Star Wars on Trial

by David Brin

  Like Leia, Queen Amidala appears at first to be a heroic woman and a strong, compelling character. Amidala is a committed fighter in the struggle against powerful, evil forces, a strong leader and brilliant prodigy as skilled with politics and diplomacy as with a gun. At the beginning of Episode I, Amidala seems a heroic figure determined to protect her planet and the Republic. She defies the Viceroy of the Trade Federation, telling him that he must reach a settlement. In her makeup and with her mature "queen" voice, she seems an imposing force. While Palpatine says she'll be easy to control, he is later surprised by her determination and resourcefulness. She comes up with a plan to defeat the Trade Federation and capture the Viceroy, a plan that reveals her abilities as a leader, strategist and diplomat. She speaks convincingly to Boss Nass and secures the Gungans' help. But Amidala is not all talk. She is a brave, assertive woman of action. She takes on a key role in the execution of the plan, pulls hidden blasters from her throne and retakes the planet. What a woman! If only George Lucas had let her be that woman.

  Amidala's status as a heroic figure committed to fight evil and protect Naboo is quickly undercut. She decides to plead with the Senate for help, but her efforts on Coruscant seem either halfhearted or incompetent or both. Amidala confides to Palpatine that she believes Chancellor Valorum is her biggest supporter. Yet when Valorum greets her warmly and says he has scheduled a special session for her, all she says, in her imperious "queen" voice, is that she's grateful for his concern. She ought to be working to gain every advantage from her alliance with this powerful man. Why not ask to meet privately to discuss her situation? Her people are being slaughtered, and she seems to be giving the cold shoulder to her greatest ally. Whether the "queen" at this point is actually Amidala or her decoy is irrelevant. If it is Amidala, she should say something more effective. If it is her stand-in, then Amidala is showing horrifically poor judgment in allowing her stand-in to function during an interaction with Valorum. Either way, she doesn't seem to care about achieving her goal. The writers could easily have shown her making a heroic effort, but they were not focused on showing her heroism or her struggles.

  In Episode II, Amidala is committed to a new goal, the defeat of the Military Creation Act. This undercuts the character in several ways. First, it's difficult to understand why she would be opposed to an army, considering Naboo's lack of an army left it vulnerable to invasion and mass slaughter. If the Gungans had not conveniently maintained a secret, unused army, Amidala's people would have been wiped out. Hasn't she learned anything from that? Or if she is such a devout peacenik, then why has she learned to use a blaster? If she believes that the use of force is a failure and diplomacy is the only right path, why does she have blasters hidden in her throne?

  Another problem with this subplot is that her commitment to the cause is only told, not shown, so we never really believe it. This is the case with many traits of both Leia and Amidala. The writers didn't take the time to incorporate into the story events that would have shown the character through action, because these characters were not a priority and most of their actions were believed unimportant to the larger plot. We never see Amidala's devotion to this cause. She only tells Jar Jar about it, at the same time that her actions show us she is abandoning the cause, leaving on the eve of a vote because Palpatine told her she should, for her safety. What we see is not commitment, but cowardice.

  Further, once she gets safely to Naboo, she makes no attempt to supervise Jar Jar, lobby the other senators to vote her way or even monitor what happens with the vote. All she seems to care about is flirting with Anakin, making out and then saying no, as if the entirety of Star Wars were taking place in the backseat of a 1956 Chevy.

  At the end of Episode II, Amidala is saved by an army whose formation she has crusaded against. Is she troubled that an army was created before the authorization for it existed? Does she rush to the Senate to argue that the army be disbanded and its origins investigated? Or does she acknowledge she was wrong and an army is necessary? No, she goes home and secretly marries Anakin. Her commitment to fighting the evil forces that threaten the Republic has vanished.

  The final goal to which Amidala appears committed is staying alive long enough to name her babies. Her commitment to this goal is not undercut, yet the fact that she has it seems completely random and out of character. If these names resonated with her personality or revealed something important about her, this could be a very powerful moment and a triumph for Amidala. But the names mean nothing to us (except that they set up the other trilogy). We sit there, befuddled, wondering where Amidala came up with these names.

