We may have passed the specific anniversary of The Phantom Menace, but we’ve no plans to stop celebrating the arrival of the prequel trilogy anytime soon, and here we have the latest Lucasfilm Defining Moment (galactically defining as well) as Padmé Amidala meets Anakin Skywalker for the first time, and less than a day before Anakin meets his future master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
So much can come from an innocent question. When a teenaged-Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) enters an inauspicious junkshop, an even younger boy, Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), is enraptured to see her. He has little frame of reference for an encounter with someone so beautiful, only fragments of tales about far-off beings that he picks up from those passing through his backwater homeworld. Self-assured and curious, he asks, “Are you an angel?”
Distracted by her mission to save Naboo, Padmé is taken by surprise. Anakin presses the topic. “I’ve heard the deep space pilots talk about them. They’re the most beautiful creatures in the universe. They live on the moons of Iego, I think.” The queen-in-disguise is disarmed by the boy’s charm.
Padmé asks her own questions about his life on Tatooine, and is bewildered to discover that Anakin and his mother are enslaved. When she tries to clarify, he becomes defensive, “I’m a person and my name is Anakin.” Padmé apologizes and explains that “this is a strange place to me.” In the course of their dialogue, the pair form an endearing connection.
