CT How did you envision Star Wars before the prequels?

The same reason the adults guys I work with, who were 90's kids, still think Power Rangers are cool, even though I keep telling them that it was an awful show. But nostalgia is strong.

 

The Christmas Special gave us More Wookies. You have no idea what a big deal that was to a Star Wars obsessed kid. As a kid you forgive all sorts of awfulness if it gives you a little bit of awesome.

Back then, I had no deep thoughts on what happened Before Star Wars. The vague image of lots of lightsaber welding heroes... Luke's father... fighting in the Clone Wars, which is essentially what we got.

 

I, like some others have mentioned, wanted the ST over the PT.

But I was very intrigued by the idea of episodes 1-3. I remember reading that George was going to allow the EU to extend post-ROTJ, but they couldn't touch pre-ANH, and just being so curious by what secrets George wanted to keep for himself if he ever made the PT.

I didn't spend a ton of time imagining the world of the old Republic, but I had assumptions, some of the same ones I'm sure most other people had.

• I assumed they dealt with a young Anakin and younger Obi Wan, and that their age difference was maybe a decade or so apart. I expected to meet them already in their 20s/30s.
• I was intrigued by the Clone Wars. At the time it seemed everyone just knew that the Mandalorians were involved, so I wondered if we'd see an army of Boba Fetts.
• I really, really wanted to see Yoda fight with a light saber. And Palpatine too. And I longed to see them fight each other.
• I assumed we'd see big battles involving scores of Jedi.
• I did expect the Jedi to be tied to the government. Obi Wan's comments from ANH about them being the guardians of peace/justice for the old Republic always left that impression to me. It made sense that they were some kind of spiritual police force.
• I never pictured that Luke and Leia's mother would be so young.
• I thought the overall PT was going to be more mature and adult than the OT, perhaps even getting a rated R.
• The whole volcano battle sounded super cool. I really wanted to see that.
• I thought we'd see suited Vader actually hunting down and murdering Jedi.
• I thought the line of succession was Yoda-Obi-Anakin. Didn't imagine Yoda was the head teacher for ALL Jedi.
• I actually remember wondering if George was going to cast the OT actors as the PT characters, since I had trouble picturing SW without them.

For the most part the prequels were a huge mystery to me, one I was intrigued by yes, but didn't spent a ton of time dwelling on. So I was able to take George's vision at face value and pretty quickly threw away most of my expectations. My issues with the PT don't at all center on me not getting what I dreamed about or hoped for.

And, looking across that list, I actually did get a lot of what I wanted to see.

 

I think it would have been cool if the Separatists used the Rebellion's hardware and the Republic used the Empire's for the PT.

 

It was kind of known by hardcore fans due to a mention by GL somewhere, I don't know if it was during a televised interview or in a magazine or something, but it was one of those myths that was passed around in playgrounds at school and I remember a computer shop having a mouse-mat depicting the scene with what they thought Anakin looked like battling a younger Obiwan in a firey/lava-ey place when I was young though I can't find anything resembling that online now.

 

I believe it was mentioned fleetingly in the James Kahn Return of the Jedi novelization, in the last chapter when Vader is unmasked. It could have even been mentioned in the 1980 Empire strikes back novel , but I know for sure it was in the 1983 RoTJ book.

 

It's not in the TESB novel - but it is in the ROTJ novel in two places - the unmasking scene, and Obi-Wan Kenobi's conversation with Luke.

In November 1977 there was Star Wars Poster Monthly which reiterated data from the Rolling Stone interview:

STAR WARS: OFFICIAL POSTER MONTHLY #2
Published November 1977 by Galaxy Publications. Text writers Jon Trux, John May, Michael Marten.
http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?Image=timetales/misc/arcana/post2-02.jpg

As on earth where we have White and Black Magic, so the Force has its dark side and Vader, for reasons that are unclear, became consumed by it. It led him to that fateful day when, in a fierce battle, he killed Luke Skywalker's father.
What is less well known is that Vader himself was then almost killed by Ben Kenobi, who was understandably enraged at his disciple's fall from grace. Vader's life might have ended then and there with a quick stab of a light saber; instead, during the fight, Vader stumbled backwards and fell into a volcanic pit where he was nearly fried alive. What remained was dragged out and preserved by encasing it in an outsized black metal suit - virtually a walking iron lung.



