PT How GL could of kept Padme alive long enough for Leia to remember her?

I'm sure this had to have been discussed before, so i'm sorry if i'm bringing up a repeated subject. But yesterday I was thinking about Leias line in ROTJ about talking about how she remembers her mother. She said she was beautiful, kind, but sad (I think that's what she said...haven't seen it in awhile)

So obviously many were thrown off in ROTS when both Luke and Leia spent the same amount of time with Padme. So did Lucas write himself in any corner...or could he have written an ending where Padme stayed alive for a little bit where it didn't seem forceful, but of course would help explain why leia remember her?

So this was roughly what I was thinking. Its not perfect...needs polishing but anyways.

When Obi-Wan leaves Mustefar(spelling?) have the Emperor detect that obi-wan had just left. He gives an order to have Obi-Wans ship followed.

Obi-Wan is on that asteroid place where padme is about to give birth. Have the droid come up to obi-wan and Yoda like it did in the movie, but have it says something more like "she has (some illness or unknown illness) that is going to take her life." Obi "no,....how long does she have" Robot "difficult to say. Could be a few months or at most 2-3 years"

Then have some alarms come up. Someone over the speakers you hear "imperial ships dropped out of hyperspace. They'll be here in 10 min."
Obi "blasted...they must have followed me from mustefar"

Just then have Padme give birth to Luke. He comes out. Padme says the nice things about Anakin like movie, but add on
Obi "Padme we have to transport you on a ship. We have to leave."
Padme "I don't think there is enough time for me Obi-Wan."
Obi "the imperials are coming not only for Yoda and myself, but you and your child as well. Palpitine will do all that he can to keep Anakin under his leash. But Anakin loves you Padme..even now. And if Anakin knows he has a child he will want to protect it as well. That is a threat to Palpitine.

We see Yoda watching this while time just outside the room. Bail approaches

Bail "Yoda....you must leave now. I got my ship ready to go. We are going to transport Padme on my ship."

Back to Padme
Padme "But...but..i can not let Anakin have my child....not the way he is now. Obi Wan please protect my son. You must go now and promise me you'll keep him alive."
Obi Wan "Padme..."
Padme "go!"

obi wan leaves and boards a small ship that Yoda is already on....then Padme feels more pain

Bail: Padme you alright?
Padme: somethings not right.
Robot: Your second child is on the way
Padme: 2nd?

Anyways to speed things up i'm thinking they push her table to roll it (or hover it) up bails ship. Maybe we don't even have to see the full child birth, just take her to the ship.

​

Just as bails ship goes into hyperdrive show that the imperials are landing on the asteroid and starting to fire/capture ones that are still there.

Show Vader like movie getting his mask on. Ask about Padme and what not. Emperor said she died..Vader Noooo​

Pan away and maybe show Obi-Wan, baby Luke, and Yoda on Dagobah.

Have Obi-Wan and Yoda talk about where it'd be best to take Luke (like in the movie) Yoda can tell obi wan to take him to his family and watch over him. He can mention how he'll stay on Dagobah....maybe a quick reason why he'll be safe there. And how He has training for obi wan...commute with Qui Gon..that whole thing (having Luke on Dagobah would be nice since would put a little wait to the "something familiar about this place".



Then this is the really added point I was thinking of.

Show Padme on Alderaan. Looking weaker and sicker. You see Padme sitting in grassy flower field (kinda like attack of the clones with Anakin. You have camera close to Padme looking sad...then from behind her you see a small girl (2 years old) jumping on the back of Padme...laughing and giggling. Padme smiles and tickles her. Then camera pans further back and you see Bail, his wife, and their child (a boy) who is roughly the same age as Leia. You see Leia and Bails child running around playing.

Bail: I love seeing our kids play together so nicely like that.
Padme: Yes, its like they are siblings

Bail has a concerned look on his face

Bail: You know Padme...we could still seek out Kenobi...you can still be with your son.
Padme: No....its to late for me. He's safe where he is. Far away from danger...living a normal life.

