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How did you envision the prequels? — Page 2

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How did I envision the prequels?

I envisioned them as being good! What a let down...

FF

“First feel fear, then get angry. Then go with your life into the fight.” - Bill Mollison

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From the original SW it's safe to say Anakin is younger it might necessarily be spelt out but there are the references to "old man" etc.

The various and changing timelines and ages are examined (quite well and thoroughly) in the "secret history of star wars" which can be found on these forums if you do a search I guess. Forgive me I can't remember who the author is but he is a member here.

Offically there's 19 years between III and IV.

Ep1 - Kenobi is 25 Anakin is 9.

10 years in between

Ep2 - Kenobi is 35 Anakin is 19.

3 years pass

Ep3 - Kenobi is 38 Anakin is 22

19 years in bewteen

Ep4 - Kenobi is 57 Vader is 41

If I'm mistaken someone correct me as I did this quickly.

Add on about 10-15 years and things should be right.

Definately check out the web book I mentioned above. If I have time later I'll try to look it up.

"Well here's a big bag of rock salt" - Patton Oswalt

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xhonzi: yes, both of those aspects of cloning; I didn't have much specific ideas (very young) but I thought there were many interesting aspects of cloning. Probably something like cloned slaves rebelling, twisting themselves to fight, I don't know...
Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
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Originally posted by: see you auntie
The various and changing timelines and ages are examined (quite well and thoroughly) in the "secret history of star wars" which can be found on these forums if you do a search I guess. Forgive me I can't remember who the author is but he is a member here.


It is Zombie84. And it is good to see you around again xhonzi! Stop being such a lurker!
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It has been a couple years...

Thanks for noticing.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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In reading all the thoughts above, I can't help feel sad for what we all have missed out on. At this point now, I would settle for a decent unofficial novel that sums up the past two pages of of great ideas to replace the Lucas 6 hour train wreck.
We've analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger.
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The huge mistake Lucas made, and I think this is the key to why the PT failed in many fans eyes is the fact that AOTC/ROTS Anakin is in many ways a whiney jerk.

Anakin didn't have to be exactly like Luke, but it was established in Episode I that Anakin was a good kid, and for whatever you think of Jake Lloyd, he is a good wholesome kid that you do sympathize with. AOTC Anakin is a jerk the minute he is on screen as he argues with Kenobi in front of Padme after whether they should protect her or find the killer, and from that moment on I just never really liked him, let alone cared for his plight. So when you have these tragic events happen to him in ROTS, you are almost rooting against him and wanting him to fall into lava as I sided with Kenobi at the end of the movie. Anakin should have been a likeable character until he turns, then you have that contrast that would make you feel his plight, cause you could understand what he was doing.

A good example of a tragedy would be Luke or Han turning on each other at the end of ROTJ, and watch them fight as trying to figure out who to root for? You wouldn't, you feel for the one that turned to the darkside, cause you cared about that character for 3 movies. I look at the Anakin character after Episode I, and sometimes wonder what the hell Lucas was thinking.
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Originally posted by: xhonzi
Is anyone else having a math problem with the prequel trilogy...?

This is something that has been bugging me in trying to understand the prequel/original trilogy timeline...

Excatly how old are Anakin and Obiwan in the 2 trilogies?

I'd say from the OT that Anakin is 50ish (Shaw was 77 during Jedi filming) and Obiwan is maybe 60ish (Sir Alec was 62 during the filming of ANH). Sine Luke is 18-20 at most, the PT can only be 21 years earlier than the OT... which would place Anakin at 29 and Obiwan at 39, obviously not the ages they were in the PT. Anakin is, again, 20 at most at the end of RotS so that makes him 41 at most in ANH...

Do you know what I mean? How old do you think they should have been in the PT?

xhonzi


As was pointed out, I attempted to actually track this in a book i wrote. Sometimes the guessing game can get a bit dodgy but a general sense, if not a specific pinpointing, can be achieved.

What I discovered is that there are three timelines.

The first is in Star Wars from 1977. Here Annikin and Vader are two seperate people--and hence very different in age. Obi Wan is about 75, and since Annikin was his childhood friend from Tatooine he would be very close to that as well; pegging Annikin's specific age here is a bit difficult but the 70-75 range is most accurate. For the purposes of illustration let's just say it was the same as Obi Wan. Vader on the other hand was "a young Jedi" as Obi Wan call him, his mere student, and would have been around 20 or so at the time he was Obi Wan's student, thus at the time of Star Wars he is about 40 years old.

