I’ve been thinking of a way to make the prequels tell a better story for a while now and it seems to me that a big part of fixing the story requires making the stories much more simple. This might not please people who think the films are fine as they are but look at the title, you really couldn’t have expected me to say leave them as they are right? Well one problem seems to be the politics, it slows the story down and whilst it does show a reasonably good explaination for how the republic collapses, it doesn’t make for a great story. Another thing I disliked was seeing a new badguy every film as it just took time to introduce the new characters and didn’t allow them to develop properly.

So I was thinking if Maul remained the main badguy with Dooku being his master, it allows Palpatine to remain more in the background so everyone doesn’t seem silly for not seeing that coming sooner. Also rather than have a badly executed friendship story between Anakin and Obi Wan, and love story between Anakin and Padme, just start the story with Anakin and Obi Wan being friends, and have the majority of the love story take place between Episodes 1 and 2 and then just hinted at on screen.

Now this all sounds far too difficult with the footage we have without ending up with very short films, and it probably is. But personally I would rather have lower quality footage if it meant a better story overall, so some very rough edits and cuts might allow us to see how the story would work, though in reality we would have to just overlook some technical flaws.

With that in mind I want to present a sort of illustrated storyboard of how I think the first of the prequels should be made. The yellow text tells the story, the red text provides notes on the ideas and the editing possibilities, and the images provide a rough guide, nothing more, yet.

With that said I hope it sparks some ideas and I would love to hear feedback. Whether or not it can lead to an edit this ambitious I don’t know but just keep looking and we’ll see.