Making the "Star Wars" Prequels Better
- Thread starter Amadeus
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Here's my conception of what the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy should've been. This is just a rough outline so far:
Episode I: The Old Republic. With the title referencing Ben's line from the original 1977 classic, this movie introduces a young Anakin and Obi-Wan and focuses on their friendship. TOR establishes the rich, dynamic world of the Old Republic before its downfall and the rise of the Empire. Certain characters from Phantom Menace are retained: Palpatine is a powerful Senator with questionable motives and Padme is introduced as the mother of Luke and Leia. But Padme and Anakin are roughly the same age and their romance first develops in TOR, not the sequel. Qui-Gon Jinn and Jar Jar Binks are absent (Yoda is Obi-Wan's teacher), and the basic storyline is completely different. The movie centers around a plot to overthrow the Republic from within. Obi-Wan is sent by Yoda to defeat the conspiracy, and he takes Anakin along for his journey in order to teach him the ways of the force. By the end of the film, which culminates in an epic battle for Coruscant, Obi-Wan becomes a Jedi and Anakin is his dedicated pupil. While the "good guys" have won, the so-called Separatists regroup to destroy the Republic from the outside. Little do the Jedi know that the Separatists are secretly guided by Palpatine, who draws up plans to engineer an army of clones powerful enough to threaten the Republic with destruction.
Episode II: The Clone Wars. In the Outer Rim the Separatists - aided by Palpatine - create a monstrous clone army that wreaks havoc on nearby systems. This sets off the "Clone Wars" referenced by Ben in the original film. The highly popular Galactic Chancellor Kirames Kaj plans to quash the marauders, but he suddenly dies and is replaced by the incompetent Finis Valorum. Despite pressure from the Jedi Council Valorum does nothing to fight the clones - and he forbids the Jedi from doing it themselves. We see that it's in fact Palpatine who arranged for the death of Kaj and for Valorum's election. With secret assistance from Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin fly to the Outer Rim in order to confront the clones. But they're defeated by the Sith Lord Darth Tyranus (Palpatine's apprentice) and held hostage. Anakin has his hand cut off in the process, mirroring Luke's fate in Empire.
Valorum again does nothing and threatens to arrest anyone who assists the Jedi. As the Republic is outraged at Valorum's inaction, Padme and a renegade group of Jedi set off on a daring mission to rescue Obi-Wan and her love, Anakin. The rescue attempt succeeds but in retaliation the the clone army - at the height of its strength - launches a full-scale assault on Coruscant. The Republican capital and the Jedi Temple are decimated in the battle. Before the Separatists can overtake Coruscant, Senator Palpatine personally leads an army of Republican forces into battle and helps defeat the Separatists. In fact is was his usage of the dark side of the force that allowed an inexperienced warrior to beat a vastly larger force that he had created in the first place. Following the battle Anakin taps into the dark side by force choking Tyranus then beheading him. Valorum is impeached for his incompetence and Palpatine is elected to replace him. In his first action as Chancellor, Palpatine adopts "emergency powers" to defeat the clone threat. This was Palpatine's plan all along: create a political crisis that would make him ruler of the Galaxy. As Padme learns she is pregnant, Obi-Wan and Anakin depart Coruscant to fight what's left of the clones.
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I kept the OTL title for a reason: overall, the plot structure remains the same but with some important changes. Instead of rescuing Palpatine, the film opens with the Jedi invading the Separatist home base. Anakin, the master pilot, commands the Republican forces in space while Obi-Wan leads the troops on the ground. Obi-Wan fights General Grievous, who'd been first introduced as a master dueler in Episode II, and kills him. The Clone Wars are effectively over and the Galaxy rejoices. Padme gives birth to Luke and Leia (here there is nothing prohibiting Jedis from getting married) and a second Jedi Temple is opened for new generations of Jedi to learn from. Everyone is happy except for Chancellor Palpatine, who is expected to give up his emergency powers now that the war is over. But Palpatine has no intention of doing so - and he conjures up a new scheme that can prolong his rule. His men assassinate Padme - by now next in line to be Chancellor - and the Jedi are framed. The Jedi not only resist the false narrative they killed Padme, but suspecting foul play they send Anakin to force Palpatine to step down. When Anakin asks if he killed Padme, Palpatine denies this but then tells him an extraordinary truth: he is a Sith Lord. He knows Anakin had long been studying the dark side and its ability to manipulate life. Playing on Anakin's hope that he can resurrect Padme, he convinces the young Jedi to stand down. The two make a deal: Anakin will betray the Jedi (who he is now convinced did kill Padme) and hand them over for the Republican troops to slaughter. In exchange Palpatine will teach Anakin how to resurrect Padme.
From there on the film unfolds mostly as it did in OTL: Order 66 is implemented and most of the Jedi are killed. Yoda and Obi-Wan survive and they duel Palpatine and Anakin respectively. Yoda just barely makes it out alive and Anakin is maimed beyond recognition. The two Jedi enter exile and the Skywalker children are split across the galaxy: Leia is sent to Alderaan while Luke lives with his aunt and uncle in Tatooine under Obi-Wan's watch.
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Certainly an improvement, but keeps the fundamental flaw of the prequels, that being that Anakin only turns to the dark side because he was lied to, in this case that the Jedi killed Padme. Anakin should turn to the dark side because it genuinely appeals to him; he should be seduced by the greater power it gives him, as Obi-wan said in the OT, not tricked into becoming Vader.
Skallagrim
Banned
As @HIM Dogson notes, Anakin must choose the Dark Side. My own suggestion has long been to paint Palpatine as Lincoln figure, in the public perception. The good guys must really believe that they're fighting the good fight, and Anakin in particular hates the secessionists. As the conflict goes on, he becomes more and more of a blood knight who believes that the ends justify the means. This increasingly alienates him from the Jedi, and he comes to see them as traitors to the cause.
