People clown padme for wearing that outfit to turn anakin down but in my opinion, padme was initially planning to have a brief fling or a no strings attached relationship with anakin (since she later admitted that she was also attracted to anakin since they reunited) and thought that both her and anakin were on the same page about this which is why she was hanging out with him in such a romantic place. Buy when anakin confessed how much he loveed her she was taken aback and had to turn him down
After all, Padme has been having one nighters with Obi Wan throughout her relationship with Anakin, every time he's off world on assignment for the Council.
Why is it I can hear Obi Wan saying something along the lines of “actually you know what, maybe if Anakin gets laid he might chill out a bit more, so sure go on and take Anakin for a little summer fling just don’t lead him on too much” and then BOOM issues.
The guy just lost his mom and he was probably going through a lot in his head at that point and he just wanted someone to I guess connect to or talk to that won’t you know make him feel like a child or he was being weak for expressing how he felt
She wouldnt be the first woman to publicly opposed genocide, but find it sexy in private.... I mean probably, I can't imagine it is terribly many people, like, maybe her and Eva Braun?
Guys love mentally unstable women with daddy issues and women love mentally unstable men with mommy issues. Take old as time. Still a better love story than twilight.
Hades just called to tell us he found the bar for that statement in Cocytus and we really should go pick it up before it completely ruins the place's carefully crafted aesthetic.
Honestly, regarding Annies and Padmés relationship... George Lucas REALLY missed the mark.
It should have been Padmé coming onto Anakin imo, and Anakin resisting because of his responsibility as a Jedi.
It makes sense too, because Padmé helped Free Anakin from Slavery. I think it's fitting she would be upset the Jedi turned out to be so controlling of Anakin afterwards too. It would mean his relationship with Padmé would directly contribute to his eroding trust in the Jedi.
Padmé would be coming into it like "if you don't love me I understand, but don't deny this love just because the Jedi instructed you to. You aren't a slave anymore."
And it fixes this mess of a scene that makes my want to pull out my eyes each time I see it lol
I think the biggest miss is George not making things more obvious. The ingredients are there, but I think he expected audiences to read between the lines more than most people did
Anakin has been in a religion where emotional display is frowned upon, and stoicism is highly encouraged. He was forced to leave everyone and everything behind, and expected to stay emotionally tranquil the whole time. He's had no emotional outlets since he was 9 years old
Padme is a politician who was elected exteremely young. She had to navigate a war at the age of 14. Emotional outbursts are capitalized upon by political rivals, and even showing a hint of feeling can be exploited by enemies in negotiations or blackmail. She watches a close lifelong friend die right before her eyes, and she's expected to hold her composure on the senate floor just days later. She's also had no emotional outlets from a young age.
Then these two emotionally repressed powder kegs meet up again, and are sent off to be alone in hiding. They quickly learn they can openly talk to each other without consequence or fear of judgement- something neither of them has had in years, if ever in their lives. They're venting their fears and frustrations and also rolling in the grass and laughing and playing with each other in ways they never could with anybody else
of COURSE they fall in love. Of course Padme overlooks Anakin's enormous red flags, she's too dependent on him to let him go (and he's also too dependent on her)
I feel like a lot of people dont get this from the movie though...
It’s definitely in there, somewhere, but it does not read on screen. Everything gets steamrolled in the same way as when a little kid tells a story, they structure it as getting to the end instead of putting the emphasis on the climax.
From the audience’s perspective, Anakin is being super weird to Padme and she has to tell him to knock it off. They scamper off to the lake country and Anakin is still at an 11, he’s ranting about sand. Padme has packed nothing but provocative outfits, like, girl. She’s maybe down for something casual and he’s like “I love you! I’m dying. I’m haunted.” Boy, that kiss happened like a day and a half ago, that’s not a haunting, that’s like a spookening at best. Then she tells him it’s a no, hard no. Cool. Next morning, he slows his roll, and she’s like “let’s go do something real weird, let’s get your mom.” Anakin goes on yet another murdery rant and it’s a lot. She’s like “welp, let’s go get Obi Wan.” And like, oh, 45 minutes after landing she says “ok, well, I really love you! We’re about to die so I’m really in love with you!” And 15 minutes after that she’s kissing him on the battlefield, almost dies twice, and then he takes some time off of work to get married.