TIMELINE ONE
Obi Wan: 75
Annikin: 75
Vader: 40

The second timeline was created with the combination of Annikin and Vader for ESB, though the story elements were not concretely desided until ROTJ. In this one the elderly Annikin had to be somehow reconciled with the young student Vader. For whatever reason, perhaps to better show that Vader was Luke's father by portraying him as an old man and not someone in middle age, Lucas decided to go with Annikin's age, but for some reason dropped it down a decade to 65. Thus at the time of Star Wars he would be 62.

TIMELINE TWO
Obi Wan: 75
Vader: 62

The third timeline was created for the prequels. Because Lucas now had to reconcile the older Annikin with the student Vader in concrete, literal terms, he could not have a 50-year-old student apprentice to Obi Wan, and hence had Anakin go with the original age of Vader, that is roughly twenty at the time of his turn to the darkside. But Lucas also decided to set his discovery up as being in his childhood, not adolescence as it originally was. The first draft of TPM had things sort of consistent age-wise with the first timeline, in that Anakin was 12 and Obi Wan was an older, full Jedi knight who discovers him, and with the film occuring thirty years before Star Wars and not twenty, that meant that Anakin/Vader would still be roughly 40 and Obi Wan in his seventies during Star Wars. Lucas' second draft completely changed this--Anakin was made 9, not a big change, but Obi Wan was made into a student and in fact it wasn't even he but his master who finds Anakin. Lucas kept Obi Wan as old as an apprentice could possibly be--I think it might actually have been 27 years old.

So with the third timeline created for Episode I Vader is once again 40-ish at the time of Star Wars but Obi Wan only 57 or so--not even a legal senior citizen. This made it even more bizarre when Vader is unmasked and portrayed by a 77-year-old man in ROTJ. Whatever.

TIMELINE THREE

Obi Wan: 57
Anakin: 42

The above ages I believe are what I ended up with but I am just going off memory. Its in the chapter "The Beginning...Again" in the book, near the end of the chapter.
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Wow, thanks for sharing.

Where is the rest of this book? And is the rest of the 1st draft of TPM also less screwed up than the movie?

xhonzi

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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Well, I don't know about you guys, but over the years, now being a little older, wiser, I've learned to appreciate the prequel trilogy a whole lot more than I used to. There's just too much greatness in it to blatantly ignore or scoff at. The OT and PT are two totally different creations (yet, with similar themes and interesting philosophical ideas), accept that and you'll find there's plenty of great stuff to be found in the prequels.

That said, while I'm very fond of The phantom menace and Revenge of the sith now I still can't totally get into Attack of the clones.
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Actually, as time goes on... I find I forget how mad I should be about the whole mess. Then I remember and return to originaltrilogy.com and complain.

xhonzi

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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Originally posted by: xhonzi
Actually, as time goes on... I find I forget how mad I should be about the whole mess. Then I remember and return to originaltrilogy.com and complain.

xhonzi


hehehe!!

As for me, I think I envisioned the prequels as being in the same spirit as the first TPM trailer. I actually sat through Wing Commander just to watch it. The saber fights, the music, the exotic creatures... man! It was awesome!
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Originally posted by: Major fatal Moebius
Well, I don't know about you guys, but over the years, now being a little older, wiser, I've learned to appreciate the prequel trilogy a whole lot more than I used to. There's just too much greatness in it to blatantly ignore or scoff at. The OT and PT are two totally different creations (yet, with similar themes and interesting philosophical ideas), accept that and you'll find there's plenty of great stuff to be found in the prequels.

That said, while I'm very fond of The phantom menace and Revenge of the sith now I still can't totally get into Attack of the clones.


Of course, the PT is filled with terrific images, has some nice action scenes and is overflowing with thematic meaning and layered construction. In this regard its worth at least thinking about for a few moments. But a poorly constructed plot, terribly written characters and a rather hollow emotional core cannot be ignored--the films, as dramatic vehicles, which is what they are supposed to be, not intellectual exercises for us to analyse, are failures. But they are fascinating failures. Because even "bad" films have a lot of good elements in them. The sequels to The Matrix are very similar in their relation to the original that the prequels have--the two Matrix sequels have incredible images, some terrific action scenes and are overflowing with layered construction and thematic meaning. But the characters were poorly written through much of it, and the plot badly constructed--I think both of these are much stronger than what Lucas often accomplished, but they are not successes as emotional and dramatic vehicles.

