[Crazy Idea] How I would have improved the "love story" aspect of the prequels.

It's simple really. Anakin needed competition in AotC for Padme. I would have casted a younger actor as Bail Organa (don't get me wrong, I love love LOVE Jimmy Smits) and had Padme in a relationship with him coming into AotC. Anakin meets up with Padme again still having a childhood crush on her, but finds her with this politician guy: Bail. Not only does this give us a love triangle, which lets face it always does the trick, but also allows for the perfect opportunity for us to see shades of anger and jealousy in Anakin. Basically, instead of Anakin and Padme sitting around debating over how they'd be living a lie, we'd have Anakin stealing Padme from Bail, which in my opinion is a lot juicier and more entertaining. You set up Anakin as this bad-boy adventure-type who spices up Padme's boring politician life and you set up Bail as the good ol' dependable boring guy. By the end of AotC, Anakin has seduced Padme and they have eloped. Poor Bail. RotS I wouldn't really change too much. I'd probably add an explanatory scene at the beginning between Padme and Bail where we find out that Bail is also married now. Awkward moment, blah blah blah. Bail's part in RotS would pretty much be the same as the Jimmy Smits part except more concern on his part for Padme as things start going down the tubes. This would also make the scene where Bail takes Leia a lot more meaningful - showing he still really cares about her. I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I think it would be effective. So yeah, that's my idea, maybe I'm a little crazy, but oh well.

 

I like it, but why Bail? How about a guy like Padme was talking about on Naboo? That would be better, IMO.

 

I guess because I've always wanted there to have been more of a relationship (not necessarily romantic, I had actually expected there to have been more of a friendship between them established in the prequels, but alas no) between Padme and Bail. I don't know, I just feel it would add so much meaning and motive to Bail raising Leia. I know, I know, I'm weird.

 

I wouldnt say your weird, I would just say your ideas are weird!

But BAIL!?!?! FOR REAL!?!?!?!

 

I actually think that's a good idea. I mean, Bail is old , but if he wasn't that much older than Padme that could have worked very well.

 

Genius idea.

 

I am SO GLAD Lucas didn't go for the "love triangle" plotline. It's such a cliché.

 

I could easily see it being crappily executed like Pearl Harbor. But it's a good idea I suppose.

 

Agreed.

The love triangles of Star Wars are subtle and implicit - think Anakin/Padme/Obi Wan and Luke/Leia/Han. That they DON'T actually exist places Star Wars above conventional entertainment. That is not for a second to imply a love triangle can't be sweeping and epic, but if you venture down that path, you're entering a weather-worn, down-trodden path. More pertinently...

The love between Anakin and Padme works on grander mythological levels because it's the first time that either has opened up their heart to another. If Padme was already being pursued or in a relationship, her union with Anakin would be tainted and make little sense. As it stands, and to borrow a Kubrickian phrase, Anakin and Padme are both "journeying beyond the infinite" and pursuing a place that neither has ventured before.

Anakin and Padme's love is precisely so timeless and tragic because it shouldn't exist. Theirs is a love that was never meant to be and can never last. When Padme initially rejects Anakin's advances and tells him that he's a Jedi and she's a Senator, she could actually be speaking about the organisations they represent - the union of Jedi and Senator is as flawed and ill-fated as Jedi Council and Galactic Senate. Again, this vital poetry is ruined if Padme has another would-be suitor or lover (particularly, as has been suggested, another Senator!). The tale Lucas conceived is perfect as it is.

 

I agree Cryogenic.

I like the love story as it is. Partly because it has lines you?d only hear in a Star Wars movie and partly because it's not really that cliché.
A few reasons,
# Padme is older
# Anakin is a monk
# No ex boyfriend/girlfriend
# They get married (which seems to be unfashionable in movies these days)

The dialogue is no more weird than what you?d find in really old novels-eighteenth and nineteenth century ones- all people seem to do is talk for pages and pages.

 

Yah live triangles are cliché dull and boring. I am really glad Lucas did not go for one. Bail, Obi-Wan or anyone else. I like the way he wrote the love story for Anakin and Padmé. I was fearing something awful like Titanic and I was pleasantly surprised that I liked all but one scene.

 

Yes, the love story works fine for me, without a love trainge to spice things up. This love story is incredibly old fashioned and almost like a courtship from the days of King Arthur. A love triangle would have been completely out of place, IMO.

BTW Strilo, which scene do you dislike? The Meadow Scene would be my guess?

 

I would have casted a younger actor as Bail Organa (don't get me wrong, I love love LOVE Jimmy Smits)

How 'bout Johnny Depp?

(I'm not sure he's younger than Jimmy Smits, though)

 

What Anakin and Padme love story did Cryogenic see? Did he see some different versions of the movies?? Their "love story" was one of the worst aspects of the PT. It didn't work at all. GL could have left it out totally and we wouldn't have lost anything.

Strilo edit: This has nothing to do with the topic of the thread. There is no call to start with someone for their opinions of the love story.

