I agree that Anakin should start out as a good person and deteriorate as the movie goes on. He should definitely not start out lousy. However, an idea that really appeals to me is seeing Anakin's personality get darker and darker as we see Palpatine's influence on him.
The whole "behind Padme's back" thing is just an idea, to be used or not. As far as having him walk out on her, I don't know if I'd do that, because we lose the climax of Anakin killing her in his ultimate use of the Dark Side. At that point, he's gone.
"Lets say he left her, or maybe even better yet she leaves him. This could add more to his feeling of betrayal. Perhaps he is the one involved in politics and not her, or maybe he is just a jedi who are essentially detectives/cops. Maybe he is a work aholic, coming home late every night and she feels neglected and leaves him, later it turns out she was pregnant but maybe she didn't know that when she left and never bothered to tell him, or he "died" before she got the chance. This way Vader never would have imagined the possibility of having any offspring. This could be tailored to fit the OT flawlessly (as flawless as possible that is). Imagine if after Anakin's wife leaves him she, Obi-wan, Anakin's closest friend feels she was treated badly by her husband and tries to comfort her and help her out, they could end up growing closer and closer and Anakin could discover this. This would even more rationalize Anakin's total turn from the jedi and his trying to kill his best friend."
But this is a really good point. I like this idea too.
"It is a shame there are no scenes of Anakin fighting any Jedi, we only get to see him getting ready to commit the murder of half a dozen or so 7 years olds. "
This is where the whole noir/B&W thing comes in handy. There's nothing saying we can't resequence footage and use it for a completely different purpose. For example, Christopher Lee is a Jedi that comes in to kill the Emperor, and Anakin kills him. Palpatine laughs, "Good Anakin, good!" And we go to the next scene.
This is the most powerful Jedi killing scene I can think of. I'd guess I'd really have to see the vid-game
footage to see whether it'd work or not. In black & white, it may be useful.
"Except that it the city ought to fill up the whole surface except for giant valleys along its surface which are too unstable to build in due to volcanic activity."
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This project would be entirely rooted in the planning, the mapping out of the new history, the new story, what footage will be used, and (most important of all), the new script. If this can be done, (and if an actress can be found for Padme), then there's a very good chance I'll do this, because the major work is not in the execution.
Spence- it'd be great if you could work on a script, along with anyone else that's interested (of course this would include me). The idea of using dialogue and ideas from the novel is a really good idea.
Another good brainstorming idea at this point is to list all of the contradictions we want to eliminate with this movie. A list of all of Obi-Wan's OT dialogue about Anakin and his personality, for instance. And a list of things that are possible to avoid.
For example:
-No midichlorians
-No contradiction when Obi-Wan says, "That boy is our last hope" in Empire
Etc.
You guys have come up with some great ideas so far. I really think that if we bounce ideas off of each other in the forum and work on the script together, then this will be a great movie.
Thanks so much!
-TM