If *you* had written the Star Wars prequels

Ask a competent writer to help with the romance plot, show a bit more of the Clone Wars than just Geonosis and a few glimpses in Episode III and generally focus a bit more on the action.

On a related note, I'd have made the opening sequence of III last longer [...].

According to bonus material on the EPIII disc, the scene was longer in an early cut. About an hour long. It was cut down because it "didn't contribute to the story" apparently, and would have taken up half the movie.

To be honest, I wouldn't make it that long - even ten minutes would have been fine.

Otherwise, I agree with all of your points.

I think I wouldn't have completely rewritten Anikins transformation into a Sith. An made him less of a whiny emo B*tch. And made the others characters less stupid, like having the ability to man up and accept Annie is decent jedi, explain things to him properly instead of just saying 'because I said so' and give him some respect. Unfortunately this would completely derail the plot.

My plan for the prequels which keeps the plot mostly intact. Like the prequels unless noted:

Episode 1:

Cut the first third of TPM on Naboo out entirely. Begin the film with the Jedi and the Queen fleeing Naboo, making it a mystery who they are. There are no such thing as Gungans. Anakin is a teenager, so the love story starts early. Amidala is a hereditary queen.

Switch Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon so Obi-Wan is the master, so Obi-Wan can get some actual screen time in TPM. Also, Qui-Gon is an alien because we need aliens and we cut out Jar-Jar.

They return to Naboo after Coruscant, but the Queen is captured, but then Padme reveals that the queen was a decoy and she's the real queen. Now that the Trade Federation thinks they've won, the good guys decide to capture the Neimoidian leaders and end the war.

The climax consists of the duel with Maul while Anakin, Padme, and R2-D2 sneak into the palace to take the Neimoidian leaders hostage, thus ending the invasion. Darth Maul still kills Qui-Gon so Obi-Wan can train Anakin. The droid control ship and the Gungan battle are cut entirely, because the droid control ship doesn't make sense and Gungans don't exist. Roll credits.

Episode 2:

Padme is still the Queen, not a senator, and therefore never goes to Coruscant. The whole assassination subplot is directed at Obi-Wan instead, setting him on the trail of the clones as Palpatine intended.

Meanwhile, Anakin tries to get the Jedi Council to authorize a raid on the Confederacy's droid factories on Geonosis, but they refuse because the Jedi aren't aggressors. Knowing that Naboo would want to destroy a droid army after the previous invasion, Anakin ignores the Council and goes to Naboo, and convinces his old friend Padme to lend him her army to attack Geonosis. She demands to go with him on the raid.

Their attack fails and they are captured by Dooku, as is Obi-Wan, who came to help. They are put in the arena and he final battle plays out exactly like the movie. Windu and the Jedi show up, and then Yoda and the clones save the day. Roll credits.

Episode 3:

Essentially identical to the movie except changing Anakin's motivation for the Dark Side and cutting out the Narm lines.

Instead of fearing Padme dying in childbirth, Anakin has a vision of the Confederacy attacking Naboo and killing her. Palpatine tells him the only way to save her is if he joins the Dark Side, so he accepts. Anakin and Palpatine join forces and use the Dark Side to destroy the CIS fleet by creating a supernova, Naga Sadow style.

The rest of the movie is the same. Roll credits.

Oh yes, and alter "Only Sith deal in absolutes" to something that wasn't accidentally hypocritical.

In my opinion the problem with the Prequels was that they felt like they had to be a "set up" for Episodes IV-VI, when really they should've had no such compunction.

Rather than be an "origin of the Empire" and "How Darth Vader came to be" story, I'd have those things already established, and the first three movies would be about the struggling rebellion trying to find allies, and the third would end with Leia getting the Death Star plans.

I never really put much thought into this topic so thats all I got for now.

Curious what sort of rants Red Letter Media will have for Ep III, by the way. While bombastic and really opinionated, there's a lot of truth in those reviews.

Agreed with much of what was posted above. Less lightsbers. Less reliance on CGI. The story itself is good to a point, I think a lot of the actual execution of that story to the screen left much to be desired. Reading the Ep II novel prior to the movie, I detested actually watching it. Salvatore did a nice job with the novel.

In short, have the guys who produced Ep V go back and re-do the prequels from scratch. More focus on the story, less on color-splashy visual fan-boy effects.

Thing is, if you have a strong story, you can have all the splashy fanboy pleasing visual effects you want and it won't detract. I, for one, didn't have a problem with the CGI; in my mind, that would be like objecting to the cantina on Tatooine being full of costumes and puppets. (Having grown up with CG helps with this, I think.)

Let's see... I only have a few suggestions a wall of text:

1) Shorten or cut out the senate scenes. This is one case where it would be okay to tell and not show. You know, a holographic Palpatine explaining with his best modest, dutiful face, "The senate is still ignoring our plight, your majesty. I'm afraid I might be forced to call for a vote of no confidence..."

