Question to those most disappointed with the SW prequels

[cooleddie74]

^
This.

Palpatine was one of the greatest and most cunning and manipulative political masterminds of galactic history. If you omit the Battle of Naboo and the Clone Wars, he achieved his Empire almost without the firing of a shot.

He was the great puppetmaster of the Saga and fooled everybody until the last moment, even Master Yoda.

 

[Set Harth]

There's the theory that Palpatine knew of Anakin's creation by the midichlorians and waited patiently for him to surface, but that's just conjecture and I can't recall if the novel Darth Plagueis confirmed this or not.

Actually, Darth Plagueis seemed to contradict such a theory. Palpatine is informed by Dooku that Qui-Gon brought back a (former) slave boy from Tatooine; he is told of Anakin's exploits, his midichlorian count, and Qui-Gon's belief that he stands at the center of a vergence in the Force and that finding him was the will of the Force. Palpatine, concerned, immediately contacts Plagueis with the news.

He did say at the end of TPM that he intended to keep a close on Anakin in the future.

Well, yes - but that was after Anakin had already won the Boonta, blown up the droid control ship, and been inducted into the Jedi order. Of course Palpatine's going to be keeping a eye on him after that. However, there is really no indication that Palpatine even knew of Anakin's existence before the events of TPM.

It underscores how out-of-touch and rigid the Jedi have become ... too beholden to their "Code" to see the real threat ... until it was too late.

As Mace Windu mused in one of the books, the real attachment of the Jedi was to the Republic itself. They just couldn't conceive that the leader of the Republic they served and the ultimate villain they were seeking happened to be one and the same, until it was too late - and to be fair, from their POV such an idea would be counterintuitive to say the least.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Counter-intuitive ... and counter-the-code. Mace's line from TPM, "The Code forbids it," is straight out of Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces" which asserts that the Hero's Journey is a transformative one - not just for the hero, but the out-dated, in-need-of-renewal world the hero inhabits. Anakin becomes an "Angel of Death" (loosely interpreted) - a transformative individual, sowing the seeds of renewal we get in ROTJ. He's the bolt of lightning and ensuing forest fire, bringing about the end of the old, and the potential of the new.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I've wondered this for a long time.. did Anakin use the Force to emotionally manipulate Padme into loving him and overlooking his flaws?

"You don't need to see his identification" could just as easily be "You don't need to see a reason for this behavior". He could have started out with just a bit of handwaving to smooth things out so she wasn't shitty about something one day and just gotten more and more into it until she was addicted to him, bound to him, and blind to him. Total emotional abuse.

She's no dummy, he would have to hide it from her. I'm sure he didn't need to actually hand wave all the time. Probably had it down to just rubbing his fingers together "nervously".

If he actually Force-manipulated her, it would explain sooooo much, for instance how she went from being independent and no-nonsense to sentimental and completely oblivious to Anakin's emo-ness and downward spiral.

She started off as being good at observing things. She ended up as a doofus...well, to be fair, shortly before he Force-choked her, she sort of snapped out of it, but Episode 1 Padme would never simply give up on life because her marriage fell apart, especially with 2 babies needing her. I might be less ragey about this if I imagine Anakin manipulating her in my head canon. Good call.

Yes I think it makes sense. It explains her own character deterioration and even more so to me it seems like an inevitable choice Anakin would make. He needs to be loved by her and if he can just tweak her perceptions a bit so she's happier that's good right? Because he wants her to be happy.. with him.

Even though she was probably free of the direct influence of him in the end her whole psyche was damaged still which is why it was easy for her to give up even though she had two babies, something totally out of character for her in TPM. Died of a broken heart? Well she had those babies to love, babies she already loved when pregnant with them. But if he was force brainwashing her all those years there wasn't any room for love for anything but him and when he attacked her he crushed everything he'd rewired her into being.

I'm not too clear on the time frame though, how long from the force choking to the birth? Because she didn't look that pg with twins in the force choking but the babies were obviously well along and viable at the birth.

Actually, this is a nice complement to the idea I floated here.

The main thing that led me to my idea/theory, of a psychic link through the Force, was the simultaneity of her giving birth and his becoming the cyber-Vader we knew from the OT, with the cutting back and forth between those two scenes and with her screaming right after his. The chapter is called "Birth and Rebirth" on DVD.

Another point is that the Emperor tells Vader that Vader killed Padmé. A lie that he choked her to death, yes, but what if, from a certain point of view, it's true? In fact, she's just died when the Emperor says that. I can't assume that that's a coincidence, either.

Now, Padmé is already dying when she arrives on the planetoid to give birth. (In fact, I should revise my theory to indicate that she was already in trouble before going into labor.) If there is a kind of psychic bond between Anakin and Padmé during "Birth and Rebirth", then it was already present by then. I believe that your idea, that he was, whether consciously or subconsciously, manipulating her all along, therefore fits perfectly with mine.

In any case, it has to be something that the medical droids can't pick up. If it were simply a result of her falling under the influence of a controlling abuser, the medical droids should be able to measure that. No, it has to be something to do with the Force, that's beyond their experience, something that is—as it were—supernatural.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

I read your post and in my head I could see drunk 7 of 9 patting the EMH's chest and saying, "we are as one, we are as one!"

