The Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread — Page 59

brash_stryker said:

TheBoost said:

 That's the whole point. The Dark Side twists and corrupts. There is no 'but I did it for such and such a good reason.' The Dark Side is an insidious cancer.

Exactly. Which is why Anakin giving rational reasons for turning to the dark side does not work.

 

Well, Yoda always said that fear leads to the dark side. Having fear of something (like loosing someone) is a rational reason that can lead someone to the dark side. The thing is that it cannot be the only reason, indeed. Because sometimes we all do bad things for good reasons without being bad persons in our heart. Anakin is doing bad things for good reasons, but we don't actualy really see when and why he became corrupted by the dark side. The movie needs scenes where Anakin learn more and more dark side powers that makes him feel unvulnerable and makes him loose his mind.

brash_stryker said:

TheBoost said:

 That's the whole point. The Dark Side twists and corrupts. There is no 'but I did it for such and such a good reason.' The Dark Side is an insidious cancer.

Exactly. Which is why Anakin giving rational reasons for turning to the dark side does not work.

 But his perfectly rational reason is almost instantly twisted, so that he kills her. It makes perfect sense. Anakin thinks he can do it, but he's wrong.

Luke couldn't give into his hatred, even if it meant that was the way he could stop Vader and Empy. If he did, his noble intentions would have been twisted and corrupted. Luke cant say "I'm just gonna tap me some Dark Side to take out Palpy, then I'll be good again." It sounds rational but it would fail, that's what Anakin tried.

(are we talking about Anakin's motivation's being incorrect in-universe? If we are we apparently agree. If we're talking about Anakin's motivations being a plot-hole as suggested by the cartoon you posted, those motivations and their consequences seem perfectly consistent to me.)

I always looked at the dark side as a means of power and control. Control and power over others.

There was a line somewhere in the ROTS novel where Palps further seduces Anakin by promising him a whole star system. It's those kind of things that would go further in the seduction as a quest for more power and control.

This goes back to AOTC and his inability to let things go and his need to control where people are and what they're doing. He puts R2 in Padme's room to watch her. He dreams and obsesses over his mother's fate.

It's like the old saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. His original intent may have been noble, but misguided. By ROTS, it should become simply power for power's sake.

It should be like him slowly becoming addicted to the power he thinks the dark side will give him.

you know what could really sell the mortivation of anakin turning dark to save his wife is  to have padme actually be suffering from some virus that would take her life and the unborn child's life rather than her dying from childbirth

this idea comes from one of the star wars clone was series where she comes in contact with a virus called the blue shadow virus.  in the episode anakin was kind of on edge that makes obiwan kind of suspisious to his realtionship with padme.

TMBTM said:

brash_stryker said:

TheBoost said:

 That's the whole point. The Dark Side twists and corrupts. There is no 'but I did it for such and such a good reason.' The Dark Side is an insidious cancer.

Exactly. Which is why Anakin giving rational reasons for turning to the dark side does not work.

 

 

Well, Yoda always said that fear leads to the dark side. Having fear of something (like loosing someone) is a rational reason that can lead someone to the dark side. The thing is that it cannot be the only reason, indeed. Because sometimes we all do bad things for good reasons without being bad persons in our heart. Anakin is doing bad things for good reasons, but we don't actualy really see when and why he became corrupted by the dark side. The movie needs scenes where Anakin learn more and more dark side powers that makes him feel unvulnerable and makes him loose his mind.

Well the problem with this is you're rationalising it with a prequel in-universe explanation. Any justification should be drawn from the OT in my opinion, as this is the Star Wars we know and love, before George took a crap on the franchise. In-universe reasoning aside, his turn is never convincing as a FILM. The fall from grace we were promised in the OT never happened. Anakin was a dick when he was meant to be "good" and when he turned we never got a sense he was any more evil than he was before, but rather, making conscious decisions to commit these atrocities to save his wife, rather than WANTING to do them.

EDIT: Just realised you agreed with what I said about the film never giving us a sense of him getting corrupted. Yeah more scenes (either side of him pledging allegiance to palpatine) could help, but whether this would be doable, I remain skeptical.

TheBoost said:

But his perfectly rational reason is almost instantly twisted, so that he kills her. It makes perfect sense. Anakin thinks he can do it, but he's wrong.

Luke couldn't give into his hatred, even if it meant that was the way he could stop Vader and Empy. If he did, his noble intentions would have been twisted and corrupted. Luke cant say "I'm just gonna tap me some Dark Side to take out Palpy, then I'll be good again." It sounds rational but it would fail, that's what Anakin tried.

(are we talking about Anakin's motivation's being incorrect in-universe? If we are we apparently agree. If we're talking about Anakin's motivations being a plot-hole as suggested by the cartoon you posted, those motivations and their consequences seem perfectly consistent to me.)

