Could the Star Wars prequel movies have been saved?

[Surgo]

Hey, there was one likable character in Jango Fett. Mostly because he was just a guy doing his job, and nothing more than that.

But I bet if he had more than 10 minutes of screen time he would be as bad as everybody else.

edit: Also I don't think the Empire in the movies was ever shown as racist. I mean we only saw humans (and white people at that) when there were Empire scenes, but we never saw them oppressing aliens either and there were only a few Empire scenes anyway.

[Kaelik]

EDIT@Surgo. Yes, the Empire was racist. First of all, the all human empire is contrasted with the Sullustan/Wookie/Mon Cal/ect alliance on purpose. And secondly, I'm not just basing the ideas off the movies. Also based off of everything that was cannon by the point the prequels were starting to be made.

So for example, the novelizations, and the whole X wing series/Thrawn stuff, which specifically paints the empire as anti alien in sentiment.

That's just my random idea in 10 minutes.

That's a damn good start. Just one question: where does Anakin fit into all of this?

He would be a conflicted pilot, unable to countenance siding fully with team human, because he sees the plight of the aliens. Struggling desperately with his confusion over who is the bad guy.

Then he would be slowly seduced over time starting at about episodes 2, when he becomes a jedi, with using force to make peace between both sides in happy ways.

The key is that literally every time he goes to far, it has to work out perfectly, and then obviously lead to the next time. He has prevent an argument by force, and have both sides realize they are really friends, he has to completely quell a revolt, and get both sides to the table, he has to genuinely convince an entire planet not to secede, ect. He has to be so successful that even the other jedi are not sure if he's doing the wrong thing or not.

I'm not sure how the 3rd movie should play out, but at some point Palpantine should start manipulating him and then working behind the scenes to make sure it works out for him when he starts to overstep.

Now mind, I don't think it's required nor desired for a Star Wars prequel movie to be about him, but it is an expectation of the audience. Personally, if I had my druthers the Star Wars movie would be set waaaay back when. Like 100-150 years before the original trilogy. That way you'd have more freedom in storytelling and you'd be able to surprise more people with plot twists.

The basic problem about doing a prequel so close to the original series is that it sucks out a lot of the surprise unless you do a Greatest Story Never Told thing and focus on sidecharacters whose antics were ancillary to the main plot.

The Star Wars Prequels have to be set so close, because there are only two options for prequels based on existing backstory:

1) Right when the empire started to form.

2) 10000 years before that, when the sith fought the old republic.

Because it's an official part of the backstory "Nothing bad ever happened here at all" for a long time.

[Darth Rabbitt]

But seriously, Mandalorians. I like what I am hearing about them so far, enough that I might pick up a book. What's the board's overall opinion on using them as baddies instead of... whatever we got?

Depends on the time period. Back in the day, they were asskickers, but more or less fair to the people they beat. They even offered a chance to join up.

Just remember that a lot of stuff was made by Karen Traviss, who jumped at the chance to make the Mandalorians her MarySueTopia. She also flips out when her characters are used by other authors, but will take other author creations and basically not even bother to try to match the character as portrayed in other books. She also has a hate-on for Jedi. I remember seeing some article about it, then ran into the thing again on TVTropes.

Boba Fett was already made a Mary Sue, with personalities ranging from Rorschach to ultra-LN, depending on the author in the EU, well before Traviss.

He even fights Vader on even footing in a few comics, which is just stupid.

However, Traviss did do a lot of Mandalorian-wanking, more than anyone else, and it was pretty lame.

But I will admit that I side with her regarding the fan debate on Lucas changing the Mandalorians to be a bunch of pacifists (with the warriors being a minority splinter faction); that was really stupid.

