Star Wars Rewrite

[Lou Bacca]

It's been kind of dead on this board lately, and I think it's because we've gotten our initial flurry of ideas and things we'd like to see changed out of the way. Now maybe it's time to start putting the pieces together. As a preliminary to actually writing the story, I think it might be helpful to do overview of the storyline and the characters. Darth Geoff, this is your show, so I think the storyline is ultimately up to you. But I'd like to sum up some things we've all talked about. Maybe we can refine each point on the list until we've got something we're happy with:

Anakin Skywalker: Discovered by Obi Wan on Tattooine as a teenager who's had a rough life - uncared for and abandoned, he's full of resentment and prickly independence. But he's also eager to learn about the rest of the galaxy, the Force, etc, and when OW meets him, is "the best star-pilot in the galaxy". OW tries to teach him the Force, and while he's very powerful, he's also arrogant and overly ambitious. Doesn't want to be controlled or manipulated, which makes him easy prey to be controlled and manipulated by someone who offers him power and independence: Palpatine. After being powerless most of his life, the power of the Dark Side proves irresistible. The Jedi are enthused by his potential, or fear it, but he doesn't get warmth or compassion from them - they treat him as an extraordinary vessel for the Force, but not as a person. He feels isolated, and there's no one to keep him anchored to the good side after he falls out with Obi Wan.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: He's our Han Solo figure. Cocky and reckless, he's arrogant enough to think he can train Anakin "as well as Yoda". Serves Bail Organa in the Clone Wars, and perhaps puts winning the war ahead of his Jedi training. Discovers that Palpatine is the Sith Lord, and has turned the Republic against itself, and Anakin against the Jedi, but discovers it all too late.

Padme Amidala: We should see her transform from spoiled young Queen (an inherited, not elected title), to principled freedom fighter. After preventing the Separatist takeover of Naboo, she replaces Palpatine in the Senate as her planet's representative; is a critic of Palpatine's power grabs, despite Anakin's loyalty to his mentor; once Palpatine declares himself Emperor, walks out of the Senate (and away from Anakin?), and plants the seeds, along with Bail Organa and others, for the Rebel Alliance. Gives birth to twins; Luke is sent into hiding; Leia is hiding in plain sight. Is killed by Darth Vader when Leia is a few years old.

Yoda: Leave Windu to do the ass-kicking. Yoda's the spiritual teacher we saw in Empire. Away put your weapon, he means you no harm. But the Force is his ally, and a powerful ally it is. Unconcerned with the physical realities of space battles and lightsaber fights, Yoda's interest lies in the fight for Anakin's soul, and the higher spiritual battle being fought between the Jedi and the Sith. But when it comes to the Sith, why can't he see what's right in front of him?

Senator Palpatine: Has been waiting in the shadows for who knows how long. How is he able to operate right under everyone's noses? I guess that's just the nature of the dark side. He's the character who needs the least amount of makeover. McDermid got him pretty spot-on.

Darth Vader: Once Anakin has split from Obi-Wan and is firmly under Palpatine's tutelage, he takes on a Sith title. He hunts down and destroys the Jedi, saving his former teacher for last. But when he confronts Obi-Wan, he loses the fight, his legs, gets burned up, etc. Palpatine puts him in the black armor. He confronts Padme again as an emotionless monster - blames her for leaving him, demands to see his son, knowing that Luke can destroy him. She refuses. He kills her. He feels no remorse - his transformation is complete.

That's a start. Again, let's revise, refine, and add to this. Then start putting the storyline back together.
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We've got to be able to get some sort of reading on those pants, up or down!

[Darth Geoff]

I like the sum up style you've got there, and several good ideas for the characters. Here are a few additions/changes:

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Young Jedi, still seeking adventure and excitement. Becomes friends with Anakin during their first adventure, and promises to teach him after the Jedi Order initially rejects him.

Anakin Skywalker: His thirst for adventure exceeds and sometimes disturbs Obi-Wan, along with his "I'm invincible" attitude. When the clone wars really heat up, the Jedi Order accepts Anakin. His desire for adventure is eventually replaced by the lure of Force powers beyond what Obi-Wan is willing to teach. His Force potential is completely underrated by everyone around him, and they don't consider him anything special until he starts killing Jedi Masters. Palpatine recognizes Anakin's drive for power and takes him on as an apprentice after Darth Maul is killed. He buys all of the Sith rhetoric, and when Palpatine turns the Republic to an Empire, Anakin fully supports him.

Padme Amidala: Spoiled young orphaned princess, falls for the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. But Anakin's attitude toward authority eventually triggers her to embrace what her parents had taught her about leadership and responsibility. She fights along side Obi-Wan and Anakin, giving her a rare insight into Palpatine's manipulations. When she becomes one of Palpatine's most outspoken opponents, she falls ill to a rare disease. (Sorry, I just can't accept Anakin killing her.) She goes into hiding after seeing Anakin take Palpatine's side.

Palpatine: Like in the films, he's been slowly working his way to the heart of the Old Republic for decades. Though there are only two Sith Force wielders at any one time, Palpatine (Darth Sidious) has gathered a wide variety of talented and deadly minions and allies. He set the clone manufacturing facility into action, and rigged it so that he knew it's weakness.
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I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.

[Lou Bacca]

That's perfect, especially the Anakin part. But I do have one objection: Anakin has to kill Padme. That's what makes his journey to the dark side complete. In killing her, he rejects love, compassion and family for the sake of hate, jealousy and revenge - everything the Dark Side stands for. It's too powerful a symbol of his transformation to not use, and having her die any other way is supremely unsatisfying.

