Prequel total rewrites...? — Page 3

How many of us are doing these total rewrites? I'm just interested. This project is so time consuming, I've been thinking personally I wish that I could work with someone who had a similar vision and had a story similar to mine where we could just work on it together. To actually get a script would be like a full-time job that I don't think anyone has time for. Because it's Star Wars, it's not like you can even make any money from the project. I think still, there has to be a lot of trust between the writers, because with a total rewrite there are still a lot of new and original ideas that would be introduced. It's a less than ideal situation, but I don't see how any of us are going to actually realistically finish a project like this. Does anyone even have an actual fleshed out treatment? After a year or two, I've only been able to get down the basic plot and happenings of the three movies. I'm about to start writing basic treatments, but I can't imagine ever being able to have time to write three full scripts for fun. How about you guys? How far along are you?

It seems that you're the driving force in keeping this forum going, that would be a shame if you lost interest in a total prequel rewrite.

xhonzi said:

My family and friends who are normally part of my writing projects keep trying to talk me out of it.  Somedays I'm still committed and feel like it's something I have to do.  Other days, I realize that even if I go through with it

1: No one else will like it.
2: I probably won't even like it.
3: No one else will probably even read it.
4: I will have wasted my time.
5: I will probably never finish it.

Assuming you have no intention of having it published, it's really just a free-time activity, right?  Approach it that way:

1) Do you enjoy doing it?
2) Will you enjoy having done it.

From what I hear of writers (I am not one), hardly anyone answers yes to #1.  But if you think you can answer yes to #2, then it might be worth doing.

Then again, your own #2 above indicates your answer to my #2 might be no, so...

Oh, and sorry about all the #1 and #2 - potty training and all I guess.

I'm currently stuck with my rewrite. I'm more than halfway done, but I have to rewrite the last of it and bring everything together. The endeavour is frustrating, and I don't know if I'll ever get around to it. It'd be easier if I had some collaboraters to work with (God knows I know squat about how to write battles in space and hate writing them) but that isn't an option, so I just have to make do.

DuracellEnergizer said:

I'm currently stuck with my rewrite. I'm more than halfway done, but I have to rewrite the last of it and bring everything together. The endeavour is frustrating, and I don't know if I'll ever get around to it. It'd be easier if I had some collaboraters to work with (God knows I know squat about how to write battles in space and hate writing them) but that isn't an option, so I just have to make do.

@xhonzi

I think because it's a fun project, it really doesn't matter whether you have to compromise with other people, because there doesn't have to be a final product that would go to print or be submitted. The things you don't agree with you could just keep your version as long as those things are relatively minor.

@Duracell

More than halfway done with three movies or the first episode? What format are you writing in? A treatment or a script? Novel form?

I'd also really like to work with someone who has a similar vision. I put a little bit of information up about my prequels on xhonzi's post about things to think about. What are yours about?

Edit: Ah, didn't see you have yours posted. I'll give it a read. Thank you for putting it up. =)

[quote=VideInfra78]

@Duracell

More than halfway done with three movies or the first episode?

Thinking about certain story and character elements I'm struck by the notion that the excessive controlling nature of Anakin in Lucas' prequels might have some merit (not in Skywalker of course) but in maybe the pre-New Hope Jedi themselves. 

This isn't a sense of control created by being traditionally power hungry or attachment to loved ones, but more of a matter of getting overtly concerned with the details and traditions rather than the broader importance of being connected with the Force and with others. Not seeing the forest for the trees, so to speak. They avoid being too involved with politics or everyday citizens because at this point in time that's "not how a Jedi does things". 

Now this doesn't make them evil, or even in a position to fall, but it does cause them to ignorant about what the real danger was. They forgot about the dangers of the dark side, forgot to truly understand what could make a Jedi become lured by what it offered. They fail to realize how powerful Palpatine was, and truly fail to comprehend the troubled nature of someone like Anakin. Someone as good as Skywalker, falling as hard as he did, was simply beyond the scope of a group that was more concerned with administrating specific elements than flowing with the force. 

Mrebo said:

@VideInfra78

I've started and I run into the same thoughts/issues as xhonzi.

My ideas are improved from reading other people's scripts/thoughts. Reading xhonzi's beginning really made me rethink how I would start. My idea was Obi Wan's ship being attacked by several small pirate ships near Tatooine, resulting in a crash landing. I like the scene but I think I need to make it more important that a plot device for getting Obi Wan to Tatooine. I think xhonzi has a good idea in jumping right into the Clone Wars.

I've thought it could be neat to have a wiki style editing system in order to construct a prequel many would enjoy. Of course, it could result in middling results.

