Originally posted by: darkhelmet
Good luck! I'd love to see any progress you make.

I find various ideas come and go, start small and then grow as I dwell on them. I'm starting to think that my effort would be better spend on a project of my own so that the fanboys can bitch when i put out a special edition with enhanced footage

But, here's the basic story outline I have so far, such as it is, with a few notes. Like Lucas's original story synopsis, it would likely be very different from the final product, should one ever get made. In other words, what you read here is subject to change, and lots of it.

Also, as much as I love Star Wars, I'm not as well read on the EU or any other sources outside of the movies. So like Lucas, the movies are what I will base the prequels on and unlike Lucas, the movies are the only thing I will remain true to.

The Cloan Wars

That is not a typo. "Cloan" is the name for the recurring villians here. My reasoning is that there was a throwaway line referencing the "Clone Wars" in ANH. In 1977, "clone" was a vague, science fictiony word which could have meant anything. In 2006, the term clone is not only widely understood but has crossed from science fiction to science fact. Who'd a thunk that? I may be reading intentions not in Lucas's original ideas, but I also can't think of a way to work in the concept of cloning. I hated it in the prequels. With the clones and droid armies we basically were given two utterly disposable armies fighting with each other and as such there was no drama because we do not care about any of them. I don't like that. If I can think of a way to make cloning a part of the pplot I will but for now it's not Clone, it's Cloan.

Part 1: A Shooting Star

In the opening crawl we learn the villianous CLOAN ARMADA which has been waging an all-out war to overthrow the REPUBLIC. They have managed to gain a foothold on the peaceful world of ALDERAN, enslaving the planet to use it as a launch pad for further assaults.

The royal family of Alderan has been scattered. Prince Bail Organa struggles with a rebel band of followers to free his world from tyranny while his siter, Princess Amidala is under the protection of the famed Jedi Knight, Obi Wan Kenobi and his apprentice Qui Gon Jin. Forced into hiding, she prays for a chance to strike back at the armada and bring freedom back to her people...

Where's Brian DePalma when you need him?

This sets the stage for all the tension. The problem with the actual prequels is that there is no clear enemy, which was part the plan, but it unfortunately did not work. Star Wars was always a very simple story with very, very clear right and wrong. The muddled morality weakens the story. Worse, it makes the whole series not feel like Star Wars. It feels like the worst rip-off of Star Wars since Krull. It also weakens the narrative. A running thread through the OOT was the presence of Vader as a nemisis. Without that... It just doesn't work right.

Maybe my concept is similarly weak, but let's look at it thus far:

I have set up a struggle with the Republic under attack from an outside force, the Cloan Armada. Why? How do we know they are called the Cloan Armada? Who cares? How did Vader know Luke Skywalker's name by the begining of ESB? Some stuff doesn't really matter as long as the plot gets moving at a good pace. And this is a good pace. We are In Media Res for the Cloan Wars. Do we really need to see the time of peace before the war? I don't think so. All in all, I think this conflict is better for Star Wars than a blockage based on some kind of taxation dispute or whatever the heck it was.

Note how while this concept is a totally teardown of the prequels to start from scratch, I am not above reusing ideas here, such as the characters of Amidala and Qui Gon, although there are somewhat different people than in the actual prequels. I'm not planning on using the name Padme at this time, but Amidala sure as hell won't be going by that. I get that Lucas was trying to use the old saw from the cliffhangers of the dual identity and stuff as well as something from the original story synopsis where the princess was rather plain looking at first but was like a godess at the award ceremony. I just don't see the point of it, personally. Also, I ditched Naboo in favor of making Amidala part of the royal house of Alderan. Simplify things wherever possible. I'm making Qui Gon the apprentice because I think Obi Wan should have two apprentices, for reasons that will become clear later. I do flip flop over whether Obi Wan already has Qui Gon at this point or not, which will be clear later.

We open on the planet Aquilae at night. A shooting star goes by and three speeder whiz by, young people out joyriding. In the speeders are Owen Lars, Benjamin, Anakin Skywalker who has his girlfriend Beru riding with him. They race around. Anakin is easily the best pilot and makes more daring manuvers. They get a strange single on their scanners and land to investigate. Sneaking up on it quietly, they see a small detachment of Cloan Soldiers have landed. They are excited and frightened by this. They observe for a few moments and determine that it is not an invasion but they appear to be looking for something. The head back to their speeders but are spotted. They race away with the Cloan Soldiers in pursuit. Through ariel acrobatics and tactics, they manage to get the pursuing Cloans to crash land, but not before Owen is shot down near an old farm house.

