How would YOU re-do the prequels? — Page 5

Promus said:

What do you think of that idea, Mrebo? I don't really like it myself, and I don't think it meshes with the "final" version.

I agree with you.

xhonzi said:

WheresBlackhawk said:

 Otherwise, think of Ben's line in ROTJ: "To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born."  With your father's name?  On his home planet? To paraphrase Comicboook Guy from the Simpsons: WORST HIDING PLACE EVER!

And with his real Uncle?  Yeah, I have to say that's a bad idea. 

I grant you it's not the smartest thing in the universe, no matter how small the risk. But if Anakin doesn't know he has a child, it's not like he's going to be checking out his old haunts to say hello to old friends. And if nobody knows the significance of the name Skywalker except for maybe 5 people in the galaxy it's not like someone is going to tell Vader. Given the nature of the risk, it wasn't a smart move, but not totally absurd. In the end it's fiction, and this kind of thing can be excused.

The idea that Owen had a relationship with Anakin rings false to me.  I think he probably had a relationship with Obi-Wan.  Owen is probably projecting his feelings about Obi-Wan onto Anakin.  He should have stayed here.  Crazy ideas of destiny, etc...  And when Obi-Wan says his bit about damn fool idealistic crusade, again, I think he's projecting his own leaving home- however that affected Owen.

I feel like the most straightforward reading of Obi's, Ben's, and Beru's words reveal a relationship. Ignoring Owen, assuming Ben is a liar, or that Owen is suffering from a slight neurosis [He didn't hold with your Father's ideals, by which I mean my ideals, he didn't actually know your father, and I'm totally lying anyhow"] does go some way paving a different direction...and despite the teasing I'm sure can be presented with some credibility.

I don't even see a real need for it even at the end of E3.  I think audiences can figure it out just fine.

I agree on this point. Very optional to have Tatooine in Ep3.

CWBorne said:

In my conception of the prequels, Anakin is actually Beru's brother...

For me Beru plays a similar role.

The idea of a very different kind of Tatooine is interesting. Good food for thought. We should discuss our ideas more often!

CWBorne...That. Was. Awesome!

I LOVE the idea of Anakin being Beru's brother! It makes so much sense...the name issue always threw a wrench into my ideas. Have you written an entire script for your vision of the prequels, or are you still just working on it? Because I LOVE your ideas and I'd love to brainstorm the other details with you too, if you'd like.

With all the fanfilms that have been made, I've always felt that it might be possible (with some extra money...) to make my own prequel fanfilms. And working with other people is an important part of doing anything like that...

Mrebo, CWBorne...we really should collaborate on something big!

Promus said:

CWBorne...That. Was. Awesome!

I LOVE the idea of Anakin being Beru's brother! It makes so much sense...the name issue always threw a wrench into my ideas. Have you written an entire script for your vision of the prequels, or are you still just working on it? Because I LOVE your ideas and I'd love to brainstorm the other details with you too, if you'd like.

With all the fanfilms that have been made, I've always felt that it might be possible (with some extra money...) to make my own prequel fanfilms. And working with other people is an important part of doing anything like that...

Mrebo, CWBorne...we really should collaborate on something big!

CWborne and xhonzi have lots of great ideas. My prequels are slowly coming together mostly in my brain (and on my former laptop).

There are a lot of branches in the thinking of the prequels. Another, bigger, branch than whether to show Tatooine is whether to preserve the OT surprises. My philosophy is to create the PT as they could have been if they had been made first. This creates challenges like not showing Anakin become Darth Vader. CWBorne is arguably more sensible in assuming everybody knows the surprises and thus being unafraid of showing Yoda, showing Anakin become Vader, etc. In not trying to keep surprises it is easier to just focus on making a really great story. And certainly not wrong to have an audience in on the secrets, just waiting to see how Luke handles them.

This was influential for my wanting to adapt to the limitations of keeping OT secrets. I do think there are simple, clever, and story-enhancing ways of keeping the secrets.

One idea I'm toying with is to show Anakin confront Palpatine and then the scene cuts to Obi Wan who, after some hesitation, goes off to "save" his friend.  We don't know anything more until Ep3 when Anakin is Vader that we see him duel Obi Wan (again). Obi Wan double talks about Vader killing Anakin. Vader retorts that it was Obi Wan that killed Anakin (double meaning of 'drove him to the dark side' and 'literally sliced him up'). In this way, Obi Wan's later explanation to Luke is seen as less of a jerky plot gimmick and more of 'this is seriously how Obi Wan sees the world.' The exposition would be done to lead the audience to believe that Vader was a dark jedi who murdered Anakin until Vader later declares, "No...I am your father."

All these divergent ideas can make true collaboration difficult, but I know just sharing ideas really helps me.

