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Assumptions you made about the PT before seeing it.


Guest El Chalupacabra
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Guest El Chalupacabra

(Split off from the other thread)

 

So what were YOUR assumptions about the PT before you saw them. Here are some of my assumptions I made prior to seeing PT for the first time.

 

 

Jedi VS Sith

Prior to the PT, I assumed we were going to get a full on Jedi VS Sith battles during the clone wars, but on a grander scale. More like armies of sith clashing with armies of jedi in a Braveheart style battle. The closes things we actually got were not in the PT, but EU: cut scenes from The Old Republic MMO essentially were what I envisioned for the PT, long before that cut scene was created.

 

Clone Wars

I assumed that the clone wars would have spanned the entire trilogy and we would have seen the war in full swing. Although we got that with TCW, the PT really only covered the very beginning and very end. Prior to the PT release, I had always assumed the clone wars had clones on both sides, possibly even cloned jedi and cloned sith (I can blame the Thrawn trilogy on that).

 

Anakin's turn

In the prequels, we didn't really get what I assumed we would. I assumed we would have seen more of a progression of Anakin being seduced by the dark side. Something more along the lines of Anakin being wreckless and angry, which we did get somewhat (killing the sand people is his first real step) but his turn in ROTS was more like a flipping a switch, than the culmination of him being tempted by the Emperor to turn to the dark side. I assumed he would have been secretly counciling Palpatine, or discovering the dark side on his own, because he was tempted by how much faster his power was attained by practicing the dark side. Killing the Sand People could have been a jumping off point for that, as he could have felt the power of the Dark Side for the first time, there. We sort of got Anakin counseling Palpatine in secret in ROTS, and it is implied that he did council Palpatine off screen in ROTS, but it would have been nice to see Palpatine actively poisoning Anakin and turning him against the jedi gradually, rather than the "gotta turn to the dark side if you wanna save Padme" angle.

 

Anakin

I assumed we were going to see him in his late teens/early 20s from the start. Not 10 year old Anakin, until the TPM promos and previews came out. I had envisioned him a young adult who was gifted but untrained force wielder, and who was making a living as a spice freighter pilot, where Obi Wan discovered him, and took him under his wing.

 

One other thing I'd like to add about my assumption about Anakin prior to the PT, or at least prior to his turn was that we would actually see him hunting down jedi. We get that towards the end of ROTS, but I remember before ROTS came out (because we knew he would end up as Vader at some point), thinking it would have been cool if there was a masked new sith lord (wearing black robes like Maul, but wearing some sort of black mask like a ninja mask or sith helmet) who is seen killing jedi left and right. Obi Wan is dispatched to confront this new sith warrior, and during the battle, the sith is unmasked somehow, and revealed to be Anakin. I would have loved to see Obi Wan's horrified face during that reveal.

 

Obi Wan VS Anakin

As for the Obi Wan VS Anaklin duel, I suppose what we got was close enough to the ROTJ novelization. It works. But my assumption prior to the PT was that Anaklin and Obi Wan dueled at the top of a volcano, and Anakin was driven off a cliff and fell in, Mount Doom style.

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I also hoped we would see more of Anakin as Vader, but before he's in the life support suit. So we'd get, like you described, a dark hooded, more nimble and agile Darth Vader striking fear across the galaxy, killing Jedi. I wasn't even sure I wanted to see him in the classic suit/mask at all. Maybe we'd see whatever happened to him at the climax of Ep. III (fall into volcano, etc) and that's the last we see him until ANH.

 

But I have a feeling if that was ever even a thought, branding won out at LFL. The mask and suit IS Darth Vader and anything else would be confusing/off-brand.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Yeah, makes sense, but I was thinking a healthy Vader could have been dressed in a Darth Maul style outfit with a mask. When KOTOR 1 came out and I played it, it was before ROTS came out. In the game, there were generic sith assassins that your player characters would encounter that looked like this:

 

 

I held out hope for ROTS to feature a Sith Assassin (revealed to be Vader, AKA Anakin) that combined an all black sith outfit, with a mask similar to the look above.

 

Now, you are probably correct that maybe Lucas felt that Vader should look like the traditional Vader in the suit, and should look like Anakin until then and maybe that it was a branding issue, but I disagree that it would have been confusing to the audience. I mean most people are dumb, but not that dumb.

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I said some of this in the other thread but now that they've split they are out of place so I will repeat myself here, which is fine since I usually repeat myself often anyway.

