#idiot goth boy anakin skywalker

[smallblueandloud]

thoughts on episode i

subtitled how to fix the phantom menace by essbie (seriously disney i would take money for this. like. minimal money. hire me, i swear i can be more creative than anyone you’ve got working on the movies at the moment)

ahem. anyways.

good ol’ george lucas really looked at the trade federation and was like, “i can make a bad chinese stereotype out of that”. i don’t like it. i also don’t like the implications of jar-jar being an idiot with that accent and just like... no. stop. if you’re not gonna get into social allegory, don’t be racist.

(actually just don’t be racist. that’s not star wars related, it’s just general life advice)

i know people complain about the politics, but the politics was great!! it was really clear to me how palpatine is angling himself into becoming emperor FROM the GET-GO and like. good for him.

the issue, i think, is that it’s not what people were expecting. it’s never what people expect out of star wars. they want space battles and lightsaber fights, and i get it, i really do. but the concept of the prequels, and how they’re supposed to chart the meteoric fall of the golden days, is such a good concept. it’s just that it requires politics, because that’s how he did it, and that’s how no one saw it coming. ah well.

ANYWAYS.

how to fix the phantom menace, as promised:

get rid of jar-jar. i know this is obvious, but do it. padme’s day-saving plan came from jar-jar’s mention of the gungan army, and i’m not sure how to fix that, but first get rid of jar-jar.

the issue with getting the information on the army is that you don’t want to imply that padme’s spying on the gungans, because, again, george lucas doesn’t want to go in to social allegory (even though the gungans would be an EXCELLENT opportunity to talk about colonialism. i’m a star trek nerd at heart, what can i say)

AND the fact that she gets the information from jar-jar, someone who everyone already hates, shows how she’s a good listener and that makes her a good queen. i’m a padme stan at heart, so i can’t fault her for that.

so, i guess what i would do is have the information come from the gungan ambassador, who padme keeps close because she values naboo’s friendship with the gungans.

when she flees naboo, she takes the ambassador with her retinue, and they hide out on the ship with amidala’d!sabe.

then, at some point when she’s frustrated with the senate on coruscant, she’s talking to the ambassador and she says something about how they were “foolish and complacent to not build an army before now.” the ambassador says, offhandedly, “the gungans have always had an army. we have always been ready for war with the naboo. but it is honorable of you to be so dedicated to peace and diplomacy and democracy that you only have a small volunteer corps.”

later, she connects this to their problem and flies them back to naboo. this also means that her petition comes from an actual government advisor, and makes the boss at least a LITTLE more intelligent and less ego-driven.

there is no godly reason for anakin to be so young. make him fourteen, just like padme. this is good for several reasons:

DEAR GOD THIS KID IS SO OVERPOWERED. he’s downright obnoxious. it’s like wesley crusher (tiny science genius), except he also has magic powers and is prophesied by the space wizards that he will save the universe. i hate it.

a nine year old is too young to be doing these things. he’s too young for pod racing, he’s too young for flying, he’s too young to be building. but a teenager is just old enough to be allowed to practice the hobbies he’s been interested in for life. he’d also have?? manual dexterity?? hand-eye coordination?? actual patience?? rare qualities, i know.

a fourteen year old is just old enough to start developing his own personality and opinions. he’s gonna be able to leave the house, and he’s gonna want to - even though he’s too young for it. anakin skywalker is, at heart, a child who doesn’t have the emotional capacity for all of the problems that life deals him. it’s why he’s drawn in by palpatine, who offers comfort and reassurance in his time of need. a fourteen year old will think he’s mature and ready to be on his own, but he’s not. the jedi philosophy doesn’t help with that issue - he’s used to emotional support, and he’s suddenly not receiving it.

fundamentally, anakin is isolated. i don’t know if y’all have been around young teenaged boys, but their whole thing is emotional isolation. it’s very frustrating to watch and be around if you’re not one of the young teenaged boys (hey! just like anakin is!), but it’s there.

a fourteen year old boy is MOODY and CRANKY and ANGRY. let’s not have yoda being “irrational” and telling us that this absolute sunbeam of a kid who’s scared and missing his mother is going to turn that fear into anger! let’s see it! young teenaged anakin is going to have moments of rebellion - he’s going to purposefully go into the fight, rather than it being an accident, for example, or purposefully blow up the ships in the pod race - and we’re going to see them. it’s going to be scary to us because we know what’s coming, just like yoda does!

also, he’d be old enough to see the injustices of slavery, and to never really forget them. i think movie!anakin hasn’t really realized how terrible slavery is, yet, and that just might be because he doesn’t know that others don’t have that life. older!anakin would KNOW and it would KILL him to leave his mother behind. let’s have a compelling narrative about slavery, instead of using it as a plot device to prop up shmi, who is a plot device used to make anakin angry! i’m tired of it!

anakin and padme would be the same age, and very very different people in very different situations. look, if we’re gonna make this a myth, let’s make this a myth. water and fire, opposites coming together and destroying each other. i stand by my opinion that anakin/padme is a fundamentally doomed relationship and narrative contrast/parallels would only HELP MY CASE. c’mon, georgie boy, if you’re gonna make a myth DO IT PROPERLY.

lessen the age gap between anakin and obi-wan. neither of them know what they’re doing, no one in the jedi order really respects these two kids who are simultaneously too young and too old, etc. brothers! let’s do this!