  Does Amidala, initially a heroic figure committed to the fight against evil, die a hero's death? Is she ultimately a tragic hero, a patriot doomed to fail in the attempt to defeat forces far more powerful? No. She has no hero's death. She makes no great attempt to defeat Palpatine. She stands on the sidelines and cries as Palpatine destroys the Republic. Her death is an accident of health, imposed by the author. Once she fulfills the needs of the saga-falling in love with Anakin and having his children-the sooner she dies, the more convenient it is for a story that has no interest in her.

  Amidala appears to be a powerful figure, a queen and a senator, yet her power, like Leia's, slips away. Both women rule planets that are defenseless, so they have no recourse when threatened. Amidala spends the first movie pleading for help. By the beginning of Episode II, she has lost her title of queen. Not long into the movie, in fear for her life, she hands her senatorial powers over to jar jar. Amidala's demotion from queen to senator reaches its logical conclusion at the beginning of Episode III. After "saving" Palpatine from General Grievous, Anakin escorts the Chancellor back to the seat of government, where they are met by a group of dignitaries. Amidala stands off to one side by a pillar, and no one seems to notice or acknowledge her. She has become completely irrelevant. Her only act as senator is to attend a meeting at which Palpatine declares himself Emperor. A once-imposing woman, Amidala is disempowered and marginalized until she becomes completely ineffectual.

  While Amidala's commitment and power are undercut, her leadership, intelligence and political skill decline over the course of the trilogy. Our initial impression of Amidala as a strong leader quickly fades. A strong leader would not allow her planet to be so defenseless. If her people don't want to have an army or weapons, then she ought to establish a treaty with another planet to defend them. If her only recourse is to "plead" her case to the Senate and the fate of her people depends on that, then she should have arranged for her own escape from Naboo, which she did not. Within minutes of the opening of Episode I, she is captured, like Leia.

  A strong leader must know the resources she commands and the options she has. Amidala appears to have no idea that the Gungans have an army and significant weaponry. If she had, she could have used them to repel the original invasion. Instead, she stakes everything on an appeal to the Senate. But when she arrives at Coruscant, she asks Palpatine her options. Apparently she has no clear course of action in mind and has no sense of the alternatives.

  A strong leader must command the respect of others. While Amidala is respected by many, including the Viceroy, who considers her a major opponent, she is not respected by two key figures: Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon dictates their actions and tells Amidala she "must trust him." When Amidala receives a call from home begging her to surrender to avoid further slaughter, Obi-Wan orders her not to reply. He doesn't even wait to see if she will obey; he is sure she will. As in the Han/Leia relationship, the male characters are built up as strong, assured leaders by their disdain and disrespect for the female.

  A strong leader must choose the best course of action and motivate others to follow. Amidala disguises herself so that she can accompany Qui-Gon on Tatooine, gain information and have some input into the situation. Yet she offers no plan and takes no significant action. Like a milder version of Leia, her only input is criticism, and her criticisms are dismissed. Anakin, a child, is the on
e to come up with the plan to get the money necessary to repair the ship. Anakin is the one to execute the plan by competing in the podrace. Amidala watches the hero anxiously from the sidelines and, when he wins, becomes a cheerleader.

  Along with her skills as a leader and politician, Amidala's intelligence also deteriorates. The intelligence of the woman who knew enough to have a decoy is inconsistent with the intelligence of a woman who "sneaks" off of Coruscant wearing a flashy gold headdress and gown that clearly mark her identity. The assassins would have to be blind to miss that outfit! Never has a character been so undermined simply by wardrobe.

  Amidala's intelligence and judgment receive another blow when she reveals she's pregnant. She asks Anakin, an unstable, homicidal egomaniac eight years her junior, "What are we gonna do?" If she wants a useful answer, she'd do better to ask Jar Jar.

