The recent thread about why people hate George Lucas got me thiking about this.
First of all no Jar Jar Binks, but I think that goes without saying.
I would also do away with R2D2 and C3PO. As someone mentioned in the other thread, this is just goofy fanboy stuff and having Anakin be the creator of C3PO just stretches credulity in a plot that already asks the audience to suspend disbelief beyond any reasonable bounds. I maybe would allow them a brief cameo in Revenge of the Sith, but there’s no reason for them to have a big presence in the prequels.
Also one of the posters in the other thread suggested ditching the Emo crap and making Anakin the swaggering Han Solo-type bad boy of the prequels. Instead of introducing him when he’s just boy, they could jump ahead and have Obi Wan and Qui Gon Jinn first encounter him when he’s a fighter pilot in training.
If you wanted to add a layer of complexity maybe you could have the Republic be corrupt in some fashion (not super-corrupt, mind you, but perhaps doing something like propping up despots, much in the same way the U.S. did during the Cold War) and the empire spewing some revolutionary rhetoric that would attract a young idealist like Anakin.
This would do away with all the talk about the trade federation and the other political goings-on that nobody but the most hard core, Storm Trooper-dressing Star Wars fans cared about.
Yeah, no Jar Jar, no midichlorians, blah blah blah.
As far as Anakin goes, they should have made him a little more morally ambiguous in the first two films so it would be easier to accept him turning into a sith lord. The only bad things he did were miss his mommy and massacre some sandpeople.
They definitely should have made the Trade Federations droid army more badass. Why did they have to be so spindly and wimpy? Why did they even need legs? They could have just made floating, kickass ninja assasin droids.
Not take itself so seriously and have characters with believable emotions and believable relationships.
Have anyone besides George Lucas direct it. Have more input from other writers.
I don’t care about midichlorians or anything like that. I just want to have dialogue that doesn’t make me cringe with its suckiness. Most of the actors are quite competent in other movies, but not in the prequels with Lucas’ direction.
I would have not made the prequels at all.
Okay, let’s see…
[ul]
[li]No Jar Jar[/li][li]No kid Anakin[/li][li]No C3PO or R2D2[/li][li]No stupid Jedi rules about only training infants and being forbidden to marry[/li][li]Absolutely no midichlorians[/li][li]No Naboo, with its incomprehensible political system[/li][li]Definitely no jumping crazy-frog Yoda[/li][li]No clone stormtroopers[/li][/ul]
Okay, these are the first things that came to mind that I wouldn’t want in the prequels. For what I’d want:
More politics! The reason all the political stuff was boring is because it was so scattered and irrelevant to the plot. I’d like lots of political intrigue and many more factions at play. Oligarchic older systems concerned about the increasingly strident demands of poorer systems they traditionally exploit, territorial wars cropping up left and right, the Outer Rim threatening secession… In the midst of this the authoritarian and militaristic Empire should be a region of peace and prosperity, a growing force in the Galaxy, poised to replace a failing Republic, of which it is a member. The Jedi should be neither so centralized nor so physically powerful; they’re much more interesting as warrior monks than as medieval knights and they were plenty competent enough before they were put in overdrive in the prequels. This change would allow for more Jedi and we could have different Jedi supporting different factions and going against each other in the Galaxy’s myriad wars. They’d all be motivated by pure and noble goals but would still be one more factor threatening to plunge all worlds into chaos.
This is so much fun I even wrote an outline of how I’d like the first film to be like!
Part I
In the first movie we’d get acquainted with the relevant parties and some of their back-stories. This is the beginning of a period of civil unrest in the Republic and the ties that bind its members together are at an all-time low. Even the Jedi are no longer in agreement as to what is the right course, with some of them arguing for a path of meditation and non-interference while others still believe it’s their duty to support the Republic and some of them have even begun to take sides on the many conflicts. Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Republic aligned Jedi -let’s say he’s in his 40s and maybe an underling of Jedi General Qui-Gon Jinn- is sent to yet another war. The republican forces are there to mediate the conflict but immediately become embroiled in it and are mostly destroyed. Forced to chose a side and fight, Obi-Wan befriends a young (early 20s) fighter pilot named Anakin Skywalker. During their war adventures together Obi-Wan admires his new friend’s skill, courage and potential in the force, but is afraid of the aggression he displays. Alongside that there’d be some intrigue in Coruscant, with Emperor Palpatine maneuvering different parties and sending agents (maybe a sect of dark Jedi that call themselves the Sith) to foment unrest and war all around. In this subplot we’d meet the prequel’s Leia: she could still be called Padmé, but maybe it’d be better not to have her as so personally powerful from the start; an idealistic senatorial aide would be good. She’d be a strong female character (but not an action hero!) and would oppose Palpatine’s more overt attempts to gain political power in the Republic Senate. She’d be a true believer of the Republic’s traditional values of personal and civic liberties. She somehow acquires information on one of Palpatine’s secret schemes. The data is not damning to him personally but it concerns some operation he regards as essential to his eventual rise to power, for which reason the Emperor sends one of his assassins after her (Darth Maul?). She is forced to run and hide from an implacable foe that draws always nearer.
