[Gorecki]

Where angels fear to tread...

So, here is yet another attempt to rewrite the basic outlines of the prequel trilogy, as inspired by TK-421 and Smelly Terror's previous excellent posts. I have borrowed liberally from their ideas here without credit, so I humbly pay homage to them, and ask that you read their original posts to see where the points of cross-over occur.

Smelly Terror's Prequel Ideas can be found at:
http://www.chefelf.c...?showtopic=5247

TK-421's can be found at:
http://www.chefelf.c...?showtopic=8383

I would also direct you to this article, as I make reference to it in the material below:
"Prequels aren't just dumb, they are evil!
http://io9.com/36281...umb-theyre-evil

I should also come out of the closet here as the author behind another complete set of prequel rewrites which can be found on-line at the long-since abandoned site: http://paladin.www4..../LivingRoom.htm

I created all of that material 9 years ago, in the wake of Phantom Menace, convinced Lucas could not possibly rescue the mess he had made with Episode I, as I think most are agreed is true. It was fun and I got a lot of nice feedback on it, but it was taking up too much time and distracting me from my own writing projects (I have since written 2 non-SF novels and received a contract to publish the second).

What, then, in god's name moved me to make another attempt at rewriting the prequels?

Well, the great things both TK-421 and Smelly Terror made me realize about how beholden to Lucas's vision of the prequels I had remained, even though my project shared with theirs a basic desire to (a) restore fidelity to the facts about the prequel stories embedded in the Original Trilogy, and (b) to create stories simple and clear enough in structure to give them room to breathe and live the way the old films do, rather than being so crammed full of superfluous detail that all meaningful character moments are drowned out by verbiage.

These two guys showed me that there is a whole other way to approach it, starting from the same basic facts.

So the main things I have stolen, borrowed, paid homage to from their versions are the following:

-- start with Anakin at around age 19, already dabbling in the force, already with a girlfriend who will become the mother of Luke and Leia
-- keep Yoda, Jabba, and as many other unnecessary original trilogy characters out of it as possible
-- make the Jedi already semi-mythical, or marginal figures (that is, start the story after they have already slipped to the margins of the Republic)
-- be sparing in the use of light-saber stuff
-- make Vader's conversion a long, slow process of corruption, not a one-fell-swoop affair
-- find another hero to draw our attention and sympathy, since Ben necessarily fails to some extent, and Anakin's story is unrelievedly tragic
-- reintroduce the world of the Jedi to viewers slowly, as in the original trilogy, and start from a position of skepticism; don't announce the presence of Jedi in the opening scroll, and have their light-sabers out in the first scene
-- extend the story up until the death of Luke and Leia's mother, which would have to be a few years (I am saying 5) after their birth, to conform with the Original Trilogy

(Thus, I am essentially bumping my stories up, although they are fundamentally changed. Instead of starting with Anakin as a young teenager in Episode I, we start with him as a young adult; the girlfriend is already in the picture; Alderaan is brought to heel and the kids are born by the end of Episode II [instead of Episode III], and Vader is almost completely Vader by the end of Episode II, just as the Empire is for all intents and purposes the Empire by the beginning of Episode III. This lets us see what we probably wanted to see most, which is Vader 'hunting down and destroying the Jedi' in Episode III, with all the big political developments out of the way. But, one of the strengths of this approach, is because the Jedi are already on the fringes of this society, it's not their fault as such that the Empire happens, so at the same time, we don't need every little detail and political maneuver as it happens; the adventure takes place around the edges of what is going on, and leaves a big chunk of the backstory -- the golden age of the Jedi -- unrealized and still in the backstory, which is what the Prequel Trilogy we got lacked.)

What follows are two longish texts -- I apologize. The first is a set of notes about backstory and basic elements of the world in which the Prequels take place, and how to reconcile the facts we get in the Original Trilogy with a reimagined Prequel Trilogy. Again, a lot of this is reworked from TK-421 and Smelly Terror's posts. I've had warm emails from both of them, so I am sure they will not object.

Then, 3 short treatments of the Episodes, including opening scrolls.

[Gorecki]

BACKGROUND NOTES [Basically excerpted from emails exchanged between me and TK-421, Smelly Terror]

What makes this whole thing a fun exercise is working within the constraints set up by the original films. And that was what was so aggravating about the prequels (on top of being stylistically abominable), that Lucas basically just disregarded every constraint he had set for himself -- outside of Anakin being found on Tatooine (which was implied, but is not strictly necessary) and fathering twins. That's about it for faithfulness to the original trilogy. It was appalling. Everything from Leia knowing her mother to Obi-Wan discovering Anakin, and presumably having some sort of conflict with Owen -- it was just so insulting that he chucked all of that out the window. Which thereby made the Obi-Wan character in the Original Trilogy out to be a flat out liar and a fraud. I mean, honoring those constraints was the only reason the prequels were even worth doing. Instead it was just a 7 year marketing shill, and -- yeah -- he basically trusted that for most people, seeing lightsabers again and the odd Wookkie perhaps would suffice to convince them they were Star Wars films. Anyway, all of that is water under the bridge, and I am preaching to the converted, of course!

I want to move on to what the constraints you guys have made me aware of suggest, 'cause I think it's a hell of a lot more interesting than what Lucas gave us. However, when I was working on my prequel plot treatments, I realized, even if you put together a plausible story that honors the structure and style and constraints of the older films (which I think my treatments do), the magic of the films was almost a kind of accident. I mean, on paper, I am sure Han Solo was just as lifeless as any of the rest of Lucas's crappy writing. It takes a unique actor to bring a character like that to life (and also the tweaking of the script by skilled writers, which Lucas didn't really allow for the prequels). But anyway...

But, you know, I think this is basically the problem with Lucas -- he has no constraints. He is a one-man movie studio and is surrounded by Yes-men. How a character like JarJar ever got off the drawing boards is beyond me. Someone close to him should have said, 'George, this is the worst of a number of terrible ideas you have had over the years. If you put this in star wars, you will -- and should be -- lynched'. But no one had the nerve to say anything like that too him. God help Ahmed Best, wherever he is. That big break basically destroyed his hope of any sort of career!

Oh, by the way, did either of you see this post: http://io9.com/36281...umb-theyre-evil
This person makes some interesting points, thought I don't necessarily agree. She says prequels are anti-heroic -- well, so what, some of the greatest stories of the 20th century are anti-heroic. But in a way she is right. To me, the hero of these stories is the mother of Luke and Leia -- she sees the danger coming and saves her children; she doesn't die in childbirth. She dies fighting for her children.

The author of that piece also says that if you know where the story is going already, it takes a lot of the drama out of it. However, this helps me to realize that, as maybe both of you suggested, since we know Anakin and Padme/Amidala (or whatever you want to call her) are going to fall in love, why bother showing it? Those scenes were terrible and boring. So, yeah, why not start with them already involved, and maybe already having trouble in their relationship. Problem solved!

The biggest problem, perhaps, with the prequels is precisely that it takes this wonderful vague idea of the past that the Original Trilogy conjured up and locks it down into one vision. I mean, the Jedi as a bunch of basically incompetent pseudo-politicians hanging out in an art deco skyscrapper -- yuck, who wanted that? They really are incompetent, as you point out. They are hanging out with Palpatine all the time, and have no idea that he's a Sith Lord. Good god.

So, the way to avoid this is, start the story after the point at which the Jedi have already faded into the background. This is quite consistent with the original trilogy, as that really telling comment of Motti's suggests -- "Your sad devotion to that ancient religion..." You are so right -- this is not reflective of events 20 years in the past -- this would have to be at least 100 years after the Jedi have ceased to be a dominant force in the affairs of the Republic. So, okay, that's a good constraint, and it keeps the mystique of the Jedi in tact. Obi-Wan says, "before the dark times, before the Empire", but the dark times could have been going on for 60 or 80 years before the Empire fully became the Empire.

In truth, I think Lucas fudged a lot of details in the original film, because he never thought he would have to present a persuasive vision of how all these odd elements -- princesses and democracy, for example -- could be brought together. But they are all there in that film, so we have to work with them.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE ACADEMY?

One of the oddest ones is that Luke wants to go off to the Academy, but he says he hates the Empire. Well, who is running this academy if not the Empire? Some outside group that is not affiliated with the Empire? Not the rebellion, it's too underground for that. (Notice, we heard nothing about this academy in the prequels, and yet it is a major element of Luke's situation and his desire to get out of Tattooine in A New Hope. Odd.) I mean, Tatooine is supposed to be remote, but everyone (Owen, Beru, Ben) takes for granted that it is a reasonable aspiration for a poor farmboy to aspire to enter this Academy, and the Empire has no trouble dropping in and meddling on Tatooine, so it must all be part of the same (political/military) system. I don't know. Maybe within the Empire there are worlds, like Alderaan, which are for the most part left to do their own thing, peaceably. I think in my version (I've forgotten a lot of the details now, because it was literally 10 years ago) the Academy is based on Alderaan, and they are purely training pilots for a sort of diplomatic core, not for combat, since Leia says "we're peaceful, we have no weapons" and also why would the Empire allow someone to train fighter pilots not allied with the Empire?

