AHC: Make the Star Wars Prequels Into A Single Spin-Off Film

While this is another "how to fix the Prequel's thread", this caught my attention because Greenville's idea above is exactly what I thought the "clone wars" were when I watched Star Wars. The Republic gets attacked by clones, and his ideas about the Empire being formed because the Jedi can't handle it, they need something more militarized, then the Empire secretly gets rid of the Jedi and stays in power permanently. That is much more straightforward and just makes more more sense than what we got.

To stay more on topic, the commentators are right that in a sense we got the single prequel movie, actually twice. "Revenge of the Sith"really does tell Lucas' account of the fall of Vader, the Republic, and the Jedi. From the point of view of the plot, your really don't need to watch the two earlier movies to understand what happened. My suspicion is that "Phantom Menace" originally was another Lucas project that had nothing to do with Star Wars, that got re-written to clumsily fit into the Star Wars universe (its actually OK as a non-Star Wars movie)

"Rogue One" turns out to work as prequel that is actually artistically satisfying. It doesn't tell why the Republic or Vader fell, but if you want to watch a "Star Wars" prequel, you are better advised to just watch "Rogue One" (to be fair to Lucas, it is based on his ideas). You can get a good trilogy by using Rogue One as the third movie chronologically and splitting ROTS into two movies, changing the cheesier/ more ridiculous elements in ROTS (the movie still needs a lot of work), and splicing in the better parts of "Phantom Menace" as appropriate.
 

Greenville

Banned
I have to give a timeline of how the Republic fell and the Empire rose. ABY stands for years before the Battle of Yavin.

30 ABY - A Republic military experimental craft in deep space goes malfunctions, destroys its creators, and becomes out of control by self-reproducing an army of clones and ships in the millions.

25 ABY - The first waves of the clone armada begin attacking and raiding worlds on the outer edges of the Republic. These are mostly supply gathering missions to build the growing fleet for the main assault. Entire star systems are left in ruins from these attacks. The Jedi are sent to repel what they can but are quickly becoming overwhelmed by this increased threat.

25 ABY - A full-scale invasion of the Republic begins. The Jedi are overwhelmed by the crisis and cannot hold back the attack. A new leader named Palpatine is voted in as president during the crisis and given emergency powers. The Republic Senate declares a state of martial law and conscripts the Galactic Star Fleet to combat the invasion. The Jedi are removed by the popular vote of the Senate and replaced by a formal military of generals. It's during this time general Obi-Wan Kenobi meets his apprentice Anakin Skywalker on a mission to defend Alderaan.

21 ABY - The Jedi go into dormancy or maintain peacekeeping missions like humanitarian aid. The president stages a coup and demands the power of an emperor to win the war. This is eventually granted and the Jedi are totally removed from any Republic related duties. So much of the galaxy has been damaged in the war that it'll take decades to recover. Anakin Skywalker is lost presumed missing around this time after a fiery crash during a mission.

20 ABY - Covertly, the Emperor uses a newly formed secret police and special forces with Darth Vader at the helm to wipe out and eliminate the Jedi one by one. This is able to occur fully undetected by the Imperial Senate. The only surviving Jedi from this purge are Yoda and former General Obi-Wan Kenobi.

20 ABY - The Imperial Starfleet crushes what remains of the clone armada and wins the war. The Emperor will be able to stay in power for decades with the power acquired during this time. The Jedi are simply explained away as having died out or dissolving after the war. Anakin Skywalker's twin offspring are born and sent into hiding to protect them from their father and the Emperor.
 

samcster94

Banned
While this is another "how to fix the Prequel's thread", this caught my attention because Greenville's idea above is exactly what I thought the "clone wars" were when I watched Star Wars. The Republic gets attacked by clones, and his ideas about the Empire being formed because the Jedi can't handle it, they need something more militarized, then the Empire secretly gets rid of the Jedi and stays in power permanently. That is much more straightforward and just makes more more sense than what we got.

