Hey everyone, I appreciate the discussion everyone’s been having here.
To reiterate, I think this project, at the very least, can be a collaborative effort to tackle various issues regarding consistency and continuity between the films. It could become more than that but that’s what I think should be focused on for now.
I really like your points Imhotep! I hadn’t really thought about if/how to tackle the incest vibes in the OT. Other thoughts on this would be appreciated.
About the two Death Stars: In the past I had considered having just one Death Star in the OT, and imply that they just heavily damaged it in ANH, only for them to destroy it for good in ROTJ. But I think it would be a little too radical. Maybe if you could set up the second Death Star in Empire Strikes Back somehow? Maybe see a less formed DSII from the Executor bridge in Vader’s first ESB scene? It definitely is a criticism though.
Regarding Mace’s lightsaber, it’s a reasonable question. You definitely haven’t been the only one who has wanted to do that, like you said, jack had done it for AOTC, and I know Adywan was planning on changing it to either blue or green for his now-cancelled Revisited Prequels.
It would’ve been cool to see Anakin with a red saber, I remember a lot of the ROTS marketing had him with a red one. Sparked my young imagination. I would be weary of having lightsaber change colors though, because if you do it in one situation it raises questions of why doesn’t this character’s lightsaber change color in this situation either. Though it would be cool to see though!
Another thought I had regarding saber colors, instead of changing Mace’s saber color, why not throw in one or two more purple sabers during the arena battle to show, while it is rare, it isn’t completely unique. Especially considering there are 10,000 Jedi and it would be really surprising if he were the only one with a purple lightsaber. I don’t think fans would have been as bothered by his saber if he wasn’t the only Jedi with a purple saber. And even if 1% of Jedi had purple lightsabers, that would still be 100 Jedi.
You could even throw in one or two yellow lightsabers as well (they’re in The Clone Wars so they’re even technically canon). I would even like to see blue and green sabers with slightly different hues, but I think that would be too much work for not much of a difference. And if one Jedi had a yellow lightsaber when they go to arrest the Chancellor, each Jedi would have a lightsaber of each Jedi color. Seems symbolic, like they represent the whole of the Jedi Order and their downfall or something. But you also have to ask if these kind of changes really “improve” the story or they’re just for fun. But at least adding one more purple lightsaber to the arena would be the least amount of work for the most influence on the story/world building in my opinion, without having to change what already exists.
Regarding “Obi-Wan once thought as you do”, I would either want it to be changed to “your mother” (using his bible audiobooks is a good idea), or just cut the line entirely. The scene still works without the line. But with Padmé dying tragically, I think it would be a nice callback to her character, and help connect Luke’s motivation to her’s, which would help connect the trilogies. It’s been a commonly mentioned thing so it would be cool for someone to attempt it! Voice manipulation isn’t a bad idea either Zerome!
About the Clone army thing. It seemed like a lot of people were confused by Stormtroopers not being clones in the sequel trilogy, even though Stormtroopers in the OT weren’t clones either. BUT, I honestly don’t blame anyone who thought this was the case. If you just watch the movies, it is easy to assume that the clones in the prequels just evolve into the Stormtroopers of the originals, and you just attribute the different accent/heights/etc. to when they were filmed (I think George even felt the Stormtroopers were clones, since he threw in Jango bumping his head on the Slave 1 door as an Easter egg).
The only way you really know they aren’t for sure is by reading or watching material outside of the movies, which I kind of feel shouldn’t be necessary. I think clones being only used in the prequels is still valuable to those movies, because they were the secret weapon that helped eradicate the Jedi Order, leaving Vader to finish off the remaining few. To make it clearer that OT Stormtroopers aren’t clones, would it be blasphemous to add a one or two female Stormtrooper lines into the OT? I think that would be the simplest way to make it pretty clear that they aren’t clones.
My preference is making the conflict of the ST a proxy war with two groups within the Senate funding the Resistance and the First Order.
This is an interesting idea! I also had been thinking about the possibility of the Empire (or Imperial Remnant) and the First Order being two separate things. Maybe the Remnant is minding its own business when the First Order strikes, and they invade both the New Republic and offer the Remnant a chance to surrender.
“In his absence, the FIRST ORDER has splintered from the remnants of the Empire…”
And I actually think your idea isn’t too far off to the truth! I know in Bloodlines, it pretty much says that there are some New Republic senators that are secretly supporting the First Order, helping them get funds and making the rest of the senate think they’re not really a threat. It would be nice if that idea could be made clearer in the films. The only thing I could think of is through the TFA opening crawl. Maybe the second paragraph could say something like-
“Fearing that First Order spies have infiltrated the New Republic, General Leia Organa forms a covert Resistance…”
Certain words could be swapped:
spies/sympathizers
infiltrated/influenced
This would give a little more context as why it had to be the Resistance fighting the First Order rather than just the New Republic, and it would make the New Republic seem less incompetent or ignorant, but rather, compromised. I like this idea the more I think about it!
These are just some ideas though! I enjoy talking about this with you guys, thanks for the discussion!
So, I have formed a list of commonly brought up continuity errors, inconsisties, plot holes or big questions brought up in the movies. A lot of them I don’t think need edits, but I think they all could/should be vetted. Thanks to those who have brought other questions to my attention as well, most of those have been added.
Now, before I post this list, I’m not sure if I should just post the questions themselves, include my thoughts on some of them (or do that in a separate post), or if I should just put the list in my original post.
Basically I was thinking we could go through the questions, and come up with acceptable answers or edit ideas for each item on the list. EddieDean can then organize them on his list. After some discussion, we could then possibly prioritize what ideas would be worth pursuing first.
I could just post the list, start discussion, and decide what to do next as we go on. Would appreciate any additional thoughts.