Bingowings said:
The only way I can think of preserving the Vader surprise and keep the iconic Obi-Wan/Vader fight is something like this (Maul covered his face with ink but we know Vader didn't do that from ROTJ so a mask seems to make sense) :
But Lord help the poor bugger who tries it.
You'd have to establish that Obi-Wan had other pupils (not just Anakin), the dreaded, "you were my greatest student" cliche' and then go through every frame of the final duel and cover Anakin up so you assume he died saving Mace (and as I said before because Palpatine is so confident of his new apprentice turning you could have him refer to Vader before Anakin's final fall).
So much hard work just to cover up George's terrible screw ups.
I like the idea, but it may be easier to replace Obi's head with Mace's or someone elses. That would leave the work down to a replacement head as opposed to an entire body.
In response to previous posts, I still prefer the Grevious/Maul connection, but not "Grevious as Vader".
Regardless, HOW anyone goes about this is going to be DIFFICULT to say the least to make any edit so the OT payoffs are still a surprise.
(1) I like the Youtube clips posted showing Anakin with the red saber, which helps tell who-is-who during the fight; at the same time, it is a dead giveaway for Anakin being Vader, even if you don't call Anakin "Vader".
(2) you can replace Obi with Mace (and have purple against blue, or if you have all Jedi have blue sabers per the earlier post of Jedi having the same color sabers) or keep it "as-is", you still have the visual problem of not being able to tell who is who in the fight, especially the long shots.
(3) you can replace Anakin with an earlier, cruder "Vader" complete with Samurai-esque armor, but the WORK it would take would be tremendous to get it to look right, though your plot points above Bingo could work.
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In fact, maybe this could be a plot point for the Sith:
maybe all of the Sith members were killed at some point, brought back with the Dark Side of the Force (hereby known as DSOF) and made into cyborgs in a similar way that light sabers were created by combining "magic" with technology.
It is only through the mastery of the DSOF that said Sith Lord is able to rebuild or recreate a body for themself (the Emperor/Senator Palpatine could have a different reason for looking the way he does: instead of Mace reflecting the lightning, maybe the Senator went out into battle ala Julius Caeser and is horribly wounded, thus it is only through the DSOF that he is healed and transformed into a truly evil man. I always thought the build up to the Emperor should have had a man who started off good - a "good king" ala Arthur - but was corrupted into an Uther or Mordred type - think the movie EXCALIBUR but play it backwards character-wise so to speak)
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Also also, I would add these considerations too:
(1) alter/change the Jedi hunting sequences so they aren't simply shot by generic clones/stormtrooper types. I do not know how you would go about this, but to maybe take clips from other movies to show Sith Knights hunting and fighting Jedi Knights by taking scenes from say the beginning of KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (when Liam Neeson and his men are ambushed in the woods) or other such movies, rotoscoping light sabers over the swords and show them taken down by those who actually COULD.
Hell, one of the best things about that fan-made trailer for THE PHANTOM MENACE was the altered BRAVEHEART scene with all of the "scots" running into battle with lightsabers on. If anyone could incorporate such scenes convincingly (for that one, change the grass to sand and place it into AOTC), that would still be better than what we got.
(2) have the jedi temple destroyed from a Star Destroyer fleet bombardment. Whether you make the Jedi temple floating over the regular human city world or on the ground (I still would like to see the Jedi's in a floating city, not just for looks but to signify their attitudes and their disconnect with the people below - which all leads to their literal downfall: if said bombardment is done on said floating city, you could show the city/temple crashing into Coruscant)
Regardless, anything to make the end of the Jedi far more dramatic than what we see...