 

[Set Harth]

If it were simply a result of her falling under the influence of a controlling abuser, the medical droids should be able to measure that.

How?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If it were simply a result of her falling under the influence of a controlling abuser, the medical droids should be able to measure that.

How?

When the medical droid said:

MEDICAL DROID: Medically, she is completely healthy. For reasons we can't explain, we are losing her.

I was supposing that that was an assessment based on the medical state of the art in the Republic, and that we could take the droid's medical opinion on face value, as the literal truth. I presumed that that was one of the "good droids" available in the Republic, good enough for Organa's starship or better (or they would have used one from the starship instead).

It's not really believable for me to assume that there's not a lot of spousal abuse in the Republic that needs to be treated by medical doctors, since it's a big galaxy.

 

[cooleddie74]

My impression was that the droids were designed by the Polis Massan species that was mining the asteroids where the medical facility was located but that they were extremely reliable and sophisticated. Perhaps they could measure aspects of one's body that other droids couldn't, or they were just good at extrapolating and making educated guesses about a humanoid patient based on their other observations and procedures.

They certainly seemed to be more sophisticated than the 2-1B and FX-series medical droids used by the Rebellion a generation later, but that could just be the more advanced CGI designs of the "newer" droids being misleading. Anyways, perhaps they could measure things about Padmé that other droids and living, breathing physicians couldn't due to their exotic alien design.

 

[Set Harth]

I was supposing that that was an assessment based on the medical state of the art in the Republic, and that we could take the droid's medical opinion on face value, as the literal truth. I presumed that that was one of the "good droids" available in the Republic, good enough for Organa's starship or better (or they would have used one from the starship instead).

What I meant was, how could a droid measure that she had fallen under the influence of a controlling abuser? Isn't that more of a psychological thing?

 

[cooleddie74]

^
That's what I tried to cover in my own (admittedly very conjectural) explanation above. Who knows what Polis Massan med droids can detect seeing as the species that designed them is pretty exotic.

 

[Hound of UIster]

That doesn't seem likely. I believe there has been some arguments that their unfamiliarity with human biology was why they couldn't save her.

 

[cooleddie74]

Thanks for the poor on-screen explanations, George.

 

[AgentCoop]

According to the Wiki, the Kallidahin (the proper name for the Polis Massans) were renowned for their expertise in medicine and xenobiology, so if the "they were unfamiliar with humanoids" thing is some kind of semi-official explanation then someone at Lucasfilm needs to get their stories straight. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kallidahin

 

[Hound of UIster]

Thanks for the poor on-screen explanations, George.

The official canonical explanation is probably that she died of a broken heart and lost the will to live.

 

[cooleddie74]

It likely is. From an audience heart-grabber and tearjerker moment perspective I guess can see why George went that route, but it just makes little sense seeing as she's pregnant and is expecting to be a mother. Is she so in love with her husband and disappointed in Anakin's new, ruthless behavior that her anger and disbelief in his actions overrode her own strong maternal instincts?

Just a few minutes earlier she spoke of "the baby" and wanting Anakin to run away with her so they could raise it together. Now she loses the will to even live, forget the kid? It's a tad wonky, but - oh well.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

It's a tad wonky unless you think she has a a psychic bond and brainwashing and Force reconstruction of her neural pathways over time all of which are shattered by the builder of these things trying to kill her. Killing the very structures of "love" he has built.

As to how it worked on the screen without all these interpretations, it didn't IMO. I think the birth scene is terrible, embarrassingly bad. It looks like some clunky 70's sci fi, awkward and disconnected from real people. I went from adoring Padme in TPM to hardly being able to watch her death because it was so cheesy. Even the camera angles are weirdly amateur looking, like a bunch of school kids who had no understanding of birth and death were doing the "okay, and now she dies and ROBOTS!" scene. I remember thinking, I should be crying now but this is fucking awful.

 

[cooleddie74]

And, of course, the birth of Luke and Leia is not only a clunky scene in and of itself, but it's overshadowed by the construction and birth of Darth Vader in the black armor - the moment that fans had waited through three films to witness after another wait of almost twenty years. When you juxtapose the two "birth" scenes it's clear which one had the stronger dramatic pull and weight and the one that is more fondly remembered.

 

[Pondwater]

I didn't care much for Padmé's death either. I can understand that her heart was too broken to live on but why did she not want to live for her kids? The funeral scene made my heart sink when they closed in on that charm he gave her.

 

[cooleddie74]

The Naboo state funeral was so much more effective and emotional than her passing on the delivery table. And I did really like the little, subtle touch of having a fake pregnancy "bump" on her body so that her family and others believed she died before giving birth, helping cover up the existence of the twins.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

It makes no sense that this woman who had devoted her short life to civic duty, her people, the good of the republic would just up and die from a broken heart when she had babies to care for. You have to make it make sense, but really these explanations we've been discussing could have been included in the film with one line about her psychic connection to Anakin. Broken heart, pfft.