Time Period: Around a millenium before Ep. 4
Story Description: (This is a three-part series).
Part 1:
On the rural backwater world of Aetlaet, Cada makes a good living as a merchant, importing off-world goods and selling them to farmers, ranchers, and miners far away from the few cities. When his fiance is kidnapped by a vicious gang, he aims to take revenge and win her back.
The story is inspired by a little Greek tragedy, plus Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Firefly, and other stuff. It’s not a Space Western exactly, but there are definitely touches of it. However, it also sets up some of the events of Original & Prequel trilogies, showing why the Jedi believed the Sith were destroyed, and why Palpatine was
very interested when he heard a Skywalker helped defeat the Trade Federation.
It follows a basic three-act structure.
(1)
Cada is a merchant, he deals in technical goods (including a mechanical arm in an early scene), showing that he’s technically capable and a good pilot. When he wants to finally ask Wola to marry him, things are interrupted as Leator comes to town. Leator kidnaps the girl and cuts off Cada’s right arm… with a rusty, dull hatchet. He then ties Cada (and the arm) to his speeder and sets it off into the desert. Cada survives. He’s broken pretty much everywhere and some time passes. Some of Leator’s goons finally go too far when they taunt him about his woman one day, and he simply snaps. He blasts both of them, boys a much more advanced military-grade cybernetic replacement, and sets out to get revenge.
(2)
Cada starts attacking Leator’s goons, hitting them over and over again. There’s not much to say here - this is actually a relatively brief section of the film, and it’s intended to show just how incredibly pissed off the people of Aetlaet are. Cada is going increasingly out of cvontrol again,a nd taking bigger abnd bigger risks. His arm, being a military-type weaopon with advanced fire control, manages to keep him from getting killed. Finally, Cada gets hurt again and is saved by Theclis. As the injured, confused, and generally angry Cada comes back around to wake, he sees Theclis, and kills thinking he’s Leator.
(3)
Cada, realizing just how messed up he is, and that he’s simply taking revenge without any point. He commits himself to taking Leator down. He sneaks in to Madela’s palace and frees Wola as well as several others women. Wola has been Very Unpleasantly Treated and seems to be drugged. Along the way, he discovers that Madela is long dead and cleverly tricks Leator’s men into fighting each other. During a high-speed escape, Leator chases the two, until leator finally causes them to crash. Cada is pinned under the speeder while Leator comes to kill him, until Wola shoots him in the back, displaying a good deal more s The two leave the planet the next day.
Meanwhile, Arfest is busy burying his brother Theclis. Acknowledging there’s little law and less justice on the planet, he says he’s going to go hunt down Cada and bring him back for a trial.
(I know that’s a bland description, but it’s kinda the two-second version).
Characters:
Cada
Wola - a young and pretty woman who Cada seeks to propose to early in the film.
Madela - A murderous gangster who lives in an isolated palace with his son Leator.
Leator - Madela’s son and chief enforcer, who takes what he wants when he wants and murer anyone who gets in his way. He enjoys rape, mutilation, and chopping off people’s arms.
Theclis & Arfest - are also Madela’s son, though they refuse to have anything to do with him. They do not like Leator. At all.
There are other characters, so it’s not quite that thin, but when you have a short space, you only want to put down a few.
Coolest FX Scene:
The speeder chase through the canyon. Leator and several of his men are hunting the overloaded speederbike of Cada and Wola. I conceive of this as having very little CGI, and being done in very few, very long takes. The main digital effect is the character’s action (shot in greenscreen), being inserted into the absurdly fast-moving shots of the canyon (probably done in a plane or chopper).
Part 2: Doom of the Sith
This details the fall of the Sith and how they were destroyed (but survived) by the Jedi. I dont’ have all the details, but roughyl speaking:
Cada and Wola have become thieves and roughyl speaking, Robing Hood types. They steal from corrupt governments and their private-sector lackeys as well as pirates and smugglers. (Cada has a 60 billion credit bounty on his head. This is doubled by the end. :D) This changes when they are recruited by Jedi Armon to help him infiltrate and spy on Virta. Arfest also joins to help them, although he’s very clear about plannign to take Cada back with him. They discover he is a Sith Lord (Nixus), and must fend off increasingly vicious attacks by assassins, including Genovo Larst and Darth Broetus.
Things come to ahead when Nixus invades the peacful world of Caledon. As Armon and Wola engages in a terrible battle with Darth Broetus (whose forces are invading the space station and orbital-docking network), Cada runs across the network, grabs a space elevator array, and then boosts himself onto Darth Nixus’s flagship. he plants charges which cripple the mighty battleship, and then fights to prevent the Sith Lord from escaping. In the end, Arfest saves him from plummeting with the doomed ship, while Nixus incinerates as his titanic Mask of Hatred ship explodes above the polar regions.
