What do you guys think of Anakin's origin so far? I think it's much more fitting with my mental image of his past as imagined in my first viewing of the OT. Even the whole "Anakin Redblade" stage name is meant to invoke the color of his future lightsaber.
The year is 30 BBY.
The film begins with a gunship descending upon Taris. Inside, a squad of Mandalorian Clone warriors checks their weapons and performs other military pre-battle drills.
Skip to a seedy cantina on Taris. Nellith Lars walks in with a bag slung over her shoulder. The object inside has a pyramidal outline and illicits reactions of curiosity from the other patrons. The big holo-screen above the bar shows highlights from the latest swoop race. Several Rodians are seated in front of the display, taking occasional swigs of hard liquor. They let out cries of either joy or dismay (it was difficult to tell) at the result: the winner for the third race in a row was Anakin Redblade.
The characters below form the movie's "power trio" (like Luke, Leia, and Han in ANH):
Nellith Lars: the pre-eminent member of the Jedi Sentinels, a Jedi order charged with the compilation and guarding of Holocrons. She guards a powerful secret that she will defend to the death against the wrath of the Clones.
Ben Cortel: an aged navigator on a spice freighter. Ben holds a skeptical, sardonic attitude, no doubt because of multiple run-ins with the law. Due to his experiences in the seedier parts of the galaxy, he holds no special stake in the conflict wracking the Republic...but fate will intertwine his destiny with that of the galaxy's.
Anakin Skywalker: a teenage runaway from the urban planet Taris. Anakin grew up under an abusive father named Logan Skywalker. Young Anakin ran away from home at the age of 15 when his father took Mother Skywalker's life. Anakin has spent the last four years in Taris' underground swoop racer scene, quickly rising to become a capable pilot (racing under the stage name of "Anakin Redblade") and a sly fighter. Anakin's fate, however, will not keep him on Taris forever...
I think the character of Padme/Lady Skywalker is tailor-made for just that role, Darth Lucas. It's just a matter of making her interesting. What does she do for a living? Is she Force-sensitive? Does she feel strongly one way or the other about the Clone Wars (assuming she is around to see them)? What becomes of her after your prequels?
Another thing, I'm intending for these prequels to be seen after the OT.
Here is my first attempt at the film's opening crawl...
STAR WARS EPISODE I: A NEW KNIGHT
The CLONE WAR rages across the galaxy, threatening the existence of the GALACTIC REPUBLIC.
In this time of distress, the High Chancellor of the Republic ANTIOR has requested assistance from the JEDI, a circle of sages and warriors who wield the mysterious magic known as THE FORCE.
A humble freighter captain named BEN CORTEL has taken on a Jedi passenger, NELLITH LARS, not yet realizing that her mission could change the fate of the entire galaxy...
I've been working on a prequel trilogy treatment to run in the same canon as my sequel trilogy treatment. Here's what I'm trying to bring to the table with my prequels...
- Episode I: A New Knight (taking place in 30 BBY): The Clone War rages across the galaxy. Under the threat of complete anarchy, the Republic calls upon the clan of Force-users known as the Jedi Knights for military and diplomatic aid.
A graying, 45-year-old spice freighter captain named Ben Cortel picks up a mysterious cloaked passenger calling herself Nellith. She offers a substantial sum of credits to transport a clandestine shipment of cargo to an uncharted star system in the Outer Rim.
During their transit through the Mid-Rim, Nellith starts to suspect that Ben is a Force-sensitive. She tries to induct him into her order, the Jedi Sentinels, a group that compiles information into sacred Jedi Holocrons. Ben denies this and dismisses her "ramblings" as hokey nonsense.
As the freighter enters the Outer Rim systems, the ship is attacked by a boarding party of deadly Mandalorian Clone warriors demanding Nellith's secret cargo. Ben and Nellith valiantly fight off the Clones, but are saved in the nick of time by the timely intervention of a stowaway passenger...a disheveled, brown-haired teenager named Anakin Skywalker.
It was his Force signature that Nellith was detecting all this time, not Ben.
The boy seems more predisposed to being a Knight than a Sentinel, so Nellith decides to get Anakin in touch with an experienced Knight, her dear old friend Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Along their journey, they set in motion the events that lead to a new age for the galaxy. But is this coming age one of light or one of darkness?
What do you think?
@NeverarGreat: That's a good point. In the prequels I've been working on recently, I've tried to balance out the Force mythos stuff with Solo/Fett/Wedge-style stuff that does not have to do with the Force.
All this talk of different clans of Jedi has got me thinking...maybe this is the new thing that the prequels should have brought to the table.
The way it looks in my head is this...
It is the year 25 BBY, just before the outbreak of the Second Clone War. The Republic is still reeling from its narrow victory against the short-lived Mandalorian Sovereignty, a militant state that used revolutionary new cloning technology to bolster the ranks of its armies. It was thanks only to the intervention of the Jedi Knights that total destruction of the Republic was avoided.