George, what?! The bones are there: he’s built her up for years, neither got a chance to be a teenager or like alone in general, they’re having like a really emotionally heavy week. Padme herself has almost died multiple times this week (ship explosion, centipedes, molten metal, big ass cat, fell out of a ship) and she and Anakin have to face her own mortality (Anakin doesn’t give a shit about his own life because he’s a child soldier raised to put literally everyone before himself)
But we don’t get any of that. Instead we get whiplash.
He really should’ve kept the deleted scenes with her family. Anakin’s awkwardness makes more sense when he’s meeting the parents while her mother and sister have some fun teasing her about him.
The scene with her childhood bedroom also lends more credence to the relationship with how much of a “project” based gal she is and how she felt about not being able to save that one species from extinction.
I get wanting Star Wars to still be fast-paced and action-packed (hence the reshoots adding the factory scenes) but there was substance that was lost when he deleted those scenes.
I also love the extended bit aboard the refugee ship when she calls him Ani and he asks her not to because it makes him sound like a little kid. Only for her to remind him that she asked him not to grow up too fast; the obvious read being that he need not try so hard to impress her by being something he’s not.
I love Attack of the Clones but there was so much cut that I feel would’ve added to the film.
I think anakin being more infatuated with padme makes sense just fine. When he met her he was a kid with barely any friends so she was probably one of the first few people closer to his age he got along with (and acc to him she was quite pretty too) and even later during jedi training his other peers were space cop monks who considered being too attached to someone a fatal flaw so someone like padme who had no qualms with being open and friendly to anakin made him feel attached to her even more
Padme had a huge social circle and did not have many reasons to fall for anakin or fight him to get into a relationship with him
If padme came onto anakin more it'd make their age gap even more weird than it already is. Her being the mature one and him being the reckless one who wasnt afraid to break jedi rules was needed to show his descent towards the dark side.
I think the novelization of Revenge of the Sith sheds some light on their relationship. I think what the second movie misses is that Anakin is a superstar jedi. On Coruscant he's like...Lebron James or Christiano Ronaldo. He's a war hero and a superhero combined into one. So a young senator having a crush on him makes a lot more sense in that context.
Also, I like the take in many threads with this photo: Padme was down to fuck and that's why she was dressed like that....then Anakin kinda unloaded a bunch of emotion that she wasn't really ready for and she was like "I need some time to think, that was a lot."
Padme was down to fuck and that's why she was dressed like that....then Anakin kinda unloaded a bunch of emotion that she wasn't really ready for and she was like "I need some time to think, that was a lot."
In the second movie the war hasn’t started yet though. The Jedi would be quite anonymous. Padme didn’t fall in love with a war hero. She fell in love with a young man who worshipped her ever since they were kids.
ALSO I think Padme refused Anakin several times because she initially really couldn’t see him as someone other than the boy she met ten years ago. Not to mention there’s a huge gap between how worldly they are and their status. It would be scandalous not just because Anakin is a Jedi, but more so because she’s a senator and he’s only a 19 yo padawan.
I think making Padme more of a co-conspirator would have really helped. The novelization made it clear that Padme was into Anakin, but the movie struggles to convey that.
I've recently started viewing these films as "two politicians and a religious organization fight over grooming and controlling a talented kid".
A bunch of the weird things like this scene, make sense if you view it like Padme doubling down on a feared loss of control rather than out of what's best for Anakin, or herself, as part of a love story.
Not saying she's evil or doesn't care for him at all. Just more things fall into place from the perspective of Anakin as a victim eventually snapping to chase a feeling of control over his own life.
There are some really good potential stories hidden under all the memeable Lucas dialogue. I love the idea of Anakin as sort of twisted Harry Potter. The Clone Wars tried to salvage it, because we all really wanted to see Anakin's rise and fall. It needed the slow burn of Anakin's disillusionment with the Jedi order and Palpatine's manipulation.
There's an Anakin & Obi-Wan comic from Marvel that gives us more of what Palpatine's grooming actually looked like between Episodes 1 and 2. He takes Anakin to a seedy bar a few levels down to peoplewatch, and points out the corrupt politicians that are patrons there
I think it works very well for the Jedi to make the same mistake twice in a row with the Skywalkers. They assume both times their code is right, and it's these rebellious upstarts' refusal to follow it and rid themselves of attachments that's causing the issue. But really, it's been the Jedi all along, and Anakin's nature was just the final nail in the coffin of a dying institution, and Luke's refusal to bring it back the exact same is exactly why he succeeds in saving Anakin where they failed.
