Chefelf.com Night Life: SmellyTerror - Viewing Profile

The world's stupidest pilots.

Obi-Wan warns the Naboo pilots that their fighters' blasters might not be able to damage the Droid control ships. Sure enough, when they get to the fight they discover they can't damage the ship.

So what do they do? Do they try to work out an alternate plan - like fly into the great big hole that Anakin eventually does? Do they retreat? do they even wonder what to do next? No. They fly around in circles, getting killed one by one, for no apparent reason.

Let's not dwell on the utter stupidity of a plan that relies on the destruction of the Droid control ship, even though they suspect they can't actually damage it... Really, let's not.

So, I’ve decided to write scripts of Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars. I realise this is horribly nerdy and ultimately futile, but I enjoy writing and I enjoy Star Wars, so this is a good use of some spare time. I guess there’s always the chance of some nerd-girl groupies, too, the hope of which may get me through the inevitable self-doubt. Has any (male) human achieved anything without the hope of sex at the end of it?

Oh ok, Newton. Good point.

Anyway, some of the initial, pretty incoherent discussion is over here in my WoW guild’s forum: http://www.pa-guilds. ..opic.php?t=1322

...with some parallel discussion happening with the real fanbois (they will not be sad to be called such) at: http://www.chefelf.c. ..?showtopic=5247

People have been kind enough to lie and say they liked what I wrote, so I'm moving forward.

So! I want to shoot some shit here. I’ve put out some of the main concepts in the original posts, but there are some ideas I’d like to get feedback on. Please be as harsh as you gotta be.

1. Padme as a Jedi?

First, I want her more awesome than the simpering weakling she ends up being in Episode 3. That goes without saying. Pregnancy is no excuse. My wife is pregnant and she’d kick Anakin’s whiny ass.

But Padme the Jedi? Think about it: Luke is not just the son of Anakin, but also Padme – a Jedi on both sides. Padme could be a fellow Jedi student, more advanced in a lot of ways than Anakin, but basically an equal. That’d give them plenty of time together and let her be pretty damn cool in her own right.

I’m not sure how it’d work with the whole dark-taint thing going on, though. Something to think about.

1b. A scene.

I mean, she can be awesome without being a Jedi too. There’s a scene I’m toying with where the badguys burst in, and Padme, surprised, does the whole, weak-woman “please don’t hurt me”. The badguys dismiss her, “where are the others?” When their attention turns, she whips out a pair of blasters and mows the bastards down. Grim smile. “Idiots”. Exit scene to kick some more ass.

A scene like this could help establish her as a funky strong female, it mocks the weakness of so many passive female characters in other movies, and has the virtue of correcting the sad lack of dual-pistol use in Star Wars, which is a bloody TRAVESTY!

2. Threepio being awesome

At some stage, Threepio is put into a situation where he has to kill someone to save the good guys. He’s horrified, since it goes against his programming. He’s so horrified, he eventually asks for a memory wipe. That’s why he’s so vague about his past in New Hope, and it’s why R2 is so loyal to this un-likable guy who is always so mean to him. There could even be a bit of a personality change, from a more forceful Threepio in the prequels, to the wussy professor in the original series.

Personality development in droids – it could be worth doing.

Not that we necessarily *need* for his memory to be wiped (as it is so clumsily done in ep3), since we can happily keep him off Tatooine, but it might be worthwhile to actually explore the character. I never really liked him, but the movies seem to expect me to.

…but then, there are goo arguments against this. I dunno – what do people think?

3. Owen

Anakin’s brother needs to be part of things.

(Step-brother my ass! Needing to go back and change stuff in the original movie to cover up for the fact you’ve made him a step-brother is just silly. And it can be so much cooler if he really *is* the brother).

Obi-Wan says stuff in New Hope that shows Anakin and Owen discussed getting involved in the Clone Wars, and that Owen wanted Anakin to stay on Tatooine. I also really liked his character in New Hope, so I want to see more of him. Then we have Own taking on the massive danger of looking after Darth Vader’s son! You can see he’s scared about what might happen, but he’s doing his best for his nephew. Brave guy.