ROTJ novel:

"There is still good in him." he declared.
Ben shook his head remorsefully. "I also thought he could be turned back to the good side. It couldn't be done. He is more machine, now, than man - twisted, and evil."
Luke sensed the underlying meaning in Kenobi's statement. He heard the words as a command. He shook his head back at the vision. "I can't kill my own father."
"You should not think of that machine as your father." It was the teacher speaking again. "When I saw what had become of him, I tried to dissuade him, to draw him back from the dark side. We fought ... your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever - he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will ..."


It was a face that had not seen itself in twenty years.
Vader saw his son crying, and knew it must have been at the horror of the face the boy beheld.
It intensified, momentarily, Vader's own sense of anguish - to his crimes, now, he added guilt at the imagined repugnance of his appearance. But then this brought him to mind of the way he used to look - striking, and grand, with a wry tilt to his brow that hinted of invincibility and took in all of life with a wink. Yes, that was how he'd looked once.
And this memory brought a wave of other memories with it. Memories of brotherhood, and home. His dear wife. The freedom of deep space. Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan, his friend ... and how that friendship had turned. Turned, he knew not how - but got injected, nonetheless, with some uncaring virulence that festered, until ... hold. These were memories he wanted none of, not now. Memories of molten lava, crawling up his back ... no.
This boy had pulled him from that pit - here, now, with this act. This boy was good.

The boy was good, and the boy had come from him - so there must have been good in him, too. He smiled up again at his son, and for the first time, loved him. And for the first time in many long years, loved himself again, as well.

 

Originally I saw SW the way I see the Harry Potter series: It was a great 3 part story arc, but left a lot open for possible additional story before it. I always thought there was a lot of opportunity for a prequel trilogy.

I envisioned that any prequels would not span so much of a timeframe-covering maybe five years total instead of 13. Also it would focus closely on Anakin, Obi-Wan, the Lars family and whoever Padme would've been-instead of having such a wide spanning scope in terms of story. Basically I felt the events of ROTS was what took place over the course of an entire trilogy. Episode I would be the start of the clone wars, Anakin would already be a Jedi, about age 16 or 17. He would already have turned to the Darkside by the final act of Episode II, and he would be in his mechanical suit for at least half of Episode III.

 

I really never thought about the time before Episode IV, or the "prequel time." I only had some curiosity about what "The Clone Wars" meant.

 

Obi-Wan and Anakin had been knights fighting against clones, with Leia's father also involved somehow. And of course that the Emperor was involved in the destruction of the Jedi and the Republic.

That all sounds about right, other than which side the clones were on (which was a pretty specific thing for me) but the way that I envisioned it was quite different. It was, if anything, more "grown-up" than the original trilogy, just in the sense of all the characters starting as adults. It never occurred to me that we would see Anakin's journey starting when he was just a small kid.

To add: I really envisioned the Jedi like medieval knights in concept, not at all like monks. The Jedi having a "temple" being so ascetic has always felt a bit off to me. In general, while it makes sense that people would have a religious relationship to something as spiritual as the Force, I liked it more in the old days when there weren't as many overtly-religious elements in Star Wars.

 

To be perfectly honest, I had not thought about the prequels at all until TPM was announced. For me the OT was enough, and I never experienced any real anticipation towards either sequels or prequels. I tend to not speculate about it before I see a new movie. After I watch it I either like it or I don't. I do consider myself a SW fan, but tend to just wait and see, without giving any future new installment much thought. Maybe it's because of my lack of imagination? When I saw posters, pictures or trailers of TPM, all I thought was "cool, a new SW, this might be interesting". As for counting down days until the premiere of ANY movie, that was never really my thing. I tend to appreciate what is there, instead of doing a lot of hoping and anticipating (regarding MOVIES, not other aspects of life!!). Strangely, even though I was positively surprised by AOTC (I had zero previous knowledge of it), I don't remember ever anticipating ROTS or speculating what it would be like. I watched some trailers here and there, that was pretty much it. Same with Alien Covenant or the Blade Runner sequel (I am also a fan of Blade Runner and the Alien franchise, except for Resurrection and that totally unnecessary AVP stuff). I don't give much thought to those either. I may like them or I may hate them, anyway I will see when the time comes. OK, I admit that as a kid I did anticipate both ESB and Alien, which I had only seen pictures of. But those are the only ones I can remember.

