When we see Padmé at the villa where she and Anakin have their first kiss, before that she begins to describe the water when she was a child. In Revenge of the Sith when she dies, the dress she wears for her funeral procession is often remarked to (and Word of God states that it was inspired by) Ophelia's death from Hamlet. When 'Anakin' dies and 'Darth Vader' is born, where does that happen? In Mustafar, where he's burned into the fire mere minutes after he chokes Padme, his saving grace, his Morality Pet, the only person who can ever really calm him and his passion down. Fire is to water what Anakin was to Padme, at least before he kills her and becomes Darth Vader.
In Attack of the Clones, I always hated the scene where Anakin relates to Padmé what happened when he went to rescue his mother from the Tusken Raiders. I chalked this hate up to either bad acting or bad writing, because Anakin seemed to do so much emotional flip-flopping in the film that I couldn't get a good bead on his character. It wasn't until I watched the DVD version of the film and noticed an extra few seconds at the end of that scene (which I don't think was in the theatrical version, though I may have simply overlooked it) in which Padmé says something along the basic lines of "everyone is human" that I realized that the reason for Anakin's grief was not the slaughtered Tusken (which he proclaims rather fiercely to hate), but his own failing as a Jedi (who is supposed to be impervious to that sort of strong emotion).
The above troper is right: Padme says "To be angry is to be human", to which Anakin replies, "I'm a Jedi; I know I'm better than this!" Those two lines were indeed absent from the original theatrical version, but added in subsequent home releases. Good thing too, as they do add greatly to the depth of the characters and to viewers' understanding of their perspectives.
Related to this, watch Padmé in the background as Anakin starts talking about slaughtering the Sand People, getting increasingly angry, even violent. She shifts her weight at one point. She's getting ready to run for her life.
One of this criticisms I've heard for Attack of the Clones was that the final battle between the clone troopers and droids was idiotic - they just lined up and shot at each other. Then I realized that this might actually make sense for two reasons:
The clone troopers were trained, but who trained the trainers? The Republic apparently hasn't a major war in a thousand years. That's a lot of time for bad ideas to creep into their institutional experience, and good ones to drain out (particularly if most of their ground troop usage was for things like police actions/suppressing riots, where marching in ranks would be a good tactic).
Perhaps the last time the Republic fought a major ground war, shield technology was greater than offensive weapon technology on the ground (like how it is with the Gungans and their giant shield in "Phantom Menace"). In such a situation, marching in close ranks might actually make sense, since you would maximize the number of troops covered by the shield.-Bass
There's also another point that I realized while I read this. A lot of people (myself included, admittedly) criticized the use of outdated combat tactics with futuristic technology. Except... the vast majority of the small arms in the Star Wars films are portrayed as semi-automatics. Modern infantry tactics weren't really adopted until the mass adaptation of fully automatic rifles for every infantry unit. The tactics before that were really based around mass deployment of a combination of fully automatic weapons and self-loading or bolt-action rifles (the latter greatly outnumbering the former). Even before then, in WWI, tactics were massed around men using bolt-actions being supported by machine guns. The clones and droids fight more like a 19th century army using single-shot rifles. This would be strange, but, as a general rule, that's what they are! The clones use mostly their large rifles, and the CIS droids have a mixture of weapons that have similar capabilities (though Super Battle Droids seem to be top of the line with rapid-fire blasters in their arms shown in AotC). The Clone army does mix things up with more close combat support (shown with the gunships at the end of AotC) instead of going to full auto. It's not that they can't adapt modern tactics, they just haven't had any of our universe's reason to. Compounded with the lack of wars until the prequel trilogy, that's a pretty strong argument for Lucas knowing what he was doing.
Except that only a few seconds earlier we are shown that continuous energy weapon exist in form of the laser cannons mounted at the side of the clone drop ships, which would easily serve the same purpose as machine guns. In addition to that we have sensor guided missiles, tanks and aerial combat vehicles in combat on both sides, which have existed for a long time already, especially when taking anything from the EU about the Old Republic into account. Also small scale wars had been a common events before the outbreak of the Clone Wars giving plenty of opportunities to study war and combat tactics. The Jedi having no clue about war and military strategies would imply that they have essentially ignored anything happening in the past 4000 years.
The above is actually demonstrable evidence that Lucas really didn't think things through further than 'it looks cool'. Both sides have very fast-firing, semi-automatic weaponry, armoured troops and vehicles, guided missiles, void ships capable of landing on planets, shields, walker robots among much more - but the most advanced infantry tactic is to stand in the open and shoot, and the most powerful ground troops are effectively monks with plasma swords (even with their powers, there aren't enough of them to make any impact on even a planetary conflict, much less a galactic one).