So Owen can be the flip-side of Anakin. He can let us explore the virtue of simplicity, how his non-involvement is not cowardice, but real, practiced peace. He is more Jedi than many of the Jedi! I’d love to see a scene where Anakin takes Obi-Wan to meet his brother, and Obi-Wan can see the power that Owen has, too, but realises that Owen doesn’t want it. Owen instinctively senses the danger he and Anakin face, and when Obi-Wan offers to help him develop his power, Owen can explain that. He’s not a “simple farmer” out of ignorance or fear, but because he sees his kind of life as a real basis for contentment, and a way to hold his own demons at bay.

He want’s Anakin to stay, because he can feel bad things happening in his brother, even when Obi-wan can’t.

So Obi-Wan can go away really respecting Owen, even though they have irreconcilable differences of opinion.

Then, much later, when Obi-Wan comes to Owen with Luke, we can see the basis for Owen’s hostility – he wants Luke to live a simple life, and Obi-wan wants Luke to become a Jedi and save the world.

Can also hint that, as Owen has this vast untapped affinity with the Force, Vader will be reluctant to come nab Luke – not prevented from doing so, but feeling a reluctance to deal directly with Owen. Owen makes him uncomfortable. It’ll also cover Obi-Wan’s Force-presence from detection by the Empire – Vader doesn’t sense Obi-Wan when he comes to Tatooine, because he thinks he’s just sensing Owen.

So, would people want some Owen, or do you want him ignored as far as possible?

4. Jedi fu

Would you be ok with an unorthodox Jedi character who fights with a lightsaber in one hand, and a blaster in the other? I mean, other Jedi would be terribly disapproving of the clumsy blaster but our Jedi (maybe…. PADME?), could be a bit of a larrikin, a Han-Solo kind of Jedi.

I *really* don’t want them all to be carbon-copy stiffs.

Hmmm, now I think of it, if Padme was a bit of a nut, for a Jedi, that’d appeal to our irreverent, new-comer Anakin, and vice versa. Hmmm…

Thoughts?

5. Bail Organa

Obi-Wan “served” Organa in the Clone Wars, but at the same time we know that Alderaan, Organa’s home world, is peaceful and has no weapons. So what are they doing in the Clone Wars?

I think it’s still worth having Palpatine cause and/or manipulate the Clone Wars just to consolidate his position with a big fat army. Perhaps Organa gets a hint of this, and recruits some Jedi to help him negotiate peace…? Or are we sick of “negotiations”?

Any ideas? Actually, while we’re there:

6. The Clone Wars

I never could come up with a cool explanation for the Clone Wars.

There was the movie version…. Sorry, but just because one side happened to use clones as its army, I can’t really see that they’d be called “the clone wars”. Surely the wars would have to be *about* clones to be called that? I mean, looking at the conflict in the prequel movies, wouldn’t it be called “the wars of succession”, or something similar? Or hell, since one side is using droids, wouldn’t it make as much sense to call it “the droid wars”?

So, ideas for what the clone wars could be?

There is the general hostility of people in the original series to droids. That works pretty nicely if there was a big war with droids – but how does that relate to clones? Yeah, in the movies we have clones vs droids. So maybe that’s the way to go. But I’m very happy to hear something more compelling.

I’m especially keen for the stormtroopers *not* to be clones, though. I saw the original movies, I heard their voices already. You can’t convince me they’re all New Zealanders – although that does explain why they dress up like sheep…

….maybe. Ok, thinking with my fingertips here, but maybe, next to the Republic is this Droid society. In a contrast to Republic’s use of its own droids, the Droid empire keeps cloned people as servants. The clones rebel, and the Republic goes to help. Many of the Republic’s droids are subverted by the Droid enemy, though a lot (like R2 and Theepio) aren’t because they can’t fight, or maybe just because they’re cool. Hence the hostility to droids later on.

