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The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 305

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Smithers said:

“A young Jedi named Darth Vader, he was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father.”

The only story necessary for the prequels to tell is the story of a jedi knight who turns to the dark side and betrays the Jedi, then proceeds to kill a ton of them, Luke should be seen by the audience as some random Jedi’s son, and that’s it. There’s no reason to give Luke and Vader the same last name, and there’s no real reason to see Vader’s children being born. When the twist finally comes in ESB, the audience should be 5 movies in and still be in as much disbelief as Luke is, the prequels really could serve the twist rather than take it away. Man, what a shame these movies are.

I don’t know how it’s possible to mislead the audience into thinking that Anakin and Luke aren’t related. After all, Padme is pregnant during ROTS and when ANH starts that will be the obvious connection to Luke. There really needs to be some other Jedi implied to be the one who turns evil.

So what Jedi that we see in the Prequels is capable of becoming Darth Vader?

Maul - Acceptable age, but too short and never established as either a Jedi or Obi-wan’s student.
Dooku - Former Jedi, vague connection to Obi-wan, noble title, proper height. Far too old, however.
Grevious - Good robotification, but again not a Jedi and completely different attitude from Vader.
Windu - Good build and motivation, acceptable attitude, but too old and impossible as Obi-wan’s student.

Of these options, I feel like Dooku has the best chance despite the age problem. If he was masked, and had some sound effects to indicate parts of him were already robotic (and providing an explanation of his stiff movement), he could actually work with some creative editing.

For example, when Dooku is at Anakin’s mercy in ROTS, simply cut away before he is beheaded. Have Anakin say ‘I shouldn’t.’ Then deactivate his lightsabers off camera, with Palpatine saying ‘You did well, Anakin’. This would also make Palpatine not so obviously interested in Anakin as a Sithling. When Obi-wan wakes up in the elevator shaft and says ‘Did I miss anything?’ Anakin could say ‘Dooku.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘His fate will be the same as ours’.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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The whole problem is with Obi Wan in ANH.

A young JEDI named Darth Vader, he was a PUPIL of mine before he turned to evil, helped the empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered YOUR FATHER.

No edit can remove Anakin falling to the Dark Side. It is impossible. So we KNOW that Anakin has fallen.
We need to hide the fact that he was Obi Wan’s apprentice, we need to make people think that he is not Luke’s father, we need to make the audience believe that Darth Vader is someone else.

Some of these have already been told.

  1. Remove any mention of “Skywalker”.
  2. Remove Anakin calling Obi Wan “Master”.
  3. Remove Luke and Leia’s birth.
  4. Show Anakin being killed.

Problems:

  1. Obi Wan gives Luke Anakin’s lightsaber.
  2. Luke is on the same planet Anakin was.

Italian faneditor.

EDITS LIST:
Episode IV - THE HEIR OF SKYWALKER. Episode VI - RETURN OF THE JEDI RENEWED. DYAD IN THE FORCE (3-into-1 sequels).
PM me for links if interested.

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I think not having Anakin clearly being Luke’s father would be impossible to do unless you also edited the OT, since Obi-Wan refers to Anakin’s saber as his father’s lightsaber. To me, this would defeat the whole purpose of the edit, since you are trying to bend the prequels to conform to the Original Trilogy as we know it.

It would be a cool experiment to try to preserve the twist, but I just wonder if not showing Anakin’s fall would be worth it. It would be like Othello or Faust without their descents into tragedy.

I mean, the whole point of the prequels is to show Anakin’s fall.

I think the only way you could possibly make it work is if Anakin still fell to the dark side, but we assume he died on Mustafar. You would have to establish that Obi-Wan had other students, and that other Jedi may have possibly turned to the dark side. Maybe the briefing scene could be changed to Obi-Wan giving a lesson to his new students, with some new dialogue or a different hologram that helps imply it is a lesson rather than a war room briefing. Or maybe a new shot of some Jedi surrendering to Anakin in the temple raid.

