Channel72

You know, a weird byproduct of the way Disney depicts the New Republic is some very interesting (and likely inadvertent) political messaging. The Prequels depicted (poorly) the failure of a democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, driven by a populace who chose to “elect” an Emperor because they favored security over personal freedom. The Republic failed to resolve the Separatist conflict, embraced a massive war, resulting in an unprecedented military build-up as prelude to a police state. The messaging here is pretty obvious: don’t give your leaders too much power for the sake of security, and be skeptical about the military-industrial complex. It was a pretty typical message for the Bush-era, post 9-11 environment the Prequels were released in.

A decade later, the Disney Sequels come out, followed by all these New Republic based Disney+ shows. And bizarrely, Disney seems to have inadvertently imbued their content with the opposite message. In the Sequels, the New Republic government defunds its military and stubbornly refuses to believe the First Order is a serious threat. Only Leia takes measures to fight the First Order, and she is proven to be right.

Then in the various New Republic Disney+ shows, we see a similar dynamic: New Republic politicians and bureaucrats are constantly skeptical about any military threats to the Republic for some reason. Only our heroes (and an offscreen Princess Leia) take reports of any national security threats seriously. And of course, our heroes (and offscreen Leia) are always proven correct.

So bizarrely, Disney+ Star Wars is giving off something like a neo-conservative pro-war, pro-national security message: “Make sure you maintain a strong military and stay alert for national security threats - enemies of the Republic are everywhere! Don’t be a peace-loving idiot like that Senator in the Ahsoka show - build up your military and increase your defense budget!” The messaging tells us we need a strong military-industrial complex, otherwise our old enemies will regroup and take us out.

Of course, I don’t think this messaging is intentional. It’s just a fluke stemming from poor planning beginning with Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams wanted to do a soft reboot of the OT, which meant resetting the Galaxy back to Empire vs. Rebels. So the New Republic had to go. (J.J. didn’t care how. Just blow it up!) But in order to justify how it was destroyed so easily, the writers concocted this whole backstory where the New Republic government dismantles its military and inexplicably doesn’t take any national security threats seriously. So Leia has to go off on her own and fund a “resistance”. This weird skepticism of national security threats is then carried over into the Disney+ shows.

Anyway, I just think this inadvertent pro-military messaging is really hilarious.

fmalover said:

Channel72 said:

Gandalf the Cyan said:

I can give Lucas a bit of slack for the lucklusterness of the PT and ROTJ, since he was ultimately just trying to make pulpy Flash Gordon-esque adventures, not high-art movies. ANH and ESB, however, were so good that they’re generally considered to have entered into the realm of high art. He then fell into a trap where his subsequent films were expected to be masterpieces as well, and I agree that he could have definitely done better on them. But since he really knocked it out of the park on his first 2 SW films, fans’ expectations were higher than his.

I don’t think this opinion is too unpopular, especially around this forum. ESB especially came out amazingly good, but went over budget and probably gave Lucas ulcers from the stress. He probably never intended to make Star Wars that good - but it ended up being that good anyway due to “lightning in a bottle” factors like Kasdan’s script, Kershner’s direction, and the natural chemistry between Hamill, Fisher and Ford.

Why does everyone ignore the fact that TESB was co-written by Leigh Brackett? They always make it seem like Lawrence Kasdan was the sole screenwriter.

Well, I definitely don’t ignore that. In fact, I posted a whole thread about Brackett’s screenplay a while back. But the reality is that close to 0% of Brackett’s draft made it into the final shooting script, so her role is often glossed over for the sake of brevity when discussing the development process of ESB.

In fact, I wouldn’t even necessarily say Brackett “co-wrote” ESB. That implies a collaboration between Brackett and Kasdan. In reality, Brackett independently wrote a completely different take on ESB based on Lucas’ plot outline. Lucas then rewrote the script from scratch apparently. It’s hard to say how many ideas in Lucas’ rewrite originated with Brackett. At face value, the later Kasdan scripts (which were based on Lucas’ rewrite) appear to be completely independent from Brackett.

Personally, I believe that elements of Brackett’s draft influenced the way Kasdan/Lucas thought about the story as they developed it. But that’s just my own speculation. The broad story elements - the plot, the locations, even some specific things like Luke being attacked by a snow monster - originated from Lucas’ plot outline, not Brackett’s draft. So it’s tough to identify specific ideas in the final script that unambiguously originated with Brackett. But going by Kasdan’s fourth draft and the final shooting script, pretty much 0% of Brackett’s original writing or dialogue carried over into later iterations.

NFBisms said:

Anakin / Darth Vader is purposefully re-contextualized as a kid, and I think there is some value in foregoing the fabled ‘Jedi Hunts’ (that were sure to have happened between canonical III and IV anyway) to examine what made the monster at earlier psychological and political points. He’s a failure of institution, radicalized by war, exploited by an abuser, abandoned by pedagogy. It’s a different flavor of tragedy than personal failure.

