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The entire PT should have been ROTS


The Choc
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  • 2 weeks later...

As Tank said if Lucas handed a 20 page treatment to a writer and then hired a director the prequels would be much better, even with essentially the same story. Having said that the biggest issue is TPM, Anakin being so young in it and it taking place so far away from the rest of the story.

 

There are 3 important relationships for Anakin in the PT. Obi Wan, Palpatine and Padme. TPM, 1/3 of the story, gives us basically zero in terms of his relationship with Obi Wan or Palpatine. Unless I'm mistaken his only interactions with Obi Wan in TPM are when Qui Gon introduces them and at Qui Gon's funeral when Obi Wan says he will train Anakin. His only interaction with Palpatine is when he tells Anakin he will watch his career at the end. Their relationships are advanced 0 during the movie. At least with Padme they interact, its not perfect because obviously their romance can't begin but at least we sort of set up that Anakin basically has Padme on this pedestal which plays a park in AOTC.

 

Like I said though his relationships with Obi Wan and Papatine are nonexistant. In AOTC he attempts to basically tell us that in those 10 years they've had a relationship (Obi Wan and Anakin talking about an adventure they had at some point, when we should have seen an adventure the 2 shared in TPM and Anakin telling Palpatine that his guidance has paid off). I guess we are just supposed to take Lucas word that over the 10 years Anakin has grown close to both of them but the problem is we don't get emotionally involved this way.

 

The PT is a big story and Lucas had choices to make about which parts to tell. When at the start you limit yourself to 3 movies you are basically admitting you can't tell the entire story. This isn't a long novel that you just start writing and it ends up as long as it ends up. Obviously at some point Anakin was 8, Obi Wan as an apprentice, Palpatine was a Senator. Those things are part of the story. They just weren't the part of the story that should have been show to us.

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I have a lot of problems with the prequels, but a kid Anakin was never one of them. We needed to see Anakin as a child prodigy with humble beginnings. Given that Lucas’s movies (the PT especially) was supposed to be a homage to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, it kinda feels wrong to exclude that chapter from the story. Anakin was a kid in TPM for that reason.


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That could have worked I guess, but that's kind of pushing it. Anakin's separation from his mother needed to occur at a relatively young age, an age when it would have had the largest and most lasting psychological impact. It needed to happen at an age when his sense of self was still malleable and not fully formed. Maybe a 12 yr old Anakin?

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Anakins separation from his mother didnt need to happen at all except for the fact it was written as a necessity. There are so many other ways all of it couldve been written. Anakin couldve been discovered as an adult and the story couldve worked, if thats how it was written. It didnt NEED it to be a Campbell riff at all.

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No, it didn’t NEED to, but why dumb it down? I get that Lucas botched what he was trying to do in a lot of ways, but I’ve always appreciated that there was an attempt to aspire higher than just telling an action/adventure story, but a story that resonates on a deeper level. Its what drew me to SW. All those myths withstood the test of time for a reason. They tell us something about our own inner workings. I like that there were some intellectual reasons behind the decisions that were made in those films, reasons other than doing something because it is “cool” or because the fans will like it.


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There are other myths than the Heroes Journey. It could have been a straight tragedy. We don't need to see Anakin being found. We can see him at the height of his powers at the start of the first movie and then just show the fall.

 

I always remember something Kasdan said about Star Wars. He said that you should start the story as late as you possibly can where the story still makes sense. Lucas did the exact opposite and basically started the story as early as he possibly could.

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There are other myths than the Heroes Journey. It could have been a straight tragedy. We don't need to see Anakin being found. We can see him at the height of his powers at the start of the first movie and then just show the fall.

 

 

That's a fair point. Lucas chose to portray Anakin as a failed hero, whereas his story could have been that of a fallen hero. Anakin could have started out as a veteran jedi knight, a hero of great notoriety, but with one weakness (pride, anger, whatever) that palp exploits. This one weakness of this otherwise great and noble man proves to be the germ that spawns Vader. I've often wondered how the PT would have looked if Lucas had gone that route. Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about that though. Given that initiation seems to be such an important theme in SW, it feels "wrong" to me that Anakin's story be portrayed in any way other than a failed initiation (a failed hero's journey).

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The thing is, Anakin’s journey was more or less the same as Luke’s. He just failed where Luke did not. Luke was an orphan with daddy issues— but we didn’t see him as a kid. ANH used a few lines spread over two scenes (three if you count the one cut from the film) and I got his absent parent angst BETTER than I did for Anakin. Why? Because we were with him alone. Luke barely remembered his father, had some BS story about him, but was clearly still enamored with the idea of Anakin. What better way to make us empathize with that than to show us his loneliness (staring at the suns) and put us in that moment as opposed to seeing his father leave him.

 

There’s certainly a way to do that, and Anakin losing his mother could have been pulled off— but by no means does that trope require him to be a little kid.