So the audience watching chronologically would still know Obi is lying, but we just be surprised that the twist was different than we thought it was.

But, if you want to save the twist for the OT, you would still be recontextualizing ANH by having Obi still clearly be lying in the audience’s perspective.

Alternatively, you could, like you said, have the last time we see Anakin is in the temple, maybe the rumination scene. But we don’t see him leave the temple. And maybe you could trim ROTS so Anakin’s turn is being set up less. When the Jedi go to arrest Palpatine, maybe the person who saves him is left ambiguous.

So when the temple burns, we are left to assume that Anakin is still there and may have also died. We never go to Mustafar, and like you suggested, have the climax be between Yoda and Sidious. Padmé has the babies and goes into hiding like in Hal’s because she has Jedi children. You still need to imply that Obi-Wan had more students though.

But I feel like even if one were to watch the films this way, after the twist is revealed, the audience would want to know how Anakin became Darth Vader. When did he become more machine than man? When did Obi-Wan find out Anakin was Vader?

By not showing how it happened, you sort of end up in the same place where you want to see how it happened.

Maybe Obi-Wan could find Anakin’s lightsaber in the Jedi temple. Create an insert of him picking it up. Maybe Obi-Wan could still watch the security hologram, but we don’t see what he sees.

Regardless of this change, you still have the error of the ROTJ line “Obi-Wan once thought as you do.” Unless you interpret it as Obi-Wan once thought Anakin was good before he turned evil, but it seems to imply Obi-Wan still thought there was a chance to save Anakin after he turned.

And if you wanted to save all of the reveals, like what Yoda looks like. You’re left with barely any climax for ROTS.

So you either have:
No Yoda in Prequels, Anakin turns but not implied to be Vader
or
Yoda in the Prequels, Anakin’s turn to the dark side is not shown and fate left ambiguous.

You would be left with very little if you had neither Yoda vs Sidious or Anakin vs Obi-Wan as the final battle. Even if you added as many deleted scenes as possible, you would be left with a pretty short movie. I think you would have to add a lot of extra material, somehow.

The only way I see that you can make it work is if you make edits of both the prequels and the original trilogy to make it work. It would be cool to see, but I also think it sort of defeats the original purpose of modifying the PT to match the continuity and the reveals of the OT as-is.

Despite my doubts, if someone could figure it out then I still would be interested in seeing it, but there is a lot you have to figure out and I don’t know if you would have much left by the end of it.

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If you go the route of Anakin dying in the temple, I think it’s required to keep Padme dying. After all, Anakin’s primary temptation to the Dark Side in ROTS is to save Padme from certain death, at least from his point of view. Her death comes as a dark vindication of his visions, and keeps Anakin the noble hero of a tragedy. If she were to survive, the movie would descend into thematic incoherence.

The crawl could provide the blueprint for this new direction, setting the stakes as a battle for the soul of the Jedi religion. Set up Anakin as a Lancelot character, the best of the Jedi Knights whose moral success or failure will determine whether the Jedi as a religion deserves to live or die. Then the Sequel Trilogy could gain more essential relevance.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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I think the Yoda scene in ESB is more fun if the audience is in on it. Besides, cutting huge swashes of the Prequel to preserve a twist that’s executed within a few minutes of meeting the guy in ESB just doesn’t make much sense to me.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

I think the Yoda scene in ESB is more fun if the audience is in on it. Besides, cutting huge swashes of the Prequel to preserve a twist that’s executed within a few minutes of meeting the guy in ESB just doesn’t make much sense to me.

I agree. The Anakin/Vader reveal works better preserved, but Yoda need not be.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Smithers said:
-Remove yoda from the movies, this is crucial and actually serves the OT more because you can leave in all of the lines mentioning master Yoda, setting him up as a great Jedi Master. This is also no problem to me because Yoda is boooring in the PT, save for a few good lines.

Only removing him fighting. You need the Jedi Council to tell the PT’s story.