Anakin’s downfall should probably contain elements of both systemic failure and personal failure. But I think it should be more heavily weighted towards personal failure. Perhaps something like 40% systemic failure (failures of the Jedi as an institution, experiencing the horrors and injustices of war, etc.), and 60% personal failure (Anakin just being turned on by the allure of power, and his need for control in a chaotic Universe). The greater emphasis on personal failure is really required for Vader’s redemption in ROTJ to have real dramatic weight. It really needs to be Vader’s choice to embrace the Dark Side, and also his choice to save his son in ROTJ.

Gandalf the Cyan said:

I can give Lucas a bit of slack for the lucklusterness of the PT and ROTJ, since he was ultimately just trying to make pulpy Flash Gordon-esque adventures, not high-art movies. ANH and ESB, however, were so good that they’re generally considered to have entered into the realm of high art. He then fell into a trap where his subsequent films were expected to be masterpieces as well, and I agree that he could have definitely done better on them. But since he really knocked it out of the park on his first 2 SW films, fans’ expectations were higher than his.

I don’t think this opinion is too unpopular, especially around this forum. ESB especially came out amazingly good, but went over budget and probably gave Lucas ulcers from the stress. He probably never intended to make Star Wars that good - but it ended up being that good anyway due to “lightning in a bottle” factors like Kasdan’s script, Kershner’s direction, and the natural chemistry between Hamill, Fisher and Ford.

I was just randomly rewatching Return of the Jedi the other day on Disney+. I noticed that Disney added a content warning that said: “Tobacco use”. What the hell? Is there some scene I forgot where Palpatine is smoking a cigarette while relaxing on the DS2 or something? I’m not sure why this content warning is there, but I can only guess it must be because of that brief scene where Jabba is smoking some kind of space hookah pipe (which may not technically even be tobacco).

Because I’m a ridiculous nerd, I looked this up on Wookiepedia, and found this article: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hookah_pipe

Hilariously, the Canon version of the article doesn’t specify what exactly is being smoked in these Star Wars “hookah pipes”. But the Legends version of the article says it’s some kind of intoxicant called “Marcan herbs”, which is described as a “mild euphoric drug”. So the content warning should probably be more like “drug use” rather than “tobacco use”, if Marcan herbs are still canonical. Also, obviously I have no life.

EDIT: Just realized there’s also a shot of some Ewoks smoking pipes. I guess this movie does have lots of smoking in it.

timdiggerm said:

Channel72 said:

And I agree about Alderaan. I’ll never understand why Lucas created Naboo instead of just using Alderaan as one of the principal settings.

As much as I agree, I can’t help but feel that if he had done this, we’d be calling it the prime example of “universe shrinkage”

Well, we do say that overuse of Tatooine causes “universe shrinkage”, so I see your point. But I suspect that using Alderaan in the Prequels would be received mostly positively, mostly because we never actually saw Alderaan in the OT, and Ben Kenobi’s association with Alderaan as recounted in A New Hope sort of primed the audience to expect that Alderaan would have some key role in the Prequels.

Vladius said:

Channel72 said:

Sideburns of BoShek said:

I really liked FOTR at the time, and still prefer it to what we actually got. Though imagination and our projections in filling in the blanks often triumphs reality. I’d love to see an animation or comic book form of it, even fan made, but then is so much of that early “what if?” stuff I’d like to see, along the lines of “The Star Wars” comics from 2013/14.

A common element across most fan speculation about the Prequels is that our imaginations concocted stories almost entirely based on elements from the OT. Things like Alderaan, Captain Antilles, spice mines of Kessel, etc. But Lucas obviously wanted to make the Prequels unique, with new settings, new characters, and completely unexpected plot developments. And since it was Lucas’ creativity and imagination that created Star Wars in the first place, it seemed likely that he would come up with amazing new things that far surpassed the mediocre imagination of the average fan.

And indeed he did come up with lots of new, unexpected stuff. Things like Gungans, mysterious clone conspiracies, a “chosen one” prophecy, Qui-Gon Jinn, General Grievous, Dexter Jettster, pod racing, etc. I mean, who could have expected that Episode I would go in an entirely bizarre direction - telling a Kurosawa-influenced side story about two Jedi Knights protecting a young Queen from evil invaders - a story almost completely unrelated to anything that happens in the OT. Lucas obviously wanted to flex his creative muscles, defying fan expectations to such a degree that the whole thing came off as wacky instead of cool. In retrospect, the pre-Prequel fan expectations - derivative and straightforward as they often were - sound like a much better “rough sketch” for the Prequels than what we ultimately got.

Out of that list of unexpected stuff, the only thing that was universally liked and well handled (maybe) was podracing. “At least it did something different” is always a bad excuse for this kind of thing.

That’s not a bizarre direction for episode 1 at all. You’re not winning any points by namedropping “Kurosawa-influenced” by alluding to The Hidden Fortress when the original Star Wars in 1977 was already drawing on that setup so heavily. If anything the prequels ruined those elements by making the Jedi the FBI instead of samurai.

