PT Padmé Amidala MEGAthread - Don't look at her that way. It makes her uncomfortable

You're looking for an explanation, but real life examples aren't good enough?
-And the fairy tale explanation is not good enough either?

"Broken Heart Syndrome" can cause sudden heart failure. Padme is in agony. We don't know if it's "Broken Heart Syndrome" or not. The movie doesn't tell us what caused her death.

"What was shown" was that Padme died of unknown causes. The droid says he doesn't know what is wrong with her.

 

Well said. Even a depressed person has no right to judge others who have the same problem or know how they feel, as each case is individual. There is no objective scale of measuring pain or depression, those are subjective feelings, impossible for an outsider to tell.
Both Padmé and Anakin may in this world be diagnosed with cases of depression, anxiety, PTSD or any other condition known to modern medicine, politician, Jedi or whatever. Being in those positions even in the SW universe would not make one immune to ordinary diseases. This is why I tend to defend Anakin in other discussions. The "simple" explanation is that he was "power-hungry" and even "greedy" for wanting to stop people from dying. But why can't we accept that Jedi are not superheroes but essentially human beings with human flaws and weaknesses. I see Anakin as someone presumably suffering from anxiety, GAD, PTSD or even to some extent depression, even though it's never mentioned in the movies. We only see their roles, Jedi, senator, whatever, and lose sight of the fact that there are actual human beings behind those roles.

 

Yes, I don't want to discuss real life examples of which no-one really knows any medical background. Lets say someone dies the evening after the husband died in an accident. It could be a broken heart, but is probably a heart attack. Thats what I mean. Would the suicide have worked my dad would still have died because of an overdose as a result of his depression after mum's death. Not because of the death itself.

@Sith Lord 2015 - I defend Anakin too (for me he suffers mentally). My problem is not that Padme is upset, unstable or even depressed or hopeless. For it is the timing. One week, even a day later would have worked in that context - for me. As it is the whole scene has a very bad taste for me. And because that would change my perception of the twins and the whole saga, I see Padme's death as a follow-up of the choke, Anakin using her to survive (unconsciously) or killing the last straw. Die

Sorry, if I said something harsh or insulting earlier. it's not Easy sometimes to explain myself in another language.

 

Yes, I perfectly agree. You didn't insult anyone as far as I'm concerned. And I agree that Padmé's death was a little sudden. But then again I feel the entire second half of ROTS felt a little rushed. I have no idea how that could have been solved though. Splitting it into two movies is unrealistic, as the prequels were always meant to be a trilogy. What we got sure isn't perfect, but probably the best that could have been done with the limited time frame.

 

Guys, when Anakin and Padme are having their picnic on Naboo and Anakin says "Well, if it works" , then after letting out a smile Padme says "You're making fun of me"

How exactly was he making fun of her? I never really understood how that was a jab at Padme (my knowledge on politics is quite vague) and it's bugged me from time to time, anyone have any answers? I wanna be let in on the joke as well!

 

I assumed it was just her way of saying "You're putting me on."

 

Lol because she is a champion of democracy and he appears to be supporting dictatorship.

It's a weird scene. He's kind of joking but he's not.
Then he likes Padme's response so he just kind of brushes it off.

 

Padme is very idealistic and like's to preach her views. When Anakin smiles, she thinks he was egging her on, like getting her into "debate mode" for fun, or to poke fun at her seriousness. I think this is one of the best scenes that shows their chemistry.

 

I actually also like the scene more than some, for the playfulness of it.

But it is a little nonsensical an approach to hinting at Anakin's inner political views, you have to admit.

 

How so? I like it because it shows that Padme gets a hint of Anakin's authoritarian political views, but chooses to see them as a joke, even while being probably a little intrigued by them. It makes you get why someone like her might fall for a guy like him. Anakin's basically advocating for dictatorship here, yet it's one of his most charming scenes where he and Padme have the most natural chemistry. That's quite a thing to pull off.

 

I guess.
It just seems a little out of place to me. I see their chemistry, but it seems like an odd place to hint at this important aspect of Anakin's beliefs, when within the first two prequels it is rarely portrayed overtly.
Interesting point on the duality of it (is that the right word?), but it still seems odd to me, also given that Padme's views are so far removed from what this implies Anakin could be on board with.

Padme says "Your making fun of me..."
And Anakin teases "I'd be much too frightened to tease a Senator", which is perhaps a little ironic because he is kind of confirming he isn't neccesarilly joking.

