[Casual Fan]

First, apologies to the moderators if they have to chuck this discussion into one of the subfolders. I wasn't sure if it belonged in the fan fiction folder or was of more general interest.

That said, looking at some of the attempts here at rewritings of the prequels, it seems that they suffer from one problem: they are actual rewritings. The fans plunge straight into crafting an exciting scene, with dialogue, usually about a swashbuckling space battle.

It seems that the problems with the real prequels wasn't that Lucas wasn't able to do this, after all he did give us much the same with the beginning of ROTS. At least to me, the problem was that with every movie Lucas needed to make "real" the backstory. He had to create an alternative universe which consistently followed its own laws and its own history, and with each movie the strain of doing this showed more and more. This seems to be becaus he was making up things as he went along.

So the first task in rewriting the prequels is to fully flesh out the alternative universe Lucas hinted at in Episode IV, and began to flesh out in Episodes V and VI. Then write the story. Lucas' own alternative universe that he supplied in the prequels would have to be junked because, well, it just didn't make sense. It failsthe first test of all alternative fantasy and scifi universes in that its not internally consistent.

So rewriting the prequels as I envisage it is looking for answers to several questions raised in in Episodes IV-VI but never really answered.

Here is one to start off: who is the Emperor?

Is the Emperor human or alien?

Is he some sort of a mutant, like the Mule in the Foundation series?

Who were his parents?

Who taught him and what did they teach?

What motivated him; was he evil in the Hitlerian sense or was there "some good" in him? Did he marry and/or have children? What did he do to relax?

What was his natural lifespan?

Did he do anything noteworthy in his pre-Emperor days?

Was he ever a Jedi or received Jedi training?

Was there some legitimacy to his rule or was he completely an usurper?

The real prequels supplied answers to many of these questions but not all of them, and not to the crucial question of motivation. And they did a better job handling this part of the alternative universe than with other parts.

I submit that once these questions are answered the story starts to unfold. For example, for some reason I always viewed the Emperor as non-human, either an alien or mutant. Already you get a different set of prequels. Give the Emperor a daughter, and have her fall in love with Anakin, and you immediately get a drastically different set of prequels from the ones that made it on screen.

[Despondent]

He was a mule?

[KurganX]

He was a mule?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Might want to explain what the "Mule" in Foundation was.

The only sense I can think of other than the animal is a being that can't reproduce, since it's a hybrid of two close species. The Tlexau (sp?) in the Dune books were referred to as "mules" IIRC.