The SIth should be defeated forever, but Genovo Larst survives (if badly injured). As she awakens in Nixus’s secret lair, the Sith droids bow to her and present a Jedi Holocron (first tim appearing in the movies).
Arfest, naturally, takes Cada back to their home planet, where they crassh-land in the ruins of Madela’s palace. Cada confesses that he panicked and murdered an innocent man because he didn’t think. They engage in an incredibly badass duel, blasting buildings to rubble all around them. Finally, Arfes lets Cada go, dropping his weapon because Cada wouldn’t take a shot even if he could kill him.
Characters:
Cada (Skywalker)
Wola
Arfes
Jedi Knight Armon - A Jedi trying to stop Warlord Virta, whose manufactured claims to the sector render the Republic helpless to stop him from conquering them.
Darth Nixus - A Sith Lord seeking to destabilize the entire sector, in the guise of Warlord Virta. He has semi-legit claims that the worlds of this sector are resisting his legal authority, and is crushing them one by one (extremely brutally).
Darth Broetus - Nixus’ apprentice.
Genovo Larst - A vicious woman Bounty Hunter who becomes a new Sith.
Best Action Scene:
The final battle between Cada and Arfes. They start with 100 shots each, and use a grand total of 197 of them. Every shot is shown onscreen, as they blast through builds and finally crush the last remnents of the old palace (yes, this is A Deeply Symbolic Moment).
Part 3: Fall of Palpatine
Not much here - I have the idea and a rough plot, but basically, it’s about how Palpatine was turned into a Sith (it’s a really grim and gruesome plot) and vows to destroy the Sith and Jedi alike… a vow he made good on, corrupted or not, years later.
The key idea here is sympathy for the devil. Palpatine is betrayed at every turn (or in some cases, made to believe he’s been betrayed at every turn). We also show ho when learned to be a Magnificent Bastard from the best, as Darth Plagueis callously manipulates him.
I also wanted to show that Plagueis wasn’t himself as personally evil as Palpatine, but was far more destructive. Plagueis is simply callousness personified, viewing everyone around him as tools. he manipulates everyone because that’s what he does. He fills a young and naive Senator Palpatine (yes, of Naboo) with lies and propoganda, then forces him do terrible, terrible things. Finally, he puts Palpatine ina situation where he’s likely to become emotionally attached, and then rips it all away. He betrays
All of this was so Palpatine would turn to the Dark Side, which a young, semi-trained force user with no one to turn to can hardly help avoid. palpatine does so, and simply pwns Syfo-Dias. He lets the jedi live, but basically gives him a cuttingly cruel Hannibal Lecture where he makes it very clear that one day, he will kill Syfo-Dias, but until that day comes he’s going to do everything he can to make sure Syfo-Dias looks good and even becomes a Jedi Master. And Syfo-Dias will become his slave in exchange for that, because if he doesn’t, or betrays Palpatine, he’ll dup evidence of Syfo-Dias’s scumsuckery all into the public’s lap.
Palpatine confronts Plagueis, and loses.
Plagueis returns to his safe hideous, which is shielded beyond belief, and settles down to bed. Suddenly, a lightsaber ignites from beneath and cuts him from shoulder to mid-chest. The dying Plagueis coughs and hacks , trying to crawl away as Palpatine emerges from beanth the heavy mattress. Palpatine then crushes Plagueis with the Force. I mean, crushes him. Into a little ball.
Palpatine sits down on Plagueis’s throne (looking more exhausted and like a man should when life itself becomes a living nightmare), when hundreds upon hundreds of Sith droids come rushing in. He raises his lightsaber, when they all bow before him. He sits back upon the throne, and weeps.
Palpatine: duh
Plagueis: detailed
**Jedi Knight Syfo-Dias **- He’s a powerful Jedi who is exceptionally vain and arrogant. He toys with Plagueis’s offer. Plagueis is trying to pit him and Palpatine to see who worthy of becoming his true apprentice.
**Woman **- Don’t have a name here yet. Palpatine likes her, but believes she likes Syfo-Dias more. They begin to fall in love, but Plagueis put her in that position. Syfo-Dias kills her while Plagueis hires an assassin to pretend to be her (after suitable surgery) and the replacement “betrays” Palpatine in the most brutal way possible.
Best Action Scene: the ultimate lightsaber duel between Palpatine and Plagueis. I’m talking total balls-to-the-wall lightsabery death sweating from every pore. The entire thing is a huge battle to the doom. We’re talking about chopping through buildings as Palpatine cleaves his way through hundreds of droids.
Crowning Moment of Awesome? In the final duel, Plagueis unleashes his Force Lightning. Palpatine is so strong that after being tortmented with it for a while, he copies the technique and barbeque’s Plagueis with his own medicine. Finally, Plagueis tricks him into a bad footing and is able to bring down by chucking the whole building (wired with explosives, just in case) into the depths of Coruscant.