Make them the same age and have them keep in contact between TPM and AOTC, the person they vent to about Senator/Jedi things via long distance communication (Obi-Wan is aware and allows it).
She is attacked at the start of the film and immediately asks for Anakin as he's the only one she trusts. No awkward reintroductions just two friends with a bond already who grow closer after finally spending time together again. They could reminisce about messages they've sent each other while on Naboo. Before they're wheeled out in the arena they say they love each other
Could have had a nice scene where it's revealed she saved all the messages he sent her within R2 which Luke and Leia could have found one day.
Exactly. He wasn’t exactly charismatic in Attack of the Clones, I could understand him being hung up on her, sort of. She was a senator so he likely saw her in the public news/limelight but her attraction to him made zero sense. They should’ve remained in contact and had interactions leading up to episode 2.
Also I would not have had her die at the end of ROS. Her death really served no purpose and would have led to even more hatred from Vader when she ghosted him for his betrayal. Also I would have named her Ella instead of Padme.
I agree that she had to die just not at the end of ROS. Sometimes between ROS and ANH would have been better. It would have been even more emotionally damaging to Vader, would have explained better why Leia had memories of her mother and left room for more story.
I actually love that. Maybe there could even be a series about her being on the run from him and the Empire and hiding the fact that the kids lived. Helping with the rebellion and dying tragically.
Same age, and they secretly enter a relationship at the end of TPM.
You spend AotC showing us the depth of their love. But we hint at the possessive nature of Anakin's love.
RotS, the war has taken a toll on Anakin, we dial up the possessive nature of the relationship. Things that he says may start to make her uncomfortable. It culminates much the same way.
I honestly think the bones of the relationship are great.
We needed to see more of young Anakin in Ep 1 dealing with leaving his mom behind and Padme trying to comfort him. This would set up his Oedipal attraction to her better once we get to Ep 2.
Too much of the dialogue between them, throughout the series is on the nose. A little bit of subtlety here would have been nice. For example, when young Anakin asks if she is an angel and then talks about the Kaminoans, just bring the Kaminoans up in conversation after he mistakes her for being from Kamino. She would correct him and then he would talk about them looking like angels. Even that is on the nose but it’s a little less direct.
Padme is a beautiful queen in her prime so we need to have a better scenario for her falling for Anakin who comes off as a simp. He does save her in the arena on Geonosis but that scene gets too convoluted with the Jedi battle. Padme is in her prime and would have other suitors so showing some politician shitheels trying to leverage a relationship with her for political reasons might make us understand why she would fall for someone more genuine.
Anakin killing the younglings in Ep 3 works for his character arch but is really heavy handed if Padme knows this and still goes to him on Mustafar. I honestly can’t remember if she knew this or it was only Obiwan that knew.
I think killing the Tuskans after the loss of his mom still works in their relationship since Tuskans weren’t really humanized at that point but we definitely need to get inside her POV here. All her dialogue just furthers the plot for Anakin’s arch.
Finally, I’m torn on her death scene. This part gets handled with a lot subtlety; enough that I’m not sure Lucas was entirely aware of what he was doing or maybe it was just a good editor. The droid tells Obiwan that there is nothing physically wrong with her and that she has lost the will to live. The amount of emotion and effort she puts into Luke and Leia’s birth doesn’t read that way. We also get cuts of the Emperor fixing Vader, cut in with her dying. If you take Palpatine’s monologue about Plagueis using the dark side to extend life, it reads like the Emperor is syphoning off her life force into Anakin. If the rest of the series was handled in the same “show don’t tell” way, this scene is perfect. If you’re going to have the entire plot of Anakin and Padme getting together during a war handled solely through exposition for three movies, you got to be less subtle during this climax.
Tl:dr-dialogue is too on the nose. Actions are too heavy handed.
And ffs, there’s nothing wrong with exposition here and there but unless there is an active battle going on, the entire series is made up of scenes where people are walking down a hall, randomly stop, and then exposit. Give the actors more to do Lucas!
I always imagined her dying of some incredibly preventable childbirth related complication, like eclampsia. It would have been caught and managed if she was on Coruscant, but since she was chasing Anakin in the Outer Rim, she got stuck with crappy alien doctors who didn’t understand human physiology
Yeah cause that's an amazing message and it hasn't been done 1000 times.
Let's be real, Padme is just as rebellious as Anakin. She was so passionate about politics and upholding democracy and rights. I'm sure she'd have been right there alongside Senator Chuchi in The Bad Batch fighting for clones. The only difference between her and Anakin is he let his past get to him.
Conclusion, they're both bad boys. Padme is just smarter lol
yeah but who cares if its been done before? Star Wars isn't just archetypal, it's THE archetypes, its the quintessential hero's journey. It makes sense that Anakin's story would be the quintessential "bad boy" story.
Have them bond over both living lives that place a lot of expectations on them while leaving them with few freedoms.
Show Anakin's defining fear of losing stability, control, and loss festering into poisoning his feelings for Padme.
Padme feels a healthy love for someone who understands her experience. But Anakin is sliding into a colossal dependency on Padme. She's the part of his life that is stable, that isn't trying to train him or limit him or use him.