No I agree it's not a plothole. In capable hands it could have worked as his initial rationale, so long as other temptations were presented to him along the way. As it is, it's just badly executed and unconvincing.

I only posted that cartoon for laughs. Here's some others:

Alternatively you could keep the prophecy but flag it up before they meet Anakin.

Keep him a slave but reduce what he does to something a bit more within the realms of belief (no building Threepio and possibly getting the pod by some other means but Anakin does it up for Qui-Gon).

Turn Anakin's frustration more onto Mace specifically and the Council generally (and less onto Obi-Wan) make Obi-Wan into the one person who always backs him up when everyone else is cautious of him to the point where Anakin's frustations seem more legitimate.

Reduce the Padme crush so that he only becomes seriously interested in her after his mother dies (he fancies her and likes her but realises there is no future in it) but when his mother dies everything is turned upside down. Padme sees him at his most vulnerable and he sees her at her most supportive and this is where their feelings for each other become more than an infatuation.

Keep his massacre of the Tuscans but make that his turn to the darkside moment. Have him confide in Palpatine not Padme and keep it as a dirty secret between the two of them.

That way Palpatine knows about his ambition to keep people alive before ROTS, something he could use as a carrot for later.

The stick could be the knowledge of what he has done (married in secret and murdering children all be it a moment of justified insanity).

That way Anakin could be almost blackmailed into doing what he does rather than just opting to do it at a whim.

It's still the same story that we got in the theatrical versions but nudged into a more plausible mode.

Good guy does something evil in a moment of stress and is manipulated to do things worse and worse until he is so far down he can't see a way out.

Sometimes less is more but not always, so it would depend how it worked in an edit.

Having him already killing children (in a moment of insanity which he deeply regrets at that point) makes it easier to believe he might do it again and be more outwardly callous about it in the future (as he becomes desensitised to the horror of what he is doing).

We have no evidence that he has gone that far other than his confession.

His choice of confessor needs to change though, Palpatine makes much more sense, Padme falling in love with a self confessed child murderer makes no sense at all.

Palpatine keeping the information under his cowl does.

Bingowings said:

Sometimes less is more but not always, so it would depend how it worked in an edit.

Having him already killing children (in a moment of insanity which he deeply regrets at that point) makes it easier to believe he might do it again and be more outwardly callous about it in the future (as he becomes desensitised to the horror of what he is doing).

We have no evidence that he has gone that far other than his confession.

His choice of confessor needs to change though, Palpatine makes much more sense, Padme falling in love with a self confessed child murderer makes no sense at all.

Palpatine keeping the information under his cowl does.

Agreed.

Luke: I won't fail you. I'm not afraid.
Yoda: You will be. You will be.

If this was to tie up with the prequel trilogy (along with exaggerated yodaisms) it would go something like this:

Luke: I won't fail you. I'm not afraid.
Yoda: Good this is. On the path to the darkside you are not. No problems have we. Fucked the emperor is.

NOBODY expects the Dark Lords Of The Sith! Our chief weapon is hate...hate and fear...fear and hate.... Our two weapons are fear and hate...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, hate, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, hate.... I'll come in again....

EyeShotFirst said:

Palpatine really needs work. I hate the way he looks in ROTS. The makeup people went way too far. Palpatine didn't necessarily need to be all deformed. I could see it as he was old and his powers were keeping him alive which in turn made him old and wrinkly. It looks crappy. I used the same approach ady did for ESB R. I plopped the ROTJ eyes on the rest of the face and blended it. Plus I undersaturated it for flow with the rest of the saga.

This looks very impressive! Makes the world of difference. Now we just need to somehow get rid of the "lightning blowback" explanation for why he looks like this.

EyeShotFirst said:

Palpatine really needs work. I hate the way he looks in ROTS. The makeup people went way too far. Palpatine didn't necessarily need to be all deformed. I could see it as he was old and his powers were keeping him alive which in turn made him old and wrinkly. It looks crappy. I used the same approach ady did for ESB R. I plopped the ROTJ eyes on the rest of the face and blended it. Plus I undersaturated it for flow with the rest of the saga.

As I posted earlier I'd make the transformation even more subtle:

I wish there was a way to show the Palpatine transformation in a more subtle way (he has almost two decades of evil to turn into the pale prune face we see in ROTJ).

It would be more acceptable to me if the lightning accident doesn't happen at all but he slowing becomes consumed by the dark forces he is using.

I agree, but is this doable?

brash_stryker said:

I agree, but is this doable?

It would depend on how much Palpatine after the Mace battle you want to use.

The declaration of the Empire scene should be a doddle (there is plenty of sequences of pre-change Palpatine on the Senate podium to adapt and you could keep his lips pretty much the way they are so lip sync shouldn't be a problem).

Some people would like to remove or truncate drastically the Yoda Vs Palpatine duel and even after his turn his cowl covers a multidude of latex sins.

It would be great to see what results would come from people attempting such a task.