That’s the Clone War. We’re told, and most people in the Republic believe, that the Droid enemy are incapable of surrender, and the good guys are forced to commit genocide. It’ll turn out, though (hey, this is where we can bring in Organa!) that Palpatine hasn’t been letting them surrender –they’ve been trying, but he’s lying to the Senate. What’s more, he’s been recruiting a lot of these clones into his army, and they’re hugely loyal to him. ZOMG, it’s almost like he’s trying to take over!

Oh, and they’re not all clones of one guy! Yuk. They’re cloned in batches by the droids, depending on their function. Cloning one guy, pfff – what if you cloned someone who was a really bad shot? Oh, wait. They did.

Anyway, I rather like that idea.

Comments?

Hi!

I came across this site in a discussion about the prequels. Someone basically asked me what I thought would have been better than what we got, so I had to put my money where my mouth is.

I thought you guys might like to see the outline I posted.

It's not a script! Though feel free to flesh it out, or even request a real script from me if you like this stuff.

What I've tried to do is reconcile a prequel storyline with the original movies - something that didn't seem a high priority for the recent movies. I *think* it ends up with a more satisfying and meaningful story arc. It ties a lot of the plot together, and even explains some of the apparent inconsistencies in the originals.

Comments, if you can wade through the slab below, are welcome.
---

Mongoose’s version of the Star Wars prequel trilogy

…because I know you care.

Part 1: the original scripts

Let’s have a look at some of the original script stuff that should guide the prequels, a lot of which clearly didn’t get looked at when the movies we actually got were made. Here’s what people (mostly Obi-Wan) in the original movies say about the period of time that would become the prequel.

This is the stuff I expected to see expanded on in the prequels:

---
LUKE: No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a
spice freighter.

BEN: That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your
father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten
involved. “He didn't hold with your father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.”
---

So we see that, immediately before the Clone Wars, Anakin was living on Tatooine, or was at the very least *there*, and was close enough to Owen for them to argue over idealism. There was a possibility of Anakin “staying” on Tatooine.

---
BEN: He was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior.
---

Note: cunning, and exceptional as a pilot. Not an over-confident idiot.

---
BEN: I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have
this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He
feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic
crusade like your father did.
---

Ok, we have to accept he’s probably lying about Anakin wanting Luke to have the lightsaber (it’s not impossible that it’s true, though! See part 2 for my idea that Vader knew about Luke). We can see that Anakin followed Obi-Wan on “some damned-fool idealistic crusade”.

---
BEN: […] For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.
---

Not an absolute, but I always got the impression that the Jedi were kinda like awesome Ronin dudes who wandered the universe and had adventures. Not the police.

---
BEN: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he
turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi
Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all
but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.
---

Note that Obi later says that this was all true, “from a certain point of view”. That is, we have no reason to think he’s lying, except to obscure Vader’s true identity.

So he helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Knights – not wander over to the Temple and kill the kiddies. I mean, they’re not Knights, the Empire didn’t really exist at that point, and he hardly had to hunt.

He was seduced by the dark side of the Force, not by the Emperor. I know that sounds a bit vague, but I think he really *could* be seduced by the dark side. See part 2.

---
BEN: Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy
field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us.
It binds the galaxy together.
---

It’s not made of microbe-GODS!!!
>:[

---
LEIA: General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone
Wars.
---

Her “father” being, apparently, Bail Organa. Note: Obi-Wan “served” Organa.

This says that Bail Organa was a mover and a shaker in the Clone Wars. It also shows that the Jedi did not necessarily operate for themselves under the command of other Jedi – again, I think of them as funky Ronin dudes.

---
MOTTI: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader.
Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure
up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the
Rebel's hidden fort...
---

(This is the convo on the Death Star, where the arrogant Motti gets hisself chokified for dissing Vader).

Jedi were clearly not running around in the streets in Motti’s lifetime. They weren’t the freaking police. “Ancient religion”? Sounds more like Jedi were, even before Vader, semi-mythical. Again, this goes to the bad-ass, wandering hero idea.

