The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread

With Adywan announcing his intention to remove Threepio from his versions of Episodes I and II and not having Anakin build him, the time has come for this thread to be born.

Though his versions are years away I thought it would be a good idea for Adywan and others who wish to change the prequels in an ambitious way (rather than nibbling at the edges) to read our ideas of what might be done.

I shall pop my ideas on here in a few days time but I thought I'd not waste a moment in starting this thread.

Let your imaginations soar here and let the editors decide what's actually possible and appealing to them.

Perhaps by pulling together we can rescue the prequel trilogy from the netherworld of epic cinema gone wrong.

i would vote to remove any noticable features of sidious so its actually a surprise when his true identity is revealed. would be cool to have dooku in his place on TPM, and to do away with the rule of the two.

When I saw the trailers and some of the leaked production photos from TPM my speculations of what would happen were very different to the final film.

The Trade Federation Tank prop was shown at the studio with some Tatooine looking items in one photograph I saw which lead me to believe that the Trade Federation Battledroids would invade Tatooine at some point, which would justify the anti-droid sentiment shown in ANH.

The Magnoliafan take on the Federation (that they were dealing in slavery) would tie in with Anakin's slave background too.

Perhaps by recolouring some scenes from AOTC it might be possible to create a crisis on Tatooine which would create a more dramatic origin story for Anakin.

The Geonosians are seen in AOTC as being fond of Gladitorial combat, which could extend to Pod Racing.

So one possible huge re-jig would be to put the Trade Federation primarily into the hands of the Geonosians instead of the Neimodians (who could be just a lesser member race).

This would return to the original intent of the battle droids being built to resemble their masters.

I also assumed that the lightsabre duel between Maul, Qui-Gon and Obi Wan was taking place on a star ship.

It might be possible to alter the scenes at the beginning of the film as seen and cutting into the duel (with adjustments) so that the Jedi encounter the Sith Lord on the Trade Federation ship.

I also assumed that all the Naboo hanger scenes would happen at the same time (surely the Trade Federation would have destroyed or disabled the Naboo fighters rather than just leave them hanging there to be launched against them at the end of the film).

So one possible alteration would be to start the film on Coruscant with Queen Amidala protesting about the blockade of her planet. She goes (with a Jedi escort and the Gungan Ambassador Jar-Jar) to effect a liberation of her planet but is hijacked on route and forced to land on Tatooine which has already fallen to the Federation. They meet up with Anakin, gain the parts they need, Anakin joins the Jedi hoping to liberate Tatooine at a later date (giving Anakin a noble intention for leaving his mother behind rather than just seeing the stars).

As they escape they encounter a Sith Lord who is working with the Federation (I'd love to be able to put the Obi-Wan vs Maul scene that only happened in this publicity photo but I haven't a clue how).

I find it hard to believe that they flew Ewan over to Tunisia just to film a few shots outside Amidala's ship.

They break through the blockade and create a hasty alliance with the Gungans. The Gungan's attack the bulk of the droid army, The Jedi attempt to shut down the shields for Trade Federation command ship and encounter battle droids (which should rarely if ever speak and certainly should not be the comic relief goons as seen in the theatrical version...incidently they do sound good in German) and finally the Sith Lord they first encountered on Tatooine, the Naboo fighters clear the path for the Jedi and take on the full Federation fleet (not just one ship making it an more hopless fight) and the Queen and her troops storm the palace.

Jar-Jar would have a less prominant role and would be dubbed to turn him in a dignified but quixotic ambassador.

Anakin's dreams of liberating the slaves on Tatooine would come true with a tragic twist in the next film as Geonosis is now Tatooine the site of the first big battle of the Clone Wars.

The Federation fleet would retreat once it's command ship is lost leaving their Neimodian lackys to take the blame.

The scene with Dooku forming the Seperatists would be moved to a meeting on Tatooine placing Dooku into the first film and making it seem as he is the prime Sith Lord.

