PT What if thread: What if ROTS had been an 18/NC-17?

I seem to be making lots of ROTS threads recently. But, seeing as my thread on opera seemed to go nowhere (presumably because opera is too un-mainstream a topic, or too apparently unconnected to Star Wars), I thought I'd tackle a subject slightly more obvious this time.

Disclaimer: I actually created a thread like this quite a few years back, but the tone of that was a bit more…well, silly. Here, I want to look at this subject seriously.

We've probably all imagined something like this before, about many different films. It's an interesting idea, a favourite film or series turned insanely adult and/or thus far darker. But aside from fan edits and remakes, such a thing rarely ever actually happens.

First off, I generally really like ROTS as a film. It's my third favourite Star Wars film overall. But in my opinion, with ROTS, Lucas had an opportunity to create something truly special: The third chapter of Star Wars for a genuinely adult audience. Strange idea? Maybe, but keep in mind that when I say this that I'm aware of the unusual idea that the prequel trilogy as a whole was more arty and avant-garde than the original trilogy, for better or worse. So, aside from the problem of making a Star Wars film that wasn't just partially inaccessible to children - which ROTS, as it is, already was, since it's rated 12 in the UK and PG-13 in the US - but, potentially completely inaccessible to any but an adult audience - is it that much of a stretch to imagine ROTS as that one special chapter of the Star Wars saga that kids aren't allowed to watch...at all? The one chapter that's adults only, that young Star Wars fans have to wait until they're seventeen or eighteen to watch?

Of course, that brings us to the point of, well...why?

And here's my answer. Forewarning: this might be a bit disturbing, so read with caution.

As a teenager, I was already cautious about the third chapter of Star Wars. I had grand visions in my head of how dark, depressing, angst filled and grim, even hellish, it might be. In brief, here's something I remember imagining the film would include:

Aside from Vader having a red lightsaber, and his massacre of the Jedi and choking of Padme being shown in much more detail, I also imagined the colours of the film to be even darker and more disturbing, and the section of the film where the Empire comes into existence being an even bigger focus, with the main focus being on the horror, torture and extreme violence and mass murders that generally accompany the rise of a brutal totalitarian state. For this reason, all of Vader’s heinous acts upon becoming Vader would have been shown, even if not necessarily in gory detail - but they would have been seen, as would have scenes such as the Clone Troopers rounding up ‘enemies of the state’ and shooting them brutally. Basically, every horrific, tragic, and nasty aspect of the rise of the Empire would have been seen, and this would have made the film…truly dark.

That’s just how I imagined it back when I was about fifteen.

As for the actual film, when I first watched it, I was genuinely somewhat disturbed. I, however, still wish it’d be taken much further. Way down into the depths of hell that must exist in our minds, the hell of a world in which dictatorships like this exist.

Now, here is how I’d handle ROTS if it was an 18 or an NC-17. I hope this isn’t too dark for this forum!

A. Without being silly about it, possibly tease the audience with what appears to be a flashback to, well, a sex scene between Anakin and Padme. But, instead of exploiting the high rating and being really explicit - and thus, doing something which kind of goes against the spirit of Star Wars - because, let’s face it, Star Wars has never been sexually explicit, so it wouldn’t make sense for this to be in only one film - instead of doing that, be really subtle. Have Anakin thinking of Padme, and remembering something they did one night… But the scene could be blurry, covered in shadows so you can’t really see very much, and with only a couple of noises. So it wouldn’t be completely OTT. But it would give the film a more adult quality regardless.

B. Show the rise of the Empire in a really terrifying, depressing, tragic and horrifying way. Take full advantage of the adult rating. Show not only the full gory details of the Jedi Purge, but extend it and make it long and drawn out. Show Vader’s killing of the Jedi, leaving certain parts to the imagination but with most of it shown fully. Have him decapitating or even eviscerating his former Jedi friends. Even show him killing the Jedi kids, but only show his face in close up as he does it, and not them actually being killed. And this is where it gets even worse…

B2. In addition to the Jedi purge and the Separatist massacre, show just most likely would have realistically happened to those involved in the “Petition of the 2000”. Sidious, after declaring himself Emperor, was a complete dictator. He wouldn’t have killed them - it’d have been far worse than that. Most likely, Mon Mothma and most of the others involved in the petition - maybe not Bail Organa, since he didn’t seem to hang around Coruscant during those moments - but everyone else involved in the petition would have, after Sidious’s declaration of the Empire, been branded as potential enemies of the state. They would have been tortured horrifically and brainwashed. This is the kind of thing we needed to see, in order to witness and understand the full horror of Palpatine’s Empire, and how it was no better than Nazi Germany or the USSR under Stalin. It might not be too graphic, but it would have to be harrowing: Have a darkened room in which the senators are strapped to tables, taken into an even darker space by the precursor to that probe droid from ANH (which was used on Leia), and just hear some dreadful noises, howling, gasping and screaming.