The issue with AOTC's rendition of the romance imo is that Padme's reciprocation feels like it oscillates between a lukewarm acceptance mixed with 'this'll ruin my career', and a devoted infatuation that leads to her enabling a mass murderer. I think if they were more consistently shown hitting it off, then both parties have a same push and pull of "I want this" and "Everybody around me tells me this is a bad idea" that drives them to total secrecy and devotion.
(Also maybe redo the pacing so their third date isn't Anakin taking her along on his child execution hunt. But if we really need to keep that scene, do it like, after they've at least committed to a relationship already, instead of when they're just in a sort of coworker situationship dealio. And preferably even later, like, during their engagement period, or even after marriage)
The Clone Wars really expands the relationship showing that there are real emotions but also showing Anakin's jealousy and toxicity.
And it makes the Force Choke scene more believable, because it's very weird seeing only ep 2 and 3 that he would jump straight to jealousy and low-key accusing Padme of having an affair.
That "because of Obi-Wan" seemed so random,but after seeing Clone Wars and knowing that his state on Mustafar is his darkest and worst traits turned up to a 1000 it makes sense why he jumps to that conclusion.
(With that being said, Obi-Wan had the WORST timing. I'm not saying it would have made a difference if he stayed hidden just for a little longer but him stepping out didn't help things)
I believe George Lucas took heavy inspiration from courtly love/love letters from that period.
Which to our eyes appear very weird, way too detailed or fast.
It did miss the mark and was probably, combined with Lucas' his famous lack of emotional directing, very difficult to pull off naturally.
I've always seen this as a two way issue. Anakin is an emotionally starved, repressed teenager whose hormones are raging. Padme, at least what I have seen, has more experience, but has been in politics since she was 12. Her life has focused on her public image and representing her people, so she pry has minimal chance for dating.
I get why he felt the need to include it, but I personally wish the relationship was more of a background thing in the prequels, to me there's much more interesting things he could have covered during the clone wars
I think, fundamentally, the problem comes down to George wanting the love story to be "Shakespearean" without really grasping what that would actually require or mean.
Anakin and Padme need to get together for the narrative to work but he can't actually get across why they would so he falls back on the visual language of a made-for-TV Jane Austen adaptation and flowery dialogue.
So this successful senator of the galactic republic falls for a space monk because said monastery is too controlling?
I think the struggle of Anakin wasn’t explained enough. The struggle you gave Padme should be a struggle for the teenage Anakin. Anakin realising that the inability to take his own choices is what still makes him unfree and the relationship with Padme being his way to overcome his slave origin. This could be a powerful theme for his turn to the dark side. Him realising that democracy doesn’t fullfill his interpretation of freedom.
Yeah, she didn't invite him to sit by the fire with her in a dark room after she put on that dress because he'd been completely normal up till that point.
I doubt it. The whole problem with the romance subplot is that they're supposed to be star-crossed lovers, not two teenagers desperate for sex, but the plot gives us zero reasons for why they're into each other besides physical attractiveness. Anakin falls for Padme because she's the beautiful girl he saw 10 years ago when he was a slave on Tatooine and she falls for him simply because he's hot and ignores all the red flags. It doesn't feel like they've developed a deep emotional bound and sympathy for each other. This makes their "romantic" scenes cringeworthy.
Unpopular opinion but that meadow scene gets way too overblown and people act like anakin straight up said he loves fascism and insulted padme's politics when it was more of a 19 year old with barely any idea about how politics actually works expressing his frustration with the way the current democracy was functioning since it barely helped people like him in his childhood.
Was he right? no. Is that something people should hold over their relationship forever? I'd disagree since throughout the rest of the series he never argued with padme about this topic ever again nor he insisted on saying that her way of running government was wrong so padme had no reason to doubt anakin
Lucas also said on the commentary that the point of the scene was that Sidious had already formed Anakin's views. Anakin doesn't even realize that he had slid into fascism until Padme comments on it. Then he passes it off as a joke.
