Some totally useless thoughts on what the PT shoulda been like

Except for Anakin's "brother" Owen who lived on Tatooine and never mentioned living anywhere else.

 

Of course it was. It was story, not special effects. That's why I prefer the novels to the movies. You can find actual plot and characterization in the Star Wars books. That stuff has no place in the movies. Which is not to say the movies are bad, just not the place to find a Star Wars story.

 

TheBoilingChef's got me thinking about how I would do the PT. Here goes:

TPM:
-The galaxy is splintering. Dozens, maybe hundreds of worlds are breaking away from the Old Republic for a host of reasons, some like its grown too corrupt, too powerful, too bloated, inefficient, its overtaxing, or its playing favorites, etc. There is a political crisis on Alderaan. There is a coup on the planet, and the Jedi are sent to negotiate (Two Masters-Ben Kenobi and Dooku, and their Padawans-Anakin and Padme). They are escorting Prince Bail Organa, the leader of the government in exile, back home for the negotiations. The coup leader-Baron Sandage-is in league with Darth Maul (he might talk to Sidious offscreen but Sidious would not be seen in TPM, perhaps heard over an intercom link or something). Alderaan being a very prominent planet, close to Coruscant can't fall victim to the wave of secession in the eyes of Chancellor Valorum, but the coup leaders-disaffected nobles-have already made a deal with some of the Seps. They set up came and spring a trap for the Jedi. Dooku, a critic of the Republic-a reason he was chosen to negotiate-senses something afoot and decides to stay on Alderaan and get to the bottom of it. Obi, Anakin, and Padme escape with Bail. Darth Maul is ordered to capture or assassinate Bail. That is the price for the alliance. Sandage can't have a closer heir to the throne than himself left alive.

With the spacelanes blocked, Ben takes a roundabout way to Corellia, where he hooks up with his brother Owen, who wants nothing to do with the Jedi, but helps nonetheless.

Once they get back to Coruscant, after escaping Maul, they find that neither the Council nor the Senate want to help. Palpatine, a Senator from Alderaan, engineers Valorum's fall. But Bail rallies a group of friendly senators to his cause and they raise an army to take back Alderaan. Ben and the others decide to go back with them, to find out Dooku's fate and to discover more about Maul.

At the end of TPM, Bail's forces are repulsed and the Jedi believe Dooku has been killed by Maul. Ben later on kills Maul. Sandage is able to rally other worlds to his aid and the Confederacy is born.

AOTC: It is about four years later. To stop the Seps from conquering the galaxy, the Republic has hired Mandalorian mercenaries to help shore up the motley Rep forces. Mandos use clone soldiers. The mercs continue to raise their fees, eventually holding the Republic hostage. Palpatine and Bail began arguing for the creation of a clone army. Jedi are torn about whether to fight or not, as well as about a clone army. Of course the Mandalorians are opposed and they turn on the Rep. Ben, Anakin, and Padme do find out what happened to Dooku. He is now a key leader of the Seps. He believes that the Republic has fallen under the sway of Sidious and that only by dismantling it can the galaxy truly be free.

ROTS: Another three years later-the Clone Wars go on about 7 years. The Seps have Mando clones and the Reps have cloned soldiers too. It's a bitter, vicious war. Anakin kills Dooku in combat, striking a major blow to the Sep cause. Anakin and Padme have grown close. When she tells him she is pregnant, he knows they can no longer hide their illicit relationship. Anakin has grown closer to Palpatine at this time. Palpatine offers him a job as his Security Head. The Council has concerns, but can do nothing when Anakin quits the Order. Padme follows suit. As the war winds down, Palpatine is concerned about traitors amongst their midst, some even in the Jedi Order. Anakin is disbelieving at first, though he comes to see some Jedi do harbor anti-Palpatine views, and Anakin has come to see Palpatine and the Republic as synomous. The Jedi and some Senators have begun secret negotiations with the Seps to bring the war to a close. Palpatine convinces Anakin that they are plotting against the Republic and sends Anakin to arrest them. Things go wrong and Palpatine has the justification he needs to arrest the Jedi. Anakin is forced to pick a side and he chooses the wrong one, but for a 'noble' reason-to prevent continued galaxy-wide slaughter which he thinks will happen if the Republic is overthrown and the war is allowed to continue.

 

And

Luke: No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a
spice freighter.

Obi-Wan: That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your
father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten
involved.

​

(Emphasis mine.)

 

the original poster's ideas are pretty good.

As for me, Episode 1 should have basically been the period between the Ep1 and Ep2 that we got.

The prequel trilogy should have started with Anakin as Obi-Wan's apprentice. That was what everyone took away from the OT and that would have been a great way to kick-start the prequels. Episode 2 should have the Clone Wars proper. It deserved its own movie. Instead we got the start of the clone wars... and the end of them. With cartoons showing us all the stuff that we wanted to see. Episode 3 coulda stayed mostly as it was.

 

Both of those ideas are pretty cool, and probably would have been better than what we got. At least where TMP is concerned, because I do actually like Attack of the Clones & Revenge of the Sith. Although I will gladly admit that they could have been better.

 

I really want to fit in the Mandalorians because not only are they a kick ass villain but gives some plausable reason.

 

I have two little suggestions, which barely change the existing story, but would have improved them ten times:

1) Get someone else to write the dialogue. Use contradictions, for gods sakes.

2) Shunt the Phantom Menace into a novel as it barely has anything to do with the last two films. All you need to know is Anakin met Padme when he was younger and fantasizes about her. Attack Clones is Episode One. Episode Two is a compilation of the Clone Wars micro-series climaxing with the Battle of Coruscant (Grevious attacks Coruscant and abducts Palpatine).

