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Anakin should have become Darth Vader before the last 10 minutes of Episode III

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I’ve felt (like many others) that the ending of Revenge of the Sith feels really rushed, and that Anakin should have gotten into the Darth Vader suit before the very ending of the last movie. (Also Padmé shouldn’t have died onscreen, but that’s probably a topic for a whole 'nother thread) I had though we were gonna see him “hunting down and destroying the Jedi Knights” instead of the Clones. I wonder if it would have been much better had he gotten his Darth suit more towards the beginning, or at least the halfway point of ROTS.

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Think that would have been better! And instead of the clones fighting for the republic, they should have been the enemy imho. Like it was hinted at in the early EU (especially in the Thrawn trilogy).

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Darth Caliban said:

Think that would have been better! And instead of the clones fighting for the republic, they should have been the enemy imho. Like it was hinted at in the early EU (especially in the Thrawn trilogy).

Yes! Just one example of the great universe-building in those books. I really like what Mr. Plinkett says in the Clones video about them being cloned monsters that threaten the galaxy. Also, while we’re on the subject I think the Clone wars should have been going on before or at least begin at the start of Episode I. There’s a war going on at the start of SW (which I know that was the point), but it would be a more interesting way to start your space adventure series.

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I think there should have been more than 3 movies, the phantom menace should have been it’s own story with no Episode number. Something like “In the beginning…”

Episode II now the new Episode I
Episode III now being the Episode II

At the end of the new Episode II, the duel happens, Kenobi doesn’t see what happens to Anakin, he falls over and Kenobi assumes he’s dead. This is the cliffhanger Kenobi and Padme leave and the closest planet is Alderaan. Bail Organa greets Kenobi and the injured Padme. Meanwhile, the injured Anakin is found by the Emperor as they fly into space and iris out, it’s the end of the movie.

Episode III begins after the scroll as we follow the Emperor’s ship coming out of light speed and arriving on the planet. We see Darth Vader being assembled but we can’t see his face, it’s more like building a machine. We watch as the twins are born on Alderaan.

Yoda has the same talk with Bail and Kenobi, but Yoda takes Luke with him to Dagobah until Kenobi can figure out what’s happening with Chancellor Palpatine. He arrives on Coruscant and goes to his office to speak to him, but the guards won’t let him in.

Kenobi can sense something, something dark and evil, yet very familiar. He decides to leave and return later.

A scene of the Emperor talking to Vader about his planned Death Star project and how it’s already in production. This will keep the systems under control.

Vader wipeouts all remaining Jedi on Coruscant with his newly constructed red lightsaber.

The movie eventually leads up to Vader confronting Kenobi and it’s a draw, badly wounded, Kenobi flys to Dagobah to ask Master Yoda what they should do, he orders him to take young Luke to Tatooine to live with his family, he promises to watch over him.

Same ending of Episode III.

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CarboniteSolo said:

I think there should have been more than 3 movies, the phantom menace should have been it’s own story with no Episode number. Something like “In the beginning…”

Episode II now the new Episode I
Episode III now being the Episode II

At the end of the new Episode II, the duel happens,

I love love love this concept! Much more aligned with what I was thinking. Your summary of Episode III sounds like a much more interesting movie!

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Thanks WookieeWarrior77, that’s how I thought it would go down. I left a huge gap in the story once Kenobi is on Coruscant, but you get the idea of what I was going for, which is, Vader is the main villain, but he doesn’t know it’s Anakin until toward the end, and he’s actually frightened what his student and friend has turned into…a monster.

As for Luke going to Dagobah with Yoda first, it seemed like he had been there before, almost like a dream as he states in TESB, that’s because he was there.

I do hope this is addressed in the Obi-wan Kenobi series. Maybe he goes to Dagobah when he was 8 years old, but then Yoda or Kenobi mind erase his very brief time there, while he takes care of Leia from the inquisitors.

Uncle Owen will not like Kenobi for putting them all in danger. After it’s all over, he’ll say, “Stay away from my family, I don’t want to ever see you around here anymore.”