Probably just leave whatever’s being done to them to the imagination. But have Vader, some newly appointed Imperial officers, etc, supervising the proceedings with utter mercilessness and a truly cold quality. Show their complete indifference to the suffering of their victims. Maybe have one scene where one of the ‘traitors’ is tortured too much and dies horribly, but again don’t their actual death - maybe show their corpse. Terrify the audience…make them wonder if their democracies could become like this if they/we (in real life) voted for a monster like Palpatine.

B3. Have a scene in which other ‘enemies of the state’ who are not senators, but other, more ordinary people and aliens - from businessmen and lawyers to miners and decorators - are simply ‘taken away’ to either conditioning camps, or extermination camps, or forced labour camps. Show the families begging for their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, etc, to be released…but none of them are.

B4. Introduce some of the Imperial officers. Have a scene in which Tarkin is introduced as a character, and established right away as a ruthless figure by some means: For example, have him order a massacre of apparent ‘traitors’ under Palpatine’s orders. Don’t know how old they’d be at this time, but if they aren’t too young, maybe introduce Veers, Ozzel, etc as well. Presumably Piett and Needa and Jerjerrod were only teenagers at this time or younger. Maybe their parents could be shown. Maybe some of these officers were brainwashed by the Empire from the start in a brutal academy. In terms of relating this to the high rating, have their establishing character moments be violent or horrifying ones that show their ruthlessness and dedication to the new Empire.

C. Include every detail of Vader being put in the suit, maybe with a little black comedy thrown in about him losing all his body parts, juxtaposed with the tragedy of his life as a hero turned mass murderer of innocent children and all his former friends.

D. This might be taking it too far, but maybe have Palpatine decide to make a private (as opposed to public) example of the leaders of the Petition of the 2000 by having especially dreadful things done to each of them, none of which kill them but all of which will scar them for life. Things such as: Being subjected to their worst fear from an extended period of time, having their families tortured to death, they themselves being subjected to psychological, verbal and physical abuse to the greatest degree the mind and body can handle before expiring, etc.

Ok, even if only implied and partially off screen, that’s seriously screwed up, but isn’t that what the audience needs to see the Empire as? Which brings me to my final point, the biggest reason for all this…

Which is this: I haven’t really read any EU stuff, so I only really count the films. And to my mind, apart from the destruction of Alderaan, what exactly did the Empire do in the OT that made them such an ‘evil dictatorship’, which they supposedly were? Quite seriously, aside from the Emperor himself being obviously evil, and Vader and (in ANH) Tarkin being ruthless and, well, evil, what else do we see? Nothing. Quite literally. The Empire, aside from blowing up Alderaan, is simply presented as an extremely powerful absolute dictatorship and an extremely authoritarian state, which does not tolerate an armed rebellion and puts it down with brutal force. That is all. And what government wouldn’t have a bunch of terrorists killed?

I’m not arguing that the Empire wasn’t evil, or that they weren’t the bad guys. Not seriously. But my point is that aside from those moments in ANH, they don’t really do anything ‘evil’…they simply attempt to put down a violent rebellion. Yes, a rebellion for freedom and to restore a republic, but who was the legitimate party? The actual state, which was the Empire. So freedom was irrelevant.

And that’s my point. I strongly feel that the audience NEEDED to see how the Empire rose in all of its horror and extreme bloodshed in ROTS in order to genuinely understand why the Empire is, well, evil, and why the rebellion was justified and necessary. Just being told ‘it’s bad’ isn’t good enough, not for adults. And that, in a nutshell, is why I think ROTS should be the “one adult chapter” of the Star Wars saga. Because little kids aren’t ready to see how a brutal dictatorship was established.

And, to play devil’s advocate once more, if Palpatine’s Empire wasn’t a horrifically brutal dictatorship which did things that rivalled Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, then maybe…just maybe…the rebellion wasn’t justified after all? See my point?

Anyway, discuss. How would ROTS have worked if it were like this? Would it have worked at all? Might it have been the lowest grossing of all six Star Wars films, but the most critically successful? This should be interesting!

 

NC-17? Um, no. Come on, that is not even remotely a realistic scenario for a SW film, let alone an R rated one.

 

NC-17 is pretty much reserved for movies that have very explicit sex. It's rare to get an NC-17 just on violence and/or language.

 

This isn't about realism though. This is just a speculative "what if" thread.

The questions are not "is it realistic?" or "should star wars be NC-17, but "Could it work?" and "Did we as an audience need to be horrified by the Empire in order to see how bad it actually is?"

Kubricklynch: That's interesting. In the UK it's different AFAIK. Films which get an 18 rating in the UK can get that rating purely due to violence, torture and horror.

 

I do take it as about the realism of war and that is it's dark and graphic on all sides not merely one. I felt when I saw RotS disappointment and missed opportunity due to poor handling, execution, and as ever the pointless and dangerous sanitasing of *war*. War is not a kid-friendly topic and it shouldn't be treated as such.

 

I don't like the cartoony voices of the droids introduced in ROTS.
I don't like how other PT movies were handled either.
I would want NOT want sex scene and bunch of cursing though.
More realism and seriousness could be nice though and it's not just in ROTS I'd want it.
I don't want slapstick "humorous" violence in a battle.
Also SW lacks emotion in areas.
I would not need an NC-17 rating for that. I thought those were more about sex, which I don't want in SW.
A PG-13 movie can be darker and serious. It's not the rating, it's the handling.

