This-n-That

I am the very model of a very buff barbarian!
I spent the evening on Friday with some friends playing a video game, namely Champions of Norrath. I know, it's not like me, but I have to admit a guilty pleasure in mindless hack-n-slash now and then.

All the characters, be they elves, orcs, vampires, gnomes, etc., have English accents. It didn't really dawn on me until I was driving to work this morning. What would the game/movie industry do without England? Whatever else they may have done, England has given us English with scores of accents to choose from, thus providing an instant feeling of "exotic" while differentiating between character types/status. My character, for example, is a human barbarian with a Scottish brogue. The gnomes are all cockney. One of the other characters is a female elf with a British/Welsh accent.

I have to wonder if it's possible to do a fantasy game or movie and have it be taken seriously without the actors speaking with an accent. Is there any such thing as an American elf?

Random musings on Star Wars
For my commuting pleasure this morning I pulled out the Star Wars IV soundtrack. While listening to the music that goes with the C-3PO and R2D2 scenes I got to thinking about how the two droids came together in the "first" three movies, and decided there has to be some significance there, even if unintentional. R2D2 was a servant of Queen Amidala. C-3PO was built by young Anakin Skywalker. The former droid is strong-willed and fearless. The latter is a self-centered whiner. In short, they're a reflection of their original owners.

And though they have no memory of it, in the "last" three movies, it's these two that are catalysts for everything that transpires. Running from their former master, the droids first encounter Leia, the daughter of Padme and Anakin. Then, while acting as her couriers, they encounter Leia's brother and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the orchestrator of the entire situation they now find themselves in.

It is fortunate for the galaxy that Luke and Leia inherited more of their mother than their father. There's no doubt that Leia is just like her mother. But Luke manages to inherit a smaller portion of his father's rashness and whininess. He's got just enough of his father's rashness to get himself into the final confrontation with Vader and Palpatine, but also just enough mother's sense or courage and responsibility to resist the Dark Side long enough to free his father from Palpatine's thrall.

When I first saw "Revenge of the Sith," I was rather bothered about Padme's death. I mean really, she lost her will to live? Rather melodramatic, aren't we? But the more I think about it, it makes a fair amount of sense, even if it is melodramatic. And Star Wars is nothing if not melodrama writ large.

Even if Anakin isn't one to consider the big picture, Padme is. She realizes that she's been nothing more than Palpatine's pawn from beginning to end, and that she as much as or even more than Anakin is responsible for his rise to power and the destruction of the Jedi. To someone who felt quite heavily the weight of a governing a planet, she would undoubtedly grasp the significance of what she has helped saddle the galaxy with. And the weight of that would nearly crush her. Add childbirth (to twins, even) to that, and you've got one weak, dangerously depressed woman.

So why wouldn't Padme, who has always been reasonably responsible, want to live for her children? She probably feels, at that moment, completely incapable of raising her children. Her judgement has been shown to be seriously lacking, and she knows it. The only person who has been reasonably level-headed and wary in all this is Obi Wan. (Yes, there's Yoda, but as cool as he is, he's not one to take on kids: "When 900 years old you reach, change diapers you will not!) It's plausible that she feels the best hope for her children is someone with better judgement and the power to fight a dark jedi.

Furthermore, she had to realize that as long as she is alive, Anakin (or Darth Vader, at this point) would always be searching for her. Keeping the children with her would place them in greater danger than hiding them. But even then, if Vader did find her he would probably be able to find out about the twins, and then he'd be after them as well. Dying might have very well been the best way she could help them, sad to say.

Finally, of course, there is the heartbreak of watching the man she loved turn into a ruthless, soulless killing machine. By that point Anakin was already more machine than man, and just needed the hardware to physically complete the metaphore. She had to have felt that, however bad he might become, he would never be able to hurt her. But he was, and he did (and what he did probably didn't help her condition, either). And she helped make him that way.

So yes, I don't suppose it is all that implausible for Padme to implode, to take herself out of the picture by sheer, bitter resignation. And perhaps that act in itself sowed the seeds that would one day redeem her beloved Anakin. Her loss is the one lie that Palpatine cannot cover up. He promised Anakin to teach him the power of life itself so that he would be able to save Padme. That was the power that Anakin sells his soul for; all that really mattered to him.

And Palpatine didn't deliver. He gave him power, he fanned his rage, he kept him focused on the problem "out there," but he never gave Vader the power to save those who mattered to him. Then, many years later, along comes a son that he knew nothing about. A son, who is literally a part of his beloved Padme. A son who reveals that Vader also has a daughter--a daughter he has met and in whom he had to have seen something of her mother.

I think when Vader vows to turn Luke (and later Leia) to the dark side, he is doing it to try and save their lives. He knows that is the only way Palpatine would allow them to live. It is the only power he is truly able to wield on their behalf. And so he suggests this to Palpatine, and then works with him to bring it about.

Except he fails. Vader/Anakin is very good at failing when it matters most. His son not only proves to be stronger than him at resisting the dark side, but stronger than him in his use of the force. Anakin fails, and now Palpatine will kill his son. Perhaps in that last moment Anakins realizes it has been Palpatine taking everyone he loves away from him all along. Maybe he just wants to save his son at all costs. But Vader finally realizes he can resist, and that he can save those he loves from death, if only through his own.

In the end, that's what it boils down to. Anakin realizes that he can save Padme's memory, her literal flesh and blood, by letting go of himself. As much as he loved Padme, he loved himself more. Once he put someone else ahead of himself he could finally be free. He failed to save Padme, but learned the lesson in time to save her son and daughter. In that light, his final words "Tell your sister...you were right about me..." take on amazing significance. He was finally able to be for them what he was never quite able to be for Padme.

I really need to go back and watch the last three movies again now that the first three are through. I wonder how much more there is to be found now.