(Sidenote: in one apocryphal chunk of Star Wars backstory, Han Solo was a member of the Imperial navy or something, and rescued Chewbacca, a slave, from being mistreated by a superior, and then presumably left the navy. But why would Han have ever cooperated with the Empire, unless -- again -- it is something like the Academy that is functioning outside the Empire in some way, or is a relatively uncorrupted institution within the Empire?)

(In the deleted scene from A New Hope, Biggs tells Luke the plan is to train with the Imperial Academy and then jump ship and join the Rebellion. This makes more sense, but it still implies Owen is willing to let Luke go off and join the Empire, or maybe he is stalling and has no intention of ever letting Luke go. That is all quite consistent and plausible with the original trilogy.)

Okay, so what follows are some ideas that could easily be grafted onto the plot treatments you have already sketched out. I don't think I will go any further with this stuff. I want to stay at work on my novel, which is more gratifying, and has a future, whereas rewriting Star Wars does not, unless Lucas wakes up and realizes that what keeps franchises like Batman alive is that other artists are given room to reimagine them from time to time. That would be nice to see with Star Wars, but I'm not holding my breath.

GUARDIANS OF PEACE AND JUSTICE vs. SAD DEVOTION TO AN ANCIENT RELIGION

The thing about the Jedi being "guardians of peace and justice in the old republic for over a thousand generations" is tricky, because it does suggest they were, if not police, something like Samurai, the muscle behind the political system. (In the original Star Wars script, it is obviously modeled quite closely on Japan, because the Jedi do defend the Emperor. But can you have an Emperor of an ancient, supposedly democratic republic?) There is, of course, a real-world precedent for the sort of transformation the Republic with its mystical warrior protectors transforming into a secular, technological state would have to go through, and again it is Japan. Japan went from being a basically feudal, warlord controlled society with Samurai running around to a modern industrial nation state capable of taking on the other great powers in the world within about 80 years (roughly 1860 - 1940). Something similar could happen to the Republic. Like, in the prequels we got, it's crazy. They have been protecting the republic for thousands of years, and then they totally fumble the ball on Palpatine and Anakin and it all goes to shit in a matter of a few years. It's really stupid. It makes more sense if the whole society has already kind of turned its back on the Jedi before things really start to go bad. Then, it's not Yoda or even Ben's fault (notice too we never got any explanation of where the name Ben came from; he says he's been called Ben since before Luke was born in A New Hope -- it is never used even once in the prequels, so once again he's just an out and out liar. Great). They foul up with Anakin, but the Empire is not something that happened all of a sudden while the Jedi were asleep at the wheel. (Even Vader is not 'the Empire' as such. He's the Emperor's pitbull, but one pitbull does not an Empire make.)

JEDIs and TECHNOLOGY: The Republic's Backstory

It is a contradiction inherent in the original films, but to me, since the Force is generated by life, the Jedi should be sort of anti-technology. They are anti-blaster, anyway, and the comments about Anakin being more machine than man, twisted and evil, and the sort of threat of Luke slowly becoming an evil cyborg all suggest an anti-technological bent. (Also there seems to be a certain distrust of droids in the Star Wars world, or at least in Owen Lars mind!) Dagobah is a huge swamp. We don't see Yoda using anything technological, including a lightsaber, and that makes sense. i hated seeing him in this sterile office tower in the prequels. He should be surrounded by LIFE!!! Anyway, but of course the lightsaber itself is a piece of technology and luke is a pilot, so, okay. But my idea, spurred on by you guys, is the following.

The Republic has existed in a kind of low-tech, at most steam-punk mode for centuries. They have some basic technology, but not weapons of mass destruction, etc. And the Jedi are basically responsible for keeping a lid on technological advancement -- it is part of their philosophy of life. (By the way, this is all just backstory. None of this has to be dealt with explicitly in the film. In fact, that too is a big problem with the prequels -- the stories are so convoluted and complicated that most of the time the characters are too busy communicating plot information to each other and to us to have any real character moments. In the original films, the plot was actually very simple, and the characters didn't have to spend a lot of time telling us or each other what was going on or why, so you could focus on character stuff. I think that has to be the goal of any good prequel rewrite as well -- a story simple enough that you don't have to fill in all the blanks. Just sketch the background lightly and then focus on the characters. That's another advantage to starting well after the Jedi have slipped to the margins of this society. You don't have to explain or show the downfall in great detail.)

THE CLONE WARS

Anyway, this begins to change, perhaps with the introduction of droids? There is a neighbouring society/kingdom, whatever, that is highly technological. Why not call it Corellia, since Han describes the Star Destroyers as those "big Corellian ships". In fact, it is run by droids, or maybe is a kind of mix of droids and humanoid life-forms. This is maybe getting a bit too SF for Star Wars, and for my tastes, but maybe the droids are becoming more powerful by blending organic intelligence with machine intelligence (maybe there is a fearsome droid general, like General Grievous but without that stupid name, who is a blend of machine and organic parts). Maybe they are also abducting people from other systems and cloning them as slave labor/disposable warriors. These would be particularly scary development to a society traditionally hostile to technology. So the war with the droid world could be justified as an attempt to liberate the clones, and prevent the droids from becoming an expansionist power. But the real agenda is simply to put the droids back in their place, as servants of men not vice versa, and then use their technology (and this pool of labor/soldiers) to build the Empire.

This would feed nicely into the hostility to droids shown in A New Hope. I.e. "We don't serve their kind here. You'll have to leave your droids outside", Owen's negative attitude to droids, and Ben's comment that he can't seem to remember ever owning a droid, as if it would not be appropriate for a Jedi to own that sort of machine. And this could create some interesting sympathy for droids (like Threepio), because they would be treated more severely and suspectly at home (in the Republic), maybe with frequent memory erasures, etc. (Not that Threepio needs to feature prominently in this version -- it could just be one scene, or a montage of images of mistreatment of droids.)

This would work well because there would be weight to fighting the clones -- they are human; they can suffer and die, whereas droids cannot. But it would also lend weight to the stuff with droids, because really robots are just another form of slavery. And when we see the kind of backlash against the droids (who will be returned to their docile state of service to organic lifeforms) there will also be pathos there. It will also tie in nicely with the implicit theme at the end of Return of the Jedi of a technologically primitive society triumphing over the Empire.

In any case, the machine-world (Corellia) would be an interesting environment to send the main characters to in the first film. Lucas basically exhausted all the environments on the earth (forest, jungle, tundra, desert, etc.), except an underwater world, which he squandered on that stupid Gungan thing in Phantom Menace. (I reused it more effectively in my original Episode II rewrite -- see the above listed site -- and could be recycled again here.)

Anyway, the two societies (Republic and machine-world) have lived peaceably side by side for a long time, but people see the benefits of more technology, and there is a fear that unless they keep up, they may be vulnerable. So the society becomes more materialistic, real-world, they build a normal, at first defensive military and the Jedi become these kind of fringe characters. Jedi-ism, or whatever you want to call it, could even become a kind of underground, occult thing that teenagers like to dabble in, but that the state officially discourages, as the NAZIs and the Communists tried to stamp out religion. So when we begin the story, the Republic is already in a kind of proto-fascist state. It is moving toward rapid industrialization, and is ripe for take-over by a strong military leader should an appropriate crisis present itself.

[Gorecki]

START OF EPISODE I

Why not start with graduation from this Academy that is so important to Luke (we never see it in the prequels, or hear anything about it), and have an attack by the Machine-world forces in the midst of the celebrations, or shortly thereafter? So, the story starts on the Republic homeworld. Call it Coruscant if you like, but it is not a high-tech metropolis. If anything, it is a kind of steam-punk, almost medieval-looking place, or a place clearly in transition from old to new. Anyway, a crop of new pilots has just graduated and they are celebrating in a bar or whatever. Anakin is there with his buddies. Except he is not a graduate. He's a drop out who works in a shop fixing ships, etc., maybe doing some sort of elicit piloting in his spare time (thus making him more like Han Solo). His girlfriend is there too. (I think a lot of us liked the idea that Leia is not just a princess by adoption, but a true princess of the blood! But who cares? Maybe it is cooler if her mother is a kind of scrappy grunt, a kind of female Han Solo, who is attracted to Anakin because they are similarly adventure hungry and tough, but she turns away from him when she sees him drifting off in a dangerous direction.)

