Even though Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is the best of the prequel trilogy in the Star Wars saga, it’s still a far cry from measuring up to the original trilogy. One of the biggest issues with the final chapter in the story of how Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) became Darth Vader is how the former Jedi’s relationship with his secret lover Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) comes to an end.

On one hand, seeing Anakin’s judgment clouded by the dark side, so much that he nearly kills her, is a powerful tragedy. But the fact that Amidala ends up essentially dying because she “lost the will to live” is a bit silly. It doesn’t help that Padmé, who was once a strong, independent leader, never willing to walk away from a fight, just cries and whines when Anakin clearly isn’t himself anymore. But in the original ending, she didn’t take Anakin’s betrayal the same way. In fact, in the Revenge of the Sith original ending, Padmé made some bold moves to stop him. Find out more below.

Digital Spy just stumbled upon a speaking engagement that concept artist Iain McCaig gave at Academy of Art University last fall, and during the event, he discussed how the confrontation between Padmé and Anakin originally unfolded. If you’d like to hear McCaig explain it himself, here’s the video right at the relevant portion of the lecture:

If you can’t watch the video for some reason, McCaig explains that in the original draft of Revenge of the Sith, Padmé was starting the rebellion behind Anakin’s back. She realized that the man she loved was becoming a monster and a terrible power was growing in the Republic. Once Anakin left for Mustafar, she brought in the Separatists to begin forming the organization that would become the Rebel Alliance. Sadly, that ended up being removed from the script completely. But that wasn’t the only thing Padmé was originally going to to in Revenge of the Sith.

The original draft saw Padmé follow Anakin to Mustafar, just as she does in the movie we all saw in 2005. However, the early version of the story game Padmé a knife with which she intended to kill Anakin. When she arrives on the planet, they embrace for a moment, and then she brings out her weapon to kill the man she loves. Anakin doesn’t even try to stop her. But she just can’t bring herself to do it, because she loves him too much. That’s when Obi-Wan Kenobi shows up and the rest of the movie plays out in pretty much the same way we saw in theaters. Here’s a piece of concept art that was officially released in a book of art from Revenge of the Sith:

These details would have beefed up Padmé’s role a bit as far as being an integral part of what was to come in the original trilogy. There’s no reason given as to why the change was made, but maybe George Lucas thought it didn’t make sense logistically in the end that she was the one behind the early development of the Rebel Alliance. We’re not sure.

If you want to hear more from Iain McCaig, watch the full video above. Just before he discusses the original ending of Revenge of the Sith, he also mentions how the opening scene was a little different, involving General Grievous killing Shaak Ti, another Jedi, in front of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, adding her lightsaber to his collection. That would have made the villain a bit more intimidating and threatening.

Anyway, what do you think about these original Revenge of the Sith details?