[tussock]

TPM: Obi-Wan and Anakin (who is about 21) are sent to mind-control the trade fed boys into leaving Naboo alone. But, oh no, not only are they greeted with droids and violence, the trade fed are already being mind-controlled by a Sith! Maul orders the jedi's killed, the invasion to begin, and magic-chokes the fuck out of anyone who manages to disagree.
The Jedi tag along hidden in the inactive droid invasion force, and get to make the bigger fish joke on the way to the capital, staying ahead of the destructive droid army.

Wait, droid armies? Automated weapons platforms make more sense, because SW droids are uncoordinated as shit. But whatever.

So, capital, Sith want to replace Emperor Amidala with a mind-controlled wimp. Jedi realise this and ask him to leave, but he just sends them away with his young daughter, to get to the council and ask for a declaration of war. They run the blockade, and Maul sends a ship after them.

On Tatooine seeking parts, Jedi have a bounty on their heads, so they operate in disguise as raggedy desert-dwellers, and mind-control their way into trouble. Anakin steals a pod-racer for parts, trouble solved. Princess goes all dreamy-eyes at him. Sith drones are mostly destroyed by the locals, but one sees the Jedi leave with the Princess, and they do some space-battle to escape the planet and jump.

At the council, Amidala's daughter gets Naboo's ambassador Palpatine elected head of the council. War is then declared on the trade fed using emergency powers that the Jedi hierarchy convince everyone to push through (Yoda and some others object, though they can't explain why and are ignored). The blockade is shattered as the Naboo fight fiercely on the ground, and the trade fed promptly surrender. The Jedi chase down Maul, but he forces them to kill him. Jedi win again, bitches. Or do they?


There's no kids, no Jar-Jar, there are cocky and arrogant Jedi, and the Sith being evil and mysterious. Anakin is an argumentative, whining man-boy like Luke in IV, and kicks much ass. No Jedi are killed.

[Orion]

Tussock,

your version has definite promise. Let me nitpick it.

1: You have to kill a Jedi. I'm serious. These movies are about the decline and fall of the Jedi Order. The problem is not that they killed one Jedi in Phantom, it's that they didn't follow up by killing like 3 in Clones. (The fight scene doesn't count, they need names. Put a redshirt Jedi with Anakin and Obi-wan for each mission.)

2: I'm not sure what you mean by "mysterious", but actually we needed a lot more info about the Sith. What do they want, why are the Jedi afraid of them?

3: There is no reason to exclude Jar-Jar, having a comic relief alien is fine. Original Trilogy had C3PO. The thing is, he needs an arc where he is not morally reprehensible and where you can feel good occasionally about his small-scale accomplishments. Maybe also make him not a racist stereotype.

4: I agree--Anakin should be at least 12, perhaps as much as 16. He should also be the lead or a second lead. Put him in the heart of the action, make him one of the fucking naboo royalty or something. Follow him around for a while before he even meets Obi-Wan.

[tussock]

Orion, thanks. I'll counter a little for the sake of argument.

C3PO only worked as a foil for R2, who is the primary character in A New Hope, the droid who destroys the Death Star for the rebellion. R2's an interesting character; narrator, silent witness, but also the primary instigator of everything once he gets his mission in scene one. He lacks a voice though, to let the humans be the centre of attention, and 3PO is the lampshade they hang on that at every opportunity.

"We are not important to the plot, please keep watching the humans."

If you had another central character, you can have Jar-Jar be their comic foil. A movie from the perspective of the starry-eyed but strong-willed Padme and her clumsy and silent maidservent Jar-Jar might work, if you start the film with her running the blockade to get help and returning with the Jedi.

But there's no central character at all in TPM and the characters we follow most closely are the Jedi (who dies!) and his Padawan (who should be Anakin from the start).

You don't need to mention the Sith much in TPM, because it can be a movie about the Jedi and how they go about their business of casually manipulating everyone. The Sith can be a simple villain who gets his comeuppance. That there's more to it, and the Sith actually won the first movie by manipulating the Jedi can be the theme of the later movies.



AotC: The Emperor-for-life (the Jedi do not want) has a standing army now and he's keen on sending it to crush a rebellion lead by the Sith.