Anyway, his elder brother, Owen, has come from Tatooine for his brother's graduation, or simply to collect him now that school is finished. The family has been scrimping and saving to put him through school, but Anakin has been living a lie. He hasn't told his family that he dropped out (or was kicked out for risky behaviour or something), even though he's the best pilot in the bunch. Owen tells him it is time to come home, permanently, but Anakin isn't having it. He's had a taste of life in the capital and in the fast lane, and he wants to keep going with it, not leave his girlfriend, etc. Also, unbenowst to Owen (or maybe he gets a hint of it while he is there), Anakin and his girlfriend have been dabbling in this occult Jedi thing -- Anakin's really good, she's so-so. It's a kind of cool, underworld thing that we should get some glimpses of. Of course, because it's basically a bunch of kids screwing around with the force, they are helpless to avoid using some Dark Force, so it's really kind of dangerous. The girlfriend eventually wises up and decides she wants out of it. This can be the beginning of her separation from Anakin. It ought to happen fairly early in the story, because one of the weirdest constraints in the Original Trilogy is that Luke and Leia are twins, but the father only knows about the boy. How is this possible, unless he is absent from the mother's life for the entire length of the pregnancy -- off fighting in the clone wars, perhaps -- and she chooses, for some reason, only to reveal the son to him and not the daughter. (More on this later -- really cool!)

Perhaps Owen and Ben Kenobi are old friends. Perhaps Ben is an instructor at this academy, and Ben is his teaching name (the fact that he is a Jedi is not generally known). Maybe Ben is living a kind of double-life on 'Coruscant', that is, sort of keeping an eye on things for the Jedi council, which is in exile. Maybe there are a dozen or more Jedi operating this way on the Republic homeworld. He catches wind of Anakin's talent, sees the danger of his dabbling in the dark side, and decides to try to train him as a proper Jedi. Before he can succeed, however, Anakin is swept up in the clone wars, becomes a distinguished fighter, gets closer and closer to General Palpatine, who will eventually seize power in a military coup, although the senate will be kept in tact until A New Hope, and so breaks off from General Kenobi.

That's a tricky issue. How can Ben be a general, if he has to be a kind of clandestine figure? Maybe the clone wars should essentially be nearing their end at the beginning of Episode 1. Unless Ben is a general for Bail Organa, and they are fighting some sort of internal counter-insurgency against the Empire, etc. Or, the Clone Wars have sort of 3 antagonists - the Machine-world, the proto-Empire, and the Alderaanians, in league with liberated Clones who want to keep their world out of the clutches of the proto-Empire (when this split occurs, that could be when Obi-Wan and Anakin end up on opposite sides of the conflict; they could even confront each other for the last time on the battlefield). This would provide a motivation for defanging Alderaan (i.e. making it peaceful place with no weapons) at the end of the prequels, and then destroying it utterly in A New Hope.

There is a time problem with having the girlfriend in the picture right from the start. If Anakin is 19 in Episode 1, and there are gaps of 5-10 years between each episode, making him 30-40 at the end of Episode 3 (and 50-60 at the start of A New Hope), the kids have to be born during Episode 3, so they are roughly 20 at the start of A New Hope. Maybe the kids are the product of a kind of one-night stand that Anakin and his girlfriend have after being reunited sometime before or during Episode 3. She realizes it was a mistake, that Anakin hasn't changed and is still a threatening figure, so her mission is to keep her kids safe from him. That's an interesting and emotionally compelling plot line. If she is a really gutsy, self-reliant chick, it would play nicely into Leia's personality. And it creates room for a heroic character in the midst of the anti-heroism of Anakin's decline and Obi-Wan's failure.

I never much liked the idea of the love-triangle plot between Ben, Padme/Amidala and Anakin. It makes Ben seem like an even more terrible person, or to have even worse judgement. But... being a flawed human being is okay (if not an outright liar, as in the actual prequel trilogy). It might be interesting because of course he is not going to tell Luke, "Well, I was also involved with your mother." But... if the relationship between she and Anakin breaks up in Episode I, and they only briefly reunite in Episode II or III, thus producing the kids, then a romance with Ben is more plausible, and he doesn't come off so badly. If she has some Jedi skills, and he even sort of trains her a little, a relationship can easily develop. Anyway, it doesn't have to be tacked on so stupidly as it is in the actual prequel trilogy, and it doesn't have the be the one thing that makes Anakin go ape and kill her (she's not going to die -- she's going to escape safely with Leia). He's not going to have an opportunity to kill her, though he might have a confrontation with Obi-Wan about it. (Like, why is there no reference to any of this in A New Hope, if it plays such an important role in his becoming Vader?)

Empire is a great film, but there is a time problem. Leia and Han's misadventure in the asteroid field and then their stay at Bespin lasts at most 3 to 5 days. Meanwhile, Luke has received 80% of a complete Jedi's training! And with that little bit of training, he is able to resist the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. Whereas Anakin, with 20 years of training or time with the Jedi, goes over to the darkside. Yes, the Emperor uses outright torture to try to force Luke to use the darkside to defend himself. But it doesn't work. So for Anakin's cross-over it maybe needs to be a longer, subtler process, and one he participates in more actively -- he can't just be forced over in one moment; it wouldn't be dramatically satisfying either. Better to have it be a long, slow process of corruption -- or, as one of you suggested, he thinks he is doing good by using the dark side and/or helping the Emperor.

[Gorecki]

EPISODE I

THE GATHERING STORM

Nearly a century of rapid change has
swept through the once pastoral and
peaceful confederacy of worlds
known as the Republic. Old beliefs and
traditions have slipped away, and all but
a few ancient taboos have been broken.

Now, a series of mysterious abductions
on the outskirts of its territory has brought
fear to the capital, and for the first time in
its thousand-generation history, the Republic
is poised on the brink of war.

A new crop of brave young pilots
celebrates their graduation from the elite
Naval Academy, apprehensive that events
may soon call upon them to defend the great
Republic, in place of its ancient guardians...

Basically, I think Lucas was wise to intuit that since the prequel series will have to be quite dark, the first episode should end in a fairly clear-cut victory that the audience can take pleasure in. I agree with this approach. The problem is, in the Prequel Trilogy, the Republic lacked a credible external enemy. The Sith were too few, and the Trade Federation was just a joke. A war to keep planets from separating from a supposedly democratic Republic is totally unpersuasive, and the fact the Jedis would ever have participated in helping wage this war is ridiculous and condemnable. The only fun we can have is if initially the threat is real, external, and defeated. Then the Republic can start to rot from within, as victory in war can come as a calamity to a previously peaceful society.

It also gives us a chance to parallel Luke and Anakin's stories, at least initially. So, like Luke, Anakin will be swept into events much bigger than himself almost by accident. He will be out celebrating -- if ruefully -- with his buddies from the academy, when Corellia's forces attack. (It doesn't have to be Coruscant. It can be Tantive IV, where the Academy was supposed to be, and thus on the outskirts of the Republic. This makes more sense than a direct attack on its heart anyway.) A mystery immediately presents itself -- Corellia is a machine-world run by droids. Yet they are not sending droid fighters (weightless and boring in the actual Prequel Trilogy), they are sending manned vessels. On behalf of the Jedi (though it is not revealed until later that Ben is a Jedi), Ben enlists Anakin's aid (as he later enlists Luke's) to go to Corellia, by stealth, and investigate (perhaps with Anakin's girlfriend in tow). They will of course prove the heroes of this film, though Ben will shun the limelight, letting Anakin take all the credit, along with a slightly older general, Palpatine.

In transit, they can discuss the fate of the galaxy. They can even, perhaps, take Owen to a safe outpost where he can catch a ride home, and en route they have the argument about whether to go off on this mission with Ben or not. Anakin makes some slighting comments about the Jedi. Where are they now that the Republic needs them? etc. Ben, maybe somewhat lamely, argues the people no longer believe in them, and that in any case defensive warriors armed with swords cannot defend the Republic from monstrous machine armies; that time is past. Anakin disagrees, though it is secret for now that he has been dabbling in Jedi arts.

(Actually, I would like to have a scene of Anakin and his girlfriend dabbling in Jedi arts, maybe even before the attack. It will all be quite mysterious to the audience, and not require any special explanation, until later. See my background notes above.)

Perhaps there is an intermediate battle/event on the space station where they part company with Owen. Maybe this is where Bail Organa enters the picture. There is another attack (I don't know, maybe too repetitive), Anakin reveals his powers, and Ben decides to train him, rather than let his talents go undeveloped. (There is never any indication in the Original Trilogy that Yoda has to train Anakin. He says he has trained Jedi for 800 years, but that need not be read to imply he personally trained every single Jedi in that time. In any case, the Jedi have already faded from view. So the fact Ben takes this on himself is his own decision, he doesn't clear it with anyone, and presumably is not disciplined by any one for doing so.) The training can continue off an on throughout the film.

