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Another Star Wars Prequel?
boarder8925 writes "George Lucas said he was finished with the Star Wars movies, but it seems George Lucas has an idea for another add-on to the Star Wars movie series: a prequel to The Phantom Menace. The story would follow the Jedi regaining control of the universe from the many Dark Lords some 88 years before Anakin Skywalker ever graced the universe. Yoda, who, according to Lucas, was instrumental in the effort, would apparently have a headlining role. However, Lucas, now age 60, says he won't be captaining such a ship if it ever happens."
No more SW prequels please! Would be interested however in seeing some subordinate stories like where do Han Solo and Chewbacca meetup between Episode III and IV and perhaps a story following Boba Fett's bounty hunter quests. THere are lots of good stories that could work within the characters Lucas has already presented but please, George, stop going back in time.
One would have thought that the Star Trek franchise was proof of how difficult that is to pull off.
The Star Wars franchise can only be rescued by Lucas' continued meddling in the storyline.
After Return of the Jedi, I didn't think there was a hope for the Trilogy, but now, with the latest three movies delivered, I realize that my feelings back then about the original movies were truly happy and optimistic.
Because Lucas was able to show me how far down the toilet he was willing to let the franchise go, I appreciate the original trilogy all the more. Even his remasters of the original three make me wax nostalgic for my childhood.
I'd like to see how they discover midi-chlorians and the origins of the Jedi. Just thinking. If not, I've seen all the Star Wars I need for one life time.
Too lazy to create a sig...
Yah.. and the guy REALLY came up with it all is dead, his name was Frank Herbert....
Star Wars was rejected by moviemakers on first draft because of the plagiarism, only after a significant re-write did they want to go forward...
The real prequel is called Dune.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Now i know there has been alot of prequal hype of late and sequels are very unhip. ... Perhaps a movie where you don't know whats going to hapen(unless you read the books) would be a little more exciting than another bleeding prequal , though yoda doing some cool jedi tricks would be cool
for the love of god though there are some real gems in the books/comics set after the origional trillogy , Dark empire for example , the reformation of the jedis and so on
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The Starwars universe is great. A clever mix of magic, politics, religion and technology. This is what makes sci fi great. You take a few physical laws, mix them up a bit and see what happens when you introduce humans into it.
This is George Lucas' legacy: a standardised universe, that captivates the imagination. He has woven a rich tapestry of worlds, cultures and characters but is a lousy story teller, particularly dialog.
Please Mr. Lucas, let the universe go. Spend the remainder of you professional life as an executive producer who lets others write and direct, whilst you approve and fund.
As a side note, I'd really like to see a script from Kevin Smith. Given a free reign (and a ban from using his friends as cast members)he could write the Starwars adventure we all think we remember.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
The other drawback is when you've got a character arc like Anakin's I, personally, like to know there's at least a chance of redemption. That maybe, just maybe, they don't get drawn too far into the dark. Even when they do, it's nice to know there's a chance they won't.
Prequels (or catching earlier seasons of a show) always let me down like that, as I know that there's no other possible way. In the case of Episodes I-III the whole point is showing Anakin's path to becoming Vader. But therefore there's no chance of him not falling, as the films where he's already fallen were made first.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
They should do a movie based on the Knights Of The Old Republic RPG story. That was the best Star Wars story ever.
Am I the only one actually wanting the old movies remade with todays standards?
I really like the universe and I espect the fact that SW-fans is fanatic and all but... it comes down to one thing: Entertainment. Right now its just silly, tried looking at IV the other day and I couldnt stand the figthts, it does just not fit in anymore.
this is not my signature.
While some may not agree it is a good idea, I for one have often thought about it. Anyone may take it and use it because I'm not interested in writing science fiction.
I would like to see a Star Wars done so far in advance of even KOTOR that the "galaxy far, far away" is just in its first days of space travel and universal exploration. I don't know (because I'm not that big of a Star Wars fan) how long the Jedi order has been around, but I often wonder "what if" the Jedi were around even before the invention of such things as the light saber.
