The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 224

You are right, Mr Ghostface. I think it's a bit of a tricky situation: Star Wars is so ingrained in popular culture that it doesn't seem really necessary to introduce anything in the prequels. I don't think the movies are worse for it, but on the other hand, Lucas does insist 1-6 is the story.

Also, characters like Yoda and Jango Fett are just thrown into the story. In the prequels, their characters are who they were in the stories that technically haven't happened yet. They are not characters of their own.

And how about an in-movie explanation? Does Jar-Jar know what a Jedi or the Force is? He doesn't question it, because the audience doesn't have to question it, but does he, as a character, know? Anakin seems to know, but does he know who Yoda is?

I understand that (re)introducing everything would be tedious, but it might also have been a nice way to learn something more about the things we already knew, and thus fleshing out the story/characters/world of Star Wars.

^I'm with SilverKey.  I wish the stories could be watched for the first time as 1-6 while remaining equally enjoyable for us to watch 4-6, 1-3.

Mr Ghostface said:

Well, of course it doesn't introduce us to anything, it ISN'T the first movie in a series. It's the fourth. Hence it's a prequel, meaning it was made after another movie but it takes place before. It assumes knowledge of the previous movies. Just because it takes place before doesn't mean it has to begin all over again with introductions to things that virtually everyone going to see it already knew about.

No one in 1999 was going to see The Phantom Menace wondering what it was about. They went to see it because it was a new Star Wars movie. So the introduction to the universe would be unnecessary.

This is all well and good, but Lucas expects people to start with TPM now, not ANH.

Agreed. You can call it the fourth movie, but you can't get past the fact that it's called Episode I. And new SW viewers if they had any sense wouldn't get past the first film, because it's so screwed over.... It doesn't explain certain things well enough and over explains the things that we should get just by watching the film with our eyes open.

TV's Frink said:

Mr Ghostface said:

Well, of course it doesn't introduce us to anything, it ISN'T the first movie in a series. It's the fourth. Hence it's a prequel, meaning it was made after another movie but it takes place before. It assumes knowledge of the previous movies. Just because it takes place before doesn't mean it has to begin all over again with introductions to things that virtually everyone going to see it already knew about.

No one in 1999 was going to see The Phantom Menace wondering what it was about. They went to see it because it was a new Star Wars movie. So the introduction to the universe would be unnecessary.

This is all well and good, but Lucas expects people to start with TPM now, not ANH.

Who cares what Lucas thinks? It's not like he got the prequels right in many other respects either, is it? He

TV's Frink said:

Mr Ghostface said:

Well, of course it doesn't introduce us to anything, it ISN'T the first movie in a series. It's the fourth. Hence it's a prequel, meaning it was made after another movie but it takes place before. It assumes knowledge of the previous movies. Just because it takes place before doesn't mean it has to begin all over again with introductions to things that virtually everyone going to see it already knew about.

No one in 1999 was going to see The Phantom Menace wondering what it was about. They went to see it because it was a new Star Wars movie. So the introduction to the universe would be unnecessary.

This is all well and good, but Lucas expects people to start with TPM now, not ANH.

Who cares what Lucas thinks? It's not like he got the prequels right in many other respects either, is it? There's no real way around it, the prequels are written as continuations for the audience, regardless of the chronology of the events they're depicting. You can watch Memento in chronological order if you want to, but it wasn't intended that way and doesn't work as well.

timdiggerm said:

Mr Ghostface said:

Who cares what Lucas thinks? It's not like he got the prequels right in many other respects either, is it? There's no real way around it, the prequels are written as continuations for the audience, regardless of the chronology of the events they're depicting. You can watch Memento in chronological order if you want to, but it wasn't intended that way and doesn't work as well.

While this is true, Memento is a bad example because the movie is edited into the order it's shown in. It takes significant work to both watching it in chronological order.

