What was your impression of the prequels before they announced the PT?

screams in the void said:

I thought we would see the Jedi fighting scores of Mandalorian Super commando’s

For the longest time I thought Joe Johnston would’ve been the perfect director for Episode II if for no other reason than the fact that, regardless of whatever the story ended up being, Boba Fett was always going to play some sort of role in that particular installment of the PT.*

But hearing you say it like that, suddenly I got images of Captain America taking on Hydra in The First Avenger. I feel like we could’ve gotten something similar to that if the production had hewed closer to the OT’s more practical filmmaking techniques (as the sequel trilogy largely is). Instead I feel like the Mandalorian army everyone wanted to see became the clones and the Jedi were fighting with them instead of against them.

*at least that’s what I read in a newsweek article at some point during the months leading up to TPM’s release. Said article also mentioned a rumor about Jet Li possibly playing Boba. I’d love to know how that one started and if there was ever any truth to it.

I paid no attention. I don’t care about anything EU* related.

*I consider anything not in one of the movies to be EU.

I thought that if they got made they’d be cool.
Maybe something along the lines of what OP describes.
I never thought they’d be incoherent, mortifying, laughable garbage.
Until the SEs came out, and I realized Georgie-poo was a demented megalomaniac hell-bent on shitting all over the franchise.

timdiggerm said:

screams in the void nails it, although I didn’t think there’d be armies of Mandalorians. I was sure that the Clone Wars were a war in which the Jedi fought against clones, as did everyone else (cf. Zahn’s Heir to the Empire trilogy).

Imagine, wave after wave of mass-produced clones, besieging jedi strongholds in a mind-bogglingly brutal battle of unfathomable attrition.

Now imagine a scattering of CGI “Fetttroopers” vaguely blasting at cartoon “comedic” robots, with absolutely no discernible military objective being pursued by either side.

Oh, I think we can all agree Georgie poo made the right decision here…

Yeah, I thought something very similar to screams in the void as well. But to add to that, I thought it would be the Jedi defending the galaxy against the mandalorians. But the mandalorians had broken intergalactic law and begun cloning themselves. The Jedi couldn’t stop the onslaught because they were so hopelessly outnumbered, and they actually began cloning themselves in order to win. There was also a rumor that “Obi-wan” was actually OB-1 (kinda like See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo…) and that stood for “Old Ben 1”. Thus implying that the Obi-wan Kenobi we know is actually the first successful clone of the Jedi “Old Ben Kenobi”

Some of these ideas came from some random newspaper article I read and the the Heir to the Empire trilogy actually kinda helped solidify them with C’Boath and Luuke and all that cloning stuff.

I don’t know why but I never really thought about it in depth. I spent more time imagining what the post-RotJ galaxy would be like. What would the Jedi Order come to look like? Would Han and Leia have a child, multiple children or no children? How would the New Republic deal with the remnants of the Empire and how would the new Jedi Order fit into that effort? I asked these and more questions and spent a lot of time thinking of answers.

As far as the BBY time period, Kenobi’s reference to his friendship with Luke’s father was pretty much enough for me. I accepted that they were good friends just like my childhood friends and now Vader is the bad guy. As far as the Clone Wars references, I think I just imagined some long-past war spanning multiple planets in which lots of Jedi fought. I don’t think I even considered who the actual participants were.

I thought C3PO would be hard at work programming binary loadlifters.

The mythology we formed in our own minds was probably better than anything that could have actually been filmed, even if it had been done well. Some things are better left to the imagination.

I honestly wasn’t that interested. There was some kinda artwork from a book or a trading card series that shows the Emperor lowering Vader’s helmet using the force? That’s about it. It was a striking image.

As a fan of the Asimov Foundation series, I was really interested in the grander arc: what galactic political forces created the Empire and how did things get to that point? From the beginning of ANH, you get the sense that the Rebellion is on its last legs, meaning there were probably years, if not a decade, in which the Empire was consolidating power and stomping out dissent.

Learning some of that history as backdrop to a story of friendship, Jedi, the Force, blaster duels, aerial dogfights, and the goings-on on a number of weird and exotic planets really intrigued me.

Needless to say, the “manufactured crisis that nobody understands (and actually makes no sense) but is only resolvable by the entire galactic leadership dumbly placing their blind trust in one creepy guy” did not do it for me at all.