Anyway, they get to Corellia. The Republic counter-attack is already underway, so they have two dangers to avoid -- detection by the locals, and destruction by the Republic forces now making war on the planet. (This will create an exciting situation that we haven't seen before in a Star Wars story.) What they discover is that the droid leadership of Corellia -- perhaps a hive of a dozen or so linked droids, rather than a single general -- have been abducting people from the outskirts of the Republic, cloning them, and using mind-control technology to turn them into drones for their war. They have also enhanced their own powers by mixing organic intelligence with machine muscle. They manage to get this information back to General Palpatine, commanding the war from the sky (perhaps with some sort of aid from Bail Organa?). The focus of the war has to shift from mere defence to liberation of the clones, who are themselves victims of the conflict. (In a parallel way, prejudice against droids will be seen in attacks and things on droids back on the Republic home world, maybe campaigns against them where people are seen burning their droids in big public squares -- quite medieval in a way, etc.). They have to smash the droid leadership and its mind-control center, a big installation akin to the Death Star, but based on Corellia. Maybe there is a battle with the droid leaders, I don't know. In any case, as in Episode IV, Anakin proves to be the hero of the day, they return triumphantly to Coruscant, and the film ends happily, with Palpatine, Anakin, maybe Organa, and the future mother of Leia and Luke in the limelight, and Ben in the shadows.

(Note: so far, no Sith are on the scene. Palpatine is not a Sith, just a regular human taking advantage of an opportunity.)

[Gorecki]

EPISODE II

THE BIRTH OF VADER (THE CLONE MUTINY?) (ENEMIES WITHIN?)

A decade after the victorious Battle of
Correlia, peace remains strangely elusive.
Many fear that what began as a war of
defense and liberation has turned to
expansion and aggression.

New enemies seem to be everywhere.
General Palpatine has exploited the fear of
the masses by vowing to keep the Republic
safe, marching his troops into the capital,
and crowning himself as its Emperor.

The future of the Republic lies in the hands
of those few brave souls who oppose the
Emperor and his designs to build a fleet
of warships capable of dominating the galaxy...

For me, one element of the original trilogy that is essential to its structure is that the story moves forward to new worlds and new environments (only about 3 per film), as much as possible, rather than backtracking. So, the focus of this story shifts to Alderaan. Anakin has already been fighting alongside Palpatine in the clone wars (the term need never be used in the film; we will understand what is meant by it retrospectively when Ben says it in Episode IV). A kind of informal alliance has formed between Ben, Organa and the future mother of Luke and Leia (let's give her a new name, rather than Padme/Amidala which was always confusing -- call her Nara Uulia for now), and Nara. Nara is cozy with Organa's present (or future wife); they are friends, and thus, Nara will be able to trust her when the time comes to deposit Leia with her. In the first third of the film, it will be revealed both women are pregnant. Nara and Anakin are not an active couple -- they have an on-again, off-again thing. Nara is perhaps a bodyguard or otherwise in the service of the Organas.

When they were last on, shortly before this story began, Nara became pregnant. She has an opportunity early in the story to tell Anakin (who, perhaps unknown to her, has already had his first few bionic implants). He is excited -- he expresses his hope that it will be a boy that he can train as a Jedi. She becomes wary, but -- for fear of displeasing him -- superficially confirms his hope that it will be a boy. He expresses his plan that with the aid of his son, he can overthrow the Emperor when the time comes. She isn't ready to assist him in that, as she sees him struggling to control the dark side power that he has been dabbling in (maybe he is accidentally forced to reveal to her that he has a mechanical arm or lung, or something), and fears for her son, so she decides at this time to end things permanently, though she may not tell him in as many words (maybe she tells Ben). In any case, they never meet again. He is absent in battle for the next 9 months, and is not present for the birth.

Over the course of this episode, he makes his last serious turn away from the dark side. At the end of a particularly fierce battle, he has used a lot of dark force power, and realizes he is on the brink. He tries to swear it off. He hands his light-saber hilt to Ben and asks him to give it to his son. Then he is returned to the Emperor's medical team, who advance his transformation by adding a breathing apparatus, or something, but not the full Vader gear. Note: at this point, there is no special enmity between Ben and Anakin. They have their differences; Ben has realized he has lost control of his apprentice, but he still holds out hope that he can be rescued. (Note: unless he gave his lightsaber to someone other than Ben, which is a stretch, they can't be overt enemies at the time of parting. And they likely can't have another serious confrontation, though maybe a close encounter. So, the big showdown with Vader has to be someone else. Read on to find out who!)

However, as a result of events near the start of this episode, it becomes increasingly clear that the war is no longer about freeing the clones or protecting the Republic. The Emperor has seized the awesome capabilities of Corellia's machine society, and -- with human beings back firmly in control -- they are harnessing it to build the Empire -- first order of business, a fleet of star destroyers. The clones were simply assumed into the ranks of the Empire's military, the clone factories/foundaries(?) were never actually shut down, and there is reason to believe they are even trying to reconstruct the droids' mind-control technology (perhaps this was an aspect of the Death Star's function that was never revealled -- a central coordinating hub for troop control. I don't know? Too SF? Doesn't have to be made totally explicit). In any case, this information can come from some refugees, clones and/or others, who arrive at Alderaan seeking Organa's help, telling of Republic attrocities carried out in the course of the war, etc. -- a kind of clone mutiny (It could be suggested that the promise of freedom for the clones proved false, as the Republic was not actually willing to integrate them, so they had little choice but to continue as soldiers to the Emperor, to whom they might feel a sincere loyalty for liberating them -- but this would imply a kind of racism in the Republic, and maybe we don't want the Republic to come off as such a backward society. Except that it has already been changing, that is getting worse, for 100 years or so. The glory days of the Republic are already fading well into the distance at the beginning of Episode I.

The mutineers/refugees can bring X number of liberated clones into his service, perhaps also the Mon Comlari (Akbar's people), and the Alderaanian fleet, to mount an overt counter-offensive against the Empire. All this cannot, of course, be discussed with Anakin present. But by the end of the film, Anakin will be on a side of the conflict opposite to Ben, Nara, and Organa. (See, he can sincerely believe that he is doing right and that Ben and the others are doing wrong. It may not be clear to many within the Republic that it has become, through war, something quite different than it was. They may legitimately believe what is being done is necessary to keep the Republic 'safe', as is so often the case with real-world Empires. So it is not one event as such that draws Anakin over to the wrong side. He has been dabbling with the dark side all along, he has - sincerely - taken the wrong side, and thus comes to view Ben and the others as traitors. (By the way, while Anakin cannot be present for this discussion, Nara can perhaps confront him with some of the accusations about the Emperor, and even say -- "You must have seen things in this war that make you question the Emperor's true motives" -- etc. And his inadequate, muddle-headed response can be part of what convinces her it is time to make the final break from him.

In any case, toward the end of this Episode (there might need to be a montage in the middle to suggest the passage of at least 9 months, plus more mechanical add-ons for Anakin/Vader), both Organa's wife and Nara give birth. However, Organa's child dies. Because Nara and she are such close friends, Nara asks her and Organa to keep the baby's stillbirth secret. She has decided she will give her baby to Organa, for safe keeping. Maybe the births are staggered by a few days, or they speed Nara's up a bit by surgically removing the kids (could be good and wrenching). She has to go away and prepare for the greater task, which is keeping them safe as they reach maturity. (This sort of baby-switching goes on all the time in old stories, and is quite in keeping with the medieval, fantasy roots of the Star Wars myth.) Of course, Nara gives birth to twins. She feels she can safely send the boy off to live with his Uncle Owen, as Anakin has made clear he has a plan for the boy many years ahead, and thus will not harm him. Ben is not so confident, but out of loyalty to her, he goes along with it. (We may or may not need to include a scene where Owen and Ben argue about the lightsaber. Maybe best to leave it out. In any case, we know Ben delivers the baby to Tatooine and the Lars accept it, so maybe it need not be shown.)

By the end of the film, the uprising based on Alderaan has been smashed; Anakin/Vader storms into the capital and nearly kills Organa. They strike a hard bargain -- Alderaan will be left alone only if it is completely disarmed. Nara, meanwhile, has escaped to parts unknown, and Vader has to be convinced she (and her baby) died in the bombardment. This can of course provoke enormous rage in him, and perhaps it will help explain why he is content not just to be the Emperor's side-kick but to be subordinate even to Governor Tarkin, as it appears in Episode IV.

Thus, at film's end, we see Nara going off on the mission she won't reveal to anyone (Maybe she says to Ben: "I'm afraid if I tell you, you will persuade me otherwise, so let it remain a secret" or some such thing). This appeal to me for the same reason that the cliffhanger ending of Empire is so great. It gets us really curious about the start of the next film, and of course contributes to Anakin's final transformation into Vader.

