WI: Star Wars Franchise Without the Prequels

I too was a Star Wars fan like most other young people in the 1990s. The original trilogy had it all: relatable characters, frightening villains, high fantasy, and exciting battles. I've never watched Star Trek or read any of the Star Wars books; my only connection to science-fiction is through the Star Wars movies. What made those movies so enjoyable was the fact that they were "good" movies. From a film-making standpoint they earned high marks. The characters were especially strong. They were archetypal in a good way. Lucas (and the rest of the team) took familiar tropes and placed them in a fantastical universe. Luke was the reluctant hero who discovered himself in the process of the story. Darth Vader was the hero-turned-villain who ended up sacrificing himself for his son. Han Solo was the rogue with a heart of gold. Etc, etc.

Comparing the characters of the original trilogy to the prequels is just saddening. The villains are one-dimensional; the heroes boring. There is no depth to a Mace Windu or even an Obi-Wan. They are exactly who they appear to be. There is no discovering, no showing. Lucas tells us who they are. We don't see Anakin and Obi-Wan's friendship develop on screen. We hear it exists. We hear that they had some incredible adventures. But we never see it. Plus, there is no chemistry between Ewan Macgregor and Hayden Christensen. This leads to another key point: there is no true (i.e. relatable) protagonist. Obi-Wan is too distant, Anakin is too annoying, and Padme lacks more than one dimension. Luke was clearly the protagonist, and he evolved in each movie. The prequels lack that.

The storytelling, action sequences, and general direction of the plot are all quite weak as well. But it all stems from the characters. At the end of Episode III, the audience should be screaming "NOOOO!!!!" when Anakin becomes Darth Vader. Instead, many thought "good riddance. That's what we came for, right?" This makes it clear to me that Lucas was chiefly focused on shoving as much CGI into each scene as possible to please younger fans. I'll admit that when I first saw the prequels I liked them. After all, I was young and the movies were "cool." People like me bought the toys, games, and various other merchandise that Lucas designed the films for.

So, enough complaining. Time to think proactively. How can the prequels be salvaged? Well, to start with there needs to be a real change in who's in charge. Lucas is going to be a part of the process; no changing that. But his role can be limited. Since this is an alternate history website, let's say that Steven Spielberg offers to direct the movies. Lucas agrees. He stays on to be executive producer and churns out the first draft of the script. Spielberg reads it, notices the clear problems, and proposes that a team of professional script-writers are brought on to make some changes. Lucas accepts. He will still have final say on whether or not the changes are adopted, but I can't see him rejecting improvements. I believe that Lucas wrote what he did because simply believed it was the best script he could write. Some people aren't great fiction writers. If a better script was left on his doorstep, while still including the crucial elements, I believe Lucas would have accepted it. I also believe that no one in the production team for the prequels had the nerve or willingness to present a better script, or to challenge Lucas on anything. Spielberg could have done that, and if he had directed the prequels they would have been much better.

P.S.: A lot of credit goes to Red Letter Media for helping zero-in on the core problems with the prequels. I'm not a film-maker or film-student. They are.

I think people forget what some of George Lucas's original ideas were like. Some of the good things in the original movies were there because Lucas lacked the budget and power to get away with doing what he wanted.

The best thing about the first movie was that young kids could relate to Luke Skywalker. They thought 'I could be him'. But Lucas originally conceived him as a predestined Jesus type figure (which he did with Annakin later).

On balance I think Lucas was lucky to get away with Star Wars. He could have ruined it on day one but luckily he was unable to do it due to people like Harrison Ford fighting his awful dialogue and the heavyweight acting skill of Alec Guiness.
 
The best thing about the first movie was that young kids could relate to Luke Skywalker. They thought 'I could be him'. But Lucas originally conceived him as a predestined Jesus type figure (which he did with Annakin later).

And a midget.
 
OMG.

That's why he had R2D2. He had promised the job to a midget and when Mark Hamill was cast as Luke Skywalker instead he said 'don't worry I can paint this trash can and put some wheels on it.'

It all makes sense now.


The R2D2 guy was going to be Luke, I think.

That, and he thought of having Luke be a girl.

And he originally conceived the enemy to be a massive army of wookies they were fighting against.
 