Not a movie about finding an army for the empire (though the Jedi can totally be doing that too), but about Jedi trying to mind-control their way out of this mess of armies and wars they mind-controlled themselves into, while fighting another Evil Sith, only this one in charge of a multi-system breakaway.

The movie can use basically all the same scenes (though it desperately needs a primary character again). What the audience sees, again, is the Sith leading an army that does on-screen Evil, assassinates Jedi and Imperial allies, tries to kill Amidala and other friends of the protagonists.

The Jedi are confirmed as being afraid of the Sith simply because the Sith are an old Jedi branch who use their power to do great Evil. They suspect there's more going on, but Palpatine's plan is beyond their ken. Jedi should be killed here by the Rebellion, and most everyone hates hates how things are turning out. Much conflict within the Jedi council over their path, which none of them can see clearly because of the Sith. Many Jedi (Yoda) agree with the rebellion's aims, if not it's methods.

Anakin hates the Rebellion because they're all spies and assassins (who targeted his personal interests), and he's just plain better than most Jedi and loses respect for the bickering council. He's instrumental in getting the old senate to side with the Emperor and vote him more powers to deal with the rebellion now!

So the Jedi side with the Emperor and go on assassination runs of their own to end the rebellion and get all the Sith they know of. The Jedi again shortcut the war by killing Sith and have an apparent victory, albeit for a cause they do not favour.



RotS: Yeh. Following the above changes, you have the big unveil where the Jedi realise they've been conned, see Palpatine as the Sith lord, see the rebellion was right, and they try to change sides.

Anakin and basically everyone else is sick of their meddling, goes against them with the Emperor, and we've set that up completely in AotC and TPM.

So it's full on lightsaber battles akimbo as the Jedi get wiped out on Corsucant, on escape ships, by some in the rebellion who don't believe them, and you can have a few saved by heroic measures to disappear onto their own little outer-rim worlds. Mace Windu can stay behind to fuck up Anakin/Vader rather than escaping, but it earns time to take his new-born children away in secret (Ben takes young Luke, someone else takes Leia, to try and keep one of them alive when running the gauntlet). Somehow make kidnapping the babies be the great vision the Jedi have for their eventual defeat of the Sith, and maybe have Yoda disagree again for fun ("uncertain, their future is").

Plot? "We fucked up, no matter the cost to ourselves we must sacrifice everything to give the rebellion a chance, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, OK, the rebellion is safe for now and we have planted the seeds of their eventual victory. Run and hide".

[tzor]

C3PO only worked as a foil for R2, who is the primary character in A New Hope, the droid who destroys the Death Star for the rebellion. R2's an interesting character; narrator, silent witness, but also the primary instigator of everything once he gets his mission in scene one. He lacks a voice though, to let the humans be the centre of attention, and 3PO is the lampshade they hang on that at every opportunity.

In one sense "Star Wars" died the moment Epsiode V had to be made. If you take the original primise from the release of Epsiode IV, R2D2 is the "Tri-trillogy" (dropped after attempting to write epsiode V ... V should have been V and VI followed eventually by VII, VIII, and IX and only at IX would Vader have reconciled with Luke). He was supposed to be the constant in all of the episodes.

So if you really want to remake the whole I, II, III part, you need to get back to the original hook. Anikin has to make R2D2 around half way in I, Jar Jar has to play the role of C3P0 and needs to somehow find a reason to associate with R2D2.

Oh and you have to up the intelligence of the Jedi by a mangitude. They come about as inoompitent, and non one likes to root for a moron (that includes Jar Jar who needs at least two redeeming features). The basic plot should be that the powerful Jedi had this "weakness" in their structure that the Sith could employ. But they are always seen as unable to do squat.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So here's a question for you:

Could filmmakers save Return of the Jedi? And if so, how? I mean, it's not in dire of a need of a retcon/disposal/rewrite as the prequel movies. But most people (and I am one of them) say that while it's watchable it's only just barely so. Like the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.