Not a bad idea. The difficult part is showing that arc across three movies. Personally, I still think the best way to do it is make Anakin a hero in the first one, show his attraction to the dark side in part two, then in the final movie he becomes Darth Vader.
Ditch the Phantom Menace. While its frankly the best of the three films including it means that the actual STORY of the prequels, that of Anakin Skywalker's fall had to be so condensed that he's introduced (at least in the way it actually MATTERS) to the audience as a mass murdering fascistic psychopath. So he doesn't so much fall as take a very, very, VERY slight veer to the Dark Side. When you are going for a tragic fall of a character the entire meaning falls apart when they are worse BEFORE their fall than after.
Anakin should be fundamentally heroic as a rationale for his turn. The idea of him turning to the dark side to protect people is good but I would expand it to mean all the people of the galaxy; he wants to end this war (and I'm partial to opening the movie with the Clone Wars having gone on for 20 years with no end in sight; war is all Anakin has ever known). Movie one is him learning the truth that helping people is good. Movie two is him embracing the lie that the dark side is how you help people. Movie three is doubling down on choosing the dark side, and a belief that the Republic is corrupt.
I also think it's important to establish the Jedi ideology as bad. While Anakin wants to help people they believe in upholding their dogma over helping others. Obi-wan and Yoda hate what the Jedi have become but wrongly believe they can be reformed. The Jedi establishment drive Anakin into the arms of Palpatine- a commentary on how reformers can become radicalized into evil if the establishment fails to compromise with them.
I think that's going too far to make Anakin sympathetic, to the extent that it makes him the protagonist when in fact he needs to be the villain by part III. It also goes against the spirit of the original trilogy, where it's the Jedi way that redeems Vader and restores order to the galaxy.
Anakin is the protagonist. Being the villain and being the protagonist are not mutually exclusive. ROTS absolutely should be Vader as the villain protagonist and Kenobi as the hero antagonist. It's still Anakin's arc we're following, even as he chooses to give up all hope of redemption.
The true Jedi way is what redeems Vader, but I think it is necessary for the Jedi to have become corrupted by the time of the PT. They're too enamored with their political influence, too focused on the letter of their teachings and not the spirit. When Kenobi and Yoda tell Luke that Vader is beyond redemption and must be put down, that there is no coming back from the Dark Side, they are wrong. The prequels, to have a point thematically, should be deconstructionist. If the Jedi are all fine and dandy the prequels have not justified their existence; we already knew that Anakin would become Darth Vader, and if that's all there is, the films tell us nothing we don't know. Making the Jedi corrupt reframes the OT in a satisfying way, and makes this a story about how tyranny rises- it never rises when the old order is working.
For the record, I think this is what the prequels were going for, even if the failures of the Jedi could have been handled better. Yoda's advice to Anakin in ROTS is unhelpful and heartless, and did drive him into the arms of Palpatine. All I'm proposing is to expand the scale of what Anakin cares about.
Skallagrim
Banned
No, not really. Some EU works referred to their duel where Anakin fell into a "molten pit". Beyond that, Lucas initially told EU authors that the Clone Wars happened like 40 to 35 years before ANH (one encyclopedia cited them as having ended in 35 BBY). Anakin and Obi-Wan were implicitly assumed to be between one and two decades older than the way we saw them in the prequels.
This has the implication that the birth of Luke and Leia, and the ultimate fall of Anakin (and the Republic) happened some fifteen years after the Clone Wars. (This is supported by the fact that The Farlander Papers have Mon Mothma refer to "decades of peace" between the end of the Clone Wars and the rise of the Empire).
It would seem that Palpatine was made President (the term 'Chancellor' wasn't used before the prequels) of the republic during the Clone Wars, but only made himself Emperor and exterminated the Jedi much later.
As far as this concerns Anakin and Obi-Wan: they were apparently supposed to be good friends and companios throughout the Clone Wars, only falling out later on-- with Anakin choosing Palpatine's side against the Jedi.
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In the novelization of ROTJ, Luke and Obi Wan’s conversation on Dagobah is much more detailed. This is where Obi Wan tells Luke that he and Anakin fought and that he threw Anakin into a flaming pit. He also tells Luke, “You were sent to Tatooine to live with my brother Owen” which obviously got changed.
No there is nothing of the sort about anything in the Star Wars Universe. Everything was made up on the fly which is big part of the reason there is so much inconsistency. Lucas most definitely is not like people like Tolkien and Herbert who created extensive back ground details first.
A good example is that the original title of the novelization of ANH was, “Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope - From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker” implying that Luke and not Anakin/Vader was the main character for the entire series.
The duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan and Skywalker's immolation are pretty much essential. Getting there is what's difficult.
Maybe for Anakin's fall, you could do something similar to the sequence in ROTJ where Luke is tempted to become a Sith and he almost gives in. Only here, Anakin does give in and embraces the dark side. I agree that it's better for him to be tempted instead of being tricked.
Furthermore, that should be the climax of movie 2. Movie 3 should begin with Anakin as a Sith trainee, rationalizing away atrocities. He should be Vader by the end of the movie, and IMO there's no way to have pacing that makes sense if the movie starts with him straight up heroic.
Can the Republic and the Separatists both have clone armies?
Or maybe there are Republic stormtroopers instead, which increasingly come under the control of Palpatine and his supporters.
Or maybe there are Republic stormtroopers instead, which increasingly come under the control of Palpatine and his supporters.
Episode II could have an ending directly parallel to Empire, with Obi-Wan and Anakin having a fight that ends with Anakin maimed and burnt beyond recognition. Then either at the very end of Part II or the beginning of Part III Anakin becomes Darth Vader.