Star Wars, on the other hand, has six distinct parts which, with absolutely no effort, you can watch in any order. Now, if you have six things, labelled 1 - 6, which do you think you're going to watch first? Probably not 4.

timdiggerm said:

Mr Ghostface said:

Who cares what Lucas thinks? It's not like he got the prequels right in many other respects either, is it? There's no real way around it, the prequels are written as continuations for the audience, regardless of the chronology of the events they're depicting. You can watch Memento in chronological order if you want to, but it wasn't intended that way and doesn't work as well.

While this is true, Memento is a bad example because the movie is edited into the order it's shown in. It takes significant work to both watching it in chronological order.

Star Wars, on the other hand, has six distinct parts which, with absolutely no effort, you can watch in any order. Now, if you have six things, labelled 1 - 6, which do you think you're going to watch first? Probably not 4.

 If I'd never heard of Star Wars, then yeah, 1-6. But people have heard of Star Wars, and in 1999 when these movies were made everyone had heard of Star Wars. Movies aren't made so that a generation down the line if someone comes across them they will know the history behind them, they're made for the audience that sees them when they're first released.

timdiggerm said:

Mr Ghostface said:

Who cares what Lucas thinks? It's not like he got the prequels right in many other respects either, is it? There's no real way around it, the prequels are written as continuations for the audience, regardless of the chronology of the events they're depicting. You can watch Memento in chronological order if you want to, but it wasn't intended that way and doesn't work as well.

While this is true, Memento is a bad example because the movie is edited into the order it's shown in. It takes significant work to both watching it in chronological order.

Star Wars, on the other hand, has six distinct parts which, with absolutely no effort, you can watch in any order. Now, if you have six things, labelled 1 - 6, which do you think you're going to watch first? Probably not 4.

If I'd never heard of Star Wars, then yeah, 1-6. But people have heard of Star Wars, and in 1999 when these movies were made everyone had heard of Star Wars. Movies aren't made so that a generation down the line if someone comes across them they will know the history behind them and all that, they're made for the audience that sees them when they're first released. The Phantom Menace was never going to be written as if it were something brand new, was it. That would be dumb. It's not like audiences of the original movies thought they better hold off for the first three episodes. The Star Wars movies were written to play in the order they were made. Lucas and some fans might want them to work in story order, but they simply weren't written that way. It's just the way it is.

That's exactely the point we're discussing, Mr Ghostface.

Since the movies don't play in order, what was really the point in making them? Why not make a trilogy set after the original trilogy? We are discussing what might make them work in order.

Maybe someone should just remove the episode numbers from the titles and just make the two trilogies into, well, two trilogies. 

Not to mention this is the Prequel Radical Idea thread.

Bingo, I like the Geonosis becomes Tatooine idea, at least regarding the first film.

You were asking how would Shmi end up on Tatooine?

Maybe it's a system abandoned by the bad guys of the clone wars and the republic steps in to settle it?

They encourage farmers and such to colonize it and so the Lars family steps up and moves from Geonosis to Tatooine.

It's too bad there's not more footage of a young owen to set up more confrontation between him and anakin over the latter wanting to leave when owen gives him the tantalizing prospect of staying.

Oh man, you could parallel ESB when Yoda encourages Luke to stay and finish his training rather than go help his friends.

You could do something similar with episode 2 where it's owen encouraging anakin to stay on tatooine with his mother and not return to the fight to help a friend(obi-wan captured by dooku).

In the post you seem to be referring to I was wildly suggesting the other way around but I've suggested that way around in the past (which makes more sense but means the Luke's big nowhere gets even more important and even more coverage).

It would create another reason why the general population really don't like droids that much and how the Jawa's make so much money (clearing old battlefields).

But then you have to make more of the coincidence that Obi-Wan tracks Fett to the same planet that A) Anakin has simultaneously arrived on and B) that he keeps getting pulled to.

If in doubt blame the Force (and 'des-tiny').

Oh I'm sorry. I thought you were saying on in your recnt posts you could change Tatooine in Episode One to be Geonosis.