But Disney is in charge....
I am not impressed so far.

 

I agree with SN. Mature and serious does not equal language or sex. Both of which SW has no need of. What it lacks for me is the proper execution and presentation of depth particularly of emotion: why don't we ever see anyone truly weep in SW but Padme and she's scorned as weak???

Likewise that there are well-intentioned people on all sides. Painting an adversary as wholly evil is wrong. The Imperials deserve to be shown as whole beings to show that war is a complex thing that should NOT be sought lightly. No matter the differences, everyone still has feelings and that should be shown.

 

Or Lucas could've just handled the fall of Anakin and the rise of the Empire better than the way he did? We don't need to see Bail Organa look like he just went through a meat grinder before being trampled by buffalos. We don't have to be so graphic and disturbing that we wonder if this is even a Star Wars movie while we watch the robots rip up BBQ's Anakin to install the implants. A good director knows how to show the horrors of dictatorship without resorting to blood, guts and gratuitous torture scenes.


As for the OT, I dunno about you but I imagine blowing up an ENTIRE PLANET and forcing a native to that planet to watch you destroy it is a pretty damned evil move. If Tarkin were trying to get the audience to pity him after that, he was gravely mistaken.

 

Alien movies, the first Predator movie, and so on, spring to mind.

 

Wait, what? NC-17? This is star wars, I mean I don't mind when it gets dark at times but good grief not that dark.

 

Given the number of "come apart along the spine" descriptions of slain opponents in the Denning EU novels - it seems that, even with cauterisation, lightsaber combat can be very gruesome.

 

No thank you.

 

It might have been fun to get ridiculously ultraviolent, with Vader cutting down everything in sight like Arnold in one of his 80s movies, like Commando.

I dig 80s action movies, so I probably would have loved it, despite it being so inconsistent with the rest of the saga.

Well, if you're gonna show some sex, it might as well be the conception of the twins. That would be the idea.

A Hayden butt shot would be obligatory.

I think this would just be extraneous and boring.

If this is going to be a scare movie, then this would be worth a few quick shots, a short sequence.

This might be amusing.

What more do you want to see? The Empire is represented by The Emperor, Darth Vader and Tarkin. You're seeing the Empire's evil through them. What else would make them an evil dictatorship other than the evil dictates of their leaders? The stormtroopers are an extension of that, a faceless army that ruthlessly slaughters everything it comes across.

Captain Antilles' summary execution by Vader. The torture of a member of the Imperial Senate. Slaughtered jawas. Owen and Beru killed. The attempted destruction of Yavin IV. The summary and rather capricious execution of Imperial officers for dubious reasons. The occupation of Cloud City. The torture of Han and Chewie, and Han's encasement in carbonite. The attempt to build another Death Star, to destroy more planets.

This blindness to the evil of the Empire as shown in the OT is really bizarre.

No, freedom was not irrelevant, and that's an absurd reason to declare it as such.

What does legitimacy matter? The Empire was the legitimate government, and a wholly evil one that needed to be torn down completely. I'd say the Empire forfeited its legitimacy with its unjust and unlawful actions.

No, I don't think the audience needed to see that, they already knew.

You disagree, but most of the audience already understood that the Empire was wholly evil and why the rebellion was justified.

The Imperials dressing like Nazis and blowing up planets was really all that most people needed to see. Most people understood and appreciated how evil the Empire was just from ANH alone.

Star Wars' evil Empire is one of the most defining examples of the trope, and the OT alone was enough to establish it as such.

 

I thought the Order 66 sequence was made more frightening by what we couldn't see, really. Sometimes the imagination can be more terrifying than movie violence (which can come across as cheap and/or comical). An extended sequence would probably be more violent, but would serve no other storytelling purpose than cheap thrills, and ironically would make the audience more desensitised to events.
Order 66 and Anakin lighting up his saber in a roomful of kids were already the most chilling moments in the saga, not for the violence, but for the implications. Even though other scenes have more violence (think the slaughter at Mustafar), they were hardly as memorable.

 

I vaguely remember watching that play in high school - with a whole bunch of other students, as part of Drama work.

 

No thanks. The fight sequence and Anakin's maiming are brutal enough given the universe. I do not need cursing and gore in Star Wars.

Not to mention sex.

I've seen plenty of unrated films (what could be considered NC-17), but if it does not fit the universe, characters or story what's the point.

 

I highly doubt SW would ever get a higher rating the PG13.

 

I hope Rogue One will push it a little further though (but Disney - have they ever made anything beyond PG13?).

 

Probably tons - only they release them under the Touchstone Pictures banner.

 

I don't think so I think Rogue one will be PG13.

 

Top Gun was re-rated 12A (UK equivalent of PG13?) - maybe that'll be a rough guideline for what one might expect?

 

Sorry Kablob ,

NATIONALGREATNESS has dethroned your Barriss Offee thread as the most bizarre yet intriguing topic on these boards.