here’s a video of the concept artist, iain mccaig, explaining the original ending of RotS and why he preferred it to the version that was chosen
and i have to say, i agree. over and over again we see padmé prioritize her duty to the republic and democracy, over her own life and over the lives of the people around her as well. i think this version would have been more in-character for her!
video transcript bc there aren’t any subs:
“Behind his back she’s starting the rebellion to overthrow him. Because Padmé can see he’s becoming a monster. It’s apocalypse now, right? At the end, Mustafar? When she goes to see him she has a knife in her hands, i know she does, check the concept art in the book. (audience laughs)
“She gets off that ship with the knife. She runs up, throws her arms around him - he lets her. She’s got the knife at his neck, she’s going to kill him - he lets her. And she can’t do it, she loves him too much to stop him, even when he’s become the monster.”
“Enter Obi-Wan! Anakin freaks out, kills Padmé - well, almost. Wouldn’t that have been good?”
the official scene concept art
official costume design + commentary from iain mccaig:
“The moment Padmé realizes Anakin can’t be saved, she should do the thing she needs to do - out of love. She should kill him.”
“The red in her hair is because it’s the end of the film, and I thought she should be going after the bull [Anakin]”
fuck yes
Why didn’t they keep this? Here we would’ve seen where Leia gets her fighting spirit from!
Luke faces Vader to try and save him after his mother was the last to give up hope, and faced him to kill him. That would’ve been cool
oh my gosh, imagine luke strutting in there like “i’m here to finish what my mom started”
This would have made so much more sense (character logic and plot wise) and amped up so much more of the drama, including their love story, and now I am disappointed.
someone: luke skywalker beat darth vader and ended the empire
everyone else in the galaxy:
everyone on tatooine:
Imagine being the local jock from Toshe Station and turning on the news to learn that the guy you called “Wormie” in desert high school just killed the two most powerful people in the galaxy.
Tags via jaquez45:
#I think a lot about this #like the guy was a weird excitable nerd
#but you had to tolerate him because #INEXPLICABLY #he was STUPID good as a pilot #like the t-16 orbital drop whomp rat champion since he was 13 #so you couldn’t just IGNORE him and his fucking nerdery #and his being super awkward CONSTANTLY
#and one day his farm is burned and his family is dead #you assume he’s dead too and you feel kind of bad for mocking him now
#but then #space radio is like LUKE SKYWALKER BLEW UP A SPACE STATION #LUKE SKYWALKER KILLED THE EMPEROR
#and you just #kind hope he never decides to get revenge for the wormie thing
oh also turns out he came back to town and killed the mob boss who controlled everything and then left again without buzzing any of his former acquaintance so probably you’re Beneath his Notice; mixed feelings about that
Okay but like. Imagine that you’ve had a long day. You’ve been captured and tortured by some neo nazi punk bitch and your mission is super compromised and you don’t know where your little robot buddy is or if he’s gonna be okay and in walks this stormtrooper. You’re like “okay this is it he’s either here to imprison or kill me but I’m not going down without a fight” but then he just pulls you aside and takes of his helmet to reveal not only the WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN but also that he’s helping you escape because hes DEFECTING from the FIRST ORDER which you’ve probably never heard of a stormtrooper doing because the whole lifetime of brainwashing thing but despite the literal LIFETIME of brainwashing this one is too KIND and GOOD and BRAVE to be a part of the first orders cruelty. Like how are you NOT supposed to be like “I’m gonna call you Finn and also if you want the last name Dameron that can 100% be arranged.”
So here’s the thing that literally never occurred to me until just recently, because it’s kind of a throwaway line.
In A New Hope, right around the time that Vader’s told that there was an empty escape pod launched from the Tantive IV, he instructs one of his underlings to “send a distress signal, then inform the Senate that all aboard were killed.” Very shortly thereafter, the Emperor dissolved the Imperial Senate and sends all of the delegates home.
Consider Bail Organa, who is one of the very few people in the galaxy who knows a) who Leia really is, b) that she has a twin brother, and I think c) where Luke is, which is Tatooine, which is where the Tantive IV was when it was destroyed.
And immediately on the heels of being informed that his daughter was killed (which is devastating enough, even without her being a Skywalker and one of the last hopes of the galaxy), the Imperial Senate was disbanded.
The timing is complete coincidence on the part of the Empire, because they actually have no idea about any of this. But Bail Organa has to be drawing the worst possible conclusions.
I bet you anything that when the Death Star appeared in Alderaan’s sky, the only thought in Bail Organa’s mind was “That’s it. We’ve lost. The Empire found the last two hopes of the galaxy, and killed them both, and now there’s nothing, not even the illusion of the Senate, to stop them.”
And then he died.
And then he hovered there in the Blue Force Ghost Afterlife with Padme Amidala and a pack of Jedi all cheering their asses off as Luke rescued Leia, they all escaped from the Death Star, Luke did the trench runs on the Death Star, and Han came swooping in to save the day.
I mean. Just imagine them all, Bail, Breha, Padme, a shit-ton of Jedi, Obi-Wan showing up a third of the way through, all watching intently like the goblins waiting for Sarah to make her wish in Labyrinth and then cheering like NASCAR fans during the final trench run, sparing a moment to laugh their asses off as Darth Vader, well known to all of them as the best pilot they’ve ever known, goes tumbling off ass-over-teakettle into deep space after failing to avoid a collision … just fucking imagine the party scene waiting for him after he died. It helps.
Imagine Vader watching the security feeds later and just … living … like that’s his son and he’s doing what Vader’s dreamed of doing most of his life and somehow hasn’t been able to do despite being the #2 man in the Empire at this point … that’s gotta have struck a chord somewhere deep in that buried ember of light inside him.