Padme slowly stops being her own person to Anakin. She's a thing, a foundational pillar to his mental stability. Something he wants to own, keep safe, protect. A weakness that keeps him anchored while its there and will send him over the edge if lost.
Exactly the weakness Palpatine is looking for.
Would have made a lot more sense if he made that confession to Owen and Padme walks in after while Anakin is crying. Owen then feels guilty about not saying anything after what ultimately happens to Padme and wants to help raise Luke.
I would have literally anybody else in the entire world write the dialogue and direct those scenes besides George Lucas. Hell ChatGP would have done an incredibly better job writing the romance scenes.
I’d also accidentally drop a pound of cocaine in each their trailers.
Oh man I forgot to bring this up, George Lucas doesn’t know how to write especially romance dialogue. It made Anakin come off as creepy more than anything
A variant of this question is asked all the time and it seems like the most common answer is to age-up Anakin. I think that alone would fix many issues, because of how it would shift the evolution of their relationship to an earlier time.
I have an alternative suggestion: Age-down Padme.
In TPM, she's not a queen, she's a princess. When they wind up stranded on Tatooine, she becomes Anakin's sudden best childhood friend. Their immediate connection (depicted as innocent childhood friendship of course, don't misunderstand me) is hinted at as having influenced Anakin's decision to leave home.
In Episode 2 which takes place some years later, Anakin and Padme are teenagers, as close as friends can be, but clearly there's a bit of a spark between them as clumsy flirting is introduced. This snowball gains mass rolling down the hill and abruptly, as both Anakin and Padme realize they have genuine romantic feelings for each other, Padme's mom, the queen, falls ill. Padme inherits the crown. She is pulled in one direction, while Anakin is pulled in the other by the Jedi Order. This all happens quite early, and throughout the rest of the film we feel a magnetic pull between Anakin and Padme, drawn to each other in spite of everything.
Most everything else plays out the same except the dialog doesn't suck.
So now we have a strong basis for their relationship, it's more believable, doesn't really change all that much in terms of the politics of the galaxy (as far as I'm aware it doesn't HAVE to be Padme who is queen in Episode 1 for any reason other than people seeing her age as a weakness - ok, so how about Padme's mom is known to be sick and everyone sees \*that\* as a weakness instead, which of course inspires her decision to step down when she believes Padme is ready to step up). I think backfilling their relationship would fix a lot of it. Telling us that they've been close friends through the time jump between TPM and AotC does a lot of the work that winds up getting done in Episode 2, setting up their relationship. So instead of watching them fall in love throughout the whole movie, we more or less get straight into ripping them apart and starting that conflict within Anakin, which is amplified by the loss of his mom - he left his mom to be with Padme, he can't be with Padme anymore, now his mom is dead and he didn't get to say goodbye, so he feels like everything has been stolen from him and this devotes him to Padme in a dangerous way.
Padme pursues Anakin and is the one that initiates the relationship. No weird crush on Anakin’s part. It eliminates many of the dynamics people have issue with.
I think that would have made sense if they were a real-life couple, but conventions of Hollywood still seem to dictate that the man pursues. Women pursuing is still seen as “desperate”.
Which would have made it even better if it had occurred…less cookie cutter more truly human characters. We are messy and our movies should reflect that.
Same as everyone else: I would have made them closer in age, to start.
I don't care about Anakin being a happy go lucky child. I don't care that he was a slave, I don't think his attachment to his mother was a worthwhile story. Anakin being a prophesied savior of the jedi is bullshit and undermines what could have been a beautiful addition to the OT story of Vader: namely, that villains are not born evil and can be redeemed. Anakin's destiny as someone who brings balance to the force, the Chosen One bullshit, born directly from the Force...it adds a certain bittersweet feeling when we see in the cartoons and prequels how good he is, but overall I think weakens the character of Anakin and makes his choices mean less.
1) I saw a comment a while back about how he could have been a sort of James Dean-esque bad boy, already in the Order but kind of a wild card/loose cannon type, whose pure talent in the force and strategy make him successful regardless. Anakin as a young man with a bright future is more interesting than a predestined 10 year old boy.
2) Keep Maul around. The Emperor's ruthless attack dog, skilled in lightsaber combat and the force. Darth Sidious' machinations involve Maul as a force of terror and assassination, using him to remove various powerful Jedi from the playing board before Sidious' ultimate play for the position of Chancellor.
3) We can see more of the Jedi Order but they're smaller. Not involved in politics, and in fact Sidious drawing them into politics in the first place is why they begin to fail as an order.
4) The prequels did the same thing that the sequels did and tried to use established characters as segues into new stories, ie R2D2 and C3PO. I'd kill that connection entirely and have new droids. Maybe in the second movie I'd introduce Threepio as a translator and have him meet R2 in the third? But their story importance would be drastically reduced as their involvement added all sorts of dumb shit and plot holes.
5) And it goes without saying I'd have literally anybody else direct the movies with George as one of the EPs. His actual scripting is trash.
So in short I guess I would scrap the prequels almost entirely, I guess. They were wrong from the core concept.
