Oh, and what did they call them? Younglings? That’d be right out the window.
Whoa, I don’t think they needed nearly as much modification as you guys are proposing. I’m of the rare opinion that Episode 1 is actually the nearest to being a great film, and all it would take is a few minor changes…
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Simple edit out of Anakin’s “Yipee!!”
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Don’t eliminate Jar-Jar, just give him a different voice/dialect and edit out the slapstick.
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Build up Darth Maul a bit more. When he came to the desert looking for Obi-Wan he sent out droids to look for them. Instead he should have gone into a cantina and asked around himself (naturally leaving corpses behind for anyone who didn’t cooperate). Having a bit of action and terror in that section of the movie would have helped with the overall pacing.
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Keep Maul’s lightsaber a suprise!!! This would have totally changed people’s final opinion of the film. Imagine if all you saw of Maul in the previews was his face and single-edged sabre in the desert fight. If it was a suprise when he unleashed the double blade only at the end when taking on the two Jedi, it would have been great.
I still stand by my opinion that Episode 1 is the best of the prequels (on repeat viewings), and that the 2 on 1 Maul fight at the end is the best action scene in the entire series, original trilogy included. Also the pod race is way underrated.
I know you didn’t ask about the OT, but imagine if Lucas had spent the cash to make Endor a Wookie planet instead of Ewoks. The whole movie would be seen in a different light. Shame it didn’t happen.
Aside from the annoying child Anakin, Jar Jar Binks, the midichlorians, and how damnably stupid Yoda was, my wish is that to fix the mawkish, corny, and frankly unbelievable love story between Padme and Anakin. She’s supposed to be such an enlightened, good hearted young woman, yet she drops trou for Anakin after he admits to slaughtering the Sand People, including innocent women and children. That’s hot! Seriously, their love affair was cringeworthy, and I know both Christiansen and Portman are capable of better if they had better material to work with.
Oh yeah, Vader should totally have chucked them off the roof!
Oh… you meant… well, never mind.
I actually would have left the Youngling’s fate more ambiguous, with them simply vanishing and it perhaps being implied that Vader let them go. But then, I would also have made the Jedi a bit more sinister as well.
Interestingly, I’ve seen the deleted scenes from Episode 2. I can understand why most of them were dropped - but here’s the kicker: the scenes between Padme and Anakin were good. I mean, they were too short and should have been re-filmed to be a bit more realistic for her family (really, we needed some hugs and kisses all around to show that she missed her family being a big-shot Senator on Coruscant), but the scenes did work. They showed off a little bit of her character, and actually established a connection between Anakin and Padme. I wouldn’t say it was romantic, but it would help show why and how they formed a bond. It would really only need another scene (to replace the awful “nerf-surf” scene) to vastly improve the movie.
The other deleted scenes could mostly go; they didn’t add much, and the one between Obi-Wan and Mace Windu rather bland. Also, Mace works better as the character who doesn’t trust Anakin: it makes Anakin’s turn against the Jedi much more believable.
I would actually have made Count Dooku’s loyalties very dubious indeed, and make it very unclear, perhaps even at the end, whether he was truly working for Sidious or actually trying to end the Sith.
I agree with a lot of the changes - older Anakin, no droid army, etc. One thing I’d change is dropping the whole, “Only two Sith at a time,” idea. There should be an entire Sith order, almost as large as the Jedi, but more secretive, and each film cranks up the lightsaber fightin’ action. The first movie, you only see Maul and Sidious, and the big lightsaber action from that movie is Obi-Wan and Qui Gonn versus Maul. Second movie, you have a rogues gallery of Sith apprentices, and climax with a fight between half dozen or so Jedi and Sith. Third movie, the main action setpiece is the Sith assault (led by the newly corrupted Anakin, of course) on the Jedi temple, which features entire armies of Sith and Jedi going at it. The battle is a pyrrhic victory for the forces of darkness. The Jedi are wiped out, but the Sith are shattered as well, with only a crippled Anakin and a handful of other Sith surviving. All according to Sidious’ plan, of course, as with the Jedi all but extinct, he no longer needs a temple full of potential Judases to carry out his plans.
They should have introduced him in the first movie as an unambiguously heroic character, and then revealed his dual loyalties in the second film, making his betrayal of the Jedi actually mean something. Also, they should not have named him “Dooku.” Would have been cool if they’d made the moment Anakin killed Dooku the moment Anakin turned, as well, to mirror the scene in Jedi where the Emperor tells Luke to kill Vader, so his “journey to the dark side will be complete.” It would help give us an idea of how close Luke was to losing everything at that moment, and make his refusal to strike out in vengeance all the more heroic.
Such a good point. He will always be Count Dook-Chute to me.
Yes! I like that ambiguous, double-double? agent version of Count Dooku much better. A bit like the whole Professor Snape thing in the Harry Potter stories.
He could even have had an alias of “Duke Countu” for when he was doing the bad guy thing 
The special effects were overwhelming, and detracted from the story. Needed to be more story driven and lo-tech.
And more with Darth Maul. He was by far the most interesting character, and he had no lines.
I like most of the ideas presented here, a LOT. This is basically what pissed me off about APM, it could have been so great.