  While Amidala doesn't have Leia's smart mouth, she definitely gains the stupid mouth. When Anakin returns from the burning temple and claims the Jedi are trying to overthrow the Republic, what wisdom and direction does Amidala, a senator, have to offer? "Oh, Anakin, what are you going to do?" George Lucas's focus clearly is on Anakin and what he's going to do. But Amidala should have more on her mind.

  Her follow-up? "Anakin, I'm afraid."

  As Anakin, a mass murderer, tells her that he's going to end the war, she looks up at him trustingly, like a child, and nods. Then she cries.

  Ultimately, her failure of judgment is complete. Obi-Wan tells her Anakin has turned to the dark side and killed children. Though she knows he killed children in his massacre of the Tusken Raiders, she denies it here. How many children does Anakin have to kill before Amidala will help to stop him? Apparently, he hasn't hit the magic number yet.

  Amidala could easily have been shown growing and learning over the course of the trilogy, becoming a wiser, more effective leader and cannier politician, a greater adversary to Palpatine. Having a character who might actually be able to uncover Palpatine's plans would have dramatically increased suspense. Yet instead, Amidala becomes weaker and more stupid, so she can be pushed aside in favor of the males.

  Like Leia, Amidala alternates haphazardly between action hero and passive victim. In the second half of Episode I, Amidala runs, fights and shoots to liberate her planet. While she is a second-rate action hero at best-she still needs to be saved by Anakin-at least she is taking action, and the attempt to liberate Naboo is successful.

  Amidala's image as a decisive, clever woman of action, though, is undermined by the conflicting image of damsel in distress. This comes to the fore in Episode II, as Amidala's decoy is killed. Amidala becomes an object to be protected rather than a compelling character. The danger to her highlights the heroism and derring-do of Obi-Wan and Anakin as they chase down the assassin, rather than revealing her own heroism or, indeed, any aspects of Amidala's personality.

  Near the end of Episode II, Amidala makes the jarring transformation from damsel back to action hero. In the arena, she suddenly becomes an expert lock pick. Not only does this make no sense with what we know of Amidala, it's plain old bad storytelling to establish that a character has a particular skill at a climactic moment where that skill is critical. This could easily have been established earlier, so her character would have some continuity.

  Her decisions as an action hero also aren't consistent with her character. She claims to love Anakin, yet when they are being attacked in the arena, she frees herself and makes no attempt to help him. This is neither heroic nor loving.

  While her performance in the arena is clearly meant to be heroic, her abilities are also clearly meant to be inferior to the men's. Amidala shoots a lot, but we don't see her hit much of anything. Anakin again has to save her by offering her a ride on his beast. Later, as they pursue Dooku, she falls out of the ship. This safely excludes her from the climactic battle, keeping her from true action-hero status. She shows up at Dooku's hangar too late to do anything but shoot ineffectively.

  In Episode III, Amidala is back in passive mode. Except for the beginning and the end, she spends the entire movie in her penthouse apartment, changing clothes and gazing out the window. This Rapunzel, though, is more even-tempered than Leia. In fact, for much of the movie, she has that Prozac glow. As the war escalates and the Republic threatens to crumble, she brushes her hair, musing about how to decorate the baby's room. After Obi-Wan has told her his concerns about Anakin, Amidala relates them to Anakin without seeming concerned herself. Anakin confesses he's not thejedi he should be and claims he's found a way to save her. When your husband claims he's found a way to save you from death in childbirth, wouldn't you ask him what he's talking about? Is he suggesting abortion? Has he learned about a hot new obstetrician on Oprah? Has he, by chance, turned to the dark side? Amidala asks none of these things.

  Her passivity reaches a character-crushing extreme as the Jedi temple burns. She knows Anakin, her one true love, is there. She knows the temple is on fire. Yet she just stands there-in a new dress-and cries. Can you imagine Han Solo standing there when Leia could be burning? Amidala should be rushing to Anakin's rescue. Or at least calling the fire department. How can this possibly be the same woman who picked locks, rode monsters and shot droids? It can't be. This is not a coherent character; it's a paper doll with too many outfits.

