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Idea: Radically altering the Prequel Trilogy storyline one film at a time

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 (Edited)

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.

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Johannus said:

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?

There are people who think the films are fine as they are? ;-)

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We can't see giant images that get cut off because they're too wide.

Also, approximately none of that looks like it actually needs to be an image, which mean it's essentially wasting bandwidth. Text please.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

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timdiggerm said:

We can't see giant images that get cut off because they're too wide.

Also, approximately none of that looks like it actually needs to be an image, which mean it's essentially wasting bandwidth. Text please.

Yeah sorry just getting used to posting the images so edited them down now and as it goes on the images are more annotated so I did these in the same way so as to carry on that style, I'll make sure they all fit from now on.

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Just reduce the dimensions by half and then people could right click on them and see them full sized.

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Thanks!

But why big images containing text? It's inefficient and makes the page slower. I guess I can understand having the pictures of the characters (although I think we all know what they look like), but you can easily have just the little pictures along with regular text, instead of great-big-image-files.

ROTJ Storyboard Reconstruction Project

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timdiggerm said:

Thanks!

But why big images containing text? It's inefficient and makes the page slower. I guess I can understand having the pictures of the characters (although I think we all know what they look like), but you can easily have just the little pictures along with regular text, instead of great-big-image-files.

Its because i have been making these on my computer as flat image files which can then be uploaded to any number of sites with the information all self contained.  I think there are about 22 images altogether (which obviously I will scale down accordingly now I know how) but yeah they do all contain the text, if you think its a problem I can take them apart to type the text next to them as you suggest, but personally I think it is easier to keep it all together.  What do you suggest?

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So thats the story that I think could be told using the footage available, with a minimum amount of extra scenes or extending scenes or anything like that, and I think what would need to be done can be mostly done on the computer rather than actually filming extra stuff.

 

I would love to get some feedback.

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I'm trying to digest it all. I agree, this is a better story overall, and I admit this is probably the way Lucas should have approached it. But I'm afraid that maybe David Blaine and Criss Angel are too busy to help on this?

 

Seriously, I'm just joking. I just can't figure out how to execute these ideas personally. I would LOVE to be proven wrong however.

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 (Edited)

This film is a few years old now so it may be possible at some point to put Hayden's face on another body convincingly but I'm still skeptical....nah it can never be done*

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I wouldn't say it can NEVER be done.... Effects houses do it already. And there was a time that ONLY an effects house could do the things that Ady  and others are doing now. So to say it can never be done is probably not true.

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Ok but if this could be done keeping the characters looking like Obi Wan and Qui Gon as per the original, but telling the story in this way and redubbing Qui Gon to be called Anakin then it would make a huge continuity error between episodes 1 and 2 but besides that I think it would allow for the story to improve so much that the benefits might outweigh that one error. 

Glad you like the story though. 

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You might want to introduce this stuff in the scriptwriting forum.

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TV's Frink said:

You might want to introduce this stuff in the scriptwriting forum.

This.

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Johannus said:

Ok but if this could be done keeping the characters looking like Obi Wan and Qui Gon as per the original, but telling the story in this way and redubbing Qui Gon to be called Anakin then it would make a huge continuity error between episodes 1 and 2 but besides that I think it would allow for the story to improve so much that the benefits might outweigh that one error. 

Glad you like the story though. 

So we are to suspend belief and pretend that Liam Neeson is Anakin? Correct me if this is not what you are suggesting.

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mrbenja0618 said: 

So we are to suspend belief and pretend that Liam Neeson is Anakin? Correct me if this is not what you are suggesting.

If that is the closest that technology will allow us to achieve then yes.  Ideally I think it would be better if we could replace the actors as suggested, but like people have pointed out this whilst not impossible would be very difficult.  More possible would be filming a new actor as a young Anakin, which I wouldn't object to given the poor acting at present.  But again it would be difficult without a lot of money.  Accepting a 'recast' Anakin between episodes 1 and 2, whilst not ideal would be the easiest to achieve from an editing point of view as it would only require a few name changes. 

I can see you think this is ridiculous, and I'm not presenting it as a small thing.  But personally I think the existing prequel storyline is ridiculous (given the source material from the original trilogy).  Therefore, I'm saying the benefits might outweigh the problems.  I did say from the outset it was going to contain radical ideas :)

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TV's Frink said:

You might want to introduce this stuff in the scriptwriting forum.

Oh and the reason I posted here instead of the scriptwriting forum is just because I haven't attempted to write a script, or even a really original story.  I've just tried to edit the existing material into a better story.  (Though there are a few parts where I had to try to find additional bits to make it flow).  But most of the notations I have made relate to how the existing material could be edited to tell that story, from a fan editing point of view, so I just felt this forum was more appropriate.

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It's pretty much a proposal for an edit (an ambitious edit with lots of almost impossible face mapping but who knows what might be possible in a few years time?).

Much of the story and the footage remains as in the theatrical versions but re-shuffled.

Many of the radical edit ideas on here follow the same lines  so it while it's a difficult thread for a Mod to place, I personally think it fits in here (even if it's just food for thought) but it does straddle both areas.

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Here's my advice:

Write a screenplay of this great story you have. When done, get help from other people in cleaning up your script for a final draft.

Get as much footage from the prequels as you could possibly use for this.

Buy a camera.

Get a group of actors who look like the characters. (actually, the only likenesses that matter are Obi and Anakin)

Get a green screen

Find some locations.

Film them.

Have someone (ady?) help you with visual effects.

Win!

It may seem really hard, but it's more realistic than doing it as a fanedit. You could also revisit this idea in 20 years or so when technology is better. I like your idea, but this idea would need about 100 people working on it, and not just over the internet.

That's my two pence.

 

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 (Edited)

You have a pretty hefty load of ideas there.

Perhaps sit down and write the story out and then proceed?

 

 

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I've often thought of re-writing the prequels. It would be interesting. I enjoyed the animated prequels thread that used to be fairly active as well.

I keep hoping that in my lifetime, maybe once Lucas leaves us, his daughter may have the sense to reboot the prequels and find some amazing directors to completely re-imagine them.

I know way back in the day, Lucas planned on handling the prequels in a similar way as the OT. He was to direct the first, and then he would hire 2 directors to finish. Names in the running were Steven Spielberg and James Cameron at the time. So, basically we probably would have still gotten TPM, but maybe some amazing follow-ups to wash the bad taste out of our mouths.