I leave it as an open question if we want to imply or even explicitly show some sort of love interest between Ben and Nara. I am not opposed to it in principle, as her ambivalence about Anakin makes it not an overt betrayal of a friend on Ben's part. But even if it is somewhat of a betrayal, Ben can have flaws and losing your girl is hardly an excuse to become a galactic Hitler. In any case, events in the next story will make it all the more angering to Anakin, and persuade him of the justice of his final mission to exterminate the Jedi.

[Gorecki]

EPISODE III

REVENGE OF THE SITH

With the uprising smashed and Alderaan
neutralized, the Emperor is firmly in
control of the Republic, now become a
galaxy-spanning Empire of fear and violence.

Only two threats to his misrule remain.
With Vader's own fearsome powers
growing stronger and stronger, the
Emperor plots a desperate attempt
to secure himself against enemies within
and without.

The Jedi, though dispersed, weak and
broken, may yet have strength
and wisdom enough to sow the seeds
of the Empire's final destruction, if not
in this generation, then in the next...


Okay, so, at this point, about 5 years later, the Empire is firmly in place. They have star destroyers at their disposal, and no significant internal opposition (i.e. Alderaan, mutineering clones). Their regular generals are more than competent to handle the few skirmishes that are still brewing, so we can focus entirely on the fate of the Jedi, Anakin, and Nara, and Vader can focus on his extermination campaign. Perhaps Vader's extermination campaign has already begun. It is not overt -- it is a kind of secret mission. He is pursuing the few remaining Jedi to the ends of the galaxy.

There is a kind of council meeting of about a dozen Jedi in some remote mountains somewhere. This will be the only time we will see any significant collection of Jedi gathered in the series, so it will be very special. (This is the Zen vikings image that TK-421 suggested.) Not sure how to handle this exactly, but basically they are discussing a last attempt to either win Anakin back to the good side, or destroy him. It is almost a suicide mission -- to hunt the one who is hunting them.

I have two ideas here that would be cool. 1) Maybe not so practical -- Vader busts up this very meeting, perhaps killing a third or more of those in attendance. This could be a very cool sequence, in a big old, dark, cavernous mountain compound (again, think Zen vikings), and battles maybe slipping out onto the snowy cliffs of the mountain itself. (We known how much George likes casting people down bottomless pits.) This could be when Ben confronts Vader for the last time, but it shouldn't be a full-on duel. It should be some sort of situation where they come close to each other, maybe even exchange a few words, but some physical obstacle prevents them from having an all out battle.

Or, scenario (2) a hitherto unknown Jedi appears at this meeting, Yoda's self-declared representative (note that Yoda appears nowhere in this version, so as not to ruin his reveal in Episode V). This might also be a bit impractical, since surely they would sense this Jedi approaching, unless it is some unusually powerful Jedi able to mentally hide in some way from them.

Anyway, this Jedi turns out to be -- you guessed it: Nara Uulia, the mother of Luke and Leia. Stay with me here, 'cause I think this could be really cool. So, she knows by the early part of Episode II she has a terrible burden to bear -- she is bearing twins to the emerging galactic Hitler. She has to protect them. The only way to do it is to pursue what she set aside years earlier, or has previously only developed to a slight extent, with Ben's help. So she went off and found Yoda and convinced him to train her. She has come back fierce as hell, in disguise (it will have shades of both Luke and Leia's arrivals at Jabba's Palace in Episode VI). Ben of course is thrilled, but... well, undecided about the love-story angle. Might be good. Might add to the anger when Vader realizes who it is that has come back. In any case, it's fucking cool! She is now ready to lead the virtual suicide mission to rescue or destroy Anakin once and for all.

Nara's return also sets us up for an amazing scene where she visits Leia, now about 5 years old. She doesn't know who the woman is, but she takes to her instantly. They play together and talk for a short time, and then she has a discussion with Organa's wife. This will be one of the most moving scenes in the whole series. Maybe she should be too hardened to weep at this point, but I'd like to see her choked up. "She's beautiful... but she's not mine anymore. I thought I could protect her. Maybe I still can. But not as her mother. She's yours now." Thus, when Leia talks about her in ROTJ, remembering her mother as "very beautiful, kind (?), but sad", we will know exactly what she is referring to. (And we won't need any further explanation. We can just be left to assume that at some future point, her adoptive mother let her know who that woman was. Or, maybe it is a purely intuitive thing. I mean, how does Luke know she was adopted anyway, other than intuitively?)

Okay, next idea. So in this version, Palpatine is so far not a Sith, just a regular skilled general. However, his right-hand man is this increasingly powerful Jedi. So he's getting scared. His time is limited, he realizes, before Anakin/Vader will seek to replace him. The only solution is to make himself more powerful than Vader. How? By becoming a Sith. Again, bear with me here.

So, this could be fun in a number of ways, because so far this version has been light on Jedi action, and the Sith have been absent. The backstory, which maybe is only revealed in fragments by Ben and or the other Jedi, i.e. to Nara, is that the Sith were driven to the very edge of the galaxy by the Jedi a long time ago. They had been thought extinct. But the myth is that they are out there somewhere. The Emperor sends a team off in search of them. Perhaps he has a lower-ranking henchman with Jedi powers -- the mission would have to be secret from Vader as well. Anyway, they find the Sith, and the Emperor sneaks off to contact them. (Perhaps this is what draws Anakin/Vader off of his attack on the Zen Viking fortress -- he senses the Emperor is getting close to outwitting him permanently. Then it becomes a kind of race, with Vader trying to beat the Emperor to the Sith, and the Jedi in hot pursuit of Vader.)

Somewhere in the original treatment for Star Wars, Lucas had this thing called the force crystal, or the kaiber crystal. Sounds pretty hokey, but it would be cool to have a kind of cave of evil somewhere (maybe lit an eerie green) where the dark side is particularly strong. Some ancient Sith, the Sith Yoda as it were (call him Darth Sidious for convenience sake) is hanging out there, perhaps with one or two beleaguered apprentices or henchmen on hand. In my other version of the prequel rewrites, I suggested the Sith exist in a kind of parasitic relationship, which is why they can never have large numbers, and why they are always sort of destroying themselves through one-upmanship, the master hating and resenting the master and plotting to destroy him. I also suggested that because of this, the Uber-Sith Lord has to switch bodies from time to time, because the dark side preys on and destroys life. So, basically, Palpatine is sort of making a deal with the devil, and doesn't know what he is getting into. He thinks he is going to gain some sort of power from Darth Sidious, but actually Sidious spies his change to regain strength and move back to the center of power. He thus inhabits Palpatine, whose face is now hideously transformed, as we see in Return of the Jedi. Vader is too late, and the Emperor is now able to discipline him with force lightening, etc.

(Of course, it would seem that with Motti expressing such contempt for the Force in Episode IV, it has to remain basically secret that the Emperor is a Sith, as I guess is implied in Lucas's version as well, though how Palpatine's face would keep shifting back and forth remains a mystery. It would make more sense if the Emperor is a totally reclusive figure once the Empire is firmly established, with Vader as his main agent in the galaxy, and the many military leaders obeying him, and even giving orders to Vader as Tarkin seems to, ignorant of the Emperor's Jedi powers.)

Brought to heel, they turn their attention to the Jedi, who arrive into a kind of ambush. Perhaps this is the only major battle we ever see with multiple Jedi, including the few lingering Sith Lords. There should be a kind of vampiric quality to these guys, and these scenes -- like a journey into hell. Of course, all the other Sith Lords, and most (maybe not all) of the Jedi -- save Ben -- will be killed. However, Ben and Vader won't fight directly face to face. Instead, the big emotional final battle will be with - you guessed it Nara. In the course of the Battle (she wears a kind of helmet or disguise, perhaps modeled somewhat on Leia's bounty-hunter disguise in Return of the Jedi), he realizes she is Nara. He is enraged that the Jedi, the Organas, etc., and Nara herself conspired to fake her death and hide her from him. All hope is lost. Perhaps Nara even has to tell Ben to leave and save himself while he can. In any case, Vader necessarily has to cause her death. And it is at that point that we know, he is totally irredeemable.

And that's basically the end. Maybe a major downer of an ending! But a hell of a lot more psychologically persuasive and interesting than the version we got.

[Gorecki]

A few more notes on prequel possibilities...

JEDI TABOOS

I should perhaps clarify why I included the word 'taboo' in the opening scroll for the above Episode I treatment. I agree with Chefelf that the Jedi Code gets pretty convoluted in the prequels as they stand, and should be abandoned. It is a sloppy element to the story that just lets Lucas import whatever he wants whenever he wants.

