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I'm asking because to be honest, the prequals could have been better. anakin never came across as a good man (he always seemed immature at best and sociopathic at worst), the clone wars weren't really there, and obi wan didn't really try to redeem anakin. Anakin and Padme had no real chemistry (no i'm not dissing the lines, there really was no sense of chemistry between either of the two actors.) Palpatine was also way to obvious. the only way anyone would fall for it was if they were stupid.

They aren't horrible, but to be honest, the prequals could have been better.

Off the top of my head.

Introduced Anakin as a young Jedi instead of a kid. Have the first move focus on his rise in power and importance in the order ending with his becoming a Jedi Knight. The second his corruption and fall culminating in him winning an epic duel with Darth Maul and taking his place at Palpatine's side. The third would be his hunting down the order instead of just killing some kids while the clone troopers do the real work.

Also give him a real reason to fall to the darkside instead of something that a simple c-section could have prevented...

Oh and no Gungans.

To me, the main problem with the prequels was that they were rushed. TPM was like ANH: a self-contained story. Except unlike ANH, there was no chance TPM would bomb at the box office, so all it managed to do was waste a third of the time Lucas had for telling the stories that had to be told (fall of Anakin, fall of the Jedi, fall of the Republic). Worse, by putting AOTC ten years in the future, it effectively forced all the characters to be reintroduced.

First off, no child-Anakin in Episode 1. He has to be an adult, and he has to be portrayed as Obi-Wan described him in ANH: a great pilot, a war hero, an idealistic crusader. I remember an idea tossed around a couple years ago about him being a reckless officer in the Naboo fighter corps that's stuck with me. The Clone Wars definately has to either start in Ep.1 or already be underway. The overall plot of TPM can still be worked into that framework without too many changes. Like maybe he and Obi-Wan go off to save this peaceful, helpless planet that the Republic's ignoring because it's got bigger problems to deal with?

AOTC would be all about the Clone Wars pushing Anakin to make serious moral choices: violating his beliefs as a Jedi and soldier in order to save the things he's fighting for. Friendship with Padme-character turns to love, way to find solace in wartorn world. Clones could either be a desperate Republic measure to stem the tide of the CIS's endless droid armies (in which case, Anakin approves, Jedi don't), or another trick of the Confederate's sleeve (appear at the last minute, destroying all Anakin's hard work in a bloody battle or something). Dunno which.

ROTS is Anakin finally breaking with the Jedi over how the war is fought. He wants victory at any cost, they want to fight "by the book." Palpatine/Anakin turn on the Jedi in the interests of bringing the war to an end (maybe the Jedi want to "free" the clones, maybe the Republich as some new superweapon). Padme sticks to what she believes in, gets killed saving Obi-Wan from Anakin in a duel (like maybe he deflects a blaster shot back at her without even thinking). Twins are miraculously saved from the womb.

I will set down one thing in iron: For the first, the clones will not be the Republic's army (or, at the very, very least, not its regular army), and they will not be based on Boba Fett fanwank Jango Fett. Nor will they be the straight predecessors of the Stormtroopers.

"Clone Wars" it was. It cannot be said any plainer that the war was fought against the clones, not by them.

Not really; when you say 'Great Atom war', people probably won't jump to the conclusion that it was being fought against atomic bombs. Really, the original Clone Wars comment was ambigious enough that the way the prequels presented it was fine with me.

Atoms are not intelligent beings. They cannot be an enemy. Clones are, and can.

Should the French and Indian War be called instead, The British Colonist War?

why can't both sides use clones? That way it would be between clones.

Darth Hoth wrote:Atoms are not intelligent beings. They cannot be an enemy. Clones are, and can.

Should the French and Indian War be called instead, The British Colonist War?

Well, the clones were certainly the enemy from the Separatist POV, weren't they? I mean, really, as I said, Obi Wan's original comment didn't really say anything beyond the fact that it involved clones.

Obi-Wan never said "Clone Wars." It was Luke and Leia that called them that.

Srelex wrote:

Darth Hoth wrote:Atoms are not intelligent beings. They cannot be an enemy. Clones are, and can.

Should the French and Indian War be called instead, The British Colonist War?

