# Rewriting the Star Wars Prequels



## taiwwa (Feb 3, 2014)

This is sort of a pet passion of mine. The storyline of the original Star Wars, and the subsequent EU novels, shaped much of my creative imagination and got me interested in structuring story.

And, like most people, I was massively disappointed with the prequels. Unlike many, I actually am somewhat okay with The Phantom Menace, and I view it as the best of the prequels. But I really really despised the next two movies. Too much CGI, and the fundamental heart of the story is utterly illogical.

So, if the Star Wars prequels could be reimagined, what would you do? I can think of a few general objectives to pursue...

-- don't see Yoda at all so that when he shows up in ESB, it is a big surprise. He's away on business as a great warrior the entire time.

-- "Darth" is a title, much like "Duke". And Darth Vader hails from the Vader family, a noble house on the world of Corellia

-- The general situation would be the Core worlds and outlying worlds have a legitimate dispute over a resource, make it clones. Obi-Wan is a Jedi General in the war. He seeks the help of young Anakin Vader, who is reluctant to join in. 

-- Together, they win some stunning victories and turn the tide. Then, in a fateful encounter, they face off against the leader of the Separatists (who would be largely human, btw). Count Dooku (would change name) says that the Core Worlds have been corrupted. And under dark influence. And he is leading a Rebellion to right this (this is the same Rebellion Luke is later a part of).

-- At some point, Obi-Wan realizes that Dooku is right and leaves to join him. Anakin is rightfully angered and feels betrayed. He seeks out Obi-Wan and they fight. Obi-Wan barely makes it out by sheer luck, as he is clearly the inferior swordsman. 

-- Anakin Vader's son is raised as a simple country bumpkin farmer. 

Biggest change of course is making the Separatists legitimate instead of puppets.

Overall theme would be that holding something together unnaturally is a "dark side" thing to do. Letting things flow unpredictably is the Light side way of doing things. 

Rewriting them would be a massive undertaking and wouldn't ever be...validated, you know? But could be interesting. Prequels do allow for interesting story-telling techniques because they can intersect with subsequent events which the audience already knows.


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## CupofJoe (Feb 4, 2014)

Stories can be reset in any number of ways. People have been doing it with Greek myths, Shakespeare and the Bible [to name a very few] for hundreds of years. Sometimes well some times badly. 
While I will happily say that I am influenced by sources like Star Wars, I don't personally see the need to rewrite the films. but if it were to be done, I'd take it to the lowest most personal level I could... Shmi Skywalker [Anakin's mother] and try to tell the tales from her [a slave's] PoV. The nearest we get to a common PoV through the films are C3P0 and R2D2 [and I see them as being there for light relief].


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## kayd_mon (Feb 8, 2014)

Hmmmm.... 

Episode I was pretty bad. It was a C-grade movie at best - entertaining action, though none of it with any real stakes. 

Episode II was fine but for two things: the stiff direction (because Hayden Christensen can act, he was clearly directed poorly) and the awful dialog. Obi-Wan's "detective" bit in the middle was fun, and the action scenes were great. 

Episode III was on par with the old ones. I rank it as the third best of them all. Some issues, sure, but it is a good sci-fi movie. 

CG complaints aren't valid to me. That's how they make movies now. Just because the original trilogy used scale models, puppets, and paintings doesn't mean that the FX crew needed to be limited to that. 

Could the prequels have been done better? Oh, absolutely! There are multiple Expanded Universe books and comics that are far better than the prequels. But, looking at them as-is, they are watchable, and some parts (and one episode) are really good. All my opinion, of course. 

If I had it my way, I would have focused more on the characters, especially Obi-Wan. He would have been the main focus, and I would have made Anakin 100% less whiny and annoying. I also would have hired someone good at writing political intrigue to make those parts of the story actually good. I would keep the saber battles almost exactly the same.


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## Penpilot (Feb 11, 2014)

Here's a couple of youtube videos of a guy who goes through a scenario of what he'd change and why and describes how he thinks it should have been written. I found his ideas pretty entertaining. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgICnbC2-_Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAbug3AhYmw


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## taiwwa (Feb 13, 2014)

Yes, Belated Media is great. 

You know, Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic pretty much put in the elements that the prequels should have had...

so for instance, a great idea of theirs was to position the Mandalorians (Boba Fett's tribe) as these rampaging barbarians from the periphery...sort of like how the Huns threatened Europe for so long. 

So like it would be cool if Boba Fett was more akin to an Indian scout in the American West. If you know the history of the US vs Apache's, like Geronimo's band did the marauding, but there were some Indians who served the US military as advance scouts and lookouts. Fett could be something like that.

Could have been.

If the prequels had been written in anything resembling intelligence...


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## Z Six Mystic (Mar 23, 2014)

kayd_mon said:


> CG complaints aren't valid to me. That's how they make movies now. Just because the original trilogy used scale models, puppets, and paintings doesn't mean that the FX crew needed to be limited to that..



I'll take puppet Yoda over the CGI one every time.


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## kayd_mon (Mar 23, 2014)

Well we all are entitled to our own tastes and opinions, but somehow I think that they would have some difficulty having puppet Yoda fight with sabers. 

Don't get me wrong, puppet Yoda was one of the highlights of my childhood, but I don't expect them to use puppets in movies anymore, unless it's a Muppets film.


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## Z Six Mystic (Mar 23, 2014)

Agreed, but his light saber fight should have been slowed down a bit in my opinion. It would have made the movements and strikes seem more realistic, yet equally impressive. That's one of the problems with CGI - it's unlimited and easy to let get out of hand. CGI should enhance and detail, not automatically replace.

