TPM: what if Anakin were in his mid teens?

[aussiemuscle308]

Also the stuff about Anakin being conceived by the force is kind of dumb and I wish it was never included.

She just said that to avoid talking about the father...imo

i like Coyote's suggestion to make him Dooku's illegitimate son. (another opportunity for history to echo "no, I am your father".)

[adam_grif]

Well there's a fine line between echoing the PT and rehashing it, and I think making Dooku be the father of Anakin is probably crossing that line.

[Havok]

Except that we have a pretty good idea that Anakin wasn't conceived by the Force, but by Darth Plagueis, so it isn't really an issue.

[adam_grif]

Unless you mean he took Shimi out for a nice dinner and did a bit of the old in out in out, then I don't care. "Conceived by the force" isn't really much sillier than "conceived by a sith lord's force powers", since the force has a will and all force users are essentially just asking it for favors anyway.

[Havok]

"Partially, but it also obeys your commands."

Sorry, but one of the first thing we learn about the Force says otherwise.

And fucking really. Artificial insemination, no matter how it was actually administered, isn't really that far of stretch for one that Sidious names as one of the most powerful Force users ever.

[adam_grif]

Sorry, but one of the first thing we learn about the Force says otherwise.

How does that contradict what I said? The force is doing everything, not the people, they just ask it to do stuff. Please don't tell me you're just making a semantic nit pick because I said they asked it for favors and obi wan said it obeyed your commands, since that distinction is rather irrelevant to what's at hand.

The ridiculous part isn't that artificial insemnation exists, it's that there is a force power that makes women pregnant. Whether she got pregnant because it was the will of the force or the will of darth whocares doesn't change anything about this situation. It's only really hinted at that it was darth whatever that did it in the films anyway, I'm assuming you have some EU source that implies it heavily or something.

Actually you know what? If they retconned it so that darth noscreentime broke into her home, knocked her out and fertilized an egg with a syringe, I'd totally be down with that.

Either way, there is no real reason for it to be here. The only possible thing it could add to the story is really vague foreshadowing about the force being able to create life for ep 3, but it was never brought up in connection with Sideous' Ep 3 ramblings about darth slight-variation-on-a-bad-thing. He just kind of said that he could influence midichlorians (lol) to create life, or even save someone from dying, and Anakin just kind of accepted it at face value. Did Anakin even know that he was conceived by the force?

[Knife]

"Partially, but it also obeys your commands."

Sorry, but one of the first thing we learn about the Force says otherwise.

And fucking really. Artificial insemination, no matter how it was actually administered, isn't really that far of stretch for one that Sidious names as one of the most powerful Force users ever.

That whole line, including the bit about about controling your actions, along with Anakin being born of the Force plays nicely into a theme like Greek Myth where Heroes are born of gods doink'n good look'n women. One of the biggest themes of the movies that gets beaten to death but people who play the video games more than pay attention to the movies, is the Force being fate/god/destiney/whatever you want to call it. (Not that I think you play too many video games)


Though I do find the Darth Plageus thing silly so I guess I'm biased against that particular theory.

[Galvatron]

If anything, the Tatooine connection isn't necessary and should have been cut out of TPM. Pretty sure the original SW novelization, or maybe the script, had Uncle Owens Ben's brother, should have kept that dynamic and drop a line some where in the first two movies about Obi Wan's brother farming water on a backwater world; then have Obi Wan have an epiphany in RotS to hide Luke there. No need for Tattooine really in the prequels, but that's my personal opinion.

The only reason I'd have used Tatooine as Anakin's home planet was this line from ANH:

"[Owen] didn't hold with your father's ideals; thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved." That implies that Owen and Anakin had some sort of brotherly relationship far beyond what we saw in AOTC.

But since Lucas decided to ignore that (I assume because he felt by then that Obi-Wan's entire story was a fabrication ), there was no reason Anakin couldn't have come from somewhere else.

[TheHammer]

If anything, the Tatooine connection isn't necessary and should have been cut out of TPM. Pretty sure the original SW novelization, or maybe the script, had Uncle Owens Ben's brother, should have kept that dynamic and drop a line some where in the first two movies about Obi Wan's brother farming water on a backwater world; then have Obi Wan have an epiphany in RotS to hide Luke there. No need for Tattooine really in the prequels, but that's my personal opinion.

The only reason I'd have used Tatooine as Anakin's home planet was this line from ANH:

"[Owen] didn't hold with your father's ideals; thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved." That implies that Owen and Anakin had some sort of brotherly relationship far beyond what we saw in AOTC.

But since Lucas decided to ignore that (I assume because he felt by then that Obi-Wan's entire story was a fabrication ), there was no reason Anakin couldn't have come from somewhere else.

It wasn't entirely a fabrication on Obi-Wan's part. Based on Beru and Owen's conversation in ANH in talking about Luke and Luke's father, it seemed to imply that there was more of a relationship than the "some guy I met once because my dad married his mom".

Another reason that it could have been so much better to have had Anakin older. Owen could have been the upright older brother (Half Brother or Step Brother still maybe?), disappointed with Anakin's pod racing and disdain for farming. Anakin would have left at Owen's dismay, following Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade... come back years later with the same story line of his mother being taken by tusken raiders, and still blaming himself for her death for not having been there to protect her.