[sabs]

Yes. You shoot the ewoks in the head. You go back to making it on the Wookie homeworld. Storm Troopers getting stomped by teddy bears is lame.

[Username17]

Return of the Jedi was deeply flawed on many levels. The speeder bike scenes in the woods were boss, the acting is pretty decent, there's some good tension, the final showdown between Luke, Vader, and the Emperor is... not all that great actually, but it does the job. But despite having many passable and even legitimately great elements going on, the movie is not actually very good.

Major problems as I see it are:

• Ewoks. The Ewoks can't move their mouths and look really chincy. They are unimpressive compared to the contemporary works of Jim Henson. Added to that, they are conceptually teddy bears with stone tools who are cannibals or something. They are neither threatening nor sympathetic. Having them fight and beat Imperial Storm Troopers is embarrassing, and you don't even cheer when they win. Everything about Ewoks is bad.
• The Death Star II: Electric Boogaloo. Yes, it's a "Fully Operational Battlestation". That makes it different and more threatening than the partially completed one from Episode IV. But not very different. Not different enough for it to feel like a major threat until fairly late in the movie. While "It's a Trap!" was memorable, the period before the big reveal feels under utilized precisely because it isn't revealed to the audience that the heroes are dealing with something worse than they already soundly defeated until it is also revealed to those characters.
• The Showdown. The faceoff between Luke, Vader, and Palpatine should have been awesome, but it comes off as whiny and unfocused. The Emperor's pitch for turning to evil is "something something Dark Side". Luke's argument for turning away from the Dark Side is "I know you know that I know that you know that there's Good". It was dumb.

And of course, there are some minor problems:

• Boba Fett's Death. Apparently the bullshit ending that Boba Fett is given at the hands of a wardrobe malfunction caused by a groping blind dude was literally George Lucas having a temper tantrum that fans liked a character he had conceived of as minor. That shit isn't cool.
• The Imperial Honor Guard. You know those awesome looking dudes in red with the electrostaves? They didn't do anything in the movie, which was a major let down.
• The Luke/Han Relationship. Luke and Han were originally suitors for Leia. She chooses Han, which is just as well because it turns out that Luke and Leia are brother and sister. That's fine. But no one actually does anything with that information in this film.

Now I am not sure how much the film makers could have influenced that train wreck. Some of the big problems are also big plot arcs. What you'd want to do is to have the action split between the Wookie world and Coruscant, with no Death Star at all, and have the speeder bike chase and fights in the woods be about Wookies fighting to keep their world and have all the final showdown with the Emperor in the actual capital. But I'm not sure you can do a reboot that extensive.

At the very least, a better script would show the audience that the Rebels' plans were doomed from the beginning so that the audience wouldn't get so complacent about the whole thing. And write some better dialog so that Luke and Leia being siblings would have some impact on the story other than just shitting all over any possible tension between Luke and Han. Maybe have her do some force moves or maybe have Han and Luke get into a fight before the kinship thing comes out to settle things. And of course you'd write some actual fucking dialog so that the Emperor and Luke would make an actual philosophical argument for their positions.

-Username17

[K]

For the Dark Side to be a viable temptation, it needs to actually be powerful in an immediate way that Lightside is not. Like, Darth Vader deflected blaster fire with his hand. (Sure he's got a robot hand, but that should be just the entry-level Darkside badassery.)

High-end stuff should be tossing aside whole units of troops like Sauron or Force-lightning attacks on speeders or exploding earth. People should see a Darkside Jedi come on stage and think "ok, now we are going to see some people get fucked up."

Lightside can be slowing picking up space-ships and Tai Chi Force-swallowing and more calm and Zen-like acts of power, but Darkside needs to be close, dirty, and deadly.

Only after that are people going to be willing to listen to the Emperor talk about supply-side economics.

