Weapons of Class Destruction

Many spoilers to follow:
It was the middle of last year when rumors started to surface of Padme's fate: That Anakin was going to kill her, Force-strangle her and throw her against the wall as nothing more than a rag doll. Some fans felt this wasn't far enough for Ani to descend, that he should rape her to conceive the twins; then, he would truly be "badass" and "kewl." Ew. Meanwhile, we few, we proud PT fans had an adverse reaction. After the tender love story, the devotion he'd shown, how could he commit such a heinous act?! And then it turned out to be true, though not exactly in the way it had been described, and the fur really started to fly. 'It's totally out of character! It's what Lucas believes is best but I can't see it!' On both Anakin and Padme fandom fronts, a cry went up: "How could he?"

I've been completely and utterly spoiled, I've read every bit of information from every official source that I could. And I've come to believe that it is absolutely perfect for what Lucas was trying to achieve!

You see, in the OT, Vader is a figure of fear, of loathing: He tortures his daughter, among countless others; kills indiscriminately in the name of the Empire; wounds and makes ready to kill his own son, fully aware of his parentage this time, if he does not join him in ruling the galaxy. And there's the crux of it: The same choice he offers Padme and that she rejects, blindly trying to bring him back to anything rational. She can't. Luke can't, not until the end of the next movie when Vader kills the Emperor, not to atone for his countless sins, not to put the galaxy to rights, but to save the only person who unconditionally loves him. Because, as Lucas himself points out, children teach us to love unconditionally, something Anakin could not even grasp when he had a hold on Padme and covetously sought to hold on to her forever.

Not that it has to do with love. Lucas is very careful to point out that it is fairly early in the picture that Anakin's lust for Padme turns into his lust for power and knowledge. Under the guise of "saving" his beloved, he will become all powerful. This may be terribly hard to swallow for those who have loyally followed Anakin's journey through the course of the past two movies but it is in no way out of character. Think of all the world leaders who started out *just wanting to do good* and where they ended up- a mild example being the fact that Robespierre was ardently against the introduction of the guillotine in the senate as he claimed, one could say foresaw, that it would become to quick, to easy to execute criminals. He ended up wearing the machine's likeness on his cuff-links as a sign of his power.

Padme said it herself in AtoC: That living the lie would destroy them both and so, it seems, it has. While whispers of Palpatine's counsel are definitely darkening his heart, the twists and turns are already there, laid out by the first two movies of the PT. It was anger that slaughtered an entire tribe of Tusken Raiders, not love; love is never a justifiable rationing for indiscriminate killing.

As for Padme's part, is it believable that a strong character with an even stronger sense of self would lose herself in this. Completely. She did the moment she married him, knowing full well the implications. They are a young couple, their thoughts are in the here and now, not how everything is going to work in the long run. I must admit, I was sorry to see the senate petition side story go as it's a vital part of the forming of Palpatine's opposition as well as a part of the story that would involve Padme at work.

But does the movie work without it? In a word, yes. Treason is a perfectly understandable reason for Anakin to suspect Padme but a young man's inherent sexual jealousy and need for possession is much more potent, in my opinion. It's an extremely instinctual biological thing as the rash young man he is to want her to himself, whether that envy materializes in suspicions over her activity in the senate or her alleged closeness with Obi Wan. It's not necessarily that he believes that Padme and Obi Wan are creeping, it's that urge to possess, an almost animalistic pissing contest with any male that comes close to her.

And Padme's broken heart: Chauvinistic plot device or melodrama at its height? She could not survive this movie, not without a mention as to her fate in the OT (and anyone who thinks that lies in Leia's recollections in RotJ are adding too much with their own imaginations); I would not leave her to the EU nor would I want her death to be off-screen. Do people die of broken hearts? My father did, last year three months after my mother passed on; he lost his will. Is he excused from his fatherly duties of looking after his mentally ill daughter because he is male and therefore didn't have the same drive that a mother would have? Now which is the chauvinistic assumption? She knows the twins are safe and cannot bear living out something she believes -knows- that she helped to create, even with the best of intentions: love.

So, the ultimate question lies not in whether we find it sympathetic or the right thing, but that, as terrible as it is, it is still realistic. I for one applaud Lucas for taking this very risky path, of sticking to his guns that darkness is, in fact EVIL and not cool, that it is a destructive, unfeeling entity. That Anakin became that entity.

Peace, Ghani

EDIT, Post-RotS: Watching the movie, I understood the most fundamental reason of all when it comes to the choices Lucas made concerning Padme's death: She could not, for the stories sake die of physical wounds because that was what Anakin misguidedly was trying to protect her from in the first place. His vision would have been true and some would argue that it would be more fateful if he indeed caused with his actions the very thing he feared most. To me, it's more tragic that it was indeed his actions that caused her death but not in the straight-forward way of damaging her physically, but wounding her spiritually and emotionally with the choices he was making in her name. It is still a self-fulfilling prophecy but not one that Anakin could ever have dreamed of nor can he, in his new Sith state, ever understand it.