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When Obi-Wan first meets him in Episode I, Anakin should be a young adult in his twenties or so (and “already a great pilot”). Obi-Wan should be “amazed how strongly the Force was with him,” taking “it upon [himself] to train him as a Jedi.” They eventually would go off to fight in the clone wars (along the way, Anakin getting involved with Luke’s mother and coming under the spell of Palpatine) and by the end of Episode II, Anakin is “seduced by the Dark Side of the Force … and [becomes] Darth Vader.” And then Episode III is all Darth Vader running around hunting down and purging Jedi.

One of the biggest problems of the prequel trilogy is that George Lucas decided to waste an entire movie with Anakin being a small child. Not only is there no plausible way for such a young boy to meaningfully contribute to the story (without resorting to silliness), but it also uses up a full third of the trilogy to do so and sets the wrong tone for the rest of the films.

Of course, by this time in history, Lucas himself has already turned to the Dark Side (fully committing to the Special Editions and forsaking the original releases, overly obsessing over CGI, and most damning, insulating himself from any outside writing/directorial help or input and surrounding himself with those only capable of muttering “Yes, Mr. Lucas”). So, even if we had avoided a child Anakin, there is little hope that the prequels would have turned out significantly better. But maybe, just maybe, we could have got…something more.

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I strongly disagree. I prefer things happening gradually and over time as it allows things to play out like an opera having them spaced out. It also allows Luke to go through the same journey as his father but make a different choice as they both learn the same lessons in their first two films but in the third film you get a different choice. It also has a bigger impact seeing Anakin as human longer instead of more machine than man. You don’t get that by having Anakin become Darth Vader in the suit right away. Same with the rise of the Empire. It doesn’t happen instantly but gradually to build the tension through subtle transformation.

“Heroes come in all sizes, and you don’t have to be a giant hero. You can be a very small hero. It’s just as important to understand that accepting self-responsibility for the things you do, having good manners, caring about other people - these are heroic acts. Everybody has the choice of being a hero or not being a hero every day of their lives.” - George Lucas

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You mean he should have been in the suit before the last few minutes because he was dubbed Darth Vader as soon as he rescued Palpatine.

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People are too obsessed with the idea of trilogies. Honestly they should have never bothered numbering the Star Wars movies at all, and should have just filled things in with whatever movies they wanted to make. So like, for instance, they could have just made a bunch of movies about young Anakin at different stages of his life, or about other characters in that time period (which could feature Anakin as a supporting character or guest character), and we wouldn’t know the exact one where Anakin would turn to the dark side, but we would see the gradual transition. And then a later movie could just be about him hunting down Jedi. Others could be about other characters, like Obi Wan.

I mean that’s eventually what the Star Wars meta narrative evolved into, when you factor in Clone Wars and all the standalone movies and Disney Plus shows. There’s no reason they couldn’t have just written things that way in the first place, instead of forcing the prequels and sequels to mirror the OT.

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Trilogies didn’t really exist before Star Wars though. At least not in the same fashion. It could have been series like Planet of the Apes where it just kept going until it ran out of steam entirely.

Anyway, on topic, no Vader as he was in SW originally should not have been shown in the PT.

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I would have liked him getting some sort of Sith outfit that is similar to his Vader outfit and then the rest of Vader’s iconic suit is built onto that after the run-in with Obi-Wan.

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Mocata said:

Anyway, on topic, no Vader as he was in SW originally should not have been shown in the PT.

This for me too. I am sure the PR, marketing and merchandising people were overjoyed at it being the film and being able to use such an iconic image. But it really had no business being shown in the PT from a story point of view. The end few scenes in ROTS just summed up the rushed box ticking that was going no in the last Prequel film.

(That is also ignoring the awful way the scene was actually executed - Noooooo!!!)

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Buzz Lightyear said:

People are too obsessed with the idea of trilogies. Honestly they should have never bothered numbering the Star Wars movies at all, and should have just filled things in with whatever movies they wanted to make. So like, for instance, they could have just made a bunch of movies about young Anakin at different stages of his life, or about other characters in that time period (which could feature Anakin as a supporting character or guest character), and we wouldn’t know the exact one where Anakin would turn to the dark side, but we would see the gradual transition. And then a later movie could just be about him hunting down Jedi. Others could be about other characters, like Obi Wan.