[Foxwarrior]

I kind of liked the part of the original movies where the force was a subtle tool for guidance, and the few blatant displays of force power were effective mainly because nobody knew what the force's limitations were.

What you describe is only aesthetically different from having a star destroyer or throwing thermal detonators, K. Squadrons of Sith in force bubbles flying around in space, crushing X-Wings would be amusing in a rather frivolous way.

[K]

What you describe is only aesthetically different from having a star destroyer or throwing thermal detonators, K. Squadrons of Sith in force bubbles flying around in space, crushing X-Wings would be amusing in a rather frivolous way.

Aesthetics matter. People feel that things are powerful because they look powerful. This is why Arnold Swarzenegger ended up as the Terminator and not John Conner as he was originally cast.

So the Force looks powerful because guys with laser swords are better at fighting than guys with blasters. Jedi block blaster fire and make it hit people and that looks awesome while giving a convenient reason why space samurai don't get killed in droves by guys with blasters.

So you don't need the Darkside to be better than a Star Destroyer, but it does have to look better than carrying around some grenades and owning a blaster AND it has to look more awesome than just bouncing laser blasts back into your enemies.

For example, tossing a grenade at a Lightside Jedi should involve them doing some dramatic leap to avoid it, but a Darksider should blow it up in mid-air with the Force and then throw the flames back onto the enemy.

[Shrapnel]

In a word: No.

[Foxwarrior]

Everything else in Star Wars that is even slightly powerful looks powerful: Rancors, spaceships larger than cities, Sarlaccs, armies. Don't you think there is at least one cool metaphor hidden somewhere in how the force wielders look the least powerful of any powerful thing, but are still the most important characters in the galaxy?

Also, there's the underdog effect. Because "you can only defeat what you are able to defeat"--Misty, in order for the good guys to both win in the end and be the underdogs, they need to have powers that don't look as powerful as they really are. I guess that doesn't actually encourage making the Sith non-excessive, hmm.

But in my extremely humble opinion, a mage battle where the two sides use very poorly-defined powers to counter each other has far less dramatic tension than one where most or all of the moves rely on established knowledge about in-setting mechanisms and mundane physical interactions.

[K]

Everything else in Star Wars that is even slightly powerful looks powerful: Rancors, spaceships larger than cities, Sarlaccs, armies. Don't you think there is at least one cool metaphor hidden somewhere in how the force wielders look the least powerful of any powerful thing, but are still the most important characters in the galaxy?

They run around with laser swords and can bounce laser fire back onto their enemies, cut through anything, and perform crazy feats of acrobatics that would result in the death of any normal person.

They already look damned impressive even before you factor in mind-reading and seeing the future. There is no metaphor of them being the least powerful.

[Avoraciopoctules]

For the Dark Side to be a viable temptation, it needs to actually be powerful in an immediate way that Lightside is not. Like, Darth Vader deflected blaster fire with his hand. (Sure he's got a robot hand, but that should be just the entry-level Darkside badassery.)

High-end stuff should be tossing aside whole units of troops like Sauron or Force-lightning attacks on speeders or exploding earth. People should see a Darkside Jedi come on stage and think "ok, now we are going to see some people get fucked up."

Lightside can be slowing picking up space-ships and Tai Chi Force-swallowing and more calm and Zen-like acts of power, but Darkside needs to be close, dirty, and deadly.

Only after that are people going to be willing to listen to the Emperor talk about supply-side economics.

I can definitely agree with this. As things stand, if I am a Good Space Wizard and somebody starts talking about the "power of the Dark Side", the Evil Space Wizards are mostly just cosmetically different. I'll probably just laugh in their faces.

With the specific example of the Emperor, I think it would be pretty cool to see that his sorcery is capable of inflicting horrific damage on stuff, but he'd rather win the ideological battle of words than fight. It would make for an interesting dichotomy if the good guys had to start the final fight.

[virgil]

Lots of people I know choose the Dark Side, because the expectation is that Light side force users have to act like D&D Paladins, and thus can't have any fun (or sex, unless you're one of those cone head aliens).