Right. That's why you need a better scrip-writer, producers who aren't afraid of Lucas, and an independent director. If Spielberg is there (or another strong director) than I see the prequels going very different. RLM pointed out that Lucas wasn't really a director. He sat in his chair and watched the actors do their thing in front of a blue-screen. That's really what a producer does, interjecting if something really major comes up. With a better script, better director, and better casting (a role the director can help with) you have better prequels.
 

Perkeo

Banned
Am I the only one saying that the prequels weren't THAT bad?

TPM disapointed me, but not as much as it did others. Annie was way to young, and Jar-Jar way to silly, but to be honest, the expectations were so high that no movie would have met them, and the ambivalent ending (total victory of good to outsiders, total victory of evil to insiders) was nice. After all no less than what ANH was: an introduction to the universe and it's characters with no real thoughtfulness.

ATOC and the Clone Wars series are the only part of the franchise that I REALLY hate. Anakin Skywalker, supposedly one of the greatest Jedis in history, the one that Padme falls in love with, turns out to be a spoiled brat. And the way it was directed made me wonder why they even bothered making the movie rather than stick with the computer games alone.

ROTS is the reason that I DON'T regret that Lucas made the prequels. General grievous was a relapse to what I said about ATOC, but the way Anakin became Darth Vader and the duels Obiwan-Anakin and Yoda-Palpatine are tomething I no longer want to miss. In THIS movie, Lucas once again told the stroy of a boy who becomes a man rather than of a greedy billionaire who mikes the franchise cow until it's dry.

My overall ranking is in descending order:

1) The Empire strikes Back
2) Revenge of the Sith
3) A new Hope
4) Return of the Jedi
5) The Phantom Menace
...
42) Attack of the Clones
..
3141) The Clone Wars

So to me it's "Pity what great chance George missed" but not "I wish he hadn't done the prequels at all".
 
Am I the only one saying that the prequels weren't THAT bad?

TPM disapointed me, but not as much as it did others. Annie was way to young, and Jar-Jar way to silly, but to be honest, the expectations were so high that no movie would have met them, and the ambivalent ending (total victory of good to outsiders, total victory of evil to insiders) was nice. After all no less than what ANH was: an introduction to the universe and it's characters with no real thoughtfulness.

ATOC and the Clone Wars series are the only part of the franchise that I REALLY hate. Anakin Skywalker, supposedly one of the greatest Jedis in history, the one that Padme falls in love with, turns out to be a spoiled brat. And the way it was directed made me wonder why they even bothered making the movie rather than stick with the computer games alone.

ROTS is the reason that I DON'T regret that Lucas made the prequels. General grievous was a relapse to what I said about ATOC, but the way Anakin became Darth Vader and the duels Obiwan-Anakin and Yoda-Palpatine are tomething I no longer want to miss. In THIS movie, Lucas once again told the stroy of a boy who becomes a man rather than of a greedy billionaire who mikes the franchise cow until it's dry.

My overall ranking is in descending order:

1) The Empire strikes Back
2) Revenge of the Sith
3) A new Hope
4) Return of the Jedi
5) The Phantom Menace
...
42) Attack of the Clones
..
3141) The Clone Wars

It's all about taste.

I think Phantom Menace is much more watchable than Attack of the Clones in which dialogue plunged to depths even lower than I thought George Lucas was capable of.

Of course any movie with a kid in it, especially one that can't act is a disaster waiting to happen.

I think in the prequels he was trying too hard to tick all the boxes and maximise profits as well as giving the fan boys what they want and make an epic.

We already saw where he was going when he put Teddy Bears into Return of the Jedi and made Princess Leia Luke's twin sister, forgetting that they had kissed in Star Wars and in Empire Strikes Back.
 
Am I the only one who's actually read the initial drafts of the original Star Wars?

I mean, seriously, they're not that hard to find on the internet. In fact, here, I'll give you a link to where you can find them.