CWBorne suggested paying homage to "New Hollywood" films. That inspired me to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. While I've yet to get a full sense of the stylistic elements, that movie was inspiring for the relationship between Obi Wan and Anakin. And there is a scene on a cliff that I would be tempted to borrow almost completely.

I guess it could be nice for more of us to post things we've written. I shy away from doing so because I'm afraid of not continuing or I will want to radically revise it and don't want to present something so tentative... And of course, delusions of grandeur make me think I can present a finished product so compelling that others would fall over in awe XD

Maybe I'll post something, since I have been inspired and helped by what others have written. Feedback would be helpful too I suppose.

I'm not really familiar with New Hollywood although I think I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a child, but it was awhile ago. I'm not a big fan of the love triangle angle, although it's better than anything that was on screen in the PT. I think the love triangle worked well in the OT in ESB and to have that again might be kind of a rehash.

I thought that this forum might be a good idea for people to share thoughts but for the reasons you mentioned it seems that not too many of us are interested. At one point it seemed there was a lot of motivation to get something going, but I think it has lost steam.

You reminded me of something that I wanted to put in another post of mine with pirates. And that is that I see a lot of similarities between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Empire in SW.

I've just written a treatment. It's here for all to read: http://kinoflim.blogspot.com/2012/02/alternate-star-wars-prequels-first.html

xhonzi said:

Señor Spielbergo said:

I've just written a treatment. It's here for all to read: http://kinoflim.blogspot.com/2012/02/alternate-star-wars-prequels-first.html

 

Truth be told, as soon as I read Maul, I almost bailed.  And then I read Amidala and I totally bailed.

I started to take a look and liked the intro, but I have to offer the same advice I've offered many times before.

Offered many times before:

Please, for the love of Mike, don't reuse Prequel specific names!

Especially when the entire character has been changed.  It is so very distracting. 

Also, many people will be reading your work to forget the offical Prequels, so don't jump right in and remind them of them.

It is a rewrite. IMHO, even if the characters are different, I'd rather not have to ingest a bunch of made-up names of characters and planets. I'm working around the source material, not completely throwing it out. Familiar character names are for convenience and context.

I hope you can get past your initial presumptions and give my treatment a second chance. I think you'll find that there's some intriguing ideas.

You should change Darth Maul to Darth Darth.

Best user name ever, btw.

xhonzi said:

Offered many times before:

Please, for the love of Mike, don't reuse Prequel specific names!

Especially when the entire character has been changed.  It is so very distracting. 

This. Definitely this.

But with that being said, I appreciate Senor Spielbergo's draft's differences from the Lucas PT. So far I have noticed that Anakin feels more like a real character (if for no other reason than that he *has* some character now), there's no stupidly huge Jedi Order...I like the pacing leading up the final battle, with Anakin speaking to Amidala beforehand and hitting off their romance, then she joins the fight in her ship. Feels more space opera-like than anything Lucas gave us after 1999. 

I'll get to Episodes II and III...

xhonzi said:

Señor Spielbergo said:

I've just written a treatment. It's here for all to read: http://kinoflim.blogspot.com/2012/02/alternate-star-wars-prequels-first.html

 

Truth be told, as soon as I read Maul, I almost bailed.  And then I read Amidala and I totally bailed.

I started to take a look and liked the intro, but I have to offer the same advice I've offered many times before.

Offered many times before:

Please, for the love of Mike, don't reuse Prequel specific names!

Especially when the entire character has been changed.  It is so very distracting. 

Also, many people will be reading your work to forget the offical Prequels, so don't jump right in and remind them of them.

I think we can all agree that the problems with Lucas's PT wasn't that there weren't enough new places and characters, but that all the fundamentals were done poorly. Nobody came in anticipating Dooku, Gungans, Battle Droids, The Trade Federation or any of that. We came in expecting to see and have answered that short list of things we know from the OT that I include in my preface. We wanted to know about Obi-Wan, Anakin, and the Empire.

That being said, I am tackling my version from a film-critical perspective. We need a name for our villain, so I give it as Maul. We know Luke and Leia have a mother, so I name her Amidala. These names weren't the problems in the PT. Their characters' flatness and poor motivation was. If I had known how much PT-SD (see what I did there?) there exists from PT names, I wouldn't have named the Vice Lord of the Exchequer Jar-Jar Binks (<-- this is a joke).

I also think it's slightly arrogant to automatically throw out everything Lucas did in the PT (except for Jar Jar). He had some good ideas, but they mostly got lost in the noise.

So, for example, we know from ANH that Anakin and Obi-Wan fought for an idealistic crusade in the Clone Wars. So in my interpretation, I write the clones as slaves grown in the Outer Rim territories. The Clone Wars are the Republic's crusade to abolish this practice, which is something Obi-Wan and Anakin can believe in idealistically. I also write Palpatine as emerging onto the scene as a mutated slave clone that first helps the Republic eradicate slavery and whose mistreatment eventually leads him to become corrupted by power.