Well, the clones were certainly the enemy from the Separatist POV, weren't they? I mean, really, as I said, Obi Wan's original comment didn't really say anything beyond the fact that it involved clones.

The British Colonists were certainly the enemy from the French and Indian point of view, were they not?

It is stupid and a needless illogicality and borderline inconsistency, if not quite the latter. One does not name a war after one's own forces.

Darth Yan wrote:why can't both sides use clones? That way it would be between clones.

While that is at least better, the war suffers a huge loss thematically if no one but faceless automata dies on either side. (Although this did happen in the canonical prequel trilogy, of course.)

Darth Hoth wrote:
It is stupid and a needless illogicality and borderline inconsistency, if not quite the latter. One does not name a war after one's own forces.

Why not? We've had things named after specific weapons--the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example.

Darth Hoth wrote:While that is at least better, the war suffers a huge loss thematically if no one but faceless automata dies on either side. (Although this did happen in the canonical prequel trilogy, of course.)

I think there's still something to be said for droid armies. That's just classic sci-fi. Though you're right that something's lost the way it is now with droids vs. clones.

Perhaps clones using droids as soldiers? The way the Clone Wars is described by Zahn in TTT (clones trying to conquer the galaxy), you figure they must either have been oppressed (which doesn't jive well, since the protagonists would ostensibly be fighting against them) or just have superiority complexes like Khan (in which case, using cannon fodder clones doesn't seem to fit).

I personally don't care about the way "the Clone Wars" turned out. It was a mere throwaway line in ANH. Some of the early EU implied that people thought badly about the Clones, but the EU was barred from ever clearly elaborating on the Clone Wars as well.

TC Pilot wrote:To me, the main problem with the prequels was that they were rushed. TPM was like ANH: a self-contained story. Except unlike ANH, there was no chance TPM would bomb at the box office, so all it managed to do was waste a third of the time Lucas had for telling the stories that had to be told (fall of Anakin, fall of the Jedi, fall of the Republic). Worse, by putting AOTC ten years in the future, it effectively forced all the characters to be reintroduced.

I disagree with the opinion that TPM was too self-contained, or that the characters' aged portrayals were too disconnected. TPM lays the groundwork for Anakin's character. He's a poor slave boy who grew up with little, held on tightly to what he did have (like his mother), and had big idealistic dreams of being a big hero. I'm fine with him starting as a kid, because it contrasts better with his eventual downfall. Yet that kid was also given reasons for turning out the way that he did. Anakin had little respect for the system and wanted to change it, and TPM clearly established that the system was broken. The only father figure he did know was Qui-Gon (who was gentle and encouraging with him). Qui-Gon's premature death, and Obi-Wan's vastly different parenting style, were important parts of the story arc. The loss of both of his parent figures leads to Anakin's attachment issues, which plague him in ROTS.

Obi-Wan himself was introduced as the younger but ironically more conservative student of Qui-Gon's, who unlike his free-thinking master had a much stronger respect for authority. He saw how his master had been shut out of the Jedi Council because of politics, and was much more comfortable with following the system. His role in TPM was thin, but those facts were established and were carried on in AOTC and ROTS. It's why Obi-Wan was much stricter and less trusting toward Anakin.

Padme is actually an underrated character IMO, after recently seeing the prequel trilogy a couple months ago. Some people just bash on her for being "monotone" in TPM, ignoring the fact that she's a completely different person when she's out of the dresses and makeup, and pretending to be a handmaiden. She's just a teenager in TPM, so it was clear to me that she was young, inexperienced, and trapped in her role. A role that carried a lot of responsibilities and tradition. She was shown forlornly staring out of windows several times to show the burden on her. Yet she also took her role very seriously, and fought hard for her people despite all of the Senate's bullshit.

