Now, I certainly not going to attack Lucas for bringing Natalie Portman into Star Wars, she is after all the lady who has single handedly restored the honour of Israeli women after Golda Mier, but the character seems to cause the whole star wars continuity and meshing with the original and prequel trilogy to go haywire.
Unlike nearly all the other main characters, her backstory was not set at the time of the Original trilogy, she was irrelevant to the story except for a couple of dialouges.
A lot of what she does is contrived IMO, her relationship with Anakin, while central to his fall does not do much to take Vader forward. Perhaps her character’s role could have been culled in the movies, as it was to a large extent in Ep III.
IIRC, the original idea was to have Padme not die during childbirth, but continue on and lead the rebellion for a short time before kicking it. This would make some sense, and enable Leia’s bit about remembering feelings/emotions about her mother to be actually true.
The way they used Padme (elected underaged Queen?), and not her existence, is the problem.
It would also have been a much better use of the Padme character to contrast her path with Anakin’s. They both hate the corruption and impotence of the Galactic Senate, but Anakin’s militant idealism becomes corrupted into something far worse. While Padme ends up working under the radar to assemble what’s left of the decent people within the Senate into the nucleus of what becomes the Rebellion. A deleted storyline hinted at this but was left on the cutting room floor.
The general consensus is that George Lucas ruined the Star Wars continuity/story. Padme is probably like 117th on the list of things he did to mess things up.
I am reaching a sort of opinion that George Lucas purposefully sabotaged Star Wars to create a perpetual “what if…” and “what could have been” amongst the fans, thusly generating a buzzword forever. Meaning more sales.
I’ve always been more amused by the people who can’t imagine the concept of an elected Monarch. Hell, half the kings in history were elected (usually informally).
She doesn’t ruin the continuity, but she does manage to represent just about everything wrong with the prequels: emotional inauthenticity, contrived motivation, unconvincing characterization, bad dialogue, and gaping holes in logic and coherence. The only thing she manages to escape is the juvenile humor that the films resort to sometimes.
I’m not sure if that’s really the case. Why would I buy the prequel DVDs or any of the other merchandise because I think “What if Lucas did this instead?”
On the other hand, it’s hard to believe he screwed up 3 movies so awfully by accident…