One of the film's strengths is shown here however, the contrast between Anakin as emotional and even submissive to Padme here compared with later in the story. I know he is joking about being frightened to tease her, but I think it is fairly relevant to his initial attitude of respecting Padme's decisions (like cooling off, until Geonosis and the potential end of their life, when Padme requests it in the fireplace scene).

 

I just think they should have put it in another scene.
Padme helps found the Rebellion, she would never be on board with Anakin's potential views. This doesn't sit well with me.

 

I'm moving this and my response to this thread because it feels OT in the other and I've already made too many posts over there that feel that way.

The context of that comment was in response to a poster listing all of the things that mean a lot to Padme, but never including her own children on that list. The conversation was about all of Padme's loss and how that justified her loss of a will to live. It's a pretty giant missed point imo to argue that while ignoring the neon elephant in the room doing backflips. Padme hadn't lost everything at the end of RotS. She had two healthy babies.

As far as her line on Mustafar, it conveys the opposite of love of child to me. At that point, Padme pretty clearly imo knows that Anakin killed the younglings. She suspected it from the beginning, but by then she knows it. Begging a baby slaughterer to raise her child with her emphasizes my biggest complaint with GL's writing for Padme at the end - her world began and ended with Anakin, not her child. There isn't a single scene of Padme acknowledging she has to put her own child first, no matter what, and the circumstances more than called for it.

 

I don't think she is exactly on board with it. She half thinks it's a joke, and half buys into it as part of Anakin's bad boy persona. I mean, ultimately, why would she care that Anakin's got some poorly thought out political views? He's not a politician.

Anakin himself doesn't seem to be that passionate about it. He's naive more than anything.

Padme was depressed and she couldn't go on. It happens to mothers more often than you probably think. I refuse to condemn such people. You obviously aren't able to understand their suffering and that's that. I'm sorry, maybe you have personal reasons for feeling the way you do about this issue, but so do I, and at this point I don't see what good can come from this discussion.

 

In that scene Padme argues for democracy and yet by ROTS when Palpatine gains his power through the democratic system (via a manipulated and ill-informed body, sure, but that's part of the very problem), Padme is of course vehemently against it. Yes, that system later became an Empire, but at the beginning, at least, it was supported and enabled by the political body that Padme so believed in. And she went against it.

So in response to her own question that she asked Anakin: "By whom [should decide the rules]?", her actions, ultimately, answer: "Me".

And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, because a system is only supposed to be a means that lead to desired results, and if it fails to produce those results, or in fact ends up actively fighting against those results, then what is the use of the system?

Is this not what Padme realised when she fought back against it?

For the people on the wrong side of democracy, the other side sure can look like a dictatorship, especially for the most grievous matters.

 

Sure it does.

DARTH SIDIOUS: "It seems, in your anger, you killed her."

Vader killed Amidala. The visual language of the film supports this (the inter-cutting between her death and his rebirth), the dialogue supports this (the line above; also, we have her dying despite the fact that "medically she's perfectly healthy", while even Sidious is shocked that Vader is "still alive").

Intentionally or not (and after "She was alive! I felt it!" I think not), Vader killed his wife to keep himself alive, which ties into the overall idea in the movie that "the dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities, some considered to be unnatural", and the idea of "saving the one you love". At the end, Vader's selfishness bears out, and his "new powers" can save only himself, because he doesn't truly love his wife (not the way he describes love in Attack of the Clones), he wants to possess and control her.

 

Great rundown of Portman's career and she gives some good reflections on her involvement with TPM.

 

The relationship between Padme and Anakin fascinates me.

I've no problem with the "broken heart" death because of the Force. Padme was strong-willed, yes. But she was also married to potentially the strongest Jedi ever. I've long theorised that Anakin unintentionally trapped Padme in a kind of Force bond and that when Anakin gave himself fully to the Dark Side, that bond was basically severed. It's like the air was sucked out of the room and she suffocated, the air in this case being that connection through the Force.

For me, this explains why Padme seemed willing to run away with Anakin even after she learned what he had done at the Jedi Temple and what he was going to do. The Padme of The Phantom Menace would never have even considered it but by the end of Revenge Of The Sith, she is wholly trapped within that bond and she can't escape it. When Anakin chokes her, that's when the bond is severed and she starts to deteriorate. She survives long enough to give birth but without her connection to Anakin, she doesn't last long. In a sense, what Palpatine says is true. Vader killed her...or to be more accurate, the act of becoming Vader killed her.