If you can, read it while in your mind you substituting the offending names with others. I hope you do. However, I'm leaving the PT names that I've used so that other film nerds like myself can have context while reading my blog.

http://kinoflim.blogspot.com/2012/02/alternate-star-wars-prequels-first.html

@Spielbergo: I am struggling to figure out what character context is provided by re-using Padme Amidala's name. She's a more interesting character in your treatment, to be sure, but sometimes I catch myself thinking of your new Padme as having that same drab monotone and *total* lack of any personality quirks or emotion, like in the Lucas films ("important Senator and mother of Luke and Leia" doesn't count as a personality)...though that does not seem to be your intention.

I do respect your insistence on trying to accentuate the elements of the PT that you thought were cool, and then crafting other stuff to go with it.

My treatment, though...the one name it has in common with the Lucas PT is "Coruscant".

McFlabbergasty said:

@Spielbergo: I am struggling to figure out what character context is provided by re-using Padme Amidala's name. She's a more interesting character in your treatment, to be sure, but sometimes I catch myself thinking of your new Padme as having that same drab monotone and *total* lack of any personality quirks or emotion, like in the Lucas films ("important Senator and mother of Luke and Leia" doesn't count as a personality)...though that does not seem to be your intention.

I do respect your insistence on trying to accentuate the elements of the PT that you thought were cool, and then crafting other stuff to go with it.

My treatment, though...the one name it has in common with the Lucas PT is "Coruscant".

I can see that. Then again, the films are really about Anakin and Obi-Wan. If you get their characters right, Amidala's character can be improved simply by how she reacts to them. 

I think the line goes that story is action, character is reaction.

One thing I'm trying to cement is the extent of Palpatine's on-screen time. I've already decided to *not* show him using his Force Lightning ability, at least not in the way we see it used in ROTJ. Perhaps he puts his hand on a control panel and sends a surge through it, crippling power to an entire facility and trapping our heroes in some kind of dangerous and seemingly-impossible-to-escape situation.

This occurrence only has the proper narrative precedent, though, if it is established that these prequels are meant to be seen *after* the OT. Same goes with the parentage revelation.

The way I've written it out, there is no need to show the birth of the twins, their placement on the two different planets, or even the cocooning of Anakin inside the suit. Also, I require *some* justification for why the name Darth Vader is chosen for Anakin's alias, otherwise I will skip that scene too.

I'm trying to tell a new story in the Star Wars galaxy that also happens to set up the OT. But the things that happen in this PT ought to make good enough sense on their own, too, not simply "my character exists solely to fulfill this one prerequisite to set up this one background condition for the OT".

The point is to have the consequences that set up the OT emerge organically from the chronicle being told in a remade PT, not simply going through the motions of a space opera story in order set up the bowling pins that will inevitably be knocked down by Hamill, Fisher, and Ford. While that may be a byproduct of a remade PT, I'm trying my best not to make it the sole end.

As for inter-trilogy connections...I  think GL went too far in all the wrong places. I'm trying to write this PT so that there are bridges between the trilogies (other than the obvious fact that one leads to the other and they take place in the same universe)...but either one can almost feel like its own little self-contained series. There's a different overall journey being undertaken in either trilogy. Also, only three characters "diffuse* from this trilogy to the OT (Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Palps). 

Mrebo said:

I think RLM had a point that it should have been the story of Obi Wan Kenobi. In the OT, Obi Wan was there to pass the torch. It is more impactful if Obi Wan was the central heroic figure of the PT rather than the mentor of the hero

...

Alternatively, the central hero could be Luke's mother. Her character is a blank slate. She could be a strong character, urging Kenobi to take her son away where he would not be found. It is through her that Kenobi gains importance as caretaker. [Not sure how to deal with baby Leia yet].

Those are two very appealing constructs, Mrebo, especially the one with Madam Skywalker as the protagonist.

Currently I'm having Obi-Wan be a secondary character (at best) for Episodes I and II, mentoring the protagonist and warning Anakin not to let the hatred he feels for his mortal enemy take control of him. It is only after Anakin goes off the deep end (at the conclusion of Episode II) that Obi-Wan becomes the Gandalf tagging along with our traveling heroes. Before that point he was more analogous to Dumbledore...wise and powerful, but mostly off-screen and concerned with higher affairs at the Jedi Sanctum.

As for Mother Skywalker, here called Jeni, she's had a past relationship with the protagonist ("Ben") that went sour, and then takes an interest in Anakin. But after Anakin goes dark, Jeni acts as a foil to Ben; she knows that there is still good in Anakin, an echo of Luke's attitude towards Vader in ROTJ. It is by this time that Jeni is pregnant with the twins.