Rather than the "Nooooooooooooooooooo!" scene, which shows Vader weak and emotional, we have to use his murdering of Padme to show how he's truly become the villain we all know and love. When we see the POV shot of the mask, we feel bad for Anakin. Then we see him kill her without a trace of remorse, and "the good man who was your father" is truly dead. In that moment, we see the cold, unemotional, remorseless Darth Vader. You say you can't see Anakin killing her, but ultimately he doesn't - Vader does, and in doing so, he kills off Anakin as well.

That should be the emotional center of the prequels. Having her die of some random way that wasn't connected to the greater story would be like, well, killing off Boba Fett in some sort of slapsticky mishap. Okay, maybe not that bad. But if you can use her death to forward the story so effectively, why wouldn't you?
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We've got to be able to get some sort of reading on those pants, up or down!

[Darth Geoff]

[Lou Bacca]

[Darth Geoff]

You are absolutely right, except I really want to tie up that loose end about Leia having memories of her mother. None of this crap about "memories of the womb". Those lines in ROTJ were presented as important, and I want to support that.
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I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.

[Lou Bacca]

I think that's pretty easily resolved. She doesn't have to die the minute the kids are born. The chronology that makes sense to me is:

1) Anakin Skywalker starts working for Palpatine and the dark side
2) Amidala leaves him, because he's turning evil
3) She gives birth to the kids
4) Anakin demands to see Luke, not knowing she had twins, but knowing Luke can destroy him
5) Obi-Wan confronts Anakin, chops him up
6) Anakin undergoes a long rehab, resurfaces as Darth Vader
7) Vader kills Amidala, still unaware of Leia's existence, and she's raised by the Organas.

At some point in this chronology, Luke goes to live on Tatooine under Ben's watchful eye. It could be that this happens right after 5, because the Emperor's still looking for him. Or it could be that it happens after 7, and Luke just has a crappy memory.

Splitting up the twins doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I know, but the RoTJ dialogue suggests that they were before she died. If Vader and the Emperor are only after Luke, because they're unaware of Leia, maybe OW and Yoda insist on protecting Luke, but Padme, not wanting to be separated from both her children, insists on keeping Leia with her, since the Sith aren't after her. When Vader confronts her, Leia's not around for some reason.
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We've got to be able to get some sort of reading on those pants, up or down!

[Princess Laura]

Friendly reminder from the neighborhood troll:

The point of this rewrite is to make the story flow better and to overall enchance the power of the story. Our problem with Lucas was that he lost touch with what the fans wanted.

Another gentle nudge: Occam's Razor. If you can explain something more simply, do it.

Honestly, I've never had a problem (as I've said before) with Leia's "real mother" line. If she knew Padme, cool; if she thought it was Bail Organa's wife, that's cool with me, too. I don't think the fall of Anakin revolves around this detail. It might revolve around a "betrayal" by Padme, but to me Anakin kills enough people without having to kill the one he loves. It's enough that he effectively kills the part of him that has the ability to love.

I'd rather see a resolution to the Obi Wan/Yoda training dichotomy (which seems contradictory right now) or the Clone Wars/Robot Wars thing. Those things bother me. The Mandalorian armor/clone thing bothers me. Jar Jar......'nuff said.

I think we're mired down in details and we need the bigger picture again. I would go back to what I liked in the original and the new trilogies and expand on those. Just my two cents..
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"I find your lack of pants disturbing."

[Lou Bacca]

That's not trolling at all, Laura - that's eminently constructive. I agree that the "real mother" line isn't something that needs to be resolved as urgently as Obi-Wan's description of Anakin, etc. But I also think, whatever issues we have, we should work them out before tackling the overall flow of the story.

I think it'll be much easier to put the story together having established, say, that Vader kills Padme or he doesn't, or what happens to the kids, or who trains Anakin. Those are all things to hang the story one. If we can agree on those things one way or the other, it should be pretty easy to rebuild the story around them.

And I know you said you were leaving the forum, but I hope you reconsider. We need someone pulling us closer to the stories Lucas wrote, since it's pretty easy to just start spinning new ideas out of whole cloth, as I did with my first attempt at retelling the story.

Another thought about Padme's death. Lucas tries to have it both ways - Anakin kind of kills her, since he chokes her, but he kind of doesn't, since she dies of malaise. He actually refuses to say what she dies from, which to me is an enormous cop-out. I personally don't think it's satisfying for her to die of natural causes or something else unrelated to the larger story. But I'd much rather see it happen that way than the way Lucas did it.
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We've got to be able to get some sort of reading on those pants, up or down!

[Lolkje]

I'm late to the party, but I can't see Mother as spoiled royalty at all. She'd have more chutzpah as a spy/security officer who starts off rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful, and later becomes political out of the necessity of the Clone Wars. I'd do a major revision of Ep I, making Mother the decoy who has a major role thinking on her feet and speaking for the sheltered and aloof ruler of the planet. She gets to be herself more in Ep II, working with Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Bail to investigate the conspiracy behind the Clone Wars. Then she returns full circle in Ep III, going into hiding undercover in the Organa court after Anakin's "death."

The Empire should be responsible for Mother's death (in between the trilogies, when she is on a mission for the fledgling Rebellion), but not Vader personally. In watching the scenes between Luke and Vader in ROTJ, I imagine a strong resemblance (in personality and appearance) between Luke and Mother being a shining candle in the darkness that helps remind Anakin of who he was.