To me, the Force (good side and Dark Side) was always quite simple -- if you use the Force correctly, benevolently, it makes you powerful. If you use it aggressively, destructively, out of anger, etc., it also makes you powerful, but ultimately destroys you. This is a pretty good description of what 'taboo' means in the ancient sense. Taboo means 'don't mess with this stuff, because most people can't handle it.' Some people (i.e. Jedi) can handle it; some people (like Anakin) can't handle it - they go over to the dark side, and they are no longer in control, the Dark Side controls them. To me, we don't need any more explanation or mythology than there is already in the original films.

But I think the notion of taboo can also help keep the Jedi mythology credible and simple for any alternate prequel trilogy. The most obvious taboo is using the force to attack or kill someone, other than in self-defence. That's a simple rule. No problems there.

It seems to me that since life creates the Force, the Jedi ought to be very conscious of their relationship to other living things. Thus, some obvious taboos would be the mixing of technological and organic life forms, giving rise to a basic suspicion of technology in general, a taboo/suspicion that has lots of support in the Original Trilogy.

Cloning, you would think, would also be taboo, which is why I find it rather distressing -- not to mention non-sensical -- that the Jedi go from being mildly surprised in Episode II that the Emperor has commissioned a huge clone army, and then, in the next film, the Jedi are happily working alongside 8,000,000 Temura Morrisons as if there is nothing offensive or deeply wrong about all this!

I would suggest another might be fighting from behind a mask, and I suggest this because it opens up some interesting avenues for the conversion of Anakin to Darth Vader. Masks have deep significance in all cultures. Our ability to trust one another and gage each other's intentions depends on our ability to read faces. Whenever people consicously seek to do something wrong (at least in traditional, folkloric stories), they tend to disguise themselves. Disguises are also popular tropes in adventure stories, Star Wars included. It would make perfect sense if wearing a mask was a taboo for the Jedi, because when you have a mask on, you are tempted (or freed) to do things you wouldn't do in your own person.

So, think about this for a moment. We have all tended to assume that Vader gets his mask after a cataclysmic injury. It is a kind of necessity, a life-preserving device. (I mean, I don't know why he couldn't be kept alive without encasing him in a helmet; notice no one asks him, though he does look suitably terrified as the mask goes on in Episode III). But what if it's the other way around? What if he starts wearing a mask in battle BEFORE he becomes Vader, or before he goes irredeemably bad, and it is wearing the mask that enables him to commit attrocities, precisely because a mask frees you, it hides your true identity, even allows you to lie to yourself about what you have done. I think there is a really cool way to incorporate this into a reimagined prequel trilogy. See below, under - further notes on Episode II.

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THE BEATIFICATION OF 'EMPIRE' AND THE TRASHING OF 'RETURN OF THE JEDI'

I understand why some people hate 'Return of the Jedi' and see it as the beginning of the rot that set in in George's brain and in the series. Maybe I was still too young (9) to detect its flaws, but I loved 'Return of the Jedi', and while I will acknowledge that Empire is hands down the best film of the series, 'Jedi' is more fun for me to watch. I love Jabba's palace and all its attendant pirate-movie references. I also like the look and feel of Endor, and the happy ending (minus the special addition's distracting and unnecessary celebration shots from Bespin - didn't everyone abandon Cloud City anyway?), Coruscant, and (inexplicably) Tatooine. For all it sins, 'Return of the Jedi' is so much closer in tone and fidelity to the other two films, and The Phantom Menace is so, so, so, so, so much worse, that it is hard to dislike ROTJ. I mean, TPM is so bad that Clones and Revenge of the Sith seemed kind of good in comparison, despite also being much, much, much more terrible than Return of the Jedi. There is just no comparison. I won't even begin to address how anyone could say they think ROTS, ANH, and TESB makes a coherent trilogy, and they just chop off the first two and ROTJ. It makes no sense at all, and you could never watch ROTS and ANH back to back and think they even took place in the same universe.

However, 'Empire' is far from flawless. So if it is going to be the gold standard against which all other real or potential Star Wars movies are judged, lets step back a moment and have a look at what we are dealing with.

-- in A New Hope we hear that TIE-fighters couldn't get this far into space on their own, i.e. because they don't have hyperdrive. And yet, in the next film, since Luke needs to go to Dagobah, all of a sudden his equally tiny X-Wing fighter has hyperdrive

-- Luke's training appears to take a week or two at bare minimum; it would be rather ridiculous if it were any less than that; and yet the Han/Leia action it is intercut with takes a maximum of 3 days; so great, Luke's epic Jedi training amounts to the equivalent of a weekend retreat in Buddhist meditation (then again, everyone involved in the project does hail from California)

-- I understand people's objections to Chewie's Tarzan yell in Return of the Jedi, but Empire is littered with Earthly references that make no sense in the world in which the story is supposedly taking place. Han says "See you in Hell" (a line he repeats 4 years later in Temple of Doom); Threepio says Luke is clever, "for a human being" (funny, I thought we were in a galaxy far, far away, not on some future colony of the planet Earth), and Leia asks if she should "get out and push" as my own mother might have during a bad winter storm with the old Dodge Dart (this last one works in context as a joke, whether it conjures up images of cars or not, but 'hell' and 'human being' are pretty terrestrial)

-- I understand that the Ewok battle seems lightweight and not really a fitting end to the Empire (but, I mean, it is not the single cause of the end; it is a minor battle that is simply meant to distract those guarding it from properly protecting its shield generator; the space battle and the deaths of Vader and the Emperor are rather more significant), but anyway, I am not sure why the Battle on Hoth is any less silly, except that it looks cool and no Care Bears are involved. I mean, the Empire attacks with big clumsy tanks, and no air support. On Endor, there are trees in the way, so fine, you can't really have an air war. But on Hoth, it's tanks vs. planes. Well, shit, imagine how long a WWII battle that was similarly stacked up would have lasted. (This connects with the topic of Technology in the Star War universe; see below)

-- plus, Vader comes in person to the Hoth base during the battle. Why? Well, it's cooler, or scarier, or something. But what he is going to do once he gets there is anyone's guess. Get into a fist fight with Han Solo? Find Luke in a corridor and handcuff him? Plus, Vader was a great starpilot, not a tank driver. There's no shot of him driving the AT-AT, which would have been laughable. So we are forced to imagine Vader sitting in the back of an AT-AT thinking, "Geez, I hope this thing arrives safely. We've got no air support, and it seems to be rather easy to just run a rope around their dumb-ass legs and topple them over."

-- lastly, in A New Hope we hear that "travelling through hyperspace is not like dusting crops, boy. You could bounce to close to a super-nova or fly right through an asteroid field and that would end your trip real quick". Fair enough. However, the Empire is out dumping pieces of metal trash 10 times the size of the Millenium Falcon in open space; and you know, say what you will about super-novas, they tend to stay in the same place, whereas this junk is just floating around, for the next Star Destroyer or troop-transport to smack right into; but it serves the plot and makes a kind of clever gag, so it's in there, even though it makes no sense whatsoever

-- this is a minor gripe, but I didn't necessarily like seeing Han use a lightsaber on Hoth; my feeling from the first film was that the lightsaber is not just an ordinary piece of technology that anyone can pick up and use; you have to have some control of or predisposition to Force abilities to use it; indeed, maybe in my 6 year old brain I thought the energy of the lightsaber is not some sort of well-behaved laser beam that only extends for a few feet but actually force energy that is channeled through the user in some way. (I believe in the technical manuals, or whatever -- I don't read that stuff, but I have perused it occasionally -- there is some kind of force crystal inside each lightsaber, that focuses the beam or whatever.)

In any case...

None of these flaws mattered, because the tone, the themes and the character stuff were so engaging that we didn't notice the flaws, or laughed them off with a chuckle, without losing our affection for the rest of the film. The film has real gravity when it needs it and good humour when it needs that; they are not all promiscuously mixed together as they are in the prequels we got. And, of course, we actually cared about these characters, both because of the plot, the writing (including actors' ad-libs on set) and the performances. In the prequels, we are interested in the characters only because we know they will later have an impact on the lives of characters we already care about. But we don't really care about these characters, because the convoluted plot, horrible writing, and atrocious acting didn't lead us to care about them.

Notice there were no star-making performances in the new films, as Harrison Ford's turn as Han Solo made him a star. The leads were already stars, and their careers seem to be fading post-Star Wars, except for Portman, who is young and gorgeous, whatever else her talents may or may not be. What was the last decent movie Ewan McGregor made? Liam Neeson gives arguably the best performance in the prequel trilogy. Sadly, it was in the worst film of the three, and it is an unnecessary character - Ben was trained by Yoda, not by some dashing Irish Jedi. He shows up in things like Batman Begins, but otherwise Neeson's been sort of typecast in boring thrillers, and there are only so many holocaust movies left to be made. Even Hayden has given better performances in other films where he was cast appropriately.