BEN: You father was seduced by the dark side of
the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and
became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good
man who was your father was destroyed. So what I
have told you was true... from a certain point
of view.
---

The conversion does not sound like Anakin had some moral crisis. The good side of Anakin was – as far as Obi-Wan can tell – destroyed. He’s not conflicted, he’s EVIL.

---
BEN: When I first knew him, your father was already
a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the
Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train
him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him
just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.
---

“A great pilot”??? Does that mean he was good at, um, Pod Racing? Bull! And Obi-Wan took it on himself to train Anakin, not because Yoda refused, not because Qui-gon left Anakin to him in his will, but because of Obi-Wan’s own pride – that he thought he could train him as well as Yoda could have.

…and he stuffed something up.

---
LUKE: There's still good in him.

BEN: I also thought he could be turned back to the
good side. It couldn't be done. He is more machine
now than man. Twisted and evil.
---

So Obi-Wan would need to have attempted, or argued in favour of an attempt, to turn Darth back into Anakin. “It couldn’t be done.” An attempt was made, and it failed.

---
VADER: When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.
---

The last time Vader saw Obi-Wan before their duel on the Death Star was when they were still in a master-apprentice relationship. And Vader “left” Obi-Wan. He wasn’t left bleeding on the ground.
:/

---
VADER: You don't know the power of the dark side. I
must obey my master.
[…]
VADER: It is too late for me, son. The Emperor will
show you the true nature of the Force. He is your
master now.
---

See, it sounds like something in the dark side is forcing Vader to obey the Emperor. It doesn’t sound like he’s (still!) following the Emperor because of a vague promise years ago to teach him how to stop people dying. (PFF!) In fact, we see in Empire Strikes Back that Vader wants to betray the Emperor with Luke!



Part 2: how it could have happened

Please note that I’ve never read the books. I was a massive fan of the movies as a kid, but the books seemed kinda sacrilegious. So I mentally filled in the blanks, and when I heard about the prequels I had some hope that some of my imaginings would turn out right.

So I guess I was more disappointed than some…

Anyway, here are the main plot elements in 12-year-old Mongoose’s head;

How did Anakin turn: Ok this is kinda complicated. First, he already had some control over the force when Obi-Wan met him. He was young, maybe Luke’s age in New Hope, and an unbelievably good soldier, one of the best pilots in the galaxy. He, beyond Luke, had actually worked out some force stuff for himself. Basic telekinesis to push enemies, for example.

Anyway, Obi-Wan notices, laments that this guy has got to the limits of where he can go alone, and takes him on as a student.

The important thing is that Anakin had always used some dark-side powers. Obi-Wan warns him off it, tells him it can subvert his will and – most importantly – makes him vulnerable to the controlling powers of the Sith. Anakin argues, says it’s cowardice to avoid both sides of the force, just superstition that makes Jedi afraid, and that there’s no such thing as Sith. He really doesn’t believe the warnings. He’s been using the dark side without any problems.

So although Obi-Wan makes it a condition of teaching Anakin that Anakin will give up the dark side stuff, Anakin keeps practicing in secret. It some battles, we see him use his dark-side powers.

So he’s slowly getting corrupted by the dark side. He still thinks he’s powerful enough to control it, and it appears he’s right. Even Obi-Wan turns a bit of a blind eye to it, forgiving Anakin for his arguments in favour of the dark-side, because Anakin really is a good guy, and he’s hugely powerful, and Obi-wan maybe even starts to believe that the dark side can be controlled.

Anyway, Obi-Wan finally realises he’s made a mistake in being lax with Anakin, and gets jack of it. He tells Anakin that what he’s doing is too dangerous, and he has to stop or Obi-Wan will stop teaching him. Anakin leaves. (They won’t see each other again until the Death Star).