The developments weren’t that unexpected given that they are prequels and some of the material was already written. Everyone knew going in that Anakin would become Darth Vader, Obi Wan would be a main character and train Anakin, the Emperor would be a main character and corrupt Anakin, the Emperor and Vader would kill the Jedi minus Yoda and Obi Wan, Luke and Leia’s mother would be a main character and some kind of royalty, and Luke and Leia would be born and get hidden from Vader. It’s not really fair to any fans or writers to say that they had a failure of imagination for sticking to what was already well established, especially given that writers were explicitly prevented from detailing very much about the prequel era.

For Alderaan specifically, it makes much more sense for Alderaan to be a part of the story than for Anakin to be from Tatooine, which was something Lucas chose to do over. He did re-use a lot of ideas and imagery, it’s just that people nowadays credit that to Ring Theory or something rather than a lack of imagination or to fanservice.

I probably wasn’t clear enough, but that list of “unexpected stuff” was supposed to be a list of stupid things, not well-handled things. I mean, I included Dexter Jettser in there, which I thought made it obvious I was listing stupid stuff in the Prequels. The main point I wanted to make was that fan theories about the Prequels were way more derivative of the OT than Lucas’ actual Prequels, but that this was probably a good thing because, in practice, Lucas’ original ideas turned out to be so ridiculous/wacky that OT-derivative fan ideas probably would have been way better.

And I agree about Alderaan. I’ll never understand why Lucas created Naboo instead of just using Alderaan as one of the principal settings.

The “Darth Vader hunts down and terminates Jedi” movie sounds cool in concept, but would probably be hard to write in a compelling way. You’d need to establish the characters of Vader’s victims - and you can’t even use Obi-Wan as one of them. And as the third movie in a Trilogy, there’s just not really enough material that ties back into the pre-Vader story lines (stuff from Episode 1 and 2, like the Clone Wars, etc.) that also overlaps with a post-Vader Episode 3 murder-fest story-line. I think a story about Vader hunting down Jedi survivors would potentially be easier to implement as a series instead of a single movie, as it would necessarily require establishing new characters who are Vader’s victims before killing them off.

In my opinion, despite how cool it sounds on paper, watching Vader kill lots of Jedi actually wouldn’t be as interesting as it sounds. The real gold that could have been mined from the Prequels was the relationship/friendship between Anakin and Obi-Wan and Anakin’s heart-wrenching betrayal of his mentor and best friend. But bizarrely, that was barely explored in Lucas’ Prequels.

DZ-330 said:

Please define filler for me?

I mean, these streaming serialized shows usually have some overarching “season-level” plot or through-line that begins in the first episode and wraps up (or significantly advances) in the season finale. Individual episodes may advance the season-level plot to varying degrees. “Filler episodes” are episodes that barely advance the season-level plot, or don’t advance it at all. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even if an episode doesn’t advance the season-level plot, it can still be used for valuable character development.

But in practice, at least with Disney+ Star Wars, the non-plot-advancing episodes can be a bit frustrating, because of Disney’s weekly release schedule and the relatively few episodes per season. The show grabs your attention with dangling plot threads, but then filler episodes force you to wait yet another week for any additional plot advancement. Of course, this is subjective and context-dependent: filler episodes can be enjoyable, especially if the show isn’t structured around some urgent season-level plot. Arguably, before serialized story-telling become fashionable, most TV shows were just all “filler episodes” - and nobody complained. I didn’t really mind the “side quest” episodes back in Mandalorian Season 1 either, because the whole show had this laid back episodic vibe. But as a show progresses and the “season-level” plot becomes more well-defined and urgent, and starts merging with larger Star Wars narratives, the non-plot advancing episodes can really be a strain.

Also, with Bad Batch in particular, I think the season-level plot-advancing episodes are just orders of magnitude more compelling than the non-plot advancing ones. Season 3 so far arguably had one “filler” episode. It was okay, I guess. It was mostly the protagonists running away from giant tentacle monsters, for the sake of a very minor plot-advancing clue at the end. (Although they did introduce those young clones, so maybe that will be significant later.) Regardless, the plot-advancing episodes are just in an entirely different league in terms of quality.

So I just watched the first 3 Bad Batch season 3 episodes.

Despite being a cartoon aimed at kids, and despite having Dave Filoni’s name attached to it, there’s something about this show that sets it apart from the usual recent non-Andor live action Star Wars crap. Like… this show is actually written pretty competently, more often than not.

I’m so used to watching crap like the Mandalorian or whatever, where very little thought is put into plot mechanics or the logistics of how characters get from A to B. Characters often just appear wherever the plot needs them to be. Characters often conveniently forget previously established abilities. Characters often take actions that seem incoherent or questionable. Limitations are vague or undefined - characters often just “wing it” and everything works out, because the bad guys are impossibly stupid and the good guys are impossibly lucky.