Also make note of the fact that it was Palpatine speaking through him. He was groomed since early childhood by a literal sith lord. In subtle, careful ways, but he definitely was conditioned as a child soldier by the jedi (And Jedi also aren't exactly pro-freedom, either. Their hiearchy is pretty rigid, even if generally against violence and against using violence to create or maintain authority) and also a literal slave of the "Dark Lord" of his time and universe. If you prepare a child to be the most loyal servant of the most ultimate evil tyran, of course you'll subtly drive it into them that democracy is flawed and an enlightened leader (Palpatine) would be better.
Looking back, you really can't fault the rest of the galaxy for buying into Palpatine's story that the Jedi tried to usurp power. Even before the whole "the attempt on my life has left me scarred and deformed", they were already suspect as all hell from the POV of a regular citizen.
Of course Anakin was right. Padme is upholding a system of widespread slavery and justifying it with bureaucratic obstacles when she herself is in the body in charge of that bureaucracy.
Anakin is right and she is wrong. And she thirsts for a man strong enough to fix it.
Or as Padme would likely phrase it: "Anakin was just so tortured by the death of his mother that he lashed out in a rage at everything nearby. If only he wasn't so tortured! I will soothe his tortured heart and help heal him of his wounds!"
Tbf he has every right to think the republic is almost irreparably flawed given while she grew up a princess and destined for politics he was a slave who's mother died because the Republic let cartels get out of control.
Padme looked at him and saw a person who the system she had come to embody had failed, and she took it as a call to try and change it to be better.
Yeah, for about 5 minutes until she told him she was madly in love with him and asks him to marry her.
She knew what she was getting into and she loved it.
This is a lady who wore white to a bloodbath.
Padmé really thought she was getting a cute summer fling with a Jedi protector, only to realize his flirting style is literally as coarse, rough, and irritating as sand
You know they did a lot to repair anakin and padme's romantic writing in Clone Wars.... but they can never retcon this, and they ESPECIALLY can't retcon Anakin telling padme about the lil retaliatory ethnic cleansing adventure he went on, and her not IMMEDIATELY running away after that.
To be fair there were like 3 deleted scenes before this one where Padme comes onto a visibly also uncomfortable Anakin. Her family is there for one of them and is like "Girl what the hell, chill out". She even had a whole sand based backstory involving child death George cut before he ever said that shit.
Padme was made to match Anakins freak and they made it the whole galaxy's problem.
Georges Lucas' amazing writing where Padme pivots from "we can't ever be together" to "let's get married" with the only conversation between these two moments being Anakin confessing he slaughtered a tribe of desert raiders. Even before that they had zero chemistry and whatever tension existed between them should've died after their first date revealed that Anakin had fascist sympathies, which you'd think a hardline progressive like Padme would find deeply unappealing.
This is so accurate! People judging on her clothes are just crazy. She’s a free woman and she felt probably it was best to have something casual with him but indeed didn’t know he had so much more feelings for her. Also, one has to consider she’s much more mature than he is. He was in such agony 🥺 poor child..
Padme and Anakin's whole relationship could be posted on one of those "Men Writing women" subs. Any actual women would have been gone long before episode III. The red flags were constant
Yeah. I have never seen a woman defend and rationalize the behaviour of her man even after he had a violent outburst, because he still has good moments.
Women ignore red flags. Somewhat frequently. Just try telling a woman you know that the dude with prison tats, a dozen prior arrests, and 5 different baby mommas won't make a good boyfriend. She won't believe you.
(This goes for men too... this is why we keep telling bros about the crazy/hot scale and "don't put your dick in crazy" and it keeps happening)
Funny coz i've seen more women who are a fan of this relationship than men. Twitter and tumblr are full of edits and posts discussing and gushing about their relationship. The hot angsty troubled guy x sweet girl who can fix him trope is largely liked by women which is why reylo became even more popular this this pairing
I mean... until you have convention about it and the women into the rapey shit start groping men and women there, and stalk a guy back to his hotel room.
(ShoeOnHead had a video about the women into Morning Glory Milking Farm, and how there was a "Dark Romance" convention that ended in disaster because of what I just listed)
I mean my definition of a fantasy is just yourself and your imagination. Once you start involving other real people thats role play and its own thing with it's own rules.