These extremely ancient Jedi could wield a lesser-evolved weapon like an atom-thin blade held together by a magnetic field...or they could just wield regular swords made out of some super-strong alloy that doesn't break easily. Actually, Jian (you know them as Tai-Chi swords...think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) would make great Jedi weapons as they require much mental and physical disipline to use properly. Most Tai-Chi masters won't even think about teaching you to use one until you've trained with them for over a decade.
Speaking of which, martial arts could be even more of a focus in such a production as it is something the fans would enjoy seeing on the big screen and would fit in with the Jedi codes of self disipline and their supernatural fusion of mind and body.
All the old tricks would be there, mind-trick, force push, telekinesis, etc...but maybe there could be room for some ancient Jedi powers forgotten by the time the more recent adventures come about. Perhaps elemental control? True telepathy? Astral projection?
As other posters have thought, we might even have the ability to see more of a backstory on the midi-clorians and perhaps even a creation myth with some supreme being founding the very universe itself.
In any event, a universe as vast as the one Star Wars is set it is filled with all sorts of good ideas waiting to happen. I, for one, think those who scoff at a new movie should sit back, relax, and know that there cannot possibly be a failure as catastrophic as that of Star Trek. Over-marketing doesn't kill a franchise...under-writing does...as in crappy.
I've seen all of the Star Wars movies in the theater as they came out, and I've liked them all.
I just steadfastly remain intentionally shallow.
It's supposed to be eye candy, not give you a doctorate in comparative theology or high-energy physics.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Never having read Dune I was amazed how much of Star Wars was influenced by it, as outlined here
To his credit, Lucas also robbed Flash Gordon, Kurosawa, Joseph Campbell, and Tolkien :)
Real Sci-Fi doesn't "take a few physical laws, mix them up a bit and see what happens." Real Sci-Fi asks "How do we, in this real world, with our knowledge of the universe, do such-and-such a thing?"
Lucas has more in common with Tolkien than with Asimov, Clark, or even the movie Alien.
Cannon means what the original author/creator himself has done/written.
Thus (like it or not) the prequals being more directly from Lucas are more directly cannon.
Unless a different definition specific to SW has been established (with Lucas's endorsement). It's my understanding that Lucas considers the Zahn books second ONLY to what he's put (most recently in the case of things like Queedo/Solo shooting) on the screen/vhs/dvd.
Also I seem to remember reading in one of the books that the Death Star series was THREE deathstars. The original devlopement prototype that never had an outer shell and was mainly a proof of concept/testbed for several years. The final working version destroyed in ANH (built over a few years itself) and the enlarged (almost double IIRC) sequal blown up in ROTJ.
This parts a bit sketchy in my memory but I seem to recall that the prototype DS was started in secret by Palpatine before he was powerfull enough to do as he pleased after the higher ups in the military rejected the proposal for it durring the clone wars. I believe it was built in a black-hole cluster near Kessal(sp?).
That black hole cluster was used to patch Solo's "in under 12 parsecs" statment of how fast the Falcon was by claiming that the trick to the Kessle run was how short a path through/around the mess of black holes you could plot that your ship had the speed and toughness to handle.
Mycroft
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Dune deals with the fact that what you see into the future locks you into that - or more correctly, the self fulfilling prophecy paradox. Star Wars doesn't (maybe revenge of the sith does hint on that) . It just handles prescience as just a sense and tries to concentrate on moralizing about the Dark and Light sides of the Force. (which it did very well too). Also Dune deals with the inversion of scarcity - Melange which is rare, but common on Arakkis , Water which forms oceans in other worlds, but rare on Arakkis.
Dune carries a lot of fatalism - especially ironic because Paul is prescient. Also the fact that he lets go of Chani rather than turn into a Tlelaxu puppet - which Anakin was not able to do. Also the twins - a girl and boy , the mother dies at birth.
If you really think about it , the Matrix had some of the themes too - Neo is not The ONE , but turns out to be , Paul is not the Kwisatz Haderach , but he becomes.
Dune has the best eyecandy - I remeber dreaming about Shields and lasguns - the sound, color and shimmering feeling. For some of us, CG effects are never enough . Also yeah, the first 3 Dune books were good - the rest of them sucked (come on !.. honored matres' ?.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
The Death Star plans were handed to SIdious by somtone from the trade federation, pre episode III. This means that they do predate the Empire.
