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Post by Applelight Limited on Dec 27, 2015 0:50:33 GMT
Since everyone is in a real Star Wars mood I just wanted to ask this; with better writing, acting and a more interesting plot, do you guys think Disney could salvage the three Star Wars prequels with a reboot?
Hollywood has retold the stories of Batman, Spiderman and the Fantastic Four a few times, so I don't think the same thing for some Star Wars movies is out of the question. And if they did, what would you want from it? Or would you even go to it?
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Post by japaneseteeth on Dec 27, 2015 3:53:08 GMT
I think it's theoretically possible, but I'm not really sure that it would be necessary. That said, it could be done. Personally I think they just need to make Vader's backstory less emo in nature. And for the love of Yoda get somebody else to write the romance stuff. Everything involving that romance was just cringeworthy, which was kind of a problem given that it was his motivation for going to the dark side in the first place.
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Post by Kyler Thatch on Dec 27, 2015 7:42:27 GMT
I went to the Dark Side to save you from dying, Padme! That's why I'm force-choking you to death!
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Post by Applelight Limited on Dec 27, 2015 15:07:34 GMT
A friend of mine said that there should have been a love triangle between obi wan, Anakin and padme. That Anakin mistakingly thinks that them two have a thing going and it makes him crazy angry.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Dec 27, 2015 16:16:00 GMT
I believe the novelization does imply something like that. Anakin suspects that Padme is cheating on him with Obi-wan, and Padme feels weird that she's more comfortable discussing her anti-Palpatine coalition with Obi-wan than with her husband.
I wrote up a pretty thorough treatment of how I thought the prequels could have been fixed, keeping as much of the original plot intact as I could, but I think it's been lost forever now. The big changes I can remember:
* Actually show more of the Clone Wars. In the background of Episode I, have the Confederacy of Independent Systems already threatening to break away from The Republic. So everyone's afraid that the conflict on Naboo could spark a galaxy-scale war. Which, of course, it does. So Episode II is set in the middle of the War, and Episode III is the end.
* Keep Jar-Jar Binks, but tone him down a bit. Instead of "comedy" from Jar-Jar doing stupid stuff, get comedy from other characters reacting in annoyance to Jar-Jar.
* Make Anakin older—already an older teen when Qui-gon and Obi-wan take him away from Tatooine. This makes his romance with Padme less weird, and leaves Yoda's objection "He's too old!" a little more sensible. This also makes for less of a time skip between Episode I and II.
* Count Dooku is not a Sith lord. Instead, he's telling the truth when he asks Obi-wan to join him in finding and take out the Sith Lord who's controlling the Galactic Senate. This leads to cruel irony in Episode III, where Dooku realizes Palpatine is the Sith Lord and tries to kill him, but Anakin and Obi-wan don't believe this.
* Keep Darth Maul as a recurring villain. He still gets chopped in half in Episode I, so in Episode II he shows up with robot legs. He's a major leader of the Confederacy's droid army, and those who don't know he's a Sith, call him... General Grievous. By the end of the movie, he gets horribly mangled in an "accident" arranged by Dooku, so by Episode III he's the familiar four-armed cyborg with almost no organic parts remaining. Then when Darth Sideous takes Anakin as his Sith apprentice, Anakin must prove his worthiness by killing Darth Maul for good.
* Tone down the lightsaber fights a bit. Some amount of fancy acrobatics and crazy spinning is a good idea, since these are the Jedi at the near-height of their powers, so you'd expect something more impressive than what we saw in the OT (where the only lightsaber users are an old guy, a cripple, and a complete newbie). But we still need less flash and more substance—more of the first half of the Anakin/Obi-wan fight, and less of the second half where they're suddenly in a videogame level. Also, it would maintain Yoda's gravitas better if he fought purely with telekinesis, rather than with a lightsaber, and certainly not by hop-flipping everywhere.