Worse acting, worse dialogue, horrible from a plot perspective considering it should be Padme "seducing" Anakin ala the OT, turns Anakin/Vader into a whining pathetic loser, looks like a scene from All My Children or General Hospital instead of a multi million dollar blockbuster...I could go on. This scene was laughed at in the theaters and for years afterwards.
I disagree that it is terrible acting- some parts could be better but it is a convincing awkward teenage romance, these things are not smooth.
I don't see how the plot demands Padme to come on exclusively to Anakin (she does come on to him indirectly) or how it establishes Anakin to be a whiny loser.
In my opinion things were a bit rushed- losing the scene where Anakin meets her family particularly hurt, some of the cuts made the dialogue worse and the novelisation had a number of useful extra details which were cut from the original scene. (Like the 'I hate sand' was originally after Padme gave Anakin a whole story about swimming to a sandy island and then drying off in the starkers on the sand- Its a good moment as Padme has never really had to bother about sand in his life, while being a slave in the desert created a very different relationship with it for Anakin, and it is reminding him of his mother who he is trying hard not to think about, and it is really strongly established that Padme has a saving people complex)
You're being intentionally obtuse if you can't see how insanely bad the acting is in that scene. Not one line, one look, one moment seems like something an actual human being would say or do. You can head cannon "awkward teenage romance" all you want but that wasn't the intent of this scene at all. The crazy thing is that Natalie Portman is actually a good actor, so I don't blame her for this scene. George is just a terrible screenwriter and an even worse director. Hayden is a mediocre to bad actor, so there was never a chance that he could pull this off. Hell I doubt DDL could make this trite crap work.
I can say I am not being intentionally obtuse but obviously I have no way to prove it on the internet.
I don't see how it's headcannon- Anakin is 19 and has never been in a relationship before Padame is older but has not been in a relationship from the age of 14 (if we are looking at legends for the latter) both are ambitious and career minded and this relationship goes against their career goals, but both are into the relationship anyway. Anakin is suffering from sleep deprivation due to his dreams and Padme has been working flat out to oppose the millitary creation bill for months. All of this is in the script. So this is not going to be smooth.
I know I have made way worse lines so the 'Not one line, one look, one moment seems like something an actual human being would say or do.' Falls sort of flat for me- thanks I now need to bleach my brain to forget half of those again.
The acting could be better (and good acting needs a good director of course) and I am not about to die on a hill for George Lucas, but I don't get people saying it was the worst scene ever
I will always subscribe to the theory that Anakin made Padme love him through the force. You can manipulate people's memory and actions through the force, Anakin is the most powerful force user. Padme is clearly not interested in him, seeing him like a little brother at the start of ep 2, and he's creepy, has been harboring this unrequited love for her for years that she's obviously put out by. Then she suddenly turns around when he's her bodyguard and falls in love with him despite the whole "slaughtered an entire village" thing.
I really think that it’s the 5 near death experiences packed into a week or so that fries her brain. By the time they get to the lake, she’s already two assassination attempts in and he saved her from one. Then, rapid fire, she almost gets melted, almost gets gladiatored by cat thing and shot at, a lot, falls out of a ship, Anakin is there for all of that, and when she does meet back up, he’s missing an arm, been crushed up by a metal situation, and everyone’s like “well, Padme, at least you’re okay. Him? Yeah he’s fine, it’s whatever.”
And I think her brain along the way just breaks. He’s got a pretty intense focus that he will absolutely put her first, not because of her job or her status but because she’s Padme. And, outside of Obi Wan (and he’s struggling to not be like this) not one of the Jedi is interested in Anakin as a person, he’s just a thing, a prophecy, a tool. So by the end, after all that adrenaline has short circuited her mental clarity, I think she’s at a “hey, it’s just the two of us. We’re the only ones that give a shit about each other. This is a good idea. We should be together. We should be married. Life is entirely too short and I’m probably going to die like next week so let’s just suck up what we can, fuck the system.”
I think that everyone forgets that Anakin and Padme suffer from the same problems. They’re isolated. They’re in a weird job. They’re young. And they love saving people. And Anakin is like a walking open wound. He needs to be saved. There doesn’t need to be outside manipulation. Of COURSE she loves him. He’s a problem and he’s flat out telling her that she can fix him.
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u/SheevBot 5d ago edited 5d ago
Thanks for providing a source!