[Galvatron]

It wasn't entirely a fabrication on Obi-Wan's part. Based on Beru and Owen's conversation in ANH in talking about Luke and Luke's father, it seemed to imply that there was more of a relationship than the "some guy I met once because my dad married his mom".

That's my point: why would the Owen that we saw in AOTC give a fuck that his dickhead stepbrother (whom he barely knew) left Tatooine to rescue Obi-Wan?

Another reason that it could have been so much better to have had Anakin older. Owen could have been the upright older brother (Half Brother or Step Brother still maybe?), disappointed with Anakin's pod racing and disdain for farming. Anakin would have left at Owen's dismay, following Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade... come back years later with the same story line of his mother being taken by tusken raiders, and still blaming himself for her death for not having been there to protect her.

That is better, but it's not how George Lucas wanted to do it so you're obviously just a nerd-rager like the rest of us.

[Elfdart]

It wasn't entirely a fabrication on Obi-Wan's part. Based on Beru and Owen's conversation in ANH in talking about Luke and Luke's father, it seemed to imply that there was more of a relationship than the "some guy I met once because my dad married his mom".

That's my point: why would the Owen that we saw in AOTC give a fuck that his dickhead stepbrother (whom he barely knew) left Tatooine to rescue Obi-Wan?

Let's recap what happened in AOTC: Owen meets his stepmother's son, who left his mom a decade before to become a Jedi. This son rushes off into the desert after the Tusken raiders by himself -after a search party was wiped out, which cost Owen's father his leg. Anakin brings Shmi's corpse back to the homestead and goes into a tirade about how he massacred a whole clan of Sand People, how much he resents Obi-Wan and how he wants to be the most powerful Jedi ever. After his mother's funeral, Anakin runs off to save Obi-Wan.

A few years later, Obi-Wan shows up with the prodigal son's baby boy, at some point telling the Larses that Anakin is dead. Obi-Wan turns up some time later with Anakin's lightsaber and Owen tells him to piss off.

The point is, Owen and Beru have seen more than enough of Anakin and Obi-Wan to know that they don't want their adopted kid to have anything to do with them -and who can blame them? Owen may not have known Anakin very well, but he did live with Shmi and cared about her. Her son being a moody, reckless young man who ended up "dead", leaving behind an orphaned son of his own must have made an impression. On top of that, Owen had two decades to think about how all this came to happen and he obviously reached the conclusion that Anakin should have never left Tattooine. No dead Shmi, no dead Anakin, no Jedi, no orphaned Luke.

[Galvatron]

Yeah, well...

Okay, that actually does make sense to me now.

[TheHammer]

That is better, but it's not how George Lucas wanted to do it so you're obviously just a nerd-rager like the rest of us.

What does George Lucas wanting or not wanting have to do with a "what-if" scenario such as this?

[aussiemuscle308]

about Obi Wan's brother farming water on a backwater world; then have Obi Wan have an epiphany in RotS to hide Luke there. No need for Tattooine really in the prequels, but that's my personal opinion.

That sounds better than Annakin forgetting about the owens family when he became darth vader. where else would they have stashed his son? it'd be the first few places you'd look.
you'd also need to rework Anni's fall to the dark side. i equate it to a priest finally deciding/realising that religion is crap and abandoning his way of life, so it's not something that would happen easily. maybe if he thought Obi-wan killed padme that might make him angry enough to blow away the jedi...

Well, he didn't know he had a son remember? Or a daughter for that matter. .

Vader: "Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father"
sounds to me like he knew, he only didn't know about Leia.

[Elfdart]

He didn't know about Luke until after the Battle of Yavin.

[Havok]

Yeah, well...

Okay, that actually does make sense to me now.

This is a nice example of people forgetting that in the context of the movies, these are real people that have lived real lives and have their own perceptions about what has transpired in them. Just because we see what actually happens, doesn't mean that every character has and like in real life, 20 years can do a lot to how people remember things and other people.

[Elfdart]

Yeah, well...

Okay, that actually does make sense to me now.

This is a nice example of people forgetting that in the context of the movies, these are real people that have lived real lives and have their own perceptions about what has transpired in them. Just because we see what actually happens, doesn't mean that every character has and like in real life, 20 years can do a lot to how people remember things and other people.

Exactly, and as literary giants like Gore Vidal have pointed out, a character should only know what he knows (or thinks he knows) and think what he thinks. Vidal even referred to it as the Jamesian Stricture, after Henry James, who created characters in much the same way.

Owen Lars has no way of knowing anything about Anakin, other than what he might have overheard Anakin say. Obi-Wan could have tried to tell him, but there's good reason for him not to tell Owen and Beru and judging from the way Owen reacts to the mention of Obi-Wan's name in ANH, it's not a sure thing Owen would have listened, let alone believed anything Kenobi had to say. Going by what happens in AOTC and ROTS, Owen has every reason to be suspicious of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Jedi and to regard them as trouble he and his nephew do not need.

For all the crap hurled at George Lucas for his writing, his characters and stories are in fact well thought-out. The characters and their motivations make perfect sense in context.

[aussiemuscle308]

You know what? It seems like we're seeing lots of "series reboots" lately, mostly around the Comic Books. Maybe Lucas, or whoever ends up with control of the franchise down the road, will see the light and reboot Star Wars...

it'd certainly be a lot easier to make the movies in chronological order, rather than how they were originally done.