Padme Amidala was always my favorite character, but Obi-Wan comes close. Watching him and Anakin verbally sparring all the time provides endless entertainment. Though I think I'm beginning to appreciate all the characters a lot more than I used to. Palpatine is simply amazing in every scene.
Padme's costumes...what can I say? I want to own them. I'll be jealous of her fictional world for the rest of my life. XD Why is it that everyone in Star Wars has the greatest fashion sense and all the women traipse around in gorgeous, lavish gowns in a highly sophisticated scientific age, but we're all stuck wearing jeans and t-shirts? Sigh...there's just not enough magic, not enough appreciation of the gaudy in the modern world.
While we're on that, I like all the movies, but unlike most fans, I like the new trilogy better than the old. (Yes, I'm a total sap and Episode II is my favorite one.
) There's just something magical about the tragic love story and an older world based on an honor code. In the first trilogy, the Jedi order is extinct and little more than a legend of the past. Everyone's out to benefit themselves. It's a rollicking adventure ride; Indiana Jones in space. The new movies are inifinitely more rich in folklore, and that drew me to them right away. The Jedi are a thriving order, political systems value ostentatious display of wealth and status (just check out Queen Amidala's dresses), and the systems themselves are often contradictory.
In the old trilogy the lines are clear-cut. Anyone watching the movies can tell that the Empire is evil and the heroes are justified in fighting it. The new trilogy introduces a whole slew of questions as to which political systems really work. Naboo, for example, seems like the pinnacle of civilization, but they have glorified ideas about virtue; notice how all the queens, the top figureheads of the government, are always very young. Why? You'd think that people that young wouldn't be qualified enough to rule, but somehow they all get elected. Naboo clearly values innocence as a defining marker of a person's potential for just leadership, and while no one can argue that Queen Amidala is a good person, she has a lot of faith in people who are only out to manipulate her. You got to wonder if their system of government is really such a strong model for the galaxy, seeing as the queens of Naboo are all too often dismissed as symbolic ornaments while corrupt politicians like Palpatine are really holding the reigns. In that sense, Anakin was right in Episode II when he said that all the Senate ever does is argue--too many clashing ideologies are coming into the debates. Amidala is important on her world, but does anyone really listen to her in the Senate when she requests aid for her planet (Episode I)?
Wow...yeah, I got carried away. But seriously, people who don't like the new trilogy probably aren't watching it enough. I used to think they were boring when I was younger, but they really grew on me. You discover nuances in the stories each time you watch them.
