Making The Star Wars Prequels “Good”

I do not know if any of you has seen the “What if Episode I was Good” video from Belated Media on YouTube. As fine as I am with the prequels, even I can recognize that they are from perfect. For one thing, the best way to make Episode I “good” and by good I mean make it more like the Star Wars film fans were hoping for, is to restructure the whole trilogy. More on that in the second half of this post, but first I want to comment on the one thing in the Belated Media video that does not make a lot of sense to me.

That is that they want to make Anakin older when he first appears and get rid of the midichlorians. The more I think on this, the more I realize that you cannot get rid of both, you have to keep one. Anakin, first appearing as older means that you have to maintain the midichlorians because there would still be a need for some measure of force sensitivity. If the force is that strong in Anakin at some point while growing up, the force would have to manifest itself. By the time Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan found him, he would firstly, be too old to be accepted by the council. Second, without the training he would most likely already be on the path to the dark side. However, by keeping the younger Anakin, then the midichlorian are unnecessary. That is because of the scene with Watto when Qui-Gon tries to use the Jedi mind trick, and Watto turns out to be immune to it. In that scene now, after Watto says he is immune to the Jedi mind trick Anakin proceeds to use it, and it works. Qui-Gon realizes that Anakin is strong with the force, but Anakin would be of an age where it could be assumed by the audience that this is probably the first manifestation of the force within Anakin.

While watch the Star Wars Saga in the machete order, viewing the saga in the order of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, Return of the Jedi. I realized that Episode I, with the exception of the introduction of Anakin Skywalker and some other characters (some did not really need to enter until Episode II) and the politics that underlie the rise of the empire, is narratively irrelevant. Those plot elements do not take long to introduce, because of this, the best way to make the prequels “good” is to restructure the whole prequel trilogy.

Episode I is still titled The Phantom Menace; however the film is now a combination of the old Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Because honestly if Clones is one hundred percent of a movie, about half of it can be kept, and the other half or so can be tossed in the trash. There are parts of this film that are just atrocious. The new Phantom Menace introduces Anakin, Qui-Gon, Darth Maul, and the politics of the first act. The second and third acts of the film are whatever in the old Attack of the Clones is not tossed in the trash. These acts would include Dooku, the clones (not from Django Fett though), the end of the film on Geonosis. There will be part of the third act that will play out like the end of the old Phantom only Darth Maul gets away, and it would take place on Geonosis like the old Clones.

Episode II is Revenge of the Sith only it gets a new title, something like The Dark Side Cometh, well something having to do with the dark side. The only real change is that the second act include Obi-Wan and Darth Maul having another confrontation that ends with Maul getting away again. Episode III is an entirely new film titled Revenge of the Sith. This movie is similar to The Godfather Part II in that the films plot has the Obi-Wan Story and the Darth Vader story run parallel to each other. That is because the prequels are about Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader without explaining how Darth Vader become the Darth Vader you see in Star Wars.  In the Obi-Wan story, he has an epic final confrontation with Darth Maul. Also, you get to some foreshadowing to the kind of relationship that Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker have prior to Star Wars, but that would be at the end of the film to avoid a Jake Lloyd thing. The Darth Vader story would be how Darth Vader became the Darth Vader in Star Wars so it would deal with the growing influence of the empire and Vader’s role in its growth. It would end with the empire planning to build the galaxies ultimate weapon, the Death Star.


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