 

I never envisioned large Jedi vs Sith saber battles, the thought never entered my mind. I actually always assumed there would be a very small number of Jedi in the Galaxy. Like a couple dozen, maybe less.

 

The Clone Wars I wasn;t sure on. I kinda thought maybe we wouldn't even see the Clone Wars. That the story would come in after that. Ya know like the opening scroll says somehting like "The Clone Wars have torn the Galaxy asunder..." then the prequels were about putting the Galaxy back together in the aftermath of that catastrophic war.

 

I mostly agree with Chalup about Anakin, I did want to see Anakin hunting down Jedi.

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That you don't remember what you thought about something 20+ years ago? It probably says something bad about those of us who do remember.

My assumptions included the Jedi being wise guardians who didn't really rely on superpowers. That Obi-Wan was Yoda's apprentice. That the Jedi were more spread out and acting independently.

 

I also just realized that the prequels are all about how horrible bureaucracy is and how it leads to evil.

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I remember assuming it was going to be ****ing awesome cause it was Star Wars again.

 

I was about 14 or 15 and sorely disappointed leaving the theater after TPM. AOTC the disappointment was worse. ROTS I was pleasantly surprised, given what had come before, but still pretty jaded.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I was (and still think) disappointed with TPM when I first saw it, but I liked it. My dislike grew with time. But I thought back then as I do now, that each PT film got a little better. AOTC bothered me because of some missed opportunities, and wooden acting. ROTS was the best of the lot, and I think the CGI holds up the best of the 3 PT films.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Agreed.

 

If the other 2 PT films were made at the level of ROTS, I think it would have been a far better trilogy.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I don’t know about “best stuff”...

 

It was filler down until the last hour or so.

Not being a blind PT defender here, but to be fair, I think ROTS opened strong with the space battle and Dooku duel. As soon as Grievous made his appearance, it was filler for a while, until things started going down. All I am saying is ROTS was the best of the PT for me, and if the other two were made at least at that level, I think there would be less to complain about.

 

But that's getting off topic. We all have something to complain about with the PT.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I assumed that Jedi all vanished when they died. The EU may have had something to do with that.

Yeah, it's sort of like Superman supposedly being the only Kryptonian to survive the destruction of Krypton. Except for General Zod. And Supergirl. And Kandor City. And Krypto the Superdog.

 

But hey, we had EU novels and video games to sell in the 1990s!

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To be honest, I never really had very many expectations for the prequels. It could have been that I was very young, and by the time the EU renewed my interest in Star Wars with a computer game back in 1997, I was was primarily interested in the post-Jedi era because that was when that game--Jedi Knight--took place. I did briefly ponder the Clone Wars, though, partially because the strategy guide for that game mentioned them in passing. "Since the time of the Clone Wars, no Jedi battle has been so crucial as this one" (paraphrased), referring to the final mission where you must battle the Dark Jedi Jerec as Kyle Katarn.

My friend and I did have one silly theory when we were very young, though: that the imperials "beat up" Anakin Skywalker, killed him, and brought him back as a cyborg that did the Emperor's bidding. This may have been influenced by RoboCop.

But yeah, surprisingly, I never had much interest in the prequel era until just a few years before the films came out. Actually, my first exposure to any sort of preview of The Phantom Menace came when I called LucasArts' video game hint line, Yoda's Help Desk. The hold music featured the main Star Wars theme overlayed with snippets of dialogue from the films. Most came from the original Trilogy, but one was from Menace: a clip of Qui-Gon saying, "Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi." I remember envisioning at that moment both Obi-Wan and Anakin in their teens. This must have been mid-1998, and I had not been following any movie news or spoilers at that point.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

There really shouldn't have been, but apparently for some individuals there is a difference between the assumptions the PT films made (still trying to figure out how a film makes an assumption, or how a creator of a franchise can make an assumption about his own creation), and assumptions viewers made about the PT. Rather than fight it, I just moved my responses over here and created a separate thread when someone said something, to avoid potentially upsetting anyone. As a rule, I try not to do that.

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Right. So my thread was asking "what assumptions did the prequels make?" What things seemed to happen in those movies without question, when really the prequels could have taken things in almost any direction?

 

Then some people took it in the direction of what they themselves had assumed would happen in the prequels. I really don't mind when threads evolve and diverge, I wasn't mad, but I made a glib comment and Chalup started an offshoot thread.

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