Well, I expected what the OT said. That Anakin was a great pilot before they met, that Obi-wan trained him and didn’t do as good a job as Yoda (at least in Obi-wan’s mind). We’d see R2 and Threepio in each movie. Somewhere the Clone Wars happen. That Anakin would fall to the dark side leading to an epic light-saber duel between Obi-wan and Anakin in or around an active volcano. Anakin lost and was horribly injured and burned and ends up in the suit. Anakin’s wife would be in there somewhere and the link to the Lars’s and Luke and Leia would be separated at birth. I expected to see the rise of Palpatine as Emperor and for Bail Organa and the Jedi to be portrayed in some manner.

I guess I don’t hate the prequels quite as much because they were pretty much everything I had expected them to be. I truly love the Palpatine arc. I wasn’t so keen on the whole virgin birth and Owen being Anakin’s step-brother, but it fits with the OT. I didn’t expect Jar Jar, I don’t think anyone did. And I don’t think anyone over 10 really liked him. I did love Boss Nass (I love just about everything Brian Blessed does). I loved the politics, the convoluted story. The love story was very classic Hollywood - not quite forced, but not quite natural. I think in the scheme of things they made Anakin too whiny. An American accent, but too much like David Prowse on set performance. ATOC has too much strife between Obi-wan and Anakin and not enough mentor/friendship (it was there but overshadowed). It would have been nicer if that episode joined the clone wars in progress. The intrigue behind the start of it was important to the rise of Palpatine, but did not further the Obi-wan/Anakin friendship. I think the lack of the friendship part on screen really was the kicker as to why I didn’t like it as much as I’d hoped. Unless, of course, Obi-wan was lying about that as well, in ANH.

yotsuya said:

. That Anakin would fall to the dark side leading to an epic light-saber duel between Obi-wan and Anakin in or around an active volcano. Anakin lost and was horribly injured and burned and ends up in the suit.

Is this in a book or something? I remember my dad mentioned something like this years before ROTS.

yotsuya said:

I guess I don’t hate the prequels quite as much because they were pretty much everything I had expected them to be.

You sure had low expectations.

The love story was very classic Hollywood - not quite forced, but not quite natural.

Hmmm, no. It was one of the most forced “romances” in the history of film.

Wazzles said:
Is this in a book or something? I remember my dad mentioned something like this years before ROTS.

Yep.

yotsuya said:
I truly love the Palpatine arc.

The what now?

Here we go a quick search reveals a 1977 interview http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/the-wizard-of-star-wars-20120504

Ben almost kills Vader. As a matter of fact, he falls into a volcanic pit and gets fried and is one destroyed being

Also the ROTJ novelization

And this memory brought a wave of other memories with it. Memories of brotherhood, and home. His dear wife. The freedom of deep space. Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan, his friend … and how that friendship had turned. Turned, he knew not how - but got injected, nonetheless, with some uncaring virulence that festered, until … hold. These were memories he wanted none of, not now. Memories of molten lava, crawling up his back … no.
This boy had pulled him from that pit - here, now, with this act. This boy was good.

I didn’t have much time to come up with my own headcanon of the prequels anyway (I only saw the OT for the first time three years or so before TPM came out), but I was always way more interested in what happened after the OT than before it. I just sort of took Obi-Wan’s explanations in the films at face value and then went back to wondering what Luke ended up doing after ROTJ.

I feel George should have started with “The Beginning” and showed Anakin at around 13, just a little older would have been better. Then he could have gone on to Episode I-III with an older Anakin, which would have given more time to see that friendship actually have a beginning, a middle and an end. There also could have been more adventures and given the actors more to work with. George shouldn’t have written the screenplays, should have wrote the story, but not the script. I actually thought the Prequels would mostly be on location, like most of the original trilogy. I hate green screen, it is so obvious and bland, I understand why, but, George should have shot the desert scenes, ALL of them, on location.

I’m getting side tracked, sorry. I thought we would see Anakin meeting Obi-wan, them fighting in the Clone Wars, much like Rogue One, a ground battle on location with Jedi and clones. I would have preferred that Padme had lived, so that Leia actually remembers her real mother.

The fight scene in Revenge of the Sith is almost exactly how I imagined it, but I thought he would actually fall INTO the volcano, and crawl out barely alive, or get spewed out by the volcano as he falls in.

I liked the Emperor, for the most part, I wouldn’t have had him cackling and making bad puns with Yoda. I would have kept it serious and dramatic all the way.

I thought we would get suited Vader at the end of Episode II, the trailers fooled us, they had his breathing trailer for Episode II, so I thought he would turn into Vader at the end. Then we would get suited Vader all for Episode III, hunting the Jedi Knights down. I also thought Episode III was going to be called “The Dark Times” or something like that.

Who thought we were going to see Vader at the end of Episode II as well?