They look over at the two children playing. Bails child is observing a frog like creature. Giggling as it jumps.

Bails wife: honey lets bring the food out here to eat. Its a lovely day.
Bail: Yes..your right. why not.
Bail calls out to his son and even leia to come

Bail: Come here leia...want to help uncle get some cookies?
Leia giggles and goes towards him. But bails son doesn't come...hes looking at the frog. Bail calls a couple times but the child doesn't come.

Padme: let him be... I'll watch him till you come back.
Bail: Hmmm ok....we'll be back in 10min.

You see bail, leia, and bails wife enter a small shuttle and fly away. You see Padme looking at Bails child who has blond hair. He looks up at Padme and smiles. Padme smiles back...and for a breaf moment she gets a flash of Anakin as a small boy "i'm a person...and my name is Anakin."

Padme lays back....looking up at the sky. There are a few clounds that shes looking at.....then through the clones one small imperial shuttle comes....very quickly.

Padme calls to bails child to come to her.

The shuttle lands only like 100ft away from Padme. Padme that is weak is still sitting up on the grass field with bails child in her arms. Out of the shuttle comes the Emperor with a few troopers and royal gaurds staying by the ship. Padme has a frighten face and his holding the child closely. The emperor approached Padme.

(I'll be honest don't know what exactly they can say. something like 'dear child....do you think I would let you go...your mere existence is a threat to me. Especially the existence of your child."

Padme looks down at the child she is holding which is bails. Padme tries to speak up to say its not hers.

Padme: No don't touch the child its....

Emperor for pulls the child out of her arms...the child his hover on the side of the emperor crying and the emperor has a big smile on his face. The Emperor doesn't give padme a chance to speak.. you see from Padmes POV the emperor hold out his arm towards Padme and quickly close his fist...screen goes dark.

Then screen comes back as you see bails shuttle landing quickly....you see Bail running towards Padme with bails wife and leia in her arms some distance away. Bail calls to padme to wake up but she there is no life in her. He looks around call out for his son....and he from a distance enough to make out that its the child. Bail and his wife are in great tears. Bail puts his arms around his wife as they are sobbing. Then little leia walks close up to them. Their tears die down...they look at each other....and bail puts his arm around Leia and pulls her towards him.

We pain at last to Obi Wan who is on tattoonie. He's riding on a local animal (like in TPM) And he gots off his animal pulls out his binoculars, zooms in on a small home. He see's Owen...pans more see's Beru and pans more and sees a small 2ish year old Luke walking towards Beru...she picks him up and walks next to owen as they are making funny faces at him. They look towards then the sun set. Obi Wan puts his binoculars down. He smiles. And heads back towards the animal. Then we go to owen, beru, and luke and all 3 are looking at sun set ….roll credits.


This went on longer then I thought. sorry...i'm sure there are some issues with this...but just a fun thought I had. Some things I was trying to cover are of course...leia would spend time with padme to somewhat remember her. Luke would be on Dagobah to remember it feels familiar, and also show/explain that the emperor wanted to make sure padme/child dies.

Any thoughts or how you would of liked to have seen Padme and Leia be together longer?

 

"Leia, do you remember your mother? Your real mother?"
"Just a little bit. She died when I was very young."
"What do you remember?"
"Just images, really. Feelings."
"Tell me."
"She was very beautiful. Kind, but sad."

Images and feelings. Nothing more. All of which can be acquired through the Force.

There's nothing here that necessarily contradicts what we saw in ROTS. To have Padmé live for a while with Leia inherently goes against the purpose of their hiding:

"To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, if Anakin were to have any offspring they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous."

 

What leia says doesn't 100% go again ROTS but the fact that leia and luke were infront of Padme just as long (if you want to get technical luke was born first so he was around padme more) so I think the common thought was that leia of course actually spent some time with Padme. Even if it wasn't much. That's why I said maybe around 2 years (could maybe be 3 or 4) because around that age whatever memories you would have would only be 'images/feelings.'