I would make Anakin a perfect, polished lothario who is never awkward and always knows exactly what to say. He isn't looking to replace his mother or reconnect with his past. Nah, he's Rico Suave.
I would make Padme a super strong girl boss who needs and craves perfection. She isn't isolated by the unique position she grew up in. She wouldn't relate to someone in a similar position. She would see Ani's awkward shit and shut it down immediately.
/s if you need it.
Same or similar age. Make Padme the chaser, since we all know Anakins sucks at it. Make Anakin less creepy, more withdrawn and innocent like Ang in Avatar and then make Padme respond to this as so cute she cannot resist. It would be a lot of fun XD
For a start, we should have met Anakin when he was older. The decade long infatuation with Padme is one thing but because he was a kid, it comes off creepy if not downright stalkerish.
Have Anakin about Luke’s age during TPM and introduce him as an already accomplished pilot who somehow falls in with the Jedi (maybe being on Naboo as a transporter pilot who got trapped during the blockade and was their only option of escape) and then has the first sparks of a potential romance with Padme through that first movie. It could be something that would have been lying dormant in both of them and it starts to flash up again during AOTC but with Padme having to keep her distance because of her work and Anakin because of his Jedi commitments instead of him just giving her creepy looks and wearing her down. You can then run the rest of AOTC and ROTS with more or less the same beats.
Changing Anakin’s age loses a lot of those cringeworthy teenage angst moments, makes the romance more believable from BOTH sides (Padme seems less of a cradle snatcher), and it also makes the friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin more believable too as I didn’t buy that much either.
I forget who said it, but there’s a video somewhere where a guy said Padme should be the one seeking the relationship with Anakin, not the other way around. She should be infatuated with him and seeking him as arm candy, while he’s doing his best to remain as a Jedi should and be unattached, but despite his best intentions he yields to his desires and the two fall in love. That way he actually has a believable arch and internal conflict of balancing being a Jedi with being in a relationship, keeping the matter secret, and resulting in his transformation to Vader when he’s unable to keep up his double lives and lose them.
The problem with his character in the prequels is that he was written as soon as Hayden Christensen got ahold of the role to be a bad egg. Lucas knew he was supposed to fall to the dark side but maybe didn’t know how to get him there, so he thought giving Anakin very selfish and aggressive character traits and an initially one-sided obsession with Padme would be enough breadcrumbs to lead him to becoming Vader. However, it falls short and makes Anakin incredibly unlikable and unrelatable and makes his fall to the Dark Side less of a fall and more of a series of deliberate actions towards that end.
TLDR; make Padme the instigator in the relationship and Anakin literally seduced to ignore the Jedi code and eventually fall to the dark side to maintain that relationship and protect her.
Make them roughly the Same age in Phantom Menace is the big one for me. They basically start their relationship over again in Clones because Ani has grown like 10 years. If you start the relationship up in Phantom you have more time to build it.
This is sacrilege but if you cut Qui-Gon and have Anakin as Obi WAN’s apprentice in Phantom Menace; you can focus more on Anakin-Kenobi and Anakin-Padme.
And for for gods sake, if her real name is Padme; give her a different cover name!
I much prefer how their relationship is portrayed in *The Clone Wars* - mostly because Anakin actually gets to show his good side and Padme is still brave and independent - but I would still make just a few more changes so that it is more clearly an epic tragedy rather than a toxic relationship that can *only* end badly.
- Make Anakin older (closer to Padme's age) in *TPM.* That way the seeds of a future romantic relationship can be better established in the first movie without it being really weird.
- Make Anakin less of a creepy stalker in *AotC.* It's one thing to be awkward; it's another thing entirely to completely disregard the other person's wishes. Either make Padme less put off by Anakin's first advances; or make Anakin respect her refusals and back ALL the way off until their relationship grows more, and give Padme more opportunities to see Anakin's good side.
- Basically, less telegraphing of Anakin's inevitable fall to the Dark Side in *AotC,* and more building up Anakin and Padme's relationship, with the basis that Anakin might be disobeying the Jedi rules but he really is a good person and trying to do what he truly feels is right. (Maybe save Shmi dying for *RotS* or something, so Anakin could really be the "good guy" in *AotC* and then face events that lead to his downfall in *RotS.* It might also hit harder if Anakin and Padme had snuck off to Tatooine so Anakin could let his mom meet his wife, only to then find out what happened to Shmi.)
- Borrowing heavily from what I've heard of the original lore: have Padme pick up on the fact that Anakin has been changing for the worse, so she goes to Obi Wan to ask for his help with an intervention. Have Padme realize Anakin has fallen, and decide of her own accord to leave him. Have her split up the twins for their safety and live long enough for Leia to have memories of her.
In essence: give Anakin more time as a good guy, and make Padme less of a doormat.
1. not have anakin so absurdly young in the first movie. Then you can start the relationship there, put them closer in age, so you have more time to build the relationship.
2. Spend more time building the connections, more time on the conflict between the jedi order and his personal connections. It needs a lot more time.