I don't think the prequels should be written off, but I don't think any of here really did--we watched them, discussed them, watched them again, analysed them and discussed them some more. That is far more from fair, and so when we continue to criticise them I don't think its as simple as us not giving them their due. The successes that the films have within them--some clever subplotting, interesting thematic construction, etc--can only entertain you so far without having an emotional or dramatic core to hook us with. Thats why we continue to love the OT but continue to criticise the PT.

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Originally posted by: Major fatal Moebius
Well, I don't know about you guys, but over the years, now being a little older, wiser, I've learned to appreciate the prequel trilogy a whole lot more than I used to. There's just too much greatness in it to blatantly ignore or scoff at. The OT and PT are two totally different creations (yet, with similar themes and interesting philosophical ideas), accept that and you'll find there's plenty of great stuff to be found in the prequels.

That said, while I'm very fond of The phantom menace and Revenge of the sith now I still can't totally get into Attack of the clones.



See I will never appreciate the PT, mainly because it is designed to tie in with the OT, and that forces the viewer to see them as 'one' story. You can't see it 1-6 as one story, when you have essentially two different trilogies, one filmed in the late 70's/80's and the other at the turn of the century. They are too different in terms of CGI to models, CG landscapes filmed in front of bluescreen to real landscapes, and Lucas himself changed over 20 years as he is just a different director, as most from his profession when they get older.

What Lucas should have done is left the OT untouched, and kept that as the OT story, and make the PT a true backstory, not a hamfisted continuous story that is supposed to be shoehorned 'now the beginning' to all the fans, like we watched a half finished story all these years!!!

The PT could have been filled with 21st century CG, 21st Century CG Landscapes, etc, and the viewer could essentially watch that story on its own, but still not screwing with the OT story. The PT shouldn't have been the beginning of the 'Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker', it should have just been a 3 movie trilogy about Anakin, Kenobi, and Padme, and The Emperor the same way the OT was the story about Luke, Leia, and Han, and Darth Vader.

Anakins turn should have been a plot point, not THE main point of the PT, as that would give more time for the Clone Wars, the birth of the Rebellion, the Force Ghost, etc. Instead you have this PT about the rise/fall of Anakin that is suppose to shoehorn in with redemption of Anakin now in 4-6, and it just doesn't work, cause they literally look like TWO different sets of movies, and the OT was never the redemption of Darth Vader, that was just a plot point in ROTJ!

I think many fans wouldn't be as hard on the PT, especially OOT fans, if the OT was left untouched, and you could essentially watch that 4-6 and enjoy that for the story arc it has in it. And if you want more SW, there is this backstory that is suppose to be watched AFTER the OT, that has an arc in itself about the main players and how they got there, and you could watch that in a different light cause essentially it was made 20 years after. 1-6 just doesn't work, the story, the visuals, the tone, I have tried it a zillion times, and I have yet to watch 1,2,3,4,5,6 consecutively(within weeks) in that order, and get through it with any enjoyment. I always start with TPM, and then realize I have to sludge through these 2 movies to get to something interesting in ROTS, plus realizing I have to get to the 4th movie to get to anything great.
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Originally posted by: CO

Anakins turn should have been a plot point, not THE main point of the PT, as that would give more time for the Clone Wars, the birth of the Rebellion, the Force Ghost, etc. Instead you have this PT about the rise/fall of Anakin that is suppose to shoehorn in with redemption of Anakin now in 4-6, and it just doesn't work, cause they literally look like TWO different sets of movies, and the OT was never the redemption of Darth Vader, that was just a plot point in ROTJ!


I can see what you're saying, but I have to disagree that the PT suffers from "too much focus" on Anakin's turn to the Dark Side. The PT seems to concern itself mostly (and I will concede that this it does well) with the political backstory of the Empire and how the Emperor pulled the wool over everyone's eyes and convinced them to hand over their Republic without so much as a whimper. I think that was well done, yet wasn't my biggest interest in the trilogy. The one thing I really wanted was a serious, believable, tragedy. The political machinations of Palpatine received far more screen time than the fall.

xhonzi

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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Originally posted by: Major fatal Moebius
Well, I don't know about you guys, but over the years, now being a little older, wiser, I've learned to appreciate the prequel trilogy a whole lot more than I used to.

