I really like this.
Jar Jar was there for the kids, I get it, still, they could’ve given the adults the satisfaction of at least ONE character disliking him.
Forgot to add: Have Yoda be in perfectly fit fighting condition, the baddest-ass Jedi warrior of them all, until his fight with Sideous. Then Sideous four-fifths kills Yoda, leaving him too crippled to do anything but hide and cling to life long enough to teach Luke. THAT’s how bad a mofu Sideous is.
(Note to self…“tab” “enter” does not do what I want it to do on web forms…)
Let’s try this again…
Ep 1:
- Recast Jake Lloyd with a slightly older, better actor with more gravitas and less “yipee!”. The “Sixth Sense” kid would have been great, or a young Ricky Schroeder from back in the day.
- Remove the ill-placed humor and contemporary references, like the farting animals and the 2-headed race commentator.
- Cut down on the cuteness of the enemies. Stormtroopers in episode 4 were badass and scary, droids saying “roger roger” is not.
- Preserve the cool mystique of the force, no midichlorian tricorders.
- Don’t kill off the fan-favorite character and the one with the most “cool” potential of the 6 movie series, Darth Maul.
Ep 2:
- Recast Anakin with someone who can emote beyond pouty teenager. “I hate you, I’m going to my room slam!”
- Anakin’s corruption to the dark side just wasn’t convincing. Luke’s temptations and struggle were far more dramatic and convincing with much less screen time needed (although Hamill is simply a much better actor).
- Again, remove contemporary references, like the 1950’s robot diner.
- Remove the horrid Spielberg-ish video game jumping puzzle action scenes (the droid foundry).
Ep 3:
- If the prior movies were fixed per above, Ep 3 may have self-corrected any inherent flaws.
It must be my limited imagination, but I’d go with just some tweaks.
Show little Anakin using the force. Not in big ways, just in little ones. Make him use it to win the pod race. Have him ‘let go’ during the starfighter battle so that his destroying the droid ship is due to ‘luck’ from the Force, not just a dumbass kid wondering what certain buttons do.
Make Jar Jar more palatable by having him start as a buffoon (maybe less so) who has to become a responsible adult when he sees the genocide headed for his people. The way it is now, he started as a buffoon and ended as a lucky buffoon.
Have the Jedi council become less passive. Maybe Obi-Wan even teaches Anakin OUTSIDE the Jedi order - showing how great his hubris was that he ‘thought he could each Anakin as well as Yoda had taught’ him. On the original trilogy, it seems that Obi-Wan made a great mistake with Anakin. In the prequels, it was Qui-Gon who made the great mistake, no Obi-Wan.
-Joe
The point is often made that the prequels needed a “Han Solo” type character, you know, somebody morally grey with a cheeky glint in his eye.
Why the hell wasnt Vader made to be that character? Start from Vader being in his early twenties, essentially a good guy getting involved in the good fight whatever that may be. He saves people, but it is obvious from early on that he has little qualms about cutting down others who get in his way. Over the course of three films this anti hero with a great collection of funny one liners actually slips to the dark side.
Think about it. In the originals Han Solo was a smuggler who eventually threw his support behind the good guys, which is what usually happens with these grey heros. This is the flip side, the anthesis to Solo, the grey hero gone bad. And it hurts far more because we actually liked him up to that point. How much would it hurt if Mal Reynolds became a homocidal maniac?
[ul]
[li]Let Grievous live up to his role in the cartoon as a seven-foot tall Jedi-hunting nightmare.[/li][li]Hire an advisor/swordfighting teacher to ensure that anyone who is playing the role of a Jedi looks competent. No Power Ranger poses this time around.[/li][li]The Separatist’s droids will not be treated as comic relief. First and foremost they should be combat droids, even if they might not be the best models on the market.[/li][/ul]
I agree with pretty much everything in your post, but mainly that Anakin was portrayed to sympathetically and as a “good kid”. Think early seasons of Smallville. Lex Luthor actually seemed to be trying to do the right thing. His dad was the bad guy. I would rather have an equally compelling Anakin (and NO frakking midichlorian crap). Try to get Anakin to do the right thing, but through some tough or nasty choices.
Rather than happily leave home to be a Jedi, he is more or less taken. Qui-Jon convinces his mom that with such potential, he is duty bound in a “with great power, comes great responsibility” way, but Anakin doesn’t want to leave, which plants the germ of bitterness in his heart. So when his mom gets kidnapped and killed, he’s royally pissed because if he’d stayed home it wouldn’t have happened.
There you go, you get Yoda’s “There is much anger in him” all taken care of. He is super powerful, but he’s always going to harbor a vicious grudge against the Jedi. And let him struggle with the ethics of being powerful but not just abusing it to get what he wants.
Have Joss Whedon write and direct Miller’s versions.
My own contributions,
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Eliminate Lucas’s pathetic need to have characters from the original set in the first set. Sure, Obi-wan and Yoda and Palpatine are all important, but Boba Fett? Come on! No Jengo Fett, no Boba Fett, create new characters that have nothing to do with the later movies. It’s a big galaxy.
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Same thing with his pathetic need to tie up every point directly to Episode IV. Like the “plans for a secret weapon”, i.e. the Death Star, that Dooku has in the Ep II. And at the end of Ep III, everything is put exactly into place for Ep IV. So what happens in the 18 or so years where Luke is growing up? Nothing.
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Anakin built C3PO? Holy flying bull crap.
