McFlabbergasty said:
That would certainly be interesting to see, where Leia got her spunkiness from. Is Darelda a statesman in your draft, or does she have a different occupation?
I'm actually trying to focus as much as possible on new characters. Currently, the only OT characters we ever see are Anakin, Obi-Wan, Palpatine, and Bail Organa. And no Lucas PT-exclusive characters ever appear.
Ben Cortel is simultaneously known and unknown to the audience when we see his exploits in the PT. I am trying to set things up so that his influence can be "felt" upon re-watching the OT.
I think Ben is well-grounded in the reality constructed by the OT because his name was actually uttered several times.
Some of Ben's character traits transfer by osmosis to Obi-Wan, Luke, and Han. He finds a greater destiny to pledge himself to, in a manner similar to Luke in the OT. Ben also addresses my concern with the PT that there was no suave, free-wheeling, lady-killer type of character like Han was in the OT. I consciously avoided casting any wise and venerable older Jedi Knights as a protagonist for fear of falling into the same traps as the Lucas PT.
Interesting. I do the exact opposite, partially because I want to challenge Lucas' ideas, and show how his themes could been done in a good way ;P. Also, since the path of the Jedi is so important to understand, I think it is important to show how these people should have acted, what ideals they embody, and, above all, how they could be plausible flawed. That is, after all, the core theme of the story.
So, I do use Mace Windu and others. Also, these characters have an image, it's easy to conjure up their faces to the mind's eye, and since SW is a very visual story, I think that dimension is important, at least to me.