But the Bad Batch is often written like an actual story with actual thought put into plot mechanics. There’s often proper set ups and pay-offs, characters know their limitations, and thought is often put into the logistics of the action scenes.

I won’t really spoil anything, but there’s an episode where a character has to escape from an Imperial facility. Sounds really cliché, right? We’ve seen this 1,000 times. I’m sure they just easily bonk some Stormtroopers on the head and walk out the front door, right? Well, no. In fact, a lot of time is spent setting up how well guarded and secure this facility is. They spend an entire episode just showing daily life in the facility. It really does seem pretty impossible to escape - it’s portrayed as a realistically secure facility with sentries, bio-scans and force fields limiting access to different areas of the facility. When the escape finally happens, the protagonists exploit a feature of the facility that was set up well beforehand and actually makes sense, and they also have help from someone with higher security clearance. It’s like the writers actually thought hard about this, and tried to come up with a way for the protagonists to escape without necessarily making Imperial security look completely ridiculous. (They should have just put on a trench-coat and a fake mustache and waltzed out the front door, like in the Kenobi show.)

I mean, the show isn’t even that good. It’s like a 6.5 out of 10, mostly. It’s certainly no Andor. It still suffers a bit from pointless filler episodes. But I’m just pleasantly surprised to see actual competent writing in Star Wars these days.

The Order 66 scenes in ROTS came off as emotionally sterile to me. A “montage” scene like that was also very much NOT compatible with typical Star Wars film language, which generally stays anchored to a POV character.

I always thought a better way to depict the purge would be to stay within the POV of one character. They did this reasonably well in Clone Wars Season 7, where we saw the purge from the narrow POV of one Jedi (Ahsoka) trapped on a starship, being pursued by Republic soldiers trying to kill her. I think ROTS should have done something like this, perhaps with Obi-Wan as the POV character. The full extent of the purge should have been implied, happening mostly off screen over a longer time period.

I have a theory about all this. Basically, the Star Wars content we see streaming now is not how Disney originally planned to use the IP back in the early 2010s after they acquired Lucasfilm. Disney was operating originally under a completely different “general direction” for Star Wars, which has been completely turned upside down in the subsequent years due to multiple unforeseen events.

Originally, the plan was to move on completely from the OT era and characters. The original actors were very old, and it was time to reboot and move on. The Sequels were to be a “swan song” for the OT heroes and the OT era in general, much like Star Trek: Generations was a final goodbye to Captain Kirk. The future was to be focused mostly on the Sequel era. (Evidence for this is heavy early investment in Sequel-era themed parks, merchandise and promotional materials). The idea was that the Sequel Trilogy would pave the way for decades of future Star Wars content set in the Sequel era and possibly starring Sequel Trilogy characters. Yes, there were also those “Star Wars story” movies set in the OT-era, like Rogue One, Solo, the aborted Boba Fett film, etc. but those were limited in scope, and the main thrust going forward would be to move on to the Sequel era. This would effectively skip the New Republic period entirely, because that period simply wasn’t relevant in light of the Sequels, where the New Republic was unceremoniously destroyed as an after-thought, along with Luke’s aborted Jedi order.

But then a few unexpected things happened:

1. Unlike TFA, which was resoundingly successful by any metric, TLJ was financially successful but caused widespread division among the vocal fan-base.
2. The Solo movie bombed financially, causing uncertainty about the franchise’s future.
3. A quaint little side-project called “The Mandalorian” was released on streaming, and became an unexpectedly enormous success and merchandise-sale driver.
4. Some idiot somewhere ate a bat or something, or possibly left the door open at some lab in China, causing a world-wide pandemic that killed millions and forced the survivors to stay at home and watch Disney+.

Given these unexpected developments, Disney began to heavily redirect resources into their fledgling streaming service, with the Mandalorian as the centerpiece. This brought Favreau/Filoni into the spotlight at Disney, as their low key side-story about a Boba Fett rip-off was now largely driving merchandising sales (thanks to a cute 50 year old Mogwai rip-off). Favreau/Filoni then used their newly acquired clout to steer the enormous ship that is Disney in the direction of a new era of interconnected streaming content with Din Djarin and Grogu as the centerpiece. By pure happenstance, this also placed the New Republic (earlier shrugged off with a giant red reboot beam) into the forefront of all new Star Wars content.

This led to the awkward situation where Disney inadvertently became hyper-focused on the time period directly following ROTJ - the one era where we’d expect to see Luke, Lando, Leia and Han living out our childhood EU dream story-lines (including of course the creation of Luke’s new Jedi Order). But unfortunately, Disney (A) has no real plan (or perhaps even ability) to bring these characters back as the focus of their own stories, and (B) has already resigned these characters to the dustbin of history by having them all die in increasingly depressing ways throughout the Sequel Trilogy, to pave the way for newly rebooted Sequel-era counterpart characters. So now we’re left with this bizarre situation where we increasingly delve into the politics of the New Republic right after ROTJ, but Luke and Leia are almost entirely off-screen and barely involved in the ongoing struggles of the government they fought so hard to establish. On top of this, there’s almost no point in seeing what they’re up to anyway, because as interesting as Luke’s new Jedi Order might have once seemed, we already know it goes up in flames and has no lasting impact. It’s a narrative dead-end, so the writers have to just clumsily tip-toe around the OT heroes when writing stories set in the New Republic.