Well, this was made very clear - neither Sith nor Jedi masters don't have more than one apprentice at a time. The difference being, of course, that Jedi masters let go of their apprentices and there is no rivalry amongst them.
It's important to notice that Anakin's fast advancement within the Jedi Order was possible only because of the turmoil created by the Clone Wars. He skipped some tests. He probably fought more than meditated. He, so to speak, sneaked past the system designed to screen against any padawan becoming too powerful without developing enough compassion and understanding. It wasn't all that hard, because it was a system built on trust, not paranoid suspicion.
And he managed to keep his relationship with Padme a secret from the rest of Jedi. His betrayal of the Jedi in a sense begun with that.
A tear jerker is what Lucas called this blasphemy. How on earth can you possibly cry when every line delivered from Ian McDiarmid (Palpy) was vocally awkward. I know I couldn't. I was drawn out of the movie by every performance. I was drawn out of the movie by Ewan's good performance because it was so out of place. I sat there thinking "that's actually a good performance" instead of what was going on in the scene.
The security hologram scene was stupid looking. There was no time spent developing emotion. I wanted to feel for the characters and physically couldn't. You must have wanted it more than me.
The story had to be blatant (aka. Anakin had to verbally say why he was turning dark) or else you would never be able to infer what was going on. The real symptom of this movie (and the two before it) is that without blatantly being told what was happening, we would never know. The problem is that Lucas has no grasp of sublety.
Lucas is an incredibly bad director and writer. I will banket the statement by saying all bad acting performances were Lucas' fault. A New Hope was good because he was under enormous pressure to finish it. ESB and RoTJ were good because he had other people do the important work. These movies (and his bastardized remakes) are his vision. His vision sucks. He got lucky making Star Wars and got lucky with his timing to let the fan base create create an incredible universe. The story has not been his for a long time now and I don't think he has any right to go in and ruin it.
All that said, Episode III is by far the best of the prequels. But I also believe that all the "good reviews" of this movie have everything to with how pitiful the other two were.
88 years? Is that a typo in the article?
I thought the Sith were in hiding mode for over a thousand years?
Not that I've come to expect continuity from lucas or the star wars universe or anything =)
I guess he'll have more edits in the I, II, III special edition trilogy box set re-re-re-release.
e.
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Lucas is just an idiot. Look at the scene at the beginning of ep III (which I swore I wouldn't see, then good reviews came out) where the ship tilts 90s. The gravity inside the ship also changes direction 90 degrees. Why? Is the ship just hovering in space, with no orbit? Then why does it start to "burn up" as it enters the atmosphere? If the ship is in orbit, using artificial gravity, why does the direction change?
I mean, this is high school physics stuff. The most basic 'science' stuff in sci-fi and Lucas fucks it up.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
And several lines of dialog at the end of A New Hope, in the battle of Yavin, are lifted almost exactly from The Dam Busters.
Actually, now I think about it, that whole battle was pretty much lifted from the The Dam Busters. Especially if you compare the trench run with the flight down the river lined with guns on the way towards the dam.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
I thought the exact same thing in the theater watching ep III. "This is the only movie that really needed to be made." The other three were pointless.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I prefer the better explanation, that he was throwing out a bit of bafflegab to dazzle the kid. That would also explain the eye-rolling on Kenobi's part when he says it. And hell, the line in the script itself was probably as worse bafflegab than the average Treknobabble, just that Harrison Ford did a good job at making it sound like it.
I mean really, do you think they actually researched that sort of thing? Like Harrison Ford said to Mark Hamill, "this ain't that kind of movie, kid"
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Vader's scream at the end was the greatest bit of unintentional comedy I've seen in quite some time. It's just another example Lucas's prediliction towards nauseating schlock despite stunning achievements in technical filmmaking. Sparkle Like The Stars Just Ask Leslie
Or it could be that the Kessel run is some distance scale that is >12 parsecs and his ship is so fast that the length was contracted to less than 12 parsecs (from the point of view of someone outside the ship and not moving).
Jarjar eh... I think "Revenge of the Sith" shows us just how much Jarjar screwed up the movies. Not just being annoying, he played a crucial role dimwittingly supporting the rise of the Sith while he was filling in for Amadala in the Senate... showing everyone that we really had good cause hating Jarjar all along.