The Moons of Iego: The Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker Website

QUOTES: MYTHMAKING - BEHIND THE SCENES OF AOTC, BY JODY DUNCAN

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Rick McCallum: "...the rain added to the beautiful and tranquil setting, making the disturbing romance between Anakin and Padmé all the more real." [from the introduction, describing the on-location shooting at Villa Balbaniello]

Natalie: "It starts out that her relationship with Anakin is one of mentor. She's known him only as a little boy prior to this episode, so when they reencounter each other, she treats him like a little kid. George worked with me to make me seem older than Anakin, to make it believable that she would boss him around and look at him as a little boy - at least for the first half of the film, until it becomes more of a romance."

Lucas: "I had used the [parents' house] scene, initially, as a means of showing Padmé's parents putting some pressure on her to quit politics ans settle down and start a family - at twenty-four years old, she was already quite late doing that in Naboo terms. I thought that would help motivate her relationship with Anakin. However, in watching the movie, I found that the love story worked fine without that element of pressure. The chemistry was there, and that was enough for her to fall in love with him."

Lucas: "The challenge was that I wanted to tell the love story in a stle that was extremely old-fashioned, and, frankly, I didn't know if I was going to be able to pull it off. In many ways, this was much more like a movie from the 1930s than any of the others had been, with a slightly over-the-top, poetic style - and they just don't do that in movies anymore. I was very happy with the way it turned out i the script and in the performances, but I knew people might not buy it. A lot of guys were going to see this movie, and most guys think that kind of flowery, poetic talk is stupid - 'Come on guys, give me a break.' More sophisticated, cynical types also don't buy that stuff."

Natalie: "We felt pretty stupid biting into fruit that didn't exist. But still, it was a fun scene [the dinner scene] to shoot. I don't think George was entirely satisfied with the dialogue he had written for the scene, because he told us to improvise some of the dialogue - and of course it got inappropriate very quickly!"

Lucas: "Let's face it, their dialogue in that scene [the fireplace scene] is very corny. It is presented very honestly, it isn't tongue-in-cheek at all, and it's really played to the hilt."

Hayden: "He is disobeying his mandate to protect Padmé [in going to find his mother], but she goes with him because of the love between them."

Ben Burtt: "That moment [the love pledge] is very important. After this, they fight side by side, but this is their last intimate moment. The way it was written and shot, it was a very long scene, with a lot of dialogue. In the course of editing it, the question came up - do we really need all of this dialogue? We were grappling with other questions as well. Should the scene be played equally between the two of them, or should it lean more toward Anakin? Or should it lean more toward Padmé?"

Burtt: "The [love pledge] scene wasn't written that way, and it wasn't shot that way; but we restructured it so that she would have the final word, which made a tremendous difference in how it played."

Lucas: "I decided to rewrite that scene and put it back into the movie, but make it stronger and more explicit about what actually was at stake: the fact that Anakin would be kicked out of the Jedi Order if he were to go after Padmé. I had to make it clear that he had a choice to make. He could either stay in the Jedi Order and go after Dooku, or he could go after Padmé and be kicked out of the Jedi Order."

Lucas: "...And it appears to be a nice movie, with a somewhat happy ending, at least with Anakin and Padmé. It's only when you put it in the context of the bigger story that you see the handwriting on the wall. You notice flaws in Anakin's personality that are going to sink him in the end."

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