WHAT KIND OF PERSON THREATENS TO KILL A NINE YEAR OLD?? on the other hand, a fourteen year old, yes, i can see that happening.

i stand by my opinion that sabe should’ve been expanded upon. she and padme are two halves of one person, let’s see that in action! at least let sabe have a conversation with anakin that’s startling in its similarity to one with padme. again: if this is a myth, give it mythical elements, like two people who are the same person, both thinking and saying the same thing, but separate.

all the time from every scene that used to have jar-jar as the “”comic”” “”””””relief””””””” should be used to expand on maul. give him backstory! give him an arc! give him a driving motivation! you know what would be cool? more between him and qui-gon. they were made to destroy each other, maybe?

I LOVE QUI-GON JINN. that isn’t a correction, i just wanted to say it.

okay, i know i said we weren’t doing social allegory, but let’s talk about the slaves. you want to talk about freeing the slaves, fucking COMMIT, georgie! take notes from @fialleril‘s tatooine slave culture and TALK ABOUT WORLDBUILDING.

(sidenote if y’all have not read fialleril’s tatooine slave culture fics/meta, y’all have not LIVED. go and read it, immediately!!)

take out the ten minute podrace sequence. that’s just gratuitous.

oh, and one last thing! i see what they were trying to do with the midichlorians, and i appreciate it, but could they not. like. i like science as much as the next math nerd, but don’t try to retcon stuff into making sense. this is STAR WARS. things aren’t supposed to make sense! they’re supposed to LOOK COOL. psh, can’t believe i have to tell this to george lucas himself.

anyways, there’s a (much shorter) list of things i WOULDN’T change, and it is:

duel of the fates

the politics

padme amidala

qui-gon jinn, and his death (even though i’m SAD about it), and his funeral

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[smallblueandloud]

thoughts on episode ii

subtitled let’s fix attack of the clones!!: anakin edition

i came out of this movie really not shipping anakin and padme. he is selfish, awkward, and distracting - and she should too busy to consider a romance.

the prequels are trying to tell two stories (anakin’s fall and the fall of the republic) and it barely tries to link them, instead just spending time on the boring, clunky one (anakin) at the expense of the more interesting one (the republic/the clones, represented in this movie by obi-wan), which seems like it’s missing vital conversations.

but this post is about anakin and anakin/padme. so let’s get started.

this movie, at least in terms of anakin’s development, suffers from middle-of-trilogy syndrome. nothing really happens. his mother dies (oh my GOD) and he angsts about it for a while, commits mass murder, and then jumps right back to pursuing his terrible “romance” with padme.

i mean, there are NO lasting effects of his mother’s death. he learns no coping techniques, feels no real emotions about it...

shmi was done dirty in general though. the idea of her marrying the guy that bought her is pretty icky. i’m becoming more and more fond of fialleril’s headcanon that shmi meets beru and adopts her as her daughter. cliegg is nothing but owen’s offscreen father.

i mean, that would’ve been SO MUCH BETTER, even if you keep the whole shmi-dying-solely-to-cause-her-idiot-son-pain. WHICH YOU SHOULD NOT. why spend all of episode i talking about freeing the slaves and then do absolutely nothing about it??

picture shmi, her adoptive daughter beru, and her adoptive daughter’s boyfriend owen (who really isn’t sure how he got involved in this but isn’t complaining) running an underground slave-freeing operation.

not sure how this would tie into the movie, plot-wise or anakin-development-wise, because yeah, you do need to start getting nervous around this kid. (I MEAN, IN MY PLAN FOR THE PHANTOM MENACE, YOU WOULD’VE STARTED THIS IN THE VERY BEGINNING BY USING A SLIGHTLY WORRYINGLY COMPETENT AND BRUTAL 14-YEAR-OLD, NOT THE PREPUBESCENT NONSENSE WE GOT. but regardless.)

i guess you’d need anakin and padme to be hanging at on naboo, in her lake house (god padme’s so freaking bougie), and padme asks how anakin’s mom is.

queue the obligatory “oh, haha, i don’t actually,,,, know??”

padme proposes that since they have no duties and she’s actually bored out of her mind, they should go visit shmi. anakin protests for about two seconds before realizing a) there’s no stopping her, and b) he’d actually kinda like to see his mom.