 

I should have thought this thread was about stating whether or not - and why/why not - you agreed with the topic starter's suggestions. I responded in kind by saying that I did not and by outlining why I thought the love story was perfect as is. Would you care to do the same?

 

thus far, i liked the love story. it is far better than most of the love stories we see today on the television. george lucas did a fine job, in my opinion.

 

I should have thought this thread was about stating whether or not - and why/why not - you agreed with the topic starter's suggestions. I responded in kind by saying that I did not and by outlining why I thought the love story was perfect as is. Would you care to do the same?

Once people start to reply to a topic, their replies become open to discussion. This is the nature of discussion forums. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me replying to what you stated. I most certainly don't have to only reply to the original question.

As to the original question, instead of Bail, maybe GL should have left some of the stuff in that showed that Palpatine was planting seeds in Anakin's mind that there was something going on between Obi-Wan and Padme. So, instead of a real triangle, there's a fake one being manufactured just to turn Anakin.

 

Anakin and Padme's love is precisely so timeless and tragic because it shouldn't exist. Theirs is a love that was never meant to be and can never last. When Padme initially rejects Anakin's advances and tells him that he's a Jedi and she's a Senator, she could actually be speaking about the organisations they represent - the union of Jedi and Senator is as flawed and ill-fated as Jedi Council and Galactic Senate

Well the 'union' between the jedi and the senate seemed to work quite well for a 1000 years so I'm not sure your analogy works.

The 'Forbidden Love' scenario is just as cliched as the 'Romantic Triangle ' scenario, so I don't think cliches are the relevant matter it's how well it's done that counts.


g

 

I just read yeterday he's like 42 or 43! I was shocked, he does'nt look it eh? I don't know how old Smits is.

 

Funny, considering that one of most important plot points in virtually every incarnation of the Arthurian legend is the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot love triangle.

Personally, though I can appreciate the Jedi/Senate, Anakin/Padme analogy - I don't think it would have hurt too much for Padme to have shown an interest in another man before Anakin comes along. Bail would have been the obvious candidate (maybe not Jimmy Smits ). I'm not saying that the two senators were having a full blown love affair, but a growing appreciation for each other that was cut short by Anakin's intervention.

An appreciation that Anakin would remember during his months away during the wars - and one that he might secretly fear flaring up again. Then, in RotS - Palpatine could have played the "honest Iago" role. It wouldn't even have to be overt:

"Senator's Organa and Amidala are conspiring against me..."

Just hearing the two names together would be enough for our possessive protagonist to start jumping to false conclusions. He'd also associate the emerging rebellion against Palpatine's rule with "Organa and my wife", which would give him further cause to not even consider "Wait a minute, maybe they've got a point" - he wouldn't see what they were saying, only who was saying it.

Though I'm fine with it as it stands.

I only wish we could have seen more of Alderaan throughout the PT (maybe with it taking Naboo's place) so as to make its destruction in the OT actually mean something... since as it happens it just doesn't move me. Not much anyway.

(How did I change topic so completely? )

 

We've had our share of "the prequels suck because..." and "AOTC sucks because..." discussions around here. Making the blankment statements you did threatened to de-rail this thread into another such discussion. The mods are very stringent on ensuring that threads don't just devolve into flame wars; responses like the one you first made are very incendiary and make a flame war several steps closer to reality.

But the union of the Jedi Council and the Galactic Senate was in trouble and the forbidden union of a Jedi and a Senator was reflective of this.

That's a good point.

Yet a "Forbidden Love" scenario allows for a cleaner narrative and sharper exploration of repressed feelings and doomed love than does a "Love Triangle". The latter overburdens and overcomplicates a concept which is profound enough to deserve no such embellishments. Moreover, as I spoke of before, Anakin and Padme's love seems that much grander and precious if it's a private love between them founded on them awakening each other's hidden desires. The idea is that they're both stuck in vocations where they haven't had the opportunity to explore romantic attachments. Their fateful pairing shakes the earth beneath their feet and opens up exciting new possibilities for them both. We're meant to be seeing a pairing that is a one-of-a-kind on multiple levels.

 

Fat_Bird, what you're doing is trivializing Cryogenic's opinion by asking her what version of the love story she saw? I'm sure you know better than that, but if not, consider yourself told. Everyone's opinion on this board is valid. And your attempt at answer wasn't that good.

 

Him.

Except on Saturday nights, honey.

 

So sorry.

 

Oh, I really like your ideas! One of my favorite scenes in RotS is Padme and Bail's reactions in the senate when Palpatine creates "the first galactic empire." I don't know, I suppose I'm just desperate to find any kind of comradery between the two of them because they are, it seems, the only 2 noble politicians left in the galaxy.


I also can see the points that a lot of people have made in this thread about the forbidden love aspect and the purity of the relationship of Anakin and Padme. I guess what intrigues me so much with the idea of a love triangle is that it gives so much opportunity for Anakin to show shades of anger and jealousy, even paranoia in AotC.