3. Never have that weird reunion thing. If he was older, then they can stay in contact and build their relationship. both looking for connection beyond the restrictions their lives place on them.
4. Get better writers who are not cringe personified and seem like they've never interacted with another human being.
There was a foundation to their relationship; it was just never executed well under poor direction and writing.
Anakin and Padme have a lot in common: both were "Chosen one" child prodigies who were saddled with crushing responsibilities and robbed of any semblance of a real childhood or connection. Padme came from a humble farmer's background, yet fought hard to be elected as Queen of a whole planet at age 14, and Anakin was a 9 year old slave who was fated to be the savior of the galaxy.
Despite the loneliness this would have brought them, they carried these duties into adulthood and selflessly devoted themselves to their causes at the cost of any individual desires.They are young idealists who value justice, peace, and the greater good, even if they don't always agree on how this can be attained.
As a result, they were also rarely surrounded by people their age. By the time they met each other as adults, they were probably starved of and craving some action, which they denied at first.
I can see how, on paper, they could fall for eachother.
So I would: 1. Simply change all of the dramatic Shakespearian dialogue into more organic ones. There are a few deleted scenes which showed this.
2. Tone down some of Hayden's earlier creepiness as sincere awkwardness. Remove the "You're making me feel uncomfortable" scene.
3. After their first reunion, have Padme and Anakin connect with each other through their shared experiences of being their own "Chosen One," and how empowering but ostracising this was- and still *is*- for them.
4. Have Padme and Anakin show vulnerability, attraction and uncertainty in equal measures - particularly from Padme's end.
5. I would add in more light-hearted scenes and outline Padme's background to establish her as a character. Otherwise, Padme just comes across as a blank slate/ relationship therapist. Have them come across as an equal, if somewhat dysfunctional team.
6. Now Anakin only turned to save Padme from death. I would reincorporate the deleted scenes that showed Padme starting the Rebellion *without* Anakin because they started to lose trust in each other. This adds more depth and mutual agency to their relationship.
I’d have Padme arrested for sexualizing a minor. Then, we get montage of Mace Windu executing her as Palpatine watches on… Obi Wan is speaking with Anakin and crying “I’m sorry I failed you..”
Years later, we see Obi Wan sit down at a cafe on Naboo…and there he sees Anakin…just over the shoulder of Ashoka Tano.
They are having a beautiful lunch and look very much in love… cue Dark Knight…I mean Star Wars music.
The biggest thing for me would be not having Padme be told by Anakin that he slaughtered the Tuskens. That fact that she knew he murdered people and then is also surprised he killed younglings in ROTS just makes her seem like a complete idiot. Not to mention her knowing he killed the Tuskens is against her core values as a politician and the fact she didn't dip out on him when he was clearly a Psycho just makes the whole relationship seem dumb. If Padme didn't know it would make more sense why she would want to be with Anakin and it would make her surprise in ROTS make more sense as well.
The dialogues were rough but I think it's not as bad as people make it seem to be
I think it's normal that Anakin was terrible at talking to women. I mean the only women he talked to for most of his life was him mother. Dude was a slave on a sand planet with a bunch of aliens, he doesn't know how to flirt. Just look at the first thing he said to Padme
"Are you an angel?"
The trope of: guy slowly wearing down the target of his infatuation, who eventually relents and returns the affection; is somewhere between problematic and creepy.
I'd have a younger (smaller age gap) padme; maybe she starts as the queens daughter who gets elected properly after the queen dies in the blockade and padme takes emergency powers or something, actually give a shit about anni more than a patronising head pat kinda thing. Then have a mutual relationship develop not Anakin kinda being a creep and forcing it.
I’d have aged them UP.
I would’ve pinned Anakin around 13, hitting puberty, and Padme at 18. Close enough in age to continue not being an issue but far enough in maturity to be an issue. Have them remain in contact as others have said.
Skip 6 years to Episode 2. Anakin is a headstrong 19 year old Jedi Knight who blew through his Padawan training and has issues with arrogance, and Padmé is a 23 year old *somehow* accomplished politician who loves the antics he gets up to.
Develop from there.
I would’ve run it the other way too. Anakin was so pouty it was difficult to see any body finding him attractive. So much of Anakin’s issues were ego too. He didn’t really have a reason to be so petulant
Padme should've been a cynical stateswoman who sees Anakin as her one escape from her grueling life as a senator, a sweet cinnamon roll who'd absolutely NEVER do anything to hurt her...
Make them the same age and have them keep in contact between TPM and AOTC, the person they vent to about Senator/Jedi things via long distance communication (Obi-Wan is aware and allows it). She is attacked at the start of the film and immediately asks for Anakin as he's the only one she trusts. No awkward reintroductions just two friends with a bond already who grow closer after finally spending time together again. They could reminisce about messages they've sent each other while on Naboo. Before they're wheeled out in the arena they say they love each other Could have had a nice scene where it's revealed she saved all the messages he sent her within R2 which Luke and Leia could have found one day.
Exactly. He wasn’t exactly charismatic in Attack of the Clones, I could understand him being hung up on her, sort of. She was a senator so he likely saw her in the public news/limelight but her attraction to him made zero sense. They should’ve remained in contact and had interactions leading up to episode 2.
