Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia
Well, here's the thing, though. While it is possible that the way "royalty" works on Alderaan is different, we don't know that for sure. It's never explained one way or the other.
While in real life there are different systems of Government in different countries, there are usually different specific terms related to that type of government. The same terms (especially not King, Queen, princess, etc) are not used to have multiple meanings.
Additionally, we know from the prequels that Leia's adoptive father, Bale Organa, was an elected official (a Senator). So, that would suggest that her adoptive parents are not some sort of different "permanent" Royalty, resulting in her being a Princess. So, again, it begs the question of whether or not her status as such is the result of an elected office of her parents (or if Princess is somehow an elected position all it's own), or what the deal is.
This may seem like a moot point to some (and I can why some people may not have stopped to think about it), but it's these kinds of details (not just this particular detail specifically) that the prequels raise more questions towards than they answer, and this could have easily been avoided with a few brief additional pieces of dialogue.
When terms like "Queen" and "Princess" are used, naturally people are going to connect those with how traditional royalty works as we generally know it here on Earth. So, in the original films (before the prequels existed) when we heard the term "Princess" applied to Leia, there was no real reason for it to raise questions. It was a natural conclusion that her parents were likely some kind of Royalty.
But then by making a "Queen" an elected office in the prequels, it just raises too many questions. And frankly, they are questions that didn't even need to be created if Lucas had been more clever about the whole thing. Despite the fact that Leia being publicly known as a "Princess" would have nothing to do with her birth mother having been a "Queen" within the plot of the movie, I'm relatively certain that a big part of the whole reason that Padme is made to be a "Queen" in the first movie is so that people will logically automatically connect her as being the person who would give birth to PRINCESS Leia and Luke.
But it's a connection that wasn't needed. Since Leia's status as a Princess in reality would have nothing to do with her birth mother's former Queen status, there was really no reason to make Padme a Queen at all (let alone making the Queen an elected official). It was not needed to forward the plot (they could have given Padme a different elected position of similar importance that would have served the plot in roughly the same way without even raising any questions about the Royalty issue).
It's little details like this that cause a lot of problems, and they are things that I just don't think George Lucas really put any real time or thought into when writing the prequels because he was too focused on cramming in as many special effects shots as possible in the movies.
Other issues that have been brought up before are things like the relationship between Obi Wan and Yoda. In the Empire Strikes Back, Obi Wan tells Luke that he will learn from Yoda "The Jedi Master who instructed me". But then we see the prequels and Qui Gon is his master.
Now, yes, I know the typical responses to this, Obi Wan likely would have been trained by Yoda as a "youngling", and technically after Obi Wan was no longer Qui Gon's apprentice, he often took instruction from Yoda. None the less, the logical conclusion that most people are going to come to from that scene in 'Empire' is that Yoda would have had a more direct involvement in Obi Wan's overall training. If Obi Wan had stated it is, "there you will learn from Yoda, one of the Jedi Masters who instructed me", then I think seeing someone else training him wouldn't have been an issue.
But again, this is an issue that could have been easily avoided (much like the royalty issue) if things had been done a little differently.
First and foremost, Qui Gon's character for the most part is pointless. Now, I have nothing against Liam Niassan, and whlie I do feel in general that most of the acting in the prequels is rather hollow and without any real convincing emotion on the part of most of the principal cast, Liam Nissan gave probably one of the better performances.
But really, the problem with "Phantom Menace" is that it's Qui Gon who really makes the Anikin discovery... it is him who insists that the boy is trained, and it is him that forges the initial bond with Anikin. This completely screws up starting the relationship with Obi Wan and Anikin. Other than saying "hi" to each other and Obi Wan telling Anikin and insisting to Yoda that he train him after Qui Gon dies, there really isn't much interaction between Obi Wan and Anikin in the first movie.
For one thing, Anikin should have been older from the start. It should have been the same actor playing him in all 3 movies. Lucas seemed to put a lot of effort into trying to make a parallel between the paths that Luke takes in the OT and Anikin takes in the PT. That would have worked better if Anikin had been played by the same actor in all 3 PT movies. It would have also made the ultimate relationship between him and Padme make more sense (since she is played by the same actress in all 3 PT movies). The Jedi Counsil makes an issue out of Anikin being too old to begin training anyway, so that would have had more impact if he had been noticeably older (and would have served to better parallel to when Yoda makes the comment about Luke being too old).
Making Anikin older would have allowed Obi Wan's character to be older from the start. He would have been a Jedi Master from the get-go, so the questions about Qui Gon being his direct master instead of Yoda never would have even surfaced since we never would have seen Obi Wan's time as an apprentice. Then Obi Wan would have forged the initial relationship with Anikin (being played by the same actor), which would have given us more of a foundation for when we first see them in Episode 2 many years later. As it is now, we see this relationship between them at the start of Episode 2 that was forged mostly off screen and that we have no real basis for. They have differences and disagreements from the get-go in that movie, so it would have been nice to have seen more of a time between them before Anikin's arrogance got out of control.
The whole thing would have made a lot more sense. If they really needed 2 Jedi in Episode 1, they could have just had Obi Wan training an older apprentice who by the end of the movie is ready to face the trials, having that Jedi move on and having Anikin become Obi Wan's new apprentice.
And there are various other issues with the prequels that don't make sense and are never really logically explained (as pointed out in Red Letter Media's youtube review of Episode 1, why would an organization called the trade Federation want to block trade? That would be like an oil company wanting to stop the selling of oil).
But I digress on pointing more of them out and simply say this. Yes, these are George Lucas's movies. And some people did have to high of expectations for them, and no matter how they turned out, they probably would have been hard pressed to live up to the hype. But that being said, by doing things like calling Leia a Princess or refering to Yoda as being THE Jedi that instructed Obi Wan, people are naturally going to reach a basic logical conclusion based on what is stated (i.e. traditional royalty and not elected royalty).
Far too often when it comes to issues like this, I hear arguments that it's the fault of the fans for jumping to conclusions, filling in blanks that aren't there, not being more open minded about the prequels, and that because these take place in another galaxy far form Earth, we shouldn't expect these things to hold the same meaning as they do on Earth.
But frankly, those arguments are a big B.S. cop out. People are NATURALLY going to come to basic conclusions based on the information presented. People are not going to go into movies that tell the back story of the original expecting some kind of 6-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon type of connection between the prequels and the originals regarding these issues (with some of those 'degrees' not being fully explained or happening off-screen/in between PT movies) instead of a simple, natural, logical, basic, direct connection. These things don't add some kind of fun cryptic mystery to the story, they just add a lot of head scratching moments that leave people with a question mark floating over their heads when they notice these issues (some being more obvious from the get go than others).
I'm not saying that everything about the prequels was bad, but they could have been much more streamlined than they were to avoid raising these questions. And just because it is "George Lucas's story" does not mean that it's above questioning or criticism. If anything, with him being a filmmaker who has the level of prestige that is associated with him, he deserves to be called out upon sloppy written and explained story points much more so than the smaller writers/directors of much smaller films. He CAN make them however he wants, but I can't say that some of the backlash that he has received for the prequels and some of the OT changes is undeserved.
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