PT Padme. What would you change about her character.

It's an interesting theme over the course of SW how children change you.

But she was pregnant... The political scenes on the deleted section I assume would have been much more better to add(of course we all know that it would disturb the flow and overall aspect of the movie) but other than that, she can't fly do crazy evasive actions with a ship, can't really go gung ho in battle.




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I have no idea how that Scenario would look but that sounds interesting...

If Padme started doing things like in AOTC(remember when she got cut on the belly?) that would just be stupid on her part. Why would she go out on a war while potentially killing her unborn children if hurt.

I'm not trying to say that she goes wuss but to go all Rambo while she's going to pop REAL soon doesn't sound like a good idea.


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I still say a more dramatic scene would have been Padme being forced to only take Luke or Leia into hiding (like Sophie's Choice) then her dying of the will to live.

Having a final scene in ROTS of a hysterical Padme as she watches Obiwan take baby Luke away actually is giving me goosebumps as I write it.

 

Yes, because in her mind she brought on all that happened. She supported Palpatine, Ani went to the Dark Side to protect her, the Jedi mistrusted Ani because he loved her, she was busy fighting the war while Palpatine quietly seized total power. That's her point of view; Ani even said he murdered people all for her. With all that on her head at once, and with Palpatine sure to never stop going after her and her loved ones until she's dead, she thought that she was a burden and a threat. Better to die and put herself out of their misery, than stay and fight a battle she'd already lost. Obi-Wan could protect her kids better than she could, and there's no sense persecuting her family if she's gone.

Again, you have to put yourself in her state of mind. She'd been utterly broken, with no chance to breathe and regroup. It's easy to tell her to fight, when everything she'd thought worth fighting for was gone, or under greater threat while she lived. But if she's dead, and her kids supposedly don't even exist, the heat is off for them and she can no longer cause them pain. To her, the universe is better off without her.

 

Even with the knowledge of what happens in the OT, that would've been unbearable. ROTS was dark enough already.

 

This has been gone over again and again.

We really don't know why Padme died.

A droid says she has lost the will to live.

 

That doesn't make it invalid.

 

I realize that what was currently going on with the galaxy and her personal life would have been a great burden on her. However supposedly losing the will to live or deciding that someone else could take care of her two newborns better than she could just makes her look like a bad mother (and a very self centered individual when it comes to her personal life). It was just a plotpoint that was not planned out very well by Lucas.

I honestly think by the time the prequels came around GL did not have a good grip on Star Wars and its fandom anylonger. He had lost touch with what he had created and how thoroughly its fans would disect it. Star Wars had become the biggest movie franchise around yet he still treated it as a small niche type of franchise that not many people are going to care about.

If Star Wars was still a niche franchise what Lucas did would have been completely fine. However given how huge it was he should have tied his new ideas in closer to what he created for the OT. Even if it forced Padme to die offscreen several years later then he should have done that because that was what he originally wrote.

 

I always thought it made sense that she died because of Anakin. Padme was the recipient of the Chosen One's love. Anakin loved her enough to sacrifice anything to save her. If they are all luminous force beings we must assume there was a connection between Padme and Anakin through the force that went deeper than any other form of love, due to Anakin's great power. I always thought her dying was the result of that connection being cut. Like their love was what was sustaining them both in a way, their connection to each other through the force. Without that connection Padme could no longer live, and neither could Anakin. It's beautifully poetic.

 

Padme isn't a bad character but I agree that it's stupid to have an elected Queen at a young age. Have a monarchy or don't, but don't try telling me that we can have queens and princesses and all of that but that we still have to declare 'muh democracy' just so that we can contrast with the Empire in the most simplistic way possible.

 

????

You do realize in history that there have been young leaders before?

 

Yes there have been. The issue with Padme being queen isn't so much that she is queen at the age of fourteen. It's that she was an elected queen at the age of fourteen. The only way that would ever make since and the only way you could ever accept that that could logically happen would be if the lifespan for them was much shorter than ours is.

She should have just been part of a monarchy like E 50 said and that the throne was passed down to her from a parent or other relative.

 

I would change literally everything...

 

I wouldn't have her lose the will to live. (Her husband's evil actions would still bring sorrow to her though, but she wouldn't die from it)
She just had children and still had hope for her husband.
She would not have been an elected queen.
I'd rather have an actual monarchy.

Show abhorrence to the use of the clone army.

 

I would have had her give birth to the twins at some point before the part where she goes to find him to convince him to turn back, and I would've had Darth Vader actually kill her-perhaps unintentionally, as a result of some uncontrolled use of his darkside power, but she wouldn't have told him the kids were born...

 

So you disagree then with the entire basis of the OT with the Rebels vs the Empire which was presented in the most simplistic way possible in the first place?

Now of course with the story completed we find that it really wasn't that simple after all.

 

Yes. Being able to let go, even if it's hard, is one of Lucas' main points throughout the Prequels. Besides, losing the will to live has nothing to do with "giving up". She didn't commit suicide, she died because her place in the universe was wiped out and she accepted, contrary to Anakin, that there are things you "can't fix".

I also don't think you're arguing rationally. It's been pointed out repeatedly what Vader/Palpatine could have done to bring her out of hiding and what kind of life that would have meant for the twins, yet you're still saying - from an emotional point of view - I'd be somehow impossible to protect a child with your own death. It happens all the time, especially in situtions of crisis.

 

I keep reading your posts trying to make sense of it, and I think it's the other way around.

 

Except that, again, she'd become convinced that she'd put them in danger by supporting the man who wanted her and, perhaps, the kids dead. Plus, the man she loved more than anyone else in the Universe was now no longer trustworthy. While she might've had doubts about Yoda, I'm sure she was certain Kenobi and the Organas would look after the kids. Better them than her, who had fouled up things for everyone in the galaxy.

No, that's not rational. But, again, she had been suddenly and violently pushed into a state where she was so deep in despair that rationality was beyond her ability to achieve. And that's a very realistic idea.

 

It's hard for the viewer to weigh the emotional gravity Padme endured, and in such a short amount of time. I think perhaps to some extent, since we know with every viewing how Anakin ends up, we don't consider the trauma of witnessing something like that firsthand, to your one true love, in a world you had helped to create (that said one true love has now vowed to destroy).

And so, just on its own merits, I can see how you can throw any rational thoughts out the window at that point, and not even come close to seeing Padme as weak. Add in the hormones running rampant (not being funny here), and you've got synapses firing all over the place. We've likely seen people "legitimately" fold up over issues a fraction as Shakespearean as what she experienced.

Plus, while you can take the approach that she "gave up", it's just as easy to say that she "held on"...long enough to deliver healthy babies. She'd endured so much at that point; I can't hold it against her for simply running out of steam.