I mean that’s eventually what the Star Wars meta narrative evolved into, when you factor in Clone Wars and all the standalone movies and Disney Plus shows. There’s no reason they couldn’t have just written things that way in the first place, instead of forcing the prequels and sequels to mirror the OT.

Honestly, this.

While I think it would’ve been great to have a movie of just Darth Vader killing Jedi, all three of the prequels have important concepts to show. The Phantom Menace is more necessary then people think. It shows Anakin’s past trauma as a slave and introduces his relationship with his mother which is a huge part of his turn to the dark side, as well as introducing his strained relationship with the Jedi council. These shouldn’t be in flashbacks because as explained here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD2G0D-nyLA), flashbacks aren’t a part of the Star Wars format. It also shows how Palpatine became chancellor (that shouldn’t happen off-screen, Palpatine’s rise to power is literally the other half of the point of the prequels, that’d be like if Anakin turning to Vader was off-screen) and the corruption in the Senate. Just jumping into Attack of the Clones doesn’t work, unless you combine their plots together somehow.

I would do a saga like this:
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
A Clone Wars movie (using elements from EU novels and both Clone Wars series)
Revenge of the Sith
A movie with Darth Vader hunting surviving Jedi and the foundations of the empire
A movie adapting the Fortress Vader comic arc
A New Hope
Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi

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G&G-Fan said:

Buzz Lightyear said:

People are too obsessed with the idea of trilogies. Honestly they should have never bothered numbering the Star Wars movies at all, and should have just filled things in with whatever movies they wanted to make. So like, for instance, they could have just made a bunch of movies about young Anakin at different stages of his life, or about other characters in that time period (which could feature Anakin as a supporting character or guest character), and we wouldn’t know the exact one where Anakin would turn to the dark side, but we would see the gradual transition. And then a later movie could just be about him hunting down Jedi. Others could be about other characters, like Obi Wan.

I mean that’s eventually what the Star Wars meta narrative evolved into, when you factor in Clone Wars and all the standalone movies and Disney Plus shows. There’s no reason they couldn’t have just written things that way in the first place, instead of forcing the prequels and sequels to mirror the OT.

While I think it would’ve been great to have a movie of just Darth Vader killing Jedi

Moving his turn earlier doesn’t necessarily mean the ending is nothing but killing Jedi. A more convincing arc could’ve been:

  1. Set Anakin up as a hero

  2. Anakin succumbs to the dark side

  3. Anakin’s friends fail to pull him back to the light

There’s an old saying in Tennessee, I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says “Fool me once, shame on- shame on you… fool me can’t get fooled again.”

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SparkySywer said:

Moving his turn earlier doesn’t necessarily mean the ending is nothing but killing Jedi. A more convincing arc could’ve been:

  1. Set Anakin up as a hero

  2. Anakin succumbs to the dark side

  3. Anakin’s friends fail to pull him back to the light

I mean, there’s more to it then that. There’s also character development for Vader delving into his psyche and showing his adjustment to becoming a cyborg monster. Basically, the stuff in the 2017 Vader comics (which IMO are a masterpiece). Just thinking about a movie adapting Vader bleeding his kyber crystal and the Fortress Vader arc gets me giddy.

I don’t see how this is better then having Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones (tho improved, obvs), then a Clone Wars movie to really show Anakin’s heroics, then Revenge of the Sith and then a Vader movie. I think that Anakin having a traumatic past and a hard time letting go of people he cares about (due to his mother’s death) is fantastic and adds dimension to his character.

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Well, a big problem with that is that it isn’t a trilogy. It’s two movies, a long ass cartoon, and then two more movies. It isn’t conducive to telling a character arc. One movie is more than enough to set Anakin up as a hero, and the third movie is way more than enough to show him adjusting into being a cyborg monster, something that’s honestly icing on the cake and not actually an essential part of this story.

There’s an old saying in Tennessee, I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says “Fool me once, shame on- shame on you… fool me can’t get fooled again.”