As far as emperor....yeah I added that because I figured if Padme didn't die in child birth then you know the emperor would go crazy to find her and kill her (and the child he would know she would of had by that point) He would of told Vader that padme died already, but on the back end he'd try to make sure to find her and kill her before Vader finds out her lied and she was actually alive.

 

How could Leia remain hidden and anonymous from both Vader and Sidious by staying with Padmé for 2 years? Having Padmé alive, in and on itself, would endager whoever of the two stays with her, as you've pointed out.

Leia simply retains images and feelings from her mother while Luke didn't. It's not something that extraordinary. Twins not having the same memories and recollections of events/moments that both have experienced is perfectly normal in the real world. Star Wars is a world where living beings generate an energy field through which one can see the future and the past, sense the presence and feelings of others and that can run strong from parents to offsprings, which makes it even less extraordinary.

 

I get what your saying but in this version wouldn't leia still be a secret. She'd be living with Bail as his child (which come to think of it I should of just made his child a girl too. Would explain how he could take Padmes kid and say its his. Birth records would show they had a girl too.)

 

Even in our world some people have "baby memories". Is rare but it happens. In the world of SW , especially for these children is not even surprising that one of the siblings has such memories, as @Alexrd explained above, mostly images and feelings. Classical vague baby memories actually, but in this case. "helped" by Leia strong ability to connect to the others even without training (obviously she was born that way).
Why Luke has not such memories is interesting question, while itself not crucial. Exactly because Leia was born second she was literally close to her mother's death and her mother strong feelings in the last minutes of her life. At this moment Luke is in Obi Wan's hands
There is more and I think in Padme Amidala Megathread @PiettsHat talked about this. You can see in every clip whr the twins are shown that Luke is always with eyes shut and Leia is with eyes open.
Here

and here:

I had never pay attention to this detail but is obviously deliberate, as is in two scenes. So Luke is always the dreamer and Leia is always with eyes open to the world and they are such even as grown ups.
So my idea is that this works as it is and also, Padme dying shortly after the childbirth is very sad but I'm afraid is the only resolution of the situation. Is not only because of the tragic poetry of ROTS. Is also because Lucas showed mercy to her: she couldn't bear what Vader did in the aftermath (of course knowing that she is alive he wouldn't do it but again he would seach for her and put in immediate danger and so on).
The interesting thing here is while Luke had no memories of his mother he inherited her undying hope that there is still good in Anakin.

 

You bring up a lot of good points. I guess I wonder if Lucas put himself in that corner. Like if was able to have 'the ending' more towards the middle...meaning Anakins fight with obi wan...Yoda vs Emperor and allow a more fleshed out ending to wrap up loose stuff.

I do like the idea of maybe Leia being born first and padme holding her....and then she dies just as luke is born. I think its still a stretch but at least it gives some weight to leia remember something and luke nothing.

 

What I would like would if Leia could be hold by her mothe while Luke is in Obi Wan's hands... Maybe they had such idea but maybe is visually not the best choice as Padme's face wouldn't be seen fully on screen as is in the movie and it has to be for the ompactiof the scene. I think it is deliberately chosen that Luke is born first: to be guarded by Obi Wan even then and to be separated to hi mother first (and so he has no memories of her).

 

Lucas didn't quite put himself in a corner. The thing is that he could never settle on the backstory of Padme, back when he was writing the OT. In many of the older drafts of ANH, she did live for quite a while before dying. But this was back when Vader was not locked in as Luke's father and Leia was not related to either and the importance of Luke fighting Vader was understated. By the time he got to ROTJ, he had all these different threads that he had to pull together and he did create a general backstory, but he was still not very precise in the minutiae of what happened to her and the children. It seems that the novelization was crafted of a general idea of what happened, but was not something that Lucas had to beholden to. So when he did craft the story in the 90's, he knew how to get there and he had left himself an out.

