Poll "Small Universe Syndrome" - Yay Or Nay?

[cooleddie74]

Well, Padmé is 24 and Anakin is still 19 or has just turned 20(one reference book around the time of AOTC's premiere said Anakin had just turned 20 prior to the events of the movie) and Natalie is one of those women whom you can believe looks about the same at 24 as she did at 14.

 

[wayoung]

... What? No, she doesn't. We saw Portman onscreen at 14. We saw her onscreen at 24. She does not look the same. No one looks the same at 14 as at 24. A young teen vs an adult.

 

[cooleddie74]

I said you can believe it. She looks so young even at 40. That wasn't meant to be taken literally. Besides, who really gets upset that the look in ages is so similar in AOTC yet one is a teenage girl and one is a prepubescent boy in TPM? That's how aging works. The older you get the more your visual appearances line up.

George decided to have Anakin be 9 in TPM and develop a crush on Padmé. We can question the writing decision but it doesn't make things any creepier. I think some fans look for small things to be upset about because they don't line up with our unique personal preferences.

 

[wayoung]

I'm not commenting on the rest of the discussion, I'm specifically commenting on you saying Portman being one of *those women* who you'd believe looks like she'd look the same at 14 & 24.

I'm sure it's just bad phrasing on your part, but it comes off as creepy. No one looks the same at 14 & 24. And Portman was a popular actress at both stages of life, we have lots of video evidence that at 14 she looked like a 14 year old and at 24 she looked like a 24 year old.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, I'll admit I didn't word that as eloquently as I should have. That being said George could probably have written Anakin as a 13-year-old slave so that way he would still have had childhood separation anxiety issues when freed and forced to leave his Mom behind. George wanted a kid around 9 or 10 so that was his choice but making Anakin slightly older would have simplified things a little and cut back on the cutesy puppy love comments or remarks that Padmé was being way too forward with a 9-year-old.

 

[Captaindemotion]

I thought that maybe Padme being sort of midway between Obi-Wan and Anakin in terms of age might be the setup for a love triangle but obviously that wasn’t the case

 

[cooleddie74]

George couldn't write romance worth a damn save for what he did between Han and Leia and even that was largely implied and just boiling under the surface for a while. The less romance he wrote into the Prequels the better.

I'm an ardent defender of the Prequel Trilogy but wow, could he not piece together a competent romantic scene unless it had no dialogue(Anakin and Padmé's secret wedding ceremony).

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well, Padmé is 24 and Anakin is still 19 or has just turned 20.

And that's just it though. If you look at TPM, and then look at AoTC, there's no way they could be close to the same ages in AoTC when he's so much younger than her in TPM. Yeah, theoretically from a story point of view, maybe they're closer in age, but that's where the casting fell apart IMHO. As an on-screen dyamic in TPM, it just doesn't work for various reasons. Admittedly, she is a young-looking actress even now, but she still looked way older than him in TPM. The discrepancy was more than just distracting.

So, if George wanted a 9 year old kid as Anakin, and wasn't willing to budge on it, then at least cast a younger actress as Princess? Then have them played by Christensen and Portman in the second movie. That would have been far more palatable.

 

[cooleddie74]

Eh. I can buy she's 24 and he's 19 or 20. They look close enough in age even if in-universe there's about a five-year gap. Aging works like that sometimes.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Nabooans age differently...it's that Gungan water

 

[cooleddie74]

And Anakin had a growth spurt. He looked like Jake Lloyd at 9 and Hayden Christensen at 20.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Eh. I can buy she's 24 and he's 19 or 20. They look close enough in age even if in-universe there's about a five-year gap. Aging works like that sometimes.

Ok, but what you deem is a minor detail is actually a fairly big one to me. Afterall, as a first part of a trilogy, the first impression is everything, and my first impression was that it wasn't possible that those two could ever hook up by the visual presentation of them being so different age-wise via their actors. The job of a movie is to sell the viewer on the premise, but right from the get-go, that broke down, IMHO.

But there are ways they could have fixed that, like lowering her age. Of course that would have made her title and her power questionable. For that, you could wait until the 2nd movie to have her parents killed off, with her then assuming power on her world. This has the consequence of fixing a few other things, such as the attraction Anakin has for her even stronger and relatable. But what was shown in TPM was not.