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TECHNOLOGY IN THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE

It is a contradiction inherent in the Star Wars universe that while they have space ships and lasers and energy shields, etc., there are no nukes, no chemical weapons, no weapons of mass destruction until the Death Star, and none are used in the gap between the building of the two Death Stars. Despite their apparently vast technological superiority, the Empire still invades Hoth in rather clumsy walkers, and Endor too. We just have to accept this fact about the Star Wars universe. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But, you know, no one wants to see a nuclear holocaust or napalm victims in a Star Wars movie. A few fried Ewoks is all the horror we are really prepared to accept. It is a kids film, after all, if a kind of serious one.

In any case, these facts have to be accounted for -- or at least accepted as constraints -- in the prequel series, which they were not. Lucas pumped up the technology (even R2-D2 has myriad powers that he mysteriously loses by the time A New Hope rolls around) offering the lame explanation that "this was before the Empire destroyed everything." Right, because that's usually what Empires do - consciously throw themselves into a technological dark age.

No, obviously a good, faithful prequel trilogy would have to show a world at the same or a lower-level of technological development than the original trilogy, which was a kind of charming rust-bucket, almost steam-punk world. This makes a lot more sense, would mesh a lot more smoothly with the original trilogy, and would look a lot better on film - of course, you would have to actually shoot it on film, and build, um, sets and props, rather than doing all this art deco stuff on computers.

Another problem with the Star Wars universe is that the vision conjured up by lines like "for over a thousand generations the Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice in the old republic" is too vast to fit with the basically modest potential of the Jedi. It suggests the Republic -- which must be a confederacy of at least several planets -- has had interplanetary flight capabilities for thousands of years. And... the Death Star, which doesn't appear to require anything especially new, is just being built in the time before A New Hope? No nukes, no chemical weapons, no time travel, no transporters! What the hell has been going on for those 1000s of years? Is it like ancient Egypt -- they set things up the way they liked and just went with it, forever!

The fact is, guys running around with swords -- even laser swords -- could not defend a multi-planet system with unsavory gangsters, cybernetic robot generals, clones, and pirates lingering around the edges without employing a hell of a lot of technology (certainly space ships). But the whole charm of the Jedi is that they are kind of free; that the Force alone is all they really need to do their thing. And, since the Force is generated by life, the more technology that is involved in being a Jedi, the more removed they are getting from the source of the whole thing. Who wanted to see Obi-Wan piloting a space ship and wearing a gold headband? Not me.

Which is why, as I suggested in my previous posts, I have always thought of the Jedi as shunning technology as much as possible (Yoda lives with absolutely nothing mechanical or electronic on Dagobah; indeed, we never even see him use a lightsaber). Sure, Luke flies a space ship and uses a blaster, and his best friend is a little blue robot, but he is a lot like his father. He is a new breed of Jedi, one at ease with technology in a way that even the previous generation (Ben: "I can't remember ever owning a droid") was not. He has no objection to receiving a bionic arm, but then he hasn't had that sobering chat with Ben yet about how his father is "more machine now than man, twisted and evil."

In any case, for all of these reasons, I found it really boring to see the Jedi flying around in space ships, and commanding clone troops (which is downright offensive, especially since they are using them to suppress separatists with violence in a supposedly democratic society!). This is a far cry from the sort of earthy, independent, technology-shunning image of the Jedi that was conjured up in my head by all those tantalizing hints in the original trilogy. And it's boring, because it all ends up looking too much like other SF franchises. The Republic is really just the United Federation of Planets all over again. It looked dumb in Star Trek IV, and it looks dumb here. Far better in the original trilogy where most of the cast was human, and they occasionally met with strange creatures or unusual races (which is typical in adventure stories), but they were not jostling around shoulder to shoulder with aliens in every scene.

I mean, in The Phantom Menace, Tatooine -- which is supposed to be on the outer rim -- seems very domesticated and a lot less remote (people seem to be coming from all over the galaxy for the big pod-race grand prix) than it does in A New Hope, when the Empire is dropping in to go after a few droids. George doesn't seem to get that the more basically humanoid aliens you cram into one shot, the less exotic or interesting it all becomes. It looks a hell of a lot like the Indy 500, which -- however junky A New Hope was with its wolfmen and astronauts -- could not be said of the original series. A few Taun-Tauns and one Wampa, or a few Jawas and Sandpeople, were more than enough to evoke entire worlds in the original trilogy. In the Phantom Menace, Tatooine, teeming with colorful aliens, looks not unlike Las Vegas, and has about as much atmosphere.

And that is maybe the biggest problem with the whole project of prequels: a good film is like a good novel, it leaves a lot to the imagination. The more Lucas tries to fill in the blanks, the less interesting his universe becomes. The original trilogy sketched lightly. There really wasn't a hell of a lot to it. But it left a lot of room for us to fill in what we wanted to imagine. He could have done the same in the prequels by taking an approach similar to the one suggested by Smelly Terror and TK-421 in their great posts, and which I have made some further suggestions toward. Keep the mythical golden age of the Jedi in the past -- don't try to show it, and crowd out the imagination of all the viewers who loved the original films. Keep it simple, don't cram in as much stuff as you possibly can.

You know, he broke his own commandment with regard to special effects. He said, a long long time ago, that in most effects-heavy films, they create this elaborate world, and they spend a lot of time just showing it off. In his movies, he thought, they just sketched that world lightly. You catch glimpses of it, but the camera doesn't linger on unnecessary details. The focus is on the characters and the story, not the gorgeous sets and special effects work. The opposite is true of the prequels. Its all showing off -- look what we can do with computers! -- and the characters almost seem like a nuisance getting in the way of all the glittering CG.

Maybe that dinosaur walking through the frame in the Special Edition of A New Hope says it all. George is more interested in that dinosaur than the thing it is obscuring from view -- the flawed, but charming and original film he made, with a lot of help from other talented people. Apparently what he really wanted to make all along was some mongrel of Jurassic Park and Star Trek. Yawn.

[Gorecki]

EPISODE II Ideas: The Origins of Vader's Mask

Okay, so above I suggested that wearing a mask creates a temptation to do evil (this is a universal truth), and that maybe Anakin should start wearing a mask before his final conversion. (I mean, there will be no instant conversion in any case. Yoda says: "Once you start down the dark path, forever it will dominate your destiny. Consume you it will. As it did Obi-Wan's apprentice." Ben says, "Vader was seduced by the dark side. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed." Seduction, consumption -- these imply that it's a slow process, not a botched sword fight plus plastic surgery job.

So, why would he start wearing a mask? And would it be explicit that this is a Jedi taboo. Here's a credible scenario (and an exciting sequence for a film):

At the beginning of Episode II, the clone wars (though I would prefer not to use that term on-screen) have been going on for 10 years. Anakin has been fighting alongside General Palpatine. Ben has been fighting alongside Prince or King Bail Organa (has to be royalty if his daughter, adopted though she may be, is going to be Princess Leia), but they are on the same side. The Alderaanians, perhaps having a substantial fleet of diplomatic vessels, was initially persuaded of the merit of the wars to keep the Republic safe and contributed them to military service. (This means that Ben is seeing and experiencing a different war than Anakin, and doesn't necessarily see Anakin committing attrocities on behalf of the Empire, as he will have to at some point.)

However, doubt is now arising. There is a mutiny aboard a troop carrier. The Empire attempts to regain the ship, and maybe they succeed in destroying it, but some survivors get to Alderaan and appeal to Prince Organa. They tell of attrocities committed in the war, they explain that far from liberated they are now slaves of Palpatine's war machine, instead of the droid war machine that was smashed in the previous film. The clone incubating facilities were never shut down, and even the droids' mind control technology is being reconstructed to maintain discipline among the ranks. Ben, Nara (future mother of Luke and Leia, in service to Organa's wife, future adoptive mother of Leia) and Organa are all very disturbed to hear this. Perhaps they even confront Anakin about it directly. Organa and Ben have also been loyally serving the Emperor, but at a greater distance from him than Anakin, so simply raising doubts is not going to be seen as disloyalty right off the bat. And they are friends -- surely between friends they can raise these questions. But it becomes clear that Anakin has a different view of the war than Ben and the others. They begin to wonder if Anakin is thinking straight, etc. (He also learns around this time that Nara is pregnant.)