I'd remove all Sidious scenes from the first film and have him make his first appearence in the second film.

I'd also remove or alter all the joke alien pod racers and have them all gladiator slaves of the Federation.

As in most re-edits Jake Lloyd's performances would need to be toned down to make him less annoying and the Jedi Temple scenes would be placed at the end of the film (minus Qui Gon) with Obi-wan being reluctantly being allowed to school Anakin because of his obvious nascent Jedi abilities  (not because of the dreaded midichlorians).

I'd also would like Darth Maul speak more by sampling some dialogue from the PSone game (where I believe he has more to say) and the Eulogy To Fear (no not the one in Dune) heard in the trailer which (as in the trailer) balances Yoda's warning about fear leading to the Dark Side.

cool! id love it if we made a community rough, low res beta edit. i like the ideas for sure.

it would be good to have the sidious scene from the end of AOTC as a "OMG, it cant be! scene"

It's been mentioned elsewhere-Make it one epic movie (with an intermission!) where Obi-wan Kenobi is the main character. (the guy who's just trying to do the right thing and clean up everyone else's mess while his friend turns evil (sorta like The Dark Knight)

Could I dare to be obvious by making Grievous into what is left of Darth Maul thus padding his character into more of a threat?

As a cyborg foe of the Jedi he could later on be confused with Vader in the public eye so some of the stories of Vader hunting down Jedi could be attributed to him because of the difficulty of communication during a Galactic war, (especially if he sounded like James Earl Jones).

It did seem odd that during the prequels lots of cool looking bad guys turned up with stronger fighting skill than Vader in the original trilogy and with each film at least one of them is knocked out.

Lucas also said that the reason for the sabre duels being more energetic in the prequels was down (in part) to the combatants in the original trilogy being an old man, a cyborg and a partly trained youth.

In the prequels we see Dooku (older than Obi-Wan in the original trilogy) leaping about like a madman and a cyborg who isn't even a Jedi or a Sith taking down the Jedi in their prime.

There is a story (and I'm not sure if this is true) that the some of the people in the art department wanted to give Grievous Maul's eyes but Lucas hated the idea.

It would give the Grievous character a bit more validity if he is what is left of a fully trained Sith Lord,  (which Dooku has restored as a cyborg) though how one could account for Dooku's agility is beyond me.

This is probably well beyond the scope of any re-edit, but it bothers me that the main thing the Jedi have against the Emperor is that he's a Sith lord.

General Greivous dies, then the Jedi go full battle ready to arrest the man. Is being a Sith lord technicaly illegal? They have no proof or evidence that he's done anything wrong. The man doesn't even have a single session of the Senate to renounce his emergency powers. It just seemed really rushed.

Honestly, I don't mind TPM, although about 60% less Jar Jar would be nice.

AOTC is just unpleasent to watch. I hate Annakin the entire time, and they never actually solve the mystery Obi-Wan is investigating.

TheBoost said:

Honestly, I don't mind TPM, although about 60% less Jar Jar would be nice.

Or 100% less Jar Jar... You seriously enjoyed TPM more than AOTC? Wow, I liked Hayden Christensen like 5 times more than Jake Lloyd and he was soo annoying in AOTC. I found he was alright in ROTS though.

Okay, here's a whole big truck load of ideas I've had as well as some ideas I've seen floating around elsewhere, the creators of which I can't really remember.


* First of all, much can be done with a altered opening crawl. So many details can be changed and the whole style of the film can be completely altered. Let me give you some examples on how this can be done with an example of an altered opening crawl for The Phantom Menace:


It is an age of tension in the GALACTIC REPUBLIC.

The nefarious GALACTIC FEDERATION, an alliance of

power-hungry war lords, has mysteriously appeared

and spreads it's influence across the galaxy. Once shielded

by the brave JEDI KNIGHTS the old republic now crumbles from

within and without.