Early in AOTC, she forlornly advises Anakin not to "grow up too fast." In Darth Wong's review, he defended the prequel romance by saying that Padme probably fell in love despite Anakin's lame lines because she's inexperienced and raised in a highly structured and restrictive environment herself. I thought that was a sensible interpretation, but I didn't think much about the subject, nor did I think that the movie itself did anything to actually show that. But seeing the movie again, that line really stands out. Padme is someone who's been through a lot, and feels isolated by her job. The incompetence and corruption that she had to put up with in TPM also furthers her loneliness, and makes her distrustful of others. In AOTC, she had a clear take-charge, self-sufficient attitude. She repeatedly refused offers of help from others, and made decisions of her own in defiance of Anakin's position as her bodyguard. None of this was made into a big plot focus, but it was there. I was impressed with how well her personality flowed from TPM to AOTC, after not having given much thought to her character at all for years and years.

As for things that I would want to change, here are a few:
[*]Jar Jar's incompetence would be dialed down a bit. I never thought he was as horrible as many TPM detractors thought, but he is annoying. My problem with his role in the Battle of Naboo is that he kept screwing up, and did nothing but screw up, but just lucked into kills. Show him being clumsy and screwing up, but also show him shooting a gun with his own hand and getting some legit kills of his own. That turns him from a total screwup and annoyance into a guy who's not the best but puts in a good effort.

[*]Write Anakin into the Battle of Naboo better. Again I'm fine with him being a kid. But I don't know why they even took him into the hangar bay, and I thought it was pretty lame for the autopilot in his ship to just take him into the battle (where his lines detracted from the tension). Show Anakin sneaking into a fighter against Qui-Gon's wishes (or better yet, Obi-Wan's, who would be left in charge of him). Then have him show some more fear while in the cockpit, to maintain the tension.

[*]The love lines in AOTC were pretty bad. As with Jar Jar, I maintain that they were a small part of the movie and were never as bad as many detractors thought, although there's room for improvement. I really liked Wong's idea of Anakin and Padme fleeing Sith assassins throughout the movie, with Anakin getting battered but eventually winning Padme's heart with his courageous actions.

[*]Make Grievous more Terminator and less Snidely Whiplash. His portrayal in the movie is actually fine, on its own. The cartoon was arguably at fault for the disconnect in his portrayal. But for a minor henchman villain, I would have preferred his much more fearsome portrayal in the cartoon than the sneaky escape artist we got in the movie.

It is stupid and a needless illogicality and borderline inconsistency, if not quite the latter. One does not name a war after one's own forces.

No, people just name wars after their ideals, like "Enduring Freedom." Then there's stuff like "The Great Patriotic War." There's no way to argue how logical a war's name is, because there are no rules for naming wars.

Jim Raynor wrote:I disagree with the opinion that TPM was too self-contained, or that the characters' aged portrayals were too disconnected. TPM lays the groundwork for Anakin's character. He's a poor slave boy who grew up with little, held on tightly to what he did have (like his mother), and had big idealistic dreams of being a big hero. I'm fine with him starting as a kid, because it contrasts better with his eventual downfall. Yet that kid was also given reasons for turning out the way that he did. Anakin had little respect for the system and wanted to change it, and TPM clearly established that the system was broken. The only father figure he did know was Qui-Gon (who was gentle and encouraging with him). Qui-Gon's premature death, and Obi-Wan's vastly different parenting style, were important parts of the story arc. The loss of both of his parent figures leads to Anakin's attachment issues, which plague him in ROTS.

For me, it's the fact that his character (and to a lesser extent Padme's) shouldn't be recognizable. He goes from 10 to 20. That's a decade of some pretty major physical and mental changes.

Real people change, but changes are often rooted to their past. There was a recent article about how people's adult personalities can be set by early childhood.

Anakin and Padme both change but there is consistency and progression in their change. Despite his clinginess and fear of loss, Anakin begins the trilogy as a happy kid. Padme begins as an overwhelmed and naive teenager, and is shaped by events into an independent and distrustful woman.

On a somewhat shallow level as far as directly altering the existing movies, I think Mike Nichols voiced a meaningful complaint in the audio commentary of his edit of TPM- there are an amazing number of scenes littering the film with either redundant information the audience is already familiar with or that don’t meaningfully advance the plot at all (travel through the planet’s core!). By cutting those sorts of scenes to improve the pacing of the film, and reducing Anakin and Jar-Jar’s “antics”, Nichols ends up with a rather nifty version in The Phantom Edit. I wish I had that on a DVD. I haven’t seen his AOTC edit all the way through, but I do know that he cut out almost a third (!) of the movie’s length.

