Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

[butterfly]

It's amazing how much more interesting things are when you care. Well, not amazing so much as obvious, but still.

The Obi-Wan/Anakin dynamic is fraught and complex here. It hasn't settled into the more easy affection of RotS, but the love is still plainly there, on both sides. Also, I'd love a chance to compare images of Anakin's glance up after his mother dies to him seeing Obi-Wan fall against Dooku in the beginning of RotS. They struck me as similar, but I'd feel better about that if I could see them side-by-side.

The only other time I watched this, it was with my dad and it was purely for Ewan. The politics and the romance were boring because I didn't care about where they were going. I believe that, at the time, I made a comment about how 'obvious' it was that Anakin would go evil and... yeah, of course it was, because I already knew that he would. I wasn't thinking of the movie where it was in the saga, but of when it was released, years after we knew about Darth Vader.

This time, that the moment in the meadow, where Anakin reveals that he doesn't so much see the bad in a dictatorship? I got chills. And Padmé laughs it off, chooses to believe that he's teasing her, and that's a moment in time when Anakin's course could have been shifted. If she'd taken him seriously, if they'd talked about their differing political views, some things might have gone differently. Or not. Anakin is confident in his views and extremely stubborn.

I loved Obi-Wan's stuff at the time because, you know, Ewan, but this time around, I really appreciated what it meant for Obi-Wan as a character. I watched the deleted scenes and I really like that Lucas cut Obi-Wan telling Mace about Anakin's feelings for Padmé. It complicates Obi-Wan's character not to tell, not to reveal Anakin's attachments, and thus (to us) revealing his own.

I wish that some of the Padmé deleted scenes had been in. On the other hand, this makes her family extra-canonical, which is nice from a fanfic point of view. Win-lose.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

The Obi-Wan/Anakin dynamic is fraught and complex here. It hasn't settled into the more easy affection of RotS, but the love is still plainly there, on both sides.

It's a transition period. I think they were reasonably fine as long as Anakin was still the child and Obi-Wan the adult, because that is a given hierarchy. But now Anakin isn't a child anymore but a teenager in transition to adulthood, complete with teenage rebellion thing, and Obi-Wan keeps switching between older brother/friend (as when they kid each other about the nest of Gundarks) and Master/father figure.

This time, that the moment in the meadow, where Anakin reveals that he doesn't so much see the bad in a dictatorship? I got chills. And Padmé laughs it off, chooses to believe that he's teasing her, and that's a moment in time when Anakin's course could have been shifted. If she'd taken him seriously, if they'd talked about their differing political views, some things might have gone differently. Or not. Anakin is confident in his views and extremely stubborn.

Yes. It could have gone either way. Though he at this stage is still more malleable, and of course would go over broken glass to please her. However, I think one deep-seated problem is that there isn't much to motivate him to believe in democracy. He spent the first nine years of his life on a planet controlled by gangsters with slavery which was soundly ignored by the Republic because it wasn't a part of it; and then the next ten years in the very hierarchic Jedi Order where you did what your master and/or the Council told you to. Plus when he arrives on Coruscant for the first time, the Republic shows itself even unable to help one of its members, Naboo, and afterwards system after system breaks away, with a lot of people wanting an army to stop that (but shouldn't it be the right of those systems to leave the Republic?).

I wish that some of the Padmé deleted scenes had been in. On the other hand, this makes her family extra-canonical, which is nice from a fanfic point of view. Win-lose.

We do see her family during the funeral procession in RotS, though, even her little niece. Sure, we're not told who they are, but they're present. I wish they'd have left those scenes in, too, both for the family and for the conversation in her room between her and Anakin where she tells him about the children who could not adapt, who died away from their homeworld. Which is very poignant in overall saga context.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

However, I think one deep-seated problem is that there isn't much to motivate him to believe in democracy. He spent the first nine years of his life on a planet controlled by gangsters with slavery which was soundly ignored by the Republic because it wasn't a part of it; and then the next ten years in the very hierarchic Jedi Order where you did what your master and/or the Council told you to. Plus when he arrives on Coruscant for the first time, the Republic shows itself even unable to help one of its members, Naboo, and afterwards system after system breaks away, with a lot of people wanting an army to stop that (but shouldn't it be the right of those systems to leave the Republic?).

So true.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

When I saw the deleted scenes of Padme, her love of Anakin finally made *sense* to me. She wanted to save him. NOthing in the film as screened got that across to me, but its vital to understanding her motivations. Poor girl. You're right that the moment in the meadow is a nexus point - it's also the scene where I believe in their romance the most. The teasing, the laughter.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

The deleted scenes did wonders for my understanding of Padme as well. Padme was a fixer, a doer -- we see that about her in TPM. It makes sense that she'd want to 'fix' Anakin.