Basically, the New Republic, and all the OT characters associated with it, have already been thoroughly rebooted. We were never meant to go back and revisit them. But now that unforeseen economic/cultural circumstances have pushed Disney to revisit this era, we’ve ended up with some very weird story-telling parameters indeed. We’re back in the New Republic, but all the OT characters seem to be ghosts.

— double post

Bobson Dugnutt said:

With TFA, there’s a lot that we don’t know the exact specifics of, like we do with the OT or PT. The first cut was definitely 2:30-ish though, and not 3.

…

Basically, there is just a lot of uncertainity with TFA. There’s no un-revised drafts to go off, no extensive BTS book or documentary released, no substantial deleted scenes. It’s impossible to tell what was in early cuts, and what wasn’t The stuff we know the best about is reshot material, but even then not entirely. It might take another 20 or 30 years like SW77, but eventually we’ll know more.

Well, there were at least early “leaks” of plot elements before TFA was released in December, 2015. In May of 2015 (seven months before the premiere), some guy stitched together a full plot synopsis based on various alleged leaks and rumors and released it online. I remember reading this back in 2015, and being extremely skeptical. But after seeing the movie, it became clear these “leaks” were genuine.

I don’t know if this has been posted/discussed here before, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. Anyway, the “leaked” plot synopsis is very close to the actual movie (especially for the first two Acts), with some interesting differences. In the synopsis, the “MacGuffin” is not a map to Luke Skywalker, but rather Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber itself. Also, Hux seems to be Kylo Ren’s superior (like Tarkin in ANH), and Rey may be named Kira.

However, the “leaked” synopsis diverges significantly from the actual film in Act 3. Specifically, there is no Starkiller Base. Instead, the First Order has developed some super-weapon called “the Catapult”. Exactly what it does is ambiguous, but they use it to blow up Maz Kanata’s castle. The heroes escape and make it back to the Resistance base, which is on Yavin IV. (Sounds like JJ Abrams.) Interestingly, Leia is also developing a super-weapon for the resistance, called “The Sledgehammer”. Act 3 takes place on the First Order planet where they’re developing “the Catapult”. In this version, it seems like Leia shows up with a more substantial fleet, and she uses “The Sledgehammer” to quickly blow up First Order Star Destroyers in one shot. But the Sledgehammer eventually somehow gets destroyed, and the First Order almost wins the space battle. But Finn and Han manage to blow up the First Order’s superweapon from the ground, saving the day. Kylo kills Han, and fights Finn and Rey in a snowy forest like in the real movie, but Rey and Kylo end up separated by a fissure in the ground, leading to a stalemate. The movie ends with Rey meeting Luke.

Since this synopsis was demonstrably released to the Internet in May of 2015 (seven months before TFA was released in theatres) - and since it is like 70% accurate to the actual film, we can safely say it was definitely based on legitimate leaks. The places where it deviates from the actual film are interesting. We’ll probably never know if the deviations are the result of misunderstandings, or if they reflect actual early drafts of the script.

My hypothesis is that they do legitimately reflect earlier drafts of the script at least to some extent. If we assume that earlier drafts of TFA did not have Starkiller Base at all, it would explain why in the final movie, the Starkiller Base plot line sort of comes out of nowhere and has little connection to the ongoing plot about finding Luke’s map. My guess is someone at Disney demanded that the movie feature a bigger, better Death Star, and so the writers came up with Starkiller Base late in the development process, and scrambled to graft it into the existing story. So the original story-line about two super-weapons was replaced with a more conventional story about the First Order developing a new Death Star.

There’s also additional evidence supporting the claim that the deviations are legitimate reflections of earlier drafts. They match certain unused concept art for TFA. Specifically, in the leaked synopsis, the First Order base is described as a “castle” (there’s weirdly a lot of castles in this script) on a snowy planet - instead of what eventually became the more conventional facility on Starkiller Base. Sure enough, there is concept art depicting exactly this.

^ Lucas may have borrowed some superficial scenery elements or aesthetics from Dune, but really I always thought the whole Star Wars/Dune connection was overstated. The main thing is the desert planet, and offhand mentions of “spice”. These are very superficial similarities. However, earlier drafts of Star Wars featured the spice trade much more prominently - which indicates Lucas at least had some familiarity with Dune. There’s also the Jedi and the Bene Gesserit, both religious figures with super-human abilities (especially the Jedi mind trick).