EDIT: * Shmi Skywalker leaves Tatooine with Anakin in Episode I. So in Episode II, she's on vacation on some planet that's supposedly far away from the Clone War front lines. Anakin gets the nightmares about his mom dying, as before, and goes to check up on her. He finds that Confederate forces have attacked the planet, in spite of its complete lack of military targets, and imprisoned huge numbers of civilians. Anakin sneaks into the prison and finds his mom just in time for her to die. (And it's implied that she was singled out for torture specifically on Darth Sideous' orders.) Anakin gets so pissed, he single-handedly destroys every battle droid in the camp, then kills their masters when they try to surrender. But the civilians are so happy to be freed, they see Anakin as a hero, not a war criminal.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Dec 27, 2015 17:33:53 GMT
That sounds like a pretty good set of modifications. In particular, bumping Anakin's age up would've helped a lot. I think it would also have helped if they established that Anakin and Padme had kept in contact between I and II so it doesn't have to basically build their relationship from "we knew each other for a few weeks years ago" to "marriage" over the course of one movie.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Dec 27, 2015 17:57:30 GMT
I saw this on another site via a link.. It's got a lot of good points. Here's my own suggestion as well for the phantom menace: what happens on naboo foreshadows what is going to happen to the galaxy at large. First of all, naboo has king, padme's father. This gets around the ridiculous issue of having a kid elected to rule a planet. And the planet has been repeatedly attacked by pirates or raiders, with one raid having killed the queen. Stricken with grief, the king vows never again to be caught defenceless. The Republic hasn't been protecting them enough (the Republic does have a navy, the forerunner to the imperial one, but it's too small to adequately protect the outer rim), so he decides to rapidly arm himself, by buying a crap tonne of battle droids from the trade federation. Yeah, the trade federation are a send up of crooked arms dealers and defence contactors. But that costs money, and so to fund it he's also rapidly industrialising the planet, chopping down the forests and mining at the expense of the Gungans, who naturally fight back. Which causes him to crack down on them, and on the dissent from his own people. This is what brings the Republic and the Jedi into it. But he goes over the deep end, tries to kill the Jedi and declares that naboo is seceding from the Republic. The conflict is trying to stop a mad king from destroying the planet with his droid army with a combined force of Gungans, naboo resistance fighters and republican navy forces, and they do succeed. But to some other planets with problems of their own with the Republic, it looks like naboo was bullied into toing the republic's line. And over ten years it eventually snowballs into the separatist movement that leads to the clone wars, stoked up by the trade federation who are looking to sell a tonne of droid gear. There is precedent in real life for this; World War One was not helped by international arms dealers selling gear to both sides. However, what Mezza suggested (having the confederates already existing) might work better. It plays into this notion that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and it also solves the problem with padme (too young to be a ruler) and the trade federation. I mean, how the hell do they get away with what they did? At least my way they can say 'hey, we just sold him the droids! It's not our problem what he does with them!'
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Post by Mezzaphor on Dec 28, 2015 17:36:17 GMT
Oh yeah, if the conflict on Naboo directly sparks the Clone Wars, then the whole mystery of the clone army in Episode II would need to be tweaked to fit. So:
* The Republic does already have a standing volunteer army. By the time of Episode II, the Republic and the Confederacy are basically at a stalemate. The Confederacy's droid army has numerical superiority, but the Republic's organic soldiers are enough smarter to offset that. (There's a hard limit on how smart you can make a battle droid before it stops taking orders and turns against its makers.) Then several Republic battalions go missing, with no explanations. Rumors start coming from the frontlines: a new Confederate army with soldiers who think like organics but fight with the unity and resiliency of droids. Obi-wan solves this mystery while investigating the attempted assassination of Padme Amidala. Clues from the crime scene lead him to Kamino, where the locals proudly give him a tour of their clone factory ... and they ask him if he's impressed with their performance on the battlefield so far. Turns out that the Kaminoans are selling their Jango Fett clones to the Confederacy, but they think they're selling them to the Republic. Because Zam Wesell (that shape-shifting assassin) originally commissioned the clone army on Sideous' orders, and she wore Obi-wan's appearance for all her dealings with them. The Jedi halt the delivery of any more clonetroopers to the Confederacy, but can't agree whether or not to incorporate the clones into the Republic army. It becomes a moot point when Senator Jar-Jar Binks' impassioned speech convinces the Galactic Senate to give Palpatine "emergency powers", and Palps immediately sends the clonetroopers off to war. So, for the big battle on Geonosis, there are clones fighting on both sides.
