PT The Phantom Menace Rough Draft

Don't tell Disney that. They had Ahmed Best as a guest during Star Wars weekends last year. And let's not forget the prequel references in Rebels, the novel Dark Disciple based on the unaired prequel era Clone Wars episodes, the Star Wars game app based on The Phantom Menace, and on and on and on. But keep believing that myth you're clinging to.

 

Yes. It's a Baldrick like cunning plan from Blackadder.

Keep referencing them constantly and weaving them into every aspect of the new Star Wars universe.

 

Does anybody know what happened to the secrethistory website? It seems to be down/gone at present...

 

I like the idea that the rough draft could've went a different direction for us hard core fans. I also applaude Lucas for doing it the way he wanted to and after reading this months SW Insider, Rick McCallum states "they knew they would lose some of the hard core fans, but George wanted to do it his way". The question now is would the movies have been better if they just got different actors/actresses and writers/producers? Too bad Kasdan turned down the opportunity to work on the prequels as they needed more of the employees from the OT.

 

Just can still picture a "what if" for the prequels. Is this the future i see?

 

Since they are pretty awesome I don't see what in particular they would add. It wouldn't take away either since any direction is ultimately from Lucas.

 

So would we be open to spinoffs during the Prequel era? I love all the movies, just feel the PT would have benefitted if someone didn't just say "yes man" to Lucas all the time. It seems the consensus is obvious, too many kiddy parts not needed. I dont mind them being more kid focused but the hard core fans were not being thought of in this instance.

 

Going back to some points in the first page, it made more sense to make Owen Anakin's step brother - had they been real family, Vader would have thought to search there yonks ago. As it is, Anakin didn't regard them as family or people of any significance, and it really wasn't a likely place for his son to end up. From their point of view, they were receiving a memory of Shmi who appears to have been very loved, so they were happy to raise the child.

 

I think Bink's appeal to kids is overstated, I would have been far less tolerant of him at five or six than in 1999 or now, I hated the Stooges and they did it way better than Jar Jar.

Kids are ignorant and inexperienced not stupid, there is a difference. It isn't about the kids, it is slapstick. It is a form of humor that appeals much to some and far less for others no matter what age.

I see a character that just doesn't fit the universe, stupid just doesn't mesh with Star Wars for me. There is no purpose and acts as negative gravity on the broader story breaking immersion.
Plus, stupid is barely funny it is much closer to sad and right next door to pitiful at least for me.

Sorry but when a character that is almost all about humor isn't funny to a person you can't be surprised when they really fail to work for them on a catastrophic level. The only time he actually got a laugh out of me was "All sinkin' and no power, wensa yousa thinking wesa in twouble?". That one worked for me but otherwise between obnoxious and miserable with a lot of eye rolling in between.

I think if I was served a similar portion of that fool in 77, neither of us would be here. Me because I'd not care and you because the ageless quality of the OT would be greatly reduced, relegated truly to kids stuff while failing broadly to address such an audience which means the phenomenon effect would not be there.

 

If he was ever looking he would have scratched it off in passing. The guy who peppered the galaxy with probe droids wouldn't have given even that connection a pass.
A galaxy is a huge place, you will scratch every known associate first. I grant that Owen and Beru are a sketchy place to send a child seeing they don't really know Anakin he is really just little more than someone they met at Owen's stepmother ' funeral who spent the night brooding and barely spoke to you. There is neither bond or even much in the way of interactions.

They met but don't know each other. The Lars are salt of the Earth type good people for taking Luke in like they did but I do find it clunky. It seems to me based on Star Wars that Anakin, Owen, and Beru knew each other in a fairly personal way and Obi-Wan too but I could by to a lesser extent or after the fact but in Star Wars despite how little is said it all implies more personal knowledge and conception than what played out.

 

Is it known that Vader knew his child survived Padme's death?

 

Yikes! 2016 already.

Time passes fast. Jar Jar fast.

I don't care about "The Three Stooges" or whatever. Jar Jar may have comedic antecedents, but that's like saying Han Solo is a lame Cary Grant.

Or, for that matter, that Jar Jar was pinched from Han Solo (the waistcoat, the cynicism, helping the Jedi cross a threshold, "dumb luck" in battle, etc.).

Resonance, depth, consilience, outside of the art, and within.

I love Jar Jar.

Well, true enough.

But there are some latent caveats or fallacies there which I feel compelled to parse out via counter contentions:

i) Jar Jar is not the be-all and end-all of slapstick humour in Star Wars. Nor is he even a bellwether for slapstick humour necessarily.
ii) Jar Jar cannot be reduced to slapstick humour. There's more to Jar Jar than his being a vehicle for comedy.
iii) Just because some people dislike slapstick or derive little from it, it doesn't mean everyone is the same. As you imply, tastes differ.
iv) Liking Jar Jar does not make one stupid.