Wow! You should collect all your ideas into a single work and share it; I'd love to read what you have!

You mentioned Yoda's role, and I wanted to say something about that because I had an idea. Personally, I don't think we should see or hear Yoda at all, at any point. Yoda's reveal in ESB (and the drama/emotional context involved) should be intact, or even enhanced by the prequels. The point of Yoda was to illustrate an important detail about the nature of the Force; that "size matters not" and that it's something beyond the physical. Luke was expecting Yoda to be this great big warrior dude, but he was actually just a little guy.

I think the prequel characters should talk about Yoda a great deal - add to the mystique, so the audience keeps building a mental image about Yoda being this big, majestic, super-heroic figure. Yoda-this, Yoda-that...which makes the impact of Yoda's appearance in ESB all the more poignant. When Obi-Wan tells Luke on Hoth to go see Yoda (if you've watched these prequels), you'd think "oh man, we're finally going to see Yoda!" The excitement would build throughout ESB, and the audience's expectations (built up while hearing about Yoda in the prequels) would create a lot of depth to what you actually get: a little troll living in a shitty swamp. You're still surprised even if you don't watch the prequels, but if you DO watch the prequels, it's an even deeper experience. That should be the overarching goal of any prequel, I think.

Wow, I'm glad I could come up with an idea that you liked!

Yoda doesn't have to already be on Dagobah; depending on how the events play out across your three prequels, he certainly wouldn't be on Dagobah during the Clone Wars (but he'd still remain unseen). You could hear in passing about where Yoda is - he led a glorious battle on so-and-so planet, etc.

I'm not sure the Jedi have to be demonized in the prequels, though; that's one of the things I didn't like in the "official" prequels (although the prequels handled it very awkwardly). In fact, making the Jedi "less-than-good" weakens the effect of the Empire, which is supposed to be truly evil. I think the Jedi should remain paragons of virtue, even as they're being hunted down and destroyed one by one. It certainly makes the Empire more threatening, that even the Jedi at the height of their strength couldn't stop the Empire from coming about. In fact, the only reason they were nearly destroyed is because of Vader; if there hadn't been an ex-Jedi on the side of the rising Empire, the Jedi might have been successful in stopping the Empire from coming into existence.

Yoda is not a warrior, he is a trainer.  That's why he's not involved in the clone wars.

The real problem is that when we all saw ANH and the first half of ESB- the only "jedi" we'd seen were adult male human warriors.  (Ben, Luke and Vader).  The idea that this little smurf could be not only a jedi, but a powerful jedi held in reserve by the most powerful jedi hitherto seen was not even considered.  We didn't say, "Oh, I bet that guy is Yoda" because How Could He Be?

Assuming there are more than a few jedi in your new PT, and assuming that they are not all adult male warriors... The possibilty that someone would guess that Yoda was Yoda is much higher even though Yoda is never seen nor heard (but possibly talked up) in your new PT.

To be clear: I am on the "Talk up Yoda, Don't show Yoda" team all the way.  It's easily done, in my opinion.  However, the other restictions required to really maintain the surprise are much more burdensome and you must ask yourself how committed to the surprise you are.

For the record: I am for preserving all surprises.  Not because there is an audience in the world that would be fooled by them today... but because not doing so seems like cheating and poor storytelling.

2 other things:

1. It's nice to see so much activity in this sub forum as of late.

2. Would this level of activity persist if we spun some of these conversations out into individual threads?  I think one of the problems we have here is that we discuss the same issues in lots of different threads and lots of different issues in the same threads.  It leads to a lot of ideas getting lost or repeated.  Just food for thought.

Surprises: Yoda

Surprises: Vader

Surprises: Luke and Leia

Surprises: (what else?)

How to handle Owen?

Who are the Clones?

All of these would be excellent threads.

xhonzi said:

2 other things:

1. It's nice to see so much activity in this sub forum as of late.

2. Would this level of activity persist if we spun some of these conversations out into individual threads?  I think one of the problems we have here is that we discuss the same issues in lots of different threads and lots of different issues in the same threads.  It leads to a lot of ideas getting lost or repeated.  Just food for thought.

Surprises: Yoda

Surprises: Vader

Surprises: Luke and Leia

Surprises: (what else?)

How to handle Owen?

Who are the Clones?

All of these would be excellent threads.

 

I concur. Maybe some more specific threads would be helpful. So many of my ideas are interconnected or tentative that it would be hard to define them too precisely, but maybe such threads would help?

Yeah, now that I think about it, splitting off each idea into its own thread would be best for collaborative purposes. I think this thread has evolved past the simple "tell us what you think" and more into the "brainstorming for concepts and executing ideas" territory.

I'm with you guys all the way!