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Any solution that still shows Luke’s father turning to the dark side is not preserving the twist. Him being Darth Vader is only half of it.

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Agreed.

Like I mentioned and Nev suggested, having Anakin in the temple would be the latest we could really see him.

If you had Mace go by himself, and cut the dialogue between him and Palpatine, maybe you could imply Mace went to align himself with Palpatine. That would help explain the whole “betrayed and murdered your father” bit. The only issue would be making it to where Mace was one of Obi-Wan’s students.

Otherwise, you would need to make a totally new character, or at least show Obi-Wan had other students.

How you would accomplish this, I don’t really know.

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I hate to be a square, but, can we not be content with the machete order or prequels after the OT?
This chronological order and retaining surprises seems like a lost cause.

But, alas, who am I to control the discussion?

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I have an idea to use the PT footage to create an anthology film, starring Obi-Wan and Anakin during the Clone Wars. No fall of the republic, no turn to darkness, just the “good ol days” Obi-Wan talks of. TCW accomplishes this but I wonder if is possible in live action. A lot of restructuring would be required:

  1. Start off with Obi-Wan investigating Geonosis, with a crawl explaining everything up that point. Everything before that could be used but is frankly boring; the asteroid dogfight will catch viewer’s attention from the start.

  2. Keep the Battle of Geonosis grounded to Obi-Wan / Anakin / Padme; although the fight scenes are cool they take away from the pacing of the primary story- capture Dooku before he starts a galaxy-wide war.

  3. But of course they fail. The loss creates personal stakes. Yoda only uses the force. Dooku’s escape leads to a clone wars montage, which I already created and posted here a while back: https://vimeo.com/294955682 (excuse the distortion). With this we smoothly transition to ROTS without a text time jump, making it feel natural.

  4. Here’s where things get complicated. Obi-Wan is sent to General Grievous before the death of Count Dooku in hopes of finding Dooku’s location. Meanwhile, Anakin begins to doubt the council and learns his wife is pregnant. But he shows no obvious dark side signals (with the raider and dooku murders having not happened).

  5. After Grevious’s defeat is the trickiest part. We establish the Separatists have hired change-lings using audio from ATOC and TCW’s Holocron Heist. Then, it is implied that four changelings have infiltrated the Republic and taken the forms of Mace Windu and three other Jedi. The “treason” scene is repurposed as Separtists kidnapping an innocent Palpatine. Of course, Palps doesn’t whip out a saber as that would give away the big secret.

  6. Anakin rushes to save Palpatine but is too late, leading to the Battle over Coruscant. Anakin apologizes to Obi-Wan about not appreciating his training, allowing them to have character arcs going into the third act. Then the battle plays out, only with General Grevious. This time Anakin and Obi-Wan work together to take down Dooku, concluding the anthology.

Tl;dr: A simple, fun edit for the Prequels that could played before ANH without any spoilers.

Maul- A Star Wars Story

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I’m having trouble understanding the arguments to hide Anakin’s turn to preserve the twists, I think I’m missing something. My pint was to preserve the whole point of the PT, which is to show Anakin’s fall to the dark side, but the point was to hide the fact that anakin has any relation to Luke. In ANH, Obi-Wan talks about how darth vader was a pupil of his that turned to evil, so the audience (given the footage available) WOULD immediately know that anakin and darth vader are one in the same, but the audience doesn’t necessarily know that darth vader and luke’s father are one in the same. What we know from ANH is that luke’s father was a jedi and that darth vader killed him, so all we have to do is imply that Luke’s father died during the 20 year long jedi purge at the hands of vader. Am I missing something?

Prequel Fan-Edit thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Yet-another-series-of-prequel-edits/id/17329

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4throck said:

Smithers said:
-Remove yoda from the movies, this is crucial and actually serves the OT more because you can leave in all of the lines mentioning master Yoda, setting him up as a great Jedi Master. This is also no problem to me because Yoda is boooring in the PT, save for a few good lines.

