PT Original George Lucas's prequel outline revealed

PiettsHat Just wanted to mention that either way (Palpatine as instigator, Palpatine as advantage-taker), we're essentially talking about this being the "moral" of that part of the story, right (except focused more on the political side of things rather than the economic - though some might argue that in real life the two are inextricable)? I just remembered the book and thought it worth mentioning, since I neglected to really reply earlier.

 

Gotta point, forgot about that! But as I said, maybe she saw her in a dream?

 

Yep. In fact, that Anakin as a kid could be a prologue before the SW fanfare and opening scroll.

 

I agree with this. However, I think it could have been more Palpatine helped instigate things and not "he controlled all the pieces and was some svengali over the whole thing". More like a guy who sends Archduke Ferdinand to the Balkans rather than the master of the whole thing.

 

Eh, that would've stuck out like a sore thumb. This is "Star Wars", not a Bond movie where you have a teaser scene before the opening credit sequence. The format had already been followed in the past three movies, and couldn't really be changed here without it really looking weird. I've said it elsewhere-- the same people complaining about having Anakin as a kid the whole movie would complain just the same if we had a prologue.

 

I never bought that argument that a flashback scene in the PT woulds stick out like a sore thumb. Lucas made the PT with much different special effects then the OT, so essentially each trilogy sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the other. And Lucas made TPM and AOTC 10 years apart, which doesn't jive with the OT timeframe as ANH and ESB are about 3 years and ESB and ROTJ are about 6 months. By skipping over a whole decade starting in AOTC, AND having a new actor play Anakin, that sticks out like a sorethumb to the viewer because you don't see that in any of the OT movies.

 

It's no worse than having Obi-Wan played by a younger actor in the PT. Unless anyone thinks that we should now see Ewan digitally replaced by a CGI recreation of Alec Guiness, to keep things even.

 

But that's the thing. It's not a flashback. It's a flash forward. It's before the Lucasfilm logo. Before a long time ago, etc etc. Episode One can get away with a lot.

edit: Jedi_Ford_Prefect I think the recent SW films could learn some lessons from the recent Bond films, or any of the Bond films for that matter.

 

...and there aren't any flash-forwards in SW, either.

I'm not sure how The Phantom Menace is supposed to learn from Casino Royale, though the same thing works with GoldenEye, I guess. Still, I don't see what the attraction of having a flashback/forward breaking up the narrative like that is. I can understand wishing that Anakin were older in TPM-- I respect the ideas behind making him younger and even think that the movie pulls it off much better than it's given credit for, but I'll admit it would've been nice to see that kind of innocence and idealism in a young teen instead. But I don't understand the rationale behind keeping Anakin's discovery at a young age, but not spending any time with it. Better to commit to one age or the other for TPM, and if one thinks it's better that the same age had been used for the whole PT, I can appreciate that. But the flashback/forward thing is just a bit too much.

 

If it's a prologue in the first episode of a story, by definition it's not breaking the narrative. Conan the Barbarian and Braveheart did terrific with younger characters that then flash forwarded....and that's in the story proper. A prologue would stand apart enough to give people the info and then jump into the heart of the story after the scroll.

To each their own I guess.

 

Not a bad point, but you also have the expectations of the three previous productions, even if they're not preceding in the timeline. The formula was already set in ANH, ESB and ROTJ, and would've risked rubbing people the wrong way. "Conan" was the first movie of its series, and "Braveheart" is completely stand-alone, so they can do what they want (same thing with "GoldenEye" and "Casino Royale", at least as far as each Bond actor constitutes a mini-series of his own). Technically Lucas could've done what you're saying, and maybe gotten away with it, but you'd easily have a lot of fanboys bitching over it (but that was really pretty much inevitable).

 

I wish we never saw Vader in the suit, just end his PT story at being carted in the rain.

Show Tarkin with Palpatine observing the Death Star...

After the credits, cue the iron lung, one time.

 

before it came out I actually thought stylistically that might be the best. So then maybe younger audience's would have that question still in their mind's in Episode 4. Is it the same guy?
but everyone wanted to see suited-Vader so there was no way it was not going to happen.

 

The thought of hearing the iron lung along with a pitch black screen makes me think of LLCool J.

"Don't call it a comeback.... I'm the tower of power."

 

I think it worked better with the suit being shown, because if it was just hinted at, then we would be speculating pointlessly about what time Anakin gets put into the suit, and then there would be a major issue about whatever the EU said or what one of a hundred different websites think might have happened.

Yeah, showing the suit is better because it gets rid of all the guesswork and gets to the point.

 

Now, if only they had done this with the Sifo-Dyas thing (speaking of EU and 'guesswork')......

 

Ya know, in some instances its almost like GL hadn't seen the OT when he made the PT.......

and its those instances that I believe result in the PT hate by many. Its not Jar-Jar, its not Hayden, or any of the other usual things blamed for the PT "sucking".

(I don't think the PT sucks, I'm talking about people who do.)

This article, aside from a few details, doesn't really sake up what the PT came to be, but it does point out..... again......some of these silly things.

 

You have to love the absurd headline: 'Star Wars' Prequels Were Mapped Out By George Lucas & Lawrence Kasdan In 1981

First off nothing is being mapped and Kasdan is just asking questions. It's like asking Lucas the backstory after the first film. Based off of that ESB and ROTJ couldn't have happened as Vader wasn't Luke's father and the Emperor wasn't in tune with the Force.

