The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 203

He does care about storytelling. He's just a sloppy writer. The ideal Star Wars film can still be directed by him, but with somebody polishing the scripts, as it happened with ANH.

He does care about storytelling. He's just a sloppy writer. The ideal Star Wars film can still be directed by him, but with somebody polishing the scripts, as it happened with ANH.

I like how he admits that he's 'The King of Wooden Dialogue' while receiving his AFI award :)

The irony, IMO, is that Star Wars Saga has a GREAT story. A REALLY great one. I mean, try retelling it to somebody (from I to VI, yeah), and he'll think 'No shit, that sounds awesome!'. But the mileage of that person's opinion AFTER seeing the movies may vary. And I don't mean only prequels, RotJ isn't the best execution of the ending that you could get and ANH hasn't aged well for a movie (I really consider ANH to be slow and boring, something I can't say about a lot of other old movies I love to watch).

ChainsawAsh said:

I disagree.  It would have made sense, and it could have been done.

The #1 problem with the PT was the decision to focus so heavily on Anakin.  It should have focused on Obi-Wan as the primary protagonist.  And I think, had this been done, it could have worked while still keeping the surprises of the OT.

But that doesn't matter for this topic - this is about working with what we have, not creating something that was never there.

Or possibly adding to as well as subtracting from what we already have to create something that would otherwise never be there.

In which case ideas are the building blocks of change.

That's why I hope to encourage radical thinking in this thread because the line between the possible and the impossible on a reasonable budget is becoming thinner as time goes on.

While this isn't a total remake thread it may become (if it isn't already) possible to make these disappointing films resemble the sort of films we hoped for while keeping much of what Lucas was trying to do.

ESB is still very much a Lucas film, full of Lucas' ideas but tempered and restrained by the input of others.

I guess what we are trying to do here is apply that restraint retroactively to the PT.

I understand the criticism of some what is being said but it has been astonishing seeing already some of these ideas being realised in motion.

EyeShotFirst said:

This is how the prequels are at the theater in the perfect world of my mind.

I want to know where you got this. Looks great!

So RedLetterMedia's new review has some interesting points about how the prequels could be improved.

Skip to around the 30 min point of part 1 and you'll see what I mean. Some would be relatively simple to pull off e.g. the general mood of coruscant with decaying buildings, less air traffic and more poverty along with Palpatine's propoganda over megaphones.

It's completely true (though it's never occurred to me before his review) that the effects of the war just aren't felt on Coruscant at all. Life just carries on as normal, which is ridiculous!

Then there's the suggestion that the clones should have been the opposing side (or at least utilized for the purpose of espionage and/or infiltration by cloning and replacing high ranking Republic officials - just like in Harry potter where you had people at the Ministry of Magic being put under the imperius curse) and all the republic troopers would just be regular soldiers forced into service, which I've always thought is how it should've been.

This of course would probably be impossible.

Yeah, but if you remove the idea that troops are clones, then who do you have left to call clones? If it weren't called the clone wars, I would say just remove ever reference to clones.. Because honestly, the clone thing is stupid. It's just a tool in these movies. It's not even what the war is about which always confused me. I always thought the war was fought because and for clones.

Not sure that is fixable in what we have now... Since I've seen the RLM review, it seems harder and harder to fix these turds.

One way of making the Jedi come across as less stupid and more realistic would be to replace some of the council members and give them new lines which could nudge the plot into something approaching making sense.

One of the reasons why the PT feels so flat and unconvincing is the over use of CGI and puppets as exposition feeders.

The Rebels and the Imperials come across as more believable in the OT not just because the dialogue is better written and matches a story that makes more sense but also because they are played for the most part by real people without the need of physical or computerised puppetry and audiences tend to relate more to real people.

Even in the OT Ackbar is less engaging a character than Dodonna in ANH because he doesn't really need to be a lobsterman (it may make the Rebels seem more diverse than a humans only club but Ackbar's alien nature is diminished by his very human voice).

Yoda works in ESB and Jabba in ROTJ because of all the effort that went into creating them and because of their position in the story.

I imagine the success of Chewie and the droids in the first film gave George free license to push the other worldly and abstract characters further into the foreground and end result was to dilute the human dimension in the PT.

Removing some of the more bizarre Jedi from the PT would make space for new dialogue and perhaps a less wobbly telling of the story.

Nigel said :

What's wrong with being racy?

By the way guys, what the hell happened to eyeshotfirst? :-/

Also, here's a very rough concept I'm looking into for Zam's death which may explain why Vader says to Boba "no disintegrations"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHHmM1nkjMA

lol Bingo.

brash_stryker said:

By the way guys, what the hell happened to eyeshotfirst? :-/

Temporary ban for making an image-only post outside of off-topic on more than one occasion.

Is there any way to edit the prequels into just one 2h movie... in a way that still makes sense....and ties into the OT....I can't bear to watch them anymore as they are.

J

brash_stryker said:

Also, here's a very rough concept I'm looking into for Zam's death which may explain why Vader says to Boba "no disintegrations"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHHmM1nkjMA

Interesting...

interesting indeed - but what about trying something where the flesh is disintergrated but the armour remains? - I mean, something that fast acting looks powerful enough to also eat Kenobi's arm off...

After watching Bob's video a couple of ideas popped into my head.

First I thought of adding telepathic communication between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan telling him the right time to switch the field gate's attention to  him and open up the fight between Qui-Gon and Maul.

Something simple like "Obi-Wan, now!".

I then thought that perhaps the Sith would be powerful enough to intercept these telepathic messages and you could have Maul's trailer monologue or parts of it play over his glaring over the kneeling Qui-Gon as a form of telepathic taunt.

Maul never says anything during the duel which some people see as cool but I personally find the mental sparing in saber duels are always the important thing, the sword play was a metaphor for what was going on in the combatants heads.

I also thought that perhaps ditching the shielded room altogether would be an improvement and just have the Gui-Gon part of the fight take place on the up walkways when Obi-wan is recovering from being kicked down a few levels by Maul and the second half take place when he has jumped up too late to assist his Master.

The powerstation is one giant death pit do we really need another less impressive looking one?

Finally what if Obi-Wan never gets official Council permission to train Anakin and they barely tolerate his defiance because they don't want Obi-Wan to leave the order?

That would set up the cold distance that the other Jedi keep between them and Anakin and make them come across as smart enough to remain constantly vigilant over his progress.

It would put more pressure on Obi-Wan as he is personally responsible for Anakin's training and not the Council.

As it is we don't really see Anakin in the temple between being rejected by the council in TPM and being a fully trained Jedi Knight in ROTS.

If Obi-Wan is home tutoring him he may not even be allowed access to the temple until a short while before he sets fire to the place for not making him a master.

Look at all the money the various Galactic governments save by not having to cover every floor of their buildings with...floors.