 

Hm. Okay. Here's how I imagined it.

1. The Jedi were like the samurai. There was no "organization," but they were united by a kind of loose code. They were lone mystical cowboys, agents of the Light Side of the Force who travelled the Galaxy on their own whim to fight the agents of the Dark Side, thus bringing balance. They were the galactic gunslingers, but with magic, I guess.

2. I never gave much thought to the Dark/Light paradigm.

3. I imagined the Empire to have been around for centuries. The Galactic civilization was centuries beyond its golden age, judging by how filthy and used everything seemed.

4. The Emperor was hundreds of years old. Maybe he was even one in a series of emperors.

5. Vader was a brave Jedi knight who gradually obtained his armor during his adventures. He was younger than Kenobi, but not as young as the prequels made him out to be. He was around when Luke was an infant, but left Luke's life before Luke was old enough to remember him. He obtained injuries at some point, thus requiring him to wear a breathing system and helmet to protect his fragile body.

BONUS:

The FORCE! The Force changed so much for me in the prequels. In A New Hope, Kenobi rebukes Han's mockery of the Force by claiming it was an energy that permeates all living things in the Galaxy. I had interpreted their little argument to mean that the Force was accessible to all people; I had no concept of "force-sensitive" beings. True, Vader notes that the Force was "strong" with Luke, but I saw it as a mystical thing that anyone could tap into with enough training and meditation. Luke just had a natural inclination to it, like how some people have talent in music or athletics.

 

I thought the Clone Wars (A 100% true war) would be raging at the beginning of Episode 1, the way the Galactic Civil War was at the beginning of ANH.
I thought Anakin would be a hardened Republic fighter pilot before meeting Obi Wan, and the trilogy would be about them establishing a more equal relationship,
and fighting scary clone soldiers of the empire until Anakin joins Palpatine at the end of Episode 2.

Episode 3 would heavily feature Anakin besting jedi after jedi on several different war fronts until he finally faces Obi Wan mid film.
The second half of the movie would focus on Black armored Vader continuing to tear through jedi and bringing the empire to galactic
prominence, leaving Obi Wan and Anakin's wife to flee into exile with the twins.

I never imagined Yoda fighting. Especially not with a lightsaber. Oh, and of course Qui-Gon never existed.
Yoda was credited with training Obi Wan from apprentice to knight.
There were no midi-whatsit'sfaces, no prophecies, and no Gungans. (I have no problem with prophecies)

I was very surprised by the way things turned out

 

I thought Star Wars was weird when I was a kid. ROTJ was the first one I saw and I didn't like it. I saw ROTJ in maybe 88-89 on HBO a couple times. I wasn't a fan. I didn't understand it. I would have never seen the entire OT if not for TPM. Here I am in Orlando for Celebration with my wife who I also introduced to Star Wars and it all happened because of The Phantom Menace. One of my favorite movies as a kid was A Never Ending Story. The Phantom Manace felt like A Never Ending Story to me. It's was a mystical fantasy story. Many fans diss Jar Jar, but he reminded me of Jim Hensen. I thought of The Muppets and Fraggle Rock when he first showed up. Jar jar was never a distraction for me, the focus was always on
Padme. Even though Anakin Vader - Luke Skywalker are the featured characters of the main 6 films. I always viewed Padme & Qui Gon as the stars of TPM. I saw an OT film first, but it was a PT film that made me watch the other 5 films.

 

I always thought Obi-Wan played a larger role in Anakin's fall.

In ANH Uncle Owen doesn't speak highly of him at the dinner table and he didn't really want Luke spending time with him, so I always thought that Obi-Wan was at least partially to blame for the situation everyone was in. Like one day he talked Anakin into following him on some 'damn fool idealistic crusade' and things were never the same. Plus maybe this is just me but I always got the sense that throughout ANH Obi-Wan had felt some kind of remorse and was atoning for past sins, hence why he changed his name. He wasn't just in hiding, he was running from his past.

But as we all know the PT suggests Obi-Wan actually had very little to do with it. Anakin's turn had more to do with Palpatine's lies and his willingness to save Padme.