Also, cut World War I Generals some slack. After the bloodbaths of the Franco-Prussian war and the US Civil War EVERYBODY knew that marching in ranks was really really dumb. The official tactic of all squads of all relevant Great Powers from 1870 to today remains "Fire and Movement." Some people stay behind cover and shoot to keep the other guys' heads down (helped by the bolt action allowing soldiers to stay prone), and then the others not giving covering fire advanced to get better firing positions. They did this with bolt-action single shot rifles.
Finally- the other great big ground battle in Star Wars, the Battle of Hoth, involves some pretty reasonable tactics from both sides, considering what they have at their disposal. The Rebels dig fire trenches and engage appropriate targets (You'll note the turret thingies try to engage the AT-ATs while the infantry slogs it out with the Snowtroopers); the Imperials let their Armoured units smash a hole in the defences and the infantry support the armoured advance. It's not that he didn't know how to do it; he just doesn't care.
You mean that battle that took place over 20 years later, which had been filled with low-level conflicts and military actions involving a standing military force?
Another possibility: The separatists don't bother coming up with tactics better suited to preventing casualties because droids are mass produced and easy to replace. As for the Republic's Clone Troopers, well...
Well of course the real reason is that in the OT the battle scenes were based upon either WW2 gun camera footage (for the aerial battles) or in the case of Hoth was done by Norwegian Army reservists who knew what they were doing; it looked authentic because it was. In the PT the battle scenes are made on computer by designers whose closest knowledge of fighting came from playing Call of Duty.
Much nerd-rage has been had over how little sense the romantic dilemma makes. What is one of the first things she says upon being reintroduced to him? "You'll always be that little boy I knew on Tatooine." A few scenes later: "Don't try to grow up too quickly." The principle problem is that she still views him as a kid, since that's all she remembers of him. Anything else she says is the problem is really her trying to avoid the issue. As they get to know each other better, she sees him display more maturity, but still sees him as beneath her developmentally. Everything he does convinces her otherwise, especially going to such lengths to find his mother and then mourning with his step-family. And then he clinches the deal by leaping in to save her in the Droid Factory.
Why does Padme still marry Anakin after he confesses to small-scale genocide? Because she sees him as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds and is touched that, out of everyone, he's wiling to trust her with this secret which could get him into serious trouble.
When Palpatine describes the Republic as having "stood for a thousand years," it initially seems questionable, given that he's about 24,000 years off. However, there is an organization with which he's affiliated, and which has stood for a thousand years (in its current form) at the time he makes that declaration. What seemed like a lapse in the writing was in fact a Freudian Slip that foreshadowed the Emperor's ultimate loss of control where he most needed it - over Vader.
Anakin might not like sand but what ends up saving Padme when she falls out of the gunship during the Battle of Geonosis? That's right, sand. It might be "course, rough and irritating" but it's also soft.
Anakin and Padmé's relationship is heavily criticized for being built up as "true love" when the two come across as having little chemistry and few, if any similar interests. Why would these two ever be a good match for each other? Well that's exactly the point! They aren't a good match! We were never supposed to think they would be. They were two very sheltered young adults with little experience in relationships. Of course they were going to over-idealise their relationship, just as most teenagers do with their first girlfriends or boyfriends. They confused what was most likely a rush of hormones and mutual physical attraction, with the idea that they were soul mates. In fact it's not entirely unlike Romeo and Juliet. The play was supposed to be a cautionary tale about romanticizing young love and people mistakenly assumed it was supposed to be the perfect love story. The exact same thing happened with the prequels.
It could be seen either way. To me, it came off as if Anakin was just desperate for some sort of connection, and Padme had a sort of I Can Change Him mentality, and it was played rather well.
More to the point, the relationship was shown that it could have worked if they weren't hampered by this massive secret of being lovers when they weren't allowed to. Being forced to carry it was obviously going to crush them so long as the war continued, and The Clone Wars demonstrated many times how dangerously close it came to falling apart. But that was the point; Palpatine had been grooming both Anakin and Padme to cross paths one day, knowing he could manipulate them both and get exactly what he wanted. So on the surface, their relationship couldn't work, but for Palpatine, it would work exactly as he wanted.
It's also confirmed that Anakin IS severely love-starved, due to his former slave status and abandonment issues—it's the most evident with Padme, but he also clutches Obi-Wan and Ahsoka in the same kind of emotional vice-grip.