 

[cooleddie74]

I think George was so dialed into making Anakin as young as possible while still being able to competently interact with adult characters that him being 9 and the equivalent of a child mechanical genius was something on which he was unwilling to budge. The younger and more innocent he is the more tragic his eventual downfall. That's definitely a point which can be argued since as I posted above Anakin could have been 13, still a kid and still traumatized by being separated from his mother whom he's forced to leave behind in slavery. His road to the Dark Side would still be the same and his childhood wouldn't need to be jettisoned, only advanced a few years to the onset of puberty.

But George being George his way ruled the day. I guess we're lucky that Jake Lloyd was so endearing and convincing as a child Anakin that everything else can be reasoned out and accepted if reluctantly, because had George cast the wrong child actor we'd be complaining about far more than the age difference between Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala.

 

[Unicron]

Ok, but what you deem is a minor detail is actually a fairly big one to me. Afterall, as a first part of a trilogy, the first impression is everything, and my first impression was that it wasn't possible that those two could ever hook up by the visual presentation of them being so different age-wise via their actors. The job of a movie is to sell the viewer on the premise, but right from the get-go, that broke down, IMHO.

But there are ways they could have fixed that, like lowering her age. Of course that would have made her title and her power questionable. For that, you could wait until the 2nd movie to have her parents killed off, with her then assuming power on her world. This has the consequence of fixing a few other things, such as the attraction Anakin has for her even stronger and relatable. But what was shown in TPM was not.

For my part, I've come to feel the PT would have been improved in several ways if Anakin hadn't been so young in E1. I think Natalie's age was fine in PM, but it would have been better to have an older Anakin (nothing against Jake Lloyd of course ). It would have made the romance angle with Padme better if they were closer in age to begin with, and perhaps if an older Anakin became gradually disillusioned with the Jedi as a number of them did in the years leading up to the Clone Wars. I feel like there was some missed potential there.

I know, right? I really feel that with the ST, they didn't do character very well. It's not just that they're underused, but that they're underdeveloped. They had set up Phasma as this interesting character that had potential for more, and they could have kept using her throughout the trilogy as she did feel like an important imperial character, but instead it was wasted talent. I also liked Rose and found her to be an interesting character that at least gave Finn more to do, but again, it wasn't something they followed up on.

I agree about Phasma. She really needed a lot more to do than she was actually given, and I wish Gwendoline Christie had been given that opportunity to really shine (no pun intended )

 

[Owain Taggart]

It's not the in-universe age I have a problem with. It's the visual discrepancy of the actor's ages that make it difficult to buy-in.

For my part, I've come to feel the PT would have been improved in several ways if Anakin hadn't been so young in E1. I think Natalie's age was fine in PM, but it would have been better to have an older Anakin (nothing against Jake Lloyd of course ).

Completely agreed. As I posted earlier, I find the idea itself is sound, but the casting muddies it, and therefore, I have trouble standing behind it.

I agree about Phasma. She really needed a lot more to do than she was actually given, and I wish Gwendoline Christie had been given that opportunity to really shine (no pun intended )

Yeah, she definitely was shiny! I mean, given the unique design of her character (as a chrome-plated Stormtrooper), one would think there would have been bigger and better plans for her. It's a lot of design effort that amounts to little.

 

[cooleddie74]

George was so hellbent on casting a nine-year-old and Natalie in the other role we were gonna be stuck with it. George can be....incredibly stubborn. His soundstages were full of Yes men for the whole Prequel production era.

 

[Noname Given]

George was so hellbent on casting a nine-year-old and Natalie in the other role we were gonna be stuck with it. George can be....incredibly stubborn. His soundstages were full of Yes men for the whole Prequel production era.

The problem is for his story the way he wanted to tell it If Anakin were cast or stated to be much older; then there would be no question of Yoda rejecting him because he is too old to begin Jedi training. I think George wanted him old enough to have the question be debatable, but the character young enough that it wasn't seen as all that strange that he was ultimately accepted and trained as a Jedi Padawan.

I agree that the age difference between the characters does make the 'romantic' story subplot that runs through the PT films hard to accept. And for me it was either George's direction or at the time neither Hayden Christensen nor Natalie Portman were that good a pair of actors. Some of their acting and line delivery imo was atrocious; but again it's possible that It was all because of the way George directed the films.

 

[cooleddie74]

Natalie was a good actress even in her teens and Hayden was good in My Life As A House. George just couldn't direct human emotions very well.

 

[Greg Cox]

George couldn't write romance worth a damn save for what he did between Han and Leia and even that was largely implied and just boiling under the surface for a while.

And, arguably, the bulk of that was carried by EMPIRE, which he neither wrote nor directed.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

If Portman had looked more like she did in Leon it wouldn’t have seemed as weird.