THUNDERDOME
Why Padme and Anakin is Cinema’s Worst Love Story
“I don’t like sand.”
Thunderdome is a Fanfare series where our writers good-naturedly debate some matter of pop culture and then leave it to the readers to decide. Read each post and vote at the bottom!(Warning: Contains spoilers for Attack of the Clones, but quite honestly, I’m less concerned about that and more concerned about the knock-on spoilers for The Empire Strikes Back, for those poor unfortunate souls who have yet to see that stunning piece of cinema. Attack of the Clones is considerably less stunning, and those who view it could be described as poor unfortunate souls for precisely the opposite reason.)
There’s a moment late in Attack of the Clones where Padme declares her love for Anakin, just before they are about to be executed. It is supposed to be the emotional high point; the end of a dramatic arc underpinning the entire film. The audience is meant to be swept away by their romance. Instead, they are guffawing in cringe-induced mirth at the utter absurdity of the exchange.
Anakin: Don’t be afraid.
Padme: I’m not afraid to die. I’ve been dying a little bit each day since you came back into my life.
Anakin: What are you talking about?
Padme: I love you.
Anakin: You love me? I thought we had decided not to fall in love. That we’d be forced to live a lie and that it would destroy our lives.
Padme: I think our lives are about to be destroyed anyway. I truly… deeply… love you and before we die, I want you to know.
There’s a pleading tone to Padme’s final line, as though she’s begging the audience to buy into a relationship she knows damn well is beyond ludicrous. No, I really love him. Honest. I really, really, really love him. Sorry Padme. We’re not buying this utter dog’s dinner of a romance, and the film is crashing down all around you as a result.
I have written extensively elsewhere concerning my dislike of the Star Wars prequels. Yes, they were technically proficient, with great visual effects, sound, production design, costumes, and so forth, with phenomenal series of music scores from the peerless John Williams. However, narratively they were an unconvincing, thudding, cloth-eared bore and a pale shadow of their illustrious predecessors. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the relationship between Padme and Anakin, particularly in monumental cringe-fest Attack of the Clones.
Before I carry on, a part of me feels obliged to apologise to the likes of Ewan McGregor and Christopher Lee, who try very hard in sorely underwritten roles, with their side of the Attack of the Clones narrative. I also feel a bit bad for Natalie Portman (excellent in so many other films) and even the good-humoured Hayden Christensen, who again, aren’t really to blame for the hideous mess I’m about to describe. Let’s place the blame where it belongs, on series creator George Lucas. Whilst no one doubts his credentials as a cinematic game-changer of unprecedented imagination (I will love him forever for the original trilogy, as well as the Indiana Jones series), his blindness to his own flaws as a screenwriter torpedoed the prequel trilogy — especially Attack of the Clones.
With Attack of the Clones, Lucas created a romance so implausible, so forced, so idiotic, it made the Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey series look like complex, thoughtful, Shakespearean deconstructions of the human condition. As cinematic narrative catastrophes go, this one is one for the history books. With Amy Adams’s Lois Lane and Henry Cavill’s Clark Kent in those ghastly Zack Snyder helmed Man of Steel murk-fests, we were talking mere total absence of sexual chemistry in the romantic leads. With Attack of the Clones, Lucas goes beyond absence of chemistry into the realms of negative chemistry, with star-crossed lovers that repel like oil and water.
One of the biggest problems in Attack of the Clones is the over-explanation of everything. They’re a pair of young people alone together in hiding. Of course they’re going to fall in love! We don’t need moronic dialogue to spell it out, such as this deservedly derided exchange on Naboo.
Padme: We used to come here for school retreat. We would swim to that island every day. I love the water. We used to lie out on the sand and let the sun dry us and try to guess the names of the birds singing.
Anakin: I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.