2) Take the Gungans more seriously. You know what? A nation of 7-foot-tall amphibious people who live in a gleaming underwater metropolis and then march out of the deeps to battle an army of deathbots with spears and catapults should be awesome. Who decided that they needed fart jokes and slapstick?

2a) I'm okay with comic relief from droids, but not from battle droids, who should be about as socially adept as turnips. I dunno, I guess you could get a little humor out of that, but that would be like giving the Stormtroopers wacky antics, isn't it?

3) Don't have Palpitine fight with a lightsaber. Come on, he has lightning, telekinesis and mind control! We need some more variety in our Jedi vs Sith battles.

4) Did Anakin have to be the one who built C 3 P 0? I enjoy the idea of Artoo and Threepio being ordinary droids who were swept up in the events at the start of Episode IV a lot more, honestly.

5) Don't explain the Force. Or, if you reeeally want to, don't do it in a way that invites Power Levels.

Personally, I wouldn't have had Anakin strangle Padme. It takes a while for the Dark Side to consume you completely, and I think it would've been far more compelling if he had in fact ensured her safety, in a manner of speaking, after turning to the Dark Side, but had his plans to "keep her safe" (read: restrict her freedom completely) cut short by the Jedi. They "kidnap" her and hide her on one of the outer rim planets, where she gives birth to the twins. Palpatine, fearing that Padme may hold too much sway over the newly-named Darth Vader, sends out his own assassins to locate her and have her killed. He then blames her murder on the Jedi, which prompts Anakin to start the Great Purge.

He gets his injuries in a confrontation he has with Obi-Wan several years after the purge has started. This way, Vader's motivations aren't completely ridiculous, and they wouldn't rely too much on This Is Your Brain on Evil.

As wasteful, time-consuming, and idiotic as it would have been, I think Lucas should have kept the huge-ass Trilogy Creep that was planned for the prequels.

It would have made character development a Hell of a lot more plausible, added shitloads of backstory, and force the rest of us ADHD-addled impatient pricks to not read the books.

Make General Grevious' downfall better - he was badass in the Tartarovorsky [sic] Clone Wars.

Personally, I'd have made a conscious effort to show more of the Clone Wars and more of their impact on the galaxy. More Republic Commandos, more clone troopers in general, and even some Rahm Kota for good measure.

Also, I'd have made the combat scenes more realistic. Less flippy-spinny stuff in the lightsaber fights; more use of cover, suppressing fire and flanking in the war scenes, and the occasional sniper shot from out of nowhere that kills someone; a lot of in-helmet views from the clone troopers' perspective, complete with dust, grime and oil getting caked on; and more than a few shots from inside the cockpits of the various military vehicles, such as the AAT, TX-130, AT-TE, LAAT/i gunships, and the various starfighters.

I know, that might cut out a lot of the scenes with Anakin. Honestly, the less said about them, the better. The one scene of Anakin that I'd leave mostly intact would be the pod race. Aside from that, most would be completely different.

Also, no more of that "kissing equals sex" BS. We may imply it, we probably won't be allowed to actually show it, but we won't go with a half measure just so the movies can be seen by a broader audience. PG-13 is our target. R is acceptable.

However, if there's one thing involving Anakin that I'd like to see, it's Anakin's pod racer and C-3PO being built. I like the insides of technological things.

edited 23rd Jul '10 6:59:21 AM by rallyfan9000

@amarielah, I completely concur with that version- in the original films, Vader looks to be an elderly man under the mask, which has always made me think that his turn to the dark side was at an older age than the one presented in the prequels.

Not only that, but the badass Darth Vader's characterization is almost completely at odds with the whiny dude we have in the prequels. He should have been something of a control freak from day one, IMO. I also think it would've been amazing if both Anakin and Padme had been deadpan snarkers, with Obiwan starting off as the Unfunny.

Honestly, the most disappointing aspect of the prequels for me was always how completely underwhelming Anakin and his fall turned out to be. He was always my favorite character in the original trilogy, and they just squandered all of his potential for being awesome as a good guy too.

Yeah, one of the things I liked about the originals is their simplicity - probably a result of technological restructions in filming, though. Lightsaber effects are ridiculously easy to do now.

Hey, I like that whole Padme in-hiding and killed by Palpatine idea. That would also restore a bit of credence to the part when Luk eand Leia talk about their Mom. Leia either imprinted on her in ten minutes, or had mommy around for a bit to remember that she was very sad.

Of course, the romance between Anakin and Padme would need to be rewritten a whole lot.

@ your last point: Oh no, I will miss out on sand hating if that happens

Contrast the romance between Han/Leia and Anakin/Padme. Worlds apart. Of course, it sort of helped that Carrie Fischer and Harrison Ford knew how to act, and that the characters themselves were way more interesting.