 

Before the prequels does anyone remember what if any information there was about luke/leias mother? I remember when TPM was coming out right away it was said who padme was playing (the mother of luke and leia) I was kinda surprised they'd take away who the mother would be that quick. Not that I was looking for it but I don't remember any info about her before that

 

There wasn't much. Outside of the script drafts and the backstory bit in the ROTJ novelization, the only thing that Lucas ever talked about prior to the 90's, was what he said in the story meetings for ROTJ in 1981.

He later revisited that in 1997.

"The man Leia called Father was obviously not her father. He is part of the group that ends up having to fight Darth Vader in the film that will be out in 2003 [laughs]. The part that I had never really developed is the death of Luke and Leia's mother. I had a back story for her in earlier drafts, but it basically didn't survive. When I got to JEDI, I wanted one of the kids to have some kind of memory of her because she will be a key figure in the new episodes I'm writing. But I really debated on whether or not Leia should remember her."

--George Lucas, Star Wars-The Return Of The Jedi: Annotated Screenplay, 1997.

 

I always found the Luke/Leia conversation a little strange given what we're shown of the backstory. It doesn't seem intuitive for Leia to say "She died when I was very young" when in actuality, she died when Leia was only a few minutes old. Luke also doesn't seem to interpret "very young" as "childbirth" because he follows up what she says with "I never knew her", implying that he believes Leia did know their mother (and Leia does not attempt to clarify his apparent misinterpretation).

So while I wouldn't call it an overt contradiction, the official explanation doesn't seem very intuitive to me.

 

the alternative to that though is not to have Padme dying in the PT at all which would have been very anti-climatic and confusing in bridging the two trilogies together.

Of course there is the "EU can handle it in a book" argument which I really cannot stand. Casual audiences should not have to hunt for a book/comic/computer game to complete a cinematic experience...especially for a major character like Padme.

 

Yeah that's fair, an offscreen death would indeed have been anti-climactic. There's no easy way to go about it without requiring some kind of major story overall.

 

This presumes that Luke and Leia know when Padme died. We don't know what the Lars and the Organas told them about her.

 

Why would Leia know that her mother died in childbirth? It's likely that her adoptive parents were just very vague when answering any questions about her real mother. When withholding the truth, it's better not to lock too many details down.

 

The thing with SW is that the events of each movie take place within a short period ( about a week , 'cept maybe ESB) , so for Padme to die six months after the birth the birth would've needed to happen in ep II , but that causes narrative problems too.

I think it was more a problem that he eventually realised that the birth should happen in III and she needed to die pretty quickly , so basically Palps and Vader think she died and the kids were never born ..

 

But the obvious problem is that Leia came to Alderaan when she was basically a newborn and Bail and his wife are not some random nobodies but two very prominent people
So that they had adopted Leia would not be a secret, it would be known. As would her age.

Since Bail needs to keep some things hidden, the simplest thing for him to do would be to have Leia's mother as having died in childbirth, due to the war for ex.
Trying to make it seem that Leia lived with her mother for a few months/years makes no sense and would lead to questions and could get exposed.
He would likely fudge the date of Leia' birth so it seems that she was born a week or two before Padme's death.
So simply tell Leia that her mother died in childbirth or shortly thereafter and they took her in when she was weeks old.
Just saying "when you were young" invites further question , "How old was I, where did we live" etc..

Bye.
Old Stoneface

 

Padme staying alive doesn't work at all as then Vader would know she is alive and therefore be able to trace her. On top of that both he and Sidious would then know that a child was born. In the original story Anakin and the Emperor didn't even know the mother was pregnant. That obviously wasn't going to work when actually making the movies 20 years later. This is all part of the obstacles that had to be overcome when the first story was that Luke was the only child and Anakin was killed by Vader as opposed to Anakin becoming Vader and then adding Leia as the sister.

Why there is so much importance placed on Leia remembering her I don't know. What is also puzzling about it is the idea that it was too short a time which really doesn't work as Padme carried Luke and Leia for months. Leia carried the images and feelings and Luke didn't. Luke's actual remembrance of Padme was subconscious as he had the same conviction as she did that there was still the good of Anakin in Vader.