CWBorne, that was pretty much how I envisioned it too. Real-life dictatorships don't spring up literally overnight - that was just another unrealistic, cartoony aspect of the prequels. They had to cram the formation of the Empire into one of their movies, so they did it last-minute and half-assed.

Personally, I would span it out similar to this:

Episode I - Meet Anakin, goes off to Clone Wars with Obi-Wan, starts training as Jedi

Episode II - Clone Wars have been finished for a while, in the meantime we learn that Palpatine has been vying for more power since the end of the war, Anakin has become somewhat seduced by the Dark Side of the Force and eventually turns. The movie doesn't exactly need to make it clear that Darth Vader is Anakin - we don't necessarily have to see that. This would mean that in Episode III, the character of Anakin would suddenly disappear and be replaced by this Darth Vader guy, who we then have to wait out a film before learning that he's actually Anakin.

Episode III - Empire already in place (we learn about what happened in dialogue), Rebellion wins it's first major victory against the Empire and steals the Death Star plans.
A lot of the characters and situations in Episode IV seem like they don't have much of an introduction, and spring out of nowhere, so I always felt that just as ANH focused on Luke and was "his" movie, Episode III should be "Leia's movie" and show her leading the Rebellion against the Empire. This version of Episode III would also introduce the "new" characters you'd see in the rest of the Trilogy (minus Luke, Han, and Chewie, of course...those "new characters" won't be introduced until the next film), like Leia, the Rebellion, C-3PO and R2-D2 (this would be their first appearance in the saga).

Johannus said:

A lot of thought goes into how Obi Wan and Anakin meet.  However, if we meet them whilst they are already friends it means that what we are shown only has to enforce this great friendship, not create it entirely.  Personally I think this would be better as it is easier, and still works really well (just think of Han and Chewie, or even Vader and the Emperor before the PT came out).  This would also allow Anakin to simply mention his step brother without there having to be a full explanation on screen, thus allowing Owen's words more room to be truthful. 

I agree with you all who see the value in not over-explaining. That was one thing I loved about the OT, even when I didn't totally get it at first as a young child.

Which is why I like your idea there, Johannus. It would resolve many issues (like being bound to Tatooine/Owen) by putting them in the past, preserving some of the rich unseen background of the OT. It also gives greater latitude in developing a story around relationships...rather than a story about the creation of relationships. It allows more transient characters to casually weave in and out of the story (like 3PO and R2).

I'm not quite married to my version starting on Tatooine...but I have been engaged to it for awhile. Will have to consider it more. Hmmm...

CWBorne said:

I want to be able to return to [Tatooine] in the third prequel and have it illustrated exactly how damaging this conflict has been, even to planets not directly involved in the war. 

As we've discussed before, I think Tatooine should definitely make an appearance early in the revised PT as a promising, "nice" world, but we shouldn't see it again until ANH, when we can see just how far it's fallen into crap.

Johannus said:

Mrebo said:

I'm not quite married to my version starting on Tatooine...but I have been engaged to it for awhile. Will have to consider it more. Hmmm...

I have considered many ideas of using Coruscant in a NPT, or in a new RotJ, or even in an outline for what if RotJ wasnt the end but the stepping stone for Episodes 7-9 in which Coruscant could then appear in E9. 

Johannus said:

Imagine if we could completely reboot Star Wars and create the perfect 9 films as they should have been (so leave episodes 4 and 5 pretty much identical, and the parts from RotJ that would have allowed it to be more open ended to lead into the next 3 films.

For the record, RoTJ is no less perfect than 4&5!

One thing I want to try to do is wrap up my EpIII in as neat a little bow as RoTJ. To that end, I want a non-gloomy (Star Warsy) ending. Elsewhere I've raised the issue of making the Empire appear as the good guys so far as I can. The chaos in the galaxy will be so pronounced that the new control by an Empire will be welcomed.

As some of you have suggested it can be fun to not show much of Palpatine, to leave Tatooine as a developing world, etc. And we can wrap it all up in hopeful terms.

And nothing precludes jumping in media res (not a phrase I knew before) to an episode VII now, though I hope Lucas restrains himself!

Granted this has the risk of perhaps being at bit too specific and/or dogmatic...

This would be my concern but it is an interesting idea. Also, what do you not like about the term "padawan"?

I've been considering using certain terminology for purposes of Jedi religious beliefs - terms like "darth"(obviously taken from Vader, and as a corruption of "dearth") to describe the emptiness which hatred and anger will fill; and "bendu" (GL's original part of name for Jedi) to describe the righteous self which keeps anger and hatred at bay. Obi Wan could explain such beliefs about these competing sides within everyone. Thus the name "Darth" has more meaning as a name and not a mere title; it would be a sign that Anakin has embraced that side of himself. And less random than, "hm, Darth sounds like a cool name." On the other hand I don't want to be too technical and silly. Thoughts?