The above scene could have played out in total silence, with looks and gestures from the leads, John Williams’s music to do a bit of the emotional heavy-lifting, and it would have been at least a tad more convincing. The dialogue is a lead balloon that kills the scene. Alternatively, a realistic response to that interminable nonsense about sand would have been for Padme to laugh in Anakin’s face.
The woeful lack of peril doesn’t help matters. A pressure cooker of danger would have pushed the characters closer. At the very least George, you should have stuck a bounty hunter on their tail, to shoot at them on Naboo whilst they prance around making idiots of themselves, falling off animals, and rolling in meadows. By contrast, consider the brilliant romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. It plays like a screwball romantic comedy in sublime counterpoint to the darker elements of the story, amid the relentless pursuit of Darth Vader. (“Would it help if I got out and pushed?”)
Yes, all right, screwball comedy wouldn’t be the way to go with Attack of the Clones. But damn it all George, there are countless convincing teenage romances you could have looked to for reference. Again, we don’t need idiotic sub-Mills and Boon speeches, such as this eye-roll-inducing monologue from Anakin.
Anakin: From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought of you. And now that I’m with you again… I’m in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. The thought of not being with you… I can’t breathe. I’m haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating… hoping that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me… What can I do? I will do anything you ask.
(Awkward pause, as audience collapses in mirth once more, for all the wrong reasons.)
Anakin: If you are suffering as much as I am, please, tell me.
At which point the audience affirms: Yes, we are suffering just as much as you. Please, make it stop.
Padme pushes back against Anakin throughout these scenes, quite understandingly. After all, Lucas is determined to portray him as a whiny emo brat, not the arrogant, flamboyant, dangerous character he should have been. But that all changes when they pop off to Tatooine to try and rescue Anakin’s mother from marauding Tusken Raiders. They are too late, and his mother dies on cue, just as Anakin arrives.
Cue a rage-induced massacre that weirdly seems to turn Padme on. As Anakin stroppily tells her about how he slaughtered Tusken Raider women and children, she seems to go from we-need-to-put-duty-first to now-you’re-actually-rather-hot, please-slaughter-some-more-women-and-children-for-me. The emotional arc of this romance is twisted, but much more importantly, it elevates unconvincing into an art form.
Anakin’s petulant strops elsewhere (for instance, his constant whinging about the entirely reasonable Obi-Wan) do nothing to add sex appeal to the character. As for Padme, she remains a dull, passive bore, existing purely so Lucas can put narrative Tab A into backstory Slot B. She’s treated with further contempt in the screenplay for Revenge of the Sith, in this hilariously banal exchange.
Anakin: You are so…beautiful.
Padme: It’s only because I’m so in love.
Anakin: No. No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.
Padme: Then love has blinded you?
Anakin: Well…that’s not exactly what I meant.
Padme: But it’s probably true.
At this point, I can only sympathise with what Obi-Wan says later in that film: “I can’t watch anymore.” Anakin’s entirely unconvincing fall to the dark side (which I’ve previously picked apart here) is motivated by a desire to prevent Padme dying, when really it should have been about lust for power. Yes, I know it’s easy to criticise as an armchair pundit. What would I have done with the prequels? You can read about that here, if you’re interested.
In summary, the romantic relationship between Anakin and Padme doesn’t merely lack romance, it lacks anything remotely representing plausible human interaction, making it my top contender for worst screen romance of all time. Saying that as a lifelong Star Wars fan is painful, but thankfully we’ll always have the original trilogy to remind us of the time before George Lucas was abducted by aliens and replaced with a talentless doppelganger.
What say you?
Based only on the arguments presented (you have read all of them, haven’t you?) and not on personal preference: who wins this bout? Voting closes on February 24 at 6:59 AM.The other entries:
- Love Actually by Paul Combs
- Massimo and Laura From 365 Days by Jessie Waddell
Author’s note: I hope you enjoyed this article. For more about me and my writing on Medium, please click here. For information on my writing outside Medium, please click here. For a list of my published novels and other works, please click here.