Now, let me be clear, I don't think the Force bond made her love him. I think the bond probably started when he confessed to killing the Tuskens, when she comforted him instead of being repulsed by his actions. She was already in love with him at that point and I suspect that in that moment, Anakin unintentionally reached out through the Force and that was the beginning of it. Three years later, she's fully enveloped by the bond and she is fully linked to Anakin through the Force and wholly dependent on him for her survival. Anakin's possessive nature only served to increase the strength of the bond

I guess in some sense you could say she was basically addicted to Anakin through the Force and when he becomes Vader and the bond is severed, she essentially goes through a sudden and extreme withdrawal that she doesn't have the ability to cope with.

For me at least, the Force bond idea makes the most sense. The droid doctors don't know what's wrong with her. There should be nothing wrong with her but she's dies anyway. What in that universe could even the most knowledgable droid never explain? The Force. It would never occur to them that the problem was mystical, not physical.

 

I think I can accept it if there's some thing like a force bond between them.
A few weeks back I watched the movie again and I think, I know now, what angers me personally. For me the timing is simply wrong - or the timing in the movie doesn't feel right for me. The broken heart would work for me, when there would be a couple of days between the birth/death. Or at least one single scene in which she fully realizes what happened, but without the "there's still good in him". It is this sentence that really does not fit for me personally. If she thinks that there's still good in Vader, she should go on with her children. Or at least wait until she's sure both kids are in a safe place.

But the force bond sounds good. My head canon was/is/I don't know, that Anakin survived somehow because he drains her life, so there's a bond anyway.

On a sidenote I have to admit that once the action goes to Mustafar my stomach rules over me. I simply get hungry every time Anakin lands on Mustafar.

 

Anakin did a lot of bad but I have never interpreted the films or any of George's interviews about the PT in any way hinting at Anakin using the Force to manipulate Padme. Nothing of the kind is even seen in the film. Padme isn't even force sensitive or even weak minded so the idea that this force bond concept from the ST is now a rewrite for the PT doesn't make sense.

If he had "forced" her, then she would not have rejected him during the fireplace scene in AOTC. He agreed with her at the end of that conversation that they would be living a lie. The next person to bring up "love" was Padme herself. She declares her love for him, to his obvious surprise, right before they enter the arena on Geonosis.

Anakin didn't survive because he drained Padme's life. He used the power his hate provided from the dark side to survive to Palps rescue.

I don't necessarily think her dying of a broken heart and leaving her children behind is a good thing but that's the reason given by the creator of SW.

 

Agreed.
One of the better lines in the romance story is "They only work on the weak-minded."

My reading of any force-bond theme present is more an indication that as one of them disappears, so does the other. Not an intentional or conscious thing on their part, more like symbiosis.

 

Like I said, it is kind of my own headcanon because if I tell myself, that he drained her somehow, I can accept the stuff afterwards more. Otherwise I watch the next movie and as soon as Luke complains about living on a dustball my brain comes up with "Hey, stop complaining. You could complain when you knew that your mum just died because of reason".

And with the force bond: I do think there is something. Like the usual bond parents have with their childs or partner have with each other. Put the force and someone like Anakin in and you get a bond. I mean, he clings to everybody he cares about, so he probably builds something like a bond. Not something like in the ST, but like ... I don't know how to explain. Like these situations when someone knows that something happens to their partner, before the call comes?

 

Anakin didn't need a force bond to have a loving relationship with his mother as a young boy. He clings to people he cares about because of a natural emotional attachment that grows more after the death of his mother. The attachment that George explains goes against the Jedi Code and leads to his fear of letting go and the greed for more power to save the ones he loves. I don't believe Anakin had to have some mystical bond to care about people. He was a compassionate young man. Obi Wan described him as loyal in the ROTS novel. Those are all natural characteristics and emotions that make sense to me as a mother with her own child, or as a daughter who was separated from her mother at a young age.

My best guess is that you are referring to something like a mothers intuition or a gut feeling.

 

@wobbits - you're right, although I think he had a bond with his mother as well. I don't know if that is still a thing in the new canon, but I mean is in the way of mothers intuition. Not like the force-skype. Of cause he never needed a bond to care about people. I'm with you in that. Although I don't think that he turned because of an attachment but because what he made out of it (can't imagine to live without that person because he defines himself over that person). He simply never learned how to let go. And that is something everyone learns with the first attachments most people have - to their parents. Teens usually learn this when they get older and step farther away from their parents until they start their own lives.

 

I'm not sure I am understanding this statement. Can you elaborate?