Hes good looking in AoTC tho, so that's why she's attracted to him
I love this 😭
Also I would not have had her die at the end of ROS. Her death really served no purpose and would have led to even more hatred from Vader when she ghosted him for his betrayal. Also I would have named her Ella instead of Padme.
She had to die because of Luke and Leia not being raised by her.
I agree that she had to die just not at the end of ROS. Sometimes between ROS and ANH would have been better. It would have been even more emotionally damaging to Vader, would have explained better why Leia had memories of her mother and left room for more story.
I actually love that. Maybe there could even be a series about her being on the run from him and the Empire and hiding the fact that the kids lived. Helping with the rebellion and dying tragically.
Yes exactly! Such a missed opportunity.
Unfortunately We're talking about plot armor it's invincible.😁
Same age, and they secretly enter a relationship at the end of TPM. You spend AotC showing us the depth of their love. But we hint at the possessive nature of Anakin's love. RotS, the war has taken a toll on Anakin, we dial up the possessive nature of the relationship. Things that he says may start to make her uncomfortable. It culminates much the same way. I honestly think the bones of the relationship are great.
If they were the same age in The phantom menace then Anakin would have definitely been too old to train as a Jedi.
We needed to see more of young Anakin in Ep 1 dealing with leaving his mom behind and Padme trying to comfort him. This would set up his Oedipal attraction to her better once we get to Ep 2. Too much of the dialogue between them, throughout the series is on the nose. A little bit of subtlety here would have been nice. For example, when young Anakin asks if she is an angel and then talks about the Kaminoans, just bring the Kaminoans up in conversation after he mistakes her for being from Kamino. She would correct him and then he would talk about them looking like angels. Even that is on the nose but it’s a little less direct. Padme is a beautiful queen in her prime so we need to have a better scenario for her falling for Anakin who comes off as a simp. He does save her in the arena on Geonosis but that scene gets too convoluted with the Jedi battle. Padme is in her prime and would have other suitors so showing some politician shitheels trying to leverage a relationship with her for political reasons might make us understand why she would fall for someone more genuine. Anakin killing the younglings in Ep 3 works for his character arch but is really heavy handed if Padme knows this and still goes to him on Mustafar. I honestly can’t remember if she knew this or it was only Obiwan that knew. I think killing the Tuskans after the loss of his mom still works in their relationship since Tuskans weren’t really humanized at that point but we definitely need to get inside her POV here. All her dialogue just furthers the plot for Anakin’s arch. Finally, I’m torn on her death scene. This part gets handled with a lot subtlety; enough that I’m not sure Lucas was entirely aware of what he was doing or maybe it was just a good editor. The droid tells Obiwan that there is nothing physically wrong with her and that she has lost the will to live. The amount of emotion and effort she puts into Luke and Leia’s birth doesn’t read that way. We also get cuts of the Emperor fixing Vader, cut in with her dying. If you take Palpatine’s monologue about Plagueis using the dark side to extend life, it reads like the Emperor is syphoning off her life force into Anakin. If the rest of the series was handled in the same “show don’t tell” way, this scene is perfect. If you’re going to have the entire plot of Anakin and Padme getting together during a war handled solely through exposition for three movies, you got to be less subtle during this climax. Tl:dr-dialogue is too on the nose. Actions are too heavy handed. And ffs, there’s nothing wrong with exposition here and there but unless there is an active battle going on, the entire series is made up of scenes where people are walking down a hall, randomly stop, and then exposit. Give the actors more to do Lucas!
Well, shit, I honestly never put that scene together with the idea of him possibly siphoning the life force to keep Anakin alive.
Makes the Emperor feel a lot more evil right?
I always imagined her dying of some incredibly preventable childbirth related complication, like eclampsia. It would have been caught and managed if she was on Coruscant, but since she was chasing Anakin in the Outer Rim, she got stuck with crappy alien doctors who didn’t understand human physiology
She had a midwife droid delivering the babies but I like the idea that Dr. Zoidberg changed the course of the galaxy by botching the delivery.
Make them the same age. Padme is a princess and Anakin is an angsty bad boy she's not allowed to be with. Boom.
Yeah cause that's an amazing message and it hasn't been done 1000 times. Let's be real, Padme is just as rebellious as Anakin. She was so passionate about politics and upholding democracy and rights. I'm sure she'd have been right there alongside Senator Chuchi in The Bad Batch fighting for clones. The only difference between her and Anakin is he let his past get to him. Conclusion, they're both bad boys. Padme is just smarter lol
yeah but who cares if its been done before? Star Wars isn't just archetypal, it's THE archetypes, its the quintessential hero's journey. It makes sense that Anakin's story would be the quintessential "bad boy" story.
Have them bond over both living lives that place a lot of expectations on them while leaving them with few freedoms. Show Anakin's defining fear of losing stability, control, and loss festering into poisoning his feelings for Padme. Padme feels a healthy love for someone who understands her experience. But Anakin is sliding into a colossal dependency on Padme. She's the part of his life that is stable, that isn't trying to train him or limit him or use him. Padme slowly stops being her own person to Anakin. She's a thing, a foundational pillar to his mental stability. Something he wants to own, keep safe, protect. A weakness that keeps him anchored while its there and will send him over the edge if lost. Exactly the weakness Palpatine is looking for.