(padme has some ulterior motives besides wanting anakin to see his goddamn mom again. she wants to buy her freedom, since she’s actually prepared with real funds this time, and she wants to ask her advice on helping out with abolition, since she and sabe had failed miserably when they tried on their own. [this is canon, go read queen’s shadow if you haven’t already because it’s an excellent book.] we love women acknowledging other women’s expertise!! padme has grown a lot and wants to stop being so core world-y.)

so anyways, they go there, meet shmi (who’s already freed herself, thanks so much), and beru and owen. anakin, because he has had no emotional support network since he was nine goddamn years old, is jealous, but does his best to keep it under wraps.

at some point, while anakin and padme are helping out with the freedom trail, and someone (not sure who) gets a little violent with shmi.

anakin... goes ballistic, we’ll say. it gets violent. he gets harsh. it’s an overreaction, but shmi manages to calm him down.

(padme, on the other hand, is frightened. she takes a step back the next time anakin turns to her. but she manages to hold it down until later.)

the flighty escapee that beru is operating on goes into hysterics. shmi pulls anakin outside and tells him, quietly, that she’s so overjoyed to see him but that she thinks he needs to be getting on his way.

padme, meanwhile, gets pinged on her communication device. obi-wan has contacted them, just like he did in canon.

also, there’s some kind of beru&anakin moment, or maybe a beru&padme moment. just a conversation of some kind, for uber talented gifset-makers to gif and put alongside beru talking to luke so i can be destroyed emotionally.

this serves several purposes.

the movie feels more emotionally coherent. anakin doesn’t jump from awkward flirting to mass murder to making out with his girlfriend.

shmi gets some closure.

we’re introduced to beru, who clearly meets anakin and padme.

we get to see the little people making a difference, which is a huge theme in star wars. this can act as a foil to the hugely ineffective senate.

padme gets the opportunity for some character growth (she’s my wife and all but she’s so bougie).

we get to see anakin be dark, over something.... sorta understandable?? and it doesn’t quite make us think he should be locked up (unlike murder) (except the movie says it’s okay because they’re just sand people and i really don’t like the implications of that). also, we can see the inherent tragedy of someone who needs so much community support being “”chosen”” by the force to go into an order of emotionally private individuals (not that that isn’t a bad thing for someone like obi-wan, but it really isn’t good for anakin).

AND I HAVEN’T EVEN REALLY MENTIONED PADME. i have a wishlist for padme, and it boils down to: at least mention her relationship with sabe, show her being good at politics, let her have character development, don’t make her have to mother anakin, and oh by the way make her two-dimensional enough that her abandoning her ideals to get together with a jedi actually makes sense.

because like! i can believe she likes anakin! he’s an old friend, from a time that seems simpler in hindsight, and he’s in love with her and flirts awkwardly and makes jokes. i mean, the dialogue makes it impossible for anakin to seem remotely attractive, but we’ll leave it at the fact that padme desperately wants something simple and a relationship with anakin, paradoxically, looks like a winner.

but i want to see her like anakin. show, not tell, georgie boy!! all we see in the movie is her giggling at him and her rejecting him, and then her kissing him, and there’s really no falling in love.

because okay. they’re a fundamentally doomed relationship, total opposites who are both startlingly naive wrt their personal lives. so i accept that they’re not really in love - they’re just clinging to ideals of each other. well. at least padme is. she’s smart enough to recognize what she’s doing, but she pushes it down because she is forced to hold too much on her shoulders (BECAUSE THE SENATE DOESN’T WORK) and she needs something that is just for her.

look, i really need sabe in these movies, okay. this is unrelated to my humongous crush on keira knightley. i need padme to have a friend, someone she can express this to, who can look at her doubtfully when she says she’s in love with anakin, because we really need to drive in the idea of this being a tragedy and we can’t see it unless we see how goddamn foolish even padme “good choices” amidala is being.

also like. padme needs friends. and i firmly believe that the “mother” that leia remembers was sabe, who is actively involved in the rebellion during the OT. because like. i have emotions, and most of them come back to luke&leia.

i’m not sure i’d have them get married, but that’s just a matter of taste. and you have to admit the set of final shots - the victory with the clones, baby boba pressing his forehead to his dad’s helmet, the marriage - with the overlaid music is really something. i mean, there you have the myth stuff that george wanted. i vibe with it.

anyways. thank you for coming to my ted talk, part the second.

[smallblueandloud]

anakin skywalker is an infj too.

what am i supposed to do with this information?