But, there's the difficulty of telling a story that everyone knows the outcome of already. We all knew that Anakin had to sire some kids, so it was a foregone conclusion that him and Padme had to link up. Harder to tell the story, I think, if your viewers already know the end result...

It's a foregone conclusion that Anakin had to hook up with someone, but we didn't have a name or any meaningful personality traits.

If you're trying to create dramatic tension, that sounds to me like prime conditions for a love triangle.

Heh, some of the best prequel fanfic I've read involved a triangle between Anakin, Padme and Obi-Wan.

I kind of figured Leia had assumed that her adoptive mother was their birth mother and didn't care too much about the details...

Episode 3: Made Anakin the ultimate supreme BADASS that should have become Darth Vader, instead of the angsty monk who got his girlfriend teen pregnent. Played up his jealousy and pride as what turned him to the dark side instead of "lul love makes you evil"

Also more Count Dooku.

Episode 2: I would have played up Obi and Anakin's friendship and made Anakin less of a dick.

Also more Count Dooku.

Episode 1: No Jar-jar, please no Jar-jar.

Also more Qui-Gon jinn.

Generally speaking, I'll try to salvage the story that we got into something workable, rather than inventing new movies wholecloth.

Episode One:

• Completely remove the entire Gungan species from Naboo
• Completely remove the entire Tattoine segments of the film, including the Pod Race.
• MAKE THE DROID ARMIES ACTUALLY MENACING. The droids were lamo comic relief in the film, and they totally undermined the tension from looking stupid, being totally useless and making "funny" dialogue.
• Make Annakin an ACTUAL PILOT, none of this 8 year old pod racing wonder boy garbage. Obi Wan said Annakin was a "great pilot" when he met him, so lets stick with that.
• Remove the Annakin being miraculously conceived garbage, have him be the love child of a powerful Jedi Master or something.

As far as the overarching plot goes, there's nothing inherently wrong with the mystery plot about the Sith and some political stuff.

• Qui Gon and Obi Wan switch places in the story, with Obi Wan being eager and adventurous, and Qui Gon being extremely reserved and set in his ways. Instead of Qui Gon wanting to train Annakin, it would be Obi Wan who did against his Master's wishes.

• Make Annakin like, 17 or 18 years old. Then the audience isn't creeped out when people talk about an 8 year old boy being "too old". This also helps out with some Ep 2 stuff.

• Make the Queen like 17, minimum.

Annakin would be introduced to the plot when they need a daring pilot to blow past the Trade Federation blockade. He's a new pilot in the Naboo defense force, but is never-the-less skilled, and the Jedi sense the force is strong with him.

• Obi Wan is like, 20 or 21, nearly at the end of his training.

• There needs to be an explanation of some kind for why 99% of the Trade Federation Ships just up and left when they came back from Coruscant.

Anyway the rest happens pretty standard, Annakin rallies the pilots who think it can't be done and leads the attack on the Control ship. Darth Maul kills Qui Gon on the planet, then Obi Wan gets worked up and kills him. None of this keeping his composure with flawless choreography, I want some actual emotion.

Finally,

• Qui Gon doesn't want the boy trained, but Obi Wan lies to the council and tells them that he agreed and did want him trained.

IMO, this lends better to the character, because it adds a bit of depth to Obi Wan, who is otherwise basically a conservative, emotionless robot.

I think that having Annakin be only a few years younger than Obi Wan adds believability to the resentment that Annakin feels regarding Obi Wan "holding him back", since he's basically got to look up on and respect somebody the same age as him.

I had other thoughts, but I should stop rambling.

edited 26th Jul '10 4:08:55 AM by adam_grif

Ah, yes. I like that. We can keep the Gungans, though, just less Jar-Jar toilet humorus.

Hmm, just off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Jar-Jar's mother had an abortion.

Count Dooku really was a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to prevent the collapse of the Republic.

Palpatine was, as Lucas originally conceived him, weak rather than outright evil and manipulated and controlled by Vader and Tarkin.

Anakin was played by someone who could act their way out of a wet paper bag.

Luke and Leia were not sibling and they and Han Solo settled into a threesome. Alternately they were siblings and still wound up in a threesome with Han.

edited 27th Jul '10 8:26:19 AM by tricksterson

How would i write the Star Wars prequels? Three feature length films of this little guy: http://www.urlesque.com/2010/06/28/star-wars-at-at-day-afternoon/

If I wrote the star wars prequels, then:

1. There would be no Romantic Plot Tumor.
2. There would be more giant squids.
3. Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader would be a very gradual one, happening over the course of all the movies.
4. More puns.
5. The prequels would be taken a lot less seriously, and done in a more lighthearted tone.
6. Except Darth Vader's Face–Heel Turn, which would be even darker than in the movies.
7. At least thirteen Face Palm in every movie.
8. It would end at the beginning of the sequel trilogy.