I'm doing a few things here. One, I want to start Anakin as a young man/teenager. I understood the desire to have Anakin start as a small boy, but I didn't like it. If he was too old, Luke was positively ancient. Benjamin may have a red shirt on him at this point unless i manage to handle him right. Fans of the OOT probably can guess he's doomed.

I couldn't figure out how Owen could be Luke's uncle. Owen's name is Lars, but Beru does not seem like a Skywalker, and I hated the overcomplicated family ties in the actual prequels. Basically stepbrothers, right? Instead, I thought it would be good to make owen and Anakin just real good friends. People have their children call especially close friends aunt or uncle even though there is no actual relation. I kind of like this because it gives us a reason to give a fig about Owen and Beru and makes there eventual deaths all the more tragic. At least for this first installment, we will see them actually engage in the struggle so that their decision to become simple farmers is a very real choice. They tried being amoung the movers and shakers in a galactic struggle, and decided it was not for them. But I am getting ahead of myself. Also, I made Beru Anakin's girlfriend here because it will give some potential tension when Anakin falls for the princess and Beru decides to go with owen instead. We'll see how I handle that.

A man comes out of the farm house. It turns out to be Obi Wan Kenobi, the famous Jedi Knight. He congratulates the young people on their stunt flying and check on Owen to make sure he is OK. ObiWan decides this planet is no longer safe and tells the princess that they should leave. The young people ask if they can come with them, but ObiWan refuses because it is too dangerous and that they should go home and he watches them speed away.

Obiwan, his apprentice and the princess secret away to a space port In the hopes of meeting a contact for safe passage to a new hiding place. The princess is accousted by roughians. obiwas and his apprentice defend her and are helped by the youths who has followed them. ObiWan relutantly agrees to let them come along.

The escape and are contacted by Bail Organa who asks them to return to Alderan to help with the battle against the Cloans. The return and ensuing fighting occurs involving the Cloan battle plattform, which is a space station that is in synchronous orbit around the planet because it has a long elevator that leads from the planet surface all the way to the platform in space.

During the ensuing action:

* Anakin and Amidala start a romantic interlude
* Beru and Owen also kindle a romantic spark
* Benjamin dies in ObiWan's arms, giving him a guilty concious about bringing the kids along
* Anakin's skills and force potential becomes apparent to ObiWan
* The platform is destroyed, the Cloans are defeated, Alderan is saved. Yay!

At the end, Obi Wan invites Anakin to train under him to be a Jedi Knight, even though having more than one apprentice at the same time is unheard of for the Jedi. He accepts. Owen decides that this is not the life for him and will return home. He asks Anakin to come with him, but Anakin says he is staying. There is a tearful separation between Beru and Anakin that is similar to the ending of Casablanca but she eventually gets on the transport. Obiwan, Quigon, Anakin holding hands with Amidala watch it depart.

Fade out.

A lot of this is pretty sketchy right now. I think the prioncess needs some kind of mcGuffin to give the Cloans a reason to seek her out. I mean, they took over her planet. Why do they need her? Beats me. It's in the script.

Naturally, we'd be seeing all kinds of ass-kicking on the part of the priciples, including Bail Organa. Fleshing out his character and the planet Alderan will help make its destruction all the more potent.

There are two things I want to try to avoid in these prequels that the actual prequels did:

1) outdoing the OOT. A big land and space battle was how the OOT closed, so what's that doing in TPM? Double Light saber? R2D2 flying? WTF? The Star Wars series always built with each episode trying to outdo the previous episode in some way. But these movies are supposed to come before those movies, so they shouldn't outdo them. It is a difficult task to make these movies work well as the first three episodes of a series while being interesting to today's audiences.

2) no friggin' cameos!. i didn't like how R2D2, C3PO, Greedo, Chewbacca and probably others were just kind of dropped into the movies. it felt cheep, like "Oh look, there's so-and-so from the OOT" I hate that. Actors appearing is OK, like Warwick Davis. I also don't mind 98 Degrees, to be frank. It's not like they'd be singing. But characters should be there if they matter, and for most of these folks, they don't.