But victory over the Mandalorians came at a price. In their determination to defeat such a persistent and dangerous foe, the Jedi clans known as the "Knights" and the "Masters" discovered that there was a "dark side" of the Force. Some of these rogue Jedi Knights seceded from the order and become the dreaded "Sith Barons". These lightsaber-wielding warriors came to be feared across the galaxy. They practiced the use of the Dark Side as the ultimate expression of anger and hate, the only two things that gave them any power.
Among these traitorous Sith Barons was Anakin Skywalker, who took on the ancient name Darth Vader after his betrayal of the Jedi Knights.
Only one Jedi Master went rogue as a result of the First Clone War. His name was Palpatine. Unlike his more direct Baron counterparts, Palpatine decided that the path to total galactic domination lay in subtlety and manipulation. He decided that one day he would rule the galaxy, but first he needed to convince the public that the Jedi were unworthy to serve as its protectors.
Vader's conversion from Sith Baron to Sith Lord would mark a turning point not just in the life of Anakin Skywalker, but in the history of the entire galaxy.
And so the dark times began.
Perhaps the different Jedi "sub-groups" are entire cohesive orders of individuals who have some ideological splits between each other but are all united by a few common principles of "Jedi-ness", they just differ in how they interpret the Force. We see a small glimpse of this in the differences in the descriptions of the Force given to Luke by Obi-Wan and Yoda in ANH and ESB respectively.
Basically, under the large over-arching designation of JEDI, there are various clans that operate autonomously. These are "the Knights", "the Masters", "the Navigators", or what-have-you.
@Darth Lucas: I like the idea of different sub-orders within the Jedi hierarchy. Do you think there would be any additional ones besides Knight and Master? I'm thinking that if I "burrowed" (hehe) the idea of various branches of the Jedi lineage, that I would include some never-before-seen kind of Jedi in my prequels to differentiate them from the OT and offer something new...but I would try to make sure it is done in a way that renders them extinct somehow by the events of ANH.
Jedi Knights seem to be the most martial (but at the same time the most diplomatic) kind of light-side Force user. The Dark Side analogue would of course be Darth Vader. They are the business end, the ones who travel around the galaxy and either end wars or (in the case of the Dark Side) start them. A Jedi Knight has been established as a Jedi who can navigate diplomatic/social situations with powers of negotiation (bolstered by the occasional use of the mind trick)...but who is not afraid to pull out a lightsaber and start slicing away enemies, but only if that is an absolute necessity. Sith Knights tend to be more inclined to the combat option than their Jedi counterparts, and even their "diplomacy" usually entails blackmail or intimidation.
Jedi Masters are more cerebral. They never use lightsabers because they are not expected to engage in any sort of combat outside of self-defense (which even Light Side Force powers are supposed to allow, correct?). The Dark Side equivalent of this would appear to be the Emperor, the pre-eminent Sith Master. An individual who considers the Dark Side of the Force as a tool with which to dominate the galaxy.
So what's left? Jedi Navigators who use their powers to more effectively pilot starships through hyperspace? Jedi Alchemists who use their Force abilities to create objects that can imbue a user with special powers of some kind? Jedi Scribes who collect information to fill up Holocrons?
The dialogue I posted in my previous post is stripped down and minimalist compared to what would actually be heard in the movie.
I was kind of nervous trying to tackle the problem of what Ripley would do in this scene. It seemed like a daunting task, above my "pay grade", to write from the perspective of one of the most memorable and enduring protagonists in the history of science fiction cinema.
Ripley curls upward and takes a moment to adjust to her surroundings.
It seems like no time has passed since her fight with the Queen. One minute she is drifting off to sleep, near Newt, Bishop, and Hicks; the next minute she is awake again and those three are no-where to be found.
O'Neill sits on the side of the cryo-pod.
"Do you hear me? Do you know where you are?"
Ripley is somewhat dazed from hypersleep. "USS Sulaco...What's going on? Have we reached Gateway Station?" she asks.
"Lt. Ellen Ripley?"
"Yes, that's me. Who are you?"
"I'm Brandon O'Neill; I represent the Company. We'd like to have you examined before you get to Earth, make sure everything's okay."
Ripley's eyes widen. She stands bolt upright and faces O'Neill.
"Bullshit. This is not a corporate operation; the Sulaco is a military vessel," she gestures around the starship containing them.
O'Neill tries to adopt a reassuring manner to put her at ease, but Ripley quickly becomes more agitated. She looks around and asks "Where are the others?"
Then she turns back to O'Neill. "Where is this ship?"
What I am saying is, the revised PT of your dreams is in a sandbox. The stuff from the EU is a box of tools that you can use to make a majestic sand castle.
I think our policy of the EU is to draw from it as you will. Borrow events, characters, worlds, etc. and use them as necessary in the films. I mean, why not? The actual sequel trilogy coming up after 2015 is voiding expanded universe continuity! JJ Abrams even did that once before with Star Trek!
My point is is that we should not allow the EU to pollute our minds with constraints relating to when or where this story can take place. These prequels need to springboard off of the OT. The ORIGINAL TRILOGY. That's what this site is named after, is it not?