Anyway, perhaps there is another mutinous ship (or there is a rendez-vous between the mutineers and other sympathetic forces, like say the Mon Comlari), and this time the Emperor wants it dealt with with extreme prejudice to set an example and prevent a larger-scale mutiny. Anakin gets the top-secret, ninja-like assignment. Maybe there needs to be an elite-core of troops that defend the Emperor directly, and also enforce discipline on the other troops (i.e. military police), kind of like the SS in Nazi Germany. They would have to have distinct uniforms so that, in a scene like this, if they invade a ship and clash with regular (mutineering) troops, we know who is who (God knows there are a zillion variations on the basic storm trooper outfit in the prequels as we got them. Any of these variants might do!). Anyway, while they are distracted by this assault, Anakin, in the black suit, is working his way through the ship by stealth, perhaps planting charges, or aiming to penetrate the bridge and murder the flight crew. (Anakin sincerely believes these troops are traitors and that it is just to destroy them and set an example. He's a fanatic, but like all fanatics, he thinks he is serving the cause of the good.) For this task, he wears a tight-fitting black space suit, with a face mask and goggles similar to, but not the same as the Vader outfit he will later be permanently encased in, sans helmet and cape. He manages to board the vessel without being detected and begins his covert assault from within. (This would be cool for lots of reasons, but one is that a lot of us when we first saw Vader assumed his outfit was a kind of space-suit; even if he has breathing problems, surely he doesn't need to be fully enclosed in a suit to preserve his life. So this suggests that the origin of the suit is not strictly practical, though it may have begun as a space suit. See below for more on this.)

While he is tearing apart the ship, maybe murdering several troops in cold blood, he runs into Ben. He's taken by surprise, not just because he feels caught out in the midst of an unfolding attrocity, but also because to him it means Ben is also a traitor, as he is assisting the mutineers. But he is not yet ready to kill his master, so he aborts the mission, just barely managing to flee from Ben's attack -- maybe this is where he gets his first injury that requires a bionic replacement, such as a severed hand. (The mysterious black figure could even escape by blasting himself out of an airlock -- we never see this sort of thing in Star Wars, so it would be novel and cool -- and then rendez-vous with his ship.)

(It may need to be alluded to in scenes prior to this that Anakin's mind is becoming opaque to Ben; he can't read him properly, as he once could, as evidence that Anakin's dark powers are advancing, and to give credibility to how Ben could encounter him and, though he is disguised, not understand that it is Anakin.) Or, in defending himself, Anakin could be forced to use some dark force (drawing a red lightsaber would be cool, but might smack too much of premeditation on Anakin's part; better if the red lightsaber appears for the first time after he has handed his sword over to Ben for Luke, when they are still basically friends, or at least respectful of each other as warriors attempting to act on what each of them judges to be in the best interests of the Republic), and this would lead Ben to think it is a Sith, or Dark Jedi, but not necessarily Anakin. (It would have the feel of that awesome Ralph McQuarrie painting we have all scene of Vader fighting someone that looks like Luke (but in a kind of space helmet) in what looks to be the corridor of a ship. This scene would also be a nice prelude to the storming of the vessel at the beginning of A New Hope. Vader is the pitbull - he goes in with the troops, doesn't just hang back like the Emperor.)

It would be interesting if the audience also didn't know for sure if it was Anakin, until after when he removes his mask. This would be hard to pull off, unless it is the very opening action sequence of the film, which would be very exciting, suspenseful and mysterious, but might be a bit of a stretch coming immediately on the heels of the previous film, when he was a big hero and an untarnished good guy, save for his dabblings in the dark side. But it would help to basically avoid a repeat of him being confronted by Ben et al. about the attrocities the Emperor is accused of ordering, such as the destruction of this mutinous ship. (Anakin's rhetoric can easily be imagined:

Anakin: "We are at war. If the Emperor cannot count on the loyalty of his own troops, the Republic is lost."
Ben: "What sort of commander orders the murder of his own men?"
Anakin: "Traitors deserve to die."
Ben: "And what makes you so sure you know who is a traitor and who is a patriot? Sometimes a patriot, to save his country, must disobey his commander."
Anakin: "Anyone who disobeys the Emperor is a traitor."
Ben: "That sort of thinking will lead us to something even more terrible than this war. What is it you are seeking to preserve, Anakin, the Republic, or the Emperor?"

The thing about Anakin and Ben, too, is that neither of them lived at the height of the Jedi golden age. They are both young Jedi in the twilight of the Jedi era (past the twilight, really), so Anakin has no role-models other than Ben. It is quite easy for him, in his arrogance, to imagine he knows better what a Jedi ought to be than Ben does, just as Ben, in his arrogance, decides to train Anakin rather than taking him to Yoda, something that no true Jedi would have dreamed of in times gone by. But Ben has the benefit of that training, and of knowing other Jedi, so he is not as wayward as Anakin.

Anyway, when he gets back to the Emperor, the Emperor is of course furious that he aborted the mission before destroying all the troops, and that he hesitated to kill Ben. The Emperor reminds him of what he already half believes, that if Ben was there giving them aid, then he (and by extension Organa, et al.) are traitors to the Republic and should also be destroyed.

Perhaps there is one more meeting between Anakin and Ben, during which they broach this question of loyalty to the Republic directly. Both think the other one is misguided, in the wrong, and both are sincere. Ben says they now have irrefutable evidence that a Dark Jedi is assisting the emperor, in which case anyone loyal to the Republic must now oppose the Emperor. Maybe he implies it might be Anakin himself ("I might almost have thought it was you, but no true Jedi would fight from behind a mask, like a coward" - this silently shames and enrages Anakin; this taboo around masks would also lend menace and mystery to Nara in Episode III, when she first turns up masked, and is initially masked in her encounter with Vader.) And of course Anakin has to lie, which becomes a permanent trap.

Again, the mask makes all this possible; a mask makes it possible for you to lie to others and to yourself about what you have done, which is kind of a crucial phase here in the middle before he is irredeemably lost to the dark side. In this final interaction, Anakin could be rubbing his wrist (i.e. the hand that was chopped off and replaced). This might be too obvious, but it would confuse Ben -- who has likely never seen such technology (again, it would traditionally have been taboo in the Republic to mix man and machine like this) -- that Anakin appears to have a normal limb, when the opponent he faced was dismembered. If handled correctly, this could be really cool, and not silly. But again, we have to believe Anakin has gained the ability to conceal his thoughts from Ben, otherwise lying etc. will be of no avail.

Once he begins lying to Ben, their relationship is basically over. Around this time, he should realize they are parting permanently and hand over his lightsaber for the son he is anticipating. The next time they encounter each other, it will be as Vader (which is only a kind of persona at this point, the person he is able to become behind this mask, which enables him to commit atrocities in the service of the Emperor).

He could make a fairly persuasive case that he can better evaluate the situation if he stays close to the Emperor, than if he joins some sort of internal rebellion, and Ben takes him as sincere in this regard. Maybe Anakin is half sincere, or somewhat confused, but in any case, this is for all intents the end of their relationship. He will be on the opposite side of the conflict from now on, isolating him from Nara and Ben, and preventing him from being present for the birth of his children (which is crucial to the plot).

<>

EPISODE III

Another idea, since Vader and the Emperor are now seeking to exterminate the Jedi naturally they are going to have various teams searching for the Jedi. Vader can't be present for every moment or every mission, or is called in after the sort of advance team (perhaps led by a few lower-ranking apprentices with some force sensitivity, maybe recruited from these kind of occult groups where teenagers have been dabbling with the force, and inevitably slipping over into dark side stuff) has a good idea of where a Jedi can be found, rather like the Empire combing the galaxy for the rebels in Empire Strikes Back. So in the midst of this, the Emperor secretly orders one of the teams to go to a spot that he suspects is the mythical location of the Sith. (Maybe it's even a kind of prison or dungeon, though there would have to be a good explanation of why the Sith can't break out. And it would be low tech, not like Magneto's prison-cell in X-Men). The film could open with them finding this place (a touch of Indiana Jones in the Star Wars movies can't hurt, can it?) but rapidly being destroyed there in a kind of mysterious cave. It would be a very short, kind of scary scene. The audience wouldn't be sure what happened, but the Emperor would be quite certain that they had found the right place. So it sets it up for later in the film when the Emperor, Vader and the remaining Jedi have a show down in this same location.

Sidenote on Special Edition changes: readers of my ideas for Episode III might be wondering, if Luke and Leia's mother also became a powerful Jedi, why doesn't she appear at the end of Episode VI alongside Ben, Anakin and Yoda. Well, good question -- because this is not Lucas's version. However, while I am opposed to virtually everything that was added or changed in the Special Editions, I think if a prequel trilogy that satisfied the vast run of fans had been made, adding a character at the end here would have enhanced the film and the sense of completion it was meant to give us, rather than taking away from it, as the appalling inclusion of Hayden Christensen in the 2004 version of ROTJ does. That is beyond stupid. And the explanation is so stupidly obvious (well, he ceased to be Anakin when he became Vader, so his spirit is preserved in its youthful, pre-corrupt state) it just shows that we have all become accustomed to the moronic logic of an increasingly illogical imagined universe. I say, back to the drawing boards for the whole thing we must go!

[KurganX]

Always fun to see stuff like this. Thanks for posting it!