Meanwhile, Anakin and Obi-Wan find out the war they’re fighting is part of the same scheme and that they’re on the wrong side! Anakin’s people are making use of illegal cloning technology and attempting to do something really, really evil (I can’t figure out just what right now)! They also find out about Padmé. Obi-Wan tries to stop what’s going on and is arrested. Forced to choose between patriotic duty and his loyalty to Obi-Wan and higher principles, Anakin betrays his people and aids in the Jedi’s escape. They fly together to Coruscant just in time to save Padmé’s life. At this point we’d have the obligatory lightsaber duel. At some point Obi-Wan would be taken out of play for a moment and Anakin would lose a hand to the assassin defending the girl (it’s not Star Wars without hand chopping). Obi-Wan kills the Sith, whom he believes to be just another renegade Jedi. The heroic trio exposes the dastardly doings of Anakin’s people (whatever they are) and the public is outraged, especially by the use of clones, forcing the Republic to interfere directly on the local conflict and to come down hard on the aggressors. Obi-Wan decides to train Anakin despite the violence he sees in his friend. The Emperor has been temporarily thwarted but also takes an interest on the young hero. Anakin is happy that he’ll become a Jedi and is starting to fall for Padmé, but the betrayal of his people chafes at his conscience.
Honestly there’s too much to list. I’d pretty much want to rewrite the whole thing with keeping only the skeletal framework (of Obi-Wan training Anakin, the two become friends, Anakin turns to the dark side under Palpatine and kills all the Jedi).
Big changes would include making the Clone Wars further back in time (which requires making Obi-Wan and Anakin both older) and a separate event from Anakin’s turn to the dark side. Greatly lower the number of the Jedi and make them far more mystical and shadowy and removed from public politics.
Can’t disagree too much there.
I would change one thing: I would, in fact, keep Jar-Jar Binks. Maybe change the name, but no big deal. In my view, Binks should be something of an adventurer or bounty hunter, a dangerous character from a relatively primitive people, but with considerable talents. He might be picked up by the Jedi as a guide to his homeworld. He doesn’t have to be an exact copy of Solo, but a bit of roguish charm would help.
The purpose is that I feel the movies need a Han Solo character. Someone the audience can relate to a bit, to bridge the gap between storybook and silver screen. It was import in the originals to have that in the midst of mysterious aliens and Jedi-in-training (Princess Leia eventually partly filled this role as well). And it was good to know that in the middle of all that, there was still a dangerous guy with a big gun. 
Exactly right. Which usually also means someone that we can care about a bit. Sure some cardboard characters are to be expected but better that even those who you do not relate to are interesting and their changes are fathomable.
Too much to list storywise, but most of it could’ve been forgiven if they’d used the same SFX techniques they used in the first trilogy. It was their aesthetic that made those films.
I’d make R2-D2 Obi-Wan’s droid and not Anakin’s. I’d leave C-3PO out of the prequels altogether - he doesn’t add anything and he gets mind-wiped anyway.
If combat droids are going to be involved they should be efficient, even if they aren’t effective. It is forgivable to use droids that are worse fighters than a human if you can buy them by the freighter load and throw them into battle to die by the millions without being called a monster. It’s not forgivable to add programming that makes them worse, for the sake of comedy.
Anakin should not have been born, raised, or had any other particular reason to think of the planet Tatooine.
I would have completely done away with the early childhood of Anakin and most of his early adolescence as well.
Episode I. The back story of Anakin Skywalker, starting as a young man in his twenties.