Now, the mercenary Federation has blockaded the peaceful

world of Alderaan seeking to place the helpless world under

their domination. With war looming ever closer, the Chancellor

of the republic has sent two Jedi Knights to negotiate with the

Federation in the hopes that peace can be maintained...


* Okay, so there's a few things to note about that opening. First of all, the federation is no longer involved with trade. They're simply the claw of Palpatine, an organisation of mysterious origin seeking to conquer the galaxy. The old republic is already crumbling, so it's final downfall is already being orchestrated. This gives the series a certain darkness that is generally absent from the prequels, or at least the first two. Naboo is retitled "Alderaan", giving the planet some sense of relevance next to the original series. You could argue that Naboo doesn't look like Alderaan, but you have to realise that this fan edit would constitute and alternate canon. The more high-tech cities of Alderaan undoubtedly exist, but away from the magnificent and historical palace of it's royalty featured here.

* Also, some creative voice editing can be used to make reference appear to Alderaan actually in the film. For example Panaka mentions later that a senator from Alderaan is being considered for the position of chancellor. Use this sound bite earlier in the film and Panaka could in fact say "Alderaan has no army!" as opposed to "We have no army!". I think this works even better, because we know this to be true from the original series as well.

* Next of all, alien languages. The Neimodians are not the least bit intimidating. Some solutions have been suggested for this, but one of the best and most interesting I've seen is to take dialogue from the likes of Passion of Christ and Apocalypto which both feature obscure and (I think, not 100% certain) dead languages. This is a great improvement and gives the editor a lot of freedom when rewriting the dialogue of the Neimodians.

* Next, droids. Rather than speak any recognisable language, they should perhaps speak a garbled techno-babble like the probe droid of Empire Strikes Back. It might make them slightly more intimidating. Another positive change, I think, would be to recolor the droids to gray and their tanks from brown to black. Star Wars has consistently used conflict between nature and technology as a theme, but the naturalistic browns and beige colors don't exactly help emphasise that. If changed they could not only look more intimidating but also help reflect that theme, as they would stick out as very robotic and alien whilst crunching around the forests of "Alderaan".

* Here's a little detail I think could help improve the prequels connection to the original series. It's a just a little one, but instead of the Trade Federation ship using that odd aqua-like and rather gratuatious bubble thing to communicate with Amidala, they could instead use a screen like that used by Vader in Empire Strikes Back. Y'know, that scene where he chokes the admiral using the force. A flash of static, the familiar activation noise and then the reveal of Amidala; it would add a little bit of a familiar ambiance to the scene, I think.

* Jar Jar completely rotoscoped out. Yep. GONE. Along with the Gungans in general. No more.

* I may seem to be hitting the same button again, but I also believe that Naboo starfighters should be changed to gray or a more mechanical color. As it is, they look rather like toys more than tangible star fighters as in the original series. A color alteration could help with that.

* The young Anakin Skywalker is actually a very quiet boy. A very quiet boy. In fact, he's so quiet and introverted and thoughtful most of his lines are no longer appropriate. He's tuning into the force, or something. Any reason at all. Anything to justify removing a bunch of his lines.

* Perhaps Wato should be given the Neimodian treatment too? Except his lips may be too articulate, unlike the Neimodians...Hmm. It would certainly work, as he could make more references to the treatment of slaves in order to increase the sense of villainy. Maybe.

* All lightsabers, excluding Sith lightsabers, should be changed blue. Why? Because then Luke's new lightsaber in Return of the Jedi has some meaning. It's the beginning of a new dawn for the Jedi. Whereas in the old republic they used blue sabers, in the new republic they will use green just as the founder Luke did. I think that would be neat.

That's all I can think of for The Phantom Menace. I was thinking that maybe Dooku could be introduced via Holograms to give his character greater purpose, but somehow I just don't feel there's space for that if the narrative of the first film is to remain uncluttered. Also, I quite like the idea of Grievous being the remains of Darth Maul. Perhaps he could even have Maul-like symbols pasted onto his body? Maybe? I just feel that Maul needed better treatment. I was expecting (and I think fans and the public were expecting it too) that Maul would be the primary antagonist of the prequel series, before he was cut-down in his youth rather like poor, poor Fett.

