What Are the Ways the Star Wars Prequels Could Be Improved???

I really like that interpretation, Rev. I just happened to stumble in here inadvertently, and It's funny because as I finished reading the first of these two posts and @Prax's just after, my IMMEDIATE thought before I even got to your follow-up was: "So what Palpatine told him was true...from a certain point of view"!

Whatever the exact mechanism/dynamic at work, it's always been quite clear to me, thematically speaking, that by turning to the dark side in a desperate effort to "save" Padme from the fate he has foreseen for her, Anakin actually causes her death, bringing about by his own actions the very thing he was seeking to prevent in so acting. A self-fulfilling prophecy. The more one tightens one's grip, the more will slip through one's fingers...

 

I'm not saying its not mythmaking or magic at all. I'm not looking for a rational reason in that sense. More that the subtext isn't as clear as I feel like others think it is.

Or, I'm just dense.

 

Just watch the scene and pay attention to the imagery and sound design. Specifically the contrasting heartbeats and what they do in relation to what's going on. Headphones might help.

 

Now, where do the headphones plug in to the book?

 

Right here.

 

39.99?!? I didn't realize that.

 

I'd go so far as to say that the text actively contradicts and undermines the subtext in this instance.

They could have left it at "We don't know why she's dying", which would have been pretty weak given that they had both advanced medical technology and advanced Force-users there, but only mildly insulting to the audience. But they had to throw in that "She's lost the will to live" line, which just furthers the destruction of her character that started with "You just killed a bunch of women and children because you got pissed off? God that makes me hot!"

It also, frankly, reeks a bit of Trinity (from the Matrix) syndrome: they didn't have anything else to do with the character, so they killed her (contradicting Leia's RotJ line in the process). I can see from a writing standpoint what they were going for, but they flubbed the dismount.

 

^ You're either way too cynical or don't have any understanding of Padme whatsoever if that's how you see her character and her actions.

 

Didn't have anything else to do with her character?? This whole scene is the (climactic)denouement of the movie, and the climax of the wider story. Padme dies.

Leia's statements in RotJ are vague, "feelings, images mostly," but if taken to mean that they contradict RotS, then they would be a plot hole unto themselves, before any prequel was made. Like, how did Vader not know he had children? Why would Padme abandon Luke, but not Leia? Why would Padme die later on, but Leia now ALSO become adopted by another family? The more deeply considered, the more it doesn't add up. And at the very least, would make for a terrible ending of a movie. How would they even write that?

Maybe instead of having a conclusion in Ep3, we could have had a follow up miniseries about "Padme on the run" and we could follow Vader's new life "Working out the kinks" Where he has to deal with an overbearing boss, a cumbersome suit, and pesky renegade Jedi, while both of them long for the good ol days.

I propose ending the movie right:
Anakin dies in the fiery pits of Mt. Dooom, and as he is reborn as the unholy, mechanical Vader, Padme is smothered, whether symbolically, physically, or mystically. Her life is snuffed out.

Obi Wan and Yoda decide the fate of the children, just as we learn in the OT.

*Curtain closes

 

Those questions were answered by Obi-Wan in ROTJ, at least to my satisfaction. Leia and Padme hid on Alderaan, while Luke was hidden on Tattooine. In this instance, I add in my own head cannon that Obi-Wan would join them later.

However, Padme died and Obi-Wan determined that Leia was safe remaining, as he puts it, "anonymous."

I would watch that.

How I always imagined it.

 

I'd watch it, too. It's just that it would ruin the ending of the movie.


This is what Obi-Wan says:

Luke: I can't kill my own father.
Ghostly Ben: Then the Emperor has already won. You were our last hope.
Luke: Yoda spoke of another.
Ben: The other he spoke of is your twin sister.
Luke: But I have no sister, duuuude!
Ben: To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your Father when you were born. The Emperor knew as I did, that if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous.

P.S. I like your new avatar.

 

There is nothing in that sentence that precludes Padme going with Leia.

 

I agree. It's obvious that Padme died right after giving birth to both Luke and Leia. And being Force sensitive, it's also obvious that Leia had sensed Padme's emotional state before the latter's death.

 

No, but he doesn't say this either:

What Obi-Wan tells Luke fits with how it plays out in Ep3.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. I think that Padme had allowed her emotional state to affect her health . .. especially while she was in the act of giving birth to twins. I never understood why people find it hard to consider how a person's emotional state can affect his or her health.

 

Maybe not, but it doesn't suit the kind of mythmaking fairytale story that's being evoked quite as well as the mother giving her life for both her twins, who are then separated only for fate to reunite them years later.

Granted, it may not have been planned that way (for a given value of "plan" because a lot of the details were always in flux, even during shooting of the OT) but this is the simplest and most well suited outcome.

Consider this: how much of a disservice would it have been for Padme to have her die off-screen between movies? At least this way her death has some weight and meaning. We see her funeral, we see people morn her passing (and symbolically, the passing of the Republic.)


One detail I've found interesting is that the fact that they're adopted was never kept from either of the twins. There's no reason Beru and Owen couldn't have made out that Luke was their child, but instead they chose to tell him the truth (up to a point.)
The same with Leia and yet her exchange with Luke on Endor seems to presuppose that they both already know the Organa's weren't her birth parents, (presumably because they've talked to each other about it before.)

It's as if neither set of foster parents wanted to erase Padme from her children's lives entirely.

 

That's all perfectly fair.

And, to be clear, I think Padme dying at the end of ROTS is fine thematically, and fits well enough. I just enjoy thought experiments about other possible meanings from the text based upon what I thought from ROTJ until ROTS.

 

Let's see...she falls in love with a sociopath, then "loses the will to live" right after having two kids.

I think I can live with not having any understanding of that kind of person.

Apparently she didn't love him enough to try to get actual help for him before matters spun out of control.

 

I didn't realize that STAR WARS was set in the late 20th century or early 21st century. Anakin had already tried talking with Yoda about his troubling feelings and walked away feeling disappointed.

And I hate to say this, but Padme never really had a problem with what Anakin had done to the Tuskens. She thought they had deserved their fate after what they had done to Shmi. The movie's novelization confirmed this. I'm not saying there was nothing wrong with her views. I'm just saying that Padme was not the saint that many of the saga's fans seemed to think she was. I found it interesting that Padme had dismissed the Tuskens' murders and Anakin felt guilty about what he had done for three years. By the way, "Revenge of the Sith" did confirm this.

 

Except she's not "that kind of person", and the fact that you seem to think she is demonstrates that you really don't understand her character... or are so cynical that you're incapable of seeing the character for who she really was and grasping the point of Lucas characterizing her as he did.