 

What that article presents is not a 3-film story. What it amounts to is mostly just a different way of doing ROTS, and though it's pretty vague, the way ROTS is done seems superior to me in a lot of ways. I certainly wouldn't want the whole PT re-written just to explain why Leia remembers Padme, and that part of the GL's early story doesn't make that much sense to me either. Giving up one kid but not the other? If Padme doesn't die, then you have another problem. Vader would start searching desperately for his wife and kids, so that would make hiding Luke of Tatooine especially weird since if Vader is actively searching for him, he'd certainly look there.

The idea of a suited Vader killing off the Jedi after the Purge sounds cool, but I agree with those who say that the main story is complete and that would just be extraneous.

I understand why Lucas chose to make Anakin be 9, not a teenager. Luke started at that age. It would seem redundant (though he likes repitition). However, I wonder if a Superman I storyline structure may have worked for Episode I. What I mean is that we get to see Anakin as a boy, it cuts forward some time then we see him in the Jedi trials, then by the end of the film, he'd be a young man and win a big battle at the end. I know the standard SW structure limits the film events to just a few weeks, but it may have felt all right b/c we would see it as Anakin's origin story, and so, we know the first film is about his maturation.

I think some spillover of ROTS into ATOC might have worked. For instance, there could have been more about Palpatine trying to cozy up to Anakin, telling him that it's wrong that the Jedi force its members to separate themselves from their families. Then, when Anakin learns that his mother has been kidnapped, he places some of the blame on the Jedi for her death. In a small side story, Palpatine could've even orchestrated her kidnapping with the purpose of driving a wegde between Anakin and the Jedi. We could see some real seedy types, like bounty hunters, who contact the Sand People and give them something weird so that they want so that they'd kidnap Shmi. Or maybe an entirely different group than Sand People kidnap her.

 

Honestly, the PT is fine the way it is.

Mod Edit:

Welcome to the Boards, El Jedi Colombiano!
In case you didn't know, we talk about the films; not the fans...
and Xenforo comes equipped with an ignore function, just in case. -Sx3

 

At the end of the day, for me the biggest problem I have with the PT (along with a beloved character of mine bouncing off walls with a lightsaber...ugh) is that these movies don't need to exist at all. Three epic films of backstory that supports the OT. We got the story of Anakin/Darth Vader we needed in the OT to give us a deeper understanding of the character, just enough to support the main story. I don't care who made C-3PO (oh it was Anakin, what a coincidence), I don't care at all about Anakin as a child, I don't care at all about how Obi-Wan learned to become a Force ghost after death (figured that's what good lil' Jedi do). Keep some mystery dammit! Leave it up to the viewers imagination. At no time at all between me being a SW-loving little kid in the '80s to GL announcing the prequels in the mid-90s did I ever think or care if any more SW movies were made...except in high school in 1994 when I wanted Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire books to be made into movies. I already knew the story of Anakin/Vader. It was talked about in the OT and it was done.

 

RogueZero

Don't you think that's a rather...well...selfish position to take, though? At the end of the day, ESB and ROTJ didn't need to be made either. In fact, I imagine there are quite a number of people who don't like them precisely because they so radically alter the original film -- ANH. But tons of people also love them as well. If you don't like the new films, you are certainly welcome to ignore them. And you may not care about Anakin/Vader and Obi-Wan's backstory, but some of us do. Heck some of us are only Star Wars fans because of the prequels.

That's not to say you have to like or be excited about every single film -- I don't particularly care if the sequel trilogy is made or not, but I don't see why you have such a "problem" with the PT existing.

 

I do tend to ignore them. I liked all three prequels when they came out in theaters (though was still disappointed by TPM and AOTC). But as I get older, the less I care for them.

Maybe it is selfish, I don't know. I don't have any problem with the PT existing per se, it's more that I don't think they were necessary. I'm really glad that many like those films a lot and really glad that they helped make new SW fans. That's cool. But every time I watch the OT, events in the PT discolor certain things...or something. I DO care about the backstory of Vader. It's touched on here and there in the OT. My imagination always did the rest. And that was fine for me. I understand it's not fine with everyone else. I'm not about to yell at someone who likes ROTS more than any of the OT films or anything. Whatever.

I guess I'm getter older and more stubborn. If you talked to me ten years ago, I'd probably say I mostly enjoyed AOTC and was looking forward to Ep. III. Hell in 1997 I really liked the SE and watched the rereleases in the theater. But I was 17/18 then and it was before I'd get tired of the over-dependence on CGI. It was still cool to see stuff like that...then.

 

Some cool ideas in this thread, but I still prefer the films we got.

 

I noticed people usually say "unnecessary" about sequels/prequels only if they don't like them. Outside of SW, Matrix sequels or Godfather III would be a good example. They rarely say the same thing about, say, Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2 or Godfather Part II even though none of them were required by the originals' storylines.

Obviously, the OT didn't need a PT (or ST) to stand on its own. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't benefit. I think even the PT haters admit ROTJ in particular works better now that we've got a better look at old Palps' nefarious ways or Anakin as a desperate young man prepared to do anything to save his wife.

There're quite a few other things fans had wanted to see since ROTJ, such as the Jedi and Republic before the Empire and Anakin/Obi-Wan volcano duel. So, there was quite a bit of backstory that could be explored in the prequels even if the final product doesn't live up to your imagination (what does?).