Anyway, there's my ideas....

This is probably well beyond the scope of any re-edit, but it bothers me that the main thing the Jedi have against the Emperor is that he's a Sith lord.

General Greivous dies, then the Jedi go full battle ready to arrest the man. Is being a Sith lord technicaly illegal? They have no proof or evidence that he's done anything wrong. The man doesn't even have a single session of the Senate to renounce his emergency powers. It just seemed really rushed.

And they have no record of the Sith doing any wrong for 1000 years or so :)

Molly said:

Aramaic's still alive...

I honestly haven't seen the Passion, so I wasn't really sure what language it was they spoke in it. I knew it was either an endangered or extinct language. In any case, Wikipedia has just revealed that native Aramaic speakers found the use of Aramaic in the passion to be "stunted and unfamiliar" meaning it's usage as an alien rather than terrestrial language is slightly more justified.

Any similarities can simply be explained away as being merely similar, like the way Ewokese is sometimes similar to Tagalog and Swedish.

I was always under the impression that the Rebel fleet was comprised of Republican era ships which were salvaged and maintained/modified by the Alliance because they couldn't get new ships.

I would love to see some Y-Wings with all their streamlined panels intact  :

http://flickr.com/photos/rocketseason/sets/72157608098402281/

(one of the few welcome ideas in the new Clone Wars TV series) and some fresh off the production line X, A, B wings etc in the prequels.

I wouldn't even mind seeing some tatty ROTS ships in ROTJ:R but that's for another thread.

I would also like Jengo Fett to be Boba Fett and never remove his mask or be a child or be the template for the clones.

It would be nice to have one mystery guy in the saga remain a mystery.

TheoOdo said:

Naboo is retitled "Alderaan", giving the planet some sense of relevance next to the original series. You could argue that Naboo doesn't look like Alderaan, but you have to realise that this fan edit would constitute and alternate canon. The more high-tech cities of Alderaan undoubtedly exist, but away from the magnificent and historical palace of it's royalty featured here.

* Also, some creative voice editing can be used to make reference appear to Alderaan actually in the film. For example Panaka mentions later that a senator from Alderaan is being considered for the position of chancellor. Use this sound bite earlier in the film and Panaka could in fact say "Alderaan has no army!" as opposed to "We have no army!". I think this works even better, because we know this to be true from the original series as well.

I love this idea a lot.

Giving Alderaan large chunks of screen time makes us care a lot more about the place when it's destroyed in ANH and from space the two places look very similar.

It also explains the lack of mention of Naboo and it's people in the OT.

Making this one change binds the saga closer together.

I agree with Bingowings about Jango Fett.   In the edit I'm working on, Jango and Boba are not father and clone, but instead mysterious Mandalorian warriors and bounty hunters.  Jango is also not the clone template.

TheoOdo said:

Naboo is retitled "Alderaan"

YES!

wouldnt it seem random that the emperor would blow up his own home world though? or would it make sence that he is the senator of some random planet called naboo, who is just helping out amidala. perhaps it could be implied that Sio Bibble is senator through alien subtitles and he stays in order to let the queen go. i cant remember if organa is in TPM or not.

i would also suggest that coruscant scenes are perhaps replaced/re toned to appear more like ROTS, which has a much moodier and dramatic palette.

maybe TPM could be retrofied like Shroud of the Dark Side. Little touches like making the red republic cruiser at the beginning white (like the millenium falcon concepts it was based off) i would be happy to see darth maul become darth grevious.:)

i like the the expanded trade fed ideas, like having geonosians on tatooine.

anakins lightsaber should be a lighter blue in the PT?