I love this. Love it, love it, love it. It would have established character, it would have been an excellent scene to show off some interesting aliens, and it would have repeated the motif of alien culture. And, of course, it would have injected some excitement in the film, which was a huge yawnfest for me. I said it before, and I’ll say it again…APM just wasn’t FUN to watch, and for me, that was its biggest sin.
I suspect this sentence would also work if you replaced “and he had no lines” with “because he had no lines.”
I’m still pissed that they made General Grevious such a wuss in the actual movie, when he was so badass and imposing in the cartoon prequels. Really made his defeat and general menace underwhelming.
Anakin’s turning was also poorly done, because they neither established any real “magic” to show that the dark side can actually directly twist you, nor did they build enough of a plausible character turn. Anakin rebelling against Windu was one thing, but to go from that to slaughtering children and then joining in with the very people who he’d just spent years of his life fighting and watching his friends die in the face of was just too far.
The fact that they exist.
I don’t really think the prequel trilogy can be fixed with a tweak or two; they really need completely rewritten. But here’s a few thoughts anyways:
I like the idea of making Obi Wan the protagonist and Annikan a morally gray hot shot pilot. First, this would allow a contrast between Obi Wan as a member of the established Jedi order and Luke trying to recreate it. Secondly, there’s the contrast between Annikan becoming the big bad guy and Han Solo joining the Rebellion.
You can keep Jar Jar, but only if you get rid of the ridiculous accent and personality. A comic relief character is probably necessary, and C-3PO’s presence doesn’t work. Just don’t be stupid about it.
Make the Clone War about the clone’s role in society. Make them legal slaves that nearly everyone has. Treat them like droids are treated in the OT. The clones rebel, and it’s the resulting war is what allows Palpatine to consolidate power. At the end, Palpatine should make clones free citizens, but imply droids quickly take the same role in society. This would be more consistent with R2-D2’s restraining bolt in the first movie.
Something I said at the time was that the second film actually needed graphic violence. His slaughter of the Sand People is a major turning point and, like a Shakespearean play (so often a source of inspiration to Lucas) it happens off-stage and he tells about it later. No… SHOW IT! You actually need to see the “evil” take over him, especially since it’s an evil we can relate to (revenge) yet it’s kind of the moral of the character to the extent it has one (don’t give in to the dark side, etc.).
And of course the whole conception/virgin birth thing- flush that down the crapper then toss explosives down the pipes, seal off the plumbing, burn the house, and move. That was one of the cheesiest and most pointless things in the films. The Force isn’t just biological but it has DNA and a Y chromosome? It would have worked better if Annakin’s father had been killed in a war and he was a ward of the Jedi; if his mom was a Mos Eisley “You Won’t Get Hives From My Villainy, Big Boy” prostitute who on a bad day would do a Hutt it wouldn’t have been any worse.
If his mom has to stay in the script and marry the farmer it would have made more sense if Owen had been her biological son. A blood relationship would have made more sense with why he took in Luke. (In the novelization of the movies Owen was Ben Kenobi’s brother.)
Did Palpatine give her a vibrator that was powered by Force lightning? How exactly did they do this AND THEN just let the kid get brought up on a desert planet owned by a flying bug version of Fred Sanford? Wouldn’t you want him where you can keep an eye on him and raise him to be of use to you?
Some history of the Galactic Republic would have been good as well. How did the Jedi get started? And as for the Empire, why are all of the Empire’s officers human? It can’t be coincidence- is Palpatine racist (i.e. human race over others) or does the Force not work as well over non-humans or…
I agree with most of what’s been mentioned already. I’d add that the whole “virgin birth” plotline needs to be dropped.
Lucas should have also made more of an effort to have the new trilogy match the history that had already been told in the original trilogy.
I like the idea of Anakin being a Han Solo-like character to start with. My suggestion would have been to make the Republic a weaker institution undergoing some kind of major crisis. Portray the Jedis as looking like a spent force who are looking back on their glory days (sort of like the Crusader orders after the Muslims retook the Holy Lands). Show Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan and Yoda as still being okay but imply that their cause is over. So when they recruit Anakin as a new potential Jedi to save the Republic, he can legitimately question whether the Jedis have any value anymore as an insitution and whether the Republic is worth saving.
Then show a charismatic leader, Palpatine, who rides in on a white horse. He’s got the answers and he can rescue the galaxy. Anakin could legitimately consider this guy as a more respectable figure to follow. A big moment would be when Anakin had to betray a Jedi plot against Palpatine.
In the final movie, we’d have Anakin signing up with Palpatine to save the world from collapse. But of course we’d see that Palpatine is just as interested in gaining power as he is in fixing problems. A good analogy would be how many Germans in the early thirties thought Hitler was going to save Germany.
More shirtless Ewan.
I’d accept this if we got shirtless Natalie and shirtless Keira as well.
And a scene of Ewan and Hayden trying to figure out something… anything… to keep themselves warm while being stranded on Hoth might also be nice. Or a scene in which Annakin wishes to prove his loyalty to Kenobi in any way possible.
I’d ditch the clone troopers, and instead have the clones in “The Clone Wars” be Senator Plapatine and his clone(s), Darth Sidious*, so that the war is not named because it is one fought by clones, but because it was instigated by clones.
*make a few. That way, he can be everywhere at once.