Originally posted by: jack Spencer JrI tell you what, man. The prequels have been bugging me lately. I think the real problem with them is how poorly they fit with the original trilogy. There is not clear, recurring villian. Part of Star Wars's appeal was how Vader was always giving the heroes a hard time. The prequel's quasi-political web type thing was not a good substitute.
Worse, I think the prequels also weaken the narrative of the entire series. This is a sticking point for most original trilogy fans who dislike the prequels. It would have been on thing, but since these are numbered episodes, it's difficult to ignore the prequels. But they don't work very well when watched in numerical order. So we original trilogy fans are stuck with episodes 4, 5, and 6 with no hope for a 1, 2, 3 to go with them. It is a series that will never be complete. At least as far as the numbering goes.
That said, the material that appears in the prequels works best as it appeared in the original trilogy. That is, as backstory. As stuff that happened before the movies that we learn about as we watch the movies. That said, there was plenty of room to make a good movie here if lucas had done it right, but I don't think his writing skills were up to the challenge. One thing he needed to do was keep the secrets revealed in the original series a frickin' secret. I mean, finding out that Vader was Luke's father at the end of ESB is kind of lame if we'd already watched his parents fall in love and his dad go evil and become Vader and stuff in the first three movies. It seemed like Lucas was way too interested in showing us stuff to realise that sometimes things should be hidden. Like in the Ocean's Eleven remake. They had a plan and throughout the movie they were doing stuff for the plan, but the audience didn't know how it all fit together until the end of the movie after they had pulled it off. Vader's identity should have been handled like that.
The sad thing is if Lucas had just gone back to his original inspiration, the serials, he would have seen this. A villian (or hero) with a secret identity was standard fare in the serials. Take
Adventures of Captain Marvel for example. This one had a group of scientists who had uncovered a powerful McGuffin in an ancient tomb. It turns out that one of them wants the McGuffin for himself, but which one? As a villian, he dons a robe and mask and his voice is dubbed over. Why? I don't know as the villian always sent henchmen to do his dirty work. In any case, the plot becomes a ten little indians as the scientist are one-by-one killed by the villian ("Whelp, I guess this one ain't the bad guy 'cause he's DEAD!") until only two are left. These two, who are roughly similar in appearance, go back to the tomb and with both their faces in shadows, one reveals to be the villian and kills the other. They tended to cheat a lot in the serials, but i think this could have been a useful device in the prequels.
Dig this: set up some guy is bumping off Jedi Knights. Maybe they know the guy's name, maybe not. Obi Wan has two pupils. Anakin Skywalker and... some other guy. We'll call him Qui-Gon Jin Qui-Gon is further along in his training and is chaffing to continue to be under his master's tutelage. Anyway, they attempt to find this jedi-killing guy, right and they go down to a planet with no/poisonous atmosphere and put on breather masks like shown here:
here. This will hide their faces so we won't know what happened when one kills the other. Obi-Wan than comes upon the scene but only finds some clothing and lightsabres. Anakins lightsabre. So he thinks the bad guy killed them both until he confronts Vader on the rim of a volcano crater. Vader still keeps his face hidden but does mention to Obi-Wan that he was a former apprentice. We see the realization slowly dawn in Obi Wan's eyes and he whispers "You..."
Now, the point here is that who Vader is remains a secret to those who've never seen the original trilogy. (Don't laugh. More are born every day) And at this point we are sort of led to believe that Vader is Qui-Gon, particularly when Skywalker's son becomes center to the conflict.
This is just my own meager talent assessing and concocting solutions to the problem with writing the prequels to these movies, and how much better they could have been if lucas still had good writers taking his ideas and doing good things with them.