Only removing him fighting. You need the Jedi Council to tell the PT’s story.

I will cut together every single clip where yoda has no lines to prove this is easily doable

Prequel Fan-Edit thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Yet-another-series-of-prequel-edits/id/17329

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Smithers said:

I’m having trouble understanding the arguments to hide Anakin’s turn to preserve the twists, I think I’m missing something. My pint was to preserve the whole point of the PT, which is to show Anakin’s fall to the dark side, but the point was to hide the fact that anakin has any relation to Luke. In ANH, Obi-Wan talks about how darth vader was a pupil of his that turned to evil, so the audience (given the footage available) WOULD immediately know that anakin and darth vader are one in the same, but the audience doesn’t necessarily know that darth vader and luke’s father are one in the same. What we know from ANH is that luke’s father was a jedi and that darth vader killed him, so all we have to do is imply that Luke’s father died during the 20 year long jedi purge at the hands of vader. Am I missing something?

The problem is that no matter which way you cut it, it doesn’t totally work. Your solution on paper sounds like the best, but even if you cut out Anakin’s Skywalker name, there are a few too many hints - Padme’s pregnancy, Anakin’s being from Tatooine, the whole Lars homestead, and Anakin’s lightsaber (possibly the biggest one you can’t get around).

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If you really want to preserve the twist, I think the best option is to have Luke be Luke Lars for the first two OT films, as that would hit two birds with one stone, preserving the twist while simultaneously solving the issue of how Vader never figured out the guy named Skywalker living with his step-brother was his son. Granted there’s still the step-brother bit, but that’s something you’d fix in the Prequels themselves. Anyway, the only problem with my idea is Lars has got to be the lamest name in the Galaxy. Most notably, you’d lose “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”

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DominicCobb said:

The problem is that no matter which way you cut it, it doesn’t totally work. Your solution on paper sounds like the best, but even if you cut out Anakin’s Skywalker name, there are a few too many hints - Padme’s pregnancy, Anakin’s being from Tatooine, the whole Lars homestead, and Anakin’s lightsaber (possibly the biggest one you can’t get around).

True, my edit won’t contain the tatooine part of AOTC, and with TPM being the most expendable installment in the series, you could avoid the tatooine problem by completely removing it in a hybrid edit. Padme’s pregnancy is pretty hard to get around, and Anakin’s lightsaber would pretty much need to get cut out and around as much as possible so that the audience never focuses on that hilt. That’s still a bit of a reach but I think it’s doable.

Prequel Fan-Edit thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Yet-another-series-of-prequel-edits/id/17329

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Anakin Starkiller said:

The whole “This place seems familiar.” is such an unimportant throwaway line that I only remember it exists because of this thread. Besides, it’s not like Luke would remember the place he was born at. How many of you remember being born?

How many are Jedi?

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Smithers said:

I’m having trouble understanding the arguments to hide Anakin’s turn to preserve the twists, I think I’m missing something. My pint was to preserve the whole point of the PT, which is to show Anakin’s fall to the dark side, but the point was to hide the fact that anakin has any relation to Luke. In ANH, Obi-Wan talks about how darth vader was a pupil of his that turned to evil, so the audience (given the footage available) WOULD immediately know that anakin and darth vader are one in the same, but the audience doesn’t necessarily know that darth vader and luke’s father are one in the same. What we know from ANH is that luke’s father was a jedi and that darth vader killed him, so all we have to do is imply that Luke’s father died during the 20 year long jedi purge at the hands of vader. Am I missing something?

Return of the Jedi names Luke’s father as Anakin.

Reading R + L ≠ J theories

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Has anyone thought of adding city footage from the blade runner films into the prequals?

“Get over violence, madness and death? What else is there?”

Also known as Mr. Liquid Jungle.

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There was an edit a while ago that used some of the Taffy Lewis bar footage from BR in the Coruscant nightclub. Don’t think the edit was ever completed, though.