But holistically, Star Wars is dramatically different. It’s a different genre (space opera versus sci-fi/political thriller), it has heavy use of robots and aliens (both absent from Dune), and it’s a straightforward action-oriented hero’s journey influenced by Flash Gordon and 1930s serials, as opposed to Frank Hebert’s heavy socio-political themes and false Messiah religio-social commentary.

Also some of the stuff Herbert complains about in the above-quoted paragraph is a huge stretch. “Hooded dwellers” in the desert? That’s a universal motif influenced by real life Bedouin tribes - not something unique to Dune. And the “sand worm” skeleton appears for like 3 seconds and looks more like a dinosaur skeleton. It’s more likely an expression of the general motif of “dead things” in the desert to visually emphasize the lifeless, hostile environment. This is similar to Westerns where we see a cattle skeleton or circling vultures to emphasize the hostile environment. Also, Tatooine is supposed to visually represent “the middle of nowhere”, whereas Arrakis is the center of the whole spice industry and a highly important world.

I mean, you may as well say Star Wars ripped off Lawrence of Arabia because it takes place in a desert and features Sir Alec Guinness wearing a robe.

A Wookie Jedi? Man, I feel like it would be a real struggle to depict such a thing in live action and avoid having it look really stupid. I mean a giant Yeti with a lightsaber is hard to pull off in a non-comedic way.

Sideburns of BoShek said:

I really liked FOTR at the time, and still prefer it to what we actually got. Though imagination and our projections in filling in the blanks often triumphs reality. I’d love to see an animation or comic book form of it, even fan made, but then is so much of that early “what if?” stuff I’d like to see, along the lines of “The Star Wars” comics from 2013/14.

A common element across most fan speculation about the Prequels is that our imaginations concocted stories almost entirely based on elements from the OT. Things like Alderaan, Captain Antilles, spice mines of Kessel, etc. But Lucas obviously wanted to make the Prequels unique, with new settings, new characters, and completely unexpected plot developments. And since it was Lucas’ creativity and imagination that created Star Wars in the first place, it seemed likely that he would come up with amazing new things that far surpassed the mediocre imagination of the average fan.

And indeed he did come up with lots of new, unexpected stuff. Things like Gungans, mysterious clone conspiracies, a “chosen one” prophecy, Qui-Gon Jinn, General Grievous, Dexter Jettster, pod racing, etc. I mean, who could have expected that Episode I would go in an entirely bizarre direction - telling a Kurosawa-influenced side story about two Jedi Knights protecting a young Queen from evil invaders - a story almost completely unrelated to anything that happens in the OT. Lucas obviously wanted to flex his creative muscles, defying fan expectations to such a degree that the whole thing came off as wacky instead of cool. In retrospect, the pre-Prequel fan expectations - derivative and straightforward as they often were - sound like a much better “rough sketch” for the Prequels than what we ultimately got.

Sideburns of BoShek said:

If there’s any older fans out there who remember this time before the prequels, I’m curious if you could attest to what it was like during this time? Was the speculation more or less what the EU writers were hinting at? How shocking was it when these changes were made?

I’m old enough at least so that I was already a teenager when Phantom Menace came out, so I engaged in my fair share of speculation about the Star Wars backstory as told by Obi-Wan to Luke in A New Hope. I hadn’t read any of the EU material at that time, so the speculation was purely based off the OT and various playground rumors I picked up. I somehow knew that Anakin Skywalker fell into a lava pit while fighting Kenobi, which is how he became Vader. I was aware of the “OB1” idea that Kenobi was actually a clone - but I didn’t necessarily believe it. The basic assumption regarding the Clone Wars was that the clones were the bad guys - possibly associated somehow with Mandalorians - and they were fighting against the Republic (or maybe the early Empire). Anakin followed Kenobi on some “idealistic crusade” which was probably to fight for the Republic against the clones. Anakin and Kenobi were similar in age, and Anakin was known for his great star-fighter piloting skills. The Jedi Knights were kind of like Samurai who served the nobility (which is why Kenobi served Bail Organa.) Beyond that, I assumed very little.

I do remember assuming the Prequels would be much closer aesthetically/stylistically to the OT. And due to the mention of clones, I assumed the Prequels would have more of a “science fiction” angle to the story than the originals did. I also assumed that Alderaan and the Alderaanian royalty would play a much larger role in these stories. (The actual Prequels seem to have replaced Alderaan’s role with Naboo.)

There’s a fan-made plot synopsis/script outline that was circulating around in the 80s or early 90s which told the story of Episode 3. Obi-Wan is essentially the main character. The story also featured characters like “Lady Arcadia Skywalker”, who was Anakin’s wife, Bail Organa, and Captain Antilles. The story focuses a lot on the Alderaanian forces as Palpatine takes control of the Republic. There’s also a “Prince Valarium”, which indicates that whoever wrote this may have actually read (or at least heard details about) genuine early drafts of Star Wars. (They definitely read the ANH novelization at least.)