I agree with that. However, I also brought up the idea of keeping Tatooine in the later episodes but having it be a world formerly ruled or governed by the bad guys of the clone wars that is then abandoned by the time of episode two.

That way you could then place shmi on tatooine as in the existing film. The idea would be the lars family moved from geonosis to tatooine between the events of episodes one and two to settle tatooine.

Maybe Cliegg Lars lost his leg in the clone wars and he's an old veteran who was given land on tatooine as part of his pension? :D

You also suggested maybe geonosians like podracing too. Well, there are shots in the podrace that look alot more geonosian than tatooine-ish so I agree with that.

Then there are the parts in AOTC where anakin is on his speeder looking for his mother passing through tatooine landscape that looks geonosian.

Oh my head.

But I'm all for turning tatooine in TPM into geonosis. But geonosis needs to bve the red rock world and tatooine needs to be distinct from it: sand. Lots and lots of sand and flat plains.

I don't know how much this could be done but maybe instead of having the water-ball ballet at the Opera House in ROTS, there could be a propaganda piece about how the evil Jedi Dooku had started the war and was defeated by the efforts of the Grand Army and The Chancellor.

It would show how the regime was already twisting the story against the Jedi and in favour of Palpatine and serve as a better parallel to Palpatine's grooming of Anakin.

Bingowings said:

I don't know how much this could be done but maybe instead of having the water-ball ballet at the Opera House in ROTS, there could be a propaganda piece about how the evil Jedi Dooku had started the war and was defeated by the efforts of the Grand Army and The Chancellor.

It would show how the regime was already twisting the story against the Jedi and in favour of Palpatine and serve as a better parallel to Palpatine's grooming of Anakin.

^Agreed.

A real missed opportunity is that Palpatine could have insinuated that it was the Jedi behind the war.  He could have suggested Dooku was colluding with the Jedi council to perpetuate the war, and they used it to build their power to take over the Republic.  The Sith were just a proxy on which to place blame.  What about the mysterious Jedi that supposedly ordered the clone army?  It seems such an obvious thing to do.

In the same vein instead of Anakin actually killing children Clone Troopers could enter the council chambers armed with sabers taken from fallen Jedi.

They could kill the children but the archive footage could be doctored so it looks as if Anakin did it.

That way Vader looks more vile in the eyes of Obi-Wan and the story that comes from Padme's lips seems as more evidence to Anakin that the Jedi are the problem not the new Emperor.

i quite like the idea that they were watching a military parade

Bingowings said:

In the same vein instead of Anakin actually killing children Clone Troopers could enter the council chambers armed with sabers taken from fallen Jedi.

Hello there! Long time reading this boards, but never really post something. And I must say, you guys rocks in terms of creating something new from very sad PT. I just hope that ideas from here one day became a part of really cool edit.

Something came to my mind today. It's a little crazy idea, but what if we replace Jar-Jar on C-3PO?

For example, in Episode I, C-3PO could be that servant droid on trade fed's ship in the very beginning, who sought a chance to escape from his greedy masters when jedi show up. Hi sneaks onto one of the ships after jedi and lands on the planet. When Qui-Gon run through the forest he might see him (here we replace JJ with droid) and so on. Then they meet Obi-Wan and Threepio say, that he knows the way to the city (cut underwater sequence entirely). Movie continues as usual, except we see Threepio and no Jar-Jar. When on Tatooine, we smoothly cut meeting Threepio with R2, then roto/replace/cut the footage with Binks and Threepio to create one golden droid from both gungan and non-covered C-3PO.

In other two movies similar things may be done. I just seen a footage and it really could work. Of course, this almost impossible and would require shooting an actor with a suit and a massive redub and effects work, but who knows..

Sorry for spelling, my english is not so perfect)

there would be a large bank of anthony daniels material from the clone wars cartoon which could be good.

Yeah, good point. This might help with voice of C-3PO, but other characters will need a new lines too.