 

I'm not a big fan of the Mandalorians, myself, but lately I've been thinking of ways to use them in "my" PT storyline, just to make it more significant that the Clone Army of the Republic comes from Jango Fett (and so that Fett doesn't just randomly appear in Episode II with no real backstory or motivation).

My idea has the Mandalorians taking the Trade Federation's place in blockading Alderaan (rather than Naboo). In the final battle at the end, they're almost completely destroyed, and the last few, including Jango Fett, scatter across the galaxy. In "my" Episode II, as it was in the real Episode II, it's revealed that he was approached to be the genetic base for the Clone Army created by Sifo-Dyas (who would actually be Sidious posing as a Jedi, and not an actual Jedi who died recently). Jango Fett and the Mandalorians would ultimately get their revenge on the Jedi and the Republic in Episode III, when Order 66 is issued and the Empire is born.

 

Brilliant! Much better and somehow more consistent with the OT than the prequels we got. It successfully discards all of the unnecessary crap that Lucas threw in.

Just a brief aside, I had always imagined from my limited understanding based on the OT before any of the PT info came out, that the Clone Wars were fought with clones of Jedi or other force-strong individuals. I like the addition of the Mandalorians. It would have been very interesting if using force-sensitive clones, not fully-trained Sith, was Palps' way of getting around the Rule of Two, so they would have some powers but not enough to challenge their masters, and in turn the Jedi Order had to hire Mandalorian mercenaries to fight with them against the numbers of the Clones, in addition to the assembled Republic soldiers.

 

^ Still feels WAY too plot-heavy and convoluted to me. I think the prequels should kept a tighter focus on Anakin, Padme, and Obi-wan, and kept all the political stuff in the background (just as in the OT). We didn't need to see every little move Palpatine made in order to take over the Republic.

Obviously there would have to be a BIT more plot than in the OT, just by nature of the story being told, and Palpatine would have to pop in every now and then to manipulate Anakin, but I still think the prequels could (and should) have told a much simpler story than they did.

 

I wonder how merely giving the movies a real director would've affected them. A real director would've allowed the actors to actually act instead of using them as pawns to move from one special effects scene to the next, and probably would've done a lot more practical location shooting than making it Green Screen: The Movie.

Sure the dialog still sucks and the plotting is clunky, but maybe a real director would've allowed the actors to be creative with their characters and ad lib or something.

 

I can't agree that Qui-Gon shouldn't have been there. Qui-Gon was needed, even essential, I'd say. I'll say up front that he is my favorite character so keep in mind that I'm biased. Anyhow, my thinking goes like this:

- We needed him so he could die. Qui-Gon's death, a man we loved and respected, signified the beginning of the end of the Jedi Order. He was the best of the Jedi, smart, witty, loving and not afraid to go against the rules. He was the first to go and thus the Jedi Order was less without him. If he had stayed around a lot could've been better which leads me to my next point...

- He could have saved Anakin. It was made apparent in the OT that Obi-Wan failed Anakin. Now, Lucas wanted to make Anakin sympathetic and tragic. It is implied that if Qui-Gon had taught Anakin then Anakin may have turned out okay. In AotC and RotS Obi-Wan's mannerisims (and even that way he had his hair and beard in AotC) showed that he was trying to be like Qui-Gon but could never quite reach his level.

- We needed to see that the Jedi Order may have been too dogmatic. Qui-Gon represents an out of the norm Jedi Knight compared to the strict Jedi on the Council. I think Yoda came to realize this over time, especially when Qui-Gon contacted him from beyond the grave (this would've been made clearer is the communication scene was in RotS). Perhaps if more Jedi were like Qui-Gon the catastrophe could've been avoided. Remember when Ki Adi Mundi said that the Sith's return was impossible as soon as Qui-Gon mentioned it? Qui-Gon was much more open to the possibility.

 

Too bad we cant start a "Reboot-Episodes 1-3" petition? Scrap the entire set of movies and have it written a bit more "adult" and cohesive as a story. As someone said, have it focus more on the characters and less on the political aspects.
There are just soo many things wrong with the PT. Many of them mentioned here. The biggest was GL's total control of everything...
They let the Beatles have total control over Let it be and look at what happened there.

 

Anakin shouldn't have been a whiny little bich.

 

I actually don't mind the prequels as they are, but if I had to change anything, it would have been just to have all three films focus on the Clone Wars with the clones being Mandalorians. There would be no mystery behind who's leading the clone invaders--it would be identified as the Sith from the very beginning.

- It would have been Obi-Wan and Anakin in Episode I rather than Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Rather than the Trade Federation, it would have been the Mandalorians invading Naboo. Darth Maul still would have died in the end and it would have been revealed that Anakin and Padme had been secretly seeing each other for years....

- I would have introduced a bad-ass female Sith in Episode II and concentrated more on Anakin being lured towards the Dark Side by Palpatine as the war takes its toll on the Republic. It would have ended with Anakin leaving Padme and Obi-Wan to join the Sith...

- Episode III. With the Republic on the verge of defeat, Obi-Wan reluctantly accepts a mission to lead an army to take out the deadly new Jedi assassin--Anakin Skywalker--by any means necessary...

 

As I have omitted The Phantom Menace from my collection, that is how my Star Wars DVDs are arranged.

 

We actually did almost get that. Asajj Ventress was one of the first proposals for the new Sith character in Attack of the Clones.