More thematically I can see where Lucas hit the big points over the course of the prequel trilogy in turning our perception of Darth Vader in the original trilogy into a tragic villain, it's just....he needed to do it better. This could be a bizarre comparison, but I think a “successful” PT fits Anakin in a stronger sort of Don Draper or Jimmy McNulty archetype. Yeah, he cheats on his pregnant wife and kids, and drinks too much, (or slaughters a few too many people with his lightsaber) but it's fun watching him! He holds the audience sympathy all the way through to the point where the rug is pulled out from under him and we see him make very bad choice(s) that are frighteningly logical consequences of prior indiscretions we (the audience/the Jedi) have previously apologized for.

…But it was never fun watching Anakin do his thing, making watching his character arc more an exercise in foreplay for the good stuff of Darth Vader stalking around Force-choking underlings. I could watch hours of that. And the squeaky mice things running around the Star Destroyers.

I don't know, is this DD/McNulty comparison a stupid idea? "Do what you did only with less suck" isn't very useful advice I know.

Episode one.

Ideally it would be nothing like what we saw, but if we are trying to salvage elements of the original plot...

Reposting thoughts I had on it a while ago:

* Completely remove the entire Gungan species from Naboo
* Completely remove the entire Tattoine segments of the film, including the Pod Race.
* MAKE THE DROID ARMIES ACTUALLY MENACING. The droids were lamo comic relief in the film, and they totally undermined the tension from looking stupid, being totally useless and making "funny" dialogue.
* Make Annakin an ACTUAL PILOT, none of this 8 year old pod racing wonder boy garbage. Obi Wan said Annakin was a "great pilot" when he met him, so lets stick with that.
* Remove the Annakin being miraculously conceived garbage, have him be the love child of a powerful Jedi Master or something.

As far as the overarching plot goes, there's nothing inherently wrong with the mystery plot about the Sith and some political stuff.

* Qui Gon and Obi Wan switch places in the story, with Obi Wan being eager and adventurous, and Qui Gon being extremely reserved and set in his ways. Instead of Qui Gon wanting to train Annakin, it would be Obi Wan who did against his Master's wishes.

* Make Annakin like, 17 or 18 years old. Then the audience isn't creeped out when people talk about an 8 year old boy being "too old". This also helps out with some Ep 2 stuff.

* Make the Queen like 17, minimum.

Annakin would be introduced to the plot when they need a daring pilot to blow past the Trade Federation blockade. He's a new pilot in the Naboo defense force, but is never-the-less skilled, and the Jedi sense the force is strong with him.

* Obi Wan is like, 20 or 21, nearly at the end of his training.

* There needs to be an explanation of some kind for why 99% of the Trade Federation Ships just up and left when they came back from Coruscant.

Anyway the rest happens pretty standard, Annakin rallies the pilots who think it can't be done and leads the attack on the Control ship. Darth Maul kills Qui Gon on the planet, then Obi Wan gets worked up and kills him. None of this keeping his composure with flawless choreography, I want some actual emotion.

Finally,

* Qui Gon doesn't want the boy trained, but Obi Wan lies to the council and tells them that he agreed and did want him trained.

IMO, this lends better to the character, because it adds a bit of depth to Obi Wan, who is otherwise basically a conservative, emotionless robot.

I think that having Annakin be only a few years younger than Obi Wan adds believability to the resentment that Annakin feels regarding Obi Wan "holding him back", since he's basically got to look up on and respect somebody the same age as him.

Episode I is mostly worthless; it basically wastes 1/3 of the Prequel Trilogy telling a story that is only tangentially related to the real storyline. Ideally, the Prequels should have begun with something similar to the mystery-based plot-line of Episode 2, which culminates in the outbreak of the Clone War. Perhaps the story could open with Amidala arriving on Coruscant to request the help of the Jedi in uncovering her assassin, and the council dispatches Obi Wan to investigate. Obviously, the circumstances surrounding Obi Wan meeting Anakin would need to be completely reworked, but the idea of having Anakin as a 18 or 19 year-old pilot in the Naboo airforce who accompanies the Queen seems promising.