May the Force be with you.


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## Steerpike (Mar 23, 2014)

I did think Yoda's CGI lightsaber moves were a bit ridiculous. As for the rewrite, I don't like the idea of Vader coming from a noble house. Why make that change? Makes the character much less interesting to me.


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## taiwwa (Mar 25, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> I did think Yoda's CGI lightsaber moves were a bit ridiculous. As for the rewrite, I don't like the idea of Vader coming from a noble house. Why make that change? Makes the character much less interesting to me.



Well, it would be in line with a more realistic political system which I outlined...also would make the contrast of a nobleman's son being raised by "those people" more poignant.


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## Kennith E Perry (May 19, 2014)

Z Six Mystic said:


> I'll take puppet Yoda over the CGI one every time.



Not me, the puppet Yoda looks like a puppet the CGI version looked real. 

As for the prequels, 1 was terrible. A little boy (Jake Lloyd was a terrible actor) flew a fighter into space and destroys a trade federation vessel was just dumb. They should have had Annakin as just a minor character to introduce him and explain why Qui Gon wanted him but he shouldn't of been in any of the battle scenes. I think Annakin should have already been an adult in 1 because it was kind of gross that Padme was an adult when she met him and then she married him.  Jar Jar was a waste of time, I'm glad the barely showed him in the 2 and 3. I liked 2 and 3 so I really don't have any changes to them. I'm hoping that 7 will be a great sequel.


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## Reaver (May 20, 2014)

Kennith E Perry said:


> As for the prequels, 1 was terrible. A little boy (Jake Lloyd was a terrible actor) flew a fighter into space and destroys a trade federation vessel was just dumb.



And it just so happens that there's a kid-sized helmet in the Naboo fighter...WTF?  And although I really like 4, 5, and 6: Why is Lando wearing Han's clothes at the end of The Empire Strikes Back? Can anyone explain that?


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## Penpilot (May 20, 2014)

Reaver said:


> Why is Lando wearing Han's vest at the end of The Empire Strikes Back? Can anyone explain that?



Brian Griffin asked the same thing... hahah. But I think the answer is two fold. First, all Lando's cloths were on cloud city and well, he couldn't go back there, so since Han wasn't using them, why not. Or maybe those were Lando's cloths originally and Han won them from Lando way back when along with the Millennium Falcon fair and square.

Second, the real world reason was Harrison Ford wasn't signed on for Return of the Jedi, so the carbonite was to get him out of the way, and Lando wearing Han's cloths was to prepare the audience for the possibility of him replacing Han if they couldn't get Ford signed for Return of the Jedi.


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## kayd_mon (May 20, 2014)

This discussion reminds me of one of the things I loved about some of my favorite 80s movies - they all started the story in the middle of the action. No origin stories, because they just aren't needed. 

We don't follow Indiana Jones through boyhood and college, we see him right away chasing artifacts in a jungle temple and narrowly escaping with his life. That's all we need to follow the character. 

We don't see the Goonies meeting each other and forming their gang, we see them go on their final adventure, or what seems to be. No one needed the full backstory to appreciate the characters' relationships. 

In Star Wars, we get a few lines about some clone wars, a dissolved senate, and a jedi purge. All of that seems mythical, and it makes sense. Vader's story is revealed in a satisfying way by the end of RotJ. Jedi are special and rare, adding interest to the audience. All that is great without knowing that Vader is a whiny, silly kid (and I'm referring to Episode II here), the senate was as interesting as an afternoon watching CSPAN, and everyone in the galaxy had a front row seat to crazy force magic, if they didn't wield it themselves.

I miss the days when studios didn't feel the need to tell every character's origin story. IMO, for all the enjoyment I got out of the prequel trilogy (which really was quite a bit), in the end, they cheapened the Original Trilogy in so many ways.


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## Z Six Mystic (May 20, 2014)

Kennith E Perry said:


> Not me, the puppet Yoda looks like a puppet the CGI version looked real.



The first time the world met Yoda, it met a puppet.

The _real_ Yoda, a puppet he is.


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## Reaver (May 20, 2014)

kayd_mon said:


> in the end, they cheapened the Original Trilogy in so many ways.



Of all the Star Wars prequels, I liked Attack of the Clones best. However, The thing that ruined all of them for me was the midichlorian angle. Up until then, the Force was something mystical and cool.


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## Jabrosky (May 24, 2014)

Once I entertained the idea of writing a fan-fiction where Darth Vader _wasn't_ Luke's father. I'll quote the little plot summary I typed out for this hypothetical scenario:



> Jonah Vader was born into a prosperous family of Tatooinese human merchants, but he was always awestruck by the legendary intergalactic order of warriors known as the Jedi. Vader shared this fascination with fellow peer and farmboy Anakin Skywalker, with whom he would roleplay as Jedi when they were both small children. The two boys became best friends and maintained their dreams of becoming Jedi into adolescence, when they together enrolled into the Jedi Academy. Obi-Wan Kenobi was the Jedi trainer who took tutelage over both Vader and Skywalker.
> 
> Initially Vader and Skywalker cooperated very well together. Their early missions pitted them against the nascent Galactic Empire which sought to brutally conquer the entire galaxy, and they gained widespread renown as the most daring young Jedi. However, as Vader and Skywalker's campaign against the Empire progressed, it became clear to Vader that although he was more intelligent than Skywalker, he was significantly less Force-sensitive by nature. This cast him underneath Skywalker's shadow in the public eye, which he resented with fiery passion.
> 
> ...


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