Calling Jar Jar "stupid" is, in my eyes, a gross reification, whether you mean to declaim the character or are referring to some larger aesthetic impact on the Star Wars mythos.

I think Jar Jar fits by not entirely fitting. Everything in Star Wars is, as I see it, deeply entrenched in paradox.

Furthermore, I think Jar Jar brings a certain charge to the prequel trilogy (especially TPM where he more widely features: and one might call this charge, among other things, "fun") and is a synecdoche for bigger ideas at work, or more esoteric energies, or phenomena, at play in the whole.

The duality of Jar Jar -- he's amphibious and functions well on land and in the water -- also speaks, to my mind, of a broader dialectic ruthlessly at work in Star Wars across multiple planes. He is, again, a condensation, a microcosm, a filament that suggests a deeper universe of meaning that extends far beyond "slapstick humour".

Again, to me, that is a gross reification: "almost all about humour". One could argue much the reverse: that Jar Jar is barely about humour at all. Humour, in and of itself, is surely a "phantom menace", when dwelled upon ("your thoughts dwell upon your mother") at the expense of all else.

I find it interesting that most people seem to look upon Jar Jar as a handmaiden for humour, resolutely failing to consider the character from other angles. It's an easy way to dismiss him, I guess, even with the hefty proviso that the concept of humour, and humour within Star Wars, are broad categories in themselves.

The scope of Jar Jar, in my opinion, extends far beyond humour. If that isn't obvious in TPM, I think it should be after AOTC and ROTS; which trenchantly sketch a weirder, starker, sadder, and manifestly more human Jar Jar (an inadvertent enabler of Palpatine in AOTC, the crushed clown behind Padme's casket in ROTS; depicted in the bleakest light -- literally: dark, grim, low-contrast -- in his and her final scene of the trilogy).

This rhetorical refrain essentially comprises (or conceals) a tautological misapprehension of Star Wars and George Lucas.

Lucas made the OT to make the prequels; not the other way around. Which also renders this pithy attempt at an argument a non-sequitur.

Charles Darwin first had to formulate the theory of evolution before he could cogently ponder the "descent of man". The Beatles found their way to the "White Album", and back, of sorts, to "Abbey Road", by first releasing the likes of "Please Please Me" and "A Hard Day's Night".

In other words, you build a foundation, first, and then play around in the structure, once the structure has been established and a template for speculation and innovation exists. It follows that the PT should not be traduced by the driest understanding of what came before; let alone be forced, by callow reductionism, to conform to the same mold. The true nature of Star Wars had barely been disclosed prior to 1999.

One needs to have some respect for time's arrow, and what can be wrought with the passage of time, rather than engaging in narrow philosophizing that completely ignores the sublime fact that the full beauty and eccentricity of something isn't exposed, and doesn't develop, all at once. Complexity, in the human realm, is the result of linear progression. I hold that the prequel trilogy is more complex than the original trilogy; and that you need an original trilogy to arrive at a prequel trilogy.

Lucas always wanted to start in the middle of the tale and leave the backstory for later. This fundamental reality should inform any serious discourse on the saga. Pithy banalities like trying to conceive of a prequel trilogy in 1977, and hermetically imagining the imminent failure of Star Wars as a result of that crooked conception, should be dropped.

IMO, anyway.

 

You know it's interesting that when talking about his next project, back in 1973, Lucas talks about a western in space, and in response to the interviewer's reaction of disbelief, said, "Don't worry. Ten year old boys will love it."

Seems like the young audience was what Star Wars was created for even from the beginning.

Is Jar-Jar really all that worse than 3-PO? 3PO was quite annoying, bumbling, and whiny.....

 

This is exactly true, but the olden OT purists don't want to hear it because they think it would make them look foolish for liking children's entertainment.

 

I don't think Vader had any idea about Luke until after the Death Star. It's a lot easier to hide from someone that's not looking for you. And really that Lars homestead is probably the last place in the galaxy Vader would go without a reason.

I wonder if the Emperor knew about Luke and Leia.

It's really a shame too. If they could except them for what they are, they might be able to enjoy all of them.

 

The rough draft or whatever, seemed a more mature film like he was hoping to film some biblical and historical film approach but gave up. Likely he misjudged the audience in the end. But I liked some elements of the filmed movie which ended up a mess as did the PT. The illustrated (early)screenplay for the TPM is quiet excellent and entertaining , I especially like how Maul created a Force illusion of himself and tricked the Jedi. I liked quite a few of Lucas's unfilmed ideas. Likely Lucasfilm will inevitably recycle his notes and unused material as they have.