Had Padmé been 20-30 years older than anakin instead of 2-3 it wouldve fixed a significant portion of the franchise, including padmé’s own chracterization
he whole “‘woah we’re doing something we shouldn’t this is going to ruin both of our lives” doesn’t ring true in the original movies cause they’re just two beautiful young people doing what they’re supposed to do in a story. the cliché kills the dramatic tension. give me a 45 year old woman ruining her career life and reputation because a dumbass 19year old monk is pathetically throwing himself at her feet THAT’ll give the audience something to be anxious about. It’s not something people expect to happen.
Would also explain why all the authority figures are like “Sure, lets put this notoriously disobedient and hotheaded beautiful youth as the sole escort of an equally beautiful young woman who’s had the entire world on her shoulders from childhood. no prophecy twins will result from this”. i could see obiwan allowing it because he can’t deny anakin anything, but what about the rest of the jedi council??? What about padmé’s own people? The choice of anakin as bodyguard looks like bad optics even if nothing actually happens. What about her reputation??? It would’ve been satisfying if they’d actually leaned into it instead of vague hints. Like padmé says its improper but nothing in the surrounding world actually makes it seem that way. The prequels at least didn’t do a good job establishing the jedi as sexless and chaste. They just seem like cool hot guys with swords of COURSE they fuck.
but if she’s 45, even if she’s beautiful, a lifetime of dutiful service to the republic would make most people go “ah she would never sleep with a teenage monk, doesn’t matter if he asks”. Plus the general social standards of star wars being actually identical to those of our own society they’ll probably be like “well what would a 19year old even want with a middle aged woman?” the thought wouldn’t even occur. She’d be desexualized by virtue of her age so of course give her a hot young bodyguard no one (including the audience) is gonna see potential for impropriety
AND NOW WE COME TO ROTS. Its not impossible for a 45 year old woman ti get pregnant (average menopause is 50 i assume also in space until proven otherwise) but it is rarer, and it would make sense of anidala not to have been expecting it. It would also underline, again, that this pregnancy is a genuine threat to their lives and careers, because two young people in love secretly married having a baby is literally fine. its normal. the audience will forgive and even applaud even if the wider society in the movie doesn’t. but a 45 year old senator with a secret baby?? that she’s KEEPING?? like already in the original she shouldn’t have kept the baby but the movie is christian and the audience too the vibe is “noo pregnancy is beautiful its luke and leia awww”. We should be SCARED about the pregnancy.
And then, anakin having nightmares about padmé dying in childbirth are no longer obvious prophecies. like young padmé is healthy and rich, she’ll have the best medical care theres no reason to think her pregnancy will have complications. It’s actually kind of stupid and dismissive for people to say anakin’s nightmares are nothing to worry about, especially considering he’s had them before! but if padmé is pregnant at 45 the risk of complications is very high even with good medical care, and it would make sense for anakin to just have regular nightmares about it. The pregnancy is not a good thing! its a big risk they’re taking in a lot of ways!
It also complicates the “unavoidable fate” thing they did in rots. Like in the original had anakin not tried to do everything to prevent padmé dying in childbirth she actually wouldve been fine. She died of grief while fully healthy which i think everyone can agree was fucking stupid. But if anakin’s descent into the dark side, 100% ensured padmé dying (strangling a 45 year old woman who’s already endured a huge amount of stress and throwing her to the ground? narratively speaking, either she’s not making it or the baby isn’t), i think it would be good if we weren’t told with absolute certainty “had anakin stayed a jedi she wouldn’t have died”. It would be more compelling if we didn’t know for sure!!
Plus it would make anakin’s freakout so much easier to empathize with. Like sure its scary to think of your loved ones dying but the whole movie she’s presented as obviously not at risk. Anakin worries but we don’t. We should worry! Are we so much better than him? Wouldn’t we also be desperate in his position? Or alternatively we refuse to sympathize with his decision to fall in love with a middle aged woman which is uncomfortable and leads us into much more complicated moral questioning than “become evil or stay good?”. It would add drama either way!
And it would make both padmé and anakin so much more 3 dimensional as characters. Now they’re making strange, emotionally driven and unexpected decisions instead of following the script for romantic lead 1 and 2. Padmé has actual depth and complications! She makes decisions we can’t necessarily appove of, keeping the baby becomes a genuine decision with genuine cost instead of “duh, what else is she gonna do?” Her falling in love with anakin actually adds depth to her character and tells us something about who she is instead of turning her into a cliché. Replaying the trilogy in my head with older padmé instead of young padmé she immediately feels like a character with agency instead of a cardboard cutout of the ideal dead wife.
Even in the delicious wonderful scenario where obiwan and padmé have an affair after anakin joins the dark side, if padmé is young it doesn’t feel like a decision she’s making so much as the circumstances acting upon her, it feels like obiwan is betraying anakin but it doesn’t feel like she’s actually betraying anything? she just doesn’t have enough agency for that to be the case. Giving in to emotion is what a romantic heroine is supposed to do. But older padmé sleeping with obiwan after losing her extremely young husband to the dark side while at most 5 days away from giving birth is like…an actual decision. A complicated woman making unsympathetic choices, giving in to emotion when what’s expected of her is dignity. For the THIRD time, she acts out of feeling instead of reason and seals her fate. Its kind of a misogynistic character arc but i don’t care id watch the shit out of it. And she HAS a character arc now, instead of nothing.
darth vader should have survived the battle with palpatine at the end of episode vi and then he joins the rebels and they use a pulley system to lower him into a vat of white paint and he becomes Light Darth Vader and spends the rest of his life apologizing to people
for people who don’t get it: it actually happened
i said this 100% as a joke i didn’t know about this comic and that’s why star wars shouldn’t ever be a comic cause nothing good ever comes from star wars comics
Anonymous Asks:
betsybugaboo Said:
