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I think not having Anakin clearly being Luke’s father would be impossible to do unless you also edited the OT, since Obi-Wan refers to Anakin’s saber as his father’s lightsaber. To me, this would defeat the whole purpose of the edit, since you are trying to bend the prequels to conform to the Original Trilogy as we know it.
It would be a cool experiment to try to preserve the twist, but I just wonder if not showing Anakin’s fall would be worth it. It would be like Othello or Faust without their descents into tragedy.
I mean, the whole point of the prequels is to show Anakin’s fall.
I think the only way you could possibly make it work is if Anakin still fell to the dark side, but we assume he died on Mustafar. You would have to establish that Obi-Wan had other students, and that other Jedi may have possibly turned to the dark side. Maybe the briefing scene could be changed to Obi-Wan giving a lesson to his new students, with some new dialogue or a different hologram that helps imply it is a lesson rather than a war room briefing. Or maybe a new shot of some Jedi surrendering to Anakin in the temple raid.
So the audience watching chronologically would still know Obi is lying, but we just be surprised that the twist was different than we thought it was.
But, if you want to save the twist for the OT, you would still be recontextualizing ANH by having Obi still clearly be lying in the audience’s perspective.
Alternatively, you could, like you said, have the last time we see Anakin is in the temple, maybe the rumination scene. But we don’t see him leave the temple. And maybe you could trim ROTS so Anakin’s turn is being set up less. When the Jedi go to arrest Palpatine, maybe the person who saves him is left ambiguous.
So when the temple burns, we are left to assume that Anakin is still there and may have also died. We never go to Mustafar, and like you suggested, have the climax be between Yoda and Sidious. Padmé has the babies and goes into hiding like in Hal’s because she has Jedi children. You still need to imply that Obi-Wan had more students though.
But I feel like even if one were to watch the films this way, after the twist is revealed, the audience would want to know how Anakin became Darth Vader. When did he become more machine than man? When did Obi-Wan find out Anakin was Vader?
By not showing how it happened, you sort of end up in the same place where you want to see how it happened.
Maybe Obi-Wan could find Anakin’s lightsaber in the Jedi temple. Create an insert of him picking it up. Maybe Obi-Wan could still watch the security hologram, but we don’t see what he sees.
Regardless of this change, you still have the error of the ROTJ line “Obi-Wan once thought as you do.” Unless you interpret it as Obi-Wan once thought Anakin was good before he turned evil, but it seems to imply Obi-Wan still thought there was a chance to save Anakin after he turned.
And if you wanted to save all of the reveals, like what Yoda looks like. You’re left with barely any climax for ROTS.
So you either have:
No Yoda in Prequels, Anakin turns but not implied to be Vader
or
Yoda in the Prequels, Anakin’s turn to the dark side is not shown and fate left ambiguous.
You would be left with very little if you had neither Yoda vs Sidious or Anakin vs Obi-Wan as the final battle. Even if you added as many deleted scenes as possible, you would be left with a pretty short movie. I think you would have to add a lot of extra material, somehow.
The only way I see that you can make it work is if you make edits of both the prequels and the original trilogy to make it work. It would be cool to see, but I also think it sort of defeats the original purpose of modifying the PT to match the continuity and the reveals of the OT as-is.
Despite my doubts, if someone could figure it out then I still would be interested in seeing it, but there is a lot you have to figure out and I don’t know if you would have much left by the end of it.