Why do clone troopers have New Zealand accents, apart from the obvious? If we're going by Translation Convention, they're the Star Wars equivalent of New Zealanders, and when Erwin Rommel says he could take and hold hell with New Zealanders, they're tough little buggers.
Obviously, the Mandalorians are the New Zealanders of the Star Wars universe.
Perhaps the Star Wars universe differs from reality on this point, but as far as reality is concerned, accents are not inherited through genetics. And unless I'm mistaken (I haven't really dug into any EU material), the clones weren't raised by Jango Fett... they were age-accelerated and boot-camped. So why should they share his accent at all? (Boba Fett, on the other hand, appears to have been raised by him, so his accent makes sense.)
In some of the EU materials at least, Jango Fett took a central role in training the Clone Troopers, along with a handful of others.
Mandalorians could be considered Maoris (...in space!), and were considered incredibly dangerous before events in the old republic-era drove them into decline. Jango was one of the few still around by the time of the SW movies, and was very much concerned about his Mandalorian ancestry, which is part of the reason he demanded an unmodified clone for himself. As a member of a famous group of warriors, with a proven track record, he was suitable breeding stock and a useful teacher. It's mentioned in the EU that he brought in Mandalorian customs to the clone units (particularly the commandos) as a means of creating an esprit de corps, tweaking songs and the like to be about loyalty to the republic rather than Mandalore. My theory is that that's just the in-universe equivalent of a Mandalorian accent, which they'd have picked up from their born-and-raised Mandalorian head teacher Jango.
As for the accent, it could be as simple as the Kaminoans using Jango's speech patterns as the model for the clones language instruction.
Mace Windu kills Jango with young Boba watching. What happens when Boba sees a Jedi for the first time in years in "Return of the Jedi" with a lightsaber? He focuses all of his attention on attacking Luke, the representation of what killed his father, blinding him to the rest of the battle.
Why does Boba decide to focus his skills as a bounty-hunter specifically for an infamous gangster? Because getting involved in a political battle (like his father did with the Clones, the Jedi, and the Confederacy) got his father killed for his trouble.
Count Dooku may have genuinely wanted to kill Palpatine with Obi-Wan's help as Dooku directly cites Sidious' influence as the defining fact to showcase had terribly the political situation in the Republic has become to where the galaxy NEEDS the Confederacy (despite some unsavory characters like Nute Gunray) to create a new working government without the Sith's intervention. It's even clear that Dooku offers Obi-Wan and the other Jedi who intervened at the execution chances to work with him, indicating that he may not have even truly wanted the Jedi to be exterminated from the galaxy and that they would have a place should the Confederacy take over the galaxy, or at least been spared. Instead of outright killing Anakin and Obi-Wan in their fight, Dooku merely wounds Obi-Wan and (no pun intended) disarms Anakin. Even in the next film, Dooku only incapacitates Obi-Wan when he gets the chance in their fight, and only threatens to crush Obi-Wan and Anakin because he knows full well that Yoda will choose to save them while he escapes back to Coruscant.
Yoda knew all too well what the deal is with Kamino not appearing on the star map. The reason he let a child give the answer was to show Obi-Wan how complacent the Jedi have become. (And considering how dismissive Jocasta Nu was when she told Obi-Wan that Kamino simply didn't exist, he's more right than he probably knows.)
Obi-wan tells Anakin to forget about the visions of his mother and his dreams will pass "in time." Obi-wan's advice to Anakin ignore his warnings through the force may have caused him to wait too long in returning to her, perhaps keeping him from saving her life. This is the first time where the Jedi teachings of ignoring personal attachments actually resulted in tragedy, and personal tragedy at that. It's no wonder why in the next film Anakin is so adamant on not listening to future advice from the Jedi council, especially concerning his visions.
So Palpatine instructs Dooku to have the very same mercenary who served as a template for a (at the time) secret clone army assassinate a senator who would vote against an act that would allow for the creation of that same army. The mercenary, who is renowned as the best one in the galaxy, promptly botches the job by relegating it to a less skilled killer, and fails to cover his tracks, leading to the clone army being discovered by the Jedi. We could easily chalk it up to Informed Ability on Jango's part and Contrived Coincidence. But it was all a Batman Gambit on Palpatine's part so that the proposition to use the newfound army can come from the Jedi and raise less suspicion, as well as paint them as warmongers. What is more, he creates a reason for the Jedi to use a slave army they are appalled by, having no other choice. They know full well that this is against all their principles, and their morale is broken before the battle even started. Yoda later confirms that this caused all Jedi to fall to the Dark Side, not just the ones that turned Sith.