It would begin with his early life on Tatooine as an erstwhile drifter. He would be taken in by Obi-Wan Kenobi, who would teach him the Jedi ways. He and Kenobi would fight in the Clone Wars as mercenaries, and this is where Skywalker would meet Amidala and subsequently conceive Luke and Leia. The whole Clone Wars would be not a slick, CGI, alien-and-robot-heavy production, but a very gritty and realistic campaign. Think Spartacus and Gladiator, but set in the Star Wars universe. It would focus primarily on human combat, since I believe the emphasis on aliens and droids detracted from the human touch that the original movies had, and mass battle scenes involving aliens and droids would involve CGI which I am strongly against. After Palpatine emerges as the victor of the Clone Wars and is shown to be clearly evil, Anakin goes to the dark side and becomes his second-in-command, Vader. (In my conception, he does not immediately adopt the face mask and helmet. He is evil, but not THAT evil yet. I wasn’t happy with the instantaneous transformation, including height increase, from Anakin to Vader.)
Episode II. The Formation of the Empire.
Everyone knows that the real reason Star Wars is so badass is because of the Empire. This second episode would concentrate on how the people of the Empire, particularly its officers and troops, were recruited and turned into a powerful military force. I reject the idea that “the stormtroopers are all clones.” I would show the Empire traveling to many different planets and recruiting men to serve as Stormtroopers, TIE pilots, and starship officers. This would serve as an opportunity to give back-story to a very compelling character who I feel the prequels completely neglected: Grand Moff Tarkin. He would be a major character in this episode, as his rise through the Imperial ranks is followed. I envision the younger Tarkin as being played by Hugh Laurie. It’s a perfect opportunity to develop the rivalry between him and Vader that is shown in A New Hope. Another character that could be fleshed out is that of General Veers, the AT-AT commander who is shown in Empire Strikes Back. He would be a young man here, proving himself on the battlefield as a Walker pilot. The main battles in this movie would be the many conquests of the Empire over the planets in the galaxy. A wide variety of exotic locales would be shown, but again, the combat would be gritty-looking, primarily human-based, and devoid of the overdone CGI that, in my opinion, cheapened the battles of the prequels. The film would end with the galaxy enslaved and devastated by the Empire, and Vader turned completely evil. He would have been wounded in one of the many battles that he fought in as an Imperial general, requiring him to wear the distinctive face mask and helmet by the film’s close.
Episode III. The story of Han Solo: his early life as a TIE Fighter pilot; his meetings with Chewbacca and Lando; his becoming a mercenary and smuggler; and the beginnings of the Rebellion.
The character of Han Solo was the heart and soul of the original Star Wars movies. His cockiness, humor and general badassness served as a perfect foil to the other figures of the story, and the lack of such a character was a severe detriment to the prequels. My Episode III would feature him as the protagonist. According to Wikipedia, Solo was a TIE pilot prior to becoming a smuggler. And everyone knows that the TIE pilots were the most badass-looking of all the Imperial units. Solo would be shown as a successful Imperial pilot, but gradually becoming disenchanted with the Empire’s evil subjugation of the galaxy. On one mission, he would meet Chewbacca, whom he would rescue from a slave ship. Commanded to kill Chewie by his superiors, he would refuse, and be court-martialed. The two of them would set out as criminals-for-hire, smuggling illegal drugs and working as bounty hunters for Jabba The Hutt, whose relationship with Solo could be established in this episode. He would meet and befriend Lando Calrissian, and win the Millenium Falcon from him in a card game.
This episode would also feature a young Boba Fett. I know this goes against the canon (both the one before the prequels and the one after them!) but I see Boba Fett as one of Han Solo’s fellow TIE fighter pilots who is also kicked out of the Imperial Starfleet and subsequently becomes a bounty hunter. A rivalry between him and Solo would be established in this movie, and there would definitely have to be a fight between the two of them. I’m thinking they could both be pursuing the same bounty for Jabba the Hutt, and fight each other over it.
Finally, this episode would introduce the beginnings of the Rebellion. Wedge Antilles could be given some backstory, along with Admiral Ackbar and some of the other Rebellion figures.
Note that I am not attempting to write the individual story arcs of these episodes - the summaries I’ve given are just meant to be descriptions of the settings and basic storylines of the movies I’m imagining.
I think Obi-Wan should’ve been the main character throughout the trilogy. The prequel trilogy made a mistake in making Anakin the main tragic figure. It’s irrelevant whether he was a good guy at one point (every brutal dictator started out as an innocent child), Darth Vader is a very bad guy who was the head of an empire who blew up entire planets of innocent people purely out of spite. By the end of the prequel trilogy, you find out that Anakin betrayed his friends and wife and turned to the dark side…which we already knew would happen. There’s no surprise there and it doesn’t have any emotional impact.