* It still takes ten years for clones to mature to battle-readiness. Since the clones are ready now, but it's only been a few years since Episode I, this means that the clone army was commissioned years before the Confederacy formed. The Jedi have a collective "Oh, crap" moment when they figure that out and realize that someone planned for the war.
* After Palpatine sends out Order 66, he communicates one last time with the Confederacy to send out Order 108. This order causes every clonetrooper still in the Confederate army to desert and join the Republic/Imperial army.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Dec 28, 2015 19:00:05 GMT
That could definitely work.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Dec 29, 2015 2:49:04 GMT
Yeah that's brilliant! It also makes 'The Clone Wars' more clone orientated. Speaking of Battle Droids btw, I really wish they hadn't made them comic relief. They should have been menacing, like the Stormtroopers were from the originals. What I would have done is make them look less human. Humanoid yes, but creepy, like one of these guys: Either cyclops or three eyed faces. And I would also have made them come across as being similar in concept to an army of undead thralls. Unthinking, unfeeling, total slaves to their masters will and very creepy. But slow witted. Yes, they don't move very fast, and react slowly, but they are totally fearless, and also only by destroying their CPU in their chest will you actually kill them outright. You can take off their heads, legs and arms but they'll still try to get you. And replace the silly squeaky voices with inhuman ones. Make it so that they only speak to their non droid masters or prisoners, and they have creepy voices, not stupid ones.
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Post by Kyler Thatch on Dec 29, 2015 5:12:14 GMT
To be fair, it was only the rank-and-file battle droids that looked wimpy. The super battle droids (the beefy-looking chrome ones) looked fairly intimidating. And then there's those rolling droidekas that will ruin your day even if you're a shot-deflecting Jedi.
Then again, perhaps the point to their light frame was to make them able to fold up for compact transport. Remember how they got an entire platoon to fit in just one tank? Maybe they weren't supposed to be tough, maybe they were meant to come at you in massive overwhelming numbers.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Dec 29, 2015 12:04:45 GMT
According to the Legends EU, the standard B1 Battle Droids were modeled after the skeletons of Nemoidians. So their appearance was considered, if not intimidating, at least unsettling. But yeah, the goofy voices and comedy scenes make it hard for audiences to take those droids too seriously.
Just like the B2 Super Battle Droids were pretty intimidating when they first showed up in Attack of the Clones, but then their scene with R2-D2 in Revenge of the Sith made it hard to take them too seriously anymore.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Dec 29, 2015 13:20:26 GMT
Appearance wise I guess there's nothing wrong with them. It's more their mannerisms. As Mezzaphor said, there's too many scenes that make them too stupid to take seriously. Which is a shame because as kyler said, that scene of them being deployed from the tank was both cool and threatening.
And that scene with R2-D2...urgh. Might as well have been two bullies in the hallway at school trying to stuff him into a locker. They should have had R2 hide, they go looking for him (like professional soldiers, not stupid) and then he ambushes them with the oil trick.
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Post by Mio on Dec 29, 2015 16:08:33 GMT
It's interesting to think about, but I'm honestly uncertain about if the current team in charge of Star Wars would really make it better.
I think most of the prequel series is fine in concept they were just poorly written, directed, and acted. That being said if I could I would get rid of The Phantom Menace entirely since it was not a story that needed to be told (at least not on the big screen).
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Post by japaneseteeth on Dec 30, 2015 1:08:28 GMT
In general giving the combat droids individual personalities really makes very little sense. It makes them act stupider than a basic combat AI would. The fact that their default personality seems to be "goofball" doesn't help any.
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