IMPOSSIBLE REQUESTS

here are a selection of ideas that i wouldnt expect ady to pull off in a million years, but would love to see:

• consistent naboo ship types, so we get the millenium falcon of the PT

or better

• a new condition millenium falcon being used instead. i know it sounds silly, but it would have been a nice touch to have something objective like that being a tie through. but impossible. the trusty old bird.

• consistent jedi starfighters, or maybe even being replaced with something like A-Wings (someone mentioned having rebel starcraft as republic starcraft)

• tie fighters, or something resembelling them more. the clones wernt too far off stormtroopers, as the cruisers wernt far off star destroyers, but no tie fighters.:(

Master Qui-Gon said:

Yeah but how would you handle that Amidala and Bail are senators of the same planet?

 

Amidala could be head of state (like a constitutional President or Monarch, she is a Queen) Bail (a Viceroy) could be the local Senator and elected political leader once Palpatine has been promoted to Chancellor.

Living here in the UK HM Liz Windsor is the constitutional head of state but her Prime Minister Rt Hon Gordon Brown (texture like sun) is the elected political leader of the country and leads the country in the UK Parliament and during treaty negotiations.

The Queen still has certain powers (she can in theory desolve Parliament and war can't be declared without her approval, something Margaret Thatcher discovered to her embarrassment during the Falklands War) but it's the PM that heads up the day to day running of the shambles.

A similar set up exists in Eire which has a constitutional Presidency.

So you could have Queen Amidala and Viceroy Bail Organa both representing different arms of the running of Alderaan.

In a revised prequel trilogy she could remain Queen all the way through and just edit the references to her being a senator.

Do any of the scenes with the other Queens of Naboo add much to the story?

The other Queens could be further decoys if the scenes are needed.

Would the Emperor allow the destruction of his (supposed) planet of origin?

I can't think of a better way of setting an example to the rest of the Galaxy, tyranny begins at home.

Sure, Tarkin came up with the plan but I could see Palpatine giving the scheme his blessing.

Palpatine doesn't need public approval at that point, he wants to control the galaxy through fear.

Showing that even his own people weren't safe from his destructive whims would polarise opinion, the Rebels would be more rebellious but the floating systems would be less likely to join in the fight.

Bail Organa was going to be in TPM and Adrian Dunbar filmed some scenes in the role :

but Lucas either didn't like them or him and his image was retconned into being Bail Antilies in the EU.

If Naboo was to be reduxed into being Alderaan it wouldn't be too difficult to alter Pananka's line refering to Bail one way or the other, Dunbar never appears in any of the final shots anyway.

Dunbar is a good actor I'd like to see the footage, maybe he was another TPM cast member who didn't take to George or visa versa, Ralph Brown described Lucas as "a man lacking in human decency", Terence Stamp was not impressed when he was asked to act to a mop because Lucas had given Nat Portman the day off  (George didn't think her presence was necessary) and Hugh Quarshie was "made an offer he could refuse" to be in AOTC.

Does ol' Palpy even need to be from Naboo/Alderaan?

will said:

Does ol' Palpy even need to be from Naboo/Alderaan?

 

 

In the EU he does (but who cares in this context) as a Senator he didn't just represent Naboo but a collection of systems in the area, the Republic is a big place but with all this doubling up of representation it hardly sounds that democratic to start with.

It almost makes you wonder what the Alliance were fighting for in the first place.

If Palpatine had a good strong wife with a strong interest in herbal remedies like the Emperor Augustus had ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37lXkrGMpMQ ) the galaxy wouldn't have to wait long to get rid of rotten Emperors.

Doesn't Augustus look like Boss Nass BTW ;-)

 PS. It goes, hopefully without saying, that if you liked that clip do go out and buy "I Claudius" it'll be one of the best spending decisions you'll ever make.

TheoOdo said:

Naboo is retitled "Alderaan"

In this case Adywan will need to cut the extra OT SE Naboo shoots in his ROTJ revisited.

I think it's a good idea, but it could cause many editing troubles for a result that, perhaps, don't really worth it.