Lit What if Timothy Zahn made the Prequels?

What I want to know is what if Kevin J. Anderson made the prequels?

 

In that case it's obvious Daala is Mara Jade's older sister.

 

So, my interpretation of the question asked by this thread is basically "what would the prequels have been like going by the information from the OT and the Thrawn Trilogy?" and maybe a little bit of "how would you make the prequels better?"

I always got the impression, before Revenge of the Sith, that Anakin/Vader was an able-bodied dark side warrior for well more than a few hours before the duel with Obi-Wan. The ending of the film was very sudden to me. Anakin turns to the dark side, Palpatine becomes hideous, all the Jedi are murdered, Obi-Wan and Anakin duel on Mustafar, the Republic becomes the Empire, all basically overnight. Based on how it was originally presented, I was expected at least an entire film of able bodied Vader hunting down the Jedi before he finally has his duel with Obi-Wan.

But to answer the literal question, I bet Kinman Doriana would've played a large role.

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I hope you guys appreciate the effort I put into this joke, it took me like, 10 whole minutes in MS paint.

 

I can no longer find it. The interview was from 2003. I looked, but I can't find many Zahn interviews from that period anymore.

 

Again, I didn't understand your meaning because your post made no sense.
I didn't know if you were posting in good faith or not.

 

I wouldn't put too much stock in that. What you think he's going to come out and in 2003 and say "nah that was stupid and hence George Lucas, they guy indirectly in charge of me getting paid for my job, is crap at writing"

 

Maybe putting a Superweapon in every part

 

As long as it's not Hand of Thrawn style where everything including Palestine becoming Emperort is all part of Thrawns master plan

 

I'm sick of people blaming everything on the Jews

 

I need to look at my predictive text more

 

Maybe Zahn wouldn't have made up the Clone Wars as one big war but into a series of different conflicts with the use of clones being the only thing they have in common.

What i would also have liked would be if the different sides in the wars and would have all used clone soldiers at some point.

 

Haha Emperor Palestine has turned up plenty of times in my posts before being edited. Are you familiar with Grand Admiral Thrash? He gets in sometimes too.

 

Are you literally so confused by his position that you don't think his post was made in good faith?

Because that's kind of ridiculous.

 

I mean, he didn't have to say anything. IRRC he was asked only how he felt about changes the PT made to what he had assumed about the backstory.
You're kind of cynical. Remember that people like R.A. Salvatore also liked the AotC script. (That interview I probably can find, as I was reading it about a week ago.)

 

We can only speculate, but if I had to venture some guesses, I'd say:

1) Anakin would have become Vader much sooner, probably at the end of II (keeping in line with the 2nd act being the darkest and lowest point for the characters) and the third movie would have been about Vader hunting down the Jedi and Obi-Wan on the run.

2) There would have been more ties to the OT's throwaway lines. For example, remember in Empire when Luke says about Dagobah "Something familiar about this place". Zahn probably would have had Luke and Leia born there as a way to pay that off. And he probably wouldn't have written the story in a way that makes Obi-Wan look like a total liar in the OT. "You're father wanted you to have this when you were old enough". Oh yeah, I'm sure right after you chopped his limbs off, he was so upset that he wasn't going to be able to give his lightsaber to that unborn child resting in the wife he almost choked to death.

3) The Anakin/Obi-Wan relationship would have been the core of the story for three films. To me, that was one of the major failings of the prequels. It really should have been about a friendship that erodes into a heated rivalry. But they BARELY even look at each other in TPM, and separated for most of ATOC (and when they are, they come off more as being irritated with each other as opposed to having a real partnership) and in III (where we finally get to see some friendlier moments between them) they get separated again until the end. These decisions robbed us of seeing what should have been the emotional core of the three films. We should have seen them as teacher and student, brothers in arms, and then enemies. I feel like a lot of us felt this way, and that Zahn would have geared the stories towards that.

4) And if he were writing it, I'm sure Zahn would have found someway to reference Thrawn, even if it was something as simple as just having the Chiss in the story somehow.

 

presumably, Zahn would have the ROTJ novelization to hand.

Thus - Owen would be Obi-Wan's brother, and Anakin would not know Padme was pregnant when she left him.

"Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough"

might be handled with Padme telling Obi-Wan that they were planning on having a child, and that Anakin had been planning on raising the child as a Jedi and handing down his lightsaber to them.

 

By the way Owen being Obi-Wan's brother, was it originally George's idea or did it come from Kasdan or James Kahn?

 

Looking through the screenplay drafts, I think it's a Kasdan idea that George never considered canon.

 

I never understood this. Obi and Ani were clearly very close by AotC. He was confiding in Obi about his dreams and even his intoxication with Padme.
Then RotS shows us how much Anakin has grown throughout the war.
That opening act of RotS after watching AotC all the time for three years is something else.
"This time we'll do it together".
"I was about to say that".

Their fighters flying in sync, Anakin having matured "I say patience" etc etc etc.

I thought George balanced their relationship against the larger galactic story very well.

 

Several good moments don't make up for a lack of actual relationship building.

 

What i'm saying is that for me there was very clear relationship building.

 

What you're describing isn't relationship building. It's relationship points. We don't see their relationship change in any drastic way until the last third of RotS. We just see different phases of their relationship.

In TPM, there is no relationship.

In AotC, they're master and apprentice.

In RotS, they're Best Friends.

Where in any of these movies, save for the last part of RotS, does their relationship actually shift, or develop, or grow?

 

Exactly. Compare that to say Luke and Han from the OT. They start off not liking each other at all, but their experiences together lead to them bonding and growing to like and respect each other, which then leads to Luke's understandable disappointment in Han leaving, and the great payoff at the end where Han helps him out.

And that was all done in one movie with Han not even being introduced until around the halfway point in the film. It was still a friendship I could feel and understand, where as Obi-Wan and Anakin just kind of exist in the roles written for them. The most we got was in III, and even then it was kind of rushed.

 

What are you talking about? Every movie shows their progress, just like Luke leveling up every movie.