The elected part doesn’t bother me - the 14 year old part does. However Leia is a 18 year old Senator in Part IV, so it probably all stems from Lucas’ teen age power fantasies.
Maybe the founders of Naboo’s government were a bunch of pedos. See if the elected ruler is a 14 year old girl, it’s alright to screw them. Padme herself did some cradle loving.
Han Solo’s a Ewok?
I’d actually argue there’s a lot of really creat character work in Attack of the Clones between Padme and Anakin.
It’s best if you imagine that both of them are emotionally developmentally delayed… because honestly they probably are (child politician/warrior monk).
If you watch their scenes and imagine them being 13 or 14, it actually works a lot better.
The worst thing that Lucas ever did with Star Wars can be encapsulated into three words:
Han
Shot
First
The cynical “this is what I really wanted to do in the first place” retconning nearly destroyed it for me.
Considering the performance Portman gave, this would not have been a significant disability.
I actually think the show is better than all the prequels.
Why? It was established that nobody had to father Anakin.
#1 on the list, of course, is why the hell R2-D2 and C3PO don’t recognise the names “Luke Skywalker” and “Obi-Wan Kenobi” when they spent a year (or 15-ish, in R2-D2’s case) trucking across the galaxy with Obi-Wan and were there when Luke was born.
Yes, but they weren’t teenage girls, and they were elected for life terms.
It’s definitely a Lucas thing. Remember that in the story meetings for Raiders of the Lost ark, Indy was supposed to have raped Marion when she was 12. Suddenly his alienation from his old professor becomes more understandable.
Well, originally, she was 16. She wasn’t 18 in the first one until retroactively, when she turned out to be Luke’s twin.
C3PO’s memory was wiped at the end of Revenge of the Sith, as you’ll recall. As for Artoo, he just had the sense to know when to keep his piezoelectric buzzer shut.
Yeah, but when monarchs are elected, it’s only other nobles who vote, and it’s for life. Having a popular election with a set term doesn’t make any sense and I have a feeling that was added in after Episode I for Lucas’ clumsy Iraq War analogy in Episode III.
Wait, Amidala was 14? I thought she was 17? CRAP! Now something I thought was preposterous has been made preposterous[sup]2[/sup].
Max the Immortal said:
WIN!!!
Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor said:
Where did Ewoks eat other Ewoks?
smiling bandit said:
Really Not All That Bright said:
And the title was hereditary afterwards. The election was only a stopgap to get over some crisis preventing the hereditary path to proceed.
2ply said:
I suspect this is more of a situation where Lucas was trying to retcon the mess he had already created. See, originally there was an Empire, so it made sense to have princes and princesses and such. But then eventually he wanted there to be an older Republic, and democracy. But that chokes on the notion of hereditary monarchy, so he tried to create a hybrid whereby he could have his monarchy and his Republic. Ergo, electing queens for set terms.
Body double for the end scene? 
Padme doesn’t ruin Star Wars continuity.
The PREQUELS ruin Star Wars continuity.
Really? :eek: Now that I’ve never heard - not that I’m complaining about it.
I think he meant that Ewoks eat humans–where else did they get a dress Leia’s size so quickly except from a previous victim? I’m sure there must have been some very mixed feelings about our heroes arriving since (a) they did get to meet their God incarnate (though did he have to be so gay?), while (b) they lost out on a huge feast of not only the girl human but her friends, too.
Actually, as time continues to pass, this is turning out to be less and less true. I can think of one genuinely good, impressive performance from each of them to date, which leaves a lot of non-SW performances that, while not as abysmal as in the prequels, is certainly nothing to brag about (though Portman has been far more successful in skating on her cute/pixie charm, which is not quite the same thing as good acting).
I agree with your other point, but what you and Irishman said here is defintely not true. It was quite common for the monarchy to be routinely decided not by inheritance law (and most nations never had a clear or respected one if they had one at all) but by political influence. Usually this was limited to members of the ropyal family, but hardly always.
Now, as far as the monarchy in Star Wars, that was something I loved about it. Look! It’s a strange foreign political system which doesn’t make sense to us. Well, duh! Most political systems make no sense to an outsider. It’s the nature of politics. Hell, that was the most science-fictiony thing in the entire series!
Sigh. This is the “Bald Centauri Women” scenario all over again.
I don’t think this is entirely fair. Ewan McGregor absolutely nailed Obi-Wan- he had Alec Guinness dead to rights.
Just about everything else in the prequels was appalling, but I enjoyed Ewan McGregor’s performance.
The danger is when you create a foreign (yet familiar-looking) system with words and titles that have specific associations and meanings, and then decide to rest the entire 3-film story on the shoulders of the various machinations and “intrigues” within that political system. That things are different from us and go unexplained is fine with me–but then to be so dependent on the specifics of such a system so as to labor to incorporate them into the story without satisfactorily reconciling these associations and assumptions is simply distracting.
He does this everywhere. The Jedi cannot love (oh, but they’re not really monastic, despite their wardrobe). Slavery is bad (oh, but a grateful Republic couldn’t possibly rescure your mommy from such a fate). Clones are…good? Bad? Normal? Frowned upon? Who knows? With all the talk of trade embargoes and votes of No Confidence and heads-of-state stupidly travelling incognito (as themselves?), there’s a persistent insistence on using everyday words or concepts, but throwing them into a new context without ever thinking the premise through as it applies in the SW Universe.
Even before the prequels came out, I though it was pretty clear in episode IV that R2D2 remembered Obi-wan (as opposed to only seeking him out because Leia told him to).
After seeing the prequels, I figure R2D2 knew exactly who Luke was (and who his father was) in episode IV as well. He simply chose not to contradict Obi-wan’s story about Vader killing Luke’s father.