I tend to be “meh” to “nay” on AOTC, although I’ve come around very slightly on the Anidala romance. The dramatic romantic dialogue is … not good, but one thing I do think Lucas is good at is lighthearted banter à la Han and Luke or Anakin and Obi-Wan: whenever he stops trying to do Serious Drama and instead lets Anakin and Padmé make silly jokes and tease each other (“Don’t worry, we have Artoo with us!”), the result is sort of endearing. I can believe these are two people who genuinely like each other and who, being rather sheltered and lonely, might interpret the first romantic sparks as a reason to run off and get married next week. The problem is that Lucas doesn’t want to do lighthearted banter, he wants to do Serious Drama.
One thing that still puzzles me about AOTC is Padmé’s reaction to Anakin’s massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Ghost!Qui-Gon is horrified and even Anakin seems disgusted with himself by the end of the workshop scene. Meanwhile Padmé (who has hitherto been shown as one of the nicer people in the GFFA) is not only not horrified, but seems to regard it as an understandable “human” thing to do. Maybe it’s a grim bit of foreshadowing: an unhealthy relationship can cause you to betray your own moral code by accepting things you otherwise wouldn’t, as we’ll later see when Anakin’s friendship with Palpatine causes him to overlook the signs that Ol’ Sheevy is bad news. Or maybe Padmé is secretly a Sith Lord. But her part of the workshop scene gets so little narrative weight that I don’t know what we’re supposed to make of it.
My really petty AOTC complaint: it does undercut the seriousness of the arena scene a bit when Padmé’s white jumpsuit ends up ripped in the most fashionable way possible. It’s a minor offence on the Scale of Sexism in Star Wars, but still. Go from chic workwear to cute crop top with the swish of a monster’s claws!
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One thing that still puzzles me about AOTC is Padmé’s reaction to Anakin’s massacre of the Tusken Raiders. Ghost!Qui-Gon is horrified and even Anakin seems disgusted with himself by the end of the workshop scene. Meanwhile Padmé (who has hitherto been shown as one of the nicer people in the GFFA) is not only not horrified, but seems to regard it as an understandable “human” thing to do. Maybe it’s a grim bit of foreshadowing: an unhealthy relationship can cause you to betray your own moral code by accepting things you otherwise wouldn’t, as we’ll later see when Anakin’s friendship with Palpatine causes him to overlook the signs that Ol’ Sheevy is bad news. Or maybe Padmé is secretly a Sith Lord. But her part of the workshop scene gets so little narrative weight that I don’t know what we’re supposed to make of it.
My really petty AOTC complaint: it does undercut the seriousness of the arena scene a bit when Padmé’s white jumpsuit ends up ripped in the most fashionable way possible. It’s a minor offence on the Scale of Sexism in Star Wars, but still. Go from chic workwear to cute crop top with the swish of a monster’s claws!