You know what isn't in those drafts? Luke being a midget. Or Luke being a girl. George Lucas did briefly consider making Luke female after writing the second draft -- that draft had no female main characters, with Luke having to rescue his older brother Deak rather than rescue a princess, so Lucas was worried about the story being too much of a sausage-fest. And if Lucas ever really thought of making Luke a dwarf it was probably something he just threw out there once and then rejected as being too crazy -- it was never seriously considered. (And since Googling seems to be too much of a trial for you, I'd like to point out that at the time of filming Star Wars in 1976, Kenny Baker was FORTY-FUCKING-TWO YEARS OLD -- a bit old to be playing a character originally conceived as being aged 16, wouldn't you say?) By the way, the heroes in the first draft fought alongside the army of Wookiees, not against them.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh here, but there's no end to the rumours and gossip being thrown around about Lucas which are basically just new creative ways of slagging him off and I'm fed up with it. It's all very well to criticise him for stuff he actually did but all this bullshit is just the internet equivalent of "what some bloke down the pub told me"
 
It was in the "Empire of Dreams" documentary itself. Lucas considered a female Luke and a Dwarf Luke. He may not have put it to paper, but it was a serious thought.
 
Judging from the scripts, if he ever did think of making Luke a dwarf it would've been for the third draft of the script. The first draft had the Luke-equivalent character (Annikin Starkiller) as the son of a famous powerful Jedi-Bendu Knight called Kane Starkiller who was actually himself a main character in the film -- so it doesn't fit. The second draft had him (now named Luke Starkiller) as the third-youngest son of a very wise very old Jedi Bendu known only as The Starkiller, and his older brothers Cliegg and Deak also appear and are themselves powerful Jedi Bendu -- so again it doesn't fit. The third draft is the first one where it's Luke venturing out into the big bad world with no family with him, so that's the only one where it fits. (In fact, if I remember rightly, that was meant to be the rationale for making Luke a dwarf in the first place: to emphasise how small he was in the big dangerous universe. Lucas would later re-use the idea in Willow.)

Which means that "Luke was originally a midget!" is still wrong. Both ideas -- Luke as a girl, and Luke as a dwarf -- would've come between writing the second and third drafts, when Lucas was radically restructuring the story and would've been looking for anything that could work to make it better. That's about halfway through the writing process. And, notably, he dismissed both ideas before writing as not being good enough. They're only famous now because of what fantastic departures they would've been from the finished film if he'd decided to run with them.
 

Perkeo

Banned
It's all about taste.

I think Phantom Menace is much more watchable than Attack of the Clones in which dialogue plunged to depths even lower than I thought George Lucas was capable of.

Of course any movie with a kid in it, especially one that can't act is a disaster waiting to happen.

I put ALL the blame on the fine-tuning of the script:

Jake Lloyd wasn't a miscast because he couldn't act but because his lines that were written for a character almost twice his age.

The basic story of Attack of the Clones is not even all that bad:

Anakin has learned to use the force so well that he becomes overconfident.
BUT:
There is a difference between overconfidence due to actual virtues and the attitude of a spiled brat

Padme resents Anakin's naivety but respects his integrity, so they fall in love.
BUT:
There is a difference between naivety and idiocy, and I don't buy Padme falling in love with an idiot.

When trying to rescue his mother Anakin ends up killing in anger.
BUT:
There is a difference between manslaughter in affect and the massacre of women and children.

The saddest thing is: You don't need to change much to make it a worthy part of the epic. Just let the dialogues rewrite by a true writer and make the encounter with the sandpeople a still half-honorable thing (e.g. the killing of two guards he could as well have sneaked around or of ONE unarmed person in the heat of the moment)

I think in the prequels he was trying too hard to tick all the boxes and maximise profits as well as giving the fan boys what they want and make an epic.

Jackson showed with The Lord of the Rings that is IS possible to make a commercially successful movie without annoying the fan boys.

We already saw where he was going when he put Teddy Bears into Return of the Jedi and made Princess Leia Luke's twin sister, forgetting that they had kissed in Star Wars and in Empire Strikes Back.

IMO Return of the Jedi already showed that Lucas was running out of passion and/or ideas to make Star Wars more than just another pop corn movie.

The Ewoks were part of that, but the love triangle wasn't. None of the kisses between Luke and Lea were that serious, and comedy love stories - unlike drama ones like Anakin/Padme - are allowed to be kitschy.
 
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