To stay more on topic, the commentators are right that in a sense we got the single prequel movie, actually twice. "Revenge of the Sith"really does tell Lucas' account of the fall of Vader, the Republic, and the Jedi. From the point of view of the plot, your really don't need to watch the two earlier movies to understand what happened. My suspicion is that "Phantom Menace" originally was another Lucas project that had nothing to do with Star Wars, that got re-written to clumsily fit into the Star Wars universe (its actually OK as a non-Star Wars movie)

"Rogue One" turns out to work as prequel that is actually artistically satisfying. It doesn't tell why the Republic or Vader fell, but if you want to watch a "Star Wars" prequel, you are better advised to just watch "Rogue One" (to be fair to Lucas, it is based on his ideas). You can get a good trilogy by using Rogue One as the third movie chronologically and splitting ROTS into two movies, changing the cheesier/ more ridiculous elements in ROTS (the movie still needs a lot of work), and splicing in the better parts of "Phantom Menace" as appropriate.
Rogue One also uses Vader extremely well. ROTS clearly has some good ideas, and in better hands, would easily be widely seen as good movie(it mostly has a good outline). TPM, as a non SW movie, could have worked(minus the racist stuff and adding some character development) where Lucas was merely executive producer(with a RT score of 75ish and seen like 5th element or some of the weaker Trek films). AOTC was a mess and tried to be Empire without any of the things that made it excellent and fails to connect to 3 that well.
 
Rogue One also uses Vader extremely well. ROTS clearly has some good ideas, and in better hands, would easily be widely seen as good movie(it mostly has a good outline). TPM, as a non SW movie, could have worked(minus the racist stuff and adding some character development) where Lucas was merely executive producer(with a RT score of 75ish and seen like 5th element or some of the weaker Trek films). AOTC was a mess and tried to be Empire without any of the things that made it excellent and fails to connect to 3 that well.

Attack of the Clones has a ton of stuff which illustrates Anakin/Vader's early career and why he fell to the Dark Side, it's just none of it was executed well. Okay, the aesthetic and setting is great, Dooku is a great yet underutilised villain, but we can't say much more positive. Which is a shame, since it could be a very nice setup to the OT, a one-two punch with Revenge of the Sith. Which is why I was saying if you cut out the fluff and got rid of crap ("I hate sand", "YOUNGLINGS") you could do a good 2 hour or so movie combining AOTC and ROTS and get a nice product which perfectly does things.

The Phantom Menace as a proto-Star Wars Anthology wouldn't be terrible. But as I said, it's a prequel to the prequels. If it just focused on politics and droids they could find something to make out of it. Maybe as a backstory of Obi-Wan movie (I'm sure the actual Star Wars Anthology will churn that out too sometime).
 
This strays from the OP, but you could salvage a prequel trilogy by splicing Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith together, cutting out a lot of crap, and then piecing together a good movie that would have more of ROTS than AotC.

That is one movie, which is the OP. But for the third movie, Rogue one. What about the first movie? The Phantom Menace. But take out all scenes involving Anakin Skywalker, have a Naboo pilot destroy the command ship (you will need to insert a few new scenes). The audience first meets Anakin on Coruscant, when he is already in training as a Jedi, and already assigned as Padme's body-guard, and his origin is explained. The Phantom Menace just introduces the universe. Take out Jar Jar Binks as well. To fill out the Phantom Menace to a full movie, add stuff from the two later prequels.

You can turn the prequels into two movies by cutting out a movie's worth of stuff, cut out about a third of TPM, half of AotC, and a tenth of ROTS and you can get something decent, you can take out a little more and have two movies with a little shorter running times.
 

Greenville

Banned
For the prequel era, I could really see where doing The Force Awakens did for the Republic capital. Perhaps the surprise invasion of clones wipes out the majority of the Senate on the capital. The surviving leader, Palpatine ascends to power with an emergency power capability of a dictator. He suspends all elections and appoints replacements for these members in the emergency protocol as a way to establish who he needs to vote him into the office of Emperor.
 

samcster94

Banned
For the prequel era, I could really see where doing The Force Awakens did for the Republic capital. Perhaps the surprise invasion of clones wipes out the majority of the Senate on the capital. The surviving leader, Palpatine ascends to power with an emergency power capability of a dictator. He suspends all elections and appoints replacements for these members in the emergency protocol as a way to establish who he needs to vote him into the office of Emperor.
Yeah. A one-off film, a prequel trilogy with a simpler plot, even a Prequel show with 3-5 seasons in the early aughts, would all benefit from an idea like this as it is simpler.
 
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