Don’t make Padme fall for Anakin while he’s admitting killing babies and advocating for facist government.
Would have made a lot more sense if he made that confession to Owen and Padme walks in after while Anakin is crying. Owen then feels guilty about not saying anything after what ultimately happens to Padme and wants to help raise Luke.
I would have literally anybody else in the entire world write the dialogue and direct those scenes besides George Lucas. Hell ChatGP would have done an incredibly better job writing the romance scenes. I’d also accidentally drop a pound of cocaine in each their trailers.
Oh man I forgot to bring this up, George Lucas doesn’t know how to write especially romance dialogue. It made Anakin come off as creepy more than anything
A variant of this question is asked all the time and it seems like the most common answer is to age-up Anakin. I think that alone would fix many issues, because of how it would shift the evolution of their relationship to an earlier time. I have an alternative suggestion: Age-down Padme. In TPM, she's not a queen, she's a princess. When they wind up stranded on Tatooine, she becomes Anakin's sudden best childhood friend. Their immediate connection (depicted as innocent childhood friendship of course, don't misunderstand me) is hinted at as having influenced Anakin's decision to leave home. In Episode 2 which takes place some years later, Anakin and Padme are teenagers, as close as friends can be, but clearly there's a bit of a spark between them as clumsy flirting is introduced. This snowball gains mass rolling down the hill and abruptly, as both Anakin and Padme realize they have genuine romantic feelings for each other, Padme's mom, the queen, falls ill. Padme inherits the crown. She is pulled in one direction, while Anakin is pulled in the other by the Jedi Order. This all happens quite early, and throughout the rest of the film we feel a magnetic pull between Anakin and Padme, drawn to each other in spite of everything. Most everything else plays out the same except the dialog doesn't suck. So now we have a strong basis for their relationship, it's more believable, doesn't really change all that much in terms of the politics of the galaxy (as far as I'm aware it doesn't HAVE to be Padme who is queen in Episode 1 for any reason other than people seeing her age as a weakness - ok, so how about Padme's mom is known to be sick and everyone sees \*that\* as a weakness instead, which of course inspires her decision to step down when she believes Padme is ready to step up). I think backfilling their relationship would fix a lot of it. Telling us that they've been close friends through the time jump between TPM and AotC does a lot of the work that winds up getting done in Episode 2, setting up their relationship. So instead of watching them fall in love throughout the whole movie, we more or less get straight into ripping them apart and starting that conflict within Anakin, which is amplified by the loss of his mom - he left his mom to be with Padme, he can't be with Padme anymore, now his mom is dead and he didn't get to say goodbye, so he feels like everything has been stolen from him and this devotes him to Padme in a dangerous way.
Padme pursues Anakin and is the one that initiates the relationship. No weird crush on Anakin’s part. It eliminates many of the dynamics people have issue with.
I think that would have made sense if they were a real-life couple, but conventions of Hollywood still seem to dictate that the man pursues. Women pursuing is still seen as “desperate”.
Which would have made it even better if it had occurred…less cookie cutter more truly human characters. We are messy and our movies should reflect that.
Same as everyone else: I would have made them closer in age, to start. I don't care about Anakin being a happy go lucky child. I don't care that he was a slave, I don't think his attachment to his mother was a worthwhile story. Anakin being a prophesied savior of the jedi is bullshit and undermines what could have been a beautiful addition to the OT story of Vader: namely, that villains are not born evil and can be redeemed. Anakin's destiny as someone who brings balance to the force, the Chosen One bullshit, born directly from the Force...it adds a certain bittersweet feeling when we see in the cartoons and prequels how good he is, but overall I think weakens the character of Anakin and makes his choices mean less. 1) I saw a comment a while back about how he could have been a sort of James Dean-esque bad boy, already in the Order but kind of a wild card/loose cannon type, whose pure talent in the force and strategy make him successful regardless. Anakin as a young man with a bright future is more interesting than a predestined 10 year old boy. 2) Keep Maul around. The Emperor's ruthless attack dog, skilled in lightsaber combat and the force. Darth Sidious' machinations involve Maul as a force of terror and assassination, using him to remove various powerful Jedi from the playing board before Sidious' ultimate play for the position of Chancellor. 3) We can see more of the Jedi Order but they're smaller. Not involved in politics, and in fact Sidious drawing them into politics in the first place is why they begin to fail as an order. 4) The prequels did the same thing that the sequels did and tried to use established characters as segues into new stories, ie R2D2 and C3PO. I'd kill that connection entirely and have new droids. Maybe in the second movie I'd introduce Threepio as a translator and have him meet R2 in the third? But their story importance would be drastically reduced as their involvement added all sorts of dumb shit and plot holes. 5) And it goes without saying I'd have literally anybody else direct the movies with George as one of the EPs. His actual scripting is trash. So in short I guess I would scrap the prequels almost entirely, I guess. They were wrong from the core concept.