The opposite has happened for me- the Prequels seem even worse now than when I saw them originally.

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Originally posted by: Mielr
Originally posted by: Major fatal Moebius
Well, I don't know about you guys, but over the years, now being a little older, wiser, I've learned to appreciate the prequel trilogy a whole lot more than I used to.

The opposite has happened for me- the Prequels seem even worse now than when I saw them originally.


+1

Thanks Zombie, now I don't have to. I thought you were the author but wan't 100% and didn't want to get it wrong.

"Well here's a big bag of rock salt" - Patton Oswalt

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Originally posted by: Mielr
Originally posted by: Major fatal Moebius
Well, I don't know about you guys, but over the years, now being a little older, wiser, I've learned to appreciate the prequel trilogy a whole lot more than I used to.

The opposite has happened for me- the Prequels seem even worse now than when I saw them originally.


Yeah, true for me too, though I have probably seen AOTC and ROTS no more than three times each (which makes it interesting that I saw TPM seven times in the theater, just the excitement of the music and the opening crawl on the big screen and that lightsaber battle at the end made it worth it). I remember hating ROTS even more the second time I saw it, and it being unbearable the next time. First two times were in the cinema, third time was on DVD. I never saw AOTC in the theater, so I had only ever seen it on DVD, and I remember the first time being interested in what happens next, but greatly disappointed. And viewings of it after the first time were pretty painful, and one of those times was the riff track version, and it was still hard to watch. If I had to sum AOTC up in two words, they would be: "fingernails" and "chalkboard". If I ever had to watch it again in one setting, I might actually consider removing my eyes and squeezing them into my ears.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Originally posted by: xhonzi
Wow, thanks for sharing.

Where is the rest of this book? And is the rest of the 1st draft of TPM also less screwed up than the movie?

xhonzi



Coincidentally, I just posted an article on the rough draft of TPM.


The Beginning - A Look at the Rough Draft of Episode I

To answer your question, yes, its much less screwed up than the film. Definitly imperfect but I would have rather had this version filmed than what we got.
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A good read, great work again Zombie. I've got no criticism apart from a couple of spelling errors.

Obi-Wan is described as being about thirty years old and wears all black.


The movie and the PT just got infinitively better right there

My take on all this is it's the same film and plot with just some key characters decisions that improve it vastly.

The character of Anakin floors me. I really like what has been done here given his age. Though the young actor to play such a role would be a hard task. I also find Shmi Warker very interesting.

Pros:

Kenobi's age, title and wisdom. Pretty much the Qui Gon role we see in TPM minus the years.

Anakin's maturity.

Binks is slightly more serious. Still comedic relief without the silliness.

Maul's additional presences and dialogue.

Reduced Jedi Council. No Yoda or only for the first movie would of been better.

Cons:

Kenobi only has Binks interact with for much of the first half of the movie. (In theory I prefer it this way but it could turn out worse than the alternative in practice.)

Palpatines rise isn't so clear.



I think with a director other than Lucas shooting this script (George handling the podrace and the like) we could have had a movie on par with ROTJ. It still has its flaws but I like it a lot better.

"Well here's a big bag of rock salt" - Patton Oswalt

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Originally posted by: see you auntie
I've got no criticism apart from a couple of spelling errors.


Yeah thanks for pointing that out, the transcription wasn't typed up by me and I didn't realise how many typos were in it.

The biggest strength about this early draft is that Obi Wan is in the Qui Gon role. Its Obi Wan who uncovers the invasion, rescues the queen, meets Anakin, decides to train him, wins his freedom and presents him to the Jedi council. Kenobi has a strong relationship with Anakin as a father figure, he has a strong relationship with Padme, and he also is more developed as a character. He's in his thirties, a full Jedi, bold in many ways but also a good role model. It would have strengthened the series so much because it has a trickle-down effect into all the character relationships and into the next films, which also meant that AOTC could have been free to take more time developing characters since there was no more introductions needed. You can see in the dialog exerpts that the dialog is no better than the final film, and of course Palpatine's whole arc is non-existant--he just shows up at the end and says "hey look I'm supreme chancellor now!" But as a first draft these things obviously could have been worked out and developed, and its great the way Jar Jar is semi-normal and actually becomes a real warrior in the end battle--a character arc, look at that. Theres also some neat bits like Theed city actually being assaulted and us seeing the people suffering, and I like the way we actually witness Anakin being accepted into the Jedi at the end.
The movie is still a bit dissapointing, but only in a "well thats not as good as the OT" way instead of "what the hell was that piece of shit?". I think if Lucas gave this draft to a real writer that could have made the characters real, the plot more interesting and the drama a bit more hevfty that the film could have surpassed ROTJ.
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I still think the movie needed/needs a strong infusion of Clone Wars right there in Episode 1. And I don't just mean introducing a droid army that the clones are later used to fight. Lucas previously sited Japanese Samurai films (Kurasawa) as an example of: Using an historical context for the backdrop of an adventure story without pandering to the audience (whether they are familiar with the history or not) the reasons behind that history. He claimed that convinced him to not feel too strong of a need to go explicitly into the Empire/Rebel conflict and all of the reasons behind it; just let it stand that it was. He thinks, and I agree, that that take on the setting set it apart from the other sci-fi and fantasy of the time. I expected the same angle on the Clone Wars and was a little surprised (and disappointed) he didn't follow his own advice when setting up the backdrop for the PT.