Things come to a head. There’s a hell-difficult fight - I always liked to think it was between Anakin and some other dark-side users, like-minds and maybe friends up to that point, other Jedi he encouraged to use the dark side - but they were too weak to control it, they get corrupted by some new master (the emperor), and they turn on him with a “join us or die”. He panics a bit, realises that he’s stuffed up and that the dangers are real, that he’s caused the downfall of some good people, but he’s fighting for his life against these guys. So he’s getting attacked with dark-force, and he’s using every trick he has to fight back. More dark force of his own, and he’s better than them, a lot better, and he beats them. But only barely – he’s horribly wounded. He’s also soaked in dark-force energy, and he knows he’ll have to mend his ways. He realises that the warnings are right – these guys were being coerced by an outside power through the dark side.

Brief dialogue, he turns over his lightsaber (see below), and explains that he came horribly close to losing his will to the dark side.

He’s off to be placed in medical containment, to recover. But AHA! The Emperor nabs him! The Emperor tries to convert him, now that he’s absolutely drenched in the dark-side. The Emperor knows that’s the way to do it, that’s why he sacrificed all those other sith-apprentices, knows that anger and hate are the way to get the dark-side to control him. But he’s still too strong! He’s pretty awesome, after all. So the Emperor, having him basically at his mercy, puts him in the torture chamber. He utterly ruins Anakin’s body, and when Anakin is barely conscious and at the depths of hate and desperation and agony, Anakin tries to fight back with Dark Force, and the emperor finally corrupts him…

(See? That’s what the emperor is doing with Luke in the last movie. He’s forcing Luke into a position where he either dies, or uses the dark-side out of rage and desperation, because that’s how the emperor takes over).

Anakin never makes the decision to go over to the emperor. He is, essentially, broken. It was his own arrogance and impatience with the slower, more peaceful light side that opens the door, but in the end he is compelled by the dark side.

So when the good guys show up to “rescue” Anakin, well it’s not Anakin any more, it’s Vader. And he is unstoppable.

The thing I most missed in the prequels was seeing Vader at his height, going after the entire Jedi Order and winning. That should have been the third movie right there. Vader being awesome.


The Emperor:

A senator? Pff! Let’s look at history for a better way to change a Republic into an Empire: be a General, and turn up at the capital some day with all the troops.

So Palpatine is a great General, fighting on the fringes of the Republic. At the start, Anakin is one of *his* - he’s already noticed Anakin’s power, and he’s been very carefully encouraging him, placing him in situations to encourage his anger and aggression. It actually makes sense for a soldier, and Anakin is a stupidly-cool soldier. Palpatine is a good friend of Anakin. He helps Anakin secretly train some of his new Jedi-apprentice friends in the new techniques – ie. the Dark side. These will eventually become the Sith-apprentices Anakin stops training them, and Palpatine secretly takes over.

Palpatine’s plan is to take a victorious army back in triumph, and take over. That’s how it was usually done, by the way, in human history.

His problem is the Jedi. They’ll stop him, and he knows it. He’s not a fighter, he leads from the rear. He needs one hell of a bodyguard, and that’s going to be Anakin/Vader.

So when Obi-Wan turns up a take him off for training and adventures, he’s not pleased.

By the way, he usually avoids Jedi, doesn’t like them around or in his army. When Obi-Wan is near Palpatine he senses a dark taint (it’s just silly that they never do in the movies), but he thinks it’s coming from the dark-force he’s just seen Anakin use. Otherwise Palpatine is careful to avoid close contact with Jedi. He’s too important to meet with these wandering ronin dudes. Scruffy buggers.

He only makes an exception when he realises that Anakin is helping some other more “progressive” Jedi in the Dark Side.



The kids (Luke and Leia):

I say: wouldn’t it be cool if he had some idea Luke existed? Bear with me here. He wants Luke to help him overthrow the Emperor, and he’s actually protecting him from the Emperor until he can get a chance to get Luke onside.