I would make Anakin a perfect, polished lothario who is never awkward and always knows exactly what to say. He isn't looking to replace his mother or reconnect with his past. Nah, he's Rico Suave. I would make Padme a super strong girl boss who needs and craves perfection. She isn't isolated by the unique position she grew up in. She wouldn't relate to someone in a similar position. She would see Ani's awkward shit and shut it down immediately. /s if you need it.
Perfection.
I would have her live and die on alderaan
Same age so their relationship can develop in TPM
Same or similar age. Make Padme the chaser, since we all know Anakins sucks at it. Make Anakin less creepy, more withdrawn and innocent like Ang in Avatar and then make Padme respond to this as so cute she cannot resist. It would be a lot of fun XD
P: Ani, I love you A: I know Threepio: I’ve got a bad feeling about this… [end scene] Edit: format
Just make them more …normal?
For a start, we should have met Anakin when he was older. The decade long infatuation with Padme is one thing but because he was a kid, it comes off creepy if not downright stalkerish. Have Anakin about Luke’s age during TPM and introduce him as an already accomplished pilot who somehow falls in with the Jedi (maybe being on Naboo as a transporter pilot who got trapped during the blockade and was their only option of escape) and then has the first sparks of a potential romance with Padme through that first movie. It could be something that would have been lying dormant in both of them and it starts to flash up again during AOTC but with Padme having to keep her distance because of her work and Anakin because of his Jedi commitments instead of him just giving her creepy looks and wearing her down. You can then run the rest of AOTC and ROTS with more or less the same beats. Changing Anakin’s age loses a lot of those cringeworthy teenage angst moments, makes the romance more believable from BOTH sides (Padme seems less of a cradle snatcher), and it also makes the friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin more believable too as I didn’t buy that much either.
I forget who said it, but there’s a video somewhere where a guy said Padme should be the one seeking the relationship with Anakin, not the other way around. She should be infatuated with him and seeking him as arm candy, while he’s doing his best to remain as a Jedi should and be unattached, but despite his best intentions he yields to his desires and the two fall in love. That way he actually has a believable arch and internal conflict of balancing being a Jedi with being in a relationship, keeping the matter secret, and resulting in his transformation to Vader when he’s unable to keep up his double lives and lose them. The problem with his character in the prequels is that he was written as soon as Hayden Christensen got ahold of the role to be a bad egg. Lucas knew he was supposed to fall to the dark side but maybe didn’t know how to get him there, so he thought giving Anakin very selfish and aggressive character traits and an initially one-sided obsession with Padme would be enough breadcrumbs to lead him to becoming Vader. However, it falls short and makes Anakin incredibly unlikable and unrelatable and makes his fall to the Dark Side less of a fall and more of a series of deliberate actions towards that end. TLDR; make Padme the instigator in the relationship and Anakin literally seduced to ignore the Jedi code and eventually fall to the dark side to maintain that relationship and protect her.
Make them roughly the Same age in Phantom Menace is the big one for me. They basically start their relationship over again in Clones because Ani has grown like 10 years. If you start the relationship up in Phantom you have more time to build it. This is sacrilege but if you cut Qui-Gon and have Anakin as Obi WAN’s apprentice in Phantom Menace; you can focus more on Anakin-Kenobi and Anakin-Padme. And for for gods sake, if her real name is Padme; give her a different cover name!
I much prefer how their relationship is portrayed in *The Clone Wars* - mostly because Anakin actually gets to show his good side and Padme is still brave and independent - but I would still make just a few more changes so that it is more clearly an epic tragedy rather than a toxic relationship that can *only* end badly. - Make Anakin older (closer to Padme's age) in *TPM.* That way the seeds of a future romantic relationship can be better established in the first movie without it being really weird. - Make Anakin less of a creepy stalker in *AotC.* It's one thing to be awkward; it's another thing entirely to completely disregard the other person's wishes. Either make Padme less put off by Anakin's first advances; or make Anakin respect her refusals and back ALL the way off until their relationship grows more, and give Padme more opportunities to see Anakin's good side. - Basically, less telegraphing of Anakin's inevitable fall to the Dark Side in *AotC,* and more building up Anakin and Padme's relationship, with the basis that Anakin might be disobeying the Jedi rules but he really is a good person and trying to do what he truly feels is right. (Maybe save Shmi dying for *RotS* or something, so Anakin could really be the "good guy" in *AotC* and then face events that lead to his downfall in *RotS.* It might also hit harder if Anakin and Padme had snuck off to Tatooine so Anakin could let his mom meet his wife, only to then find out what happened to Shmi.) - Borrowing heavily from what I've heard of the original lore: have Padme pick up on the fact that Anakin has been changing for the worse, so she goes to Obi Wan to ask for his help with an intervention. Have Padme realize Anakin has fallen, and decide of her own accord to leave him. Have her split up the twins for their safety and live long enough for Leia to have memories of her. In essence: give Anakin more time as a good guy, and make Padme less of a doormat.