Anyway, this fan-made synopsis is close - both plot-wise and stylistically - to my vague expectations about the Prequels. At least, much closer than the actual Prequels that were released 1999-2005. I can’t say to what extent this fan-made synopsis was an amalgamation of pre-existing fan expectations, or to what extent it actually influenced fan expectations. I can’t even remember when or if I became aware of this plot synopsis as a child. But I can say with certainty that this plot synopsis is at least closer in spirit to what I expected from the Prequels.

Darth Vader is named after someone named Gary Vader, a resident of Modesto, California, who bullied George Lucas in high school. Also, this fact is only partially untrue, surprisingly.

These silly Ewok movies capture an aesthetic aspect of classic Star Wars which has all but disappeared since the Original Trilogy - which is the classic visuals/animatronics of a Jim Henson inspired production. This really doesn’t exist anymore since CGI replaced puppets. Not that Jim Henson style puppetry and animatronics always looked good - they sometimes looked really fake or stupid. But when it was done right, it often resulted in some really amazing, memorable visuals, now infused with nostalgia.

When TFA came out in 2015, Daisy Ridley’s performance - and her chemistry with Finn - was actually one of the major aspects I liked about the movie. It was such a breath of fresh air to see actual acting and chemistry after 3 Prequel movies of non-stop wooden acting and lifeless characters.

But that turned out to be just a small silver-lining after the Sequel Trilogy devolved into a catastrophic incoherent mess. As for the upcoming movie, Daisy Ridley is a good actress, but it’s hard to be too excited about this new movie. I mean, even Adam Driver’s amazing performance couldn’t save the Sequels. It’s really all about the writing - and so far Disney has been sorely lacking in that department.

Gandalf the Cyan said:

In my ideal prequels, Ep1 would’ve had Anakin as a heroic protagonist. Ep2 would plant the seeds of darkness in him, becoming an antihero, and by Ep3 would be about him turning to the dark side, with the definitive turn at the climax. He may only become evil at the very end of the trilogy, but it’s a much more gradual progression that doesn’t feel forced.

Agreed 100%. The OT was very character driven. Every scene followed the POV of a main character. It almost never cut to a location unless a main POV character was there. In contrast, the Prequels would often suddenly cut to the Senate, or Palpatine’s office, or random battles with no main characters (in ROTS at least). It was more like a historical documentary than a character-driven story (with the notable exception of Phantom Menace). Consider the Order 66 montage, for example - something that feels very un-Star Warsy and doesn’t mesh well with the film language of the OT.

I think the Prequels should have been mostly character driven, to mirror the OT. Stuff like how the Clone Wars began, or Palpatine’s rise to power, etc. should just be part of the backdrop - a given historical background against which the story unfolds. The main action should exclusively follow POV characters like Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme, just like the OT followed Luke, Leia and Han. A better way to depict Order 66, for example, would be something like Clone Wars Season 7, where we follow a single character’s POV experience through the massacre.

Spartacus01 said:
The problem is that, as Mark Hamill also said, the hatred for the Prequels at the time went far beyond the simple “I don’t like them”. There are actors who have received death threats, actors who have even tried to commit suicide, and George Lucas was covered by a mountain of poop for almost 10 years.

I mean… who cares? Among any passionate fanbase, there will always be some small percentage of irredeemable assholes. But this stuff is often brought up to deflect criticism of the Prequels, or to imply that all criticism of the Prequels is somehow invalid or dangerous simply because it’s vaguely congruent with more extreme, anti-social behavior coming from 0.000000000001% of the fanbase. Anyone that actually sends a death threat to an actor over something like this is clearly deranged.

I mean, I do feel sympathy for people like Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best, considering what they had to go through for the sake of their day job. But honestly that’s a sideshow, and it has nothing to do with how the Prequels were received in general. (Also Ahmed Best has a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu so I doubt any of these deranged morons would make fun of him to his face. He’s also clearly quite comfortable with making fun of the character he played, since he voiced Jar Jar in some Robot Chicken skits about Star Wars. As for Lucas, he’s actually covered with a mountain of cash, not poop.)

Anyway, the same thing happened again more recently with the Sequels. Some idiots on Twitter decide to harass one of the actors, and therefore all criticism of the Sequels is forever deflected. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

Barfolomew said:

And yeah, he definitely didn’t do Brackett any favors by withholding whatever his plans at that moment were, because I think the biggest weakness of Brackett’s draft as a story (so aside from not really getting the feel of Star Wars right) is that she’s clearly having trouble getting a handle on Darth Vader as a character, struggling to find a throughline for his various motivations. What she seems to settle on is that Vader is insecure - first he’s obsessed with killing Luke because Luke’s victory over the Death Star humiliated him; then he wants to to turn Luke to his side because he’s tired of being afraid of the Emperor.