 

Given TPM and AotC as they are, then yes having Padme die in RotS makes sense.

But this was by no means a given.
It would be totally possible to make a PT where say Anakin and Padme break up in the second episode and Anakin is unaware that she is pregnant. Then in ep three she is presented as Bail's wife and Leia is Bail's daughter. No reason for Vader or Palpatine to think that Anakin had a child.
We could have some scene showing young Luke on Tatooine.

Leia's memories are not very important, they matter not at all given the PT. We know that neither Luke nor Leia knew their mother. Leia just for some unknown reason thinks she spent time with her.
It adds nothing to her character or Luke.

What it was, was a hint of backstory. That now has been ret-conned.
So what is left is a reminder of that ret-con.
Lucas could have done an SE where he cuts the bit about the mother and just have Leia ask Luke what is wrong and Luke says that Vader is here.

What is to me far more of a issue is giving Luke's conviction in his father as simply just something he "downloaded" from Padme.
That is doing him a disservice, that his insight, his faith in his father, that is not his, it just something he "got" from his mother. He didn't sense that, he didn't arrive at that after his experience with Vader in ESB and afterwards. No, that was all Padme not Luke.

Bye.
Old Stoneface

 

Leia never says anything about how long she thinks she has or hasn't spent with Padme. All she says is images and feelings. That's very, very vague. Lucas had it framed in such a way so as to be whatever he wanted it to be.

As to Luke, it wouldn't be so much a "download" as a residual belief that would explain why he would believe that it was possible for him to still be good, when the Jedi don't. At best, Lucas intended it to be an echo of their faith in Anakin.

As to breaking them up, sure, he could have done that. But Lucas had already determined that the tipping point for Anakin's turn was his attachment to his mother and to his wife. It wouldn't work as well if they're not together during this period. He realized that which is why he abandoned his original idea where he left her because he was Vader now.

 

I did some experimental editing a few years ago to see what would have to happen with ROTS to facilitate Padmé surviving the movie. It's a completed fan edit now, and, while I would NOT say it is necessarily an "improvement" to the theatrical, it was a great deal of fun to work on and got me analyzing, contemplation, and interacting with the films to a greater extent than I had before.

Here's what's relevant to Padmé:

- The three deleted scenes about the 'seeds of rebellion' have been reinstated so as to show her character to a greater extent and help frame the political and personal rift forming between Anakin and herself.
- Anakin's motivation to seek the dark side to save Padmé's life is downplayed somewhat, and his (now only) premonition nightmare is moved to after some of his other, more political motivations have been established. (This had to be done if her death is removed.)
- The medical droid's line has been redubbed to say, "She has sustained severe injuries. I cannot say how long she might last. We are preparing to deliver the babies...."
- We cut to the "Lord Vader, can you hear me" scene immediately after the birth of Leia, so that when Vader is told she has died and he initially denies it, the audience clearly understands that his instinct is correct, that Palpatine is lying to him, but that he accepts it.
- The following shot of Bail Organa's ship has been moved from Naboo to space. Conversation about the specifics of the twins has been removed, though a longer conversation can only be implied.
- Yoda landing on Dagobah has been reinstated to cover the removal of Padmé's funeral, pacing-wise.
- Footage from the film 'The Other Boleyn Girl' is used to depict Padmé residing on Alderaan, seemingly bed-ridden, with an infant Leia. The jappor snippet necklace can be briefly seen being worn.
- Clip of the above:

Again, not saying it's how it should have been, because Lucas chose to break with ROTJ's description of events for a reason, but it was a fun project to see what an alternate cut with that in mind could be like. It's called 'Labyrinth Of Evil,' after the ROTS lead-in novel, which I thought made a good title for an alternate version of Episode III.

 

that's an interesting edit. Of course if people were to watch the movies from 1-6 people would keep thinking in 4, 5, and till end of 6 'where is padme!' haha.

But someone up top brought up an interesting SE edit. Maybe just don't have leia say anything. Have luke say "do you remember your mother, your real mother." and just have leia say "luke wants wrong." that might work.