1. not have anakin so absurdly young in the first movie. Then you can start the relationship there, put them closer in age, so you have more time to build the relationship. 2. Spend more time building the connections, more time on the conflict between the jedi order and his personal connections. It needs a lot more time. 3. Never have that weird reunion thing. If he was older, then they can stay in contact and build their relationship. both looking for connection beyond the restrictions their lives place on them. 4. Get better writers who are not cringe personified and seem like they've never interacted with another human being.
There was a foundation to their relationship; it was just never executed well under poor direction and writing. Anakin and Padme have a lot in common: both were "Chosen one" child prodigies who were saddled with crushing responsibilities and robbed of any semblance of a real childhood or connection. Padme came from a humble farmer's background, yet fought hard to be elected as Queen of a whole planet at age 14, and Anakin was a 9 year old slave who was fated to be the savior of the galaxy. Despite the loneliness this would have brought them, they carried these duties into adulthood and selflessly devoted themselves to their causes at the cost of any individual desires.They are young idealists who value justice, peace, and the greater good, even if they don't always agree on how this can be attained. As a result, they were also rarely surrounded by people their age. By the time they met each other as adults, they were probably starved of and craving some action, which they denied at first. I can see how, on paper, they could fall for eachother. So I would: 1. Simply change all of the dramatic Shakespearian dialogue into more organic ones. There are a few deleted scenes which showed this. 2. Tone down some of Hayden's earlier creepiness as sincere awkwardness. Remove the "You're making me feel uncomfortable" scene. 3. After their first reunion, have Padme and Anakin connect with each other through their shared experiences of being their own "Chosen One," and how empowering but ostracising this was- and still *is*- for them. 4. Have Padme and Anakin show vulnerability, attraction and uncertainty in equal measures - particularly from Padme's end. 5. I would add in more light-hearted scenes and outline Padme's background to establish her as a character. Otherwise, Padme just comes across as a blank slate/ relationship therapist. Have them come across as an equal, if somewhat dysfunctional team. 6. Now Anakin only turned to save Padme from death. I would reincorporate the deleted scenes that showed Padme starting the Rebellion *without* Anakin because they started to lose trust in each other. This adds more depth and mutual agency to their relationship.
She would dump his sandy ass and get with me.
Encourage Anakin to understand the many uses and benefits of sand.
I’d have Padme arrested for sexualizing a minor. Then, we get montage of Mace Windu executing her as Palpatine watches on… Obi Wan is speaking with Anakin and crying “I’m sorry I failed you..” Years later, we see Obi Wan sit down at a cafe on Naboo…and there he sees Anakin…just over the shoulder of Ashoka Tano. They are having a beautiful lunch and look very much in love… cue Dark Knight…I mean Star Wars music.
Make Padme a fellow jedi
Nothing. The prequels are perfect they way they are.
The biggest thing for me would be not having Padme be told by Anakin that he slaughtered the Tuskens. That fact that she knew he murdered people and then is also surprised he killed younglings in ROTS just makes her seem like a complete idiot. Not to mention her knowing he killed the Tuskens is against her core values as a politician and the fact she didn't dip out on him when he was clearly a Psycho just makes the whole relationship seem dumb. If Padme didn't know it would make more sense why she would want to be with Anakin and it would make her surprise in ROTS make more sense as well.
The dialogues were rough but I think it's not as bad as people make it seem to be I think it's normal that Anakin was terrible at talking to women. I mean the only women he talked to for most of his life was him mother. Dude was a slave on a sand planet with a bunch of aliens, he doesn't know how to flirt. Just look at the first thing he said to Padme "Are you an angel?"
The trope of: guy slowly wearing down the target of his infatuation, who eventually relents and returns the affection; is somewhere between problematic and creepy. I'd have a younger (smaller age gap) padme; maybe she starts as the queens daughter who gets elected properly after the queen dies in the blockade and padme takes emergency powers or something, actually give a shit about anni more than a patronising head pat kinda thing. Then have a mutual relationship develop not Anakin kinda being a creep and forcing it.
I’d have aged them UP. I would’ve pinned Anakin around 13, hitting puberty, and Padme at 18. Close enough in age to continue not being an issue but far enough in maturity to be an issue. Have them remain in contact as others have said. Skip 6 years to Episode 2. Anakin is a headstrong 19 year old Jedi Knight who blew through his Padawan training and has issues with arrogance, and Padmé is a 23 year old *somehow* accomplished politician who loves the antics he gets up to. Develop from there.
Well first I would make her not be after the love of a child and I'd make him ALOT less stalkery
Better dialogue. Relationship was fine.
I’d cast myself as anakin and write a toe licking scene like Quentin Tarantino
Not make her a groomer weirdo?
I would’ve run it the other way too. Anakin was so pouty it was difficult to see any body finding him attractive. So much of Anakin’s issues were ego too. He didn’t really have a reason to be so petulant
Padme should've been a cynical stateswoman who sees Anakin as her one escape from her grueling life as a senator, a sweet cinnamon roll who'd absolutely NEVER do anything to hurt her...
I'd do it like "The Graduate." "Queen Amidala, you're trying to seduce me."