Star Wars "boring political talk" Makes it More Real

[DWF]

^You make her older than you have to also make Anakin older because otherwise: eww. I mean not that there's currently a shortage of "eww" as things stand, but that would sort of put it over the top.

I'm not sure exactly why Anakin had to be found so young, after all Luke didn't start training until he was in his late teens/early 20's so the "too old" bit seems a little disingenuous. Maybe it was to make the attachment to the mother stronger and by extension the loss that much greater?

The primary driver, from what I understand, was the idea that there would not be the anxiety of separation between Anakin and his mom, and thinking he wouldn't be all that upset if he were older. While I get that point, I personally think that Anakin should have been older, and that their relationship could have been built up in a different way.

Regardless, I do think the ages were a minor problem, but the overall political scheme is one that I think needed a little more polish. Palpatine and his machinations are great, and I enjoy some of the Senate scenes. But, in the larger view, they don't make as much sense.

Part of this is owed to Padme's subplot being largely excised from ROTS and leaving much of the skeleton work of the Empire's formation unseen, which would go a long way for expounding upon Tarkin's remarks in Episode IV, which is what a prequel should do.

Padme's sub-plot before the reediting involved only one scene, but after Anakin's fall was reshot they actually expanded her role in the movie, making her the focus of his reasoning for joining hte dark side.

 

[Venardhi]

Seems to me a teenager taking care of his ailing mother and working in her place would feel just as much anxiety leaving her in slavery as a kid being taken away from her. Moreso, even, with the guilt of abandoning her to who knows what.

Alas, what might have been.

 

[fireproof78]

^You make her older than you have to also make Anakin older because otherwise: eww. I mean not that there's currently a shortage of "eww" as things stand, but that would sort of put it over the top.

I'm not sure exactly why Anakin had to be found so young, after all Luke didn't start training until he was in his late teens/early 20's so the "too old" bit seems a little disingenuous. Maybe it was to make the attachment to the mother stronger and by extension the loss that much greater?

The primary driver, from what I understand, was the idea that there would not be the anxiety of separation between Anakin and his mom, and thinking he wouldn't be all that upset if he were older. While I get that point, I personally think that Anakin should have been older, and that their relationship could have been built up in a different way.

Regardless, I do think the ages were a minor problem, but the overall political scheme is one that I think needed a little more polish. Palpatine and his machinations are great, and I enjoy some of the Senate scenes. But, in the larger view, they don't make as much sense.

Part of this is owed to Padme's subplot being largely excised from ROTS and leaving much of the skeleton work of the Empire's formation unseen, which would go a long way for expounding upon Tarkin's remarks in Episode IV, which is what a prequel should do.

Padme's sub-plot before the reediting involved only one scene, but after Anakin's fall was reshot they actually expanded her role in the movie, making her the focus of his reasoning for joining hte dark side.

But it still made her an actual active participant rather than a bystander or a Macguffin that Anakin is trying to save. She was no longer a person.

Also, the idea that Padme assists in the groundwork for the Rebellion would have been an interesting change, given her working with Palpatine at first.

 

[Reverend]

Seems to me a teenager taking care of his ailing mother and working in her place would feel just as much anxiety leaving her in slavery as a kid being taken away from her. Moreso, even, with the guilt of abandoning her to who knows what.

Alas, what might have been.

It's a bit of a wrinkle because if you compensate for ageing him up by making Shmi "ailing", then you either make it *less* credible that he'd leave her at all or make him seem selfish if he does. Then what you'd have to do is concoct some elaborate scenario that'd force him to leave her behind, which means you can't really rely on him feeling guilty and instead will probably have to switch it to blame and resentment directed at whomever was responsible for the situation.

Despite what some people seem to think, it's not always a simple matter to "fix" a story by simply changing one or two bothersome details. A lot of these things are there for a reason and they're mostly interdependent. It's like knocking a leg off a stool. All of a sudden the whole thing can get a lot more wobbly.

It seems to me that a lot of the time these sorts of troublesome details are actually there as a sort of damage limitation after a writer has written themselves into a corner, which is a lot easier to do and harder to avoid than you might think.

 

[fireproof78]

Seems to me a teenager taking care of his ailing mother and working in her place would feel just as much anxiety leaving her in slavery as a kid being taken away from her. Moreso, even, with the guilt of abandoning her to who knows what.

Alas, what might have been.

It's a bit of a wrinkle because if you compensate for ageing him up by making Shmi "ailing", then you either make it *less* credible that he'd leave her at all or make him seem selfish if he does. Then what you'd have to do is concoct some elaborate scenario that'd force him to leave her behind, which means you can't really rely on him feeling guilty and instead will probably have to switch it to blame and resentment directed at whomever was responsible for the situation.

Despite what some people seem to think, it's not always a simple matter to "fix" a story by simply changing one or two bothersome details. A lot of these things are there for a reason and they're mostly interdependent. It's like knocking a leg off a stool. All of a sudden the whole thing can get a lot more wobbly.