So by all means, if you want your story to be about how Palpatine was trained by the evil Sith Admiral Darth Exar Bane in the year 60 BBY, then by all means go right ahead. As long as the trilogy ends in some way shape or form setting the stage for the events of the OT. And I think that the level of tangential relationship between the events of any revised PT and the OT will depend on whether the OT is meant to be seen after the revised PT or before it.
A long time ago.
While I've enjoyed reading many of the prequel treatments and other stories posted by members of this forum, it does not take an expert to see that in some ways the ideas they propose are irreconcilable with each other. Even something like the on-screen presence of Obi-Wan Kenobi in Fan A's prequel trilogy re-write would make Fan B's prequel trilogy re-write impossible. It's because of things like that that I propose writing numerous drafts coalesced from all the best ideas of everybody's treatments. What I mean by that is that perhaps one draft can be "Anakin-Centric Prequels" and another could be "Obi-Wan Prequels" and maybe somehow we'll wind up with "Boba Fett prequel trilogy". Or they could be "The One About The Prototype Death Star" or "The One About Darth Bane and the Valley of the Jedi".
Maybe we could set up a collaborative Dropbox folder where we drop in our ideas and can work with each other on the fly?
@NeverarGreat: Alien was horror. Aliens was action. Alien III is survival.
In the cryo-pod area, O'Neill taps several keys on the last occupied pod. The glass canopy slowly flips open, exposing Lt. Ellen Ripley to the stale, recycled air of the Sulaco.
Hicks is woken up from cryo-sleep by Mack and Rodan and taken to the infirmary.
He recognizes the two Corporate guardsmen as having once been Colonial Marines. He remarks that they have stopped fighting for real ideals and instead embraced the cold life of mercenaries. Fighting for money and money alone. Hicks sees their choice as dishonorable. Rodan tells Hicks that he is missing out on a hefty paycheck by staying in the Marines and not joining Weyland-Yutani private security.
In the infirmary Hicks is patched up by Portnoy. A special sterilized patch is placed over his eye, far more effective at protecting against infection and irritants than the simple cloth bandage he improvised on LV-426. With his one good eye, Hicks spots Newt unconscious and strapped to a stretcher.
Hicks asks why they have done that to a little girl. He is visibly angry.
Portnoy simply tells the Marine that little Rebecca Jorden is an important asset to the Company, especially considering what was accidentally smuggled aboard via the dropship. It dawns on Hicks that she is going to be exploited by the Bio-Weapons Division, just as Ripley revealed on LV-426 shortly before Carter Burke's death. The Queen must have laid an egg on the dropship while Bishop was flying him, Ripley, and Newt off of LV-426.
Without a weapon, Hicks decides that he cannot physically resist his captors. He regards his captors with a weary eye, sizing them up to see what it would take to get past them. The fragile old doctor would pose no problem, but Hicks knows that Rodan and Mack are both formidable in combat (from his experience serving alongside them).
The Marine lies back on the stretcher and lets the recovery drug cocktail take effect. Better to not fight now if it means living to conquer another day.
Newt, who is completely out cold, is wheeled out of the infirmary by Portnoy.
The creative writing wiki "Channel 101" written by original Community showrunner Dan Harmon is a very useful resource for what you are describing. He knows how to cut through the crap, so to speak, and really get down to the core of what makes for good storytelling. I consider him a mentor.
Whenever I write summaries of my material for presentation on this forum, I feel like I am writing Wikipedia-style synopses of movies that already exist.
The infirmary of the Sulaco. Several rows of stretchers resting on movable power-assisted gurneys. Medical computers ready to scan for patients' vital signs, such as heart rates, blood pH levels, and other biometrics.
Portnoy picks up Newt and places her on a stretcher, laying her flat on her back on top of the soft surface. She immediately sits up and turns to her captor.
"Where are we going, doctor? Will we be home soon?" she asks.
His back turned away from the little girl, Portnoy fills up a syringe with a sedative compound. He tries to placate the little girl, but it is of little avail.
Newt starts to panic and gets up off the stretcher.
Portnoy is forced to chase her through the infirmary.
The little girl flips over several carts loaded with pill bottles and flasks of anesthetic liquid in an attempt to slow down Portnoy. But the old man eventually catches up to her and grips her from behind with both arms. She whines and cries out for help,
"RIPLEY!!!"
Portnoy deftly maneuvers the needle to a vein in her neck and delivers its liquid payload. The little girl is quickly pacified. Sedative runs through her young veins.
Portnoy picks the little girl up and places her on the stretcher again, this time crudely strapping her limbs to the siderails with a few leather belts.
You're sort of on the mark with that one, but there's more to it than that. More to come later...
The film has yet to reach the frantic, action-packed phase of its runtime, but that's just because there is no killer Xenomorph onboard as of yet. How do you guys like it so far?
Similar to how the first two films had taglines ("In space, no-one can hear you scream." and "This time it's war."), I've been juggling ideas around for Alien III's tagline...
- "The deadliest creature in the universe is coming for your world."
- "Some monsters are stranger than fiction."
- "It wiped out a crew of seven. It destroyed a colony of hundreds. Now it has come to feast on billions."