The ironic thing about the Prequels is that Episode I was really the only film which actually felt like it had an organic plot-line. Yeah, it was a pretty bad movie, but the storyline actually seemed to move along organically, whereas Episode II and III felt more like Lucas was just going down a checklist of plot-points. Anakin and Padme need to fall in love? Check. Secret clone-army revealed? Check. Anakin seduced by Palpatine? Check. Anakin fights Obi-Wan? Check. Darth Vader suit, Imperial march, segue to Episode IV? Check! Also, Boba Fett.

Again, this all seems to be a symptom of Episode I taking up precious screen-time on very peripheral material. If the Prequels were paced better at the writing-stage, with Anakin and Obi-Wan's initial encounter being worked into the mystery plot leading up to the Clone Wars, not only would we have more screen time to develop Anakin's character and ultimately his downfall, but Episode 2 and 3 wouldn't come off as a vacuous check-list of plot-points.

I have some ideas, mostly about the backstory of the prequels.

The Republic - The galaxy has been dominated by the Republic for a thousand generations. Unfortunately, it's begun to collapse. The people are apathetic and complacent, tolerating the often massive corruption of their leaders because they feel powerless to fight against it. The Republic tries to mask the decay with a facade of glory and stability, but a series of rebellions have exposed the cracks undeniably.

The Clone Wars - For the last two centuries, coalitions of systems have attempts to break away from the Republic. Some have grown tired of the corruption and hopelessness of the Republic, and some have sought simply to oppress their peoples more directly. These wars are known collectively as the Clone Wars, because both sides have used armies of cloned soldiers and battledroids to fight.

The clone armies are a sign of the malaise that has fallen over the galaxy, as almost no conventionally born people have served in the ranks of the military in generations. People can't be bothered to defend their own Republic or fight for their own independence anymore. They sit at home and watch propaganda broadcasts about their troops winning victories, and occasionally flee when their worlds become battlefields.

The Jedi - The Jedi are an ancient order of Force-users allied with the Republic and devoted to the Light Side of the Force. They aren't the only Force-users in the galaxy, but they are one of the most famous. Their numbers have dwindled in recent times, as they devote themselves to travelling the galaxy and putting down small, local problems instead of guarding the Senate and the Chancellor as they once did. Their strict rules and idealism, along with their declining galactic prominence, have resulted in their numbers dwindling; they're seen as making too many rigid demands in exchange for too little fame or glory for potential members. The Jedi have long opposed clone armies, exhorting the people of the Republic to join its military to defend it. When the next Clone War starts, the Republic will demand the Jedi accept command of clone troops. The Jedi will do so, but will also recruit non-clones into their service as they have always done.

I wouldn't change much about the prequels just a few basic things here and there. I think that overall the ideas surrounding the prequels weren't that bad, just poorly executed.

TPM:

-Anakin would be older when they meet him. This would solve a lot of problems for me. If he's older when they meet him, he can be more easily integrated into the Battle of Naboo and his relationship with Padme becomes significantly less icky. Also, I think it helps draw parallels to Luke in the OT.
-Jar Jar would be funny. I don't' care how he's made funny, but he would actually be funny. He would make jokes that weren't annoying or stupid, but actually funny.

The rest of TPM could stay the same as long as they made those two changes.

AOTC:

This is the one I would change the most. The basic plot would be changed significantly. Anikan and Padme would be on the run from bounty hunters, hopefully a new character/characters and not a repaint of Boba Fett, and they would develop their relationship in the midst of this danger instead of the safety of Naboo. The creation of the clone troopers would be done legally by Palpatine, instead of something he did in secret, and stand as a sign of just how bad the situation with the separatists has become. Obi Wan then instead of investigating the clone troopers, goes on a mission to assassinate the separatist leaders on that bug planet. The final change is that Dooku would be unknown to the Jedi. He wouldn't have been a former Jedi, just someone that Palpatine trained in secret. To the Jedi, he's just another politician, not a true threat.

ROTS:

I think this one was actually kind of okay. I can't think of too many things I would change about this one.