Clone Troopers wear armor very similar to Jango's, but more covering. The Kaminoans obviously took his armor as model, but as they use more traditional tactics they don't need Jango's acrobatics and can use more cover.
Anakin's accusation that Obi-Wan is holding him back carries a double meaning. Anakin is feeling frustrated with Obi-Wan's low opinion of him, but also of the fact that he was never allowed to go visit his mother in order to check up on her and make sure that she's safe.
The Imperial March exists in-universe and is actually older than the Empire. It was playing in-universe during the military parade at the end... And it's going to be one of the symbols of the Republic appropriated and perverted by the Empire.
The music that plays when Obi-Wan sees the first battalions of Clone Troopers on Kamino is the same music from the previous film when the Trade Federation marched all over Naboo. Considering what those Clone Troopers and the Republic they fight for will later become, it's a nice bit of musical foreshadowing.
...But wait! There's more! For a cross-franchise connection, this music is reminiscent of another John Williams composition: the Nazi Theme from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Considering what much of the symbolism of the Empire calls to mind, this makes the foreshadowing work even more.
C-3PO considers machines making machines as perverse because he himself was made by Anakin. In addition, he was built individually by a Human, rather than mass-produced. It is not dissimilar to the way that most people see clones as less than Human.
Why does Cordé say she failed Padmé by dying? Because now they can't hide that Padmé uses body doubles.
The disastrous battle in the Geonosian arena was Count Dooku's most brilliant plan in the entire Clone Wars! He would have known from the droideka's memory records that Obi-Wan was sending a communication to the Jedi Order when he was captured. This would, he also knew, bring the Jedi Order to Geonosis in force. The entire "game" in the arena was the trap! The Geonosians can fly, which Dooku was perfectly aware of, but which the Jedi somehow seemed oblivious to. The arena itself was a nice, round, confined space that the Geonosians could exit directly from their seats by literally just getting up and leaving, without having to fight their way past the Jedi. Once they did so, there were no crowds to get in the way when Dooku had the battle droids come marching in. The Jedi would be the only people in left the stands or on the field. Thus giving the battle droids an easy set of targets to focus on without the confusion of an entire arena full of Geonosians. Result: nearly every Jedi was killed, leaving only a handful of survivors.
Having Dooku hit Anakin with Force lightning isn't just an in-universe tactical decision to separate him and Obi-Wan so Dooku could fight each on their own. It also serves as foreshadowing for Return of the Jedi. Rewatch the scene where Luke is being tortured. The moment Palpatine starts throwing lightning at Luke, Vader looks around and is clearly disturbed. This isn't just a father watching his son getting tortured; he's remembering how terribly debilitating it was from his own personal experience!
Anakin's recounting of the murder of Tuskens is widely hated, especially in regards to how Padmé doesn't seem to hold it against him, but fans haven't considered his emotional state. He's in shock. His mother died in his arms after being kidnapped and tortured, then he flew into a rage and slaughtered them all, even the children. Especially the line "They're dead!" sounds like someone in stupor who can't believe what he has witnessed. He's horrified of what he's done and what he's becoming. He can't be expected to act calmly or rationally.
There's a gag where C-3PO's head ends up on a battle droid's body. Why are both walking around, shooting Jedi? A deleted scene shows the battle droids being independently controlled after the Jedi raid the control ship. This would imply that the battle droids have two control systems - one in their "backpack" which links to the control ship, and a backup one in their head unit. C 3 PO's head was on the battle droid's body, which received commands from the control ship, and the other head, not detecting the control ship signal, operated C 3 PO's body independently.
Anakin’s thinly-veiled sales pitch for dictatorship seems at first to be a product of grooming by Palpatine, but consider the other factors that go into this. First, Anakin spent his formative years as a slave on Tatooine, where Republic laws and principles are nothing more than empty words. Then, he joins the Jedi, who are certainly not a democratic institution. What’s more, Obi-Wan’s comments about politicians suggest that, in their work as Jedi, the two of them encounter the democratically elected leaders of the Republic at their worst, seeing the seedy side of things up close and personal. In other words, to Anakin, the principles of democracy are hypocritical BS that benefited neither him nor his mother, and have the effect of putting corrupt assholes into power. No wonder he doesn’t think much of democracy.
Anakin kills Sand People. An act of revenge driven by hate. Yoda apparently knows about it, judging by a clip of his reaction, and does nothing.
He didn't know what Anakin did exactly, all he heard was Qui-Gon telling Anakin to stop, and his soon to be Vader breathing.
