You know, a lot of people say that the assassination scenes in AOTC don't make any sense, like why use slugs instead of just shooting her, or why didn't Jango just shoot her after Anakin and Obi-Wan leave, but I always thought that it was supposed to fail, so Obi-Wan would follow the trail and get the clones Palpatine needed. Thoughts?
[SPOILER - highlight to read]: Ze very popular Senator in question was leading the charge against the Military Creation Act; had ze Senator succeeded, zat meant that ze evil Supreme Chancellor [Palpy] would have been unable to implement ze clone army and fight ze Clone Wars, which simply means that there would not have been a Galactic Empire. So he secretly arranged for ze b1tch to be assassinated and when that failed, he used her to put temptation in Anakin's path while simultaneously getting her away from Coruscant so the bill could pass unchallenged.
There's so much better ways to do that though that a genius magliomaniac would have been able to engage in. Discredit her by creating a scandal, such as the wierd romance thing going on with anakin, or just hire the good assassin to do it personally.
Instead, he hires a competent assassin who hires an incompetent assassin to botch the job, and then the competent assassin even shows off his cool sniper skills by shooting the incompetent assassin with a poison dart... Why not just do that to padme in the first place? Then you've got obi-wan tracking the competent assassin, the senator dead (like you wanted anyway) and the clones found.
or maybe just be a little more straight-forward and state that a clone army has been made due to the recent threat from the invasion of naboo and the involvement of a sith lord. you know: "those guys are ALWAYS trying to raise an army, I just figured we should be prepared. That, and count dooku, who used to be a jedi, now is opposing the republic? he's gotta be a darth by now. The recent crises present no logical reason to oppose military creation..."
EDIT:
Also, how many failed assassination attempts were there before amidalla decided to get a decoy who was willing to risk their life for her. I mean, freakin ruler of the republic couldn't afford to have someone with half a brain assassinate the good senator? Maybe even use his cross-galaxy-battle-meditation to see it through?
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Last edited by Moriarty on Jun 3rd, 2010 at 07:17 PM
For all of Padme's flaws, she does seem to be relatively clean cut as far as scandals go. In order for Palpatine to introduce a particularly effective smear campaign, that would have taken vast amounts of time. I mean, honestly speaking, Palpatine himself is an excellent example of how scandals and criticisms can be ineffective. He had political enemies and opponents from day one as a Senator and despite the fact that all of them were right about him, he was pretty much bulletproof due to a combination of charisma and reputation. Granted, Padme hasn't shown herself to be in Palpatine's league as far as brain cells go, but I'd wager she had a reputation that was just as powerful.
The romance angle wouldn't work at all: it was ultimately Anakin's obsessive love for Padme that drove him into Palpatine's clutches, exposing that would have just brought the Jedi down on both of them [Anakin & Padme] and probably driven her away from him.
If I recall, Palpatine (through Count Dooku, Nute Gunray, and Jango Fett) was genuine in his attempt to kill Padme during the Separatist crisis (I don't think he banked on her surviving the explosion of her personal shuttle -- the novelization, I'm pretty sure, shows that he's absolutely shocked to see her alive). After she survived the attempt, though, Palpatine used Padme to put temptation in Anakin's path (the Rise of Darth Vader confirms he did this deliberately). Padme is the key to Anakin's descent and her survival was necessary.
The Naboo incident was ten years prior to Attack of the Clones and Palpatine could not publicly endorse the Military Creation Act at all, in either case.
Why didn't the Jedi wonder how the clone army got there in the first place? Well, they did wonder, but they could've conducted an investigation.
Oh, and I think that this pair of Jedi suggested testing midichlorian counts in the Senate to reveal Darth Sidious. Darth Sidious was scared of this so he sent them to die on a suicide mission. The Jedi could've used that plan.
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