Experiencing it from Obi-Wan’s perspective will give more weight to his distant sadness in Episode IV and explain why he had to lie to Luke (maybe not for Luke’s sake, but for his own sake). In fact, you could even make Obi-Wan the hot-shot Han Solo figure, with him being selfish and arrogant enough to think he could go over Yoda’s head and teach Anakin himself. The betrayal and failure would shake him so much that he becomes the subdued broken old man we see in Episode IV.
While I don’t see the need to change the overall story too much, I do agree with starting Anakin out older. At least late-teens (there’ve been enough young-teen soldiers over the centuries I think we can manage).
I would, however, keep some of the implications about the Jedi Council. Namely, that for all their wisdom and power, they were not very in-touch with things. They live in a literal Ivory Tower, and Yoda pretty much defines the Jedi. Not becaue he has the authority, either, but just because he’s old and has ordered things to suit. Likewise, the Jedi just do things, and often without a reason why.
Some of their principles are admirable (don’t force everyone to live like we want) but they take it to the point of not really doing anything or encouraging anything good. They just blindly obey. It’s also apparent that while many Jedi live too busily for families or such, that’s not how they all feel. Obi-Wan doesn’t really need that, but Anakin might (and apparently some other do, too). Anakin thinks he’ll be just straight pushed out if he’s discovered, which isn’t very helpful. PLus, Jedi are not exactly a religious group: they don’t give that up in order to devote themselves to their higher ideals, but to a half-decent government. (It isn’t the Force which they actually spend all their time serving.)
I only watched the first one.
How about some more actual war in the plot?
No to C-3PO being retconned in. Jar Jar can stay (& take the comic relief role from Threepio). More plausible victory over the droid army.
I didn’t watch the next two, but from what I’ve heard, this would sum it up:
How about some more actual war in the plot?
How about some actual acting?
The script is going to be filled with wooden dialogue, that is a given. That was true of the first 3. But the actors in the first three were able to pull it off better. Hayden Christiansen is a wooden actor. He was worse than Jar Jar in my opinion. I would also not make the entire first movie be about a kid. Maybe up to a third and then get into the buiness of making Darth Vader. There was no need to try and make him a sympathetic character. That was the purpose of the end of ROTJ. Anakin as a child was background, it shouldn’t have been an entire movie.
Color me weird, but I wouldn’t have Anakin AT ALL until the last (third) movie - just have him being intruduced as a child to Obi Wan, and the start of his training regiment. Show him to be a bright, upstanding young Jedi-to-be. Then when Obi Wan is telling the story of what happened to him to Luke, and then the subsequent reveals of what happened to him (both Ben’s lie and Vader’s truth) would still be a shock to the audience. We really don’t need Amidala as an on-screen character.
I have no problems w/C3PO and R2D2 being in the prequels, as Lucas had stated from the beginning that they would be in all the films. R2’s origin was fine, I just didn’t like the way they handled C3PO’s. Better he was just some random protocol droid that got caught up in the chaos from the beginning
This is all true and is telling of the absurd paradox of the prequels: they are supposed to be prequels but they are shockfull of references that only really matter if you’ve seen the original trilogy. As a package, it doesn’t make sense, because there are only two alternatives, both of which are bad:
-
Either you have not seen the original trilogy and watch the prequels and the big reveal of episode V is ruined.
-
Or, you have seen the original trilogy and watch the prequels and the suspense is lost because you already know what is going to happen from the get-go.
Both of these issues could have been adressed. There could have been suspense and surprises and a screenplay that fit better with the original trilogy. But there weren’t.
I don’t think the problem is Christiansen as an actor. He was good in Life as a House and Shattered Glass. I think the problem in that movie was that Lucas’s direction was so bad that neither Christiansen or Portman were experienced enough to overcome his bad direction, while people like Neeson and McGregor could.
I agree with what a lot of people have said. One I’d add is show a better transition from Anakin to Darth Vader. As it is, Anakin feels betrayed by the Jedi and what does he do? Immediately starts killing Padawans at the Jedi Temple.
I would think in real life, non-crazy people would have a bit of a sliding slope to get down between they get to the child murder stage, but Anakin apparently decided to jump straight there.