Though he still knew enough to recognize that Anakin was 'in terrible pain,' yet the indications are that this is never addressed by the Jedi again - the next time they speak to Anakin, he's relaying information about Obi-Wan being kidnapped on Geonosis, and then war breaks out.
There Are No Therapists in the Jedi Order anyway, which is rather peculiar considering the stress they are all under, all the more so once they were at war. Real life military personnel often need extensive counseling, and have rather high rates of substance abuse, suicide, depression and PTSD. Then again, the Jedi have all those poetic, but pointless, platitudes (e.g. "There is no passion, there is serenity...blah, blah, blah...) that they can chant until the pain goes away. No wonder they have to brainwash all their members from infancy, and are averse to allowing anyone old enough to have issues to join the Order!
The Jedi entirely rely on their traditions and training to address these mental health issues. Not only are they entirely unequipped to deal with an angsty teenager with a rough childhood, but they don't even realize they're missing this piece of the puzzle. Nobody in the Jedi Order were ever hormonal teens!
Consider how adamant the Jedi Council was about not training Anakin because he was "too old". These issues probably never came up before because the Jedi have traditionally been taken to be trained early enough in their lives that they were able to start believing in and following the Jedi way of thinking before they had a chance to form attachments to others. Anakin didn't, and he was being expected to adhere to the Jedi way when his own upbringing conflicted with that way of thinking.
That's the whole point of the Prequel Trilogy, and Luke's failing come The Last Jedi. The Jedi Order of the Prequels had become so ideologically inbred Anakin was a literal Outside-Context Problem for them. Luke, in seeking to emulate the previous Jedi Order, also emulated its failures, instead of learning from them and building something better. One hopes the lesson finally sinks in with Rey.
Sabé, Padme's decoy in the first movie, is not around and has been replaced. What could have happened to her? Maybe this wasn't the first assassination attempt on Padme.
She managed to survive past the Battle of Yavin. She's just determine to avenge Padme. Only problem is that the person she's working with to help learn the truth is Padme's killer.
The fact that there's so much material in Geonosis' ring means that it is a type of ring which apparently lasts less than a century before accreting into a moon. This means that the material was very recently—within living memory—scraped off the planet by a glancing collision. No wonder the planet's biosphere is so harsh!
There's something particularly unsettling that both the Jedi order and Kamino scientists seem perfectly at peace with institutionalized weapons training with their children during training.
As confirmed later by Yoda in Star Wars Rebels, the war caused the entire Order to fall to the Dark Side, not just Anakin or other defectors such as Barriss Offee or Pong Krell. On one hand, the Jedi are demoralized before the war even started, because they are forced by the circumstances (as they see it) in command of a slave army. But then, remember how Obi-Wan felt the deaths of Alderaan's people. It is likely that throughout the war, the Jedi felt the death of each of the millions (billions?) of clones, and while they did not pay attention to it because they accepted it as normal (it's war, after all), the sheer stress wore them down all the same. Add to that that the clones knew they were expendable and the Jedi felt their pain as well...
During their romantic interlude in the meadow on Naboo, when Padme' joking asks if Anakin is going to use one of his "Jedi mind tricks" on her, he retorts that they only work on the weak-minded. Unfortunately, as seen in Revenge of the Sith, you don't need to be of feeble mind to fall victim to the Force Choke.
Considering that Palpatine managed to get emergency powers strictly because Jar Jar Binks proposed the motion, the entire conflict that sets forth which evolves into the conflict seen in the original trilogy, and to an extent the sequel trilogy, is only so because of Jar Jar.
Why was Jango Fett chosen as a clone template? Because he's a well rounded mercenary. He has acrobatics and quick reflexes, can pilot a starship through a dense asteroid field with the skill to get the drop on a much smaller and more nimble starfighter, and yet keeps his cool even in highly stressful situations, such as facing against Jedi or dangerous beasts. Each of these qualities can be trained into his clones to fit their dedicated roles (ie, ground troops and pilots) because the instincts are there. Not to mention that Jango is one of the few characters who successfully kills Jedi...
The fear that the Sand People show for Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope is much more understandable when you realize that a lone Jedi was also responsible for slaying an entire tribe of them living in the same area a little over two decades earlier.
When you look at Shmi's condition, she appears barely responsive to stimulus and is deprived of strength. She was clearly tortured at the hands of her captors. Beaten, whipped, starved, and quite probably... raped. With all of this in mind, it's no wonder that when Anakin realizes the cruelty of how she died upon discovery, and the sheer unfairness of it all... he unleashes his anger so completely.