Vader is playing both ends. In Empire Strikes Back, whenever he’s in earshot of someone who could report to the Emperor he’s all “oh, we need to get him to the emperor”. But when he’s got Luke on his own he changes his tune – he wants to kill the emperor.

By Return of the Jedi, suddenly the emperor isn’t so trusting of his good buddy Vader. He keeps Vader on a very short leash. Maybe he got wind of Vader’s plans? Maybe he’s smacked Vader around a bit between movies, gotten a better control over him. Vader does seem unusually cowed a fair bit in the last movie when he talks about the emperor.

So what’d need to happen to set all of that up would be, first, Anakin knows that Padme is pregnant. Then, later, when it looks like he might die, after his fight with the baddies, but before the emperor gets him, he hands his lightsaber over to someone, to give to the child. See, Anakin has realised he’s stuffed up, and he’s talking about not being a Jedi any more, after/if he gets better.

Ok, so later, we’ve got Vader smacking things up and killing Jedi. The Emperor asks him about Padme and child, but Vader lies! He says the child and mother died.

See, Vader wants Luke to grow up so that, together, they’ll be enough to beat the emperor. Obi-wan discovers that Vader knows about Luke but isn’t coming after him, even though the emperor would obviously want him to. He sees this as a sign that Vader has some good in him and can be turned, and convinces some of the other Jedi to try to convert Vader back, while Obi-Wan takes the kid to Owen. This is the attempt to turn Vader back to the light side which Obi-Wan talks about in New Hope. It fails, and when, during the attempt, they say they know about Vader protecting Luke and Padme, Vader answers that he needs Luke to beat the Emperor and take over himself – not because he’s “good”. Then he kills everyone, so the only people who know the Luke plan is Vader and the audience.

…and of course you’ll see that he really *is* conflicted, and his insistence that he needs Luke to beat the emperor is partly justification.

So that’s why Obi-Wan keeps Luke with Owen – he *knows* that Vader knows about the kid, but that for some reason Vader isn’t acting on it. Vader doesn’t realise that Obi-Wan is still around, though, so Obi-Wan keeps his head down. If he tries to intervene and bugger off with the kid, Vader might realise Obi-Wan is still in the picture and be forced to nab Luke too early for everyone’s plans.

Owen doesn’t want Obi-Wan hanging around either, because he’s worried Vader will get wind of it and come after them. That’s also why he’s so overprotective of Luke. He’s hoping Vader is content to leave Luke along, and doesn’t want to push it.

Of course, then some idiot storm-troopers go and mess things up, and Obi-Wan, who was always intending to train Luke, has to take the chance and go. The rest is history.

Vader, of course, doesn’t realise it’s Luke until after the Battle of Yavin – note that he never actually sees Luke in New Hope, except maybe in the distance after he’s killed Obi-Wan, and is probably a bit distracted.

About Leia: Vader doesn’t know about her. In fact in the final movie, he says that Obi-Wan was wise to hide her – not wide to hide *them*, just her. This fits in nicely with the possibility he knew about Luke all along.

Leia would only need to be hinted at in the 3rd movie, too – Owen could take “the boy”, hinting *but not stating* that there was a girl, too. Well ok, maybe admit there is another one, but do not say her name!

If you know that Luke and Leia are twins by the time Empire Strikes Back rolls around, then their kiss is totally incest! Gotta save that bombshell for the last movie.

She goes into hidingexile with her mum, and is adopted by Organa when Padme dies.

Padme:
I’m thinking that it’d be cool if Padme was in on the attempt to turn Vader, though I think an accidental death might be the way to go there – don’t want to push Vader’s evil-ness too far, and it’d be good if the good Jedi stuffed something up, leaving it to poor, brave Padme to give the ultimate sacrifice. They make the attempt some time after Obi-Wan has left with Luke, after Vader has been chomping through the remaining Jedi and they decide that turning him, as Obi-wan and Padme have been suggesting, is their only chance to beat him. They get the best of what’s left, along with Padme, and go after Vader – and they all die. It’s this period of preparation that Leia spent with her mother, and remembers in the final movie.

