Although it is tempting to show the story from Luke’s point of view, it’s impossible to do this for the prequels. Therefore, I propose making Yoda the true viewpoint in the story with Luke as the student he views from afar:
Open with Luke seeing a battle in the sky. He goes to see his friends and talk with Biggs, then returns home. The footage begins blurry and indistinct, almost dreamlike, but gets sharper and clearer as the scene progresses. The next day, a sandcrawler arrives with two droids. Luke cleans them and discovers a mysterious transmission. He tells his uncle about it, saying that it might belong to Old Ben, but his uncle dismisses it. Luke goes to contemplate his choices at the sunset.
Two Jedi stare out at the city at sunset. Inside the temple, the Jedi council tests Anakin on his abilities and feelings. Yoda explains that he senses much fear in Anakin, stemming from his fear of losing his mother. Transition to the Naboo palace at sunset, which has been made to look like another part of the Jedi temple, and Yoda declares that Obi-wan is a Jedi Knight and that Anakin will be one as well.
That night, Luke finds R2 has left and can do nothing else until morning.
Cut to the homestead in the daytime. Owen and Beru greet Anakin, and Clieg Lars informs him of his mother’s disappearance. Anakin kisses Padme goodbye and speeds off in search of her.
Cut to Luke searching the desert for R2. He finds the droid and Ben, who tells him all about the Jedi.
Obi-wan voices his concern to Mace and Yoda about Anakin’s abilities, and his emotional connection with Padme. They urge him to trust the boy.
Luke sees the wreckage of the sandcrawler and the burning homestead.
Yoda senses Anakin’s pain, and we see Anakin returning to the homestead with his mother, who is then buried.
Luke makes his decision to become a Jedi like his father.
Amid Anakin’s desolation, R2 arrives with the distress call. Anakin and Padme decide to rescue Obi-wan, the person Anakin considers to be like his father. The ship leaves Tatooine
The Falcon blasts off from Tatooine into Hyperspace.
Anakin and Padme confess their love, are brought into the arena, and Obi-wan jokes about the rescue attempt. The Jedi intervene in the games and Yoda arrives with the clones. Dooku reveals the existence of the Death Star.
Obi-wan senses a disturbance in the Force, Luke takes his first step into a larger world.
Obi-wan remarks on the victory of the clones, but Yoda says otherwise. The Senators watch the ships depart, the beginning of the Empire. Anakin and Padme are married.
In space, Imperial ships gather. Vader is summoned, and sees the rebel base on Hoth.
Luke collapses in the snow, and sees a vision of Obi-wan telling him to go to Yoda.
He leaves immediately and finds Yoda, but in the meantime his friends must flee Hoth.
Luke senses that his friends are in danger, but can do nothing.
Anakin has a dream of Padme dying in childbirth.
Luke faces the Dark Side Tree.
Anakin has visions of the future, but Yoda cautions him against acting on them.
Luke decides to leave. Yoda cannot dissuade him.
Anakin sits in the Jedi council chambers, torn between the Jedi and love.
Luke faces Vader alone. He fails, but he is rescued on the Falcon. They escape Cloud City.
Here follow several scenes of Episode 3, starting with Anakin comforting Padme after the Temple massacre. Obi-wan enters to discover where he has gone, and we see Vader killing the separatist leaders. Padme confronts him, then Obi-wan. Yoda waits on the asteroid awaiting news, and Bail arrives telling him of Obi-wan’s arrival.
Luke returns to Dagobah, and Yoda tells him all about the mission ahead. He dies.
After this there are some flashes, distorted voices, strange noises. The image of a throne room appears, a door opens. Luke and Vader meet the Emperor on the only Death Star to be introduced in this edit. Their confrontation leads to the death of Vader and the Emperor, but as Luke stares into the funeral pyre, Yoda’s words echo – ‘Pass on what you have learned’.
There is a vision of a temple, Luke confronting a student, the temple in ruins, Luke hiding on an island. There is darkness, but then Rey comes to Luke’s door, bearing his old lightsaber. Some of the scenes from the island in TLJ are played here, and eventually Yoda appears to Luke to give him one final lesson. Luke then becomes a legend, dying in front of the binary sunset.
Amazing insight as always Neverar.
I feel once Rise of Skywalker comes around we will see a lot more edits like these, hoping to tell concise stories whilst using all the films at their disposal.
I think it’s a great idea to use Yoda as the centerpiece.
For me Yoda and Luke are two sides of the same coin. They both represent where the Jedi went wrong, but also how they must move on from the horrors of the past for a brighter future. Using Yoda as the main character allows us as an audience to view the successes/failures and similarities of Anakin and Luke’s story from the masters perspective, allowing us to view the Jedi from an objective outside standpoint.
The main reason I wanted to make this edit in the first place was because I wanted to show the main story using all the films as concisely as possible.
In the prequels the Jedi justify the war and compromise their beliefs. They choose to fight and turn from peacekeepers to generals. This leads to their ultimate demise. This idea is conveyed by both Anakin and Luke’s decisions. Anakin decides to give in to power and temptation, and decides that fighting/the darkside is justified in order to prevent Padme’s death.
When Luke goes to face Ben in the temple he is faced with the almost exact circumstances anakin does. He hears the sounds of murder and death as he says “he would bring pain and death at the end of everything that I love because of what he could become and for the briefest moment I thought I could stop it”. Luke doesn’t make the same mistake, but the fact that the beliefs of the jedi were part of the reason this happened is why the jedi need to end.
In order to prevent the darkness, the jedi fight, thus becoming the darkness. One of the first inspirations for this edit was that I wanted to simultaneously portray these two storythreads. I think using yoda could be a great way to make this happen. Especially because of what is signified at the Force Tree and with Luke.