[Prak]

Lots of people I know choose the Dark Side, because the expectation is that Light side force users have to act like D&D Paladins, and thus can't have any fun (or sex, unless you're one of those cone head aliens).

Yeah, the way the two sides are established is that, except for specific individuals, the Light Side doesn't get to have strong emotions, like hate or anger, but also love or happiness, and the dark side gets to admit they're living beings that have emotions. There are exceptions, like Mace Windu, who is the sole Jedi to have a fighting style based on being angry and using it, but he's not supposed to do that.

It might be interesting if Jedi were all ascetic, until they reached a certain level, where they could choose a single indulgence, and some choose to not be celibate, so they can have families (or sleep around, whatever), some choose to relinquish the strict hold on their tempers because of how draining it is, etc. But they didn't do that, and people would still pick the dark side, even if it were a mirror opposite and you took on a single ban when you became a Sith Master.

[Hicks]

I'll never forget reading a star wars RPG dark-side sourcbook, and getting so angry that they said that love was evil. So angry I could just choke the shit out of the motherfucker who thought that up.

"Hey guys. I think that love is evil and leads to you shooting lightning and eating puppies. Let's write that down in an actual book that kids read!"

choke-choke-choke-choke

I rooted for Palpatine in the prequels.

[Hicks]

Speaking of love being capital E-vil, how do you perpetuate your mystic society if you indrotrinate them as children with "a jedi cannot love"?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

There were Quakers with laser swords.

[Username17]

Speaking of love being capital E-vil, how do you perpetuate your mystic society if you indrotrinate them as children with "a jedi cannot love"?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

There were Quakers with laser swords.

The Catholic Church is the longest continually active human organization. It's not a problem if your high muckety mucks or priests or whatever don't breed, so long as you have a substantial lay population to recruit from. Announcing that Jedi Knights don't breed isn't a problem as long as they aren't telling the millions upon millions of citizens who believe in the Jedi to not breed.

That being said: in the original trilogy there were three original Jedi and they had between them two or more children. Obi Wan never copped to having or not having any biological children, nor did Obi Wan or Yoda say even a single thing against love or companionship while they were training Luke. Yoda specifically says that Anger, Fear, and Aggression are the Dark Side. He doesn't say shit about Love.

All the "Jedi don't Love" crap is from the prequels. It's shit and doesn't make any fucking sense.

-Username17

[K]

Speaking of love being capital E-vil, how do you perpetuate your mystic society if you indrotrinate them as children with "a jedi cannot love"?

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

There were Quakers with laser swords.

Force-sensitivity doesn't seem to be hereditary except in certain rare circumstances (Anakin's bloodline and a few races, for example).

In the various sourcebooks, it's pretty much said that Anakin was just a clone made by the Emperor because he wanted to make Super Sith to move his soul into because the Dark Side was rotting him from the inside.

Basically, the canon is a fucking mess and desperately needs a reboot.

[K]

Yoda specifically says that Anger, Fear, and Aggression are the Dark Side. He doesn't say shit about Love.

All the "Jedi don't Love" crap is from the prequels. It's shit and doesn't make any fucking sense.

-Username17

Well, Jedi are Space Samurai, so Buddhist themes like "any emotion that forms attachment is bad" is not surprising.

But yeh, using themes from real Buddhism and not some kind of Space Buddhism is just a lot less interesting, but it's hard to complain when they undercut the entire mythology and mysticism with "metachloriants."

[Winnah]

Midichlorians make even less sense after Vader has a large percentage of his body replaced by inorganic tech.

Retcon them into a benign bacteriophage or something, that reproduces a lot faster when their host has a strong connection to the force, whatever that is. They are simply a indication of force sensitivity, not the cause.

edit: Also, Anakin's mum. Not a virgin. His daddy just could not handle the responsibility, so used a Jedi Mind trick and skipped town.