It seems to me that a lot of the time these sorts of troublesome details are actually there as a sort of damage limitation after a writer has written themselves into a corner, which is a lot easier to do and harder to avoid than you might think.

I generally agree with this point. Thinking about it, I think that Lucas was trying to write Anakin like Paul from "Dune" with the prophecy and a little bit of a different tone to it.

He had certain beats that he wanted to reach through his films but wasn't quite certain how to get there. In my opinion he simply didn't get the details ironed out, save for whatever aided him in getting to those specific points. The details were never really that important, and so, have that unpolished feel to me.

 

[Venardhi]

Seems to me a teenager taking care of his ailing mother and working in her place would feel just as much anxiety leaving her in slavery as a kid being taken away from her. Moreso, even, with the guilt of abandoning her to who knows what.

Alas, what might have been.

It's a bit of a wrinkle because if you compensate for ageing him up by making Shmi "ailing", then you either make it *less* credible that he'd leave her at all or make him seem selfish if he does. Then what you'd have to do is concoct some elaborate scenario that'd force him to leave her behind, which means you can't really rely on him feeling guilty and instead will probably have to switch it to blame and resentment directed at whomever was responsible for the situation.

You seem to think this is a bad thing. Guilt and frustration turn to resentment and anger (especially quickly in a roguish teenage boy with a chip on his shoulder). "Ailing" may not be necessary to make it compelling, but changes would need to be made obviously. I'd bet no more than a handful of scenes would need even moderate changes though, with maybe one or two new or heavily altered ones.

It is a futile exercise anyway. The movies we got are the movies we have, warts and all. That I find them nigh-unwatchable isn't going to be changed by dreaming up an alternate version of them.

 

[Reverend]

Seems to me a teenager taking care of his ailing mother and working in her place would feel just as much anxiety leaving her in slavery as a kid being taken away from her. Moreso, even, with the guilt of abandoning her to who knows what.

Alas, what might have been.

It's a bit of a wrinkle because if you compensate for ageing him up by making Shmi "ailing", then you either make it *less* credible that he'd leave her at all or make him seem selfish if he does. Then what you'd have to do is concoct some elaborate scenario that'd force him to leave her behind, which means you can't really rely on him feeling guilty and instead will probably have to switch it to blame and resentment directed at whomever was responsible for the situation.

You seem to think this is a bad thing. Guilt and frustration turn to resentment and anger (especially quickly in a roguish teenage boy with a chip on his shoulder). "Ailing" may not be necessary to make it compelling, but changes would need to be made obviously. I'd bet no more than a handful of scenes would need even moderate changes though, with maybe one or two new or heavily altered ones.

No, I'm simply pointing out it's not as simple as all that. If you change a character's basic set of motivations and characteristics it has a knock-on effect that can shatter a narrative structure.

It's easy to backseat drive (or armchair quarterback for the yanks) but coming up with a cohesive plot is bloody complicated and far from easy. I think fireproof78 is right in that Lucas basically hobbled himself early on by locking in certain storybeats without thoroughly fleshing out how it all connects or coming up with a cohesive tone. It left everything feeling disjointed to such a degree that no mere script doctoring or polish could fix.

The only way to do it is to start over from scratch.

 

[Venardhi]

I can, but it doesn't have to. It all depends on how carefully you finesse the changes. A few lines and a scene here or there can easily account for far bigger differences than changing a character from a child to a teen, and without changing a single major beat of the story. Hell, entire characters or subplots are often cut in editing.

I disagree that some minor rewrites couldn't have fixed a lot of TPM's problems, but I suspect the direction was more at the root of the problems anyways.

 

[Reverend]

The thing is, often times, a lot of "finesseing" of a troubled script can just end up making even more of a mess. You need only look at the number of projects that have had to go through multiple re-writes from several writers to see where that approach often leads. Often times they're atonal, rambling with weird shifts in tone and focus. In a word: incoherent. For a pretty horrible example of this sort of thing, go watch 'Green Lantern'.

There's a limit to what you can do in editing too. Sure, if you're lucky you can excise a whole subplot (like Newt's family & the sentry guns in 'Aliens') but only if the scenes and lines can be cut around in such a way that you don't loose anything vital the things you still want left in. Or you can even change the nature of a conflict if all the relevant exposition is crammed in one place and not directly referred to again in later scenes. This is how when editing MiB they were able completely alter the background conflict of the film and the nature of the Macguffin because all of that in explained in one scene where all the actors stand around looking at a blank viewscreen. Most of that was done simply by cutting-away from the actors to the screen and have Tommy Lee Jones loop in the new exposition, lopping out what they didn't need any more.

But you're not always that lucky and in the case of TPM, what we got was *already* a result of a damage limitation edit when they realised Jar Jar was a really bad idea. By that point it was too late to start over and he was too integrated into the footage and dialogue to excise or radically alter. It was basically one step short of doing something like this.
Not the worst idea I know, but lets be real here.