- Post
- #945014
- Topic
- Alternative Prequel Ideas
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/945014/action/topic#945014
- Time
I had this not so fleshed out idea as an alternative for Vader to be something more than just the suit Anakin is plopped into after he gets all burnt up.
In episode II, after a movie filled with Anakin and Obi wan together being good friends going on adventures of course, there could be a similar plot point to the one we already have in which a mysterious assassinator is after Anakin’s wife (let’s just say they’re married by now). Anakin is desperate to take it upon himself and find the killer, but the Jedi insist he keep with the obligations he’s already been given, and to have patience and to trust in the force. While the imperial senate (the republic is an empire by now so episode III can just focus on a personal angle with Anakin’s turn) has made efforts to protect padme, no one’s really on getting to the root of the problem.
Frustrated and swayed by his ever idealistic principles, Anakin devises a nameless, menacing alter ego, concealed under a black suit and a modulated deeper voice to go after the assassin without the council ever knowing.
He’ll go on to make a new lightsaber (it will be red as it’s much less common) , just to be careful that no Jedi council member ever finds out what he’s up to. It’s also more so that the lightsaber Obi wan gives to Luke isn’t the same blade that commited horrific acts of murder.
Nik goes after the bounty hunter, tracking down rememenants of where he’s gone in some Jabba’s Palace-type areas.
After killing Maul in episode I (who we won’t find out actually survived until III), Anakin is deeply disturbed by the taking of someone else’s life. He’s not the best with handling loss himself, never mind taking lives. But as this mystery agent of evil (or, phantom menace, I suppose), he starts being in more and more situations where crime lords aren’t taking him seriously and get him cornered by men who wish to kill him. So, he kills back. And it’s a horrible pain for him to go through at first, but it’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make for his loved one. But the more it’s forced upon him, the more it feels strangely…just. Like taking scum who didn’t deserve to live at all out of the world isn’t hardly as bad as the loss of, say, his own mother.
Gradually, he starts to grow rather fond of the idea. Almost as if he’s doing a galaxy a favor. Because all the while, he only means to do the right thing, right? This is for his friends and family to have better lives in the days to come? So he can have a better life with his family once the war is over? Hell, he’s only quickening the blow of the war by doing what he already knows is right. He doesn’t have to go through the archaic dogma that is the Jedi council just to be told he has to wait indefinitely to do what is right. While the disguise was meant to be a one and done thing to keep his wife safe for good, Anakin slowly becomes certain that it would be downright selfish to not take the power he’s been granted by the force and use it to save more lives than those he has to take in the process.
And after all, the Jedi will never have to know.
One thing leads to another, and soon he discovers the bounty hunters are in alliance with the separatist forces, who are in alliance with whoevers mandating that those dreadful clone beasts come down and attack the peaceful capital of coruscant. And it just so happens that one of its leaders, Count Dooku, is staging an alliance with all of the couruscant officials in one room, only to spring his trap and get them all killed by clone beasts! Including his bestest buddy Ben Kenobi! Anakin better do something!
He arrives at he event and immediately leaps into action, draws his sword and declares Dooku under arrest. Clones come in and kill a great deal of innocents and Dooku engages in battle with the mysterious vigelante. And after Nik murders Dooku without hesitation or mercy, we see the contrast between his reaction to killing off Maul, and now. The fear and anger are more prevalent within him than ever. But he also just made an incredible bloody mess of things.
Ben senses that the masked murder is also someone who should be considered an ally. In a fit of rage, he demands to know the identity of this killer. Seconds away from being completely found out, Anakin does the unthinkable and manipuates Ben at his most emotionally vulnerable: he tells him that he is Darth Vader, the old pupil Kenobi was adamant he destroyed after he turned to the dark side. And Ben completely buys it. So does the rest of the council. ‘A cunning warrior’, indeed, was Anakin.
Through episode III, Vader goes to higher and higher extremes to get what he wants, ignoring how self centered what he wants has slowly but surely become. As we go on, well cut from Anakin to Vader without showing the transition into the suit, to subconsciously differentiate them as two characters in the mind of the audience. How he gets to be Palpy’s right hand man I don’t know, which is pretty bad because it is like the most important thing ever to happen in these movies.
