This reminds me of something I was wondering about a couple weeks ago: I remember knowing that Obi-Wan and Anakin fought their duel on a lava planet well before The Phantom Menace came out. Even before the PT, that was just an accepted fact among everyone I knew. My question is, where did that come from? Was there an interview with Lucas or an EU novel or a comic book that had that in there? EVERYONE took it as gospel, but I haven't a clue where anyone got the idea.
Also, I think it was a huge mistake to try to make Anakin the protagonist in the prequels. I know Lucas is fond of saying that the whole saga is really Anakin Skywalker's story, but even if it is, using a more relatable main character (i.e. Luke) to give the audience a way in worked beautifully in the OT. The way he's portrayed in the films as they are, there's precious little relatable about Anakin, so no one really cares what happens to him. Obi-Wan should have been our main guy. We already know him from the OT, he's close enough to Anakin that we can still get that complete story if we're following him, and the nature of his character arc is something much more relatable. "Failing a loved one, resulting in a painful dissolution of the relationship" is something I'm willing to bet a lot more people have experience with than "being tempted to evil by the promise of occult techniques to achieve immortality". Even though if I had the choice I'd tear down everything about the prequels and start from scratch, I think just shifting the focus like that would massively improve the films that we actually got.
