth to triplets, and the ST could have revolved around finding the 3rd Skywalker and their possible offspring.

Or have C3PO be owned by Uncle Owen for 10 years in the PT, so when we get to ANH and he doesn't recognize him.... Oh wait that already happened...

 

Uncle Owen had a "rusty silver" droid. Then he got a "golden" droid. So that's why he didn't remember him.

 

That last part has been argued and completed a while back(even Reddit is tired of explaining it)Owen doesn't care about Droids. Therefore, he thinks of the droid as any other.

And that idea would be interesting.....

The "another line" is ambiguous and open enough to squeeze more into it. So if Lucas wanted to, he could have and it would have been fine.

If anything, go and have a chat with Lucas on ROTJ and how he retconned Luke And Leia for the sake of story and emotion.

He's done these things more than once...



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I'm an OT fan, but I readily admit the Luke/Leia revelation was a total cop-out by Lucas to tie up the trilogy. I have many problems with ROTJ and that is one of them. Hence why it's inferior to ANH & ESB. The difference is I don't try to justify and make these crazy excuses, as I will call out something in the OT and PT, and now the ST.

C3PO talked like an English Butler unlike any droid in the galaxy, so I think Owen would have remembered that droid who left with Anakin Skywalker & Padme (the mother and father of the that blonde haired kid he was protecting all of those years).

 

He talked no differently to TC-14 for instance, and was a different colour. Add to that Owen's negative view of droids, and you have your answer.

 

Digga....

Who the hell is making excuses and justifying?

ROTJ/Rots was a retcon(semi retcon), but it sure as hell was one I thought was a good decision. That's just my own opinion.


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ha ha, just kidding. I can't tell one "limey" accent from the next. Owen must have the same problem. Or maybe 3P0's butler voice is the default setting and Owen never changed it. He seemed like a lazy bum, making poor Luke do all the work.

 

As I've written in other threads, she lost the will to live because she'd pretty much lost everything that meant anything to her. Her husband, her trust in her own judgment, her government, her belief in justice. It'd all been destroyed within the space of a few days, and she'd been an unsuspecting part of the plot to bring it all down. And, as for her family and children, she knew that Palpatine would make sure she was killed, even if it meant attacking her family and kids (or, worse, taking her kids in and setting them on the Dark Side path) in order to bring her out into the open. She knew Ani still had some good in him, but she knew she couldn't bring it back.

In her mind, under the circumstances, the best way to protect her family is to give up and die. If things had happened over a longer period of time, she might've been able to gather strength and ride it out. But she'd been so thoroughly socked so quickly she couldn't stand it. I know from personal experience how damaging stress can be, so I buy Padme's giving up. Besides, we see people in much happier circumstances give up on their lives all the time.

Given the story, I guess I'd keep Padme as she is. To change things, we'd need to do a massive retcon.

 

Seriously? After having 2 kids, the best way to protect them is to give up and die?

 

I don't think she gave up and died to protect but more so gave up like all you said about her.

Just my 28 cents.


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