 

I guess I kind of imagined that what happened would at least somewhat match the descriptions and accounts given in the OT instead of completely contradicting them in many places. Honestly, one of my big issues with the PT is that Lucas seems to have been too lazy to go back and watch his own movies.... or he just didn't care that he was blatantly contradicting them. I mean, pretty much Obi-Wan's entire account of Anakin in ANH is completely contradicted by the PT. I mean, it was VERY, VERY clear that Obi-wan met Anakin as an adult if you go by what was said in ANH.

 

Obi Wan fight againt The Clone masters and Clones, Palpatine dont create the Clone Wars
Anakin is more older when he meet Obi Wan, Clone Wars and Rise of the Empire are separate conflicts. Jedi use white lightsaber colors, Vader injuries was not becauce of Obi Wan, Vader was a respectable person without suit like Windu, Mandalorians were involved, Vader like Revan maybe use his suit to look like Mandalorian, Stormtroopers are created in memory of Mandalorians

 

It doesn't though in any truly meaningful way. It did play against perceived expectations which were never explicit.

He very specifically paid attention to what was actually said and worked within that. Arguably far more than he did with TESB because in ANH Obi-Wan specifically said that Darth Vader betrayed and murdered Luke's father. Once he got past that then nothing else compares in terms of latitude with what was said.

For one there are Obi-Wan's own contradictions in the first place but looking at what he actually said:


BEN He was the best star-pilot in the
galaxy, and a cunning warrior. I
understand you've become quite a
good pilot yourself. And he was a
good friend. Which reminds me...

BEN A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who
was a pupil of mine until he turned
to evil, helped the Empire hunt down
and destroy the Jedi Knights. He
betrayed and murdered your father.
Now the Jedi are all but extinct.
Vader was seduced by the dark side
of the Force.

OBI-WAN
When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was
amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to
train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well
as Yoda. I was wrong.

Anakin was a great pilot when he first met him. Check. Obi-Wan took it upon himself to train him as a Jedi. Check. Anakin was a young Jedi who turned to the dark side. Check. The minor point of contention is that in ANH (where he's covering up Anakin true identity as Vader) is that Anakin was a pupil of his until he turned to evil as opposed to a former pupil/apprentice. Even then Lucas made a point of Anakin still calling his former Master "Master" due to his rank as a Jedi Master.

 

I have no answer to that question other than the first three movies proved to be a pretty good story.

 

Power Rangers is one of the weirdest shows from my childhood. They just frankensteined a show together. I still have no idea what the context was for this small child appearing next to the Megazord.

And then they went off to fight in a war against Owen's wishes? Yeah, I would have loved to have seen that trilogy as well.

 

For many years for me I was just happy with ANH ESB ROTJ but when the we were told the PT was announced I was excited to finally get to see the backstory to the OT and many things were done in the PT that were not the way I envisioned them to happen in it and was glad a gave fresh approach to the story was done rather than a predicticable one the same for me happened also with the ST

 

Great thread indeed! As someone who saw the OT very, very young, I kept checking the movies and the EU to immerse myself in Star Wars (it wasn't that easy back then). Some impressions I had over what happened before the movies:

- Vader was a bit older during his confrontation with Obi-Wan (Obi-Wan clearly says young Jedi when referring to him during his turn to the dark side, but I imagined this nonetheless). It was rumored to be in a "pit of fire" sort of scenario. I also heard that Vader crashed his starfighter into a large ship during a battle: the Emperor saved him, and blamed the Jedi for his accident. So perhaps Vader could even beat the Emperor in a physical confrontation, but he felt a debt of gratitude towards him for saving his life, and for giving him the chance to exact vengeance on the Jedi;

- Didn´t imagined the Jedi being mostly aliens, but mainly a sort of medieval looking, templars like monks. Qui-Gon and Ki-Adi Mundi were the only PT Jedi that matched how I imagined them. And Yoda didn't fight, at all. He was above it, achieving a greater state of consciousness that allowed him to nullify his enemies aggressive abilities without engaging in physical combat himself. This was also true for the Emperor, but in an opposite way, where he was so powerful in this wizardly use of the Force, that he didn't need a lightsaber to defeat his enemies;