This is how I interpret Vader’s motivations in Brackett’s draft: In Act I, Vader’s is just a straightforward villain carrying out instructions to kill Luke. But then in Act II, two things happen that change Vader’s motivation: (1) he talks with the Emperor, where we learn Vader is afraid of his boss and there’s tension between the two of them, and (2) he discovers Luke is becoming very powerful while training on Dagobah. These two things make Vader decide to try and convert Luke to the Dark Side, so the two of them can team up and overthrow the Emperor. Vader believes he has a good chance of converting Luke, because of course Vader killed Luke’s father in this version, and thus can leverage this fact to harness Luke’s rage.

There’s nothing really wrong with this - it’s a good a way as any to handle Vader’s character arc, given the information Brackett had about Vader while writing this. It’s certainly not as good as the final version of ESB, but it more or less works.

Another semi-related thing I find interesting: in Brackett’s draft, there’s no “cave scene” on Dagobah. Instead, Vader appears to Luke through some kind of “force vision” and the two of them have a conversation, where Vader begins trying to convert Luke to the Dark Side. It reminds me of the Sequels, where Kylo Ren speaks with Rey via the Force while she trains. It’s a convenient (if clumsy) way to have the hero and villain communicate before their big showdown later. Although, Brackett portrays the conversation between Luke and Vader as more dream-like, whereas in the Sequels it comes off as a straightforward Force Zoom call.

NFBisms said:
My theory is that this will be a big source of the sectarian rebel tensions in the lead-up to the Alliance. Like I alluded to above, Luthen is basically a bolshevik accelerationist. Revolution on his terms is dirty, brutal, and spearheaded by a professional vanguard of gangsters and spies. Mon’s canonical call for Open Rebellion is the inevitable clash with that clandestine exclusivity, but I think what’s added to it with the development of a culture and religion rally, is that for once there might be a tangible, coherent ideology to the so-called “Alliance to Restore The Republic”, one that addresses what exactly makes The Empire more evil than the Old Republic.

Yeah - I mean, historical parallels are always tricky and inexact, but I think what you say about Luthen here is essentially correct. But I interpreted Mon Mothma as basically aligned ideologically with Luthen, rather than viewing the two as representing opposing sides of something like an eventual Bolshevik/Menshevik split. Mon Mothma finances Luthen’s revolutionary activities. She comes off as less “Machiavellian” than Luthen mostly because she operates as a public figure in the middle of a technological police state. (Mon’s cousin Vel also is presumably aligned ideologically with Luthen.) The fact that Mon does some Menshevik type things - like working with the Imperial Senate and Galactic elite to fight oppressive legislation - doesn’t really put her in opposition to Luthen’s attempts to pull off an “October revolution”. Mon’s public activities in the Senate (and her ineffective opposition to Palpatine) are something of a cover story. She’s a Bolshevik in Menshevik clothing, if anything.

for once there might be a tangible, coherent ideology to the so-called “Alliance to Restore The Republic”, one that addresses what exactly makes The Empire more evil than the Old Republic.

Yeah. I mean, the movies don’t explore this beyond a very superficial level. But clearly, we’re supposed to understand that the Empire is worse than the Old Republic because the Empire isn’t a democracy, at least after Alderaan. (Oh yeah, also that little matter of blowing up Alderaan.) But we don’t really even know exactly how the Empire functions economically. We often call the Empire “fascist” - but all we really know about it (from the OT at least) is that it’s a totalitarian police state. It doesn’t necessarily have the structure of classic fascism, like a corporatist economy organized around syndicates. Ironically, the Old Republic was shown to have a Trade Federation and other enormous corporate entities representing an economic sector, with representation in the government - a major feature of fascist/corporatist economies. Presumably these were nationalized and absorbed into the Imperial State.

The encroaching nationalization of private enterprises is mentioned in the novelization of ANH and a deleted scene, but Andor depicts private corporations working as organs of the State. Historically, fascist states would often privatize industries at first, but then end up nationalizing (more so in Italy than Germany) or subsidizing major industries over time to consolidate state control and subordinate the economy to the military. I assume the Empire does this as well (if their handling of Preox-Morlana is any indication) - and they probably absorbed/nationalized former Separatist corporations. But presumably, Palpatine’s end goal is complete nationalization of everything in subordination to the State/military, using the Death Star as a means of maintaining direct control. Also unlike actual fascist regimes, the Empire doesn’t seem to glorify an ancient past or ancient traditions.

The Old Republic, on the other hand, was apparently a quasi-democratic, liberal, capitalist society, with encroaching forms of corporatism (e.g. Trade Federation, Techno Union, etc.)

It’s unclear what sort of economy/ideology the various Rebel factions depicted in the OT or Andor are actually fighting to achieve in some hypothetical New Republic, but presumably the Rebel Alliance that we know and love wants to setup something similar to the Old Republic, rather than something more like a socialist economy with publicly owned industries as suggested (arguably) by the underlying thematic vibes of Andor.

Also, anyone notice how that deleted scene in ANH with Luke and Biggs is kind of an early “spiritual predecessor” to Rogue One/Andor? It’s a scene that would be right at home in an episode of Andor, minus the corny 70s dialogue.