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Showing Anakin as a little boy isn't bad in and of itself. Its the fact that the prequels are only 3 parts, you have to choose what parts of the story to tell. I think you simply give up too much in other aspects by showing Anakin as a little boy. Mainly in his relationship with Obi Wan. Also I think we've seen Star Wars works best when there is a backstory to fall back. The OT obviously has what would become the PT as a backstory. The ST has alot of backstory to fall back on. The PT starts so f ar back that it almost feels like the characters started their existence at the beginning of TPM.

 

Personally the more I think of it the more i think start the story late, like really late. The Clone Wars are over. Palpatine has declared himself Emperor. There is a large number of systems against him though. At the end of the Clone Wars Anakin retired to Tatooine. He did something terrible during the Clone Wars, we don't know what though. Obi Wan shows up to bring Anakin into the fold against Yoda's wishes due to the terrible thing Anakin did during the Clone Wars. Obi Wan is willing to risk it though because he feels Anakin is their only chance to win. He shows up on Tatooine to start the trilogy, Anakin refuses to come until Obi Wan tells him that Padme is in danger. This brings Anakin back into the fold.

 

The whole thing has this sense of doom. Anakin knows he has these dark tendencies, but he is ashamed of them and tries to suppress them. This is why he retired. He didn't trust himself. This would explain Obi Wan's guilt in that eventhough everyone knew the danger of bringing Anakin back he did it.

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The thing is, Anakin’s journey was more or less the same as Luke’s. He just failed where Luke did not.

 

True, Anakin is a Luke that failed, and if that had been his only role in the prequels, his issues with his mother could have been pulled off without showing us a kid Anakin. But things were complicated by the fact that Lucas attached a whole other secondary mythological role to Anakin. He made Anakin a messiah figure! The stories of these figures begin at a very young age, usually with a miraculous birth, at a time when his/her society is deteriorating. These figures often have humble beginnings (coming from poverty, etc.), but display remarkable abilities as children. And there's often a prophecy involved. I think this is a big part of the reason Lucas started Anakin off young. Lucas wanted to model TPM after a very specific type of story.

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Agreed. The whole Chosen One idea should've been left out. It should've just been a Jedi who was incredibly powerful and amazing in every way who falls to the Dark Side. I found it interesting that after TPM brought this mythological concept into the forefront of its saga we started seeing other franchises follow suit-The Matrix, Harry Potter.

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True but I'm just referring to how the concept seemed to be stressed more and more through all these franchises as they went on through the aughts. In the first Matrix, Neo was "the One." That's really the reason for his name since it's an anagram for "one." But then in the sequels he's "the Chosen One." Still the same thing but they should've just kept their way of doing it from the rest.

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  • 4 weeks later...

This was on cable the other day, I watched a few minutes until a commercial came on and the I thought "this is stupid" so I put the blu ray in. After watching it I'm more convinced that ROTS should have been the whole thing.

 

Look at the open of TPM. Its a small ship, moving slowly, they politely ask to dock with another ship. The Jedi are served tea. It's not exactly awe inspiring. I realize Lucas intention was to show that seemingly unimportant events can be the seed of something much larger. But it's just not exciting.

 

Contrast that with the open of ROTS. Imagine you hadn't seen any new Star Wars in 16 years. We hadn't seen Hayden's bad performance or think there was too much CGI. Just imagine going in fresh. The crawl tells us Palpatinte has been captured and 2 Jedi are trying to save him. Simple, easy, nothing about taxation of trade routes. Then just think that opening shot, the 2 fighters along the Star Destroyer and then they go over the hull and that whole entire huge battle opens before us. Just think of going into that fresh, it would have been engrossing.

 

Then just think we have Obi Wan and Anakin, the 2 characters people most wanted to see on a mission to save Palpatine. Artoo is there. They have the same basic approach the Federation ship. Once on board the ship you change it up some, they find Palpatine, they make their way back to their ship in the landing bay, they are just about to board one and rescue Palpatine! Then bam the Federation cruiser finds an opening and goes to lightspeed an Anakin, Obi Wan, Palpy and Artoo are all of a sudden whisked away and on an enemy ship heading to an enemy planet.

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I agree that the Chosen One prophecy would have been best left out. If not, they should have at least come up with a more original name for this prophesied being since "Chosen One" has been done to death in everything ever.

That's why I love the similar Sith prophecy of the Sith'ari.

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Guest Robin

I think Star Wars had all the details we needed. However we all know that GL had so many fun ideas and SW financially exploded so he added an episode number to it. I often wonder if he regretted it, I mean obviously he made billions over the course, but in some interviews and behind the scenes of the Prequels he almost seems like hes burdened by them.

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I also think part of the prequels issue is this: When you are new and trying to establish yourself you can't just make the movie you want. You need to think "what do people want to see". You can't just flat out make the movie you want.

 

With the prequels he could do whatever he wanted. He could just make the movie he wanted story wise. He didn't have to worry "oh man if people don't like this I may never work again." I'm sure he realized that talking abut the taxation of trade routes to out laying star systems in the crawl wasn't going to make people jump out of their seats. I'm sure he realized that kids werent going to go home and re-enact scenes about motions in the Senate. But for George it was an important aspect of the story, about how minutae like that can lead to much worse things.

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