- I imagined the higher echelons of the Empire being like a cult. Beyond the military, the dignitaries, the Inquisitors, and the Prophets were all very important, making the Empire a very dark, fundamentally evil form of government. In fact, Vader hunting the Jedi with the help of the Inquisitorius and other dark side agents was one of the most important aspects to be shown in the PT, I thought. It was a galaxy changing event that lead to very bad people being in positions of great power;

-Jabba was, by far, the greatest gangster in the galaxy. Maybe this hasn't change much, but every time I see Jabba bested by another lord of crime (looking at you, Xizor, Maul, Tyber Zann) it just feels wrong to me. Oh, and yes: the Stormtroopers were the Empire elite troops. We just saw so much of them in the OT because we see incredibly important events unfolding that require their presence, but they wouldn't be a common sight in a planet like Tatooine.

Ahh good memories... I still like what I thought of the galaxy back then, and curiously enough, many things still makes sense to me!

 

I also saw the OT as a child but one thing I thought that parts of the EU preserved (the RPGs to an extent, which helped flesh out the universe, as well as the PC Space combat games, X-Wing and TIE Fighter and XWA) was the old sense of the SW universe.

Always saw Anakin as being a grown man when he meets Obi-Wan. But that Anakin's involvement was with the Empire and Obi-Wan was more remembering a time of transition and mostly under the Empire.

I think Bioware sort of gets how I saw the Jedi with the Asari Justicars in Mass Effect. An independent body that may be consulted by the Republic but that is given the space to resolve disputes, act as knights-errant, etc. I never liked the PT showing just how intimately they were involved. The Justicars are ruthless but I still imagined that (and I'm sure the creators of ME knew this) going and doing justice, investigating crimes or events, and preserving order and peace could never (in this fantasy setting) be done and be given credibility by a galactic civilization without them being independent of the government, not its toadies.

And I think Bioware's KOTOR actually tells a better fall of Anakin with Revan, and I always understood that's what the writers were trying to do. (better than the PT.) Meaning, the Jedi were removed from political affairs, not that they'd never fight but that Yoda or others had cautioned against throwing themselves into the CW (which was always an invasion by Mandalorians in my mind, once that bit of lore was fleshed out a bit, and a fight over cloning facilities.) The Jedi in my mind would never go to war clone troops and it would be seen as an abomination to them. The war would be fought to destroy the facilities, while the Mandalorians or other factions sought to gain access and control them. The Jedi would be caught in the middle and eventually discarded by a galaxy who saw them as barriers to expedient measures to achieve victory or some political end. The Jedi should never have their main temple on the same planet as the government.

But anyway, Revan's journey of trying to do good in the secular sense, would mean his spiritual downfall. At the time of his fall, the Jedi were already dwindling and thus hunting them down would have been less of a task, easier to do outside of the public's gaze, and much easier to justify. Vader, in my view, was seduced by a chance to unite a disordered galaxy. Probably the most important part to me, is what he may have hated what he became at some point, that initially, he was fueled by that vengeful spirit of justice and so, would never directly participate in killing children knowingly. Yes, he was there at the Death Star, but even a soldier will tell you it's different to shoot someone in person than to drop a bomb from a plane.

In my mind, the thousand generations conjured up an impossibly ancient civilization and I think the old RPGs and comics did a decent job of conveying some of that history in the timelines I would see. So while the true, formal end of the Republic may have been during Vader's lifetime, I imagined the Empire as supplanting the Republic less in a "coup" sense and more of the Germanic migrations into central and western Europe and the end of the Roman Empire.

 

Interesting point. There's a reference to "the later corrupt Emperors" in the SW 1977 novelization that suggests a similar idea. George Lucas asked its author Alan Dean Foster to take such references to a more gradual process of transition from Republic to Empire out of the final text, but apparently that one slipped through. In one of the conversations between Lucas, Foster, and publicity head Charles Lippincott, Lucas also suggested that one idea behind the more gradual transition was to have Leia become Empress at the end of the trilogy while still featuring a restoration of democracy.

Also, I'm still mad at Gary Gygax for misspelling the medieval English title of "justiciar". That missing I has been taken up by a bunch of modern works (including Mass Effect) borrowing straight from Dungeons & Dragons and never even bothering to spell-check the terms Gygax and co. threw in with abandon back in the 1970s.

 

I envisioned Jedi with haircuts that were not an embarrassment in polite society.