Channel72 wrote:Episode I is mostly worthless; it basically wastes 1/3 of the Prequel Trilogy telling a story that is only tangentially related to the real storyline.

Episode I establishes Anakin's character, how he was raised, and what he wants and fears. It sets the stage for how he reacts to things and changes in Episodes II and III. Anakin's fall and eventual redemption is the real storyline of SW. TPM also establishes the Jedi's complacency and stagnation, as well as how dysfunctional the Republic is. It shows Palpatine beginning to seize control of the government. The movie also shows Qui-Gon being a supportive father figure to Anakin. Despite how underused Obi-Wan is in TPM, he's contrasted to Qui-Gon and that difference is important to the trilogy.

EDIT:

The ironic thing about the Prequels is that Episode I was really the only film which actually felt like it had an organic plot-line. Yeah, it was a pretty bad movie, but the storyline actually seemed to move along organically, whereas Episode II and III felt more like Lucas was just going down a checklist of plot-points. Anakin and Padme need to fall in love? Check. Secret clone-army revealed? Check. Anakin seduced by Palpatine? Check. Anakin fights Obi-Wan? Check. Darth Vader suit, Imperial march, segue to Episode IV? Check! Also, Boba Fett.

Do you have any actual reasons why the plots of Episodes II and III were like a "checklist," beyond subjective statement?

If the Prequels were paced better at the writing-stage, with Anakin and Obi-Wan's initial encounter being worked into the mystery plot leading up to the Clone Wars, not only would we have more screen time to develop Anakin's character and ultimately his downfall,

They already took their sweet time developing Anakin throughout all the movies.

I remember that the Distressed Watcher's main grip with the romance was that Padme genuinely seemed uninterested in him and her rejections seemed like real rejections. As such the kiss scene felt forced. He also pointed out that Padme's reaction to Anakin's confession was out of character; she claims to have huge moral standards yet when he confesses that he's slaughtered innocent women and children she's like "oh we all have bad days." I actually felt that was a fair point; if the plot hadn't demanded it I wouldn't see Padme falling in love with anakin. Also, given that anakin's a perfect little altruist in episode i, it seems wierd that he's a borderline sociopath in the second film. Also, he never gave off the appearance that he was a good man in episode i and ii, and showed only small signs in episode III; as such the redemption does come across as insincere. And obi wan's lackluster attempts at redemption also made him seem insincere. If he had made a genuine effort rather then giving up after two tries, I would have believed it.

Padme stares at him, and says things like how he's making her feel uncomfortable. Those scenes could be read either way, with one explanation being that she's tempted but rejects him out of a sense of duty (which she makes explicit during that scene on Naboo, when talks about how tortured he is). By the time they're on the ship to Naboo, alone, she stops trying to fight against his advances. I do think that the first kiss did come across as too fast and felt forced though.

She talks a lot about democracy and duty. She's been a Queen and a Senator, and takes that seriously. But that doesn't mean she's perfect. I don't see how making exceptions for people who are close to you is that big a contradiction; real people do that all the time. Anakin said that the Sand People were "like animals," something that had already been said earlier by Shmi's crippled husband. The only thing she probably saw them as was a bunch of violent savages, so that's probably why she excused it. Look at all the Americans who harp on "freedom" on one hand, but then say that we should "nuke the Middle East."

I've already gone over how TPM Anakin leads into ROTS Anakin. He grew up as a slave, was torn away from his mother, and had his kindly father figure killed off, before being taken in by the restrictive and unsupportive Jedi Order. He then spends ten years being mentored by Obi-Wan, a conservative Jedi who didn't believe in him like Qui-Gon did from the very start. Anakin is someone with attachment issues for the few things that he does have, and yearns to take control of his life (which has been determined by others and sprinkled with tragic events throughout). He sees how broken the government is, and favors simple, authoritarian solutions without all the political BS (and he sees himself as the one to do it, stemming all the way back to the big dreams he had as an "altruistic" child). I also don't know how you can say he never came off as a good person in Episode I, after calling him a "perfect little altruist" in the previous sentence.

Obi-Wan's mission was to kill Anakin, not try to talk him down. He talks to Anakin a couple times anyway, and Anakin doesn't even try to hide how twisted and evil he has become.