  The biggest blow to the coherence of Amidala's character comes in her relationship with Anakin. Though Amidala professes her hidden love for Anakin near the end of Episode II, it's hard to believe she actually loves him or finds anything appealing in the pouting, selfcentered Anakin. He argues for a dictatorship, something she would not find funny or charming; he reveals himself to have a stalker-level obsession with her, saying he has thought of her every day since they met and she "torments" him; he proclaims his goal to become all-powerful and end death; and he confesses to the mass murder of Tusken Raiders. At this point, any woman with Amidala's knowledge and commitment to good would be dialing 911 or checking the Yellow Pages for the nearest psychiatric hospital. Anakin is clearly a nutball, and a dangerous one at that. But after his slaughter of innocents, she strokes his head and forgives his action. Apparently mass murder is only a misdemeanor in her universe, and a bit of a turn-on. For shortly after, she agrees to marry him.

  Amidala's integrity as a character could easily have been preserved, simply by having Anakin keep his killing spree to himself. For the woman who excuses mass murder is none of the things Amidala is supposed to be. She is not fighting evil forces but excusing them. She is not taking decisive action but sitting idly by. She's not preserving the Republic but enabling its destruction.

  The tragedy is that it did not have to be this way. Amidala and Leia could have been coherent, compelling, powerful characters. Their integrity need not have been compromised to meet the needs of the story; in fact, the story would have been more exciting and suspenseful with their full participation. Their competence need not have been undermined to glorify the males; heroes can each have their own strengths, admirable in their own ways. If as much attention had been spent on the women's personalities as was spent on their clothes, makeup and hair, their actions might have been tied together in fascinating character arcs. Amidala might have been the naive peace-lover who learned the hard way that a world without defenses is a world open to slaughter, might have crusaded for an army of the Republic and triumphed only to find herself duped, might have investigated the suspicious army to uncover its preprogrammed secret orders, might have warned the Jedi only to find she was too late, might have shot herself so Anakin could not turn her children to darkness, might have died a tragic hero's death. Leia might have been the lost leader of an obliterated planet who found a new identity among the Rebels as their head of intelligence, might have been painfully conditioned as a child to repress her Force abilities, might have sensed something breaking free inside her during her torture on the Death Star, might have fought these new instincts and sensations, which carried with them an awakened anger toward Bail, might ha
ve electrocuted herself on Cloud City to avoid a second round of torture by Vader, might have recruited Lando's aide into her intelligence network, might have discovered through him the new Death Star, might have faced her own crisis with anger when Luke told her the truth. The characters carry many exciting, unrealized possibilities, unfortunately, because the focus of George Lucas and the other writers was not on the female characters, who were undervalued, underdeveloped and undercut.

  The greater tragedy is that these weaknesses are not limited to Star Wars. They surround us. They are more prominent and painful in Star Wars because these movies excel in so many other ways, and because George Lucas's fairy tale means so much to us. As I look at the poster on my wall, at the figure of the heroic woman crouched below the man, I dream about what might have been, "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

  Jeanne Cavelos began her professional life as an astrophysicist, working in the Astronaut Training Division at NASAs Johnson Space Center. After earning her MFA in creative writing, she moved into a career in publishing, becoming a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she created and launched the Abyss imprint of psychological horror, for which she won the World Fantasy Award, and ran the science fiction/fantasy publishing program. Jeanne left New York to pursue her own writing career. Her books include the best-selling The Passing of the Techno-Mages trilogy (set in the Babylon 5 universe), the highly praised science books The Science of Star Wars and The Science of The X-Files and the anthology The Many Faces of Van Helsing. Her work has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Jeanne is currently at work on a thriller about genetic manipulation, titled Fatal Spiral. Since she loves working with developing writers, Jeanne created and serves as director of Odyssey, an annual six-week summer workshop for writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Guest lecturers have included George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, Terry Brooks, Jane Yolen and Dan Simmons. More information about Jeanne is on her Web site, www.jeannecavelos.com.