Yoda: no Yoda! Yoda should be this awesome wise guy that people talk about, but no-one sees. It’s important that you don’t know it’s him when you first see him in Empire Strikes Back!

Again, Jedi should be a loose group, funky wandering hero Ronin guys, not a damn police force. Not seeing Yoda, only hearing that he’s somewhere else, should be fine in that kind of setting.

I guess I could be convinced otherwise on Yoda, but… it’d have to be a loud argument.

Vader’s Fighting Style:

Jedi flips and stuff are cool. Vader doesn’t do that shit, though. Why?

He’s the Jedi equivalent of a tank. He’s just this unstoppable force, menacing. Have Jedi jump-flip at him – he’ll use the force to pluck them out of the air, smack ‘em on the ground, and stick ‘em with a lightsaber. They get distracted, even for a moment? Choke you, biatch. They quickly learn that you don’t leap near Vader, you go careful and keep your Force-defences going – lightsabers only. That’s how Obi-Wan fights Vader in New Hope, too. Careful, concentrating. It adds an element to that fight – there’s a lot going on that you can’t see.

Vader doesn’t need showy lightening ala emperor – he just methodically stomps anything that comes at him. In Empire strikes Back, he just soaks up Han’s blaster fire – no wussy deflection, he just sucks it up! Better yet, HE TAKES A LIGHTSABER HIT FROM LUKE WITH BARELY AN “OUCH”! It just boings right off.

So, I like Mace Windu. He’s a good character. Imagine, Vader has nailed the other Jedi, it’s just Mace and him. Mace, being awesome, manages to hit Vader full on, just like Luke does in Empire: ouch, but Vader doesn’t stop. In that moment of OMGWTF, Vader nails him. That’d be a cool death – he should have beat Vader, but it was VADER, so he still lost.


Jedi: were awesome, semi-mythical Ronin dudes who turned up to right wrongs and slay baddies. Not a council in the capital, not the cops, but wandering heroes.

The Clone Wars: the one bit I had no idea about. Could be a lot of things. What we got was unnecessarily convoluted, IMO. Less on the cunning political plots, more with the characters and action, I say!

Organa: has to be cool, since Obi-Wan (and, almost certainly, Anakin) worked for him in the Clone Wars. Most important: his adopted daughter (Leia) has to be a Princess! So he’s got to be at least a Prince or something. And Alderaan “has no weapons” – so Organa and the Jedi were doing something cunning together in the wars.

Anakin’s character: think Han Solo at extremes. Completely unimpressed by authority, confident, smooth. Arrogant, though, and power-hungry. Not because he’s got some lame adolescent political theory, but because he knows he’s good and can be trusted – he has faith in himself.

Part 3, a brief timeline:

Ep1: Happy adventures, war on the rim. Obi-Wan meets Anakin, they become good friends, Anakin learns force stuff, learns about the Jedi (leaving specifics of the “Force” to the original 3, because no-one wants to hear it all twice). Helps Padme in some heroic adventure, gets a kissy. Ends with the start of the Clone Wars.

Ep2: The Clone Wars in progress/towards the end. Develop Anakin’s dalliance with Dark side, he marries Padme, who gets preggers. Big fight between Anakin and the dark side, but then the Emperor cheats and nabs him while weak. End with Anakin replaced by Vader, who then kills most of the dudes who came to rescue him.

Ep3: Vader triumphant. The rise of the Empire. Luke gets hidden and discussed. Padme dies, sad because her guy is a big evil bastard – but dies *trying to get him back* because she’s not some piss-weak woman who dies of a broken heart, is she? Ends with the last of the Jedi resistance dying while trying to bring Vader back.

Cue: A New Hope!
(See, on the surface the “hope” is still the Alliance’s chance to beat the Deathstar, but on a larger scale the “hope” is now actually LUKE, because he’s everyone’s hope, the Jedi’s, the Alliance’s, Vader’s, the Emperor’s, EVERYONE’S).