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Some bizarre planet elects a queen? And the best candidates for the job are teenage girls? Was Lucas smoking crack? I know, he’s trying to justify his concept of Leia being a princess (and the galaxy having royalty) with his concept of the Republic being democratic. Sorry, but he bungles both parts of it. Leia won’t be a princess just because Amidala was at one time a queen, but not by the time Leia is born. Hell, I thought Leia was a princess because of her adopted father. I mean, it’s never “Prince Luke”.
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The “Clone Wars” refers to the Stormtroopers being clones? Gah! I always expected there to be some cool cloning device that could take an existing person and make a duplicate. Yeah, I know, sci-fi gimmick with no science basis, but this is Star Wars, where there are lightsabers and the Force and hyperspace and aliens and interstellar Empires. Surely if they can elect a *queen[/I, they can find a way to make a whole grown clone. Then you could have interesting things like a duplicate bad Obi-wan running around or something.
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The pod race is awfully high stakes and dangerous to put in the hands of a 10 year old boy, no matter how hotshot a pilot he is. If it’s supposed to be the equivalent of push cart races, then it shouldn’t be nearly so high tech. Now a 16 year old hot shot pilot I could accept, but not 10.
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Only 2 Sith at a time? Bah! Pathetic! Stupid! Nonsensical!
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Agree with Merijeek, Obi-wan needs to play a far stronger role in finding and training Anikan, against the Councils order or in secret. With Anakin as a Padawan, Obi-wan has effectively been sanctioned by the Council, even if it is against their better judgement.
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Anakin should choose the Dark Side instead of Amidala, not because of her. He should have chosen power over love.
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Leia should actually meet her mother in order to have memories of her real mother (per ROTJ).
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There should be some Jedi for Vader to hunt down. Having the stormtroopers do it all in one fell swoop kinda cheats that part of the later canon.
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No midichlorians. Nope, zip, zilch. Keep the Force mystical.
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No miraculous virgin birth for Anakin. Oh the stupid, it burns!
The “NOOOOOOOO” scene needs some serious work. We need to establish that Vader is a serious badass and that the only reason he sucks up to the Emperor is that Palpy is an even bigger badass.
Palpatine brings Annie back on line and tells him of Padme’s death and that his promise and ability to save her was a bit overstated. Naturally Vader goes into a rage and destroys the lab, the technicians and the Emperor’s bodyguards, much to the delight of Palpatine.
Finally Vader turns his attentions to the Emperor himself. He force-grabs Palpatine’s Saber and attempts to strike him down. Palpy feebly raises his hand and sends Vader slamming into the far wall of the facility while retrieving his saber. He chuckles to himself and says
“You have much to learn, my young apprentice, but you are not ready for that lesson yet.”
Bingo!
I had always pictured Darth Vader as having been a total badass.
In my mind I thought he would have been a warrior in his younger days; someone head strong and defiant (to the point that he never gives up a fight) and that his suit and life support were both from a crash and from countless, bloody battles. (I think it’s because of the quote from Obi Wan “He’s more machine now than man”, making it sound like a process, not a singular event).
More tauntauns.
I love Miller’s framework for the most part. Part three definitely needs to focus on Darth Vader hunting down and killing Jedi.
Whatever happens, Vader must fall all the way into the lava, and come crawling out after Obi-Wan leaves. I think this should happen at the end of part two. This should be the final conversion from Anakin to Darth.
Fewer arms get cut off. I think you could make a drinking game out of the number of arms lost.
If you have to keep JJB, then no matter what you do, it’s not really an improvement.
But, I would get some better actors, get Padma out of those ridiculous costumes, and spent more time on the plot.
That’s pretty standard sword-fighting fare, though. Ever read the Book of Five Rings? You think those Samurai are all honor-this and fair-fight-that, but most of the guy’s advice is “feint and then cut your opponent’s hand off.”
Obi-Wan’s near-crying screaming at Anakin was just about the only emotionally moving scene in the entire prequel trilogy.
I have to say I prefer Lucas’s work to most of these suggestions (although Vader hunting down the Jedi would be cool, and the transition from Republic to Empire should have been a lot messier). I still don’t understand what compelled him to insert Jar Jar Binks, though. I mean, why?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: And having Anakin choose power over love is a good suggestion.
Oh, and as to this, no frigging thank you. Star Wars would be pretty lame if Darth Vader’s dialogue was all super-ironic sarcasm and Padme was a karate expert. Joss Whedon’s had a few good ideas and all but he’s not a great director by any emasure.
That said, you and others make a lot of good points. It was silly for Padme to be “elected.” It was a very unfortunate decision to have us meet Anakin Skywalker at age 9-10 (or else if that was necessary, to not have him be an action hero at that age.) It was also unfortunate to have people call him “Annie.” Anakin’s fall should have been much better designed and far more graphically violent. Various continuity errors - Vader not hunting down the Jedi, Leia never knowing her mother, midichlorians - were stupid and pointless. And no Jar-Jar, no matter what the OP says.
But I thought your best point was that Obi-Wan absolutely should have trained Anakin with at least some degree of secrecy. In “Star Wars” it’s hinted that Obi-Wan feels guilt over what happened, and he seems unusually eager to fix it through Luke. But if Anakin was brought into the Jedi order by the Council it absolves Obi-Wan of the (or at least most of the) responsibility for that error.
Dude! You just sold me hypothetical tickets for all the opening day screenings, and this is a guy that doesn’t own a single Star Wars anything.
No, no, he’d be the screenwright, not the director.
Besides, if we’re to keep young Amidala, who better to characterize a Power Girl? 