Which brings me to my next random thought: I always like listening to ol' George prattle about story theory, but then I'm always surprised (and disappointed, natch) how much I think he doesn't follow it. Or at least we disagree with the application of said theory. On the contrary, I love practically all of Jim Cameron's work, and consider him to be one of the truly inspired director's of our day, but when I listen to him in interviews and on commentaries and the like, he seems to be so wrong about story theory. Maybe I'm wrong and that's why I agree with the wrong guy. And why I can't finish anything I write...

I think we can all agree that that is more like the Obi-Wan we expected from the PT (and partially, at least, got in RotS). I wonder what lead George to change it to the movie version. I guess it buys you this:

1) A pre-Anakin example of a Jedi Master/Apprentice relationship

2) More Jedi througout the film (this is their heyday, is it not?)

3) More concern for Qui-Gonn's death at the end

That's about all I can think of. Definately tempting, I would think. But ultimately you're selling more than you're buying.
xhonzi

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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xhonzi, I think you just touched upon one of the major problems of the PT. It's the back story of the OT thinly disguised as "the beginning."
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So, not to take the conversation in a new direction or anything...

I wanted to ask this question previously, but it seemed everyone was enjoying the current discussion. And then I was reading a lot of it on zombie's site...

What did we quote-unquote "know" about the PT before 1999? Some of it, obviously, was baseless rumour or conjecture, some of it was abandoned before the final product, and still some was actually in the movies. It looks like a lot of it is covered by zombie, but I haven't read all of it yet.

I can think of the following:
9/12/6 Movies. A trilogy of trilogies.

Mandalorian involvement

Clone Wars

Darth Vader hunted Jedi

Molten Battle between Anakin and Obiwan

Vader was the 12th Dark Lord of the Sith

Dang. I was thinking of more. What else shaped your anticipation of what the prequels would be?

xhonzi

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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Yeah, theres not really a sort of list of what Lucas talked about regarding the prequels, you sort of have to read through the whole book. But really, there isn't a whole lot--it was all general statements. Theres a republic with Jedi, Kenobi discovers and trains Anakin, Palpatine was a senator and becomes the head of the Republic, a Clone war occurs, Palpatine lures Anakin to the darkside and betrays the Jedi who are somehow wiped out, Kenobi and Anakin fight on a volcano where Anakin gets burned up and becomes Vader, Kenobi works with Bail Organa to hide Anakin's wife and twin children, and somewhere in all of that there would be something called the Clone Wars.

Really, thats all we knew. The only additional specifics is in relation to the Clone War--not Mandolorians but "Imperial Shocktroopers." These were super-troopers of a distant origin, of which Boba Fett was a part of, who fought a war called the Clone War, which the Jedi were involved in, but were defeated by the Jedi.

But any of that was subject to change, as can be seen by the Clone War. The above "Shocktrooper" info was revealed in Bantha Tracks, and around the same time LFL also published that the stormtroopers were clones--so perhaps the Clone Wars were to be that the Imperial Shocktroopers tried to invade the Republic, the Republic created a clone army that was led by the Jedi, and when the war was over Palpatine used these as his stormtroopers. This was all invented around 1979 or so--before this Lucas hadn't developed the Clone War at all, other than it was a long-ago battle which the Jedi were involved in. In fact, one idea from 1977 stated that Lando was a clone survivor from the war, and came from a planet of clones.